US/NATO War on Russia

[Lauren Johnson]

Pepe Escobar addresses the public China's neutrality

"We are paying very close attention to the situation in Ukraine. We hope all parties can calmly maintain restraint to prevent the situation from further escalating and worsening. Political resolution and dialogue is the only way out."

This, via Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong, is Beijing's quite measured, official interpretation of what's happening in Ukraine, tailored for global consumption.

But here, in a People's Daily editorial, is what the leadership is really thinking. And the focus is clearly on the dangers of regime change, the "West's inability to understand the lessons of history", and "the final battlefield of the Cold War."

Yet again the West misinterpreted China's abstention from the UN Security Council vote on a US-backed resolution condemning the Crimea referendum. The spin was that Russia - which vetoed the resolution - was "isolated". It's not. And the way Beijing plays geopolitics shows it's not.

Oh, Samantha …
The herd of elephants in the (Ukraine) room, in terms of global opinion, is how the authentic "international community" - from the G-20 to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) - who has had enough of the Exceptionalist Hypocrisy Show, has fully understood, and even applauded, that at least one country on the planet has the balls to clearly say "F**k the US". Russia under President Vladimir Putin may harbor quite a few distortions, just like any other nation. But this is not a dinner party; this is realpolitik. To face down the US Leviathan, nothing short of a bad ass such as Putin will suffice.

NATO - or shorthand for the Pentagon dominating European wimps - keeps issuing threats and spewing out "consequences". What are they going to do - launch a barrage of ICBMs equipped with nuclear warheads against Moscow?

Furthermore, the UN Security Council itself is a joke, with US ambassador Samantha "Nothing Compares to You" Power - one of the mothers of R2P ("responsibility to protect") - carping on "Russian aggression", "Russian provocations" and comparing the Crimean referendum to a theft. Oh yes; bombing Iraq, bombing Libya and getting to the brink of bombing Syria were just innocent humanitarian gestures. Samantha The Humanitarian arguably gives a better performance invoking Sinead O'Connor in her shower.

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin was polite enough to say, "these insults addressed to our country" are "unacceptable". It's what he added that carried the real juice; "If the delegation of the United States of America expects our cooperation in the Security Council on other issues, then Power must understand this quite clearly."

Samantha The Humanitarian, as well as the whole bunch of juvenile bystanders in the Obama administration, won't understand it. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov gave them a little help; Russia didn't want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to "raise the stakes", but if the US and the EU continue with their sanctions and threats, that's what's going to happen.

So the plot thickens - as in a closer and closer strategic partnership between Tehran and Moscow.

Secessionists of the world, unite?
Now imagine all this as seen from Beijing. No one knows what exactly goes on in the corridors of the Zhongnanhai, but it's fair to argue there's only an apparent contradiction between China's key principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and Russia's intervention in Crimea.

Beijing has identified very clearly the sequence of affairs; long-running Western interference in Ukraine via NGOs and the State Department; regime change perpetrated with the help of fascists and neo-nazis; a pre-emptive Russian counterattack which can be read as a by-the-book Samantha The Humanitarian R2P operation (protecting Russians and Russian speakers from a second coup planned in Crimea, and thwarted by Russian intelligence.)

On top of it Beijing well knows how Crimea has been essentially Russian since 1783; how Crimea - as well as a great deal of Ukraine - fall smack into Russian civilization's sphere of influence; and how Western interference directly threatened Russia's national security interests (as Putin made it clear.) Now imagine a similar scenario in Tibet or Xinjiang. Long-running Western interference via NGOs and the CIA; a take over by Tibetans in Lhasa or Uighurs in Kashgar of the local administration. Beijing could easily use Samantha's R2P in the name of protecting Han Chinese.

Yet Beijing (silently) agreeing to the Russian response to the coup in Kiev by getting Crimea back via a referendum and without a shot fired does not mean that "splittists" Tibet or Taiwan would be allowed to engage in the same route. Even as Tibet, more than Taiwan, would be able to build a strong historical case for seceding. Each case bears its own myriad complexities.

The Obama administration - like a blind Minotaur - is now lost in a labyrinth of pivots of its own making. A new Borges - that Buddha in a gray suit - is needed to tell the tale. First there was the pivoting to Asia-Pac - which is encircling of China under another name - as it's well understood in Beijing.

Then came the pivoting to Persia - "if we are not going to war", as that Cypher in Search of an Idea, John Kerry, put it. There was, of course, the martial pivoting to Syria, aborted at the last minute thanks to the good offices of Moscow diplomacy. And back to the pivoting to Russia, trampling the much-lauded "reset" and conceived as a payback for Syria.

