Geoeconomics and Geopolitics #18
Wagner coup; Moscow Mutiny; Europe’s China dependence; America's Asia; Jujuy protests; Agroecology;
Additional commentaries: to the blogs and essays submitted to csloh.substack during the last few days.
1] THE WAGNER INCIDENT and MUTINY IN MOSCOW
The Wagner private military company (The Print) was founded in 2014 by a former Ukrainian-born GRU officer Dmitry Utkin together with Prigozhin (Times); allegedly, Utkin had elements of Nazi leanings (NBC). This mercenary group was named by Utkin in honor of the German composer Richard Wagner. (The soldiers call each other “musicians” that are led by a “composer” and all of them give “concerts” around the world)!
It’s reported by Forbes that Prigozhin, as an oligarch, has a net worth in excess of US$1 billion dollars.
Another rather uncomplimentary write-up on Prigozhin - ‘Putin’s chef’ - is pieced together by Ms. Monika Zgustova in counterpunch.
”The 1000km M-4 Rostov-Moscow Highway mutiny”
Mercenaries, (Mercenaries and Wars), military strategist Sun Tzu had said "When the numbers are even, and no favorable opening presents itself, although we may not be strong enough to deliver a sustained attack, we can find additional recruits amongst our sutlers and camp-followers, and then, concentrating our forces and keeping a close watch on the enemy, contrive to snatch the victory. But we must avoid borrowing foreign soldiers to help us."
Whence the whole episode reminds one of warning by Machiavelli's against mercenaries:
I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and [one’s own] destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, that they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you….…
Tony Barber, in an FT piece, evoked what is supposedly a
long tradition of unofficial, semi-official or secretly state-backed warriors who fight for Russia — a tradition that extends from the tsarist empire’s 19th-century volunteers to the Wagner group of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.
Or what Professor Tooze expressed in his Chartbook #224 “proliferation of parastatal armed units like the Wagner's and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s Akhmat units could herald into a neo-feudal civil war that fractures the state.”
A deeper insight on Wagner private military company outfit can be distilled from Band of Brothers: The Wagner Group and the Russian State, (CSIS 2020), and Adam Tooze Chartbook #224 write-up; view also the +40-min WSJ, Shadow Men.
2] Jujuy Protests - THE PEOPLE OF JUJUY
Jujuy is where the Chinese company Tsingshan Mining Development S.A. plans to invest US$120 million to install a hydrogen chloride and sodium hydroxide manufacturing plant to produce lithium carbonate. The provincial governor Morales is a right-winger, (Peoples Dispatch, 23/06/2023).
In other regions of south America, the scrambles for mineral resources are also intensifying.
Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia - together referred to as the “Lithium Triangle” - hold more than 75 percent of the world's supply beneath their salt flats.
The new Chilean government of Gabriel Boric has been trying to nationalize the lithium industry, alarm global monopoly-capital, (Foreign Policy, 21/04/2023).
Though, it makes sense for foreign investors to look at Bolivia, too, even as the high-altitude salt flats are not conducive to the usual extraction method by solar evaporation, (Political Geography, Vol. 90, October 2021).
Lithium is excavated and re-processed for the EV industry where China - with over half of the world's lithium refining capacity but relying on imports for two-thirds of the raw material, and according to the U.S. Geological Survey, China only accounts for 8 percent of the world's lithium reserves, which are mostly held in an igneous rock called spodumene - dominates in her domestic market:
3] AGROECOLOGY
Agroecology is a science, practice, and movement that combines Indigenous and practitioner wisdoms with principles of ecology to generate sustainable and equitable food production and distribution.
Structural forces are neoimperialism intrusion and financialisation capitalism involvement.
Here's another narrative - like Pueblo a Pueblo [People to People] the grassroots project for organizing the production, distribution, and consumption of food, which connects agricultural producers with urban dwellers -where the connection is to nature and the land, nurturing people with peaceful transformation and solidarity.
It is also about resistance to Big Agribusiness, and the financialisation-of-the-capitalist-system that goes hand-in-hand with it.
The crisis in Ukraine is already weakening the EU's strength and international influence and accelerate its marginalisation in the global geopolitical landscape.
Two factors: on the one hand, the EU's greater dependence on the US; and on the other, the increased influence that US-leaning countries have now acquired within the EU since the outbreak of the transborder special military operation. The general understanding in China appears to be that so long as the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not resolved, the EU's dependence on the US will continue and the prospects for greater EU strategic autonomy will remain bleak.
This is confirmed by a report issued by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) which warns that the European Union is being vassalized by the United States. According to the policy brief, authored by Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin, the process of vassalization has been accelerated by the direct U.S.-Europe foreign policy.
This is a bad geopolitical prospective for China; read the said article therein by Jian Junbo (简军波) – Deputy director of the Centre for China-Europe Relations, Fudan University.
5] CHINA, U.S. HAVE SHARED INTERESTS
US policymakers are increasingly determined to exclude China from the interconnected world and are willing, and prepared, to pay a price for doing so; read Deglobalisation is here to stay.
In the insurgent of US attempting to de-risk and decouple from China in certain areas, Beijing is responding in many a way that does not end up exacerbating this trend; here's one such articulation by Liu Jianchao, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.
6] AMERICA's ASIA AUKUS AUSTRALIA
AUKUS supporters in Australia argue that it will bolster stability in the Asia Pacific by deterring China’s growing military influence in the Asia-Pacific basin. However, critics have expressed that Australia should adopt instead strategic security cooperation with its Asia Pacific neighbours rather than closely clinging to the sole hegemon.
America at one time worried that Australia was “flirting in different kind of orientation with China” (read the James Curran’s article therein).
Can AUKUS, thus be able to bring peace and stability to Southeast Asia? At the onset, Australia should build trust with its Southeast Asian neighbours. Then, Australia need to ensure that AUKUS shall adhere to the compliance within international law. Thirdly, Australia should commit earnestly to build a peaceful and trustful foundation in ensuing a stable relationship with China.
Indeed, assuming counterbalancing China’s growing dominance, say with the Defence Strategic Review, may be beneficial from an Australian national viewpoint, but an escalating Australia–China tension is of Southeast Asia’s biggest concerns.
That's why: America's Asia posture always other plans in mind: AUKUS is one strategic means to “lock in Australia for the next 40 years” - to have a reliable sheriff in the Asia-Pacific salon.
MOMENTUM #154 and the FRIDAY FILES 07/07/2023
Kindly circulate among peers and diaspora communities.
Thank you.
