By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
More than 15 years ago, while I was covering one of the annual Munich Forums on Security, as a journalist, I asked Brent Scawcroft, former US National Security Advisor, what should be the relations of the West with China and Russia. He told me:
We have to entertain with both of them better relations than they can have between themselves.
Given our level of ignorance about what is going on behind the scenes around Kim, Trump and their meeting, we must remain very reserved about what is all that about.
But if we ignore what can happen in this summit and most of what made it possible, we can be near to certain as to what are the aims of the Neocon Party of War most probably has contributed to its election and is controlling Mr. Trump.
For them, what is happening with North Korea and its nuclear weapons is important, but it is not the most important. As Mr. Harris, the US envoy to South Korea put it, the real long-term challenge behind North Korea is China and, even Russia, the states but also their regimes. From the imperial point of view the North Korean problem has to be addressed in such a way, as to facilitate Imperial policy towards China, Russia and the smaller nations-targets, undermining their unity, helping the emergence of pro-western, regime change forces in both countries and in North Korea, changing their regimes and dislocate them.
Why they are so radical? Because of a very, very simple reason, because no center of Western Imperialism is ready to accept such huge relatively independent and strong entities as China and Russia are today. They do not have the slightest wish to just be sitting idle watching China becoming the Global Economic Superpower, adding one Italy every year to its economy. The last thing they would like to see is Russia coming back to the role one had the USSR in world affairs. They cannot sleep at night thinking of half of the Middle East dominated by Iran in alliance with Russian Army!
You may have any opinion you wish about the Chinese or the Russian regimes, how much of “progress” and how much of “reaction” they represent. Still, one would be foolish not to understand that without the mere existence of those two big and relatively independent entities, without their military and, more and more, economic parity of China with the US, the Totalitarian Empire of Finance would already dominate the Planet, in a way it would make extremely difficult any resistance to it. That concerns both nations of the Global South and forces struggling for social and political democracy inside the West, the Global North.
Twenty years ago they were dreaming of a new American Century, meaning not a century, and probably not an American one, but the eternal Kingdom of Money. Now you think they are ready to accept a Chinese-Russian-Iranian century? No, they are not.
Graham Allison, a member of the Trilateral, ex-Dean of the Kennedy School of Government and an authority in US Foreign Policy knows better than me and you how his compatriots who make decisions are thinking. He should have serious reasons to write last year a whole book trying to persuade his fellow Americans not to fall into the “Thucydides’ trap” and not to go easily into the path leading to a World War with China.
The election of Trump in the US is due to various factors. But it could not happen, as we will try to prove, if there would not be a huge and complicated Neocon conspiracy to elect and to use him. To understand Trump’s conspiracy logic, that is the Neocon strategy behind him, we must forget what he says or what we think he is, and analyze what he and his administration are doing and in which strategic context his doings are getting a meaning and a sense.
Unity between China, Russia and other nation-targets: The main Key of the world situation
Many years after Scawcroft gave me the above answer, not only the United States were unable to entertain with Beijing and Moscow better relations than they can have between themselves, the US has now much worse relations with both China and Russia than China and Russia can even imagine having between themselves.
Beginning with the invasion of Iraq and continuing with the wars in the Middle East, the interventions in ex-USSR and the threats against Korea, the Neocons themselves tough both Chinese and Russians how vitally important is their cooperation. Or at least, it seems to be the case.
Now, it is of utmost importance for the Neocons, who hold power in the US, in Israel and command also much influence in a lot of world capitals, to undermine the alliance between China and Russia, and also the unity between every one of them with the other potential or real targets of Western Imperialism, like North Korea, Iran, Syria etc.
For that reason the level of relations, the unity or disunity between China and Russia, and also with all the other smaller nations-targets of Western Global Imperialism is the key factor, the single most important one for the evolution of the international situation.
The Unity of such a “Resistance Front” is one of the main factors which will decide if the world will evolve towards a more democratic, “multipolar” structure or towards the complete domination of Finance and the destruction of human civilization, if not of life on Earth.
