Majorityrights News > Category: Regionalism

Nato Foreign Ministers meet (Photo: Bogdan Danescu/Reuters)

Foreign Brief, “NATO foreign ministers to discuss Russia-Ukraine confrontation over Kerch Strait”,  4 Dec 2018:

Foreign ministers from the member states of NATO will convene in Brussels today to discuss the recent flare in tensions between Russia and Ukraine over access to the Sea of Azov.

Kiev has been invited to participate. It will likely reiterate its request for heightened NATO patrols in the Black Sea and increased naval assistance in the waters surrounding Crimea. While representatives are expected to unanimously condemn Russia’s act of aggression towards Ukrainian vessels, it is unlikely that they will consent to an increased deployment to the region, with heavyweights Germany and France having ruled out a military solution.

The Sea of Azov incident, as well as any potential NATO response, is also likely to undermine efforts to quell rising violence in Eastern Ukraine. Germany has pushed strongly in recent weeks for more frequent contact between the ‘Normandy Four’ group of nations committed to a peaceful solution for Ukraine’s conflict. However, Russia’s involvement is likely to pressure NATO to tread carefully in its response to avoid undermining tentative mediation efforts. NATO is expected to endorse the possibility of further sanctions against Moscow.

The Hill, “Trump: Japan ties could sour when ‘I tell them how much they have to pay”, 6 Sept 2018:

President Trump touted his good relations with Japan on Thursday but warned the relationship may sour over trade.

“Of course that will end as soon as I tell them how much they have to pay,” the president said of his strong ties with Japan in a call to Wall Street Journal assistant editor James Freeman.

Freeman shared the president’s remarks in a WSJ op-ed published Thursday. Freeman said Trump had called him shortly after the editor appeared in a segment on the Fox News Channel praising the president for the strong U.S. economy.

Trump’s comments about Japan come as the U.S. finds itself in a number of trade fights with allies and other countries.

Trump has slapped tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. And he has threatened new tariffs on auto imports. Japan’s trade minister in August warned the country could possibly retaliate.

Trump last week announced a trade deal with Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. is separately negotiating with Canada but both countries have dug in during the contentious talks.

Trump has warned he is willing to go ahead and sign the deal with Mexico if Canada does not get on board.

“[T]here is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal,” Trump tweeted last week.

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has vowed his country is “not going to accept is that we should have to sign a bad deal just because the president wants it.”

Trump is also escalating a trade war with China. Trump has floated another $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods.

Stratford, “Japan’s Built-in Resistance to Pressure”, 5 Sept 2018:

Past protectionist pushes by the United States prompted Japan to build up a degree of insulation that could help it weather the current tariff threat. Even as it pursued its Cold War-era strategy to build up the Japanese economy as a U.S. bulwark in the Pacific, the United States moved to protect the U.S. domestic sector from Japanese competition. In the 1970s, the United States piled pressure on Japan, which ultimately agreed to self-imposed voluntary export restrictions on automobiles, which lasted from 1981 to 1994. This squeeze on Japanese automakers spurred a flurry of joint ventures and the movement of Japanese production onto U.S. shores.

Between 1978 and 1989, the top seven Japanese carmakers each set up production in the United States — an acceleration that gathered momentum with production of Japanese cars climbing from 620,000 units in 1986 to 2.15 million by 1994. This trend of increased Japanese manufacturing in the United States has continued to strengthen. The number of vehicles manufactured by Japanese carmakers in the U.S. rose from 3.3 million to nearly 4 million between 2006 and 2016. And of the 20 most popular light-duty vehicles sold on the U.S. market, five were Japanese models containing upwards of 50 percent of components produced in the United States.

