Brexit Coincides with India’s and Pakistan’s Entry into the SCO
IN FOCUS, 25 Jul 2016
Alfredo Jalife-Rahme | Voltaire Network – TRANSCEND Media Service
Professor Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, leading Latin American expert in geopolitics, considers that the UK exiting the EU at the same time India and Pakistan become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an acid test, proving that the world is alive. De-globalization is at work.
Today the Shanghai Cooperation Organization represents two thirds of the world’s population. Furthermore, its members include the world’s number one global economy (China) and the leading military power on conventional war (Russia).
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 laid down a US unipolar geo-strategy and toxic, financial globalization, that sowed monstrous inequality at the local/regional/global levels. This was harnessed by mass unemployment and suffocating austerity.
Half a century after dangerous period of deregulation under Thatcher and 27 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Brexit marks the start of a sorrowful route to de-globalization [1]. This involves geostrategic changes that emphasize the dynamic trend of multi-polarity.
Brexit shifts a geostrategic plate and this will have serious consequences for the new global order, now defined as having three poles, with the US, Russia and China occupying one each.
In the short and medium term, Brexit ranks of equal importance to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the long term, in the style of Fernand Braudel, Brexit is “anti-Waterloo”: it reverses the rising trajectory of Great Britain, begun with its decisive military triumph 201 years ago in the old Belgium, now the headquarters of a dismembered European Union.
An editorial in a Chinese newspaper, Global Times, notes: “The future landscape of global policy will probably to lead bigger changes, similar to those witnessed in geological history when the former supercontinent Gondwana ruptured, 180 million (sic) years ago [2]”.
The EU’s scattered geostrategic pieces will be divided up between the US, Russia and China, in the back seat.
Perhaps in selected assertions of the three superpowers, we can locate the core of the new global order, brought about by Brexit: the US declares that Russia has won; China asserts that the dollar has won and the Euro has lost and Russia assures that China has won.
As a “premonition”, three days before Brexit, George Soros the evil mega-speculator – who used migrants and free circulating capital, to demolish the EU and the euro – was already making Russia out as the “emerging global power”, in unison with the EU’s swooning ” [3].
Already, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, had held Soros culpable for fuelling the migrant crisis in the Middle East to sink Europe [4].
It was no coincidence that Soros has been one of the leading winners of the financial tsunami caused by the Brexit, having bet that the value of listed shares would fall and gold would rise. [5].
Now Soros bets on the routing of Deutsche Bank, the leading German/European bank. This benefits the “banksters” on Wall Street and in the City [6].
An article I wrote last year is worthy of Cassandra:
“Great Britain is abandoning the EU for China: a geo-financial alliance with ‘Hollandization’; when the biggest reserves of Chinese currency complement the financial know-how of the City (London), a multipolar framework for a new 21st century geo-financial order is constructed.” [7].
Taking a position not far off from my thesis, Thierry Meyssan, Director of Voltaire Network, argues that Brexit, supported by Queen Elizabeth II of England, and the reorientation of Great Britain to the Chinese yuan, is tantamount to the fall of the Berlin Wall; it represents the “new hand of cards in global geopolitics.” [8].
In a previous article, my thesis was [9] “fate’s geostrategic coincidence: the same day the EU began to implode, the Shanghai Group (SCO) had its 16th summit in Tash¬kent (Uzbekistan). Tsar Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Mandarin Xi were in attendance. They approved a protocol for India and Pakistan, the two big nuclear powers [10], [11], to enter. The end of an era!
Indeed, Fate dealt out two coincidences of geostrategic consequences. This is because the day after Brexit, and after attending the 16th Summit of the Shanghai Group in Tashkent, Putin made a 2-day visit to China, where he set out the detail of his strategic ties with Xi.
The two geostrategic coincidences in Eurasia – at Tashkent and at Pekin– had been made to evaporate by disinformation spread by mass media in a “West” in angst.
At a financial meeting in St Petersburg, 7 days before Brexit, Tsar Putin speaking with legendary sarcasm, accepted that:
“probably the US continues to be the only (sic) global superpower”, however he is ready “to work with whoever the winner may be of this year’s Presidential Race in Washington.”
However, “he does not want the US to tell him how to live.” [12].
The same day as Brexit, two nuclear powers on the Indian subcontinent became part of the Shanghai Group: India equipped with 110 to 120 nuclear warheads [13], and Pakistan, with 110 – 130 warheads [14].
Daily Times claims that ” Pakistan’s entry into SCO is highly instructive in the changing geopolitical scene” [15].
