Yves here. This article may seem to be not that newsworthy to anyone who has been paying attention to how US overreach in Ukraine and now what can most charitably be described as dereliction of duty have created a fantastic backdrop for Chinese messaging and diplomacy, particularly in what some call the Global South, but others are trying to rebrand as the Global Majority. Notice this post is focused on recent news and policy moves, and not on China’s long-term initiatives.
Regardless, this piece is more interesting than it might seem due to being published by what amounts to a US propaganda organ, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Thus the comments on Beijing initiatives finding a receptive audience, and for good reason, are major admissions against interest.
By Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Cross posted from OilPrice
- China criticizes Western policies and hypocrisy, particularly in their responses to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
- Beijing’s diplomatic efforts are focused on presenting an alternative to the Western-led world order, appealing to countries in the Global South.
- China’s stance on global conflicts is part of a broader strategy to gain influence and challenge U.S. and European global leadership.
For Chinese Ambassador to the EU Fu Cong, the Israel-Hamas war laid bare the West’s double standards and how Beijing sees it falling out of touch with the rest of the world.
Speaking in Brussels in mid-November, shortly after the October 7 outbreak of hostilities in Israel and Gaza, Fu railed against the bloc’s labeling of China as a “rival” on the global stage, saying that if having different foreign policy views makes Beijing a rival then Brussels will find it has many other competitors.
“From the Middle East to Africa, from Asia to Latin America, there are many countries who obviously do not see eye to eye with Europe when it comes to values,” he said. “We can clearly tell [this] from the divergence of responses to the ongoing Gaza crisis in the Middle East.”
Those comments have come to crystallize China’s long-term effort to gain clout across the so-called Global South — featuring countries such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Nigeria — where nations are looking for alternatives to the Western-led world order.
Bloody conflicts — in Ukraine and most recently in Gaza — have exposed global divisions over the plight of Palestinians and lingering resentment over perceived Western hypocrisy about the use of force and civilian casualties that Beijing is looking to capitalize on.
“This is a huge victory for China [in its campaign] in the Global South to demonstrate the hypocritical and ideological nature of U.S. foreign policy towards Palestine, which indirectly affects the views of the Global South towards the war in Ukraine,” Haiyun Ma, a Chinese foreign policy expert at Frostburg State University in Maryland, told RFE/RL.
As U.S. President Joe Biden tied American support for Ukraine and Israel together in October — describing the countries as democracies fighting enemies determined to “annihilate” them — many in the developing world heard a double standard.
China and many other countries saw it as hypocritical for the West to condemn an illegal Russian occupation in Ukraine but to stand staunchly behind Israel, which has occupied parts of Palestinian territory for decades and has settlements on the West Bank.
The White House has recently grown more critical of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, but many leaders of countries in the Global South that have historically supported the Palestinian cause have noted the differing Western reaction to both crises.
Experts say these perceived gaps in Western policy — galvanized recently by scenes of civilian casualties from Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip — have presented an opportunity for China to better position itself as an alternative to Washington’s global leadership and could work to undermine the United States’ attempt to rally global support to isolate and punish Russia for invading its neighbor.
Since the deadly attack in Israel on October 7, China has presented itself as a peace broker while taking aim at the West.
Chinese diplomats at the UN and Chinese state-run news outlets that broadcast globally in local languages have stepped up their criticism, saying that U.S. military support for Israel is contributing to the war. Meanwhile, Beijing has lookedto build up its clout by calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and hosting a peace conference with Arabic and other Muslim ministers in November.
“It was tried with Ukraine, but now with the Israel-Hamas war, it’s clear what China is trying to do,” Etienne Soula, a research analyst with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, told RFE/RL. “They’re portraying the West — and the United States in particular — as isolated, while China is surrounded by Arab and African countries on the side of the Global South.”
The Ukraine, Gaza Tightrope
China has been seeking to expand its influence across the Global South for years and recently concentrated its efforts in the Middle East, culminating in a Chinese-mediated deal in March that restored relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Beijing has looked to build off that diplomatic win, and in both Gaza and Ukraine, China has tried to balance its message to varying degrees and avoid blowback, though still working to discredit the United States.
“Beijing wants to pin responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Washington and [demonstrate] that the [United States] and Europe have significantly weakened their capacity to uphold the existing world order,” Michael Schuman, a China analyst at the Atlantic Council, wrote in November.
