A specter haunts the fast-aging \u201cNew American Century\u201d: the possibility of a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance. Let\u2019s call it the BMB.<\/p>\n
Its likelihood is being seriously discussed at the highest levels in Beijing and Moscow, and viewed with interest in Berlin, New Delhi, and Tehran. But don\u2019t mention it inside Washington\u2019s Beltway or at NATO headquarters in Brussels. There, the star of the show today and tomorrow is the new Osama bin Laden: Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive, self-appointed beheading prophet of a new mini-state and movement that has provided an acronym feast — ISIS\/ISIL\/IS — for hysterics in Washington and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
No matter how often Washington remixes its Global War on Terror, however, the tectonic plates of Eurasian geopolitics continue to shift, and they\u2019re not going to stop just because American elites\u00a0refuse to accept<\/a> that their historically brief \u201cunipolar moment\u201d is on the wane.\u00a0 For them, the closing of the era of \u201cfull spectrum dominance,\u201d as the Pentagon likes to call it, is inconceivable.\u00a0 After all, the necessity for the indispensable nation to control all space — military, economic, cultural, cyber, and outer — is little short of a religious doctrine.\u00a0\u00a0Exceptionalist missionaries don\u2019t do equality. At best, they do \u201ccoalitions of the willing\u201d like the one crammed with \u201cover 40 countries<\/a>\u201d assembled to fight ISIS\/ISIL\/IS and either applauding (and plotting) from the sidelines or sending the odd plane or two toward Iraq or Syria.<\/p>\n NATO, which unlike some of its members won\u2019t officially fight Jihadistan<\/a>, remains a top-down outfit controlled by Washington. It\u2019s never fully bothered to take in the European Union (EU) or considered allowing Russia to \u201cfeel\u201d European. As for the Caliph, he\u2019s just a minor diversion. A postmodern cynic might even contend that he was an emissary sent onto the global playing field by China and Russia to take the eye of the planet\u2019s hyperpower off the ball.<\/p>\n Divide and Isolate<\/strong><\/p>\n So how does full spectrum dominance apply when two actual competitor powers, Russia and China, begin to make their presences felt?\u00a0\u00a0Washington\u2019s approach to each — in Ukraine and in Asian waters — might be thought of as divide and isolate.<\/p>\n In order to keep the Pacific Ocean as a classic \u201cAmerican lake,\u201d the Obama administration has been \u201cpivoting\u201d back to Asia for several years now. This has involved only modest military moves, but an immodest attempt to pit Chinese nationalism against the Japanese variety, while strengthening alliances and relations across Southeast Asia with a focus on South China Sea energy disputes. At the same time, it has moved to lock a future trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), in place.<\/p>\n In Russia\u2019s western borderlands, the Obama administration has stoked the embers of regime change in Kiev into flames (fanned by local cheerleaders Poland<\/a> and the Baltic nations<\/a>) and into what clearly looked, to Vladimir Putin and Russia\u2019s leadership, like an existential threat to Moscow. Unlike the U.S., whose sphere of influence (and military bases) are global, Russia was not to retain any significant influence in its former near abroad, which, when it comes to Kiev, is not for most Russians, \u201cabroad\u201d at all.<\/p>\n For Moscow, it seemed as if Washington and its NATO allies were increasingly interested in imposing a new Iron Curtain on their country from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with Ukraine simply as the tip of the spear. In BMB terms, think of it as an attempt to isolate Russia and impose a new barrier to relations with Germany. The ultimate aim would be to split Eurasia, preventing future moves toward trade and commercial integration via a process not controlled through Washington.<\/p>\n From Beijing\u2019s point of view, the Ukraine crisis was a case of Washington crossing every imaginable red line to harass and isolate Russia. To its leaders, this looks like a concerted attempt to destabilize the region in ways favorable to American interests, supported by a full range of Washington\u2019s elite from neocons and Cold War \u201cliberals\u201d to humanitarian interventionists in the Susan Rice and Samantha Power mold.\u00a0 Of course, if you\u2019ve been following the Ukraine crisis from Washington, such perspectives seem as alien as any those of any Martian.\u00a0 But the world looks different from the heart of Eurasia than it does from Washington — especially from a rising China with its newly minted \u201cChinese dream<\/a>\u201d (Zhongguo meng<\/em>).