Andrew Batson — What is the real driver of the Russian revanche?

Important. Another paradox of liberalism. Liberalism creates its own enemies.

Andrew Batson's Blog
What is the real driver of the Russian revanche?
Andrew

Marcelo Gullo — The Structure Of Hegemony

Short summary of world history since 1492 and the rise of the West to prominence and dominance.

Katehon
The Structure Of Hegemony

Marcelo Gullo

Does Putin really intend to restore the Soviet Union? — Interview with Richard Sakwa

RD Interview: Professor Richard Sakwa from the University of Kent talks about Russia’s foreign policy and explains why Russia is creating alternative regional institutions such as the Eurasian Economic Union.

Short and important.

Russia Direct
Does Putin really intend to restore the Soviet Union? Interview with Richard Sakwa
Alexey Khlebnikov, Nikolay Shevchenko

Andrew Korybko — Reconceptualizing The TPP: The Brotherhood Of The Three Blocs

Taking TPP and TiSA a step further in the analysis. How the US uses trade agreements to "lead from behind."

Noteworthy:

What one should never forget, however, is that the TPP has clauses that hand de-facto political rights to corporations, thus making it the world’s first formalized system of post-modern “government” or “economic governance”. To put it bluntly, transnational economic actors begin exercising political rights over populations and their elected governments, while neither of these two subjects is able do the same to the corporations, thus creating a top-down vertical of power.

"Economic liberalism" to rule the world— getting closer to the neoliberal objective of global imperial plutonomy and transnational corporatism.

The Vineyard of the Saker

Reconceptualizing The TPP: The Brotherhood Of The Three Blocs
Andrew Korybko

Berlusconi — Germany Controls EU, While Being Under US Rule

"The EU acknowledges the hegemony of Germany, which in its turn recognizes the United States' dictate. Therefore, we are not far from the circumstances which sparked two bloody world wars in the XX century," the prominent Italian politician said.

The battle of words is hotting up.

Sputnik
Berlusconi: Germany Controls EU, While Being Under US Rule

Wang Yi — China, Russia adhere to multi-polar world order

The joint promotion of a multi-polar world order is an important area of interaction between China and Russia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said before his visit to Russia.

"Multi-polarity is a main global trend. Our countries share an opinion that the formation of a just and rational multi-polar world order will meet the interests of lasting peace and stability on Earth. At the same time, the multi-polar world order gives more space to development of all countries and offers them a broader chance," he said in an interview with Interfax.

"China and Russia have been closely interacting in international and regional problems and working together to promote the idea of multi-polarity for years," the minister said....

Russia Beyond The Headlines

Wang Yi: China, Russia adhere to multi-polar world order
Interfax

Andrew Korybko — America’s Guide To Dismantling The Multipolar World

Bird's eye view of America's global geopolitical and geostrategic posture. "The land of 1000 bases." But the US prefers to operate clandestinely.

Oriental Review
America’s Guide To Dismantling The Multipolar World
Andrew Korybko

Zach Przystup — China-US Relations: The Return of Mao’s Noose

‘The U.S. and China are locked in a great power competition, and their primary goals are incompatible.’…

National visions are powerful motivators. For the U.S., a national vision of liberal democracy and free markets has translated into permanent forward deployment of the U.S. military and the world’s largest alliance system. Underlying this forward strategy is the belief that liberal democracy is the best form of government, and that it must be protected at home and given to others when possible. This American vision is less than three centuries old; China’s view of itself as the center of the universe goes back thousands of years. As scholar Yan Xuetong notes, Chinese people believe China’s fall from preeminence to be “a historical mistake which they should correct.” If it is true that old habits die hard, the main tenets of China’s national vision are unlikely to change. 

By pivoting to Asia, Washington is placing a bet that Beijing desperately wants to avoid a disastrous conflict as much as it does, and that the status quo in the region will endure. By tightening the noose, Beijing is trying to call its bluff. As Sun Tzu might observe, both sides are trying to win without fighting. 

For now, that may be a viable strategy. But even if China continues its steady growth, avoids threatening its neighbors, and generally demonstrates that it is a responsible stakeholder in the international system, it is inconceivable that it would allow another superpower to have the best real estate in its own neighborhood. At some point, the U.S. and China’s national visions will collide. When that happens, Washington and Beijing will both have to make a monumental decision about the future of East Asia, and the rest of the world.

