Whither the international rules-based order?

 

 

US’ so-called rule-based order means international gangsterism

 The United States’ so-called rule-based order is  gangsterism while its sanctions on other countries are illegal, a renowned Canadian lawyer has said a recent interview. Christopher Black, a veteran Canadian lawyer who has been involved in a number of high-profile cases, including defending former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, strongly condemned actions from the U.S. and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which have repeatedly accused other countries of destroying postwar international orders, portraying themselves defenders of international order. The lawyer believes that U.S. sanctions on other countries are illegal and are a ploy to defend its economic wars against other countries.

 

 

 China's challenge to the rules-based order 

 

 

Top priority: The moral principle that we all should live peacefully on one planet should over-ride sovereign nations fighting over power and ego from turf to space, when humanity could be burned by climate warming or nuclear war. — AFP

 

EVERYDAY, we are told we must defend the rules-based order. But whose order? What rules? Why should we defend an order if we did not have a say in shaping?

All this is in the realm of politics and geo-politics. The biggest thinker who shaped the current neoliberal order was Austrian philosopher Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), whose ideas of classical liberalism of freedom, democracy and self-order of markets dominated global relations.

Neoliberalism was put into practice in the 1980s, when US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pushed through the free market philosophy that swept away Keynesian state intervention of the 1950-1970s.

The deeper thinker on the whole question of constitutional law, politics and international order was German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), whose influence on conservative political circles in almost all the Big Powers has been growing.

I only became aware of Schmitt’s work when Noema magazine wrote an editorial on Schmitt’s Nomos of the Earth (1950).

Schmitt is controversial, because he essentially wrote the legal basis for Nazism in the 1920s, which accounts for his ostracisation (in today’s language “cancelled”) from academic circles for decades.

 

Main priority: A demonstration calling on the German government not to intervene in the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine, in Berlin. The moral principle that we all should live peacefully on one planet should over-ride sovereign nations fighting over power and ego from turf to space, when humanity could be burned by climate warming or nuclear war. — AFP

Schmitt was a brutally realist thinker who explored the legal foundations of European political theory. Schmitt argues that no order can function without a sovereign authority. A state is legally constituted when the politics distinguishes between friend and enemy and when the citizens are willing to fight and die for its identity. The state alone is given the power of violence (and enforcement) by the citizens to enforce the law.

Schmitt is considered an authoritarian supporter, because he saw sovereign power resting ultimately in the Executive (rather than the Legislature or Judiciary) because the sovereign (i.e. the President) decides on the exceptional situation, where he/she must suspend the law because of war or assume emergency powers in order to restore order.

Decisions by the Executive are either bound by law or bounded by his or her moral bearings.

The world is today watching on TV whether former President Trump is morally culpable for causing the Jan 6, 2021 riots, or legally culpable.

The Ukraine war is being supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or Nato on a matter of moral principle for a non-member, but if the war escalates to nuclear global destruction that kills all, how do we trade off the individual rights with the collective right of everyone else to survive?

Schmitt dissected the European constitutional laws and international order, dividing them into three phases: pre-1500, 1648 to 1919 (World War I) and thereafter.

Before the discovery of America, European powers fought each other under a religious cloak, since the Pope decided on disputes of rights on moral grounds.

Indeed, it was the Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493 that authorised the Portuguese and Spaniards to conquer all lands and seize and enslave Saracens and non-Christians in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The religious rationales comprised the Domination Code whereby Christians can rule over non-Christians and possess their property, as well as the Discovery Code, whereby land owned by non-believers are treated as terra nullius (empty land), meaning non-Christian indigenous peoples do not have rights.

But when the Dutch and English started fighting with the Portuguese and Spaniards over overseas territories, what was the legal justification?

Dutch jurist Grotius (1583-1645) provided the secular rationalisation that discovery alone is not enough, but since there was freedom in the seas, occupation by a sovereign state confirms rights seized through war.

Schmitt argued that Jus Publicum Europaeum (European Public Law) emerged after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia to allow sovereign countries to have the right to go to war based on their own judgement of justice and necessity without interference in each other’s domestic affairs.