Those who believe Beijing strategists have not carefully analyzed - and calculated a response - to all the implications of these overlapping pivots do deserve to join Samantha in the shower. Additionally, it's easy to picture Chinese Think Tankland hardly repressing its glee in analyzing a hyperpower endlessly, helplessly pivoting over itself.

While the Western dogs bark …
Russia and China are strategic partners - at the G-20, at the BRICS club of emerging powers and at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Their number one objective, in these and other forums, is the emergence of a multipolar world; no bullying by the American Empire of Bases, a more balanced international financial system, no more petrodollar eminence, a basket of currencies, essentially a "win-win" approach to global economic development.

A multipolar world also implies, by definition, NATO out of Eurasia - which is from Washington's point of view the number one reason to interfere in Ukraine. In Eurasian terms, it's as if - being booted out of Afghanistan by a bunch of peasants with Kalashnikovs - NATO was pivoting back via Ukraine.

While Russia and China are key strategic partners in the energy sphere - Pipelineistan and beyond - they do overlap in their race to do deals across Central Asia. Beijing is building not only one but two New Silk Roads - across Southeast Asia and across Central Asia, involving pipelines, railways and fiber optic networks, and reaching as far as Istanbul, the getaway to Europe. Yet as far as Russia-China competition for markets go, all across Eurasia, it's more under a "win-win" umbrella than a zero-sum game.

On Ukraine ("the last battlefield in the Cold War") and specifically Crimea, the (unspoken) official position by Beijing is absolute neutrality (re: the UN vote). Yet the real deal is support to Moscow. But this could never be out in the open, because Beijing is not interested in antagonizing the West, unless heavily provoked (the pivoting becoming hardcore encirclement, for instance). Never forget; since Deng Xiaoping ("keep a low profile") this is, and will continue to be, about China's "peaceful rise". Meanwhile, the Western dogs bark, and the Sino-Russian caravan passes.

Also a long analysis on China's geo-political strategy: [URL="http://rt.com/op-edge/china-construction-economic-projects-342/"]Westward march of the Chinese Dragon in Eurasia
[/URL]

As the US militarily pivots into the Asia-Pacific, the Chinese steadily march westward simply through trade-oriented construction and economic projects.

The Chinese have finished the construction of a major tunnel that is part of a mountain transport corridor from Turpan to Kurla that is linked to Pakistan. The corridor is part of the extension of the Karakoram Highway that is part of a project to re-integrate the westernmost portion of the People's Republic of China with the areas of Eurasia to its west.

Beijing has been setting up its own transportation infrastructure and energy pipelines in Eurasia, and the infrastructure being built will be the engine of an economic renaissance that is unfolding. The Chinese now have a presence all around the old Silk Road and the ancient maritime trade routes in the Indian Ocean that sold spices and precious metals.

China has been busy building deep-sea ports, holding bays, railroads, highways, tunnels, and transportation hubs throughout these regions.
Despite US pressure and attempts to militarize and control the Indian Ocean's shipping lanes, the Chinese have been busy setting up an infrastructure network stretching all the way to Gwadar, close to the Persian Gulf, in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka from Chittagong in Bangladesh and Kyaukphyu in Myanmar.

While the US watches with displeasure from the sidelines, these Chinese projects are weaving the fabrics of Eurasian integration.

Washington's secret wars against China in Xinjiang and Tibet

The US has tried and is continuing to try to weaken China. Washington's attempts at weakening China have included exploiting the ethnic tensions and cleavages between the Han Chinese, which compose the majority of the Chinese population, and China's non-Han citizens. This includes stoking tensions in East Turkestan between the Han and the predominantly-Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghur indigenous population in the autonomous region of Xinjiang.

The US has also continuously pushed for protests and secession in Tibet. Although the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile claim that the unrest was the result of discontent with Beijing, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) teams, US planning and CIA training were all involved in sparking and manipulating the Tibetan unrest that erupted in Lhasa on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The Han and predominately-Muslim Hui, an ethnic group comprised essentially of Hans that have mixed with Silk Road travelers and traders over the millennia, were targeted and killed during this wave of anti-Beijing unrest.

During the American Anthropological Association's 110th Annual Meeting in 2011 (running from November 16 to November 20 in Montréal), one anthropologist even admitted that for research purposes that they were given privileged access to the CIA's training program that ignited the 2008 unrest in Tibet.

The CIA even has training camps for Tibetan guerillas on American soil, away from public eyes in the Rocky Mountains.

