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Washington expects U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the United States before year-end, whether at next week’s U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) or after, the State Department said on Monday. 

“I’ll let the Chinese government speak to whether Wang Yi will or will not attend UNGA next week. But that said, whether it’s UNGA or whether it is after UNGA sometime before the end of the year, it is still our expectation that Secretary Blinken will host Foreign Minister Wang Yi here in the United States,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters. 

The Wall Street Journal, citing people briefed on the matter, reported last week that China is planning to dispatch Vice President Han Zheng to UNGA, instead of sending Wang Yi on a broader U.S. trip as previously signaled.  

The annual gathering of world leaders comes after U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday expressed disappointment that Chinese President Xi Jinping was not attending an upcoming summit of G20 leaders in India, but added that he was going to “get to see him.” 

Biden did not elaborate, but the next likely opportunity for Biden to hold talks with Xi, as the two countries seek to stabilize troubled relations, is an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco in November. 

China’s top security agency has hinted that any meeting between Xi and Biden in San Francisco later this year will depend on the United States “showing sufficient sincerity.” 

“As the president has said, he hopes to meet with President Xi sometime later this fall. We believe there is no substitute for one-on-one conversations at the leader level, so we will continue to work towards the possibility of that,” Miller said on Monday. 

Blinken traveled to Beijing in June, where he met with Wang’s predecessor, Qin Gang, in the first visit by the top U.S. diplomat to China in five years. The U.S. State Department said then that they held “candid, substantive, and constructive” talks, and Blinken invited Qin to Washington to continue discussions. 

Blinken subsequently met Wang on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Jakarta in Qin’s absence. 

Three other senior U.S. officials have traveled to China for meetings after Blinken’s visit, but Chinese officials have yet to travel to the United States for talks. 

Wang, 69, served as foreign minister from 2013 to 2022 as ties frayed with the United States to a point that Beijing described as an all-time low. 

Armenia picks Michael A. Goorjian’s ‘Amerikatsi’ for Oscar race …  Public Radio of Armenia

1. Armenia 0-1 Croatia – Highlights  beIN SPORTS
2. MATCHDAY: Portugal takes on surprise challenger Luxembourg. Croatia faces Armenia  Toronto Star
3. Croatia beats Armenia 1-0 to climb atop Euro qualifying group in match delayed by drone  The San Diego Union-Tribune

1. Armenia launches joint military drills with United States that anger Moscow  The Associated Press
2. Armenia Kicks Off Drills with U.S. Amid Strained Russia Ties  The Moscow Times
3. Armenia-US military exercise kicks off near Yerevan  Reuters

Russia’s dilemma in Nagorno-Karabakh: you cannot leave you …  Mediamax.am

The July military coup in the west African country of Niger has once again brought attention to the fact that the US government runs a global military empire that serves Washington’s special interests, and not the national interest.

Before the coup made news headlines, most Americans – including many serving in Congress – had no idea the US government maintains more than 1,000 troops stationed on several US bases in Niger. But it’s even worse than that. A recent report in The Intercept suggests the Pentagon repeatedly misled Congress about the extent and the cost of the US presence in Niger. 

According to The Intercept, “in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of US Africa Command described Air Base 201 (in Niger) as ‘minimal’ and ‘low cost.’” In fact the US government has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on the base since construction began in 2016.

So when did Congress declare war so as to legalize US military operations in Niger? They didn’t. But as Kelley Vlahos writes in Responsible Statecraft, US troops have been “training” the military in Niger since 2013 and the US government has constructed a number of military bases to “fight terrorism” in the country and region.

Does that mean that the Pentagon is operating in Niger under the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) meant to track down those who attacked the US on 9/11? It’s a good question and thankfully one being asked by Sen. Rand Paul in a recent letter sent to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Senator Paul first pointed out in the letter, “the Administration’s limitless interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF and frequent use of Title 10 authorities results in military operations abroad conducted with little Congressional oversight and even less public scrutiny.” Such actions “undermine our Constitution,” he writes as he asks, “in how many countries are US forces conducting operations authorized by the 2001 AUMF.”

Ironically – or maybe not – one of the coup leaders in NIger had been trained by the Pentagon at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. What is the US government training foreign military officers to do, exactly? Overthrow their own governments?

