Welcome to shocked and awed 21st-century geopolitics
March 23, 2021
https://thesaker.is/welcome-to-shocked-and-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 posted with permission and first
posted at 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 dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly
powerful five minutes in
the history of post-truth international relations.
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 an extra bonus.
China’s millennial diplomatic protocol
establishes that discussions start around the common ground – which is 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
afterward, 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 is promoting 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”, 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 like an American stooge with the implementation
of the 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 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.
