The price for calling Saudi Arabia a pariah state

What the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis have brought to the surface is the latent geopolitical reality that the Global South rejects the policies of neo-mercantalism pursued by the West in the garb of ‘liberal internationalism.’

The West is pursuing a hierarchical international order. None other than the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell blurted this out in an unguarded moment recently with a touch of racist overtone when he said from a public platform that ‘Europe Is a garden. The rest of the world Is a jungle, and the jungle could Invade the garden.’

Tomorrow, China could as well be challenging the US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. The recent paper by the Chinese Foreign Ministry titled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’ tells us that Beijing will no longer be on the defensive.

Meanwhile, a realignment of forces on the world stage is taking place with China and Russia on one side and the US on the other. Doesn’t it convey a big message that on the very eve of the historic announcement in Beijing on Friday, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud landed suddenly in Moscow on a ‘working visit’ and went into a huddle with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who was visibly delighted? (here, here and here )

Of course, we will never know what role Moscow would have played behind the scenes in coordination with Beijing to build bridges between Riyadh and Tehran. All we know that Russia and China actively coordinate their foreign policy moves. Interestingly, on March 6, President Putin had a telephone conversation with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.

To be sure, the geopolitics of West Asia will never be the same again. Realistically, the first sparrow of spring has appeared but the ice was melted for only three or four rods from the shore. Nonetheless, the sun’s rays give hope, signalling warmer days to come.

Conceivably, Riyadh won’t have any truck further with the diabolical plots hatched in Washington and Tel Aviv to resuscitate an anti-Iran alliance in West Asia. Nor is it in the realms of possibility that Saudi Arabia will be party to any US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

This badly isolates Israel in the region and renders the US toothless. In substantive terms, it scatters the Biden administration’s feverish efforts lately to cajole Riyadh to join Abraham Accords.

However, significantly, a commentary in Global Times noted somewhat audaciously that the Saudi-Iranian deal “set a positive example for other regional hotspot issues, such as the easing and settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And in the future, China could play an important role in building a bridge for countries to solve long-standing thorny issues in the Middle East just as what it did this time.”

Indeed, the joint communique issued in Beijing says, “The three countries [Saudi Arabia, Iran and China] expressed their kenenness to exert all efforts towards enhancing regional and international peace and security.” Can China pull a rabbit out of the hat? Time will tell.

For the present, though, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will certainly have positive fallouts on the efforts toward a negotiated settlement in Yemen and Syria as well as on the political instability in Lebanon.

Besides, the joint communique emphasises that Saudi Arabia and Iran intend to revive the 1998 General Agreement for Cooperation in the Fields of Economy, Trade, Investment, Technology, Science, Culture, Sports, and Youth. All in all, the Biden administration’s maximum pressure strategy toward Iran has crashed and the West’s sanctions against Iran are being rendered ineffectual. The US’ policy options on Iran have shrunk. Put differently, Iran gains strategic depth to negotiate with the US.

The cutting edge of the US sanctions lies in the restrictions on Iran’s oil trade and access to western banks. It is entirely conceivable that a backlash is about to begin as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia — three top oil/gas producing countries start accelerating their search for payment mechanisms bypassing the American dollar.

Anonymous

The rest of the world turning against white hegemony

That is another slap on the face of the West. In Anchorage, Alaska, Senior Chinese diplomat, Yang Jiechi was reported to have used Mandarin in his retort against Blinken of the USA and he refused to debate in English. Not that Yang Jiechi does not speak or understand English. Even though Yang had his earlier education in China, he later pursued further education at the University of Bath and London School of Economics. He also served as Chinese Ambassador to the USA for several years. Can he not understand and speak English? What do you think and why he refused to speak in English? Days of outright dictating by the USA are over.

When China invited countries to participate in space research after successfully launching its Tiangong Space Station, the USA unashamedly applied. Knowing that it will most likely be rejected, it tried to instigate and demonise China by insisting that China must provide only English signage on the Tiangong Space Station and use English instead of Chinese instruction manuals. It even said that China's Tiangong Space Station must meet its standard in order for the USA to participate.

China categorically told the USA off by pointing out that the USA had nothing of value to add to the research and rejected the USA application. Most of the countries that applied and who were accepted, are now putting their astronauts through a language immersion course in Mandarin to familarise themselves with the language. As I said earlier, the days of USA blatant dictating is now over. China does not recognise the USA's 'Rules Based Order' rubbish.

China must continue to take such a stand and insist on its application in every aspect. What is good for the country must never be hijacked by others out to destroy its culture and heritage.

Anonymous 

White Peril is an existential threat to the rest of the world

Mahbubani also talked about the “emotional force” that is driving the geopolitical rivalry, notably how the West harbours a “fear of the yellow peril”, referring to the metaphor that depicts the Asian world as an existential danger to the West.   mothership.sg

The yellow peril was a white men's creation to smear China, to frighten themselves and extended this to frighten the rest of the coloured people of the world. After decades of oppression in China, after invading and bankrupting China from plundering and looting and cutting up China into pieces, the white men turned around to fabricate the weakened and impoverished Chinaman as the yellow peril, a threat to their existence. They created a whole series of lies and caricatures, cartoons, comics, movies, slangs etc etc to demonise the Chinese as evil and subhumans when the white men were the real wicked devils that destroyed China and the Chinese people as a Civilisation.

