United States

U.S.-China High Level Meeting March 18

March 11, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, United States

U.S. Sec. of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan to Hold First in-Person Meeting With Chinese Counterparts Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi In Alaska March 18

March 10 (EIRNS)–The State Department today confirmed that on March 18, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will meet in Anchorage, Alaska, with high-level Chinese officials Yang Jiechi, Director of the Central Commission of Foreign Affairs, and Wang Yi, Foreign Minister and State Councilor to discuss what Blinken called a “range of issues” including those on which there is “deep disagreement.”

The Anchorage meeting will follow the March15-18 trip to Japan and South Korea, by Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. According to a Pentagon press release, the meetings with both governments are intended to bolster relations with allies in the region “in the face of long-term competition with China.” The State Department added that the meetings will “highlight cooperation that promotes peace, security and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.” Just prior to these meetings, President Biden will hold a virtual meeting on March 12 with his “Quad” allies–India, Japan and Australia.

Blinken will return from Asia directly to Anchorage where he will be joined by Jake Sullivan. Austin will go on to India, to meet with his counterpart and other national security officials, to also focus on “free, prosperous and open Indo-Pacific and Western Indian Ocean Region,” as reported by the Pentagon.

U.S.-China: A Shared Humanity

March 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, New financial order updates, United States, World Land-Bridge updates

U.S.-China State Legislators Meet for 5th Forum; Amb. Cui Lauds Cooperation

March 4, 2021 (EIRNS)–The 5th China-U.S. Sub-national Legislatures Cooperation Forum met online on March 2. Attending were state legislators from the states of Alabama, Hawaii, California, Delaware, Iowa, Michigan, and Tennessee. On the Chinese side were leaders of the standing committees of provincial or municipal people’s congresses of Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Hubei, Guangdong and Yunnan. The forum was the outcome of President Xi’s state visit to the United States in 2015.

During the course of the Forum, the two sides had extensive discussions on the theme of “Win-win Cooperation for a New Chapter.” The U.S. legislators’ organization participating in the meeting is the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, whose president is Stephen Lakis.

China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai addressed the group. He underlined that this was the first such event since the change of administrations, and he emphasized the importance of U.S.-China cooperation, particularly in a year in which the world is still in a major fight against COVID-19. Cui referred to the call that the two presidents had made in February as the possible beginning of an improved relationship between the two countries.
“A China-U.S. relationship based on coordination, cooperation, and stability is both in the fundamental interests of the two peoples, and meets the shared aspiration of the international community,” he said. “The two countries need to work together under the principle of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation, focusing on cooperation and managing differences, to promote the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations, to bring more tangible benefits to the two peoples, and contribute to peace and development of humanity.”

Mexico Seeks Energy Security

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Mexico, United States

Mexico Stands Firm: Texas Shows We Are Right To Put Energy Security Before Profit

March 3 (EIRNS)—In the middle of the Texas energy crisis, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked leaders of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to brief the nation on how that crisis proves that his policy to restore national energy self-sufficiency and a national electricity grid regulated by the government, fed by all energy sources, emphatically including fossil fuels, is urgent, and its opponents are dead wrong.

The climate mafia has launched war against AMLO’s “vision of energy sovereignty” and mandate for fossil fuels to be used before subsidized and unreliable wind and solar. “No other G20 country has such abnormal or retrograde energy policies as this government. It’s not going to advance us toward our climate goals,” one leading climate activist told the London Guardian in mid-February. International energy “investors” are preparing lawsuits against AMLO’s new Electricity Law to drive out the speculators, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies last week and is expected to pass the Senate shortly. Rating agencies are preparing to lower Mexico’s credit rating, if it becomes law.

The CFE team, led by its chairman, Manuel Bartlett, who has been outspoken against the wind and solar energy frauds, detailed how the selling off of Mexico’s public sector electricity generation and distribution to a bunch of unregulated international speculators under the previous two administrations were the cause of the blackouts in Mexico when the cold wave hit, as happened in Texas. The officials pointed to the absurdity that Mexico, an oil producer with plenty of its own natural gas, now found itself with 64% of its national electricity powered by natural gas imported from Texas. Mexico was knocked out when the cold wave hit because the pipelines from Texas froze, and after that Texas stopped all export of natural gas because its wind and solar “renewables” failed, they
reported.

