Wikileaks, the scandalous politics

Heads and Tails of Wikileaks

Wikileaks is a venture website that started to put classified correspondences of the US Department of State on 28 November 2010 (www.wikileaks.com suspended, a mirror site is wikileaks.info). The website also sent a bulk of such correspondences by email to 5 major media outlets: The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pais.

Respected media outlets collaborate with Wikileaks (Antiwar.com)

Wikileaks has sent 250,000 Dept of State documents to the mass media, but only 1300 of them have been made public so far. On the first day (28 November) the Wikileaks site hosted 220 documents, which were precisely the same contents as the five media companies published. What and when to publish – Wikileaks had clearly made a cartel agreement with the Five. Since then, Wikileaks has put 30 to 70 new documents online per day.

Of the 250,000 dossiers, 240,000 are the genuine documents that 274 US diplomatic representations have reported back to Washington. Another 8,000 are the instructions which were sent back to the field offices.

WikiLeaks Diplomatic Cables - A Superpower's View of the World (Der Spiegel)

Some indicate that Wikileaks possesses 3 million classified US documents. Wikileaks started to reveal 400,000 Iraq-related dossiers as early as in October. It further twitted that it would divulge further 3 million documents. This has not yet been materialised.

WikiLeaks threat sparks massive review of diplomatic documents (CNN)

WikiLeaks to publish secret US files (Press TV)

Much Ado

Whether is being 250,000 or 3 million, those are awfully large number of classified documents. This is why the Wikileaks incident is called ‘the history’s most scandalous leak’ or 9-11 of diplomacy.

Is the Internet 9/11 Under Way? (Beforeitsnews.com)

US Congress has named Wikileak’s representative Julian Assange the internet’s Osama Bin Laden, who threatens US security. He was arrested in England upon request by Sweden for a rather obscure charge that he committed indecent sexual acts. While he has been released on bail thanks to the volunteer donations, he fears assassination attempts, and he may be eventually extradited to the US. Hawkish congressmen insist that Assange poses a threat to the US thus the nature of the charge is not important. There is a gross similarity to the argument 10 years ago, that Bin Laden was a bad guy so must be killed regardless of whether he was directly involved in the 9-11 or not.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange refused bail (BBC)

Are the Wikileaks documents so subversive? Most of them had been already reported by the mass media before the Leak. When we look at the Middle East section, we find things such as “Saudi royals considered Iran more threatening than Israel thus asked the US to air-strike Iran”, or “Hezbollah in Lebanon had been supported by Iran, who installed optic fibre network to fight against Israel”. Isreal should be happy, that the world knows it now. For classified documents, they seem to have a certain direction of propaganda. I wonder what Wikileaks is really leaking.

WikiLeaks Disclose Complicated U.S. Strategy By William Pfaff (Truth Dig)

The real story of Wikileaks has clearly not yet been told. by F. William Engdahl (Global Search Canada)

While Wikileaks documents often favour Israel and attack Iran, Tehran claimed that Wikileaks was not leaks that were against Washington’s will but instead a coordinated leakage orchestrated by the US intelligence. Iran also doubts the authenticity of the dossiers. In essence, they are saying that it’s far more marketable to leak documents than by official press conference, such that it was an effective and new propaganda method.

Wikileaks secret documents are US plot against Iran, claims leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Daily Record)

Should we simply reject what the Axis of Evil says? Let me trace how the dossiers had been leaked. In June 2010, Wired magazine reported that an US Army officer called Bradley Manning of information bureau had used SIPRNet (US military information network) to copy 260,000 classified diplomatic correspondences and handed them over to Wikileaks.

State Department Anxious About Possible Leak of Cables to Wikileaks (Wired)

Wikileaks stated that it was incorrect. But Wired’s claim is very possible. SIPRNet is configured to allow access for 300 million low-ranking soldiers and officers with low clearance status to certain level of classified documents, in order to provide for information-hungry members of the military. So we are talking about classified documents that 300 million public servants can read. Documents on SIPRNet are therefore not important ones – top-secret classes are not hosted there.

United States diplomatic cables leak (Wikipedia)

It is rather possible that the system encourages those officials and soldiers to be exposed to propaganda, under the disguise of ‘classified documents’. This is what Wikileaks is really leaking. Iran correctly pointed that out.

What is the role of mass media here? Were they given a role of stirring things up by sensationally reporting “3 million leaks!”? Salon magazine criticised that Time magazine had wrongly reported ‘thousands of leaked secret documents’ when it was only 1300 docs. Time didn’t formally apologise, but instead enlarged the exaggeration.

The media's authoritarianism and WikiLeaks (Salon)

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is a foreign policy advisor to President Obama, suspects that Wikileaks had been infiltrated by intelligence agents from various countries. Wikileaks, henceforth, is not an organisation that strives for great freedom of speech but a tool for international relations. Wikileaks is staffed by volunteers – easy prey for professional spies.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Who is Really Leaking to Wikileaks? (Economic Policy Journal)

Brzezinski’s conspiracy theory is the complete opposite of Iran’s, that anti-US nations had sent their agents to Wikileaks to collect US representations speaking ill of political leaders of allied countries. Thereby, the West’s alliance will be weakened.

'The United States Is Behind This Deliberate WikiLeaks’ (Der Spiegel)

If Brzezinski’s worry proves to be true, this would mean that countries such as Iran, Venezuela or China have acquired intelligence capability on par with that of Anglo-American-Israeli bureaus.

Do Not See It

Since the Wikileaks scandal, the US government ordered that no federal employees or temporary contractors must access to Wikileaks-hosted information, including regular TV news programmes that may talk about the scandal. Unless the government lifts the classification, it says it’s illegal to view the documents anyhow. The government, although not an order, instructed universities and schools that Wikileaks ought to be avoided because it served no educational value.

