After the NATO summit in Vilnius, the centre of world politics these days has shifted from West to East – to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.
The marathon of meetings of the Asian Week includes the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Security Forum, the East Asia Summit, and events with countries that have the status of ASEAN dialogue partners. Among them are Russia, China, and the United States, i.e. the main poles of a multipolar world in which the “Asian tigers” united in ASEAN have become a self-sufficient world centre of power.
Russia’s relations with Southeast Asia remain a two-way street. This traffic is becoming more and more intense, despite the prohibitive red light of traffic lights of Western sanctions.
The series of meetings of foreign ministers in the Russia-ASEAN format, at which Moscow is represented by Sergei Lavrov, is proof of this. The interest in the dialogue can be judged at least by the huge crowd of journalists that follows the Russian minister in Jakarta as one of the main newsmakers.
Many things are discussed at these meetings. Including the increasingly urgent issue of launching consultations on the transition to national currencies in mutual settlements.
At the same time, the West is not abandoning its attempts to make Asia stop at the red light it has switched on. Flying to Jakarta, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hinted Asian states that are not involved in the sanctions war could fall under secondary US sanctions.
“Today, the US and its NATO allies, backed by certain regional players, are stubbornly leading the line to launch alternative bloc structures, including under the ‘Indo-Pacific’ brand. These endeavours are aimed not at cooperation, but at containment and confrontation,” Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Indonesian newspaper Kompas.
Meanwhile, comparing the NATO summit in Vilnius and the meetings in Jakarta, one cannot but come to the main conclusion that these two events are fundamentally different from each other.
They are fundamentally different in everything: their goals and objectives, agenda, atmosphere, and in general, their vision of how international relations should be structured and what issues should be prioritised to ensure security.
While in Vilnius everything revolved around Ukraine and ways to contain Russia and China were discussed, in Jakarta everything was done to avoid talking about Ukraine and to deepen dialogue with Russia and China rather than to engage in confrontation with them.
The East again reminded the West that there are a thousand and one problems in the world besides Ukraine, which the West does not care much about, but which are of great concern to the multipolar non-Western world. These are rebuilding the global economy, creating non-discriminatory conditions for business, stabilising supply chains for goods and services, closing the gap in economic development, a nuclear-free zone in South-East Asia, protecting the environment, fighting epidemics, ensuring energy and food security.
All these components are part of a comprehensive notion of security, both regional and global. The cost to the world of not addressing these problems is becoming increasingly high.
This, in fact, is what they are talking about in Jakarta these days. They are talking about what they persistently kept silent in Vilnius.
Sergey Strokan, RT
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