Posted by seumasach on March 27, 2018
I don’t think the West is uniting: both Trump’s and the EU’s response has been less than fulsome. Trump’s expulsions, along with the appointment of John Bolton of the neocon stable, are surprising given that the Russia collusion narrative has run out of steam and he would then appear to have a free hand to pursue detente with Russia. Is Trump now seesawing between a realist approach and a neocon approach or has some deal been reached between the White House and the neocon opposition? Since we still don’t know for sure what is behind the “Get Trump” campaign, assuming it’s not that he put a hand up a lady’s skirt, then it is equally difficult to surmise as to what such a deal might involve. His sacking of Tillerson just as Boris Johnson was reveling in the latter’s support for Britain after Salisbury strikes me as not being coincidental. Tillerson was allegedly pushing for action against Assad in tandem with the Brits following Nicki Haley’s ominous warning at the UN and Lavrov’s robust counter warning about direct action by Western forces in Syria and attempts to pin more chemical weapons outrages on Assad. Yet nothing has happened. Has the war party just shot it’s bolt and it has turned out to be a damp squib. Have we just missed WW3? Is Trump sitting pretty, graciously appeasing the neocons after seeing off the Brits and their Clintonite allies or has he succumbed to the inevitable and begun preparing a war cabinet as some have claimed. My bet is that in defiance of all appearances the world has just become a safer place and the Western empire has just had it’s Romulus Augustulus moment.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
27th March, 2018
The mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by some countries of the European Union and North America on Monday is an unprecedented and intriguing development. First, the US alone accounts for some two-thirds of the expulsion – 60 diplomats. Curiously, even Britain, which is apparently the aggrieved party in the Skripal affair, expelled less than half that number – 23. Broadly, however, this is an Anglo-American move with which a number of EU countries and Canada display solidarity.
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Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire, Stripal affair | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 14, 2018
In 1421 , when Europe was becoming possessed by the imperial idea, China specifically reject that despite it’s global preeminence on the basis of so many factors. This choice is crucial: on the on hand China itself was, as a result, subjected to imperial domination; on the other , it understood possibilities of another kind of internationalism. It’s moment has come!
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
14th March, 2018
The geopolitical focus of the still young 21st century spans the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf all the way to the South China Sea alongside the spectrum from Southwest Asia to Central Asia and China.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chinese soft power, globalization without empire, The Chinese century | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 13, 2018
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
12th March, 2018
The Chinese economy is bound to surpass the 19-nation eurozone before the end of the year. You don’t need to be an analyst in China to know that. Common knowledge from Guangdong to Gansu is that China’s economy was bigger than Europe’s up to the mid-19th century. Then came a bad spell – unleashed by Brit gunboat diplomacy – for a short 150 years.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), New Eurasian Century, Trans-European Network – Transport (Ten-T), Venice Offshore-Onshore Port System (Voops) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 10, 2018
This is also an opportunity to turn China-US relations in a positive directions. China has obviously answered Trump’s exhortations to use its influence to resolve the Korea crisis and it may be able to respond to similar exhortations to deal with the US-China trade deficit with the thorny issue of Chinese investment into the USA facilitated by China’s enhanced image.
Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
10th March, 2018
The key to understanding Kim Jong-un’s summit offer to Donald Trump is that it is the product of negotiations which have been underway since October.
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Posted in Global peace process, Multipolar world | Tagged: China-South Korea relations, End of empire, Korea crisis, trump agenda, Trump's pivot to Asia, US-North Korea talks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 7, 2018
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
6th March, 2018
The Principal Assistant Secretary of State in the US state department’s Bureau of South & Central Asian Affairs, Alice Wells gave an extraordinary briefing in Washington on March 5 on the Trump administration’s outlook on the Afghan peace talks and reconciliation. The fact that the briefing was on record is itself of significance, underscoring the cautious optimism that the 4-way contacts and below-the-radar discussions between Washington, Islamabad, Kabul and the Afghan Taliban have gained traction.
