{"id":154857,"date":"2020-02-24T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=154857"},"modified":"2020-02-22T08:45:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T08:45:34","slug":"munich-conference-reveals-east-west-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/02\/munich-conference-reveals-east-west-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Munich Conference Reveals East-West Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stresses urgent need for international coordination ‘to build a shared future.’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi makes a speech at the 56th Munich Security Conference at on Feb 15, 2020. Photo: Abdulhamid Hosbas \/ Anadolu \/ AFP<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Feb 2020 – <\/em>Few postmodern political pantomimes have been more revealing than the hundreds of so-called \u201cinternational decision-makers,\u201d mostly Western, waxing lyrical, disgusted or nostalgic over \u201cWestlessness\u201d at the Munich Security Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWestlessness\u201d sounds like one of those constipated concepts issued from a post-party bad hangover at the Rive Gauche during the 1970s. In theory (but not French Theory) Westlessness in the age of Whatsapp should mean a deficit of multiparty action to address the most pressing threats to the \u201cinternational order\u201d \u2013 or (dis)order \u2013 as nationalism, derided as a narrow-minded populist wave, prevails.<\/p>\n

Yet what Munich actually unveiled was some deep \u2013 Western \u2013 longing for those effervescent days of humanitarian imperialism, with nationalism in all its strands being cast as the villain impeding the relentless advance of profitable, neocolonial Forever Wars.<\/p>\n

As much as the MSC organizers \u2013 a hefty Atlanticist bunch \u2013 tried to spin the discussions as emphasizing the need for multilateralism, a basket case of ills ranging from uncontrolled migration to \u201cbrain dead\u201d NATO got billed as a direct consequence of \u201cthe rise of an illiberal and nationalist camp within the Western world.\u201d As if this were a rampage perpetrated by an all-powerful Hydra featuring Bannon-Bolsonaro-Orban heads.<\/p>\n

Far from those West-is-More heads in Munich is the courage to admit that assorted nationalist counter-coups also qualify as blowback for the relentless Western plunder of the Global South via wars \u2013 hot, cold, financial, corporate-exploitative.<\/p>\n

For what it is worth, <\/strong>here\u2019s the MSC report<\/a>. <\/strong>Only two sentences would be enough to give away the MSC game: \u201cIn the post-Cold War era, Western-led coalitions were free to intervene almost anywhere. Most of the time, there was support in the UN Security Council, and whenever a military intervention was launched, the West enjoyed almost uncontested freedom of military movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

There you go. Those were the days when NATO, with full impunity, could bomb Serbia, miserably lose a war on Afghanistan, turn Libya into a militia hell and plot myriad interventions across the Global South. And of course none of that had any connection whatsoever with the bombed and the invaded being forced into becoming refugees in Europe.<\/p>\n

West Is More<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Munich, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha got closer to the point when she said she found \u201cWestlessness\u201d quite insular as a theme. She made sure to stress that multilateralism is very much an Asian feature, expanding on the theme of ASEAN centrality.<\/p>\n

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with his customary finesse, was sharper, noting how \u201cthe structure of the Cold War rivalry is being recreated\u201d\u00a0in Europe. Lavrov was a prodigy of euphemism when he noted how \u201cescalating tensions, NATO\u2019s military infrastructure advancing to the East, exercises of unprecedented scope near the Russian borders, the pumping of defense budgets beyond measure \u2013 all this generates unpredictability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet it was Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi who really got to the \u00a0heart of the matter<\/a>. While stressing that \u201cstrengthening global governance and international coordination is urgent right now,\u201d Wang said, \u201cWe need to get rid of the division of the East and the West and go beyond the difference between the South and the North, in a bid to build a community with a shared future for mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunity with a shared future\u201d may be standard Beijing terminology, but it does carry a profound meaning as it embodies the Chinese concept of multilateralism as meaning no single state has priority and all nations share the same rights.<\/p>\n

Wang went farther: The West \u2013 with or without Westlessness\u2013 should get rid of its subconscious mentality of civilization supremacy; give up its bias against China; and \u201caccept and welcome the development and revitalization of a nation from the East with a system different from that of the West.\u201d Wang is a sophisticated enough diplomat to know this is not going to happen.<\/p>\n

Wang also could not fail to raise the Westlessness crowd\u2019s eyebrows to alarming heights when he stressed, once again, that the Russia-China strategic partnership will be deepened \u2013 alongside exploring \u201cways of peaceful coexistence\u201d with the US and deeper cooperation with Europe.<\/p>\n

What to expect from the so-called \u201csystem leader\u201d<\/a> in Munich was quite predictable. And it was delivered, true to script, by current Pentagon head Mark Esper, yet another Washington revolving door practitioner.<\/p>\n

21st Century Threat<\/strong><\/p>\n

All Pentagon talking points were on display. China is nothing but a rising threat to the world order \u2013 as in \u201corder\u201d dictated by Washington. China steals Western know-how; intimidates all its smaller and weaker neighbors; seeks an \u201cadvantage by any means and at any cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if any reminder to this well-informed audience was needed, China was once again placed at the top of the Pentagon\u2019s \u201cthreats,\u201d followed by Russia, \u201crogue states\u201d Iran and North Korea, and \u201cextremist groups.\u201d No one asked whether al-Qaeda in Syria is part of the list.<\/p>\n

The \u201cCommunist Party and its associated organs, including the People\u2019s Liberation Army,\u201d were accused of \u201cincreasingly operating in theaters outside China\u2019s borders, including in Europe.\u201d Everyone knows only one \u201cindispensable nation\u201d is self-authorized to operate \u201cin theaters outside its borders\u201d to bomb others into democracy.<\/p>\n

No wonder Wang was forced to qualify all of the above as \u201clies\u201d: \u201cThe root cause of all these problems and issues is that the US does not want to see the rapid development and rejuvenation of China, and still less would they want to accept the success of a socialist country.\u201d<\/p>\n

So in the end Munich did disintegrate into the catfight that will dominate the rest of the century. With Europe de facto irrelevant and the EU subordinated to NATO\u2019s designs, Westlessness is indeed just an empty, constipated concept: all reality is conditioned by the toxic dynamics of China ascension and US decline.<\/p>\n

The irrepressible Maria Zakharova<\/a> once again nailed it: \u201cThey spoke about that country [China] as a threat to entire humankind. They said that China\u2019s policy is the threat of the 21st century. I have a feeling that we are witnessing, through the speeches delivered at the Munich conference in particular, the revival of new colonial approaches, as though the West no longer thinks it shameful to reincarnate the spirit of colonialism by means of dividing people, nations and countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

An absolute highlight of the MSC was when diplomat Fu Ying<\/a>, the chairperson on foreign affairs for the National People\u2019s Congress, reduced US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to dust with a simple question: \u201cDo you really think the democratic system is so fragile\u201d that it can be threatened by Huawei?<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for <\/em>Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 asiatimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Feb 2020 – Few postmodern political pantomimes have been more revealing than the hundreds of so-called \u201cinternational decision-makers,\u201d mostly Western, waxing lyrical, disgusted or nostalgic over \u201cWestlessness\u201d at the Munich Security Conference. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":154858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[237,1149,239,244,433,267,504,541,109,287,254,292,70,172,75],"class_list":["post-154857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-africa","tag-asia-and-the-pacific","tag-brics","tag-china","tag-europe","tag-geopolitics","tag-international-relations","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-security","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}