Trump: Anonymous op-ed is 'virtually treason'
President Trump says the anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times is 'unfair' to the country.
Trump: Anonymous op-ed is 'virtually treason'
President Trump says the anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times is 'unfair' to the country.
Kavanaugh hearings, Times op-ed, Woodward book make it official -- Washington elites have gone mad
Trump slams 'resistance' op-ed in New York Times
President Trump calls The New York Times 'gutless' for publishing an anonymous op-ed reportedly from a senior administration official who claims individuals inside the White House are working to thwart the president; chief White House correspondent John Roberts reportsIf you’ve been living your life rather than following the latest circus in Washington, you may have missed the fact that the Swamp’s chief scribe has a new book coming out. Or maybe you're unaware that some anonymous, arrogant Trump administration staffer who no one voted for has written in The New York Times about how he or she feels entitled to overrule a president elected by the American people according to the Constitution.
It turns out Bob Woodward doesn’t
have a flattering view of President Trump. It also turns out that there
really is a deep state conspiracy to thwart President Trump's agenda,
organized by his own administration's appointees. Stop the presses! I
think we knew that already.
What's more illuminating than Woodward’s gossipy,
exploitative book or the pompous, self-important preening of a
presidential aide is the D.C. media and political establishment's
obsession with covering its own pathetic palace intrigue.It certainly reminds us of the very worst of Washington – the focus on style over substance, the personal over policy. But it’s even more serious than that. Political appointees (or civil service bureaucrats, for that matter) who actually take pride in subverting the democratic will of the people exemplify the frightening authoritarianism we face at the hands of an entrenched ruling class determined to cling to power regardless of who wins actual elections.
What this week reveals is that the Washington elites have gone mad. They have not only lost touch with the real life struggles of the working men and women of America whom they despise.
This insider club, comprised of people in both parties and the Beltway establishment, has become so isolated from reality that it ignores substantive results – whether that’s economic progress or foreign policy successes like the cowing of ISIS – and instead celebrates the most self-regarding and insignificant people, touting them as headline newsmakers and brave truth-tellers who can enlighten the benighted masses.
President Trump was elected to sweep all of this away, to enact big changes on behalf of the American middle class who perceived, correctly, that for years it did not matter who they voted for, the same people would be in power. And with the same results, namely: the rich and well-connected get richer, while working Americans see their communities collapse, their incomes go down and their jobs go away.
But now the president also risks being consumed in the shallow Washington obsession with anonymous briefings, leaks and tweets. He risks losing sight of why he was sent to the White House in the first place.
The outsiders who elevated Donald Trump to the highest office want him to turn the populist message of his 2016 campaign into a governing agenda that delivers beyond just the economic revival we have seen.
It’s obvious that the president can’t count on the Republican Party in that mission: the GOP seems to have simply ignored the 2016 election and treated it, bizarrely, as a license to perpetuate the crony corporate conservatism that voters explicitly rejected in the primaries.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue there’s another circus in town: the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
With red-hooded handmaidens and shrieking outbursts, the spectacle has descended into farce with constant interruptions by juvenile activists who, with the blessings and coordination of Senate Democratic leadership, think it appropriate to turn the hallowed offices of the world's most important deliberative body into the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Insanely, the media elites even tried to smear one of Kavanaugh’s staffers as a white nationalist by falsely claiming she flashed the "white power" symbol with her hands. Weren't these the same people who just last weekend were lecturing us during Sen. John McCain's memorial service that we ought to be more civil to each other?
President Trump, I say this as one of the earliest advocates of the populist revolution: your presidency is at an inflection point. You can continue to play the Swamp creatures at their own game, or you can go over their heads (tails?) and enact a genuinely revolutionary populist program that will reassure your voters, and perhaps even some of your skeptics, that you stand on the side of working Americans. Frankly, your re-election depends on it.
Fortunately, Mr. President, if the Bob Woodward book tell us anything new, it is that your instincts are correct. Too many of your advisers have seen their job as preventing you from delivering on your promises.
Former economic adviser Gary Cohn was clearly one of Woodward’s sources and recounts with great pride his “purposeful” effort to “block some of what (he) believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses.” Hilariously, the Goldman Sachs veteran is now being lionized by the left for his efforts to protect the profits of the super-rich by blocking President Trump’s plans to protect American workers.
