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Due to Washington’s Cold-War-style confrontational policy towards China there is now an ever-growing rift with U.S. allies in the European Union and Asia-Pacific.

This was evident from G20 and ASEAN discussions this week where numerous countries expressed deep misgivings about Washington’s relentless push for divisive relations with China.

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, while attending a G20 summit in Washington DC, told the New York Times of the stark difference emerging between the U.S. and the EU. “The United States wants to confront China. The European Union wants to engage China,” said Le Maire who added that the bloc needs to become more independent from American policy.

This call for European independence from Washington has been growing for some time. It reached more vocal levels during the presidency of Donald Trump owing to his hectoring style towards allies over NATO military spending and various alleged trade complaints. What has amplified these dissenting calls is the formation last month of the tripartite military pact between the U.S., Britain and Australia – known as AUKUS – which completely blindsided European allies. France was particularly aggrieved because it lost a submarine contract with Australia worth about €50 billion.

The new pact has been condemned by China as a provocative threat to security in the Asia-Pacific.

It’s not just about French national pride. The European Union counts China now as its biggest trading partner, having overtaken the United States. Germany’s export-led economy – the main driver of EU growth – is heavily dependent on China’s vast market.

It is becoming evident that Washington’s confrontational policy towards China – for example, the establishment of AUKUS – is detrimental to Europe’s strategic interests and trade with Asia. France takes over the rotating EU presidency soon and is showing that it will not indulge Washington’s divisive dynamic.

The same can be observed among Asian nations which are alarmed by Washington’s Cold War atavism.

Members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and others, have protested the way in which U.S. confrontational policy towards China is forcing them to choose sides between superpowers. The nations of Asia-Pacific have historic territorial disputes and other differences, but nevertheless there is a consensus that there must be cooperation and mutual development through dialogue and partnership.

It is notable how two of the three AUKUS members – the United States and Britain – are not geographically part of Asia-Pacific and yet these two powers have stoked much unrest since unveiling the military pact with Australia. Readers are recommended to check out this interview published by us on the subject this week with Professor Michael Brenner.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said last week that the Asian hemisphere wants peace and prosperity, and that nations do not want to be forced to take sides in any U.S.-China rivalry.

“We do not want to become an arena for proxy contests or even conflict,” he said.

Nations are well aware of the harmful impact of a previous Cold War. During the former Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union the stand-off was distorting normal development as well as increasing the risk of nuclear war. It seems incredible that in this day and age, there is still the shadow of Cold War looming over nations.

The main culprit for this pernicious polarity is the United States. Washington claims that it is not seeking a Cold War with China, yet it routinely incites provocations towards Beijing and casts international relations in a zero-sum manner. Washington tells other nations, in effect, that you are either with us or against us. This divisive policy is of course an essential element of American hegemonic ambitions.

The United States talks piously about upholding a “rules-based global order”. That is simply a euphemism for Washington’s decreed order according to its self-interests. What Washington always seeks is dominance over others. This is an indispensable function of U.S. global power.

In other words, mutualism, multilateralism, cooperation and co-development are anathema to U.S. global power. Cold Wars and confrontation are the essence of world relations, according to American designs for dominance. Lamentably, that ultimately means that world peace and security are in contradiction to Washington’s aims. That’s quite a damning revelation.

One salutary effect, however, is the growing realization among nations, especially among supposed allies of the United States, that their own self-interests are being sacrificed to placate Washington’s diktat.

How bitterly amusing that when Joe Biden was elected U.S. president he promised to bring allies together. The world is ineluctably diverging from the United States no matter who sits in the White House. And that’s because the world is finding that American power is the fundamental, irreconcilable problem.

Multinational corporations operate under the guise of ‘wokeness,’ while exploiting those abroad.

Alberto BUFALINO

Multinational corporations have come to rely on social corporate activism, championing causes such as Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police. The very same companies demanding social progress within the U.S., however, rely on slavery and forced labor around the world. Starbucks, known for their activism, employs such practices in Brazil, with conditions so poor that the employees don’t even have access to water.

Now, Senator Hawley is trying to stop this double standard with new legislation. The U.S. can be a world leader with the reform of global supply chains, helping to end slavery and forced labor across the world.

According to a report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 83 major brands, including notable industry giants like Adidas, Nike, Amazon, BMW, and Samsung, have relied on forced labor from Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. This exploitation is not unique to China: worldwide there are around 40.3 million slaves, roughly equivalent to the population of California.

