Behind the raft of OPEC+ production decisions riling the collective west lies a tight Russian-Saudi strategy and enhanced Russian-Iranian energy cooperation.
A curious thing happened in Vienna on Sunday just as the 35th Ministerial Meeting of OPEC+ was about to start at its headquarters. Three princely western news organizations – Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal – were barred from entering the OPEC premises. When asked about it, pat came the reply: “This is our house.”
Indeed, OPEC officials were left with no option other than an unorthodox way of “mood setting,” given their heightened sensitivity about the wild stories disseminated in the western media about disagreements between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two high flyers in OPEC+.
To be sure, OPEC+ touches raw nerves in Washington even seven years after the group took shape as the brainwave of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). The two leaders intended that they would have more control over the global crude oil market. The impetus to realism on the part of Moscow and Riyadh has only grown since 2016, and will crystalize further after the US-led G7 inserted itself into rule making in the world oil market last year, threatening to fragment the entire ecosystem.
Saudi Arabia’s BRICS aspirations
Neither Russia nor Saudi Arabia can afford a break-up of OPEC+. In fact, had there been no OPEC+ today, there would be an urgent need to create one, as both Moscow and Riyadh have, in different ways, come under US pressure on account of their global pre-eminence as energy producers.
Their potential to be key players in the emerging multipolar world is giving Washington the jitters. Saudi Arabia has formally applied for BRICS membership and sought to join the New Development Bank, the multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states and headquartered in Shanghai, China.
In fact, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud was present in Cape Town last week for the BRICS ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, Bin Farhan met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Russian readout underscored the depth and profundity of the current level of relations between the two counties.
Saudi Arabia is tiptoeing toward BRICS at a historic juncture when the group is reportedly all set to create its own currency at its forthcoming summit in Durban, South Africa. This, of course, will be a calamitous development for the petrodollar – the pillar of the western banking system – and holds the potential to create a new global oil market.
Russia-Iran oil cooperation
To digress a bit, on 18 May, Russia and Iran signed 10 documents for cooperation in the oil industry, comprising six memorandums of understanding, two contracts, one agreement, and a roadmap related to bilateral cooperation in the fields of industry, transfer of technology, and oil recovery enhancement.
These agreements allow Russia (together with China in separate agreements) to have its companies present in any oil and gas field in Iran that Moscow chooses. Following the signing ceremony in Tehran, the visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is also the co-chair of the Permanent Russian-Iranian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, stated that the two countries held negotiations on banking interactions and using their national currencies in the bilateral transactions.
Quite obviously, Iran’s strategic ties with Russia is a spectre that haunts the administration of US President Joe Biden. In that context, Saudi Arabia’s gravitation toward BRICS adds to the angst in the western mind. It is hardly surprising that feverish US attempts are afoot to undermine OPEC+.
Agreement on oil production cuts
No sooner than the OPEC+ ministerial at Vienna ended, Deputy PM Novak made clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia were in lockstep on the OPEC+ deals:
“No, there were no [Russian-Saudi] differences. We always find common solutions. For years, our agreements have been in force in the interests of the market, in the interests of the countries participating in the agreement, and in the interests of both exporters and producers. We always find common solutions with Saudi Arabia. Naturally, we always have preliminary discussions, but nevertheless we always reach concord.”
In Moscow on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The Russian Federation is a member of the joint understanding (in Vienna). The OPEC+ format continues its work, there are common agreements that, of course, everyone will follow. Of course, this format retains its importance and its significance for ensuring stability in international energy markets.”
The decisions taken by the OPEC+ ministerial after seven hours of talks amply bears out the Saudi-Russian “concord”: An agreement on pegging the 2024 baselines at 40.46 million barrels a day, against which the production cuts are to be measured; reduction of overall production targets from 2024 by a further 1.4 million bpd in total; the deep cut by Saudi Arabia to its output in July on top of a broader OPEC+ deal to limit supply into 2024 as the group seeks to boost flagging oil prices; Russia’s extension of its voluntary oil production cut by 500,000 barrels daily till end-December 2024, which will be calculated from the 2024 quota, which in turn has now been reduced to 9.828 million barrels a day as part of the deal.
OPEC+ seeks ‘stability and market balance’
Novak told Russian TV on Sunday that OPEC Plus nations have taken “an important decision to extend the voluntary cuts announced by the countries from 1 May, 2023 in order to balance the market. This is 1.66 million barrels a day on top of what was announced last October … So, in aggregate terms, it is 3.66 million barrels undertaken by the OPEC+ countries to ensure stable market operation.” He continued:
“The agreement is in force until the end of 2023, that is why we discussed the issue of its possible extension until the end of 2024 for quite a long time today. Two major decisions have been passed: first, to extend the existing agreement until the end of 2024, and, second, to extend throughout 2024 voluntary cuts by 1.66 million barrels a day starting 1st May undertaken by nine countries.”
“This will make it possible to have long-term forecasts of the effect of our agreement for 18 months ahead. These are key decisions we discussed and passed today… Naturally, we have possibilities to adjust our decisions. If necessary, we will do so to ensure the market stability so that it is balanced and clear for investors, buyers, and exporters. For all market players.”
Indeed, as the Saudis have sought, oil prices rose on Monday, with global benchmark Brent oil climbing toward $78 a barrel. On the whole, if there has been any “winner” in the OPEC+ talks on Sunday, it must be the UAE, which gets a boost to its production limit for next year at the expense of some African members who were asked to give up part of their unused quotas.
The finely balanced OPEC+ decisions “to achieve and sustain a stable oil market, to provide long-term guidance for the market, in line with the successful approach of being precautious, proactive, and pre-emptive,” – to borrow from the OPEC press release on Sunday – have only been possible due to the trust and mutual confidence among the key players within the group, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in particular.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference in the garden at Chequers, in Aylesbury, England, on May 15, 2023 (AP)
By Al Mayadeen English
Russian troops successfully gained control over Bakhmut, and Zelensky acknowledges its loss.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emerged on Sunday to acknowledge Bakhmut’s defeat to the Russians, saying there was “nothing left” of the city.
When asked if Ukrainian soldiers were still holding out or if Russia had taken the city, Zelensky was evasive, saying only, “You have to understand there is nothing” there.
“For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”
Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik that the Russian forces’ control over the important transport hub of Bakhmut on May 20 marks a critical turning point in the battle between Kiev and Moscow.
The liberation of Bakhmut demonstrates that Ukraine’s political leadership’s approach has failed, because what happened there will be directly blamed on Zelensky and his remaining cadre, Kwiatkowski said.
Russia’s victory in Bakhmut is significant “practically and symbolically,” she said. “In practical and strategic terms, control of the city in its entirety allows the start of rebuilding and normalization there for the people of the city, and real hope for the end of the [Bakhmut] “meat-grinder.” While Ukrainian forces may still attack the city from the west and north, the decision on who holds the city is in practical terms already decided, the former analyst for the US Department of Defense said.
For months, the besieged city of Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) had been the hub of warfare between Russia and Ukraine. The hard-fought city was finally seized on May 20 by assault units of the Wagner Group private military company (PMC) and the Russian armed forces.
The fact that Russian troops proved to be highly successful in expelling the Ukrainian armed forces from Bakhmut points to a “decisive change along the dividing line between Ukraine and Russia”, Kwiatkowski explained.
The timing is critical in this case, since it occurred during or before the “anticipated” Ukrainian counteroffensive, she added. “Just as the Wagner Group returns east for rest and recuperation, the Ukrainian Army, both soldiers, and leadership, should be similarly returning “home” to rest and regroup. Clearly, the Ukrainian strategy to hold ever tinier portions of the city at a huge and disproportionate cost to its remaining military has failed,” Kwiatkowski said.
The fall of Bakhmut by Ukraine may also put a dent in the West’s thus far unwavering willingness to supply arms to Ukraine. “The decision in the West, in DC and Kiev, will need to be made – escalation into a direct NATO-Russia war, which will cost everyone and lead to catastrophe, or to cut losses, and settle the conflict so that the West can stop bleeding money and armaments, and start buying up the western part of Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski emphasized.
According to the analyst, Zelensky is increasingly behaving “as if he does not understand the reality of the situation.” “He acts like this loss will not be blamed by Ukrainians on his “leadership” and capabilities to deliver on his many promises. At best, he faces a blow to his credibility at home, and at worst he may not be able to return to Kiev safely from his current, and since the war started rare, overseas travel.”
As for the so-called collective West, it may use the liberation of Bakhmut as a sign that it is “time to settle,” Kwiatkowski said.
“With the complete fall of [Bakhmut], Zelensky’s usefulness to the West, and to his own people, has suddenly become very limited,” the Retired officer concluded.
Related Videos
Putin’s last warning! A terrifying report about a nuclear weapon being struck in Ukraine after sending F16 fighters to Zelensky
Urgent, the Ukrainian 93rd Brigade turns against Zelinsky and the army commander because of Bakhmut’s loss
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov slams the US for what he described as “cynical and absurd” statements following an attempt at Putin’s life.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev (TASS)
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov vowed to respond to what he described as “Ukraine’s act of terrorism” in the form of an attempted drone attack on the Kremlin at a time suitable for Russia.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he stated that the US officials’ statements on an attempt at Putin’s life “are striking in their cynicism and absurdity.”
“The U.S. did not find it possible to recognize the obvious thing – it was a terrorist action planned by the Zelensky regime and an assassination attempt targeting the President of the Russian Federation. Moreover, the timing was not chosen by chance – ahead of Victory Day and the May 9 Parade, where foreign guests are planned to take part in,” Antonov added.
“How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol, or the Pentagon? The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for an average citizen: the punishment will be harsh and inevitable,” he said.
“The theses that this act of terrorism was allegedly a “false flag operation” are blasphemous and deceitful. That is, it was Russia itself that staged a provocation against the heart of our statehood?!”
This comes after US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said when asked about the suspected Ukranian drone attack against the Kremlin that he was aware of the reports without ascertaining their legitimacy, noting that he would take any piece of information from Moscow with a “very large shaker of salt.”
“I’ve seen the reports. I can’t in any way validate them. I’d take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt,” Blinken said during an interview for The Washington Post.
The top Russian diplomat further accused the United States of shielding the “Kiev criminals”.
“The statements of high-ranking officials that Kiev can choose how to defend itself are the textbook example of double standards, a policy of encouraging the Zelensky regime to attack the Russian Federation. The words of the bureaucrats about allegedly deterring the Kiev Nazi regime from hitting targets outside its borders are a false farce,” he said.
Antonov acknowledged that Ukraine has no desire to seek peace, warning that the attempt at Putin’s life will be put into account “while working out our strategy to implement the goals and objectives of the special military operation.”
On his part, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called for the elimination of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “and his clique” following the attempt at Putin’s life.
“After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left other than the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “is not even needed for signing an instrument of unconditional surrender; Hitler, as is known, did not sign it either. There will always be some substitute,” Medvedev stressed.
This comes just one day after the press service of the Kremlin said that two UAVs attempted to target the Kremlin residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin,” the statement said.
The Kremlin stated that Putin was left unharmed by the attack and that Russia reserves the right to initiate retaliation against Kiev’s attempt to strike at the Kremlin.
“As a result of this terrorist act, the President of the Russian Federation was not injured. The schedule of his work has not changed, it continues as usual,” the statement said.
“The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit,” it added.
The Kremlin further stated that it considered the attempted drone attack on the presidential palace as a planned terrorist act and an attempted assassination against Putin.
“We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the Russian president, carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned,” the statement read.
Moscow will be ready to respond to Kiev’s attempt to carry out a drone attack on the Kremlin whenever and wherever it sees fit, the Russian presidential press service said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures whenever and wherever it sees fit,” the statement reads.
According to the statement, “last night, the Kiev regime attempted to attack the Russian president’s Kremlin residence using unmanned aerial vehicles.”
The Kremlin noted that it was “a pre-planned act of terrorism and an attempt on the life of the Russian president, which took place just before the Victory Day and the May 9 Parade that will be attended by foreign guests.”
The following video shows the moment of the drone attack:
State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the US and the EU by providing financial and military assistance to the Zelensky regime, become sponsors and accomplices of nuclear terrorism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not harmed in an overnight drone strike on the Kremlin, his press service announced on Wednesday.
“As a result of this terrorist act, the President of the Russian Federation was not injured. His work schedule has not changed, it continues as usual,” the message said.
Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained that the head of state was not in the Kremlin during what he described as a Ukrainian UAV attack on Tuesday night. He noted that President Putin is currently working from his residence near Moscow.
Leaked US military documents show the US believes Russia will be able to continue funding its war in Ukraine for at least another year despite Western sanctions, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The assessments were part of a trove of documents allegedly released by Jack Teixeira, an Air National guardsman who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted for the leaks.
According to the Post, the leaked documents show that Russia’s economic elite are unlikely to withdraw support for Russian President Vladimir Putin even if they don’t agree entirely on the actions in Ukraine and have taken a hit from US sanctions.
“Moscow is relying on increased corporate taxes, its sovereign wealth fund, increased imports and businesses adaptability to help mitigate economic pressures,” the assessment reads.
The Post said the documents are marked with a code that suggests the intelligence was gathered by intercepting private conversations held by Russians on limiting the impact of sanctions.
While Russia’s economy took a major hit from Western sanctions, Moscow’s efforts to shield itself from the US-led economic campaign has kept its currency strong and allowed energy exports to keep flowing.
