April 07, 2010
Kyrgyzstan: Who's In Charge?
Last month the Pentagon funneled over 50,000 troops and millions of gallons of fuel through the Manas "Transit Center" in Kyrgyzstan, the euphemism for the US air base that Kyrgystan's parliament voted closed in 2009.
The "Tulip Revolution" of 2005 failed as Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev preferred his neighbors Russia and China to Uncle Sam. On March 11 the US State Department issued a human rights report against the Kyrgyz Republic creating the background and justification for future intervention. Now the "United Tajik Opposition" or UTO (which was active in Kyrgyzstan's civil war after the Soviet Union collapsed) is disrupting the urban centers of the country.
Coincidentally, just in the last two weeks major investments by Chinese ventures were ramping up in Kyrgyzstan including energy giant China Guodian Corp. Guodian opened an office last week in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, and said it was pursuing electricity generation projects including hydropower. Guodian is still scheduled to issue 1 billion Yuan in corporate bonds on April 13.
It will be interesting to see how the situation in Kyrgyzstan unfolds. Watch closely and you might catch the interaction of clandestine operations, "legitimate" warfare, psyops, American, EU, Russian, Chinese, and multinational interests of all stripes collide!
At issue is transport and supply of the so-called Af-Pak theater and the larger contest for the resources and markets of the one of the world's least developed regions. As with Vietnam the USA is opting to destabilize a border region of China where Beijing wants to gain the upper hand. We know how that ended. Beijing is just as content to watch patiently as America bleeds on a different Chinese border....
The "Tulip Revolution" of 2005 failed as Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev preferred his neighbors Russia and China to Uncle Sam. On March 11 the US State Department issued a human rights report against the Kyrgyz Republic creating the background and justification for future intervention. Now the "United Tajik Opposition" or UTO (which was active in Kyrgyzstan's civil war after the Soviet Union collapsed) is disrupting the urban centers of the country.
Coincidentally, just in the last two weeks major investments by Chinese ventures were ramping up in Kyrgyzstan including energy giant China Guodian Corp. Guodian opened an office last week in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, and said it was pursuing electricity generation projects including hydropower. Guodian is still scheduled to issue 1 billion Yuan in corporate bonds on April 13.
It will be interesting to see how the situation in Kyrgyzstan unfolds. Watch closely and you might catch the interaction of clandestine operations, "legitimate" warfare, psyops, American, EU, Russian, Chinese, and multinational interests of all stripes collide!
At issue is transport and supply of the so-called Af-Pak theater and the larger contest for the resources and markets of the one of the world's least developed regions. As with Vietnam the USA is opting to destabilize a border region of China where Beijing wants to gain the upper hand. We know how that ended. Beijing is just as content to watch patiently as America bleeds on a different Chinese border....
Labels: foreign relations, great power, human rights, new world order, war
March 22, 2010
Xi and Li at Home and Abroad
China's senior leaders are taking a back seat this week to allow the next generation a chance at the helm. Vice President Xi Jinping began a four-nation European state visit in Vladivostock with President Medvedev and PM Putin and other senior Russians there to greet him. Xi is traveling with a large entourage of important mandarins including Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Administration of China. They will travel the length of Russia to the Baltic and visit Finland and Sweden.
In Beijing, Vice Premier of the State Council Li Keqiang delivered the keynote speech at the China Development Forum 2010. The forum opened on Saturday and features a full range of heady topics and addresses by a who's who of global mulitnational corporations and NGOs from the IMF to OECD and from Morgan Stanley to Ford and Bombardier. The participation makes mockery recent mainstream media reports focusing solely on Google and false claims that foreign companies are "wary" of doing business in China or pulling out altogether.
Meanwhile a tourism forum on Hainan brought former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Beijing to meet with an old friend.
Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are expected to be the next President and Prime Minister of China but I still believe either man could be President in 2013....
Labels: energy security, foreign relations, new world order, reshuffle
November 17, 2009
NATO-China Relationship Expanding?
A week ahead of Obama's China tour, the deputy secretary-general of NATO Claudio Bisogniero visited Beijing and met Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Zhang Zhijun and senior Chinese Communist Party government officials. Bisogniero said "NATO and China should work together to meet common challenges," specifically Afghanistan.
Meanwhile opposition is building to the Afghanistan conflict in key NATO nations with dickering back and forth over whether Obama's man in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, really needs 40,000 additional troops. The US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is openly against a surge in troops. Public support is already against the war in key NATO states the UK, Germany, and Canada. Yet NATO says it will not leave until its job is done.
Yesterday in Beijing, Presidents Obama and Hu met behind closed doors and discussed (among other hot button issues) Afghanistan which shares a small border with China west of the Karakoram Highway. According to the joint official statement of that meeting the USA and China support the efforts to combate terrorism in Afghanistan. Could a role for China in NATO's occupation of Afghanistan finally be underway?....
Labels: foreign relations, new world order
December 16, 2008
World Bank's Zoellick: China Must Maintain Growth
Speaking to a crowd of reporters in Beijing, World Bank President Robert Zoellick (former Deputy Secretary of State and Trade Representative in the Bush administration) praised China's efforts to stabilize its economy and said the most important thing China can do in 2009 ("a very difficult year for world economy") is maintain growth. Zoellick is meeting with Chinese officials pressing for continued reform and opening markets.
Labels: financial crisis, free trade, new world order, panic of 2008
October 06, 2008
World Needs A New G-3
With the exception of the fire-breathing wing of the American Republican Party most observors of the current scene agree that the global influence of the USA is finally beginning to wane. Events of the Panic of '08 show that the world really contains 3 superpowers specifically the USA, the EU, and China. An interesting analysis of where we are and where we very soon need to go is provided by one Parag Khanna in Der Spiegel. Two key grafs:
"As stealthy, globalized escalations continue among the great powers undeterred by global governance norms, the potential for conflict grows: resource competition in the Caspian and South China seas, terrorism with nuclear weapons, an attack in the Gulf of Aden or the Straits of Malacca. The uncertain alignments of lesser but still substantial powers such as Russia, Japan, and India could also cause escalation. Furthermore, America's foreign lenders could pull the plug to undermine its grand strategy, sparking economic turmoil, political acrimony, and military tension. War brings profit to the military-industrial complex and is always supported by the large patriotic camps on all sides. Yet the notion of a Sino-US rivalry to lead the world is also premature and simplistic for in the event of their conflict, Europe would be the winner as capital would flee to its sanctuaries. "
"Yet at present the term "international community" is little more than a euphemism for Western dominance. The West can expect no allegiance to a Western order masquerading as representative of global values decreed without global input. America has called on China to be a "responsible stakeholder" in the global system, but because it is implicitly an American order China is naturally resistant to it. China will not exercise its enormous economic weight in the interests of antiquated and unrepresentative clubs like the G-8 that will not even let it in. Similarly, much as the efficacy of the UN Security Council today depends on the United States, the same is becoming true of China, which can also bribe the rotating Security Council members to vote its way. Without a new division of labor, Western institutions will diminish with America's power, leaving only classic geopolitical competition without even the veneer of diplomatic coordination. "
Labels: financial crisis, g3, new world order, panic of 2008
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