Good riddance to Cohn and all the other elitists who put their interests first. When the president identifies the weasel who wrote with such gleeful disloyalty in the pages of The New York Times about being "part of the resistance" from within the White House, he should show him or her the door too.
In fact, President Trump should make a public example of that disgrace of a public servant working for the duly elected president of the United States.
It’s little wonder that the bold agenda for change that propelled Donald Trump to the White House has barely been delivered.
Thankfully, there’s another book out there that offers genuinely transformative solutions to our long-standing problems. A book with answers about how we can restore economic security and opportunity for all American workers, how we can rebuild family and community, how we can finally and comprehensively Drain the Swamp. It could be a blueprint for the rest of the Trump presidency and a surefire way to win re-election in November 2020.
It’s my new book, “Positive Populism,” setting out 27 big ideas for delivering the positive promise of populism – and I can highly recommend it!
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/09/06/kavanaugh-hearings-times-op-ed-woodward-book-make-it-official-washington-elites-have-gone-mad.html
Russian economy under Putin: Quality of life tripled, foreign debt fell 75%
Vladimir Putin was first elected as Russian President in 2000.
Here’s how the Russian economy has transformed in the intervening years
by numbers.
Quality of life
Before Putin’s election, Russia had a $9,889 GDP per capita by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). The figure had almost tripled by 2017, and has now reached $27,900. Russia has the highest GDP per capita among its fellow BRICS countries, with the next-highest, China, having just $16,624. The PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of countries in order to compare living standards in different nations.The average nominal monthly wage has grown almost 11-fold from $61 to $652. Unemployment has contracted from 13 percent to 5.2 percent. Pensions have grown over 1,000 percent in the same period from $20 to $221.
Contiune reading...
Russian economy under Putin: Quality of life tripled, foreign debt fell 75%
The Steele Dossier Was Authored by a Russian
Filmmaker Joel Gilbert discusses former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele and the origins of his "dirty dossier"
Steve Bannon Has Become America’s Fethullah Gulen and Trump Has Become America’s Erdogan
Steve Bannon Has Become America’s Fethullah Gulen and Trump Has Become America’s Erdogan
By Adam Garrie
For the first decade of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s career as Turkish Prime Minister, Fethullah Gulen and his so-called Gulen Movement, were key allies of Erdogan’s centre-right/populist/neo-Islamist AK Party.
Gulen’s powerful network of neo-Islamist supporters played an implicit (however, contemporarily ignored and denied) role in helping Erdogan and his AK Party surge to power in 2003, which in turn led to a period of unbroken AK Party rule which continues to this day under Erdogan’s powerful Presidential position.
Gulen’s association with Erdogan and the AK Party continued through a period dominated by the Ergenekon investigation. Ergenekon was allegedly a group of ultra-secular conspirators within the Turkish deep state and army—both of which are home to historically hard-line Kemalists. The Gulen movement was deeply involved in circulation the rumours that members of Turkey’s judicial system, intellectual elite, civil service and Army were plotting to topple the AK government led by Erdogan.
In the end, most of the individuals investigated as part of Ergenekon turned out be innocent of all charges and furthermore, the “evidence” against them turned out to be largely forged—many say by Gulenists who wanted to fan the flames of an anti-Islamist conspiracy.
The failure of Ergenekon to produce anything tangible, subsequently led to the Gulen Movement joining with opposition parties (notably the secular CHP) in alleging that high levels of corruption were rampant in the AK Party.
This led to the formal split between Erodgan and Gulen in 2013. The former allies are now sworn enemies.
Gulen’s group is now cited by Turkey as the Fethullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO) and is proscribed by every sector of the Turkish state. Gulen himself is currently in exile in the US--which has led to numerous allegations from Ankara that Washington is openly colluding with the now hated movement.
Today, alleged Gulenists continue to be purged from public life and jailed for their stated crime of “terrorism”. Others are prosecuted under the infamous law of “insulting Turkishness”. In many cases, the Turkish government will accuse anyone it doesn’t like of being a member of the FETO, even when they are not.
If any of this sounds oddly familiar for those who follow US politics more closely than the politics of Turkey, this is because there is indeed a striking parallel.
