Obama is Down But Not Out: Escalate the Pressure

The mainstream American media, led by the New York Times, has been forced to acknowledge what world leaders attending the summits in Asia this week already know: U.S. President Barack Obama was the odd man out at Hangzhou and in Laos, as major nations from Eurasia and other parts of the world realign around the New Paradigm, represented most visibly by China’s One Belt, One Road program for Eurasian development.

On Wednesday, the 10 ASEAN heads of state met with Chinese leaders for the 25th anniversary ASEAN-China summit. The meeting was nothing less than a total repudiation of the Obama Administration’s efforts to exploit the illegal Permanent Arbitration Panel in The Hague’s ruling on the South China Sea to drive a wedge between China and its neighbors. The ASEAN leaders joined with China in pledging to develop rules of engagement for the South China Sea, and advancing the New Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road programs that have already enriched the lives of countless citizens of the region. Even Forbes had to admit that China’s investments in the region’s infrastructure have trumped all of the Obama Administration bluster.

Indeed, between the frictions with the Chinese authorities hosting the Hangzhou G-20 summit, and Obama’s falling out with Philippines President Duterte over Obama’s self-righteous plans to pressure the Philippines leader to abandon his hard crackdown on drug traffickers and terrorists, the final Pacific tour of his Presidency has proven to be an unmitigated disaster.

In a similar vein, reports coming out of the Middle East indicate that the Syrian government, with the backing of Russia and Iran, has restored the siege of southeast Aleppo, cutting off rebel forces from the outside world. The full recapturing of Aleppo will fundamentally alter the course of the five-year war, and will force Obama to once again turn to Russian President Putin to find a way out of the diplomatic/military fiasco.

Obama is clearly down. But he is not yet out, and Lyndon LaRouche warned today that Obama must be kept under relentless pressure, to prevent any further actions like the destabilization of Brazil, that was an arrow aimed at the heart of the BRICS.

Obama is facing another imminent devastating defeat, which will resonate all the way to Riyadh and London. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, under enormous bipartisan pressure, announced on Wednesday that there will be a vote on the JASTA bill on Friday.

Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act would allow for victims and family members who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi Monarchy. As the Daily Telegraph reported over the summer, if JASTA passes into law, the British Monarchy will also be subject to suit over 9/11 and other acts of British protection and sponsorship of international terrorism. President Obama has vowed to veto JASTA if it reaches his desk—and that may very well happen on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, with all eyes on New York City, where a weekend of historic commemorative events will be occurring, centered around the Schiller Institute Chorus’ participation in four memorial concerts in New York and New Jersey, honoring those who died in the 9/11 attacks and in the rescue efforts that followed.

After the CDU’s stunning defeat in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own home state in eastern Germany, the Merkel government is also on the ropes. It is essential that a major change in economic policy is enacted in Germany, and that can only come in a post-Merkel, post-Schaeuble situation. The Deutsche Bank crisis is becoming more and more obvious, with parallels between Deutsche Bank today, and Lehman Brothers on the eve of bankruptcy, appearing in Thestreet.com and other financial publications.

We have reached a truly historic moment. Leaders representing a majority of the world’s population are coming together around a new, future-oriented paradigm of collaboration, and the series of summit meetings, starting in Vladivostok and continuing in Hangzhou and Laos, have advanced the cause beyond expectation.