The U.N. Security Council’s condemnation of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, along with the isolation of Cuba, show what U.S. assertion of raw power is doing to what remains of internationalist principles.
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani addressing the Security Council on March 11, when the council adopted Resolution 2817 (2026) condemning Iran’s attacks against the territories of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Jordan. (UN Photo/Evan Schneider)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Consider these following passages in a text that is now entered officially in the record of United Nations proceedings. I draw from Security Council Resolution 2817, which the 15–member council passed on March 11.
At issue in the vote that passed this document is the presence or otherwise of the principles of internationalism — solidarity, parity, sovereignty, global justice. In another context, and I will address this shortly, the same question arises as the Trump regime effectively blockades Cuba to the point it is in danger of collapse.
The Security Council acted in response to Bahrain’s request for a special session on the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran and the latter’s retaliatory attacks on various targets in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region.
These clauses announce what the council decided to do. I rearrange the verbs, put some emphasis in bold and nothing more:
“– Affirms the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense in response to the deplorable armed attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran, as recognized by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter,
— Deplores the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including airports, energy installations, objects necessary for food production and distribution, and critical civilian infrastructure, as well as the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas and their consequences for the civilian population, as well as attacks and threats on merchant and commercial vessels in and near the Strait of Hormuz…;
— Condemns in the strongest terms the egregious attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran against the territories of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan and determine that such acts constitute a breach of international law and a serious threat to international peace and security;
— Further condemns that residential areas were attacked, that civilian objects have been targeted and that the attacks resulted in civilian casualties and damage of civilian buildings; and express solidarity with these countries and their people;
—Demands the immediate cessation of all attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran against Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan;
— Demands that the Islamic Republic of Iran immediately and unconditionally cease from any provocation or threats to neighboring States, including the use of proxies;
— Calls upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to comply fully with its obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, particularly regarding the protection of civilians and civilian objects in armed conflict….”
And so on through nine clauses. The text of UNSC 2817 is here. It passed by a vote of 13 members in favor and two abstentions.
Having overcome my loss for words on reading this resolution, let me address the fundamental questions, of which several, raised by this document and the vote on it.
Straight off the top, UNSC 2817 is a diabolically clear example of what I call the meta-reality the Western powers now impose, with the acquiescence or cooperation of their numerous client states, on the community of nations.
Iran’s Legitimate Self-Defense
The funeral for the victims of the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
An earlier draft of the resolution by Bahrain audaciously read, “Condemns in the strongest terms the unprovoked and egregious attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran …”
Russia, China, and some non-aligned members of the council strongly objected to accusing Iran of an unprovoked attack given that Israel and the U.S. were the ones who conducted the unprovoked attack on Iran.
Bahrain and the G.C.C. countries agreed to remove “unprovoked” but added, “determines that such acts constitute a breach of international law and a serious threat to international peace and security.”
The text still makes not the slightest sense when applied to Iran’s legitimate self-defense: “The deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects,” “the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas,” “a breach of international law and a serious threat to international peace and security”:
Turn the resolution upside down and aim it at the United States and the Zionist regime, and it makes perfect sense.
This is the real-time construction of the meta-reality a late-phase imperium requires to justify its thoroughly unjustifiable conduct toward another nation. This is the extent to which it has bribed, coerced or otherwise forced the world’s less powerful nations to support this grotesque edifice of illusion.
There are not many surprises among the 13 nations that backed 2817. The French, British and Americans supported it — the last, in my surmise, having almost certainly dictated the draft of the resolution. It goes without saying Bahrain, of course one of America’s Persian Gulf dependencies, would not have acted without guidance from Washington.
Latvia, Liberia, Congo, Somalia, Pakistan: They will all have their reasons for going along with this preposterous document. You hoped for more from the Greeks and the Danes, maybe, but they, too climbed on.
So did Gustavo Petro’s Colombia, and we can be surprised and not surprised all at once: President Petro has stood up honorably to the Trump regime and in favor of international law, but this makes his nation highly vulnerable to attack of the kind that has befallen Venezuela or Iran or some other variant in between.
No, the surprises for me lay elsewhere. They are two.
