The No-Win Scenario: Why Economic Decoupling from the West is Imperative

I mean, it's a no win situation. It's a no win scenario. This is why decoupling, from the West is absolutely imperative. Whether you defy the West or you capitulate to it, the result is the same. Economic subjugation, financial ruin, dependence, and so on.

Look at Turkey and look at Egypt. These are two nations that took, completely opposite approaches, to dealing with the West and Western economic systems. Yet both of them found themselves with devalued currencies, inflation, manufactured crises, manufactured by external forces. The lesson is undeniable. There's no winning if you engage with the West on their terms or even if you engage with them at all, to be honest.

It it's very clear that the only path forward is to decouple from Western economic control as much as possible. This has to be the top priority for every Muslim country and for every global South country to to try to delink and decouple from the West. I mean, Turkey has resisted Western control. They refused IMF bailouts. They they adopted independent energy policies.

They sought, defense partnerships outside of NATO. They engaged in military operations that contradict Western, strategic objectives in the region. What was the result? Sanctions, financial attacks, speculative warfare against the Turkish lira. When Turkey detained, that American pastor, they were hit with US sanctions, and the lira collapsed.

When Turkey, bought the, defense system, the s 400, I think it is called, from Russia, they were sanctioned again. When Turkey tried to pursue an independent trade policy, Western hedge funds launched coordinated short selling attacks against the lira. And when Turkey engaged in military operations in Syria, in Libya, and Azerbaijan, they were destabilized again through, again, currency manipulation. Western controlled financial institutions and credit rating agencies have consistently, politicized, the the, alleged risk of Turkey's economy, the the economic risks of Turkey's economy. They politicized their their ranking, their ranking of the economy.

This is this is all to show that or or to, enforce against Turkey that the, the result or the cost of defiance of the West will always be instability. Okay? But then look at Egypt. Egypt chose submission. They followed the prescriptions of the IMF.

They took massive loans. They liberalized their economy in line with IMF and Western dictates, they allowed foreign investors to dictate their policies, the result, financial collapse, the same. The Egyptian pound has been repeatedly devalued and not it wasn't devalued as a form of Western punishment, but actually as a condition for Western support. Now the IMF and Western investors have significant leverage over Egypt's economy. They forced them to privatize, they forced them to cut subsidies, they forced them to, destroy domestic industries and so forth.

The Egyptian government has spent billions of dollars on so called prestige projects while the economy is deteriorating under a significant huge debt burden. That's the price of obedience, weakness, vulnerability, independence. Egypt is trapped in a cycle of permanent economic vulnerability. They're unable to really chart their path in the world without, outside or external support. And this is ridiculous for for a country as large and as important and as strong as Egypt is in its fundamentals.

I mean, the Gulf countries swooped in to a great extent to sort of insert themselves into this scenario to sort of stave off Western domination, and Egypt joined BRICS. So I mean there's hope for Egypt, that they can get out from under Western control and Western, coercion. But you see it's just a no win scenario. If you defy the West, you get attacked. If you submit to the West, they'll you'll they'll drain you, you'll get drained.

So either you, def whether you defy or you comply, they're going to try to destroy you. The consequences of defiance and the consequences of submission, are almost identical. So why submit? You know, why continue to play a game where the rules are all designed to make you lose? The only reason you would comply is because in order to defy, you have to have a strategy for independence, and you have to be equipped to carry out that strategy, and that's an incredibly complicated and an incredibly risky undertaking.

The West has been waging an economic war against the global South for a very long time. They'll attack our economies whether we are obedient or whether we are rebellious. So if suffering is inevitable, you know, let it at least be suffering for the sake of sovereignty. The only solution is to decouple from Western economic systems as much as you can. This again has to be the priority of every Muslim country and every global South country.

Your nation has to be economically independent. You have to have economic sovereignty. This has to be the top priority, Wallahi, of every of every country in the global South, and it's becoming so. You have to break away from the IMF and the World Bank. These institutions are instruments of control, not development.

Everyone understands that. They don't provide aid, they provide chains. No country has ever become prosperous by following IMF or World Bank prescriptions ever. You have to you have to focus on developing intra south trade, you have to reduce your reliance on Western markets, develop direct trade agreements with other emerging economies, so called emerging economies, particularly in Africa, Asia, so called Latin America and so forth. You have to de dollarize, transition away from the dollar because weaponization of the US dollar against countries like Turkey, Iran, like Russia, and even China proves that reliance on the dollar is a national security risk.