This changed after the end of the First World War, when the 1919 Treaty of Versailles treated the losing side as criminals, with their rights cancelled or confiscated.

While the Europeans were busily fighting each other, the United States rose in global power and imposed its 1823 Monroe Doctrine that asserted that it has its own sphere of influence, with the right to intervene in Central and South American states.

That sphere of influence would spatially cover cultural, economic, military, political and today technology exclusivity beyond legal sovereign borders.

Schmitt was prescient in seeing that where war is fought on the basis of “good versus evil”, in which all rights of the other side are “cancelled” (like the foreign exchange assets of Afghanistan and Russia are frozen or seized), the situation may be an unstable equilibrium.

The unstable European security architecture was settled decisively by the United States in two World Wars because of her overwhelming military, economic and industrial power.

But in today’s multipolar situation, who decides on the rules of the international order? If both sides accuse the other side as evil and illegitimate, who decides other than the use of arms?

To cut a complex story short, the Nato military alliance, comprising nearly one billion people and 47.3% of the world’s gross domestic product or GDP (2020) assumes its status quo role as the final arbiter of the “rules-based order”.

The problem is that BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), plus Indonesia have 3.5 billion population with one quarter of world GDP in market terms (25.6%).

However, on GDP PPP terms, they are near parity with Nato and therefore may have their own views on the international order. What if the larger non-Western countries want their own version of the Monroe Doctrine?

The moral principle that we all should live peacefully on one planet should over-ride sovereign nations fighting over power and ego from turf to space, when humanity could be burned by climate warming or nuclear war.

For Nomos (or order) of the Planet, rather than the Earth, we should all rationally cooperate. If we truly believe in democracy, can the eight billion people in the world vote on the rules-based order, or do we still leave it to G-7?

No order is stable without true legitimacy on democratic principles. How to achieve that order remains a truly open question.

Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. 

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Editor's Note:

NATO, which is constantly looking for imaginary enemies and justifying its existence by inciting confrontation, is holding a summit from Tuesday to Thursday, and it also plans to extend its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific region. Behind its aggressive narrative, contradictions and divisions within NATO have become increasingly prominent. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is not going according to NATO's playbook. This series of articles will provide some clues regarding NATO's predicament. This is the fifth piece.

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was established in 1949, but to this day it remains an important tool for suppressing the opponents of the West. The initiative to unite 12 countries originally belonged to the United States, which became the most powerful world leader after the end of World War II. The US was the foundation of the organization's military power, a source of economic and financial assistance to member countries. It goes without saying that not only the highest command posts belonged to the Americans, but they also defined strategic objectives at all stages of NATO's activities. The main mission of this organization from the very beginning was the unification of military and economic resources under the command of the US to prepare an all-out war against the Soviet Union. The countries of another military bloc, the Warsaw Pact Organization (ATS), led by the USSR, also became enemies. It was created only six years after NATO - in 1955.

NATO played an important role in weakening the USSR and its allies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the question arose about the feasibility of continuing the existence of NATO. But the US, which really ruled the bloc, set a new task for it - to involve former ATS member countries and post-Soviet republics in its structure. This was considered necessary to expand the zone of America's strict control over Europe as the most important part of the world at that time. NATO was also used to "sweep" the European space during the war against Yugoslavia. NATO and its de facto twin in the field of economics and politics - the European Union - were used in organizing the "color revolution" in Kiev and provoking the current Ukrainian crisis. In these situations, the US uses NATO as a tool for dirty work, saving the US from the loss of "precious American lives" and the risk of retaliatory strikes on the territory of the US.

NATO's successful fulfillment of its tasks in Europe led Washington to think about using the potential and experience of the bloc in another part of the world. Having recently identified China as the most serious threat to the international order, Washington is faced with a lack of resources to contain and suppress the growing Chinese power.