Whatever the case, it appears the coup government in Niger may be seeking a withdrawal of foreign military on its soil. Mass protests against French military presence has led the French government to begin talks with the coup government on withdrawal. There are rumors that the coup government may next request US troops to leave the country.

We should pre-empt their possible request by withdrawing all US troops immediately from Niger (and the rest of Africa) and closing all military bases. The claim that the US government is fighting terrorism in the area is doubtful. After all, in both Libya and in Syria the US government backed terrorist groups against governments it sought to overthrow. President Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan famously wrote to his then-boss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 that, “in Syria, al-Qaeda is on our side.”

Congress must step up and exercise its oversight authority to end the counter-productive US military presence in Africa. Our military empire is bankrupting us and turning the rest of the world against us.

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This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Videos produced by The Drawdown Project –a project that appears to be well-funded and to have the support of some (but not enough) powerful institutions—outline what must be done to prevent more climate catastrophes worse than the catastrophes already happening.  The main staff members of the project, including the narrator of the videos (Jonathan Foley) are climate scientists.  What must be done for the most part is in some measure already being done, but it is now done on too small a scale to stop or to reverse humanity´s lockstep march toward self-destruction.

What must be done includes drastic cutbacks in the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels.  Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels alone accounts for 62% of the global warming observed today.  About 40% of climate change is caused by other factors.  Construction using cement to make concrete and deforestation, for example, also add to CO2 emissions without being, strictly speaking, the burning of fossil fuels.  About 11% of today´s climate change is due to deforestation.

Emissions of other gases besides CO2 like methane and nitrous oxide also cause climate change.   Rice cultivation and gas belching farm animals are major methane culprits.  Fertilizer use is a major nitrous oxide culprit.  Fluorinated gases leaked, for example, from refrigeration, are also important.

Going back to the single biggest factor, burning fossil fuels, about 25% of the damage –the largest single component of that factor—is burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.  Food production, industry, and transportation (gas guzzling autos and airplanes) are not far behind.

Another part of the picture is formed by the sinks that take C02 and other harmful gases out of the atmosphere.  Natural sinks that remove CO2 from the atmosphere are found in forests, natural soils, and oceans.  To save itself and the biosphere humanity must, first and foremost, reduce emissions.  And to arrive at the sustainable planet that it is necessary –not optional—to create, humanity must follow up by protecting and enhancing natural sinks.

Without pretending to be social scientists or political philosophers, the climate change scientists at Project Drawdown assert that social justice and protecting the cultural heritage and land rights of indigenous peoples are indispensable components of transitioning to a sustainable world.  Foley (the narrator) confesses to being mystified by the apparently inexplicable tragic spectacle of human beings bitterly divided and hostile to one another, polarized and armed.  Project Drawdown might be heard to be shouting over and over,

“Whatever it is that you are doing that is keeping you from doing what must be done to reverse climate change, stop doing it, and instead do what must be done.”

Some causal connections explaining the social paralysis standing in the way of doing what must be done are not hard to see.  Two examples:

1. The general objective of South Africa´s National Development Plan (NDP) is to achieve 5% annual economic growth, and then to use the surplus generated by the growth to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.  The NDP pays lip service to fighting climate change, but in the end the overriding goal of growth trumps doing what must be done.  The NDP funds building a new railroad to carry coal from mines to ports in order to create jobs and to grow the economy with the revenues earned by selling coal to India.
2. Appalachian miners afraid of losing their steady jobs and being dumped into the precariat, rally in support of a populist presidential candidate carrying signs proclaiming, “Trump mines coal.”

These easy to see examples of the frustration of ecology by economics suggest a simple general approach to understanding polarization and paralysis:  economic imperatives inherent in the dominant system clash with what must be done.   It is a simple approach that might be classified, if it must be assigned to a discipline, under the heading “philosophy of history” or “global dynamics,” or “sociological theory” “global political economy” or “International Relations Theory.”  Whatever rubric best suits it, the same approach, I claim, that explains paralysis regarding  doing what must be done a large scale to cope with climate change, helps  explain also paralysis in saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war;  paralysis in stopping organized crime, drug lords, and the steady advance of narco culture; and in general the inability of human beings as a species to work together to do what should be done and must be done.

