I love the fact that China, Russia and Pakistan have started to develop a shared understanding on Afghanistan. This is the trilateral core of a natural alliance that could end the occupation of the country, something that is essential for the security and prosperity of our region. Include Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and you have a combined force that is a sure-win for Afghanistan and its immediate neighbours.

Pakistani officials met in Islamabad to discuss the upcoming trilateral meeting in Moscow next month. The three countries have a lot of positives and strengths to build upon within a cooperative framework. They respect each other for what each one brings to the table and the brilliant synergy that their partnership entails. It’s time they got into joint action.

With the US on the table, the quadrilateral process was such a farce. It could have never brought peace to Afghanistan and its neighbourhood. It’s only good use is to set a time-table for ending the US occupation and devising the mechanism to make it smooth. Trump is already preparing for a face-saving exit from Afghanistan. We could make it easy for him.

Russia and China have clearly emerged as great world powers, and the US is no longer King, its short-lived reign as the sole superpower crumbling right before our eyes as we speak. It is actually a time to rejoice and celebrate, even if it is just for the fact that a ray of hope has emerged and it is getting stronger by the day. Victory would come in due course for sure.

They say to be great in the world, you first have to be great in your hometown and I both China and Russia have come to the same conclusion. The nursery of instability and terrorism in the US-occupied Afghanistan threatens them directly. There should be no doubt about it: The countries surrounding Afghanistan have the biggest stakes in its stability. The sooner the US is thrown out of the picture, the better it will be for our neighbourhood.

Pakistan has been grouped together with various regions, including South and West Asia, even Central Asia and the Middle East. And though there is at the very least quite a bit of truth in all of these identity tags, we should still not let ourselves be defined by these groupings. We should not let established ideas imprison our imagination about the future.

In any case, we are living in extremely fluid days and the tectonic plates of geopolitics are definitely shifting. So where do we stand in the middle of this worldwide upheaval and mayhem. The decisions we take today will determine our future in the new world. So here is how I like to imagine it.

At this point in history, our regional identity is constrained to be built around a problem; the military occupation of Afghanistan by the US-NATO combine and its serious consequences. Pakistan’s regional identity should be conceived in this context since our future depends on it, as does the destiny of other countries joined at the hip with Afghanistan; Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Let’s call this region the Circle of Resistance, as a circle is exactly what the five countries form around a land-locked Afghanistan. Countries forming this Circle of Resistance can’t afford to let the cancer of US occupation continue right in their middle and right across their borders. There will be no peace in the region, forget about prosperity, until the terrorist-spawning, two-faced Uncle Sam, the biggest thorn in the side of Afghanistan, is taken out.

The China-Russia nexus has emerged as a formidable bulwark of resistance against the imperialist US hegemony, and our alliance with this neighbouring nexus is as natural as gravity. This alliance is also inevitable, despite the never-ending divide-and-rule games being played in the region by an assortment of empires for centuries.

Cooperation between the China-Russia nexus and the Circle of Resistance is essential to do what needs to be done for our survival to begin with; securing our region from manufactured terrorism and engineered instability. Besides, imperialist occupation of Afghanistan is a jinx on the vision of Eurasian integration within a win-win cooperative framework which is required to bring prosperity for all of us.

China has been saying this for a while and it’s very logical; that the security of a region is the responsibility of countries that form that region, basically telling the policeman-of-the-world Uncle Sam to withdraw its tentacles that are strangulating entire nations in every region around the world. Take the example of a small country like Cuba.

It has bravely resisted the empire and created a humanitarian society unpolluted by the neo-liberal mindset, free of mega-buck corporations and their greedy compulsions that over-ride all notions of welfare and well-being of citizens. Cuba has managed to take care of its people, providing them education and one of the best healthcare systems in the world for free.

Vulgar disparity in incomes is not seen. It is surviving pretty much on its own. It doesn’t pose any military threat to the self-proclaimed sole super-power of the world but the US would like to snuff out this pocket of resistance. To impose its elitist neoliberal worldview on an egalitarian society it has employed an array of weapons; the blockade, covert operations and deceptive diplomacy. It is pushing Cuba to open up its territories to blood-hungry corporate hyenas who, among other things, would like to infest the country’s agriculture with GMOs.

This was the 25th year in a row that the UN General Assembly called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba. 191 out of 193 members of the UN called for the end of the blockade, while Israel and the US abstained. As if this never happened, the blockade continues to stunt the growth of Cuba. Neo-barbarism continues decade after decade in Kashmir and Palestine. The list could go on and on. The international system is clearly out of order.

Creating a post-imperial world order requires collective action. That’s why the meeting in Moscow is so important.