In order to mobilize the existing resources, the Biden administration has developed a concept of Indo-Pacific security, strongly resembling a similar concept for the North Atlantic. The concept has already been reinforced by the creation of the Indo-Pacific Command of the US Armed Forces. Already available resources were activated - military alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia. The AUKUS military group was created. The activity of the QUAD military-diplomatic group is stimulated. The creation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework was recently announced. But even these actions are not enough for Washington.

Therefore, it is urgently necessary to extend the scope of NATO's responsibility to the Indo-Pacific region as well. Obviously, US efforts are aimed at uniting all Asian and European allies, their military, economic and geostrategic resources to create a new tool for the realization of American global ambitions. It can be conditionally called the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization according to the patterns of NATO.

Of course, the arrival of NATO to the East, especially since the new military bloc of the West, will threaten the security interests of Russia as a Pacific power. But first of all, it will be directed against China. Strengthening the militarization of the region will also contradict the interests of economic stability and security of ASEAN, APEC and other groupings of the region.

Serious obstacles may arise in the way of implementing Biden's chess game. We are not talking about the fluctuations of European satellites in NATO such as "ready for anything" Poland, the "Baltic troika" or the Balkan neoplasms. It is unlikely that we will talk about England with its age-old anti-Chinese traditions and loyalty to Washington at the level of a conditioned reflex. But such large "stakeholders" as Germany, France, Spain and Italy may think hard about the consequences of entering into a military confrontation with China, taking into account their trade and economic interests.

These powers are well aware of the benefits of bilateral trade with China, which amount to tens and hundreds of billions of euros. They are also aware of the intention of the White House to lift trade sanctions against China in an attempt to bring down the threatening increase in inflation. The role of trade and economic "cannon fodder" is unlikely to entice figures claiming some level of independence even within the framework of NATO. In Madrid, the leaders of significant European powers are unlikely to voice their doubts, but then they will try to "put on the brakes" in implementation of Biden's Indo-Pacific plan.

Another important reason for avoiding the dubious honor of becoming a member of the anti-Chinese coalition may be Washington's inconsistency. Just two years ago, then US president Donald Trump reproached NATO member countries for the insufficiency of military efforts, the desire to "ride for free" and even promised to dissolve the military bloc. What will happen after the next presidential election? Will Trump come back? Won't those business and political circles that oppose the dispersion of the waning power of their power, for the concentration of resources on solving domestic economic and humanitarian problems, win?

Europeans are already suffering losses from following Biden's anti-China course. The ratification of the China-Europe Comprehensive Investment Agreement has been disrupted. Taking into account the hostile policy of Poland and the Baltic countries, Chinese logistics companies are reviewing the routes of goods delivery to Europe via the Silk Road. Beijing is studying the experience of "crippling sanctions" against Russia. After all, Washington has threatened to impose similar sanctions not only in case of the aggravation of the situation around the Taiwan island, but even if China refuses to participate in sanctions against Russia.

The US' convulsive attempts to return itself to the role of world hegemon are unlikely to succeed. But they can cause considerable harm to mutually beneficial relations between countries, which will be difficult to compensate quickly.

The author is head of the "Russian Dream-Chinese Dream" analytic center of the Izborsk Club. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn 

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Editor's Note:

Since the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine began, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the roles the US and NATO have played behind the crisis.

From launching color revolutions around the world to leading NATO's eastward expansion to hem in Russia's territorial space; from imposing sanctions on "disobedient countries" to coercing other nations to pick sides… the US has acted like a "Cold War schemer," or a "vampire" who creates "enemies" and makes fortunes from pyres of war. The Global Times is publishing a series of stories and cartoons to unveil how the US, in its superpower status, has been creating trouble in the world one crisis after another.

This is the fourth installment.

Supporters of Pro-Russian groups protest during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin' visit in Bulgaria on March 19, 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: AFP -Anti-government protestors wait at the entrance of a barricade in front of the Dynamo Kiev stadium in Ukraine on February 23, 2014. Photo: AFP

On the evening of December 25, 1991, the hammer and sickle flag representing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was slowly lowered over the Kremlin, and the flag of the Russian Federation in white, blue, and red was raised on the same flagpole.