Whatever the problem, the primary necessity to satisfy investors, where investors are the key decision makers deciding whether the economy stops or starts, is constraint number one.  This constraint further shortens the already short list of possible, as distinct from merely imaginable, solutions to the problem.

Here I do not mean that structural explanations exclude human creativity, rule out conspiracy theories, and deny the existence of conscious decision-making in one great Levi Straussian structuralist straitjacket.   I mean striking a balance recognizing both structural imperatives and conscious agency.

A good example of such a balance is Alfred Marshall´s Law of Substitution.  Whenever a more efficient way to run a profitable business doing or making something, for example generating electricity, is discovered, it will become, ceteris paribus, a substitute that will drive out old-fashioned customary practices.  Emile Durkheim makes a similar point when he gives as an example of a social fact, the fact that a businessperson could, if she or he chose to do so, opt for using obsolete technologies, but to do so would be to invite certain ruin.

Nonetheless, Durkheim cannot deny a flip side explicit in Marshall:  It is the conscious and often creative efforts day after day of businesspeople seeking success every day for their business, that drives an overall historical trend that leaves obsolete and inefficient technologies behind.   One could add other trends similarly driven.

So, I allege that the simple fact that in today´s business civilization most humans are on most days doing what they must do, to solve their immediate need to get by, pay their bills, and to keep their business going if they have a business, trying to make sure that in today´s win lose world, they are among the winners and not among the losers,  explains why everybody does not, immediately upon receipt of the news that a green transition is not optional but necessary, just down tools, pick up new tools, rewire brains, and set about doing what the Drawdown Project says humanity must do. This is not a complete explanation, but I do not know of any better approach to a first approximation.

Let´s approach the big picture via Keynes.  It changes everything, Keynes writes, to deny the best-known law in economics, Say´s Law, and to appreciate the far-reaching consequences of a chronic weakness of effective demand.  Its flip side is the chronic weakness of the inducement to invest.  Hardhearted as we have become living in the framework of today´s dominant institutions, we simply take it for granted and see it as natural that employers do not hire people because everybody needs a dignified livelihood, but rather if and when it is profitable to hire them.  Nothing seems more natural than pulling the USA out of a long depression with war spending, and then continuing economic growth led by government deficits featuring a permanent warfare state.  Nothing seems more natural than the elites (i.e., the investors) of the rest of the world counting on U.S. trade deficits to generate profitable trade surpluses for them.   Nothing seems more natural –in today´s dominant warped vision of reality—than reliance on permanent war establishments to generate economic security for millions who would not otherwise have it.

Designing a sustainable world that meets human needs in harmony with nature is not likely to figure as a relevant way to occupy one´s mind to a young person pursuing a military career.   That young person is quite likely to be seen by his or her family as a success compared to siblings and cousins who do low paying part time work at McDonald´s.  The less successful members of the family often tend to drift off into drug abuse and into the regular practice of the seven deadly sins.

It does not take much philosophy to persuade the former, the healthy young people pursuing a military career, that the moralistic rhetoric in the media that portrays her or him as honorably serving high ideals with advanced military technologies, trumps the agenda of the Drawdown Project.  Something that does spark their interest, when push comes to shove, is advancing their careers by accumulating combat hours.

There is not necessarily any coherent relationship between the life-worlds of the many different participants in the drama of history –between what is going on in their heads and what they do every day – and the structural fact that the system only works, with some unstable semblance of stability, when huge and unpayable debts are making up for the chronic weakness of effective demand and for the weakness of incentives to invest.

Looked at from a nonviolent perspective, the preceding simple idea is the flip side of another simple idea: what Mahatma Gandhi called modernity´s lack of dharma.  Gandhi´s coining of the word adharma names the norms that organize the life and define the personality of homo economicus.  

Step one of theorizing the dynamics moving history in today´s global economy should, I allege, consist first and foremost of identifying the constitutive rules of markets as causal powers.  They are the generative mechanisms that govern, ceteris paribus, the physical organization of the production of the means of subsistence that makes human life possible in today’s global economy.

It does not follow, however, that what most motivates human beings is the acquisition of the means of subsistence.  For example, there are many cases where the need for dignity and self-respect trumps the need for food.

