Geopolitics
This is significant in that many people assume because some US businesses profit from China they will consequently never allow the US to sever ties. This is a direct historical example of corporate profits being sabotaged in the name of harming and isolating the USSR. And I believe a reason why we should expect decoupling to only continue and grow more severe. It's also illustrative because many liberals like to believe Jimmy Carter was some sort of dove against war and confrontation when actions like this show he and the Democratic party that was just embracing fully neo-liberalism and purging old keynesian elements in fact were all too happy to embrace sanctions and economic warfare and antagonism. [(archive link)](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/WbBLe) > Washington threatened to revoke military contracts if companies didn’t stop cooperating with the Soviet state, according to a newly released file > Major American corporations were heavily pressured to cut ties with the USSR during the arms race in the late 1970s, according to a declassified document published by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). > > Jimmy Carter, who was US president from 1977 to 1981, is known for intensifying the nuclear arms race and pushing to distance his administration from the Soviet Union. The policy decisions made during this time included postponing work on the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, freezing economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries, limiting trade and banning licenses for the sale of sophisticated technologies to the USSR. > > The declassified report, which is dated June 1980 and signed by KGB head Yury Andropov, is devoted to the state of Soviet-American relations. The report cites alleged confidential statements made by a General Electric vice president, as well as the heads of US aircraft manufacturer Northrop and petroleum corporation Atlantic Richfield Company. > > According to the report, the Carter administration threatened to revoke the military contracts of companies that did not cut ties with Soviet organizations. It states that representatives of many large US corporations “expressed dissatisfaction” that politics were meddling in business affairs, which they said impeded on traditional economic ties, limited the scope for business, and forced companies to miss out on profitable deals. It's the same gangster-ism we've seen from the US before. They've destroyed smaller companies for refusing to play ball with illegal wiretapping and electronic surveillance (Qwest telco I believe was one) and they will do it again. Many major companies have valuable contracts with the US government they can't give up and as we've seen with the NVIDIA chips sanctions on China even those that don't want to play ball and stand to make more in China than from the US government are coerced anyways. > Moreover, US business titans were hoping for change, the document stated, noting that “even the Rockefellers,” the American industrial and banking family that still owns one of the world’s largest fortunes and which heavily invested in Carter’s presidential campaign, was “beginning to get worried.” > > The report claimed that some within the US State Department and Carter’s Democratic Party understood that “the business world is not happy with the unbridled escalation of tensions,” and unofficially signaled that companies should “maintain certain connections” with their Soviet counterparts.
www.scmp.com
This is a big change: Singaporeans (who are traditionally more pro-West) now overwhelmingly favor China as a "strategic partner for security and survival" versus the US. Half of the Singaporeans said they favor China, versus just 15% for the US. https://archive.ph/kRz9I
www.theguardian.com
The most surprising thing here is that this got published in The Guardian, as normally all you'd get there is imperialist cheerleading. [Arnaud Bertrand](https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1844575114937106467) on Twitter summarized the most important points of this piece: *"This is an absolute must-read by @adam_tooze and probably the most important geopolitics article I've read in The Guardian in years:* *Tooze makes the point, which I think is correct, that Washington likes to portray itself as a victim and merely reacting - often powerlessly - to events such as the war in Ukraine or Israel's destruction of Gaza and now Lebanon.* *But what if, Tooze asks, "that interpretation is too benign"? What if this was all essentially gaslighting and the US were in fact in the driver seat? What if we were witnessing "the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension", as Tooze puts it?* *Tooze argues that Biden's foreign policy is a direct continuation of Trump's, which he calls "literally revisionist", as "he had no interest in the existing rules of the game". Biden, he writes, "has been every bit as aggressive as, perhaps more so than, his predecessor." For example, Tooze says that with regards to China Biden acted even far more aggressively that Trump did with his attempts "to stop China's development in tech" and its "strong-arming [of] allies such as the Dutch and the South Koreans" for that purpose. Similarly, Tooze argues, "in what is now called the Indo-Pacific, the US is not merely defending the status quo" but very much revising it.* *Same thing with the Middle-East: despite all its propaganda about wanting peace, the basic fact remains that "the US is paying for more than 25% of Israel's rampage as it physically annihilates Gaza, victimises the West Bank and sets about uprooting Hezbollah. It has pulled allies such as Germany and the UK into line. It is shielding Netanyahu against the reach of international justice."* *All in all, Tooze writes that "in all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000s."* *This is a point I've long made myself and the key paradox of today's geopolitics: the US largely built the post-WW2 and post-Cold War order but it's obviously come to the conclusion that it doesn't serve it anymore, and therefore has become the world's foremost revisionist power. And they do so whilst attempting to gaslight all of us with the Orwellian assertion that they do so to protect "the rules-based order* It is as we also have been saying for a long time now: the US is not being forced along this path by either the Zionists, the Kiev regime, or anyone else. Washington is very much in the driver's seat of all this escalation even as it pretends otherwise.
