Fools and Rules
Fools and Rules
The fool’s-based international order, US sacrifices Asia-Pacific for selfish gain, Washington's China Strategy: Same Playbook, New Target, Ukraine war will end in surrender
The fool’s-based international order
By The Asia Times
For the first time, all the governments of the West are on the brink.
A gate to ‘the Europe garden’
First Biden, then Macron and the unfortunate Rishi Sunak. Japan’s Kishida, Germany’s Scholz and Canada’s Trudeau remain in office only because the election cycle doesn’t require them to assay the voters.
For the first time since modern European states were defined by the Treaty of Westphalia, every government of every major Western country is falling or would fall if it had to hold elections, notes ‘The Asia Times’. What collective curse has befallen the leaders of the West such that all of their voters have come to despise them by enormous margins?
There is a simple explanation for the collective ruin of the governments of the West: All of them agreed to an agenda that their voters reject because it has degraded the quality of their lives. Spontaneously and simultaneously, the voters of the West are rising up to repudiate their leaders.
The damage to the world’s political class is breathtaking.
The first returns from France indicate that Emmanuel Macron’s bubble party of the center drew just a fifth of the national vote in the first round of the snap election that Macron called following the disastrous European Parliament election of June 9. Le Pen’s National Rally, tendentiously labeled the “extreme right” by the media echo chamber, came in at 34% while the leftist coalition garnered 28%.
72% of Americans, meanwhile, think that Joseph Biden isn’t mentally fit to be president (the other 28% presumably includes a large number of dementia victims). 56% of Americans disapprove of his performance.
The three parties that comprise the German governing coalition together polled just 30% of the vote in the June 9 European Parliament elections. The country’s second-largest party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has 16% of the vote, enough to force itself into a coalition that the formerly mainstream parties have sworn never to consider.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has an approval rating of 13% and the support of just a tenth of voters in his own party. Canada’s Justin Trudeau looks like the leper with the most fingers with an approval rating of 28%.
What is the agenda that the voters of the West have repudiated? America’s elite set out to remake the world according to its own imaginings after the fall of Communism in 1990 and had sufficient power to frog-march the rest of the industrial world into its plan.
The first is a global agreement to isolate and debilitate Russia, expanding NATO to the Russia-Ukraine border. As Donald Trump declared on June 21, that is precisely what provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In March 2022, Biden promised that sanctions would cut the Russian economy in half; instead, Russia’s economy has grown and is now larger than Japan’s, according to the World Bank, and Moscow has the upper hand in a grinding war of attrition. The war is vastly unpopular in Europe and the surge in support for alternative European parties on June 9 was largely a peace vote.
The second was a global agreement to put the climate change agenda ahead of industrial productivity. In the US, the Biden administration hobbled the extraction of hydrocarbons. US petroleum exports doubled during the Trump administration; under Biden, exports have barely recovered to the Trump peak after a sharp fall.
In Germany, the Ukraine war shut off Germany’s access to cheap Russian energy after the Merkel government acceded to the Green Party agenda and shut down the country’s nuclear power plants. Energy prices played a major role in the inflation of the past three years.
The third agreement responded to the demographic decline of the industrial nations. All leaders of the major Western countries agreed that they would absorb large numbers of immigrants from poor countries to their south, Middle Eastern Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans in the case of Europe, Central Americans in the case of the United States.
This is not quite the so-called “Great Replacement Theory” of conspiracy theory lore. Still, it comes close: The elite envisioned a new global melting pot of cultural admixture that would dilute and degrade the cultures of the West.
Immigration is by far the most important of these three: It implies the reconfiguring of social and economic life in the industrial world and the erosion of the national foundation of the advanced states.
By no coincidence, the populist rebellion against this global pact among the elites focused on immigration, with Donald Trump in the US and Viktor Orban in Hungary leading the charge. It is also the issue for which the elites will throw themselves on their swords.