Supply chains are inextricably tied to exploitation abroad. The Global Slavery Index estimates that “G20 countries are importing risk of modern slavery on a massive scale. Collectively, G20 countries are importing US$354 billion worth of at-risk products annually.”

Senator Hawley is critical of multinational corporations, particularly over their insistence on being vocal leaders of “wokeness” in America despite profiting off of exploitative practices abroad. As Hawley put it, “Corporate America and the celebrities that hawk their products have been playing this game for a long time—talk up corporate social responsibility and social justice at home while making millions of dollars off the slave labor that assembles their products. Executives build woke, progressive brands for American consumers, but happily outsource labor to Chinese concentration camps, all just to save a few bucks.”

Hawley has built his political image by going after multinational corporations, particularly over their willingness to leave the U.S. to produce goods abroad and their relationships with China.

theamericanconservative.com

In the era of Covid, virtual diplomacy was on display in India on May 21 when India’s President Ram Nath Kovind accepted the credentials of the ambassadors of Australia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, North Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, and Senegal via video conferencing. The unusual method for the presentation of credentials, which would have normally taken place in a formal ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan presidential residence in New Delhi, was the first of its type for India, and, possibly, the world.

The United Arab Emirates ambassador in London, rather than host a diplomatic dinner for Members of Parliament at his residence, arranged for a virtual dinner, which saw prepared food, paid for in advance by the UAE embassy, delivered to the homes of the guests, all of whom joined the virtual dinner via videoconferencing. But UAE Ambassador Mansoor Abulhoul admits that there is a pent up demand for traditional diplomacy, writing recently, “For all that Zoom, Twitter, and Instagram have changed the way we work in recent weeks, none of them are as powerful as old-fashioned, face-to-face diplomacy.”

The advent of virtual diplomacy, while helping to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, has removed the facet of personal connections that have been produced by face-to-face meetings between presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, foreign ministers, and others. It was the camaraderie developed in summit meetings between President Richard Nixon and both Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, as well as between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that helped to defrost chilly Cold War relations between the superpowers.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, major international meetings have been held virtually. These have included the G-20 Summit and the Spring 2020 meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as formal virtual meetings of the European Parliament and the World Health Organization’s Assembly and informal videoconferences of the UN Security Council. The World Health Assembly videoconference was boycotted by Donald Trump, who, with his freezing of U.S. financial assistance to the organization, has forfeited a longstanding U.S. presence within WHO to China and India.

The G-7 Summit, originally scheduled to be held in person at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland, was changed to a virtual meeting. However, Donald Trump changed course and announced that the G-7 would be held in person at Camp David. However, it was uncertain whether any other G-7 leader would attend, particularly since Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club in Palm Beach, Florida became a Covid hot zone during a March summit between Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, both Covid public health protection skeptics. Members of the Brazilian delegation tested positive for the virus as did the Republican Mayor of Miami, an invited guest at the summit meeting. In April and May, Covid-positive cases were reported in the West Wing of the White House, as well as in the president’s private residence.

In a recent interview with “Japan Times,” Masahiro Kohara, a former Japanese diplomat and current foreign policy professor at the University of Tokyo, summed up the current dilemma for diplomacy among world leaders. Kohara said, “I think the fact that they can’t [meet in person] in the middle of a crisis is a disadvantage,” adding, “On the one hand, holding an online meeting means world leaders can convene a meeting at any time. But on the other hand . . . when they are at odds over an issue, they try to seek compromise outside a meeting setting, including over meals. It’s hard to do that online if there are no such components. The more complicated an issue is, it’s much harder to resolve online.”

Kohara also brought up another issue, shared by diplomats and network security officials around the world. Reliance on what have become known as “Zoom diplomacy” or “Zoomplomacy,” references to the Zoom video conferencing application that has become popular during the pandemic, has introduced several security problems. Kohara and others believe that videoconferencing can only be a reliable alternative to physical summits and bilateral meetings if the communications infrastructure is secure.

There are those in the digital freedom community who argue that certain plenary international summits and meetings should be available for view by the public. Security specialists, however, caution against widespread access to such conferences, fearing that security loopholes could be penetrated by hackers.