Apart from the Security Council vote, some 135 nations backed 2817 in the General Assembly. There was no vote in the G.A.: These were voluntary endorsements, “co-sponsorships,” and the 135 figure marks a record high in these things.
Why? Why — let me single out this nation — is India on this list of co-sponsors? Think of it: India, which has counted principled nonalignment as the pillar of its diplomacy since Jawaharlal Nehru gave the nation’s foreign policy its essential character eight decades ago.
Then there were the Russians and the Chinese, permanent members of the Security Council. Neither exercised its veto to block this nonsensical attack not only on Iran but on law, logic and reason itself.
Why turns into why not? Why did Russia and China choose to abstain while covering themselves with limp-wristed calls for a ceasefire?
“What unfolded at the Security Council on Wednesday is not merely a diplomatic misstep — it is another demonstration of how far the world’s most powerful states have drifted from justice, truth and responsible leadership.”
That is Annette Morgan, who contributed a fiery denunciation of the March 11 proceedings in these pages. Her outrage, widely shared, is directed toward Russia and China as much as the United States and its European clients.
Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, tried to recover some dignity with these remarks post vote:
“To our deep regret, the resolution that has just been adopted is framed precisely in such a biased and one-sided tone. It muddles up the cause and effect. If someone who is not well versed in international affairs reads this resolution, they will inevitably get the impression that Tehran, willingly and out of malice, conducted an unprovoked attack on Arab countries.
At the same time, the attacks against the territory of Iran itself, let alone those who are behind them and carrying them out, are not only not condemned in the document but simply left out. And the Security Council has just signed off on this.”
These are principled objections, every one of them straight to the point. How Ambassador Nebenzya got from these to an ineffectual abstention rather than a vociferously delivered veto of 2817 is simply beyond me. He ought to have banged his shoe on his desk in protest, a pointed reference to Khrushchev’s famous gesture in the General Assembly in 1960.
Ian Williams, a longtime correspondent at the U.N., had a properly scathing piece last Friday in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a seven-times-a-year journal published by the American Educational Trust, a non-profit organization. Referencing F.D.R.’s famous day-of-infamy remark after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Williams writes:
“However, perhaps the events of 3–11 should be considered more consequential than mere infamy…. At least the resolution did not include Israel among the states listed as victims of Iranian ‘aggression,’ but the silence is deafening.”
Williams’ piece goes on to relate the vote on 2817 to the U.N.’s endorsement last November, via Resolution 2803, of the Trump regime’s 20–point “peace plan” and its “Board of Peace,” which, as others have remarked, amounts to a full-frontal challenge to the U.N.’s authority.
From the Williams piece:
“His [Trump’s] war of attrition against the United Nations and international order is only slightly different from the campaigns that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its congressional allies have waged against the U.N. for decades.”
These observations suggest the magnitude we should assign to the March 11 events at the U.N. and lead Williams to pose the question with which he begins: “Is the United Nations dead, or merely crippled?”
This is one of my questions, too. Williams leaves it unanswered and so will I, but I share his evident pessimism on this very large point.
Bygone Solidarity
Fidel Castro speaking in Havana, 1978. (Marcelo Montecino, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The vote on 2817 prompts me to pose another question — this one I consider of equal or greater importance: What has happened to the admirable internationalism once prevalent among non–Western nations, especially the scores that won independence in the decades after the 1945 victories. Does “internationalism,” the very term, now sit on a museum shelf gathering dust, a curious artifact of another time?
There is no avoiding this question as the U.S.–Israeli aggression against Iran continues. Or as we contemplate the significance of Russia’s and China’s failures to veto UNSC Resolution 2817. Or as the Trump regime blocks Cuba’s petroleum supplies to the point it cannot turn on the lights, its people are beginning to starve and its health care system, once among the world’s most admired, nears collapse.
Where are Iran’s allies and friends? Where Cuba’s?
In the weeks before the U.S.–Israeli attacks on Iran there were numerous reports that the Russians and Chinese were assisting the Islamic Republic as it prepared to defend itself against the imminent aggressions of the Americans and the Israeli regime of terror.