On Ukraine, Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion and offered economic support to Russia that has helped the Kremlin survive Western sanctions. Beijing has also kept its diplomatic distance from Kyiv, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping not speaking directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy until 14 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
But China has also tried to appear as a neutral party, despite Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022. Beijing unveiled a 12-point proposal to broker peace in Ukraine in February that was widely dismissed in Western capitals, but China later stepped up efforts in the spring by dispatching Li Hui, a special representative on Eurasian affairs, to travel to several European capitals, including Kyiv and Moscow.
Those talks have gone nowhere, and Beijing appears to have stepped back from engaging diplomatically as the war edges towards the two-year mark with no end in sight.
In Gaza, China has refused to condemn Hamas — declared a terrorist group by the EU and the United States — and remains critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians, especially due to the rising civilian death toll. In its first statement in October following the Hamas attack in Israel that killed at least 1,200 people, China urged both sides to “exercise restraint” and embrace a “two-state solution.”
That statement drew immediate backlash from Israeli and U.S. officials for minimizing the brutality the Palestinian militants had visited on Israel on October 7, with Yuval Waks, a senior official at the Israeli Embassy in Beijing, saying: “When people are being murdered, slaughtered in the streets, this is not the time to call for a two-state solution.”
Soula says China has moved more carefully since then in its messaging regarding Israel — with whom it had been building strong ties prior to the war — and in showing its sympathy for the plight of Palestinians. Still, Beijing has looked to channel the collective voice expressed by other leading Global South countries, such Brazil and South Africa.
“In terms of success, it’s hard to say,” said Soula. “I think that China has followed the way that the wind has blown. Where the global majority leans, you can see China adopt a stance in that direction.”
Hearts And Minds
Soula and his colleagues at the Alliance for Securing Democracy have been tracking Chinese messaging from its diplomats and state-run news outlets for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
A February study focused on Ukraine found that officials online and in Chinese media have provided “rhetorical cover for the Kremlin” in Ukraine despite Beijing’s official stance as a neutral party in the conflict.
“To weaken Western democracies and their allies, China also has tried to isolate those countries by appealing to the Global South,” the report said. “In the context of the war in Ukraine, Chinese messaging has consistently argued that countries supporting Ukraine are hypocrites and indifferent to the rest of the world.”
A companion study released in November looking at Chinese messaging around the Israel-Hamas war also documented how Chinese state-run news outlets have leveraged their global networks, especially across Africa and the Middle East, to blame the United States as the alleged malign cause for the war in Gaza.
But it is still unclear exactly how much influence these campaigns have translated into. While the Israel-Hamas war has complicated the West’s argument that Russia’s invasion is a danger to the current world order, Beijing has not emerged as a deciding diplomatic force in either war.
Giulia Sciorati, a fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) focused on China’s role in the Global South, says that while “China has successfully played on shared worldviews with the Global South,” it’s unclear if Beijing’s positions have truly placed itself as a de facto leader for non-Western countries.
“On paper, this [stance] may comply with the perceived priorities of the Global South,” she told RFE/RL. “[But] it has shown not to comply with the expectations of Global South countries overall, [many of] which had wished for China to take on a more prominent role in peace negotiations.”
Global opinion surveys also paint a more nuanced picture for how China’s bid to woo the Global South is shaping up.
While recent polling has shown that anti-China sentiment in many Western countries is growing, China’s narratives do seem to be resonating across the Global South, where the West has failed to win over countries like India and Gulf nations into supporting sanctions against Russia.
A poll released in late February by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that while strong majorities in Western countries stand in support of Ukraine, those surveyed across the Global South were less supportive of continued war, more likely to sympathize with Moscow’s grievances, and to be suspicious of Western leaders’ motives.
But a follow-up public opinion poll released in November by the ECFR that surveyed 21 Western and non-Western countries found that people had lost faith in Western policy and instead favored “an a la carte arrangement” where their governments can choose which major player to partner with depending on the issue at stake rather than be locked into a clear geopolitical bloc.
Frostburg State University’s Ma says Chinese foreign policy will grapple with challenges in the coming years as it’s likely to face more competition from the United States and the EU in courting the Global South, but there’s no guarantee that China will “lose some of this newfound influence if the West is able to reassert itself.”
“First of all, once China gains, it will consolidate and even expand,” he said. “Second, even if the West returns and reasserts, it takes time to recover credibility and to channel resources.”
