Category Archives: Multipolar World

The Year of the Tiger Starts With a Sino-Russian Bang

The Year of the Black Water Tiger will start, for all practical purposes, with a Beijing bang this Friday, as Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, after a live meeting before the initial ceremony of the Winter Olympics, will issue a joint statement on international relations.

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Blinken Humiliated after Announced Withdrawal of Russian-led Peacekeepers

The US went into overdrive in propagating against the short Russian-led peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) mechanism. The Wall Street Journal speculated whether “the Crisis in Kazakhstan [was] the Rebirth of the Soviet Union” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that “one lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.”

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‘The country that bombed you is your friend. The one that built your new railway is your enemy’

This is the Western media’s bizarre messaging to the people of Laos, a nation that was carpet bombed by America, and which is now being vilified for accepting a new $9 billion railway line paid for by China.

Thursday was National Day in Laos, a celebration marking 46 years since the landlocked Southeast Asian nation deposed its monarchy and became a revolutionary communist state, an effort which was supported by Vietnam.

This year, the anniversary had added significance, as it saw the opening of a major new project, an electrified high-speed and freight railway system connecting the capital city, Vientiane with its northern neighbour, China. 

The $9 billion project is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been hailed as one of its flagship achievements. It is the first commercial and industrial railway in Laos, which, given its geography and the fact it is surrounded by mountainous terrain, has not previously had many options to expand its exports and generate economic growth.

Now, though, it has a direct rapid link into the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market by population, and a connection to the booming ports of Guangdong. In terms of what it will bring to Laos, it is a game changer. So, what’s not to like about it?

To nobody’s surprise, the mainstream media have responded to the railway with the usual anti-China negativity. A plethora of articles sought to paint the project as a ‘debt trap’, promoting the accusation that Beijing loans countries money for projects they cannot afford and then exerts political leverage over it. 

The Financial Times, for one, ran with a cynical article headlined ‘Laos to open Chinese-built railway amid fears of Beijing’s influence’. It implied that somehow Laos feels threatened or fears the construction of this very pioneering railway project (which the country’s own leader made sure he was the first to travel on). This suggestion of ‘fears of Chinese influence’ has become a common feature on such stories, which seek to cast doubt over anything positive China may be achieving or doing. 

A common Twitter meme among pro-China users which has followed from stories like this asks: “but at what cost?” highlighting the frequency of such negative coverage.

And if you Google “China, but at what cost?” you can find a great many examples of articles published in major outlets. In producing such pieces, the broader intention is to depict Beijing’s actions as unwanted, threatening and constantly facing opposition. In the case of the Laos railway project, the ‘problem’ is it was financed by debt, and therefore it is not a positive step.

Yet this argument is as insulting as it is outright insensitive to Laos’ contemporary history. Anyone who knows anything about Laos’ relatively recent past will be well aware that China is not the country to fear, but the United States – the nation that dropped over 260 million cluster bombs on Laos and completely devastated the country as an extension of the Vietnam War, making it the most single bombed nation in history and claiming over 50,000 lives. 

Many of these bombs remain unexploded and litter the countryside of Laos, continuing to kill civilians. In constructing the new railway, workers first had to clear the unexploded ordnance. How is it that the world and the mainstream media remain indifferent to this atrocity? And how, by any stretch of the imagination, can they claim that China is the true threat to Laos, and that the US and its allies act in the true interests of the country?

Herein lies the problem. Such a mindset symbolizes the elitism, chauvinism and self-righteousness of the countries of the West, which are ideologically inclined to believe that they stand for the ‘true interests’ of the ordinary people in the countries they profess to liberate. 

Western politics peddles the assumption that through countries’ adherence to liberal democracy, they exclusively hold a single, universal, impartial and moralistic truth, derived from the ontological legacy of Christianity, and they have an obligation to introduce it to others. The West always acts truthfully and in good faith, while its enemies do not. And therefore, so the logic goes, any policy the US or its allies direct towards Laos is motivated by sincere intent and goodwill for its interests, and in turn, anything that China does is bad-faith, expansionist and power-hungry behaviour motivated by a desire to influence or control the country. 

This creates the bizarre scenario whereby Beijing is depicted as evil and sinister for building a railway to connect to its neighbour – but we should forget America dropping millions of bombs on the country because it was done in the name of ‘freedom’. I’m sure you can imagine how the media would react if China did the latter.

Those who push this narrative predictably omit any insight into how Laos itself thinks about the situation. Another piece which took a similar stance, published in The Diplomat, was titled ‘Laos-China Railway inaugurated amid mounting debt concerns’. 

But like the ‘fears of Beijing influence’ expressed in the FT, who are these ‘concerns’ from? The report cites the “Washington-based Center for Global Development” and what it merely describes as a “US based analyst” as sources who push the ‘debt trap’ narrative. But nowhere in any of these articles is there an actual voice direct from Laos who raises any fear of China, or objects to the railway’s existence. 

Instead, they simply talk on the country’s behalf, obscuring the reality that a communist state which suffered from extreme levels of aggression from the US probably does not see its northern neighbour – and its most important economic partner – as a threat to its regime. With many more articles running variations of the same theme, there is minimal effort given to the consideration that the railway will help the country rapidly expand its exports, sustain greater growth and help Laos pay for the project. 

The Laos-China railway has provided a textbook example of how the media can distort a story in order to fortify an incriminating narrative, while brushing aside brutal realities. We are shown a lopsided world, where the travesty of a country being bombed into oblivion with consequences lasting decades is ignored, and the preference is to try to convince us how that same country’s first commercial railway line is, in fact, what it should really be scared of. 