Both Russia and China were said to be dramatically increasing shipments of critical military technologies to Iran — advanced drones, air defense systems, missile components, a data-link network that would get Iran out of the West’s G.P.S. system.
In mid–February, Russia, China, and Iran began joint naval exercises in the northern end of the Indian ocean, the Gulf of Oman and — it does not get more pointed — the Strait of Hormuz.
Ah, I thought, and wrote elsewhere: This is what internationalism looks like in the 21st century. This is the new world order as it is on the ground (and in the air).
The BRICS nations, of which these three are members, are, yes, the still-in-formation descendant of the old Non–Aligned Movement, which was the beating heart of the internationalist ethos after it declared its principles at Bandung in 1955 and, six years later, formally constituted itself in Belgrade.
That assessment may prove right, but I do not stand by it so ebulliently as I did when I first made it. Where are the Russians and Chinese now that the Islamic republic is under daily siege? Where were they on March 11, when 2817 was put up for a vote?
If there is a nation other than Cuba that has stood more steadfastly for the principles of internationalism I cannot think of it.
Readers of a certain age may recall Operation Carlota, by way of which Fidel Castro, beginning in late 1975, sent several hundred thousand troops and many thousands of doctors to aid the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the MPLA, as it defended itself against various proxies armed and financed by the C.I.A.
Jump cut to March 2020, when, post–Fidel, Cuba sent a large detachment of doctors to aid Lombardy, the worst-hit of the Italian provinces as the Covid–19 virus spread. The Cubans still bear the banner, we can conclude with admiration.
And now, in their hour of need?
Raw Power Seeking Self-Preservation
President Donald J. Trump overseeing attacks on Iran at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida, on Feb. 28. (White House / Daniel Torok)
Claudia Sheinbaum is in the same fix as Gustavo Petro now: She was forced to cut off Mexico’s supplies of petroleum to Cuba under threat of U.S. sanctions just as Petro’s ambassador at the U.N. was effectively coerced into supporting the egregious 2817. There is no pretending in matters of relative strength and relative weakness.
This month Russia has sent two tankers of oil to Cuba. The Sea Horse, believed to be carrying about 190,000 barrels of Russian diesel and gasoil and the Anatoly Kolodkin, laden with 730,000 barrels of crude oil, are headed to Cuba, according to a CNBC report.
This is despite the U.S. Treasury Department saying that, under penalty of tariffs, the ships will not be allowed into Cuba. Treasury is making an exception to its lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russian oil because of the Hormuz crisis.
The Kolodkin is expected in Cuba by next Monday with enough fuel to keep Cuba going for just 10 days, according to a report in NPR.
It is not enough, but is Moscow calling Washington’s bluff? It ought to be, with the certainty Trump and his people will not dare reenact the Cuban Missile Crisis, this time over oil supplies.
The Chinese are reportedly sending quantities of solar panels — great, modest? It is not clear — to the Cubans. O.K., it is a clever move to counter the Trump regime’s illegal and inhumane blockade while also helping Cuba transition to post-fossil sources of energy.
But I have to wonder what Sukarno or Zhou Enlai or Nehru or Tito would think of plane loads of solar panels as a manifestation of internationalism as they understood it. I leave readers to finish the thought.
It is the same as with the Russians: Were the Chinese to dispatch convoys carrying rice, medicines, and various much-needed technologies to the Cuban Republic, the Trump regime could not possibly take the risk of a confrontation by interdicting them.
My reluctant conclusion: Internationalism is alive among us but not necessarily well. Why this? What has happened over how many years?
I knew you would ask. My thoughts are several.
One, remember when Vladimir Putin remarked that anyone who did not regret the demise of the Soviet Union had no heart, and anyone who thought it could be revived had no brain? The Russian president was onto something.
A lot else collapsed, if less dramatically, with the passage of the Soviet Union into history. So did the socialist (or Socialist in many cases) principles that were the very bedrock of post–1945 internationalism.
Anyone who spent time in the Global South from, say, the Reagan years onward could see the tide of neoliberalism sweeping in with all its flotsam — deregulation, privatization and so on.