Don't Look, Don't Read: Government Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents (New York Times)

State Dept Warning Students Not to Read, Share WikiLeaks (Antiwar.com)

Is the government experimenting with an Orwellian society? Are they saying that we shouldn’t pay attention to world affairs but should read trivial local matters? Excess propaganda damages popular trust on the mass media.

War on Terror since 2001 has angered people in Europe and the Middle East. If Assange is to appear before a US court, it will damage the confidence of the US judicial system. If he is to be found guilty, freedom of speech as a principle itself becomes guilty. America doesn’t have a strong case against him.

The U.S.'s Weak Legal Case Against WikiLeaks (Time)

US authority has detained terror suspects from Afghanistan in Guantanamo or Kabul because it was aware that the judiciary would not be able to find them guilty. They had to be tried in the undisclosed military court (which was also unsuccessful). It is possible that the US authority would semi-permanently detain Assange in a Guantanamonesque ‘judiciary black hole’ to avoid real court hearings. UN Commission on Human Rights and even Russia’s Putin have warned the US not to violate Assange’s basic rights. An interesting changeover of good and evil of human rights, indeed.

Growing International Criticism of US Moves Against WikiLeaks (Antiwar.com)

The leaks of Wikileaks deteriorate America’s relationship with the rest of the world. One leaked dossier clearly states that State Secretary Clinton had instructed US representations to secretly intercept credit card numbers, air mileage details, DNA and iris information of political leaders across the globe, including the UN leaders. Obama says the document was forged. If it was true, he would have to sack at least 20 senior officials of the Department of State. He cannot accept the authenticity.

Hillary Clinton Ordered Diplomats to Steal UN Officials' Credit Card Numbers (Antiwar.com)

UN Secretariat is dissatisfied. Russia was angered at the leaked documents about deploying US missile defence systems to Poland and the Baltics. China was annoyed to have been reported that it would abandon North Korea and let Seoul unify the peninsula. Erdogan roared that he had no secret Swiss bank account, saying “Israel is behind this”. Israel, which wished to improve ties with Turkey, was effectively put on hold. Iran says US owes accountability to the world. It seems a fair request.

'US should explain diplomats conduct’ (Press TV)

China to dump North Korea, really? (Asia Times)

Senior Turkey official says Israel behind WikiLeaks release (Haaretz)

Since 2005, the White House attempted to regain the military loss in Iraq and Afghanistan by diplomacy. The ‘assertive diplomacy’ prescribed by the neocon was embraced wholeheartedly. Obama continued this strategy. Yet the actual operationalisation of this approach was, after all, stealing credit cards and DNA data, and put foreign leaders under military surveillance. Worse, the US agents in Italy were found to have appropriated the stolen credit cards to enjoy wild parties.

The secret history of US diplomacy revealed by WikiLeaks (Antiwar.com)

The End of Diplomacy

It is significant that the Leaks have deteriorated the relationships between the US and its allies. A number of French and Italian leaders had been ridiculed. A senior German diplomat and a major Australian politician were revealed to have been agents who contributed to US embassies.

German FM's Chief of Staff Sacked for Being US Informant (Antiwar.com)

WikiLeaks outs Mark Arbib as US informant (The Australian)

Many more informants must be experiencing bed of roses at the forthcoming Wikileaks dossiers.

In general, the Wikileaks affair will discourage world’s executives to pass over sensitive information to their US contacts. The perceived risk has become significantly larger for them. The epoch that the world’s informants strived to attract US’s favour is ended. And interestingly, this coincided with the end of the dollar supremacy and America’s declining military hegemony. Alongside the economy (the dollar standard) and military power, diplomacy used to be one of the three pillars of Pax Americana. Now, all the pillars are collapsing.

WikiLeaks: Demystifying `Diplomacy’ (Antiwar.com)

In an attempt to save credibility, the US Dept of State is trying to shuffle senior officials based in embassies. But this would mean non-specialists be assigned to the field offices – it is unlikely that this practice will succeed.

US Eyes Embassy Shake-Ups in Wake of WikiLeaks Shaming (Antiwar.com)

The system of diplomacy is changing. Modern diplomacy was formulated by Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, in its bid to maintain the checks and balance in the European continent. Intelligence was the power source of the British hegemony. Espionage, the mass media and propaganda were all developed in this context. US inherited this system from Britain after the WWII. The Wikileaks scandal, however, has revealed that diplomats are too engaged in spy activities than what seemed acceptable to most populace. The established mass media seems to be collaborating with this paradigm. The Leaks made it very easy for normal people to see how the indirect governance and control system by the powerful works. Yet, the US traditionally had its preference to multilateralism (see before the hegemony handover of 1945). In the end, Wikileaks may serve well to the long-term interests of the United States.

Bilderberg, China, and the Rulers of the World

Bilderberg, China, and the Rulers of the World

The Bilderberg Group is a secretive, elite membership club that meets once every year. It started in 1954, inviting 30 members from the US, 80 from Europe, and 10 from international organisations, representing decision-makers of politics, diplomacy, the financial community, and the mass media. They book a hotel and discuss how the world should be. They met in a Catalonian seaside resort of Sitges in 2010, and the meeting was of course, undisclosed.

Are the people who ‘really run the world’ meeting this weekend? (Haaretz)

There is a strict non-discretion rule imposed on participants, therefore, nothing is beyond a rumour or unidentified speculation when it comes to what was discussed and agreed. It is nonetheless an important conference that influences the course of modernity. European integration, war on terror, invasion of Iraq, global climate change – many have been speculated that Bilderberg was the mastermind. It’s often observed to be the necessary ritual for leaders-to-be. Suspect attendees include Tony Blair right before becoming the Prime Minister, Bill Clinton before swearing in as the President. President Bush attended the Italy meeting in 2004, Secretary Rice and Chancellor Paulson attended in 2008 in Virginia. The 2009 meeting in Greece was attended by Secretary of Treasury Geithner and the World Bank president Zoellick. Geithner denied his attendance but his alibi during the two days was blank, and Zoellick doesn’t bother to lie.

