There are about seven billion ways of looking a the World, since there are some seven billion human animals, all with the capacity of forming independent views of what passes as reality.
One way to look at the World is to see World Events not a struggle of nation-states for supremacy, but as a struggle among several forms of concentrated Capital to expand and secure market control over lines of commerce in as many areas of the world as possible.
Looked at the World this way, news outlets available on the web give a clear-enough picture of the struggle between Western neoliberal Capitalism and Chinese Socialist Capitalism (not, I think, a non sequester), especially in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. See, for example, "Into Africa: China’s Wild Rush", The New York Times, May 16, 2014.
See, e.g., Forbes, The 147 Companies That Control Everything (an interesting study and list of companies, though it does not include entities such as the World Bank, nor those whose wealth is controlled by states, such as in China and Saudi Arabia.
The chart understates China and Saudi Arabia, since it only counts wealth of individuals, and in both countries wealth is concentrated in countries which are controlled by individuals or a small group of individuals.
See, e.g., Forbes, The 147 Companies That Control Everything (an interesting study and list of companies, though it does not include entities such as the World Bank, nor those whose wealth is controlled by states, such as in China and Saudi Arabia.
The Times pictures China as a blundering new colonialist, making mistakes that Western colonialists learned to avoid decades ago.
The Nation, a Pakistani Punjabi-oriented English-language newspaper, sees the Chinese as shrewd, single-minded, intense, and determined one way or another to get Middle East oil in a way that cannot be blocked by the U S. Fifth Fleet, which now controls all oil coming out of the Persian Gulf. The U.S. is making multiple mistakes, primarily with its drone strikes and its policy of blocking Iranian petrochemical exports.
The Nation's article is printed after the jump. Here are some sentences that stood out. [All images are added my me; comments in italics are mine.]
Although drone attacks have ceased for the moment, the conditions in Afghanistan require a post-US Afghanistan strategy soon. It can be argued that a number of commitments, reassurances and promises were made at the conclusions of these foreign visits, especially with regional partners, China and Turkey. On the other, the visit to the United States could not bring any breakthrough in an already existing relationship of mistrust.
The first foreign visit took Nawaz Sharif to China, in July 2013, resulting in various agreements, ranging from building dams and the generation of electricity through coal. Furthermore, Pakistan’s largest civil nuclear power plant with Chinese assistance, in Karachi, is expected to be completed within 72 months.
However, the most prominent understanding was on the construction of a 2000 km stretch of road linking Gwadar with Kashgar in Northwestern China.
[The Gwadar deep-water port is, next to the Iranian border and within reach of an undersea pipeline from Oman.The port is guarded by Chinese soldiers and police, uses Chinese workers, and flies a Chinese flag].
adar:
Gwadar, Balochistan Province, Pakistan (گوادر، صوبہ بلوچستان، پاکستان), in restive Baloch territory
Kashgar, Xinjiang province,China (喀什，新疆，中國), in restive Uighur territory (維吾爾族領土)
The completion of this port is expected to enable Pakistan to provide a useful road and rail link, between the Central Asian Republic and China, along with the rest of the world. In this way, Pakistan would be provided with adequate opportunity for economic advancement. It was agreed that at a later stage, a rail and gas pipeline would also link the two cities. Furthermore, China promised to provide 85 per cent of the financing for the three-year $44 million project budget for a fiber- optic cable, stretching from China to Rawalpindi. Such an embedded involvement of China in the Gwadar Port project with Pakistan has raised serious concerns for India and the US, as it can affect the American naval monopoly in the Gulf and Arabian Sea region.
Portion of U.S. Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain, Persian Gulf, through which much oil is shipped
The third foreign visit was to the US. A joint communiqué was signed which revealed the divergent policy positions of the two leaders. Although PM Sharif carried an agenda including the drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); economic cooperation through trade, and the release of Pakistani citizen Dr. Affia Siddique, no commitment to address these concerns were made by the US President. Nawaz failed to take advantage of the release of the US based Amnesty International Report on the matters of drones, which revealed facts relating to the killing of thousands of Pakistani civilians in FATA and pronounced this act a gross violation of human rights.
See, e.g., for one of thousands if incidents in many countries, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in Yemen
Secondly, just a day before the Oval meeting, the US released the suspended military and economic assistance of $1.6 billion to Pakistan, which was considered by the Pakistani government spokesperson as a sign of development between the two “strategic partners” (though some analysts believe that the released amount is nothing more than rent for the services by the Pakistani government facilitating the logistics for NATO and US forces in Afghanistan). The reality is that there is a serious trust deficit between the two countries. There are misperceptions and divergent national interests on both sides. The exit of the US and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014 might ease tensions between the two countries by providing them an opportunity for better understanding in other fields of cooperation, especially economically.
The Prime Minister needs to understand that his third term in office is considerably different from his last two, because the international scenario has over-whelmingly transformed. The US is not as “super” a superpower as it used to be, thus giving way to the rise of regional powers, especially in terms of financial potential.
