The world at present finds itself in a totally unprecedented situation, a time of fundamental transition, a time of great turmoil. A major war on the European continent, a war that the major Western powers are keen in pursuing, and a concerted attempt in the Asia-Pacific to organize the Rim countries in a cordon-like structure surrounding and containing the most important country in the region, the People’s Republic of China, are characteristic of our time. But the world will not, and cannot, return to some envisioned previous epoch in which the United States largely determined policy for where the world is going, an  epoch which was in many respect a figment of the imagination of those who believed they ruled supreme.

 

This was a period in which numerous wars were conducted in Southwest Asia  - in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in Syria. The conditions of life of the developing world grew worse over the last few decades of that “world order”, and even in the developed world, the world of the West, the conditions of life for its citizenry deteriorated significantly from what they had been forty years previously. This was far from an idyllic situation for anyone. And yet the Western nations, spurred on by this Anglo-American contingent which have adopted the mores of the old British Empire, hope to return to that situation. But that is no longer possible. Too many things have happened which have created insuperable obstacles to that status quo ante.

 

Most importantly, the rise of China, from an impoverished nation in the 1970s to the primary engine of economic growth over the last decade, has introduced a major factor. A socialist country, developing its own path out of poverty rather than following the empty nostrums proposed by the liberal economists, is on the path to becoming one of the major technological giants of the world. The “liberal democracies” had long come to accept poverty as an endemic phenomenon, which they could not commit to totally resolve, but relied on “palliative care” through “ trickle down economics”.

 

Neither did China accept the model of some Western parliamentary democracy, some thing that would have been wholly unsuitable for a country with the history and the culture of the People’s Republic. They did, however, develop their own type of democracy, a whole-process people’s democracy, which in many ways assures more input from the general citizenry than a parliamentary or presidential system of the West. This has also become grist to the mill of our Western elites, who believed that the Western parliamentary system is “the best of all possible worlds.” Even the colossal failure of transferring that model to the Arab countries of the Middle East and northern Africa, in the so-called “Arab spring,” has not shaken our Western ideologues in their belief in the superiority of their system.

 

The latest gambit in this reassertion of the “Western model” for the world is the war in Ukraine. After numerous attempts by the Russian Federation to get the West, particularly the NATO alliance, to understand their security concerns, with neighboring Ukraine eager to join NATO and brutally suppressing their own Russian-speaking population in the western regions of the country, Russia found itself facing the possibility of engaging in war with a NATO country. In that situation, they would either have to accept the ongoing genocide against the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, or be prepared for a war with NATO, which would ultimately become a nuclear one. Moving against Ukraine before it became a NATO member was thus an attempt to stop the brutal suppression of the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and avoid a direct confrontation with NATO. Once it began, however, the Anglo-Americans decided to transform it into a fight to eliminate Russia as a power in the region and in the world.

 

While the U.S. was successful in pressuring most of the other NATO countries to stay on board its anti-Russia crusade, most of the world has seen through the sham and is supporting China’s call for peace negotiations, even among those “allies: who are less than eager to follow the Anglo-American lead in a NATO war with Russia. Much of the support for the war is thus a mile wide but an inch - deep except for countries like Japan and Poland, who have their own objectives in supporting the U.S. in this conflict. There is probably no time in the previous decades in which the credibility of the U.S. as an even-handed player in world politics has fallen so low. Noting the treatment being meted out to Russia and the obsession by the Anglo-Americans in doing so has also sent a signal to all the countries of the world that this is the way the U.S. would operate if they were given the lead. The attack on the NordStream pipeline also shows that there are even limits for the U.S. in dealing with its “allies.”

 

Fortunately for the world, there is another pathway. This has been provided by the new role China plays in world politics. While serving for decades as the economic engine of the world economy, Chinese diplomacy over the last decade has begun to exert its own influence and its own philosophy in the global arena. The creation of the Belt and Road Initiative ten years ago reinvigorated a new sense of development optimism among developing countries, which had languished under the “Washington consensus” over the period of several decades. The tremendous growth of China as a technological power also served as an example of what developing countries could do when free from the control of the U.S. and its dollar system. China’s willingness to share its development with other developing countries also provided an alternative to the neglect by the Western nations world of their development needs.

