A War Lost and Won: A New World emerging?

Ashraf Jehangir Qazi

(I am human enough never to want to murder almost two hundred little schoolgirls. But I am also weak and evil enough to do it – without any apology! Who said this? No one. No one had to. We all know who could have said it. Because he did it. That is why the US war on Iran and the Middle East will continue until it is lost. And that is why a new world order has to dawn – and it will.)
At the time of sending this article Trump’s proclamation of defeat as victory is making the news. Iran has apparently given away nothing while Trump’s concessions are camouflaged in a 60-day period of resumed negotiations. Nevertheless, it is not clear how long the current ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran can actually hold. This is because a prolonged cessation of hostilities could be politically fatal for both Trump and Netanyahu who have a slew of criminal charges to face which they have respectively held off with occupancy of the White House on the one hand, and the promise of victory through genocide and war on the other. Iran and China, on the contrary, have emerged with hugely enhanced regional and global reputations, and this has unacceptable strategic implications for the US and Israel. US global hegemony and Israel’s continued existence are both rooted in perpetual war. That is why some years back Noam Chomsky described the US and Israel as the two rogue states of the world that threatened the survival of human civilisation. His words are even truer today. Accordingly, governments of the Global South that pander to one or the other, or both of these rogue states, are open to the charge of betraying their own people.
Napoleon’s sleeping giant – China – has awakened and the western world is shaking. China does not threaten the west. It merely challenges the threat of the west. It does not seek to be master or teacher to the world. It only seeks to be an enabling partner in resisting and overcoming the existential challenges confronting the world, including the hegemonic compulsions of the US. That is threat enough for the west, which sees in China a reflection of itself.
Zhou Bo, a retired Colonel in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has written a book, Should the World Fear China? in which he persuasively argues there is little if any reason to be fearful of China. On the contrary, if a similar question about the US were put to any seriously concerned, fair minded and reasonably well informed citizen of the world, they would most likely answer the question in the positive, i.e. yes, there is every reason to be fearful of a declining, frustrated, lawless and violent US.
The great American baseball player and manager Casey Stengel warned: “Never make predictions, especially about the future!” Nevertheless, the vast majority of world opinion today, especially in the Global South, is hopefully predicting China is the future because the present US-dominated world order will ensure that sooner or later the Doomsday Clock strikes midnight. This has been the message from Trump’s disastrous visit to Beijing where he was gently but firmly put in his place by the confident courtesy and polite cautioning of his host Xi Jinping. Trump was completely confounded by having to forego his normal bullying and overbearing self and, instead, practically kowtow in the presence of someone who assessed him for what he is. No joint statement was issued because no significant agreements were concluded. Trump’s team of multibillionaires whose collective net worth reportedly adds up to over $10 trillion cut a sorry figure in the company of China’s top business and technology leaders. They had little to offer that China desperately needed. The US market, its advanced microchips, agricultural products and foreign investment potential, while still very important for China, are no longer strategic winners in the US effort to contain, isolate and defeat China. US tariffs and sanctions against China have proven far more costly for the US than for China. Even Elon Musk, who has just launched an IPO for his Space X arbitrarily valued at $1.25 trillion, failed to make waves in Beijing. As one wit commented some years back, when China is considered to be x years behind the US in some essential frontline technology, it makes up the gap in x months!
Summing up the visit, Michael Hudson, the author of Super Imperialism – The Economic Strategy of American Empire, noted there are usually two versions of US state visits of strategic importance. One is the US version, according to which the other side more or less totally surrenders to US demands, and the other side’s version, which totally denies the US version. In reality, Hudson says, “Chinese ships are freely going through the Hormuz Strait. They have been paying the tolls that Iran has said are an absolute precondition for any agreement, because Iran has been attacked unjustly, in violation of the UN Security Council rules of war and the rules of international relations. Iran under these rules is justified in receiving reparations. But the UN does not have an enforcement system. So Iran has worked out a pragmatic way of extracting these reparations.” Hudson’s point is that the US utterly failed to drive a wedge between Iran and China on the issue. Ditto for uranium enrichment as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is part of international law, which allows for uranium enrichment for civilian purposes. The only outlaw here is Israel, and its illegally developed nuclear weapons stockpile with US collusion, with which it threatens systemic genocide in the Middle East. Hudson’s analysis is by and large supported by most balanced, informed and reputable commentators and analysts around the world.