Long before Donald Trump formally entered the political arena, Steve Bannon was the leader of what is generally described as a right wing or far-right movement centred around groups like The Tea Party and Bannon’s media outlet Breitbart.
Bannon’s narrative that the US has fallen from grace and from greatness were themes picked up by the Trump campaign and immortalised in the slogan “Make America Great Again”.
When Bannon formally joined the Trump campaign team, the de-facto alliance was solidified. This became even more apparent when Bannon was appointed as a special advisor to President Trump.
Bannon’s period in the White House was dominated by allegations from political opponents who claim his team had colluded with Russia. There is a striking parallel here to the period in which Erdogan’s party and Gulen’s movement cooperated in alleging that the Turkish Army and deep state were colluding with conspirators ready to overthrow the Islamist government and replace it with a traditional Kemalist government.
In both cases, no evidence was found to substantiate the conspiratorial claims. Likewise, the revelation that Ergenekon was a non-issue coincided with Gulen’s public falling out with Erdogan and the AK Party.
In the US, as the Russiagate scandal is revealed to be a non-issue, Bannon’s August 2017 exit from the White House has been revealed to be far more acrimonious than first believed, with Trump publically stating that Bannon “cried” and begged for his job back at the time. Trump now calls his former ally “Sloppy Steve” and claims that he has little public support.
This stems from the fact that Bannon is quoted in a “tell-all” book by Michael Wolff, saying that Trump and his team are incompetent, corrupt and essentially worthless. According to the book, Bannon has even raised the issue of “treasonous” dealings on the part of Trump’s family. Bannon has come down hard on both Trump’s son Don Jr. as well as his powerful son-in-law Jared Kushner. This indeed parallels frequent allegations of corruption and even treason, relating to Turkish President Erdogan’s son Ahmet Burak.
While Bannon is under attack by Trump and his allies, he continues to lead a political movement that he has alluded to as a kind of ‘shadow government’, in the same way that Gulen’s movement has a similar covert function in Turkey.
As the ongoing “Russia probe” is becoming more of an internal corruption scandal rather than anything related to Russia—it is widely thought that Bannon might take his newly refined anti-Trump rhetoric straight to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. If Bannon’s quotes from Wolff’s book are any indication, Bannon will not paint a positive picture of Trump to Mueller, just as Gulen joined the ideologically antithetical CHP (the main Kemalist opposition) in alleging corruption in Erdogan’s government beginning in 2013.
With Trump already complaining that he should have legal options to quash the publication of Wolff’s book and with many in the Democratic opposition alleging that Bannon’s movement and the ideology proffered by Breitbart are dangerous movements peddling “hate speech” (the US equivalent of “insulting Turkishness”)—all bets are now off when it comes to Trump’s former sympathies to the free speech of opposition journalists.
While Gulen and Erdogan once stood shoulder to shoulder as campaigners for a more religious Turkish Republic—now Gulen’s followers are treated as terrorists.
Could it be that Bannon’s followers might now be targeted by Trump and his administration with the same vigour that Democrats have wanted to employ for years? The possibility is now very real, especially since Trump has in the past stated that he prefers a liberal interpretation of libel laws rather than a liberal interpretation of free speech laws. This in turn plays into the hands of Trump’s Democratic opposition who have been working with their corporate allies to censor opposition opinions online under the guise that they are “fake news”.
The US now has its own Fethullah Gulen, complete with a shadow government, in the form of Steve Bannon and his media outlet. The US also has its own Erdogan in the form of Donald Trump--a politician who seeks to radically change the social dynamic of the US, is frequently accused of nepotism and corruption and whose foreign policy statements often change drastically from month to month.
Someone pass the Raki.
‘I, Neocon’ – the Foreign Policy of Emperor Trump
‘I, Neocon’ – the Foreign Policy of Emperor Trump
By Wayne Madsen
Not many observers believe that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will survive as the most-neutered US Secretary of State since the days when Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger called the shots on foreign policy to the chagrin of Secretary of State William Rogers. Rather than lead like a constitutionally-mandated president, Donald Trump has emulated the Roman emperor Claudius in many ways.