While Zoomplomacy may be a rather easy technical task for the governments of the United States, Britain, Japan, China, Russia, Germany, and France, it becomes a burden for lesser-developed countries lacking required bandwidth to participate in virtual conferences. There are reports that Sudan was unable to participate in a recent United Nations videoconference on climate change because of a lack of required bandwidth in Khartoum. The Bhutan representative, although able to initially connect to the conference from Thimphu, was forced to deal with frozen video connections.

With traditional diplomatic meetings, including the annual plenary session of the UN General Assembly in New York, participation was based on various criteria, including official status as either a member, observer, or special guest of the UN. For the New York venue, the United States has increasingly interfered in the granting of diplomatic visas for certain participants from UN member and non-member nations like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Abkhazia, and Palestine.

Virtual General Assembly and other large plenary meetings of UN specialized agencies and other international organizations might become more welcoming to non-members that otherwise comply with the definition of a “state” pursuant to the 1934 Pan-American Conference’s Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. The convention states that a legally defined state is one that has (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) a capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

In the era of virtual diplomacy, statehood could be applied to “dependent sovereignties,” including governments-in-exile, quasi-states, or virtual micronations that are supported by permanent, although small, populations; possess either diplomatically-protected or some other physical territory, and are recognized by one or more other states. If the UN can grant physical observer status in New York to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which maintains small extraterritorial properties in Rome and in Malta, why not comparable virtual status for the Italian enclave of the Principality of Seborga, which has an area of 4.9 square kilometers and a population of 315? A strong case for cyber-representation at virtual international conferences can also be made for the Navajo Nation of the U.S. Southwest, the Nuxalk Nation of British Columbia, and Norfolk Island and the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders of Australia.

Since participation in virtual diplomatic conferences and meetings would not require diplomatic passport, visas, or other requirements for physical access to venues, could virtual international summits be opened to such “dependent sovereignties” as “cyber-credentialed” observers or guests? Indeed, it is a new and fascinating area of study for diplomacy and international law.

Virtual diplomacy may open the door for dozens of self-proclaimed sovereignties, from Catalonia and Tibet to Somaliland and Ambazonia. With sub-national governments becoming more self-sufficient and distant from central governments during the pandemic – the United States, Brazil, India, and Mexico are prime examples – could regional blocs, such as those created by the governors of New York, Illinois, and California, be represented at virtual international forums? Canada’s First Nations, the U.S. Native American sovereign tribes, and Brazil’s indigenous peoples all have felt short-changed by their respective central governments during the Covid pandemic. Could they seek virtual representation at international conferences, particularly because they possess degrees of sovereignty? And if virtual diplomatic conferences are open to nation-states, what would prevent virtual micronations from also being represented?

Covid-19 has forced nations to develop new methods for diplomacy. Will these new diplomatic methods lead to new definitions of what constitutes a nation-state or a sovereignty? There is also a cautionary note. If world leaders find themselves relying on diplomatic contact only virtually, some diplomats warn that it was the social distancing of leaders in the days prior to fast modes of transportation that helped foster mutual distrust that led to war.

China is cooperating with the U.S. in organizing the massive medical transfer, naturally of course, given the humanitarian crisis. You would think therefore that a little reciprocation would be in order from Washington. After all, China is one of those foreign countries that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on over alleged human rights violations. Would it not behove the U.S. to show a bit of solidarity and gratitude by dropping its sanctions regime against China?

And not just China. There are are some 30 countries and territories that currently sit on a U.S. sanctions list, mostly due to Washington’s accusations of human rights violations. Some of the targeted nations have been under sanctions for decades, such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Others have joined the dubious club more recently, such as Russia, Yemen and Venezuela.

Surely at this unprecedented time of a global pandemic threatening millions of human beings regardless of nationality, it is time to show genuine solidarity and compassion for others. The very idea of imposing sanctions on other countries is not only anachronistic. It is utterly barbaric.

In any case, U.S. sanctions imposed unilaterally without the mandate of the UN Security Council are arguably illegal. Even before the coronavirus outbreak and its accompanying disease, Covid-19, the American deployment of embargoes to disrupt commerce and trade of other countries could be seen as reprehensible. Such measures are rightly judged to be collective punishment of civilians which violates international law and the UN Charter.

But now as countries battle against an existential threat posed by the virus, the existing U.S. sanctions can be seen as an abomination.