It does follow that market economies are economies with losers. Many people cannot sell anything at a high enough price to make it possible to sleep legally in some space on the planet and to avoid the humiliation of not being able to play the roles of a normal member of society.  Violence and paralysis are built into the constitutive rules of buying and selling.  And not only because those rules organize and rationalize a world where warfare states are generated by a chronic need to strengthen the inducement to invest.

It follows that Kantian dreams of perpetual peace achieved by enforcing Kantian ethics and Kantian jurisprudence on a global scale are not much different from political realism.  Liberals inspired by Kant or Kant-like ideals, advocate rigid norms legally and morally obligatory everywhere and everywhen.  Often, they call it the rule of law.

The counter-dreams of the political realist define themselves as non-Kantian. Realist prescriptions can be defined as counter dreams (counter to idealistic liberalism).  They tolerate atrocities that allegedly are necessary atrocities. It turns out, nota bene, that using evils to fight allegedly greater evils often is a way to minimize the political risks to investors.  Thus it serves the cause of high economic growth and low inflation.   It rationalizes a global rule of law, a single world market organized by world rules, backed by the military might of a hegemon.  The classic Kantian and realist viewpoints (today joined by several others) turn out to be complementary ways to organize a world order that systematically generates humiliation, conflict, and violence.  Both lend themselves to imagining that the problem (growth) is the solution (growth).   Neither one takes seriously the findings of the climate scientists or aims to liberate humanity from the tyranny of economic imperatives.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS)

Neither incumbent President Ibrahim Solih nor challenger Mohamad Muizzu got 50% plus in the September 9 poll   

In the Maldivian Presidential election held on September 9, neither incumbent President Ibrahim Solih nor his principal challenger, Dr.Mohamad Muizzu, got 50% plus votes to be elected President. Therefore, there will be a run-off, which is earmarked for September 30.

In the run-off, there will be only two candidates, namely, Solih and Muizzu, and in that election too, one of the two will have to get 50% plus votes to be declared elected President. 

In the September 9 poll, Dr. Mohamed Muizzu got 100,342 or 46.19%; Ibrahim Mohamed Solih got 84,805 or 39.04%; Ilyas Labeeb 15,191 or 6.99%; Umar Naseer 6,135 or 2.82%; Qasim Ibrahim 5,541 or 2.55%; Ahmed Farish Maumoon 3,097 or 1.43%; Mohamed Nazim 1,795 or 0.83%; and Hassan Zameel got 325 or 0.15%

Maldives has consistently gone to run-offs in Presidential elections where more than two candidates had contested. Elections in 2008 and 2013 both went to run-offs, while only two candidates had contested the 2018 election.

President Ibrahim Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), was seeking a second term. But the MDP was split, with parliament Speaker and former President Mohamed Nasheed quitting and floating a new party called the “Democrats”. The Democrats put up Ilyas Labeeb as its Presidential candidate. 

The main opposition party, the Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM) led by former President Abdulla Yameen had also split with one faction forming the Peoples’ National Congress (PNC) and putting up Dr.Mohamed Muizzu, the Mayor of Male, as its candidate. 

Since the PPM was associated with former President Abdulla Yameen, who is in jail for corruption and is barred from contesting, the PNC was formed to contest the election. 

The Yameen faction in the PPM had pledged support to PNC, but many of its members who were very close to Yameen, found it difficult to switch their loyalty to Muizzu. Therefore, there were doubts about full support for Muizzu from his former colleagues in the PPM. 

Muizzu had also got his nomination from the PNC with a razor-thin majority of two votes. His support base was therefore not so strong. He was also said to have made money as Yameen’s Housing Minister though he had won kudos for his drive as a Minister and Male’s Mayor. 

The “Democrats” had approached the PPM and the PMC for support to their candidate Ilyas Labeeb to defeat the common enemy Solih. But given the PPM’s strong antagonism towards Nasheed, these advances were spurned. 

To complicate matters, there were other candidates in the fray.  These were former Ministers Mohamed Nazim and Umar Naseer fighting as Independents; tycoon Qasim Ibrahim (Jumhoory Party); and Faris Maumoon, a son of former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, fighting as an Independent.

Though none of these candidates had a chance of winning, they could force a second round of voting called run-off. And this was what happened finally.

