We need to learn where the borderline of strategic autonomy of Europe is (if there is any).

The President of France, Emanuel Macron, was sent off to Beijing with high hopes that he would successfully convert the President of China, Xi Jinping. Quite unexpectedly, Macron got back from China as if the complete opposite occurred. Macron’s journey to Beijing was surely not anywhere near the journey to Damascus of biblical proportions, which did convert Paul the Apostle but it clearly showed how woefully Europe is whimpering in between their own needs and the U.S. pressure.

In the Presidential airplane, which he was flying in from Beijing back to Paris where he was angrily greeted by the very same protesters which had previously sent him off to Beijing in such a way that they set fire on his favorite Parisian restaurant. He later talked to the reporters as if he had truly experienced a sudden enlightenment so that the leading German journal Spiegel, which had never regarded the German interests of lesser importance than the interests of their transatlantic partnership with the U.S. in which the plans and interests of all the others go awry, had to wonder whether Macron has now completely lost his mind.

Macron’s only sin seems to have been found in the interview with the Politico reporter and two of his French colleagues in the presidential airplane in which he merely noticed something that should have been obvious. Namely, Macron pointed out that Europe must resist the pressure to turn into a mere U.S. acolyte. He added that Europe is under severe risk of further getting involved in the crisis, which is not its own. Europe must lessen its dependence on the USA and avoid being further entangled into the confrontation between China and USA about Taiwan – Macron said after as many as six hours long talks with Xi, in which he spent only the first one hour and a half under the scowling look normally referred to as supervision from the President of European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, whereas Macron and Xi spent the rest of the time only accompanied by their official interpreters.

Politico goes on to report that during the interview while aboard the plane with Macron dressed in his favourite sweatshirt, he placed an emphasis on his preferred theory on strategic autonomy for Europe. Perhaps under the French leadership in order to become ‘the third great power’. The question posed before the Europeans is whether it is in European interest to rev up the crisis around Taiwan. ‘No’ – Macron both asked and provided the answer to the question. It would be the worst-case scenario for us, the Europeans, to think that we should become mere followers of the U.S. in these matters and to align our political decisions with the U.S. agenda with the adverse reactions from China. The Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine. How on Earth can we dare say anything related to Taiwan with any crumbs of credibility? We should not approach serious international matters with an intimidating approach such as ‘Beware, if you do anything wrong, we shall come after you right there ‘. This is not the sensible way forward, unless you really want to raise tensions.

There were certainly other rather heretic remarks in that plane interview. Macron, Politico reports elaborated that Europe increased their dependence on the U.S. in the field of arms and energy supply. He also mentioned that Europe should lessen its dependence on extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar which is the chief political goal between Moscow and Beijing; he will elaborate on this in an accusatory tone to Politico (which happens to be a U.S.-German news agency). ‘If the tensions between the two great powers get to be fuelled further, we shall not have sufficient time nor resources to finance our strategic autonomy. We shall further be reduced to the position of vassals in this way’ – Macron warned. While Politico in a rather odd manner regarded it as appropriate at the end of the article that all the President’s words were reported verbatim but that during the process of authorization, the interview had to be edited for the bits in which Macron even more openly talked about Taiwan and strategic autonomy of Europe with no attempt at concealment.

Though even this what was published was sufficient to cause an avalanche of synchronized discontent of Macron’s apparently rampantly subversive remarks even though he surely did not utter any lies, when he said that Europe does not need to get involved in yet another U.S. war. In all that frustration with Macron’s effort to position European interests in Europe much higher than the U.S. interests was balanced off by the Germans. On the German side, Metin Hakverdi, a centre-left ruling party SPD lawmaker, was the first to speak out with exasperation about the situation. “Macron is doing it again. Talking his head off in Beijing with zero authorisation from the EU. He will then surely organise security guarantees for Ukraine all by himself,” the senior lawmaker said. He later told Tagesspiegel that “it is a grave mistake for the West to allow itself to be divided in its dealings with Beijing of all places.” His colleague, Norbert Röttgen, from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition party in Germany said that such an approach is two party type approach, lambasting Macron for managing to turn his trip to China into his PR success with Xi Jinping and also into a foreign policy disaster for Europe with a stark warning that the policy fostered by the French President would lead Europe into a geopolitical cul-de-sac (ooopps pardon my French; I meant a dead end). It is even ironic, he added, that Macron even does much less for Ukraine than the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz with his statements about China turning U.S. away from us.