Iran is a particularly poignant case. It has one of the highest infection rates in the world with thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks. Yet the Trump administration sees fit to not only maintain harsh sanctions on Tehran, it has actually added three more rounds of sanctions against Iran since the epidemic occurred. The deaths in Iran are being multiplied by American policy.

The Trump administration cynically claims that U.S. sanctions do not impede humanitarian aid to Iran. The claim is beneath contempt. The crippling sanctions imposed by Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy virtually precludes Iran from making international financial transactions, including for medicines. Moreover, the effect of “secondary sanctions” means that many countries are intimidated from doing business with Iran out of fear of U.S. reprisals.

Washington has blood on its hands where any country is finding the fight against Covid-19 in any way more difficult. It already had blood on its hands from its illegal sanctions. But what we have now is the grotesque picture of a ghoulish, sadistic American government shamelessly showing its ugly face at a time of global suffering.

At the G20 summit last week – held by teleconference to avoid spreading coronavirus infection – Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the world to drop sanctions at this critical juncture. He said it was imperative for all nations to have access to medicines and equipment without financial restrictions. “It is a question of whether people live or die,” he added.

Putin’s call for discarding sanctions was backed by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres and other world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the end, however, the G20 final joint statement omitted any unanimous mention of sanctions. One suspects that the U.S. – the world’s number-one serial abuser of sanctions – pulled strings behind the scenes to pre-empt any move to banish such measures of financial coercion. Not surprisingly, because financial coercion (less politely, “terrorism”) is an instrumental weapon for U.S. foreign policy, as much as its military intimidation of other nations is.

Instead, what came out of the G20 conference was a joint statement of vapid, disingenuous rhetoric.

It opined: “Global action, solidarity and international cooperation are more than ever necessary to address this pandemic. We are confident that, working closely together, we will overcome this. We will protect

human life, restore global economic stability, and lay out solid foundations for strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth.”

Just how does “global solidarity” and “working closer together to protect human life” translate into practical remedial action when Washington continues to wield a veto over some of the poorest and weakest nations gaining life-saving supplies?

If there were any compassion or morality in Washington, it would immediately rescind all its sanctions against other nations in recognition of common humanity. But the hard-heartedness of Washington is unrelenting even at a time of crisis and death. It is based on a self-righteousness that is frightening in the scale of its hubris and hypocrisy.

A certain natural “correction” is due for this endemic criminal mentality of America’s ruling class. And one senses that the correction for its systematic evildoing against fellow human beings is not going to pass lightly.

Ms. Trump’s husband failed to impress anyone a week earlier after his long-awaited and overly hyped Middle East “peace plan” was presented at a “workshop” in Manama, Bahrain. Dubbed “Peace to Prosperity,” Kushner’s plan more resembled a real estate development prospectus brochure than a bona fide peace proposal between the Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinians and some Arab nations were wise to consider Kushner’s plan “dead on arrival.” Kushner’s and Trump’s real estate companies are known mainly for bankruptcies and fraud. In reality, Kushner’s plan foresees the Palestinians selling their land to developers in a get-rich-quick scheme. No where did the plan mention the political status of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, or the Palestinian diaspora’s right of return.

Kushner’s call for Gulf and other investors to ante up $50 billion over a ten-year time frame for infrastructure development, which includes a $5 billion transport link between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, appeared to be more a get-rich scheme for Kushner, his friends, and Trump’s cronies. The only people who seemed excited about Kushner’s contrivance included former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, and Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group and chairman of Trump’s short-lived Strategic and Policy Forum, both of whom were in Manama to praise Kushner’s initiative. Billionaire US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said of Kushner’s plan, “It’s going to be like a hot IPO [initial public offering].”

Kushner’s plan was rightly panned for being an unrealistic project concocted by someone who counts Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a close friend. In concert with orders from Netanyahu and two other Kushner compatriots – former Trump attorneys David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, and Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s adviser on Israel – the issue of Palestinian sovereignty was not included in the “peace plan.”

While Kushner failed to impress anyone in Bahrain with his peace plan nonsense, his wife, Ivanka, made an utter fool out of herself and the United States by appearing center stage at the G20 Summit. Rarely was Ms. Trump absent from photographs of the gathered world leaders. A short video link was released by the Élysée Palace in Paris showing Ms. Trump attempting to barge in on a conversation between French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, and British Prime Minister Theresa May. It is clear from the audio that Trump’s daughter was way out of her league and her insertions of babbling nonsense failed to impress the four leaders, three of whom are responsible for major nations and one for an important international organization. Ms. Trump has only been responsible for using her White House position to enrich her portfolio of handbag, clothing, perfume, footwear, and jewelry companies.

