A big shock in geopolitics, the approach of which you probably don’t notice ("Nation", Pakistan)
China and Russia are preparing to create an economic zone beyond the reach of Washington.
Let's start with what happened just two weeks ago, a geopolitical big bang, about which you know nothing. Its results are as follows: from now on, any potential attack on Iran by the Pentagon (in alliance with NATO) will in essence denote attacks against plans outlined by an interconnected set of organizations - BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ( SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the recently founded Chinese initiative of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (ABII) and the New Development Bank of the BRICS (NBR) are acronyms that also hardly tell you anything. Meanwhile, they represent a new order emerging in Eurasia.
Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad and New Delhi are actively establishing interoperable security guarantees. They unanimously called endless drumming bluff with which the atlantists tried to draw everyone’s attention to the fictitious meme about the Iranian “nuclear program”. And a few days before the nuclear talks in Vienna were finally crowned with an agreement, everything fell into place at the double BRICS / SCO summit in Ufa, a place that you, of course, had never heard of before, at the meeting that The United States is almost completely overlooked. Yet, sooner or later, these events will undoubtedly make both the war party in Washington and the different-sized neoconservatives (as well as neoliberal conservatives), already breathing heavily over the Iranian treaty, nervous as their stories about the structure of the modern world begin to break. into small pieces.
Eurasian Silk Road
The Vienna Agreement, the result of endless negotiations, which I had the dubious pleasure of keeping a close eye on, turned out to be like the long-awaited Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his diplomatic team from a pretty wrinkled wizard's hat: this is almost an incredible contract that can actually end sanctions imposed on a country as a result of an asymmetrical and mostly fabricated conflict.
Now imagine that meeting in Ufa, the capital of Russian Bashkortostan, as a preamble to the long-awaited agreement in Vienna. She groped for the new dynamics of the Eurasian continent and became a warning about the future geopolitical “big bang”. In Ufa, from 8 to 10 July, the 7-th BRICS summit and the 15-th Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization overlapped each other, while the Vienna agreement required new and new terms.
Consider this a diplomatic ploy of Vladimir Putin to combine two summits with an informal meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Call it a declaration of war against the imperial logic of Washington on the part of soft power, emphasizing the breadth and depth of the developing Russian-Chinese strategic partnership. Gathering all these heads of state under one roof, Moscow proposed a vision of an emerging, coherent geopolitical structure rooted in Eurasian integration. Hence the importance of Iran: whatever happens after Vienna, Iran will be for this new structure a vital intermediary / node / crossroads in Eurasia.
If you read the statement at the end of the BRICS summit, one detail should strike you: the tough economy-driven European Union (EU) is hardly mentioned in it. And this did not happen by mistake. From the point of view of the leaders of the key BRICS countries, they offer a new approach to Eurasia, directly opposite to the language of sanctions.
These are just some of the examples of dizzying activities that took place in Ufa and were completely ignored by the leading American media. During the meetings, President Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked to achieve practical goals and promote what is essentially the Chinese version of the future unification of Eurasia through a series of interconnected " new silk ways. Modi approved the influx of Chinese investment in India, and both leaders, Chinese and Indian, promised to work together to solve common border issues that for a long time did not give their countries peace and, at least in one case, led to war.
The NBR, the BRICS response to the World Bank, was officially launched with 50 billions of dollars in start-up capital. According to its president, Kundapur Vaman Kamath (Kundapur Vaman Kamath), focused on financing major infrastructure projects in the BRICS countries, this bank is able to accumulate up to 400 billions of dollars in capital. Later, he plans to focus on financing similar enterprises in other developing countries around the Global Sub - based on local currencies, bypassing the US dollar. Given the composition of the members, obviously the NBR funds will be closely linked to the new “silk routes”. As the President of the Brazilian Development Bank, Luciano Coutinho, stressed, in the near future he will also be able to provide support to non-EU European countries such as Serbia and Macedonia. Think of it as an attempt by the NBR to break the monopoly of Brussels on Greater Europe. Kamath even suggested the possibility of ever providing assistance in the reconstruction of Syria.
You will not be surprised to learn that the headquarters of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the NBI are located in China and will complement each other in the course of their work. At the same time, the private equity fund, a foreign investment unit of Russia, signed a memorandum of understanding with funds from other BRICS countries and thus marked the beginning of an unofficial investment consortium in which the Chinese Silk Road Fund and the Indian Infrastructure Finance Company will be key partners.
Full range of transport dominance
At the basic level, all this should be considered as part of the new Great Game in Eurasia. Its downside is the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Pacific and the same version in the Atlantic, a transatlantic trade and investment partnership that Washington is trying to promote to maintain American global economic domination. The question raised by these controversial projects is how to integrate trade and commerce in this vast region. According to the Chinese and Russians, Eurasia should be integrated through an extensive network of highways, high-speed rail lines, ports, airports, pipelines and fiber-optic cables. New “silk routes”, laid over land, by sea and by air, are intended to create an economic version of the Pentagon doctrine called “Full spectrum of domination” - it’s not for nothing that the Chinese corporate managers are already driving around Eurasia, concluding infrastructure deals.
