Subliminal message from Beijing to Washington in the midst of the war drums
Anger is arsonist. Below its grip, there is a tendency to provoke a reaction from the adversary, which will serve as fuel to fan the flames, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the angry hell. The method is convenient for practising accusatory reversal and making the one who reacts to aggression the instigator of hell.
Today, Washington is angry. The object of this anger is China’s dramatic rise, which is increasingly shaking the foundations and legitimacy of America’s dominance of the world. This American anger desperately needs pretexts both to justify and intensify hostilities against Beijing. So the US is seeking to provoke a violent reaction from its main geopolitical rival: China.
So far, this US strategy of competition has had the opposite effect to that expected. Whether in the immediate vicinity of Beijing, the Middle East, Africa, or Europe, US pressure against China and its partners has strengthened Beijing’s pacifist vocation, to the point of making it a key diplomatic actor in resolving the most acute global crises. To the chagnificent thirst for Washington, D.C.
An escalation of tensions meticulously organized by Washington and its allies
Washington’s strategy to escalate tensions aims to target support points that give Beijing and Russia’s multipolarity a geopolitical reality. Feeding up conflicts involving Beijing’s strategic partners is the path that the US seems to have chosen to curb China’s rise and undermine its strategic investments.
When Washington allows Israel to assassinate, on Iranian soil and in the aftermath of the Beijing Declaration, Hamas’s political leader in charge of negotiations, Chinese diplomacy’ efforts to unify Palestinian factions are also targeted. When Israel bombs the Iranian consulate in Damascus in defiance of the Vienna Convention, China, which has entered into a strategic partnership with Iran and Syria, is also targeted. When Washington and its allies bomb Yemen to remove any obstacle to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories, China, which worked to bring Riyadh and Tehran closer together, and then between Riyadh and Sana’a, is also targeted. When members of the UN Security Council adopt a resolution on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, and the United States declares that this resolution is non-binding, China, which urges respect for international law and whose strategic interests are threatened by regional insecurity, is also targeted.
The latest developments relating to Western Sahara have striking similarities with West Asia. As with the Palestinian question, the Western bloc ignores international law, which enshrines the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination – with the difference that here is the China-Algeria Economic Partnership, and the Russia-Algeria Security Partnership, which seem to be in Washington’s viewfinder. Not to mention that Algerian gas is supposed to relieve Europeans of anti-Russian sanctions, and that Algeria continues to put the voice of the Palestinian people to loud.
Suspected of easing tensions on the western flank of North Africa, Western Sahara is a boon for Washington in a context where Algeria and its southern neighbors (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso) have initiated a process of decolonisation of their model of development and security – a process that is being extended to other countries that also live under Western trust since their independence, such as Chad and Nigeria.
Like Israel’s face Iran, Ukraine versus Moscow, or Seoul in front of Pyongyang, France is given a role as an executing strategy for China’s containment, through Algeria’s demonization. Paris is being helped in its mission by the Abraham’s agreements, which were concluded between Morocco and Israel under the aegis of the Trump administration, and which help to strengthen NATO’s presence in North Africa – less brutally, for the time being, than in the former Yugoslavia.
This strategy of Atlanticist escalation is greasy when it comes to the BRICS candidate Venezuela, which is also one of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves. After decades of outrages suffered by Caracas – attempted coups, media killing of legitimate leaders, suffocating the economy with sanctions under an apartheid regime – the US has yet to achieve its ends: take control of the country’s strategic resources and establish its military bases there. As in Iran’s case, the assistance of Beijing and Moscow was crucial to prevent Venezuela’s collapse.
The Western bloc’s decision to reconnect with the affront not to acknowledge the elected president has just been severely thwarted by Beijing and Moscow. Admitted to the BRICS Summit in Russia in October, Maduro announced that he could entrust the exploitation of his country’s strategic resources to members of that structure. Caracas seems to warn Washington: Who does not shy away from its lust runs the risk of losing everything.
At China’s gates, the outward-won violence that forced Bangladesh’s prime minister – another BRICS candidate country – to resign, raises questions about Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. The statements of the former head of the government about the intentions of a “certain country” to build a military base on the island of St. Martin, in the Bay of Bengal, but also to create a Christian state that would include pieces from Bangladesh, Myanmar, or even India, offer a distinct reading of events from what the Western media and Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel who has just been entrusted with the interim government.