Intellectual cynics argue might is right in today’s world and international law and morality are for the birds. The law of the jungle is the only law, so we are told. Well, Chinese might is in the picture or jungle now. Nevertheless, China seeks reconciliation and peace within the framework of international law in complete contrast to the violent policies of the US and its cohorts. Accordingly, despite the virulent cancer of Israel, which was injected into the body politic of the Middle East by western colonialism and later by American hunger for Middle Eastern oil, there may still be a basis for hope because of the fast developing global presence of China. But for this to happen the Global South, especially Central and South Asia,will need to realise that it cannot safeguard its critical interests by serving US imperial and extractive interests, or adopting strategies that seek a balance between an adversary and a friend. Such a balance sounds as silly as it is.
President Putin’s visit to Beijing two days after the Trump visit was a study in contrast. The two Presidents, Xi and Putin, reiterated their united front against US hegemony and warned against a return to “the law of the jungle”. In contrast to the Trump visit, at the end of the Putin visit a joint statement was issued, which criticised Trump’s “Golden Dome”, a so-called defence project that is actually a nuclear first strike capability enhancing project estimated to cost almost $200 billion. The statement also criticised Trump’s decision to allow the expiry of the last US-Russia arms control treaty. It noted “attempts by a number of states (a diplomatic way of referring to the US) to unilaterally manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of several countries, in the spirit of the colonial era, have failed.”
This was a very important reiteration of the Russian and Chinese determination to thwart the implacable drive of the US for perpetual global hegemony as a precondition for its own national security, and to prevent smaller countries through the threat of sanctions from prioritising their national interests over US strategic interests. If this sounds like blatant imperialism, it is, and the Americans are not at all embarrassed. In contrast, President Xi specifically rejected the so-called Thucydides Trap whereby an existing hegemon is challenged by an aspiring one. China’s history is testimony to its rejection of global hegemony. While this may not be equally true of Russia, it is the junior partner in the Sino-Russian alliance today.
It was interesting to note how desperate the western media has been to portray the visit of Putin to Beijing as a failure matching the failure of Trump’s visit. The failure of Putin to finalise a deal with China for the construction of a Siberia-2 gas pipeline was highlighted as if it were the only item on Putin’s agenda. More than 40 agreements were in fact concluded whereas the US got little from its 3-B objective of exporting beef, beans and Boeings to China. The prospects for US exports to China are tied to the prospect for a negotiated peace with Iran, a review of the US stance on Taiwan, and the removal or reduction of trade tariffs on China’s exports to the US. The Siberia-2 gas pipeline is indeed very important for Russia to wean itself away from the EU market. However, the EU in typical self-destructive fashion has kowtowed to the US demand that it buy far more expensive American oil and gas from it for the war in Ukraine in return for the US remaining loyal to NATO and helping it to win the Ukraine war. However, Trump’s admiration for Putin stands in the way of his fidelity to NATO, Europe, and Ukraine – possibly because Putin has access to certain salacious files.
Should peace return to Ukraine, Russia’s access to the European market is likely to be restored and it will no longer have to sell its oil and gas at hugely discounted prices to keep its economy afloat. It will be less dependent on the Chinese market. Meanwhile, China has made clear that the Siberia-2 project has not been rejected and it is expected to be finalised within the coming year after further study. This may be a diplomatic way of saying China is wary of over-investing in a single massive energy project when it needs to diversify its energy sources in order to move further away from carbon intensive fossil fuels. It is already a world leader in green energy technology.
War is carbon-intensive. Peace does not have to be. The US is invested in war. China is not. The US, according to a recent Deutsche Welle report, insists on a fossil fuel-based world economic order despite its catastrophic climate implications. China, on the contrary, is a leader of the crucially important Green Revolution – despite possessing the world’s largest coal reserves. The US under Trump and his besotted MAGA see the Green Revolution as inimical to US global hegemony. Russia hovers in between largely because of the Ukraine war and the sanctions that have been imposed on it. Nevertheless, while strategically escaping the Thucydides Trap of aspiring to be a global hegemon, Russia has no intentions of falling again into the Kissinger Trap (of befriending the US against China), which led to the end of the Soviet Union, the loss of a third of Russia’s territory and half its population, and an economy reduced to that of a middle power. Such a relatively small economy cannot support the military of a 21^stcentury great power.
