For the last few years, we’ve been hearing about the new Cold War; and remembering how we in the Third World had been drawn in during Cold War 1 as “hot spots”, hopefully, our leaders are treading carefully. This new Cold War, we’re told, is between the US plus its “Western allies” and the rampant China in the east. And while the “west is west, and the east is east”, it does look like the twain are meeting in several theatres – hot and cold!!
Now, this is the weirdest Cold War ever!! In the first one, between the USA/West and the USSR, wherein the latter presented an in-your-face challenge to the former on all fronts after WWII — militarily, ideologically, politically, economically, and every other form of “ally” you could think about!! — we, natives in the colonies, during that Cold War, were used as proxies to fight most of their battles. British Guiana, Ghana, the Congo, Afghanistan etc are grim reminders that when the elephants fight, the grass gets crushed!!
Now, this Cold War’s weird because, up to the seventies, China was wallowing in poverty, like the rest of us that are part of the “Third World”. The USSR and her satellites in Eastern Europe were the “Second World”. But it was President Nixon of the USA who flew to China in 1972 and brought them out of the cold and into the UN system of nations. But more than that, the Yanks then allowed their industrial behemoths to set up shop in China to “exploit” its cheap labour; and before you could say “chow mein”, China had become the “factory” of America and the West!! Profits, baby!! Profits!!
And since China was shipping oodles more goods to the USA than the USA was shipping to China, just as quickly, China had trillions in credit (represented by their currencies as “foreign reserves”) sloshing around in their pockets! So, rather than taking on the West in a military hot war – as they did in 1950 in the Korean War – China has launched a cold war on the economic front with something called the “Belt and Road Initiative”!! And the irony is that the US and EU allowed their factories to rust away, so Walmart and Amazon are still stocking their shelves and warehouses from China!! So, even as they try to pummel (by proxy) their old adversary Russia in Europe in the Ukraine hot war, the West is blowing hot and cold at China.
The Yanks have restricted exportation of advanced chips to China, and two years ago, G7 leaders relaunched a rebranded “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment” to take on the B&R Initiative in “less developed countries.”
Can we play the two sides against each other??
…against corruption
In the Good Book, the Big Guy, His heir and His prophets assure us: “The poor will always be with you”. And they’re just grim about corruption. Right there in the first book, the Big Guy “…observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt.” And to make sure we understand that corruption is a hydra-headed monster, there’s a pretty graphic description in Timothy: “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unfeeling, uncooperative, slanderous, degenerate, brutal, hateful of what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, and lovers of pleasure.” Well!!
But we can’t give in, can we?? Just as it’s trying to use our newfound oil wealth to kickstart our economy through infrastructure projects, housing, industrialization, and direct injections of grants to the public’s pockets, the Government has acknowledged that corruption would inevitably have reared its ugly head. Now they have to launch a war against this monster before it consumes all of us.
La luta continua!!
…unfair
It’s said that “all’s fair in love and war”. However, the Geneva Convention set some rules. Article 48 declares that parties in conflict must distinguish between combatants and civilians. So, how about Israel and its pager bombs??