The white men not only destroyed and massacred the Chinese, they massacred and genocided practically every country and people across the world in the tens and hundreds of millions, the native Americans in North and South America, Africans, Arabs and Muslims, the Indians and Pakistanis, Burmese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Malays, Indonesians, Pinoys, the aborigines in Australia and New Zealanders and the Pacific islanders.

They are the real devils, the white savages that killed in the hundreds of millions of coloured people and took over their land and resources.

How can China be an existential threat to the white men when China has never invaded or conducted war in Europe, North America, Australia or New Zealand? China has nerver killed a white man in wars except in defending North Korea and China during the Korean War when hundreds of thousands of Chinese were killed by the Americans and allied forces.

This vicious myth of the yellow peril is nothing but a lie compares to the real White Peril that had massacred and genocided the rest of the world and planning to do it again. The White Peril is the real existential threat not only to the Chinese but to the rest of the coloured people of the world.

The lie of the yellow peril is a vicious white men's lie to divide the world, to demonise China as the bad guy and the white devils and savages as the good guy, afraid of China attacking them. The white men's mischievous narrative must be debunked and put right for the good of the rest of the world.

The White Peril must be stopped before it starts another massacre and genocide of the coloured people of the world. This is a real existential threat. No bullshit.

China as a world mediator for peace. No need fake Nobel Peace Prize for warmongers

The Iran/Saudi Arabia deal, brokered by the Chinese is a very humilating setback for the USA. It shows that China is now more well regarded and recognised as the power that is overshadowing the USA's influence in the Middle East. For several decades the USA held sway over the Middle East, but instead of calling for peace, had been instigating conflicts between these two for decades.

Let us hope the Evil Empire does not sabotage the peace deal with a false flag. They are famous for doing that, and the whole world knows they are capable of carrying that out. Such sabotage may not be immediate, but will be discreetly planned and executed, like the Nord Stream pipeline attack. Some claimed that the bombs on the Nord Stream pipelines were already in place in mid 2022 and set off in September 2022.

They now have to plan if they intend to sabotage the Iran/Saudi Arabia peace deal, first finding a loophole to escape direct involvement and a scapegoat to take the blame. Israel comes to mind as it is already throwing disdain and unhappiness over the deal and had been posturing to blow up the Iranian nuclear facilities for years.

It is now up to Iran and Saudi Arabia to trust each other and not be suckered into believing any inpending attack as one side trying to destroy the other despite the peace deal. It is difficult to avoid that no doubt, when terrorist are planning an attack on the sly. 

  Anonymous 

A New Era Has Dawned in World Politics

The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.

The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to the noble initiative of President Xi Jinping.” The dramatic beginning goes on to state that Saudi Arabia and Iran have expressed their “appreciation and gratitude” to Xi Jinping and the Chinese government “for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success.”

The joint communique also mentioned Iraq and Oman for fostering the Saudi-Iranian dialogue during 2021-2022. But the salience is that the United States, which has been traditionally the dominant power in West Asian politics for close to eight decades, is nowhere in the picture.

Yet, this is about the reconciliation between the two biggest regional powers in the Persian Gulf region. The US retrenchment denotes a colossal breakdown of American diplomacy. It will remain a black mark in President Biden’s foreign policy legacy.

But Biden must take the blame for it. Such a cataclysmic failure is largely to be traced to his fervour to impose his neoconservative dogmas as an adjunct of America’s military might and Biden’s own frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy.

China has shown that Biden’s hyperbole is delusional and it grates against realities. If Biden’s moralistic, ill-considered rhetoric alienated Saudi Arabia, his attempts to suppress Iran met with stubborn resistance from Tehran. And, in the final analysis, Biden literally drove both Riyadh and Tehran to search for countervailing forces that would help them to push back his oppressive, overbearing attitude.

The US’ humiliating exclusion from the centre stage of West Asian politics constitutes a “Suez moment” for the superpower, comparable to the crisis experienced by the UK in 1956, which obliged the British to sense that their imperial project had reached a dead end and the old way of doing things—whipping weaker nations into line as ostensible obligations of global leadership —was no longer going to work and would only lead to disastrous reckoning.

The stunning part here is the sheer brain power and intellectual resources and ‘soft power’ that China has brought into play to outwit the US. The US has at least 30 military bases in West Asia — five in Saudi Arabia alone — but it has lost the mantle of leadership. Come to think of it, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China made their landmark announcement on the very same day Xi Jinping got elected for a third term as president.

What we are seeing is a new China under the leadership of Xi Jinping trotting over the high knoll. Yet, it is adopting a self-effacing posture claiming no laurels for itself. There is no sign of the ‘Middle Kingdom syndrome,’ which the US propagandists had warned against.

On the contrary, for the world audience — especially countries like India or Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil or South Africa — China has presented a salutary example of how a democratised multipolar world can work in future — how it is possible to anchor big power diplomacy on consensual, conciliatory politics, trade and interdependence and advance a ‘win-win’ outcome.

Implicit in this is another huge message here: China as a factor of global balance and stability. It is not only Asia-Pacific and West Asia who are watching. The audience also includes Africa and Latin America — in fact, the entire non-Western world that forms the big majority of world community who are known as the Global South.

Anonymous