Feb. 3—It were useful to compare the Grand Strategy of the Russia-China agreement, whose one-year anniversary is this February 4, with today’s Grand Buffoonery of the “Chinese spy balloon” over Montana. The former, “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development,” explains:
“The sides [Russia and China] believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system. Development is a key driver in ensuring the prosperity of the nations….
“The sides are seeking to advance their work to link the development plans for the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative with a view to intensifying practical cooperation between the EAEU and China in various areas and promoting greater interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions. The sides reaffirm their focus on building the Greater Eurasian Partnership in parallel and in coordination with the Belt and Road construction to foster the development of regional associations as well as bilateral and multilateral integration processes for the benefit of the peoples on the Eurasian continent….
“The sides call on the international community to create open, equal, fair and non-discriminatory conditions for scientific and technological development, to step up practical implementation of scientific and technological advances in order to identify new drivers of economic growth….
“They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries….
“The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong….”
Another case of Grand Strategy was revealed in the release this week of a 32-year-old document from the U.S. National Security Archives. It relates how, in the first post-Soviet meeting of the heads of Russia and the U.S., on Feb. 1, 1992 at Camp David, Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s central proposal was for the two countries to turn their scientific communities away from the building of nuclear warheads and toward the joint development of the SDI—what President Reagan had offered to the Soviets in 1983, to make nuclear warfare “impotent and obsolete.” The scientists were also to dismantle nuclear warheads and re-purpose the uranium for fuel for a nuclear energy-driven upgrading of economic development. Only such mission-oriented, science-driven projects could truly hold the possibility of forging an actual alliance on a higher level, after decades of mistrust.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Today, the U.S. State Department, in tandem with the Defense Department, proclaimed a wayward Chinese meteorological balloon into an ominous spy balloon, invading our sovereignty, and, unfortunately, disrupting months of work in setting up one initial step in the direction of diplomacy between China and the U.S. Does our Defense Department really believe that the Chinese have foresworn their satellites’ capabilities to surveille, and have turned to balloons? If so, is it possible that the Chinese have seized the upper hand, and we need to close the “balloon gap”?
What can be said, but, those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Grand Strategy is alive and well on the one-year anniversary of the Russia-China “New Era” Agreement. The Schiller Institute and Helga Zepp-LaRouche hosts the Feb. 4th conference, “The Age of Reason, or the Annihilation of Humanity?”
There’s perhaps no better preparation than thinking through these Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture.