Somewhat less enthusiastically than Pakistan, The Hindu exults that “India and Pakistan will be full members of the SCO” [16]. The inference is that China sponsor Pakistan and Russia following its lead with India.
Everything is not rosy in the Shanghai Group. Given that, according to Yang Jin, of the Academy for Social Sciences in China:
“Global financial crisis, the depressed prices of raw materials of basic necessity (staple commodities) and the deterioration caused by economic sanctions applied on Russia has had negative effects on stability (sic) and the SCO economies”, when the “big powers (read: EU and “Plan Brzezinski”) have made incisive incursions in regional matters and disturbed the joint interests of SCO members”.
This “has hampered circular cooperation” and that, beside the pairing of the superpowers, China and Russia, it holds the membership of four Central Asians countries – Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan– with a “number of disputes on territory, water resources and ethnicity ” [17].
What will be impetus that will give the incorporation of two nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan into the Shanghai Group, which has not developed as expected for 16 summits?
The serious problem with unfolding the SCO is that it has to define its overriding objective, when persists the dilemma of forming a group of “Eurasian military security ” to be a counter force to NATO and/or integrating into a common place trade bloc.
The biggest geostrategic issue caused the transcendental coming together of the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon.
The People’s Daily declares the “compromise of an implacable association (sic) between China and Russia” [18], while Cao Siqi comments that “China and Russia strengthen global stability” and “have reached a consensus against US hegemony” [19].
An editorial in Global Times considers that the “US pressure stimulates much closer ties between China and Russia”, when “Washington is unable to destroy the Chinese dragon and the Russian bear at the same time” [20]. The ancien regime is toppled; let’s breathe life into the new era!
NOTES:
[1] Hacia la desglobalización, par Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, Jorale/Orfila (2007), ISBN 978-9685863223.
[2] “Shock waves of UK exit’s impact will rearrange the face of global politics and markets”, Anbound, The Global Times, June 27th, 2016.
[3] “Soros sees Russia emerging as global power as EU fades”, Andy Bruce & Kit Rees, Reuters, June 20th, 2016.
[4] “Hungarian Prime Minister accuses billionaire investor George Soros of trying to undermine Europe by supporting refugees travelling from the Middle East”, Jennifer Newton, Daily Mail, October 30th, 2015.
[5] “Billionaire Soros Was ‘Long’ on Pound Before Vote on Brexit”, Francine Lacqua & Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam, Bloomberg, June 27th, 2016.
[6] “Soros had Deutsche Bank ’short’ bet at time of Brexit fallout”, Arno Schuetze, Reuters, June 28th, 2016.
[7] «Gran Bretaña abandona a EU por China: alianza geofinanciera con “holandización”», Alfredo jalife-Rahme, La Jornada, 25 de Octobre de 2015.
[8] “The Brexit reshuffles world geopolitics”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 28 June 2016.
[9] “Brexit: ganó el nacionalismo británico/Perdió la globalización/Derrota de Obama/Triunfo de Putin”, Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, La Jornada, 26 de Junio de 2016.
[10] « Ташкентская декларация », Сеть Вольтер, 24 июня 2016.
[11] «“Un nuevo significado, un nuevo peso”: La organización que unirá casi a la mitad del planeta», Russia Today, 24 de Junio de 2016.
[12] «Presidente ruso Putin dice acepta rol de superpotencia de EEUU, diluye elogios a Trump», Grigory Dukor, Reuters, 17 de Junio de 2016.
[13] “Indian nuclear forces, 2015”, Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1st, 2015.
[14] “Pakistani nuclear forces, 2015”, Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1st, 2015.
[15] “Pakistan’s entry at SCO significant in changing geopolitical scenario”, Daily Times, June 26th, 2016.
[16] “India, Pakistan become full SCO members”, The Hindu, July 11th, 2015.
[17] “SCO needs to overcome diverse demands”, Yang Jin, Global Times, June 26th, 2016.
[18] “China, Russia pledge “unswerving” partnership”, People’s Daily, June 27th, 2016.
[19] “China, Russia to strengthen global stability”, Cao Siqi, Global Times, June 27th, 2016.
[20] “US pressure spurs closer Sino-Russian ties”, Global Times, June 27th, 2016.
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Alfredo Jalife-Rahme – Social and political sciences professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His columns on international politics feature regularly in the Mexican daily La Jornada. His latest book is China irrumpe en Latinoamérica: ¿dragón o panda? (Orfila, 2012).
Translation: Anoosha Boralessa
Source: La Jornada (Mexico)
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