Ibrahim Solih’s strengths were his moderation and his ability to keep a good relationship with India, his principal international supporter, and also China, a major investor in Maldives. 

However, Solih’s administration had been lacklustre, though he launched major India-financed infrastructure projects. 

The country’s economic performance had not been bright, though not entirely due to his government. World conditions also impacted adversely. 

The government faced external debt servicing payments of US$ 393 million on average over the next three years amidst tightening global financing conditions. The country’s total debt was US$ 1 billion according to Solih, but it was US$ 2 billion according to the opposition.

Solih pledged to tackle corruption and advance human rights. But in reality, he failed to bring essential reforms to the justice system, said the Human Rights Watch (HRW). The influence of Islamist extremist groups remained pervasive within the Solih government, police, and the judiciary, HRW added.

On July 31, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated key leaders and financial facilitators of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda in the Maldives, including 20 ISIS, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), and al-Qaeda operatives. The OFAC also designated 29 companies associated with the individuals sanctioned. 

Dr. Muizzu’s strengths were his reputation as an efficient administrator of infrastructure projects under President Yameen and his good work as Male’s Mayor. Muizzu pointed to challenges faced by the elderly in finding a means of income after retirement and announced that citizens between the ages of 65 and 75 would be offered contractual work, renewable on a yearly basis, besides a pension and an allowance of MVR 5,000. 

His appeal to the Islamic constituency was also a plus point in an avowedly Islamic Maldives. He was once with the Islamic Adaalath Party but joined the PPM only to become a Minister in Yameen’s government. 

A Muizzu Presidency could, therefore, worry New Delhi. China will also not be pleased with Muizzu because he is not openly pro-Beijing unlike his former chief Yameen. Muizzu had portrayed himself as a middle roader in the run-up to the polls, in the context of the Sino-Indian rivalry in the Maldives. 

In fact, in the election, the Sino-Indian issue had taken a backseat.

Ilyas Labeeb of the Democrats was close to the Democrats’ founder Mohamed Nasheed. This was at once a blessing and a drawback because Nasheed had been brazenly controversial while being popular. 

Nasheed wanted to change the Maldivian constitution from the Presidential to the Westminster system and was a diehard secularist. But both are problematic issues in conservative cum Islamic Maldives. 

Labeeb is a computer science graduate from Coventry University, UK. He combined technical expertise with a deep passion for public service, making him a dynamic leader. He had served as the Chair of the State-Owned Enterprises Committee, playing a vital role in overseeing the efficient management of public enterprises. Being young he hoped to tap into the votes of the 30-40 age group, which had traditionally supported Nasheed. 

But in the final analysis, the choice before the voters was between Solih and Muizzu. 

(This article appeared in The Citizen)

The G20 Summit was a watershed moment with different implications for all major powers present. It remained the ultimate playbook of strategic and brilliant geopolitical moves in strengthening key partnerships, addressing shortcomings and initiating wise and strategic chess moves in a new domain of power strategy and friendshoring efforts. India and the US scored big in the absence of Xi and Putin, and Beijing and Moscow saw their grip further squeezed by a flurry of moves and consolidations.

Holding the Bridge for G20 Unity

India drew praise from all camps for negotiating a compromise, displaying its diplomatic nous and mastery of charm and friendshoring tactical genius. The watered down declaration on the issue of Ukraine and Moscow has been a huge debate, especially on how Biden can eventually agree and endorse the final communique.

India remains more critical for the US, rather than risking ties and deeper trust and support and faith from Delhi with rejection of the declaration. China is the biggest picture here, and by not wanting to embarrass Delhi by rejecting the declaration and to embarrass Modi and the host, Biden saw the bigger priority in getting Delhi on board in the long game against China. Besides, by agreeing with the declaration, it will not jeopardise the stand of the US towards Russia, and there is no message being sent to Moscow from Washington that it will tone down on its approach to supporting the Ukraine or in describing Moscow’s aggression.

The move to preserve the importance of G20 in addressing common shared threats, especially non-traditional threats, remains the higher priority, especially for Biden’s upcoming elections. However, the move is also meant to send a subtle message to Beijing that the US has a wider and more strategic room and opening to be more flexible and strategic in its playbook, with the potential to turn the tide and use Moscow against Beijing, which will mark the end of Beijing’s most critical lifeline and support and for Beijing to be most seriously cornered and squeezed in a full circle of encirclement from all flanks.

