{"id":222198,"date":"2022-10-17T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=222198"},"modified":"2022-10-17T04:34:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T03:34:22","slug":"the-non-west-coalesces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/the-non-west-coalesces\/","title":{"rendered":"The Non-West Coalesces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nations representing more than 80 percent of the global population and a like percentage of global gross domestic product are perfectly capable of seeing the Biden administration\u2019s pointed provocations and do not approve.
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

OPEC President Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua Leads First In-Person OPEC Meeting Since COVID-19.\u00a0 Image source: OPEC<\/p><\/div>\n

16 Oct 2022 – <\/em>Something of epochal importance happened in Vienna, where the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, now known as OPEC\u2013Plus with the inclusion of the Russian Federation, convened recently for its first in-person session since 2020. You would not know of\u00a0this development if you rely solely on the reports carried in our corporate-owned media.<\/p>\n

The world just took a significant turn into the 21st<\/sup> century. Let us stay abreast of it, leaving those who refuse to see this to their own devices.<\/p>\n

President Biden, apparently not intelligent enough to understand the emergent new era and indifferent to the interests and aspirations of others, quickly made as big a mess of things as could be made. Last week he threatened Saudi Arabia, which co-chairs OPEC\u2013Plus with the Russian Federation, with \u201cconsequences\u201d for what transpired in Vienna. This is what imperiums do when their primacy is threatened\u2014they encourage the very currents in history they are determined to disrupt.<\/p>\n

As reported everywhere, OPEC\u2013Plus decided to reduce the oil production of member nations by two million barrels per day as of next month. This may amount to an actual cut of half that amount, as many OPEC\u2013Plus members\u2014Nigeria, for instance\u2014have not been lifting to their quotas anyway. But oil prices are already increasing, and we will soon see this at our filling stations. As retail prices rise, it is likely to complicate the political fortunes of the Biden administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill just as the midterm elections approach. So, a pretty big deal.<\/p>\n

But this is not the half of what transpired in Vienna two weeks ago. Saudi Arabia, long the driving wheel in OPEC, effectively declared its long history of subservience to Washington, by way of which oil production has been exchanged for security guarantees, to be on the way out. One of Washington\u2019s bedrock allies in the Middle East, Israel being the other, just took a major step toward the coalescence of non\u2013Western nations into a coherent bloc acting in its own interests.<\/p>\n

This is more than a pretty big deal. It brings us considerably closer to the new world order Russia and China, the two most influential non\u2013Western nations, have been talking about for several years and notably since the Biden administration took power in January 2021. Within months, Beijing and Moscow concluded that there is no making sense of a nation that, even as its power declines, has no intention of working with them as equals to mutual benefit. Since then, numerous other countries have had little trouble detecting which way the wind blows.<\/p>\n

The Ukraine crisis has sent a new bolt of electricity through this geopolitical trend. Nations representing more than 80 percent of the global population and a like percentage of global gross domestic product are perfectly capable of seeing the Biden administration\u2019s pointed provocations and do not approve.<\/p>\n

Partnerships that stop just short of alliances\u2014a term of statecraft entailing explicit obligations in the way of mutual defense\u2014have multiplied so quickly since Joe Biden took office it is hard to keep track of them. Russia\u2019s \u201cno limits\u201d relationship with China is the premier case. Russia has recently consolidated its cooperative ties with Iran. So has China. Iran and Venezuela, China and Cuba, China and Nicaragua\u2014the list goes on. As we speak, Moscow and Beijing are developing partnerships of various kinds in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.<\/p>\n

But these nations, it is easy to note, are by and large beyond Washington\u2019s fence posts: The policy cliques, this is to say, have them down as enemies. Every nation just named is currently subjected to U.S. sanctions. Parenthetically, I do have to wonder what happens when most of the world other than the Anglosphere and Western Europe is condemned in this way, but that is another conversation.<\/p>\n

With the OPEC\u2013Plus decision, it is time to make a critical distinction.<\/p>\n

When Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi summited in New Delhi last December, the Russian president and the Indian prime minister oversaw the consummation of no fewer than 28 agreements covering cooperation across the board\u2014investment, tech transfer, energy, defense. It is worth singling out India\u2019s intent to purchase a copy of Russia\u2019s S\u2013400 missile defense system, which proves a pebble in Washington\u2019s shoe every time any nation buys one.<\/p>\n