Geithner to take orders from global elite at Bilderberg (Free Speech Systems)

If Geithner has indeed participated, then the reason is obvious. The grand theme of the 2009 meeting was the great depression triggered by US financial crisis. Geithner was summoned by the West’s elites to answer his economic policy.

The World Government, Really?

According to the Times of London, the Bilderberg secretariat had sent out a booklet containing essays for discussion. As a prescription for the global depression, it suggested two options. One was to endure the decade-long depression. The other was to end the depression earlier by structural transformation of the world economy which was to be accompanied by limited national sovereignty.

Shadowy Bilderberg group meets in Greece (The Times)

Most participants of Bilderberg are international capital owners and their advisors. The first option is inconceivable for them so the second option would be preferred. It was a conference of how to restrict the sovereignty of nation states in favour of more efficient world order.

Bilderberg wants global department of health, global treasury (Free Speech Systems)

This is not a revolutionary idea. Bilderberg has kept this idea of world government since 30 years. The basic outline is to expand the power of the UN and its agencies. The world economy will be more efficient than relying on the community of nation states. Frequent attendee PM Carl Bildt of Sweden argued that the WHO and the IMF should be promoted to World Government Ministry of Health and World Government Ministry of Treasury. It was coincided with the global epidemic of swine flu. Bilderberg certainly finds it favourable that the WHO now has increased normative authority in directing what the health offices of nation states should do. A number of conspiracy theory weblogs often claim pharmaceutical companies (Bilderberg members) spread the virus. Similar line of arguments can be found for the financial crisis.

The UN, under the current system, is financed by the maintenance fees paid by member states. It cannot assume superiority over nations. Bilderberg ponders to change this situation by carbon tax for petrol and solidarity tax for air tickets to finance the UN.

Capitalism Demands Growth

For the dissidents of Bilderberg, both from the left and right camps, criticise the new world order as a system of capital concentration to the Western capital owners while leaving the poor poorer. Liberals perceive it as a biumvirate order between Rockefeller (representing the US) and the Rothschild (representing Europe). In the conservative logic, Bilderberg is a conspirator organisation by Zionists and communists (note: to them both are Jewish).

But if the rich wishes to make more money, they don’t need to create a new world government. If Obama reverses Bush’s self-destructive policies to restore US hegemony, and if the G7 resists against the G20, the old Anglocentric world order will return. To me, Bilderberg’s world government aims to destroy this old order. If the emerging markets which were previously put in the periphery are integrated to the core of the world economy, the aggregate growth potential of the world will be higher.

Currently, the IMF is discussing the review of China’s voting rights. By IMF’s founding charter, voting rights are distributed according to the size and the maturity of the economy. For long, the US occupied the single largest voting share, followed by Japan and Germany. Nations are discussing whether to give China second largest voting rights by 2011. The veto right by the US (important issues must be supported by 85% of the votes thus the US with 17% of voting rights is the only veto state) is expected to be abolished too. Bilderberg wishes to transform the IMF to the world’s central bank, which will no longer be controlled by America and its allies but by the G2.

China may have bigger say in restructured IMF (China Daily)

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz suggests IMF’s Special Drawing Rights to become the international reserve currency instead of the dollar. France and even Britain have shown interests in this ambitious plan.

The dollar’s last days? (Malta Independent)

Why is Bilderberg, a club of elites from the West, acting against the current Anglo-American world system? Do the international capital owners really wish development and profits in the US and Europe? If their primary interest is the development and profits in the global scale, the current petit equilibrium of Anglocentric world system should be replaced with the one in which developing countries can freely advance their economies. The old Anglocentric world was established by the free trade under the British Empire, whose benefits spilled to the US, Europe and Japan, and the rest was kept in poverty or contained as the Eastern Bloc. This petit equilibrium started to face limitations in the 1960s when the economies of the Triad matured. Grand strategists of Bilderberg felt the need for the transformation to the grand equilibrium such that the world economy would include the developing nations and the Eastern bloc. This was materialised by the Sino-US normalisation in the 1970s and the end of the cold war in the 1980s.

Is Bilderberg Neocon?

Popular conspiracy theory goes that only the super-elites are admitted to the covert meetings of Bilderberg, where they decide the actual dealings for the world. I disagree. Bilderberg was created by the British intelligence during the 1950s, in an attempt to lure the world elites to pro-British strategies in the cold war system. Now, Bilderberg speaks of the world government, which is effectively in conflict with Britain’s global political management. Participants of Bilderberg are not united in one agenda – they represent divergent political economic ideologies.

Mr. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank Group and a regular participant of Bilderberg, is one of the quintessential neocon. He was hired by the military-industry complex during the late 1970s to reverse the détente. After the cold war, he was the man behind the draft concept of War on Terror – the second-coming of the cold war. His goal, however, doesn’t seem to revitalise the old Anglocentric world systems. As a deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration, he advocated to support China to become ‘a responsible superpower’ nation. If Bilderberg’s understanding of neoconservatism is the one based on Prof. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, their expectation is wrong.

Bilderberg, unlike the World Economic Forum, is reserved for Europeans and Americans. In the 1970s, Rockefeller tried to invite the Japanese to transform Bilderberg from a ‘Euro-American club’ to an ‘industrialised nations elite club’. But he couldn’t win the consensus, so he instead created the Triad Committee. An exception was Ms. Sadako Ogata, but she wasn’t invited as a Japanese representative but as an expert of refugee and interventions issues. It is also observed that Bilderberg aimed to bring China to might, but they have never invited the Chinese as regulars. The rise of China may not be the consequence of China’s own efforts but is the consequence of the strategy by the international capitalists.

