New Multipolar World

magnumcromagnon wrote:

sepheronx wrote:India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In Doubt

Yesterday we reported that with the Russia-China axis firmly secured, the scramble was on to assure the alliance of that last, and critical, Eurasian powerhouse: India. It was here that Russia had taken the first symbolic step when earlier in the week its central bank announced it had started negotiations to use national currencies in settlements, a process which would culminate with the elimination of the US currency from bilateral settlements.

Russia was not the first nation to assess the key significance of India in concluding perhaps the most important geopolitical axis of the 21st century - we reported that Japan, scrambling to find a natural counterbalance to China with which its relations have regressed back to World War II levels, was also hot and heavy in courting India. “The Japanese are facing huge political problems in China,” said Kondapalli in a phone interview. “So Japanese companies are now looking to shift to other countries. They’re looking at India.”

Of course, for India the problem with a Japanese alliance is that it would also by implication involve the US, the country which has become insolvent and demographically imploding Japan's backer of last and only resort, and thus burn its bridges with both Russia and China. A question emerged: would India embrace the US/Japan axis while foregoing its natural Developing Market, and BRICS, allies, Russia and China.

We now have a clear answer and it is a resounding no, because in what was the latest slap on the face of now crashing on all sides US global hegemony, earlier today India refused to sign a critical global trade dea. Specifically, India's unresolved demands led to the collapse of the first major global trade reform pact in two decades. WTO ministers had already agreed the global reform of customs procedures known as "trade facilitation" in Bali, Indonesia, last December, but were unable to overcome last minute Indian objections and get it into the WTO rule book by a July 31 deadline.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo told trade diplomats in Geneva, just two hours before the final deadline for a deal lapsed at midnight that "we have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge that gap."

Reuters reports that most diplomats had expected the pact to be rubber-stamped this week, marking a unique success in the WTO's 19-year history which, according to some estimates, would add $1 trillion and 21 million jobs to the world economy.

Turns out India was happy to disappoint the globalists: the diplomats were shocked when India unveiled its veto and the eleventh-hour failure drew strong criticism, as well as rumblings about the future of the organisation and the multilateral system it underpins.

"Australia is deeply disappointed that it has not been possible to meet the deadline. This failure is a great blow to the confidence revived in Bali that the WTO can deliver negotiated outcomes," Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said on Friday. "There are no winners from this outcome – least of all those in developing countries which would see the biggest gains."
Shockingly, and without any warning, India's stubborn refusal to comply with US demands, may have crushed the WTO as a conduit for international trade, and landed a knockout punch when it comes to future relentless globallization which as is well known over the past 50 or so years, has benefited the US first and foremost.

Broke, debt-monetizing Japan, which as noted previously, was eager to become BFFs with India was amazed by the rebuttal: "A Japanese official familiar with the situation said that while Tokyo reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining and strengthening the multilateral trade system, it was frustrated that such a small group of countries had stymied the overwhelming consensus. "The future of the Doha Round including the Bali package is unclear at this stage," he said."

Others went as far as suggesting the expulsion of India:

Some nations, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, Japan and Norway, have already discussed a plan to exclude India from the agreement and push ahead, officials involved in the talks said.
However, such a move would clearly be an indication that the great globalization experiment is coming to an end: "New Zealand Minister of Overseas Trade, Tim Groser, told Reuters there had been "too much drama" surrounding the negotiations and added that any talk of excluding India was "naive" and counterproductive. "India is the second biggest country by population, a vital part of the world economy and will become even more important. The idea of excluding India is ridiculous." ... "I don't want to be too critical of the Indians. We have to try and pull this together and at the end of the day putting India into a box would not be productive," he added.

And yes, the death of the WTO is already being casually tossed around as a distinct possibility:

Still, the failure of the agreement should signal a move away from monolithic single undertaking agreements that have defined the body for decades, Peter Gallagher, an expert on free trade and the WTO at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters.

"I think it's certainly premature to speak about the death of the WTO. I hope we've got to the point where a little bit more realism is going to enter into the negotiating procedures," he said.
But the one country that was most traumatized, was the one that has never before been used to getting a no answer by some "dingy developing world backwater": the United States, and the person most humiliated, who else but John Kerry.