Since then, Turkey has sent multiple signals that, never mind its NATO membership, it is increasingly inclined to cast its lot with non\u2013\u00adWestern nations. It was an observer at the recent summit of the Eurasian Economic Union in Samarkand. There is talk of membership in the BRICS mini-bloc, which now consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Egypt under the vicious Abdel Fattah el\u2013Sisi<\/a> and Argentina under its right-thinking president, Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, also intend to apply for membership.<\/p>\n

India, Turkey, Argentina, South Africa, Egypt: These are not nations Washington likes to dismiss as pariahs, rogues, outcasts, or autocracies run by \u201cthugs\u201d\u2014a favorite epithet of the thuggish Biden\u2014even if some of them deserve it. This changes the complexion of the coalescence I describe. We are now talking about nations the U.S. counts as friends of one or another kind.<\/p>\n

There is a key point to be made in this connection. The policy cliques and the clerks in the media who serve them love to cast the waxing non\u2013Western bloc as anti\u2013American, driven by hatred or envy or whatever else these people can think of. The reporting on the OPEC\u2013Plus meeting has it that the Saudis \u201csided with Russia\u201d against the U.S. \u201cAngered by the kingdom\u2019s decision to team up with Russia,\u201d The New York Times<\/em> reported last week, President Biden signaled openness to retaliatory measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

What shall we call this, readers? It is either blindness or narcissism or both, and I nominate this last. As the non\u2013West gathers in the cause of constructive action, mutual benefit, and (not to be missed) noninterference, the only thing they are against is global disorder, and the only nations they are against are those responsible for it.<\/p>\n

And now to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

This is another nation you wouldn\u2019t want to take home to meet mother, but Washington has had few friends in the non\u2013West closer than Riyadh since the early 1930s, when the Roosevelt administration and the House of Saud worked out the oil-for-security arrangement (and Standard Oil of California got a drilling concession). It is this long party that the Saudis\u2014who are also looking at BRICS membership, let\u2019s not miss\u2014seem to have declared over as of last week.<\/p>\n

Western press reports have made much of the presence in Vienna of Alexander Novak, Moscow\u2019s deputy prime minister, who reportedly did some spadework prior to the OPEC\u2013Plus decision to cut production quotas. But any thought that those Rrrrrrussians railroaded the production cut through is simply a flinch from a reality Washington finds hard to bear. The Saudis acted entirely of their own volition, plain and simple. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and the kingdom\u2019s de facto leader, is many things, and a man of his own mind is one of them (for better or worse). Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, is MbS\u2019s half-brother.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons Riyadh, as OPEC\u2013Plus\u2019s co-chair, decided as it did. Its stated intent is to protect prices as the world slides toward a precipitous drop in oil demand consequent on the slow growth and rising inflation\u2014the stagflation syndrome\u2014that the U.S. sanctions regime against Russia is forcing upon the world.<\/p>\n

There is also the price cap Washington proposes to impose on Russian oil exports\u2014one of the stupidest ideas, of very many, to come out of the U.S. policy elites in decades. The buyer tells the seller the price of goods? Say whaaaa? It has little to no chance of working, but MbS most assuredly asks, If these Americans cap the price of Russia\u2019s oil in 2022, how long before they take a run at us?<\/em><\/p>\n

There is the matter of Joe \u201cNobody fucks with a Biden\u201d Biden (and what a polished president is he). I can\u2019t decide if he is a schlemiel<\/em> or a schlimazel<\/em>\u2014as a Yiddish-speaking friend explains it, the guy who knocks over a bottle of wine at table or the man into whose lap the wine spills. After following Joe\u2019s years in the Senate and not quite two in the White House, I surrender: He manages to be both.<\/p>\n

During his 2020 campaign Biden famously called Saudi Arabia a pariah to keep the progressive peanut gallery quiet on the Yemen war but with no intent to reduce U.S. support for it. As things got hairy in consequence of the sanctions against Russia, our president traveled to Jeddah, bumped fists with MbS during an obviously testy summit, and apparently figured everything would be O.K. on the oil-production side. Prior to the OPEC\u2013Plus session, administration officials flew to Riyadh and practically begged MbS not to announce a production cut at least until after the midterms.<\/p>\n

