P Kharel

International trade these days is an arena in the thick of tumultuous times. The United States-led West and Sino-Russian team-up emerge as two significant blocks heading for fierce fight for the central role in international politics and economic direction. A declining power clinging on to the seat of the only superpower emerging after the Soviet Union’s collapse 30 years ago, the United States vainly digs its heels to retain the seat destined to be no monopoly of a particular state anymore. The clock cannot be set back.
The US and its Anglo-Saxon allies made many mistakes in international dealings and created much mess in countries refusing to oblige their political prescriptions and economic directives, issued through the numerous agencies created and fully funded to serve their core strategy of retaining a stranglehold on the rest of the world. It is all a question of who survives and thrives as the dominant group in global politics, and who controls the economy and channels cultural contents as the best for all. Tastes, habits, gestures, outlook, fashion and lifestyle are the target for uniformity and utility—subtle or otherwise. Communications agencies and channels are pressed into service to the hilt for this objective.

Turbulent tide
The West’s vast technological advance fetched them an enormous advantage. But the wheel of fortune began to shift slowly by the turn of the century, and emphatically so in the 2010s. Today, China has made progress so swiftly and extensively that the West-created and dominated international agencies acknowledge that the communist China is replacing the US as the next world No. 1 economy by 2028. For Russia, it is the prospect of returning to the highly exclusive hub from where decisions of global impact are inspired or issued. However, the emerging multipolar world will be different from the past 30 years. Regional groupings will crisscross issues and interests, creating different sets of networks under various combinations. Nation first is the exclusive preserve for the big and the mighty.
The sky will not fall if there is a change in the seat arrangements or the number of members in the top-notch club. The once No. 1 superpower might fall some rungs just as the new power to occupy the seat will gain a few rungs to the pinnacle of power. Who are the best dressed, the most beautiful, the mightiest, the good, the bad and the ugly? The invariable verdict almost always arrives in favour of those in the West or their sponsored cousins elsewhere.
Actually, the scheme is to narcotise others into absorbing the cultural invasion that assures pretences of choices for all but leaves no stone unturned for canalising the dominant class’s beliefs and practices as the unalloyed mantra to a truly civilised society. The dominant decides what is in vogue, the trend and requirement for anything and everything.
Having monopolised the central role for so long, the West finds China’s rise as an economic power with political superpower status that accounts for the rattling prospect for the US and its first cousins in Europe. Within this block, too, there is a parallel approach shaping to create a major force to reckon with at this crucial juncture of tectonic changes so clearly in the pipeline — that of the English-speaking states ruled basically by Anglo-Saxons. Australia and four first cousins of the Anglo-Saxon race constitute the Five Eyes that the US President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020 touted as a potent grouping against rival claimants to the throne of world domination.
Veto powers at the United Nations gave short shrift to the spirit of the United Nations to launch military intervention in Afghanistan and invade Iraq, fuel rebellion in Libya, inspire violent demonstrations in Venezuela and decided to withhold plans for invading Syria at the nick of time when Russia, supported by China, issued a stern warning against such undertaking. In Afghanistan, the Taliban guerrillas want the “foreign devils” out as a precondition for ending the long foreign-inspired war. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions of limbs maimed, many more millions reduced to living as refugees at the mercy of others and constant uncertainty, and $1.25 trillion dollars spent by the US have not brought normalcy.
In the prevailing diplomacy pursued by many a nation, the coded messages and the applied medium of communication find new sightings, break barriers and introduce alternative avenues for reaching audiences of different sizes and interests. In the process, the passage for accurate, inaccurate and fake information is utilised in keeping with the intended purposes. Alternative media like Al Jazeera are beginning to make their international presence felt on account of their focus on giving the other side of the stories as well, in addition to touching upon issues and perspectives overlooked or dismissed by BBC, CNN and other channels with longer innings. Recent media content triggered a Sino-Australian war of words, worsening their existing strained ties. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded apology from Beijing after a Chinese diplomat tweeted an image that seemed to mock at Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan, which came out in the open recently.

Convenient choice
Reacting to the Australian soldiers’ war crimes, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian tweeted: “We strongly condemn such acts, and call for holding them accountable.” His tweet was accompanied by a digital artwork by artist Wuheqilin. An angry Afghani-Australian Sahar Ghumkhor commented on Al Jazeera: “White innocence was still desperately gasping for redemption.”
A crime ias a crime by any other name. What issues the news media choose to carry to which extent, when and how are well within the prevalent definition and scope of freedom of expression. Ethical and professional questions are diluted or flagrantly violated by the very societies that present themselves as the champions of upholding the related ideals. Trying to block the natural process risks opening the floodgates of crises at the worst of times. Even as history repeats itself, the world goes on. Big powers rise and fall. That is the rule of the times. Ambitions and aggressions create conditions of circumstances. Racially infused practices continue to assault the minorities in the West as well as the rest of the world.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)