“We are living today in times of great changes. The old order is crumbling fast and the new system of life and activities is emerging. Our task is to understand these changes and utilize them for human progress”. The first civilian governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, of blessed memory, made this philosophical statement nearly 42 years ago, in November 1980, just few months before he was unjustly impeached from office on June 11, 1981.
Retrospectively, those words were prophetic admonitions of the trials, troubles and tribulations the world would soon be in. Interestingly, Balarabe Musa’s words are as instructive today as they were then.
The Chinese Premier Xi Jinping seemed to be relaying similar vision when he said on the eve of his recent state visit to Moscow that the world is witnessing sweeping changes and transition to “multipolarism” which will eventually liberate it from US domination.
“The world today is going through profound changes unseen in a century,” Xi wrote in an article published on Sunday by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. “The historical trend of peace, development and win-win cooperation is unstoppable. The prevailing trends of world multipolarity, economic globalization and greater democracy in international relations are irreversible.”
Xi noted that the world faces “traditional and non-traditional security challenges,” as well as “damaging acts of hegemony, domination and bullying.” He added that countries around the world are “eager to find a cooperative way out of the crisis” as they try to get through a “long and tortuous global economic recovery.”
The Chinese premier holds that the emerging world will recognize that no country is superior to others, no model of governance is universal, and no single country should dictate the international order. He added that the common interest of all humankind is in a world that is united and peaceful, rather than divided and volatile.
Xi made the comments amid escalating tensions with Washington over the Ukraine crisis and US interference in China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. Beijing has resisted Western pressure to condemn Russia over the Ukraine conflict, maintaining neutrality on the issue and promoting a 12-point peace plan to end the hostilities which Washington dismissed and accused China of mulling military aid to Russia.
During Xi’s historic visit, China and Russia cemented mutual trust and fostered a “new model of major-country relations”.The Chinese leader arrived in Moscow on Monday and held in-depth talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the three-day visit. Highlight of their discussions include building a new international money transfer mechanism, independent from the Western SWIFT system that Russia is now locked out of. The analyst said that could eventually be based on a new currency controlled by the BRICS development bank, based on a basket of the member states’ currencies and backed by gold reserves.
The Xi-Putin summit in Moscow has drawn angry responses from Washington and Europe.
According to observers the summit can be seen as a threat to Western hegemony.
Hong Kong-based political and financial analyst Angelo Giuliano explained that closer economic ties between Russia and China could spell the end of the dollar’s primacy in trade and even US dominance.
The meeting provoked a flurry of angry statements and political diversions, including the International Criminal Court’s attempt to accuse Putin of child abduction and Washington’s rejection of Beijing’s blueprint for peace in Ukraine.
Giuliano added that ever-deepening cooperation between the two Eurasian giants had “far reaching consequences for the ‘collective West’.”
“China and Russia are very complementary,” Giuliano explained. “Russia has the natural resources that China is lacking and China has a very large industrial/manufacturing base and financial strength.”
A new international financial system, in competition with the US-based ‘Bretton-Woods’ institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), could be opened up to any country which wants to join, the expert said.
Its selling point would be “a much more democratic system without the veto vote applied in the US controlled World Bank and IMF,” Giuliano said. “Many countries have shown interest and the shift could be gradual.
Without doubt, the Xi-Putin summit would be most likely recorded in history as one of the most epochal, most monumental, geopolitical, geo-economic, strategic-military event in the 21st century.
There are three major takeaways of the meeting: One, the two leaders made it clear that the arrival of the “multipolar world” is now “irreversible”. Two, the duo kicked off the process of a tectonic shift from the Western-led imperial “unipolar world order” to a multipolar world based on peaceful coexistence, co-prosperity and mutual respect. Three, the leaders voiced growing concerns with bellicose actions by the US and its NATO allies, encompassing “military biological activities”; the US “build-up of potential in precise non-nuclear weapons for conducting a disarming strike” and “aspiration to deploy ground-based missiles” of various types in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific; and finally the US military buildup in the Asia Pacific within the framework of the AUKUS pact which includes the reinforcement of the Australian military with nuclear attack submarines.
It appears that the West has been caught off guard by the geopolitical maneuvers and changes propelled by Moscow and Beijing. Both countries are pulling their weight and asserting influence across Africa, Middle East and Latin America at the detriment of United States. While powers of mighty US is receding, China, the sleeping giant, is awakening. The world we are living in today is so interesting and perplexing. I foresee this multipolar agenda and politics spilling into the United Nations fora in the nearest future which will impact negatively on American status, especially as lot of people are starting to wake up to the fact that the United States has failed to live up to its ideals as a global stabilizer and peacemaker.
Back to Balarabe Musa, the first Nigerian state governor to be impeached, was not only a progressive socialist and leftwing politician, but a visionary leader, a conscience of the society and one of the most consistent personalities to have ever walked on Nigerian soil.
The great changes that he envisaged in 1980 at the twilight of the Cold War is now upon us. How are we acquainting ourselves to the new realities? Are we ready as a people and nation to the fast-changing world? Let’s interrogate ourselves.
