The West's game is up. But they will inflict more pain on the world

 

Europe is sermonizing the non-western world about democracy and morality. America is doing the same.

They want to tell the world that they are the guardians of human civilization and everyone who wants a world based on rules and morality should support them.

Yes, but don't as what are those rules, who made them, and how just they are.

Western media, long the foot-soldiers of western colonial and neo-colonial interests is furious the world is not listening.

Still, all that is not changing the world. 

Because the world has had enough. No one is buying the west's attempts at portraying conflicts where its interests are at stake as life-and-death conflicts for the world itself.

The world has seen worse conflicts, and survived.

Now the funny part. Some of those conflicts which have destroyed civilizations, led to  mass enslavement were caused by the West. By the white  man's greed -- for power and money.

But the world has come out of those conflicts. And western attempts to keep the world enslaved by buying out elites across the non-western world are no longer succeeding, or have much effect.

The simple fact is that the world has changed. The world does not see the white man's conflicts as their conflicts. They have survived centuries of western brutality and oppression. Now they are saying "enough."

The West is destroying itself in Ukraine, and in Israel.

For centuries they have survived by sucking in the world's resources and using those to win in conflicts they created. But that era is over. The West cannot continue to suck in resources, fuel conflicts and destroy non-western countries, and ensure their own people live in plenty.

The resources are drying up. You can keep blaming China, but the countries who own the resources also are not willing to part with them for small change, and so-called badges of honor that the West doles out to its agents.

Let's look at this. Russia has resources; the West hasn't.

And the West can no longer suck in resources from the rest of the world as it used to.

It cannot use military power to subdue Russia, a superpower itself. Ukraine is a lost cause. The bought-out Ukrainian elite who led that country into a diastrous conflict will soon have to flee. But true to their nature, they will cut a deal with Russia soon.

Look at Gaza. The U.S. is pumping Israel with weapons. The Arab world is not complaining. 

But that doesn't give the full picture. Arab rulers, derided by the West as dictators, are afraid of the Palestinians. They want Israel, and the West, to do the dirty job for them. And are happy to help behind the scenes.

But the moment the Palestinians are defeated, the West's deafeat starts. And Israel is finished.

The Arab rulers will not have to worry about the Palestinians or their sympathisers challenging them. Expect them to go in for the kill. Israel may have nuclear weapons, but it will implode before it can use them.

And it will be a terrible day. The U.S. will be powerless, that is if it still exists after the many conflicts it has created across the world has drained its resources and national will.

The world has changed -- forever. 

Triggering conflicts in other countries to maintain one's own superiority is no longer going to work for the West.

But don't expect them to go down that easily. They have created terrible weapons and a military-industrial complex. Their leaders and elites are drunk on power, with a sense that they are entitled to rule the rest of the world.

They will use all that and inflict untold pain to the rest of the world, like their predecessor generations before they go down.

God save the world!

Can the people of a country be punished for the supposed crimes of the regime they elected?

 

How culpable are Gazans for Hamas' sins? Photo: Pixabay/hosnysalah

One key argument underpinning Israel's ruthless punishment of Gazans is this: you elected Hamas, which carried out this brutal terror attack on our people and still holds many of them as hostages. And that makes you equally deserving of the same punishment that we are dishing out to Hamas.

This argument is not something unique to Israel. When Indian tested a nuclear bomb, the United States imposed sanctions on the country, arguing that the people who elected the government that tested the bomb has to be punished.

It is an argument that conveniently ignores that you cannot punish a regime in isolation and makes up for that by justifying collective punishment.

It also ignores the troubling moral question whether the people of a country, who are themselves hostages to a brutal regime, can be blamed for the actions of the regime. That applies, for example, to Iran and Iranians, and to some extent to Gazans.

But those questions are conveniently ignored and the moral responsibility of electing a government that is deemed by the West as against its interests and has the gall to implement steps on the international arena to weaken western domination is often pinned on the unfortunate people.

The West's preachers of democracy ignore the fact that every people has the right to elect a government that they think represents their best interests. That is based on the West's own definition of democracy, which it is now preaching to the world (even as it aids dictators and monarchs where convenient). 

