Page 2 of
2 THE ROVING
EYE A
history of the world, BRIC by
BRIC By Pepe Escobar
The
American mantra is always the same: "American
security," whose definition is: whatever happens
on the planet. Whether in the oil-rich Persian
Gulf where Washington "helps" allies Israel and
Saudi Arabia because they feel threatened by Iran,
or Asia where similar help is offered to a growing
corps of countries that are said to feel
threatened by China, it's always in the name of US
security. In either case, in just about any case,
that's what trumps all else.
As a result,
if there is a 33-year Wall of Mistrust between the
US and Iran, there is a new, growing Great Wall of
Mistrust between the US and China. Recently, Wang
Jisi, Dean of the School of International Studies
at Peking University and a top Chinese
strategic analyst,
offered the Beijing leadership's perspective on
that "Pacific Century" in an influential paper he
coauthored.
China, he and his coauthor
write, now expects to be treated as a first-class
power. After all, it "successfully weathered ...
the 1997-98 global financial crisis," caused, in
Beijing's eyes, by "deep deficiencies in the US
economy and politics. China has surpassed Japan as
the world's second largest economy and seems to be
the number two in world politics, as well ...
Chinese leaders do not credit these successes to
the United States or to the US-led world order."
The US, Wang adds, "is seen in China
generally as a declining power over the long run …
It is now a question of how many years, rather
than how many decades, before China replaces the
United States as the largest economy in the world
… part of an emerging new structure." (Think:
BRICS.)
In sum, as Wang and his coauthor
portray it, influential Chinese see their
country's development model providing "an
alternative to Western democracy and experiences
for other developing countries to learn from,
while many developing countries that have
introduced Western values and political systems
are experiencing disorder and chaos."
Put
it all in a nutshell and you have a Chinese vision
of the world in which a fading US still yearns for
global hegemony and remains powerful enough to
block emerging powers - China and the other BRICS
- from their twenty-first century destiny.
Dr Zbig's Eurasian wet
dream Now, how does the US political elite
see that same world? Virtually no one is better
qualified to handle that subject than former
national security adviser, BTC pipeline
facilitator, and briefly Obama ghost adviser, Dr
Zbigniew ("Zbig") Brzezinski. And he doesn't
hesitate to do so in his latest book, Strategic
Vision: America and the Crisis of Global
Power.
If the Chinese have their
strategic eyes on those other BRICS nations, Dr
Zbig remains stuck on the Old World, newly
configured. He is now arguing that, for the US to
maintain some form of global hegemony, it must bet
on an "expanded West." That would mean
strengthening the Europeans (especially in energy
terms), while embracing Turkey, which he imagines
as a template for new Arab democracies, and
engaging Russia, politically and economically, in
a "strategically sober and prudent fashion."
Turkey, by the way, is no such template
because, despite the Arab Spring, for the
foreseeable future, there are no new Arab
democracies. Still, Zbig believes that Turkey can
help Europe, and so the US, in far more practical
ways to solve certain global energy problems by
facilitating its "unimpeded access across the
Caspian Sea to Central Asia's oil and gas."
Under the present circumstances, however,
this, too, remains something of a fantasy. After
all, Turkey can only become a key transit country
in the great energy game on the Eurasian
chessboard I've long labeled "Pipelineistan" if
the Europeans get their act together. They would
have to convince the energy-rich, autocratic
"republic" of Turkmenistan to ignore its powerful
Russian neighbor and sell them all the natural gas
they need. And then there's that other energy
matter that looks unlikely at the moment:
Washington and Brussels would have to ditch
counterproductive sanctions and embargos against
Iran (and the war games that go with them) and
start doing serious business with that country.
Dr Zbig nonetheless proposes the notion of
a two-speed Europe as the key to future American
power on the planet. Think of it as an upbeat
version of a scenario in which the present
Eurozone semi-collapses. He would maintain the
leading role of the inept bureaucratic fat cats in
Brussels now running the EU, and support another
"Europe" (mostly the southern "Club Med"
countries) outside the euro, with nominally free
movement of people and goods between the two. His
bet - and in this he reflects a key strand of
Washington thinking - is that a two-speed Europe,
a Eurasian Big Mac, still joined at the hip to
America, could be a globally critical player for
the rest of the twenty-first century.
And
then, of course, Dr Zbig displays all his Cold
Warrior colors, extolling an American future
"stability in the Far East" inspired by "the role
Britain played in the nineteenth century as a
stabilizer and balancer of Europe." We're talking,
in other words, about this century's number one
gunboat diplomat. He graciously concedes that a
"comprehensive American-Chinese global
partnership" would still be possible, but only if
Washington retains a significant geopolitical
presence in what he still calls the "Far East" -
"whether China approves or not."
