US President Joe Biden is poised to take full advantage of the two important summit meetings with the leaders of the other Western countries next week to take a more cohesive stance against Russia and China.
According to media reports, the upcoming G 7 Summit and the NATO SummitNATO Summit have a special focus on China, apart from exerting more pressure on Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Biden is expected to launch a global infrastructure initiative that will counter the growing influence of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative on the two organizations within the framework of its ideological foreign policy, on the assumption that the United States and its Western allies have shared values.
The NATO, the world's largest military alliance, is due to adopt its new Strategic Concept at its summit in Madrid in the latter part of the week. The strategy of the transatlantic alliance highlights its intention to become stronger militarily, get more politically involved in strategic issues and pursue a more global approach.
It is planning to indulge its predistributedness in the Asia-Pacific as well as Europe.
The confrontational messages that seem certain to be sent from the summits offer little hope that there will be a reset in world affairs.
The US has no willingness to try and improve ties with China, let alone adopt a conciliatory stance toward Russia.
The outcomes of the two summits are likely to be toxic. For the world, which is in desperate need of solidarity and unity to give an impetus to a reluctant post-pandemic recovery and to end the ongoing Ukraine crisis, attempts to create more divisions and confrontations are a grim prospect.
Multilateralism and cooperation are more important for the world today than ever to address its many woes. It doesn't need the Western leaders reviving a colonialist mentality that seeks to subjugate, manipulate and exploit the non-Western world.
The US and its Western allies are still far from acknowledging that times have changed, and this is no longer the time in which they could intimidate others with their gunboats, according to the adversarial stance that the two summits seem to propagate.
The next generation of warriors in Washington are lost in Hollywood make-believe after having donned the armor of self-righteousness. The Ukraine conflict shows how it is in the real world and is fine for a screen.