Well, maybe.
The Asia Times has some analysis about some news that US media have ignored or have been blind to the significance of as a result of tunnel vision on fossil fuels, the Middle East, and the shiny keys of the new Global War on Terrorism (although that’s not likely the policy the White House thinks it is running).
Pepe Escobar: Does Bear + Dragon Trump Eagle? How Russia & China May Block the US in Asia
The US has pivoted to Asia, meaning that it is increasing its eastern Pacific Rim presence and working through trade deals and diplomatic moves to create a wall of containment around China’s southern and eastern sides. The US through its actions and policy in Ukraine has been frantically trying to provoke Putin into hostile action; Putin is not taking the bait. The US has tried paralyzing Russia oil industry through economic sanctions; the US is not getting the cooperation from NATO allies that it expected.
The US is already implicated in efforts to co-opt the Umbrella movement of Occupy Central in Hong Kong.
Russia and China have over the past years been laying the cooperative agreements on infrastucture and development that would pipeline Russia’s oil directly from the Arctic to China. China has been developing and promoting a high-speed rail link that would effectively go from Beijing to Berlin and has been in economic negotiations with Germany.
The prosperity from those Eurasian investments may provide future global economic benefits that move towards trade and stability. But they more fully integrate China, Russia, and Europe much as the US was integrated in the first half of the 20th century with the massive rail and highway and air transport infrastructures.
The ball-and-chain of the Republican caucus in Congress and the failure of Democrats to educate the public on the real state of the world will make the US integration of its activities into this economic reality all the more difficult. At some point that will put us in a dependent relationship with this Eurasian system instead as one of the equal powers. Unless we very quickly wise up.
The attempt to establish a new American Century with US dominance and ability to act without restraint is rapidly closing. Even our friends are tired of the arrogance.
Good diary.
I will say I’ve been criticized in the past for using Asia Times as a source, for what it is worth. However, the analysis seems reasonable, assuming of course that the Euros come to some sort of deal with Russia over the Ukraine.
Sources reflect their context and who pays the freight. Take the opinion as a signal to start looking for similar information in other sources.
In this case, the writer Pepe Escobar has proved a reliable presenter of what might be called BRICS-framed opinion. Those opinions sway a large part of the world outside the US and should be given more consideration than the opinions of, say George Will and David Brooks, but looked at with the same scrutiny regarding facts.
I do not disagree, but sadly people with views that we have not been told are valid by the US media or other arbiters of what is acceptable will get you in trouble, as I have discovered all too often.
That said, I think his views here are somewhat speculative. China and Russia have been traditional enemies over the years. Could these current signs of rapprochement point to a far-reaching alliance in opposition to US power? Maybe, or this could be simply a marriage of convenience for the moment, soon to be discarded. I doubt anyone can predict what is most likely to happen but my money is on this being a far less important relationship/alliance than Mr. Escobar is suggesting.
My opinion, only, of course.
A strengthening of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization over the past decade is an institutional fact that says that his analysis is not totally speculative. And Russia and China have signed pipeline agreements that logistically make as much sense as the Keystone XL pipeline even if they don’t make ecological sense.
Whether speculative or not, a Beijing to Berlin high-speed rail network would be a geopolitical game-changer.
The US would be wise to get out of the war game and into the infrastructure game. For example, Bucky Fuller’s 50-year-old idea of interlinking electric smart grids across the Bering Straits to do global load balancing of electricity. (It also contributes to peace by making an infrastructure-destroying strike on the opposite side of the world come back to hurt the aggressor. MAD without the nukes.)
I understand the tendency to privilege the “free” press in the US over the “regulated” press elsewhere. But we have seen that distinction disappear over the past two decades. Each media outlet now stands on its own accuracy and integrity and does not get the halo of its national identity.