The old way of war erupts against the new path of development and peace

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Lead Editorial

11 October 2023
Vol. 25 No. 41

The clash of systems that the Australian Citizens Party has documented exhaustively in the AAS over recent years is coming to a head, with the new orientation to development starting to eclipse the old order of Anglo-American hegemony.

On the one hand, the established order of City of London-Wall Street financial control enforced by military power, is crumbling economically and strategically. The coalition of nations that aligned with the US-UK-NATO over Ukraine is fracturing over the sheer cost of using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia, even inside the US Congress, where a revolt against funding Ukraine has sparked political chaos (p. 14). In the UK, London’s Telegraph warned on 8 October that “Britain is on the verge of a cataclysmic financial crisis” (p. 13).

On the other hand, the nations orienting towards cooperative economic development, led by China through its now decade-old Belt and Road Initiative, are growing in number and enthusiasm. The recent expansion of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) with six new members includes formerly implacable enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran, who recognise their interests lie in participating with the nations prioritising economic progress.

It is in this context that truly horrific hostilities have erupted in Israel and Gaza, with Hamas’s appalling massacres of hundreds of civilians, and Israel’s brutal bombing reprisals, also killing hundreds of civilians—so far—in a place where civilians already suffer oppressive, inhumane conditions, described as the world’s largest open-air prison. If anything defines the “old” way of war which characterises the AngloAmerican order, it has been Israel-Palestine since 1948. At a time like this the news flooding out of the conflict is both infuriating, and familiarly depressing; it’s natural to despair, and question whether any solution to this intractable conflict is even possible.

Of course it is, because Israelis and Palestinians are human beings, holding much more in common than divides them. If historical enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran can recognise that they have more to gain by cooperating on economic development than by fighting each other, so can Israelis and Palestinians. Tragically, however, they have never been allowed to, as their disputed land has always served as a time bomb to detonate conflicts with global consequences. It is one place in the world where the same US and British intelligence networks that created Islamist terrorism and al-Qaeda, and conspired to invade Iraq and launch regimechange wars that have turned the Middle East and north Africa into a hellscape, can most easily blow up a conflict to try to pull the world back into the old geopolitical dividing lines which reinforce their old order.

Those desperate to cling to the old order know it is precisely these dividing lines that are being overcome by the orientation to cooperative economic development. This week China reported on the progress of the first ten years of the BRI, which has now racked up infrastructure contracts valued at US$2 trillion! The world has never seen anything like it. China’s massive Export-Import Bank has loaned over US$300 billion for BRI projects up to the end of 2021, and in many of the last ten years China’s lending has exceeded World Bank lending. China’s loans are not loaded with conditions to pay down existing debt to Western banks, or to force economic restructuring that benefits Western corporations, but to build ports, airports, railways, hospitals, etc. that improve people’s lives. And contrary to well-debunked allegations of debt-trap diplomacy, China works with its debtors to manage the loans so they are affordable.

One bright spot inside the USA is the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who this week announced he’s running as an Independent. RFK has expressed admiration for China’s economic development diplomacy, and repeated his uncle JFK’s call for Americans to see the world through their adversaries’ eyes—the first step to any peace.

In this issue:

• ‘The government should intervene in banking’
• US Congressional Research Service casts fresh doubts on AUKUS subs
• Five Eyes sabotage of Albanese’s China trip
• A new world and ‘new’ economics
• The principles underlying the new international order
• Forging a new international framework
• Brace for impact of global bond market crash
• Chaos in House halts Ukraine aid for now
• From tweets to the streets, the banks are in trouble!
• Don’t knock the small, modular future of nuclear power
• ALMANAC: The India-Middle East Corridor is a fraud

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