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Emmanuel Todd On The Third World War
The French Le Figaro has an interview with the well known anthropologist Emmanuel Todd.
Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé»
"The third world war has began" is his new thesis. Todd is quite famous for correctly predicting the devolution of the Soviet Union long before it happened. He was quite alone at that time.
I once had a piece on Todd's later predictions for the U.S. and Europe which still seems spot on. I also quoted him in a piece on social decline as a national security issue.
Unfortunately the Figaro piece is paywalled. But Arnaud Bertrand has done us the favor of translating the gist. Here is his slightly edited thread:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand – 15:42 UTC · Jan 13, 2023
Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."
Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.
He says "it's obvious that the conflict, which started as a limited territorial war and is escalating to a global economic confrontation between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war."
He believes that "Putin made a big mistake early on, which is [that] on the eve of the war [everyone saw Ukraine] not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a “failed state” in the making. […] I think the Kremlin's calculation was that this decaying society would crumble at the first shock. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope."
He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true."
He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer:
"Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America.
Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power' of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.
If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained, backed by China, American monetary and financial controls of the world would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund their huge trade deficit for nothing. This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. This is why we are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other."
He firmly believes the US is in decline but sees it as bad news for the autonomy of vassal states:
"I have just read a book by S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs (The India Way), published just before the war, who sees American weakness, who knows that the confrontation between China and the US will have no winner but will give space to a country like India, and to many others. I add: but not to Europeans. Everywhere we see the weakening of the US, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates. As the American system shrinks, it weighs ever more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here). The first to lose all national autonomy will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the US in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid. Let's remember the Iraq war, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint anti-war press conferences."
He underlines the importance of skills and education: "The US is now twice as populated as Russia (2.2 times in student age groups). But in the US only 7% are studying engineering, while in Russia it is 25%. Which means that with 2.2 times fewer people studying, Russia trains 30% more engineers. The US fills the gap with foreign students, but they're mainly Indians and even more Chinese. This is not safe and is already decreasing. It is a dilemma of the American economy: it can only face competition from China by importing skilled Chinese labor."
On the ideological and cultural aspects of the war: "When we see the Russian Duma pass even more repressive legislation on 'LGBT propaganda', we feel superior. I can feel that as an ordinary Westerner. But from a geopolitical point of view, if we think in terms of oft power, it is a mistake. On 75% of the planet, the kinship organization was patrilineal and one can sense a strong understanding of Russian attitudes. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism."
He continues: "The USSR had a certain form of soft power [but] communism basically horrified the whole Muslim world by its atheism and inspired nothing particular in India, outside of West Bengal and Kerala. However, today, Russia which repositioned itself as the archetype of the great power, not only anti-colonialist, but also patrilineal and conservative of traditional mores, can seduce much further. [For instance] it's obvious that Putin's Russia, having become morally conservative, has become sympathetic to the Saudis who I'm sure have a bit of a hard time with American debates over access for transgender women in the ladies' room.
Western media are tragically funny, they keep saying, 'Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated'. But when we look at the votes at the UN, we see that 75% of the world does not follow the West, which then seems very small.
With an anthropologist reading of this [divide between the West and the rest] we find that countries in the West often have a nuclear family structure with bilateral kinship systems, that is to say where male and female kinship are equivalent in the definition of the social status of the child. [Within the rest], with the bulk of the Afro-Euro-Asian mass, we find community and patrilineal family organizations. We then see that this conflict, described by our media as a conflict of political values, is at a deeper level a conflict of anthropological values. It is this unconscious aspect of the divide and this depth that make the confrontation dangerous."
There you go. Is he right on everything? I don't know, but Emmanuel Todd is certainly always a very singular and interesting thinker, with a vastly different analysis from the depressingly predictable bad takes that usually dominate French media.
Todd's thinking rhymes well with that of Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson as reproduced at Naked Capitalism.
