Category Archives: Eurasian Axis

How Russia-China Are Stage-Managing the Taliban, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on August 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

It looks like the Taliban leadership is going to do its best to fit Afghanistan into the Russia-China axis. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

The Taliban delegation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin on July 28th

The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.

The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.

Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.

Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.

These are the key takeaways.

  • No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insist, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”
  • The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.
  • Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.
  • A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.
  • Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”
  • The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.

For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.

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‘Splitting’ Russia and China Is Harder Than It Looks, by Daniel Larison

Posted on August 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Beware geo-strategic geniuses and their brilliant plans. The world is not a neat chess board, it’s a lot of messy people and their rulers trying to ride a tiger. From Daniel Larison at daniellarison.substack.com:

Kupchan is offering precisely nothing tangible that the Russian leadership would find appealing.

Charles Kupchan claims to have found the “right way” to split Russia from China:

If Russia is to be drawn westward, it will result not from Washington’s overtures or altruism but from the Kremlin’s cold reassessment of how best to pursue its long-term self-interest. An offer from Washington to reduce tensions with the West will not succeed on its own; after all, Putin relies on such tensions to legitimate his iron political grip. Instead, the challenge facing Washington is to change the Kremlin’s broader strategic calculus by demonstrating that more cooperation with the West can help Russia redress the mounting vulnerabilities arising from its close partnership with China.

Kupchan has to say that an offer to reduce tensions won’t succeed because he isn’t really making that offer anyway. The gestures that he says the U.S. should make are largely rhetorical. He suggests abandoning the “democracy vs. autocracy” framing of Biden administration policy statements. That’s all very well and I agree with it, but Russia isn’t being offered anything real that would convince them that hedging and cooperating with the U.S. and its European allies are worth doing. Assuming that it is still possible to “split” Russia from China, it isn’t going to happen unless the U.S. and its allies can make Russia a sufficiently tempting offer. But Kupchan is offering precisely nothing tangible that the Russian leadership would find appealing.

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How Many Enemies Does America Want? by Doug Bandow

Posted on August 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US government has enough enemies without adding Russia and China to the list. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

U.S. Should Stop Pushing Russia Into China’s Arms

The exciting days of America as the unipower, the essential nation, the hyperpower, the sole superpower, the embodiment of worldly glory and virtue, are long over. That heady moment, evident to all after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, ended with the Bush administration. George H.W. Bush’s 1992 election defeat indicated that the American people had quickly lost their enthusiasm for imperial overreach.

The surprise new president, Bill Clinton, was confident and ambitious, but found that battling warlords and creating nations was not for the faint-hearted. Only a few months into his tenure came the infamous “Black Hawk down” incident. The score: Somalia 1, America 0. Clinton withdrew U.S. forces, ending any fantasy that Bush’s “what we say goes” was reality outside of rarefied diplomatic forums.

Not that Clinton’s foreign policy crew got the message. The administration applied starvation as policy against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, whom Washington had befriended after his invasion of Iran. Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, explained “We think the price is worth it” when questioned about the reported deaths of a half million Iraqi children. Lamenting his failure to amass a more consequential presidential record by fighting a real war or two, Clinton was left with intermittent bombing of Iraq, which achieved nothing of note, and a brief Balkan campaign that always and everywhere disposed ethnic Serbs while ignoring war crimes committed by everyone else.

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Has the US Begun Its “Great Retreat”? by The Saker

Posted on August 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

At some point the grandiose assumptions and posturing behind the American Empire are going to run head on into the realities of US deficits and Russian and Chinese military and economic capabilities. From The Saker at unz.com:

French Retreat in 1812

I have to begin this column by admitting that “Biden” (note: when in quotation marks, I refer to the “collective Biden”, not the clearly senile man) surprised me: it appears that my personal rule-of-thumb about US Presidents (each one is even worse than his predecessor) might not necessarily apply in “Biden’s” case. That is not to say that “Biden” won’t end up proving my rule of thumb as still applicable, just that what I am seeing right now is not what I feared or expected.

Initially, I felt my the rule still held. The total US faceplant in Alaska when Blinken apparently mistook the Chinese for woke-neutered serfs and quickly found out how mistaken he was.

But then there was the meeting with Putin which surprised many, including myself. Initially, most Russian observers joined one of two groups about the prospects for this summit:

  1. This summit will never happen, there is nothing to discuss, Biden is senile, his Admin is filled wall to wall with harcore russophobes and, besides, the (US) Americans are “not agreement capable” (недоговороспособные) anyway, so what is the point?
  2. If the summit takes place, it will be a comprehensive failure. At best a shouting match or exchange of insults.

