Welcome to shocked & awed 21st century
geopolitics
With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the
hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical
chessboard
By Pepe Escobar
March 23, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - - "Asia
Times"
- It took 18 years after
Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon
to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually
simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.
How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be
emphasized enough; 21st century
geopolitics will never be the same again.
Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the
diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden
had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian
President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in
the middle of a softball interview.
Not even at the height of the Cold War the
superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The
result of such an astonishing blunder was to
regiment virtually the whole Russian population
behind Putin – because that was perceived as an
attack against the Russian state.
Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and
quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be
carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words
are arguably
the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in
the history of post-truth international relations.
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In
For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we
forecasted what could take place in the US-China
2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with
cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as
extra bonus.
China’s millennial diplomatic protocol
establishes that discussions start around common
ground – which are then extolled as being more
important than disagreements between negotiating
parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no
loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss
their differences.
Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of
amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would
smash those basic diplomatic rules to show
“strength” to their home crowd, distilling the
proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China
Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.
Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack
with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the
amateurs you don’t mess with the formidable head of
the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central
Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.
Visibly startled, but controlling his
exasperation, Yang Jiechi
struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard
around the whole Global South.
They had to include a basic lesson in manners:
“If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have
some mutual respect and do things the right way”.
But what stood out was a stinging, concise
diagnostic blending history and politics:
The United States is not qualified to talk to
China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people
will not accept that. It must be based on mutual
respect to deal with China, and history will prove
that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in
the end.
And all that translated in real time by young,
attractive and ultra-skilled Zhang Jing – who
inevitably became an overnight superstar in China,
reaping an astonishing 400 million plus hits on
Weibo.
The incompetence of the “diplomatic” arm of the
Biden-Harris administration beggars belief. Using a
basic Sun Tzu maneuver, Yang Jiechi turned the
tables and voiced the predominant sentiment of the
overwhelming majority of the planet. Stuff your
unilateral “rules-based order”. We, the nations of
the world, privilege the UN charter and the primacy
of international law.
So this is what the Russia-China one-two achieved
almost instantaneously: from now on, the Hegemon
should be treated, all across the Global South with,
at best, disdain.
An inevitable historical process
Pre-Alaska, the Americans went on a charming
offensive in Japan and South Korea for
“consultations”. That’s irrelevant. What matters is
post-Alaska, and the crucial
Sergey Lavrov-Wang Yi meeting of Foreign
Ministers in Guilin.
Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an
interview with Chinese media how the
Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current
US diplomatic train wreck:
As a matter of fact, they have largely lost
the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about
relations between people, the ability to listen to
each other, to hear one another and to strike a
balance between competing interests. These are
exactly the values that Russia and China are
promoting in diplomacy.
The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China
must “consolidate our independence: “The United
States has declared limiting the advance of
technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we
must reduce our exposure to sanctions by
strengthening our technological independence and
switching to settlements in national and
international currencies other than the dollar. We
need to move away from using Western-controlled
international payment systems.”
Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov
pointed out, how the “Western partners” are
“promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at
preserving their dominance by holding back progress
in other countries. Their policies run counter to
the objective international developments and, as
they used to say at some point, are on the wrong
side of history. The historical process will come
into its own, no matter what happens.”
As a stark presentation of an inevitable
“historical process”, it doesn’t get more crystal
clear than that. And predictably, it didn’t take
time for the “Western partners” to fall back into –
what else – their same old sanction bag of tricks.
Here we go again: a US, UK, EU, Canada “alliance”
sanctioning selected Chinese officials because, in
Blinken’s words, “the PRC [People’s Republic of
China] continues to commit genocide and crimes
against humanity in Xinjiang.”
The EU, UK, and Canada didn’t have the guts to
sanction a key player: Xinjiang party chief Chen
Quanguo, who’s a Politburo member. The Chinese
response would have been – economically –
devastating.
Still, Beijing counterpunched with its own
sanctions – targeting, crucially, the German
far-right evangelical nut posing as “scholar” who
produced the bulk of the
completely debunked “proof” of a million Uighurs
held in concentration camps.
Once again, the “Western partners” are
impermeable to logic. Adding to the already
appalling state of EU-Russia relations, Brussels
chooses to also antagonize China based on a single
fake dossier, playing right into the Hegemon’s not
exactly secret Divide and Rule agenda.
Mission (nearly) accomplished: Brussels diplomats
tell me the EU Parliament is all but set to refuse
to ratify the China-EU trade deal painstakingly
negotiated by Merkel and Macron. The consequences
will be immense.
So Blinken will have reasons to be cheerful when
he meets assorted eurocrats and NATO bureaucrats
this week, ahead of the NATO summit.
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western
partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the
start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of
Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total
destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions,
with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10
years since the start of the savage destruction of
Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as
“moderate rebels”.
Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified
by the plight of Muslims in Western China.
At least there are some cracks within the EU
illusionist circus. Last week, the French Armed
Forces Joint Reflection Circle (CRI) – in fact an
independent think tank of former high officers –
wrote a startling open letter to cardboard NATO
secretary-general Stoltenberg de facto accusing him
of behaving as an American stooge with the
implementation of NATO 2030 plan. The French
officers drew the correct conclusion: the US/NATO
combo is the main cause of appalling relations with
Russia.
These Ides of March
Meanwhile, sanctions hysteria advance like a
runaway train. Biden-Harris has already threatened
to impose extra sanctions on Chinese oil imports
from Iran. And there’s more in the pipeline – on
manufacturing, technology, 5G, supply chains,
semiconductors.
And yet nobody is trembling in their boots. Right
on cue with Russia-China, Iran has stepped up the
game, with Ayatollah Khamenei issuing the guidelines
for Tehran’s return to the JCPOA.
1. The US regime is in no position to make new
demands or changes regarding the nuclear deal.
2. The US is weaker today than when the JCPOA was
signed.
3. Iran is in a stronger position now. If anyone
can impose new demands it’s Iran and not the US.
And with that we have a Russia-China-Iran triple
bitch slap on the Hegemon.
In our latest conversation/interview, to be
released soon in a video + transcript package,
Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist
– hit the heart of the matter:
The fight against China, the fear of China is
that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia.
America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure
in China to say, let’s just give all of the
railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail,
let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories
to individuals and let the individuals run
everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or
we’ll buy them out and then we can control them
financially. And China’s not letting that happen.
And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury
in the West is that somehow, the American financial
system is unable to take over foreign resources,
foreign agriculture. It is left only with military
means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near
East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now.
To be continued. As it stands, we should all make
sure that the Ides of March – the 2021 version –
have already configured a brand new geopolitical
chessboard. The Russia-China Double Helix on
high-speed rail has left the station – and there’s
no turning back.
Pepe Escobar is
correspondent-at-large at
Asia Times.
His latest book is
2030. Follow him on
Facebook.-
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