Stephen Sefton, June 1st, 2025
The genocidal annihilation of the Palestinian people now underway is categorical proof if any were still needed of the inability of the United Nations Organization to defend the most basic rights of humanity. The Zionist genocide is the clearest expression of the "rules-based order" that false Western leaders have insisted on for so many years. For Western elites, the fundamental rule is that their governments and their allies are not subject to international law. Faced with this reality, the majority world sees the UN merely as a forum for debate and, perhaps, as a legitimate source of the principles on which international relations should really operate.
A fundamental reference point among UN norms is the Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the General Assembly in December 1986. Its first article declares that “The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized." Its article two declares that “The human person is the central subject of development and should be the active participant and beneficiary of the right to development.”
The Declaration was adopted in the same year that the International Court of Justice issued their condemnation of US government terrorism against Nicaragua. Both historical moments vindicated the majority world's demand for a world of Peace, Security and Justice. But they occurred precisely at the beginning of the deepening of US and European neocolonialism in the form of neoliberal doctrine promoted very aggressively by the US government of President Reagan and his allies. Neoliberalism is a complete negation of the Right to Development focused on the socio-economic progress of Peoples and the good of the human person.
It promotes the supremacy of the interests of corporate interests above all, with the corresponding suppression of the public sector and a consequent abandonment of national policies focused on realizing the aspirations of the human person, of a nation's families. The promoters of neoliberalism falsely argue that the free market, fictitious in any case, will guarantee perfect democracy, optimal social prosperity and the most efficient governance. The reality has always been the opposite. Far from promoting democracy, prosperity and efficient governance, neoliberalism is a corrupt political and socio-economic system designed exclusively to benefit Western ruling elites and their allies.
US socio-economic history of the last forty years is of a progressively more and more repressive political system, an increasingly incompetent under-resourced public sector and a completely failed productive economy relative to its competitors. In Nicaragua we lived this reality during 17 years of misgovernment by right-wing US puppets. In any country victim of neoliberalism, this destructive pattern of socio-economic development and the well-being of the human person is clear, with more hunger, greater social inequality, chronic employment insecurity and economic precariousness for most families and households along with an unprotected environment and deteriorating physical infrastructure. In Latin America, another disastrous consequence of constant US intervention facilitating the imposition of neoliberalism by the region’s most reactionary forces has been the holding back of regional integration.
A comparison between the relative stagnation of the development of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the advances in the development of the Asian region in the last ten years is instructive. Last week in Malaysia on May 27th and 28th, the first trilateral summit was held between China, the ASEAN countries (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). While the CELAC countries vacillate over how to advance regional integration based on a firm consensus with clear criteria, the collaboration between the ten ASEAN countries has progressed successfully, as has their economic rapprochement with China.
In fact, this first trilateral summit together with the Arab countries of the GCC, signifies one more recognition by the countries of the majority world of the relative decline of US and European economic global influence and of their counterproductive neoliberal model. The Chinese Foreign Ministry noted that “"We are committed to strengthening the multilateral trade framework and protecting the collective interests of developing nations in pursuit of common development goals." The summit’s Final Declaration placed special emphasis on upholding the norms of international law, the importance of peoples' development, economic integration, connectivity, sustainable energy security, digital transformation, food and agricultural security and exchange among peoples.
The statement reaffirmed “our collective determination to work shoulder to shoulder to unlock the full potential of our partnership and ensure that our cooperation translates into tangible benefits for our peoples and communities.” This vision is clearly opposed to the self-interested neoliberal, neocolonial approach of the US and European elites. While the US government is fomenting a tariff war and sabotaging the World Trade Organization, China and its ASEAN partners have just deepened and consolidated their Free Trade Area and are now approaching the Arab countries of the GCC. A comparison with the development of CELAC indicates the mediocrity of the leaders of the countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region who follow US and European guidance and submit to their menaces.
In the case of the China-GCC-ASEAN trilateral summit, in addition to the aspect of greater economic rapprochement in rejection of US protectionism, it is also an explicit regional political reaction against the Zionist genocide in Palestine. In addition, implicitly, it also opposes the threats of a US and Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which would lead to a massively destructive regional war. The Final Declaration of the China-GCC-ASEAN summit emphatically condemned the Zionist genocide in Gaza and firmly demanded a resolution of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine in accordance with international law.
For China, the trilateral summit was another forum to promote the same vision it projected at the China-CELAC Forum of more trade openness, better connectivity, greater mutually beneficial cooperation and broader cultural exchange. Via these summits, China is expanding and consolidating its Belt and Road Initiative and its Initiatives for Global Development, Global Security and Global Civilization. Together, the population of China, the GCC countries and ASEAN totals more than two billion, contributing more than 22% of the world's GDP. In 2024, trade between participating countries totaled more than US$1.4 trillion. Even taking into account that the GCC is not an organization with a formal structure like ASEAN or the Eurasian Economic Union, the potential of this new initiative is very important in mitigating the current context of global insecurity.
The population of the ten ASEAN countries of around 690 million is larger than the population of CELAC of just over 600 million. The Gross Domestic Product of ASEAN is similar to that of the 33 CELAC countries with both groups of countries each contributing over 6% of the world's nominal GDP. Both regions are struggling to realize their true economic potential, while Latin America remains the most unequal region in the world, with economically very important countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico registering high GINI indices of 0.46, 0.52, 0.54 and 0.43 respectively.
In any case, both the China-CELAC Forum and this more recent trilateral CHINA-GCC-ASEAN summit have highlighted the great contrast in the potential for their national development between the US and European neoliberal vision and the vision of cooperation and mutual benefit for the good of the world’s peoples offered by the People's Republic of China. In Latin America, the reactionary governments of countries where US intervention has promoted neoliberal administrations such as Argentina, Ecuador and Peru face the harsh reality that while their countries will clearly benefit from greater relations with China, the US ruling class and their government order their local regional vassals to renounce them. Revolutionary countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela face sadistic US economic aggression precisely because their governments successful policies focus on the needs and aspirations of the human person and too on close relations of solidarity with China and Russia.
In that regard, the recent regional elections in Venezuela confirmed once again the unquestionable popular support for the Bolivarian government of President Nicolás Maduro and another victory of that sovereign people over foreign intervention and the coup-promoting opposition. For Latin America and the Caribbean, it is self-evident that the way to realize the region’s true economic potential is to follow the vision of human development based on relations of respect, solidarity and cooperation promoted by China and the Russian Federation. Inevitably, the majority world will continue to advance via exchanges such as the China-CELAC Forum, the Trilateral Summit between China, ASEAN and the Arab countries of the GCC, or frameworks like the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS+.
Little by little, even the reactionary Latin American governments currently thwarting the realization of the true potential of their peoples and of CELAC, are seeing the emergence of a new world order leaving behind the globalization of US-led neoliberal capitalism. Now the neoliberal propaganda slogan has come true: there really is no alternative. But in the sense that there is no alternative to globalization based on the right to development focused on the human person and on families in a world of sovereign Peoples. Our Comandante Daniel explained this clearly in December 2023 at the graduation of cadets of the “Leonel Rugama" Academy of our National Police:
“If all the Powers that are in NATO, instead of promoting wars, military occupations and terrorism, were to follow the practice of the People's Republic of China, which has been linking up with the Developing Peoples, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, developing relations without political conditions, and instead contributing to the development of all these Countries, the World would be different, the World would be at Peace, and certainly there would no longer be problems of people dying of hunger, misery and poverty.”