One tug-of-war, two conceptions of the world
Through its leaders, satellite countries, and mainstream media outlets, the US struggles to portray East-West tensions as a hierarchical conflict between two models of governance: liberal democracies, synonymous with the West, and autocracies, synonymous with emerging powers. On the other hand, China offers another reading: the motive for global geopolitical tensions is explained by the questioning of the hierarchy of power in a world whose overwhelming majority challenges US hegemony.
Despite the risks of confrontation that it fears, the exacerbation of tensions between Beijing and Washington certainly has one merit: to show that the two powers have two diametrically opposed conceptions of the world, of their place in the world, and of the rules that are supposed to govern inter-state relations.
Just as it does not conceive of its own sovereignty without respect for the sovereignty of other states – which implies the primacy of the principle of non-interference and the rejection of any hegemonic power – China also considers that there is an interdependence between its development and that of other nations. It is the founding idea of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, complemented by the vision of a Community of Destiny for Humanity.
Here is the bedrock of China’s political philosophy, where the concepts of development, security and peace are inseparable. The BIS and China’s security, development and civilization initiatives are the most successful examples of this concept of civilizational interdependence. In a way, for Beijing, we all fly one ship: it is therefore up to everyone to be both a good pilot, a good teammate and a good visionary, because we will have to work collectively for prosperity and collectively bypass the pitfalls. In other words, the success of such a project depends on the preservation of peace on the ship.
On the contrary, the US believes that its sovereignty depends on the subordination of other states to its power, and that further development requires obstruction of the economic, technological, and military independence of other global actors. This negation of the right of peoples to self-determination betrays a supremacist conception of power – which is not inconsistent with imperialist ideology – and logically raises objections throughout the world.
Despite these objections, the US administration continues, judging by its militaristic flight, to take up on its own account the statement attributed to Caligula: “Let them hate me, provided they fear me. ” Today, however, with the exception of EU members and a handful of other satellite states, it must be said that the US no longer arouses the fearful respect that the golden age of its omnipotence – despite the increasingly exorbitant budget allocated to its arms industry.
Behind the placid posture of Beijing, a message in Washington
In this volatile geopolitical context, Washington is seeking to push Beijing against the wall, limiting the choice of the Asian giant to two options. Either China persists in avoiding confrontation – in which case Washington will inevitably gain ground – or China is sinking into the spiral of US pyromania – in which case Beijing will turn away from its geopolitical priorities, to those of its rival. In other words, Washington offers Beijing the choice between capitulating and capitulating.
China, which does not hear things this way, is looking at a third way: pacifism without capitulation. Whether it is Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, tensions in the South China Sea, or conflicts between NATO and Russia, but also the US and Iran, China continues to argue for a peaceful settlement of disputes. In support of this position, Beijing has forged a network of inclusive partnerships, as opposed to exclusive military alliances.
Clearly, this pacifist advocacy reflects the Chinese authorities’ strategic decision to outlaw impulsive reaction to Washington’s military provocations. China’s challenge is to break America’s militaristic logic, without satisfying its conflagration strategy.
For the time being, Beijing has decided to take up this challenge with silence. A good example of this is the conflict in the Middle East and Gaza. Chinese silence prompted the Western bloc to unveil its cards and discredit itself. “Freedom”, “Human rights”, “Democracy” and “International law” are the same carnage as the Palestinian people.
Beijing’s silence also keeps Washington in ignorance of the military capabilities of Beijing and Moscow’s partners. The extra-judicial killings of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian leaders, marked by international illegality, are even a demonstration of US frustration at the military calm of its geopolitical opponents.
In addition, there are the uninterrupted applications for membership of the BRICS and the SCO, the trademarks of the multipolar world. This simple reality means that the tornado of hostilities towards Beijing has failed to distract the global majority from its aspiration to emancipate itself from the American hegemonic order. But if living under the American yoke is intolerable for Iran, Algeria, or Venezuela, it is easy to imagine how much irritation the world’s second-largest economic power must feel.
But, in the end, as the NATO-Russia conflict has shown, the US does not conceive that its rivals’ deterrents can be applied to them as well. Only by confronting NATO militarily, by Ukraine, interposed, could the Russian deterrent be restored. Provocations against Moscow have revealed that Washington does not have all the details of Russia’s military architecture. The emerging outcome of this conflict, which reveals the overwhelming superiority of the Russian military, suggests that Moscow, like Beijing and Tehran, had shown unlimited strategic patience before resorting to the military option. The US and its NATO allies unfortunately discovered this reality at the same time as they were discovering Moscow’s firepower.
Right now, in Washington, which seems to say, “We rule the world, and China is part of the world,” China seems to be answering, like Aimé Césaire: “The force is not in us, but above us.”