Yeah, it is mostly this simple:
It really is the imperialist West vs. the entire world
This is how they voted on a UN resolution calling for a new international economic order based on equity, sovereign equality, and cooperation, opposing unilateral sanctions and advocating for debt relief for the Global South https://t.co/veNO3uMdC5 pic.twitter.com/wy6amH7TUm
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 15, 2022
This is pretty much the map for UN resolutions aimed at Russia, too.
As I’ve noted before the bottom line is that if you are a developing country, China offers cheaper loans and cheaper and faster development work like ports, airports, hospitals, roads, railways, schools and even cities. If you aren’t close to them, they don’t care about your internal politics, either.
I remember reading an interview with a minister of an African state who said approximately, “every time a western minister visits us we get a lecture, every time a Chinese official visits we get a new hospital.”
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As for sanctions, well, everyone’s scared of them, and everyone in that green zone knows that they could be sanctioned at the drop of the hat and that the sanctions never go away. Even if they don’t approve of some things Russia or China does, they don’t want the precedent of more and more sanctions and they want to belong to a monetary system which won’t lock them out.
Afghanistan is a particularly “amusing” case: when the US pulled out it then sanctioned Afghanistan and froze its foreign reserves. There was an immediate famine effecting millions. Biden is a perverse evil genius: by ending a war he was able to kill FAR more people than if he’d left troops in country.
Then there is Iran, where a treaty was signed under Obama which would remove sanctions. Iran kept its side, but the US pulled out anyway under Trump, and lo! Biden did not reverse him. Even the Europeans disagreed with that one.
China simply offers a better deal now than the West, and there’s a couple centuries or more of resentment towards Europe and America and Japan. Most countries would rather be allied with China.
And that’s why this map is fairly close to what the cold war map will look like. A few “green” countries will cut deals with the West, but most will go with China and Russia. And why wouldn’t they?
GrimJim
Orwell truly was prophetic.
If Europe breaks away from the US and allies with Russia, and the US is able to maintain its Monroe Doctrine hegemony over Central and South America, you’ve got the solid Oceania-Eurasia-Eastasia triple blocks… The UK and Australia would end up as part of Oceania for historic, military, and racist reasons.
The Panopticon is here. The Repuli-Qans are The Party. Now we just need to determine if Big Brother is going to look like Trump or Desantis…
Chipper
Et tu, Mexico? /s
The red countries represent something like 1.3 billion people, against a total population of 8 billion. Just another way of looking at it.
Willy
I’d need to know more about the details before imagining any motives. I mean, what’s in it for the KSA? Does this mean that Chinese business magnates are now as devoted to offshoring manufacturing for cheap labor as were American business magnates?
As we all know, movers and shakers usually claim they’re doing it for all of us, before it turns out they were just doing it for themselves.
Plus when I was a kid during the original Cold War, it was obvious who was about what. Which side was the more atheist, authoritarian, free speech, and had the hotter women. Pretty simple really. In this map I see a lot of fuzziness when it comes to such things.
mugu
The hotter women, Willy?
That would be way down south where the brown beauties pour themselves into their attire not matter body shape or size and it’s all pleasing to the eye.
Not to go off topic or anything.
capelin
I read a lot of sci fi in my formative years, and I often have flashes of seeing earth and society as if as a visitor from afar. Reading this piece triggered that for some reason. Weird rubbery aliens busily being strategic and stupid.
“Afghanistan is a particularly “amusing” case: when the US pulled out it then sanctioned Afghanistan and froze its foreign reserves. There was an immediate famine effecting millions. Biden is a perverse evil genius: by ending a war he was able to kill FAR more people than if he’d left troops in country.”
They did the same thing in Iraq. Maybe 100k killed in the initial 1991 invasion; then, what, a million excess deaths from sanctions over the next 12 years. Then another invasion.
StewartM
Willy
Does this mean that Chinese business magnates are now as devoted to offshoring manufacturing for cheap labor as were American business magnates?
A British expat in Da Nang says that the Chinese are heavily involved in Vietnam (Vietnam probably is wisely playing both blocs). However, from the perspective of the Chinese government, despite their failures the authoritarian “they” still seem to operate under the fear that if they don’t provide better lives for their populace then that will generate a revolution against them. Oh, if only the leadership of the “democratic” West labored under the same fear! (Well, they do, but if it comes to that they’d prefer the fascist variety than even a social democracy which would still allow them to keep much of their wealth and power).
Plus when I was a kid during the original Cold War, it was obvious who was about what. Which side was the more atheist, authoritarian, free speech, and had the hotter women. Pretty simple really. In this map I see a lot of fuzziness when it comes to such things.
I’m not so sure about that, then or now. Maybe the atheist part (though in the USA, most Christians are in fact idolaters as they really worship this “God and Country” bullshit which isn’t anything close to real Christianity). The west is less authoritarian and very much kinder to individual rights and due process if you’ve got lots of moola; if you don’t then you get railroaded by the “Just-us” system which acts just as authoritarian a fashion as any in the world (a friend who graduated from a high-tiered law school told me that in his student apprenticeship, the first thing he found was that due process was assumed in school but not actually followed in the vast majority of court cases). Nor do I think we are actually more tolerant of heterodox views (again, except, like Austrian economics, it’s backed and funded by billionaires).
Purple Library Guy
One little language quibble: The US did not “pull out” of the treaty with Iran. They BROKE the treaty. If it had been a Western adversary doing what the US did, our media would not have called it “pulling out” of the treaty; they only called it that because it was the US, and so they had to give them face-saving language.
The US is very perfidious by international standards; they constantly treat stuff they signed as “nothing but a piece of paper”, far more than other countries.
mistah charley, ph.d.
turkey is neither red nor green, but yellow – one wonders why
elkern
Mistah Charley – Turkiye’s abstention is interesting but not really surprising. Geographically, it’s the lynchpin between the two new Blocs, so it’s still trying to balance between them. And Nationalist leaders like Erdogan often like to flaunt their [illusions of independence and power in Foreign Policy – it reinforces the sense of ethnic pride which helps “Nationalists” retain power despite screwing up the economy.
In the short run (this decade), Turkiye has to stick with NATO, mostly for the money. In the medium-long term, Geography (prime real estate on the New Silk Road) will draw them into the Chinese sphere, but maybe not until after USA really screws up & loses Europe.
Astrid
Erdogon is a trickster character, but it is worth observing that the US tried its last old fashion military coup (as opposed to lawfare or color revolution) against him and failed, and that Turkey originated the term “deep state” (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_scandal).
CH
China and Russia are cooperating in other areas as well: https://theintercept.com/2022/12/30/russia-china-news-media-agreement/