» Don’t take it the wrong way.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Tom Cotton │ Xi Jinping
» Don’t take it the wrong way.
Friday, March 22, 2024
500 Years of Western Dominance - What Comes Next | Glenn Diesen
In our current era, we have abandoned the civilized-barbarian divide, but we have replaced it with a liberal democracy-authoritarian divide to legitimize sovereign inequality. The West can interfere in the domestic affairs of other states to promote democracy, invade countries to defend human rights, or even change the borders of countries in support of self-determination. This is the exclusive right and a responsibility of the West as the champions of the universal values of liberal democracy. As the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell explained: “The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us”.
International law in accordance with the UN Charter defends the principle of sovereign equality for all states. The so-called “rules-based international order” is based on sovereign inequality, which introduces special privileges under the guise of universal liberal democratic values. For example, the West’s recognition of independence for Kosovo was a breach of international law as it violated the territorial integrity of Serbia, although it was legitimized by the liberal principle of respecting the self-determination of Kosovo Albanians. In Crimea the West decided that self-determination should not be the leading principle, but territorial integrity. The US refers to liberal democratic values to exercise its exclusive right to invade and occupy countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, although this right is not extended to countries in the jungle.
[...] The Ukrainian conflict is essentially an extension of American geopolitics, which aims to carry out Mackinder’s aforementioned stanza, “He who rules Eastern Europe rules the world.” What are your thoughts about it?
Brzezinski outlined the strategy for developing and preserving US global primacy, which relies on the age-old wisdom of divide-and-rule. Brzezinski wrote that the US must “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”. Historically, the British and the Americans have worked to prevent Germany and Russia from coming together as it would form an independent pole of power. Hegemony requires conflict between Germany and Russia, as Germany becomes a dependent ally and Russia is weakened. This logic is also applied to why it is beneficial to perpetuate tensions between the Arabs and Iran, or between China and its neighbors. The US has been very concerned about the economic integration between the Germans and Russians, which is why the US was so hostile to the Nord Stream pipelines and most likely was behind the attack on these pipelines.
The problem is that the world is no longer Western-centric and by pushing Russia away from Germany, the US has pushed Russia towards China – a technological and industrial power much greater than Germany. In the mid-19th century, the British fought against Russia in the Crimean War with the explicit purpose of pushing Russia back into Asia, where it would remain technologically and economically backward and stagnant. NATO’s war in Ukraine is a repeat of the efforts to push Russia back into Asia, although this time Asia is much more dynamic than the West. The failure of the West to adjust our grand strategy to this new reality has been a mistake of immeasurable proportions. We have not subordinated Russia, rather we ended Russia’s 300-year-long Western-centric policies in which Moscow looked to the West for modernization.
What is driving this stunning anti-Chinese obsession in the United States against a country that upholds the principle of non-interference in other countries, that used its mighty navy only for trade and not for gunboat politics when it was a superpower in the past, and that follows the millennia-old concept of “Tianxia” (天下), which literally means “everything under heaven”, that is, an inclusive world full of harmony for all?
Finally, in your new book you say that a new Westphalian world order is reasserting itself, albeit with Eurasian characteristics. Can you explain this in more detail?
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Europe’s Catastrophic Russian Problem | Wang Xiangsui
But the price is dear. The largest economy prior to the Ukraine war, Europe is now facing the prospect of political divisions and security threats. Its insensible actions are not only compromising Europe's autonomy and increasing its military reliance on the US, but also disrupting its energy supply chains, in which Russia played an important part. So what does the US stand to gain from this situation?
But time and again, the US disregarded and even intentionally harmed European interests. Europe's political stage is now occupied by liberal leftists whose obstinacy to ideology and blind loyalty to the US have deprived them of strategic foresight. If Europe fails to awaken to the reality, more losses will inevitably befall the European people. Acting as a suicide bomber in the Ukraine conflict will achieve nothing but harm Europe itself. Europe's tragedy is rooted in its failure to recognize the significance of the Ukraine conflict. What we are witnessing is merely the precursor to a brand new world order, an order of multi-polarity which neither the US nor Europe can prevent.