On the other side of the Atlantic there came a predictably similar reaction. Macron stumbled over Taiwan and Ukraine. He weakened the position of restraining the Chinese aggression and he weakened the U.S. aid for Europe – Wall Street Journal warns in their characteristic manner in their editorial section with an indecently colloquial remark: ‘Thank you very much, pal ‘. They added that ‘ if President Biden were awake, he should call Macron and ask him if he is doing his best to elect Donald Trump again? All this was preceded by an arrogant approach by Senator Marco Rubio, the highest positioned Republican with the Select Committee on Intelligence in his position of Vice Chairman. He commented that they have to establish whether Macron is talking in his own name or in the name of Europe. We need an answer to this question quickly because China is very excited about what Macron said, in them being both appreciative and supportive of everything Macron said with enthusiasm. And then he also mentioned Germans reacted as if they were issued a command with the already typical expression of obedience.

Mercifully, the answers may well follow shortly as to what Macron tried to do on his return from Beijing and why an avalanche of resentful reactions followed on both sides of the Atlantic. We need to learn where the borderline of strategic autonomy of Europe is (if there is any).

The shifting sands of the Gulf may turn rock-solid in an alliance across the region with Iran, Steven Sahiounie writes.

The shifting sands of the Gulf may turn rock-solid in an alliance across the region with Iran. This new alliance is in defiance of the old divide and conquer policy used by the U.S. State Department.

The rapprochement between The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could transform the region, after being brokered by China on March 10, ending seven years of tensions. The nations are aware that there is safety in numbers, and strength in unity instead of standing alone.

Iran had decided to improve relations with its Arab neighbors instead of waiting for the U.S. to decide to renew the nuclear agreement. Saudi Arabia had made its own strategic decision to not depend on the U.S. for security. These two strategies brought Iran and Saudi Arabia together, with China demonstrating its ability to circumvent the U.S., when it is the U.S. standing in the way of stability in the Middle East.

“The recent successful dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing helped improve bilateral relations between the two countries, which will strengthen regional solidarity and ease the tensions in the region. China will further support the process,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) by phone on March 28.

The deal involves Saudi Arabia supporting the return of Iran to the nuclear deal with the west, plans to end the war in Yemen, cooperation to stabilize Syria, and strengthening their joint ties in OPEC.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced on March 26 that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting between their top diplomats, with the location to be announced, during the month of Ramadan, the Holy month of fasting, which ends the third week of April.

Both countries share the same religion, which is a common thread in their relationship but had been a point of division used by the U.S. to divide the two. Iran is Shite, and Saudi Arabia is Sunni. When the U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq beginning in 2003, they used the Sunni-Shite divide to create chaos which served the U.S. interests to conquer and subjugate the Iraqi people in the U.S. project of regime change, which affected the whole region and created sectarian divisions.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi received an invitation from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to visit the kingdom by letter, announced on March 19, which invited him to Riyadh.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are expected to open embassies in each other’s capitals from now to May 10. They will both resume security and economic agreements signed more than 20 years ago.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait recently restored ties with Iran. Amir-Abdollahian said Iran also hoped steps would be made to normalize its ties with Bahrain as well.

Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani held talks with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on March 23, in yet another sign of the networking in the region.

In June 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for a “New Middle East”. In true American hubris, she and President George W. Bush thought Israel attacking Lebanon, bombing from the north to the south, and killing hundreds of civilians, was necessary to remove the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Rice and Bush lost their war, both in Iraq and in Lebanon. The resistance to occupation is as strong as ever, and now we have the UN recognizing that Israel is an apartheid state.

