Pepe Escobar — All under Heaven, China’s challenge to the Westphalian system

Important. This is the future. Resistance is futile. (Listen up Washington, London, and Paris. The colonial period is over. You are now irrelevant. Get used to it. The alternative is WWIII and MAD.)

Incidentally, the post accounts for Chinese opposition to the spread of Christianity in the Central Realm, since it is a vehicle for Western global domination.

Asia Times
All under Heaven, China’s challenge to the Westphalian system

Pepe Escobar

See also

What the aftermath of a nuclear WWIII would look like.

MuckRock
Read the Scientific American article the government deemed too dangerous to publish

Robert Hovden

Andrew J. Bacevich — The ‘Global Order’ Myth

A good article but Col. Bacevich focuses on the liberal interventionist view of the global order in terns of US interests in terms of the current controversy over the presidency of Donald Trump.

Liberal interventionism and the imposition of a global order under liberalism is Wilsonianism, whose history goes back to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and the the post WWI era. It crystallized post WWII when the US emerged as one of the two superpowers, contending the USSR.

Subsequent to the collapse of the USSR, the US leadership proclaimed victory and the right to permanent global hegemony under the liberal order, along with the right to impose this order on others as the US say fit.

Col. Bacevich, a historian, calls BS on this attempt to portray the pursuit of US interests as "spreading freedom and democracy" and preserving the liberal order and liberal globalization. This is just a euphemism for putting America first through foreign adventurism and nation building that has led to endless war.

The American Conservative
The ‘Global Order’ Myth

Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, US Army (ret.) | Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and writer-at-large at The American Conservative

Alistair Crooke — China and Russia Press Ahead, Together

Important. Most of this has been reported here previously, but Crooke sums it up.

Consortium News
China and Russia Press Ahead, Together

Alistair Crooke

See also

SouthFront
The Red Dragon Has Spread Wings and Is Flying

Thierry Meyssan — China is setting up the menu for Global Financial Order

During the first Annual Summit organized by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, China has shown her intention to take over the global leadership in infrastructure investment. By the end of this year, AIIB would have more than 100 members, making it the first lending institution in multilateral loans in history, under the control of the most important emerging countries. Yet, it is expected that she makes the decision of dropping off the Dollar, as it is the only way to break away from US hegemony in international finance.

This is an especially bold move since it is taking on only US hegemony and Western neoliberal dominance, but also "the masters of the universe" that control global finance. Get ready for the fireworks. Some sparks have already begun to fly.

Voltaire Network
China is setting up the menu for Global Financial Order

Thierry Meyssan, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference

Mikhail Delyagin — Russian-Chinese New World Order

The familiar world has crumbled. Russia and China must create a new one. About the need to unite the potential of both countries 

The article is based on the report at the scientific-practical conference "China and Russia in a changing world" in Beijing, on May 4, 2015.

Fort Russ
Russian-Chinese New World Order. Part 1. The End of the Market

Russian-Chinese New World Order. Part 2. Gobal Depression

Russian-Chinese New World Order. Part 3. Cooperation
Russian-Chinese New World Order. Part 4. Our Friends and Enemies

Mikhail Delyagin
Translated by Kristina Rus

Also

At first sight, things look very different now. When President Xi Jinping of Chinatook pride of place next to Vladimir Putin of Russia on Saturday, they looked like any other modern world leaders: pragmatic men-in-suits, full of smiles, temporary possessors of power rather than dictators-for-life.
Back in 1949, when Chairman Mao Tse-tung paid his first visit to Moscow to celebrate Comrade Joseph Stalin's 70th Birthday, it was a paean of old-school Communism.

Children in Young Pioneer uniforms paraded through the Bolshoi Opera House telling of their ambition to become tractor drivers. Mao wore a "Mao suit" and Stalin military uniform. Both men looked grumpy.

But the two events, six decades apart, have a clear parallel. Once again, the Russia-China axis is the main threat to the West's vision of peaceful and prosperous international relations.
The line-up of leaders alongside the two men was a walking representation of a new anti-American alliance that has formed bit by bit since the invasion of Iraq demonstrated the frightening ease with which Washington could destroy hostile leaders far away....

If Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were sending a message with shock and awe, this is the response.

The Telegraph
A new world order? Putin and Xi put friendship on display

Richard Spencer

Russia & India Report
Victory Day and the evolving Global Order

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, specially for RIR

Macedonia - the next hot spot after Ukraine?

Nikolay Starikov
Translated by Kristina Rus

RT
Macedonia unrest: ‘Warning to Skopje against new Turkish pipeline’

Sputnik
Macedonian Conflict: 'Greater Albania' Used by West to Destabilize Balkans

Paul Craig Roberts
The Choice Before Europe

‘Turkey might become hostage to ISIL just like Pakistan did’ — Yonca Poyraz Doğan interviews Alistair Crooke

This is not a short post but it is a must-read in my view. It's about much more than Turkey and ISIL.

