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St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) 2024: Marking the Rise of the Global South Century and Decline of Western Economies

June 21, 2024

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) 2024: Marking the Rise of the Global South Century and Decline of Western Economies

This year, SPIEF’s theme was “The Foundations of a Multipolar World – The Formation of New Areas of Growth.”

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual event bringing together global leaders, policymakers, and influential business figures, took place in St. Petersburg, Russia from June 5th to 8th, 2024. Attendees representing 130 countries and roughly 3 billion people worldwide attended. This year, SPIEF’s theme was “The Foundations of a Multipolar World – The Formation of New Areas of Growth.”

Foreign companies are eager to access the Russian market’s potential, despite Western sanctions aimed at isolating Moscow.

Deals involve firms from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, suggesting a pragmatic approach prioritizing commercial interests over politics and avoiding missed opportunities in Russia. The diversity of participants indicates many businesses recognize the risks of being left out of this lucrative market.

What should be a wakeup call for the global West is instead falling on deaf ears. While Washington and European capitals report declining economies, Russia, in spite of severe sanctions, continues to adapt and flourish.

Policymakers are not testing their countries’ long-term economic policies against the implications of the rise of multipolarism. Let’s consider the Green/degrowth policies favored by the Biden administration and former European economic powerhouses like Germany. They are not protecting the future of their people.

SPIEF 2024 introduced concepts the Global South Century will move forward on driving the world economy while the American and European economies recede. Russia is positioning itself as a leader.

What Is the Global South?

“Take the 3.5 billion population of China, India, and the ASEAN countries, for example.

In 2000, only 150 million of these people enjoyed middle-class living standards. Today, the number has exploded to around 1.5 billion, double the total population of Western countries. And it is predicted to grow to 3 billion by 2030.”

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‘Samarkand Spirit’ to be driven by ‘responsible powers’ Russia and China

September 18, 2022

‘Samarkand Spirit’ to be driven by ‘responsible powers’ Russia and China

The SCO summit of Asian power players delineated a road map for strengthening the multipolar world

Amidst serious tremors in the world of geopolitics, it is so fitting that this year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) heads of state summit should have taken place in Samarkand – the ultimate Silk Road crossroads for 2,500 years.

When in 329 BC Alexander the Great reached the then Sogdian city of Marakanda, part of the Achaemenid empire, he was stunned: “Everything I have heard about Samarkand it’s true, except it is even more beautiful than I had imagined.”

Fast forward to an Op-Ed by Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev published ahead of the SCO summit, where he stresses how Samarkand now “can become a platform that is able to unite and reconcile states with various foreign policy priorities.”

After all, historically, the world from the point of view of the Silk Road landmark has always been “perceived as one and indivisible, not divided. This is the essence of a unique phenomenon – the ‘Samarkand spirit’.”

And here Mirziyoyev ties the “Samarkand Spirit” to the original SCO “Shanghai Spirit” established in early 2001, a few months before the events of September 11, when the world was forced into strife and endless war, almost overnight.

All these years, the culture of the SCO has been evolving in a distinctive Chinese way. Initially, the Shanghai Five were focused on fighting terrorism – months before the US war of terror (italics mine) metastasized from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond.

Over the years, the initial “three no’s” – no alliance, no confrontation, no targeting any third party – ended up equipping a fast, hybrid vehicle whose ‘four wheels’ are ‘politics, security, economy, and humanities,’ complete with a Global Development Initiative, all of which contrast sharply with the priorities of a hegemonic, confrontational west.

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What Does It Mean to Live in a Multipolar World? We May Be About to Find Out

May 31, 2019

What Does It Mean to Live in a Multipolar World? We May Be About to Find Out

The breakdown in the Sino-U.S. trade talks has led a number of commentatorsto suggest that America’s “unipolar moment” of post-Cold War preeminence is over, as Washington lashes out against a rising China, whose economic rise threatens America’s historic dominance. Direct military violence is highly unlikely, given the inherent fragility of high-tech civilization. We therefore may see Cold War–style conflict between the two superpowers, as relations in trade or national security matters become increasingly poisoned.

So what happens to the rest of us? Will a hitherto globalized world increasingly retreat into bifurcated competing blocs, much as occurred under the original Cold War? Or can the rest of the world develop a more muted and stable form of multilateralism?