It's a risk to your national security. So you need a new economic block with its own financial architecture, which is being built. Now, obviously, every country needs to invest in domestic production because any country that relies on imports for essential goods is always gonna be vulnerable to external manipulation, always. You need food security, you need energy in energy independence, industrial self sufficiency, these have to be the the foundation of of every country's economic planning. Build independent financial networks, you know, we need alternatives to Swift which are coming up now.

Alternative payment systems, banking infrastructure, and so on that can't be weaponized by America or by the West against us. And again, this is being developed now. Because the fact is that it there's no way around it. Every Muslim country has to prepare for economic war. Economic war.

If a country as economically advanced as Turkey can be crippled by financial attacks, and if a country as friendly and as capitulating as Egypt can be basically punished for its obedience and be punished for its capitulation, then the only thing you can conclude is that the system itself is the enemy. So the solution isn't to reform that system, it's to remove ourselves from it, to build a new economic framework that does not depend on Western financial approval. We don't need their loans. We don't need their credit ratings. We don't need their permission, you know.

But again, have to build your capacity. You have to build your capacity for independence. But because like I say, the Turkey, they divide the West, but without first fortifying their economy against the inevitable hostility and the inevitable aggression that they would face as a result of their defiance. In my opinion, Erdogan should have long ago implemented measures to protect the lira against manipulation and against speculation and so on. He didn't do that.

Turkey's been under economic attack for years. The lira has deliberately been targeted by speculators, by foreign banks, by western financial institutions and so on, and and we know this. They should have anticipated it in my opinion. I mean, you have to know who you're dealing with when it comes to the West. Because let's be clear, Turkey could have protected their economy, in my opinion.

They they could have shielded their currency. You have to know that no matter how strong a country may seem, it's still if if if it is still tied to the Western economic system, it's vulnerable. The lira was not destroyed by Turkish domestic policy alone. It was targeted. It was targeted by a short selling in Western financial centers like London and New York, where traders bet against the lira to drive down its value.

There were currency swaps and speculative trading that allowed banks to manipulate the the liquidity of the lira. And then of course, you had capital flight where international investors, foreign investors pulled their money out of Turkey that just weakened the economy even more. This wasn't just market forces, this was financial warfare. And Turkey should have seen it coming. Erdogan should have seen it coming, in my opinion.

That's what I mean by building your capacity to defy. You don't get to do things in this world just because they're your right to do them. Not in a world where America exists or Europe exists. You have to secure your rights. And you have to not only take your rights, but you have to have the means to keep your rights.

If a country is serious about protecting their economy, then they need to block all of the weapons of financial warfare that that that to which they are vulnerable. So in my opinion, need Turkey should have banned offshore trading of the lira. It's a mistake to allow the the the lira to be traded freely on foreign markets. This gave speculators in New York and London and so forth the ability to bet against the lira without facing any consequences. China doesn't allow that.

They don't allow the yuan to be freely traded offshore. Russia has taken the same steps recently because if you let Western financial centers control your currency, well, they you're you're giving them the ability to sabotage your economy. Turkey should have banned offshore trading, lira trading, and brought all currency exchanges under its own control. And of course, they should have imposed capital controls. Why should foreign investors be allowed to just pull their money out overnight and crash your economy?

They shouldn't be allowed. Turkey should have restricted the outflow of capital, foreign capital to prevent the the rapid depreciation of the lira. You have to place controls on how much investors can withdraw, make sure that they invest or commit to long term investments, not just, know, short term speculation. This is what Malaysia did. Malaysia in in in the the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and it worked.

Why? Because it cut off the ability of speculators to drain the economy. You need a a some sort of a tax, in my opinion, on foreign exchange transactions. If a foreign investor wants to move money in and out of your country, in and out of your economy just to make a quick profit, then you tax them for that. Even a small tax on currency trades would have made speculative attacks on the lira too expensive.

It wouldn't have been worth it. That would have, discouraged those, hedge funds from engaging in short term bets against Turkey's economy. This isn't a radical idea. Countries like Brazil have done this. Chile has done this to to, you know, try to prevent those those types of speculative attacks.

And obviously, Turkey should have been trying to de dollarize. It's one of the biggest weaknesses in Turkey's economy that businesses and, companies and individuals can settle their, transactions with US dollars or with Euros. This creates a constant demand for dollars and Euros and weakens demand for the lira. Turkey should have forced the transition completely away from the dollar, from from any type of dollar dependence, you know. Require all businesses to settle all transactions in liras, not dollars or euros.

