US's
"Axis of Evil" as China Sees It
Translated by Andrey Devyatov
Pravda
11 May, 2003
After the 9/11 tragedy, when
the symbols of US military and economic might, the WTC towers and the
Pentagon building, fell victims to terrorism, American President George
W. Bush declared his "axis of evil" at a session of Congress.
He drew the axis from Iraq through Iran to North Korea. He said that
countries that didn't join the USA in bringing punishment to those mentioned
in the "axis" were against the USA. After that, George W.
Bush started gathering a democratic and liberal army to start a campaign
against the regimes belonging to the "axis of evil."
Simultaneously, associates
of the Protestant president unobtrusively started propagating the idea
that China's joint power had already become the key world force resisting
the US's leadership. It seems that this is to be understood the following
way: China is gradually appearing as the center of the axis drawn
by the American president.
In April 2003, one end of
the "axis of evil," Saddam's monstrous Iraq, was finally crushed
by "the coalition of the good." The victory in Iraq looked
like the times of the First Rome: a victorious warrior
stood proudly, with the prostrate and looted dead body of the enemy
under his feet.
Having not yet completed
the liquidation of the "devils incarnate" who escaped to Syria,
Saudi Arabia, Palestine and other Moslem refuges, the USA took aim at
another end of the "axis of evil," North Korea, which openly
spoke about the nuclear threat it possessed. However, while the Iraqi
end of the "axis" rested upon the surrounding Arab world,
riven with contradictions, the Korean end of the "axis" rests
upon China.
Let's have a look at the
situation from a Chinese point of view. The picture of the world looks
like this: The Chinese co-ordinates of reasonable political activity
reveals something different from a war held by the American "good¦
against global "evil," a struggle with extremism and the European
progressive movement. Here, like in a three-phase electric engine, the
movement proceeds in a fluctuating cycle with three, not two, poles
of force.
I would like to mention
that Mao Zedong's theory of division of the world into three spheres
was called a very great contribution to the treasury of Marxism-Leninism.
The idea of the theory is as follows: instead of the traditional biblical
division into two (forming an alliance against an opponent), the Chinese
traditionally consider three powers: "we ourselves, our enemies
and our allies."
As is seen from policy statements
on Chinese foreign economy strategy, China's allies are North Korea,
Iraq and Iran. These are the countries which the USA includes in the
"axis of evil." China has as a consequence referred to the
USA as "our enemies." Why did Chinese leaders do so? What
plan did they think up?
To find an answer to the
question we should first of all understand what the Chinese image of
victory is. In fact, victory for China does not lie in killing and plundering
the enemy. It is enough for a Chinese victory that the enemy lose face.
Disgracing an enemy in front of a wide audience is a goal in itself.
China is the core state,
the immovable hub of the universe; the USA and NATO, as well as Russia
and the CIS, not to speak of Africa and Latin America, are borderland
states split by acceleration vectors and revolving around the center.
What is more, in Chinese symbolism, the white face of "long-nosed
overseas devils" is a prophetic one. The reddish hair of the Anglo-Saxon
aristocracy is the symbol of a thief.
Let's get back to Mao's
group of three powers. It is interesting that China is still staying
in the background of the military and political activity. It managed
to arrange "economic openness" so that
doors for capital and technologies could freely open only inward to
China. In other words, "we ourselves" allow and help "our
enemies" and "our allies" to exhaust each other for the
benefit of "us ourselves." China is observing the active conflict
between "our enemies" and "our allies" from the
outside.
China's main objective is
that "our enemies" (the USA) overexert themselves in economic
and financial respects (i.e., they must lose face). They must overexert
themselves in the tension of the permanent struggle against "our
allies" (those onthe "axis of evil" and others).
As is known, practice is
the sole criterion for testing truth. With respect to Iraq and the Arab
world on the whole, there has been the practice of six Arab-Israeli
wars in the second half of the 20th century. This practice demonstrates
that 5 million Israeli Jews repeatedly beat 50 million Arabs and always
crushed Arab regular armies within a period of 6 days to 1.5 months.
So, today's war of the American "good" against the "axis
of evil" in the Arab world (no matter whether in Iraq, Syria or
Saudi Arabia) is fated to result in a US victory. That is why Bush administration
appointed the "terrorist regimes" of Arab Moslem countries
as its military enemy.
With respect to Iran, the
USA has quite different practice. Persians are not like Arabs. The USA
still remembers that, during President Carter, the pro-American regime
of Reza Pahlavi in Iran collapsed under the pressure of an Islamic revolution.
At that time, Americans brought shame upon themselves in an operation
aimed at "liberation" of the US Embassy in Teheran. Later,
the CIA disgraced itself with its secret diversions. And a war that
the USA incited between Iraq and Iran resulted in nothing.
As for North Korea, the generation of George Bush Sr. still remembers
the lost war in Korea. The defeat in Vietnam, when powerful America,
with its B-52s and napalm, waged war against Asians armed with Chinese-made
Kalashnikov rifles, is still vivid even for George W. Bush-s generation.
Remember the incident in
April 2001 when an American EP-3 Orion surveillance plane landed on
the Chinese island of Hainan? The US ¦military with a human face"
demonstrated its inability to do something striking to the whole world.
Instead of landing on water and sinking the secret plane, the crew landed
at a Chinese airfield. Chinese authorities then made the whole of the
world understand "the Chinese factor": they forced official
apologies out of Americans (which was treated as avowal of their guilt)
and
gave back the disassembled plane only for a payment of $5 million.
The same "loss of face"
by Americans could be observed in connection with the intention to deliver
an attack against Iraq, which was delayed for several months. Against
the background of a crisis in the US economy, the Bush administration
was expected to take immediate actions, but those actions were
delayed for the sake of political maneuvering. As a result, the USA
lost face.
The Chinese are doing the
same thing in the case of the North Korean nuclear problem. After the
North Korean regime was included in the "axis of evil," the
Americans disavowed the 1994 bilateral agreements on "oil for freezing
the nuclear engineering program." In 2002, The US' free supplies
of oil and oil products to North Korea were stopped (500,000 tons of
reduced fuel oil were earlier annually delivered to North Korea).
Then, Kim Jong-Il had China's
might behind his back and decided to aggravate relations with the USA:
the reactor at the nuclear power plant recommenced its operation. Chinese
diplomacy immediately joined the "conflict settlement" and
insisted that direct bipartite negotiations must be held between the
USA and North Korea. The Americans, absorbed in the Iraqi war, attempted
to switch the opposition to North Korea into the UN-s international
framework, and engaging Russia and Japan as well. But China didn't allow
breakup of the direct opposition between "our allies" and
"our enemies"; negotiations were held in Beijing on April
23, 2003. At the negotiations, the North Korean side toughened its demands
to the USA and added political demands to the economic ones. The Americans
were confused with
demands to sign a non-aggression pact, to give up the line of demarcation
along the 38th parallel and recognize a united Korea with its capital
in Pyongyang.
The Chinese aren-t taking
part in the game of white against black on the world-s great chessboard.
They know that, in accordance with the law of change, the north overpowers
the south and the center overpowers the north. Justas North Vietnam
defeated South Vietnam, North Korea will finally overpower South Korea.
In its turn, the USA will overstrain itself in the fight for hegemony.
Consequently, China, taking the central position, will become the world
leader.