After all, we are well past the point where parts of the globe are increasingly carved up via competing ideologies (e.g., capitalism vs. communism), given today’s broad embrace of various permutations of capitalism, or divided via proxy wars, or the “great game” of colonial expansion. Today, most nations focus on maximizing the relative productivity of their own respective economies, as opposed to establishing their ideological bona fides as quasi-colonial client states for either the United States or the former Soviet Union. Another important dimension to recognize is that what we understand to be global or international is, for the most part, owned and controlled by industrialized countries: 93 percent of foreign-owned production is controlled by Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) economies. Even the historic tendency to focus on state power should be questioned in this moment. In 2016, 69 of the world’s largest 100 economies were corporations, with their own range of interests and methods of functioning.

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Shielding the World From US Chaos Is No Easy Task

May 26, 2019

Shielding the World From US Chaos Is No Easy Task

Donald Trump’s foreign policy relies heavily on putting to use to the tools available to the Empire: economic terrorism, threats of war, diplomatic pressure, trade wars, etc. But in resorting to tried-and-true imperialism, it is isolating itself internationally from traditional allies and raising tensions on the global chessboard to an unprecedented level.

Threats of war against Venezuela, North Korea, Syria and Iran are now repeated on a daily basis. Economic measures involving tariffs or duties, in many ways comparable to declarations of war, are now habitual, whether directed at friends or allies. Iran and Syria are under sanctions, while Pyongyang is even prevented from docking one of its ships in its ports, thereby finding itself de facto placed under US embargo, such as was threatened against Venezuela.

China and Russia are daily fighting to support the multipolar world through diplomatic, economic and sometimes military means, offering to Washington’s enemies some kind of shield with which to withstand the outrageous slings and arrows of the Trump administration. Beijing and Moscow carry out their resistance with an eye to their long-term objectives, given that in the short term their actions will inevitably invite the implacable hostility of Washington and her lackeys.

The fate of the new multipolar world order essentially depends on how well China and Russia will be able weather Washington’s storm. It is naturally in the interests of the rest of the world that the chaos of Washington’s unipolarity will be brought to a close in the least chaotic and destructive manner.

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A Real-Life Game of Risk: Why Civilizationism Is Biggest Threat to Human Rights in the 21st Century

March 27, 2019

A Real-Life Game of Risk: Why Civilizationism Is Biggest Threat to Human Rights in the 21st Century

True liberal values and human rights face their largest threat to date, a rapidly growing system of global governance based on opportunistic alliances rooted in populism and an unfettered bid for power argues Dr. James Dorsey.

Many have framed the battle lines in the geopolitics of the emerging new world order as the 21st century’s Great Game. It’s a game that aims to shape the creation of a new Eurasia-centred world, built on the likely fusion of Europe and Asia into what former Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Macaes calls a “supercontinent.”

For now, the Great Game pits China together with Russia, Turkey and Iran against the United States, India, Japan and Australia. The two camps compete for influence, if not dominance, in a swath of land that stretches from the China Sea to the Atlantic coast of Europe.

The geopolitical flashpoints are multiple. They range from the China Sea to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Central European nations and, most recently, far beyond with Russia, China and Turkey supporting embattled Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

On one level, the rivalry resembles Risk, a popular game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest played on a board depicting a political map of the earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Multiple players command armies that seek to capture territories, engage in a complex dance as they strive for advantage, and seek to compensate for weaknesses. Players form opportunistic alliances that could change at any moment. Potential black swans threaten to disrupt.

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Final Steps of the Multipolar Revolution: Containing the US in Europe

February 27, 2019

Final Steps of the Multipolar Revolution: Containing the US in Europe

We discussed in the previous article how China and Russia are using diplomatic, economic and military means in areas like Asia and the Middle East to contain the belligerence and chaos unleashed by the United States. In this analysis, we will examine the extent to which this strategy is working in Europe. In the next and final article, we will look at the consequences of the “America First” doctrine in relation to South America and the Monroe Doctrine.

The United States has in the last three decades brought chaos and destruction to large parts of Europe, in spite of the common myth that the old continent has basked in the post-WWII peace of the American-led world order. This falsehood is fueled by European politicians devoted to the European Union and eager to justify and praise the European project. But history shows that the United States fueled or directed devastating wars on the European continent in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with the conflict between Georgia and Ossetia at the beginning of the 1990s, with the war in Georgia in 2008, and in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, with the ensuing aggression against the Donbass.