The G7 has given its way to the G20, where the BRIC exerts much more influence. Similarly, Bilderberg is also losing its prowess. More opportunities are now available to more open and multiethnic fora such as the Davos Conference (in Switzerland) or its offshoot the Boao Forum (in Hainang, China).

Who Created the Bilderberg, After All? (note: this section is more speculative)

Bilderberg was held for the first time in Bilderberg Hotel in a Dutch city of Arnhem in 1954. The name got its root from this hotel. The organiser was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who owned the hotel. Prince Bernhard was a controversial figure in the Netherlands, with his origin in the German aristocracy, married the Dutch princess Beatrix (now Queen), flirted with Nazism, later changed his mind, and was known to have a flamboyant personality and aristocratic attitude. He was the chairperson of the Bilderberg until 1976, when he was involved in the Lockheed Scandal, in which he was said to have appropriated a million dollars to syndicate aircraft contracts.

Prince Bernhard was a mediator of the Bilderberg, but was not instrumental to the actual formation of the elite network. The origin of Bilderberg traces to the WWII, when the Polish and Belgian political exiles in Britain were put together by the Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), to discuss the post-war European politics. It was a useful continental network for Britain, who had an ambition to design the European economic integration. The first Bilderberg meeting was three years before the creation of the European Economic Community. Since the Napoleonic Wars, the primary purpose of the British intelligence in Europe had been ‘balance and rule’ so that no single power would challenge Britain again. Prince Bernhard’s creation of Bilderberg is a derivative of this political tradition. As a reward, the Prince was never questioned by the Allied nations about his past sympathy towards Germany and Nazism. His resignation as a chairperson in 1976 coincided with the downfall of many of the polypolarist politicians. (Though this happened a few years before), Nixon, who reconciled with China, was given the Watergate, and the Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka, who followed Nixon’s path with China, had to resign amidst his own involvement in the Lockheed incident. Similar government meltdown occurred in West Germany and Italy.

Reading Brzezinski 2

This is the second half of Brzezinski article.

What about ‘the rise of Japan and new China’?

Another curious perspective that Brzezinski averred is that the 500 years of Atlantic dominance will end as Japan and China rise. Does this mean Sino-Japanese leadership will topple Anglo-American hegemony?

The Japanese government has acted exactly in the opposite direction to Brzezinski’s prophecy. Tokyo wants to maintain its political subordination to the US as long as possible. Even if the US hegemony does collapse, Japan doesn’t seem to contribute to the post-US polycentric world order. Her policies started to become more autarkic in character, as if she just wants to wait for US’s resurrection. In the wake of fiscal disaster in the US, in 2009 Tokyo increased its budget for “cooperation expenditure for US Forces realignment” by 3 folds. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was delighted to contribute more to the US.

Since the 1970s, Brzezinski has looked down on Japan since it “has no mind to participate in international politics but only remain a vassal state of the US”. Japan doesn’t seem to care. Brzezinski’s “Japan and new China” may in fact mean “new China”, such that he may have used “Japan” in order to avoid labelled a Sinophile.

His analysis on East Asia became famous with his article called “Eurasian Geopolitics”, appeared on Foreign Affairs in 1997. (Foreign Affairs) He called the Eurasian continent as a “giant geopolitical chessboard” and adumbrated how the US may rule this vast continent. Many read this article as a belligerent statement for domination, but its true objective was a grand stabilisation strategy by incorporating Russia, China and Japan to the NATO. It was thus crucial that the US cooperates with China. In 1998, Clinton turned this idea into reality when he visited China while skipping Japan – a key ally to the US. After the subsequent Republican administration, the Democratic government would once again rely on Brzezinski, such that this thesis from the 1990s is regaining its validity. A “pan-Eurasian security scheme” is becoming a reality in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation + Six-Party Talks (on North Korea).

Who serves as the bridgehead?

Ruler of Eurasia is the ruler of the world. In this sense, Brzezinski is a typical Cold War strategist, or an underdog of the military-industry complex. However, how he suggests to rule Eurasia is unique. The post-WWII US diplomacy had been based on the strong alliance with Britain (west of Eurasia) and Japan (east of Eurasia), and contain the continent itself. Brzezinski wants to advance the bridgehead toward inland. The new key partners should be the emerging EU (Franco-Germany) and an Asian regional power (China). With the two regional powers on America’s side, the Eurasian continent will be stabilised.

This is particularly daunting to Britain. If the EU grows further, Britain’s influence in Europe will be weakened. Such EU connecting directly with the US would mean even worse. Same can be said to Japan, if the US connects directly with China. Both Britain and Japan are politically Russophobes but the EU and China are much friendlier to Russia. As the US values EU and China more, America’s policy on Russia will inevitably have to become more cooperative. Washington’s global strategy then becomes polycentric.

Brzezinski often speaks against Bush and Chaney. In practice, they ran Brzezinski’s strategy, antagonising the rest of the world. Brzezinski is the mother tree of neoliberal politics that manifests the just military action by Uncle Sam. Its Republican version is the neocon. Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and Kissinger – they all argue similar policies, that US to (over)act strong America which eventually leads the world to politically awaken in an anti-US character.

Currently, policy makers in Washington don’t endeavour to democratise China. They allowed the Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Expo in Shanghai while China kept its communist dictatorship. In the 1970s, Brzezinski was a presidential attaché in the Carter administration, which normalised relationship with China after Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Brzezinski was always behind Carter’s China policy and supported China’s re-entry to the international community, much in the same way that Nixon and Kissinger did. His focus on China is clear. If Japan improves its relation with China and Russia, and adjusts itself to the polycentric new world order, it is Brzezinski’s “the end of Atlantic leadership by the rise of Japan and new China”. If Japan refuses to improve its Chinese relations and stubbornly resorts to the traditional subordination to the US, Obama would overlook Japan and instead emphasise on the G2 with China. 

