Obama, Biden and Trump have tried to hamper the rise of China. But Obama and Biden pushed Russia into the arms of China. And Trump managed to push India into the arms of Russia and China.
The absence of strategic thinking in the 'West' is palpable.
The ongoing meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is, like similar meetings of BRICS, just one building stone of the new world order. Many more will be needed. A clear outline of the new order has yet to develop:
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday proposed the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) at the "Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus" Meeting in Tianjin.
"I look forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system and advancing toward a community with a shared future for humanity," Xi said when addressing the meeting.
He highlighted five principles for the GGI:
- First, we should adhere to sovereign equality.
- Second, we should abide by international rule of law.
- Third, we should practice multilateralism.
- Fourth, we should advocate the people-centered approach.
- Fifth, we should focus on taking real actions.
Nice concepts and words. I agree with them. But where is the beef? At some point muscles will be needed to back them up.
Two days ago Israel murdered the civilian government of Yemen:
Israel killed the prime minister of Yemen’s Houthi government and several cabinet ministers in a Thursday airstrike on Sanaa, delivering the first successful strike against senior officials in the Iran-aligned group’s leadership, Reuters reported.
Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council, confirmed Saturday that Prime Minister Ahmad Ghaleb al-Rahwi died in the attack, along with the energy, foreign and information ministers, according to sources, Reuters reported. Al-Mashat did not clarify whether Defense Minister Mohamed al-Atifi survived the strike.
Prime Minister Ahmad Ghaleb al-Rahwi was the head of the civilian administration. He was not even a Houthi or member of Ansar Islam and had no influence on military things.
The wholesale killing of the civilian government of a dirt-poor country should be a wake-up call. So should be this:
Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring Israel’s "policies and actions in Gaza" had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide.
There is a real danger that such sick behavior will metastasize:
Smotrich declared this week that the Jewish people are experiencing ‘physically’, “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.
It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek (see Jonathan Muskat in Times of Israel)).
Thus we can see Washington’s new found thrall for de-capitation of intransigent leaderships (Yemen, Syria and Iran); the support for the political neutering of Hizbullah and the Shi’a in Lebanon; the normalisation of assassination for recalcitrant heads of state (as was mooted for Imam Kamenei); and for the toppling of state structures (i.e. as planned for Iran on 13 June).
The transformation of Israel to this Revisionist Zionism – and its hold over key factions of U.S. thinking – is precisely why war between Iran and Israel has come to be perceived as inevitable.
So what will, or can, the new Global Governance do about this?
Nothing – at least yet – it seems.
Still, the difference between the old and the new is already visible.
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