American Wars by Other Means
The United States of America has been a world power for almost a century. This century saw the highest level of technological progress but it was also the most brutal century in terms of wars, human deaths and suffering. The US wants to continue to hegemonize the world which means more violence around the world. After all, the US in its 244 years history has only seen peace for 16 years and it has remained at war for the rest of its history. Continued American hegemony means more death and suffering for the world.
The US elite should understand that no empire remains ascendant forever. As there are visible signs of American decline, China is poised to assume the responsibility of a world leader. As John Mearsheimer said that America will do everything in its control not to let China rise without a fight, but ‘fighting’ a kinetic war will also destroy America itself.
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Therefore, from the American point of view there must be another way to achieve its goals. And that way is through sedition and deception against the people of China, Russia and the Islamic civilization. They accomplish that through lies and falsity that parade as knowledge to convince the gullible masses to cut the branch they are sitting on. In other words, the guiding philosophy of those who wield influence on America is downright diabolical because they are running against the order of nature which seeks sustenance and peace through connectivity by avoiding unnecessary divisiveness.
Thailand: The next Friend on Punishment Row
In the wake of this week’s events in Thailand the corporate media of the West claimed that Thai people are demanding democracy. This is really funny and obviously false. The whole world knows by now there is no democracy anywhere, and especially not in the West as commonly understood.
It is the rule of special interests that do not have the best interest of people in mind. As long as Thailand was subservient to the American interests, they were a darling of Asia, but geography and history dictates that Thailand in history, and since the current rise of China, was always economically and culturally connected to the greater Chinese civilization. Since the beginning of Pax Americana, the Thai kingdom became a useful pawn of America but now they want to return back to their historical norm.
The Active and Integrated Defense Strategy of Russia and the State-based governance model of the CPC based on a Unitarianism of Confucianism, are both effective measures of governance that vie to circumvent the color revolutions
US history suggests that the US often asks its allies to go against their national interest, and if they don’t, they are punished. This is to suggest that the US is often the enemy of their allies. Thailand today has no existential enemies against whom it requires a large standing army. Yet, the US sells them its old military equipment. However, when Thailand purchases cheaper and latest equipment from China, the US objects. The reason Thailand is purchasing from China is because it trusts China in a way that it does not trust America. Thailand understands that China is a friend and America is a ‘frenemy’.
China is Thailand’s biggest trading partner. Thailand’s economy is dependent on tourism and the Chinese tourists have outnumbered the Western tourism combined. The Chinese FDI in Thailand is 13 times greater than that of the American investment. Moreover, Thailand is an important BRI country and supports China’s OBOR program of connectivity.
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The US on the other is dead set against BRI. The American preference for the region is that Asian countries remain dependent, disconnected and disengaged with each other while it reaps the benefits of their dependency. It is obvious that the US wants to punish Thailand for its support for Asian and global connectivity. It is also obvious that Thailand wants to protect itself from the Trojan horse.
The Trojan Horse
Pentagon’s infamous Trojan Horse Program was a tool of fomenting color revolutions and hybrid warfare against friends and foes alike. The purpose of this program is to use destabilization of states in conjunction with high precision weapons in order to bludgeon such states into submission. The color revolutions often attack a country from within. Since criminal elements exist in every society, they are recruited with money to spread sedition. In such hybrid wars, there are no armies attacking from outside, but armed gangs, terrorists, lawyers, students, women’s groups turn against their own states.
Valery Gerasimov, the First Deputy Defence Minister of Russia stated that “The US and its allies have opted for an aggressive vector in their foreign policy. They work on hostilities of an offensive nature, such as global strike and multi-domain battles. They use technologies of color revolution and soft power. The object is to destroy the states of those countries they don’t like, to undermine their sovereignty, to change the laws made by the elected state organs. It happened in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine. Now, we see similar actions in Venezuela and other countries”.
Encirclement of China
Whereas we have seen the US and its allies do this with varying degrees of success in some Muslim countries such as Libya, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Tunisia. And they threatened Saudi Arabia and the UAE and brought them back into line. Similarly, they did used similar tactics in Latin America with countries such as Venezuela and Peru.
However, there is good news that there is an equal number of countries where these tactics failed. In countries such as China (Xinjiang and Hong Kong), Russia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, the US and its allies failed to bring about the changes of their choice. This does not mean however, that the threat of such sedition is over in these countries.
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Non-Arab Muslim Countries Beware
The heart of resistance against the geopolitics of Zionism are countries such as Iran, Afghanistan (the Taliban), Pakistan and Turkey. These countries are different from the Arab countries in a way that their beliefs and values are based on traditional Islam and not on modern reform or wahabi/salafi fundamentalism. These countries have professional armies and in the case of Pakistan, a war trained army with nuclear weapons.