<\/p>\n As laid out by President Xi Jinping, that dream would include a future network of Chinese-organized new Silk Roads that would create the equivalent of a Trans-Asian Express for Eurasian commerce. So if Beijing, for instance, feels pressure from Washington and Tokyo on the naval front, part of its response is a two-pronged, trade-based advance across the Eurasian landmass, one prong via Siberia and the other through the Central Asian \u201cstans.\u201d<\/p>\n In this sense, though you wouldn\u2019t know it if you only followed the American media or \u201cdebates\u201d in Washington, we\u2019re potentially entering a new world.\u00a0 Once upon a time not so long ago, Beijing\u2019s leadership was flirting with the idea of rewriting the geopolitical\/economic game side by side with the U.S., while Putin\u2019s Moscow hinted at the possibility of someday joining NATO. No longer. Today, the part of the West that both countries are interested in is a possible future Germany no longer dominated by American power and Washington\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n Moscow has, in fact, been involved in no less than half a century of strategic dialogue with Berlin that has included industrial cooperation and increasing energy interdependence. In many quarters of the Global South this has been noted and Germany is starting to be viewed as \u201cthe sixth BRICS\u201d power (after Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).<\/p>\n In the midst of global crises ranging from Syria to Ukraine, Berlin\u2019s geostrategic interests seem to be slowly diverging from Washington\u2019s. German industrialists, in particular, appear eager to pursue unlimited commercial deals with Russia and China.\u00a0 These might set their country on a path to global power unlimited by the EU\u2019s borders and, in the long term, signal the end of the era in which Germany, however politely dealt with, was essentially an American satellite.<\/p>\n It will be a long and winding road. The Bundestag, Germany\u2019s parliament, is still addicted to a strong Atlanticist agenda and a preemptive obedience to Washington. There are still tens of thousands of American soldiers on German soil. Yet, for the first time, German chancellor Angela Merkel has been hesitating when it comes to imposing ever-heavier sanctions on Russia over the situation in Ukraine, because no fewer than 300,000 German jobs depend on relations with that country. Industrial leaders and the financial establishment have already sounded the alarm<\/a>, fearing such sanctions would be totally counterproductive.<\/p>\n China\u2019s Silk Road Banquet<\/strong><\/p>\n China\u2019s new geopolitical power play in Eurasia has few parallels in modern history. The days when the \u201cLittle Helmsman\u201d Deng Xiaoping insisted that the country \u201ckeep a low profile\u201d on the global stage are long gone. Of course, there are disagreements and conflicting strategies when it comes to managing the country\u2019s hot spots: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, the South China Sea, competitors India and Japan, and problematic allies like North Korea and Pakistan. And popular unrest in some Beijing-dominated \u201cperipheries\u201d is growing to incendiary<\/a> levels.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s number one priority remains domestic and focused on carrying out President Xi\u2019s economic reforms, while increasing \u201ctransparency\u201d and fighting corruption within the ruling Communist Party. A distant second is the question of how to progressively hedge against the Pentagon\u2019s \u201cpivot\u201d plans in the region — via the build-up of a blue-water navy, nuclear submarines, and a technologically advanced air force — without getting so assertive as to freak out Washington\u2019s \u201cChina threat\u201d-minded establishment.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, with the U.S. Navy controlling global sea lanes for the foreseeable future, planning for those new Silk Roads across Eurasia is proceeding apace. The end result should prove<\/a> a triumph of integrated infrastructure — roads, high-speed rail, pipelines, ports — that will connect China to Western Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, the old Roman imperial Mare Nostrum<\/em>, in every imaginable way.<\/p>\n In a reverse Marco Polo-style journey, remixed for the Google world, one key Silk Road branch will go from the former imperial capital Xian to Urumqi in Xinjiang Province, then through Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey\u2019s Anatolia, ending in Venice. Another will be a maritime Silk Road starting from Fujian province and going through the Malacca strait, the Indian Ocean, Nairobi in Kenya, and finally all the way to the Mediterranean via the Suez canal. Taken together, it\u2019s what Beijing refers to as the Silk Road Economic Belt.