Trump’s neo-conservative war hawk national security adviser, John Bolton, did not accompany the president to Panmunjom. North Korea has made no secret of its dislike for Bolton, an opinion that is shared by many other countries and a sizable percentage of Americans. Instead, Bolton was banished to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where he conducted talks with Mongolian state security secretary Davaasuren Damdinsuren. Bolton’s place in Panmunjom was taken by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who would not even have a job in the television business had it not been for the fact that his father, Dick Carlson, was a past president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and director of the Voice of America. Together with Ms. Trump and Kushner, Tucker Carlson made up the US contingent in Panmunjom for the first ever “visit” by a sitting US president to North Korean soil. In fact, two past presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, accomplished much more during their post-presidential visits to North Korea than did Trump for a self-serving “photo op.”

When it comes to the G20 leaders, regardless of politics, it can be safely said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are in a class by themselves when it comes to experienced practitioners of geo-political statecraft.

At the other end of the spectrum, where inexperienced and outright stupid novices roam, is found Trump and Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. During a joint press conference in Osaka, Trump was asked about President Putin’s belief that “western liberalism” was on the political ropes. Trump, obviously unfamiliar with the concept advanced during the Age of Enlightenment by such 17^th and 18^th century figures as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Baron Montesquieu – it should be firmly stated that anyone who ever took a college political science or history course is familiar with the refrain “Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu” – began blathering about liberal Democratic cities in California, specifically mentioning Los Angeles and San Francisco. In a cringeworthy moment, Trump incredulously said, “I guess you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco, and a couple other cities which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people.”

It is of little wonder why Trump only seems to bond with Bolsonaro, an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Bolsonaro is a disciple of the Richmond, Virginia-based Brazilian polemicist, Olavo de Carvalho. A fierce opponent of former Brazilian Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, Carvalho rejects Copernican, Newtonian, and Einsteinian physics, choosing to believe that the Earth does not revolve around the sun; that the concept of infinite numbers, as well as manmade climate change, are hoaxes; that there was no such thing as the Spanish Inquisition; that vaccinations kill people or make them crazy; and that Pepsi sweetened its drinks with aborted human fetuses. Carvalho has also said that there is insufficient evidence to prove whether the Earth is flat or a sphere. No wonder Trump and Bolsonaro admire one another. They have become the antithesis of the Age of Enlightenment. They represent a modern “Age of Stupidity.”

One could easily dismiss those like Carvalho as lunatic gadflies. However they have powerful admirers and cohorts, as witnessed in March 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Former Trump adviser and campaign strategist Steve Bannon co-hosted a screening of a complementary film about Carvalho. Present was President Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a representative for South America of Bannon’s global fascist “Movement.” Following the screening of the film, Carvalho declared that all journalists are drug addicts. While many journalists do enjoy their adult beverage of choice, such a Trump-like statement by the political guru of Bannon and Bolsonaro provides further evidence that our world has entered the Age of Stupidity, where up is no longer down, facts are considered false, and imbeciles like Trump and Bolsonaro, along with their corrupt families, now govern major nation-states.

While not directly discussed at the event, the melt-down of the Trans-Atlantic banking system now bursting at the seams with over $700 trillion of derivatives, and corporate debt bubble which the Bank of International Settlements is warning will be the new sub-prime junk bond meltdown was on everyone’s mind. Whether the USA would be willing to re-organize itself in harmony with the new system driven by the Belt and Road Initiative was a question which only the braindead could avoid thinking about.

While some commentators are trying to spin this emerging re-orientation in global affairs as a mere “trick to get re-elected”, the reality goes much deeper than many realize, as Trump is merely tapping into an American strategy which was firmly established during the 1941-1944 presidential term of America’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his loyal collaborator Henry A. Wallace who had planned a grand design for a US-Russia-China New world order founded upon principles enshrined in the Atlantic Charter and enunciated in his 1942 “Century of the Common Man” speech.

Wallace’s Fight for a Just World Order

While serving as FDR’s Vice President, Wallace wrote in his 1944 book Our Job in the Pacific: “It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia, China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America’s position in the Pacific.”

