All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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.
Spread the Truth, Refer a Friend to Global Research
***
After the Second World War, the Anglo-Saxon world’s world domination thesis, imposed with all the power of the victor, was balanced with the Soviet Union, and the world had a bipolar world order until 1989. The collapse of the Soviets, who saved Europe from Hitler’s fascism by sacrificing 25 million people (one third of them were women) in the Second World War, 45 years later, gave the Anglo-Saxon hegemony unlimited freedom of action.
Neocons Without Borders
There is no gap in the balance of power. The Warsaw Pact and the rapid dissolution of the Soviet Union gave great morale and energy to American neocons. Russia should also be disintegrated, and all states on the border – including Turkiye – should come under the full control of the USA. Moreover, the borders of the 22 states in North Africa and the Middle East had to be shaped according to American geopolitics and neo-liberal political economy. This vision was beyond the imagination of even George Kennan, who gave life to the USA’s famous Soviet Containment Strategy in 1946. NATO expansion, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and brutal interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were the requirements of this vision. According to them, there was no power that could balance American power. However, American neocons could not take advantage of China’s rise in the process of realizing this vision.
Pacific Balances
The USA had won with a very strong superiority in the Pacific basin at the end of 1945. Even though China was communist, it was a weak threat to the USA compared to the Soviets. George Kennan, the mastermind of Containment, was wary of direct military conflict despite the rise of Communist China. The containment strategy also applied to China. According to him, the further spread of Communism in Asia should be prevented. He advocated support for non-communist regimes in the region. He implemented a strategy that included diplomacy and economic measures instead of military intervention. However, the strategic picture changed with the involvement of North Korea in the war between North and South Korea between 1950-53. The USA fought against China. Although China was founded in 1949, the USA did not recognize Beijing for 22 years and had Taiwan (Nationalist China) accepted as China’s representative in the UN Security Council. The decision on the American-sponsored UN intervention in the Korean War was made with this tactic.
US-China Approach
In 1969, 20 years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the war between the Soviets and China over the border issue brought the US administration closer to China. China’s inclusion in the edge belt system in the geopolitical perspective has emerged. However, China was a completely isolated state until the visit of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1971. The USA, on the other hand, was friends and allies with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the five founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. These states did not have trade or even diplomatic relations with China in 1971. When (ASEAN) was born in 1967 as an American project to create a sphere of influence against communism during the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union and China strongly opposed it. However, after the visits of Kissinger in 1971 and Nixon in 1973, China’s isolation was lifted and China quickly integrated into the outside world. So much so that in November 2000, China proposed a free trade agreement to ASEAN. This initiative put into effect the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), which is considered one of the largest free trade areas in the world, on January 1, 2010.
Lessons from the Soviet Collapse
The impact of the US-China rapprochement, which started after US President Nixon’s visit in 1973, played an important role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. So much so that the USA and China became close enough to carry out joint activities during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However, China saw that what happened to the Soviets after 1989 would also happen to it as a rising Asian power. Because, although the state practiced capitalism in practice, it was a communist state and its regime had to be changed and come under the control of the USA. Evaluating the collapse of Soviet communism, Chinese governments learned lessons from the collapsed Soviet economy despite having huge energy resources. Singaporean diplomat and former UN representative Kishore Mahbubani writes these in his book “Did China Win?”:
“First of all, the Soviet Union collapsed not because of external pressures, but because of internal weaknesses. China is aware of the fact that ‘To survive, you need to have a strong, dynamic economy and a strong, dynamic society’. Meanwhile, in 1949, American strategist George Kennan said that the outcome of the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union would depend not on our weapons and soldiers, but on which society has greater spiritual vitality. US society was much more dynamic than that of the Soviet Union. The United States prospered and the Soviet Union collapsed. The Chinese know that the first priority is to ensure a strong economy and a strong society; So they are greatly educating their people and growing their economies so they won’t become a second Soviet Union.”
China and Containment
China, which increased its economic stability, growth and prosperity domestically, later focused on globalization by taking advantage of the opportunities opened to it by the USA. They learned a lesson from the isolation of Soviets surrounded by the USA. According to Kishore Mahbubani, China made a preemptive move against the containment policy and made its neighbors dependent on the Chinese economy. The best example of this is the free trade agreement with ASEAN, which consists entirely of countries under US control, in 2000. It was extremely surprising that China was the first country to propose a free trade agreement to ASEAN. In 2000, ASEAN’s trade with the USA was 135 billion dollars, and its trade with China was only 40 billion dollars. In 2022, ASEAN’s trade with the United States increased to $450-500 billion (an increase of more than threefold), while China’s trade with ASEAN jumped from $40 billion to almost one trillion. This was a world record. Mahbubani describes it as madness for ASEAN countries to engage in a containment policy against China in the future with US triggering and pressure. This situation reveals the difficulty of countries receiving infrastructure investments through China’s Belt and Road project to participate in similar containment and sanctions.
Multipolar Order and Living in Peace
Geopolitical rivalries cannot be overcome without mutual trust and cooperation between countries. In geopolitical competition, mutual recognition of areas of influence and interest is essential, as was the case during the Cold War. The USA recognized the Soviet sphere of influence in 1945 and agreed to live in a bipolar world until 1989. Today, it wants to see and keep the whole world in its sphere of influence. Neocons want continents, not just oceans. But they can’t afford this anymore. They may see their power run out by experiencing a major world war, but a major world war due to nuclear weapons will be a war with no winners. Then, the best choice left is to accept peaceful coexistence within the multipolar world order. The concept of peaceful coexistence was first expressed by Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai in 1953. It was later adopted at the Bandung Conference (1955), which paved the way for the Non-Aligned movement.
