Pepe Escobar — All roads lead to Rome for Xi

Backgrounder on Italy and BRI (and more). China marches (and sails) west.

Asia Times
All roads lead to Rome for Xi

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Get over it: Asia rules

The greatest merit of Parag Khanna’s new book, The Future is Asian, is to accessibly tell the story of a historical inevitability – with the extra bonus of an Asian point of view. This is not only a very good public service, it also blows out of the water countless tomes by Western “experts” pontificating about Asia from an air-con cubicle in Washington....

Good backgrounder.

Asia Times
Get over it: Asia rules

Pepe Escobar

See also

The American Conservative
Beltway Warriors Target China as the Next Global ThreatLeon Hadar

Pepe Escobar — The new Great Game on the Roof of the World

Backgrounder focusing especially on Pakistan. The potential is enormous, but so are the challenges. But it's happening, in spite of obstacles thrown in the way by the US and UK (an area where the British Empire was actively engaged in the 19th century).

Asia Times
The new Great Game on the Roof of the World

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — How the New Silk Roads are merging into Greater Eurasia

The concept of Greater Eurasia has been discussed at the highest levels of Russian academia and policy-making for some time. This week the policy was presented at the Council of Ministers and looks set to be enshrined, without fanfare, as the main guideline of Russian foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

President Putin is unconditionally engaged to make it a success. Already at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2016, Putin referred to an emerging “Eurasian partnership”.

I was privileged over the past week to engage in excellent discussions in Moscow with some of the top Russian analysts and policymakers involved in advancing Greater Eurasia.…

Important.

Asia Times

How the New Silk Roads are merging into Greater Eurasia

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ reach Latin America

Beijing is turbo-charging its infrastructure connectivity across the region and the Caribbean.

"Who lost Latin America?"

Asia Times
China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ reach Latin America
Pepe Escobar

See also

Talk of four nation-led ‘alternative’ to Belt and Road picks up steam

Asia Times Staff

See also

Australia, the United States, India and Japan are talking about establishing a joint regional infrastructure scheme as an alternative to China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative in an attempt to counter Beijing’s spreading influence, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday, citing a senior US official.

The Asian Age
India, US, Japan, Aus form ‘quad’ to compete with China’s BRI: report

Reuters

Bruno Maçães — Eurasia, the supercontinent that will define our century

World Economic Forum | Agenda
Eurasia, the supercontinent that will define our century
Bruno Maçães | Senior Advisor, Flint Global

Frank Chen — Sino-Thai high-speed railway project gets go-ahead

Bangkok has given the green light to Thailand’s first high-speed railway, spearheaded by China, an on-again-off-again project that was once hailed as the crowning project of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Thai media say the country’s National Environment Commission has approved the environmental impact assessment report for the 253- kilometer portion from Bangkok to the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima, with construction expected to commence by the end of this month and slated to be up and running no later than 2021....

Asia Times
Sino-Thai high-speed railway project gets go-ahead

Frank Chen

Pepe Escobar — From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising

 With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao….

In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.

Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”

Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.

What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”

Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.

Of course, the Atlanticists are not going to just sit by and watch this happen to them.

It's game on.

Asia Times
From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising
Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Fear and Loathing on the Afghan Silk Road

It is a categorical imperative for Beijing to expand BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] across the Levant, linking China to the Mediterranean overland just like the Ancient Silk Road did. And yet that clashes frontally with the crucial fact admitted on record by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn himself: that the Obama administration made a “willful decision” to let Islamic State fester, with the objective of arriving at a “Sunnistan” across “Syraq” as a means to accelerate regime change in Damascus. Translation: let ISIS break up the BRI in the Levant.

Counterpunch
Fear and Loathing on the Afghan Silk Road

Pepe Escobar

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