https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/02/patrick-lawrence-the-return-of-non-alignment/
The Return of Non-Alignment
The Ukraine conflict as catalyst: I wonder how many people who pay attention understood a year ago that Russia’s intervention and the West’s extravagant support for the Kyiv regime would prompt fundamental shifts in the global order such that the world is now a very different place and the 21st century has a very new look. It escaped me, I have to say. I didn’t see last February that so many nations, so vast a proportion of humanity, would lean so swiftly into a new era, or that the principles of this new era would be so clearly defined.
I certainly did not see that the good old much-missed Non–Aligned Movement would re-emerge after many years languishing in the wilderness of post–Cold War geopolitics. No, not with a declaration such as that the NAM made first in Bandung, the Indonesian mountain resort where Sukarno hosted its members in 1955, or in Tito’s Belgrade six years later, when the movement formally declared itself as an organization, but in spirit, in the ethos non–Western nations now stand up to declare as theirs.
Let us watch. In my estimation the numerous non–Western nations gathering in support of the principles and demands first articulated by the gone-but-not-forgotten NAM will stand in coming years as the most significant, determinant turn in world politics we are likely to see in this century.
There are lots of ways we can measure the wider consequences of the Ukraine conflict. There is Europe’s astonishing surrender of its interests to a voraciously coercive administration as it leads America into its late-imperial phase. Related to this, there are the regrettable pledges of allegiance sworn by Finland, Sweden, and Germany—three nations whose honorable but now-abandoned role was to serve as bridges between West and East.
These are realignments, each in response to the Biden regime’s decision to make Ukraine the crucible of its defense of a fading hegemony.
This radical new subservience to Washington is freighted with consequence in its own right. Born of insecurity and a profound lack of vision and imagination, it is a very bad call on the part of America’s “allies and partners” and will leave them at a considerable disadvantage as our new century progresses. Can they not hear history’s wheel turning?
But the common cause non–Western nations have discovered among themselves this past year is vastly more significant. For them, Ukraine has proven a catalyst in the chemical-lab meaning of this term: It has clarified the solution, let’s say. The Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Iranians, the Turks, the Mexicans, the Argentines, many others: They are thinking differently and more clearly now.
This is a realignment, too.
We can think of this realignment as the reemergence of nonalignment for the first time in many decades. To dot the “t’s” and cross the “i’s” here, which is how I prefer to do it, the NAM survives with 120 members and head office at the U.N. in New York. But its presence, if not its founding ideals, has been much reduced with the passing of its founding generation and since the Cold War’s end got the world past the East–West binaries of the previous 40 or so years.
I am not writing of a secretariat or a bureaucracy or brigades of diplomats or any such thing. I mean to note the renewed prominence of the principles for which the NAM stood. Are we surprised, as the U.S. seeks to divide the planet once again, that these come to the fore? I am not. I am more in the way of very pleased to see a new generation of leaders revive ideals first articulated during the postwar “independence era.”
I have noted these ideals previously in this space. They are based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Zhou En-lai drafted in the early 1950s and then took to Bandung. These are, simply stated, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, nonaggression, noninterference in others’ internal affairs, equality among nations, and—the point of the other four—peaceful co-existence.
Many non–Western nations have made it increasingly clear over the past few years that they adhere to these principles as the bedrock of a 21st century world order. I will once again note the Sino–Russian Joint Statement on International Relations Entering a New Era, issued—the timing is important to note—on the eve of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. If you want a declaration of the Bandung or Belgrade kind, this comes close. The NAM’s principles run all through it. They are easily detected in the document’s insistence that international law and the U.N. Charter must be the basis of the new era named in the title.
Did you follow the Group of 20 session in Bangalore last week and this? It is another case in point. Western media didn’t give it much coverage because it was a messy confrontation between Western and non–Western members, and the former came out looking utterly behind the curve, lost in an idea of their place in the global order that has little to do with emergent realities evident to anyone willing to look squarely at the world as it is in 2023.
The G–20 first convened at the close of the last century and the dawn of this one. It was conceived as a step on from the Group of 7, bringing together foreign ministers, finance ministers, and central bank governors from 20 Western and non–Western nations to reflect the increasing importance of middle-income powers such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa. The theme of each session is common interests: financial stability, international trade, the climate, aid to the poorest nations, and so on.
Leave it to the Americans. Led by Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary and a voluble exponent of the neoliberal orthodoxy, Western officials thought it was a good idea to use the occasion to bring other G–20 members in line against Russia and its intervention in Ukraine. So they spent their time cajoling others present—pretty much the rest of the G–20 not members of the Group of 7—to sign a communiqué denouncing Moscow and declaring their unified support for Kyiv.