The CFE managed to cover 75% of the gap from the loss of natural gas imports by activating 11 hydroelectric plants, coal plants fed by mines which the López Obrador government had recently reopened, diesel supplied by the state oil company PEMEX at low prices, existing reserves of natural gas and purchase of some shiploads of the latter—at the wildly-high speculative prices on the international markets. Officials stressed that they could only do these things because under the energy sovereignty policy, thermoelectric plants which were under-utilized, nonetheless were maintained, against just such an emergency.

López Obrador then drew the lessons out: What just happened in Texas makes clear that it is not possible to give equal treatment to private foreign companies, he stated. The state needs to control the energy production and national electricity grid as an integrated whole. Under the previous governments, the energy sector was being taken apart, sold off in pieces, and looted. “It is important to recognize that these two public companies [Pemex and the CFE] do not have profit as their purpose, but to guarantee electricity service, and at fair prices, also, because we are going to continue fulfilling our commitment to not increase electricity prices, even with the speculation and increases in gas prices which are occurring in Texas and the United States.”

U.S.-China Diplomacy: Needs to Aim for Unity

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, New Silk Road / BRI updates, United States, World Land-Bridge updates, World war danger updates

China to Biden Team: It Is ‘Evil’ To Try and Prevent Any
People’s Right To Pursue a Better Life.

March 3 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times responded strongly to a report issued March 1 by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which accused China of undermining U.S. national interests through coercive and unfair trade practices and promised to use all available tools to pursue “strengthened enforcement” of China’s existing trade obligations. In other words, as the Global Times yesterday took due note, “the Biden administration has repeatedly said it is reviewing the previous administration’s China policy, but recent messages emanating from Washington suggest that the new administration is keeping the hardline stance against China. The Trump administration’s strategic goal of containing China will be inherited, and only the means of dealing with China may be adjusted.”

It is “understandable” and even “reasonable” that Washington would seek to maintain its leading position in technologies, and to protect its intellectual property rights, the editors of this official daily correctly assert. China does not protest U.S. policies towards China which aim at promoting U.S. development and increasing U.S. strength, but containment smacks of the “barbaric geopolitical games” of the 19th and early 20th century.

“We are in the 21st century…. Be they Americans, Chinese, Latin Americans or Africans, all people have the right to pursue a better life…. [P]olicies targeted at preventing China’s continuous development and even pushing China’s economy backward are evil. They pose a direct harm to the interests of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, depriving the natural right of the Chinese people to seek a better life….

“Restricting China from the perspective of intellectual property rights protection is different from jeopardizing China’s scientific and technological research and development capabilities. The former is part of the intellectual property rights protection regime, while the latter is an evil result of the geopolitical mentality.

“China has 1.4 billion people, more than the West combined, and much more than the population of the major Western countries combined. China’s development is the grandest project of the global human rights cause, and China’s development needs a relatively friendly international environment, including fair conditions for trade and technology exchanges…. It is malicious to take tough measures to suppress the ability of developing countries, and to tell large countries like China that ‘you deserve to be poor’….

“This kind of malicious policy cannot be followed up in a broad and lasting way in the 21st century. We hope the U.S. ruling team can see clearly the general trend, stop talking about human rights when it is trying to deprive the sacred rights of 1.4 billion Chinese people…. At last, we have to say that such evil is doomed to failure in the 21st century.”

{Source: “Policies Containing China’s Development Malicious: Global Times Editorial” https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217096.shtml }

Russian Call for Four-Power Strategic Dialogue, U.S.-Russia-India-China

June 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, India, Russia, United States

June 21 (EIRNS) — Andrey Shushentsov, Program Director of the Valdai Discussion Club and Director of the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO University, argues in a short essay published on the Valdai Club website that a strategic dialogue among the United States, Russia, China and India is necessary to prevent the current state of affairs from devolving into open conflict. However, Shushentsov limits himself to the necessity of preventing the geopolitical confrontations now in play from turning into military conflict without ever mentioning the positive potential of those four powers to create a new world credit system as defined by Lyndon LaRouche in 2009.

