War propaganda backfires, hastens collaboration

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Lead Editorial

2 February 2022
Vol. 24 No. 5

If we go “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy” we will always find one. That spirit will always lead to interference and division, as American President John Quincy Adams warned in an 1821 address.

Amid the barrage of propaganda and lies about an “imminent” invasion of Ukraine by Russia, numerous voices concur that beating the war drums will only worsen the strategic situation. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called suggestions his country is on the brink of war “a mistake”, and asked Western commentators to “Please calm down a bit.”

Hong Kong-based news editor Nury Vittachi noted in a 1 February article republished by Pearls and Irritations, that the Ukrainian President unexpectedly told a press conference “that his country’s current problems came from the West rather than the East” and that the real threat was the “destabilisation of the situation inside the country”. Vitachi showed how “The Western powers appear to be repeating their Taiwan strategy in Ukraine.”

In a 25 January article for Consortium News, political analyst Patrick Lawrence compared China’s red line over outsiders pushing for Taiwanese independence with the line Russia has drawn over NATO expansion. “Russia does not want to ‘invade’ Ukraine any more than China wants to reassert its legitimate sovereignty over Taiwan by force.” Neither of these “conflicts” is being pushed by the nations involved, but from outside.

Calling for a new security order, Lawrence cited other analysts who concur that the latest military adventurism is backfiring: “As Scott Ritter just wrote in Consortium News, and Marshall Auerback earlier argued in The Scrum, Ukraine shapes up as a provocation too far for Washington, London and Brussels. It’s Kiev as Waterloo. It’s the end of Western expansionism.”

Already France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Turkey have made moves to distance themselves from the Anglo-American escalation.

And if Western sanctions include suspending Russia from the SWIFT financial settlement system, Lawrence added, “it would prompt Moscow and Beijing to accelerate plans already in motion to develop a system independent of SWIFT and not subject to Washington’s geopolitical whims. ... The coalescing of non-Western powers, far from least Russia and China, is a reality well beyond the course of the Ukraine crisis and this or that sanction. The relentless campaigns against the Chinese and Russians in the two-front Cold War these past few years have done a great deal to encourage unity between the two.”

“Russia is expected to sign major economic agreements with China soon that will further insulate it from economic sanctions”, wrote former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter on 28 January. Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during the Winter Olympics. Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar, in “IranRussia hit maximum strategy” published by thecradle.co on 21 January, documents a steadily increasing roster of meetings and agreements between Russia, Iran and China, meshing with cooperative arrangements involving RIC (Russia, Iran and China), SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), as this news service has also been reporting.

Every nation has the right to economic cooperation to secure its future. As AAS reported last week, Ukrainian political leader Dr Natalia Vitrenko in a 19 January open letter, demanded respect for Ukrainians to forge their own destiny, as a neutral country, as stated in the country’s 1990 Declaration of Sovereignty. Another Ukrainian political leader, Viktor Medvedchuk, has urged an alternative vision: “Ukraine should become a bridge between Russia and the West, between the West and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.”

“A new Eurasia-led order encompassing the vast majority of the world’s population”, wrote Escobar, “carries larger than life implications for the Western gatekeepers of the imperial ‘rules-based’ order.” But for the average person, a move away from the current collapsing order is not a threat, but good news.

In this issue:

• Jacinda Ardern flees public ‘bail-in’ debate (Scott Morrison just lies)
• Soaring cash use defies predictions of cashless society
• Bank lending faces moment of reckoning: former ANZ director
• Senate inquiry slams sabotage of public service
• Public servants face burnout, demoralisation; vets impacted
• Morrison’s WeChat Saga
• Australia renews fealty to ‘Global Britain’ at 2022 AUKMIN
• ‘China initiative’ witch hunt exposed
• International collaboration against war
• New support for National Infrastructure Bank in USA

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