Strengthen trade deals with all of your non Western partners, conduct all of those trades and those transactions in local currencies. Try to encourage people to to save and invest in gold, alternative assets, rather than, relying on the dollar or dollar reserves. This is exactly what Russia and China are doing right now to try to protect themselves from Western financial attacks. Turkey should have followed this this sort of a path, in my opinion. And why is Turkey still using SWIFT?

You know? Western controlled financial messaging system. If the West can block your financial transactions, which is what it means when you use SWIFT, well, they control your economy. Turkey should have expanded its use of systems like Russia's SPSPFS or China's CIPS. These these alternative payment systems.

You have to create your own regional financial networks among the Muslim countries, among the global South countries, amongst BRICS countries and so forth, bypass Western banks as much as you can. Now, again, all of this is happening now, but this is these are all steps that Turkey could have been pursuing, in my opinion, that would have protected the lira. I mean, they still would have been under attack, and and there still would have been problems. They still would have faced punitive measures by the West, but they would have been in a better position to to sustain that. They would have been in a better position to absorb the attacks by the West if they had done these types of steps to protect their economy, to put and to protect the lira.

But this just shows you the importance of BRICS. This this shows you how important the development of BRICS is, how important it is for the development of economic sovereignty in every every individual member country. I mean, especially bypassing Western banks. Iran was doing this, has been doing this for for ages because of the sanctions, Russia is doing it now. But this is something that the Muslim, Muslim country should have been doing and should have done decades ago.

You need to understand this. If a nation does not control its own financial system, then it is not sovereign. Turkey's economy was attacked because it was vulnerable, and it was vulnerable because it was still entangled, in Western financial institutions and and the Western economies. If Turkey had, like I say, blocked offshore trading of the lira, imposed capital controls, taxed speculative currency trading, tried to de dollarize their economy, build alternative financial infrastructure and so forth, then speculators would not have been able to crash the lira so easily. But Turkey didn't do these things, so it was vulnerable in my opinion.

This is a warning for every other Muslim country and for every other country in the global South. If you stay in the Western controlled financial systems, you will always be vulnerable. You will never have true sovereignty. So you have two choices, either you defend yourself and break free from those systems, or you are gonna just remain hostage, just waiting basically to be strangled whenever they might decide, whenever the whim strikes them. Financial independence is not an option, it's a necessity for survival.

So it's a no win scenario, like I said at the beginning, it's a no win scenario to engage with them at all. You have to, try as much as you can to get as far away as you can, from Western economies, from dependence on Western economies, from reliance upon Western economies and so forth. And I'm not just talking about aid, obviously. I'm talking about trade. You need to try to, eliminate them as a trading partner as much as you can.

Obviously, it's unrealistic to say that you can do it completely, but you need to as much as possible minimize your interaction economically and and and reduce as much as you can the reliance of your economy on any sort of Western partnerships. If they can stop, if they can put a freeze on you, like just the fact that they can even impose sanctions, that they even have the power to impose sanctions means that you're already on their playground. You're already on their playing field, that they can even impose sanctions on you. You know, when I was in prison, I saw how, the, prison administration used privileges as a a coercive tool. In other words, they will give you a privilege, they will give you, say, a pillow or a mattress or, you know, whatever, you know, maybe access to the canteen or something like this, access to the to the yard and so forth.

They'll give you privileges so that they can threaten you with the removal of those privileges. And this is the whole nature of the relationship with the West. They see themselves as the warden of the the jail that is the Global South. The Global South, they see the Global South as their prisoners, and they will give you privileges, and they will remove those privileges, and they only give you those privileges for the purpose of being able to threaten you with the removal of those privileges. Here, privilege means trade, it means aid, it means financial support.

Whatever you get from trading with the West, whatever you get from being involved in their economic systems, it's not worth it. It's not worth it because it's actually just a trap. Again, I know it's not realistic to say that you can you can extricate yourself completely from dealing with the West. We're all on the same planet, but, you need to reduce as much as possible any reliance on, Western economies and get yourself out of their financial systems as much as you can develop alternatives and get away from the dollar. These are all really essential policies, in my opinion, for every Muslim country and for every global South country to try to secure, their economic sovereignty.

And again, without economic sovereignty, there can be no political independence. So economic sovereignty is absolutely paramount in my opinion.