www.rt.com
Despite the title this piece is far more interesting not for its speculation on whether an earthquake was a nuclear test but for thoughts on why it is an imperative for every country against the west to acquire nuclear weapons and why Iran should do so specifically given how it has been cheated and lied to. [(archive link)](https://archive.ph/dRKAY) > By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul > In the late evening of October 5, seismic tremors of a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter Scale were detected in Iran’s Semnan region. Although they could be felt even in the capital Tehran, over a hundred kilometers away from the epicenter, as earthquakes go this was not a major event: It was not terribly strong and caused no casualties. And yet it has attracted global attention. The reason is that we are not sure that it really was an earthquake. > [...] > Yet it is at least equally realistic to assume that there really was no test. Those discussions of the Semnan tremors that are publicly available seem inconclusive to the non-expert at least, turning on points such as the exact nature of the seismic wave and the location of the epicenter. > Let’s take a step back: Instead of assessing arguments for one or the other version of what exactly happened at Semnan in Iran on October 5, let’s ask two simple questions: Why is it so important and what would it mean if a nuclear test did really occur? > In some regards, it is obvious why the tremors have reverberated globally: Iran is already embroiled in a de facto war with Israel that is on the verge of escalating further, from increasingly destructive missile attacks into an even larger regional and possibly global war. > Beyond the longstanding hostility between the two countries, this escalation is underway for two reasons: > > First, Israel has already completed a year of committing genocide against the Palestinians and there is no end in sight, while it has also been assaulting multiple countries around it with terror attacks, indiscriminate bombings and, now in Lebanon, also a land invasion. > > Second, the West has sided with Israel. In a hypothetical world, one in which the West would not have trampled all over international law and elementary ethics and, instead, would have stopped Israel, the current escalation could not have occurred. > > For these two reasons – Israel’s complete descent into mass killings and all-round aggression and the West’s helping it along – Iran’s regional “Axis of Resistance” has become the key, indeed the one and only international actor that is in the way of the Zionist regime. Given the way Western mainstream media propaganda vilifies this “axis” as “rogue” and “terrorist,” it is ironic that its members are the only ones at least trying to implement the UN 1948 Genocide Convention against the Israeli perpetrators, thus obeying a fundamental obligation of post-World War II international law. The true, monstrous rogue actors are the West and Israel. > > Without the “Axis of Resistance” under Iran’s loose hegemony, the Palestinian resistance would be entirely alone. For Israel, this means that destroying or at least neutralizing Iran is the greatest possible strategic prize. Without Tehran, the “axis” would not simply disappear. For that, its various elements – for instance, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement (‘Houthis’) are too autonomous, not mere proxies. But there is no doubt that they would be gravely, perhaps fatally weakened. > Against this background, Iran’s military capabilities are a crucial factor. While Tehran has a much less modern air force than Israel’s, Iran’s missile forces are formidable. > If it ever were to launch an assault really meant to be devastating – by targeting Israel’s economic and political infrastructure – Israel would have to absorb damage as never before in its history. The fact that Israelis have the option of leaving makes this threat all the more powerful: Their country has deliberately sought to make Gaza uninhabitable. As a civilized country, Iran would not resort to the same genocidal cruelty. But it could make it much less comfortable or safe for Israelis to stay in Israel. > And that is where we get back to the question of why it would be so important if a nuclear test really took place in Iran on October 5: On one side, Israel has threatened to target the country’s many nuclear facilities, if not in the next round of strikes then in the one after that. Yet, since the more important ones are deep underground, that is technically difficult, as an American general formerly involved in pertinent planning has just confirmed to the New York Times. But, still, Israel has US support. Even if Washington has mumbled some objections to that