The Russian Factor

It remains a win for India to get a declaration at all, seeing how Beijing and Moscow have tried to block and dictate in the past.
Delhi still wants to maintain its strategic role and growing influence and leadership position in the world by maintaining its long held strategic neutrality approach and playing the greater responsibility of bringing peace and stability.

This can only be achieved through focusing on the solutions and future progressive collective actions that will require actions, responsibilities and compromises on all sides, and Delhi wants to be seen as the power in that direction in playing the mediating role and not to contribute to the ongoing stalemate and potential escalation of conflict.

Russia is still critical for India’s future transition to global primacy, especially in food security and the vast potential it offers in energy and food assurances with its future advantage in the Siberian opening up with growing climate warming that will fasten the fertility and offerings of the Siberian plank in food cultivation capacity and resources.

The potential of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route in which Russia has predominant influence also directly impacts the naval and geostrategic advantage of Delhi in the Indian Ocean, being the future next trade and geopolitical advantage and potential flashpoint, which will impact on the Indian Ocean’s worth.

India is cognisant that for it to be the leader in regional and global primacy, it will need to depend on short term urgent needs on its energy and oil resources, the need to fill the gap on its short term deficit in self-sufficiency in offensive power postures and capacity, and the inevitability of food security, all of which Russia plays a major role in supporting these fronts.

Unless and until India has achieved its self reliance on these, and with the historical friendship and support shown by Russia in its predecessor Soviet Union, Russia remains a needed player for India’s rise.

Russia is also needed to be on India’s side in future power play that will benefit India, in breaking the alliance between Moscow-Beijing and to isolate Beijing further militarily, by having Russia on the side of India in a potential all confrontation with China especially in the Himalayan border.

Moscow remains a future strategic advantage and asset to break China’s containment of India especially in rival states and neighbouring zones including Pakistan and Central Asia.

By taking the non-partisan and non-confrontational approach in balancing the power plays between both the West and Moscow-Beijing, Delhi is also signalling to others that it remains the ultimate playmaker and eventual emerging kingmaker with greater primacy and influence in having its own unique model and systemic value in its global leadership, with its One World, One Family and One Future mantra.

This is to spearhead a new doctrine and order that is based on equality, justice, inclusivity and balanced harmonisation of interests and common framework of peace, dialogue and stability in a balanced polarity, knowing that this distinctively sets India apart from China as the leader with the pillar and foundation on democratic principles and universal progressive values with trust and stability in a responsible and measured manner, as compared to Beijing’s hard power expansion through different tools with implications on peace and stability of the rules based order.

However, Delhi remains wise and strategic in acknowledging the realities of now and the future, and the fact and stark need remain that it needs the West for its long term demographics, economic, military and scientific resilience, and the Global South and Moscow-Beijing for short term gradual process of cementing India’s next global leadership .

Xi’s Absence

The snub of Modi and Biden by Xi is to send a clear message to both India and America that he still commands a big enough internal capacity to steer China ahead in the competition with both powers.

For India, the snub by Xi is to send a message to Modi that there is no future long term hope or aspiration to make India the permanent regional ally or friend in combining joint strength to go up against the US and the West.

There have been calls and arguments for India to see China not as the inevitable next door rival, but the future perfect ally in securing India’s economic and joint climate and security interests, in sharing the leadership of the Global South.

For China, making amends with India solves many of Beijing’s problems, including border security, food security, technology development, economic sustainability and forming a joint bulwark against Western containment.

However, Beijing has deep mistrusts on Delhi and vice versa, and Xi’s absence is a message to India that China sees it as the forever Achilles heel that might derail Chinese 2049 Dream

Xi’s absence also is meant to snub Biden, to force greater overtures from the US in opening up more incentives on top of the recent shuttle diplomacy done by the Biden administration in sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasurer Yellen and Secretary of Commerce Raimondo in a flurry of moves in reengaging Beijing which have been described by some as being seen as weak and desperate.

The absence is meant to send a message that Beijing is unhappy with the mixed signals given by the Biden administration, in wanting to secure the economic relationship but at the same time continuing with the array of measures in squeezing Beijing’s technological and economic drive through the embargo and sanctions

It is also to send a message to the rest of the Global South that Beijing and Xi specifically, remain the ultimate leader and saviour of the developing world.