The change of flags signified the official disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had existed for 74 years, as well as the end of the 44-year Cold War.

There were no ceremonies held in Moscow that night, just the dull tolls of bells from Spasskaya Tower from across the Kremlin. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, Americans proclaimed internationally how they had defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War victory.

It has been 31 years since this period in history, and several major changes have taken place in the world order and international patterns. However, these have not dispelled the arrogance of the US enraptured in the title "winner of the Cold War" and its overconfidence in the "maker of history" conclusion.

Standing at the start of the third decade of the 21st century, people can witness how American politicians still view every country considered to be a threat through the Cold War lens. They are still keen to incite ideological hostility and battle their own imaginary enemies, which makes the dissipation of the dark Cold War clouds virtually impossible. The shadow of the Cold War has spread from Washington to Beijing and Moscow.

From disintegrating the Soviet Union to designing the "Ukrainian Trap" step by step with the intention of achieving the strategic goals of "eliminating" Russia, suppressing Europe, containing China and maintaining an absolute hegemony, the "strategic master plan" adopted by the US can kill many birds with one stone in order to dominate the world.

The US is still a schemer that harbors a Cold War mentality.

US plays 'central role' in political demise of Soviet Union

"NATO is a defensive alliance that has never sought the demise of Russia," said US President Joe Biden, defending the eastward expansion of NATO in a speech he delivered in Warsaw on March 26, but turning a blind eye to the "not one inch eastward" pledge that NATO had made in the 1990s. Biden's words were not a complete lie, as there's little possibility of trying to eliminate (or, achieve the demise) of a nuclear world power with more than 17 million square kilometers of land and a permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

A physical "demise" of Russia is almost impossible. Nonetheless, the US-led NATO has been attempting to "eliminate" Russia in the past decades in various aspects including politically, economically, culturally, and ideologically, in order to keep dividing and weakening Russia, observers noted. Having acted out a similar script on the Soviet Union, the US is now looking forward to an encore performance on present-day Russia.

"The American role in the political defeat of the Soviet Union... was indeed central," Zbigniew Brzezinski, a renowned US geopolitical expert who served as President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981, pointed out in his book Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. "The defeat of the Soviet Union was the consequence of a forty-year bipartisan effort that spanned the presidencies," he wrote. "...almost every US President made a substantial contribution to the outcome."

A prominent example of this "effort" was the US' Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the "Star Wars program," which was proposed by then US President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. The US proposed the program to try to maintain its nuclear superiority, hoping to bring the Soviet Union's economy to its knees through space arms races.

The US announced the end of the program after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The release of the secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents in the Cold War era showed that the "Star Wars program" that the US had hyped was no more than a calculated strategic deception.

Another "Cold War tool" resorted by the US was its foreign propaganda machine system, such as the Voice of America (VOA). Founded in 1942, VOA began to serve the US' Cold War strategy after WWII, and became the main tool for the US government's promotion to the Soviet people of, not only the American way of life but also the principles of the "free world."

In the 21st century, the US still wields its ideological "soft knife," playing up its color revolution intrigues under the disguise of "democratic values" to countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Tunisia, which only brought about three instances of political turmoil, mass impoverishment and war.

US engrossed in creating purported enemies

The end of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union did not bring about an end to the US' Cold War mindset, which continues to haunt the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the CIA even today. American politicians view the international situation through a "zero-sum game" and "ideological competition" mindset, and keep seeking out purported enemies - now Russia and China.

It is truly a reflection of the US' geopolitical strategic ambition when former US President Barack Obama said that "Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors" or when the incumbent, Biden, said Russia is the country that most "threatens [the] security" of the US while China is US' main competitor. There has long been an anti-Russian consensus among America's political elites.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had pinned great hopes for the West. But as former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "We lied, we cheated, we stole… we had entire training courses" and "It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." That encompasses reasons why an ambitious schemer cannot be trusted. 

  

https://youtu.be/DPt-zXn05ac

From 1999 to 2020, NATO increased its membership from 16 to 30 through an eastward expansion, completing the 3,000-kilometer-long strategic encirclement of Russia.

