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The Astana Club is now firmly established as an indispensable annual East-West gathering in the Heartland. This year’s forum, taking place at minus 32 degrees Celsius in the Kazakh capital, could not have been scheduled at a more incandescent geopolitical inflexion point.
Several round tables set to examine the full spectrum of the “megacycle of turmoil” we’re all immersed in – generating massive challenges to an ever-integrating Eurasia, home to ¾ of the world’s population and over 60% of global GDP.
The Star Wars-style round table gathered a mix of assorted Atlanticists, mostly American and British, and Eurasia-wide specialists from China, Russia, India, Turkiye and Azerbaijan. Now let’s get straight into the action.
When it comes to “where are we now and where are we heading”, it was hard to bypass Western nonsense such as Russia acquiring lebensraum and the Thucydides Trap. Additionally, the table was not exactly reconciling the fact that amidst the whole “de-globalization” hype, Singapore remains so attractive to Western elites, when it remains a de facto autocracy.
The always entertaining Edward Luttwak, who advised and continues to advise everyone and his neighbor in the US Deep State, coined landmarks such as “turbo-capitalism”, imprinted the notion of geoeconomics, and raises cows in the Bolivian jungle, once again developed his Chinese obsession. He was adamant: the UN Security Council is a waste of time; “all the countries near China are anti-China” – which is demonstrably false; and “there’s no symmetry between US and China.”
When discussing “the world on the edge of the abyss”, Charles Kupchan from the Council on Foreign Relations, by videoconference, mused on the “strategic defeat” of Russia before calling for a “stop in the bloodshed” – when there were never such calls before the much-lauded, and botched, Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Zhao Long from the Shanghai Institute for International Studies preferred to focus on China’s “strategic patience”, a holistic approach – as well as China as one of the major victims of the proxy war in Ukraine. Zhao Huasheng of Fudan University added that a “doorstep war” only adds to “doorstep insecurity.”
On the threat of fragmentation of the world economy, Sergey Afontsev of the Russian Academy of Sciences stressed how Moscow re-structured foreign trade in less than 6 months, and how the whole mechanism of oil exports to India was put in place in only a few months.
A key thread in all discussions was the “securitization of everything” – and how this dangerous interdependency only exacerbates security risks. Evan Feigenbaum of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace proposes that we are deep into a clash between economic integration and security fragmentation.
A Reality Check on Sanctions
Damjan Krnjevic-Miskovic of the ADA University in Baku made an excellent presentation on the slowly but surely interconnection of Greater Central Asia and Afghanistan – focusing on connectivity across what is in effect the Silk Road space.
A continental bridge is in effect – with China building railways to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan.
The advantages of the multimodal Middle Corridor – or Trans-Caspian, linking China to Europe via Central Asia, the Caspian and the South Caucasus – are bound to overlap with the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), whose main players are Russia, Iran and India.
That will ideally allow the synergistic integration of the South Caucasus, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia, congregating key actors from the SCO to BRI, and with Afghanistan as a pivot: the whole space, Krnjevic-Miskovic stressed, is “on the cusp of becoming an autonomous actor in the international order.”
A “reality check” on sanctions sparked a debate on the weaponization of the US dollar, with Afontsev re-examining Russia’s restructuring of foreign trade and its success in terms of macro-economic stability and “not allowing internal pressures to rise”. Consequences: Moscow managed to “rally Russian citizens against the West”, and there was “increased supply of labor force to the Russian Federation.”
Zhou Bo, with whom I had fascinating exchanges on the sidelines of the forum, re-emphasized that for the Americans, the friendship between neighbors China and Russia “has to be limited”.
Amidst all the de-coupling and de-risking racket, Bo remarked, the Americans still cling to the fiction of persuading China not to work against the West – when Beijing never harbored such intention. China most of all prides itself of being a member of the Global South, focused on BRICS expansion: a non-Western organization committed to trading in national currencies.
In the end, said Bo, what we have for instance in the South China Sea is continuous US provocations making the PLA ever stronger.
In a quite lively debate on AI, Thomas Cellucci, a key advisor on science and technology commercialization to the Bush II and Obama administrations, emphasized “ethical AI”; transparency in AI algos; and most of all, that science and technology should not be involved in politics.
Zhou Bo for his part emphasized American restrictions on Chinese AI – even as Tsinghua University is working jointly with Brookings on research about military AI and crucial aspects of nuclear command and control. As for the EU, Bo correctly stressed how it’s more interested in “regulating AI” than “creating AI”.
