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My Take | A new ‘axis of evil’? Maybe, but it does not involve the usual suspects

  • China’s diplomacy suddenly starts to look ‘not too bad’ compared to the genocide and ethnic cleansing, and their enabling by some democracies

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Smoke rises during Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP

A recent op-ed from Bloomberg suggests a new “axis of evil” is emerging. It was behind a paywall and I wasn’t about to pay to read it. But instead of the old axis of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the new ones are Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.

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We all know how US foreign policy turned out last time under George W. Bush when its formulation was based on such an axis: an illegal war in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands, uprooted millions and destroyed a whole society; the spurring of Iran to become a big regional player in the Middle East and the nuclearisation of North Korea that makes it virtually uninvadable.

It looks like the Joe Biden White House now wants a repeat. Whether or not it uses the same wording, we are already seeing similar results.

Remember Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity as repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result?

The hypocrisy of the completely different Western responses, especially Washington’s, to the conflicts involving Ukrainians and Palestinians, has fundamentally squandered the diplomatic capital of the West in the eyes of the Global South.

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China’s position on both conflicts accord with the rest of the world while “Western unity” is breaking on both fronts.

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