If the current situation continues, Ukraine's status as an independent country will be called into question. At first glance, the US appears to be the biggest winner. To avoid instability, numerous European financial assets and capital are now being redirected to the US, bolstering its pandemic-stricken economy and positioning it as the best-performing developed country. Additionally, Europe is once again brought under the American security umbrella, abandoning its pursuit of strategic independence. Furthermore, the US has profited during the war by selling its own energy at high prices to Europe through sanctions on Russia's energy exports. However, when considering the bigger picture in the long run, the Russia-Ukraine conflict significantly weakens the US-dominated world order and damages the credibility of the US. To many countries, the war exposed the unreliability of the US and the precariousness of the uni-polar world order it perpetuates.
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
On Realism and War with China | John Mearsheimer
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
2025 Yalta 2.0 | Dmitry Medvedev
The parliamentary circus of freaks from the land of defeated fascism, sitting once again in the Reichstag, demands that long-range missiles be sent to their neo-Nazi offspring, even at the risk of getting more long-range missiles on their heads.
Western heads of state make theatrical visits to Kiev on the day of the start of the SMO to distract their own constituencies from the pent-up problems and, in a state of acute choleric exaltation, once again lick the dirty boot of the American master.
The petty and tragic heirs of Bonaparte, trying on the golden epaulettes torn off two hundred years ago, are eager for revenge of Napoleonic proportions and are spreading fierce and extremely dangerous nonsense about the landing of troops from certain NATO countries in Kiev and about new weapons for strikes against Russia.
There are examples of the corpulent decomposition of the brains of Western politicians every day. And so the horse is pale and the rider on it is getting closer and closer ...
Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation - Feb 27, 2024.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
The Defeat of the West │ Emmanuel Todd
Todd focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West’s downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “degree zero” of the West’s religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars. Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and finally The Empire. Let’s focus on what would be the 12 Greatest Hits of his remarkable exercise:
2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for instance, how “the whole Muslim world seems to consider Russia as a partner rather than an adversary”.
3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a delicious compatibility of vision between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. Because they are forced to survive in an environment where only power relations matters, states are now acting as “Hobbesian agents.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, focused on “sovereignty”: the capacity of a state to independently define its internal and external policies, with no foreign interference whatsoever.
4. The implosion, step by step, of WASP culture, which led, “since the 1960s”, to “an empire deprived of a center and a project, an essentially military organism managed by a group without culture (in the anthropological sense)”. This is Todd defining the US neocons.
5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.
6. The demographic trap: Todd shows how Washington strategists “forgot that a state whose population enjoys a high educational and technological level, even if it is decreasing, does not lose its military power”. That’s exactly the case of Russia during the Putin years.
7. Here we reach the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published a little over a century ago, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its death, today, is the cause of the disintegration and defeat.” Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English 'Glorious Revolution', the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution were the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded 'West' is not historically 'liberal', because it also engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”. In a nutshell, Todd shows how Protestantism imposed universal literacy on the populations it controlled, “because all faithful must directly access the Holy Scriptures. A literate population is capable of economic and technological development. The Protestant religion modeled, by accident, a superior, efficient workforce.” And it is in this sense that Germany was “at the heart of Western development”, even if the Industrial Revolution took place in England. Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The crucial factor of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.” Moreover Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice at the heart of the history of the West: via the educational and economic drive - with fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God engendering a work ethic and a strong, collective morality - and via the idea that Men are unequal (remember the White Man’s Burden). The collapse of Protestantism could not but destroy the work ethic to the benefit of mass greed: that is, neoliberalism.
8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would merit a whole new book. He refers to “one of the great illusions of the 1960s – between Anglo-American sexual revolution and May 68 in France”; “to believe that the individual would be greater if freed from the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” And that’s how we became “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.”
9. Todd’s brief analysis of the deeper meaning of transgenderism completely shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and will provoke serial fits of rage. He shows how transgenderism is “one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.” And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says that a man may become a woman, and a woman may become a man. This is a false affirmation, and in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism.” It gets worse, when it comes to the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful mental and social connection between this cult of the fake and the Hegemon’s wobbly behavior in international relations. Example: the Iranian nuclear deal clinched under Obama becoming a hardcore sanctions regime under Trump. Todd: “American foreign policy is, in its own way, gender fluid.”
10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe at the start was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, that turned into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant spouse not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU abandoned any pretention of defending Europe’s interests - cutting itself off from energy and trade with its partner Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, correctly, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the end of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that happened only 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon war on Iraq.
11. Todd correctly defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We note that its military, ideological and psychological mechanism does not exist to protect Western Europe, but to control it.”