particular Israeli insanity, this means very little because the US tends to lie and Israel tends to do what it wants anyhow and then drag the US along, unwillingly or very willingly, as the case may be. > > On the other side, Iran has, of course, been developing its own nuclear program. While its leaders insist that it’s entirely non-military, if that were true, they would be idiots neglecting their duty to protect their country. And they are neither idiots nor neglecting their duty. >What adds a wrinkle of complication is that the possibility of Iran crossing the threshold to possessing nuclear weapons has been exaggerated again and again by Western politicians and media with an obvious intention to create a pretext for yet another Western war of aggression in the Middle East. > So, whenever you hear – at least in the West – that Tehran is close to having nukes, keep in mind that you may well be looking at war propaganda. And yet, there also is a real possibility of Iran acquiring – or perhaps already having acquired – nuclear bombs. > One way or the other, notwithstanding an earlier Iranian religious injunction – fatwa – against weapons of mass destruction often cited in the West, Tehran is likely to become a nuclear-armed power in the near future. In that case, the fatwa will be altered or superseded. If and when that happens, the West and Israel will have only themselves to blame, for three reasons. > First, we have long known that the West uses the foggy notion of “rules” and a “rules-based order” to evade international law and a meaningful role for the United Nations. The rules-based order is a cheap sham for those who prefer that laws do not apply to them. What the Gaza genocide and Israel’s other recent crimes have made unmistakably clear is that the “rules-based order” includes a very special privilege for Israel and the West, namely that of committing crimes against humanity. In such a world, every self-respecting government that takes its elementary duty to defend country and people seriously must think in the-very-worst-case terms. In such a world, in short, you better have nukes. Many people have said this, anti-imperialist Marxists most of all understand this. > Secondly, we have not only learned what exactly the “rules-based order” is capable of. We have also learned that the alternative norms and institutions of international law cannot stop the “rules-based” crowd once it has made up its mind: By the findings of the highest court of the UN, the International Court of Justice, also called the World Court, Israel stands as a plausible perpetrator of genocide even now; a full sentencing is likely to follow. Its prime minister and minister of defense have arrest-warrant applications pending at the International Criminal Court. And what is the result? Nothing. > Again, in such a world, you better arm yourself as well as you can. > Thirdly, Iran itself has, of course, been through a long-drawn-out attempt to find a compromise with the West and, de facto, Israel. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – aka the Iran Nuclear Deal – was concluded in 2015. [This was sabotaged by Trump and Biden did nothing to revive it] > In sum, in the West’s “rules-based order” the rules include that Israel and the West may commit genocide, and then some; international law and other laws have no countervailing power and have been discredited; and individual negotiations and compromises lead to being cheated. > > Responsible leaders in Iran, and in other states, have to conclude that their countries must have nuclear weapons as well as the means to deliver them. And, in the case of Iran, this actually means enough to deter Israel and the US. The latter especially must, in the future, face the possibility – as it does already with North Korea – of Iranian nuclear retaliation on its own homeland if Washington either attacks Iran directly or helps Israel attack it. That is the stark logic of deterrence. It is sad that nothing else remains. But, by their outrageous violence and, literally, lawlessness, the West and Israel have left Iran – and others – no choice but to adopt this harsh logic to the full. Not good in the sense that if Iran gets nukes it means a strong possibility that the US/NATO vassal gulf states get nukes and some of them are truly unhinged and will become unliveable in the coming decades thanks to climate change, what might they do to blackmail others with nuclear weapons in such a scenario? What might the west get them to use their nukes for in exchange for evacuating their entire leadership and wealth to a safe zone (hitting China, Russia, Iran, etc?). It's interesting that the author doesn't point out one big reason to get nukes is that the zionists have them and could very well use them.