In another 1944 piece Two Peoples-One Friendship (Survey Graphic Magazine), Wallace described the destiny of the US-Russia for mutual arctic development with transportation connections across the Bering Strait: “Of all nations, Russia has the most powerful combination of a rapidly increasing population, great natural resources and immediate expansion in technological skills. Siberia and China will furnish the greatest frontier of tomorrow… When Molotov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] was in Washington in the spring of 1942 I spoke to him about the combined highway and airway which I hope someday will link Chicago and Moscow via Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Molotov, after observing that no one nation could do this job by itself, said that he and I would live to see the day of its accomplishment. It would mean much to the peace of the future if there could be some tangible link of this sort between the pioneer spirit of our own West and the frontier spirit of the Russian East.”

Expressing a mode of long term thinking and sensitivity to the Asian psyche rarely seen by westerners, Wallace wrote that “Asia is on the move. Asia distrusts Europe because of its “superiority complex”. We must give Asia reason to trust us. We must demonstrate to Russia and China, in particular that we have faith in the future of the Common Man in those two countries. We can be helpful to both China and Russia and in being helpful can be helpful to ourselves and to our children. In planning our relationships today with Russia and China, we must think of the world situation as it will be forty years hence.”

So What Went Wrong?

With the early death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945, the nest of Wall Street lackeys (many of them Fabians and Rhodes Scholars) embedded in the American bureaucracy quickly took over under the Presidency of Harry Truman. Wallace was quickly demoted to Commerce Secretary, and the Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF and World Bank were cleansed of all New Deal economists loyal to the Wallace-FDR vision of the post war world. This was done through the creation of a fascist police state run under the control of Hoover’s FBI and McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities which ran the witch hunt that destroyed the lives of countless patriots, labelling them as “Soviet agents”. The 1947 Security Act evoked the Executive Order 9835 that made “reasonable grounds for belief that a person is disloyal” grounds for firing someone from any government position.

One early victim of the witch hunt was the IMF’s first director Harry Dexter White who had been accused of being a soviet spy and died in 1948 after a McCarthy hearing. Wall Street agents such as John J. McCloy, Averell Harriman, and George Keenan quickly took control of these banks and re-organized them as instruments for a neo-colonial enslavement of the world rather than as the issuers of long term productive credit which they were meant to be.

Truman’s immediate belligerence to Russia caused the Russia cancellation of its $1.2 billion subscription to join the World Bank agreed to in 1944, and Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech enshrined the bi-polar dynamic of Mutually Assured Destruction as the bedrock of the post war age of nuclear terror. As Truman unleashed the “Truman Doctrine” of US foreign entanglements in the new Cold War against Russian expansion starting with America’s enmeshment into the Greece-Turkey conflict orchestrated by London in the Spring of 1947, Churchill said in Fulton Missouri: “Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.” The Truman doctrine and Special Relationship represented the total reversal of the “community of principle” policy to avoid “foreign entanglements” advocated by George Washington, John Quincy Adams and adopted by FDR and Wallace.

Wallace Fights Back

Before being fired from his post as Commerce Secretary in 1946 for giving a speech calling for US-Russia friendship, Wallace warned of the emergence of a new “American fascism” which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. “Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.”

In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission, Wallace said “Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war.”

Henry Wallace did not disappear as his enemies would have liked, but became a third party candidate for the 1948 presidency acquiring the support of leading patriots and artists, not the least of whom being the great African American activist/singer Paul Robeson who set into a motion a process that blossomed under Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights movement. Wallace’s presidential speeches are a stirring call to action which can educate and inspire today’s generation. It is a tragic reminder that the American people, having just heroically given so much to stop a global fascist movement during WWII, failed to stop the emergence of a new fascism in America itself and did not vote for Wallace when they had the chance.

A Last Chance?

Although John F. Kennedy did attempt to revive the spirit of FDR during his three years in office, his early assassination, (followed by those of his brother, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X), sabotaged the re-awakening of the true constitutional America.

Decades after the assassinations of the 1960s, many cannot be blamed for having believed that all hope for America was lost. Yet in spite of this disbelief, we have found a US President at war with the same Deep State structures that took control of America over FDR’s dead body, not only meeting with the leadership of Russia, China and India but calling for good relations and an end to the age of war.