In the early days of the invasion, President Biden bragged that sanctions turned the Russian ruble into “rubble,” but it quickly bounced back and was one of the strongest-performing currencies of 2022. The ruble is currently at similar levels to how it was performing before the invasion.
Russia has also found new markets for its oil in Asia, and its oil revenue has continued to soar despite the G7’s attempts to place a price cap on Russian crude. The US is pushing other G7 nations to agree on new sanctions that would ban all exports to Russia but is facing pushback from the EU and Japan.
Author: Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
As reconciliation efforts sweep through West Asia to mend ties between old foes, the new China- and Russia-brokered deals will not usher in real peace until the US stops prolonging conflict.
The mid-March Moscow summit between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was notable for being publicized in advance. Since the outbreak of the Syrian war, Assad’s foreign visits have not been publicly revealed until after they have occurred. This small but significant detail suggests the Syrian president has a newfound confidence in the political and security conditions outside his national borders.
While the participants kept a tight lid on leaks, informed sources from both Moscow and Damascus disclosed to The Cradle that the Syrian and Russian presidents discussed the following issues:
Economic ties: With a focus on Syria’s energy sector, Putin expressed Russia’s readiness to invest in the production of electricity in the Levantine state, which post-conflict, suffers from a 75 percent deficit in production. Putin also expressed Moscow’s willingness to help Syria meet its vital grain needs.
Relations with Turkiye: While in Moscow, Assad reportedly refused to hold a four-way meeting between the deputy foreign ministers of Syria, Turkiye, Russia, and Iran. The Syrian president reiterated that Turkiye occupies Syrian lands, and negotiations between the two countries cannot advance from the security to the political level without a clear and public pledge from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to withdraw his military forces from the occupied territories, and open the main roads linking Syrian provinces – particularly the Latakia-Aleppo road, known as theM4 highway.
However, Moscow pressed its case, and reportedly reached an agreement between Damascus and Ankara stipulating that their negotiations would continue and move to the political level, with the main item on the table being Turkish withdrawal from Syrian lands. The basis for a much-awaited summit between Assad and Erdogan will be discussed at a later date.
The sources say that, for domestic political purposes, Erdogan needs to meet Assad before Turkiye’s May presidential elections, to convey to voters that he seeks to stop the war at his country’s southern borders, intends to repatriate the approximately three million Syrian refugees back home – a hot topic for voters – and to assure the Turkish Alevi electorate that he is not hostile to their sect, to which his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu belongs.
Relations with Saudi Arabia: Putin, who has been leading the mediation efforts to normalize Saudi-Syrian relations, briefed Assad on the results of his talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). According to official sources in Damascus and Moscow, Putin’s initiative has made progress in reactivating critical communication between Damascus and Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia’s strategic shifts
On 23 March, 2023, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the start of talks with Syria to reactivate consular work, which is a prelude to the return of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries, as reported by Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.
Sources speaking to The Cradle have confirmed that any potential progress in Syrian-Saudi relations are the result of these Russian mediation efforts, and are unrelated to the game-changing Saudi-Iran agreement struck in Beijing on 10 March. The sources believe that a meeting between Riyadh and Damascus may occur after the end of the month of Ramadan.
While the success of Saudi-Iran negotiations under Chinese auspices, and the potential breakthrough in Saudi-Syria relations under Russian sponsorship, suggest a strategic eastward turn for the kingdom, sources close to Riyadh emphasize that there is no change in the Saudi-US relationship.
While Riyadh’s relations with Washington have experienced declines in the past, recent shifts in the global political, economic, and military landscapes have prompted MbS to diversify his country’s partnerships, while preserving the strategic alignment with Washington.
Yemen: Riyadh’s regional albatross
Today, the Saudi crown price is pursuing a “zero problems” policy with neighboring countries. After failing to “transfer the [regional] battle into Iran,” and after his war on Yemen transformed Yemeni Resistance movement Ansarallah from a small organization into a regional force, MbS has realized that his domestic economic, financial, and entertainment mega-projects are doomed without ensuring calm on the kingdom’s borders.
Therefore, since late 2022, he began earnest negotiations with Iran, responded assertively to Russian efforts to mediate with Syria, and began direct talks with Ansarallah in their Sanaa stronghold. The discussions reportedly made significant progress, then stalled in January over several key points, including Riyadh’s “inability” (or unwillingness) to lift the siege on Yemen, the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country, and agreement over an internal political solution to the Yemeni crisis.
As things stand, Riyadh claims that it “cannot force its partners” in the aggression – the UAE and US, in particular – to withdraw their forces from Yemeni territory.
Several Ansarallah allies have assessed that the Saudis want to end the war, but have been prevented from doing so by the US, UK, UAE, and France. However, this estimate changed after Saudi Arabia retracted a number of the pledges it made in the negotiations.
After initially ceasing restrictions on the port of Hodeidah, the UN has returned to obstructing the arrival of some ships to the port. The siege renewal coincided with a visit by US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Fagin to the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) personnel in Djibouti which is tasked with inspecting ships bound for Hodeidah.
In a renewed escalation of tensions, Ansarallah threatened to expel the UN mission in Sanaa within 72 hours if a container ship seized by inspectors in Djibouti was not released. Indeed, before the deadline expired, the UN released the ship.
Although the threat coincided with the US ambassador’s provocative visit, and while it appears that the Americans were trying to undermine the Saudi-Ansarallah understandings, Yemeni sources tell The Cradle that the obstruction of the ships was not exclusively a US decision, but also a Saudi one.
Furthermore, the UN explicitly informed the Sanaa government that the detention of ships proven to be weapons-free was carried out by a decision of the “coalition leadership” – that is, from the Saudis.
So what is Riyadh up to, and who is really obstructing a final solution to the war in Yemen? Is it the Saudis or the Americans?
Sources close to the Sanaa government say that “a comprehensive US-Saudi consensus” still exists over Yemen. The two allies may differ sometimes, but until now, they say:
“Washington and Riyadh still agree on calming things down in Yemen, while keeping the blockade in place. They also agree that Yemen should not be an independent and strong country, capable of controlling its resources or exploiting its geographical location, because that entails strategic risks for Saudi Arabia’s regional role, and for US and Israeli interests in West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the Red Sea.”
The sources add: “Saudi Arabia and America cannot afford to grant Ansarallah conditions that would enable it to accumulate additional strength and a larger and more effective arsenal.” Simply put, the duo are not seeking an actual end to the war, but are instead pursuing a drawn-out truce.
MbS wants some calm to ensure that missiles and drones do not rain down on his ambitious entertainment and development projects, while the US and the UAE want to keep Yemen fragmented, persist in the theft of its vital oil resource, and at the same time, hold Ansarallah (in northern Yemen) responsible for managing a country that continues to buckle under siege.
Truces, not peace – yet
In short, from Yemen in the south, to Iran in the east, and Syria, Iraq and Turkey in the north, West Asia has entered the post-Arab Spring phase, where once-battling neighbors are seeking to reconnect.
This is a phase governed by ‘armistice agreements’ between countries that have fought each other, directly or via proxies, for more than a decade. Armistice agreements, it should be noted, are not peace treaties, and what this suggests is the continuation of the US-style legacy of “managing conflict,” and never actually ending it.
As multipolarism beckons the world around, it is yet to be seen if Chinese and Russian efforts to stabilize the region in order to advance sweeping connectivity, economic, and development projects will be able to overcome the old “conflict management” and “forever wars” paradigm of the declining unipolar order.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
How sharp was good ol’ Lenin, prime modernist, when he mused, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. This global nomad now addressing you has enjoyed the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at the heart of an historical crossroads – culminating with the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin.
To quote Xi, “changes that haven’t been seen in 100 years” do have a knack of affecting us all in more ways than one.
James Joyce, another modernity icon, wrote that we spend our lives meeting average and/or extraordinary people, on and on and on, but in the end we’re always meeting ourselves. I have had the privilege of meeting an array of extraordinary people in Moscow, guided by trusted friends or by auspicious coincidence: in the end your soul tells you they enrich you and the overarching historical moment in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.
Here are some of them. The grandson of Boris Pasternak, a gifted young man who teaches Ancient Greek at Moscow State University. A historian with unmatched knowledge of Russian history and culture. The Tajik working class huddling together in a chaikhana with the proper ambience of Dushanbe.
Chechens and Tuvans in awe doing the loop in the Big Central Line. A lovely messenger sent by friends extremely careful about security matters to discuss issues of common interest. Exceptionally accomplished musicians performing underground in Mayakovskaya. A stunning Siberian princess vibrant with unbounded energy, taking that motto previously applied to the energy industry – Power of Siberia – to a whole new level.
A dear friend took me to Sunday service at the Devyati Muchenikov Kizicheskikh church, the favorite of Peter the Great: the quintessential purity of Eastern Orthodoxy. Afterwards the priests invited us for lunch in their communal table, displaying not only their natural wisdom but also an uproarious sense of humor.
At a classic Russian apartment crammed with 10,000 books and with a view to the Ministry of Defense – plenty of jokes included – Father Michael, in charge if Orthodox Christianity relations with the Kremlin, sang the Russian imperial anthem after an indelible night of religious and cultural discussions.
I had the honor to meet some of those who were particularly targeted by the imperial machine of lies. Maria Butina – vilified by the proverbial “spy who came in from the cold” shtick – now a deputy at the Duma. Viktor Bout – which pop culture metastasized into the “Lord of War”, complete with Nic Cage movie: I was speechless when he told me he was reading me in maximum security prison in the USA, via pen drives sent by his friends (he had no internet access). The indefatigable, iron-willed Mira Terada – tortured when she was in a U.S. prison, now heading a foundation protecting children caught in hard times.
I spent much treasured quality time and engaged in invaluable discussions with Alexander Dugin – the crucial Russian of these post-everything times, a man of pure inner beauty, exposed to unimaginable suffering after the terrorist assassination of Darya Dugina, and still able to muster a depth and reach when it comes to drawing connections across the philosophy, history and history of civilizations spectrum that is virtually unmatched in the West.
And then there were the diplomatic, academic and business meetings. From the head of international investor relations of Norilsk Nickel to Rosneft executives, not to mention the EAEU’s Sergey Glazyev himself, side by side with his top economic adviser Dmitry Mityaev, I was given a crash course on the current A to Z of Russian economy – including serious problems to be addressed.
At the Valdai Club, what really mattered were the meetings on the sidelines, much more than the actual panels: that’s when Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, Chinese tell you what is really in their hearts and minds.
The official launch of the International Movement of Russophiles was a special highlight of these four weeks. A special message written by President Putin was read by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who then delivered his own speech. Later, at the House of Receptions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, four of us were received by Lavrov at a private audience. Future cultural projects were discussed. Lavrov was extremely relaxed, displaying his matchless sense of humor.
This is a cultural as much as a political movement, designed to fight Russophobia and to tell the Russian story, in all its immensely rich aspects, especially to the Global South.
I am a founding member and my name is on the charter. In my nearly four decades as a foreign correspondent, I have never been part of any political/cultural movement anywhere in the world; nomad independents are a fierce breed. But this is extremely serious: the current, irredeemably mediocre self-described “elites” of the collective West want no less than cancel Russia all across the spectrum. No pasarán.
Spirituality, compassion, mercy
Decades happening in only four weeks imply precious time needed to put it all in perspective.
The initial gut feeling the day I arrived, after a seven-hour walk under snow flurries, was confirmed: this is the capital of the multipolar world. I saw it among the West Asians at the Valdai. I saw it talking to visiting Iranians, Turks and Chinese. I saw it when over 40 African delegations took over the whole area around the Duma – the day Xi arrived in town. I saw it throughout the reception across the Global South to what Xi and Putin are proposing to the overwhelming majority of the planet.
In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success. Supermarkets have everything – and more – compared to the West. There’s an abundance of first-rate restaurants. You can buy a Bentley or a Loro Pianna cashmere coat you can’t even find in Italy. We laughed about it chatting with managers at the TSUM department store. At the BiblioGlobus bookstore, one of them told me, “We are the Resistance.”
By the way, I had the honor to deliver a talk on the war in Ukraine at the coolest bookshop in town, Bunker, mediated by my dear friend, immensely knowledgeable Dima Babich. A huge responsibility. Especially because Vladimir L. was in the audience. He’s Ukrainian, and spent 8 years, up to 2022, telling it like it really was to Russian radio, until he managed to leave – after being held at gunpoint – using an internal Ukrainian passport. Later we went to a Czech beer hall where he detailed his extraordinary story.
In Moscow, their toxic ghosts are always lurking in the background. Yet one cannot but feel sorry for the psycho Straussian neocons and neoliberal-cons who now barely qualify as Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s puny orphans.
In the late 1990s, Brzezinski pontificated that, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical center because its very existence as an independent state helps transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
With or without a demilitarized and denazified Ukraine, Russia has already changed the narrative. This is not about becoming a Eurasian empire again. This is about leading the long, complex process of Eurasia integration – already in effect – in parallel to supporting true, sovereign independence across the Global South.
I left Moscow – the Third Rome – towards Constantinople – the Second Rome – one day before Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev gave a devastating interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta once again outlining all the essentialities inherent to the NATO vs. Russia war.
This is what particularly struck me: “Our centuries-old culture is based on spirituality, compassion and mercy. Russia is a historical defender of sovereignty and statehood of any peoples who turned to it for help. She saved the U.S. itself at least twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But I believe that this time it is impractical to help the United States maintain its integrity.”