Reading Brzezinski 1

This is the first half of Brzezinski article. Second half follows soon.

The Prophecy

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been the leader of the Democratic foreign policy department, and is an advisor to President Obama. He published an interesting thesis in 2008. In his The Global Political Awakening, he adumbrated the loss of US leadership and assumed intensified global disagreements on the environment, society and economy. He writes, “For the first time in history, nearly all of humanity become politically active, politically awakened, and politically connected”, “the worldwide political craving for cultural dignities and economic development, suppressed so far by the colonial rule and imperial domination, will rise”, “in the past 500 years, the Atlantic basin was the centre of the world but it will end with the rise of Japan and new China. India and Russia may follow”. The Global Political Awakening (IHT)

Brzezinski has pronounced the phrase “global political awakening” already in his 2003 book ‘The Choice’. Now that he is Obama’s policy advisor, the worldwide political awakening has noticeably intensified. We are witnessing that US hegemony has declined,  the dominance of the West is coming to an end, rise of anti-US movements in the Islamic world and South America, followed by riots in the US and Britain. It seems the global political awakening is real. Unrests in Greece have spread to other European nations such as France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. The global financial crisis continues to jeopardise the pension systems in Europe. Generous social security and welfare system that Western Europe has proudly maintained are facing a collapse. Political turbulence in Europe is likely to stay.

Report reveals pension schemes will collapse (Independent.ie)

It is in the New York capital owners’ interest to politically awaken the colonised peoples and create a number of new nation states. The industrial revolution should spread to all corners of the Earth so that the world economy will grow faster. In Brzezinski’s words, the multi-polarisation of the world (as against US’s single hegemony) has its objective in the pursuit of cultural dignity and economic opportunities across the globe. Colonialism has suppressed the liberal development in the industrialising countries. Political awakening would boost nationalism that favours industrial growth. Goldman Sachs has predicted that the world’s middle class population would explode to 2 billion. It is a dream-come-true for international capital owners.

Boom time for global bourgeoisie (The Financial Times)

Multi-polarisation would have another advantage. In the past 50 years, the industrial complex that has supported the alliance between US, Britain and Israel has strived to destabilise many fragile nations. The rise of Russia, China or the Islamic world would counterbalance the destabilising effect of the triple alliance. Without the provocation by the alliance, anti-US Islamism would not have risen.  On a surface level, Brzezinski posits Anglo-centricism or ‘international cooperationism’, which sits in the opposite end of the multi-polarism. According to him, the US must occupy the core of the international system. Only the US is able to lead the world such that the world would be thrown into chaos if the American leadership is lost. His ideology remains arrogant. The same line of argument is observed in the Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Report, written by Madeleine Albright who was a student of Brzezinski. A new era of international cooperation for a changed world (Brookings Institute)

Both the Brzezinski thesis and the MGI report agree that the world is becoming polycentric. There, he argues that the G8 has become a passé. Cooperation with the G20 or the BRICs will be the future form of global governance, in which leaders from the US, EU, Japan, China, Russia and India must deepen informal dialogues to nurture trust. The incumbent superpower US and the next potential China have to share the responsibility to lead the world. Since his thesis is based on his lecture at the Chatham House (Royal British Institute for International Relations), he described ‘Europe’ as Britain and Germany and France. However, in his 1997 thesis on Foreign Affairs magazine he assumed the players of the European integration were Germany and France.

A geostrategy for Eurasia (Foreign Affairs)

Balkan, the Middle East, and Israel

Phillip Stevens, a columnist for the FT, has also written about the transnational political awakening in the third world, inspired by the internet and satellite broadcasts. He thinks the reason why the world looks chaotic these days is because our (=the West’s) value system is obsolete. Borrowing the words from Brent Scowcroft (Republican strategist), “[P]reviously fragile regions of the Balkans, the Middle East and central Asia have awakened.” Scowcroft participated in the making of the MGI Report. Both Brzezinski and Scowcroft see the emerging world order centred on several regional powers as a positive development.

(A political awakening that recasts the global landscape)

Since Brzezinski is a White House advisor, it is likely that his strategy becomes Obama’s strategy. Brzezinski thesis argues that the US should immediately commence negotiation with Iran, as well as with the moderate faction within the Taliban. Priority is Palestine – US ought to support a new demilitarised Palestinian state, whose borders are protected by the NATO security forces. Israel must accept the division of Jerusalem, while it may keep some of the settlements in the area. Both parties would need to agree on the abandon the refugees’ right to return in exchange of financial compensation.

Effectively, this means Israel’s right to exist will be guaranteed if it accepts to give up some of its occupied territories. Nevertheless, it is unconceivable that European nations would send their battalions as the NATO forces. All over the Middle East, Islamism is on the rise. Europe would not accept a dirty job for Israel. Politically, Israel is losing its joker.

The real results of CSR - the air still gets hotter

Corporate accounting is becoming cleaner and greener, as well as meaner. Environmental indicators are good way to appeal their coporate citizenship. The majority of companies that report their environmental footprints use the guideline issued by the Netherlands-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Approximately 2000 multinational corporations consult the GRI.


It’s a voluntary scheme. Some reporting companies like to have their report audited by an external consultancy or an accounting firm. But their certifications carry no authenticity – auditors don’t assume legal liability for their opinions. And what about the issues that companies don’t fancy reporting? Companies still retain total liberty what to report and what not to.