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https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1740222573445894388
Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton
Very interesting minutes of the first meeting between Mao Zedong and India’s progressive anti-colonial leader Nehru, in 1954.
Mao said: “Historically, all of us, people of the East, have been bullied by Western imperialist powers… China was bullied by Western imperialist powers for over 100 years. Your country was bullied even longer, for more than 300 years”. “Therefore, we, people of the East, have instinctive feelings of solidarity”.
“In spite of differences in our ideologies and social systems, we have an overriding common point, that is, all of us have to cope with imperialism”.
Source:
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/minutes-chairman-mao-zedongs-first-meeting-nehru …
Historically, all of us, people of the East, have been bullied by Western imperialist powers. Although Japan is located in the East, it was also an imperialist power that bullied other countries of the East. Now, however, even Japan is being bullied. China was bullied by Western imperialist powers for over one hundred years. Your country was bullied even longer, for more than three hundred years. Now the Japanese people are also being oppressed. Therefore, we, people of the East, have instinctive feelings of solidarity and protecting ourselves. Ambassador Raghavan has served in China for a few years, and he surely understands the Chinese people’s patriotism and their feelings for the Indian people and the people of other countries in the East. In spite of differences in our ideologies and social systems, we have an overriding common point, that is, all of us have to cope with imperialism. Prime Minister Nehru should not think that China has attained complete independence and has no problems. We still face very big problems.
11:06 PM · Dec 27, 2023
That Wilson Centre has some fun stuff. Such as:
Which of course aligns less with Mao’s rhetoric cited above and more with the actual historical record. Mao’s China and Nehru’s India (BFFs!) would go to war against each other in 1962, but more damningly, China sided with the US in its machinations to stop India’s intervention halting Pakistan’s 1971 genocide in Bangladesh. An absolutely clear-cut case of genocide against the third world, perpetrated with US arms and Chinese diplomatic support.
To my mind, the way this actual history played out–lots of non-aligned movement kumbaya rhetoric followed by internal divisions and then joining hands with the US imperialism–should be a salutary antidote to any magical thinking that BRICS will inevitably usher in the Multipolar Millennium.
IMHO, Western influence is good only as long as their money and words are credible, which is increasingly questionable. No modern Mao would pivot to the West only to get paid in funny money
It does lay out the challenge for the BRICS: they are still building up institutions and nobody knows if they can build things up to necessary degree, and I assume building credible and durable multilateral institutions is tougher than an allegedly well meaning hegemon. The center may not hold, but no guarantee that an alternate center would emerge.
China for the most part stayed out of the 1971 conflict. Nixon even wanted them to move some troops to the border but they refused. Whether that was them trying to be neutral or fear of USSR is not clear. Probably a mix of both.
Prior to 1962 the Chinese were ready to make a grand deal on the border but Nehru refused and started his Forward Policy (yet at the same time provided very little funding and support and undercut his generals leading to the Indian Army being taken by surprise in 1962).
In fact, there is no double standard for Western countries, because it is not Russia that should be compared to Israel, but Ukraine, which has committed genocide in Donbass.
Why would Ukraine commit genocide against own population on own territory?
The ukies are arrogant, ethnically pure neo nasties?
I’m sure there’s other reasons too, what do you think it is? Money?
Why would Germans commit genocide against its own population?
The point being that the action has already been done: not on the scale of, say, Gaza, but Ukrainian aggression against civilians over past decade is well documented, and, indeed, was the basis for all the diplomacy that the West and Ukraine torpedoed before the conflict began.
*Russian* speaking population in the Donbass.
The Ukrainians do not regard the people in Donbass as fellow Ukrainians – they are not pure enough – and want them ethnically cleansed and have said so repeatedly in their media.
People in Donbas are not Ukrainians? Who told you they wanted to join Russia?
The Galician-based, hard-right Ukrainians are white nationalists who believe in their racial purity and regard other in the Ukraine such as Russian, Polish & Hungarian speakers as untermenschen. They have their supporters go on TV and say this and make clear that they want to ethnically cleanse these regions so that they can take over, which incidentally will make them wealthy. The people in the Donbas regions have been under attack by them ever since 2014 and a UN report said that 14,000 people had died as a result. After nearly a decade of this they want nothing to do with the Ukraine and in a referendum chose to join the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian governance from the 2014 Maidan Revolution, dominated by western provinces which are western Slav ethnicity and Ukrainian speaking, started oppressing eastern/southern provinces which are eastern Slavic (ie Russian) ethnicity and Russian speaking.