I moderated a debate on the “era of blockalization” – which in the end was quite productive, as there were only two expert presentations: by James Lindsay from the Council on Foreign Relations, and once again Zhou Bo. That left plenty of time for the floor. Essentially, there was a certain agreement WWIII is not around the corner – yet; a bipolar G-2 between the US and China will be resisted by all means by Washington; and the road will be long for the yuan to displace the US dollar across Eurasia.
There may have been two problematic issues at this year’s Astana Club: not enough discussion specifically focused on the Heartland and the Central Asian “stans”; and not enough discussion on the consequences of EAEU/BRICS soon coming up with a viable road map for de-dollarization in trade across Eurasia.
Tensions Finally Come to the Surface
The – final – plenary session focused on “a new formula for peace” – and was opened by Kazakhstan’s First President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose memoirs have just been published in Russian (and soon in English).
Nazarbayev took care to remind everyone of a crucial point: he was responsible for de-nuclearizing Kazakhstan, dismantling what was at the time the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, then transferred to Russia by 1995.
He stressed “the collapse of the former world order”; renewed his support for sustainable development; and praised Eurasia’s “most radical transformation in 100 years”.
That set the stage for the final debate. Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero made a passionate plea for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. And legendary Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner, almost 90 years old, who among other things was the host of a popular political TV show on Channel One for 14 years, offered his interpretation of the conflict in Ukraine.
And that’s when the barely contained tension bubbling underneath the forum finally exploded. The catalyst had to be Ukraine.
An Atlanticist disrespected Pozner with a cheap ad hominem attack. I was forced to intervene – in front of everyone. The ensuing debate was stark: on one side, two Russians and myself. On the other side, Anglo-American supremacy.
That only confirmed, once again, that the ongoing American/NATO cosmic humiliation in the proxy war in Ukraine will be for Atlanticists a never to be healed sore wound. The merit goes for the Astana Club to make it, once again, quite graphic, amidst a mostly civil debate on all the aspects of our current, toxic geopolitical predicament.
And no, we did not find a “new formula for peace.”
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The people are awakening, the phenomenal development of China demonstrated that the origin of the lack of development of the emerging countries was not the lack of capacity and lack of intelligence of their leaders but the “Economic Terrorism” applied against them by the countries of the Western North and Asian allies.
In China nothing went wrong because Western interests risked losing Chinese trade if economic terrorist measures were applied to it like other countries. With China, it is only now that they dare to offend it by calling it an enemy and with great caution because the millions of profits of the Western elite in China are in danger.
And if the economic move against the USSR of the dollar without support as a world reserve could have given them a great advantage; By granting China fair play without financial terrorism, it allowed it to show the world the power and value of people’s work. And now the dollar is going in the wrong direction.
And that brought about the global “awakening” that they fear so much.
The Chinese culture has “strategic patience” about everything. The Kazakhs for example have been trading with China for thousands of years, they are well-known to them. The Chinese still call them, “Cooked Barbarians.” The Mongols as a contrast 1000 years ago were called, “Uncooked Barbarians.”
That is, the Kazakhs are known _enough_ to the Chinese to be acceptable for commerce and being good neighbors. That is the maximum level of integration we’re going to see from the Chinese culture, to ANYONE ELSE and it’s taken centuries and centuries for them to gain that status.
The idea that China is going to be a strategic partner in a Central-Asian “centered” economic understanding, I believe to be forever stunted.
A brief military alliance would go a long way to helping an eventual infrastructure linking – all this time being next to Russia and needing oil and gas and Russia / China are not building pipelines for example. Yes there is a large hinterland that is barely occupied in between – longer probably than even the vaunted Alaska Pipeline.
But that is the same as the “silk road” – it is historically nearly empty through all those mountains and skirting the Gobi Desert EXCEPT for caravans of traders.
Until China is linked economically through infrastructure such as pipelines to Central Asia, through that narrow Kazakhstani corridor, I just don’t see them as a giant or leading partner in the SCO partnership.
I’m not saying it’s impossible – I’m saying there are major concrete steps and links that have to happen here first. And yes it may have to occur AFTER sea lanes such as Hormuz Straits are briefly closed because of conflict. That could be the tea leaves here for all I know.
here’s charles kapchan (who changed his name from capuchin, (for obvious reasons)), calling for a “stop to the bloodshed”.