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Posted in Global peace process | Tagged: Afghan peace process, Afghanistan, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 7, 2018
“The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.”,
I also assume that is the idea: otherwise it can only be pure madness. America’s rapid growth towards the end of the 19th century was also the result, not just of tariffs but of inward investment- in that case, from Britain who had decided to outsource the empire after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Today, foreign investment provides the key to the reindustrialization of the USA and it is China in particular who can play that role. Prepare to hear Trump ringing out the slogan”The jobs are coming home!”
Patrick J.Buchanan
Buchanan.org
5th March, 2018
From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chinese soft power, deindustrialization of USA, strategic partnership between US and China, tariffs and inward investment, trump agenda, Trump's pivot to Asia, US-China: clash of world systems | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
Whereas the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) aims to counter Chinese influence under the auspices of the USA, the result may not be all that Washington hopes. Note that Japan in mimicking China’s global infrastructure projects by investing in, amongst other places , Russia. The Quad may turn out to be a vehicle for Japanese strategic autonomy in a world where an economically and politically the USA is no longer capable of leadership.
Asian Review
9th June, 2016
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to invest $200 billion in the coming five years to build roads, power plants and ports around the world.
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Posted in Containing China | Tagged: Japan-US relations, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
24th February, 2018
The Quad – comprising the United States, Japan, India and Australia – was set up a decade ago, ostensibly as an Asia-centered security cooperation mechanism. Funnily enough, Beijing always suspected it actually represented a containment strategy.
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Posted in Containing China, Multipolar world | Tagged: Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), China Australian cooperation, Chinese soft power, End of empire, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
The Belt and Road Initiative now appears as an unstoppable reality shaping 21st Century politics. The Anglosphere may try to isolate itself from it at great cost to itself but with the failure of Western intervention in the Middle East it cannot stop it. The resurrection of the , allying Australia, Japan, India and the USA, as a counterweight to the BRI looks unconvincing. As US hegemonic aspirations fade the dream lives on in the vacuous rhetoric of a New Cold War and a union of democracies none of which relate to the reality of economic sclerosis, unplayable debt and political division.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
27th February, 2018
From an Indian perspective, the visit to the United States by the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his meeting with President Donald Trump on February 23 turns out to be a reality check on the power dynamic in the Asia-Pacific. Australia is torn between two vital partners – the US in the security sphere and China in the economic sphere. The dilemma is acute insofar as Turnbull has voiced opinions on threat perceptions regarding China, which are contrary to the Trump administration’s assessment and, yet, the US and Australia are key allies.
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Posted in Multipolar world, New Cold War | Tagged: Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), China Australian cooperation, Chinese soft power, End of empire, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2018
The prospects of Quads, an Asian NATO aimed at countering Chinese influence, may simply dissolve under the sway of Chinese sort power. After all, the BRI actually offers real benefits in terms of India’s development in contrast to the meagre offerings of the fading Hegemony. Furthermore, India has already joined the SCO, a sort of Asian NATO aimed at countering US influence, and cannot for long attempt to ride both horses.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
25th February, 2018
Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale has hit the road running, as it were. There isn’t going to be a time lag following his predecessor’s permanent retirement from the South Block before the much-needed abandonment of the China policies over the past three years got under way. Those policies were characterized by a muscularity without precedents or a sense of ground realities that brought the two countries almost to the brink of war. In retrospect, they proved fanciful, sterile and even counter-productive –except, perhaps, to create a raison d’etre for the India-US defining partnership in the era of “America First”.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), Chinese soft power | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 30, 2018
GEAB
September, 2017
Qatar, North Korea, the Baltic Sea, risk of a World War III… and all the military ranting mentioned in the media lately, are issues going hand in hand with the programmed and imminent advent of the catastrophic scenario for the dollar as a unique world reference currency: the Petro-Yuan will be in place at the end of the year. More than a petro-currency, it will be a petro-gas-gold-currency! The West is thus preparing to switch to total anachronism with this founding act of the 21st century multipolar world.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: BRICS cryptocurrency, demise of dollar, dollar collapse, petro-yuan | Leave a Comment »
