In short Mikhail Gorbachev did not know what the heaven he was doing almost destroying Russia. If without Putin, Russia could be the Ukraine today.
It will certainly remain in the history of the twentieth century. Like who ? Everyone perceives it in their own way. One thing seems certain to me: He was a man who went on the road without knowing the route, without a compass and without a goal taking down the entire country with him. That is why Western media put him on all front page news missing this deep covered foreign agent.
The Africa Adaptation Summit will kick off on September 5 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The summit is the first major test of the developed world’s commitment made at the most recent UN climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021, to double its financial support for climate-proofing projects in developing countries by 2025. It is also expected to lay the foundation for an adaptation breakthrough for Africa at COP27 in November. However, while African leaders are heading for the summit seeking delivery on the commitment, most of their European counterparts may reportedly skip the meeting. While record heat waves, along with an energy crisis partly caused by the US-instigated Russia-Ukraine crisis, have forced some European countries to backpedal on their climate goals, climate change in the US has descended to an issue for partisan struggle and a topic to smear China. Chinese climate experts slammed Western countries for trying to wriggle out of their promise of giving financial aid to African countries, which possibly casts a shadow over the upcoming COP27. In contrast, China is steadily promoting green development under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Most of us already know that ASPI, or the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, produces reports about China that are based on falsities, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and outright lies, but we don’t often get a black and white, crystal clear example of their tactics in action.
Today I’m excited to present you with indisputable evidence that key members of ASPI, and their friends in Australian media, comfortably and confidently engage in lies and fabricate disinformation in order to coax the Australian public into believing that China is a threat, all so that their main funders, the military industrial complex, can make bucket loads of money through defense contracts and, ultimately, war with China. Let’s get reporting!
The Rise of Chinese Eurasianism. The 2018 article but more relevant now than in 2018. 中國歐亞主義的興起。 2018 年的文章,但現在比 2018 年更相關 by SF Bay Area China Group 8-31-22
Alfred Thayer’s Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History was a two-volume work that argued that sea power was the key to military and economic expansion. Published in 1890 and 1892, the book was an instant classic that proved highly influential in both American and international circles. The rise of Great Britain (GB) and the US follow his theory almost to the book.
The GB used its strong navy to control the oceans and all critical waterways for transport of goods, for controlling all important ports and the land mass accessible from these ports. This is how the GB was able to control its Indian colony with a small land force. The strong GB navy was used to assure safe transport of its (and those of its allies) goods and interfere or stop those of rivals. It also created chaos and many divisions in countries accessible through the ports it controlled to control these countries.
With a strong industrial base and military, GB could force sales of its goods onto other countries. This then forms the foundation for the use of the British pound as the international trading and reserve currency.
After WWII, the US took over the same role from the GB.
Now, it is the first time that it is possible to create a thoroughfare land transport route across the Eurasian landmass between East Asia, Europe and Africa, bypassing the choke points of the US naval and air power. This is made possible by the virtual alliance between China and Russia. The contradiction between Russia and China across their long border is rather secondary to the main contradictions between them and the US. Russia is turning eastward and allows Chinese influence in central Asia in preference to that of the west which would undoubtedly try to get in.
For the first time, a country with strong industrial, infrastructure building and financial capability in China can construct this route and provide mutually beneficial relations between all countries along this thoroughfare land transport route. This was not possible with the Russian Empire or the Ottoman Empire. That is the reason many nations previously under the thumb of the US are now all looking to join this new club, including hitherto rivals like India and Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And all are turning to the use of the RMB for trading to avoid being sanctioned or robbed by the US.
The US miscalculated in provoking Russia over Ukraine and attempting to prolong the war into a long term conflict between NATO and Russia in the proxy war. This finally made Russia make up its mind to turn east. While in the short term the US is making buckets of cash in selling arms, resurrecting NATO, and forcing capital flight from the EU and Japan to support the US stock market, in the longer term, it is making a big mistake.
The importance of the trans-Eurasian-African overland linkages is great! This is a really important aspect of the BRI, although of course maritime trade remains critical as well, especially in terms of oil. But the emerging capacity of China and its network of developing countries to trade goods overland via the rails and roads is definitely weakening the power of western imperialism to dominate the global economy by means of the sea. This will all take more time to develop, but it is a clear trend and I think we have yet to begin to see its true dimensions.
In the early 20th century, the Oxford geographer Halford MacKinder predicted the end of sea-power based Empires (“the Columbian Era”), to be replaced with land-based powers, in particular in the Eurasian continent, which he called the “geographic pivot of the world’. He saw this as due to the development of overland transport systems using rail. China is making this a reality through its BRI.
The world is being offered a choice at the current moment:
Join the US/West, join NATO–a warmongering machine of genocide, lose your sovereignty, and sanction and escalate towards destruction while sacrificing your people and your country’s welfare and economy.
Or join the BRI, BRIC, SCO, EEU, trade and develop in mutual respect and benefit, respect sovereignty, and develop your country’s wealth and wellbeing.
This is not a hard decision for a sovereign government to make. It’s made even easier when a US top official arrives in, say a former western colony in Africa, lands in state-of-the-art airport built by China, drives on a six-lane highway built by China, and addresses the leadership or legislature in a magnificent government building built by China, and delivers a scolding lecture to these leaders about the “threat” China poses to them, and on the importance of choosing the right side “between authoritarianism and democracy”.