{"id":1488746,"date":"2024-09-09T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1488746"},"modified":"2024-09-09T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T10:00:00","slug":"mongolias-embrace-of-putin-despite-his-icc-warrant-exposes-south-africas-political-cowardice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/mongolias-embrace-of-putin-despite-his-icc-warrant-exposes-south-africas-political-cowardice\/1488746\/","title":{"rendered":"Mongolia’s Embrace Of Putin Despite His ICC Warrant Exposes South Africa’s Political Cowardice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mongolia’s Embrace Of Putin Despite His ICC Warrant Exposes South Africa’s Political Cowardice<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

President Putin was\u00a0greeted with an honor guard<\/a>\u00a0after arriving in Mongolia for his trip this week, where he brought with him an\u00a0impressive delegation<\/a>\u00a0whose diverse expertise\u00a0confirms his stated intent<\/a>\u00a0to continue comprehensively developing their strategic partnership. All of that is standard when it comes to state visits, but what\u2019s so exceptional about this one is that Mongolia is a member of the \u201cInternational Criminal Court\u201d (ICC) and thus obligated to act on that body\u2019s\u00a0politicized arrest warrant<\/a>\u00a0for Putin.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Its government instead\u00a0defied Western pressure<\/a>\u00a0and proudly prioritized their national interests, which this analysis\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0argues have to do with recalibrating their geopolitical balancing act in a decisively pro-Russian direction as a result of the\u00a0accelerated global systemic transition to multipolarity<\/a>. The example set by this sparsely populated and landlocked state sharply contrasts with South Africa\u2019s after it was too scared to host Putin during last year\u2019s BRICS Summit. Here are some background briefings:<\/p>\n

* 14 July 2023: \u201cSouth Africa\u2019s Deputy President Spilled The Beans About His Country\u2019s BRICS-ICC Dilemma<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

* 19 July 2023: \u201cSouth Africa Showed That BRICS Isn\u2019t What Many Of Its Supporters Assumed<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

* 20 July 2023: \u201cSouth Africa Bungled The Optics Of Its BRICS Compromise With Russia<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

South Africa had the opportunity to proudly display its post-Apartheid sovereignty by defying Western pressure to arrest Putin per their country\u2019s obligation to the ICC, but it instead sacrificed these national soft power interests in favor of appeasing the West. <\/strong>This decision was made in spite of South Africa being more populous, militarily stronger, and more prosperous than Mongolia, not to mention a BRICS member, yet it still didn\u2019t dare to host Putin. \u00a0<\/p>\n

What this goes to show is that a country\u2019s metrics \u2013 the size of its population, military, and economy as well as its membership in various international organizations \u2013 aren\u2019t always the most accurate indicators of sovereignty. A much better model for predicting whether or not a country will comply with or defy external pressure upon it is the composition of its policymaking elite, which is part of its \u201cdeep state\u201d (permanent military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other bureaucracies) and also influenced by it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s has pro-Western and multipolar factions just like most Global South countries\u2019 do, and while it\u2019s difficult to discern the exact dynamics of these naturally opaque institutions, the balance of influence is tilted towards the former as proven by what happened last summer. At the same time, however, South Africa is far from a Western puppet since it still won\u2019t sanction Russia despite immense Western pressure. Nevertheless, it was still too afraid to host Putin, which was very disappointing.<\/p>\n

Mongolia\u2019s policymaking elite is cut from a completely different cloth since they\u2019ve been\u00a0multi<\/a>–aligning<\/a>\u00a0like India ever since the end of the Old Cold War through their \u201cThird Neighbor Policy\u201d. <\/strong>This simply preaches the need to cultivate strategic partnerships abroad in order to preemptively avert potentially disproportionate dependence on its Russian and\/or Chinese neighbors. The analysis that was hyperlinked in the second paragraph of this piece explains this policy and its evolution more in detail.<\/p>\n

It’s sufficient for casual observers to know that Mongolia has been practicing a much defter foreign policy than South Africa since 1991, and its elite are therefore more comfortable balancing between competing power centers and taking decisive action in furtherance of national interests when needed. To be sure, they also have a pro-Western faction, but it\u2019s less powerful than in South Africa as proven by Mongolia defying Western pressure to host Putin despite having less impressive metrics as explained.<\/p>\n

This insight about the composition of countries\u2019 policymakers and the dynamics between their \u201cdeep state\u201d factions can help observers better understand the limitations of BRICS. This analysis\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0hyperlinks to ten prior ones over the past 18 months that all share \u201cinconvenient\u201d facts about this group, which is revealed to be a network of countries that voluntarily coordinate policy with a view towards accelerating financial multipolarity processes, not an \u201canti-Western bloc\u201d.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, while South Africa\u2019s political cowardice in refusing to host Putin during last year\u2019s summit was very disappointing, it had no impact on their shared network\u2019s operations. Likewise, the same can be said if ICC member Brazil takes a page from Pretoria\u2019s playbook by also refusing to host the Russian leader during next year\u2019s summit. BRICS will continue functioning as it was always intended, which was never the way that many enthusiasts in the\u00a0Alt-Media Community<\/a>\u00a0imagined it.<\/p>\n

The takeaway is that countries like South Africa that officially commit to accelerating financial multipolarity processes are sometimes more influenced by Western political pressure than comparatively smaller and weaker countries like Mongolia that haven\u2019t officially committed to that. <\/strong>Once again, everything ultimately comes down to the composition of a country\u2019s policymaking elite and their intra-\u201cdeep state\u201d dynamics, not whether or not a country is part of BRICS or whatever other group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nMon, 09\/09\/2024 – 02:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/mongolias-embrace-putin-despite-his-icc-warrant-exposes-south-africas-political<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mongolia’s Embrace Of Putin Despite His ICC Warrant Exposes South Africa’s Political Cowardice Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack, President Putin was\u00a0greeted with an honor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1488747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1488747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}