Gente de ojos achinados

En la foto, Mauricio parece empezar a comprender que está asistiendo a la reunión más importante de su vida, y que curiosamente no está presente ninguno de los farabutes que esperaba encontrar en un evento así: los pesos pesados del Imperio y de la UE. En cambio, se topa con un montón de tipos de caras achinadas, gesto adusto y ceño reconcentrado. La nota que sigue habla de esto; fue escrita por Wayne Madsen para el sitio web Strategic Culture Foundation:

Título: World Leaders Gather in Beijing While the US Sinks into Irrelevancy

Texto: While vaudevillian comedy-like shouting matches broke out in the West Wing of the White House between President Donald Trump and his senior advisers and between the White House press secretary and various presidential aides, world leaders gathered in Beijing to discuss the creation of modern-day land and maritime «silk roads» to improve the economic conditions of nations around the world. Nothing more could have illustrated the massive divide between the concerns of many of the nations of the world and those of the United States, which is rapidly descending into second-rate power status, along with its NATO allies Britain, France, and Germany.

While Mr. Trump was threatening to fire his senior White House staff, reprising his one-time role in his reality television show «The Apprentice», China’s President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and presidents and prime ministers from around the world sat down to discuss the creation of new international and intercontinental highways, railways, and maritime routes under China’s proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Even countries that are cool on the Chinese initiative, including India and Japan, sent representatives to the summit that carried a bit more clout than the pathetic representation of the United States, Matt Pottinger, a little-known special assistant to Trump and the senior director for East Asia of National Security Council. In fact, the only reason Trump sent anyone to represent the United States at the Beijing gathering was because of a special request made by President Xi during his recent meeting with Trump at the president’s private Mar-a-Lago Club resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

South Korea, which saw relations with China sour over America’s placement of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea, sent a delegation to Beijing after a phone call between South Korea’s new liberal president, Moon Jae-in, and President Xi. Moon responded to the phone call by sending a delegation led by his Democratic Party’s veteran legislator to Beijing.

Even North Korea, which rankled South Korea, Japan, and the United States by firing a ballistic missile into waters near Russia, sent a delegation to the Beijing meeting headed by Kim Yong Jae, the North’s Minister of External Economic Relations. The Trump administration, which sent a virtual unknown to Beijing, complained loudly about North Korea’s representation at the Silk Road summit. But Washington’s complaint was conveyed by someone as unknown as Mr. Pottinger, Anna Richey-Allen, a low-level spokesperson for the U.S. State Department's East Asia Bureau. The reason why the United States is being spoken for by middle-grade bureaucrats is that the nation that still believes it is the world’s only remaining «superpower» is now governed by an administration rife with top-level vacancies, inter-agency squabbling, and amateur league players.

Even though major European Union member states were not represented in Beijing by their heads of government, Germany sent its Economy Minister, Brigitte Zypries. She warned, however, that the EU would not sign a Silk Road agreement with China unless certain EU demands on free trade and labor conditions were guaranteed. Germany’s reticence did not seem to faze other EU nations, which were represented in Beijing by their heads of government and appeared to be more avid in their support of the Chinese initiative. These EU member state leaders included Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Czech President Milos Zeman, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Moreover, had British Prime Minister Theresa May not been in the middle of a general election campaign, she would have been in Beijing. Nevertheless, she sent British Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond in her place.

If the Trump administration hoped to convince world leaders to stay away from Beijing, it was sorely disappointed. The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, was there, along with the President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Also present in Beijing were the presidents of Turkey, Philippines, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Kenya, Uzbekistan, and Laos, as well as the prime ministers of Vietnam, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Fiji, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

Ministerial delegations from Afghanistan, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Finland, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Maldives, Romania, Nepal, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates were at the Beijing summit. Japan was represented by the senior adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party, Toshihiro Nikai. France, which was experiencing a change of presidents, sent former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The Silk Road initiative has projects planned in all the nations whose governments were represented in Beijing, except for the United States and Israel. In addition to the nations represented by their government heads of state and ministers, Silk Road agreements were signed between China and Palestine, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Tajikistan, Brunei, Croatia, and East Timor.

The one clear message the Beijing meeting sent out to the world is that America’s «unipolar» vision of the world was dead and buried. Even among Washington’s longtime friends and allies, one will not hear Donald Trump referred to as the «leader of the Free World.» That phrase has been discarded into the waste bin of history along with America’s insistence that it is the world’s only «superpower.» The United States is a power, a second-rate one that happens to possess a first-rate nuclear arsenal. But nuclear weapons were not being discussed in Beijing. Major projects were on the agenda, projects that when completed will leave the United States at sea in the propeller wash.