12. In tandem with several analysts in Russia, China, Iran and among independents in Europe, Todd is sure that the US obsession – since the 1990s - to cut off Germany from Russia will lead to failure: “Sooner or later, they will collaborate”, as “their economic specializations define them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the path, as a “gravitational force” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.
[...] Whatever the deadline, inbuilt in all this is a total Russia victory – with the winner dictating all terms. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen conflict – as the Hegemon is now desperate spinning.
Sunday, December 31, 2023
The Time of the Civilisational States │ Alain de Benoist
The recognition of the crisis of universalism and Western hegemonism thus goes hand in hand with the feeling that the era of the international order based on the conflicting balance of nation-states has ended, as Carl Schmitt foresaw as early as the 1930s. The rise of civilisational states signals the entry into an era in which the world order is no longer reduced to the unstable equilibrium of nation-states. As civilisational norms become a pivotal point in geopolitics, the main competition is no longer the traditional one between nation-states but the one between civilisations. Civilisational states give rise to a new mode of sovereignty that is no longer that of nation-states.
Carl Schmitt (1940) - Großraum gegen Universalismus. (Great Space vs. Universalism.)
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
War And Epochal Global Shift │ Pepe Escobar
All of Halford Mackinder's geopolitical nightmares becoming tangible realities not only in Greater Eurasia
but across all lands still governed by the evaporating Western world order.
The petrodollar monetary system died just lately.
Brazilian geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar breaks down the epochal implications of the ongoing military conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine; he explains the roles and missions of Russia, Iran and China and their leaders; he discusses the rise of Greater Eurasia under the alliance of the three main Eurasian powers; he reports on the drastic and unexpected swift collapse of the Western world order, civilization and hegemony over West Asia due to the waning influence of US neocons as well as due to fundamental US economic, strategic, diplomatic and military failures during the past three decades. The West's former proxy rulers in the Muslim world are shaking in fear. The widely detested opportunists they are, they now all changed sides.
» The divine providence and mission of Russian President Vladimir Putin as God's chosen instrument and second Dhu al-Qarnayn,
the just conqueror, lawgiver and savior of the Christian orthodox world and the world of Islam. «
Pepe Escobar (Nov 26, 2023) - Gaza changes everything as Russia, China Confront Neocon Agenda for Middle East. (video)
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
The Financial System Has Reached The End | Egon von Greyerz
History never lies but politicians do without fail. In a fake system based on false values, lying is considered to be an essential part of political survival. Let’s just look at Nixon's ignorant and irresponsible statements of August 15, 1971 when he took away the gold backing of the dollar and thus all currencies. Later on we will show how clear-sighted the Chinese leaders were about the destiny of the US and its economy. So there we have tricky Dick’s lies:
- The suspension of the convertibility of the dollar in 1971 is still in effect 52 years later.
- As the dollar has declined by almost 99% since 1971, the “strength of the economy” is also declining fast although using fiat money as the measure hides the truth.
- Seriousness of the US economic crisis and decay and decline of the capitalist system.
- Mark the collapse of the monetary system with the US dollar as its prop.
- Nixon’s policy cannot extricate the US from financial and economic crisis.
All other currencies have without fail gone to ZERO and that without exception. Voltaire said it already in 1729: "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero." And that has been the destiny of every currency throughout history. Every single currency has without fail gone to ZERO. And this is where the dollar and its lackeys are heading. To debate if a currency, which has fallen 98.2% in the last 52 years, is going to strengthen or weaken in the next year or two is really missing the point. It is virtually 100% certain that the dollar and all fiat money will complete the cycle (which started in 1913 with the creation of the Fed) and fall the remaining 1-3% to ZERO. But we must remember that the final fall involves a 100% loss of value from today.
So a country like Switzerland with virtually no deficits and a very low debt to GDP proves that a well managed economy with very low inflation doesn’t destroy its currency like most irresponsible governments. The Swiss system of direct democracy and people power is totally unique and gives the people the right to have a referendum on almost any issue they choose. This makes the people much more responsible in their choices as a winning vote on any issue becomes part of the constitution and cannot be changed by government or parliament. Only a new referendum can change such a decision. Swiss Debt to GDP is around 40%. This was the level of US debt back in 1971 before the gold window was closed. [...] US debt to GDP is now 132%. In 2000 it was 55%. 132% debt to GDP is the level of a Banana Republic which is frantically trying to survive by printing and borrowing ever increasing amounts of worthless fiat money.