The strong onshore presence of Japanese production facilities will partly blunt the effectiveness of the tariff tactics as the United States presses Japan to enter a bilateral dialogue. Japan still holds out hope that it can persuade the United States to reverse course on its abandonment of the CPTPP. This trade agreement fits more into Japan’s overall strategy in the Asia-Pacific to counter China’s rise by pulling the Asia-Pacific region’s economy more closely into both the U.S. and Japanese orbits. During the most recent high-level meeting of U.S. and Japanese trade officials on Aug. 9 — more than two months after the auto tariff threat — Japan continued to seek a U.S. return to the CPTPP, and the United States continued to push for bilateral talks. Instead of caving to U.S. pressure, Japan has offered up expanded investment, increased purchases of U.S. natural gas and large-scale military procurements in hopes of mollifying Washington by chipping away at the trade deficit.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, right, visited Tokyo in May where he agreed with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to cooperate on investment in infrastructure projects overseas.  Reuters

Asian Review, “Japan and China take first step toward joint infrastructure abroad”, 4 Sept 2018:

Thai high-speed rail among candidates to be discussed at inaugural committee this month

TOKYO—Japan and China are moving ahead with their plans to cooperate on overseas infrastructure projects, with a newly established public-private committee scheduled to hold its first meeting in late September in Beijing.

A high-speed rail project in Thailand is seen as the first candidate for cooperation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met in Tokyo in May and agreed to cooperate on infrastructure projects in third countries. Abe is considering visiting China in October and seeks to reach agreements on specific projects there.

Japan aims to avoid excessive competition with China on infrastructure projects by collaborating. Showing support for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative could also lead to better bilateral ties. China, for its part, seeks to avoid being labeled overseas as a disreputable investor by bringing Japan on board.

The public-private committee’s first meeting will be led by Hiroto Izumi, special adviser to the prime minister, from Japan, as well as Gao Yan, a vice minister of commerce, and Ning Jizhe, a vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, from China. Senior officials from Japan’s top business lobby, Keidanren, will also participate.

The committee discussion will form the basis for a high-level bilateral forum on cooperation to take place when Abe visits China. Tokyo and Beijing are planning to sign memorandums of understanding on 20 to 30 projects then.

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Putting an end to three decades spent of looking almost exclusively towards the West.

The Three Seas Initiative, a super Visegrád-Group?

Visigrad Post, “The Three Seas Initiative, a new forum of cooperation of twelve Central European countries countervailing the Berlin-Brussels-Paris Axis?”, 13 July 2018:

Talks on regional pipelines at Regional Forum of Three Seas Initiative, 3 July 2018, Rzeszów, Poland. Photo: Olivier Bault.

By Olivier Bault.

Originally published in French on Réinformation TV.

Poland, Rzeszów – The first Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) took place on July 3, in Rzeszów, Poland. This initiative has been started in 2015 by the Polish President Andrzej Duda and the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. The 3SI groups twelve Central European countries between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea: the three Baltic States, the four ones of the Visegrád-Group (V4) as well as Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This meeting aimed to transform this simple intergovernmental cooperation into a border crossing cooperation between the regions concerned by the Three Seas Initiative. Another dimension was then also announced by the President of the Polish Sejm (parliament) with the project of a parliamentary assembly of the Three Seas that could extend beyond the 12 3SI countries by also attracting countries that are not members of the UE, beginning with Ukraine and Moldova.

The Polish president quotes the French Robert Schuman in order to justify the Three Seas Initiative

In its current form, the 3SI is first of all an economic cooperation framework with concrete projects. Because, as the Polish president Andrzej Duda said, quoting the French Robert Schuman when he came to greet the participants from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” Furthermore, Duda emphasized that the Three Seas Initiative had also a political and social dimension, that is particularly important at a moment when the European Union is losing touch with its fundamental principles. Considered by the participating countries as complementary structure and not as a concurrence to the EU, this platform of regional cooperation might potentially – with its 120 millions inhabitants – rebalance the West-East relationship within the 28, and soon 27 members of the Union.

Putting an end to three decades spent of looking almost exclusively towards the West

While they represent 22 % of the EU population, they only produce 10 % of its wealth, as the economic catch up that began after the fall of Communism (except for Austria) is far away from being achieved. And the first goal of the Three Seas Initiative is to develop the energetic and transport infrastructures along the North-South axis and to develop trade on this same axis after thee decades of a development that was principally in a East-West direction. In the domain of energy, the Polish and Lithuanian gas terminals will be connected in the middle term with the Croatian gas terminal on the Adriatic.