With this article’s title’s paraphrasing credit to the 1934 novel by Robert Graves, “I, Claudius,” Trump, like Claudius, entered politics later in life – although in Claudius’s case, he became the co-consul to his brother, the tyrannical Emperor Caligula, at the age of 46. Trump entered US presidential politics from the world of real estate, casinos, and entertainment, in his late 60s. Claudius, like Trump, spent most of his pre-political life mired in games of chance and womanizing. Claudius had four wives, Trump three. Claudius, like Trump, was an avid fan of violent sports. Claudius liked Roman gladiator duels-to-the-death and chariot races, Trump his “professional” wrestling and boxing.
Trump, like Claudius, does not possess a keen intellect. However, both took on dangerous military adventures. Claudius invaded and annexed Britain in the 1st century AD. Although initially triumphant, Claudius’s extension of Roman rule into the British Isles would eventually overextend the empire, which would lead to its collapse. Trump, although eschewing “regime change” conflicts encouraged by his two immediate predecessors – George W. Bush and Barack Obama – wholeheartedly embraced them after succumbing to the influence of neo-conservative policy advisers.
Claudius eventually fell victim to the political designs of his fourth wife, Agrippina, who is believed to have engineered a plot to poison the emperor. Upon Claudius’s death, Agrippina succeeded in having her son, Nero, placed on the throne. Claudius’s demise is where the similarities to Trump generally end, although, the Trump White House internecine internal political warfare is worthy of any palace intrigue through history.
Trump follows the advice of a dangerous cabal he has established around himself. On issues of the Middle East and relations with Muslim nations, Trump’s cabal possesses a toxicity never seen before in a US administration. This cabal revolves around the troika of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law with many portfolios; Jason Greenblatt, former chief legal officer for the Trump Organization and now Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiation; and David Friedman, formerly with Trump's law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman and now US ambassador to Israel. They, along with Trump, have succeeded in reversing 70 years of US Middle East policy by ensuring America's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The Jerusalem decision will also see the United States move its embassy from Tel Aviv to property in Jerusalem originally seized by the Israelis from Palestinian landowners.
The Jerusalem decision sends a stark warning to Muslims everywhere, who regard Jerusalem as the third-holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. It also throws a gauntlet down to the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern and Coptic Orthodoxy, and mainstream Protestantism, all which regard Jerusalem as not only Christianity's most-revered city but an international zone that ought to be placed under joint Israeli-Palestinian control or under a regime like those of past international city-states, Tangier, Danzig, and Trieste, for example. By rewarding Israel with US recognition, Trump's action was a slap in the face to Christians in Jerusalem who have been forced to contend with hundreds of vicious Jewish hate attacks on Christians, such as the scrawled words in Hebrew, "Death to the Heathen Christians, the enemies of Israel" and "Christians to Hell," painted on the Benedictine Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem, the revered site of Jesus's Last Supper. The Israeli government has taken no action to find and punish the perpetrators of these anti-Gentile attacks by Jewish hate mongers.
Trump also tossed aside campaign promises to avoid plunging the United States into George W. Bush and Barack Obama-era "regime change" debacles abroad. No sooner had economic protests broken out in Iran, Trump borrowed from Israeli propaganda barrages by tweeting out his support for an end to Iran's "brutal regime." This came after Trump said he wanted to scrap the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran, something urged by Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It is all but certain that Trump's Central Intelligence Agency director, Mike Pompeo, a Christian Zionist in the same mold as evangelical soothsayers like John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Paula White, Robert Jeffress, and Jerry Falwell, Jr., ordered CIA assets in Iran and on its periphery into action against the Iranian government at the first whiff of popular discontent over the state of the Iranian economy.
Trump wasted no time at the outset of 2018 in not only engaging in a tweet storm aimed at Iran, but choosing to criticize Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear-armed nation. Trump ordered $255 million in US assistance to Pakistan halted, accusing the country of providing safe-havens to Islamist terrorists active in Afghanistan. It is no coincidence that Trump chose to lash out at two more Muslim nations, Iran and Pakistan, after having ensured the destruction of the two-state Palestine-Israeli framework with his recognition of permanent Israeli control over Jerusalem.