In the wake of today’s election catastrophe, Macron’s premier Gabriel Attal ordered candidates of his party who came in third to withdraw from the second round of voting on July 7 in order to throw votes to the left-wing National Front, preferring the extreme left to the nationalist right.
At the same time, according to Le Monde, “Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), called on left-wing candidates who ranked third but still qualified for the second round to withdraw, to support the better-placed candidate to beat the RN. ‘Not one vote, not one seat more for the RN,’ he said.”
The socialists, after all, are globalists of a different stripe, with some serious objections to economic management by oligarchy but equally hostile to national sovereignty. Globalists of Macron’s (or Angela Merkel’s, or Rishi Sunak’s) stripe agree with the socialists on the most compelling issue: The dissolution of national boundaries, national cultures and national populations in the great wave of migration that they have done so much to encourage.
France is now 8% to 10% Muslim; according to the Pew Survey, it will be 18% Muslim by 2050 in a high migration scenario while Germany will have a 20% Muslim population. Migrants are core constituencies of left-wing parties, which puts the socialist left in alliance with the capitalist center.
The center-left alliance of desperation cannot govern France, to be sure. Nor could a similar coalition govern Germany, where a split-off from the traditional Left (“Die Linke”) led by Sahra Wagenknecht is now polling at 9% of the federal vote.
The Wagenknecht group combines traditional socialist politics with a strong anti-immigration stance and has taken some votes from the AfD, now at 17% of the total. Germany has a strong anti-immigration left that precludes the center-left alignment that Macron is trying to promote.
Whether the alliance of desperation between the ex-investment banker Macron and the leftist firebrand Mélenchon will stop the National Rally from winning the July 7 round or not is far from clear.
Perhaps France simply will descend into chaos rather than coalesce around a populist government. Germany faces a long interregnum before its next national election at the end of 2025, with the AfD leading by wide margins in polls in three key state elections scheduled for September 1.
American politics, meanwhile, is in chaos after Biden’s stupefying display of dementia in his debate with Trump on June 27. The Democrats cannot live with Biden as a candidate but they cannot live without him, making Trump’s election highly probable.
And Trump has no use for the global agenda that the American elite imposed on the world after 1990. The message coming from Washington is: You’re on your own and it’s every man for himself.
Read more here.
US sacrifices Asia-Pacific for selfish gain
By Zheng Yongnian (Global Times)
Today, no one can underestimate the possibility of a world war breaking out. The world is rapidly polarising and this polarisation is evident across major dimensions including economic, ideological and geopolitical. It is crucial to emphasise that this polarisation is being engineered from the top down - artificially - rather than emerging organically from the bottom up.
First, there is economic polarization. Globalization once implied the integration of the world economy. If globalization was a process dominated by capital with government support, then economic polarization is now a process where governments dominate and capital complies. When former US president Donald Trump first initiated a "trade war" with China, few could have anticipated the rapid downturn in global economic and trade conditions to the current situation. Trump's high tariffs policy quickly evolved into US President Joe Biden's comprehensive polarization policy. Almost all empirical evidence indicates that the situation of "one world, two markets" has taken shape.
Second, there is ideological polarization. The US and Western countries have found that as China has risen in the process of globalization, it has not only rejected becoming another "Western country" but has also developed with more distinct "Chinese characteristics." In this context, the US has once again resorted to ideological opposition, defining its relations with China from an ideological standpoint as a competition between "democracy" and "autocracy." If cognitive warfare in economics is more about influencing overseas investors to prevent them from choosing China, ideological cognitive warfare targets not only the national society but also the Chinese domestic population.
Third, and most importantly, there is geopolitical polarization. Washington has clearly defined China as a country that "harbors the intention and the capacity to reshape the international order" to compete with the US globally. Its direct objective of geopolitical strategies is to contain and restrain China. In this regard, the US has established several minilateral groupings around China's periphery. At the international level, the US academic community of international relations is accelerating the shaping of a new concept, namely "Global East," which lumps together China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, framing these countries as constituting a global "autocratic camp."