In my last night, before hitting a Georgian restaurant, I was guided by the perfect companion off Pyatnitskaya to a promenade along the Moscow River, beautiful rococo buildings gloriously lighted, the scent of Spring – finally – in the air. It’s one of those “Wild Strawberry” moments out of Bergman’s masterpiece that hits the bottom of our soul. Like mastering the Tao in practice. Or the perfect meditative insight at the top of the Himalayas, the Pamirs or the Hindu Kush.
So the conclusion is inevitable. I’ll be back. Soon.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
The new foreign strategy says Russia is responsible for defending cultural and spiritual values against “pseudo-humanistic” and other “neoliberal ideologies”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia in February 2022. (Reuters)
Russia adopted a new foreign policy doctrine on Friday that prioritizes reforming world politics away from the hegemony of the United States and its Western allies and supporting countries that choose to fight neocolonialists and foreign interference.
The new foreign strategy went into effect after being signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Russian Federation intends to give priority to the elimination of vestiges of the dominance of the United States and other unfriendly countries in world politics,” the document said.
Russia would aim to “create the conditions for any state to reject neo-colonialist and hegemonic aims,” the 42-page policy read.
“Radical changes” in the world prompted the new policies, Putin said during a security council meeting, stressing that Russia’s engagement in the international arena must reflect its view on these changes.
Defender against neo-liberal ideologies
Russia views China and India as key allies in its new foreign doctrine and stresses the strategic importance of deepening relations and “coordination with friendly sovereign global centers of power and development located on the Eurasian continent.”
The war in Ukraine led to severe sanctions by the US and EU who lobbied countries around the world to join in on the unilateral sanctions, but many countries, including China and India, increased economic and bilateral relations with Moscow, reaching historic levels.
Chinese President Xi Jinping made a three-day official trip to Moscow earlier this month where he met with Putin and held what was described by the media as historic talks. The two presidents signed during Xi’s trip two joint strategic documents aiming to boost the two global powers’ economic and diplomatic partnership.
Russia, as per the document, is a “state civilization” and is responsible for protecting the “Russian world” – in reference to cultures that align with that of the country within Eurasia. Russia will be tasked with protecting “traditional spiritual and moral values” against “pseudo-humanistic and other neo-liberal ideological attitudes.”
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the new foreign policy doctrine identified “the existential nature of threats to the security and development of our country, driven by the actions of unfriendly states.”
“The United States of America is directly named as the main instigator and driver of anti-Russian sentiment,” he added.
“The West’s policy of trying to weaken Russia in every possible way is characterized as a hybrid war of a new type.”
A review of Mahmood Mamdani’s “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009): comparing the ICC’s indictment of Omar El Bashir with that of President Putin.
The ICC’s Legal Acrobatics: from Darfur to Donbass
“Against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.” (M. Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the Global War on Terror, 2009)
The recent legal complications between Russia and the ICC, which have resulted in mutual arrest warrants, are eerily reminiscent of the ICC’s case against Sudanese President Omar el Bashir in 2008, which evokes similar legal complications: such that neither El Bashir nor President Putin are nationals of states party to the Rome Statute nor are the crimes they were accused of committing on the territory of a state party to the Rome Statute. The ICC, according to its founding treaty: the Rome Statute, doesn’t have jurisdiction for indicting either person, yet the ICC, which is principally a technocratic apolitical international organization, acted as a front line for the US in isolating its enemies.
“The decisions of the ICC have no significance for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said after the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber II issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
In 2019, Omar El Bashir was eventually ousted in a military coup ending his three-decade-long streak of iron-grip rule over Sudan. He was then sentenced to two years in prison for charges of corruption by the newly formed government which refused to turn him in to the ICC. The case of El Bashir was swiftly contained with minimal implications to geopolitics in the Middle East to the US interests: One ‘pariah‘ regime accused of bloodshed within Sudan was replaced by an internationally recognized regime involved in bloodshed in Yemen.
Despite the swift containment of El Bashir, the significance of Mamdani’s argument holds. If anything, Mamdani’s argument stands as even more relevant when looking at Putin’s case. The indictment of Putin is incomparably consequential compared to the indictment of El Bashir.
The International Criminal Court
The mandate of the ICC is expressed by the Rome Statute of 1998 :
Only individuals are liable for indictment. As opposed to its sister organization, the International Court of Justice, whose mandate presumes a legal personality of states, the ICC can only indict “natural persons” as expressed in article 25. The ICC cannot prosecute states only individuals.
The jurisdiction of the court, as expressed by Article 5, is restricted to the “most serious crimes of concern for the international community” i.e. mass atrocity crimes which expressly include: Genocide (article 6), Crimes against Humanity (article 7), War Crimes (article 8), Crime of Aggression (article 9).
As a precondition for prosecuting an individual accused of committing a mass atrocity, the court can have no jurisdiction over the case unless the alleged criminal is either a national of a state party to the Rome Statute or they had committed the alleged mass atrocity on the territory of a state which is a party to the Rome Statute, as expressed by article 12.
Typically, cases studied by the ICC are not autonomously-initiated, rather they are administered following referrals: either by a state party to the Rome Statue or more recently through a referral by the Security Council (as was the case with Omar el Bashir) or following an investigation conducted by the Prosecutor after getting authorization from the Pre-Trial chamber (as was the case with President Putin).
Revisiting the Case of Omar El Bashir in the Geopolitical Context of the War on Terror
The indictment of Omar El Bashir by the ICC was a landmark event in the practice of international law and international organizations. It set precedence by issuing an arrest warrant for not just any “natural person” but a president of a sovereign state. Furthermore, it manifested a very blatant case of the politicization of justice by coopting an international court for furthering geopolitical interests.
The prosecution of Omar El Bashir had happened in the context of the ferocious so-called “War on Terror” waged by George Bush on the nations of West Asia. As revealed by General Wesley Clark, Sudan was fourth on the list of the Seven-Country grand strategy devised by the US following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, Bush was in the last year of his second term and he was still 5 countries short of fulfilling the grand strategy.
In addition to Western diplomats with actual interests at stake, many civil society groups were very excited about the indictment of El Bashir. Most notorious were the groups that fell under the “Save Darfur” campaign. The campaign has since been irrelevant, but it’s very much comparable to other pertinent campaigns promoting “democracy” and “human rights” like Free Iran or SOS Cuba.
Mamdani extensively tackles the drives and dynamics of the human-rights-activism phenomena of the “Save Darfur” campaign in his book “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror” which was published in the same year as his article critiquing the ICC. Despite having been largely dismissed by many of the “Save Darfur” human rights activists as an apologia for El Bashir’s crimes, Mamdani doesn’t argue for el Bashir’s innocence; Mamdani’s article “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009) essentially serves as an ideographic critique of the ICC through the case study of the former Sudanese President.
Framed in the literature on the ontology of international organizations, Mamdani argues that the ICC serves more as a tool rather than an actor in international affairs (I. Hurd, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice, Ch2, 2014). The ICC which is typically presented to be uniquely technocratic and apolitical in contrast to other international organizations, actively partook in a geopolitical strategy to take down the enemies of the US.
Mamdani’s Argument on the Politicization of the ICC
In “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009) Mamdani argues that the politicization of the indictment of Omar El Bashir was evidenced by (1) the historical revisionism in approaching the crisis in Darfur (2) the skimpy investigation and representation of evidence, but most importantly (3) the legal process for the ICC’s indictment of El Bashir.
El-Bashir was the first president to be indicted by the ICC. Despite being legally consistent with the Rome Statute, the indictment was a novel event in the history of the ICC. Despite standing as the personification of the Sudanese state, El-Bashir was ultimately a “natural person” liable for prosecution by the ICC in theory. However, his indictment was a landmark event in the practice of international law: partly because it was unprecedented but also because it was a clear case of mobilizing the ICC for geopolitical ends.
Most evidently, the politicization of the case manifested in the double standards exhibited by the ICC; Mamdani points out that El Bashir was prosecuted by the ICC for manning a violent counter-insurgency campaign in Sudan (which was classified as genocide in reference to article 6 of the Rome Statute), less than a decade from the cross-Atlantic invasions which Bush waged against Afghanistan and Iraq (which classify as Crimes Against Humanity per article 7, War Crimes per article 8, and Crimes of Aggression per article 9 of the Rome Statute) without being subject to indictment by the ICC.
Furthermore, El-Bashir was indicted for the crime of genocide, which is specified under article 6 of the Rome Statute as a mass atrocity crime that falls under the jurisdiction of the ICC. In his article, Mandami problematizes the arbitrariness of the prospect of genocide. The distinction between a legitimate counter-insurgency campaign and an international-community-shaking mass atrocity such as genocide is manipulated by political semantics. There is no clear distinction between the two. Objectively, one event can be categorized as either. There is no death-count threshold that separates the two in international law. A counter-insurgency can result in more deaths than genocide. The distinction, as stipulated by the definition of genocide adopted in article 6 of the Rome Statute, is conditioned upon the “intentions” of the perpetrator.
Rome Statute
Article 6 For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group
The vagueness of some prospects of the Rome Statute, its susceptibility to the politics of semantic manipulation, and the ICC’s potential for infringing on the sovereignty of governments has led many States to refrain from ratifying the statute: Sudan being one of them in addition to Russia, the US, Ukraine, and many others. The ICC, whose jurisdiction is fundamentally preconditioned on the ratification of the Rome Statute, has acted despite this under the moral pretext of responsibility to protect human lives which suspiciously coincided with the geopolitical interests of the US: by targeting those who are hostile to the US and sparing the US and their allies. For example, El Bashir was indicted for cracking down on insurgents in Sudan, but King Mohammad of Morocco wasn’t for the violent suppression of the Sahrawi people nor was Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman for slaughtering and starving Yemenis nor was Yehud Olmert for attempting to invade Lebanon. The ICC, after all, is mobilized according to what is of “concern” to the “international community”.
Rome Statute
Article 5 The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.
Briefly, Mamdani’s argument can be formalized as follows:
(P1) Sudan didn’t ratify the Rome Statute
(P2) thus, the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed by El Bashir in Darfur
(P3) the ICC’s arrest warrant is devoid of a legal basis (or at least is founded on a shaky legal basis)
(C) Therefore, acknowledging the geopolitical context, the indictment of El Bashir is a case of politicized justice
Counter-argument to Mamdani
Many have refuted Mamdani’s argument for the illegal nature of the ICC’s indictment by referring to Chapter VII of the UN charter. Sudan isn’t party to the Rome Statute but they are party to the United Nations. The conflict in Darfur was referred by the Security Council to the International Criminal Court through Resolution 1593 of the SC as per article 13 (b) of the Rome Statute. The ICC in itself might not have jurisdiction over Sudan, but the Security Council does. The Council also has the liberty to decide on whatever measure it sees fit to deal with a given situation. The SC which had jurisdiction over Darfur granted the ICC jurisdiction by extension through the referral expressed in Resolution 1593.
UN Charter: Chapter VII
Article 39 The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken.
Article 41 The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
Despite refuting the part about legality, Mamdani’s critique of the ICC, as being subject to politicization for furthering western geopolitical interests, stands. The reason why similar security council resolutions for referral to the ICC have not been posited against Bush for committing comparable and even worse “mass atrocities” in Afghanistan and Iraq or Obama for crimes in Libya and Syria or Olmert for crimes in Lebanon and Palestine is political. The ICC despite being presented as technocratic and apolitical is molded by the power relations of international politics.
The West’s Game of Legal Acrobatics with Russia
The ICC’s jurisdiction encompasses states which are party to the Rome Statute
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute. Russia and Ukraine signed the statute in 2000 but neither ratified it (they didn’t pass it in their respective national parliaments). Russia even withdrew its signature from the statute in 2016 after the legal fiasco of the ICC with Omar Al Bashir.
Thus, neither of the alleged “criminals” (Putin nor Belova) are nationals of a state which is a party to the Rome Statute nor are the alleged “crimes” done on the territory of a state (Russia nor Ukraine) which is a party to the Rome Statute.
Legally, the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over any potential crime that might happen during the military conflict in Ukraine. Unless the alleged criminal is a national of a state which has ratified the statute. If the ICC finds the war in Ukraine a hotspot for “serious crimes of concern to the international community,” the only individuals they have jurisdiction for prosecuting would be Polish, German, British, or French “natural persons” involved in alleged crimes (or any other individual who is a national of a state which has ratified the Rome Statute).
referral to the ICC was done by the ICC Prosecutor
Furthermore, referral to the ICC was done by the Prosecutor’s investigation, as per article 13 (c) of the Rome statute which wasn’t ratified by Russia or Ukraine. Consequently, the Pre-Trial Chamber II issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and Commissioner Maria Belova.
Contrary to the case of El Bashir, the ICC’s arrest warrant wasn’t legitimized through extending jurisdiction from a security council resolution. The activation of the ICC was solely based on the Rome Statute. Extending legitimacy for the Rome Statute from the UN charter by a security council resolution as was the case with El Bashir can’t possibly happen such that Russia holds a permanent seat in the Security Council and enjoys veto power against any resolution.
the pretext for the arrest warrants is the transfer of children from a war zone
The ICC’s lack of jurisdiction isn’t the only sketchy prospect about the ICC’s case against Putin and Belova. The alleged crime that the two Russian officials were accused of is very peculiar: the forcible displacement of Ukrainian children from Donbass to the Russian Federation, as per article 6(e) of the Rome Statute).
