Category: Aggregated

The Wall Street Journal flashed its neocon colors today, in an open call for war on Russia and China as soon as possible. Titled “Russia, Iran and China are advancing as the U.S. retreats,” the Editorial says that Vladimir Putin’s sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran is “the latest evidence of an emerging new threat to world order and U.S. security: the rise of authoritarian regional powers. China, Russia and Iran are taking advantage of American retreat to assert political and (perhaps eventually) military dominance over their corners of the globe. They share a goal of reducing U.S. influence, bending neighbors to their political will, and ultimately using that regional base of power to diminish the global sway of Western democracies, especially the U.S.”.

China, however, is the greatest threat, they argue. “Perhaps the greatest long-term regional threat is a rising China with its rapid economic growth and desire to restore the Middle Kingdom to what its leaders see as their rightful dominance in East Asia. New Supreme Leader Xi Jinping has jettisoned Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of foreign-policy caution in favor of a new muscular nationalism,” building up China’s military and building bases in the South China Sea.

These “anti-democratic” regimes go beyond asserting power in their own region, the Urinal writes. “They protect other despots and search for ways to undermine U.S. allies. They can also form alliances with one another [BRICS, perhaps? — ed.], as Russia has with Iran on Syria and by selling its anti-aircraft system to Tehran. Over time regional powers can also become global threats, as Japan and Germany did a century ago, especially if they form authoritarian alliances.”

Most interestingly, the editorial dredges up the completely discredited neocons, whose ideology was famously exposed in the book Children of Satan:

“Americans can’t say they weren’t warned,” writes the Journal. “Twenty-three years ago, in the waning days of the George H.W. Bush Administration, the Pentagon planning shop published a strategy document that set blocking the rise of regionally dominant powers as one of America’s most important security goals.”

This clearly refers to the the Defense Planning Guidance from 1992, known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” after Paul Wolfowitz, who co-authored it with Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalizad, Dick Cheney, Andrew Marshall, Richard Perle, and the father of the neocons Albert Wohlstetter. The doctrine argued that, since with the fall of the Soviet Union, the US was the “only superpower,” and must prevent any other nation, or group of nations, from achieving the power which could threaten the preeminence of the US — by military means if necessary.

The Journal claims that “For 20 years and through administrations of both parties, the U.S. managed to contain the emergence of such regional threats. But that containment has broken down in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia during President Obama’s second term.”

Therefore, prepare for war, they conclude:

“The next President will need an urgent strategy to contain and counter the rising threat.”

Greek ministers continue to make the point that the era of austerity and debt payments has to end. Deputy Minister of Social Insurance Dimitris Stratoulis told Mega TV that Greece’s inability or unwillingness to pay the IMF installment in early June would not constitute a “credit event.” Stratoulis underlined that the payment of salaries and pensions and the funding of health care and education have priority over the payment of the IMF. “If we decide that there is no money left for the IMF, we have repeatedly said that our priority is to pay salaries, pensions, health, education,” he said reported enikos.gr news site.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, in a commentary on the Project Syndicate website, wrote that it is the demand for more austerity by the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, that is blocking the talks between Greece and these institutions.

“The problem is simple: Greece’s creditors insist on even greater austerity for this year and beyond — an approach that would impede recovery, obstruct growth, worsen the debt-deflationary cycle, and, in the end, erode Greeks’ willingness and ability to see through the reform agenda that the country so desperately needs,” said Varoufakis. “Our government cannot — and will not — accept a cure that has proven itself over five long years to be worse than the disease.”

He also pointed out that the creditors are “demanding unsustainably high primary surpluses (more than 2% of GDP in 2016 and exceeding 2.5, or even 3, for every year thereafter),” which, of course, would require even more austerity, including cuts in the already diminished pensions.

On May 23, President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, speaking at the opening of the 10th Shanghai Forum said: “One of the priorities of Russian-Chinese cooperation is the implementation of a full-scale mechanism for dialogue to unify the Eurasian economic integration process and develop the Silk Road Economic Belt.”

According to rzd.ru, the website of Russian Railways, Yakunin said that, under the conditions of the continuing economic instability, the primary objectives include the need to promote and maintain regional economic cooperation, the expansion of knowledge, and exchanging experience between East and West. The basis of such cooperation should be the joint implementation of major infrastructure, industrial, and energy projects, he said.

“In this light, we see a unique opportunity to integrate the Russian megaproject of the Trans-Eurasian Belt RAZVITIE (TEBR) and the One Belt, One Road initiative of our Chinese partners,” he said. “It is not just about the integration of transport infrastructure and synchronization projects, but, much more importantly, the complete unification of formats and Eurasian cooperation mechanisms and the general accumulation of resources in order to achieve global goals,” said Yakunin.

On the TEBR project, Yakunin said: “We are making significant efforts to implement the idea of reconstructing the Trans-Korean Railway; in 2014, the universal transshipment terminal at the port of Rajin was launched with a capacity of 5 million tons; at the same time, trial deliveries of Russian coal were sent through South Korea to China. Our cooperation with China and other Asia-Pacific countries has reached unprecedented proportions,” said Yakunin.

He referenced the joint statements by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping on May 8 this year, on deepening the comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction and promoting mutually beneficial cooperation, as well as on cooperation in the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road Economic Belt.

He spoke of development corridors, calling them “Network multimodal infrastructure: “rail, road, energy, water transport, and information — as the basis of this belt, including the construction of new scientific research, design, and industrial centers and cities with a large number of new jobs, which in turn become a source of advanced industrialization, according to rzd.ru.