Written by Martin Sieff; Originally appeared on strategic-culture.org
The world transformed and nobody in the West noticed. India and Pakistan have joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The 17 year-old body since its founding on June 15, 2001 has quietly established itself as the main alliance and grouping of nations across Eurasia. Now it has expanded from six nations to eight, and the two new members are the giant nuclear-armed regional powers of South Asia, India, with a population of 1.324 billion and Pakistan, with 193.2 million people (both in 2016).
In other words, the combined population of the SCO powers or already well over 1.5 billion has virtually doubled at a single stroke.
The long-term global consequences of this development are enormous. It is likely to prove the single most important factor insuring peace and removing the threat of nuclear war over South Asia and from 20 percent of the human race. It now raises the total population of the world in the eight SCO nations to 40 percent, including one of the two most powerful thermonuclear armed nations (Russia) and three other nuclear powers (China, India and Pakistan).
This development is a diplomatic triumph especially for Moscow. Russia has been seeking for decades to ease its longtime close strategic ally India into the SCO umbrella. This vision was clearly articulated by one of Russia’s greatest strategic minds of the 20th century, former Premier and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who died in 2015. In the past China quietly but steadfastly blocked the India’s accession, but with Pakistan, China’s ally joining at the same time, the influence of Beijing and Moscow is harmonized.
The move can only boost Russia’s already leading role in the diplomacy and national security of the Asian continent. For both Beijing and Delhi, the road for good relations with each other and the resolution of issues such as sharing the water resources of the Himalayas and investing in the economic development of Africa now runs through Moscow. President Vladimir Putin is ideally placed to be the regular interlocutor between the two giant nations of Asia.
The move also must be seen as a most significant reaction by India to the increasing volatility and unpredictability of the United States in the global arena. In Washington and Western Europe, it is fashionable and indeed reflexively inevitable that this is entirely blamed on President Donald Trump.
But in reality this alarming trend goes back at least to the bombing of Kosovo by the United States and its NATO allies in 1998, defying the lack of sanction in international law for any such action at the time because other key members of the United Nations Security Council opposed it.
Since then, under four successive presidents, the US appetite for unpredictable military interventions around the world – usually bungled and open-ended – has inflicted suffering and instability on a wide range of nations, primarily in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen) but also in Eurasia (Ukraine) and South Asia (Afghanistan).
The accession of both India and Pakistan to the SCO is also a stunning repudiation of the United States.
The US has been Pakistan’s main strategic ally and protector over the past more than 70 years since it achieved independence (Dean Acheson, secretary of state through the 1949-53 Truman administration was notorious for his racist contempt for all Indians, as well as for his anti-Semitism and hatred of the Irish).
US-Pakistan relations have steadily deteriorated even since the United States charged into Afghanistan in November 2001, but through it all, US policymakers have always taken for granted that Islamabad at the end of the day would “stay on the reservation” and ultimately dance to their tune.
The United States has courted India for 17 years since President Bill Clinton’s state visit in 2000, which I covered in his press party. Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a Joint Session of Congress in 2016, the ultimate accolade of approval by the US political establishment for any foreign leader.
US policymakers and pundits have endlessly pontificated that India, as an English speaking democracy would become America‘s ideological and strategic partner in opposing the inevitable rise of China on the world stage. It turned out to be a fantasy.
During the era of the Cold War, the “loss” of any nation of the size and standing of India or Pakistan to a rival or just independent ideological camp and security grouping would have provoked waves of shock, hurt, rage and even openly expressed fear in the US media.
However, what we have seen following this latest epochal development is far more extraordinary. The decisions by Delhi and Islamabad have not been praised, condemned or even acknowledged in the mainstream of US political and strategic debate. They have just been entirely ignored. To see the leaders and opinion-shapers of a major superpower that still imagines it is the dominant hyper-power conduct its affairs in this way is potentially worrying and alarming.