However, Xi’s absence backfired, and India stood out as the worthy leader in the Global South and BRICS. Delhi serves as the vital bridge to the West and emerging as the eventual powerhouse in economic and key regional military supremacy with greater fallback options in different powers in both the US and Russia,something which China lacks.

A Win for the US

The US takes advantage of the power vacuum in Xi’s absence to make an integrated move in strengthening its concerted push in inking new defence deals with India, containing China’s BRI with the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, while excluding key China allies including Pakistan, and further strengthened Washington’s leadership and soft power sway.

The US strengthened partnerships with China’s neighbours and pushed for the protection of the status quo of a rules-based order and a normative setting based on the ingrained principles of democracy, justice, human rights and freedom, and respect for international law and sovereignty of nations.

Some have argued that it remains an embarrassing loss for the US, in not being able to get all on board in pressuring Russia, but the US secured a strategic short term win alongside India.

Biden hopes to rely on the string of new infrastructure and investments as a solid and trusted demonstration of the US commitment to the developing world, offering a better and more trusted alternative to China.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and the Global Biofuels Alliance remain a strategic creation in what is deemed to be a knock-out blow to China’s BRI, acting as yet another brilliant move in checkmating Beijing’s economic and trade friendshoring efforts.

The Corridor serves as a vital geopolitical counterpunch in not only creating high paying jobs and in strengthening supply chains and food security, it provides another benchmark of Biden’s signature focus on the next frontier of a green economy and credible efforts to tackle climate change by investing in sustainable and future driven green energy. Investments in low middle income countries create a ripple effect, and this also further strengthens Washington’s soft power and economic image that is pillared on the value-based normative approach in building progressive development as opposed to China’s controversial debt-plaguing BRI model.

The US ended trade disputes with India, and Delhi scored a vital win in bringing in the African Union into the G20. Washington has also coordinated with Europe on key green energy investments in Africa in projects including the African Continental Power System Master Plan, alongside the EU’s Global Gateway strategy which are all countermoves in facing Beijing’s expansive global power sway.

By working together towards these strategic goals in capturing the next phase of clean energy growth, the EU and US hope to provide a credible and trusted development model of poverty reduction, fostering inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and mitigating climate change, as compared to the Chinese model of courting the continent.

India Cemented its Path for Primacy

India as the host of the G20 strategically managed the apparent division and tensions over the emerging two blocs, one representing the Global South and BRICS, in which Beijing and Moscow seem to be pulling the strings, and the other by a resilient Washington led West. There has been intense debate and the fear of a bipolar world in a bloc mentality in a polarised setting divided by the China led BRICS and anti West forces, and the G7 and Washington led resistance forces that are standing up for freedom and democracy. India showcased its mettle in challenging the notion of China being the de facto leader of the Global South and a perpetually divided world that is forced to choose.

India is in its best condition and level of primacy now in its path towards presenting itself as the most potent force in the G20 and in the Global South that has both the hard and soft power capacities in leading the world, and also being the ultimate power with a value driven approach that is steadfast to its adherence to democratic principles, respect for human dignity, progressive governance and the sanctity of freedom and abidance by the established rule of law, all of these in which China is lacking in being seen as the credible leader in either the BRICS or the Global South movements.

It strategically strengthened its symbol and icon of democracy and freedom and universal status quo, by displaying its principle based model and a rules based order based on sanctity of the law, justice, equality and unyielding drive for ethical leadership, a very different mode as compared to Beijing.

It cemented the role of India as a trustworthy fulcrum and pillar in the widely debated emerging new world order of a bitterly divided world along the lines of systemic belief and geopolitical differences, in a way that is more intense than Cold War 1.0.

For now, India has the last laugh in the chess game of power tussle, and Delhi has the ultimate advantage of most of the power indicators in challenging or even replacing China as the regional hegemonic power, based in its internal socio-economic capacity and future ripening of demographics, local productivity, systemic governance model, scientific and technological advancement, food and energy security and resilience against climate impact, and hard and soft power capacities.

Experts to Biden Admin: ‘Wake Up’ To Avoid Second Armenian …  Victoria Advocate