"U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday that India's refusal to sign a global trade deal sent the wrong signal, and he urged New Delhi to work to resolve the row as soon as possible." "Failure to sign the Trade Facilitation Agreement sent a confusing signal and undermined the very image Prime Minister Modi is trying to send about India," a U.S. State Department official told reporters after Kerry's meeting with Modi.

Wrong signal for John Kerry perhaps, who is now beyond the world's "diplomatic" laughing stock and the man who together with Hillary Clinton (and the US president) has made a complete mockery of US global influence in the past 5 years. But just the right signal for China and of course, Russia.

This is very interesting news.  China was originally not gonna sign it and so WTO headed by US was expecting India to sign it, but India has now refused to.  To add fuel to the fire, US is now looking to bypass India in the WTO and hope to push the agreement anyway and thus undermining India's position in the WTO making the whole thing pointless (was pointless for Russia).

US is sure making a whole lot of friends...  Go figure, only friends they can actually make are failed post soviet nations who rely on US for military purposes.

Time to see the fall and death of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the WTF...in that order. 

GarryB wrote:

US in cold war with Russia, China and India. It seems BRICS will become a real alliance, political, economical and probably also military to counter US global imperialism.

I rather suspect it will remain economic... there is no shared ideology to push... NATO has US hegemony to spread, but BRI2CSA (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa,  and Argentina.) does not.

GarryB wrote:

The world doesn't work like that, the term 'Political Economy',

You are right, the world doesn't work like that... but I really don't see Putin getting together with a group of other nations with the goal of replacing western domination with their own type of domination.

They don't want to be the king, they want to remove all kings from power and create something a bit more humaine and democratic.

Kings don't give up power easily however...    Sometimes the method needed is the same as that used against Dragons...

Kings don't give up power easily however...    Sometimes the method needed is the same as that used against Dragons...

TR1 wrote:

GarryB wrote:

The world doesn't work like that, the term 'Political Economy',

You are right, the world doesn't work like that... but I really don't see Putin getting together with a group of other nations with the goal of replacing western domination with their own type of domination.

They don't want to be the king, they want to remove all kings from power and create something a bit more humaine and democratic.

Kings don't give up power easily however...    Sometimes the method needed is the same as that used against Dragons...

Putin...wants to create something humane and DEMOCRATIC?

Oh my sides.....

nemrod wrote:
Concerning Europ, after all, European Union is enlarging more than never, for all that is it an european empire ? Then, why is Russia's parnerships called an empire ? Because of no compliance to US will ?
The first rogue state in the world has all rights, meanwhile the others will have to comply, else.....

higurashihougi wrote:

nemrod wrote:
Concerning Europ, after all, European Union is enlarging more than never, for all that is it an european empire ? Then, why is Russia's parnerships called an empire ? Because of no compliance to US will ?
The first rogue state in the world has all rights, meanwhile the others will have to comply, else.....

It is a habit for people to use the label "empire" for something extremely big, economically and militarily powerful, and is rapidly expanding its influence to the neighboring regions.

Using that kind of labelling we have an U.S. empire, a China empire, and a Russian empire. EU is more difficult to be labelled because it does not have a strong continental centralized government there are many internal conflicts and disagreements. In the future we probably will have a NATO empire and an Eurasia (Russia + India + China + etc.) empire.

The funny thing in this story is that no one in the list calls itself an empire. But all of them accused each others as "empires".

a group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government: usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom, as the former British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, Byzantine Empire, or Roman Empire.

Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order
The concept that has underpinned the modern geopolitical era is in crisis

The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis, writes Henry Kissinger. Above, a pro-Russian fighter stands guard at a checkpoint close to Donetsk, Ukraine in July. European Pressphoto Agency

Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist armies are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan's young democracy is on the verge of paralysis. To these troubles are added a resurgence of tensions with Russia and a relationship with China divided between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination. The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis.

The search for world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the U.S.—strengthened in its economy and national confidence—began to take up the torch of international leadership and added a new dimension. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, the U.S. identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited these forces with an ability to achieve just and lasting peace. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive; to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.

This effort to establish world order has in many ways come to fruition. A plethora of independent sovereign states govern most of the world's territory. The spread of democracy and participatory governance has become a shared aspiration if not a universal reality; global communications and financial networks operate in real time.

