US's "Axis of Evil" as China Sees It

The Chinese aren’t taking part in the game of white against black on the world’s great chessboard
After the 9/11 tragedy, when the symbols of US military and economic might, the WTC towers and the Pentagon building, fell victims to terrorism, American President George W. Bush declared his "axis of evil" at a session of Congress. He drew the axis from Iraq through Iran to North Korea. He said that countries that didn't join the USA in bringing punishment to those mentioned in the "axis" were against the USA. After that, George W. Bush started gathering a democratic and liberal army to start a campaign against the regimes belonging to the "axis of evil."

Simultaneously, associates of the Protestant president unobtrusively started propagating the idea that China's joint power had already become the key world force resisting the US's leadership. It seems that this is to be understood the following way: China is gradually appearing as the center of the axis drawn by the American president.

In April 2003, one end of the "axis of evil," Saddam's monstrous Iraq, was finally crushed by "the coalition of the good." The victory in Iraq looked like the times of the First Rome: a victorious warrior stood proudly, with the prostrate and looted dead body of the enemy under his feet.

Having not yet completed the liquidation of the "devils incarnate" who escaped to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and other Moslem refuges, the USA took aim at another end of the "axis of evil," North Korea, which openly spoke about the nuclear threat it possessed. However, while the Iraqi end of the "axis" rested upon the surrounding Arab world, riven with contradictions, the Korean end of the "axis" rests upon China.

Let's have a look at the situation from a Chinese point of view. The picture of the world looks like this: The Chinese co-ordinates of reasonable political activity reveals something different from a war held by the American "good” against global "evil," a struggle with extremism and the European progressive movement. Here, like in a three-phase electric engine, the movement proceeds in a fluctuating cycle with three, not two, poles of force.

I would like to mention that Mao Zedong's theory of division of the world into three spheres was called a very great contribution to the treasury of Marxism-Leninism. The idea of the theory is as follows: instead of the traditional biblical division into two (forming an alliance against an opponent), the Chinese traditionally consider three powers: "we ourselves, our enemies and our allies."

As is seen from policy statements on Chinese foreign economy strategy, China's allies are North Korea, Iraq and Iran. These are the countries which the USA includes in the "axis of evil." China has as a consequence referred to the USA as "our enemies." Why did Chinese leaders do so? What plan did they think up?

To find an answer to the question we should first of all understand what the Chinese image of victory is. In fact, victory for China does not lie in killing and plundering the enemy. It is enough for a Chinese victory that the enemy lose face. Disgracing an enemy in front of a wide audience is a goal in itself.

China is the core state, the immovable hub of the universe; the USA and NATO, as well as Russia and the CIS, not to speak of Africa and Latin America, are borderland states split by acceleration vectors and revolving around the center. What is more, in Chinese symbolism, the white face of "long-nosed overseas devils" is a prophetic one. The reddish hair of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy is the symbol of a thief.

Let's get back to Mao's group of three powers. It is interesting that China is still staying in the background of the military and political activity. It managed to arrange "economic openness" so that doors for capital and technologies could freely open only inward to China. In other words, "we ourselves" allow and help "our enemies" and "our allies" to exhaust each other for the benefit of "us ourselves." China is observing the active conflict between "our enemies" and "our allies" from the outside.

China's main objective is that "our enemies" (the USA) overexert themselves in economic and financial respects (i.e., they must lose face). They must overexert themselves in the tension of the permanent struggle against "our allies" (those onthe "axis of evil" and others).

As is known, practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. With respect to Iraq and the Arab world on the whole, there has been the practice of six Arab-Israeli wars in the second half of the 20th century. This practice demonstrates that 5 million Israeli Jews repeatedly beat 50 million Arabs and always crushed Arab regular armies within a period of 6 days to 1.5 months. So, today's war of the American "good" against the "axis of evil" in the Arab world (no matter whether in Iraq, Syria or Saudi Arabia) is fated to result in a US victory. That is why Bush administration appointed the "terrorist regimes" of Arab Moslem countries as its military enemy.

With respect to Iran, the USA has quite different practice. Persians are not like Arabs. The USA still remembers that, during President Carter, the pro-American regime of Reza Pahlavi in Iran collapsed under the pressure of an Islamic revolution. At that time, Americans brought shame upon themselves in an operation aimed at "liberation" of the US Embassy in Teheran. Later, the CIA disgraced itself with its secret diversions. And a war that the USA incited between Iraq and Iran resulted in nothing.
 
As for North Korea, the generation of George Bush Sr. still remembers the lost war in Korea. The defeat in Vietnam, when powerful America, with its B-52s and napalm, waged war against Asians armed with Chinese-made Kalashnikov rifles, is still vivid even for George W. Bush’s generation.

Remember the incident in April 2001 when an American EP-3 Orion surveillance plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan? The US ”military with a human face" demonstrated its inability to do something striking to the whole world. Instead of landing on water and sinking the secret plane, the crew landed at a Chinese airfield. Chinese authorities then made the whole of the world understand "the Chinese factor": they forced official apologies out of Americans (which was treated as avowal of their guilt) and gave back the disassembled plane only for a payment of $5 million.

The same "loss of face" by Americans could be observed in connection with the intention to deliver an attack against Iraq, which was delayed for several months. Against the background of a crisis in the US economy, the Bush administration was expected to take immediate actions, but those actions were delayed for the sake of political maneuvering. As a result, the USA lost face.

The Chinese are doing the same thing in the case of the North Korean nuclear problem. After the North Korean regime was included in the "axis of evil," the Americans disavowed the 1994 bilateral agreements on "oil for freezing the nuclear engineering program." In 2002, The US' free supplies of oil and oil products to North Korea were stopped (500,000 tons of reduced fuel oil were earlier annually delivered to North Korea).

Then, Kim Jong-Il had China's might behind his back and decided to aggravate relations with the USA: the reactor at the nuclear power plant recommenced its operation. Chinese diplomacy immediately joined the "conflict settlement" and insisted that direct bipartite negotiations must be held between the USA and North Korea. The Americans, absorbed in the Iraqi war, attempted to switch the opposition to North Korea into the UN’s international framework, and engaging Russia and Japan as well. But China didn't allow breakup of the direct opposition between "our allies" and "our enemies"; negotiations were held in Beijing on April 23, 2003. At the negotiations, the North Korean side toughened its demands to the USA and added political demands to the economic ones. The Americans were confused with demands to sign a non-aggression pact, to give up the line of demarcation along the 38th parallel and recognize a united Korea with its capital in Pyongyang.

The Chinese aren’t taking part in the game of white against black on the world’s great chessboard. They know that, in accordance with the law of change, the north overpowers the south and the center overpowers the north. Justas North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam, North Korea will finally overpower South Korea. In its turn, the USA will overstrain itself in the fight for hegemony. Consequently, China, taking the central position, will become the world leader.

Andrey Devyatov