For the majority of the second half of the 20th century, the three greatest powers of the world were at odds. The schism between neighbours that resulted in the so-called Sino-Soviet split allowed the United States to spend much of the ensuing decades, particularly beginning in the 1970s trying to exploit the split between the great powers of the wider global east.
As The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris explains, America’s vainglorious and ultimately foolhardy attempt to create a divide between China and Russia has failed spectacularly.
Any remaining hopes that the US could cause a rift between Moscow and Beijing ultimately failed to understand that whereas the Nixon administration exploited an existing, substantial split between the two communist super-powers, Russia and China are now allies and no amount of sweet-talking (however patronising) from Washington could create a new Sino-Russian split in 2017.
(ZH) — One day after the US announced it would sell $1.42 billion in weapons to China’s offshore nemesis Taiwan, Beijing lashed out at the United States, saying it was “outraged” and demanded the US revoke immediately its “wrong decision”, saying it contradicted a “consensus” President Xi Jinping reached with his counterpart, Donald Trump, in talks in April in Florida.
Back in April, at the time of the US-Chinese summit in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, I said that US President Trump, inexperienced in foreign affairs, was badly misreading China’s President Xi Jinping.
In particular President Trump misread the Chinese President’s habitual courtesy as a concrete commitment that China would take action against North Korea in connection with that country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme, and as a sign of Chinese support for the US cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in some sort of geopolitical time warp, or a teacup carnival ride, based not on whirling teacups, but…
The post …OH, AND BY THE WAY, IT’S NOT JUST GERMANY THAT IS UPSET, ... appeared first on Giza Death Star.
Vladimir Putin’s lengthy Q and A session at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum was filled with Putin’s typically thorough responses to major contemporary issues. However, while most people focused on his remarks pertaining to the situation in Syria and Libya, as well as the infamous non-relationship with Donald Trump, Putin’s most important remarks were largely ignored.
Normally I do not use or go to this source, but in this case I make an exception, since it highlights the fundamental problem…
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French President Emmanuel Macron has lumped the three very different figures of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into the same category saying that they all see the world in terms of ‘power’. The clear question is, what is the antithesis of power in this instance? But like with most strange accusations made by Macron, he refused to clarify his cryptic remark.
A recent phone conversation that Donald Trump had with his Philippines counterpart Rodrigo Duterte has been leaked to the press.
The conversation covers everything from North Korea to Duterte’s war on drugs to the fact that both Trump and Duterte require little sleep.
The tone of the conversation was very friendly, as had been reported at the time.
Among other things, Donald Trump said of Duterte’s tough stance on the drug problem,
