Headline June 10, 2018/ ''' *GREAT -NEW- GAMES* '''

''' *GREAT -NEW- GAMES* '''

*THE WEST IS NOT IN A NEW COLD WAR*. It's an old fashioned fight with China and Russia for power and influence. Maybe time enough to ask :

Who will win the new great game?

HAMBURG GERMANY : To claim we are living through a new  Cold War is both an understatement and a category mistake.

The 20th century face-off between Communist East and the Capitalist West was, ideology aside about two superpowers trying to contain each other. The conflict of today is far less static.

What we are witnessing instead is a new  Great Game, a collision of great powers that are trying to roll back one another's sphere of influence. Unlike the Great Game of the 19th century between -

The British and the Russian Empire that culminated in the fight for dominance over Afghanistan, today's Great Game is global, more complex and much, much more dangerous.

Call it the Game of Threes, It involves three prime players, Russia, China and the West, which are competing in three ways :
.- geographically.
.- intellectually.
.- economically.

And there are three places where the different claims to power clash : Syria, Ukraine and the Pacific. Many of the defining conflicts of our time can be defined through some combination of those three sets.

To differing degrees, governments and citizens from Cairo to Copenhagen have grown skeptical whether liberal democracy and postwar internationalism have been, or will be, the right choice for them.

To all those doubters, China and Russia stand ready as alternative models and protective powers, offering new arrangements for bilateral and multilateral alignments.

You don't want to follow international law, European integration or anti-corruption schemes? Follow us!

What will prove more attractive to the  Egyptian government, for instance, is the likely case of another mass uprising in the country :

An alignment with Europe, which is annoyingly nervous about the respect for human rights, or an alignment with Russia, which has proved that it will look the other way in the face of domestic oppression - even if an ally uses chemical weapons against its own people?

While Russia offers militarily ruthlessness, China offers a mercantile variant. Unlike the West, China doesn't let human rights and the rule of law get in the way of investments.

In late 2017, Beijing increased its investment in Ukraine, announcing it as an important building block in its Silk Road to Europe.

The government in corrupt-ridden Kiev has already gladly declared 2019 to be ''the Year of China'' in Ukraine.

Or consider the Balkans. You could, as prime minister of Balkan state, wait endlessly for the European union to let you enter the club by adhering to strict compliance standards and implement its 80,000 pages of required laws.

Or you could turn to Chinese investors, who won't ask for any such fuss.

In 2016, the president of China, Xi Jinping, spent three days on a state visit in Serbia. The year before, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, only stopped there for a few hours.

State-controlled Chinese companies have since bought Serbia's biggest steel mill, the Tirana International Airport in Albania and a major coal power plant in Romania, and leased part of the harbor of Piraeus in Greece, to name but a few of its strategic acquisitions in Europe.

While China does not seem as driven by aggressive anti-western sentiments as Russia does, Beijing and Moscow share the strategic goal :

*To reduce Western influence worldwide*.

China delivers the money to bolster new alliances, while Russia delivers the political poison to weaken the old ones. It's a perfect match.

Just as during the 19th-century Great Game, the Kremlin has the advantage of not needing to worry about public criticism at home as it pushes an illiberal agenda abroad.

The Honor and Serving of the latest  Global Operational Research on Interstate relationships, State- of the World continues. !WOW! thanks author and researcher Jochen Bittner.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all ''register'' on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world and Twitter- !E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' World In Wonder '''

Good Night and God Bless

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