Saturday, May 20, 2017

Ken Moak — Western critics should not be so skeptical of Belt and Road

Western critics continue to pour cold water on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious and well-planned architecture connecting the massive Eurasian landmass through a system of roads, railways and ports. They complain that it lacks transparency, erodes trade standards set up by the West, is financially too huge for China to handle, is self-serving, and is a deceptive vehicle for China to dominate the world, just to name a few.
The reality is that the West has to destroy this initiative or face watching its dominance fake into oblivion. This could involve war if that is the last resort of a dying empire. This is obvious to anyone with a passing interest in geopolitics, geostrategy and history.

The window for the West to preserve its domination is closing. These are parlous times.

Asia Times
Western critics should not be so skeptical of Belt and Road
Ken Moak

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Tom-

What on Earth are you smoking? The oceans and waterways have been the foremost strategic resource for all of human history and they will be for centuries to come. There is simply zero chance of the this new silk road being a threat to the current world order. The amount of goods transporting over land will always pale in comparison to water travel thanks to physics.

Tom Hickey said...

What on Earth are you smoking? The oceans and waterways have been the foremost strategic resource for all of human history and they will be for centuries to come. There is simply zero chance of the this new silk road being a threat to the current world order. The amount of goods transporting over land will always pale in comparison to water travel thanks to physics.

Tell that the geostrategists like Zbig that run US and UK foreign policy and by extension military policy, "war being politics by other means" – Clausewitz).

These people are terrified that the West will lose dominance if China and Eurasia are linked to Europe.

This is a major reason for all the ongoing Russophobia and the encroaching of NATO toward the Russian border. It is to cut off the Eurasian land mass from Europe until it can be conquered.

This is geopolitics and geostrategy 101.

Books have been written about it, as well as various policy papers. It's no secret.

See also the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

The US policy is not to permit an economic or military rival to global hegemony. This is what "American leadership" means as a code word that other world powers understand.

This is why Russia and China's multi-polar world doctrine is considered hostile, which makes them enemies of the US dominated West.

Unknown said...

Umm tom, in case you havent noticed Europe is already linked to China and asia via the water.

The whole reason for China wanting to do this is because they have no navy, and so in the even t of war with the US they can easily be cut off from their maritime trade. This is also why the US opposes it, to maintain our dominant strategic position on the worlds oceans. There is zero threat of the new silk road seriously biting into global maritime trade between europe and asia as the physics just dont add up.

Why would the US want or encourage the development of a neer peer rival? You make this sound as if its crazy or a bad thing. This is what makes the US the enemy of Russia and China, this is why they are hostile to the current order. Thhey want to dominate their smaller regional neighbors in their sphere of influence. We are big and powerful enough that we dont have to let them. We are a great hedge for their neighbors, of course they hate us for this. They want to dominate, they want to win and they cant becuase we are too powerful. This is a good thing, the world is much better with the US in charge then with China and Russia