<\/p>\n China\u2019s strategy is to create a network of interconnections among no less than five key regions: Russia (the key bridge between Asia and Europe), the Central Asian \u201cstans,\u201d Southwest Asia (with major roles for Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey), the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe (including Belarus, Moldova, and depending upon its stability, Ukraine). And don\u2019t forget Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, which could be thought of as Silk Road plus.<\/p>\n Silk Road plus would involve connecting the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor to the China-Pakistan economic corridor, and could offer Beijing privileged access to the Indian Ocean. Once again, a total package — roads, high-speed rail, pipelines, and fiber optic networks — would link the region to China.<\/p>\n Xi himself put the India-China connection in a neat package of images in an op-ed he published in the Hindu<\/em><\/a> prior to his recent visit to New Delhi. \u201cThe combination of the \u2018world\u2019s factory\u2019 and the \u2018world\u2019s back office,\u2019\u201d he wrote, \u201cwill produce the most competitive production base and the most attractive consumer market.\u201d<\/p>\n The central node of China\u2019s elaborate planning for the Eurasian future is Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province and the site of the largest commercial fair in Central Asia, the China-Eurasia Fair. Since 2000, one of Beijing\u2019s top priorities has been to urbanize that largely desert but oil-rich province and industrialize it, whatever it takes. And what it takes, as Beijing sees it, is the hardcore Sinicization of the region — with its corollary, the suppression of any possibility of ethnic Uighur dissent. \u00a0People\u2019s Liberation Army General Li Yazhou has, in these terms, described Central Asia as \u201cthe most subtle slice of cake donated by the sky to modern China.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of China\u2019s vision of a new Eurasia tied to Beijing by every form of transport and communication was vividly detailed in \u201cMarching Westwards: The Rebalancing of China\u2019s Geostrategy,\u201d a landmark 2012 essay published by scholar Wang Jisi of the Center of International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University. As a response to such a future set of Eurasian connections, the best the Obama administration has come up with is a version of naval containment from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, while sharpening conflicts with and strategic alliances around China from Japan to India. (NATO is, of course, left with the task of containing Russia in Eastern Europe.)<\/p>\n An Iron Curtain vs. Silk Roads<\/strong><\/p>\n The $400 billion<\/a> \u201cgas deal of the century,\u201d signed by Putin and the Chinese president last May, laid the groundwork for the building of the Power of Siberia pipeline, already under construction in Yakutsk.\u00a0 It will bring a flood of Russian natural gas onto the Chinese market.\u00a0 It clearly represents just the beginning of a turbocharged, energy-based strategic alliance<\/a> between the two countries. Meanwhile, German businessmen and industrialists have been noting another emerging reality: as much as the final market for made-in-China products traveling on future new Silk Roads will be Europe, the reverse also applies. In one possible commercial future, China is slated to become Germany\u2019s top trading partner<\/a> by 2018, surging ahead of both the U.S. and France.<\/p>\n A potential barrier to such developments, welcomed in Washington, is Cold War 2.0, which is already tearing not NATO, but the EU apart. In the EU of this moment, the anti-Russian camp includes Great Britain, Sweden, Poland, Romania, and the Baltic nations. Italy and Hungary, on the other hand, can be counted in the pro-Russian camp, while a still unpredictable Germany is the key to whether the future will hold a new Iron Curtain or \u201cGo East\u201d mindset.\u00a0 For this, Ukraine remains the key.\u00a0 If it is successfully Finlandized (with significant autonomy for its regions), as Moscow has been proposing — a suggestion that is anathema to Washington — the Go-East path will remain open. If not, a BMB future will be a dicier proposition.<\/p>\n It should be noted that another vision of the Eurasian economic future is also on the horizon.\u00a0 Washington is attempting to impose a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on Europe and a similar Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Asia.\u00a0 Both favor globalizing American corporations and their aim is visibly to impede the ascent of the BRICS economies and the rise of other emerging markets, while solidifying American global economic hegemony.<\/p>\n Two stark facts, carefully noted in Moscow, Beijing, and Berlin, suggest the hardcore geopolitics behind these two \u201ccommercial\u201d pacts. The TPP excludes China and the TTIP excludes Russia. They represent, that is, the barely disguised sinews of a future trade\/monetary war.