In These New Times

What this reveals is that the new US doctrine of detente with Russia alongside containment of China is already dead in the water. The assumption behind this strategy would have been that Russia and China could be set at odds rather as they were by Kissinger in 1972. China’s deployment in Syria and Russia’s support for China over the South Seas have essentially laid to rest such delusions. As a result, I would predict that the Brexit project will be very short-lived, that Temer will be hoisted on his own petard of Facebook protest, that Macri will reverse his anti-China shift, that the oppositional movements Venezuela, South Africa and Zimbabwe will fail and that Australia will not end up preferring a security alliance with the USA to it’s vital economic interests in a trade deal with China. At the same time, all the logic of this situation points to a Trump victory in the US. There will be no comeback for the neo-con elements purged by Obama now gathering around Clinton. We are at a remarkable conjuncture with the moment of truth to come with the raising of interest rates in the US. Then we will know exactly the potential for East-West cooperation and a reset of the global financial system: whether what is to come will be merely painful or totally catastrophic.

M.K.Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline

11th September, 2016

The wrap on the long-awaited China-Russia naval exercise in the South China Sea has been lifted, finally. From what Beijing disclosed today regarding the eight-day exercise (codenamed Joint Sea-2016), beginning on September 12, it is anything but a routine exercise. Make no mistake, it marks a leap forward in Sino-Russian military ties and signals a significant show of strategic congruence.

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