Game changer or nothingburger? The recently concluded G20 summit in India was a fascinating event that was marked with geopolitical tensions, tangible achievements, and hyperbole. After watching the historic BRICS summit in trepidation, Western powers tried their best to woo the Global South, although Biden ruined it a bit by calling them “third-world countries” and “Southern Hemisphere.” In the end, India was the big winner, concluding a commendable year of its G20 presidency with a well-organized summit and record number of outcomes; Africa was given its rightful place in G20; Russia celebrated diplomatic wins even without Putin’s attendance; and Saudi Arabia shined in the geopolitical spotlight. Meanwhile, Biden and European leaders could say they enjoyed the best samosas.
Big Picture
Before we go into the details of the summit, let’s take a 10,000-feet view of the G20.
For 40+ years before G20, there was only a small group of old Western colonialists - with Japan as an honorary member - that met regularly. That was the G7, an exclusive club that looked down upon the developing nations.
G20 is thus a recent phenomenon that started only in 2008, when the Western Ponzi scheme collapsed, and the imperialists’ banks had to be bailed out by the rest of the world. China, for example, bought $700 billion of US treasuries during that global financial crisis. Similarly, developing nations around the world pitched in to save the billionaire gamblers on Wall Street and London.
What has the G20 accomplished in the last 15 years? Can anyone think of a single tangible achievement? Nothing. When Obama came to power in 2009, there was some hope that he would change the trajectory of the American Empire – perhaps he would pause the perpetual wars, and make peace with Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Alas, regardless of the skin color and intentions, every US President eventually follows the orders of the deep state.
In 2011, the US (and some allies in the region) armed Islamist extremists in Libya to start violent protests. There were false flag sniper attacks as well to fuel chaos – similar to what happened in Ukraine three years later. Then, within a couple of days, American and European leaders cried that “Gaddafi was killing his own people.” A quick NATO resolution followed, enabling the complete destruction of Libya, which ranked 64 in the world in human development index (HDI) in Africa -- ahead of Brazil, South Africa, China, and India. After eleven years of nightmarish civil wars, Libya’s oil resources – the largest in Africa – are now being taken over BP and other Western oil companies.
If one had listened to US General Wesley Clark, the sacking of Libya wouldn’t have been surprising. He revealed in 2007 that, right after the 9/11 attack, Neocons in Washington DC had planned to “take out” 7 countries in 5 years. Those targeted countries included Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and ending with Iran. The plan didn’t quite work out as the warmongers had planned, but they have certainly caused tremendous destruction.
By the way, the entire Arab Spring was a region-wide color revolution organized by the US as a part of its attempt to reorganize the entire Middle East.
While the world was focused on Libya, an identical conspiracy was being carried out in Syria. Starting in March 2011, there were violent protests in many parts of Syria, thanks to extremists and weapons pouring across the border from Jordan and Turkey – all orchestrated by the Big Boss, USA. When the Syrian government didn’t collapse, the US resorted to the old Mujahideen playbook from the 1980s. Tens of thousands of Al Qaeda fighters were flown from all over the world and infiltrated into Syria, starting in 2012. Jack Sullivan famously emailed to Hillary Clinton: “Al Qaeda in Syria is with us.” The illegal war on Syria was a massive operation coordinated by the US and a myriad of its allies – UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey. Only thanks to Russia’s direct intervention did Syria survive. Else, the entire country would have turned into a jihadist haven – just like the Idlib region now. By the way, before the proxy war, Syria was prosperous, peaceful and secular. Its GDP had tripled in the previous decade under President Assad; and the country was even named as one of the top 10 tourist places in the world by the NY Times in 2010.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner Obama didn’t stop there. He also staged a color revolution and coup in Ukraine in 2014 with the help of Nazis. As the head of NED, Carl Gershman, wrote in Washington Post in 2013, “Ukraine is the biggest [geopolitical] prize.” (NED or National Endowment of Democracy is a CIA front organization to carry our regime changes in countries that are not subservient). US elites are terrible in planning for the long-term welfare of their own citizens, but are superb in planning long-term chaos. The concrete plans to bring Ukraine into US orbit go back to the 1990s, when the US State Department and George Soros started “investing” billions of dollars in creating grassroots movements, rewriting textbooks to fuel ultra-nationalism, buying politicians, and installing pro-US oligarchs. Also, the 2014 Maidan Coup was not the first one in Ukraine – it was preceded by the 2004 Orange Revolution, which overturned the presidential election and installed a pro-US puppet in Kiev. In short, the US succeeded in destroying Ukraine by turning the latter into an expendable pawn. The future of Ukraine is bleak, if there’s a future.
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—S.L. Kanthan