The
answer will be "not."
In a way, all of
this is familiar stuff, as is much of actual
Washington policy today. In his case, it's really
a remix of his 1997 magnum opus The Grand
Chessboard in which, he once again certifies
that "the huge Trans-Eurasian continent is the
central arena of world affairs." Only now reality
has taught him that Eurasia can't be conquered and
America's best shot is to try to bring Turkey and
Russia into the fold.
Robocop
rules Yet Brzezinski looks positively
benign when you compare his ideas to Hillary
Clinton's recent pronouncements, including her
address to the tongue-twistingly named World
Affairs Council 2012 NATO Conference. There, as
the Obama administration regularly does, she
highlighted "NATO's enduring relationship with
Afghanistan" and praised negotiations between the
US and Kabul over "a long-term strategic
partnership between our two nations."
Translation; despite being outmaneuvered
by a minority Pashtun insurgency for years,
neither the Pentagon nor NATO have any intention
of rebalancing out of their holdings in the
Greater Middle East. Already negotiating with
President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul for
staying rights through 2024, the US has every
intention of holding onto three major strategic
Afghan bases: Bagram, Shindand (near the Iranian
border), and Kandahar (near the Pakistani border).
Only the terminally na๏ve would believe the
Pentagon capable of voluntarily abandoning such
sterling outposts for the monitoring of Central
Asia and strategic competitors Russia and China.
NATO, Clinton added ominously, will
"expand its defense capabilities for the
twenty-first century," including the missile
defense system the alliance approved at its last
meeting in Lisbon in 2010.
It will be
fascinating to see what the possible election of
socialist Fran็ois Hollande as French president
might mean. Interested in a deeper strategic
partnership with the BRICS, he is committed to the
end of the US dollar as the world's reserve
currency. The question is: Would his victory throw
a monkey wrench into NATO's works, after these
years under the Great Liberator of Libya, that
neo-Napoleonic image-maker Nicolas Sarkozy (for
whom France was just mustard in Washington's steak
tartar).
No matter what either Dr Zbig or
Hillary might think, most European countries, fed
up with their black-hole adventures in Afghanistan
and Libya, and with the way NATO now serves US
global interests, support Hollande on this. But it
will still be an uphill battle. The destruction
and overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime
was the highpoint of the recent NATO agenda of
regime change in MENA (the Middle East-Northern
Africa). And NATO remains Washington's plan B for
the future, if the usual network of think tanks,
endowments, funds, foundations, NGOs, and even the
U.N. fail to provoke what could be described as
YouTube regime change.
In a nutshell:
after going to war on three continents (in
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya), turning the
Mediterranean into a virtual NATO lake, and
patrolling the Arabian Sea non-stop, NATO will be,
according to Hillary, riding on "a bet on
America's leadership and strength, just as we did
in the twentieth century, for this century and
beyond." So 21 years after the end of the Soviet
Union - NATO's original raison d'etre - this could
be the way the world ends; not with a bang, but
with NATO, in whimpering mode, still fulfilling
the role of perpetual global Robocop.
We're back once again with Dr Zbig and the
idea of America as the "promoter and guarantor of
unity" in the West, and as "balance and
conciliator" in the East (for which it needs bases
from the Persian Gulf to Japan, including those
Afghan ones). And don't forget that the Pentagon
has never given up the idea of attaining Full
Spectrum Dominance.
For all that military
strength, however, it's worth keeping in mind that
this is distinctly a New World (and not in North
America either). Against the guns and the
gunboats, the missiles and the drones, there is
economic power. Currency wars are now raging.
BRICS members China and Russia have cordilleras of
cash. South America is uniting fast. The Putinator
has offered South Korea an oil pipeline. Iran is
planning to sell all its oil and gas in a basket
of currencies, none dollars. China is paying to
expand its blue-water Navy and its anti-ship
missile weaponry. One day, Tokyo may finally
realize that, as long as it is occupied by Wall
Street and the Pentagon, it will live in eternal
recession. Even Australia may eventually refuse to
be forced into a counterproductive trade war with
China.
So this twenty-first century world
of ours is shaping up right now largely as a
confrontation between the US/NATO and the BRICS,
warts and all on every side. The danger: that
somewhere down the line it turns into a Full
Spectrum Confrontation. Because make no mistake,
unlike Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, the
BRICS will actually be able to shoot back.
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