The major problem for Washington’s European allies has always been summoning the will to contain US imperialism. For many years, especially since the end of the Cold War, European countries have preferred to defer to Washington’s positions, confirming their status as colonies rather than allies. It is fundamental to recognize that European politicians have always been at the service of Washington, eager to prostrate themselves to American exceptionalism, favoring US interests over European ones.

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The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order

February 5, 2019

The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order

The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia.

In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the elite.”

This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government, and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world, leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing demonstrations.

In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over the last few months.

In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution.

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Multipolar World Order in the Making: Qatar Dumps OPEC

December 13, 2018

Multipolar World Order in the Making: Qatar Dumps OPEC

The decision by Qatar to abandon OPEC threatens to redefine the global energy market, especially in light of Saudi Arabia’s growing difficulties and the growing influence of the Russian Federation in the OPEC+ mechanism.

In a surprising statement, Qatari energy minister Saad al-Kaabi warned OPEC on Monday December 3 that his country had sent all the necessary documentation to start the country’s withdrawal from the oil organization in January 2019. Al-Kaabi stressed that the decision had nothing to do with recent conflicts with Riyadh but was rather a strategic choice by Doha to focus on the production of LNG, which Qatar, together with the Russian Federation, is one of the largest global exporters of. Despite an annual oil extraction rate of only 1.8% of the total of OPEC countries (about 600,000 barrels a day), Qatar is one of the founding members of the organization and has always had a strong political influence on the governance of the organization. In a global context where international relations are entering a multipolar phase, things like cooperation and development become fundamental; so it should not surprise that Doha has decide to abandon OPEC. OPEC is one of the few unipolar organizations that no longer has a meaningful purpose in 2018, given the new realities governing international relations and the importance of the Russian Federation in the oil market.

Besides that, Saudi Arabia requires the organization to maintain a high level of oil production due to pressure coming from Washington to achieve a very low cost per barrel of oil. The US energy strategy targets Iranian and Russian revenue from oil exports, but it also aims to give the US a speedy economic boost. Trump often talks about the price of oil falling as his personal victory.

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A Glimpse Beyond the Unipolar Moment

October 15, 2018

A Glimpse Beyond the Unipolar Moment

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“Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition, united not by ideology but by complementary grievances” —Zbigniew Brzezinski

Are we reaching the penultimate and petulant back-end of the American Empire’s Unipolar Moment, a denouement hastened by a raft of sanctions regimes as imperiously doled out as they are laden with unconsidered paradox?

Though the sun is prohibited from casting its light between them, Nation and Empire are not an organically indivisible formation. Indeed Americans, no less than others, should relish the prospect of a resumed, unalloyed nationhood after decades of Empire co-optation. Few Americans realize the skulking entity that looms in the shadows of their overrun and diminished formal institutions as being a separable imposition capable of (to use a Benjamin Netanyahu phrase) drying up and blowing away.

Empire overlay is an uninvited and usurping agent bent on hostile, world-conquering aims to which America plays safe harbor and unwitting hostage in equal parts. Though the mode of exploitation varies, no nation on the world stage is left untouched by transnational exploitation.

EMPIRE EXPANSION

America, like all nations, is a boundaried fixity; whereas Empire despite travelling under the former’s name is a projective and extraterritorial expanse whose designs exceed the devise and interests of the nation-host itself. Invariably Empire doesn’t so much succumb to overreach as it overreaches the capacities of its nation-host; wrecking the balance sheet, debauching the currency, taxing the capacities of the deputized military and (most importantly as we shall see) sullying the conceptual coordinates so central to a nation’s actionable sense of self.

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Muli-Polar Political Project Pushed Forward by Putin In India

October 13, 2018

Muli-Polar Political Project Pushed Forward by Putin In India

I have to wonder when Russian President Vladimir Putin sleeps. He’s busier than any other leader, traveling the globe while consistently changing the board state geopolitically.

While everyone, including me, has had their eye on the turmoil in U.S. political circles over the past couple of weeks, Putin visited India and in a little less than two days ended most speculation as to where India stands in the emerging multi-polar world that Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping are building.

Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inked deals with huge future consequences for both countries. So, while the headlines were all about the Trump Administration trying to pressure India into not buying S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, Putin and Modi put the final touches on Russia building India no less than six more nuclear power plants.

One of the things holding India back as a first-world economy is a reliable electricity grid. Having eight Russian-designed and built plants operating around the country will upgrade the landscape for India’s electricity usage immensely.

Part of the reason India is such a large oil and gas importer is their electricity base load needs are being met with expensive hydrocarbons. Shifting that to nuclear,more like France and the U.S., changes everything, especially in the long run, from a foreign exchange perspective.

Bernard at Moon of Alabama was first on interpreting what the scope of these deals mean for the U.S.’s attempt to cleave India from the BRICS alliance. He rightly linked the western media’s finally picking up the Rafale fighter jet corruption scandal dogging Modi as a sign that the U.S. is very angry over these deals and is beginning the process of undermining Modi’s government.

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Tensions Grow as China, Russia and Iran Lead the Way Towards a New Multipolar World Order

September 25, 2018

Tensions Grow as China, Russia and Iran Lead the Way Towards a New Multipolar World Order

Military and economic tensions are increasing due to the ramped up warlike stance of the US establishment. The impossibility of halting the shifting world order in favour of prolonging the unipolar moment has left the US deep state reaching for any available weapon at hand, taking no heed of the dangers and consequences of such a reckless foreign policy.

With the province of Idlib ever closer to being liberated from terrorists by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the tensions between the US and Syria (and Syria’s allies) are rising. Every significant military campaign by the SAA seems to be accompanied by the usual alarms and false reports emanating from the Western media and governments warning of an imminent (staged) use of chemical weapons by the SAA. Tensions are rising as several American voices, including that of the President, have expressed the desire to strike Syria over any alleged use of chemical weapons, without even waiting for any independent verification. Threats by the US, the UK and France to bomb Russian troops in Syria are voiced everyday on Western media. The insanity is reaching disturbing levels.

These developments in Syria appear to be accompanied by the persistent attempts of Ukraine and the United States to sabotage the Minsk agreements, re-igniting the conflict in order to blame it on Russia. The assassination of Aleksandr Zakharchenko, charismatic leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), killed a few days ago in a terrorist attack, should be seen in this light.

More false accusations against Moscow, this time of having poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK, follow on from allegations of Moscow interfering in the US presidential election. Added to this situation of rising tensions between great powers are the constant threats, together with economic and financial warfare, directed at Iran by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

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Unipolar Moments Never Last More Than a Moment

September 23, 2018

Unipolar Moments Never Last More Than a Moment

American leaders, politicians, policymakers and pundits are fond of talking about the “Unipolar Moment” and “Hyper Power” position that they imagine the United States enjoys in the world.

Totally lacking from this fantasy are any inconvenient historical facts.

The US Unipolar Moment (insofar as it existed at all) lasted less than a decade from the break-up of the Soviet Union at the end of December 1991 to June 15, 2001. The US “moment” barely made it into the 21^st Century.

On that epochal day of June 15, 2001, two major events happened. First, US President George W. Bush gave a speech in Warsaw pledging to integrate the three tiny Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into NATO as a prime strategic goal of the United States.

That very same day, Russia and China created with four Central Asian nations the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): The most populous and powerful international security organization in history.

This year, the SCO doubled in population by adding India and Pakistan at the same time – two major nuclear powers with a combined population of 1.5 billion people. That means the SCO now includes more than 3 billion people, around 40 percent of the human race.

From the moment the SCO was created – dedicated from its inception to preserve and protect a multipolar world from the domination of any one power, the US unipolar moment was dead and gone.

This reality was confirmed less than three months later when al-Qaeda’s terror attacks of September 11, 2001 killed almost 3,000 people. More Americans died that day than in the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

George W. Bush should have been impeached for his gross incompetence. Instead his popularity soared. Imagining the Unipolar Moment (or Era) to be still in full flood he invaded Afghanistan later that year and Iraq less than two years later. The United States is still endlessly stuck in those unending wars.

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In The New “Multipolar World” The Globalists Still Control All The Players

August 23, 2018

In The New “Multipolar World” The Globalists Still Control All The Players

The greatest tool at the disposal of globalists is the use of false paradigms to manipulate public perception and thus public action. The masses are led to believe that at the highest levels of geopolitical and financial power there is such a thing as “sides.” This is utter nonsense when we examine the facts at hand.

