Is it too much to view this as a world war of another kind? I don't think so. And the implications of this term, if one accepts it, bear serious consideration.
After 2001
In the interim immediately following the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, the U.S. had a choice and a chance to accept, imaginatively and creatively, the emergence of a new global order and the West's relative decline in it after a period of exploitative superiority extending back half a millennium. But our leaders swiftly decided no, we'll do this as messily and violently as we can.
In other words, the war we wage against China is the same war we wage against Iran and against Russia and against Venezuela. They may look different, but they are of a piece. There is no indication that this war will prove anything other than protracted and vicious.
All of these nations are self-consciously non-Western but in no wise anti-Western. Their sins are the same, too: They all stand for self-determination, against anti-democratic Western hegemony, and for a global order in effect based on the five principles Zhou Enlai articulated at the 1955 Bandung Conference of non -aligned nations.
Think about these famous principles: Mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in others' internal affairs, equality, and peaceful co-existence. Name one of these the U.S. observes. Name one that any of the nations on our list violates, and spare us the rubbish about Russia's re-annexation of Crimea after the U.S. recklessly lunged for the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol via the coup it cultivated in Ukraine six years ago.
The nations on our list all display strengths, we must also note. These strengths translate into power of one or another magnitude. In this, these nations stand for the emergent power of the non-West. I am happy to call this the power of self-possession.
Variant of Postwar Japan
It is obvious by now that China has achieved a level of technological advancement that will propel it into global leadership in various significant fields. It is a variant of the postwar Japan story: They started out making ceramic ashtrays and transistor radios and went on to dominate in industries such as cars, shipbuilding, steel, robotics, high-end medical gear and so on. For the sake of proportion, Japan had a population of 92 million in 1960; China's now is 1.4 billion.
Iran is destined to play a leading role in its region in the political and security dimensions regardless of anyone else's preferences a positive role given its objective to bring stability to a region the U.S. has set ablaze. It has the world's fourth-largest petroleum reserves and is a locus of various emergent alliances with other powers, China and Russia notable among them.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, of course, and with the election of Hugo Cha'vez in 1999 it began to make itself that most dreaded of entities from Washington's perspective, a working social democracy in Latin America that serves its people. These are sources of power. It is because of both that the U.S. is so intent on bringing down the government of Nicola's Maduro, who succeeded Cha'vez on the latter's death in 2013.
Vladimir Putin's great transgression was insisting on nothing more nor less than parity after the U.S. brought the Russian Federation to its knees during the tragic presidency of the supine, ever-inebriated Boris Yeltsin. Since his noted speech at the Munich security conference in 2007, the Russian president has been consistently clear he welcomes extensive, cooperative relations with the West, but only if these are based on an equal partnership.
One need not change a syllable of Putin's often-stated position to recognize this as precisely the position of all of America's designated adversaries. But the coming of equality among nations is the single most fundamental reason the U.S. now wages the world war I describe.
It is always an excellent thing for U.S. foreign policy to fail when directed against non-Western powers with minds of their own, especially if it is crafted by the inimitable (thank goodness) Pompeo. Last Friday gave us two back-to-back flops. Wunderbar on both counts.
At the United Nations, the Security Council voted down Pompeo's long-running effort to extend an arms embargo against Iran as provided for in the 2015 accord governing the Islamic Republic's nuclear programs. This was embarrassment No.1 for the irrational Pompeo.
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