Public domain Preaching to the converted at G8 summit indymedia image:41649:0::0

Is that a paradigm sift I feel or the building groundswell for the promised change? On the international stage as elsewhere, this time of year is for chillin’, going fishing topless, getting elected wearing gear that would make a rapper blush, hooking up with models, that kind of thing.

Not this year. Even with the Olympics looming, good fellowship between the developed and emerging worlds is hard to come by.

“Fury”, screamed headlines in the UK when Russia and China vetoed sanctions on Zimbabwe. “Everyone has to shoulder their responsibilities’ mewed Stephen Harper, as the merging crew led by, um, China, dumped it all on the West. It wasn’t so much that, as some media muttered, China and Russia were finally showing their true colours as that they wee raising those banners just a little higher.

Consider, where did Mugabe get the guns and the gumption to launch his takeover of Zimbabwe in the first place? Maybe his largest trading partner, China? Zimbabwe, as well as Angola, are well on their way to becoming the first colonies in China’s emerging African Empire and Mugabe’s too old and messed up to notice. Chinese support of Mugabe is part of their Despots We Deal With program, joining the generals of Burma, Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos and the Sudan’s Al-Bashir, recently charged by the World Court with genocide in Darfur

China is busy buying up Africa and shoring up some very bloody leaders as its own natural resources come under increasing stress, Not so with the other major bad actor. Russia is basing its new attitude on a skyrocketing state-owned natural resources industry and a democracy in which ex-President Putin gets to appoint his successor with all the assurance of an Imperial Czar that his wish will be law. Folks who rag on Putin’s KGB background don’t go far enough. Putin’s looking to set Russia even further back on the road to democracy, all the way back to the times of Catherine the Great. Which will need to involve the reconstituting of the old USSR as a first step. They’ve done it before so it shouldn’t be too hard; just add blood, stir it up, bring to a boil.

Especially if the US is being run by a President of the Democratic Party, who, after Dubya is sure to be committed to a peaceful negotiating, non-confrontational foreign policy.

Over at the G8, China regarded the climate control guidelines with all the commitment of a truculent teenager cleaning up his room, an attitude in which they were joined by India. The pair blithely disregarded what was on the table in real time to duet on the now timeworn moan the problem's all in the West and we should clean our act up and never mind that the air in Beijing has body to it. It all added up to the teen mantra, I’m not gonna do it and you can’t make me.

Which was followed by the scarifying sound of Stephen Harper being the voice of reason as he stood up to remind the gathering the best estimates are that all the developed countries working full tilt to meet the climate change guidelines would only reduce greenhouse emissions by 30%. That leaves staggering 70% left to be controlled by the rest of the planet, by some of the same leaders who are now denying there is even a problem.

It’s in many of those same leader’s best interests to promote the increasingly shopworn notion that the developed nations are the source of all the world’s ills. It cements the idea of the noble poor, a good way of keeping a population’s expectations in check. Give them that and a foreign enemy to point the finger at, and all kinds of interesting things can happen to a country when its people are busy looking the other way.

As the developed world’s contributions to planetary destruction continue to increase, it will be harder and harder to play the blame game .That, coupled with an America grown tired of being the bad guy should hatch a period of isolationism in foreign affairs. Whether the world will be a more peaceful place without its cop on the beat remains to be seen.