Since 2014, Russia has been slapped with 5,532 sanctions, according to sanctions monitoring database Castellum.ai, followed by Iran, Syria and North Korea. And Moscow has been subjected to 2,778 new sanctions in less than two weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops' advancement into Ukraine.

At the same time, the US has been trying to undermine Putin's domestic authority, paving the way for a potential "color revolution" in Russia.

Who set the 'Ukraine trap'

Analysts point out that the current situation in Ukraine is a trap that the US has spent years digging into and is determined to draw Russia into.

To prevent Russia from becoming a threat to US hegemony again, the US has promoted two "color revolutions" in Ukraine, first by putting the pro-West Viktor Yushchenko in the presidency in 2005 and then forcing pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych out of office in 2014.

At the same time, NATO's continuous eastward expansion further pushed Russia ever closer to the set trap.

Since August 2021, the US government has been speculating about Russian troops along the border with Ukraine and the possibility of an "imminent invasion" of Ukraine, which further provoked Russia.

It is almost certain that not only does the US want to deter Russia, but it also wants Russia to send troops to Ukraine, said Tang Shiping, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, adding that the real purpose of the US' actions was to force Russia to use force against Ukraine.

Supporters of US-backed Ukrainian opposition leader wave flags during a rally in Kiev, Ukraine on November 28, 2004. Photo: AFP

The tactic of weakening Europe's strategic autonomy by putting it in a dangerous situation, a tactic that the US always used during the Cold War, is being played out again in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this gradual escalation of the situation in Ukraine, the US continues to provide funds and weapons to Ukraine and impose a full range of sanctions on Russia. The sense of crisis created by the US has also strengthened Europe's dependence on the US and NATO, thus greatly enhancing the US' chokehold over Europe, experts noted.

Complex security issues should not be dealt with in a simplistic approach of determining whether "friend or foe" or "black or white," said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a virtual meeting with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell Fontelles on March 29, 2022. "Facts have proven that the outdated Cold War mentality and camp confrontation leads nowhere in Europe, let alone the acts of taking sides and dividing the world," Wang noted.

Dragging the Cold War to the 21st century

"After 1991, the Cold War did not really end, as the US and NATO have not stopped strategically hemming Russia's territorial integrity. In recent years, the US has also regarded China as its main competitor, trying to shape an external environment that is not conducive to China's development through various means," Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times.

American politicians not only harbor a "Cold War mentality," but also continue to promote a new "Cold War strategy."

Robert Gates, former secretary of defense, wrote in the Washington Post on March 3 that "A new American strategy must recognize that we face a global struggle of [an] indeterminate duration against two great powers that share authoritarianism at home and hostility to the United States."

The two countries Gates refers to are undoubtedly Russia and China. Containing them and ensuring that no one can shake US' hegemony has become the core of the US' current global strategy.

"NATO members have demonstrated their loyalty to Washington by vowing to follow its orders aimed at ultimately containing Russia," the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on March 24, adding that Washington once again "disciplined" its allies by pressuring sovereign countries and erasing Europe's strategic autonomy.

Supporters of Pro-Russian groups protest during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin' visit in Bulgaria on March 19, 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: AFP

In terms of China, the US government has introduced the "Pivot to Asia" and the "Indo-Pacific strategy," and has united with Japan, India, Australia, and other countries in the region to consolidate small strategic cliques such as "QUAD" and "AUKUS," trying to contain China from multiple directions.

Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, summed up that the competition between the US and China will be all-rounded, involving governments and societies; in-depth competition could lead to a serious weakening or even decoupling of China-US ties in the fields of industrial chain, science and technology, and people-to-people and cultural exchanges; in terms of intensity, competition is extraordinary.

"Since President Joe Biden entered the White House a year ago, he and his top advisers have insisted they are not looking for a return to the superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated global affairs for nearly five decades. Yet one year into his presidency, Biden's actions have indicated otherwise," a commentary published on the US National Interest website stated, adding that in all areas of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has a Cold War-style mentality.