Post–Cold War Russia, to finish this point, is state capitalist by any other name. The Chinese fiddle pointlessly with their “socialism with Chinese characteristics” rhetoric. Capitalist growth tends to supersede the consciousness of internationalism now.
Two, and related to the above point, with the Cold War’s end, the binary that defined the post–1945 decades more influentially than anything else is no more.
National identities and interests, long submerged, now supersede what we used to call blocs — Eastern, Western, Socialist. Think of the BRICS: Its members now run from social democracies of one or another variety to monarchies. We can still talk of the Global South, but it is no longer clear to me what this means.
Finally, there is the exercise of U.S. power.
Since 2001, when — my date for this — the American Century abruptly ended — Washington has asserted itself ever more lawlessly, coercively, viciously and violently. With Trump’s return to the White House, there is no longer even the pretense of America as “the light of the world.”
We now witness the late-phase imperium in defense of its lapsing dominance — raw power as it seeks to preserve itself. This will run its course, but there is little defense against it for the time being.
The March 11 vote at the U.N. is measure enough of what America’s extreme assertions of power are doing to what remains of the old internationalist principles.
It was John Whitbeck, the international attorney based in Paris, who passed on, via his privately circulated blog, the Ian Williams piece in Washington Report of Middle East Affairs. He appended this note as he did so:
“Perhaps the ‘international community’ should let the U.N. die, accepting that it has become, like the League of Nations before it, an ultimately failed experiment, and genuinely peace-loving and peace-seeking states should then found a new international organization so structured as to have a better chance of playing a constructive role in the world.”
I sometimes ask readers not to miss the optimism buried beneath my apparent pessimism as I comment on events. It is hard to miss either in this remark.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.
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Simply a superb piece of writing on the evolution of the multilateral dimension of international politics thus far. But a careful reflection on its contents would not lead one to easily accept his well articulated central thesis : the alleged demise of nation-states and internationalism and hence implicitly multi-polarity being shortchanged. The non-American evolving and ongoing international realities do not validate that thesis. The wishful demise of nation-state and hence internationalism is actually a phenomenological hangover of the West-launched post-modernism. This failed to register with the larger non-West that is still prospering well by ingesting modern values and embracing non-exploitative modernity. Thus, nation-states like China, Russia, Brazil, Iran, Korea, Vietnam and many others to varying degrees are in full pursuit of multipolarity via a recharged internationalism. Even the EU that was supposed to be a supranational supplant of European nationalism is more or less bursting at its seams by nations exiting therefrom, i.e. : BRIXIT etc. Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok is not even entertained as a pipedream today ! So, no internationalism is alive, reconfiguring and would be rekicking !
The non votes which allowed the resolution to pass was good as it is now proof that all the other signers are corrupt and have no moral standing.
SHOULD IRAN HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Of course Iran needs and should have nukes. It’s the only way to protect itself from psycho-nations like US and Israel. The problem is that it takes time to build a viable nuclear deterrent that will be taken seriously by both US and Israel. That’s why at the moment and until Iran is sure that the Hormuz closing has reached maximum leverage potential for a negotiated agreement that ensures the most reliable and credible deal they can obtain. That’s very difficult being that it is dealing with two unscrupulous scoundrels that can’t be trusted. I suggest “security assurances” from Russia and China.
China and Russia need to take the initiative and invoke the principle of “mutually assured destruction (MAD)” by openly warning the US and Israel that if they try to annihilate Iran with nuclear weapons Israel will also suffer the same fate. China and Russia should be prepared to act jointly not just as Iran’s proxy but as the only sane deterrent to acquisition or the use of the nuclear option by any nation. This must be taken seriously. It should not be interpreted as a threat to Israel but as an attempt to contain nuclear war through the concept of MAD.
Perhaps you’d be interested in the following 1 hr. plus interview with Ward Wilson, by Jay Shapiro: Myths and Madness
Nuclear War
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GWvBNTgfg
THE BIG FAT CONFABULATOR
The shit stain in the White house is at it again. Flapping it’s flabby lips to claim that the US is in negotiations with Iran to end the war. Sound familiar? Remember that negotiations with Russia over Ukraine were really his two real estate brokers yakking with the vacuous EU heads of state over how many points make a list. Then there was the Gaza negotiations about a peace that wasn’t.