Economists Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson Explain Multipolarity, Decline of US Hegemony – Original here
Yves Smith introduces it:
Yves here. Some rousing weekend listening! Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are launching a bi-weekly talk show, Geopolitical Economy Hour. The opening segment gives an overview, starting with the breakdown of US dominance and how it has been accelerated ironically by self-defeating efforts to preserve the system. It seems trivial at this point to observe that American defense of its hegemony has helped forge a strong Russia-China alliance. But will this partnership wind up dominating other countries, and stymie the development of a truly multipolar order?
Good food for thought …
No Paywall has the TASS article https://tass.com/world/1561887
US may lose control of world finance due to conflict in Ukraine — French expert
Emmanuel Todd is certain that the United States is in a phase of long-term decline and, against the backdrop of its waning influence in the world, it has decided to press for greater influence in its “original protectorates,” acquired after World War II
PARIS, January 13. /TASS/. The Ukrainian conflict is existential for the United States, which, in the event that friendly European economies become exhausted, will run the risk of losing its grip on world finance, French historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd said in an interview with Le Figaro.
In his commentary, he recalls a piece of analysis offered by Professor John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, who argued that whereas for Russia this conflict was “existential,” for the United States it was just another game among other countries, and that victory or defeat in it would be of little importance to the US. “But this analysis is insufficient. [U.S. President Joe] Biden now has to hurry. America is fragile and the Russian economy’s resistance is pushing the US imperial system towards the abyss. Nobody had expected the Russian economy would be able to withstand the ‘economic power’ of NATO,” Todd said.
He is certain that the United States is in a phase of long-term decline and, against the backdrop of its waning influence in the world, it has decided to press for greater influence in its “original protectorates,” acquired after World War II, in other words, Europe and Japan. Against this background the European economy’s collapse, the expert notes, is fraught with great risks for the United States itself.
“If the Russian economy offers long-term resistance to sanctions and manages to bleed the European economy white and manages to survive with Chinese support, US monetary control of the world will collapse, and with it, the US’ ability to finance its mammoth trade deficit for next to nothing. This war has become existential for the United States. It cannot get out of the conflict before Russia. They cannot let go. This explains why we are now in an open-ended war, in a confrontation that is bound to result in the collapse of one side or the other,” Todd says.
Economic and social problems
The conflict in Ukraine “leads to a real economy that allows for gauging the real wealth of states and their productive capacity,” the expert states. In particular, he points to a two-fold increase in Russia’s wheat production after the first major sanctions were introduced in 2014, as well as Russia’s leading position in building nuclear power plants, not only at home, but also abroad.
The outcome of the conflict “will depend on the ability of both systems to produce weapons,” Todd believes. The historian notes that the transition to a war of attrition reduces the influence of advanced US military technologies, being used by Ukraine. It brings to the forefront the availability of skilled personnel, material resources and industrial potential. “At this point the
West’s fundamental problem of globalization begins to intervene: we have moved so many industries [from our territory] that we don’t know now whether our military plants will be able to maintain the desired production pace,” he added.
In addition to natural and industrial resources the expert notes the great role of human resources and education. He points to the United States’ more than twofold advantage over Russia in population, but advises his readership to remember that in the United States only 7% of students master engineering professions, while in Russia there are about 25% of them, which ultimately gives Russia a competitive edge. “The United States is filling this gap with foreign students, mostly Indians and even to a greater extent, Chinese. This substitution resource is unreliable, though, and is already dwindling,” he said.
Clash of ideologies
Todd also urged not to forget about the “ideological and cultural balance of power.” He recalled that during the Soviet era, the Communist ideology was used as soft power, which won acclaim in China, and partly in India and Europe. However, for the Muslim world, that ideology was not attractive due to its official atheism, the expert believes. “Today, Russia, which is again positioning itself as a great power, not only anti-colonial, but also patrilineal and conservative in relation to traditional mores, can attract far greater support,” he explained.