The years from perhaps 1948 to the turn of the century marked a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order composed of an amalgam of American idealism and traditional European concepts of statehood and balance of power. But vast regions of the world have never shared and only acquiesced in the Western concept of order. These reservations are now becoming explicit, for example, in the Ukraine crisis and the South China Sea. The order established and proclaimed by the West stands at a turning point.

First, the nature of the state itself—the basic formal unit of international life—has been subjected to a multitude of pressures. Europe has set out to transcend the state and craft a foreign policy based primarily on the principles of soft power. But it is doubtful that claims to legitimacy separated from a concept of strategy can sustain a world order. And Europe has not yet given itself attributes of statehood, tempting a vacuum of authority internally and an imbalance of power along its borders. At the same time, parts of the Middle East have dissolved into sectarian and ethnic components in conflict with each other; religious militias and the powers backing them violate borders and sovereignty at will, producing the phenomenon of failed states not controlling their own territory.

The challenge in Asia is the opposite of Europe's: Balance-of-power principles prevail unrelated to an agreed concept of legitimacy, driving some disagreements to the edge of confrontation.

The clash between the international economy and the political institutions that ostensibly govern it also weakens the sense of common purpose necessary for world order. The economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world remains based on the nation-state. Economic globalization, in its essence, ignores national frontiers. Foreign policy affirms them, even as it seeks to reconcile conflicting national aims or ideals of world order.

This dynamic has produced decades of sustained economic growth punctuated by periodic financial crises of seemingly escalating intensity: in Latin America in the 1980s; in Asia in 1997; in Russia in 1998; in the U.S. in 2001 and again starting in 2007; in Europe after 2010. The winners have few reservations about the system. But the losers—such as those stuck in structural misdesigns, as has been the case with the European Union's southern tier—seek their remedies by solutions that negate, or at least obstruct, the functioning of the global economic system.

The international order thus faces a paradox: Its prosperity is dependent on the success of globalization, but the process produces a political reaction that often works counter to its aspirations. A third failing of the current world order, such as it exists, is the absence of an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues. This may seem an odd criticism in light of the many multilateral forums that exist—more by far than at any other time in history. Yet the nature and frequency of these meetings work against the elaboration of long-range strategy. This process permits little beyond, at best, a discussion of pending tactical issues and, at worst, a new form of summitry as "social media" event. A contemporary structure of international rules and norms, if it is to prove relevant, cannot merely be affirmed by joint declarations; it must be fostered as a matter of common conviction.

The penalty for failing will be not so much a major war between states (though in some regions this remains possible) as an evolution into spheres of influence identified with particular domestic structures and forms of governance. At its edges, each sphere would be tempted to test its strength against other entities deemed illegitimate. A struggle between regions could be even more debilitating than the struggle between nations has been.

The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another. These goals are not necessarily self-reconciling: The triumph of a radical movement might bring order to one region while setting the stage for turmoil in and with all others. The domination of a region by one country militarily, even if it brings the appearance of order, could produce a crisis for the rest of the world.
A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon rules, can be our hope and should be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediary stages.

To play a responsible role in the evolution of a 21st-century world order, the U.S. must be prepared to answer a number of questions for itself: What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary alone? What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by any multilateral effort? What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance? What should we not engage in, even if urged on by a multilateral group or an alliance? What is the nature of the values that we seek to advance? And how much does the application of these values depend on circumstance?

For the U.S., this will require thinking on two seemingly contradictory levels. The celebration of universal principles needs to be paired with recognition of the reality of other regions' histories, cultures and views of their security. Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America's exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course. But nor does it assure success for the most elevated convictions in the absence of a comprehensive geopolitical strategy.

— Dr. Kissinger served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Adapted from his book "World Order," to be published Sept. 9 by the Penguin Press.

LMFS wrote:Fantastic article by Pepe Escobar on geopolitics:

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/29/back-in-the-great-game-the-revenge-of-eurasian-land-powers/

Hannibal Barca wrote:
I expect that they will not jeopardize it, like Putin,

Hannibal Barca wrote:Lol are you for real? 
Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Georgia his stance towards Israel, the lack of support for N. Korea and Iran. His apathy for the violent enslavement of Scotland and Catalonia. The support to the imperialist aggressors in Afghanistan .. Just to name a few.
Despite that the Russian military superiority is pretty evident at this stage.
He is Chamberlain multiplied by a million.