Russia and China have had enough
Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation
Both have had enough of being “polite”. You want confrontation? Confrontation is what you’re gonna get.
Something very important happened earlier this week in Astana during the meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi went straight to the point: he called for SCO members to “maintain their strategic autonomy”, and “never allow external forces” to turn Eurasia into a “geopolitical arena.”
Wang Yi detailed how “a few countries are pursuing hegemony and power, forming small cliques, establishing hidden rules, engaging in interference and suppression, ‘decoupling and cutting off ties,’ and even assisting the ‘three forces’ in the region”, thus attempting to suppress the strategic autonomy of the Global South.
The “three forces” is Chinese code for terrorism, separatism and religious extremism – actually the three main reasons for the foundation of the SCO way back in 2001, a short while before 9/11.
The straightforward translation of Wang’s message points to Beijing being very much aware of the Hegemon’s myriad Hybrid War tactics now deployed all across the Heartland. Still, Beijing excels in politeness, calling for “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable” security cooperation and to work with the “international community”.
The problem is the “international community” is a hostage of the “rules-based international order”.