The ICC’s choice of allegation is very comical in light of the coverage of the war in Ukraine by western media; Putin was accused of unjustifiably invading Ukraine, killing civilians, torture, and a plethora of other crimes which were popularly broadcasted by western media with the onset of the Russian special military operation.
The Rome Statute abounds with specific crimes which correspond to the narratives of western media about Putin, yet the ICC Prosecutor opted for the most ambiguous to indict Putin for: “Genocide” by the forcible transfer of children.
Rome Statute
Article 6 for the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Even if were to assume that the ICC has jurisdiction over the situation in Ukraine, the alleged crime for which Putin and Belova are being indicted can be problematized on different levels. The transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia doesn’t imply genocide; as expressed by the Statute genocide is defined according to the intentions of the perpetrator.
Putin never expressed intentions to “destroy, in whole or in part” the Ukranian national group. There was no explicit intention of genocide. Furthermore, there are no implicit intentions of genocide that can be stipulated from Putin’s actions. The military operation is in line with its declared objectives of deterring NATO expansion and protecting the Donbass population neither of which can be identified as “genocide”. It’s not clear that the children transferred to the Russian Federation were “forcibly” transferred nor is it clear that the children who were transferred are Ukrainian and not Russian. The population residing in the Ukrainian territories of Donbass are predominantly Russians who have been systematically prosecuted by the Kiev regime since the 2014 coup.
The pretext for Putin’s arrest is very comical when acknowledging the geopolitics and the legal semantics underlying the ICC’s indictment. One can argue that many school bus drivers are worse genocidal criminals than Putin.
The US wants the ICC to indict Putin but doesn’t want to provide them with the necessary evidence
More comical is the US policy towards the indictment. The confusion of the US bureaucracy before and after the ICC’s arrest warrant against Putin is representative of US arrogance: wanting to have their cake and eat it too. The Biden administration, in the final days of its first and seemingly last term, has grown restless to score a swift geopolitical victory by diplomatically isolating Putin: a restlessness that is comparable to that of Bush’s in 2009.
The White House’s excitement to cooperate with the ICC to isolate Putin was quickly met with concern from other bureaucratic institutions in the US which anticipated a potential backfire from fraternizing with the ICC.
Back in early March, theNew York Timesreported that the US Department of Defense opposes Biden’s initiative to hand over evidence that allegedly incriminates Russia for committing ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine to the ICC. The report claimed top-ranking officials in the US military are attempting to stifle the ICC-US cooperation through the provision of evidence in fear of setting a dangerous precedent that might expose the US to similar measures.
The United States has long avoided the ICC out of concern that the tribunal would go after US officials accused of war crimes. However, back in December, Congress modified the legal restrictions on cooperating with the Court strictly to allow sharing of information on Ukraine in an effort to prosecute Russian individuals.
The evidence for the arrest warrant is still ambiguous. The Prosecution conducted an investigation and presented it to the Pre-Trial chamber which deemed it reasonable enough to proceed with court proceedings.
The ICC’s arrest warrant expressed that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” however it’s still not clear whether the evidence on which the Prosecution based their investigation was acquired from the White House. It’s also still not clear what type of evidence it was or if it was sufficient evidence for indicting Putin for genocide. What’s clear however is how international law can be stretched and spun in favor of some against others.
In brief, regardless of the lack of jurisdiction, the ICC’s case against Putin is still not clearly justified in terms of evidence. The only detectable basis for the ICC’s arrest warrant is the advertised virtuous indignation and moral high grounds of the West.
Perhaps President Biden’s comment on the situation best captures the oxymoronic confusion and legal acrobatics underlying the ICC’s arrest warrant against Putin. “I think it’s justified, but the question is, it’s not recognized internationally by us, either. But I think it makes a very strong point. Putin clearly committed war crimes”
As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?
Chinese President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Presidential Executive Office of Russia, via Wikimedia Commons)
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
The final exchange, caught on camera between visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian host and counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sums up the current geopolitical conflict, still in its nascent stages, between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia, China and their allies, on the other.
Xi was leaving the Kremlin following a three-day visit that can only be described as historic. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together,” Xi said while clasping Putin’s hand.
“I agree,” Putin replied while holding Xi’s arm. ‘Please take care, dear friend,” he added.
In no time, social media exploded by sharing that scene repeatedly. Corporate western media analysts went into overdrive, trying to understand what these few words meant.
“Is that part of the change that is coming, that they will drive together?” Ian Williamson raised the question in the Spectator. Though he did not offer a straight answer, he alluded to one: “It is a chilling prospect, for which the west needs to be prepared.”
Xi’s statement was, of course, uttered by design. It means that the Chinese-Russian strong ties, and possible future unity, are not an outcome of immediate geopolitical interests resulting from the Ukraine war, or a response to US provocations in Taiwan. Even before the Ukraine war commenced in February 2022, much evidence pointed to the fact that Russia and China’s goal was hardly temporary or impulsive. Indeed, it runs deep.
The very language of multipolarity has defined both countries’ discourse for years, a discourse that was mostly inspired by the two countries’ displeasure with US militarism from the Middle East to Southeast Asia; their frustration with Washington’s bullying tactics whenever a disagreement arises, be it in trade or border demarcations; the punitive language; the constant threats; the military expansion of NATO and much more.
One month before the war, I argued with my co-writer, Romana Rubeo, that both Russia and China might be at the cusp of some kind of unity. That conclusion was drawn based on a simple discourse analysis of the official language emanating from both capitals and the actual deepening of relations.
At the time, we wrote,
“Some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations”.
Even then, like other analysts, we did not expect that such a possibility could be realized so quickly. The Ukraine war, in itself, was not indicative that Moscow and Beijing will grow closer. Instead, it was Washington’s response, threatening and humiliating China, that did most of the work. The visit by then-US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August 2022 was a diplomatic disaster. It left Beijing with no alternative but to escalate and strengthen its ties with Russia, with the hope that the latter would fortify its naval presence in the Sea of Japan. In fact, this was the case.
But the “100 years” reference by Xi tells of a much bigger geopolitical story than any of us had expected. As Washington continues to pursue aggressive policies – with US President Joe Biden prioritizing Russia and his Republican foes prioritizing China as the main enemy of the US – the two Asian giants are now forced to merge into one unified political unit, with a common political discourse.
“We signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era,” Xi said in his final statement.
This ‘no-limits friendship’ is more possible now than ever before, as neither country is constrained by ideological confines or competition. Moreover, they are both keen on ending the US global hegemony, not only in the Asia and Pacific region, but in Africa, the Middle East and, eventually, worldwide as well.
On the first day of Xi’s visit to Moscow, Russia’s President Putin issued a decree in which he has written off debts of African countries worth more than $20 billion. Moreover, he promised that Russia is “ready to supply the whole volume sent during the past time to African countries particularly requiring it, from Russia free of charge ..,” should Moscow decide “not to extend the (grain) deal in sixty days”.
For both countries, Africa is a major ally in the upcoming global conflict. The Middle East, too, is vital. The latest agreement, which normalized ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is earth-shattering, not only because it ends seven years of animosity and conflict, but because the arbitrator was no other than China itself. Beijing is now a peace broker in the very Middle East which was dominated by failed US diplomacy for decades.
What this means for the Palestinians remains to be seen, as too many variables are still at work. But for these global shifts to serve Palestinian interests in any way, the current leadership, or a new leadership, would have to slowly break away from its reliance on western handouts and validation, and, with the support of Arab and African allies, adopt a different political strategy.
The US government, however, continues to read the situation entirely within the Russia-Ukraine war context. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to Xi’s trip to Moscow by saying that “the world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war (in Ukraine) on its own terms.” It is rather strange, but also telling that the outright rejection of the potential call for a ceasefire was made by Washington, not Kyiv.
Xi’s visit, however, is truly historic from a geopolitical sense. It is comparable in scope and possible consequences to former US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, which contributed to the deterioration of ties between the Soviet Union and China under Chairman Mao Zedong.
The improved relationship between China and the US back then helped Washington further extend its global dominance, while putting the USSR on the defensive. The rest is history, one that was rife with geostrategic rivalry and divisions in Asia, thus, ultimately, the rise of the US as the uncontested power in that region.
Nixon’s visit to Beijing was described by then-Ambassador Nicholas Platt as “the week that changed the world”. Judging that statement from an American-centric view of the world, Platt was, in fact, correct in his assessment. The world, however, seems to be changing back. Though it took 51 years for that reversal to take place, the consequences are likely to be earth-shattering, to say the least.
Regions that have long been dominated by the US and its western allies, like the Middle East and Africa, are processing all of these changes and potential opportunities. If this geopolitical shift continues, the world will, once again, find itself divided into camps. While it is too early to determine, with any degree of certainty, the winners and losers of this new configuration, it is most certain that a US-western-dominated world is no longer possible.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share buttons above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
On March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will start deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Construction of designated storage facilities for the weapons is planned to be completed by July 1.
The decision to transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus was made after Minsk [allegedly] issued a formal request, essentially mirroring Washington DC’s nuclear sharing agreements with several NATO member states. And while the decision was officially made after the United Kingdom announced it would supply depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime, the actual reasoning might have to do with much more sinister plans by the United States.
Namely, Warsaw and Washington DC have been floating the idea of transferring some of the US nuclear weapons stockpiled in Europe to Poland. The move has been mentioned several times in recent years, including in early October last year, when Polish President Andrzej Duda mentioned it in an interview with Gazeta Polska. The US has nuclear sharing agreements with the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey, with approximately 100 (mainly air-launched) tactical nuclear weapons deployed in all five countries. Greece also took part in the program, but discontinued its participation in 2001, although it’s widely believed Athens still keeps the necessary storage facilities functional.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko advised against UK plans to deliver depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime and warned that Russia would soon supply Belarus with “munitions with real uranium”. However, Putin himself stated that “even outside the context of these events”, Belarus still has legitimate security concerns and that “Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has long raised the question of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus”. This clearly implies that threats to Minsk transcend the immediate danger of depleted uranium munitions deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev.
“There is nothing unusual in such a decision, as the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, and in Europe. In six states – the Federal Republic of Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Greece – well, not in Greece now, but there is still a storage facility,” Putin stressed, further adding: “[Russia and Belarus] will do the same, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.
He added that Russia is indeed mirroring the United States in this regard and that it’s not transferring the ownership of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, but that it’s simply deploying them to the country and training the Belarussian military to operate and use them in the case of a wider escalation by the US and NATO. The Russian military has already provided Belarus with the necessary upgrades to be able to deliver tactical nuclear warheads. At least 10 (presumably Belarussian Air Force) jets have been assigned and equipped to carry such weapons, although neither side specified what type of aircraft received the said upgrades.
Belarus operates several types of nuclear-capable fighter jets, including the recently acquired Su-30SM and the Soviet-era MiG-29. In addition to air-launched nuclear weapons, Russia already deploys ground-based assets in Belarus, including the “Iskander” systems capable of launching nuclear-tipped hypersonic and regular cruise missiles. Minsk also operates its own “Iskander” units, meaning that those too could be equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, further bolstering the country’s deterrence capabilities. This is particularly important as Belarus has also been targeted by US/NATO covert/black operations in recent years, including an attempted Maidan-style color revolution in 2020.
“We have handed over to Belarus our well-known and very effective ‘Iskander’ system that can carry [nuclear weapons],” Putin stated, adding: “On April 3, we will start training the crews and on July 1 we will complete the construction of a special storage [facility] for tactical nuclear weapons on the Belarussian territory.”
In addition to the “Iskander”, Belarus still maintains a number of Soviet-era nuclear-capable assets, including a substantial arsenal of “Tochka-U” tactical ballistic missiles. These could serve as a secondary delivery option given their shorter range and inferior accuracy when compared to the “Iskander” which boasts a 500 km range, high precision, extreme maneuverability at every stage of flight, as well as a hypersonic speed estimated to be at least Mach 5.9, although military sources indicate that it can go up to Mach 8.7. This makes the “Iskander” virtually impossible to intercept, as evidenced by its performance during the SMO (special military operation). The system also provides a significant advantage over NATO forces in Eastern Europe.
President Lukashenko strongly indicated that Minsk could host Russian nuclear weapons as soon as NATO implied it could deploy US B61 nuclear bombs to Poland, highlighting that his country’s Soviet-era infrastructure for such weapons remains intact despite US pressure to destroy it during the 1990s.
Belarus is home to a growing arsenal of state-of-the-art Russian military units and equipment, including strategic assets such as the S-400 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, as well as the advanced Su-35S air superiority fighter jets and MiG-31 interceptors, including the K/I variants capable of deploying the already legendary “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, which are also nuclear-capable.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
In Moscow this week, the Chinese and Russian leaders revealed their joint commitment to redesign the global order, an undertaking that has ‘not been seen in 100 years.’
What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.
It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show. Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.
What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves. Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.
Right from the start of the summit, the speeches by both Xi and Putin drove the NATO crowd into a hysterical frenzy of anger and envy: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova perfectly captured the mood when she remarked that the west was “foaming at the mouth.”
The front page of the Russian Gazette on Monday was iconic: Putin touring Nazi-free Mariupol, chatting with residents, side by side with Xi’s Op-Ed. That was, in a nutshell, Moscow’s terse response to Washington’s MQ-9 Reaper stunt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) kangaroo court shenanigans. “Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.