The Donbass regions did not support the Maidan Revolution, did not like the change in laws that blatantly discriminated against Russian speakers, and were attacked militarily by mercs, thugs etc in what the West reported as “ethnic clashes” or low-intensity “civil war” in “rebel” provinces who wanted separation or to become autonomous regions from Ukraine.
Donetsk city, being one of the major cities in the Donbass has been attacked regularly since 2014, long before Russia decided to engage.
Other reasons include, the Donbass region is rich in mineral resources such as lithium, and the best way of clearing it, is to make life miserable for the population – send in the neo-Nazi thugs with some military armaments etc..
It is a long and complicated story and I have not mastered much of it but Ukraine did not exist until Lenin and his crew glued a bunch of bits and pieces together in 1920(?) to create it.
Much of the western part of the new Soviet Socialist Republic was Catholic and had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most of the east and south was Russian Orthodox and had been part of the Russian Empire. Languages were, very similar but not quite the same. A good part of what is now Western Ukraine, Galicia, went to Poland in 1920.
After WWII, Stalin stuck Galicia on to Western Ukraine.
At its most basic you have different histories, religions, and languages. I
The Russians created and armed Donbass militias. The majority of the participants and the entire military command came from the GRU special forces with some local participation ( possibly forced ).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU_(Russian_Federation)
Ukraine has been trying to get rid of these militias in Donbass since 2014. The GRU forces had their headquarters and operatives intentionally located in large cities such as Donetsk and Lugansk which necessitated strikes against them. Russia claimed that the strikes were directed at the Russian speaking population, that kids were getting killed and hospitals destroyed. ( Does this tactics look familiar?). All this served as the basis for the invasion, occupation and land grab.
Now that is a good one! Considering that Ukrainian military was trained to NATO standard, we know from the (quite recent) history any well regulated militia could have beaten them. They didn’t need any “speshul forces” from Russia to do it.
Seriously though, real information is out there for you to utilize. What you’re now spouting is directly from the Telethon, and even Ukrainians don’t believe that fantasy anymore.
The point was that the DPR and LPR militias were essentially the GRU special forces created and trained for this sort of activities. They planted themselves in the Donbass region and blended with the local population. The majority of the local population got displaced as the result of fighting that ensued. Nakba anyone?
The nakba people love displaced Ukrainians
Yes, they were planted by Catherine II centuries ago, the way Jews were planted in Germany by Elders of Zion, or the way Palestinians were planted by whoever a thousand plus years ago. /s
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.
The source for this seems to be a Washington Post article, which (given the Post’s history) strongly suggests it’s coming from the CIA. Was the GRU involved in organizing Russian ethnic militias in the Ukraine, literally right over the border, when a virulently anti-Russian faction overthrew the elected government? I would be surprised if they weren’t (and had any interest in Russia’s national security). The more pertinent question is what was the CIA doing far from America’s border organizing the overthrow of that government? And why does our government’s notion of “defense” always seem to involve pushing military forces right up to (and sometimes over) the borders of other countries rather than defending our own borders? The Republicans at least seem to be dimly noticing that as a topic to seize upon, whatever else their abundant faults may be.
That is complete nonsense. UN weapons inspector found NO Russian small arms in Donbass in 2014. See Jacques Baud long form on this.
Have a nice life. Fabulists are not welcome here.
Actually, it you watched Russian state TV at the time, you would have seen several funerals of special forces troops killed in the Donbas. Richard Sakwa, for instance, has a short section on that phenomenon and other evidence of Russian involvement in his book — he, of course, is far from sympathetic to the propaganda of the Ukrainian elite. Similarly, even Gordon Hahn suggests regular Russian forces fought at Debaltsevo and Ilovaisk. Hahn, of course, is about as pro-Russian an expert on Ukraine as you can find (and also a right-wing proponent of the idea that US Dems are closet Marxists — though he is quite knowledgeable about Russia/Ukraine nonetheless).
Perhaps the most comprehensive study of direct Russian military involvement was done by liberal politician Boris Nemstov shortly before his assassination. He interviewed hundreds of relatives of Russian troops/volunteers killed in the war. Apparently, a fairly significant number of elite paratroopers, especially, fought in the conflict. That said, you are partially right: the bulk of the Donbas rebel forces were poorly trained militias.