Watchdog NGOs are established to monitor the sustainability claims pronounced by companies. One of them is Climatecounts.org, that developed scorecard assessment tools to see the performance on carbon emissions. This website classifies four aspects of corporate environmentalism: a) inventory of impact, b) actual reductions, c) policy stance, and d) reporting and accountability. I had a look at some of the famous companies, and sorted them to Good, OK, and Bad.

Good – Bank of America, Canon, GE, Nike, P&G,
OK – Amazon.com, Dell, Apple, Disney, Google, UPS, fedEx,
Starter – McDonald’s, Time-Warner, Sanofi-Aventis,

It’s also possible to sort by product types (eg. Bottled waters, PCs, etc), and by brands. They are not yet comprehensive so have to be filled in. Websites like this can offer concise and independent evaluations on allegedly green companies that suddenly picked up the hype a decade ago. Private green labels continue to proliferate. Questionable and unverified carbon offset schemes mushroom. If your mileage points go to planting trees.. can we be sure they’re really doing it for you? If you fly from Heathrow to JFK, that’s 1.5 tonne of CO2 for you, which translates to 2 non-tropical trees. The cost is not only about planting but also the land, stewarding, and potential natural/human disaster risks. I don’t believe extra ₤15 is enough for all these. The 2008 financial crisis occurred when we no longer knew the true risk of mortgage in the securitised products. A lot of green claims seem similar to this. A company suddenly became carbon-neutral because they made a new contract with a utility company which claims their energy source became 100% renewable, which was untrue but a mere emissions trading and offshore offset contracting, which was actually a futures product (they don’t do it now but will do in the future), which was about a chunk of land in a developing country whose land ownership regime was unclear, which leads to… Is this really a business innovation, or shouldn’t we go back to the business of actual reduction of resource use? In 2010, all developed nations announced that they 30% in excess of carbon emissions targets set by the Kyoto agreement (USEPA, European Commission and Japan’s MoE all confirmed this). The industrial sector as a whole is not doing its fair share.

The real breakthroughs may come from home energy usage. Metres to show the real-time power consumption of, for instance, dishwasher or the tumble dryer and their cost spikes. Conscious people would choose off-peak energy use. We don’t need everybody to be so environmentally savvy. But just imagine some million of people shifting their machine use by 30 minutes to less busy time.. the results will be exciting.

Will the Chinese Civilisation Clash with the West?

China Grows, and Imports



The world economy needs at least 3% growth rate to raise the standard of living, otherwise the population growth and inflation will dominate the economic growth. The Triad (US-EU-JP) is in deep depression and have not seen such a figure for quite a while. It is China that keeps the world’s 3% threshold afloat. Chinese trade volume has rapidly increased, especially imports from other Asian countries. Imports from Korea grew by 94% in 2008, from Taiwan 91%, and from Malaysia 51%. While Malaysia increased its export to China, its exports to US and Japan decreased by 13%. The growing trend of China’s import has been apparent since 2005.
China's stimulus package (Economist)
Yuan: one step at a time (Economist)

These figures suggest that the US and Japan no longer function as the locomotive of the world economy, in shadow of China. In the economic sphere, the world relies more and more on China.
Chinese demand drives regional recovery (FT)

China is expected to have grown by 13% in 2009. Such a monstrous growth rate is a bubble and it will burst sometime in the future. Yet, until the burst occurs, China is the saviour to the world economy. Unlike West Germany and Japan, that achieved economic growth but wished to accept US hegemony, China longs to convert its economic might to political muscle. Chinese economic growth coincides with its increasing political influence.


China May Overheat With 16% Growth, Government Researchers Say (Bloomberg)


More Chinese people have become conscious of their nation becoming a global player. Bookshops in major Chinese cities are flush with titles related to Chinese civilisation, hegemony theories, Western dominance, and China’s awakening. Partly due to Beijing’s censorship and partly due to China’s traditional sino-centric views, many wear nationalistic hard-liner tones.
Books in Chinese

But would the world’s future be dominated by everything that’s Chinese? Would it necessarily come into conflict with the West? Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996) accurately predicted the 9-11 and the world thereafter drunk with the war on terror. Contemporary conflicts indeed mostly take place near the fault lines of world’s civilisations. But this book also speaks of other scenarios such as the demise of the Western civilisation, the rise of the Chinese counterpart, and even Sino-American War. The book did not argue with precision, and some may have read the book not as an analytical piece but as a blueprint for US foreign policy.

The World According to the West

If we wish to think about the potential clash between Chinese and Western civilisations, we first need to ponder the meaning of a civilisation. In dictionary terms, it is “a set of technical and material assets created by people” (Webster). In this case, a civilisation means a culture, since culture is a set of spiritual assets created by people. Materialism is the civilisation, and spirituality is the culture. ‘Civilisation’ owes its Latin roots to ‘civitas’ (=of city). Civilisation originally meant urbanisation, to juxtapose against ‘rural’ or ‘barbaric’.

Huntington argues the above definition was created in Germany and was not widely accepted in the rest of the world. He says that civilisations are an extension of cultures. Then the book’s title should have been Clash of Cultures. It was only replaced with Civilizations, for the sake of impact.

Civilisations are, to a large extent, a notion of the past. Before the Great War, the world had several civilisations. The Spanish empire destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilisations. Islamic civilisation represented by the Ottoman Empire had its unique material assets. Until the first industrial revolution, China was richer and more advanced than Europe. Back then, China was under the ‘Chinese civilisation’. All foreign invaders to China eventually succumbed to the Chinese civilisation. China held its own distinction between ‘civilised’ (=China) and ‘barbaric’ (=the rest) to maintain the suzerainty system.