This aspect does particularly interest the United States, with which Poland has just signed two very big contracts for the delivery of gas after 2022, after expiration of the contract binding it with the Russian company Gazprom. Not all countries of the Three Seas Initiative wish, like Poland, to stop buying Russian gas but they all support the diversification that the construction of these new gas pipelines will lead to, as there are also important gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea and the planned Baltic Pipe will also allow to deliver Norwegian gas to the region. For the President of the Polish gas company PGNiG (Polish Petroleum Mining and Gas Industry), who was present at the Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative, the development of connections between the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic is a concurrence to the alliance between the German and Russian companies concerned by the Nord Stream pipeline.

Another project that is being achieved within the 3SI is the Via Carpatia, which includes a motorway and expressway network that will lead from Klaipėda in Lithuania to Thessaloniki in Greece along the Eastern side of the European Union. There are also some long-term projects for creating railway and waterway transport axes, as today in Central Europe, these are all the transport infrastructures that are less developed on a North-South direction than on the East-West one. It might also be discussed in the future – the question has been arisen at the Forum of the Regions of the Three Seas Initiative – to develop direct exchanges for media information for the Central European societies to avoid being informed of what happens at their neighbours’ through the ideological filter of the press agencies and the Western European mainstream media, as it is unfortunately the case nowadays.

The Three Seas Initiative, a super Visegrád-Group?

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the satellite countries of the USSR in Europe fixed their eyes towards the West for a long time and neglected the relationships between each other. Today, with the identity and society crisis that Western Europe is going through, but also with the awareness of an economic relationship where the former communist countries got themselves being dominated, there is a great temptation to meet up with the other Central European countries to speak, when possible, with a single voice in Brussels. That is already done with success by the four countries of the Visegrád-Group (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary). The Three Seas Initiative could allow twelve countries to make it the same way.

Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.

Gary Cohn invited to leave and be replaced by dumber paleocon.

Unite the Right to Wedge-out Paleo-Cohn

Unite the Right Charlottesville was a successful neo-con, neo-liberal operation forcing a wedge against Gary Cohn’s clever paleoconservative positioning - Trump’s tariffs on Asian raw materials was the last straw.

While I have been able to see a trap for White Nationalism in forced identity with the right generally, I could also see clearly and specifically that “Unite the Right” was a trap maneuvered by YKW and neoliberal lackey’s to force vocal and visible stigmatic association.

It was unbelievable to me that “Alt-Righters” would agree to participate in such a tactlessly forecast high profile event with some of the more traditional stigmatic right wing groupings, and thereby undo a few of the things that the Alt-Right actually had going for it - to distance itself from association with historical stigma and to be only loosely affiliated, un-united enough so as to be too hard to pin down - thus, not allowing the enemies of White Nationalism to easily categorize them negatively in association with anti-social positions; to allow populist audiences to dismiss them offhand in one fall swoop with a singular negative category - and beyond casual dismissal as non-serious, to frighten populist audiences into outright opposition for observable potential in nefarious, unaccountable religious, scientistic and neo-Nazi association and intent.

However, Kumiko has penetrated this to a more perspicuous theoretical overview.

Behind “Unite The Right” and its confrontation by “Anti-Fa” was an orchestrated wedge issue, encouragement of Trump to take a neutral stance toward “the Nazis” and “The Alt-Left, who were ‘to blame, too’, blame and good people on all sides.”

Kudlow was born and raised in New Jersey, the son of Ruth (née Grodnick) and Irving Howard Kudlow. His family is Jewish. He once served as chief economist at the investment firm Bear Sterns before he was fired in 1995 when he entered rehab to treat a hundred thousand dollar a month cocaine habit. Kudlow has repeatedly failed to forecast economic trends. In December of 2007 as the sub prime mortgage market began to unravel, leading to the deepest recession since the 30’s, Kudlow wrote, there’s no recession coming, the ‘pessimistas” were wrong… it’s not going to happen. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up it’s sixth consecutive year with more to come.

