RE: [A-List] Has China Become an Ally?

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> The point is this: Europe cannot 'decide' anything while it is tied by
> millions of political and above all military bonds to US
> strategy, plastered
> over with US bases and incapable of having a single European
> voice, a single
> EU foreign policy. Europe cannot become whole and free unless there is
> *first of all* a substantive father weakening of US hegemonic power, and
> THAT can only happen as a result of its failure to compete with
> China, QED.
>

I want to emphasise this point. the whole point of having Marxism as an
analytical tool is to USE it. People look at the public declarations of
leaders and surface run of events and draw conclusions accordingly--without
bothering too much to make any kind of Marxian, i.e. VALUE-THEORETIC
analysis of what's going on underneath. Ever since 9/11 there has been
clamant talk on all sides for e.g. about Russia's 'new beginning', Russia's
'opening to the West', Russia as ally and partner of the US etc, buttressed
often by really idiotic talk about the alleged 'material basis' of this
partnership, namely, that the US needs oil and Russia needs to sell oil,
Russia is a stable partner, ergo can be a reliable supplier and as a
Christian non-Opec country, Russia will therefore help dish Persian Gulf and
Arab hubris forever. Bullshit. Russia is *objectively a part of Opec* and
shares Opec's basic needs. Russia is *objectively an ally of Iraq* and as we
now see will go to considerable lengths and risk Bush's anger, to defend its
Iraqi ally in the Security Council and elsewhere. Similarly, *China needs
Europe* and more than that *the EU is objectively China's ally* because (as
value-analysis clearly shows) Europe cannot defeat the US hegemon *without
China's help*.

John Gulick is arguing that in fact China's interests are homologated to
America's; they need each other's markets, capital, energy supplies which
the US can guarantee etc. True, all true, and also the bit about the
demographic collapse of the Russian Far East and the likelihood of Chinese
mass immigration there; but the point is that beyond the dyadic Sumo
wrestling match or folie-a-deux between the CCP and the Repugs there is
something else. It is a parallelogram of forces you have to analyse and
think about, not just a number of isolable, functionally-separate
competitions between China-Us, EU-Us, Opec-the West, etc etc. China *cannot*
put all its eggs in the US basket in the way John Gulick hypothesizes
because whatever the contingent, fortuitous or surface-form of mutual needs,
tactical alliances etc between China and the USA are right now, objectively
and in value-terms *these two states are the principal rivals on the world
stage* and the competition between them is the main dynamic now configuring
the driving the whole global conjuncture. And within that dynamic, the US
and China are enemies: and China and the EU are fundamental allied.

Mark