The Global Empire knows that with China, Russia and the smaller nations united, it is near to impossible to win. To win them has to divide its rivals and also to find allies inside the political and social forces in those countries.
Divide et Impera
Not only Logic and Analysis, History also testifies to the veracity of what we said. We are not going here to debate the root causes of the historic split between Mao’s China and Soviet Russia. But it was that split that made possible Kissinger’s game with Beijing in the ‘70s, which, in its turn, made possible the encirclement of the Soviet Union, an encirclement which was used to encourage the emergence of pro-capitalist, pro-western forces in the kernel of the then Soviet leadership and, finally, the collapse-suicide of the USSR.
History is not easily repeated in the same way, if not for other reasons, because people know what happened in the past, or at least they should know it. But such a huge western triumph cannot but shape the Imperial strategic thinking.
Playing Russia against China or China against Russia remains always one of the main strategies of the Empire. If China and Russia remain united, it is simply impossible for the West to win over them.
Three factors which may threaten such a unity are 1) the existence in both China and Russia of forces which, even if they are not admitting it openly, want their integration and alliance with the West, 2) the lack of equilibrium between an essentially economic and an essentially military superpower, 3) a heritage of animosity and mistrust inherited by past conflicts, 4) the enormous stupidity of the European and in particular German political class and its direct control by the bankers who appoint their people directly as politicians. Mrs. Merkel not only did obey blindly the Americans imposing sanctions to Ukraine, now she defended them against Trump in the G7 meeting. Maybe an IQ test has to be introduced in Europe for people claiming to be elected in public office.
Germany and Europe could reequilibrate the world situation and also add an element of stability in the Resistance Front. There are still some persons who think like that in the European political class like Dominique de Villepin, who proposed recently an axis Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing, but they are by far too few and isolated. Besides, Germany cannot lead internationally Europe, while in the same time destroying and plundering South European nations!
Of course all that won’t be so easy as long as Putin and Xi seem committed to the Russian-Chinese unity.
The danger of Nuclear World War and how to fight against it
We must not underestimate the direct threat out of the nuclear war threats emanating from Washington since the election of Donald Trump. The risk of a Nuclear World War is a very real one and it will remain so, as long as the dominant social, economic, political and cultural system remains what it is in the West.
Every measure which helps diminish the probability of a nuclear conflict by intention, by miscalculation or by accident must be supported and welcomed by any sound person on Earth.
But weapons and threats to use them are symptoms and not the root causes of the problem, as Brzezinski observed during the first years of Gorbachev’s rule in the USSR.
It is imperative to treat those symptoms, but it is advisable to do it in a way removing the underlying disease or, at least, not aggravating it.
The enormous concessions Gorbachev and, even more actively, Yeltsin made afterwards to the West seemed at that time to remove the War danger and, in particular, the Nuclear War danger.
By now, everybody knows that those concessions did only one thing. They permitted more than a dozen catastrophic wars in the Middle East and Africa and they made more probable now the danger of a local or world nuclear conflict than, probably, at every other moment since 1945.
By allowing practically the interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya etc., the so-called “international community” did only one thing, it created more possibilities for new interventions.
This is why it is very important to face simultaneously the threat of a nuclear conflict and the political use of nuclear threats, however difficult it is to combine both.
Trump’s Nuclear threats are probably calibrated (by those able to control him) to help the emergence of pro-Western forces in both China and Russia (and also to the smaller nations-targets) and of course inside North Korea. The sanctions imposed to North Korea are also calibrated in the same logic. To help alienate North Korea, China and Russia, but also to help the emergence in China of those forces which will hide their pro-western policy under the patriotic slogan “We are not going to sacrifice our economic miracles, in order to defend a mad guy and his regime”.
By the way, even if one accepts that, for some reason, China and Russia had to impose sanctions on North Korea, one has a difficulty to understand why they did that not attaching a conditionality term, for instance a clause to review the situation every six months, like it happened with European sanctions against Russia, which have to be readopted every six months, but they preferred to give to the United States an absolute weapon, making necessary the consent of Washington to the lifting of sanctions.
