The West is now busy blaming Russia and China for the violence in Syria, because they vetoed a not very good UN\u00a0resolution. That is ridiculous.<\/p>\n
Russia is a faded superpower, but it is no longer fading. It has not yet made the transition from military strength to economic strength, but it will get there. China is now an economic superpower, maybe the<\/em> economic <\/em>superpower. Neither considers the open pluralist democracy, favoured by the West, the best way to govern and they\u00a0could point to the political\u00a0polarisation in the US and the inability of the Eurozone to put decisions into effect, as evidence to support their conclusion. Neither is remotely equivalent to their structure in the\u00a0cold war era; both populations culturally\u00a0prefer constant, strong and predictable leadership to the vociferous debate of the most open democracies.<\/p>\n Russia and China\u00a0look at Syria and see bloodshed and mayhem, but they do not see the vestige of a coherent alternative government (unlike Libya, where their opposition to western intervention was much more muted) and, post Iraq, will be sensitive of anything which looks like a policy of regime change. They might go along with regime change if there\u00a0were a coherent regime in waiting, to change to.\u00a0Both follow a much more nuanced approach to foreign policy than the\u00a0West led by the US. Putin has described the US as a hyper-power constantly over-reaching itself. This is harsh, but their is a vestige of truth in it.<\/p>\n Afghanistan is a disaster to anyone willing to be realistic, Pakistan is seriously destabilised, Iraq is one of the most dangerous places for innocent civilians in the world.\u00a0Moreover Iraq’s\u00a0 Shia majority is allied to Iran, the direct opposite of US aims at the start of the invasion.\u00a0 The Israel\/Palestinian problem is no nearer resolution than it was fifty years ago. This is not a good foreign policy inventory.<\/p>\n Maybe it would be a good plan to see what Russia and China can do in Syria, if anything. Meanwhile before we get too critical it might be good to remember that without China’s money the US is bust and without Russia’s energy most of Europe would freeze to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The West is now busy blaming Russia and China for the violence in Syria, because they vetoed a not very good UN\u00a0resolution. That is ridiculous. Russia is a faded superpower, but it is no longer fading. It has not yet made the transition from military strength to economic strength, but it will get there. China […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4534"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4538,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions\/4538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}