The word “Ukraine” does not appear in the commentary that begins below. The writer urges readers to consider whether they favor the RBIO or what he calls the LBIO, and to ponder whether they see what he sees as the consequences of one of the choices. — MCM
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A dangerous, bloody, & dirty game
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s keynote address at the Valdai Club last Thursday appears to have put Russia on a collision course with the U.S.-led “Rules Based International Order” (RBIO).
The Biden administration two weeks earlier released its 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS), a full-throated defense of the RBIO which all-but declares war on “autocrats” who are “working overtime to undermine democracy.”
These two visions of the future of the world order define a global competition that has become existential in nature. In short, there can be only one victor.
Given the fact that the main players in this competition comprise the five declared nuclear powers, how the world manages the defeat of the losing side will, in large part, determine whether humanity will survive into the next generation.
“We are now in the early years of a decisive decade for America and the world,” U.S. President Joe Biden wrote in the introduction to the 2022 NSS. “The terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set . . . the post-Cold War era is definitively over, and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”
The key to winning this competition, Biden declared, is American leadership: “The need for a strong and purposeful American role in the world has never been greater.”
The 2022 NSS laid out the nature of this competition in stark terms. Biden claimed: “Democracies and autocracies are engaged in a contest to show which system of governance can best deliver for their people and the world.”
American goals in this competition are clear:
“[W]e want a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order. We seek an order that is free in that it allows people to enjoy their basic, universal rights and freedoms. It is open in that it provides all nations that sign up to these principles an opportunity to participate in, and have a role in shaping, the rules.”
Standing in the way of the accomplishment of these goals, Biden says, are the forces of autocracy, led by Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “Russia,” he declared . . .
“poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”
Of course, Russia and China take umbrage at Biden’s world view, and in particular their role in it. This objection was voiced back on Feb. 4, when Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the two leaders released a joint statement that served as a veritable declaration of war against the RBIO.
“The sides [i.e., Russia and China] intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law [i.e., the Law Based International Order (LBIO)],” the joint statement read, “for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations [i.e., the RBIO], and are against addressing international problems indirectly and without consensus, oppose power politics, bullying, unilateral sanctions, and extraterritorial application of jurisdiction.”
Far from seeking confrontation, Russia and China, in their joint statement, went out of their way to emphasize the need for cooperation among nations:
”The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation. The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers when the weak fall prey to the strong.”
Russia and China believe . . . READ MORE . . .