Moscow and Beijing struck a coordinated blow against Washington

МОСКВА, 13 апреля 2021, Институт РУССТРАТ.

These days, namely on April 8, 2021, it became clear how Russia is going to respond to the United States concerning this whole wave of unfounded accusations and sanctions that come from Washington factually on a daily basis. This tool was named in an interview given by the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolay Patrushev to the “Kommersant” newspaper.

In fact, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council accused Washington of developing biological weapons, which is a direct violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BTWC).

The BTWC entered into force on March 25, 1975, and has now been ratified by most states in the world, including the US. However, Washington in 2001 refused to accept the protocol to this convention, which provides mechanisms for mutual control. Therefore, at the moment there is no possibility to verify how the US is implementing the BTWC.

Let’s go back to the “Kommersant” article and give a few quotes in order to accurately describe the situation. The correspondent of the newspaper asked Nikolay Patrushev the following question: “The mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) has not found traces of artificial origin of the virus. Nevertheless, there is still a widespread theory that China provoked the pandemic intentionally.”

However, Patrushev devoted his answer to this question entirely to the US: “I suggest to pay attention to the fact that more and more bio-labs under the control of the US are growing by leaps and bounds in the world. And by a strange coincidence – mostly at the Russian and Chinese borders. They claim that these are research centres where Americans help local scientists to develop new ways to fight dangerous diseases. However, the authorities of the countries where these objects are located have no real idea what is happening within their walls.

Of course, we and our Chinese partners have questions. We are told that there are peaceful sanitary stations operating near our borders, but for some reason they are more like Fort Detrick in Maryland, where Americans have been working in the field of military biology for decades. By the way, attention should be paid to the fact that outbreaks of diseases that are not typical for these regions are recorded in the surrounding areas.”

To the correspondent’s clarifying question, “Do you want to say that the Americans are developing biological weapons there?”, Nikolay Patrushev replied: “We have good reasons to believe that this is precisely the case.”

An important detail of this answer is that China and Russia are constantly mentioned together as countries against which US biological weapons are directed. Patrushev’s answer mentions the American biological laboratory at Fort Detrick. This is also not accidental.

Earlier, on March 31, 2021, the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said that the WHO should study the narratives about the leakage of coronavirus from the US military laboratory at Fort Detrick and in similar institutions in other countries.

Hua Chunying said: “Regarding the continued likelihood of a virus leak as a result of a laboratory incident, the members of the expert group said that if necessary, they will conduct research in laboratories around the world. As you know, such studies have already been conducted in the laboratories in Wuhan. However, when will Fort Detrick be opened to experts? I would like to ask you why the foreign media does not report on the Fort Detrick laboratory. The news about it was in June 2019, but then it was gone … Why do you keep silent?”

China also reacted on the day of the release of Nikolay Patrushev’s interview – April 8. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the US should provide information about the experiments that are being carried out in the US military biological laboratories in Ukraine and at Fort Detrick, recalling that the US has established 16 biological laboratories in Ukraine alone.

“I noticed that Russia recently asked the US again about their military and biological activities at Fort Detrick and in Ukraine. Other countries have also expressed similar concerns,” Zhao Lijian said. In his speech, he also emphasised the fact that the US is the only country that still blocks the creation of a verification mechanism under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.

The official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry went further and called on the US to take a responsible position and give a comprehensive explanation of what they are doing in these laboratories, as well as to respond to requests for the establishment of a verification mechanism for such activities.

Obviously, if a country, in this case the US, does not develop biological weapons, then it makes no sense to resist the creation of mutual control mechanisms. If a country (the US) prevents the emergence of a mechanism for verifying the BTWC, it means that it is developing biological weapons.

Thus, we observe in the information field a coordinated attack by Russia and China on the US. Two accusations have loomed: the first (general) – the development of biological weapons, the second (particular) – unintentional or intentional leakage of the coronavirus could have occurred from the American biological laboratory, most likely from the laboratory at Fort Detrick.

By the way, the experts of the WHO mission, following the results of their trip to China, called the narrative about the incident in the laboratory in China, which could cause the spread of COVID-19, “extremely improbable”.

Of course, if Russia and China manage to present convincing evidence, or at least even to sow the idea in world public opinion that it was the US that developed and released COVID-19 from the laboratory (even by accident), this will be a serious blow to American hegemony, the authority of the US will fall to almost zero.

A small remark: evidence of the development of biological weapons by the Americans in Ukraine will potentially be possible to obtain during the Russian peace enforcement operation, if Kiev opts for armed aggression against the L/DPR.

According to the information of the Johns Hopkins University, on April 11, 2021, more than 2.93 million people died in the world from the disease caused by the coronavirus and its consequences, while in the US – about 562,000 people. The IMF has rated 2020 as the worst year for the world economy in the last century, so large-scale and global economic downturn has not been observed since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The practice of instilling fear about the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying it demands for strict, hardly justified, restrictive measures in this situation will play the opposite role. The world community will react extremely negatively, assessing the coronavirus pandemic as the purest deliberate manipulation.

Given the fact that the collective West no longer has the ability and does not want to pay too high price for a military solution to the issues of global competition with Russia and China, it has focused on mental aggression – on reformatting the population of these countries, primarily young people.

In such a situation, the scandal with the American origin of the COVID-19 coronavirus will be tantamount to losing in the global mental war, and then, as a result, losing in the global competition of the great powers.

Институт международных политических и экономических стратегий Русстрат

(@russtrat)