La question de la complémentarité entre la Fédération de Russie et la République populaire de Chine dans le cadre de l’interaction avec les alliés et partenaires sur le continent africain est plus que jamais d’actualité et commence à recevoir un soutien officiel.
En effet, cette interaction russo-sino-africaine représente un autre cauchemar pour les représentants des régimes de la minorité planétaire occidentale.
Il s’est passé quelque chose d’assez extraordinaire lors de la session plénière du Forum économique oriental qui s’est tenue à Vladivostok la semaine dernière, en parfaite adéquation avec le thème principal du forum : «Extrême-Orient 2030. Combiner les forces pour créer un nouveau potentiel».
As the Taliban celebrates three years of reign, global powers/regional neighbours are forced to ponder (just like the authors) the regime’s sustained grip to power, which appears to strengthen with every passing year. In these three years, the Supreme Leader (Emir) Haibatullah Akhundzada has strengthened his grip to power, formulating new federal institutions functioning under his decree and implementing policies from his tightly lipped office in Kandahar. Under his leadership, the regime (since 2022) has been focusing on preferring Taliban leaders from the south, appointing them in key positions (from Provincial to Federal), and opening doors in the military command ranks since May 2023. With the nation suffering from chronic food insecurity, impacts of climate change and severe economic hardship (with more than 95% of Afghans under extreme poverty, according to a Kabul-based scholar), the Taliban government appears to manage the economic crisis, even reversing some impact, a claim made by a high-ranking Taliban leader within the Afghan Ministry of Economy, during authors discussion.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending in August 2021, created favorable conditions for Russia to reassert itself as a regional hegemon in broader Central Asia. Historically, as great powers retrench from a territory, the resulting void can be filled either by rival powers or by friendly successor states responsive to the retrenching power’s agenda. While the United States has lacked reliable successors to take its place in the region, Russia has asserted itself in a number of ways to boost its own power and influence. Moscow has not only cultivated bilateral ties with each of the five Central Asian states, but it has also instrumentalized regional security organizations to advance its interests. However, the full-scale assault against Ukraine beginning in 2022 has undermined Russia’s initiatives in Central Asia and its aspirations for regional hegemony. The Central Asian countries fear Moscow’s apparent neo-imperial ambitions and prefer to develop multi-vectored foreign relations. In this situation, China is poised to supplant Russia as the dominant power and security provider in the region, which could create tensions within the so-called partnership without limits between Moscow and Beijing.
Here are the full comments that I gave to The Epoch Times’ Nalova Akua about Africa’s role in the New Cold War, excerpts of which were included in his article titled “South Korean Government Gives Export Boost to Companies Trading in Africa”.
The challenge ahead is a formidable one that will require the military-intelligence services to fully focus on this newly metastasized terrorist threat in order to emerge victorious, which in turn necessitates their top brass giving them the order to abandon the all-out nationwide crackdown against the opposition. Pakistan’s prior large-scale anti-terrorist operations succeeded precisely because those carrying them out weren’t distracted by political witch hunts, which COAS Munir would do well not to forget.
While the Pakistani-Taliban security dilemma owes its origins to “innocent” misperceptions of the other that were previously manageable since neither suspected that any adversarial third party was meddling in these mutually sensitive issues, this dynamic has now evolved to the point where both suspect their counterparts of colluding with their hated enemy (if not outright being under their influence) in ways that threaten their objective national interests.
It’s unrealistic that China would ever abandon its investments in Russia or Pakistan, but those two’s connectivity roles for it vis-à-vis the EU and West Asia/Africa respectively can be complemented by Turkey and Iran via the Middle Corridor.
Up until the beginning of this year, China’s grand strategy was to rely on a network of connectivity corridors across its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) to integrate Eurasia and thus advance its non-Western model of globalization, which Beijing believes to be more equal, just, and multipolar than the declining Western-centric one. This ambitious plan was abruptly disrupted by two black swan events that created sudden uncertainty about the viability of BRI’s Russian and Pakistani routes: Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine and Islamabad’s scandalous change of government.
Indo-Pacific is a term with a long history within the imperialist lexicon. It originated in the writings of Karl Haushofer, the leading German geopolitical theorist, in his 1924 Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean and numerous other works.1 Haushofer was a German military attaché in Japan in 1908–1909, and traveled widely in East Asia. As a result of these experiences, he was to emerge as a major geopolitical analyst. He served as a brigade commander in the First World War, rising to the rank of major general by the war’s end. Rudolf Hess, who had been Haushofer’s aide-de-camp and later his student, was one of his chief disciples. In 1920, Hess joined the Nazi Party.
Thabat, an al-Qaeda-affiliated media outfit, has released a series of infographics in recent weeks that are intended to highlight the jihadists’ worldwide operations. The images include purported summary statistics for the entire month of March, figures for the week from Mar. 26 to Apr. 2, a brief timeline of the jihad in Afghanistan, as well as a history of the jihad in Somalia.