“In a chaotic environment, the leading powers seek to secure themselves a privileged position in the international system and limit the opportunities for their key competitors,” Shushentsov writes. He notes in the first part of the essay that these four countries are the most powerful nuclear powers and have four of the world’s six largest economies. He notes further the strategic competition between America and Russia, between America and China–including the U.S. effort to rope India into the “Quad” vs China, and the positive relations between Russia and India. “Unprovoked crises or spontaneous episodes of conflict in relations within the Big Four nuclear powers can disrupt progressive global economic processes,” he writes further. “In this regard, these four powers should be mutually attentive and prudent, channeling their rivalry into a non-military area.”

Therefore, Shushentsov writes, “It is the responsibility of the expert community of the four countries to carefully study the train of thought of their competing partners in order to exclude the sudden development of a conflict. In this regard, it seems reasonable to create a permanent format for consultation among the high-level experts of Russia, the USA, China and India. To ensure that mutual deterrence does not lead to strategic disruptions and war, it is necessary to manage relations, emphasizing an interest in cooperation with respect to common areas, such as climate, the ecology, digital development, space, mining, demography, migration and counteracting natural disasters. The purpose of the high-level consultations is to prevent a shift from strategic containment to impulsive attempts to break the emerging status quo,”

He concludes. “The formation of a stable dialogue format for the four leading global powers in the 21st Century will make it possible to minimize the likelihood of an impulsive breakdown into open conflict, the potential for which remains a factor in global politics.”

NSA’s Jake Sullivan: Biden and Xi Jinping to Confer Soon

June 19, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, United States, World war danger updates

June 18 (EIRNS)–NSA Jake Sullivan was emphatic at his Thursday on-the-record call with reporters that Biden would follow up on his summit with Vladimir Putin, with a discussion with China’s Xi Jinping. The White House transcript stated, “[T]he notion that President Biden will engage in the coming month with President Xi in some way to take stock of where we are in the relationship and to ensure that we have that kind of direct communication that we found valuable with President Putin yesterday, we’re very much committed to that. It’s now just a question of when and how.”

The bulk of his press conference was to report how successful Biden had been on his European trip, basically, that he’s taken leadership of the West with his B3W–Build Back Better World, “a new infrastructure initiative… that will be a high-standards, transparent, climate-friendly alternative to the Belt Road Initiative.” He has NATO sold on “tackling China… for the first time, truly taking the security challenge posed by China seriously… and standing up to, countering and pushing back on China’s non-market economic practices…” With no irony intended, he described how governments supervising a deal between Airbus and Boeing (with agreements on investments and tariffs) so as to curtail China’s large passenger aircraft industry, is an example of the ending of “non-market economic practices.”

Sullivan described how pulling together such a Western alliance means that one can deal with Russia as a “principled engagement” – presumably, making our values clear to the opponent while identifying areas to work together. The question was posed: After Russia, does that mean “you can go on to a bilateral discussion with President XI and how’re you taking that on”?

Sullivan then elaborated: “[W]hat the President said, about there being no substitute for leader-level dialogue as a central part of why he held the summit with Putin yesterday, also applies to China and to President Xi Jinping. He will look for opportunities to engage with President XI going forward. We don’t have any particular plans at the moment, but I would note that both leaders are likely to be at the G20 in Italy in October…[W]e will sit down to work out the right modality for the two presidents to engage.” He referred to two modalities – possibly by phone or by a side-meeting at an international meeting – and then, or “something else.” Sullivan’s briefing remarks are here.

At a follow-up press conference on Thursday with the State Department’s Ned Price, Robert Delaney, the Washington DC reporter for the South China Morning Post, referred to Sullivan’s announcement and brought up the previous roadblocks (the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Wuhan lab and the coronavirus, and such). Price referred back to Sullivan’s explanation and then reaffirmed the “principled engagement” line.

Ryabkov: No Delay; We Will Follow Up Strategic Security Talks

June 19, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, United States, World war danger updates

June 18 (EIRNS) — Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov commented very positively on the Biden-Putin Summit in an interview with TASS, posted today.