Neither of these happened. Truth be told, we still do not really know what happened. All we have are some vague declarations of intent and worded pious intentions. And even those were minimalistic! In fact, after the summit most Russian observers, again, broke into two main camps:

  1. “Biden” threw in the towel and gave up. Russian won this round. Hurray!
  2. “Biden” only changed tactics, and now the new US posture might well become even more aggressive and hostile. Russia is about to see a major surge in anti-Russian provocations. Alarm!

I think that both of these grossly oversimplify a probably much more complex and nuanced reality. In other words, “Biden” surprised many, if not most, Russians. That is very interesting by itself (neither Bush, nor Obama nor Trump ever surprised the Russians – who knew the score about all of them – in any meaningful way).

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Escobar: The Taliban Go To Tianjin

Posted on August 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Will Russia, China, and their Eurasian consortium be able to sort out the mess that is Afghanistan? From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

China and Russia will be key to solving an ancient geopolitical riddle: how to pacify the ‘graveyard of empires’…

So this is the way the Forever War in Afghanistan ends – if one could call it an ending. Rather, it’s an American repositioning.

Regardless, after two decades of death and destruction and untold trillions of dollars, we’re faced not with a bang – and not with a whimper, either – but rather with a pic of the Taliban in Tianjin, a nine-man delegation led by top political commissioner Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, solemnly posing side by side with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Lateral echoes of another Forever War – in Iraq – apply. First, there was the bang: the US not as “the new OPEC,” as per how the neo-con mantra had visualized it, but with the Americans not even getting the oil. Then came the whimper: “No more troops” after December 31, 2021 – except for the proverbial “contractor” army.

The Chinese received the Taliban on an official visit in order once again to propose a very straightforward quid pro quo: We recognize and support your political role in the process of Afghan reconstruction and in return you cut off any possible links with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, regarded by the UN as a terrorist organization and responsible for a slew of attacks in Xinjiang.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang explicitly said, “The Taliban in Afghanistan is a pivotal military and political force in the country, and will play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction there.”

This follows Wang’s remarks back in June, after a meeting with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan, when he promised not only to “bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream” but also to host a serious intra-Afghan peace negotiation.

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Western socialism and Eastern capitalism, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on August 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Are the Chinese more capitalistic than the US? From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

There has been a significant shift in geopolitics in recent months, with the US consciously deciding to withdraw from Asian conflicts, notably in Afghanistan. But the diplomatic war against Iran also appears to have been downgraded and the US presence in Iraq is to be wound down. Furthermore, President Biden has downplayed his objections to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany.

In this, the greatest of Great Games, America has seen the strategic advantage move to the China—Russia partnership, which probably explains why the US is backing off from Asia. Meanwhile, China’s production-based economy is strong while that of the US remains weak, a weakness only disguised by monetary inflation.

China will accelerate her policy of encouraging domestic consumption and trans-Asian trade expansion to become increasingly independent from US markets, which are likely to be hampered by a renewed bout of trade protectionism.

This article examines these and related issues, concluding that China and her close allies will be positioned to survive the worst of a developing monetary and economic crisis about to engulf the West.

Introduction

At the root of the political conflict between the West and China is economics and the global distribution of capital. To understand it, we must sweep away the fog of disinformation, and analyse it dispassionately, devoid of all nationalist instincts.

As soon as the state takes over economic functions from the private sector they get lost and replaced by political objectives. The West’s move from free markets towards greater state control in recent decades while China moved in the opposite direction is behind current geopolitical tensions. Since the days of Deng, China’s authoritarian leadership has prioritised free trade to create national wealth for its people. Meanwhile the objectives of social fairness, to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots, have become a destructive obsession for Western-style democracies.

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Posted in Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Eurasian Axis, Financial markets, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade

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Requiem for an Empire: A Prequel, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on July 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Even we citizens of the American empire can take some satisfaction in its death throes. Empire has been an expensive game, both in blood and treasure, and we have nothing to show for it. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

The inexorable imperial rot will go on, a tawdry affair carrying no dramatic, aesthetic pathos worthy of a Gotterdammerung.

Assaulted by cognitive dissonance across the spectrum, the now behaves as a manic depressive inmate, rotten to the core – a fate more filled with dread than having to face a revolt of the satrapies.

Only brain dead zombies now believe in its self-billed universal mission as the new Rome and the new Jerusalem. There’s no unifying culture, economy or geography knitting the core together across an “arid, desiccated, political landscape sweltering under the brassy sun of Apollonian ratiocination, devoid of passion, very masculine, and empty of human empathy.”

Clueless Cold Warriors still dream of the days when the Germany-Japan axis was threatening to rule Eurasia and the Commonwealth was biting the dust – thus offering Washington, fearful of being forced into islandization, the once in a lifetime opportunity to profit from WWII to erect itself as Supreme World Paradigm cum savior of the “free world”.