Whereas the Gulf Arab countries have already capitulated to the US and its allies, the non-Arab Muslim countries of the East are getting ever close to China and Russia and day by day decreasing their reliance on the West. Therefore, it is these countries that were also the frenemies of America, and they are vulnerable because of a long US presence in these countries.
China has understood that creating one’s own platforms of social media are supplemental to state’s control of essential narratives that safeguard the state’s ideological frontiers
Since WWII, in the Muslim countries of southwest Asia, the Western institutions have done a considerable amount of homework and recruitment, successfully enough to prop up elite classes intellectually subservient to western liberalism, and who often go against their native wisdoms. The enemies within these countries are known as liberals.
The communities that are vulnerable to their sedition are lawyers, NGOs, students, some religious groups and women’s groups. Invisibly, there are also hardcore criminals and terrorists who are always lurking behind the shadows with powerful friends inside various establishments and a poisonous media that is ever ready to give a false coverage of events they precipitate together. This has been particularly true in the Pakistani case.
Counter measures
We have to learn from those cases that became victims of these color revolutions. Factors that led up to them should serve as premonition, conditions to be avoided. Conversely, we must also learn from those countries’ experience that successfully surmounted this challenge. A long time academic and diplomat of the US, Michael McFaul enumerated the conditions that will inadvertently lend themselves to a color revolution: first, it is important that there be a semi autocratic rather than a fully autocratic regime. The logic of this is clear. Fully autocratic regimes have greater coerciveness to enforce its own conditions. Semi autocratic has a limited ability to coerce and on top of that they have a legitimacy crisis.
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Secondly, the leadership should be upopular. Thirdly, the opposition to the state control should be organized. Fourthly, voting falsification, and opposition’s sway on mobilizing masses helped by media who will support the anti-state narrative. Finally, there must exist cracks and divisions within the state. McFaul was a Russia expert academic who had studied revolutions and Pre-Putin Russian and American leaderships both consulted him.
Subsequently, he had served as an American ambassador to Moscow. Being a proponent of the liberal world order, he thinks that there is a science of color revolutions. We know from the recent history of Russia and China that if these conditions are extant, the US and its allies will immediately try to launch mischief. China and Russia have a nearly identical view of color revolutions.
The Active and Integrated Defense Strategy of Russia and the State-based governance model of the CPC based on a Unitarianism of Confucianism, are both effective measures of governance that vie to circumvent the color revolutions. Both China and Russia have understood that it is necessary to have a sufficient degree of monopoly on the channels of information within state and society. China has understood that creating one’s own platforms of social media are supplemental to state’s control of essential narratives that safeguard the state’s ideological frontiers.
What can the Muslim Countries Learn?
Cases from Syria, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon demonstrate that more fragmented a society is, greater the number of fissures available for the outsiders to widen the gaps and polarize the societies further. The liberal agenda feeds mainly from Zionist geopolitics which benefits from loosening the glue that binds societies together in order to gain greater control of various aspects of human life.
Muslim World is important for Russia and China not only because of demographical reasons, but also from the point of view of security and welfare
To achieve this end, if one loosens the grip of religion, institution of the family and masculine virility, one can reduce the chances of solidarity leading up to collective action taken by states and society together to circumvent atomization of societies. In short, if one does not embark upon a comprehensive plan of consciousness management in the light of our civilizational worldviews, one has greater chances to fall prey to liberal agenda of consciousness management.
As the time goes by grey areas of human consciousness seem to be shrinking and shovelling humanity in a tight black and white tunnel of modernism which is teleologically gloomy and pessimistic. From paradigms of modern science, to de-linking of ethics and morality of political and economic philosophies, to proliberal cultural attitudes, nearly two centuries of homework has led the humanity to this point.
Further, the greater distance between the state and civil society, greater room there will be for outsiders to plant themselves inside the countries of the Muslim world. Orewellian deep modernism has brought the humanity at this impasse from where recovery is difficult but possible. This difficult path is resuscitation of a traditional worldview. Since the worldview of traditional Islam is still prevalent in great numbers within the Muslim world, it is imperative that tradition should be understood, constantly perfected and perfectly presented to give societies the cultural confidence they deserve.
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The state has to be seen legitimate and the governments need to perform and deliver. What has happened to Muslim countries since 9/11 has to be understood for what it was, not how it appears to be. Muslim World is important for Russia and China not only because of demographical reasons, but also from the point of view of security and welfare. Moreover, the future of BRI and CPEC depends on eastern Islamic lands between China and Russia. What has happened recently in Thailand and Peru must be avoided at all cost by understanding the science of color revolutions.
Dr. Ejaz Akram is a Professor of World Politics SWUPL, Chongqing, China. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.