After decades of intentionally dismantling the industrial/manufacturing base of the West & transporting its factories to Asia/Latin America we are now witnessing the next stage in the Overlords program. The Israel Overlords are simply phasing out the West/white race now & transitioning their seat of global power/control to China (BRICS) vis a vis their new all nonwhite world they’re implementing–as they intend to extinguish the white race sometime this century. The West will simply morph into an amorphous mass of billions of mongrels & monkey-headed afro-latino-asians. But hey, that’s what happens to a nation or world, for believing in some Jew’s egalitarian rabbi religion for centuries that taught: ‘Salvation is from the Jews’ (John 4:22).
In the context of the article by P. E.
Many more scenarios available at lol.com.
What with the Xi California-Biden show up, eager as a lapdog for a cookie? While his breed and partner Putin, was banned and made a villain on these same territories that extend a third of the globe. Speaks for the Jew International.
What about Putin being hand-strapped to Ukraine, so he cannot deploy to the Middle East, and Israel taking handsomely advantage of this to annex, re-develop and appropriate Gaza and it’s off-shore zone? Again Jew International (the globalist nomer for lack of balls) advantage.
What about double cross, triple agent Erdogan? Swearing in the mike against the Jew, and providing the exact fueling of the International Jew colony in the same breath?
Thanks for a rare piece of public junk consumption.
So the CFR is sneaklily dong foreign policy with the Chinese and Russians without Washingtons permission, naughty naughty.
So it seems Biden Blinken and Sullivam are yesterdays news and relegated to the trash can.
Edward Luttwak of the LSE, say no more, 0bama and Harris baby daddies, thats the LSE influence to US, one spawns a disaster the other spawns a joke.
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge, mines a rum and coke.
Astana is colder than Fairbanks AK. Pepe is real G.
What is amazing to me is that the real “Ukraine” wars are completely hidden.
The war between the US compulsion and control and the BRICS+ cooperation and compromise.
The war between Naked Capitalism and Cloaked Socialism.
These are the discussions that should be taking place.
For 500 years first Portugal then Spain then Holland then France + Britain and finally USA has controlled the world through having military might and advanced weapons to force the unfortunates to give up their wealth and make the Empires rich. That Era is now over for the foreseeable future. The only weapons of compulsion left are the massive Nuclear missiles and bombs, but with Russia, China, Pakistan on one side and the West (+ Israel) on the other neither side wants to finally destroy themselves and the world as we know it.
Chemical-Biological weapons are being deployed but no real strikes have been made except, possibly, against opponents economic assets, the crops and livestock.
China-Russia-BRICS want a multi-polar world with no Western compulsion. The West is clinging on by their fingernails.
So what should the outcome of this “compulsion and control V’s cooperation and compromise” look like?
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The West has put Naked Capitalism as it’s basis. This is epitomised by Rothschild,
“We disapprove of slavery and the cost of the maintenance and upkeep of slaves. We prefer our English model in which we control the issuance of currency, and control of money, it allows us to control labor without the cost of maintaining it.” Lord Baron Rothschild (private owner of the Bank of England. Quote 1849)
Controlling labour means giving them just enough to fend off starvation but not enough to allow them to relax and start thinking about their lives. After WW2 in the US and most western countries a male working a normal job could have family where the wife stayed home, buy all the latest appliances and a new car every 2 years, this lasted for about 20-25 years, then the capitalist, bankers got scared by Kennedy and realised that they were screwed. They put on the clamps and now most homes require both adults to work merely to pay the necessities.
“The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American’s freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight.” — President John F. Kennedy, Ten days before his assassination.
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn’t know how banking really works, because if they did, “there’d be a revolution before tomorrow morning”.
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humourless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
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China-Russia and most of Africa have a socialism that uses Market forces to resolve distribution and demand issues and Government to provide and direct the major capital for industry and manufacturing. Thus based on Gross Domestic Production (not product) China is way the number 1 and Russia is number 1 in Europe for living standard. From being the most impoverished country to being the least has China as world leader in the eyes of ordinary people.
“People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilisers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools.”
― Mao Tse-tung, Mao Tse-Tung On Guerrilla Warfare
The USA believed that cutting-off the financial world to Russia it would bring victory in the military war. Instead Russia is stronger now financially than ever before. Instead of ‘shooting itself in the foot’ the USA has blown its’ balls off. The Petrodollar is dead and soon all dollar trade will be discretionary. Try selling your Treasury Bonds then.
The world has seen behind the wizards curtain. The mantra “Greed is Good” is being scorned.
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realise that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
For the vast majority of the world, Mammon is no longer God.