Have you read Nemtsov’s report? His main claim is that according to the Russian law the members of the Russian army were obliged to tell their superiors if they were vacationing abroad and that it was illegal for them to volunteer fighting, so somehow it’s obvious that them being in Donbass was official Russian policy.
It’s really not that comprehensive study, it’s merely quoting public statements of Russian and DNR officials and trying to create an anti-Putin narrative from them.
Well said. Will he keep trying to bend the truth? Likely.
BS. There is actually a good book about the beginning of the civil war that written by one of the members of the militia forces, called 85 Days in Slavyansk. The militias begged for assistance from the government of the Russian Federation and were ignored. They did get civilian volunteers (some of whom were ex or retired military), donations from civilians and businesses in Russia, but it was very piecemeal and underwhelming. Most of their equipment was either brought over from the Ukrainian military by defectors, or was captured. Everyone in the ethnically Russian speaking regions of Ukraine knew what was coming their way when immediately after the 2014 coup, the Ukrainian gov outlawed the use of the Russian language, even to the point of fining and arresting teachers that used it in the classroom. Genocide against ethnic Russians had begun (as it was already underway in the Baltics- Russian speakers in those states were basically turned into stateless persons with no social rights). If the UPA/OUN/C-14/Pravi Sector factions had a right to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine, then the people of Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk certainly had a right to decide not to participate in their little Nazi project and walk away. The sad part for the Donetsk and Lugansk peoples is that their territories were viewed as less strategic in the eyes of the Russian government than Crimea (which voted THREE times to rejoin Russia since 1991-Russia ignored the votes until the Nazis gained power). If it was simply about a land grab, way back in 2014/15, all the Russian government had to do was keep quiet and let the militias continue to steamroll the Ukrainian forces, who were much less powerful, and much more poorly trained at the time. The militias were motivated, were taking territory and would have easily taken more territory beyond their own oblasts, but the Russians asked them to stop in the hopes that Minsk would actually go somewhere- As attested by many Euro-trash leaders like Merkel and Hollande, the Ukrainians and NATO only used the fraudulent peace process to re-arm/up-arm Ukraine to renew the fight *because Ukraine was losing the first Donbas war*, and the NATO supplies and mercs that were then flooded into Ukraine (odd this is not a problem for you, while you whine about non-existent Russian state support of the militias) eventually started pushing the militias backward, until the lines solidified sometime after the second Donbas war, in 2015/2016. The militias got very little, if any, material assistance from the Russian government, and anyone who has actually followed the situation is aware of this. The Russians only intervened in 2022 because their ISR assets showed the Ukrainian buildup along the lines in preparation for a massive attack on the Donbas in 2022 and they were tired of watching the Ukrainians openly and deliberately targeting civilians.
There is a term for people like yourself who ignore present and past reality while using your voices to further the policies of those running your corrupt, belligerent country. Regardless of how you try to present yourself, you are nothing more than a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Thanks for this reference to 85 Days in Slavyansk.
The idea Ukraine has committed genocide is one of the sillier things I’ve ever heard. In the last year of the conflict, the rate of civilian deaths in the Donbas War was lower than that of homicides or car accidents. The simple fact is that Ukrainian troops, esp far-right volunteers, committed some heinous acts, especially early on, in the Donbas War — but there is no evidence anything close to genocide occurred. We need to be careful that in our zeal to counter the propaganda of US imperialism we do not unwittingly endorse falsehoods spouted by the US’ imperial rivals.
Further, as corrupt and venal as the Ukrainian ruling class is, you can’t really blame them for fighting back against a foreign-directed insurgency. Both Strelkov and Borodai were direct employees of Malofeev before getting involved in the Donbas rebellion. The rebels were armed and commanded by Russian intelligence, and several thousand Russian paratroopers and special ops types fought alongside them, especially at Debaltsevo and Ilovaisk.
This is Wolf’s straw man and not a claim EVER made here. I resent this smear.
Be careful not to fall prey to the falsehoods of the US’ imperial rivals in your zeal to (correctly) counter American imperialism’s propaganda. There is, of course, no evidence to substantiate a charge of genocide against Ukraine. And, let’s face it, you can’t really blame them for fighting back in the Donbas War against a foreign-directed insurgency. Russia or the US would have done the same.
I am putting ciroc in mod for his comment, which denigrates the site as major league Making Shit Up.