And based on that paradigm, the only important thing is whether the electoral process was followed correctly. 

But here again we see two different sets of rules. If a government moves against an opposition that is corrupt but supportive of the west's interests, it is seen as thwarting the legitimate democratic process. This has played out again and again recently in many countries where governments have taken on the West's interests.

But the same West, especially the United States, is doing everything it can to prevent its main opposition candidate from coming to power, justifying its actions with the heavy hand of law and some very unconvincing arguments. They forget that the same arguments would have invited condemnation from the West if it was another country.

Coming back to the moral question and the assigning of responsibility: the bottom line is that any people who elect a government that is going against western interests can be punished. That means the people of a country have to be well aware that they could be punished with starvation and economic denial if they elect a government that is very good for them, but also not so good for the West. Increasingly, as people and countries find their voice, this is going to play in repeat.

Well, that seems to be the rules-based international order that the West is pushing these days.

But are the people in many countries aware of these risks? And if they aren't aware, can they be punished?

Which then takes us to the question: is democracy even practical under such rules?

Which takes us to the question: who framed these rules, and who gave them the authority to frame these rules and impose them on the world?

Xi can take Taiwan without a military conflict. So why isn't he?

There could be two reasons why China is not looking at a political integration of Taiwan.

The Chinese have been trying to din it into the Americans: Beijing will never compromise on Taiwan's integration with the Mainland. And the Americans don't want to hear that.

But here is another question. The Chinese can easily take over Taiwan politically by stirring up a political unrest and rebellion. And the Americans would be able to do little about it. But Xi Jinpeng seems to be ignoring that option as much as Joe Biden seems to be ignoring Xi's repeated warnings about the Taiwan question.

That would be the best route for Beijing to take over Taiwan. Probably bloodless, or with comparatively less bloodshed. No harm to China's economy from sanctions and other punitive measures from the West and its allies. 

But Beijing seems disinterested in following that route. Despite it holding enough economic clout to squeeze Taiwan's economy and then provoke political unrest through its proxies. It can't be that Beijing does not have, or cannot find, such proxies in Taiwan. The two countries share a lot of history in common and it would need only a little bit of political shenanigans and some discrete financing to get an uprising going.

There could be two reasons why China is not looking at that option. The first, and probably the weaker one, is that Beijing wants to keep the tensions alive for longer. Every government needs a hot-button issue to keep its flock together. More so authoritarian regimes. So keeping the Taiwan issue on the boil may well serve Xi to keep his people distracted from the economic pain China is going through.

But that theory ignores that the economic pain is not something an authoritarian regime would worry about much. And with its economic clout China can better weather any blow to its economy better than, say, a Russia under Putin. But even Putin's Russia has shown how resilient it is to western sanctions that just a year ago were thought to deal a body blow to its economy.

So the second reason for Xi's disinterest in attempting a political integration of Taiwan seems more plausible: Beijing is so confident of its military and economic power that it is not scared of U.S. military might. And by holding on the confrontation course Beijing calculates that it will emerge a winner from two possible outcomes.

One, there will be a shooting war over Taiwan and, Beijing expects, with all the missiles and forces it has amassed on the Mainland, America will be defeated. Xi probably has factored in some kind of military damage but probably calculates that the prestige of defeating the U.S. military and the result of a redrawn geopolitical map will more than compensate for that. It could lead to China becoming the preeminent power in the world, ending the West's free run that started after world war 2.

Now the second possibility could be even better: the U.S. and its allies will turn tail and flee, faced with the prospect of a damaging clash with the Chinese military.

Again, the benefits are all China's.

But wait, what if China loses to the U.S. in such a clash? Xi probably is not even considering such a possibility existing; or would still think that any clash where China can inflict significant damage to the U.S. military would still be beneficial to Beijing, whatever its outcome.

So we are probably seeing a building blocks of an intense military conflict in the South China Sea. Beijing seems to want one; and the U.S. is still under the hangover of the decades when it had unquestioned military superiority over the globe.

And change is inveitable.