The possibility of a world war may have been underestimated. Looking at today's situation, regional wars involving multiple countries, especially major powers, have already broken out, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict. While the wars in the Middle East have manifested themselves mainly as a conflict between Israel and Hamas, many other countries, especially the US, have become deeply involved. It can also be argued that it is the multinational involvement that has given these localized conflicts a protracted character that no one had anticipated.
Since the advent of nuclear weapons, people have often believed that a world war involving major powers is no longer possible, as a war between two nuclear states would mean mutual destruction. However, such an argument has greatly underestimated the possibility of wars emerging in non-nuclear forms. In fact, nuclear weapons have not only failed to eliminate war but have also led to war in other forms. Nuclear weapons "encourage" nuclear-armed states to use violence and war to achieve their goals in a different way, because nuclear-armed states believe that their counterparts will not use nuclear weapons for mutual destruction, they are more likely to resort to violence and war.
Therefore, when people talk about world wars now, the issue to discuss is not whether a world war is possible, but which form it would take. Similarly, today, the development of AI and its widespread application in other fields, especially in the military, are expanding the complexity and diversity of war. Ignoring different forms of war can lead to significant strategic errors. War is the "ultimate expression" of human nature, but the form of war is changing because human nature can be "civilized."
The remaining question is, where could the main battlefield of the world war be, the Middle East, Europe or the Asia-Pacific? The Israel-Hamas conflict is still continuing in the Middle East, but this localized war is hardly likely to develop into a world war by any measure. At the same time, it can be said that the Russia-Ukraine war is entering a "decline" phase, while conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region are experiencing an upward trend.
The US and the entire West are shifting toward the Asia-Pacific. Recently, they have been engaged in cognitive warfare, attributing Russia's "invincibility" in its conflict with Ukraine to China's so-called support. The implication is that it is because of China's support that Russia is able to sustain a war. To a large extent, Washington's cognitive warfare has been effective, successfully directing Europe's strategic attention to the Asia-Pacific region.
For the US, the Asia-Pacific region becoming a "powder keg" is the ultimate means of victory. The US claims to be the guardian of peace in the region, but in fact, it has been dividing Asia-Pacific, creating conflicts across the region to an extreme extent. The ruling elite in the US seems to be trapped in an extreme fear of China. For the US, as long as it can defeat China and emerge as the ultimate "winner," it is willing to risk the destruction of the whole of Asia through war. As some extreme anti-China forces in the US openly declare, Washington's goal in its contest with China should indeed be victory.
The most serious challenge to China is how to respond effectively to the fact that the US is creating a confrontational atmosphere around China, leading the world war to the Asia-Pacific region, and ultimately realising its strategic goal of encircling and containing China.
Read more here.
NB: The author is a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and president of The Institute for International Affairs, Qianhai.
Washington's China Strategy: Same Playbook, New Target
By Einar Tangen (Senior Fellow of Taihe Institute)
It is often tempting to view things from the myopia of the moment. When considering AUKUS, the Quad, American Defense White Papers, gunboat diplomacy, Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs), containment policies, tariffs, blacklists, and Tonya Harding defences, it is easy to focus on the moment, but looking at recent history can be more revealing.
In the 1970s, the US faced numerous challenges: the oil crisis, the retreat from Vietnam, the opening of relations with China, Watergate, the creation of the petrodollar, rising inflation, declining productivity, and industrial decline, as sectors like automobiles, electronics, and steel moved to more competitive markets like Japan.
On one hand, America's military weaknesses were exposed. On the other, the stage was being set for America's future financial dominance through the petrodollar. What started as admiration and a desire to emulate Japan's miracle rise eventually transitioned into fear and loathing. A rise that many who think in linear, zero-sum terms linked to America's decline. The same cycle is being repeated today, only this time the target is China.
