The G-7 super powers bloc is now teetering, which could drastically overhaul the global political alchemy of influence toward China owing to the symbolic ”Trump card” played by US President Donald J. Trump’s insistence on keeping Russia in the G-8 against France’s threats to exclude the United States and Russia for a reduced G-6, while across the globe the China-led bloc held simultaneously the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qundao, as Trump also held a peace summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
Put in Russia over G-6 “Nyet?” Over the past months, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Trump separately to convince him, apart from trade issues, to gang up on Russia for its alleged string of abuses like the March 4 father and daughter Skrippal poisoning or the April 7 Duoma, Syria chemical bombing, believed now to be a machination of British-creation “White Helmets” rescue organization colluding with the terrorist Jhadi al-Islam.
Without prior investigation over the Skrippal poisoning, May expelled in mid-March 23 Russian diplomats, and got the US and Europe to kick out 144 Russians. May called on Russia to prove its innocence in a mockery of justice when the burden of proof supposedly shifts back to the accuser. Putin was unlikely behind lest he risked his reelection that March.
Unfortunately, the “Cry of Wolf” British propaganda is losing credibility, more so recalling ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s false alarm over Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” hoax, but caused deaths to hundreds of thousands of refugees, the rise of ISIS and irreparable damage to Syria-Iraq.
And why would Trump swallow the Russian bogey when he is being framed up for possible impeachment since Day 1 in a systematic campaign linking him to Russia’s alleged interference in US elections that catapulted him to the presidency, which appears to be another hoax involving another British spy Christopher Steele, thus increasingly discrediting the Robert Mueller probe on Russiagate.
So, when France says Nyet (meaning No in Russian), Trump insisted on including Russia in the G-8 coalition mix to bring “world peace.”
Cracks in G-7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) worsening. Italy’s populist new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a law professor and first timer in politics, is unnerving conservative Europe as he supported Trump’s position on Russia. Trump invited Comte to visit Washington.
Conte survived an attempted coup in Italy, and now wants to revive Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial and investment banking that brought stability to the financial sector, although since its repeal in 1999, the financial markets went thru chronic disastrous booms and busts, with the 2008 global financial crisis as the last serious one.
Wall Street opposes going back to Glass-Steagall, and prefers freer markets, which, unfortunately, led to ballooning derivatives and fictitious debts to over $708 trillion in 2016 alone, bigger than the global GDP of $70 trillion a year. While big banks were bailed out, small banks lending to small businesses creating physical wealth were forced into bankruptcy. From 2007 to 2012 alone, scores of small American banks closed shop.
At the Quebec G-7 summit, Trump rejected a supposed sideline meeting with May, and effectively cancelled a meeting with Macron after showing up late.
G-6 is composed of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada, which are also the major partners of the Nato, which Trump considers obsolete and be scrapped as a remnant of the cold war. Trump could not forget when Obama sent 4,000 troops to Poland through Nato only two weeks before Trump took office, provoking Russia and disrespecting his incoming presidency.
Trump threatens old military-industrial complex. We may hate Trump for his misogynist, Islamophobic, racist remarks and womanizing past, but what he is doing leads to world peace, which, ironically, is a “casus belli” or justification for war to what President Eisenhower calls the military-industrial complex, which wants to perpetuate the Cold War and pursue British Lord Palmerston’s idea on the need for “Permanent War and Permanent Revolution.” Palmerston is the same guy who said there are no permanent friends or enemies, but permanent interests.
Trump finds the Middle-East war as senseless, costing $7 trillion the past 15 years. He has talked peace with North Korea, a strategic historic move, brokered by China’s Xi Jinping, who is spearheading the “Belt and Road” initiative (BRI) with rival India and Pakistan now joining and easing old tensions with China.
One of BRI’s numerous infrastructure development projects is the 30-year delayed Kra Canal in southern Thailand that will cut travel distance by 1,200 kilometers from China or Japan to the Indian Ocean, without going down around the Malaysian peninsula through Singapore. If pushed through, perhaps, China can relax its hegemonic expansion in the West Philippine Sea.
Beware temptations of arms race. While BRI is for peace and massive development, the world must not be complacent as a rising power is tempted to expand its influence, while a weakening America will feel threatened to a point that both may be dragged into what is called the “Thucydides Trap,” which I wrote about two years ago, which are lessons behind the fall of the Greek civilization due to the senseless 27-year-long Peloponnesian wars resulting from stupid hubris or arrogance, and false honor and pride of the warring Greek leaders.
Out of tradition, the super powers are still fueling wars indirectly as the US, Russia, China and to a lesser degree, France, Germany and the UK are still the largest arms exporters, with Asia as the biggest recipient.
This is where world opinion must go aggressive in turning “swords into ploughshares” as one Bible message says.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com