During their first “informal” meeting, Xi and Putin talked for no less than four and a half hours. At the end, Putin personally escorted Xi to his limo. This conversation was the real deal: mapping out the lineaments of multipolarity – which starts with a solution for Ukraine.
Predictably, there were very few leaks from the sherpas, but there was quite a significant one on their “in-depth exchange” on Ukraine. Putin politely stressed he respects China’s position – expressed in Beijing’s 12-point conflict resolution plan, which has been completely rejected by Washington. But the Russian position remains ironclad: demilitarization, Ukrainian neutrality, and enshrining the new facts on the ground.
In parallel, the Russian Foreign Ministry completely ruled out a role for the US, UK, France, and Germany in future Ukraine negotiations: they are not considered neutral mediators.
A multipolar patchwork quilt
The next day was all about business: everything from energy and “military-technical” cooperation to improving the efficacy of trade and economic corridors running through Eurasia.
Russia already ranks first as a natural gas supplier to China – surpassing Turkmenistan and Qatar – most of it via the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline that runs from Siberia to China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, launched in December 2019. Negotiations on the Power of Siberia II pipeline via Mongolia are advancing fast.
Sino-Russian cooperation in high-tech will go through the roof: 79 projects at over $165 billion. Everything from liquified natural gas (LNG) to aircraft construction, machine tool construction, space research, agro-industry, and upgraded economic corridors.
The Chinese president explicitly said he wants to link the New Silk Road projects to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This BRI-EAEU interpolation is a natural evolution. China has already signed an economic cooperation deal with the EAEU. Russian macroeconomic uber-strategist Sergey Glazyev’s ideas are finally bearing fruit.
And last but not least, there will be a new drive towards mutual settlements in national currencies – and between Asia and Africa, and Latin America. For all practical purposes, Putin endorsed the role of the Chinese yuan as the new trade currency of choice while the complex discussions on a new reserve currency backed by gold and/or commodities proceed.
This joint economic/business offensive ties in with the concerted Russia-China diplomatic offensive to remake vast swathes of West Asia and Africa.
Chinese diplomacy works like the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) in terms of delivering subtle messages. It’s far from coincidental that Xi’s trip to Moscow exactly coincides with the 20th anniversary of American ‘Shock and Awe’ and the illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.
In parallel, over 40 delegations from Africa arrived in Moscow a day before Xi to take part in a “Russia-Africa in the Multipolar World” parliamentary conference – a run-up to the second Russia-Africa summit next July.
The area surrounding the Duma looked just like the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) days when most of Africa kept very close anti-imperialist relations with the USSR.
Putin chose this exact moment to write off more than $20 billion in African debt.
In West Asia, Russia-China are acting totally in synch. West Asia. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement was actually jump-started by Russia in Baghdad and Oman: it was these negotiations that led to the signing of the deal in Beijing. Moscow is also coordinating the Syria-Turkiye rapprochement discussions. Russian diplomacy with Iran – now under strategic partnership status – is kept on a separate track.
Diplomatic sources confirm that Chinese intelligence, via its own investigations, is now fully assured of Putin’s vast popularity across Russia, and even within the country’s political elites. That means conspiracies of the regime-change variety are out of the question. This was fundamental for Xi and the Zhongnanhai’s (China’s central HQ for party and state officials) decision to “bet” on Putin as a trusted partner in the coming years, considering he may run and win the next presidential elections. China is always about continuity.
So the Xi-Putin summit definitively sealed China-Russia as comprehensive strategic partners for the long haul, committed to developing serious geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with declining western hegemons.
This is the new world born in Moscow this week. Putin previously defined it as a new anti-colonial policy. It’s now laid out as a multipolar patchwork quilt. There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.
‘Changes that haven’t happened in 100 years’
In Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Janet Abu-Lughod built a carefully constructed narrative showing the prevailing multipolar order when the West “lagged behind the ‘Orient.’” Later, the West only “pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”
We may be witnessing a similarly historic shift in the making, trespassed by a revival of Confucianism (respect for authority, emphasis on social harmony), the equilibrium inherent to the Tao, and the spiritual power of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is, indeed, a civilizational fight.
Moscow, finally welcoming the first sunny days of Spring, provided this week a larger-than-life illustration of “weeks where decades happen” compared to “decades where nothing happens.”
The two presidents bid farewell in a poignant manner.
Xi: “Now, there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”
Putin: “I agree.”
Xi: “Take care, dear friend.”
Putin: “Have a safe trip.”
Here’s to a new day dawning, from the lands of the Rising Sun to the Eurasian steppes.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Russia and China: a summit of important international agreements and messages
Twenty years after the unlawful and destabilizing US-led invasion of Iraq, Washington must face the ultimate consequence of that war: UNSC powers China and Russia laying the foundation for a genuine, UN Charter-based system of multipolarism.
On the night of 19-20 March, 2003, the US air force began bombing the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The EU and NATO were deeply divided on whether to join the aggression: While newer NATO members from Central and Eastern Europe were in favor of the war, European heavyweights Paris and Berlin opposed it.
The Iraq war also marked the onset of diplomatic coordination between Moscow and Beijing at the UN Security Council (UNSC). The two countries began in 2003 to apply similar voting patterns in the Council, first on Iraq, then on Libya in 2011, and over Syria in several key votes. That early Russia-China UN coordination has, 20 years later, transformed into a determined joint policy toward “guarding a new world order based on international law.”
Looking back at March 2003 from the vantage point of March 2023, the invasion of Iraq unleashed geopolitical consequences far beyond the obvious ones, like the proliferation of terrorism, a decline of US power, and regional chaos. In 2003, a foundational, global shift in the balance of power was surely the last possible consequence envisioned by the war’s planners in Washington and London.
Disconnecting the dots
The destruction of Iraq, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army by the first “US Consul” Paul Bremer in May 2023, the outflow of refugees to neighboring states such as Syria and Jordan, and the exponential growth of extremism and terror attacks are among the consequences of this misguided war.
The flimsy reasons for the war, such as non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Baghdad’s alleged support of terror groups like Al Qaeda, were debunked extensively in the following years. By the spring of 2004, evidence was already rife – whether from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or from the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) – that Iraq had no WMD program at all.
Rarely before had disinformation campaigns – what is now commonly referred to as “fake news” – been so meticulously executed. The “with us or against us” narrative had firmly taken hold: Western think tanks were out in full force promoting regime change and “democracy” (not a stated goal of the US-led invasion) in Iraq, while those who opposed it were labeled anti-Israel or anti-America.
Despite unprecedented, massive public protests across western capitals in opposition to the Iraq war, the US and its allies had already set in motion their considerable war machine, led by figures such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar.
A false narrative linking Baghdad and the September 11 attacks had already been well-seeded, despite there being no connection whatsoever between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the bombers. It should be noted that there were no Iraqi or Afghan citizens among the terrorists who piloted the 9-11 planes, who were predominantly Saudi nationals.
Unfinished Business
In the autumn of 2001, war scenarios for an invasion of Iraq and regime change were already being laid out in Washington. Johns Hopkins University dean Paul Wolfowitz – an avid supporter of regime-change and US military expansion into Iraq – was named deputy secretary of defense in February 2001, a full seven months before the 9-11 attacks. Wolfowitz’s working hypothesis was that Iraq, with the liberalization of its oil industry, would be able to finance a post-war reconstruction from its own petroleum exports.
The group around Vice President Dick Cheney, which included Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was influential in shaping President George W. Bush’s position on Iraq. Unlike his father, George H. Bush, who was an experienced CIA director and analyst, the younger Bush lacked a distinct personal worldview on foreign policy, which he outsourced to his hawkish coterie.
Nevertheless, he was determined to finish what he saw as his father’s “unfinished business” from the 1991 ‘Gulf War’ aimed at expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. That conflict was executed under a UN Security Council resolution, authorizing legal measures against Iraq as a state, but which did not constitute a war under international law.
In 1991, only Jordan‘s King Hussein took a position supporting Saddam Hussein, with all other nations backing the coalition assault against Baghdad. The US government adhered to the UN resolution, which aimed to restore Kuwait‘s territorial integrity – but not to overthrow the Iraqi government.
Instead, the US supported Iraqi Kurds in the north of the country and encouraged them to revolt against Baghdad. The Iraqi army crushed that rebellion, as it did an uprising in the Shia-dominated south. Perhaps the rebels had hoped for more concrete military aid from the US, but regardless, Hussein remained firmly in power despite military defeat elsewhere.
From Washington’s perspective, the US had failed to unseat Hussein, and within the Bush family, there was a desire to settle a score. For George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity to step out of his powerful father’s shadow by executing the elusive regime-change goal. The September 11 attacks provided a justification for this obsession – what remained was to connect Iraq to the US terror attacks and galvanize public and political support for a war, both domestically and internationally.
The UN Security Council in turmoil
In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there was a great deal of division among UN Security Council (UNSC) members. US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented questionable evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, while the foreign ministers of Germany and France publicly opposed the aggression, for which they occasionally received applause in the Council.
China and Russia, who vehemently opposed the war, began coordinating their decisions and responses, in part because of their respective oil interests in Iraq. This cooperation between Moscow and Beijing set the stage for a coordinated multilateral approach between the two nations. Both governments understood that a war would open Pandora’s box, leading to the collapse of Iraqi institutions and resulting in widespread regional disharmony.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what happened. The subsequent years saw weekly attacks, an expansion of Salafi terror groups like Al Qaeda, the rise of ISIS in 2014, and perpetual internal Iraqi conflict. Anyone familiar with the country‘s conditions was aware of the looming catastrophe when the illegal invasion of Iraq began on 20 March, 2003.
China and Russia and the multipolar order
Twenty years to the day, Chinese President Xi Jinping will embark on a three-day state visit to Moscow, and the focus will extend beyond bilateral energy relations, which have been a consistent priority since 2004.
As previously stated in their joint declaration in Beijing in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart aim to coordinate their foreign policy and advance it together. Their discussions may also touch on the Ukraine dossier, although media expectations in the west may be overestimated.
It may be pure coincidence that the meeting coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Yet it also highlights how extensively Russian and Chinese strategies have intertwined over the past two decades.
Today, increasingly, “orientation comes from Orient.” Cooperative geostrategic leadership and sound alternative propositions to resolve global conflicts are being shaped in Beijing and Moscow – because the old centers of power can offer nothing new.
Twenty years after the US invasion of Iraq, a failed ‘war on terror,’ the proliferation of extremism, millions of dead and displaced in West Asia, and never-ending conflict, China and Russia have finally teamed up to systematically advance their view of the world, this time with more resolve and global clout.
As catastrophic as it was, the Iraq war ended the practice of direct US military invasions, ushering in a war-weary era that desperately sought other solutions. That global division of opinion that began in 2003 over Iraq is, 20 years later, being institutionalized by emerging multipolar powers that seek to counter forever wars.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The International Criminal Court [ICC] has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crime accusations, while the Kremlin rejected the warrant and said the court has no jurisdiction and the decision is “null and void”.
The Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday the arrest warrant was issued over Putin’s alleged involvement in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the alleged child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others [and] for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts,” the statement added.
The international court has also issued a warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the Russian president, on the same charges.
The ICC has no powers to enforce its own warrants as ICC member states can make the arrests and hand over the individuals to the Huge.
Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations of committing war crimes by its forces during the year-long war in Ukraine.
Reacting to the development, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. Describing the questions raised by the court as “outrageous and unacceptable”, he stressed that any decisions of the court were “null and void” with respect to Russia.
Furthermore, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the warrant is meaningless.
“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” she said, adding, “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.”
Meanwhile, the United States which is not a member of the ICC welcomed its decision. US President Joe Biden told the reporters at the White House on Friday that the ICC’s decision was justified.
“He’s clearly committed war crimes,” Biden told reporters, referring to Putin.
“Well, I think it’s justified,” Biden added, referring to the warrant. “But the question is – it’s not recognized internationally by us either. But I think it makes a very strong point.”
Western leaders have, unsurprisingly, been welcoming the ICC move.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also hailed the decision as historic.
The ICC decision was also welcomed by European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who described it as “an important decision of international justice and for the people of Ukraine.”
The move was just the start of “holding Russia accountable” for its alleged crimes in Ukraine, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an expanded board meeting of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow on March 15, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crime accusations, while the Kremlin rejected the warrant and said the court has no jurisdiction and the decision is “null and void”.
The Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday the arrest warrant was issued over Putin’s alleged involvement in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the alleged child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others [and] for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts,” the statement added.
The international court has also issued a warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the Russian president, on the same charges.
The ICC has no powers to enforce its own warrants as ICC member states can make the arrests and hand over the individuals to the Huge.
Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations of committing war crimes by its forces during the year-long war in Ukraine.
Reacting to the development, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. Describing the questions raised by the court as “outrageous and unacceptable”, he stressed that any decisions of the court were “null and void” with respect to Russia.
Furthermore, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the warrant is meaningless.
“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” she said on her Telegram channel, adding, “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin lauded ICC’s decision as “a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire international law system” and said that “it is only the beginning of the long road to restore justice.”
The ICC decision was also welcomed by European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who described it as “an important decision of international justice and for the people of Ukraine.”
The move was just the start of “holding Russia accountable” for its alleged crimes in Ukraine, he said.
Russia launched the military operation in Ukraine in late February 2022, following Kiev administration’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of what he called a “special military operation” was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
Over the past year, Western countries, led by the United States, have shipped billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Kiev while slapping unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow to force it into submission.
