Analysis, Side Feature

Views on the News – 13 Oct 2018

Headlines:

  • Hypocritical International Reaction to Murderous Saudi Regime
  • China beginning to realise that America wants new Cold War
  • America grounds the ‘Most Expensive Weapons Programme of its Type in the World’

Hypocritical International Reaction to Murderous Saudi Regime

According to the Guardian:

A high-profile investment summit in Riyadh later this month is rapidly becoming a fiasco as prominent businesses and media groups have pulled out over Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement in the disappearance and possible murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said he would not be attending, and the Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNN and CNBC have withdrawn as media sponsors.

The world’s business elite were due to attend the Future Investment Initiative (FII), which begins in the Saudi capital on 23 October. However, some of the companies involved say they are withdrawing pending the outcome of investigations into Khashoggi’s disappearance, while others have pulled out unconditionally.

A short while back, the international community was quite happy to patronise the upcoming Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh even though the Saudi regime has been directly, openly and quite publicly killing, injuring and starving hundreds of thousands in Yemen, perhaps because this brutal and inhuman war was being fought with the full direction, support and participation of the same international community with American and Britain fully engaged along with their numerous proxies. But a suspicious disappearance in Turkey is now supposed to be the trigger for international condemnation of this same regime.

In truth, the brutal rulers of Muslim countries are fully in league with the disbelieving masters of the world powers. They cooperate in accordance with their evil designs and then clash in pursuit of their differing interests. Justice and humanity will only return to this world once Muslims retake charge of their own affairs and re-establish their Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State upon the method of the Prophet ﷺ.

 

China beginning to realise that America wants new Cold War

According to CNN:

There is growing realization — and fear — among Chinese officials in Beijing that US President Donald Trump could be serious in his promise to upend the types of bilateral relations they have become accustomed to in the past few decades.

It is a shock for Beijing to realize that reports about an administration-wide policy initiative countering China are more than mere Washington hearsay.

Since June, United States and China’s diplomatic ties have deteriorated rapidly across a range of fronts, not just trade but also military and politics.

It may not be the start of the next Cold War, at least not yet, but relations between the two sides have been plunged into an unprecedented deep chill.

Now Chinese President Xi Jinping may meet with Trump at the annual G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires in November in an effort to broker a solution. Policy experts on both sides worry it may already be too late to find a way back.

“There has been a tidal shift in America in proportions I’ve not seen in my lifetime away from the old notions of engagement,” Orville Schell, director at the New York-based Asia Society’s Center on US-China relations, told CNN.

“I think we’re at the last act where some notion of more cooperative relationship could be rescued.”

The mistake of countries like China and Russia is that they think the West is sincere when it talks about the importance of an international system and peaceful cooperation between nation states. In fact, America, like the European countries before it, merely seeks to use talk of liberal values and discussion of freedom and democracy for its national interest. America will follow the international system as long as the system is beneficial for it, and America will abandon this system as soon as its interests dictate otherwise.

It was Britain that first championed the free market ideas of Adam Smith, who wrote his ‘Wealth of Nations’ in 1776, the same year in which the United States of America declared independence from the British Empire. Britain’s interest in doing so was to pressure its former American colonies to continue to trade with Britain. For much of the twentieth century, it was America that was promoting free trade throughout the world. But now that America is facing the threat of a new Chinese competitor, the former champion of free trade is becoming the champion of protectionism.

The disbelieving nations never practise what they preach. Their principles are designed only for others to adopt, while they are driven by worldly materialist self-interest alone. Allah (swt) says in the Noble Qur’an: وَقُلْ جَاء الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا “And say, “Truth has come, and falsehood has departed. Indeed is falsehood, [by nature], ever bound to depart.” [al-Isra 81]

 

America grounds the ‘Most Expensive Weapons Programme of its Type in the World’

According to the BBC:

The US military has temporarily grounded its entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets in the wake of a crash in South Carolina last month.

Inspections are to be carried out on faulty fuel tubes.

An official report questioned earlier this year whether the F-35 was ready for combat after dozens of faults were found.

The F-35 is the largest and most expensive weapons programme of its type in the world.

The programme is expected to last several decades and global sales are projected to be 3,000. The US government’s accountability office estimates all costs associated with the project will amount to one trillion dollars.

In a statement, the F-35 Joint Program Office said the US and its international partners had suspended flight operations while a fleet-wide inspection of fuel tubes was conducted.

The American military’s overdependence on arms, equipment and technology has weakened the fighting ability of its soldiers, who enter war expecting to be fully protected from injury or death, while the reality is that such weaponry will never work as always expected. Wars are won by men and not by machines.

America undoubtedly has the most powerful military in the world today. But this should not blind Muslims to America’s military weaknesses, as has been made evident in its failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its fear of once again taking the lead military role in wars but depending instead on allies and proxies, such as in Syria, Libya or Yemen. Those fighting for the false Capitalist creed can never surpass an army fighting for the Islamic creed. If America is unable to fight unsupported mujahideen groups, then how will America fare against the re-established Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet ﷺ that will re-unify the lands and armies of all Muslim countries? With Allah’s permission the end of Western hegemony over Muslims is near.