Military defeats in Afghanistan, stalemates in Yemen, Syria, Iran, Somalia, and Gaza, the failure of, but continued use of sanctions, the Ukraine conflict, broken treaties, the undermining of international institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the decline of dollar dominance, rising inflation, declining productivity, industrial decline in sectors like automobiles, electronics, and steel as these industries moved on to more competitive markets, polarized domestic politics, and unpopular leaders have all contributed to a bipartisan search for an appropriate scapegoat for Washington's institutional failures. This is underscored by the decline of the middle class, from 61% of the population 50 years ago to 50% today.
With Washington's weaknesses on full display, China has replaced Japan as America's scapegoat, but Beijing will not be willing to suffer Japan's fate.
The success of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry's (MITI) economic coordination efforts went from being widely admired and something to emulate to a nefarious scheme to undermine America.
Similarly, the success of China's National Development and Reform Commission, once lauded as a seminal factor in China's rise, is now seen as a nefarious scheme to undermine America.
Books in the 1970s and '80s presented Japan, variously, as a model for America's future economic development or as a malign juggernaut intent on overtaking the US:
• Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's The World Challenge (1981)
• Edward A. Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck's The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan's Computer Challenge to the World (1983)
• New York Times Magazine article "The Danger from Japan" by Theodore H. White (1985)
• Donald Trump, full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe stating that "for decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States" (1987)
• Members of Congress smash Japanese electronics with sledgehammers on the lawn of the US Capitol (1987)
• Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1989)
• Pat Choate's Agents of Influence: How Japan's Lobbyists in the United States Manipulate America's Political and Economic System (1990)
• Michael A. Cusumano's Japan's Software Factories: A Challenge to US Management (1991)
• George Friedman and Meredith Lebard's The Coming War with Japan (1991)
• T. Boone Pickens, Pat Choate, and Christopher Burke's The Second Pearl Harbor: Say No to Japan (1992)
By the 1980s, fears about Japan Inc.'s success, growing trade imbalances, and Japanese purchases of properties like the Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach had reached a crescendo, with some citing the "real possibility that economic squabbles between countries would boil over into another conflict in the Pacific." Coincidentally, those pushing anti-Japanese hysteria, based on Japan's superiority in "strategic" emerging technologies like computer chips, software, and AI, saw it as an existential economic and security threat to America's future.
Washington's answer to Japan's rise was the Plaza Accords, an agreement to prop up the US economy through currency devaluation. US manufacturers were allowed to use favorable exchange rates to boost their profitability. As a result, Japan is worth less today, in real dollar terms, than when it signed the Accords in 1985.
Today, China faces the same litany of books, articles, actions, and predictions as Japan did. The difference lies in China's economic footprint, understanding of history, and in its worldview. It is the difference between zero-sum and win-win "building a community with a shared future for mankind."
The larger question is why the US needs a scapegoat when it fails.
Most of the Asian leaders aligning with Washington's "China threat'' narratives and containment policies have short-term political priorities, rather than long-term economic goals.
In Japan and South Korea, unpopular leaders have turned to the international stage to assign blame for domestic situations that defy easy fixes. Meanwhile, the rest (the majority) of China's neighbors are cognizant and wary of US political and military actions in Asia, having experienced them before (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.) and having seen what they have brought and are bringing to the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Ukraine, Gaza, etc.).
In terms of China, its rapid economic rise and the prosperity it has brought to Asian economies are admired, but the sheer speed and size of China's growth has caused unease, especially among countries that are concerned that China might act like the US. Unfortunately, those concerns are being warped and fanned by a nervous Washington elite, who sees China in the same way they saw Japan in the 1970s, as a threat to US economic hegemony.
Washington's response to China has been to use economic and military pressure to push political interests, specifically aiming to replace the Communist Party system. This marks a significant change from the past, when the US used politics and the military to push economic interests.
America Is an Empire vs. China Is a Civilization
All civilizations started as empires, but not all empires became civilizations.
One way of looking at the issue is in terms of the difference in their development levels and approaches.