There is even news that Pakistan, Türkiye and Egypt would be playing a game of telephone pretending Iran was on the other line.
telesurenglish.net/paki…
The truth is, Iran still won’t talk to “Trumpity Dumpty” or his realtors. Is this confabulation, psychosis, delusion or just plain lying? My guess: it’s a mad mix cocktail of all those that is the only thing he’s actually good at. If you can call being a lying sack of corrupt excrement “good”.
Siendo objetivos el dilema está entre “nostalgia o futuro”. En mi opinión , hay que ser sostalgicos de las cosas que si funcionarón y valientes para refundar el futuro?
God is in control
While I agree completely with the tenor of the article by Patrick Lawrence, I differ slightly on nuance.
Yes. Criticism of the United Nations is completely valid. But it was not the United Nations that voted through the resolution condemning Iran, it was the countries that did so. I reserve my main condemnation for Russia and China voting for the resolution.
Yes.
I know.
But sitting on your hands and abstaining is the same as voting for it.
It was a stab in the back.
They claim to be allies of Iran.
Is this the nail in the coffin for BRICS?
Pepe Escobar rightly condemns India, but what Russia and China have done to Iran, is in my view worse. They have hung the country out to dry.
If Iran survives, and I hope that they do, they, along with their allies (their real one’s I mean) stand as beacons of hope for the world.
I have failed so far to find the list of sponsors of the General Assembly vote, so that I can hand write down the names of the countries that did not vote against Iran. I am hoping that the Sahel countries at least did not support the resolution. If so it might give me a little confidence in the future of Africa.
John Rothery ? (currently in New Plymouth)
Your logical explanations in this article and your understandable disappointment with the complacency of China and Russia, the only two nations who can defend themselves against the “world’s only super-bully” is felt by many of us peace-loving progressives, and I agree with others the UN has become a worthless organization for preventing or stopping wars and for what it’s worth, abolished. All they did was pay lip service to the Palestinian Holocaust which continues on for the past 2 1/2 years, as an example of it’s ineptitude in stopping the barbaric slaughter of men, women children and babies, plus the depravation of food, clean water, medical supplies and other necessities of life, while the bogus “international community” looks the other way.
Kidnapping President Maduro and his wife and taking control of Venezuela’s oil? No moral outrage, which only emboldened the cowardly draft-dodger in the White House from now attacking Iran, under orders from the Evil One, Netanyahu, and the Israeli Crime Family or Likud, in hopes of destroying Iran. I only wish the Russians and Chinese had the moral courage and moral strength like the Germans and Japanese of the WWII era did, and say “enough is enough” and use their military might to stop our country and Israel, the two most war-like nations in the world. So far, from various reports, Iran is holding it’s own, and retaliating in self-defense, legal, under international law.
Turns out, as we the world are witnessing, how right the author is: Gustavo Petro’s Colombia is, as we speak, now in the ‘cross’ heirs of the imploding, cannibalistic imperium – a common occurrence, in the without premeditated thinking, conscious reasoning abilities – animal kingdom.
What is required here is a historically long overdue separation from blind instinct to conscious critical reasoning.
If “Animal instincts are innate, inherited behavior patterns that animals exhibit from birth without being taught”, then in actual reality witnessing “human doings” claiming they have reached a higher stage of evolution, is nothing more than a derivative self-delusion of cognitive dissonance.
The not so Gallant statement, “We are fighting ‘human animals’ is, in fact, a mirror reflection of what the broader, enlightening global populace is up against and fighting back, “acting accordingly”.
“Survival of the fittest” human animals, acting on innate instincts alone, having gained the secrets of atomic energy = annihilation, Armageddon extinction.
Apt AI overview: Armageddon extinction refers to an existential catastrophe that threatens to end human civilization or cause the total extinction of life on Earth. It represents a final, destructive event, often linked to nuclear war, environmental collapse, or asteroid impacts. It implies a, likely human-caused, tipping point leading to catastrophic loss.
