This is going to get interesting, congress is insisting on secondary sanctions. Meaning Chinese institutions will be affected if they do business with Russia.
For China it is business in the US, Canada, EU, and Japan v business with Russia.
Makes it much easier for China to de facto join us in shutting down Putin.
Or it sends multi national corporations in China packing. That would be a huge favor to the west. There would be an instant build out of factories from Japan to Poland.
This is expected. It is a natural step in choosing up sides. So far China, India, and Pakistan and Indonesia are not friends, so right now the USA controls the money if not the people. However, none of these particularly like the USA. If the USA pushes hard enough, these could ally in a “ Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”
An alliance of these would have half the worlds population and a GDP larger than the USA, but not larger than the USA plus Europe. I have not taken the time to calculate the PPP but using PPP might put this group, (if it were to exist as a group) to controlling most of the worlds economy and land mass. (If Russia was part of that group)
Watch the narrative carefully, if Russia’s narrative catches on in the non aligned nations we could see the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
So far China, India, and Pakistan and Indonesia are not friends,
Qaz,
Frankly that analysis is far too 2 dimensional. There is no love lost between China and India. Both want the western markets. There is no love lost at all between China and Russia or India and Russia. Russia is a worthless market to either of them. The Russian resources are all they would want. Pakistan and Indonesia are bit players in this.
The secondary sanctions will make the choice clear and easy politically. Meaning “we did not cut off Russia, the US demanded we do so”. Politically we are not answerable…blame the US.
The thing is resource prices, oil and wheat, are going higher anyway. Yes I was wrong last week. Cutting off the finances with Russia does not change that. Blame is messy, but politicians keep running into doing just that. In fact they never seem to run the other way.
China is the wildcard. Xi may say we are corrupt and he is done with us. By us that includes all of the west.
If Xi bows out we win hands down. The major multinational corporations would go on a factory building binge in the west. China end up with a worthless russia.
Watch the narrative carefully, if Russia’s narrative catches on in the non aligned nations we could see the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
“Pax Americana” was a neo-con wet dream. It was only possible while Russia was weakened by the fall of the Soviet regime and before China was granted membership in the WTO in 2001. By the time PNAC was established in 1997. the door to Shinyland running the world at bayonet point was about to close. PNAC itself was dissolved in 2006. Kristol formed another group in 09. but it was also dissolved, in 2017.
The “non-aligned” movement, of countries that play the Commies and the west against eachother, has been a concept at lease since the 60s.
Ever see “Romanoff and Juliet”? It’s a 1961 production about the Commies and west both trying to schmooze a tiny country to resolve a deadlocked vote at the UN.
Romanoff and Juliet (1961 film)
A vote in the United Nations is deadlocked. The deciding vote goes to the tiny, obscure European Republic of Concordia. Its president, known as the General (Peter Ustinov), abstains from voting. To remedy the issue, ambassadors from the United States and Soviet Union attempt to win the General’s favor.
“Pax Americana” was derived from the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
Which has been adopted bipartisanally by the US foreign policy of regime change, unilateralism & there can only be one super power. Oh NATO expansion fits nicely into the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
As I said, the era of “one superpower” ended in 2001, when the west enabled the ascent of China by buying Chinese goods, financing their buildup, and the west increasing it’s reliance on Russian oil and gas, financing Russia’s build up after Putin took office in 2000.
The “rope” that Lenin talked about.
There is no “Pax Americana”. There can’t be. We are back to the cold war “spheres of influence”.
It is no accident that the United States is on the cusp of the Second Cold War.
Future historians may well view the last 30 years as a case study in the institutional survival of the American Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex (MICC), together with its supporting blob now saturating the media, think tanks, academia, and the intelligence community. Perhaps, these future historians will come also to view the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as the bridging operation that greased the transition to Cold War II by keeping defense budgets at Cold War levels after Cold War I ended. Also, 9-11 may have re-acclimated the American people to the climate of fear now needed to sustain Cold War II for the remainder of the 21st Century.
I couldn’t state it better.
In the link Spinney points out that the defense industry sponsored the “US Committee on NATO, a non-profit corporation formed in 1996 to promote the expansion of NATO and the strengthening of ties between the United States and Europe.” Bruce Jackson, a VP at Lockheed Martin, was chair. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_P._Jackson