Lame duck out of the Silk Road caravan
Pepe Escobar
November 11, 2014 10:57
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World leaders during the APEC Summit family photo in Beijing November 10, 2014. Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott standing behind Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd L) (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)
There’s hardly a more graphic illustration of where the multipolar world is going than what just happened at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing.
Take a very good look at the official photos. This is all about positioning – and this being China, pregnant with symbolic meaning. Guess who’s in the place of honor, side by side with President Xi Jinping. And guess where the lame duck leader of the “indispensable nation” has been relegated. The Chinese can also be masters at sending a global message.
When President Xi urged APEC to “add firewood to the fire of the Asia-Pacific and world economy,” this is what he meant, irrespective of inconclusive decisions out of the summit.
1) Beijing will go no holds barred for the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) – the Chinese vision of an “all inclusive, all-win” trade deal that really promotes Asia-Pacific cooperation, instead of the US-driven, corporate-redacted, and quite divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
2) The blueprint is on for “all-round connectivity,” in Xi’s words – which implies Beijing setting up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; Beijing and Moscow committing to a second mega gas deal – this one through the Altai pipeline in Western Siberia; and China already funneling no less than $40 billion to start building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
World leaders take their seats as China's President Xi Jinping (C) prepares to deliver opening remarks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake in Beijing, November 11, 2014 (Reuters / Pablo Martinez Monsiváis)
Once again, everything converges towards the most spectacular, ambitious and wide-ranging pluri-national infrastructure offensive ever attempted: the multiple New Silk Roads – a complex network of high-speed rail, pipelines, ports, fiber optic cables and state of the art telecom that China is already building through the Central Asian -stans, linked to Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian Ocean, and branching out to Europe all the way to Venice and Berlin.
That’s Beijing interlinking Xi’s “Asia-Pacific Dream” way beyond East Asia, with eyes set on pan-Eurasia trade – with the center being, what else, the Middle Kingdom.
The “Go West” campaign was officially launched in China in the late 1990s. The New Silk Roads are a turbocharged “Go West” – and “Go South” – expanding markets, markets, markets. Think of near future Eurasia as a massive Chinese Silk Belt – in some latitudes in a condominium with Russia.
You want your war hot or cold?
As Beijing dreams, Noam Chomsky has been very vocal about a 1914-style chain reaction of catastrophic blunders – by the West - that could fast spin out of control; and the stakes, once again, are nuclear. Moscow absolutely abhors this gruesome possibility - and that explains why Russia, under relentless US provocation, as well as sanctions, has exercised titanic restraint. Not only can Russia not be “isolated” as the US attempted with Iran; Moscow also called the US neo-cons’ bluff in Ukraine.
At the Valdai Club meeting in Sochi, President Putin, in a crucial speech (text plus Q&A) obviously ignored by Western corporate media, drew the necessary conclusions. The Washington/Wall Street elites have absolutely no intention of allowing a minimum of multipolarity in international relations. What’s left is chaos. That’s what I’ve been arguing, over different strands, during the Obama administration years, and is at the center of my new book "Empire of Chaos".
Moscow knows all about the complex interlinks with Europe – especially Germany – and with the still fading, but still influential, Washington Consensus. And yet Russia holds the trump card of being a Eurasian power; when in trouble, there could always be a pivoting to Asia.
Gorbachev was spot on in Berlin when he stressed how, breaking the promise personally made to him by Bush the father, NATO embarked on an eternal eastward expansion; and how the West – essentially the US plus a few European vassals – now seems obsessed in launching a new cold war, with the new Berlin Wall – metaphorically – transplanted to Kiev.
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders pose for a family photo at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake in Beijing, November 11, 2014 (Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon)
Moscow pivoting away from the West and towards East Asia is a process developing on many levels – and for months now, for all to see. Acres of forest can be further devastated to print how the outcome has been directly influenced by Barack Obama’s self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” foreign policy doctrine, which he christened aboard Air Force One when coming from a trip to – once again - Asia last April.
On energy, the spin by the Financial Times of yet another Russia-China mega gas deal as “Putin’s revenge” is proverbial rubbish. Russia is turning east because that’s where the top demand is. On finance, Moscow has just ended the pegging of the ruble to the US dollar and euro; the US dollar instantly dropped against the ruble. VTB for its part announced it may leave the London Stock Exchange for Shanghai's – which is about to become directly linked to Hong Kong. And Hong Kong, for its part, is already attracting Russian energy giants.
Now mix these key developments with the massive yuan-ruble energy double deal, and the picture is of Russia actively protecting itself from speculative/politically motivated Western attacks against its currency.
The Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership visibly expands on energy, finance and, also inevitably, on the military technology front. That includes, crucially, Moscow selling Beijing the S-400 air defense system and, in the future, the S-500.
The S-500 system can intercept any American ICBMs or cruise missiles, while the Russian ICBMs deployed at Mach 17, equipped with MIRVs, are simply unbeatable. Beijing, for its part, is already developing its own surface-to-ship missiles that can take out everything the US Navy can muster – from aircraft carriers to submarines and mobile air defense systems.
Join the caravan
Strategically, Beijing and Washington could not but be polar opposites in what I called the birth of the Eurasian century.
Beijing has clearly identified Washington/Wall Street fighting to the death to preserve the short unipolar moment. China – and the BRICS – is working towards what Xi defined as a “new model of great power relations.” The Washington/Wall Street mindset is “either/or” instead of “win-win”; the self-appointed Masters of the Universe believe they can always monopolize the loot because Russia – and then China - eventually will back down to avoid confrontation. This is the key aspect of Asia-Pacific today somewhat resembling 1914 Europe.