It now appears that we can forget about Russia and China deflecting or forestalling a nuclear attack on Iran from US and Israel. On March 11 both Russia and China merely abstained instead of vetoing a UN security council resolution against Iran. “Neither Russia nor China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Wednesday that turned the tables on the war, falsely identifying Iran as the instigator of hostilities.”
We can now safely assume that Russia and China are just as capable of duplicitous conduct as the US and Europe. They don’t even have the courage to verbally come to the aid of a follow BRICS member and instead let a resolution implicate that Iran is the aggressor for attacking US bases in the gulf states. Taking the side of the despicable monarchies that allow attacks on Iran from those US bases and privately endorsed a war with Iran.
IS THERE NO MORAL INTEGRITY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD?
“The Chinese fiddle pointlessly with their ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ rhetoric. Capitalist growth tends to supersede the consciousness of internationalism now.”
Yes! What is required is leadership from below. The world’s people must join together in a program to rid themselves of for-profit economics and build real socialism where the globe’s resources are used only in aid of humanity rather than the profits of the brutal and corrupt death cult currently risking nuclear war rather than give up their riches.
Dear Linda, you nailed it very well!
But to be fair, the Chinese are not war-like imperialists like the US and Europe, in spite of building a formidable military force for self-defense. They are a merchant class and embrace the concept cooperation and not confrontation.
My other post hasn’t been posted yet and you’ll see what I said.
Amen
Well said and spot on Linda.
It is more imperial bullshit to complain about China’s socialism; the difference ultimately comes down to culture and thought. The Chinese are quite sincere in building a society, globally and domestically, that prospers humanity, while the imperialists dream of their own welfare exclusively.
UN = United Nationalists.
That’s the nicest way I can say it. I tend to use another N-word that is associated with a particular nationalist movement in the last century. That fits very well.
Notice very carefully how the United Nationalists are now rushing to Israel’s and the USA”s aid. US-Israel is losing this war, so now all the usual suspects are coming out of the woodwork to claim the need for an immediate cease-fire to protect the militant nationalists. The cries from the United Nationalists are growing that the aggressive and militarist nationalists who started this war must be protected from the consequences. This from the people who did jack-%@$^ to prevent the war.
The problem with the UN is that second word. It is why it was never going to work. A world of nations, each obsessed with its own nationalism, and in constant competition with each other, will never be a world of peace. “Imagine there’s no nations” — John and Yoko Lennon ‘Imagine’.
My initial shock at the Russian and Chinese abstentions has turned into disgust. They can dance around the reasons all they want, but the high regard I held (and still try to hold) for their diplomatic offices has come down substantially. The same goes for their response to helping Cuba. Very, very little and very, very late. Their chance to shine on the burgeoning new multi-nodal order (to borrow Amb. Freeman’s term) has set back their lofty goals and greatly damaged their credibility as powerful actors.
Meanwhile, in my country of Ecuador, we wallow in our sins. El Presidente offered four items for a national referendum last year–one of which was to allow for a process to amend the constitution, and another to allow unspecified “foreign bases,” as the constitution currently prohibits such troops on our soil. All four items on the ballot were expected to pass, and all four went down in flames. I was thrilled. But alas, the love child of Marco Rubio has brought in US troops, the FBI, and this week, the Nimitz arrived off our shores. All at the same time, the government signs a “trade agreement” to relieve the country of sanctions, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, and gives non-expiring benefits to the US for “preferential status” on imports into Ecuador. We are being colonized, not so slowly and ever so surely.
None of us knows what China and Russia have done or are doing for Iran. All we DO know is that they have done much and will do more. It is Iran, however, that decides what help it needs and, to date, it has repeatedly expressed its intention to claim 10o% of the glory of the greatest victory this century to underline its regional superpowerdom.
Sun Tzu declares that a general should always have prepared for a war in such a way that the war is over by the time it begins. This means when the brawling bullies from the USA begin their war with China, the brawling bullies will have already lost that war.
The interesting question is where does China stand today in that preparation? Is Iran a part of the plan to defeat America when America begins its long awaited war with China? Or, are we already seeing the end game where the bullies lose due to China’s preparations to lure the bullies into a fight in west Asia? The interesting question is where exactly are we along the Sun Tzu timeline today? The one thing we know for sure, the poker playing bullies won’t realize that they have already lost when in fact they have. They will still be trying to ‘bluff’ a big pot, in the belief that this will save their day.
