© THOMAS PETER / POOL / AFPChinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) and Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele attend a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China October 9, 2019.
Russia is bad. There is no excuse for attacking Ukraine, and the argument that it was a strategic imperative to stop NATO's encroachment is just propaganda, right? That's what every source in the mainstream media will tell you. But oddly enough, that logic never seems to apply when western countries perceive rival states to be encroaching on their own peripheries, and there's been no bigger example of that than as to how American and Australian political classes have reacted to the now signed "Bilateral security agreement" between China and the Solomon Islands, a small archipelago which exists not far from Papua New Guinea.
The deal was confirmed this week, despite Australia and the US having piled on scores of official visits in a bid to try and halt it. This has been combined with a media narrative of extreme paranoia claiming, without due evidence, that China is set to build a naval base on the islands and poses a direct military threat to Australia in turn. This has produced some hysterical commentaries, with a founder of The Diplomat Magazine even literally calling for bombing and regime change in the island nation.
Comment: We are witnessing the birth of a new world. The slap in the face to the self-assured West in Syria and Ukraine is part of the collapse of Western neocolonialism and fascism and the birth of a new and better multipolar world where all countries are equal partners.
As always that process is very painful and bloody, but one has to go through it to get to the other side.
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