“Civilisational clash” lecture at clown university’s “multipolar” school of geopolitics: Multipolar skyscrapers at the Shanghai financial district are taller and prettier than unipolar ones in NY and London ’cause feng shui conserves traditionalism multipolarly.
Next week’s lecture: Selling Ukro-NATO Nazis multipolar Russian LNG via intermediaries to inflict strategic defeat on Satanic neocolonialism.
Nico Xcrement of Hasbara
“Salvation comes due to Jews’ deviltry” (Johannes, before he was edited by an aXe of Judaism)
The poisonous Hasbara vapour’s main job is to sell Jesus as a Jew.
The old story of lies, that Jesus was a Jew, serves the Jews’ one purpose to be worshipped by Christians as “God’s people”.
Psalm 78:59
When God heard, He was filled with wrath
And greatly abhorred Israel;
Your response is flawed in two ways:
1. The Chinese, even pre-2000, had some of the highest tested IQs across countries. Their ability to develop says little about the rest of the world, particularly Africa and Middle East. For those regions I suspect lack of intelligence is a harsh limiting factor for some regions. Africa in particular wasn’t developed in 1400, even before colonialism got going.
2. The primary stumbling block for China wasn’t “Economic Terrorism” of the West, but China’s own Economic Terrorism via a foray into Communism. Once they ditched that, things improved rapidly.
covid 19 was the ultimate bioweapon strike, followed by the even worse covid 19 injection, mandated in clear violation of the nuremberg code and a capital offense. this was also the greatest war crime, in modern history, far surpassing the sum total of those crimes, in an inglorious display of hubris and supremacy.
Putin Interview
https://voxday.net/2023/12/16/annual-interview-2023/
Pepe , next time …. perhaps not invited ? Inner , the sanctum, sanctimonious , those Chinese , silken tastes . Everyone prints digits from paper to now screen shots . The Yellow brick road is real . As is that memorable meal in Shanghai . Rockefeller Club . They mimicked the so called ‘best beasts ‘. Now they dine better than those that are left with an economy that is based on the production of wars , real or feared and the toys that it requires . KONG QUI WON . Aristotle stopped being taught in the WEST. Belt my Robe . The Chinese want you to own the parts of your chess board . They want those things called ‘ pieces ‘, called ivory , composition .
Under Mao China grew at more or less the same rate, from the lowest base imaginable, as after Deng’s ‘reforms’. The effects of 150 years of political decay, Western aggression, Japanese invasion and genocide, civil war and natural disasters, were repaired, and the industrial base for the later economic leap created. Life expectancy grew from under forty to nearly seventy, illiteracy was nearly abolished, women were emancipated for the first time in Chinese history, Tibet was liberated from feudal theocratic tyranny, the USA was defeated in Korea and it was achieved without entrenching inequality. So keep your brainwashed, hard Right, stupidity and propaganda to yourself, please.
Ah, the Mao famines simply didn’t happen. Got it.
South Korea, who had front row seats for round 1 of The West vs Warsaw Pact, would like to have a word. Japan was firebombed, starved, and nuked into submission. Somehow those countries achieved a higher standard of living faster.
And Tibet, weirdly, after the liberation, remained part of China, a country renowned for its respect for human rights and not at all a tyranny. Clearly, we have different notions of “liberating” a country. Kuwait was liberated. Tibet was annexed. See the difference?
Please keep your brainwashed, hard-left Marxist stupidity and propaganda to yourself, please.
Excellent analysis. As an American, I am tired of this neocon obsession with US hegemony. America needs to recognize our day as the global bully is over. Momentum will continue but the engine is dead. It is enough to be a responsible global partner. America needs to get its on house in order.
“Ah, the Mao famines simply didn’t happen. Got it.”
FamineS, plural? What are you talking about? There was ONE famine (1959-60) after the communists took over in 1947. Mostly due to bad weather, but also due to mis-steps by leaders including Mao. Regardless, ONE in 76 years. That’s after having had on average one disastrous famine EVERY YEAR FOR TWO THOUSAND YEARS. In other words, after 1960, the Chinese Communist Party abolished famine in China, an ancient and relentless scourge. They ABOLISHED IT.
You need to stop reading Catholic and Protestant bibles. The very first bible (144 A.D.) does not contain John 4:22 or 99% of the other Judaizing lies that appear in these later false testaments. The Jews have been duping the Christians for two thousand years.
Kuwait was part of Iraq until the Brits broke it off…. They were not really an organic nation… Tibet was part of China for many centuries. Had the communists not won the civil war – no one would have even questioned it in the 20th century. Geopolitics.