While the US wishes to prevent the resurgence of Russia as a European and global power, China, although possibly wary of the longer term potential and ambitions of a reconstructed Russia, nevertheless finds it an essential partner in strengthening world peace through ending the global hegemony of the US. For the foreseeable future the Chinese Dragon and the Russian Bear will be getting on just fine, much to the frustration of the American bald eagle.
The US-Israel war on Iran may not be finished although Trump’s threats and retreats continue as he swings between fear of the might of China and the blackmail of Israel, not to mention the fear of the loss of Putin’s goodwill. Accordingly, despite his posturing, Trump went cap in hand to China to ask for help to avoid or at least mitigate defeat at the hands of a so-called “middle power”, which had critical technical and diplomatic assistance from both China and Russia. A furious Israel has been insisting Trump resume the war if only because Netanyahu’s future depends on winning the war against Iran. Trump seems disinclined because Xi Jinping has made it clear he will continue to oppose any use of force to bring about regime change in Tehran and the installation of an anti-China puppet regime. There are reports that China has indicated if an insane Israel were to resort to a nuclear strike against Iran, even with relatively limited theatre nuclear weapons, it would forfeit the right to exist, with all that would imply. Once a nuclear war is launched by a middling power there is no possibility of a ceasefire or avoiding the immediate intervention of the major nuclear powers. Israel’s so-called Masada Complex could be its death sentence.
The need for a globally concerned and more actively involved China will accordingly grow, as its wise caution has served it well throughout its long history. But the globalised 21^stcentury is unique in human history and, accordingly, it will make new demands on the strategies of all countries, including China. The incoherent ferocity of a dying superpower must bring the rest of the world together in close cooperation with China to ensure the continuation of human civilisation. How will this be done is an essential question. But it cannot be allowed to become a show stopper if organised human society is to survive.
Just like the war on Iran, the Taiwan issue has shown Trump up in all his weakness, which he seeks to disguise in braggadocio and buffoonery. With regard to Iran he is blackmailed by Israel and the Epstein files. With regard to Ukraine he is blackmailed by the West Europeans and the US Deep State. With regard to Taiwan he is blackmailed by Japan and other pro-US East Asians who threaten to walk into China’s camp if he lets them down as he seems to them inclined to do. More than a decade ago at Fudan University in Shanghai, during an international conference I attended, a Chinese expert told his American counterpart that the US would sooner or later need to choose who would be its strategic partner in East Asia and the West Pacific: China or Japan? Given the fact that Japan was responsible for the deaths of 27 million Chinese in the Great Anti-Japanese and Anti-Fascist War, the option of choosing both was and still is a non-starter. The astute American scholar was at a loss for an answer because he was aware of the profundity of the question as Japan remains a staunch supporter of Taiwan’s forever separation from mainland China. The US will have to amend its Taiwan policy if there is to be a stable peace in the world.
The Taiwan Relations Act is defended by the US as part of its domestic Congressional and constitutional legislation and, as such, it is valid even if it violates international law! This is legal nonsense, especially as the US Constitution itself mandates the Charter of the UN including the resolutions of the UN Security Council – which cannot be adopted without the support or abstention of the permanent members including the US – to be the supreme law of the US. The contempt of the US for the rest of the world may not be unique in human history, but none of the predecessors of the US have survived in their imperial shape – and that fate awaits Pax Americana today. China, despite its Chinese name, Chungwa, which means the centre of the world, has never sought influence beyond its borders except as a security perimeter given the continuous invasions it has had to face during the course of its history. Hence the concept of One China is a non-negotiable imperative of Chinese policy that needs to be globally respected.
Taiwan has been part of China since 1683 (that is almost a century before the founding of the US) and almost 95 percent of Taiwan’s population is Han Chinese who were forcibly separated from the mainland first by the Japanese and since 1945 by the Americans. China is well aware of the current political perceptions of the people of Taiwan and accordingly seeks peaceful reunification without specifying any time period. The mischief of the American Taiwan Relations Act is likely to become increasingly irrelevant because of the belligerence of US strategy and the economic dependence of the island on mainland China, which will increase with the increasing size and sophistication of the Chinese economy.