Neocons and their Neo Liberal corporatist sellout allies would have been opposed to Gary Cohn and any efforts to hold their businesses in The U.S. against their profits, and to prevent a more thorough YKW and corporatist, feudalist exploitation of Asia; as opposed to sovereign industrial development by Asian corporations in Asia.

Trump’s conciliatory stance toward “Nazis” was encouraged by Mnuchin to drive a wedge against Cohn, who’d find that intolerable; with that be driven off by the internationalist left, recognizing a paleocon U.S. protectionist all too competent to run a neo feudalist operation against Asian labor.

Cohn hung-on in the Trump administration in hopes of being appointed Federal Reserve Chairman. That didn’t happen and the final nail in the coffin of his strategy happened when Trump proposed tariffs on raw materials of steel and iron from Asia - if you’re looking to exploit Asian labor as a feudalist, you don’t want to force them to grapple into lateral transmission (sovereignty), forcing them to develop industry and capacity to machinate their own raw materials.

Cohn was “too competent” in his capacity to run a feudalist international operation; and had to make way for a less competent and more compliant paleocon bracket, viz. Larry Kudlow - having cut his teeth under President Reagan, a protege of Frank Meyer’s paleocon movement.

”Tillerson’s Sacking Will Shock America and the World - but Delight Israel.” ...“Mike Pompeo’s impending move to secretary of state is sure to result in a much more hawkish and confrontational U.S. policy towards Iran.”

To complete the Zionist, neo-fuedalist enterprise, Trump also needed to get Tillerson’s obstruction out of the way, defensive as Tillerson was of the Iran deal (which liberalizes Iran as opposed to yielding to Islamic reactionary/ Abrahamic comprador control); he had to make way for the administration’s more ardent Zionist imperialist agenda - to undo the Iran deal is far more ably pursued with anti-Iranian hawk, Pompeo.

Finally toward that end, look to the possibility of the partly Jewish John Bolton to be placed in charge of the National Security Council - a historically instrumental position for those looking to initiate wars from The U.S. platform. Bolton is notoriously war mongering toward Iran and he is among the few people to be interviewed and seriously considered by Trump to a position to wield decisions over the matter.

Looking back a year, to the onset of the Russia investigation…

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Breitbart, “Anti-Mass Migration Central European Nations Volunteer €35 Million To Reinforce EU Borders”, 15 Dec 2017:

The four central nations that comprise the Visegrad group (V4) have set aside 35 million euros to help European Union (EU) member states protect the political bloc’s external borders against illegal mass migration.

The four countries that make up the Visegrad group, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, have all agreed to donate the money to protect the EU external border in an announcement this week. All four countries are attending a EU conference to discuss migration issues beginning Thursday AP reports.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico commented on the move saying, “if we will see good projects in the future, first of all, projects that are effective, we are ready to spend even more money because we really want to show solidarity.”

Mayor Laszlow discusses overwhelming success of Hungary’s border fence - “instituted because we’re ‘normal” - the fence cut migration to Hungary by 99%

Some of the countries in the V4 group have been accused of a lack of solidarity by some in EU leadership. The Hungarian government has been particularly critical of those in Brussels who have argued about solidarity.

Breitbart London @BreitbartLondon

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences’http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/09/04/eu-dismisses-request-border-securitty/ 10:00 PM - Sep 4, 2017

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences.’

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs replied to the EU elites in September writing, “The distorted narrative that is spun from Brussels attempts to convince European citizens that somehow European solidarity should be connected to accepting migrants, many of whom have crossed illegally into the territory of the EU.”

Kovacs also argued that Hungary had funded EUR 883.2 million from its own budget in order to protect the EU external borders.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consistently argued against mass migration, said Thursday that the new injection of cash will also go toward helping control illegal migration from Libya.

The EU, along with Italy have funnelled money into Libya to help train coastguard recruits and some allege that the Italians have even paid local warlords to stop the influx of migrants.

All four Visegrad group countries continue to refuse to participate in the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme with Prime Minister Fico noting, “Quotas do not work, they are ineffective, the decision on quotas really divided the European Union.”