President Xi, in his keynote address to the conference, said that the «One Belt and One Road» initiative is «a project of the century» and that will benefit everybody across the world. And to put his money where his mouth is, Xi said China will contribute 80 billion yuan (US$113 billion) as added financial impetus to create a global network of highway, railway, and maritime links in a recreation of the ancient Silk Road that linked China to the West. Meanwhile, in Washington, Trump spoke of having recorded «taped» conversations with his fired director of the FBI James Comey, setting off a political firestorm. A new global infrastructure being spoken about in Beijing and political hijinks the major topic of conversation in Washington. The United States has fallen into second-rate global status and is seriously ill as a cohesive nation-state but does not even realize it.

China and Russia used the Beijing summit to showcase several Eurasian initiatives, including the Russia-inspired Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Both the Chinese and Russian heads of state let it be known that the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa was still a potent world entity, even though South Africa was not represented in Beijing by its president and India chose not to send any representative to Beijing.

President Putin’s words to the conference about the new geopolitical status in the world were noteworthy: «the greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilization-wide project looking toward the future.» In other words, the European Union, which is losing the United Kingdom as a member and will never see membership for Turkey, is a dying international organism. Other international initiatives, like the EEU, BRICS, AIIB, and the One Belt, One Road (OBOR), are leaving the EU and the United States in the dust. That was evident by the fact that the United States was represented in Beijing by an overrated desk clerk and the EU by a Brussels «Eurocrat,» the European Commission vice president Jyrki Katainen.

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Por su parte, el sitio web Covert Geopolitics pasó revista a los funcionarios que asistieron a la cumbre de Beijing:

Título: List of Attendees to the 1st Belt and Road Summit in Beijing

Lista:

Afghanistan: Unspecified minister-level delegation

Argentina: President Mauricio Macri

Australia: Trade Minister Steve Ciobo

Azerbaijan: Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev

Bangladesh: Unspecified minister-level delegation

Belarus: President Alexander Lukashenko

Brazil: Secretary for Strategic Affairs Hussein Ali Kalout

Cambodia: Prime Minister Hun Sen

Chile: President Michelle Bachelet

China: President Xi Jinping

Czech Republic: President Milos Zeman

Egypt: Trade and Industry Minister Tarek Kabil

Ethiopia: Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn

Fiji: Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama

Finland:  Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland Anne Berner

France: Jean-Pierre Raffarin, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense and Armed Forces in the French Senate

Germany: Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries

Greece: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras

Hungary: Prime Minister Viktor Orban

Indonesia: President Joko Widodo

Iran: Minister of Economy and Finance Ali Tayebnia

Italy: Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni

Japan: LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai

Kazakhstan: President Nursultan Nazarbayev

Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta

Kyrgyzstan: President Almazbek Atambayev

Kuwait: Minister of the Amiri Diwan Affairs Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber

Laos: President Bounnhang Vorachith

Malaysia: Prime Minister Najib Razak

Maldives: Economic Minister Mohamed Saeed

Mongolia: Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat

Myanmar: State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi

Romania: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Environment Gratiela Gavrilescu

Nepal: Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara

New Zealand:  Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith

North Korea: Confirmed to be sending an official delegation;  the delegation will be led by Kim Yong-jae, the North Korean minister of external economic relations, according to a number of South Korean media reports

Pakistan: Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif

Philippines: President Rodrigo Duterte

Poland: Prime Minister Beata Szydło

Russia: President Vladimir Putin

Saudi Arabia: Minister of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources Khalid Al-Falih

Serbia: Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic

Singapore: Minister for National Development and Second Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong

South Korea: Ambassador to China Kim Jang-soo; Park Byeong-seug, National Assembly member for the Democratic Party

Spain: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy

Sri Lanka: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

Switzerland: President Doris Leuthard

Syria: unspecificed minister-level delegation

Thailand: five ministers: Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Pramudwinai, Minister of Transportation Arkhom Termpittayapaisith, Minister of Commerce Apiradi Tantraporn, Minister of Digital for Economy and Society Pichet Durongkaveroj, and Minister of Science and Technology Atchaka Sibunruang

Tunisia: Culture Minister Mohamed Zine El-Abidine

Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

UAE: Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of State and Group CEO of ADNOC

Ukraine: unspecified official delegation

United Kingdom: Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond

United States: Matt Pottinger, National Security Council senior director for Asia

Uzbekistan: President Shavkat Mirziyoyev

Vietnam: President Tran Dai Quang