“It was an active dialogue, rich in terms of contents and specifics, multi-layered. Generally, I note for myself that it was a summit meeting in every sense of this word,” Ryabkov said.

“A new start. A new beginning…Whether there will be an upward movement – the question remains open,” He continued. “But the fact that the desire not to escalate [tensions] further, but to look for ways out of deadlocks prevailed, that is a fact,” he said.

“There were no major breakthroughs, but given the state of relations, there could not have been. Nevertheless, especially in terms of the stability and security in the field of information and communications technology, they have achieved shifts in a constructive direction. As for the regional issues — it was rather an exchange of estimates and well-known views so it passed rather predictably,” the deputy minister explained.

On the proposal made at the summit for strategic stability talks Ryabkov said, “I would say that we have a chain of direct instructions from the leadership in order to avoid pauses in practical interaction with the U.S. This specifically concerns strategic stability and ICT security…,” the senior diplomat said.

“We are launching without delay and without pauses the implementation of the achieved understandings, putting their translation into practice. And we expect very much an American response,” Ryabkov stressed.

According to Ryabkov, Biden did not engage in barnstorming for U.S. allies at the summit, but dealt with bilateral concerns.

“Specifically at this meeting, I would not say that there was talk about such American intercession, similar to the one that took place a few weeks ago, when Washington suddenly became very concerned about including the Czech Republic in our list of unfriendly states. There was not anything similar at this meeting,” he said. “But it is also the fact that [U.S. President Joe] Biden came to Geneva with a whole series of joint documents the Collective West, as they say, adopted recently in different formats behind him, and it was felt. This was expected, and ultimately it is not so important whether this or that position of the United States is being worked out individually, or is shared by a number of other states. After all, it is the substantial part, which is important, and we receive it in the form of signals, some expectations or claims. We focus on the meaning, and not on the number of signatories under this or that signal”.

As for allegations against Russia made by Washington, he said they were totally groundless.

“We have no need to explain the red lines to the U.S. We have long understood what our colleagues in Washington talk about, when they use various languages of this or similar meaning. But we don’t even cross these red lines, because all their accusations that we act like we should not, are totally groundless. And this is one of the fundamental problems in relations with the U.S.,” he said.

“As for our red lines, I think President [Putin] explained it so clearly for everyone that I don’t think any further comment is necessary. And the talk about where we see the special acuteness of problems in regards to the U.S.’s behavior was quite straightforward and honest in Geneva,” the senior diplomat noted.

Matlock: We Withdrew from Basic Agreements with Russia

June 19, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, United States, World war danger updates

June 18 (EIRNS)–The National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. published on June 16 a package of interviews with all of the U.S. ambassadors to Russia since the late 1980’s, starting with Jack Matlock. EIR has yet to review the entire package but Russian President Vladimir Putin figures largely in the interviews as he’s been there for the entire period of those ambassadorships. The response of Jack Matlock, who was ambassador to the then-Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, to a question on Putin, is of significance, given the recent British effort to mythologize the history of that period, particularly with respect to German re-unification and NATO expansion.

“I think to be fair to Putin, I would say he started out being-–hoping to be-–an ally of the United States. He was the first to call President Bush after 9/11; he offered full cooperation in our invasion of Afghanistan, including overflights, intelligence, and so on,” Matlock noted. “What did we do in exchange?”

“We withdrew from some of our most basic agreements with Russia,” Matlock went on, answering his own question. “We kept expanding NATO, something that the first President Bush had promised Gorbachev we would not do if he allowed the unification of Germany and Germany to stay in NATO. Step by step we pulled out of even our most basic agreements and then, increasingly, are surrounding Russia, right up to their borders, right up to beyond their borders of the former Soviet Union, with a military alliance which they are not in.”

Matlock was not endorsing the style of internal politics in Russia and expressed his own view that there are things he believes Putin has done that have been damaging to Russia but, he stressed, “the Russian people are entitled to choose their leadership, and though his popularity may not be quite what it used to be, it is still greater in Russia than any of our recent presidents have been in the United States. And I would suggest that, before we condemn him too much, we think about that.”

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