Trump's denunciation of Pakistan illustrates the influence that his ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, a hybrid Christian-Sikh, whose parents hail from India, maintains over Trump's pro-India and anti-Pakistan foreign policy. Haley’s neo-conservative stance also ensured that Trump approved the sending of lethal military equipment to Ukraine, in contravention of the current Republican Party foreign policy plank, demanded by the Trump campaign during the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland, that stands in opposition to such a move.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif responded to Trump's Twitter tantrum by declaring that, "He [Trump] has tweeted against us [Pakistan] and Iran for his domestic consumption." But it was not merely generic domestic consumption for Trump. Trump's anti-Iran/Pakistan rhetoric, coming soon after his Jerusalem decision, was aimed at pleasing Zionists like casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, as well as his trio of ultra-Zionist advisers -- Kushner, Greenblatt, and Friedman. It was also a milksop to Trump's far-right conspiracy fringe, consisting mainly of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Mike Cernovich, to placate their anti-Muslim xenophobia. It has not dawned on these conspiracy fringe-minded Trump acolytes that Trump, just like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has adopted the very same regime change policies honed by CIA street themed protest guru Gene Sharp and the themed revolution mastermind George Soros. Jones, for example, once railed against Soros and themed revolutions. But now, Jones and others of his ilk wildly cheer on Trump's moves to toppled governments using Sharp and Soros tactics.
These operations are not only being employed in Iran but also in Honduras, where the Trump administration backed the drug smuggling corrupt nepotistic fascist incumbent president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, also known as "JOH," against the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla in the November 26, 2017 election. The Organization of American States, normally a rubber stamp for the United States, criticized the claimed victory by Hernandez as resulting from massive fraud. Former president Manuel Zelaya, ousted in a 2009 CIA coup approved by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced that 2018 will be the year that JOH is toppled from power and democracy restored. However, Zelaya, Nasralla, and other opposition leaders will face the "no regime change" jackboot of Trump's foreign policy of overt interference in the affairs of other nations.
Conversely, the Trump administration has declared all-out economic and political war on Venezuela, subjecting its leaders and citizen to US visa bans and crippling economic sanctions. These were the same tactics employed by neocons in the Bush and Obama administrations against the Chavista socialist government in Venezuela.
Conversely, the Trump administration has declared all-out economic and political war on Venezuela, subjecting its leaders and citizen to US visa bans and crippling economic sanctions. These were the same tactics employed by neocons in the Bush and Obama administrations against the Chavista socialist government in Venezuela.
Unlike Claudius, Trump has no strong political Praetorian Guard to ensure his ultimate survival. Trump has created more enemies than friends within the establishment Republican Party, not to mention in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, and the military services. Already, Republican presidential hopefuls are planning to challenge Trump for the presidential nomination in 2020. These efforts will gain full steam after the 2018 mid-term election that could see Congress flipping to Democratic Party control.
In the end, Trump, like Claudius, suffers from neuro-psychiatric disorders that prompt him to engage in socially inappropriate obsessions and compulsions. When Trump’s neocon policies achieve their desired results, the neocons will discard Trump like some lame old workhorse and promote some new vapid tool to carry out their policies. Enter Nikki Haley, Vice President Mike Pence, and Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton.
Source: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/01/04/i-neocon-foreign-policy-emperor-trump.html
The Yuan Brings About Pakistan’s Second Declaration of Independence
The Yuan Brings About Pakistan’s Second Declaration of Independence
By Adam Garrie
With Pakistan refusing to bend or break under US pressure, even as Washington is set to cut hundreds of millions in “aid” to Pakistan, many Pakistanis are asking themselves, “why didn’t we do this sooner”?
The answer is—in a word: CHINA.
When the US took the abrasive move to formally censure Pakistan under the guise that it harbours and abets terrorism and cut hundreds of millions in what the US calls “aid” but what in reality is US military investment, Pakistan said, “so be it” and said so boldly.
After losing over 100,000 Pakistanis in America’s ill-advised regional military operation in Afghanistan, a conflict which the US intentionally allowed to spill over Pakistan’s border, Pakistani elites and ordinary people have collectively had enough. Many have had enough for decades, not least PTI leader Imran Khan whose anti-American positions have been largely vindicated by recent events.