Amid the Western support for Ukraine, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan opened an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine a year ago. He made four trips to Ukraine, noting that he was looking at alleged crimes against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure.
In a statement on Friday, Khan claimed that hundreds of Ukrainian children have been taken from orphanages and children’s homes to Russia. “Many of these children, we allege, have since been given up for adoption in the Russian Federation,” he added.
According to Khan, Moscow has changed laws to facilitate the adoption of children by Russian families while Ukrainian children at the time of deportation are protected individuals under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Today’s arrest warrants were “a first concrete step”, he said, noting that other investigations into the Ukraine war are still ongoing.
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even knowledge – an operation that began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Based on interviews with national security insiders, Hersh – the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai Massacre, the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal – claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. By September, President Biden himself ordered its destruction. But, according to Hersh, all understood the stakes and the gravity of what they were doing, acknowledging that, if caught, it would be seen as a flagrant “act of war” against their allies.
Despite this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter’s bombshell. A MintPress News study analyzed the 20 most influential publications in the United States, according to analytics company Similar Web, and found only four mentions of the report between them.
The entirety of the corporate media’s attention given to the story consisted of the following:
One five-minute segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Fox News);
One 600-word round-up in The New York Post;
A shrill Business Insider attack article, whose headline labels Hersh a “discredited journalist” that has given a “gift to Putin.”
The 20 outlets studied are, in alphabetical order:
ABC News; Bloomberg News; Business Insider; BuzzFeed; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; Forbes; Fox News; The Huffington Post; MSNBC; NBC News; The New York Post; The New York Times; NPR; People Magazine; Politico; USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Searches for “Seymour Hersh” and “Nord Stream” were carried out on the websites of each outlet and were then checked against precise Google searches and results from the Dow Jones Factiva news database.
This lack of interest cannot be explained due to the report’s irrelevance. If the Biden administration really did work closely with the Norwegian government to blow up Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars worth of immediate damage and plunging an entire region of the world into a freezing winter without sufficient energy, it ranks as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history; a flagrant act of aggression against a supposed ally.
Therefore, if Biden did indeed order this attack, it is barely possible to think of a more consequential piece of news. Indeed, according to Hersh, all those involved – from Biden, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – understood that what they were doing was “an act of war.”
The Nord Stream attack was also one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, constituting the largest single leak of methane in history – a gas 80 times worse for the planet than carbon dioxide at accelerating climate change.
“The media system has, predictably, tried to marginalize the report,” Bryce Greene, a writer and media critic who has closely followed the press’ lack of interest in scrutinizing the Nord Stream story, told MintPress, adding,
They don’t want to deal with the repercussions. It also reflects poorly on the profession…Even Jeffery Sachs in his Bloomberg interview said that journalists he knew personally understood that evidence, but also understood that the media system they worked in wouldn’t respond kindly to any suggestion of US complicity, so they kept quiet.”
Greene explained that bothersome facts about the war have consistently been swept under the rug, noting that,
This is indicative of the entire Ukraine War coverage. From hiding the history of NATO expansion, to calling Ukrainian Nazis Russian propaganda, to CBS even retracting a story about Ukrainian corruption. The fact that US media figures want to be seen as ‘on the good team’ or ‘on the right side of history’ means that they’re unwilling to confront reality as it exists.”
RADIO SILENCE
This complete radio silence from most of the country’s most influential news organizations is all the more remarkable, considering Hersh’s revelations have been all over newswire services. Reuters, for example, has published 14 separate reports on the topic since Thursday. Every large media outlet in America (and many medium-sized and even small ones) subscribes to Reuters, republishing content from their newswires.
One of the main tasks of a newsroom editor is to follow the newswire and follow up on Reuters’ content. This means that editors around the country have been bombarded with this story every day since it broke, and virtually every single one of them has passed on it – 14 consecutive times. Thus, even when repeatedly presented with free content to monetize, almost every newsroom in the U.S. decided against it. Independent, reader-supported media, however, have covered the story much more closely.
This is not to say that Reuters has been supportive of Hersh’s assertions. Its first article on the subject, for example, was entitled “White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion ‘is utterly false,’” thereby allowing the Biden administration to set the agenda and downplay Hersh’s investigation as a mere blog post – something those in alternative media were quick to highlight. Hersh self-published his report on the online platform Substack – a fact that either undermines his findings or the credibility of the corporate media apparatus, depending on one’s perspective.
“The most incredible thing about the backlash against Hersh’s article on the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is the fact that it’s clear no establishment media outlet has any intention of carrying out the basic journalism needed to confirm or refute what he’s reported,” wrote journalist and MintPress contributor Jonathan Cook.
Other journalists, particularly those connected to the Western intelligence services, were scathing of the report. “The only people Hersh impresses any more [sic] are the sort of people who carry water for Putin and Assad, or the terminally dumb,” quipped Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins. Christo Grozev, another Bellingcat writer, labeled Hersh “senile,” “corrupt,” and an “obsessive liar” whose “irresponsible single-anonymous-source reporting by a name with legacy authority is among the worst damage to journalism anyone ever caused.”
Fact-checking website Snopes also sprung into action, calling Hersh’s claim a “conspiracy” that rested on a single “omnipotent anonymous source.”
In an interview with the Radio War Nerd podcast, Hersh fired back, claiming:
The New York Times and the Washington Post have just ignored me. What they think I should do is use [the source’s] name, get him put in jail, stuff like that, which would end my career. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. My Lai started in 1969, and I will tell you something…I will protect people.”
He also noted that he actually cultivated multiple corroborative sources for the story.
Thank God we got Snopes on the case.
Notice that they had absolutely nothing to say when random people were saying Russia blew their own pipeline.
Now when there's a credible accusation of US complicity, they have to intervene to protect the discourse from "conspiracy" pic.twitter.com/3urDxdspnj
According to Hersh’s source, last June, under the cover of an international NATO exercise happening in the area, U.S. Navy divers based in Panama City, Florida, planted remotely-triggered C4 explosives on a section of the pipeline. Then, three months later, the order was given to blow it up. Navy divers were assisted by the Norwegian military, who found the perfect location; calm and shallow water just off the coast of Bornholm Island, Denmark.
An earlier Nord Stream pipeline was already supplying Germany and Western Europe with Russian gas, providing a cheap and readily available source of fuel to heat and power the continent. With the introduction of the second pipeline, Europe would have become effectively energy-independent of the United States, raising the possibility that the continent might move in a neutral or independent political direction too, creating a powerful regional bloc of its own rather than the current Atlanticist (i.e., U.S.-dominated) model that prevails. The 760-mile pipeline travels along the Baltic Sea floor, from western Russia to northeastern Germany, transporting liquified natural gas into homes and businesses throughout Europe. As such, it represents a vastly more cost-efficient form of energy than purchasing American liquified national gas or fracked oil – something Washington had been leaning hard on Europe to switch to.
Successive White House administrations had long made their opposition to the new, multi-billion dollar project publicly known. But Hersh alleges that the Biden administration began planning the sabotage in 2021, many months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Tubes are stored in Sassnitz, Germany, during construction of the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, Dec. 6, 2016. Jens Buettner | DPA via AP
The choice to use Navy divers rather than members of America’s Special Operations Command was reportedly down to secrecy. Unlike Special Ops, by law, Congress, the Senate and House leadership do not need to be briefed about Navy operations. “The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks,” Hersh wrote.
Nevertheless, many in the know had cold feet. “Some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out,’” Hersh’s source said.
In the end, Biden himself gave the mission the green light, and three months after it was completed, Washington pressed the button, destroying the pipeline.
In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, Western corporate media were coy about the culprit, even suggesting that Vladimir Putin himself was by far the number one suspect in the case. They also actively suppressed any other opinions on the matter, sometimes to a near-comical degree. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, for example, was abruptly taken off the air by Bloomberg as he ran through circumstantial evidence suggesting Western forces could be behind the attack.
CAN WE BELIEVE THIS?
Hersh’s account adds weight to Sachs’ assertions. But is it credible? On the one hand, Hersh is a veteran investigative journalist who has built a stellar reputation over decades, working closely with government sources to break important news stories. On the other, his bombshell relies almost entirely on unnamed sources. It is standard journalistic practice to name and check sources. The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics states that “reporters should use every possible avenue to confirm and attribute information before relying on unnamed sources” and that they must “always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity” because too many “provide information only when it benefits them.”
Without a name to go with a claim, there are no consequences for sources (or journalists, for that matter) simply lying to further their agenda. Hersh, therefore, is implicitly asking readers to trust his credibility and his judgment. Moreover, Hersh’s sources are government and intelligence insiders. Part of their role is placing false or inaccurate information into the public domain to further the state’s agenda. Journalistically speaking, then, anonymous government or intelligence officials are about the least credible sources imaginable.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that, given Washington’s war on whistleblowers, no source would ever publicly disclose this sort of information unless they were ready to risk decades in prison. Therefore, they could reasonably qualify for anonymity.
Greene took a nuanced position on the story’s credibility, stating,
Is everything Hersh alleged correct? While it would surprise me if there were evidence of any other power being behind the pipeline explosion – which would mean Hersh’s report is a complete fabrication – it would not be surprising if a few of Hersh’s details don’t line up, but that is common in journalism, and not always the result of bad faith or incompetence.
“The thing to remember is Hersh’s sources are in the world of military and intelligence. They will lie, exaggerate, obfuscate – and of course get things wrong by mistake,” Greene added, “But The compartmentalized nature of any bureaucracy – and the intelligence world especially – means that the full picture is sometimes murky, even to those considered to be ‘in the know.’ The fact that Hersh’s source knows so much detail is remarkable but certainly not implausible given the history of high-level leakers.”
Establishment journalists in US and UK hate and traduce Seymour Hersh for same reason they hated and traduced Robert Fisk: their work exposes our “free press” as glorified state propagandists who follow the party line 99% of time. Truth hurts.
If the United States did indeed sabotage Nord Stream II, it was one of the least well-hidden and most signposted attacks in history. The U.S. and NATO had, for years, publicly made clear that they were exploring options to stop the project.
A few weeks before the Russian invasion last February, Biden summoned German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the White House, where the president made him participate in a bizarre press conference in which Biden stated, “If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine — then there will be no longer a Nord Stream II. We will bring an end to it.”
The event had the air of an adult chastising a misbehaving child, yet Biden was, in effect, telling Scholz to his face that his country’s infrastructure might face a U.S. attack.
To be fair to the president, he was merely repeating what many in his administration had been publicly saying for months. Both Victoria Nuland and State Department Spokesperson Ned Price had independently stated that “one way or another, Nord Stream II will not move forward.”
Likewise, after the attack, the U.S. barely tried to hide its satisfaction. “This is a tremendous opportunity,” Antony Blinken beamed. The Secretary of State continued,
It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity.”
Police accompany a protest against sanctions on Russia while a banner with the inscription “Open Nordstream 2 immediately” is held, Sept 05, 2022. Sebastian Willnow | DPA via AP
Other prominent officials thought U.S. culpability for the blast was so obvious that they assumed that they would take credit for it rather than claim Russia carried out a false flag attack. Member of the European Parliament and former Foreign Minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, for example, tweeted out a picture of the blast with the words “Thank you, USA.” Sikorski, married to U.S. national security state insider Anne Applebaum, later deleted his post.
For Greene, the United States is near the top of the list of potential culprits. As he explained,
The charge of U.S. complicity is supported by a good deal of circumstantial evidence: The clearest answer to the ‘cui bono’ [who benefits?] question is obviously the U.S. Even before Hersh’s reporting, German officials reportedly said they were open to the idea of Western complicity. So in that sense, Hersh’s reporting is in line with what we already know (and what the mainstream media refuses to seriously discuss).”
Certainly, Washington has significantly benefited from the explosion. Its major competitor (Russia) has been seriously economically weakened, and European purchases of expensive American liquified natural gas have more than doubled since last year. Norway, too, has gained from the blast and is now Germany’s principal supplier of gas, allowing it to make billions in profits.
In light of the Seymour Hersh bombshell on the U.S. and Norway blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, let's recall how U.S. officials openly incited against it for months, then blamed… Russia.https://t.co/qp1d7Jx9rypic.twitter.com/V0Cy2JPSXI
Born in 1937 into a working-class Jewish immigrant family, Hersh cut his teeth as a crime reporter in early 1960s Chicago. He first came to national attention in 1969, however, when he exposed the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops at My Lai – a scoop that won him the Pulitzer Prize. His revelations were far from welcome in establishment media, though, and he had to fight to get even a small startup newswire to take a chance on his story.
In 1974, Hersh again caused a national scandal after exposing a massive Nixon-era CIA spying operation targeting hundreds of thousands of left-wing activists, anti-war dissidents and other anti-establishment figures. Again, far from being heralded, the majority of the corporate press attempted to defend the national security state and discredit him and his reporting.
Thirty years later, he dropped yet another bombshell on the American public, exposing the U.S.’ widespread torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Whether it was reporting on the U.S.’ role in the 1973 coup in Chile or undermining the Obama administration’s claims on chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Hersh has courted controversy and attracted flak throughout his career. Yet his fearlessness has won him respect the world over. As journalist Glenn Greenwald stated,
Seymour Hersh is beyond any reasonable dispute one of the two or three most accomplished, important and courageous journalists of his generation. Very few journalists on the planet – and virtually none who still work inside the nation’s largest media corporations – can even get close to him when it comes to having broken more major, history-changing stories.”