China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were: Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty./Mutual non-aggression. /Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. /Equality and mutual benefit. /Peaceful coexistence.
This concept was damaged by the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1956 Soviet Intervention in Hungary, and the 1962 China-India border war in the Himalayas region. The Sino-Soviet separation that started in the 1960s also played a role in this process. The world communist movement was also divided into two.
The concept of Living Together in Peace was also used by Soviet President Brezhnev in 1959. Brezhnev focused on the necessity of living in peace with the capitalist world by keeping ideological differences separate. This understanding, which emphasized preventing nuclear war and giving importance to diplomacy, economic and cultural relations, was damaged by the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring in 1968. This time, the Détente policy put forward by the Soviets since the 1970s was designed to support the vision of Peaceful Coexistence. Despite the setbacks experienced during the Arab-Israeli war in 1973, this policy led to successes, especially the reduction and restriction of nuclear weapons and the signing of the Helsinki Final Act.
During the Neocon domination period that emerged after the Cold War, the USA imposed its own values under the rule-based world order. Neoliberal capitalist economy based on Judeo-Christian morality; human rights, democracy, freedom of belief and thought have become a chewing gum in the mouth of American diplomats, politicians and representatives. Since there was no enemy left as a great power, a new threat was created under the global war on terrorism. However, a double standard has been created to the extent of calling terrorist organizations close to it, such as PKK, YPG/PYD, its land force, or using organizations such as ISIS, which it founded, as a means of strategic action.
Russia’s intervention in Georgia in 2008 and China’s serious change in attitude towards the USA, Japan and the Philippines in the South and East China seas starting from 2012 triggered a great resistance to neocon imperialism and led to today.
The President of China made a speech at the Conference Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in Beijing on June 28, 2024.
Xi emphasized the following: “Over the past 70 years, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence have demonstrated that they have strong resilience and enduring validity, transcending time and space and resisting alienation. These principles have become the open, inclusive and universally applicable basic norms of international relations and the basic principles of international law… In this historical period when humanity has had to decide between peace and war, prosperity and stagnation, unity and confrontation, we have always followed the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. We must defend ourselves more than ever before and strive tirelessly for the supreme goal of building a community with a common future for humanity…Among all the powers in the world, the Global South stands out with strong momentum and plays a crucial role in the progress of humanity…The Global South is at a new historical starting point It needs to be more open and inclusive… It needs to join hands and take the lead in building a community with a common future for humanity…”
The Multipolar World Has Started
The economic axis has already turned from west to east. The dark Anglo-Saxon dominance with its colonial past is in decline. The biggest reason for this decline is the rise of China and Russia’s resistance. The failure of the US neocons to restrain their geopolitical ambitions and the fact that they repeatedly made huge mistakes and dragged the world into disasters played a role in the decline of the Anglo-Saxon leadership. Even though the military power that would balance them emerged, such as Russia after 2008, the main thing was the emergence of a military power that also had economic power.
China did this.
Today, an alternative order is being built to the Western-centered economic system governed by the USA after 1945. In 2006, Russia, China, Brazil and India created a global economic initiative, forming the “BRIC” group. The Republic of South Africa joined the group in 2010 and the initiative was named “BRICS”. The 5-member BRICS later grew by adding 4 more members. Today, the 9 countries in BRICS+ own 45% of the world’s population, 36% of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity, 25% of world exports and 44% of crude oil production. BRICS increased its share in the global economy to 35.7% in 2023. G7 remained at 29%.
The group includes global/continental nuclear powers such as UN Security Council permanent members China and Russia, and continental economic/military powers such as India, Brazil and the Republic of South Africa. With the latest expansion, the states that control two critical waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal (Iran, UAE and Egypt) have taken their place in BRICS+. Perhaps the most important feature of BRICS+ is the combination of today’s representatives of the world’s oldest civilizations and cultures. It consists of states with 25 countries are waiting for BRICS membership.
On the other hand, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was established in 1996 with 5 states under the leadership of China to improve military cooperation in the border regions, turned into a 10-member balancing entity with the participation of Belarus at the 24th SCO Summit held in Astana on July 4, 2024.
Making a speech at the summit, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said: “In the current conditions where rapid and irreversible changes are experienced in the world, the active entrepreneurial attitude of the SCO in international relations is definitely needed. The multipolar world has become a reality”. Noting that he believe that the SCO and BRICS are the pillars of the emerging new world order, Putin emphasized that these two international entities are the locomotive of the approval of multipolarity.
The growth of SCO and BRICS+ will undoubtedly contribute to the establishment of a multipolar world order without large-scale wars.
The question is whether the Anglo-Saxons can endure this outcome with the will to live together in peace.
The problem is that whether the US statesmen and politicians, who maintained peace in the bipolar world without war between 1945 and 1989 and were able to establish a balanced geopolitical order with the Soviets, left the legacy in question to the unqualified and short-sighted Americans, who this time live in a world of dreams dominated by Zionists and neocons, some of whom draw their strength from the Bible and the Torah can repeat it or not!
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
The original source of this article is Veryansin TV.
Ret Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Writer, Geopolitical Expert, Theorist and creator of the Turkish Bluehomeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine. He served as the Chief of Strategy Department and then the head of Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters. As his combat duties, he has served as the commander of Amphibious Ships Group and Mine Fleet between 2007 and 2009. He retired in 2012. He established Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021. He has published numerous books on geopolitics, maritime strategy, maritime history and maritime culture. He is also a honorary member of ATASAM.
Featured image is from Veryansin TV