 

This policy by China was not limited to its bilateral relations, but led to the creation of alternative institutions outside the domain of the New York/London financial system, such as the BRICS, the SCO, the CICA, etc., which have become the institutional support for Third World development. The issue of development has also been put on the table internationally with China’s proposal for a Global Development Initiative which has gained wide support at the United Nations and among most UN members. And as the danger of nuclear war has grown with the continued NATO conflict in Ukraine. China has similarly proposed a Global Security Initiative.

 

The reaction of the West to these proposals has been anything but welcoming. More concerned about the growing loss of control over their countries of the world, they have instead targeted China in a vicious attempt to limit its development and to discredit its growing influence.  On the economic side, they are using sanctions and pressure on its allies to restrict China’s access to the world high-tech market. On the influence side, they are trying to build a case that China is not democratic and that it is conducting human rights abuses against its minorities, using Xinjiang and Tibet as particular foils for this.

 

Nobody should be fooled by these cheap tricks, abetted by the lying media in the West. Independent investigations have shown that people are prospering both in Tibet and in Xinjiang. Hong Kong has again been stabilized and is open for business when the Chinese government succeeded in successfully dealing with the attempt at “color revolution” fomented by many of the British “subjects” still ensconced in that former British colony.  In all of these areas, traditional CIA operations which were conducted against the PRC during the Cold War are now being revived largely by US-backed NGOs. But the purpose is the same, to foment revolt against the central government by these minorities and to discredit China in international opinion. 

 

China’s role in protecting the human rights of its citizenry is deserving of much praise. More importantly, China’s call for making development a human right has been well-received by the world community. In fact, it takes one of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, namely, the “freedom from want” to a higher level, placing on all nations the requirement to assure development even for those on the bottom rung of society. This more than anything, perhaps serves as the biggest threat to the Western system. The raw rules of primitive capitalism says that those who are caught on the bottom are there through their own fault, unable to adjust to the economic structure. In the West, the attempt to eliminate poverty was often seen simply as the goal of high-minded idealists, who had no understanding of the way the world works. In the best of cases, some rationalized their acceptance of endemic poverty, by convincing themselves that if prosperity were secured for some, it would inevitably “trickle down” to those  the bottom rung, which has never proven to have been the case. In a sense, China’s success in poverty alleviation puts into question the whole viability of “Western way of life.” 

 

So, the Western nations, led by the Anglo-American faction react by starting wars and building military alliances to prevent the paradigm shift that this would require. Rather than risk the possibility of having to share the world podium with other major countries like Russia and China, they are prepared to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Such is the dilemma the world now finds itself in.

 

In averting a disaster, the role of China is key. Having placed the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, as well as the Global Civilizational Initiative, which in a sense, subsumes the other two, on the agenda, they have created an alternative structure to the one that is now leading to global conflict.

 

Years ago, Samuel Huntington, that old Cold Warrior, put out the thesis of the “clash of civilizations”. While this was primarily focused on the rise of Islamic radicalism, it also reflected the fundamental thesis of the Cold War, namely, that the world was in a life-and-death fight between capitalism and socialism, and only one could survive. Even with the demise of the Soviet Union, that thesis today obviously does not hold water. 

 

But the counterweight to Huntington’s bankrupt and sinister thesis is the dialogue of civilizations, which is incorporated in China’s Global Civilizational Initiative. The world is comprised of different cultures and different ways of thinking. In all of these, among their most prominent representatives, be it Plato and Leibniz, Confucius and Mencius, or Ibn Sina or Ibn Khaldoun, there are elements which have made a unique contribution to humanity. Through such a dialogue, each culture becomes richer and more fruitful. This also provides a basis for a new generation of thinkers in all these cultures to make further contributions as the process is not a closed one.

