At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, the Chinese leader went on a double offensive – on the one hand, there was the diplomatic level (hosting 20 foreign leaders), and then came the military part (an unprecedented show of China’s armed forces).
Moreover, in Tianjin where the conference was held, there was also a pronounced anti-American dimension to the meeting, manifested both in Xi Jinping’s speech and in the prime-time platform offered to Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi, at a time when the two are under chaotic pressure of tariffs from Donald Trump.
In fact, the American president, through his savage foreign policy since he came to office in January 20, made an important contribution to Xi’s success in bringing together under his umbrella an important number of countries and, thus, to add another floor to his tenacious construction of a China that is increasingly attractive as a haven and increasingly influential worldwide.
In China, the Indian leader swallowed his pride and was strident, thus suggesting that what separates his country from its host country (including tense border conflicts until yesterday) is becoming less important in relation to what had brought it closer to the US until the Trump era.
From China, Vladimir Putin threw a few new shovels of dirt over Donald Trump’s infantile vision of his personal relationship with the Russian dictator, over what the American leader had perceived as progress on the US-Russia-Ukraine line during the Alaska summit, over what will follow from now on in Washington-Moscow contacts on the fate of Kiev (and not only).
Putin’s defiance of Trump has been a recurring element of Russian-American interactions in the last eight months, but the exercise of defiance carried out in China by the Russian dictator himself takes on new levels of meaning and even more overwhelming proportions.
Donald Trump is either consciously working in favor of Russia and China, and thus to the detriment of America, or he does it because he is simply ignorant as they come. Historians will establish this at some point, no doubt, but until then one thing is certain: he is digging his foreign policy grave efficiently, the effects are palpable, the consequences will probably be even more disturbing for both the Americans and their long-time allies everywhere.
For it is no longer possible for anyone with an ounce of sense and a modicum of lucidity cell to misinterpret the following observation or the following image, both revealed in the wake of the Tianjin summit and the Beijing parade:
- The world’s chief autocrats – Xi, Putin, Kim – are pulling hard in the direction of consolidating and expanding alliances. As narcissistic as they are (it is, after all, a common trait of dictators), they understood perfectly well that the accentuation and expansion of influence require cooperation and cohabitation. It is not easy at all, because in order to ostentatiously embrace each other as they keep doing after February 24, 2022 and as they did even at the Tianjin summit, the autocrats in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang are forced to jump, day after day, a lot of fences that separate them: from wars in the relatively recent past, to natural and chronic suspicions that are being refreshed, to deeply uncomfortable interdependencies and to a mutual and at the same time perennial, basic contempt. And yet, they tolerate each other because they are perfectly aware that only in this way can they have a real chance of sinking the Western bloc and elevating the Eastern one. At the same time, the most famous and powerful ignoramus on the planet, Donald Trump, is firmly committed to the opposite: self-isolation and torpedoing alliances forged in almost a century of titanic work carried out by his predecessors (also imperfect, but nonetheless important). While Xi, Putin and Kim struggle to build a heritage of genuine and solid cooperation, Trump is fighting to throw out the window the ready-made treasure he received once he crossed the threshold of the Oval Office. Now we have the image of the moment.
- And the picture looks like this: while Xi orchestrates a huge and unprecedented military parade – designed to show Trump how serious military parades should look like made, to show Putin that there is even more to be done in Tiananmen Square than what happens annually in May in Red Square, and to make Modi’s life unbearable enough to make him not attend the event – well, On the same day, Trump projects his America’s strength by bombing a drug lord from Venezuela. While Xi is making his army march like never before more aggressively and tightening the screw more and more around Taiwan, while Putin continues to attack Ukraine and threatens to attack others, while Kim is testing new missiles with difficulty, well, Trump is maintaining the threat of withdrawal from the bastion of Europe and sending his army to “conquer” the major American cities controlled by the Democratic Party. Yes, that’s about all you can do today in the White House, that’s the level of decay that the US has reached in less than eight months. A scarecrow in a peasant vineyard in our country or in a cornfield seems significantly more dignified and somewhat more honest deterrent factor than what Washington can show today, suffocated by ignorance and dominated by politruks and infantilism.
Never, in the last century at least, has America seemed so out of step, and never, in the last century, has history passed by it with such speed and contempt.
But no wonder… Once a boor get their hands on the harnesses, the carriage and the journey become ‘boorish.’
And the destination?… How could it be anything than unrefined?