G–20 foreign ministers convened Thursday, and it proved nothing more than more of the same. American media reports made much of Antony Blinken’s first encounter with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian FM, since Russia’s intervention began a year ago. Maybe more was said than the secretary of state let on, but I doubt it. So far as was reported, Blinken turned in another performance for the folks back home: I told him this was Russia’s war of aggression, I told him we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes, and so on. Nothing new from the man who has nothing to say.
The Western contingent got nowhere in Bangalore. Non–Western members objected vigorously to the G–7 group’s attempt to force them to endorse the U.S.–led campaign to isolate Russia and align behind its support for Ukraine. In the end there was no communiqué—only a “Summary and Outcome Document” that acknowledges in so many words that the session was a bust.
Whatever you may have thought of Yellen when she spent her time fussing with interest rates as chair of the Federal Reserve, in matters of state she is a tone-deaf failure who simply cannot read the currents of global politics. Have you heard much lately about her oil-price cap, which was supposed to bring the world on board as Washington sought to impose a ceiling on what Russia could charge for a barrel of crude? No, well, I thought not. Why was she the Biden administration’s point person at this G–20 session? I suppose if Blinken was the alternative there is a logic to the choice.
In Bangalore they both seemed to assume that the pabulum the U.S. routinely deploys to obscure its intentions would carry the day. “Ukraine is fighting not only for their [sic] country, but for the preservation of democracy and peaceful conditions in Europe,” Yellen asserted. Of Russia’s intervention she said, “It’s an assault on democracy and on territorial integrity that should concern all of us.”
This is the Biden administration’s standard routine. Cast events as matters of ideology and sentiment and pretend politics and history are of no importance. So hollow and tired. So wanting in seriousness.
Yellen’s rhetoric did not carry the day or anything else, to say nothing of Blinken’s. Between the two of them, their presentations in Bangalore could go down as marking the beginning of the end of the G–20. This would be another casualty of the new Cold War the Biden administration insists on dragging us all into, another change in the look of the 21st century.
The non–Western nations present had made their position on the Ukraine crisis very clear well before Bangalore. It is important to note its nuance. No, we do not approve of the war in Ukraine. No, we are not going to condemn the Russian intervention. Yes, we understand that the West shares responsibility for provoking this conflict. Yes, sorry, but whether Russia has violated one of the Five Principles is complicated by the Western powers’ conduct leading up to this war. Yes, the West could and should have prevented it by diplomatic means before it started. Yes, we want to see this settled now via negotiation.
This is the very essence of the NAM’s principles in applied, 21st century form.
Talkfests such as the G–20 are of limited interest, I realize, but what happened in lovely, well-gardened Bangalore has something important to tell us. Three things, actually.
One, we find in it Washington’s absolute inability to see the world in other than Manichean terms. A lot of Democrats thought Bush II’s “You’re with us or with the terrorists” routine after the September 11 attacks was a crude formulation. Nonsense. This is precisely the frame of Yellen’s position in the Ukraine context. This is how those purporting to lead America insist on ordering the world, and to say it will get this nation nowhere in the 21st century is to put the point too mildly.
Two, Bangalore is a measure of the resolve with which non–Western nations are coming to resist Washington’s prosecution of Cold War II. While it is altogether sad to watch the world divide once again as it did during the first Cold War, conflict and confrontation are inevitable so long as the Western powers are represented by blunt instruments such as Janet Yellen.
Three, the U.S. and the rest of the West are not going to read at all wisely the informal reemergence of the NAM as non–Western nations advance its principles. Remember, during Cold War I, those declaring themselves nonaligned between the Western and Eastern blocs were dismissed as crypto–Communists, dupes of Moscow, or foolish wanderers. We’re seeing the same thing again, and let us not be surprised: We have understood for many years that among the things the neoliberal West cannot tolerate, nations that think for themselves in the interests of their people rank highest.
Maybe you noted reports that South Africa and Russia—I think China is in on this too—began joint naval exercises off the South African coast earlier this month. This reflects the waxing of Moscow–Pretoria relations, and there is no surprise here: The Soviets supported the African National Congress, now the governing party, in its fight against apartheid, the West having stood on the other side. Lavrov was in South Africa a month earlier for talks with his counterpart, Naledi Pandor.
