Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, first signed in July 2001. The hallmark of that historic accord is a mutual commitment to peace, prosperity and global stability.

© AP PHOTO / ERALDO PERES

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As Putin commented, the alliance between Russia and China is a vital source of “stability at a time of increasing geopolitical turbulence”. The latter remark is an oblique reference to the US-led Western states which are driven by ratcheting up antagonism and tensions with Moscow and Beijing using all sorts of spurious complaints.

The attempt by Washington (whether Republican or Democrat) and its Western minions to make trouble with Russia and China has become almost frenetic. Step back from the daily headlines in Western media and it is glaring just how much the agenda has become irrationally hostile towards Moscow and Beijing. Week after week there are unfounded allegations about aggression, security threats, cybercrime, interference, Covid-19, and so on. It’s like a mad cacophony to wind up tensions. Nevertheless, the deranged attitude of Western ruling cliques is but the death throes of a world order that has reached its expiration.

Russia and China’s partnership has hugely transformative geopolitical significance. Both these giant nations straddle the continents of Asia and Europe, connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic, ranging from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Both are committed to a vision of a multipolar world where nations cooperate for mutual development. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) linking Eurasia with Africa and the Americas is the vision of the future, and Russia is a key partner in implementing that ambitious win-win project for global peace and prosperity.

This vision stands in stark contrast to the prevailing Western capitalist paradigm which operates through dominance, control and exploitation for American and European profiteering. That kind of centuries-old system necessarily involves imperialist conduct whereby natural resources of foreign nations are commandeered by brute military force, conflict, subjugation, subterfuge, skulduggery and other machinations.

The multipolar vision of global relations advocated by Russia and China is the nemesis of the Western imperialist system. And that explains why the Americans and their European vassals make every effort to demonize and distort Russia and China.

But the geopolitical potential of Russia and China is unstoppable. There is a force of natural justice that all nations will inevitably subscribe to as the only reasonable, feasible and sustainable way forward. It’s about people-centered development versus profit-driven disorder.

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Moreover, the partnership between Russia and China is a geographer’s wonder study. Russia is the world’s largest national territory by landmass. With over 17 million square kilometers, it covers 11 time zones out of the world’s total of 24. The abundance of natural resources that Russia possesses is astounding, from reserves of natural gas, oil, metals and minerals, to forestry, agriculture and fisheries. It also can boast of highly advanced technology in multiple sectors. And it shares a long land border with China for easing trade.

Meanwhile, China has a population of 1.4 billion people, ten times that of Russia. With highly advanced technology and manufacturing, China is not only a vast market for Russian resources, it is also a gateway to the world economy. China has already become the world’s biggest economy over the United States according to some measures.

The US and Europe are post-industrial economies that are also post-peak of their prime. Their “prime” was always based on an extractive predatory relationship with the rest of the world that was predicated on inflicting conflict and poverty on others.

As China and Russia build on their strategic partnership for mutual prosperity and peace the upshot will inevitably entail the endgame for Western imperial powers which are atrophying from massive inequality, indebtedness, moral decadence and social decay.

Fortunately, too, and this is crucial, Russia and China have military defenses from new generations of hypersonic weaponry that make them impregnable against any warmongering notions by the United States. A failing empire like the US and its Western satellites is always a dangerous time as it tries to prevent the inevitable collapse, but starting a war with Russia and China is not an option.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

The US authorities claim the forced internet closure of Press TV and other affiliated online news services was based on alleged violation of American sanctions. The sites have since come back online by deftly switching to other internet domains beyond US control.

Nevertheless, the temporary blackout of a nation’s news channels is a deeply sinister sign of how far Washington is prepared to go in pushing information warfare under the guise of “complying” with sanctions probity.

If the United States designates foreign nations as “enemy” or “terrorist” – which it has done with regard to Iran – then, of course, it follows logic under pseudo-legal sanctions for such draconian actions to be taken in censoring public broadcasting from that nation.

But there’s a bigger picture. The latest American move against Iran can be seen as a gambit for a much broader front in information warfare against other nations. In particular, Russia and China.

Both of those nations are increasingly labelled in hostile terms as enemies, allegedly posing threats to American national security and the security of “allies”. Indeed, the hostile rhetoric is intensifying and becoming ever more frenetic, accusing Russia and China of endangering “rules-based order” and the very foundations of “Western democracy”.

What really galls Washington and its Western vassals in the European Union and the NATO military axis is that Russia and China have both developed impressive news media services that operate internationally and in English and other major languages. Those media outlets have broken the Western monopoly on information available to the world.

For decades, Washington and its allies could loudly proclaim this or that through their controlled news media and there was little chance to challenge or correct.

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That media monopoly is no longer. Western narratives on international events are contradicted by alternative perspectives from Iran, Russia and China. Oftentimes the Western narratives, for example, the war in Syria, are shown to be completely false and exposed as propaganda masquerading as “news”.

Such competition for news and views should be seen as a healthy democratic choice. But it is intolerable to the United States and its Western lackeys because such alternative information fatally undermines imperial agendas for foreign intervention. In fact, furthermore, Western governments can be seen by their own citizens as acting criminally in violating international law, for example, in imposing crippling sanctions against Iran’s people.

This, by the way, is why brave truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are persecuted. It is another example of Western powers censoring sources of critical information that illuminates their war crimes and other imperial vices.

Iran’s news channels and regional affiliates have provided informative coverage on a swathe of issues, ranging from the international nuclear accord which Washington sabotaged and is wrangling over with criminal sanctions, to the war on Yemen in which the United States, Britain and France are implicated for complicity in war crimes.

The Americans and their Western partners cannot argue against the truth which exposes their depredations and sordid machinations.

So, the only line of action is to shoot the messenger in order to delete the indicting message.

This has been going for some time already, whereby US big tech and social media companies have been surreptitiously censoring alternative foreign and domestic news services under the cynical guise of “community standards” and other bogus pretexts. That can be seen as American information warfare conducted in the private commercial realm.

But now the American government is openly wielding blanket censorship by closing down Iranian news services on the internet.

Washington’s increasing belligerent logic towards Russia and China is formulating a rationale for the same draconian censorship against these two nations.

© REUTERS / CARLOS BARRIA

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The US empire wants to criminalize Russia in order to justify NATO military expansion and to sabotage Moscow’s relations with Europe. And America’s minion-politicians in Europe are colluding in their own self-sabotage.

Perhaps more than this, the US empire is desperate to undermine China’s ascent to economic and geopolitical power by criminalizing Beijing over an array of allegations, including the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For Washington to succeed in its agenda it needs to win what it would call the information war. And that means shutting down news and views from Russia and China.

That’s why the latest American media offensive against Iran could be just the opening of a much bigger front.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.