President Obama, supported by former Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Bandar, and aligned with former Crown Prince Nayan, also tried their hand at wiping out the resistance in Syria through regime change, but they all failed.

The New Middle East has emerged, finally, but it is not exactly what Rice and Bush were asking for. Iran and Saudi Arabia are together, and both asking for the liberation of Palestine.

When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office, for the sixth time, he pledged he had two main goals: to make a deal with Saudi Arabia under the Abraham Accords format and to increase illegal settlements on Palestinian land. With the new relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu’s position is dismal.

On March 24, Israel announced plans to build over 1,000 new units on illegally occupied Palestinian land, just days after agreeing in a meeting in Egypt to suspend settlement construction.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli plans, and called on the international community “to assume its responsibilities to end the Israeli occupation and to stop its provocative practices, which would obstruct the paths of political solutions based on the Arab Peace Initiative, and undermine international peace efforts.”

The Arab Peace Initiative was a Saudi proposal in 2002 that called for normalizing relations with Israel in return for withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.

The March surprise deal was a shock to the Biden administration, but the earlier October 2022 surprise was even harder to take in the Oval Office. Biden had gone to MBS personally to ask for an increase in the oil output to bring down the price of gasoline in the U.S. MBS flatly turned him down.

The Aramco attack in 2019 occurred when drones hit the Abqaiq oil facility while protected by U.S.-made air defense batteries; however, none were effective or took down even one drone. 19 individual strikes occurred, with 14 that punctured storage tanks, and three that disabled oil processing trains.

The facilities were knocked out of commission and the world’s largest petroleum producer was cut by half, representing about five percent of global oil production.

This was the beginning of Saudi Arabia formulating a strategy for security that does not depend on the U.S. but rather looks to neighborly alliances independently.

The real tragedy is that Australia, the Philippines, Japan and America’s other patsies are adopting NATO’s policy of fighting China in Chinese waters.

Since I last wrote about the Philippines, matters have gotten so much worse not only there but across the entire South China Sea that an air and sea war now looms between China and a gaggle of America’s regional proxies. Although the Philippines is in the eye of the storm, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and even far away Australia can also expect NATO’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to wreak havoc on them. This war will dwarf anything that has recently happened in Ukraine. Bad news for Asians but good news for America’s predatory arms’ industries and, as far as Washington is concerned, that is all that matters.

A land war can be excluded because China has no intention of invading anywhere, Taiwan included and, as Australia clearly shows, air and sea warfare offer far richer pickings for NATO’s defence industries. The trick is to goad China enough to keep the profits from defence contracts rolling in but not too much that the South China Sea becomes a furnace. Better to follow the Ukrainian model, to use proxies to goad China and, with luck, then do a Russia on China, to slap sanctions on her, confiscate her assets and lecture to the world that NATO has, as always, the high moral ground, even in the Philippines, whose most vulnerable children have traditionally been the prey of choice for the U.S. military’s more depraved sexual predators.

Although the putative reason for this latest concocted war is Chinese expansion in the South China Sea, the underlying reason is Uncle Sam’s need to militarise the entire planet and collect levies from all its satrapies, most notably, in this case, Japan and Australia which is being made fork out a staggering A$368 bn for berthing facilities for a handful of nuclear powered Anglo American submarines, which are totally unfit for the purpose of defending Australia and her interests.

Australia is, in effect, going to permanently bankrupt herself to enable the British and Americans flaunt their war ships off the Chinese coast for no other reason than to buttress their own defence industries and to tether Australia to their economic coat tails for generations to come. Instead of deepening ties with China, Australia’s major trading partner, the Ossies, NATO’s Antipodean poodles, are determined to bankrupt themselves antagonising Beijing for Washington’s benefit; be sure to check out this excellent one hour interview with former Ossie Prime Minister Paul Keating, who slices and dices the Sinophobic policies of today’s crop of Australian (excuses for) leaders.

Much the same goes for the Philippines, whose President, Bongbong Marcos, is being criminally irresponsible in relentlessly tweaking China’s tail. Yet, whether it is the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia or the failed states of Western Europe, it seems that today’s leaders exist only to serve Uncle Sam’s war machine, no matter what the costs are to their own electorates. Talk about the curse of living in interesting times.