The reality is that we live in a multipolar world – and that we have clearly done so at least since 2001. However, this obvious truth will continue to be denied in Washington, London and Paris in flat defiance of the abundantly clear facts.
Ignored? Due to shame? …maybe.
Shame? No. The Western media is a fully owned subsidiary and propaganda arm of our oligarchs. All media has always been less interested in the truth than promoting their agenda. Try reading a Philadelphia paper from the 1800 presidential election. That’s a tiny example. The lies and propaganda have grown to ridiculous proportions of late. Almost no one is willing to call them on it, being too invested in the status quo, too propagandized from the cradle on and too ill-equipped to exercise any critical thinking. The only way I can maintain my sanity is to stay away from the television and very literally, every publication in English.
Agreed.
An old joke: Napoleon to Stalin: “With your PRESS, nobody would have known that I’ve lost in Waterloo..” :)
I looks like the MSM does everything possible to distort the international situation. Understandable, after DECADES of ” WE ARE THE BESTS, it’s the American Century”… and suddenly they get holes in their Pride National Boat. The USA Almighty .. pushed in the defensive economically and military (!!) struggle not to sink but playing further the Big-Number, the Leader of the World, “The only Superpower left after the crush of the Soviet-Union” ( And that on more costs and huge supplementary DEBTS near the 21-22 thousands Billions USD they already have).
At least if the USA would try to RESTRUCTURE their priorities INSIDE and ABROAD, to rethink a few useless wars, the relations to RUSSIA so how they put aside the N-Korea- show-down for later…. But NO: they simply continue to execute any ISRAELI-WISH like a wounded dog that risks his health and even life to PLEASE its Master.
Far in the distance….at the horizon line, I see the winds of change blowing, and starting up a tiny little tempest. ;-)
America and it’s politicians as well as the media are all ran by the lobbyists. When you have 330 million people put into 23 plus trillion in debt while a minuscule percentage of globalist pigs get extremely rich , there are some massive lies needing to be being told . Imagine the chaos if Americans acually knew the truth … their worst enemy isn’t Russia , Putin may be the reason millions of Americans haven’t been devastated by nuclear war
” The World Transformed and No One in America Noticed ”
Don’t worry, the Wall-Street-SWAMP-Elites took notice, but they cannot do much against the trend, the USA being bankrupt, over-stretched in many small military bases and caught in a few GUERRILLA-WARS they cannot finish. And the money-extortion-mechanisms of the FED, IMF or World-Bank don’t function without the “Debts-Collector” the US-Army.
Best prove: Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyid Blankfein “Key asset markets in the United States have reached extremely overbought levels, including everything from stocks to real estate. And while most Americans are feeling positive about economic growth in the near-term, legendary global investor Paul Tudor Jones cautions that the long-term outlook for America is very bleak.” The next recession is really frightening because we don’t have any stabilizers… We’ll have monetary policy, which will exhaust really quickly, but we don’t have any fiscal stabilizers.
…And the RUSSKIS smirk, the Chinese use the moment and the rest try to drop the chains of the IMF and World-Bank
They function like the Roman Emperor Nero, only thinking that the ‘world has lost a great artist’ as the realm implodes. Pride is in charge now.
The World Transformed and No One in America Noticed
No, the world is changing.
And in Washington noticed. Therefore is: America first!
The population of Pakistan is 220 million……get yr facts straight first, before writing abt my country
Estimated 2018 population = 200 millions. Kasmir is inian territory, you zionist occupator!
Death for moslem agressors!
Once the us retreats a little theyll break apart and court the us as an ally. As they should the us decided two world wars.
Can anyone please explain how American Debt is now approaching $22 Trillion when, and not so long ago, Paul Ryan closed down Congress on the Federal Budget deficit (in 2014 & 2015) on more than one occasion because SHOCK!! the Federal Deficit was about to hit $10 Billion. Where has the additional $12 Trillion come from?? within 3 years?