It is for this reason that Hersh’s reporting is so important – and why corporate media’s steadfast refusal to cover it is so noteworthy. If Hersh is correct, the United States and Norway essentially attacked their supposed NATO allies, something that could have gigantic geopolitical implications. Article 5 of NATO’s treaty states that if a NATO member is attacked, then all other NATO members must defend said country. Several NATO members, including the United Kingdom and France, possess nuclear weapons.
Of course, NATO will not declare war on the United States, precisely because it is, since its very inception, an unequal alliance. As Lord Ismay, the organization’s first secretary general, explained, “NATO’s role is to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in”. In other words, it is a U.S.-dominated confederation meant to stifle the pan-European project that sought to reorient the continent away from serving the U.S. and towards becoming an independent regional bloc.
While the culprit of the attacks still remains in doubt, many of the consequences are not.
Germans – like much of Europe – have had to endure freezing winters amid enormous fuel price spikes. The dearth of energy has helped spark double-digit inflation in Germany that has eroded the savings of tens of millions of people. Energy costs are causing vast numbers of businesses to permanently close and presents a crisis of competitiveness for European industry, which is struggling to compete with American and Asian manufacturers enjoying cheap fuel.
Moreover, huge numbers of European businesses are closing or reducing their domestic workforce in favor of moving production to the U.S., where, alongside cheaper energy costs, the Biden administration is offering them financial incentives to do so. The European Union has accused Washington of breaching World Trade Organization rules.
Thus, it could be said that the invasion of Ukraine has marked a turning point in geopolitical history, whereby the United States is not only carrying out a proxy war against Russia, but engaged in an economic war against the entirety of Europe. If Hersh’s Nord Stream story is true, it could send a shockwave throughout Europe and should cause long held beliefs about the nature of Europe’s relationship with the United States to be challenged. Therefore, given the massive negative consequences of all this for Washington, perhaps it is no surprise that the revelation will not be televised.
قبيل ساعات من تتويج المباحثات الإيرانية – السعودية بـ«مصالحة بكين»، كان الكونغرس الأميركي يشهد نقاشاً بين نواب وخبراء معنيين بالشرق الأوسط حول «توسيع اتفاقيات أبراهام»، والتزام «الشركاء المفترضين»، وفي مقدمهم السعودية، بتنفيذ الأجندة الأميركية في ما يتعلق بالصين وروسيا وإيران وأسعار النفط. ويتبيّن، بالصوت والصورة، أن مرادف «التأثير الإيجابي» بالنسبة للإدارة الأميركية هو «حماية مصالح إسرائيل أكثر، فقط»، مع تركيز واضح على تسويق الولايات المتحدة كصديقة للشعوب تتطلع إلى ازدهارها ورفاهيتها، تمهيداً لإدخال الدول في مسارات التطبيع… مع اعتراف ضمني بأن عدم وجود رؤية مشتركة بين الولايات المتحدة وشركائها لمواجهة «النفوذ الإيراني الخبيث» يهدد كل الطموحات الأميركية في المنطقة
عُقد الاجتماع الدوريّ للجنة الفرعية للشؤون الخارجية في مجلس النواب الأميركي حول الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا، الخميس الماضي، عشية إعلان «مصالحة بكين»، تحت عنوان «توسيع اتفاقيات أبراهام» (فيديو الجلسة). حضر الاجتماع، إلى جانب أعضاء اللجنة، كل من رئيس معهد اتفاقات أبراهام للسلام روبرت غرينواي والجنرال الأميركي المتخصص في شؤون الشرق الأوسط جوزف فوتيل والسفير الأميركي السابق في إسرائيل دانيل شابيرو مدير «مبادرة N7» (الحرف الأول من n أي تطبيع، و7 للدلالة على إسرائيل والدول العربية الست التي طبعت معها: البحرين، مصر، الأردن، المغرب، السودان، الإمارات).
وفي مداخلته، أشار شابيرو إلى تقدم مسارات التطبيع عبر مجموعات عمل تشمل أكثر من 150 مشاركاً من الدول السبع في أبو ظبي في كانون الثاني الماضي، إضافة إلى اتفاقية التعاون في مجال الأمن السيبراني بين البحرين والمغرب والإمارات وإسرائيل والولايات المتحدة. أما الطموحات الكثيرة لتكريس التطبيع فأبرزها برامج تلفزيونية «تثقيفية وترفيهية»، ليخلص المجتمعون بسرعة إلى ضرورة أن يتجاوز الدعم الأميركي في المنطقة التعاون العسكري، إلى المجالات التجارية و«المناهج التربوية والتعليمية» والتعاون الصحي و… «مكافحة الأوبئة»، مع تركيز خاص على لبنان. فبعد إشارة النائب الديموقراطي براد شيرمان إلى نجاح إدارة الرئيس جو بايدن في إنجاز الاتفاق بين لبنان وإسرائيل حول الحدود البحرية، قال رئيس اللجنة الفرعية الجمهوري جو ويلسون إن هذا الترسيم مهم للاقتصاد اللبناني، ويسمح لإسرائيل بمواصل إنتاج النفط وإرساله إلى مصر لتكريره وتصديره إلى إيطاليا للتخفيف من اعتماد أوروبا على روسيا، في سلسلة تبيّن الترابط الاستثنائي بين الملفات: لبنان يفوز، إسرائيل تفوز، مصر تفوز، إيطاليا تفوز ومجرم الحرب بوتين يخسر. وقال ويلسون «هناك أهمية كبيرة لدعم لبنان الذي يجب أن يكون عظيماً لكنه ليس كذلك». هناـ تدخلت النائبة الديموقراطية كاثي مالينغ لافتة إلى أن «لبنان على وشك أن يصبح دولة فاشلة»، فيما «سوريا مصدر مشكلات لا حصر لها في المنطقة»؛ ما يدفع إلى السؤال ما إذا كانت لدول «اتفاقيات أبراهام» القدرة على «التأثير الإيجابي» في هذين البلدين؟ ليجيب فوتيل، كما تفهم الإدارة الأميركية «التأثير الإيجابي»، بالقول إن «التعاون الأمني والدفاعي بين إسرائيل ودول أخرى في المنطقة يعزز فرص اتخاذ تدابير تحدّ من قدرة إيران على إيصال مواردها الفتاكة أكثر فأكثر قرب حدود إسرائيل». وأكد أن القيادة المركزية الأميركية «تحاول» وضع شبكات استشعار وطائرات من دون طيار لمراقبة حركة «نقل المساعدات الفتاكة»، بحراً اليوم وجواً غداً، ومع مزيد من الاستثمار يمكن معالجة «بعض من النفوذ الإيراني الخبيث» الذي ينتشر في سوريا ويؤثر على إسرائيل. ورداً على سؤال مالينغ عن كيفية توسيع «اتفاقيات أبراهام»، قال شابيرو إن هناك المفاوضات التي ترعاها الولايات المتحدة وهناك «التعاون الأمني الذي تقوده وزارة الدفاع والجيش مع جيوش المنطقة، وهناك مجالات صحية وثقافية وتجارية يمكن تحقيق اختراقات مهمة بواسطتها». أما غرينواي فركز على «توفير القدرات لشركائنا بما يمكّنهم من الدفاع عن أنفسهم بشكل أفضل، ويخفف في المقابل العبء الملقى على عاتق الولايات المتحدة للدفاع عنهم». ورأى أن الممر الإلزامي لتكريس التطبيع هو التبادل التجاري بين هذه الدول وحاجتها الاقتصادية إلى بعضها البعض. بدوره، شدد فوتيل على أن «المشاركة الدفاعية المنسّقة للتعاون المعلوماتي» هي الأساس، عبر ربط المعلومات الأمنية بين مختلف «شركاء الولايات المتحدة»، فيما قال غرينواي إن عدم وجود اتفاق مشترك بين الولايات المتحدة وهؤلاء الشركاء على كيفية التعامل مع التهديد الإيراني يحول دون إحراز تقدم، حتى على مستوى التعاون الأمني. وأكد أن الصراع الإسرائيلي – الفلسطيني يهم دول المنطقة، لكن ليس بقدر «التهديد المباشر لبقائهم من طهران اليوم»، و«الحاجة ماسة لقيادة أميركية مباشرة رداً على هذا التهديد الإيراني»، مشيراً إلى أهمية دعم الولايات المتحدة لإسرائيل في هذه المرحلة، حيث تراقب بقية دول المنطقة هذا الدعم عن كثب «بشكل لا يصدق».
يمكن تحقيق اختراقات مهمة عبر التعاون الأمني مع جيوش المنطقة وفي المجالات الصحية والثقافية والتجارية
ولا يمكن لدول المنطقة أن تكون أكثر تأييداً لإسرائيل من الولايات المتحدة. مع العلم أن «بناء الدعم يضيف نفوذاً وشركاء للولايات المتحدة»، مطالباً الإدارة الأميركية في ختام مداخلته بتأمين الموارد أو إعادة النظر في الموارد الحالية لاستخدامها بشكل أكثر فعالية لدعم «اتفاقيات أبراهام» والمبادرات التطبيعية الأخرى. وهنا، أشار شابيرو إلى أن الرواية المتداولة في الشرق الأوسط عن «انسحاب أميركي أو غياب أميركي أو تحول أميركي نحو مناطق أخرى» مبالغ فيها ومضر جداً. ولا بد من القول بوضوح «إننا ما زلنا هناك»، و«لا تزال القيادة المركزية الأميركية الجامع الرئيسي والشريك الرئيسي لجميع هذه البلدان، تتقدمها إسرائيل». «قد تكون لدينا وجهات نظر مختلفة حول طرق التعامل مع مشكلة ما، لكن الولايات المتحدة ملتزمة بشراكاتها، وملتزمة بالتأكد من قدرة شركائها على الدفاع عن أنفسهم، وملتزمة بالتواجد هناك كسند نهائيّ. ونحن نتوقع أن يتصرف شركاؤنا الإقليميون بما يتماشى مع المصالح الأميركية الأساسية عندما يتعلق الأمر بالصين وروسيا وأسواق النفط، حيث لا بد أن تتوقع أن تتدفق الشراكة بالاتجاهين، حين تكون شريكاً جيداً ومخلصاً. ولفت في ختام مداخلته إلى أن التدهور الأمني بين الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين سيؤدي حكماً إلى زعزعة استقرار الأردن، ويصعّب الأمور على مصر، ويوتّر علاقة إسرائيل وشركائها العرب الجدد، ويؤخّر التقدم بين إسرائيل وشركاء لم ينضموا إلى «أبراهام» بعد، مركزاً على أهمية إظهار الولايات المتحدة دائماً بمظهر «المستثمر المهتم بمحاولة تحسين أوضاع الشعوب الاقتصادية والاجتماعية، قبل وقت طويل من إمكانية التفاوض فعلياً للوصول إلى حلول تطبيعية إضافية».
At Russia’s Valdai Club meeting – the east’s answer to Davos – intellectuals and influencers gathered to frame West Asia’s current and future developments.
Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties.
The 12th “Middle East Conference” at the Valdai Club in Moscow offered a more than welcome cornucopia of views on interconnected troubles and tribulations affecting the region.
But first, an important word on terminology – as only one of Valdai’s guests took the trouble to stress. This is not the “Middle East” – a reductionist, Orientalist notion devised by old colonials: at The Cradle we emphasize the region must be correctly described as West Asia.
Some of the region’s trials and tribulations have been mapped by the official Valdai report, The Middle East and The Future of Polycentric World. But the intellectual and political clout of those in attendance can provide valuable anecdotal insights too. Here are a few of the major strands participants highlighted on regional developments, current and future:
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov set the stage by stressing that Kremlin policy encourages the formation of an “inclusive regional security system.” That’s exactly what the Americans refused to discuss with the Russians in December 2021, then applied to Europe and the post-Soviet space. The result was a proxy war.
Kayhan Barzegar of Islamic Azad University in Iran qualified the two major strategic developments affecting West Asia: a possible US retreat and a message to regional allies: “You cannot count on our security guarantees.”
Every vector – from rivalry in the South Caucasus to the Israeli normalization with the Persian Gulf – is subordinated to this logic, notes Barzegar, with quite a few Arab actors finally understanding that there now exists a margin of maneuver to choose between the western or the non-western bloc.
Barzegar does not identify Iran-Russia ties as a strategic alliance, but rather a geopolitical, economic bloc based on technology and regional supply chains – a “new algorithm in politics” – ranging from weapons deals to nuclear and energy cooperation, driven by Moscow’s revived southern and eastward orientations. And as far as Iran-western relations go, Barzegar still believes the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, is not dead. A least not yet.
‘Nobody knows what these rules are’
Egyptian Ramzy Ramzy, until 2019 the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, considers the reactivation of relations between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE with Syria as the most important realignment underway in the region. Not to mention prospects for a Damascus-Ankara reconciliation. “Why is this happening? Because of the regional security system’s dissatisfaction with the present,” Ramzy explains.
Yet even if the US may be drifting away, “neither Russia nor China are willing to take up a leadership role,” he says. At the same time, Syria “cannot be allowed to fall prey to outside interventions. The earthquake at least accelerated these rapprochements.”