And then there were the unilateral 1990s, when the once again self-billed Shining City on the Hill basked in tawdry “end of history” celebrations – just as toxic neocons, gestated in the inter-war period via the gnostic cabal of New York Trotskysm, plotted their power takeover.

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Craig Murray: The Decline of Western Power

Posted on July 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

By now it’s obvious even to Westerners: the West is in decline. From Craig Murray at consortiumnew.com:

The really interesting thing about the G7 summit is that it wasn’t interesting. Nobody expected it to change the world, and it won’t.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders of the G7 watch the Red Arrows fly over in Carbis Bay, June 12. (Simon Dawson, No 10 Downing Street, Flickr)

Boris Johnson sees himself as the heritor of a world bestriding Imperial mantle, but in truth he cannot bestride the Irish Sea. The overshadowing of last month’s G7 summit by the U.K. prime minister’s peculiar concern that Irish sausages should not be eaten by those in Northern Ireland who do not believe in evolution, was a fascinating examplar of British impotence as he failed to persuade anybody else to support him. It looks like Danish bacon for the shops of Belfast and Derry will have to be imported through Dun Laoghaire and not through Larne. Ho hum.

The really interesting thing about the G7 summit is that it wasn’t interesting. Nobody expected it to change the world, and it won’t. John Pilger pointed out the key fact. Twenty years ago, the G7 constituted two thirds of the world economy. Now they constitute one third. They don’t even represent most of the world’s billionaires any longer, though those billionaires they do represent — and indeed some of the billionaires they don’t represent — were naturally pulling the strings of these rather sluggish puppets.

It used to be that any important sporting event in any developing country would feature hoardings for western multinationals, such as Pepsi Cola and Nestle baby milk. Nowadays I am watching the Euros football pitches surrounded by electronic hoardings in Chinese. The thing about power is this; it shifts with time.

None of the commitments made on Covid or climate change constituted any new money, any real transfer of wealth or technology. It was a non-event. Nobody will ever look back at anything beyond the personal as having started last month in Cornwall.

From there, pretty well the same people moved on to pretend to bestride the world militarily at NATO, where the first job was to pretend they had not lost the long Afghan war they have just, err, lost.

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Escobar: Russia-China Advance Asian Roadmap For Afghanistan

Posted on July 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

Slowly but surely, Russia and China are cementing their dominance in Eurasia, and Afghanistan gives them more opportunity to do so. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s ‘facilitate, not mediate’ role could be the key to solving the Afghan imbroglio…

Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a family photo before a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Contact Group on Afghanistan, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry / Sputnik via AFP

Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting of Foreign Ministers on Wednesday in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, may have been an under-the-radar affair, but it did reveal the contours of the big picture ahead when it comes to Afghanistan.

So let’s see what Russia and China – the SCO’s heavyweights – have been up to.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi laid out the basic road map to his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Haneef Atmar. While stressing the Chinese foreign policy gold standard – no interference in internal affairs of friendly nations – Wang established three priorities:

1. Real inter-Afghan negotiations towards national reconciliation and a durable political solution, thus preventing all-out civil war. Beijing is ready to “facilitate” dialogue.

2. Fighting terror – which means, in practice, al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS-Khorasan and the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Afghanistan should not be a haven for terrorist outfits – again.

3. The Taliban, for their part, should pledge a clean break with every terrorist outfit.

Atmar, according to diplomatic sources, fully agreed with Wang. And so did Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin. Atmar even promised to work with Beijing to crack down on ETIM, a Uighur terror group founded in China’s western Xinjiang. Overall, the official Beijing stance is that all negotiations should be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led.”

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Insult To Injury: Russia Declares US Has Utterly “Failed” After 20 Years In Afghanistan, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that the US mission in Afghanistan failed. Joe Biden says it was a success. We’ll go with Lavrov. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Russia this week warned the United States military to stay out of Central Asian nations bordering Afghanistan, such as Tajikistan, while emphasizing this is Russia’s own sphere of influence and that the window for American and NATO attempts to stabilize Afghanistan have long ago come and gone.

This after earlier this month Taliban leadership boasted of having taken 85% of the country, something Kabul authorities balked at, while also admitting that clashes are growing fiercer and in many more places. President Biden last week also declared US “objectives achieved” and said the troop draw down would be “complete” by August 31st; however, the Kremlin is now declaring that Washington has utterly “failed” in Afghanistan after two decades there.

The provocative comments by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came in a press conference in Uzbekistan on Friday. He further strongly suggested that the US is now fumbling the draw down, which is contributing to the country once again descending into war-torn chaos. Crucially the security summit was attended Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

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