"The Cold War was not a golden era of foreign relations, but instead was a tragedy that cost millions of lives around the world. Washington cannot fall for feel-good nostalgia about its Cold War victory," it stated

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Checkmated over Ukraine; Is Ukraine a metaverse nightmare?

 Cornered: Ukrainian armoured vehicles blocking a street in Kyiv as Russian troops stormed toward Ukraine’s capital on Saturday. – AP Nato's actions have made it's Western allies incapable of doing better for Ukraine than Ukraine can do its own relations with Russia

WHEN the wilfully unstoppable force of Nato expansion hits the steadfastly immovable object of Russian national security, war erupts.
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By February 24 when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Moscow’s challenges became exposed and grew more acute.
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Russia cannot hold Ukraine in any sense as resentment to its incursion swells. There can be no assurance Russia can succeed in whatever it seeks to do to Kiev.
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As in all military interventions, moving in is always easier than pulling out – which must eventually happen. And then what?
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All disputes must conclude in negotiations, especially between neighbours, and it is now harder to negotiate. Meanwhile Russia is cast as the sole villain, so an invasion could not have been its preferred option.
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As a power play it is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions and superpower dimensions. Ukraine and Nato may have top billing but the US and Russia are the key actors.
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The 1947 Dunkirk Treaty between Britain and France was a contingency agreement against German or Soviet aggression. This grew to include the Benelux countries and then the US and six others to become today’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
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By 1955 Nato expanded to include WWII foe Germany, leaving the Soviet Union out in the cold. Moscow then established its Warsaw Pact alliance in trying to achieve some balance.
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Since then, Moscow stayed in Nato’s sights on the other side of the fence. Nato’s first Secretary-General Hastings Ismay described its role as “keeping the US in, Germany down, and Russia out.”
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Nato is a Cold War device that was not dismantled after the Cold War but has instead grown. But the official rhetoric in the early 1990s was of consolidation with a few contemplating dissolution.
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As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, Nato officials from the US, Britain, France and Germany repeatedly assured Moscow that Nato would not expand. Nato had become the most serious organised challenge to Russian national security.
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US Assistant Secretary of State Raymond Seitz said expansion of membership would not happen “either officially or unofficially.” His British counterpart added that expansion was “unacceptable”.
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German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher agreed and said so. Then Nato’s expansion happened.
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When Russia complained, Nato stalwarts said any agreement was only verbal and not written down, implying that what they said could not be trusted. Later Nato claimed there had not even been a verbal agreement.
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Earlier this month Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper reported that Prof Joshua Shifrinson of Boston University had found a declassified document confirming that a pledge on Nato’s non-expansion had been made. Elsewhere it is reported that President Bill Clinton broke that pledge.
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In 1999, Nato expanded by including former Soviet bloc countries Poland, Hungary and Czechia. Russia seethed but could do little.
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In 2004, Nato expanded further by admitting former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia complained again but once more its security concerns were ignored.
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As Nato missiles aimed at Russia moved closer to its borders, Moscow protested but Nato said they were only there because of Iran. Russia was unconvinced.
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After Ukraine’s independence its government continued friendly relations with Russia. But the US engineered the 2004-05 Orange Revolution that toppled the government and replaced it with one closer to the West.
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France and Germany invaded Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries with each attack ending in disaster. Napoleon’s and Hitler’s forces nonetheless made damaging incursions into the Russian heartland and national psyche.
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Today France and Germany are among European nations careful in managing relations with Russia. However, a US-led Nato with less experience and less sensitivity to Russian security concerns has acted with less care.
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Russia remains the world’s largest country by area rich in natural resources like oil and gas. It is not a threat to Europe or even Ukraine if agreements made can be honoured, but provoking it can produce a different result.
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Using Nato to challenge and undermine Russian interests will not end well for anyone. US interests are protected with the Atlantic Ocean as buffer, but European members of Nato share a continent with Russia and would have different priorities.
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The UN wants Russian forces to withdraw from Ukraine and return to base almost as much as Russia wants Nato to withdraw from its eastward momentum and return to the 1997 Nato-Russia Founding Act. Although neither may happen soon, Moscow has no interest or expressed desire to occupy Ukraine so the former is more likely than the latter.
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Ukraine for now is trapped in a vicious cycle of violence and disintegration beyond its control. It is a familiar plight of pawns caught between incompatible great powers.
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Ukraine wants urgent negotiations with Russia while Russia wants Belarus to host talks on the Minsk accords for a ceasefire and phased measures towards a compromise. Even if talks are possible it will be an uphill task since Moscow and Kiev have different interpretations of the 2014-15 terms.
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Among Biden’s errors is targeting Putin personally as if another Russian leader would have acted differently. Even Boris Yeltsin would have done the same over Ukraine, while a nationalist like Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have acted tougher and earlier.
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For the West to dump the Nord Stream 2 deal supplying Europe with Russian gas punishes only Europe which now has to pay many times more for US supplies. On Feb 4 Russia signed a new US$117.5bil oil and gas deal to supply China instead.
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Western observers worry that China may learn unsavoury lessons from Russia’s actions in Ukraine to further its disputed claims in Asia. Any lessons would be more akin to Nato’s gradual encroachment on Russian territory.
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The apparent beneficiary from Ukraine’s crisis is China, being a distraction for the West which also increases Moscow’s dependence on Beijing. But China is also awkwardly positioned as it wants to maintain good ties with all parties.
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The only unqualified beneficiary of the crisis is China-Russia relations, which must count as another major strategic blunder for Nato and the West.
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Bunn Nagara is a political analyst and Honorary Research Fellow of the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.