Is it just a lack of imagination of Chinese and Russian diplomacy, or is it reflecting the remaining power of forces which they still believe they can persuade the West of welcoming them as equal, respected partners in the Global West?
President Reagan used probably the same method with nuclear threats already in the ‘80s. By addressing then his mad nuclear threats against Moscow, he probably did exactly that, already knowing the existence of, if not secretly cooperating, with “Soviet reformers” who would use those threats back in Moscow as political weapons to promote their agenda. (By the way, one wonders under what capacity and on whose behalf, Trump wanted to solve the Korean nuclear question in the beginning of the ‘80s?)
Only a level of advanced cooperation between Western circles and some nucleus inside the Soviet State can explain for instance, how a Western aviation hobbyist was able to cross all Soviet air defenses and to land unimpeded at the Red Square. Those who permitted the flight of Mathias Rust have done it to humiliate the leadership of the Red Army permitting to Gorbachev to decapitate it, thus neutralizing “pro-actively” the main opposition to his “reforms”.
And this remark brings us to the question of the Armed Forces and the Globalization
The Armed Forces and the Empire of Finance, Pentagon and the Neocons, Armies in Russia and China
In most countries of the world, including China, Russia but even the United States, the Armed Forces, for sociological, structural, ideological, historical reasons, represent the institution which is more connected to the notions of the State and of the Nation. For this reason and because of the way a military force is constructed, the Army is less influenced than any other institution by the Totalitarian Empire of Finance, which has gradually put its people in all critical points of the western (but not only of the Western) political, media, intellectual and economic power. For this reason, military men are negatively predisposed to the advent of a Totalitarian Empire, for which any strong human identity, like the Nation or the State are enemies. That is also true for every kind of strong ideology, like patriotism, nationalism, traditional religions or any other kind of Ideology, of the Left or of the Right.
If the idea of a war against Iran represented the interests of the US Empire and not the world and regional vision of the Empire of Finance, then we would see the Pentagon and the CIA pushing for war against Iran. The fact that we see those institutions becoming the main resistance points inside the US Establishment to further escalation cannot be easily explained but as a reflection of a strong, behind the scenes, clash between the US Empire and the Empire of Finance, the latter represented in Geopolitics, by the International Neocon Party of War.
The same factors are also in action in both China and Russia, making Chinese and Russian Armed Forces the most resolute institutions in opposing the Global Empire. This is happening much more there as not only both countries are on an open collision course to the Empire, but also the historical origins of their Armed Forces are the revolutionary armies their Revolutions created to defend themselves. The Russian and the Chinese revolutions were not only social ones, they were also national, pro-independence, anti-imperialistic Revolutions, otherwise it would have been impossible for instance for Trotsky to hire 10.000 Tsarist officers to staff the Red Army. Those historical and social factors explain why Army in China and Russia are among the main forces opposing pro-capitalist, pro-western and pro-globalization forces in both powers.
But the military also has a big weakness. It knows how to use hard, military power but it is usually very weak in using political power, which is equally, if not more important in both political and military struggles.
To win a nuclear war against China and/or Russia is too difficult. The real aim is to provoke a regime change in one or both of those countries, to split them, to begin isolate the other one. In order to do it, besides trying to oppose Russia to China and vice versa and cultivating their mutual mistrust, you have to undermine the prestige of their Armies and also of their politicians who follow a national agenda.
Mr. Netanyahu for instance, who is a prominent figure of the Neocon current inside the West and, we must admit it, one of the most capable and astute strategists of our times, knows very well that there must be not only a stick, but also a carrot, even if his carrot seems sometimes not very worthy. He has pushed Trump to deliver the Korean speech in the UN last year, but Israel is providing in the same time military technologies to China, Americans do not! He is for much stronger US action in Syria and Iran, but he is simultaneously declaring he is the greatest friend of Moscow. The pro-Israeli lobby in the US was active in promoting US aggression in Ukraine, closing even its eyes to the existence of Neo Nazis in the troops which made the coup in Kiev, but Israel itself refused to oppose openly Crimea’s integration to Russia.
Read more at http://www.defenddemocracy.press/korea-russia-china-the-neocon-trumps-strategy/