For Beijing, in the second quarter of 2015, which returned to 7 percent growth rates, despite the recent state of panic in the stock markets of the country, this has an ideal economic sense: as labor costs increase, production will be transferred from its western provinces, while those parallel and interconnected "belts" of the new "silk routes" will be the natural way out for all kinds of products.
Meanwhile, Russia has begun to modernize and diversify its own economy, which is dependent on the extraction of energy resources. Among other things, its leaders hope that the totality of the developing “silk roads” and the consolidation of the Eurasian Economic Union - Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - will be transformed into a multitude of transport and construction projects for which the industrial and engineering know-how of the country will be decisive.
Since the EEU has begun to create a free trade zone with India, Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and the Latin American bloc MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela), the initial stages of this integration process are already beyond Eurasia. Meanwhile, the SCO, which began as a small security forum, is expanding and moving into the area of economic cooperation. His countries, especially the four Central Asian "-stanes" (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) will rely even more on the Chinese-managed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the NBI. In Ufa, India and Pakistan have completed the transition to a new level, becoming observers as members of the SCO. As a result, we got an alternative G8.
Meanwhile, when it comes to Afghanistan on alert, the BRICS and SCO peoples have already called for “armed opposition to disarm, recognize the Constitution of Afghanistan and break ties with al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.” Translation: within the framework of the Afghan national unity, the organization will accept the Taliban as part of the future government. Relying on the integration of the region, they pin their hopes on the future stability of Afghanistan, which is able to absorb even more Chinese, Russian, Indian and Iranian investments, and with construction - finally! - a long-planned, 10 billion-dollar, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) kilometer-long 1420 gas pipeline that serves the energy-hungry members of the SCO, Pakistan and India. (They would get 42% gas, the rest 16% - to Afghanistan).
Central Asia is currently the geographic epicenter of the convergence of the economic aspirations of China, Russia and India. It is no coincidence that Prime Minister Modi stopped in Central Asia on the way to Ufa. Like the Chinese leadership in Beijing, Moscow (as stated in a recent document by the Valdai Discussion Club) is counting on “the interpenetration and integration of projects of the EAEU and the Silk Road Economic Belt to create a“ great Eurasia ”and a“ sustainable, developing, secure common neighborhood »For Russia and China.
And do not forget about Iran. At the beginning of 2016, when economic sanctions are fully lifted, it is expected that it will join the SCO, turning it into G9. As Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made clear in a recent interview with Russia 1, Tehran considers Russia to be its strategic partner. "Russia," he said, "was the most important participant in Iran’s nuclear program, and under the current agreement it will remain Iran’s main nuclear partner." The same thing, he added, will be fair with regard to cooperation in the "oil and gas sector", given the common interest of these two energy-rich countries in "maintaining price stability on the world market."
Got a hallway - drove
The BRICS countries are promoting integration projects across Eurasia. A typical example is the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor under development. It is currently being transformed into a multi-lane highway between India and China. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia are developing a transport corridor from the Persian and Oman gulf to the Caspian Sea and the Volga. Azerbaijan will be connected to the Caspian part of this corridor, while India plans to use the southern ports of Iran to improve its access to Russia and Central Asia. Now add to this the sea corridor that stretches from the Indian city of Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and then to Astrakhan, located in southern Russia. And these are only scratches on the surface of what is under development.
Several years ago, Vladimir Putin declared the possibility of the existence of a “Greater Europe” in the future, stretching from the Portuguese Lisbon on the Atlantic to the Russian Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. Under the heel of Washington, the EU ignored these words. Then the Chinese began to dream of new “silk roads”, marking their opposite direction to the Marco Polo route: from Shanghai to Venice (and then to Berlin).
Thanks to a set of mutually enriching political institutions, investment funds, development banks, financial systems and infrastructure projects, which today remain largely in the field of view of Washington, the Eurasian center of free trade is emerging. Someday he will link China and Russia with Europe, South-West Asia and even Africa. He promises an amazing development. If you have such an opportunity, keep a close eye on what is happening on the ground, even if these facts are rarely covered in the American media. They represent the New Great - let us emphasize this word - the Game in Eurasia.
Trump card - location
Tehran is now seriously involved in strengthening its ties with this new Eurasia, in particular the person following the process, Ali Akbar Velayati. He is the head of the Iranian Center for Strategic Studies and senior foreign policy adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Velayati stresses that security in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus depends on further strengthening the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran tripartite alliance.