China's President Xi Jinping delivers opening remarks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake in Beijing, November 11, 2014 (Reuters / Pablo Martinez Monsiváis)
With this kind of stuff passing for “analysis” in US academic circles, and with the Washington/Wall Street elites through their myopic Think Tank land still clinging to mythical platitudes such as the “historical” American role as arbiter of modern Asia and key balancer of power, no wonder public opinion in the West cannot even imagine the impact of the New Silk Roads in the geopolitics of the young 21st century.
A quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US, for all practical purposes, is run by an oligarchy. Europe is geopolitically irrelevant. “Democracy” has been degraded to self-parody in most of the West. “Humanitarian” – as well as neo-con - imperialism in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and beyond has led to disaster after disaster. Financial turbo-capitalism is a time bomb.
Russia and China may not be proposing an alternative system – yet. Still, as the dogs of war, of hate, of inequality - bark, the China-Russia caravan passes. The caravan is selling Eurasia economic integration – not bombs. Real Asia-Pacific integration may still be a long dream away. Yet what APEC has shown – graphically – once again is the spectacular implosion, in slow motion, of the former indispensable nation’s geopolitical dominance.
Announcing a landmark agreement to confront climate change, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi both portrayed it as an example of how the world’s two largest economies could collaborate on the world’s most pressing problems, even as they compete in many other areas.
“When China and the U.S. work together, we can become an anchor of world stability and a propeller of world peace,” Mr. Xi said. Mr. Obama echoed that sentiment, calling the climate change agreement a milestone in the countries’ relations that “shows what’s possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”
But it was the differences that were cast in sharp relief during a rare question-and-answer session after the presidents delivered their statements. During the planning for Mr. Obama’s visit, the White House had lobbied intensively for reporters’ questions to be taken, and the Chinese authorities relented only a day before the leaders stood together in the Great Hall of the People.
Initially, Mr. Xi appeared to ignore two questions from a reporter for The New York Times: whether China feared that the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia represented an effort to contain China, and whether China would ease its refusal to issue visas to some foreign correspondents in light of a broader visa agreement with the United States.
After first taking an unrelated question from a Chinese state-run newspaper — appearing to draw a bemused reaction from Mr. Obama — Mr. Xi circled back, declaring that the visa problems of news organizations, including The Times, were of their own making. He evinced little patience for the foreign news media’s concerns that they were being penalized for unfavorable news coverage of Chinese leaders and their families.
Mr. Xi said that China protected the rights of media organizations, but that the organizations needed to abide by the rules of the country. “When a certain issue is raised as a problem, there must be a reason,” he said, apparently acknowledging a link between news coverage and the refusal to extend the visas.
Mr. Xi used a Chinese metaphor to describe the travails of The Times and other organizations, saying they were like a faulty car. “When a car breaks down on the road, perhaps we need to step down and see what the problem is,” he said.
In a passage that was not translated into English, the president added that “the Chinese say, ‘Let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off'” — a saying that can also be translated as, “The one who created the problem should be the one who solves it.”
Mr. Xi also bluntly warned the United States and other foreign countries not to get involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, which he dismissed as illegal, responding to a question to Mr. Obama about rumors in the Chinese media that the United States is fomenting the unrest there.
“Hong Kong’s affairs are exclusively China’s internal affairs, and foreign countries should not interfere in Hong Kong’s affairs in any fashion,” the Chinese leader declared. “It goes without saying that law and order must be protected in any place.”
The authorities in Hong Kong have issued increasingly strong warnings for protesters to clear the streets as Mr. Obama’s visit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Beijing have neared an end.
Mr. Xi dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama’s pivot to Asia — including a proposed regional trade pact that does not include China — was an effort by the United States to contain his country. And he brushed off a recent wave of anti-American statements in China’s state-run media, saying, “I don’t think it’s worth fussing over.”
Taken together, Mr. Xi’s statements offered a rare, unvarnished glimpse of the Chinese president, two years into his term and after his swift consolidation of power. He showed no hesitation in departing from his usual script about the importance of a “major power” relationship.
For his part, Mr. Obama tried to keep the emphasis on working with China. He, too, sharply disputed suggestions that the United States’s new focus on Asia should be seen as a threat, saying that “our conversation gave us an opportunity to debunk the notion that our pivot to Asia is about containing China.”
Mr. Obama said he had assured Mr. Xi that the United States had nothing to do with the protests in Hong Kong. “These are issues ultimately for the people of Hong Kong and China to decide,” he said of the protests demanding fully democratic elections, though he voiced support for the right of free expression.
In general, Mr. Obama’s references to human rights were carefully calibrated. He noted America’s refusal to recognize a separate Taiwan or Tibet. He also praised China for its role in nuclear negotiations with Iran, its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and its dealings with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Mr. Obama played down a recent wave of virulently negative coverage of him and the United States in China’s state-run media. Tough press coverage, he said, came with being a public official, whether in China or the United States. “I’m a big believer in actions, not words,” he added.
White House officials told reporters that the president had called on a reporter for The Times in part because several of its China correspondents had been denied visas by the government.
The state-run Chinese television station CCTV did not broadcast the 48-minute news conference. “That would have been a deliberate decision by the central propaganda department, which everyone knows is even more hard-line than Xi Jinping,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
Propaganda officials did not want the Chinese public to see President Obama talking about human rights and Tibet, Mr. Shi said, even though he said Mr. Obama had been gracious in not saying “hard things to annoy his host.”