By Bunn Nagara, Author at ISIS

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Is Ukraine a metaverse nightmare?

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The Russian pipe-laying ship 'Akademik Tscherski' which is on deployment for the further construction of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline, is moored at the port of Mukran on the island of Ruegen, Germany, on Sept. 8, 2020. The gas is still flowing from Russian even as bullets and missiles fly in Ukraine. But the war is raising huge questions about the energy ties between Europe and Russia. The conflict is helping keep oil and gas prices high due to fears of a possible reduction in supplies, and consumers will continue to face financial stress from that. 

 

The real-life cost of war: People walk at the border crossing between Poland and Ukraine, in Medyka, Poland, on February 24, 2022. Photo: Reuters

 Moving from a unipolar world to a multipolar world was always likely to be messy and risk-prone. But few saw how fast we moved from beating war drums to actual armed conflict between the Great Powers, the latest being in Ukraine. Are we on a march of folly to World War III, or have key players lost sight of reality?

`Lest we forget, World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945) were fought to keep down rising powers—Germany and later Japan.
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Russia and China suffered the most casualties in WWII, and both were allies against German Nazis and Japanese militarists.
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The United States became the real winner, but decided after WWII to contain communism in both the Soviet Union (USSR) and China.
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Fifty years ago, in 1972, US President Nixon set aside enmity against China, restored US-China relations, and in one strategic stroke, isolated the Soviet Union, leading to its collapse two decades later.
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The great achievement during the Cold War was the avoidance of nuclear conflict, with the Cuban missile crisis being a live test of brinkmanship.
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Both sides climbed down when the USSR removed missiles from Cuba, and the US quietly removed missiles from Turkey.
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President Kennedy understood that grandstanding on moral issues should be restrained, because in a nuclear war, mutually assured destruction is madness.
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After seven decades of peace, the Western media has been painting the multipolar world as a black-and-white conflict between good vs evil, democracy vs autocracy—without appreciating that the other side may have different points of view that need to be heard.
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By definition, a multipolar world means that liberal democracies will have to live with different ideologies and regimes.
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Today, YouTube and the Web provide a wealth of alternative views than mainstream media, such as CNN or BBC.
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Prof John Mearsheimer, author of the influential book "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics," offers the insight that the Western expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was the reason why Russia felt threatened.
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The more the Nato allies try to arm Ukraine, the more insecure Russia gets.
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In essence, Russia wants a buffer zone of neutral countries like Austria, which are not members of Nato, but that does not exclude trade with all sides.
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Carnegie Moscow Center analyst Alexander Baunov described how "the two sides appear to be negotiating over different things.
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Russia is talking about its own security, while the West is focusing on Ukraine's."
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What he is describing are two sides that are each in their own social bubble or virtual reality (VR) Metaverse, deaf to the other side's views.
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The term "Metaverse" came from a 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel titled "Snow Crash," where the Metaverse is the virtual refuge from an anarchic world controlled by the Mafia.
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Today, Metaverse is an online virtual world where the user blends VR with the real, flesh-and-blood world through VR glasses and software augmented reality (AR).
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In other words, in Metaverse, your mind is colonised by whatever algorithm and virtual information that you get—real or fake news.
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Metaverse is escapism from reality, and will not help us solve real world problems, especially when we need to talk eyeball to eyeball.