Where does China stand in preparation for war with America?
I would say the war has already begun. Historians will argue about the defining moment but I would point to the 2014 coup (color revolution) in Ukraine. Or you could choose the break-out of hostilities in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February 2022. America instigated the coup in 2014 and encouraged Ukraine to attack the Donbas territories in 2022, expecting Russia to rapidly collapse. Which continues not to happen. Russia correctly views the war as one for its survival as a nation. China correctly recognizes that it was intended to be the next target after Russia.
Iran is strategic to both Russia and China; to Russia for its location and to China for its resources, oil in particular. I believe Russia and China are working hard to support Iran, while avoiding direct confrontation with America. In that sense the Iran war is the inverse of the Ukraine war, but different in that Iran is fighting for its survival. Ukraine, by contrast, could negotiate peace with Russia if America would allow that. But America still wants to bleed Russia down to the last Ukrainian.
I believe all the parties recognize that the American Empire is on the edge of collapse and therefore pulling every available lever to regain unipolar dominance both economically and militarily. The extremity of the American situation creates danger for all the rest because it is liable to behave erratically (we are seeing this now) as well as violently (we’ve been seeing that for a while).
This World War is a hybrid war in every possible way, and the information-propaganda aspect is more important that ever before. For that reason, it is more difficult than ever to obtain reliable information about what is happening; all of the major media in America are acting as a megaphone for the State and most of the media abroad go along with that. And most certainly those in the US sphere of influence.
At the same time, nobody, not even America, wants this to become a direct war between America and Russia or China. The consequences would be too extreme and irreparable. So no one will want to call it a war.
One possible reason China and Russia didn’t vote against the ridiculous resolution could be that they figured that (unfortunately) the UN is so meaningless nowadays that it’s not worth even slightly upsetting the irrational US…?
I agree. I think they recognize that the UN is only a tool of the US Empire and will never get better. Once the Empire is gone, there comes the opportunity for a better organization.
??
‘Iran (Islamic Republic of)’ ?
USA (Warmongering, Profiteering Republic of).
Appropriate, surely?
Thank you for the excellent article. I had to retreat from the crap that is called the evening news. And so I came to Consortium News and your article. It offers some consolation that one is not alone in the universe.
Fear is a powerful motivator. I’m disappointed to see Russia and China capitulate. Not a good sign. It’s going to be up to the populations of these countries to act in ways that make it extremely uncomfortable for their governments to continue to prop up this evil system. Humanity cannot afford to sit back and watch the world slip into total barbarism.
This article brings up for me the quotation attributed to the American poet, William Carlos Williams: “Leadership passes into empire, empire begets insolence, insolence brings ruin.”
The United Nations has run its course. A new Federation of Nations can more elegantly, practically, diplomatically and fairly can be designed.
So depressing. I feel that in all likelihood people in the future may discover international law as a brief footnote of the late 20th Century.
It is hard for me to comprehend how the world thinks it can survive US Empire and the moral black hole that is Israel, without a united front, or any solidarity? Do they really believe they are better off facing the Empire, each alone?
China has been the most disappointing. Immediately pivoting from multipolar vision to “how dare you ask us to do anything”, even if the ask is a simple veto.
I think the UN is dead now. It was on life support through Ukraine and Gaza, but after the Board of Peace vote (with again no vetos, or plausible excuses) that was really the death rattle, and this was the nail. It’s as if Russia and China are just letting the UNSC crash and burn, just like everyone else.
Only power matters now, and it seems the world hangs on the fierceness and intelligence of the most oppressed to beat the Empire, while anyone with power chooses not to use it, or to use it to destroy their own credibility (Europe).
What zeitgeist is this? I cant understand any of these people.
Agree, it’s depressing. Some analysts say Russia and China decided not to stand in the US’s path as it destroys its own credibility completely…and then its empire.
I didn’t think I’d live to see Iran defanged, much less the U.N. attempting to become relevant.
Not yet….Iran has the US over a barrel…of oil.