The industrial revolution gave Europe an advantage. After the Napoleonic Wars, Britain became a hegemonic power in Europe, and gave China a beat in the Opium War. Since then, China was put under quasi-colonial state. With the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the world civilisations were unified under the Western civilisation. Not to mention mass production and mass consumption, but transportation, telecommunication, scientific basic research, economics, law, enterprise management, accounting, electoral system, journalism, how to run a country… these are all the offspring of the Western civilisation. Sun Yat-Sen and his fellow revolutionaries strived to import Western systems and technologies in China. The Chinese Communist Party learned from the Soviet Union, which was a variant of the Western civilisation. Kemalist Turkey contemplated how to throw away Islamism and westernise. Both Sun and Atatürk looked to Japan, which achieved westernisation at a very rapid pace.

While China kept Chinese clothing and architectural characteristics for nationalist reasons, its ultimate goal was to exit Chinese and Islamic legacies as soon as possible, and replace them with Western governance system and technologies. Its role model Japan, after the Meiji Revolution, abandoned its feudal shogunate system for the purpose of adopting the Western civilisation.

Japan grew rapidly, became the P4 member in the League of Nations, and its militarist policies came to conflict with the US. But Japan was allied with Germany, thus the WWII was not the clash of Western and Japanese civilisations. The Japanese never embraced a concept of Japanese Civilisation (=that one country is the sole constituent member of a civilisation), even during the 1980s when she had her golden decade. Most Japanese think their ancestral roots are the mixture of Central Asia, Korea, and southeast Asia, its early governance system adopted from the Chinese civilisation, fully developed the ‘Japan-ness’ during the mediaeval age, and domesticated the Western civilisation in the modern era. They believe their success owes to the domestication process, but both Sun and Atatürk thought it was the unmodified importation of the Western civilisation that would lead a country to success.

Illusory ‘Chinese Civilisation’

Civilisations are geographical concepts. Before the industrial revolution, travelling to other parts of the world required much time and effort. Now the industrial revolution has fully spread to all corners of the world, they are connected with common transportation and telecommunication network. A new technology or system developed in one part of the world would quickly spread to the rest. This nullified the possibility for several different civilisations to exist independent of one another. The transportation and telecom network is based on the capitalist concepts, thus this phenomenon has allowed the Western civilisation to permanently sweep throughout the world. The evolution of civilisation is synonymous to material thus economic growth. Re-dividing the unified world is clearly not advantageous to the economic growth. The world will not go back to when there were many different civilisations. So the clash of civilisations is an oxymoron.

From this perspective, China’s recent growth does not mean the rise of the Chinese civilisation. It is the consequence of a series of attempt to adopt the Western civilisation since Sun. China can grow now, because it has abandoned the Chinese civilisation and finally succeeded in adopting the Western civilisation. The “Great Chinese Civilisation” is merely propaganda to incite the nationalism of the Hans. If it’s the rise of the Chinese civilisation, then the former affiliate states such as Korea or Vietnam must benefit too. It’s not happening. China as a culture still does exist, but the Chinese civilisation has been dead since the Opium War. China will inevitably have to lift the yuan’s dollar peg some time in the future, and when it indeed does so, it means it has learnt the Western methods on monetary management.

Multilateralism and Single Civilisation

The world has been conquered by the Western civilisation. But that the West having dominated the world politics is another. The recent 100 years coincided the civilisational dominance of the West and the political dominance of Britain and the US. The Western civilisation with its industrial advantage ruled the rest of the world. Adoptees such as Japan contributed to the evolution of the Western civilisation, especially in the manufacturing domain. In the 21st century, however, US’ economic and military fiascos have put the Anglo-American dominance in jeopardy. The world’s contemporary civilisation has its base in the West, but politically, the West as the sole hegemony is coming to an end. The FT and other business papers foresee Asian newcomers that will engine the world economy. Like Japan did, growing India and China will make some sort of contribution to advance the incumbent Western civilisation in the future.

The Western civilisation will maintain its unitary wholeness, but it will be led by non-European countries. Perhaps it should change its name to the ‘World Civilisation’. The last clash of civilisation in the world history was when Britain destroyed the Ottoman Empire. And it was not even the main theatre of the Great War. The two world wars primarily concerned the internal conflict within the Western civilisation, such that new and more efficient players such as Germany and Japan challenged the British hegemony. It was the competition between nation states, not between civilisations. The UN and the EC were created to curtail this inevitable competition.

The emerging World Civilisation may fail to contain its internal conflicts, like the Western civilisation failed. Yet the BRIC nations are quite cooperative to global integration efforts such as the G20 or the IMF or the UN. Major warfare beyond the scale of regional skirmishes is unlikely to happen.

The Sinking Dollar Ship

The Sinking Ship

Since its launch in 2008, the G20 has organised three summit conferences. The first meeting created an enormous expectation by the mass media and bloggers that it would the same magnitude of 1944 Bretton Woods that determined the dollar supremacy, replacing the pound. But it was a false alarm. No official resolution was made on the settlement currency. The third meeting in 2009, therefore, had no such expectations.

