The West’s ‘rules-based order’ invokes rulers’
authority; Russia-China say it’s time to return
to law-based order
By Pepe Escobar
July 03, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - - "Asia
Times" -
We do live in extraordinary times.
On the day of the 100th anniversary of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
President Xi Jinping,
in Tiananmen square, amid all the pomp and
circumstance, delivered a stark geopolitical message:
The Chinese people will never allow foreign
forces to intimidate, oppress or subjugate them.
Anyone who tries to do this will find themselves on
a collision course with a large steel wall forged by
more than 1.4 billion Chinese.
I have offered a
concise version of the modern Chinese miracle –
which has nothing to do with divine intervention,
but “searching truth from facts” (copyright Deng
Xiaoping), inspired by a solid cultural and
historical tradition.
The “large steel wall” evoked by Xi now permeates
a dynamic “moderately prosperous society” – a goal
achieved by the CCP on the eve of the centennial.
Lifting over 800 million people out of poverty is a
historical first – in every aspect.
As in all things China, the past informs the
future. This is all about xiaokang – which
may be loosely translated as “moderately prosperous
society”.
The concept first appeared no less than 2,500
years ago, in the classic Shijing (“The
Book of Poetry”). The Little Helmsman Deng, with his
historical eagle eye, revived it in 1979, right at
the start of the “opening up” economic reforms.
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Now compare the breakthrough celebrated in
Tiananmen – which will be interpreted all across the
Global South as evidence of the success of a Chinese
model for economic development – with footage being
circulated of the Taliban riding captured T-55 tanks
across impoverished villages in northern
Afghanistan.
History Repeating: this is something I saw with
my own eyes over twenty years ago.
The Taliban now control nearly the same amount of
Afghan territory they did immediately before 9/11.
They control the border with Tajikistan and are
closing in on the border with Uzbekistan.
Exactly twenty years ago I was deep into yet
another epic journey across Karachi, Peshawar, the
Pakistan tribal areas, Tajikistan and finally the
Panjshir valley, where I interviewed Commander
Masoud – who told me the Taliban at the time were
controlling 85% of Afghanistan.
Three weeks later Masoud was assassinated by an
al-Qaeda-linked commando disguised as “journalists”
– two days before 9/11. The empire – at the height
of the unipolar moment – went into
Forever Wars on overdrive, while China – and
Russia – went deep into consolidating their
emergence, geopolitically and geoeconomically.
We are now living the consequences of these
opposed strategies.
That strategic partnership
President Putin has just spent three hours and
fifty minutes answering non-pre-screened questions,
live, from Russian citizens during his annual
‘Direct Line’ session. The notion that Western
“leaders” of the Biden, BoJo, Merkel and Macron kind
would be able to handle something even remotely
similar, non-scripted, is laughable.
The key takeaway: Putin stressed US elites
understand that the world is changing but still want
to preserve their dominant position. He illustrated
it with the recent
British caper in Crimea straight out of a Monty
Python fail, a “complex provocation” that was in
fact Anglo-American: a NATO aircraft had previously
conducted a reconnaissance flight. Putin: “It was
obvious that the destroyer entered [Crimean waters]
pursuing military goals.”
Earlier this week Putin and Xi held a
videoconference. One of the key items was quite
significant: the
extension of the China-Russia Treaty of Good
Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, originally
signed 20 years ago.
A key provision: “When a situation arises in
which one of the contracting parties deems that…it
is confronted with the threat of aggression, the
contracting parties shall immediately hold contacts
and consultations in order to eliminate such
threats.”
This treaty is at the heart of what is now
officially described – by Moscow and Beijing – as a
“comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination
for a new era”. Such a broad definition is warranted
because this is a complex multi-level partnership,
not an “alliance”, designed as a counterbalance and
viable alternative to hegemony and unilateralism.
A graphic example is provided by the progressive
interpolation of two trade/development strategies,
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia
Economic Union (EAEU), which Putin and Xi again
discussed, in connection with the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was founded
only three months before 9/11.
It’s no wonder that one of the highlights in
Beijing this week were trade talks between the
Chinese and
four Central Asia “stans” – all of them SCO
members.
“Law” and “rule”
The defining multipolarity road map has been
sketched in an
essay by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that
deserves careful examination.
Lavrov surveys the results of the recent G7, NATO
and US-EU summits prior to Putin-Biden in Geneva:
These meetings were carefully prepared in a
way that leaves no doubt that the West wanted to
send a clear message: it stands united like never
before and will do what it believes to be right in
international affairs, while forcing others,
primarily Russia and China, to follow its lead. The
documents adopted at the Cornwall and Brussels
summits cemented the rules-based world order concept
as a counterweight to the universal principles of
international law with the UN Charter as its primary
source. In doing so, the West deliberately shies
away from spelling out the rules it purports to
follow, just as it refrains from explaining why they
are needed.
As he dismisses how Russia and China have been
labeled as “authoritarian powers” (or “illiberal”,
according to the favorite New York-Paris-London
mantra), Lavrov smashes Western hypocrisy:
While proclaiming the ‘right’ to interfere in
the domestic affairs of other countries for the sake
of promoting democracy as it understands it, the
West instantly loses all interest when we raise the
prospect of making international relations more
democratic, including renouncing arrogant behavior
and committing to abide by the universally
recognized tenets of international law instead of
‘rules’.
That provides Lavrov with an opening for a
linguistic analysis of “law” and “rule”:
In Russian, the words “law” and “rule” share
a single root. To us, a rule that is genuine and
just is inseparable from the law. This is not the
case for Western languages. For instance, in
English, the words “law” and “rule” do not share any
resemblance. See the difference? “Rule” is not so
much about the law, in the sense of generally
accepted laws, as it is about the decisions taken by
the one who rules or governs. It is also worth
noting that “rule” shares a single root with
“ruler,” with the latter’s meanings including the
commonplace device for measuring and drawing
straight lines. It can be inferred that through its
concept of “rules” the West seeks to align everyone
around its vision or apply the same yardstick to
everybody, so that everyone falls into a single
file.
In a nutshell: the road to multipolarity will not
follow “ultimatums”. The G20, where the BRICS are
represented, is a “natural platform” for “mutually
accepted agreements”. Russia for its part is driving
a Greater Eurasia Partnership. And a “polycentric
world order” implies the necessary reform of the UN
Security Council, “strengthening it with Asian,
African and Latin American countries”.
Will the Unilateral Masters ply this road? Over
their dead bodies: after all, Russia and China are
“existential threats”. Hence our collective angst,
spectators under the volcano.
Pepe Escobar is
correspondent-at-large at
Asia Times.
His latest book is
2030. Follow him on
Facebook.
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