Would you tell us about your ideas in regards to the “financialization of the global order"? 

For some time, the international order was structured around the United Nations and the corpus of international law, but more and more the West has tended to bypass the UN as an institution designed to maintain the international order, and instead relies on economic sanctions to pressure some countries. We have a dollar-based financial system, and through instrumentalizing America's position as controller of all dollar transactions, the US has been able to bypass the old tools of diplomacy and the UN -- in order to further its aims. 

But increasingly, this monopoly over the reserve currency has become the unilateral tool of the United States -- displacing multilateral action at the UN. The US claims jurisdiction over any dollar-denominated transaction that takes place anywhere in the world. And most business and trading transactions in the world are denominated in dollars. This essentially constitutes the financialization of the global order: The International Order depends more on control by the US Treasury and Federal Reserve than on the UN as before.…

When did this start?

It started principally with Iran and it has been developed subsequently. In a book, “Treasury's War,” the tool of exclusion from the dollar-denominated global financial system is described as a “neutron bomb.” [A neutron bomb destroys life but leaves inanimate resources in place.] When a country is to be isolated, a "scarlet letter" is issued by the US Treasury that asserts that such-and-such bank is somehow suspected of being linked to a terrorist movement -- or of being involved in money laundering. The author of "Treasury's War" [Juan Zarate], who was the chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, says this scarlet letter constitutes a more potent bomb than any military weapon. 

This system of reliance on dollar hegemony no longer requires American dependency on the UN and hands control to the US Treasury overseen by Steve Cohen -- a reflection of the fact that the military tools have become less available to the US administration, for domestic political reasons. 

But with Ukraine, we have entered a new era: We have a substantial, geostrategic conflict taking place, but it's effectively a geo-financial war between the US and Russia. We have the collapse in the oil prices; we have the currency wars; we have the contrived "shorting" -- selling short -- of the ruble. We have a geo-financial war, and what we are seeing as a consequence of this geo-financial war is that first of all, it has brought about a close alliance between Russia and China. 

China understands that Russia constitutes the first domino; if Russia is to fall, China will be next. These two states are together moving to create a parallel financial system, disentangled from the Western financial system. It includes replicating SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication] and creating entities such as the Asian Development Bank. One of the principal tools in the hands of Washington to control the global system was always the International Monetary Fund [IMF].

Nations have to go to the IMF to ask for financial help, when in difficulties, but recently it was China -- and not the IMF -- which bailed out Venezuela, Argentina and Russia as their currencies crashed. China became concerned when the ruble crashed on Dec. 16-17, and intervened to halt a run on the currency. The IMF and the World Bank were no longer at the center of the global financial order. They had been displaced by China.
What would you say about the prospects of success of this new order? 

It is too early to say that it will be successful, but it is a very important shift that is taking place. It has already started to have an effect. Take Russia: European and American leaders thought that Russia would weaken because of sanctions and the fall of the ruble, but China intervened and stopped the collapse in the ruble. In short, China is operating as a backstop to a financial system that is in the process of shifting dramatically away from Western control.

You can see where this is going.

These issues have been coming up and are being discussed in Iran, Russia and China. What sort of state should be built; how might it defend itself from a color revolution; from geo-financial predations; from globalised financial crises: how to build a strong state, how to give its people security? 

Russia experienced the grasping of the oligarchs and the disintegration of their economy. In China, too, consumer liberalism has taken a hold, but the atomizing effect of neo-liberalism is tearing at the fabric of society and attenuating its values. The main thing is that we rethink things. How do we put back values into the political system? How do we reinsert moral values back into the economic fabric? 

There is a strong reaction taking place against neo-liberalism -- everywhere. Every state will respond it in a different way. Russia is reaching back to Orthodox Christianity in order to re-invent what it means to be Russian -- in a new way: by emphasizing human "capital" and conservative family values. China, too, is looking afresh at its ancient masters. How do you make a state that is not vulnerable to the abuse of democracy by the West? How do you make a society that is not vulnerable to the control of economic variables in order to bring regime change? How do you withdraw from this vulnerability?…

The portions of the post I have omitted consider how this affects the petrodollar, the Middle East, oil, and the shifting world order. Also the position of Turkey, which is a strategic pivot point between East and West.

Today's Zaman (Times) — Istanbul
‘Turkey might become hostage to ISIL just like Pakistan did’

Yonca Poyraz Doğan interviews Alistair Crooke, director and founder of Conflicts Forum based in Beirut