A far more adult alternative for the Philippines and her neighbours would be to return to the jaw jaw strategy of former President Rodrigo Duterte and, with her ASEAN partners, to see what can be achieved through quiet diplomacy with China. First off, China would have to accept that her nine dash line, which lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea, is unacceptable poppycock and, though China’s legitimate defence concerns regarding American aggression need to be fully accommodated, so also must the economic needs of the Philippines and her ASEAN partners be met with regard to fishing, mining, freedom of navigation and allied rights.

Much the same applies to Japan and her first class navy, which would give as good an account of herself against China as the Japanese Imperial Navy did 80 years ago against the British and American navies. As with ASEAN, so also should Japan build bridges with Taiwan and Korea and negotiate as a sovereign group with China. The United States should play no role whatsoever in any of that as they have no business in East Asia, which they have militarily controlled since Imperial Japan’s 1945 surrender.

No one, except the Americans, who have no business whatsoever in the South China Sea, wants a return to those battles of Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Leyte Gulf and Manila. Certainly, no one besides the Americans and their British toadies stand to benefit from such a conflagration. Paul Keating sees that. Duterte sees that. China sees that. And so, of course, do the Americans, who are determined to again burn South East Asia to the ground if that is what it takes to maintain their top dog status. The abiding mystery in all this is how the Americans can get so many of their satraps to serve only America’s military interests and not their own.

The real tragedy here is that Australia, the Philippines, Japan and America’s other patsies are adopting NATO’s policy of forward defence, of, in effect, fighting China in Chinese waters to supposedly avoid having to fight them on home turf. What this means in practical terms is allowing the U.S. to build naval and air bases and to suffer the collateral damage such hospitality brings in its wake.

Although the Americans and their Filipino puppets are boasting of the security and jobs such bases will bring, given America’s track records in Subic Bay, Clark Airbase and Olongapo naval base, to say nothing of their stomach churning war crimes during their original conquest of the Philippines, we can expect their sexual abuse of glue sniffing rugby Filippino boys and girls to again return to the levels that made People Power demand the 1991 closure of America’s vast military and child grooming bases.

The Philippines, as my previous article pointed out, is a country awash with all of the problems poverty, American neo-colonialism and the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse bring with them. Those problems do not have magic bullet solutions, such as those the Belt and Road Initiative or the vampirish embrace of Uncle Sam represent. The solution lies in taming corruption and in politicians and diplomats doing the jobs they are charged with. In the case of the Philippines, that must entail closer economic ties with China to ensure the Philippines gets its due entitlement from its waters. What it does not entail is going back to the dark old days of having an economy built around the carnal needs of America’s GIs and the predatory needs of the British and American arms’ industries.

When one considers the fate awaiting the Philippines’ rugby boys and girls, when one considers Bongbong is determined to pauperise the Philippines’ struggling transport drivers through NATO’s Green Agenda, when one considers the disreputable role BongBong’s parents played when they ruled the Philippines, Dantean despair is the most natural of reactions. But then, politicians like Keating and Duterte show that there is hope leaders who are something more than American toadies might, with People Power, re-emerge and that the Philippines will rid itself not only of Ali Baba but the 40 thieving families who rule the Philippines as well. That can only happen by breaking the American link and building fresher, unfettered ones with China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and all other Asian countries that divest themselves of the Yankee yolk. If, as I hope, there is to be true hope in the Philippines not only for the rugby children but for all Filipinos, that hope can, as Paul Keating says, only be grounded in abandoning the old Anglo-American colonial masters, denying them naval and air bases and instead forging mutually beneficial alliances with Asia’s powerhouses, who likewise have no need for America’s 7^th fleet and all the ugliness and depravity it epitomises.

“The NATO expanders are telling us that Russia’s actions inside its unchanged borders are exactly why we had to expand NATO’s borders. Russia’s reaction to NATO’s expansion enlargement justifies NATO’s enlargement expansion.” 

– Patrick Armstrong