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The Metaverse designer is more interested in controlling or influencing our minds, feeding us what we want to hear or see, rather than what information we need to have to make good decisions. The risk is that we think VR conflict is costless, whereas real war has real flesh-and-blood costs.
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.In short, the more we look inward at our own Metaverse, the more we neglect the collective costs to the world as it lurches from peace to war
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Surprisingly, I found the right-wing influential Fox commentator Tucker Carlson asking better questions than CNN or BBC commentators.
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In his show Tucker Carlson Tonight, in the segment "How will this conflict affect you?" he asked bluntly why Americans should hate Putin and what the war will cost every American.
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Carlson asked some really serious questions, even though his views are partisan—have the Democrats, with their moral concern to hate Putin, forgotten the big picture of war costs?
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First, would Americans be willing to go into a winter war with Russia?
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Second, would they pay much higher gas prices as oil prices have already hit above USD 100 per barrel?
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Although economic sanctions are applied, even Europe will not be willing to risk cutting off gas supplies from Russia, since Russia accounts for 35 percent of European gas supplies.
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Third, is Ukraine a real democracy?
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Carlson's 2018 book "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution" is well worth reading to understand how conservative Americans think about elites who care about themselves more than society at large. 

Carlson asked some really serious questions, even though his views are partisan—have the Democrats, with their moral concern to hate Putin, forgotten the big picture of war costs?
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First, would Americans be willing to go into a winter war with Russia?
`
Second, would they pay much higher gas prices as oil prices have already hit above USD 100 per barrel?
`
Although economic sanctions are applied, even Europe will not be willing to risk cutting off gas supplies from Russia, since Russia accounts for 35 percent of European gas supplies.
`
Third, is Ukraine a real democracy?
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Carlson's 2018 book "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution" is well worth reading to understand how conservative Americans think about elites who care about themselves more than society at large.
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In sum, the decade of 2020s may face a tough period of escalating conflicts at local, regional and global levels, with proxy wars that disrupt each other's economies and social stability.
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If states fail, and poor and hungry people migrate at a larger scale, even more border conflicts are likely, since most will want to go to the richer countries in the North, such as Europe and America.
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There is no ideal world where everyone is good and the other side is bad.
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In a multipolar world, there will be all kinds of people that we don't like, but we have to live with them.
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A negotiated peace is better than mutual destruction.
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In Metaverse, virtual life can be beautiful, moral and perfect, but the real world is lurching towards a collective nightmare.
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We should not kid ourselves that the Metaverse VR of self-deception is the real world.
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We either sleepwalk to war, or have the courage to opt for sustainable peace.
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The real question is: Who is willing to climb down and eat the humble pie for the sake of peace?
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By Andrew Sheng is adjunct professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing and the University of Malaya. He was formerly the chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission, Hong Kong. 

Tan Sri Andrew Sheng (born 1946) is Hong Kong-based Malaysian Chinese banker, academic and commentator. He started his career as an accountant and is now a distinguished fellow of Fung Global Institute, a global think tank based in Hong Kong.^[1] He served as chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) before his replacement by Martin Wheatley in

Andrew Sheng comments on global affairs from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are his own.

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