Today, the great infrastructure programs driven by credit which epitomized the New Deal under Wallace and FDR is alive in the surprising Belt and Road Initiative. Russia and China have thus found themselves in the ironic role of having become more American than the America which has ran roughshod over the world for the past half century. Whether Wallace’s dream finally be revived by a US-Russia-China alliance for a new just economic order will occur or not has not yet been answered.

Trump took Kim at his word who said after talks broke down thanks to Bolton and Pompeo in Hanoi that no dialogue would be possible if Bolton was involved.

So, Trump sent Bolton to Mongolia. Then he went to Korea and did the one thing he had to do to begin unraveling the mess he’d gotten himself into.

Last week I asked where does Trump go after his confrontation with Iran? Trump answered that question in dramatic fashion. And he deserves a lot of credit for it.

But what does this mean in the wider context? It’s a good first step but we’ve seen this game from him before, making bold moves only to be reined in by his staff.

I would say that the optics of sending Bolton to Mongolia are pretty clear. Bolton’s time in the White House is nearly over. This is also a strong signal to Iran that Trump trying to back down without actually saying that.

The drone incident was intended to box Trump into a path to war with Iran after the tanker attack in the Gulf of Oman two weeks prior. That was likely not the Iranians but the Saudis and/or MEK, again trying to get Trump to fly off the handle, since he’s easily manipulated into emotional acts.

But he was talked out of it at the last minute, presumably by Tucker Carlson, who was with him on Air Force One when Trump went to meet Kim.

Has Trump finally woken up to the reality that he can’t appease these neocons anymore? That their lust for power can only be sated by perpetual war? That he has to lead and be President? Asking for advice from your cabinet is one thing, being led by your nose to foregone conclusions which are anathema to what put you in the White House in the first place is another.

He hasn’t drained one ounce of The Swamp because he wasn’t strong enough to do it.

His instincts are correct. His desire for denuclearization is sincere. Like Trump or not, he’s a patriot. What he does he does out of this sense of patriotism. It’s laudable but it also makes him vulnerable to bad advice and his own personality defects.

And those things nearly got the world into a war where no one wins.

So, with all that said, now what?

A lot has changed in the past four months since the end of the Mueller investigation. And the signs are all there that Trump is feeling a lot more secure both politically and financially that would allow him to not only make bold first moves but follow through on them.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed down on border wall funding. She’s ruled out impeachment as a bad political tactic. And she’s under fire from the hard-core Progressives in the party. This makes them weak.

So, from a re-election standpoint Trump looks very secure, especially after the “I’m more woke than you” fest that was the first debate among DNC candidates.

We’re looking at a mirror of 2016 with the Republicans that Trump beat. A wide and shallow pool of less than capable candidates who will all eat each other alive while he rides to re-election.

The difference is that these weren’t hand-selected to be pushovers to coronate Hillary Clinton. This is just the best the Democrats have to offer. And, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, that’s not saying much.

From a re-election perspective Trump has to shore up his foreign policy position and admit that whatever he’s tried to do to this point hasn’t worked. In fact, it has done nothing but weaken him and is adding to an already messy economic landscape worldwide, as I’ve pointed out in the past.

This turn by him is more than a small blip, in my mind. It is Trump backing away from the abyss created for him by his neocon handlers, who all hate him anyway.

Bolton was pushed on him by major Republican donor and Israeli Firster, Sheldon Adelson. And Adelson is the real issue here. So much of Trump’s foreign policy has centered around the wishes of this odious man.

With RussiaGate behind him and leading Democrats refusing to let it lie down as they try to obfuscate the obvious trail which leads back to them Trump looks a lot more secure. He’s looking at the fundraising numbers, the crowds he’s drawing at rallies more than a year out from the election, a stock market at all-time highs and he’s thinking he doesn’t really need Adelson’s money network anymore.

And if that is the case, then we may finally see the Donald Trump that he sold us during the campaign. I’m not holding high hopes for this, but I would be remiss in not pointing out his incentives.

It’s becoming obvious to everyone that the Deal of the Century for Israel and Palestine is a dead letter. So many of Trump’s mistakes have been in service of this deal which they can’t even bring to the table.

The last piece of this puzzle is whatever happened at the G-20 between Trump, Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping. Trump folded on the worst of his trade war with China. His uber-hawks wanted Huawei destroyed for not giving the US backdoor access to spy on the world, everything is just noise.

