Escobar: How Telegram Is Geopolitcs

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

From Trump to Crash Test Dummy, Hegemon’s “policies” have managed quite a feat.

It must have taken eons of Taoist patience for President Xi Jinping to tell a few self-evident facts of life to a mediocre imperial functionary such as U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Xi’s key takeways:

1. “China is ready to be a partner and friend of the U.S.” Even as the reverse is highly doubtful – as China is considered by Washington as an existential “threat”.

2. China focuses on the well-being of all mankind: that’s the core of Beijing’s concept of a global “community with shared future.

3. China and the U.S. should be both responsible for history; for the people; and for the world. That’s the “three responsibilities” concept.

The last thing a unipolar Hegemon is responsible for is the world at large: unipolarity by definition profits only the Empire’s own plutocracy.

Little Sullivan also pushed for direct, over the phone military-to-military communications at a working level. Of course, because the Hegemon has less than zero paid moles infiltrated in key nodes of the Chinese system – so at least they will be able to hear little tidbits on and off from the Chinese military.

Yet the key takeway on the military dossier came during Little Sullivan’s session with General Zhang Youxia, the vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission.

Gen Zhang bluntly told Sullivan, in no uncertain terms, to stay away from Taiwan. Sullivan looked like a headless chicken after the meeting.

As headless as after his meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi:

“The United States and China have not made progress in negotiations to find a solution to the Ukrainian crisis.”

Of course not. Beijing sees through the whole imperial “ceasefire” machinations – in parallel with the U.S. trespassing all Russian red lines. Moscow has not responded in a devastating manner – yet – because Putin bears as many Taoist traits as Xi.

China is back: get over it

The Beijing leadership’s meetings with the envoy of an ultra-lame duck U.S. administration may have been only a pro forma exercise. After all what really matters is business.

China’s export to the U.S. represent less than 2% of China’s GDP. That’s negligible. China is the top global trading/commerce powerhouse – and real, strong business ahead is not with the West, but with the Global Majority. China has been playing this Long Game to perfection.

So much perfection that imperial media has been literally freaking out about how deep China has integrated all across the Global Majority, challenging what is the de facto liberal-totalitarian what-we-say-goes international “order”. See, for instance, here.

From Trump to Crash Test Dummy, Hegemon’s “policies” have managed quite a feat.

Included in the package is giving away the world’s biggest tech market – China – exclusively to Chinese manufacturers; chasing away at least 75% of top Chinese scientists back to China from the U.S.; and giving the entire Russian market – over 100 million consumers – to China, in parallel to Beijing buying loads more of cheap energy from Russia.

And this is just the beginning. Hegemon sanctions were actually instrumental in helping Beijing develop even faster the Made in China 2025 set of policies – becoming a leader or second best in 10 high-tech sectors. And the next stage is the several simultaneous steps towards de-dollarization – including the expansion of the petroyuan.

A crack Chinese scholar summed it all up in his delightfully blunt stye (“having the Leviathan-esque advantage of being crystal clear”): China is really back – and will stay on for a very, very long time.

No wonder this is beyond anathema for the imperial plutocracy and its Atlanticist vassals.

We are slowly and surely advancing towards the establishment of a new world-system managed by Sovereign Civilizational States: China, Russia and Iran are at the forefront.

The road though will be long and thorny – with plenty of nasty setbacks. And that brings us to the current Pavel Durov judicial-tech-geopolitical saga.

How Telegram is geopolitics

Pavel Durov is now essentially a high-level hostage in one of NATOstan’s key nodes, France.

NATO’s military intel/surveillance/economic matrix finally got the leverage they actively sought for so long. For the moment there’s no answer to the key question: what did Durov offer his captors to be “rewarded” with a temporary semi-freedom regime after posting bail that for his standards amounts to pocket money?

Durov is essentially accused of not “collaborating” or “cooperating” with Western intel. Their single-minded obsession is to control Telegram’s content moderation set up; have total back door access; and eventually ban all Russian channels – which have been instrumental to carry the real stories on the ground developing from Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Telegram is the social network of choice of the Global Majority. Telegram is at the heart of geopolitics. So this is yet another chapter of the no holds barred Hybrid War by the Collective West against the Global Majority.

Telegram also happens to be extensively used in Russia by public and military bodies. It’s a near certainty that Pavel does not have Telegram’s fabled encryption keys; yet his math genius brother Nikolai does.

As it stands, no one knows the terms of the deal leading to Pavel’s semi-freedom. What is clear is that some sort of concessions were made – Durov has not been turned into Assange 2.0. These concessions might include handing over selected information in a classic “judiciary” mode that would not compromise Russian state secrets.

The Durov brothers are certainly aware that any information leading Western intel to harass bloggers and channels for their political stance would fatally compromise the credibility of Telegram.

Depending on how the French mega-bureaucracy “investigation” proceeds, and whether the system decides to take Durov to trial or even to block Telegram in the EU, that will only benefit Telegram globally.

The saga is just beginning. As it stands, the world is waiting for a word by Pavel Durov himself. On Telegram.