“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” ~ Nelson Mandela
I don’t often get taken totally by surprise in routine geo-political events like the major meetings, but I have to admit that I was surprised over this year’s G20. It seems that our geo-political neophyte Donald Trump – being able to dominate the European and World leaders with his manipulation of the press via his constant flow of provocative comments – convinced his past victims that they had to get in the game quickly, or they would look like wimps in front of their own constituents.
They came out swinging, but did not wait until the G20 meeting began. Major “perception management” moves were designed and put into motion, with full-spectrum government planning and media-seeding during the lead-up to the meeting. A multi-stage ambush was laid for Trump way before he set foot in Germany.
A day before the meeting, Merkel and President Xi Jinping announced their intentions to fast track a free trade agreement on July 6th. Xi said that “Chinese-German relations are now about to have a new start where we need new breakthroughs,” adding that he hoped to make a “new blueprint, set sights on new goals and plan new routes for cooperation” during his visit to Germany.
Merkel was not only jump-starting Germany’s free trade push with China, but paving the way for the EU to follow, and said so in plain language. She remarked, “Then we of course talked about questions regarding the EU and China. In this context the questions and the equal treatment of China by all other countries regarding international trade relations are ongoing. Here we are in the final stages of the negotiations of the European Parliament, the European Council and the commission and Germany will very much press for speed.”
Merkel also attacked Trump’s “America First” high school sports mantra, undermining it with a carefully crafted position, that she did not seek to participate in a world view of “winners and losers” as a game, but one in which everyone was a winner.
This was not cheap hype talk; but based on solid economics that the more countries with growing, thriving economies, the more international trade, stimulating predictable long-term growth for everybody. She used China as an example, where Chinese companies currently employ 500,000 Germans, and she wants that number to rise.
Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission president, partnered in this double-barrel point-blank shotgun blast with Merkel against Trump’s threats to put duties on European imports, by threatening quick retaliation if Trump did so. There was to be no negotiation over this, as Trump had never offered any.
He had just announced ahead of time he was going to fix/break all of America’s trade deals, playing Mr. Big to his voting constituency, so Mr. Juncker decided to do the same – and it worked. Trump did not say anything about “unfair trade” with Europe while at the G20, even though it is partially true, as American cars are virtually banned from the German market.
But the EU was fighting back with both fists with its well-timed announcement of the major free trade deal with Japan, a major US ally. It was not a coincidence that the EU-Japan summit concluded on July 6th, the day before the G20 started. Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe called it “the birth of the world’s largest free, industrialized economic zone”. The EU described it as its important bilateral trade deal. The two parties already comprise 19% of world GNP, and 38% of exports.
While this new agreement had been in negotiation for some time, all parties can thank Donald Trump’s big mouth for having it quickly concluded – a classic case of American boomerang foreign policy, whether it involves economics, influencing elections, or overthrowing governments via violent coups that involve death and destruction of masses of innocent civilians for what pompous Americans describe as “pursuing our interests”.
But far away on the other side of the world, another actor had rolled out his own plans to ride the wave of the G20 meeting international focus. North Korea tested a new missile after being ignored with its offer to stop testing, if the US and S. Korea would discontinue their war gaming, and after being dismissed a second time when NK offered to enter talks with no conditions. Kim Jong-un chose the 4thof July to test his two-stage ballistic missile – three days before the G20 meeting –and received tons of press coverage.
The Russians and Chinese were not left out of the pre-staging for the G-20 event, as they had their own two-day summit in Moscow, where they announced a $10-billion investment fund for infrastructure on the New Silk Road and the Eurasian Economic Union.
The big item here, left out of Western Press, is that Western bankers are left out of the deal. Where once upon a time they would cheer such developments for the financing opportunities they represented for the banksters, they now find themselves left at the altar, more boomerang from US sanctions.
It is no coincidence that, with the rise of economic and trade independence with Russia and China, we see the orchestrated corporate media ‘”threat hype” fake news that the general public has become more aware of in the past year. Veterans Today was editorializing about “fake news” five years ago, which resulted in a 100% corporate media blackout on us in the US and EU.
We were also warning and writing about the “deep state” actors that wielded so much power behind the scenes, and we were smeared as “conspiracy theorists”. But now we have been proven right, as has NEO, with the fake-news term being commonly used in mainstream corporate news, and mentioned three times in just one Politico article I read tonight.
Meet and Raise you one
Putin and Xi also issued their own North Korea de-escalation plan, which finally brought international attention to North Korea’s concerns about the major war gaming that had always been conducted on its borders by the US and South Korea. The US reaction was to flex its military muscle with a B1 Lancer bombing practice run near the demilitarized zone, even though the world was already aware that the US Air Force knows how to drop bombs.
On June 22nd North Korea put its de-escalation offer on the table, and as of this writing, Western media is generally omitting if from their coverage. The game the US is playing here is to string out the North Korean threat, as it provides the opportunity and cover to move more military assets closer to Russia and China.
The US was the early winner in the game when it put its THAAD missiles into South Korea, as the powerful THAAD radars can reach far into China. South Korea also has Patriot missiles, with newer ones in the pipeline. But the bottom line is the US cannot attack North Korea, as it can inflict quick and substantial damage on Seoul and the US bases.
Most analysts would bet even money that if North Korea felt it were a target for a decapitation attack, it would use its nukes while still able to do so. The US preemptive attack would then be blamed worldwide for the ensuing carnage.
A deterrent is of no use when the battle lines are so close, if one is not willing to use it quickly with an incoming attack on the way. The situation is further complicated if China and Russia have an agreement to warn North Korea of an incoming attack. The situation could quickly escalate out of control.
If it has a chance to open talks, the US would be making a huge mistake by refusing to put the brakes on military maneuvers near North Korea; and South Korea would be out of its mind not to lobby for talks. But history is filled with poor leaders who made disastrous decisions for which their citizens paid a huge price.
That history hangs over us in a variety of places around the world – Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Ukraine, like the Sword of Damocles, where the US and NATO are pushing the envelope of forward deployment as part of their military-umbrella colonization program. Many view these moves as tripwires for a WWIII that someone wants. And who else but the Deep State could that be?
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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