He did this agreeing to more soybean imports from China. This was a cop to the farmers he needs to keep onside if he’s going to win in 2020.

But the most important part of this are the signals by Russia and China that they would assist Iran in getting its oil to market. The Chinese will buy it and the Russians will clear the trades through their electronic payment system analogous to the US-dominated SWIFT.

Since any further action by the US to stop Iranian oil exports involve physical confrontation and interdiction that threat is now off the table after Trump nixed bombing Iran. No one will be happy with an order by Trump to detain Iran’s oil tankers, except the people who have been playing games with him, the Israelis and the Saudis.

But even then, Putin surely held the Saudis feet to his fire in agreeing to extend the oil production cuts into next year. A little leverage on the over-levered can be very effective. From the looks of things, post G-20, Trump assessed the landscape and began pulling back.

Bullying can only take you so far. Pressure applied too forcefully can always be turned against you. And in politics overplaying your hand will bust you. Next move, Mr. President?

Two words were on the lips of world leaders as the curtain went up on the Group of 20 gathering in the Japanese city of Osaka. On Friday, all the early statements and gossip revolved around the “trade war.”

Xi Jinping set the tone. China’s president warned about the dangers of protectionism at a meeting between the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“This is destroying the global trade order … This also impacts the common interests of our countries, overshadows the peace and stability worldwide,” the Chinese president said.

In the past year, Washington and Beijing have been embroiled in a brutal trade conflict involving tit-for-tat tariffs on imports worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Along the way, Chinese companies, such as the telecoms giant Huawei, have been dragged into the dispute, suffering punitive sanctions imposed by Washington.

After trade talks broke down last month and the technology battle intensified between the world’s two largest economies, the shockwaves rippled across the globe.

Now, G20 leaders are praying that US President Donald Trump and Xi can ease tensions when they meet face-to-face on Saturday to discuss the situation.

Although there appears little chance of an immediate deal, they will be hoping a truce can be hammered out.

Trump at least made all the right noises about trade agreements. But they did not appear to include China.

‘Very big deal’

The only real reference about the spat with Beijing came in a remark he also made to Modi.

“We actually sell Huawei many of its parts,” Trump said. “So we’re going to be discussing that and also how India fits in. And we’ll be discussing Huawei.”

Earlier this week, media reports suggested that Xi would not agree to a deal unless Washington lifted its ban on the company, which is recognized as a world leader in 5G technology and a key player in the smartphone sector.

During the opening session, Trump touched on the issue. “We must also ensure the resilience and security of our 5G networks,” he said.

Still, Sino-American trade fiction dominated the conversation after the World Bank released a report earlier this month entitled, Global Economic Prospects: Heightened Tensions, Subdued Investment.

“The trade relations between China and the United States are difficult, they are contributing to the slowdown of the global economy,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing European Commission president, told a media briefing.

“Today things are made neither in China nor in the United States. They are made globally,” he said.

In his opening address, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, appealed for unity among bickering nations as well as later touching on the thorny problem of reforming the World Trade Organisation or WTO.

He urged G20 leaders to send a strong message in support of free and fair trade, warning that geopolitical tensions were rising and buffeting the “global economy.”

“With your help, I hope we will realize beautiful harmony in Osaka … rather than highlight our confrontations, let us seek out what unites us,” he said.

“Today, I want to discuss with leaders measures to further enhance momentum towards reform in WTO,” he added.

Eloquent sentiments amid the rhetoric of what is looking like a new economic Cold War between China and the US.

“Bullying practices are on the rise, posing severe threats to economic globalization and international order, and severe challenges to the external environment of developing countries,” Dai Bing, an official from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a veiled attack on Washington’s stance.

Yet behind the scenes, Beijing’s top trade negotiator Vice-Premier Liu He and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met at the Imperial Hotel in Osaka, according to an official familiar with the matter who declined to be identified, Bloomberg news agency revealed.

They were trying to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Xi tete-a-tete.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who dined with the US president on Thursday, illustrated the challenges ahead.

“I walked away with the view that this is going to be tough because there are some very serious issues that they’re trying to resolve,” he told Channel 7, the Australian television network.

But then, walking away has been a specialty in the year-long diplomatic confrontation.

asiatimes.com