The US government may have “shut down”, as Terry Crawford-Browne puts it, but his suggestion that the US is collapsing is unserious. (“US empire is collapsing”, October 1).
Similarly, his view that European countries are collapsing because they “grovelled to the US and its proxy wars in Ukraine and Palestine” is nonsense.
If Ukraine is a proxy war it is because Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and those countries previously under Soviet yoke fear they may be invaded next. Gaza is no proxy war — Hamas started it.
Most Arab states share Washington’s concerns about Iran as a terrorist state. Incidentally, President Donald Trump’s foreign policy faces growing domestic opposition.
Crawford-Browne dreams of a peaceful and prosperous “Global South era led by China’s Belt & Road initiatives (BRI)”. Instead, in addition to Russia, China threatens international stability with its aggressive manoeuvres in the China Seas. Russia exploits conflict in Africa.
China’s exploitive practices in Africa are well documented and its non-conditionality policy protects corrupt regimes while marginalising the values that have informed Western progress for 300 years.
The imbalance of SA’s trade with China, which President Cyril Ramaphosa has noted, resembles the colonial core-periphery paradigm, which reinforces dependency. The result is SA’s deindustrialisation and job losses.
Former UN assistant secretary-general Ramesh Thakur, not exactly a spokesperson for the “West”, has described Brics as a buffer zone between the West and China and Russia, therefore a tool serving their foreign goals. These include overthrowing the liberal international order, which since 1945 has prevented world war and spread prosperity.
China, and the BRI, which India refuses to endorse, represent tyranny. China, accused of genocide against the Uyghurs, spends more money on policing and keeping its own people in check than it spends on its enormous military forces. Surveys indicate few in SA desire a BRI-China future.
François Theron
Pretoria
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