\u00a0 On my own recent travels, I have had quality agricultural producers in Spain, Italy, and France repeatedly tell me that TTIP is nothing but an economic version of NATO, the military alliance that China\u2019s Xi Jinping calls, perhaps wishfully, an \u201cobsolete structure.\u201d<\/p>\n There is significant resistance to the TTIP among many EU nations (especially in the Club Med countries of southern Europe), as there is against the TPP among Asian nations (especially Japan and Malaysia).\u00a0 It is this that gives the Chinese and the Russians hope for their new Silk Roads and a new style of trade across the Eurasian heartland backed by a Russian-supported Eurasian Union<\/a>. To this, key figures in German business and industrial circles, for whom relations with Russia<\/a> remain essential, are paying close attention.<\/p>\n After all, Berlin has not shown overwhelming concern for the rest of the crisis-ridden EU (three recessions in five years). Via a much-despised troika — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission — Berlin is, for all practical purposes, already at the helm of Europe, thriving, and looking east for more.<\/p>\n Three months ago, German chancellor Angela Merkel visited Beijing.<\/a> Hardly featured in the news was the political acceleration of a potentially groundbreaking project: an uninterrupted high-speed rail connection between Beijing and Berlin. When finally built, it will prove a transportation and trade magnet for dozens of nations along its route from Asia to Europe. Passing through Moscow, it could become the ultimate Silk Road integrator for Europe and perhaps the ultimate nightmare for Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cLosing\u201d Russia<\/strong><\/p>\n In a blaze of media attention, the recent NATO summit in Wales yielded only a modest \u201crapid reaction force\u201d for deployment in any future Ukraine-like situations. Meanwhile, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a possible Asian counterpart to NATO, met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In Washington and Western Europe essentially no one noticed.\u00a0 They should have. There, China, Russia, and four Central Asian \u201cstans\u201d agreed<\/a> to add an impressive set of new members: India, Pakistan, and Iran.\u00a0 The implications could be far-reaching. After all, India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now on the brink of its own version<\/a> of Silk Road mania. Behind it lies the possibility of a\u00a0\u201cChindia\u201d economic rapprochement<\/a>, which could change the Eurasian geopolitical map. At the same time, Iran is also being woven into the \u201cChindia\u201d fold.<\/p>\n So the SCO is slowly but surely shaping up as the most important international organization in Asia.\u00a0 It\u2019s already clear that one of its key long-term objectives will be to stop trading in U.S. dollars, while advancing the use of the petroyuan and petroruble<\/a> in the energy trade. The U.S., of course, will never be welcomed into the organization.<\/p>\n All of this lies in the future, however.\u00a0 In the present, the Kremlin keeps signaling that it once again wants to start talking with Washington, while Beijing has never wanted to stop. Yet the Obama administration remains myopically embedded in its own version of a zero-sum game, relying on its technological and military might to maintain an advantageous position in Eurasia.\u00a0 Beijing, however, has access to markets and loads of cash, while Moscow has loads of energy. Triangular cooperation between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow would undoubtedly be — as the Chinese would say — a win-win-win game, but don\u2019t hold your breath.<\/p>\n Instead, expect China and Russia to deepen their strategic partnership, while pulling in other Eurasian regional powers. Beijing has bet the farm that the U.S.\/NATO confrontation with Russia over Ukraine will leave Vladimir Putin turning east. At the same time, Moscow is carefully calibrating what its ongoing reorientation toward such an economic powerhouse will mean. Someday, it\u2019s possible that voices of sanity in Washington will be wondering aloud how the U.S. \u201clost\u201d Russia to China.<\/p>\n In the meantime, think of China as a magnet for a new world order in a future Eurasian century.\u00a0 The same integration process Russia is facing, for instance, seems increasingly to apply<\/a> to India and other Eurasian nations, and possibly sooner or later to a neutral Germany as well. In the endgame of such a process, the U.S. might find itself progressively squeezed out of Eurasia, with the BMB emerging as a game-changer. Place your bets soon.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be called in by 2025.<\/p>\n ______________________________<\/p>\n Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times\/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), <\/em>Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), and <\/em>Obama does Globalistan<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.<\/em><\/p>\n