Despite Washington's rejections, there is also a body of literature that candidly discusses Washington's covert Tibet operations. The Tibetan activist Jamyang Norbu wrote a chapter in a book published in 1994 and edited by Columbia University professor and Tibet specialist Robert Barnett, Resistance and Reform in Tibet, openly detailing the CIA's role in Tibet against the Chinese government. The Tibetan Resistance Movement and the Role of the CIA' is the title of Norbu's particular chapter. More recent literature includes the University Press of Kansas book by Kenneth Conboy and former CIA agent James Morrison that was published in 2002, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet'. These authors all openly reveal how the US has waged a covert war against China by encouraging Tibetan secession and controlling the heart of the Tibetan guerilla movement fighting against Beijing.

Westward march

Washington has been pushing for trouble between China and the countries bordering China in the South China and East China Seas.
US officials dream of rebooting the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) too.

SEATO is the defunct NATO of East Asia that was supposed to expand in parallel with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), just as NATO and the European Union have expanded hand-in-glove over in Europe on the western portion of Eurasia.

There is also the Asiatic segment of the global missile shield project that the Pentagon is building next to China's heavily populated eastern borders. This is part of a Eurasian strategy of encirclement that targets both China and Russia alike.

This brings us to the so-called Asian Pivot' that Hillary Clinton announced in 2011 when she claimed that the US was pivoting towards the Asia-Pacific region and away from the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Beijing did not buy any of it. China knows better. The US has no intentions of leaving the Middle East or the Pentagon's military playland in Afghanistan.

Instead the Chinese are continuing with their project of slowly developing a trade-based infrastructure network that moves westward towards the Caspian and Mediterranean shores of the Middle East.

Foreign Policy, the magazine founded by Samuel Clash of Civilizations Huntington, was even given a taste of what is the obvious in China by the Stimson Center's East Asia fellow Yun Sun in 2013: "As America pivots east, China marches in the other direction," she explained to readers.
Eagle's Empire of Blood v Chinese Empire of Trade

The US has not stopped skimming to halt the Chinese in their tracks. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is yet another US scheme to do this. The aim of the TPP is to isolate the Chinese by imposing trade restrictions between Beijing and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
Beijing, however, has other plans.

China is going ahead with its projects, because it is not susceptible to Washington's ongoing pressure and destabilization operations.
The shadow that the American Eagle has been casting from the sky over Eurasia is waning and shrinking as it steadily declines.
The Silk Road is being rebuilt in Eurasia by the Chinese Dragon and its friends. It is Marco Polo in reverse.

The Dragon and its friends, including the Russian Bear and the Iranian Lion, have different ideas about the management of their part of the world. Management in Eurasia they have declared will be local and not American. This is the basis for the blooming of an alphabetical hodgepodge of different regional organizations ranging from the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and the Eurasian Union to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).


This is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which cut Iran off from the international banking system in 2012 under Uncle Sam's orders, reported at the end of 2013 that China's national currency supplanted the European Union's euro as the second most-widely used global currency after the US dollar. 8.66 percent of global trade was taking place in the Chinese yuan.
This is just the beginning. The use of the yuan will increase in international transactions.

Despite US attempts to curb Beijing globally, Chinese influence in Africa and Latin America is increasing too.

The US divided Sudan, attacked the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and created US Africa Command (AFRICOM), while their French poodles begun to re-impose themselves militarily across Africa under Nicolas Sarkozy, as part of the attempt to drive the Chinese out of Africa. The results, however, have done little and Chinese influence has continued to grow in Africa.

Across Latin America there is talk about increasing trade with China. The Chinese are preparing to start building a mega canal in Nicaragua to meet the increased demands for trade from Latin America too. At the same time, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are also reorienting Latin America away from the US towards China and its Eurasian partners.

The Chinese presence is additionally felt in both the North Pole and South Pole. Beijing is eagerly waiting for the opening of an Arctic Silk Road or sorts and for exploration projects in Antarctica.

Beijing, in addition, a permanent observer at the Arctic Council and China has invested heavily in the research, Arctic development projects, and exploration of the countries bordering the North Pole. Beijing's ultimate aim is to develop an Arctic transport network and access Arctic energy reserves.

The Pentagon sees China as the biggest threat to the United States. The threat, however, is not one of a military nature; it is economic.
Chinese soft power is outflanking US hard power. Unlike Washington and its Western European friends, Chinese capitalism is not sustained by military force. While Washington continues to wage war and siphon the wealth of vanquished nations, the Chinese just continue to do business across the world as they steadily continue their westward march in Eurasia towards the banks of the Caspian and Mediterranean. In other words, China works while America boxes.