Four international summits have just been held in Asia, each with messages about the changing world order and the desire of Arab countries to advance toward the multipolar world proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Seldom has the world witnessed four more crucial conferences than the ones held during the period of May 19–21 for three consecutive days. The first was the regular Arab Summit organized by Saudi Arabia on May 19 in the port city of Jeddah, which saw the reintegration of Syria into the League of Arab States (LAS) after 12 years of absence. Several media outlets throughout the world emphasized how startling it was to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back among Arab heads of state after a 12-year severance of diplomatic relations between Syria and many Arab countries, including the host country, Saudi Arabia. It should be recalled that the Saudi government was cool to the efforts of some Arab countries to readmit Syria to the LAS at the last Arab summit in Algiers on November 1-2, 2022. However, it subsequently changed its mind and decided to accept the strong Arab consensus in this regard, i.e., to bring Damascus back into the LAS. The change followed the restoration of Saudi-Iranian relations mediated by China in March of this year.
The presence of Syria’s president was not the only event of the Jeddah Summit. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the presence of Ukrainian President Zelensky was also a surprise at the first meeting of the Summit. He was there at the invitation of the Saudi Arabian government and wanted to enlist Arab support for Ukraine, knowing that the Arab world does not want to take sides in the conflict, but rather wants to work with the international community to bring peace to the country. With the ardent support of the West, led by the United States, the Ukrainian neo-fascist wanted to continue the fratricidal war and then move it to Russia. He is not confused by the fact that the US and NATO not only cynically declared that they would wage this war to the last Ukrainian, but also pumped their Ukrainian hires with huge supplies of modern weapons.
And Zelensky echoes them and does everything he can to bring new and terrible woes upon the Ukrainian people and upon Ukraine. Will Ukraine be able to exist as an independent state in the future, since its neighbors, particularly Poland, are already laying claim to Ukrainian territory and sending their soldiers to participate in this war? The Arab world has taken a wise stance on the war unleashed by the United States and NATO against Russia, stating that it is not their war and they will not even discuss the issue. The Arabs reaffirmed that they are, as before, in favor of peace in Europe and seek to establish a multipolar world in which the Arab countries will take their rightful place.
The Jeddah summit coincided with the G7 summit, which Japan hosted from May 9 to 12 in the city of Hiroshima. On the sidelines of the Hiroshima summit, the leaders of the Quad, a quadrilateral security dialogue that includes the United States, India, Japan and Australia, met for their third face-to-face meeting since 2021. At the same time, US President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in the context of the trilateral alliance between the United States, Japan and South Korea. The three leaders discussed how to take their trilateral cooperation to new heights, including through new coordination in the face of what all three consider “illegal” nuclear and missile threats from North Korea and issues related to “economic security” – meaning China – and their respective strategies in the Indo-Pacific region.
Remarkably, no one, neither the hosts nor the guests, recalled the terrible atomic disaster during World War II, when American atomic weapons were dropped on the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any military necessity. In this case, the civilians of these two unfortunate cities acted as guinea pigs for the “defenders of democracy,” the United States. The Hiroshima summit also clearly showed Japan’s total subordination to the interests of the transatlantic master, to the detriment of the Japanese people.
The fourth summit, the first of its kind, was organized by China in the Chinese city of Xi’an. Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, all five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The parties at the Xi’an summit agreed to strengthen cooperation to prevent foreign interference and “color revolutions” in their countries, and the Chinese president held a series of one-on-one meetings with his Central Asian counterparts. The summit took place in the context of Beijing’s vigorous diplomatic efforts to counter Western strategies to “contain” China. If anyone doubts the existence of such strategies, reading the results of the G7 summit in Hiroshima would probably change their mind. China, of course, was not mentioned by name, but there is no doubt about the fact that G7 leaders had Beijing in mind in the Hiroshima communiqué issued by G7 leaders on May 20, when they emphasized that they would coordinate their approach to economic sustainability and economic security through policies of diversification and deepening partnerships and risk reduction, rather than disengagement of Western countries.
This language may in part recall a speech by the European Commission’s notorious president Ursula von der Leyen two months ago on Europe’s future policy toward China, where she also said that it would be based on risk reduction rather than disengagement of European countries. The use of the term “economic coercion” has been interpreted as a reference to certain Chinese market practices. Meanwhile, G7 leaders pledged to achieve their goal of raising $600 billion in funding for quality infrastructure through the Global Infrastructure Investment Partnership as a counterstrategy to China’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Not surprisingly, the Chinese government then reacted strongly and negatively to the indirect attack on China and announced its countermeasures.
Perhaps the wording of the joint statement made by the Quad leaders in Hiroshima on May 20 was more neutral from China’s perspective. The leaders said they wanted to see a region, meaning the Indo-Pacific region, in which no country dominated or was dominated and where the leadership of regional institutions, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and the Indian Ocean Region Association (IORA), was respected. It goes without saying that most of the member countries of these groups are very interested in maintaining good relations with China and do not want to get involved in the fierce competition between the US and China on the side of the West.
The four summits taken together reflect the changes taking place in the world order today and show that the West, led by the Joe Biden administration, is trying to align the rest of the world with its goals and interests as well as its worldview, even though many countries and many regions have different ideas about how the world should be run. The phrase “rule-based international order” often used in Western communiqués is not widely accepted in many parts of the world for the simple reason that said “order” is nothing more than rules to suit the interests of the West alone. And this colonial policy of the US, the UK, France and other European countries is still remembered with horror by the peoples of Asia, Africa and both Americas.
It is enough to compare the “high principles” that the West claims to defend in Ukraine with their irrelevance, from the perspective of the same West, of course, to the Palestinian question and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab territories after the June 1967 war, to understand why this is so. The US was the driving force behind the West’s support for the war in Ukraine against Russia ostensibly so the Ukrainians could defend their territorial integrity, but at the same time under the Trump administration, the Americans recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. The regrettable choice that contravenes the UN Charter, an instrument that it professes to uphold in its backing of Ukraine, has remained unaltered by the Biden administration. Washington’s cynicism, empty rhetoric, and double thinking in its foreign policy, especially lately, is off the charts.
The G7 leaders’ communiqué reiterated that the G7 member countries are taking steps to support Ukraine and pump it full of modern weapons “for as long as it takes.” They also discussed US support for “joint efforts” with allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots to use fourth-generation fighter jets such as the US-made F-16s. President Biden expressed support for Zelensky’s “commitment” to a just peace based on “the fundamental principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations” during his meeting with the Ukrainian president in Hiroshima. What to say here, simply, if it were up to the will of the aged and feeble-minded President Biden, he would award Zelensky, who has ruined many people and brought Ukraine’s fate to the brink of collapse, with the Nobel Peace Prize. Truly, as the saying goes, if God wants to punish Joe Biden, he takes away his mind. This statement couldn’t be more accurate!
The key contrast between the G7 summit and the other gatherings of Arab and global leaders mentioned earlier is that the former have conveyed conflicting signals regarding their inclination to embrace the concept of a multipolar world put forth by Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, the latter were determined to pursue the old stale policy of a unipolar world only in their own interests. However, the West, led by the US, simply does not take into account the realities of the 21st century and that now it cannot pursue its neocolonial policy. Wrong times, wrong people with their wrong aspirations, wrong countries! Relations in the international system are rapidly changing, leaving the mossy West with its ideology in a swamp of oblivion.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”