 

While it may take some time to convince our wayward leaders in the West that dialogue is much more important than conflict, the majority of the world is supportive of the direction that China has laid out with these three initiatives. They also give new meaning to the concept of the rights of man, or human rights. For in each of these cultures, one will find the noblest elements in their reverence for the human individual. The human individual is unique among all single entities of other species in that he possesses a mind, a mind which is capable of developing new ideas, which when transformed into social practice as scientific breakthroughs, medical insights, or artistic works, provide greater benefit to humanity as a whole. This requires that every individual have the right to access to a reasonable standard of living, to education, and to personal mental and social development. We can find the root of this notion in all of the major cultures of the world.

 

With this insight, we can determine a deeper meaning to the notion of “human rights”. It is not the right to have a formal vote in some sort of parliamentary system as the West contends. Rather it is the right of the individual to development of his or her full powers of mind and to have gainful employment in a way that contributes to the development of the species. This requires a society and political structure that provides the individual with what Franklin Roosevelt called “freedom from want.” It requires access to education and to the elements of culture. It means creating opportunities for the individual to choose a profession that he or she deems suitable for their own fulfillment. It means creating a society that prizes progress as its most important product.

 

This necessitates viewing the “right to development” not simply as the right of nations to develop, but also right of the citizens of those nations to develop. As society progresses, so must also the lot of even those on the lower rung of society. But this will not simply “trickle down”, but must be the task of society to encompass them into the broad sweep of the nation’s development. 

 

How many nations can claim that they are doing this? The endemic and growing poverty in the Western nations, including the United States, is clearly an abuse of that “human right,” the “right for development.”  The failure in this area has contributed to the many problems afflicting the United States, be it racial discrimination, increased school shootings, or simply neglect in maintaining a functioning infrastructure in our cities and towns. Only China has shown, particularly with its poverty alleviation campaign, the ability to secure this “right of development” for its own citizenry. The commitment of the Communist Party to that goal has been the necessary requirement for meeting it. Can other parties in the Western countries follow suit? Commit themselves to eliminating poverty? Creating development possibilities for all of its people? This will not occur without a major shift in the ruling paradigm in the West, which prioritizes weapons for waging war to meeting the needs of its people.

 

The world has taken note of these two distinct paradigms being offered them today. The one, proposed by the Anglo-American faction, namely, waging war against its “rivals”, creating new divisions in the world that can ultimately lead to nuclear war, and prioritizing the profits of the rich at the expense of the poor. The other has been proposed by China in its Global Security Initiative, which calls for a new security architecture based on taking consideration to the security needs of all nations, prioritizing dialogue to conflict, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, supporting the principles of the UN Charter, and working through the United Nations to resolve conflicts between nations rather than resorting to military force or economic sanctions..

 

None of this will be easy to accomplish in the atmosphere created by the NATO-Russia conflict. This will require major changes in the way the United States views the world. But this is now the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s speech at American University, where he announced his wish to end the Cold War. Had he not been assassinated, he would have accomplished that task during his second Administration. That was the spirit of America which was alive at that time, and, while no longer of importance for our ruling political elites, the tradition has not been wholly eliminated in the hearts of the American people. This gives us hope that that spirit can again become reality. But it will be a struggle that we have to accomplish here. 

 

At the same time, the rest of the world must react now in mobilizing those forces necessary to put China’s Global Security Initiative at the top of the global agenda. The world can no longer be subjected to a U.S. policy that totally neglects the good of the many, a policy based on enmity, fear, and a desire to dictate policies for the rest of the world. The creation of new organizations representing the interest of the Global South such as BRICS, the SCO, the CICA, must do their part in creating a new paradigm in the world, a paradigm of harmony and mutual understanding among nations rather than rancor, fear, and conflict. The future is in our hands, but not unless we act now in bringing down the war fever and the hate, and finding the great common interest around which all nations can unite, the interests of peace, development, and scientific progress. We can create a beautiful world, if we have that world uppermost in our vision and are prepared to engage in the necessary struggle to implement that vision.