Would you invite the Russian general staff to Nato HQ to decide on a defence strategy … against the Russians? I didn't think so.
So why invite over several hundred “lobbyists” from fossil fuel companies to the COP27 climate summit in sunny Sharm-el-Sheikh then, as in every year?
There are a quarter more of these corporate anti-climate warriors this year than in last year's conflab at Glasgow. The one where a Tory minister “wept” publicly.
One of his colleagues went on to become PM and let it be known that, actually, he was not going to join leaders in Egypt. He had more pressing matters to attend to, such as dealing with the fallout from two other colleagues who had gone amok with voodoo economics. The outcry forced Sunak to fly over for a fleeting visit, armed with a vacuous speech.
Meanwhile
Add the fallout from the war over the Dnieper River, where a mere 100 days after the promises in Glasgow all those pious Western leaders doubled down on fracking gas and even returned to pay obeisance to King Coal. Renewable energy was suddenly out of fashion. The planet would have to wait.
French President Emmanuel Macron angrily asked why US energy firms were charging Europe several times more for their gas than in the US. Had Macron forgotten the rules of capitalism he practiced as a banker at Rothschild & Co?
Why would frackers, cavalierly destroying the soil on US territory with chemicals and high pressure water, look a gift horse in the mouth?
File Photo: A Ukrainian soldier of an artillery unit fires towards Russian positions outside Bakhmut on November 8, 2022 AFPWhile the Russian military machine allegedly sputters (who knows what's really in the mind in Moscow anymore), its economy seems to have suffered a lot less than Europe's industries.
There is even talk of “friend-shoring,” where some of these industries can shut down plants in the EU and reopen in the US. Who needs enemies with such friends?
Which brings us to the temerity of a German leader, at the helm of a crumbling economy, making a trip to China.
Could we be witnessing a turn?
The former mayor of the trading port city of Hamburg, now chancellor of Germany, was accompanied by a score of the top CEOs of Germany's venerable giant multi-nationals. The types of companies which have been in business for more than a century, seeing off a couple of real world wars and a Cold War to boot. This year they had put up with the potential destruction of their business models by decisions made by their leaders.
Perhaps they have finally pushed back. Russia as an enemy is a shock to their system. Losing China on top of that would really be kaput. Germany and China have common cause to return to business as usual.
Nonetheless, Scholz took a lot of flak for the brief visit. Juxtapose that with Merkel flying in ten times during her tenure. With not a murmur of a complaint.
File Photo: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, on the right, meets visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the left, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 4, 2022 AFPRumours are swirling around that besides signing lucrative deals the mission also entailed discussions about Ukraine. Did the leaders agree to promote a peace process, a pause or some sort of deal?
At the same time, was Jake Sullivan (US national security adviser) pressuring the hard-core in Kiev to forge a compromise compact after the “effortless” capture of Kherson? If true, has all this transpired because sanctions and stagflation are killing the wrong economies, sparking rolling strikes and discontent?
A word of caution: amid the confusion, one can also read a completely different set of outcomes to all this.
One in which General Armageddon hopes that General Winter will provide the ideal conditions for a massive Russian blitzkrieg after the jaw jaw becomes war war? The odds just lengthened on this one.
How about the groups (from “somewhere”) responsible for blowing up (Germany-bound) pipelines? Will they feel that a pause is undesirable and go ahead with another “spectacular”? The forces that favour a lengthy war do not want to fold just yet, do they?
I said “pause” because, for the sake of argument, even if there were a comprehensive peace deal sometime next year (in a momentary mood of optimism), why would that herald a change in overall US and Russian grand strategy? Would signatories keep to any agreement?
No clarity
The world looked for clarity from the US midterm elections. Instead it got a fudge. The party which is more keen to confront Russia first seems to have done better than expected against the party that does not want to lose any more time going against China.
Either way, the bipartisan consensus is that both Russia and China are viewed as enemies. It is a case of sequencing.
Global leaders attend a meeting, after an alleged Russian missile blast in Poland, in Bali on November 16 ReutersWith Trump it was clear that China was the immediate (not subsequent) existential target. South China Sea rather than the Black Sea. Today, the latter is priority, with a secondary front on the former (cue the semiconductor chip war).
How about climate change? The only positive is the sense that rising anger is replacing the risible series of pleading academic debate that has achieved nothing for three decades.
If some of the elites and middle classes in the Global South conclude that this is now totally political, akin to the anti-colonialism struggles all over again, then we might get somewhere.
But that unity is for the medium term. Let's face it. This year has been a nightmare from which we need to escape.