Empires are outward-facing: they are aggressive and dominate others as a means of building power and legitimacy. For the US, this has meant being in conflict for all but 17 of its 248-year history. It has insisted that its powers as an Exceptional nation allow it to extend its control over South America (the Monroe Doctrine) to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
What gives the US the right to declare itself an "Indo-Pacific" power, let alone claim dominion over all parts of the Earth? The answer is simple, and is what the US as an empire has always done: whatever means, politically, economically, and/or militarily, might makes right.
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry forced Japan to open up its ports to resupply US whalers, setting in motion Japan's imitation of imperialism, which led to Japanese aggression before and during WWII. The US Yangtze Patrol in China was put in place to protect US interests without regard to sovereignty. South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and others suffered under the same aggression.
Civilizations tend to be inward-facing: they defend what they have as they deal with the societal issues that come after their empire periods. For China, its civilization took a radical change from an outdated and corrupt system to the progress it has achieved over the last 75 years. What remains though are the societal, cultural, and legal values that are endemic to China.
Empires fall when they are either defeated militarily or decline internally.
Civilizations used to fail due to wars or famines, but as societal expectations have changed, governments are now expected to provide individual (safety, order, food, shelter, clothing, predictability) and societal (roads, water, sewer, communications, opportunity) essentials. The key difference is that civilizations develop and live by laws and social values, whereas empires rely on force.
The relevance of this distinction is that, historically, conflicts erupt when values fail.
American Exceptionalism is a logical fallacy: insisting on moral superiority whilst ignoring personal failings. Today, it is increasingly wearing thin.
For example, according to the February 21, 2024 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, US trade policy has generally sought to advance US economic growth and competitiveness by reducing international trade and investment barriers, fostering an open, transparent, and nondiscriminatory rules-based trading system through the WTO.
Except, since Obama's presidency, Washington has refused to allow any WTO appellate judges to be seated, which means if a party appeals a lower tribunal ruling, there can be no binding ruling.
In this case and many others, Washington's hypocrisy and accusations of others of doing what the US has done, and is doing, have become the standard operating procedure. However, this tactic becomes less persuasive the more it is used.
It is a pity, given that if the US practiced 60% of the values it preached from trade, finance, human rights, self-determination, primacy of law, and respect for international institutions, it would have at least some credibility. Instead, Washington has become a rogue state, financed by a Ponzi scheme that practices the opposite of what it preaches.
Into this toxic brew, Washington has returned to the old playbook used in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia: to divide and create chaos as a means of maintaining American hegemony. AUKUS and the Quad are strategies to contain China's rise. The question arises: to what end? It is a question that no one in Washington is willing to answer, other than to recite their faith in American Exceptionalism.
Domestically, things are no better, with Gaza calling into question America's values. Money flows freely for wars and weapons, while domestic concerns about voting rights, free speech, abortion, guns, drugs, poverty, homelessness, literacy, immigration, and hope for a better future are given lip service but no resources.
The biggest question facing America, and the world, is the Trump question. Will the king of MAGA, even if convicted, be the next president, and will he follow through on his campaign promises to put "America First" at the expense of the rest of the world? As an unapologetic transactionalist, Trump is expected to press America's interests without regard to values. However, if Biden is re-elected, he will continue to blindly follow his notion of American Exceptionalism, which espouses values but does not exemplify them.
This means that neither Trump nor Biden is expected to embrace a vision of "building a community with a shared future for mankind," but we can hope the next generation of American leaders might. This means China's economic and security concerns will have to be addressed without the US, perhaps collectively through consensus with those who are actually involved, like ASEAN and the "rest of the world."
Please note: The above contents only represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Taihe Institute.