So far as I understand it, “nonaligned” means “not aligned,” not with this side, not with the other. The Americans don’t speak this language, and it is worth noting how eagerly the Europeans haven’t either, since the Ukraine crisis erupted. Washington and the European capitals are freaked out about the naval drills and altogether the strengthening ties between South Africa and the Russian Federation—which are, of course, entirely the business of Pretoria and Moscow and have nothing to do with “taking a side.” The South Africans are “moving further away from a nonaligned position,” an E.U. spokesman told The New York Times.
In this connection, let us not leave out Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Green foreign minister, who is as hawkishly Russophobic as anyone walking around in Washington. Here she is speaking at the Munich Security Conference a couple of weeks ago: “Neutrality is not an option, because then you are standing on the side of the aggressor.” Yes, Virginia, there are as many stupid statesmen and stateswomen now as there were back then.
It was Newspeak during Cold War I and it is Newspeak this time around. You can call yourselves nonaligned as long as you align with the West. Otherwise, you are with the “them” in our “them or us” formulation: This is the commonly held Western position.
A few months ago, Cambridge University published the results of various surveys it had conducted in 137 countries to measure their views about the West, Russia, and China. A World Divided: Russia, China and the West is a 38–page report and can be read here. In sum, it found that of the non–West’s 6.3 billion people, 66 percent—what is this, three-quarters of the world’s population?— look favorably upon Russia; the figure for China is 70 percent.
It is important we take care to understand these figures. There are subtleties in them.
The sentiments they reflect derive in large measure from history. The Russians and Chinese stood with the non–West as it decolonized. Both were prominent voices in the old NAM. Given America’s poor record on both counts, we can take this as a measure of how the past comes to bite Washington on its backside.
At the same time, we cannot read positive sentiment toward Russia and China as in essence anti–American. Moscow and Beijing made this pointedly clear in their Joint Statement a year ago, and many others have said the same thing: The U.S. and its Atlantic world allies are to be welcomed as a new world order takes shape. What the non–West rejects is any suggestion of the hegemony Washington and its allies insist upon. The distinction is essential always to bear in mind, notably when we read over and over that the project is to subvert the West.
The scene in Bangalore will be repeated many times in years to come. These occasions are to be watched and understood for what they are and are not. They will reflect one of the most essential conflicts of our time. The original NAM failed to prevent Washington’s reordering of the world into hostile blocs; the West suppressed but did not extinguish its aspirations. Non–Western nations, stronger now even as the U.S. weakens, have a vastly better chance of success this time. Whether they are hostile to the Western powers is up to the Western powers to determine.
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https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/23/china-report-excoriates-us-hegemony-war-crimes-cia-coups-400-foreign-interventions/
China Report Excoriates ‘US Hegemony’, War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions
The Chinese government has published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its destructive effects on the world.
The document analyzed the ways in which the United States has “abused” its hegemony politically, militarily, economically, financially, technologically, and culturally.
China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Washington has roughly 800 foreign military bases all around the world and has launched 400 foreign military interventions.
The United States committed genocide against Indigenous nations, imposed its colonialist “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, and annexed independent territories like Hawaii, Beijing pointed out.
China denounced the US for sponsoring coups, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in dozens of countries, while constantly spreading “misinformation” and propaganda to destabilize foreign adversaries.
Just since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, wounded millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, Beijing recalled.
These devastating facts were laid out in the report “US Hegemony and Its Perils“, which China’s Foreign Ministry released on February 20. It was subsequently republished by major Chinese media outlets.
Beijing said the goal of the report was to “draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples”.
The Foreign Ministry wrote:
Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.
The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights.
Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation.
It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others.
It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”
Political hegemony
China condemned the countless examples of “U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.
It noted that the US has treated Latin America as its colonial territory with the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”.
Beijing denounced Washington’s illegal, 61-year blockade of Cuba; the 1973 CIA coup against Chile’s democratically elected President Salvador Allende; and the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government.
China likewise blasted the “color revolutions” and “regime change” operations that the United States supported in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond.
“The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law”, Beijing wrote.
“The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation”, it added.
Military hegemony
“The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote, explaining:
Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii.
After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives.
In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.
The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
“As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world”, Beijing added.
It cited a Tufts University report that found that the United States carried out almost 400 military interventions from 1776 to 2019.
Since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, injured millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, China pointed out.
Economic hegemony
“By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting ‘seigniorage’ from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote.
It identified the “hegemony of U.S. dollar” as “the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy”.
Through the use of sanctions and other measures, “The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion”, and “America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon”, Beijing warned.
Technological hegemony
“The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields”, China said.
Beijing condemned Washington’s global use of cyber attacks and surveillance.
