Asian Alliance Supplants US Empire

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from Consortium News:




Asian Alliance Supplants US Empire

While Official Washington grapples with how slowly to draw down troops in Afghanistan – and debates whether to complete the pullout from Iraq by year’s end – a new alliance of Asian states is expanding into the vacuum left by America’s decaying empire. By mid-June, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization may represent more than half the world’s people, Nicolas J S Davies writes.

By Nicolas J S Davies
June 7, 2011


On May 15, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that an important expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be on the agenda at its upcoming summit in Astana in Kazakhstan on June 15.

If the expansion is approved, India and Pakistan will join China, Russia and the Central Asian republics as full SCO members, and Afghanistan will join Iran and Mongolia as a new SCO “observer.” The U.S. media seem to have missed this news, but future historians will be unlikely to ignore it as an important turning point in the history of Afghanistan, the United States and the world.

The original Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), who met in 1996 to sign a “Treaty on Deepening Trust in Border Regions,” formed the SCO in 2001 with the addition of Uzbekistan and a commitment to greater cooperation in military and economic affairs.

In 2005, President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan hailed the historic nature of that year’s SCO summit, the first time that the original members were joined by India, Pakistan and Iran. He noted that half the human race was now represented around the SCO negotiating table. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/06/07/asian-alliance-supplants-us-empire/

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