But while the uneven “alliance” between Washington and Islamabad has alienated Pakistanis for decades, even prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan, what has changed is that there is a new superpower with a colossal presence in the region--one that is willing to forge a thorough partnership with Pakistan and in doing so, rendering any perceived advantages incurred from a US “alliance” more or less dispensable.
For years, China’s investment in Pakistan along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has breathed new life into Pakistan’s economy. From the mountainous border in the north to the Panamax Gwadar Port on the Indian Ocean, China’s positive influence can be felt throughout Pakistan’s vast terrain.
The influx of Chinese experts, workers and high level diplomats in the country has proved that a revitalised Cold War era friendship is by the standards of 2017, one based on pragmatism, mutual respect and a win-win mentality that contrasts sharply with a US attitude of disdain towards Pakistan. This attitude is magnified even more deeply by Pakistan’s Saudi “ally” that has used and abused Pakistan for decades, in a cold exploitation of the country’s financial needs.
Pakistan’s refusal to follow Saudi and the UAE into Yemen and likewise, Pakistan’s refusal to take Saudi Arabia’s side in the ongoing dispute with Qatar, is as much a reflection of the confidence and renewed independence that a Chinese partnership has given Pakistan as it is a reflection of the increased professionalization of Pakistan’s “deep state” which is largely immune to the fluxuations of Parliamentary politics, while wise enough not to inhibit the peaceful exercise of Pakistan’s multi-party democracy.
Pakistan’s refusing to blindly follow Washington’s increasingly anti-Pakistan Afghan policies is a further result of the geo-political armour that China has allowed Pakistan to wear with pride, as it is symptomatic of a Pakistani “deep state” that is far more pragmatic and intelligent than it was 20 years ago.
But the most important development thus far, in Pakistan’s 21st century partnership with China is the agreement to conduct bilateral trade in the Yuan rather than the Dollar. This agreement was inevitable, but the fact that it was agreed just after Donald Trump’s insulting statements about Pakistan followed by the withdrawal of “aid”, sends both a pragmatic and symbolic message to the world. Pakistan is not for sale and nor will Pakistan refrain from taking action to build new partnerships out of fear that the US will be permanently lost as an “ally”. Just as the US closed one door, Pakistan and China quietly and rapidly opened another much larger door.
The treat of US financial blackmail becomes limited in its scope when one realises that Pakistan’s most important long-term trading partner is a country that is not only powerful enough to resist the Dollar’s fading hegemonic grip on global trade, but that moreover, it is a country that owns the lion’s share of US debt. This country is of course, China.
The Dollar might still control much of the world, but with China controlling the Dollar, all the while readying the Yuan for its inevitable transition to a floating currency, it is China that now has the last word when it comes to the effectiveness of US financial blackmail as well as US sanctions.
In this sense, Pakistan’s agreement to trade with China exclusively in Yuan is like a second declaration of independence for Pakistan. Furthermore, the move will certainly inspire other nations to rethink their dependence on Dollar based institutions.
With the US also cutting Pakistan out of security/intelligence sharing agreements, it is high time for Pakistani leaders to admit a long standing reality. The US has never been Pakistan’s ally, it has merely been a two-faced benefactor whose investments in the country were never designed to increase Pakistan’s sovereignty, prestige or safety. In reality, they were designed to bring about the opposite.
By contrast, the Chinese model does not make demands on one’s foreign policy, security policy, wider partnerships or style of government. China demands only honesty and respect and rewards this with the same.
When promoting One Belt—One Road throughout the world, President Xi Jinping is always eager to point out that China’s global trading network is all about enhancing mutual strengths while supplementing areas of economic or production relation weakness. There are no strings attached in One Belt—One Road—the obvious implication being that in the US model of global trading mechanisms there are many strings attached.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte stated that one of the reasons he prefers modernising the armed forces of Philippines using Russia and Chinese weapons, is because Russia and China do not make such sales conditional upon political demands. The same is true with wider trading partnerships with the great superpowers of the global “east”.
The US will surely amplify its anti-Pakistan rhetoric in the coming months and one shouldn’t be surprised if ultimately this leads to sanctions against a former “ally”.
But China has made Pakistan largely immune to Washington’s bullying techniques and thus serves as a model for the world that if one wants to make one’s own country “great again”—one must ditch the US as an indelible partner and embrace sovereignty with Chinese trading characteristics.
Liberteon