The reason, I suspect, is because the article focuses on perceptions and framing – “China presents itself as a peace broker” rather than, due to the Saudi Arabia/Iran rapprochement, China is a peace broker.
In this way, the US can present itself as pro “whatever” while doing the opposite of “whatever.” I presume this is to try and persuade the reader to think more of the framing and less of the doing.
‘ “China presents itself as a peace broker” rather than, due to the Saudi Arabia/Iran rapprochement, China is a peace broker.’
A fine explanation; thank you. Such is the distorting framing:
“Since the deadly attack in Israel on October 7, China has presented itself as a peace broker while taking aim at the West…”
“resentment over perceived Western hypocrisy”.
Yes, it is only perceived hypocrisy…
Is there some other kind of hypocrisy?
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202401/04/WS65960fa2a3105f21a507a82c.html
January 4, 2024
China concerned about Red Sea shipping attacks, envoy says
By MINLU ZHANG
United Nations — A Chinese envoy to the United Nations on Wednesday called for a halt to the attacks and harassment of civilian vessels and to respect and safeguard the freedom of navigation of all countries in the Red Sea.
China is concerned about the repeated attacks and seizure of merchant ships in the Red Sea over a period of time, said Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN.
Geng spoke at a Security Council open meeting about Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea, amid a growing threat of spillover from the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
Geng said the Red Sea is an important corridor for the transportation of goods and energy. Ensuring the smooth flow of the waters and the safety of passing ships not only helps to maintain regional peace and stability but also contributes to the security of the global supply chain and international trade order, which is in line with the common interests of the international community, he said.
“China believes that all parties, especially influential powers, should play a constructive and responsible role in maintaining the safety of shipping lanes in the Red Sea,” Geng said.
Geng noted that at present, the issue in Yemen, where the Houthis are based, is at a critical juncture. The tense situation in the Red Sea has brought new challenges to the political process in Yemen and added new complexities to the already volatile Middle East region, he said.
“China calls on all parties concerned to remain calm and restrained, adhere to dialogue and consultation, promote a political solution, refrain from any acts that aggravate the situation, and do their best to maintain the positive momentum of the political process in Yemen,” Geng said.
Geng pointed out that the current tense situation in the Red Sea is one of the manifestations of the spillover effects of the Gaza conflict….
‘They’re portraying the West — and the United States in particular — as isolated, while China is surrounded by Arab and African countries on the side of the Global South.’
They are not portraying this so much as this is what is actually happening. The west screams about civilian casualties in the Ukraine – but never in the Donbass – and when the Israelis slaughter civilians by the tens of thousands there is only crickets. Worse, western countries are supplying Israel with the ammo and the means to keep this going. What is worse the west is trying to stop any cease fires but wants the Israelis to keep on going. And if the population of Gaza is forced out, the west will expect the countries of the Global Majority to take these refugees in, not them.
What is most stupid is that western counties want China to toe their line if they want to take part diplomatically. So they want China to condemn Russia and maybe even sanction them while they also want them to call out Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yeah, diplomacy does not work that way. One you stake yourself to a position like that, you have immediately disqualified yourself as a valid negotiator and have taken a side.
In short, countries like China, Russia and Iran are sitting back and thinking themselves lucky with who their enemies are.
‘They’re portraying the West — and the United States in particular — as isolated, while China is surrounded by Arab and African countries on the side of the Global South.’
They are not portraying this so much as this is what is actually happening.
[ Powerful, cogent response. ]
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1743028989449347255
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Here’s Professor John Mearsheimer on the complaint filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice against Israel. Given his record of prescience and accuracy on Ukraine and so much more, it’s very worth reading with an open mind:
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/genocide-in-gaza
January 4, 2024
Genocide in Gaza
By JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER
I am writing to flag a truly important document that should be widely circulated and read carefully by anyone interested in the ongoing Gaza War…
4:57 PM · Jan 4, 2024
The hongweibing control the elite universities in the US.
Interesting article. I’ve read the first few sections of the document (82 pages) and plan on finishing the rest ASAP.
Mearsheimer has also done two recent interviews that, in my opinion, are also worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztwf8mjenMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huDriv7IAa0
He points out some interesting facts about China and Russia and some present day US misguided foreign policy stances, to include the fact that a large part of the world looks at the US position on Ukraine vs. Gaza as, rightfully, hypocritical.