The Diplomat
China-US Relations: The Return of Mao’s Noose
Zach Przystup | Assistant Director for Global Executive and Diplomatic Education at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

Song Luzheng — The West will lose out if it refuses cooperation

Apart from economic challenges to the West, China is also experiencing a new development mode based on a different political institution, which is making the Capitalist West uneasy.…

China and the United States have what are called "structural conflicts," in that Washington wishes to dominate the world for at least another one century, while Beijing is not prepared to be pushed around – meaning there has to be a winner.…

Before 2008, China and the West did achieve a win-win situation to a certain extent. Chinese industrial products lowered Western living costs while their export stimulated China's growth. Earlier, when China started its reform and opening-up, Western capital and technology helped Chinese industries to develop, and in exchange, the West found new markets and a new place for industrial transfer. 

But such win-win cooperation was not able to continue after 2008, when China's success started to have more profound economic impact. In the changed circumstances, the West and China need to find a new way to achieve win-win results. 

However, this has to be based on two preconditions: 

First, the West has to understand its political institutions cannot be implanted in China; the latter will continue with its proven-successful development pattern different from the West. If the West cannot accept this, or seeks to impose its ideology on China, conflict will be inevitable. 

Second, China has to show through actions that its rise will be different than that of Japan or Germany in the past, meaning it will not seek to challenge or even overturn the current international order. Participation and sharing are China's objectives.…

China's rise has changed the geopolitical pattern. The world is entering a fluctuating period of adjustment during which turmoil may occur. Both China and the West have to accept the fact, and treat the great historical transition in practical ways. Both sides need to solve their own internal problems, and reform the current international order. Only in this way is a win-win result possible.

China.org.en
The West will lose out if it refuses cooperation

Song Luzheng | research fellow at the Shanghai Chunqiu Institute

Reuters — NATO's new missions won't solve Ukraine, Iraq crises

[Michael] O'Hanlon of Brookings said the summit had not entirely dispelled questions about the alliance's future purpose and transatlantic security cooperation.

Notwithstanding the Ukraine crisis, "NATO's fundamental purpose going forward will be to deal with out-of-area global problems," he said, citing the crisis in Syria and Iraq as well as continued efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

 The summit "didn't provide any floor under defense budgets or general burden-sharing of NATO European security", he said.

In other words, protect and advance Western interests, access to energy in particular.

Reuters
NATO's new missions won't solve Ukraine, Iraq crises
Paul Taylor And Adrian Croft

Chalmers Johnson — Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled

Goldie but goodie that bears repeating. Chalmers Johnson reviews Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.

Alternet
Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled

Chalmers Johnson

Things ot be aware of: Noopolitik

In political science Noopolitik from the Greek Noos (knowledge) and German Politik (politics) is the network-based geopolitics of knowledge. The term was invented by defense experts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in a seminal RAND corporation study of 1999 and often appears in connection with that of smart power.

Noopolitics is an informational strategy of manipulating international processes through the forming in general public by means of mass media of positive or negative attitude to external or internal policy of a state of block of states to create a positive or negative image of ideas and promulgated moral values...

While the term initially appeared in association with the concept of the US Revolution in Military Affairs, Noopolitik has also come to describe an interest in theKnowledge Economy and in particular innovation and R&D to leverage growth and political reach in international relations. Thus Noopolitik may be defined as the use of innovation and knowledge to leverage political intercourses by other means at the international level. Such "knowledge race" may be either a means of asserting political independence or of generating a sudden gap in the geopolitical balance of power.... 

Professor Li Xiguang of Tsinghua University described the stakes of Smart power for the People's Republic of China in a 2010 article on Noopolitik in the Global Times 

Soft power is the power of making people love you. Hard power is the ability to making people fear you. Over the last 500 years, all the world powers gained their hegemony through hard power, but the US has gained its hegemony through combining hard power and soft power, both striking at and assimilating its opponents.

The US has built its soft power by making its values and political system, such as the US interpretation and definition of democracy, freedom and human rights, into supposedly universal values.

Innovation war.

Emphasizing China’s deeply-rooted desire for technological independence, Segal refers to the PRC’s efforts as an “Innovation Wall,” which is the willingness to innovate as independently as possible from the rest of the world to simply and systematically leap ahead of any other country. Needless to say, the scope of the rising fog of war in world economic and R&D competition is particularly daunting for the Euro-Atlantic community. The Chinese phrase for national innovation zizhu chuangxin was notably coined in a 2006 state report titled “Guidelines on National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development.” If China decides to foster an innovation of its own, and the ideas were published in Mandarin language journals it would provide a barrier against other linguistic communities, and a thicker fog of war might rise in knowledge-based economic warfare.

Noopolitik
Wikipedia

Deniz Kellecioglu — Two concept proposals: from neoclassical economics to neoliberal economics and from neoliberalism to plutocratism

Rectification of names

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Two concept proposals: from neoclassical economics to neoliberal economics and from neoliberalism to plutocratism
Deniz Kellecioglu

Agree.