We are told the-powers-that-be are divided by “Left” and “Right” politics, yet both sides actually support the same exact policy actions when it comes to the most important issues of the day and only seem to differ in terms of rhetoric, which is meaningless and cosmetic anyway. That is to say, it’s nothing but Kabuki theater.

We are told that corporate power must be balanced by government power and that government power must be balanced by “free markets,” when in reality corporations are chartered and protected by governments and free markets simply don’t exist in today’s economy. In the case of social media “censorship,” we are told that the solution is to use government power to enforce “fairness” instead of simply launching our own alternative platforms. Yet, social media corporations exist in the form of monopolies exactly because of government power and intervention in business. The abuses of one “side” are being used to push us into the arms of the other side, which is just as abusive.

In terms of geopolitics, we are told that national powers stand “at cross-purposes;” that they have different interests and different goals, which has led to things like “trade wars” and sometimes shooting wars. Yet, when we look at the people actually pulling the strings in most of these countries, we find the same names and institutions.

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US Sanctions Foster Emergence of Multipolar World

August 16, 2018

US Sanctions Foster Emergence of Multipolar World

Russia, Iran, China, and now Turkey are in the same boat, as all have become the target of US sanctions. But none of those nations has bowed under the pressure. Russia had foreseen the developments in advance and took timely measures to protect itself. The Turkish national currency, the lira, is plummeting now that Washington has introduced sanctions as well as tariffs on steel and aluminum, in an attempt to compel Ankara to turn over a detained American pastor. Turkish President Erdogan said it was time for Turkey to seek “new friends,” and Turkey is planning to issue yuan-denominated bonds to diversify its foreign borrowing instruments. On Aug. 11, President Erdogan said Turkey was ready to begin using local currencies in its trade with Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, and the EU nations of the eurozone.

The recent BRICS summit reaffirmed Ankara’s commitment to the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) that is geared toward de-dollarizing its member states’ economies, and the agreement to quickly launch a Local Currency Bond Fund gives that policy teeth. Turkey has also expressed its desire to join BRICS.

Ankara is gradually moving toward membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It has been accepted as a dialog partner of that organization. Last year Turkey became a dialog partner with ASEAN. On Aug. 1, the first ASEAN-Turkey Trilateral Ministerial Meeting was held in Singapore, bringing together Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, ASEAN Secretary General Dato Lim Jock Hoi, and Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who is serving as the 2018 ASEAN term chairman. The event took place under the auspices of the 51st ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting that attracted foreign ministers and top diplomats from 30 countries.

Ankara is mulling over a free-trade area (FTA) agreement with the Eurasian Union. This cooperation between Ankara and the EAEU has a promising future.

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The End of the US Unipolar Moment Is Irreversible

August 14, 2018

The End of the US Unipolar Moment Is Irreversible

The past weeks have shown how part of the American establishment is weighing the pros and cons of the Trump administration’s strategies around the world. I have a strong feeling that in the coming weeks we will see the destabilizing effects of American politics, especially towards its closest allies.

A disastrous flip of events appears to be on its way, in case Trump were to lose the November midterm elections (the House and Senate elections). If this were to happen, the Trump administration would probably exploit the Russia gate conspiracy claiming that Moscow had now acted in favour of Democrats. Trump could argue that Moscow was disappointed by the lack of progress in softening US sanctions against Russia; indeed, by Trump’s measures against Russia (expulsions, sanctions, property seizures) and its allies (China, Iran and Syria).

Trump would not hesitate to claim Russian interference in the midterms to aid the Democrats, citing intelligence reports. He would say that Russia aims to create chaos in the US by placing roadblocks in the way of attempts to “Make America Great Again” and handing the House and Senate to the Democrats. He would use the electoral defeat to blame his accusers of getting aid from Russia. In doing so, he would be accelerating the implosion of his administration in an all-out war with the establishment. The mainstream media would dismiss Trump’s accusations against the Democrats of collusion with Russia as a conspiracy theory of an unravelling presidency. All this, summed up, would lead to the Democrats having majority in both houses, easily proceeding to the impeachment of Trump.

Italy is piggybacking on the US, operating side by side with Washington to expand its role in North Africa, especially in Libya. However, Rome will have to offer something in return to please Trump.

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