Tag: India

New World Order

[H]ere’s the real takeaway: Tianjin is not just hosting another international gathering; it is hosting the embryonic headquarters of a new world order. When half of humanity convenes to discuss not how to obey the old hegemon, but how to craft sovereign industrial futures, the game has already shifted. The West, stuck in yesterday’s script of divide and rule, cannot grasp that the 21st century is already unfolding elsewhere – in Russian engines powering Chinese jets, in oil tankers sailing east, in Modi and Putin shaking hands against the backdrop of an Asia that is no longer waiting for permission. The SCO in Tianjin is Eurasia writing history, while the West scribbles in the margins of its own decline.

My cyberfriend Terry Cowan, commenting on Shangai Cooperation Organization (the SCO) meeting in Tianjin, China — without us. Here’s how a few of our mainstream media covered it (not that Terry thinks they’ve got much true to say):

Then, a day later, Trump exerted his charm:

Twenty-six heads of state joined Xi Jinping to watch a military parade in Beijing. They included many autocrats, including from Russia and North Korea, but no leaders of big Western democracies. Beforehand Mr Xi said mankind faced a choice between peace and war, and called China “unstoppable”. Donald Trump told China’s leader to “give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States”.

The Economist World in Brief, Wednesday 9/3. Fuller Economist coverage here.

John Ellis channels the Financial Times:

Xi Jinping has capped a week of frenetic diplomacy by presiding over one of China’s biggest military parades, projecting his nation’s growing power in a show of solidarity with fellow strongmen Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. A procession of China’s newest tanks, drones and missiles rolled past Tiananmen Square on Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the second world war victory over Japan. The People’s Liberation Army showed off its latest weapons, including hypersonic missiles, with Xi hailing troops as a “heroic force” that should develop into a “world-class military” — implying a full equal to the US’s armed forces. The Chinese president said the PLA would “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity” — code for Beijing’s goal of gaining control over Taiwan. “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable,” Xi added. (Source: ft.com)

I’m not going to blame Donald Trump for all this. I have little doubt that his various tarrifs, trash-talking, vacillation and so forth accelerated it, but the American empire didn’t much rally under Joe Biden, either. We’re at an inflection point, and I expect us to be much closer to “bit player” than to “hegemon” when it’s over.

[A] critical mass of the American people … no longer want[s] to govern themselves, … are sick of this republic and no longer want to keep it if it means sharing power with those they despise.

Nick Catoggio

I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on my favorite social medium.

A haunting history

In the Indian state of Kerala, a 25-year-old Medical student, now named Hadiya, has had her marriage to a Muslim, and her conversion to Islam the year before that, disrupted by guardianship-type judicial proceedings brought by her Hindu parents.

[One] problem is the profound Hindu paranoia about religious conversion. For many centuries before the arrival of the British, Hindus of the lower castes converted to Islam in massive numbers to escape an oppressive religious hierarchy. Under the British, and even after independence, many hundreds of thousands converted to Christianity for the same reasons. Hindu revivalists today see an opportunity for a great and glorious reversal of that demographic loss. This has made them aggressively defensive of their faith, and of “their” people. Hadiya is but a pawn in their game.

(Tunku Varadarajan in the Wall Street Journal)

If Hindus were converting to Islam because it was less oppressive, then Hinduism is/was far more oppressive than I realized and/or Islam is/was, in its Indian setting, a far cry from the Islamist/Sharia advocates today in other parts of the world.

I can’t say much about the Hinduism side of that equation, but this is some circumstantial evidence, yet again, of how monolithic Islam isn’t—just as, sadly, there are multiple contending Christianities. Perhaps there is one true Islam in that mix, as I believe there’s one true Christianity, but I’m not competent to opine on which is it and I doubt that other Western non-Muslims are in any better position.

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.