It is a demonstration of how the power of the English-language, pro-US media distorts reality itself and how they can blow up an issue, yet hide the truth, by professing to care dearly about the well-being and interests of a country which the West poured death, destruction and carnage upon in the name of freedom.

Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

United Eurasia: Russia is Betting the Days of Total U.S. Economic Supremacy are Ending

The centre of the world is moving. While once it sat somewhere within the Atlantic, balanced between Europe and the US, it is now moving east. With Asia on the rise, Russia is now planning its role at the heart of two continents.

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A ‘Strategic Apocalypse’ in Afghanistan: A Seismic Shift, Years in the Making

A huge geo-political event has just occurred in Afghanistan: The implosion of a key western strategy for managing what Mackinder, in the 19th century, called the Asian heartland. That it was accomplished, without fighting, and in few days, is almost unprecedented.

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Afghanistan to be Integrated into China’s “Belt and Road”

There’s a reason why the Talibans are not rampaging inside Kabul to celebrate their victory over the US military — Afghanistan’s economic cooperation with China via the Belt and Road Initiative will be in full swing.

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A New Great Game is Afoot in Afghanistan, as China Hosts the Taliban

The inviting of a delegation from the Taliban Islamic fundamentalist group to Beijing this week has raised eyebrows across the world. Is China being clever, or does it face grave dangers on entering the “graveyard of empires”?

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China Mega Investment Deal With Iran Blows U.S. Out of the Picture

China has just announced that it will invest 400 billion dollars in Iran over a period of 25 years in exchange for a great deal on Iran’s oil – in the latest move of absolute defiance against the U.S. and its secondary sanctions. Where’s this all heading?

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The US-Russia Bering Strait Rail Tunnel Project

In a recent paper entitled ‘Tomorrow’s Arctic: Theatre of War or Cooperation?’ I introduced readers to the US-Russian grand design which shaped not only the sale of Alaska in October 1867 to the USA for $7.5 million, but also Russia’s involvement in the American Civil War as Czar Alexander II arranged the deployment of Russian military fleets to San Francisco and New York.

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A Stunning Success: China’s International Development Cooperation

One of the most significant chapters in China’s newly released white paper concerns its support of developing countries’ endogenous growth, which crucially contradicts the US’ information warfare narrative that Beijing is laying so-called “debt traps” for its partners.

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All that is Solid Mutates into Air: Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Today all radio stations on Planet Earth should be playing this song. What the aptly named Fifth Dimension immortalized in their spring of 1969 psychedelic soul classic is now literally true: This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius – the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21st  at 𝟬° in Aquarius.

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RCEP: World’s Biggest Trade Deal Signed While Deep State Brings U.S. Closer to Civil War

While a civil war is looming in the US, several nations in the Asia Pacific region are silently bringing their economies closer together, and have finally signed the world’s biggest trade agreement ever. This milestone proves that these countries strongly reject the view that a threat of force is the only means of maintaining order in the region.

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Two Paradigms Clash: U.S.-China-Russia Partnership that Won WW2 or Hellish Plunge Into WW3

The Pentagon’s new military report on China released on September 1st has demonstrated that the outdated and deadly Cold War mentality which has wrought such destruction upon the world since the end of WWII has not only become more deeply embedded into the psyche of dominant foreign policy officials in the Pentagon, it demonstrated that the current American establishment is totally unfit to survive in today’s nuclear age.

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The Historic Clash of Two Opposing Geopolitical Paradigms

Compared the great initiatives taken on behalf of freedom and anti colonialism throughout the past 260 years, today’s America appears to be a strange and foolish creature running roughshod over the dignity of people and nations in a race for mass nuclear extermination.

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Russia and China Have Put A Choke Hold on the Deep State Again

As you can observe in the past few weeks, the Deep State has launched all types of offensives against Russia and China in order to remain relevant. Fence sitting actors are also playing their part to project that they are actually for one side over another. But who’s going to win in the final battle between full spectrum dominance and multipolarity?

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China and Iran Deepening Bilateral Ties with A 25-Year $400 billion Strategic Partnership

In contrast to endless US war on humanity, China, Russia, Iran, and other nonbelligerent nations on its target list for regime change pursue cooperative relations with other countries — hostility toward none.

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China’s Growing Influence in Central Asia, Middle East Will Lead to Further U.S. Decline

China’s increasing presence on the international scene is an undeniable threat to the US-led world order. Critical to China’s emergence as a major power this century, has been its widening influence in the Central Asian states. Central Asia, rich in mineral reserves, is among the earth’s most strategically important regions. Control over Central Asia ensures access to raw materials such as oil or gas, while it stands as a “guardpost” against US hegemony over the Persian Gulf further south.

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The Global Reset: Unplugged from the Deep State

Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.

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Oil Wars Between Russia & Saudi Arabia May Destroy U.S. Shale Oil Industry Instead

Oil prices crash 27% and counting, as the new oil wars begin, when Russia decided not to give in to Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s request to cut down production by 1.5 million of barrels per day.

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What Part of “Go home” Don’t You Understand? – Iraq to US

Even amongst Iraq’s more pro-US factions, the calls for “Yankee go home” have grown increasingly louder. Yet, there are some sectors who still argued that when the resolution was passed to evict the US forces from Iraq, there were only Shia legislators and no Sunnis attending the session.

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