Nonetheless, there are signals that G20 summit is indeed a conference to discuss the leading currencies. The UN Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform, quite abruptly, announced that the dollar standard ought to be replaced with a new currency basket scheme, much in the same manner of IMF’s SDR or EMS’s ECU.
UN panel urges replacing dollar with currency basket (Reuters)
The Russian authority leaked to the media that Moscow intended to propose a discussion to establish a new international standard currency at the preparatory meeting for the G20. The Russian proposal is based on the SDR, just like the UN panel.
Russia wants to start debate on new reserve currency at G20 (Ria Novosti)
The Russians insisted that major developing countries such as China supported their plan. China doesn’t officially express that it wants a new standard currency instead of the dollar, but unofficially it has made a preliminary proposal and disseminated the dossier to G20 delegates. On surface, China cannot afford to throw the dollar to the bin as it owns huge amount of US treasury bills.
U.S. dollar: Another Sign of Accelerating Loss of Confidence (Seeking Alpha)
Bank of America's Bernstein Says Sell Bank Stocks After Rally (Bloomberg)


If G20 wishes to transform the international currency regime to a multi-polar model, currencies of developing countries such as the yuan, the rouble, or the riyal to be stable. Yet, as long as insufficient regulation is placed upon hedge funds and tax haven jurisdictions, they are reluctant to lift the dollar peg for the fear of speculative attacks. The primary goal for Germany and France is to strengthen the hedge fund regulation – this is because they know the euro alone cannot take over the dollar’s role as the settlement currency. The EU needs the stabilisation and internationalisation of the other G20 currencies. Brussels pressured traditional tax havens such as Switzerland or Singapore to revise their financial tolerance. Britain, which used to oppose to more regulations, also declared ‘the beginning of the end of tax havens’.
'Beginning of the end of tax havens' (FT)
Similarly, American mass media enthusiastically report that US corporations evade taxation by transferring their profits to offshore facilities, so tax havens should be bulldozed.
Trillions that the world could use - $11.5 trillion hidden in offshore havens (International Herald Tribune)

The US is already bankrupt
FRB has decided to print more dollars to purchase the leftovers from the bond market. It will buy $300 billion worth of long-term bonds in 2009. Furthermore, the FRB will buy additional $850 billion mortgage equities from Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae that are not selling well.
Fed to buy $300bn in Treasury bonds (FT)
Beside local buyers, the US bonds have been traditionally supported by Japan and Germany. Since 2008, however, China became the world’s largest creditor of the bond. But the Lehman shock caused a huge drop in bond appetite by foreign buyers. Depression in US lowered the export volume of China, which is now in capital shortage to buy more US bonds. By analysing China’s natural resource diplomacy, it is clear that Beijing is trying to decouple from the dollar. China aggressively buys mines and petrol fields across the world. Seventy percent of China’s financial investment was composed of the dollar. They want to lower the percentage to 50, and the other 50% to be composed of more liquid non-dollar assets such as mines. This is clever, as it can offset the loss from the dollar depreciation with the price rise of commodities.
China inoculates itself against dollar collapse (Asia Times)
Falling greenback fuels BRIC dollar reserve rethink (Reuters)


More than Guantanamo, Obama’s biggest challenge is budgeting. He has to roll out financial policy, more public expenditure to sustain the economy, and re-strengthen social security policy that was neglected by his predecessor Bush. They all cost money. US fiscal deficit may become record high. Already, America’s fiscal balance is negative $11 trillion. Obama announced that the federal government expected $7 trillion increase of fiscal deficit over the next 10 years. Congress, however, thinks it was an underestimation, and instead figures the true estimate to be $9 trillion. Rescue plans to banks were originally $500 billion, but they are now $3 trillion.
Much Bigger Deficits Seen in Budget Office Forecast (New York Times)
Although an independent budgeting, Medicare assumes government bailout in the event its balance sheet fails. Estimation of the total cost borne by the government ranges from $30 to 50 trillion. Approximately 50 million Americans have no health care coverage at all. Inclusion of this group to the Medicare is ethically correct, but financially a risky venture.
Medicare Meltdown (Wall Street Journal)

Tea parties
A number of social movement organisers in US dubbed themselves Boston Tea Party in 2009. Historically, it is a symbolic incident in colonial America, that civilian groups in Boston dumped tea leaf barrels into the harbour as a protest to British decision to grant exclusive rights to the East India Company to export tea leaves to the 13 Colonies. Bostonians were upset not to be able to send representatives to the parliament in London, while taxation was freely decided by the British. British common law already established the principle ‘no representative, no taxation’, which was employed by the colonists. Three years later, the 13 Colonies declared independence. It became an American tradition to name any movement to oppose taxation with no popular representation Boston Tea Party.

The 2009 Tea Party participants are dissatisfied at the worsening economic condition despite huge bailout efforts on large banks by the government. People were angry to know that the government admitted to give excessive remuneration to AIG directors, while the company was supported by the public money.
Editorial: A.I.G. Bailout (New York Times)
Treasury told to make bail-out banks invest in US (FT)
A federation called New American Tea Party mobilised 150 demonstrations against corrupt bankers across America.
Fed-up Americans mobilize: More than 150 tea parties (World Net Daily)


Obama and his advisor Summers expressed their anger against AIG, but it will be difficult for them to take tough measures. AIG had accepted $50 trillion worth of CDS, which was instrumental to trigger the crisis. AIG failure is the CDS failure, which will cause chain reactions to other financial institutions whose success depend on.
"Getting Tough" with Predator Financial Institutions (Global Research)
Unemployment rate in US deteriorates. Including the semi-unemployed (U6), the rate is already 13.6 percent. In key states like Michigan, California, or Oregon, the U6 unemployment rate is 20. This is as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The federal government can have the FRB to print more money. But state governments don’t have this option. Illinois announced that it intended to increase the income tax by 50% for those whose annual income exceeded $56000. The middle class is also upset. Potential for tax rejection is big. If the tax revenue becomes insufficient, governments won’t be able to pay coupons to bond holders. Foreign investors will stay away from US bonds.

Boston Tea Party in 1774 achieved the independence and the birth of a new nation, but the Tea Party in 2009 may result in the dissolution of the Union. In the US, civil rights such as democracy and civil obligations such as tax payments form a clear social contract. The United States was not created as a nation state curved by natural boundaries. It is based on contracts. If the majority of the people become dissatisfied with the current state of the federation, the US can become politically very instable. In New England, the cradle of the American Revolution, there are heated discussions on whether they should declare independence from the US.

New Hampshire in uproar over US Administration (Russia Today)