{"id":3008,"date":"2024-09-23T07:42:12","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T07:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2024-09-23T12:31:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:31:29","slug":"china-threat-to-europe-camouflaged-as-peacemaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/china-threat-to-europe-camouflaged-as-peacemaking\/","title":{"rendered":"China: threat to Europe camouflaged as peacemaking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/a>
By James Johnson
23\/09\/2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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China-Brazil peace plan has now a new chance to be considered by the world community at UN General Assembly this week. Road to hell is paved with good intentions but whether the Old Granny-Europe is able to notice the reality? Do they confide to Xi so deeply that can afford do not read between the lines an obvious trap indications? Let’s lighten the shadow while it’s not too late. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The annual meeting of the UN General Assembly begins on Tuesday. Most readers might take this news as routine. It seems this will be just another ritual event in the great hall of the UN, somewhere far over the Atlantic. Brusselers, Parisians or Praguers actually mostly don\u2019t care it might have impact on them. But it won\u2019t be like that this time.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Their imagination may conjure up images of hundreds of state leaders wearing similar ties or exotic national costumes, delivering traditional pompous speeches about local or global issues. Now it\u2019s different.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This year’s General Assembly may be the beginning of tectonic processes that will directly affect the comfort zone in which ordinary European burghers are so willing to live.  China is the reason for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first it seems that it\u2019s not a serious threat. After all, the General Assembly is to discuss one of the most pressing issues on the world’s agenda: how to stop Russian aggression against Ukraine. Sincere or hypocritical words are to be heard about the need to end the war, and various actors will again speak of their readiness to become a peacemaker or mediator.<\/p>\n\n\n

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But it seems that this time Beijing is serious and expects to take the initiative firmly in its own hands. The moment is favorable for this: the uncertainty related the US presidential election opens an opportunity window for China. Appealing to the UN audience and referring to the alleged support of many states of the Global South for the Brazilian-Chinese \u201c6-Point Consensus\u201d initiative, China can now offer a real plan to \u201cend the war\u201d with specific measures and timelines. And thus launch the process of Russian-Ukrainian peace settlement according to the Chinese scenario.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Of course, this will not look like a \u201cChina plan\u201d in words. On the contrary, it will be constantly emphasized that the Global South (no matter how amorphous this term may seem), the BRICS, or even the \u201cworld majority\u201d is behind the initiative. To begin with, Beijing can simply gather a couple of dozen ministers or high-ranking representatives from the Global South on the sidelines of the General Assembly (of course, Ukrainians will not be invited to this meeting) to form a kind of \u201ccore\u201d group that can quickly expand to include other states in Africa, Latin America and Asia or regional international organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this will definitely not be the plan of Europe, which is experiencing the largest conflict since World War II, and certainly not the Ukraine\u2019s plan, which president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is persistently promoting as his version of a just peace.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Of course, the Chinese plan will contain many beautiful words, including appropriate and inappropriate references to the UN Charter. By manipulating words, it is possible to make the reference to the principle of sovereignty respect, which so sensitive to any victim of a neighbor’s invasion, mostly vague and unspecific, shifting the emphasis to \u201ctaking into account the security interests of each country\u201d (a favorite phrase of all autocratic regimes, dreaming of a world divided into zones of influence). But under the beautiful verbal wrapper, there is a simple essence: frozen war. The role of the \u201cworld majority\u201d spokesperson implies a hidden ultimatum to Ukraine (and thus to its allies) on behalf of China and the suspension would be as a result of it. At the same time, this freeze will bring exclusive dividends to China.<\/p>\n\n\n

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So where does the danger live?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 First, Beijing’s plan is beneficial to Russia. After all, it undermines all Ukraine’s efforts to organize a large peace summit, where the conditions for peace on the continent could be discussed with the participation of Kyiv, Moscow, and other related states.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Of course, the Chinese plan does not envisage a Russian victory, as portrayed by Russian propaganda, in the form of a tricolor over Kharkiv, Kyiv, or Odesa, a constitutional renunciation of Ukraine’s legitimate territories, or the immediate Western sanctions lifting.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Chinese plan is more about, as they call it in Beijing, \u201cnot letting Russia lose\u201d the war whose main beneficiary has long been China (just consider about the of natural resources amount Moscow is forced to give away for almost nothing in exchange for continued supplies of critical products).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, Moscow will pay Beijing for this service with even greater concessions, and the unstoppable movement towards dependence on China, which Russians are trying so hard not to notice, will accelerate even more.<\/p>\n\n\n

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And second, the success of the Chinese plan will be a great foreign policy success for China itself, and its consequences aren\u2019t worth to underestimate. Beijing will not only consolidate its role as the leader of the Global South, leveling the influence of the West and crystallizing a \u201cmajority coalition\u201d loyal to China in the Russian-Ukrainian peace settlement. The Celestial Empire will try to \u201creassemble\u201d the global security architecture in its own way. To build a world where Beijing, but not international law, will be the key arbiter in all conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n

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But let’s get back to Europe. \u201cWhat’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?\u201d What do we Europeans care about this global policy, China-Brazil initiatives, or China-Russia trade? Why should we be wary of Chinese initiatives on the sidelines of the General Assembly? Moreover, this Beijing initiative is only the first step, and its real contours and scale will be visible later – in a month at the BRICS summit in Kazan or later during the \u201cpeace conference on Ukraine\u201d convened by Beijing. Or during the culmination of the drama – during the China initiated peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, where both sides will be forced to sit down at the negotiating table (of course, with China mediation, but to make the picture less gloomy, Beijing would be eager to involve one of the powerful European actors as mediator).<\/p>\n\n\n

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The answer is simple. Brussels, Paris, Berlin and other European capitals must clearly understand as an unacceptable the idea of resolving any conflict by imposing ultimatum conditions (even camouflaged as the \u201cwill of the global majority\u201d) to the parties of the conflict, especially to the victim of aggressor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 1939 One Day already raised an open question to the European security architecture\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to make sure that the coming September days in New York do not become an unnoticed \u201cbeginning of the end\u201d of European subjectivity.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SourceBy James Johnson23\/09\/2024 China-Brazil peace plan has now a new chance to be considered by the world community at UN…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-choise"],"views":1049,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3022,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions\/3022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}