He is aware that in geostrategic terms, Iran primarily has a favorable location. This country in its region, in addition to Russia, offers the best access to the open seas and is the only obvious east-west / north-south intersection for the trade flow coming from the Central Asian “-states”. It is not surprising that Iran will soon become a member of the SCO, although its “partnership” with Russia is already waiting for an undoubted development. Iran’s energy resources are extremely important and are considered a national security issue for China, and from the point of view of the country's leadership, Iran also plays a key role as a transportation hub for its “silk routes”.
This growing network of roads, railways and energy pipelines, as previously reported on TomDispatch, is the Beijing response to the Obama administration, announcing its “reorientation to Asia” and the efforts of the US Navy to stick its nose into the South China Sea. Beijing prefers to demonstrate its power through a huge number of infrastructure projects, mainly high-speed railway lines, which stretch from its eastern coast to the interior of Eurasia. If we continue in the same spirit, the Chinese-built railway from Urumqi in Xinjiang province to Almaty in Kazakhstan will certainly some day be extended to Iran and cross this country on the way to the Persian Gulf.
New world for Pentagon strategists
At an international economic forum in St. Petersburg last month, Vladimir Putin told Charlie Rose (PBS) that Moscow and Beijing had always sought a sincere partnership with the United States, but were rejected by Washington. Well, honor and glory to the “leadership” of the Obama administration. Anyway, she managed to combine the two former geopolitical rivals while they strengthened their pan-Eurasian general strategy.
Even a recent deal with Iran in Vienna is hardly - especially considering the “war hawks” in Congress - until the end will destroy the 36-year-old great wall of Washington’s distrust of Iran. Instead, there is a possibility that Iran, freed from sanctions, will actually be absorbed by the Russian-Chinese project on the integration of Eurasia, as a result of which we will have to watch the Washington soldiers who are not able to act effectively and are moaning like banshees.
Supreme Commander of NATO, Dr. Strangelove, sorry, American General Philip Breedlove, insists that the West must create a rapid reaction force - online - to counteract Russia's “false tales”. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter (Ashton Carter) states that he is seriously considering the possibility of unilaterally redistributing missiles with nuclear warheads in Europe. A candidate for the post of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, naval commander Joseph Dunford, recently explicitly identified Russia as a real “threat to the existence” of America; Air Force general Paul Selva, who was appointed vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supported this assessment by using the same phrase and calling Russia, China and Iran - in that order - more dangerous than the "Islamic State". At the same time, Republican presidential candidates and a flock of “hawks” of Congress just scream and smoke with anger when it comes to Russians and the Iranian treaty.
In response to the Ukrainian situation and the “threat” of a resurgent Russia (behind which resurgent China stands), the Washington-oriented militarization of Europe is in full swing. According to reports, NATO is currently obsessed with what is called "rethinking the strategy" - the compilation of detailed futuristic scenarios of war on European soil. As economist Michael Hudson (Michael Hudson) noted, even financial policy is becoming militarized and driven by the new NATO 2.0 cold war.
In its latest national military strategy, the Pentagon assumes that the risk of starting an American war with another nation (as opposed to organized terrorist groups) is low yet, but at the moment is “growing”. He identifies four nations as a “threat”: North Korea as a separate case and, predictably, the three countries that form the new Eurasian core: Russia, China and Iran. They are portrayed in the document as “revisionist states”, openly ignoring what the Pentagon defines as “international security and stability”; that is, the playing field created by globalization, exclusive capitalism and the Washington brand of militarism.
The Pentagon, of course, does not engage in diplomacy. Clearly disregarding the Vienna talks, he still blames Iran for the nuclear race. And he claims that the “military option” against Iran should never be dismissed.
So rely on the super blockbuster as you watch the Pentagon and the congressional “war hawks” react to the environment after Vienna and - although the summit was barely noticed in Washington - after Ufa, especially with the new occupant of the White House in 2017. .
It will be spectacular. Please note. Will Washington want to try to make amends to “lost” Russia or send troops there? Will he restrain China or the IS "caliphate"? Will he cooperate with Iran to fight the ISIS or reject it? Will he really turn his face to Asia, leaving the Middle East, or vice versa? Or will he try to hold back Russia, China and Iran at the same time? Or find some way to set them against each other?
In the end, whatever Washington does, it will certainly be moved by the fear of the growing strategic depth of the economic relations that Russia and China are establishing between themselves, a reality that is now becoming apparent throughout Eurasia. In Ufa, Putin openly declared Xi: "By combining efforts, we [Russia and China] will, without doubt, overcome all the problems we face."
The “efforts” should be understood as the new “silk routes”, the Eurasian Economic Union, the growing BRICS bloc, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization, banks founded by the Chinese and everything else that contributes to the beginning of a new integration of a significant part of the Eurasian continent. What remains for Washington to fly like an eagle? Rather: scream like a banshee.
- Pepe Escobar
- http://www.thenation.com/article/the-geopolitical-big-bang-you-probably-dont-see-coming/
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