This article is from the May issue of TI Observer (TIO), which zooms in on new developments of those mini-laterals in the Asia-Pacific and examines how these changes will redefine strategic dynamics and the security situation in the region. If you are interested in knowing more about the May issue, please click here:
http://www.taiheinstitute.org/UpLoadFile/files/2024/5/31/1327268243b64df50-7.pdf
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Ukraine war will end in surrender
And there won’t be any negotiations with Zelensky when the Ukrainian army collapses and a replacement government is installed
The Ukraine war will end in a surrender, not in a negotiated deal. That is my sense of where the war is headed and why the parties cannot negotiate a settlement. The latest wrinkle in the missing negotiating saga is a declaration in the form of an interview given by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the interview, Zelensky said there can’t be direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia but there could be indirect negotiations through a third party. In Zelensky’s proposed scenario, the third party will serve as an intermediary and any deal will only be with the intermediary, not between Russia or Ukraine. Zelensky suggested the UN could act in this role.
However, the Zelensky proposal is a non-starter for many reasons, but the biggest one is that warring states need to directly agree on ending a conflict.
There is no hope of a third party implementing any deal, as the failed Minsk agreements (2014, 2015) proved. Minsk was a hybrid case where the deal was signed by Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Ukraine refused to implement the deal and the OSCE proved toothless and unwilling to try and enforce the Minsk accords. The deal had political backing from Germany and France, although neither was a signatory nor legally obliged in any manner to support the resulting deal.
Zelensky’s “proposal” really is just another smokescreen to deflect criticism of Ukraine for not wanting a settlement with Russia. Three strong forces are keeping Zelensky from the negotiating table.
The most important is that the main Anglo-Saxon players in NATO, namely the US and the UK, strongly oppose any negotiations with Russia. The US has done everything it can, including through sanctions and diplomatic measures, to prevent any dialogue with Russia on any subject (other than prisoner exchanges).
The second reason is Ukrainian legislation, sponsored by Zelensky, prohibiting negotiations with Russia. The Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) could rescind that legislation in a nanosecond if Zelensky asked them to do so but he likely won’t.
Zelensky completely controls the Ukrainian parliament, has arrested or exiled opposition politicians, and controls the press and other media. Zelensky’s iron fist means that he won’t personally allow direct negotiations.
Zelensky also has signed a decree prohibiting any negotiations with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
The third reason relates to pressure on Zelensky from hard-right nationalists, including especially the neo-Nazi Azov brigade. Direct evidence for this is the firing of Lieutenant General Yuri Sodol, the top commander of Kiev’s forces in the Kharkov area.
Sodol was accused by Azov brigade leaders of killing more Ukrainians than the Russians in the Kharkov battles. Azov took their message to the Rada and Zelensky obliged them by firing Sodol.
Since Sodol’s dismissal, Ukraine’s situation has worsened along the entire line of contact. Ukrainian battle losses are very high, with as many as 2,000 killed and wounded on some days.
The Russians have stepped up their attacks with FAB glide bombs, including the monster FAB-3000 which just hit a Ukrainian army command center in the Donbas town of New York and reportedly killed 60 or more Ukrainian military personnel.
The Russians say that Zelensky is not a viable negotiating partner because his term of office expired in May. There is some confusion about the legal situation in Ukraine but experts in and outside Ukraine think that the leadership of the country should pass to the Speaker of the Rada since Zelensky completed his term.
Ruslan Stefanchuk is the Rada speaker and is becoming more politically active, though he has not opposed Zelensky’s continued rule.
Meanwhile, given the battlefield situation, the Russians no doubt figure that the time will soon come when the Ukrainian army either collapses or surrenders, or both.
In either case, the Ukrainian government will need to be replaced in some manner, perhaps with an interim military leadership selected by Russia. That would allow the Russians to formulate a capitulation agreement with a replacement government.
A surrender by Ukraine’s army and an agreement with a Russia-appointed government would make NATO’s continued involvement in Ukraine impossible.
That could open the door, finally, to a security dialogue between NATO and Russia once NATO digests what happened and why. Unfortunately, loading NATO with has-been political leaders like Marc Rutte does not bode well for the future of the alliance.
The key message for NATO if the Russians win in Ukraine, as seems more and more likely, is that the security alliance must stop its expansion and look for a more stable arrangement with Russia in Europe.
Stephen Bryen is senior correspondent at Asia Times. He served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defence for policy.
Read more here.