“The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection”, it wrote.
“The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools”, it added.
Cultural hegemony
“The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
Washington uses movies, TV shows, and media outlets as weapons of soft power, Beijing pointed out.
“U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries”, it wrote.
Citing a report from The Intercept, the Chinese Foreign Minister noted how the “U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media”, spreading war propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.
“The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it”, Beijing warned.
US propaganda is “targeting socialist countries” in particular, it noted, stressing that Washington “pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night”.
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/02/us-ambassador-to-china-were-the-leader-of-the-indo-pacific/
US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific
A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.
Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.
“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.
“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.
The “Indo-Pacific” is a term which has gained a lot of traction in geopolitical discourse in recent years, typically describing the vast multi-continental region between Australia to the south, Asia to the north, Africa to the west, and the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the east. It contains half the Earth’s population, and it very much includes China.
After making the rather audacious claim of being “the leader” of a region which China is a part of but the United States is not, Burns went on to claim the US does not want any kind of confrontation with the Chinese government.
“We want a future of peace with China,” Burns said. “As President Biden makes clear every time he talks about this, we don’t want conflict, but we’re gonna hold our own out here. And I feel optimistic, just concluding my first year as ambassador, about the American position in this country and in this region.”
Again, Burns is saying this from China, so by “in this country” he means in China.
Burns supported the Iraq war and is on record saying that “China is the greatest threat to the security of our country and of the democratic world,” and he was appointed to his current position for a reason. Though especially hawkish and American supremacist, his comments are entirely in alignment with official US foreign policy; here’s an excerpt from a White House strategy published last year titled “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States“:
The United States is an Indo-Pacific power. The region, stretching from our Pacific coastline to the Indian Ocean, is home to more than half of the world’s people, nearly two-thirds of the world’s economy, and seven of the world’s largest militaries. More members of the U.S. military are based in the region than in any other outside the United States. It supports more than three million American jobs and is the source of nearly $900 billion in foreign direct investment in the United States. In the years ahead, as the region drives as much as two-thirds of global economic growth, its influence will only grow—as will its importance to the United States.
In a quickly changing strategic landscape, we recognize that American interests can only be advanced if we firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region itself, alongside our closest allies and partners.
This intensifying American focus is due in part to the fact that the Indo-Pacific faces mounting challenges, particularly from the PRC. The PRC is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power. The PRC’s coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific. From the economic coercion of Australia to the conflict along the Line of Actual Control with India to the growing pressure on Taiwan and bullying of neighbors in the East and South China Seas, our allies and partners in the region bear much of the cost of the PRC’s harmful behavior. In the process, the PRC is also undermining human rights and international law, including freedom of navigation, as well as other principles that have brought stability and prosperity to the Indo-Pacific.
Our collective efforts over the next decade will determine whether the PRC succeeds in transforming the rules and norms that have benefitted the Indo-Pacific and the world. For our part, the United States is investing in the foundations of our strength at home, aligning our approach with those of our allies and partners abroad, and competing with the PRC to defend the interests and vision for the future that we share with others. We will strengthen the international system, keep it grounded in shared values, and update it to meet 21st-century challenges. Our objective is not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.
As we discussed recently, history’s unfolding has shown us that the US empire’s plan to “shape the strategic environment” in which China operates has meant continuing to encircle China with war machinery in ways the US would never permit itself to be encircled. So when men like Joe Biden and Nicholas Burns claim the US does not seek a confrontation with China, what they really mean is that they hope China just sits back without responding to the confrontation the US is already inflicting upon it.
The way US empire managers talk about “leading” ostensibly sovereign states with ostensibly independent governments shows you they really do think they own the world. We see this in news stories like US officials admonishing Brazil for permitting Iran to harbor military ships thousands of miles away from the US coastline, while continually shrieking about China asserting a small sphere of influence over the South China Sea which the US continually transgresses by sailing and flying its own war machinery right through it.
We also see US empire managers claiming ownership of the entire planet in instances like when they drew a “red line” on China providing Russia with military assistance even as the US and its allies pour weapons into Ukraine, or the time Biden said that “everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard,” or the time then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked on the mounting tensions around Ukraine that it is in America’s interest to support “our eastern flank countries”, suggesting that the eastern flank of the United States is eastern Europe and not its own geographic eastern coastline.
They claim ownership over the entire planet while pretending that they do not seek confrontation with the nations they try to subjugate, and interpret any refusal to be subjugated as an unprovoked act of aggression. This is taking our world in a very dangerous direction, and we need to do something to stop it.
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