China is well aware that any success for the US policy of piracy around the Hormuz Straits – which Trump praises as helping to enrich the US – will only be a precursor for similar US outrages with regard to the Taiwan Straits. That is why President Xi made a point of warning Trump against any adventurism in the Taiwan Straits. The US knows that Taiwan can become a casus belli for China and, as a result, even when China was much weaker than the US, previous US Administrations have always warned Taiwan against declaring independence. Trump’s latest statement on Taiwan suggests he is similarly inclined after his visit to China. For Taiwan, backed by a newly belligerent Japan, to pre-empt the situation would create a crisis that could dwarf the Middle East crisis. The US, however, would be even less likely to win a conflict off the coast of China, especially in the Taiwan Straits.
Meantime, Iran has amazed the world, and in particular the Muslim world, with the scale of its resolve, sacrifice and success in defending itself against a monster superpower threatening to bomb it back to the stone age, just as it allegedly threatened Pakistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings of the Twin Towers of New York. The US has tasted defeat in the developing world or Global South before, especially in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. But each of those defeats took years to be accomplished, whereas in Iran within a matter of weeks, the US knew it had bitten off more than it could chew – admittedly as a result of Chinese and Russian assistance, but no less because of the resilience of a 3,000-year-old civilisation.
Pakistan can validly lay claim to being part, indeed the heart, of a 5000-year-old Indus civilisation. But, unfortunately, its leaders have effectively rejected this nation building option. Iran’s civilisational identity has not undermined its religious identity or ability to adapt to the demands of modernity. Why should Pakistan’s? Thereby hangs a tale for another day. Few have written more eloquently and profoundly on the subject than Pakistan’s great poet and intellectual, Faiz Ahmad Faiz.
Pakistan’s role as mediator has justly been appreciated even if some ‘lifafa’ (envelope) intellectuals and journalists seem to make Pakistan out to be almost the main actor and victor in the conflict. Nevertheless, it has received praise for its role from Iran, China, the US and Russia, which is indeed remarkable. Yet, inexplicably, it threatens Iran if it attacks GCC countries in response to US assaults on Iran from military bases on the territory of the GCC countries that are made available to the US military unconditionally and free of rent. This is tantamount to connivance in US aggression against Iran and is every bit as illegal as the direct US/Israeli assault on Iran itself. With regard to Pakistan’s defence assistance agreement with Saudi Arabia, under no circumstances can a bilateral agreement legally supersede the obligations of member states under the UN Charter. Losing the confidence of Iran, and risking the forfeiture of its own role in facilitating an amicable end to the criminal war launched by the US makes no sense. It seems to be the outcome of a policy of having too many masters in place of the one legitimate master of any responsible government, i.e. its own people. This situation could eventually impact on the confidence of China in Pakistan’s ability to maintain a principled policy course. China does not make a habit of airing its reservations, but it makes them clear in its own discreet way. The US and its Gulf cohorts are, meanwhile, concentrated on distancing Pakistan from China on the street-versus-elite model, which has devastated much of the Arab world. Were that to happen in Pakistan, it would be tantamount to criminal policy negligence, especially in view of the critical support from China that, in the words of one of India’s leading military experts, “shattered Operation Sindoor”. Such support would never have been extended to Pakistan by the US.
In conclusion, according to the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, smaller states (including today’s so-called “middle powers”) must always rely on international law in their interactions with larger powers as an essential, if not always sufficient, support basis for the achievement of their policy objectives. This is even truer today as we see how the US contempt for international law has finally caught up with it and put it at a critical disadvantage relative to China, which takes its international law obligations very seriously. Smaller countries playing at ‘realpolitik’ merely endanger their own security and future. The people pay for the sins of commission and omission of their rulers who, when the bill comes round, are nowhere to be found.
Antonio Gramsci spoke of the need for the pessimism of the intellect (in order to take account of bitter realities) and the optimism of the will (in order to overcome the challenge of these realities). In this sense the optimism of the will is similar to faith and resolve. Iran – with all its shortcomings which it will need to address – has demonstrated a very impressive optimism of the will to make the sacrifices it has had to in order to confront and frustrate the massive evil of the US and Israel.
Tragically, and unforgivably, the middle class intelligentsia of Pakistan is, by and large, only too ready to adopt the pessimism of the intellect that requires it to do little or nothing, while refusing the optimism of the will that can only be measured in terms of sincerity, struggle and sacrifice. The ready acceptance of our inability to do what is essential and indispensable is tantamount to accepting and internalising national failure. What more could an adversary wish for?