Bouthaina Shaaban, a special advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is a remarkable woman, fiery and candid. Her presence at Valdai was nothing short of electric. She stressed how “since the US war in Vietnam, we lost what we witnessed as free media. The free press has died.” At the same time “the colonial west changed its methods,” subcontracting wars and relying on local fifth columnists.
Shaaban volunteered the best short definition anywhere of the “rules-based international order”: “Nobody knows what these rules are, and what this order is.”
She re-emphasized that in this post-globalization period that is ushering in regional blocs, the usual western meddlers prefer to use non-state actors – as in Syria and Iran – “mandating locals to do what the US would like to do.”
A crucial example is the US al-Tanf military base that occupies sovereign Syrian territory on two critical borders. Shaaban calls the establishment of this base as “strategic, for the US to prevent regional cooperation, at the Iraq, Jordan, and Syria crossroads.” Washington knows full well what it is doing: unhampered trade and transportation at the Syria-Iraq border is a major lifeline for the Syrian economy.
Reminding everyone once again that “all political issues are connected to Palestine,” Shaaban also offered a healthy dose of gloomy realism: “The eastern bloc has not been able to match the western narrative.”
A ‘double-layered proxy war’
Cagri Erhan, rector of Altinbas University in Turkey, offered a quite handy definition of a Hegemon: the one who controls the lingua franca, the currency, the legal setting, and the trade routes.
Erhan qualifies the current western hegemonic state of play as “double-layered proxy war” against, of course, Russia and China. The Russians have been defined by the US as an “open enemy” – a major threat. And when it comes to West Asia, proxy war still rules: “So the US is not retreating,” says Erhan. Washington will always consider using the area “strategically against emerging powers.”
Then what about the foreign policy priorities of key West Asian and North African actors?
Algerian political journalist Akram Kharief, editor of the online MenaDefense, insists Russia should get closer to Algeria, “which is still in the French sphere of influence,” and be wary of how the Americans are trying to portray Moscow as “a new imperial threat to Africa.”
Professor Hasan Unal of Maltepe University in Turkiye made it quite clear how Ankara finally “got rid of its Middle East [West Asian] entanglements,” when it was previously “turning against everybody.”
Mid-sized powers such as Turkiye, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are now stepping to the forefront of the region’s political stage. Unal notes how “Turkiye and the US don’t see eye to eye on any issue important to Ankara.” Which certainly explains the strengthening of Turkish-Russian ties – and their mutual interest in introducing “multi-faceted solutions” to the region’s problems.
For one, Russia is actively mediating Turkiye-Syria rapprochement. Unal confirmed that the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers will soon meet in person – in Moscow – which will represent the highest-ranking direct engagement between the two nations since the onset of the Syrian war. And that will pave the way for a tripartite summit between Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Note that the big regional reconciliations are being held – once again – either in, or with the participation of Moscow, which can rightfully be described as the capital of the 21st century multipolar world.
When it comes to Cyprus, Unal notes how “Russia would not be interested in a unified state that would be EU and NATO territory.” So it’s time for “creative ideas: as Turkey is changing its Syria policy, Russia should change its Cyprus policy.”
Dr. Gong Jiong, from the Israeli campus of China’s University of International Business and Economics, came up with a catchy neologism: the “coalition of the unwilling” – describing how “almost the whole Global South is not supporting sanctions on Russia,” and certainly none of the players in West Asia.
Gong noted that as much as China-Russia trade is rising fast – partly as a direct consequence of western sanctions – the Americans would have to think twice about China-hit sanctions. Russia-China trade stands at $200 billion a year, after all, while US-China trade is a whopping $700 billion per annum.
The pressure on the “neutrality camp” won’t relent anyway. What is needed by the world’s “silent majority,” as Gong defines it, is “an alliance.” He describes the 12-point Chinese peace plan for Ukraine as “a set of principles” – Beijing’s base for serious negotiations: “This is the first step.”
There will be no new Yalta
What the Valdai debates made crystal clear, once again, is how Russia is the only actor capable of approaching every player across West Asia, and be listened to carefully and respectfully.
It was left to Anwar Abdul-Hadi, director of the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the latter’s official envoy to Damascus, to arguably sum up what led to the current global geopolitical predicament: “A new Yalta or a new world war? They [the west] chose war.”
And still, as new geopolitical and geoeconomic fault lines keep emerging, it is as though West Asia is anticipating something “big” coming ahead. That feeling was palpable in the air at Valdai.
To paraphrase Yeats, and updating him to the young, turbulent 21st century, “what rough beast, its hour come out at last, slouches towards the cradle [of civilization] to be born?
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (desktop version)
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
Amid incessant NATO aggression and escalation of hostilities within Russia, now also including US-backed Kiev regime terrorists targeting schoolchildren, Moscow has started revamping the doctrinal approach to the use of its strategic arsenal. Rather curiously, the new document, published by the “Military Thought” magazine run by the Russian Ministry of Defense, attracted little attention in Western media. It should be noted that such changes are made only once in several decades or even longer. The strategic posturing of countries, particularly superpowers, is usually “set in stone”, meaning that changes are prompted only by major events of historical proportions.
It was only a week ago that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia is suspending its participation in the New START arms control treaty. Putin cited continuous, blatant US and NATO violations of the agreement as the primary reason for the decision. With the treaty becoming a mere formality, Russia is not bound to honor it anymore, as this would undermine its own strategic security. With that in mind, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) started implementing new ways to deter any possible direct US/NATO attacks on Russia, particularly as the belligerent thalassocracy has repeatedly floated the idea of “decapitation strikes” on Moscow in the last several months.
The authors of the document are Deputy Commander of the RVSN Igor Fazletdinov and retired Colonel Vladimir Lumpov. They argue that the US is on a collision course with Russia, as Washington DC and its vassals are becoming increasingly aggressive due to their political elites’ frustration with the loss of the “sole superpower” status.
With America seeing Moscow as the main culprit for this, it plans on defeating Russia in a “single blow”, thus eliminating the main obstacle to total US global dominance. Fazletdinov and Lumpov argue that Washington DC plans to defeat Russia in a “strategic (global) multi-sphere operation”, the primary goal of which will be the elimination of its strategic arsenal.
“[The US believes] this goal is only achievable in the event of an instantaneous nuclear strike against the RVSN or at least with the deployment of ABM [anti-ballistic missile] systems around Russia. The US plan is to destroy at least 65-70% of Russian strategic nuclear forces as part of its Prompt Global Strike concept, with the rest eliminated by American ABM systems. The US would then launch an all-out nuclear attack on the Russian Federation in order to destroy it,” authors warn, further adding: “We aim to repel a potential [US] nuclear strike, preserve our own nuclear capabilities, suppress the deployed US missile defense systems and cause unacceptable damage in case of [US/NATO] aggression.”
Russia certainly has the capability to almost instantly change its strategic doctrine.
Unlike its NATO rivals (including the US itself), Moscow leads the world in several key military technologies, which also include at least a dozen operational hypersonic weapons deployed over the last 5-10 years.
And indeed, in early December President Putin stated Russia could adopt a US-style concept of preemptive strikes. The program mentioned by Russian military experts, called PGS (Prompt Global Strike), is a US attempt to develop a capability that enables it to attack enemy strategic targets with precision-guided weapons anywhere in the world within just one hour. Still, the US is yet to deploy a weapon that can achieve that.
On the other hand, with the Mach 12-capable “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile carried by modified MiG-31K/I interceptors and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers, the Mach 28-capable “Avangard” HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle) deployed on various ICBMs and the Mach 9-capable scramjet-powered “Zircon” hypersonic cruise missile deployed on naval (both submarines and surface ships) and (soon) on land platforms, Russia is the only country on the planet with the capability to immediately implement such a program. And yet, Moscow still refrains from going ahead with such plans, although its justification for this would hold much better than that of the US.
The authors further emphasize “the need to make sure the US was perfectly aware of the impossibility of the complete destruction of our strategic capabilities and the inevitability of a crushing retaliatory nuclear strike”.
American policymakers take advice from former high-ranking generals and officers who somehow managed to lose a war against outnumbered and outgunned AK-wielding insurgents in sandals while wasting trillions of dollars and deploying hundreds of thousands of troops during the two decades of continuous NATO aggression in Afghanistan. This is without taking into account the technological disparity which was so overwhelmingly on the side of the aggressors that it can quite literally be measured in centuries rather than decades. Still, delusions and living in parallel reality seem to be a given for the warmongers at the Pentagon.
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
The glib talk of people dying for no good cause, but rather only for a clique of clowns and their imperial circus, is the ultimate sick joke.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sparked indignation and outrage this week with his grim warning that America’s sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine.
His presumptuous comments were made at a press conference on February 24 but only gained notoriety this week, provoking howls of derision and disgust. The reckless insanity of the war in Ukraine – and the catastrophe it is leading to – has become unbearable.
U.S. politicians – mainly on the Republican side – as well as ordinary citizens have become rightly alarmed by the blank-check policy of the Biden administration to prop up the Kiev regime with up to $100 billion in military and financial support over the past year.
There is growing public anger both in the United States and across the European Union with the bottomless pit of money that governments have unaccountably reached into and thrown at Ukraine. Western states have increasingly escalated the war with supplies of heavier and longer-range weapons. Not one Western so-called leader has made any diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. The United States and European Union have mobilized totally in war mode, without any public debate or accountability.
The Kiev regime is the perfect partner for the NATO war machines because of its insatiable demand for ever more weaponry.
Zelensky and his cabal of corrupt cronies have like ventriloquist puppets played their squalid part by poaching for the conveyor belt of weaponry to be sped up. It’s almost comical when NATO leaders are at other times quietly calling on the Kiev regime to slow down its consumption of ammunition because their own arsenals are being depleted and leaving their states undefended.
The charade has worked a treat up to a point. American and NATO military manufacturers have made record profits and have seen unprecedented stock-market investment gains from the war racket that is Ukraine.
However, the comic actor-turned-politician is in serious danger of overplaying his wheedling role. President Joe Biden has even resorted to cautioning Zelensky to tamp down his zealous public demands for weapons and money out of concern that the “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude is running the risk of infuriating American and European taxpayers who will foot the bill of goodies at a time of unprecedented social and economic hardships.
So when Zelensky went further to warn that American sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying if more weapons are not supplied to Ukraine there is a sense that an unacceptable level of forbearance has been surpassed. The proverbial last straw.
Western media immediately rushed to cover up his remarks by claiming – incredibly – that Zelensky did not say what he did.
The Western public is right to see through the appalling racket. Not only has the Western military-industrial complex gotten obscenely rich, but Zelensky and his junta have also milked the American and European public like a cash cow. Zelensky and his cronies have made multi-millions in offshore funds and assets. The weapons flooding into Ukraine have been sold off on the black market ending up in the hands of terrorists and criminal networks all over the world. Even the Pentagon’s inspectors admit they don’t know where all the weapons have gone.
Not only that but the endless arms bazaar has prolonged the war in Ukraine with horrendous casualties among Ukrainians drafted to fight a NATO proxy war against Russia. A war that the Ukrainian regime has no chance of winning. The imminent Russian victory at Bakhmut spells the collapse of the NATO-backed regime. And with that collapse will come the crashing of NATO’s much-vaunted prestige. If you thought the Afghanistan debacle was bad, wait to see the gnashing of teeth over Ukraine.
Tragically, this war – the biggest in Europe since World War Two – could have been avoided if Washington and its European minions had heeded Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s expansion that had long been raised. The Western rulers chose not to deal with Moscow through politics and diplomacy, making an armed confrontation inevitable.
Washington and its imperial lackeys have made the conflict into an existential crisis with fraudulent claims about “defending democracy and freedom” from alleged Russian aggression. The grandiose deception covers up the real agenda of American hegemonic ambitions towards Russia and China.
The Zelensky puppet regime – infested with corruption and Nazi paramilitaries armed by NATO – is claiming that if it falls to Russia’s military then Western states will be facing Russian aggression. That’s why he made the ridiculous claim that without more weapons being sent, Russia will next invade NATO states, and American sons and daughters will end up fighting and dying.
This is a grotesque distortion of what is happening in Ukraine and what the real causes of the conflict are about.
The reality is Ukraine has been destroyed by American imperialist machinations since the 2014 CIA-backed in Kiev. Russia has been forced to eliminate a Neo-Nazi regime that the NATO powers deliberately and covertly weaponized. President Biden and his feckless corrupt son Hunter have been personally involved in the creation of the Frankenstein monster, as have senior members of this White House administration, including Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. These same people sanctioned the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines in an act of international terrorism against supposed NATO allies, such is their criminality.
The ceaseless corruption of Ukraine under American and European indulgence has led to the abysmal danger of an all-out war with Russia that if it were to happen could end the world in a nuclear conflagration. Washington and its NATO minions are precluding any diplomatic way out of the crisis because of their lies and criminal Russophobia. The war racket is too addictive for the NATO war junkies and their crime syndicate intel agencies. The logical endpoint of this perverse charade involves the potential of all-out world war. Zelensky in his sordid comic star-turn inadvertently went off script with his shocking ad-lib remarks.
Those remarks – among many other inanities uttered by Zelensky, Biden, Scholz, Macron, Sunak, Von der Leyen, Borrell, Stoltenberg and other NATO war-pimps – are akin to the clown’s mask slipping, revealing the ugly face beneath. The American people and all others around the world should be horrified and furious.
The glib talk of people dying for no good cause, but rather only for a clique of clowns and their imperial circus, is the ultimate sick joke.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 