What a bed our Joe and the confirmed schlemiels<\/em> running America\u2019s foreign policy have made for themselves and the rest of us to lie in. Once again, the man from Scranton proves what he always has been, a provincial pol who thinks he can sell snake oil around the world just as he long did in Delaware and with no clue as to what makes responsible statecraft.<\/p>\n

I do not doubt that MbS\u2019s disrespect for a clown with failing mental capacities made it easier for him to act against U.S. wishes and more specifically the Biden White House. In my read, he has effectively joined the Russians and Chinese in concluding there is simply no working with so unserious a regime. But the Saudis appear no more inclined to set policy out of spite or contempt than any other nation in the gathering non\u2013Western bloc. Riyadh acted in its own interests as it sees these.<\/p>\n

Asked at a post-session press conference if the OPEC\u2013Plus decision was an act of aggression, Prince Abdul Aziz, the Saudi oil minister replied, \u201cShow me exactly where is the act of belligerence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But precisely. Dollars to donuts, as one of my editors used to say, it was an American correspondent who posed the question: It takes an American to read events with this degree of self-centeredness, as if the world revolves around Washington the way Ptolemy thought the sun and all the planets revolved around the earth. \u201cThe Saudis sided with Russia\u201d is nothing more than a variation on the Ptolemaic theme, a repeat of Bush II\u2019s \u201cyou\u2019re with us or against us\u201d binary\u2014which many of us ridiculed at the time but now consider a perfectly rational way to divvy up the world.<\/p>\n

Ideology, to make this point plain, had nothing to do with the OPEC\u2013Plus decision and has nothing to do with the non\u2013West\u2019s assembly into a sort of inchoate network of partnerships. Enlightened self-interest\u2014that old phrase in a new context\u2014is what drives this evolution in global affairs.<\/p>\n

I have asserted for years, at the risk of repeating myself, that parity between the West and non\u2013West is a 21st<\/sup> century imperative\u2014an inevitability regardless of whether or not anyone anywhere wishes this to be so. What happened in Vienna earlier this month gives us a demonstration of how this evolution will proceed.<\/p>\n

Late last week Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan met in Astana, the Kazakhstan capital, the second encounter of the Russian and Turkish presidents in as many months. In the course of things, Putin proposed to make Turkey an energy hub for the distribution of Russian gas now that the Nord Stream I and II pipelines connecting Russia to Europe are out of commission. Erdo\u011fan also noted that Turkey can act as a transit point to get Russian fertilizers to the less-developed most in need of them.<\/p>\n

Here is how Erdo\u011fan, ever eager to appear important in world affairs, concluded his conversation with Putin on these matters:<\/p>\n

We can work together because we are more concerned about the poor countries than the wealthy states. This is how we should envisage this, and if we do it, we will be able to change much\u2014to change the balance in favor of poor countries.<\/p>\n

Turkey and Russia are together. I know some of our steps will worry some circles and some countries, but we are full of resolve. Our relevant bodies, our colleagues [in our ministries], will establish contacts and strengthen our relations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See what I mean about which way the wind blows? See what I mean about the non\u2013West\u2019s coalescence?<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see what comes next now that the Saudis have joined the party and put some distance between themselves and the Americans. Hardly is it right to anticipate some nasty breach in relations. They seem simply to be shaking themselves loose from the embrace that suffocates, as a British ambassador once described Japan\u2019s relations with the U.S.<\/p>\n

A final note in the matter of the BRICS and the Saudis\u2019 interest in joining them. It is a matter of record that, as currently constituted, the group is developing a basket of currencies intended to serve as an alternative to the dollar in international trade. This sounds like another very big deal in the making. Since the Saudis agreed in 1945 to price oil in dollars, the petroleum market has been absolutely key to the U.S. currency\u2019s supremacy as a reserve currency\u2014which, in turn, has been key to Washington\u2019s projection of American hegemony.<\/p>\n

Now what? Friends in the markets used to tell me that de-dollarization, while a long-term inevitability, would not occur in my lifetime. I don\u2019t hear much of this anymore. What appeared a distant prospect only a few years ago now seems to grow closer by the year. It will not matter how many fists Washington bumps: They don\u2019t generally stop history\u2019s wheel from turning, as Biden has learned.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the\u00a0<\/em>International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is\u00a0<\/em>Time No Longer: Americans after the American Century.\u00a0His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.\u00a0His website: Patrick\u00a0Lawrence<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

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