“Western newspapers are tragically funny: they keep saying: ‘Russia is isolated. Russia is isolated.’ But when you take a look at the votes at the UN, it will turn out that 75% of the world does not follow the West, which at such moments looks very small,” Todd says. “The current conflict, which our media tend to describe as a clash of political values, at a deeper level is a conflict of anthropological values. It is this lack of awareness and depth that makes the confrontation dangerous.”
Global confrontation
“The reality is that World War III has already begun. It is obvious that the conflict, initially a limited territorial war, has evolved into a global economic confrontation between the entire West, on the one hand, and Russia, supported by China, on the other, to have become a world war,” Todd believes. He speculates that given current economic and demographic factors, the hostilities should be expected to end within five years.
He believes that one way or another the European countries are “participating in killing Russians” by supplying military equipment to Ukraine, even though they do not put themselves at risk. “The Europeans are primarily focused on the economy. We can feel the real involvement in the war through inflation and shortages of various goods,” the expert stressed.
Russia, he says, while participating in an economic war [with the West], is partially restoring the military economy, but at the same time it is doing its utmost to take care of the people.”
“This is the purpose of the pullback of troops from Kherson that followed the pullback from the Kharkov and Kiev regions. We are counting the square kilometers captured by the Ukrainians, while the Russians are waiting for the fall of the European economies. We are their main frontline,” Todd stated.
Posted by: Oblomovka daydream | Jan 14 2023 18:01 utc | 65
Am reading through Inside Putin’s Brain by Michael Millerman, an analysis of Alexander Dugan’s work. (Millerman does not believe that Dugan is all that huge an influence on Putin btw, but that is how Dugan is often described because of his influence in Eurasian intellectual circles and thus the entire multipolarity movement.)
I believe that we are in WW III already, however this is indeed an asymmetric war as both Chinese and Russian grandees have been warning us about for a couple of decades now. So this is not our grandparents ‘war.’
I also don’t think that Todd’s patrilinear notion goes nearly far enough viz describing the axes of contention. Rather, I think Dugan’s Fourth Political Theory notion is much more apropos. Simply put, it’s what must come next after liberalism which is the primus inter pares of the main ideological giants of the 20th century ‘modern’ era namely liberalism, commmunism and fascism. Here is an excerpt from the early part of the book which touches on the different notion of ‘people’ in a nation that the Russians and thus most central Eurasians share. It’s a little wordy but deals with important, fundamental issues. If we are engaged in a world wide struggle to determine the future, obviously who that future is for, which means how we view people in any given national or societal context, is part of that struggle for when we are dealing with existential struggles between different polities we are dealing with different ontological experiences of collective reality. In short, how we perceive and feel the notion of ‘we’ and ‘us.’ It’s that simple, that basic, that important. That is what this ‘war’ is ultimately about.
Multipolarity assumes multiple different senses of ‘we’ whereas liberalism, by being based on individualism as the core building block, has ended up generalizing everything to some sort of materialism-based One World in which all individuals dwell. Whereas the more traditional views – which the emerging anti-liberal Fourth Political Theory embraces – embrace a unified polity or collective to which the individual is beholden, for which the individual sacrifices. Modernist liberals regard the world as an atheist ‘objective’ domain contained within the ideology of the state in which, essentially, all questions are essentially answered. However the view expressed below, which comes from a theistic perspective, has an ‘open top’ in which all questions are not answered because profundity, which we all can experience in daily life, is experienced in silence, in wordless direct perception. The system cannot possess that or contain it nor should it try. Which is why at root this ‘war’ has profound spiritual implications, quite possibly for how human polities will run for the next millenia. There’s a lot more than patrilinearity in the mix, though that is an interesting aspect to consider.
Or something. Here’s the excerpt:
Narod/People
Just as studies of the Chinese character for people min, are “crucial to making sense of political imaginaries in contemporary Asia,” so, too, is the Russian word narod crucial to understanding the political imagination of Eurasianism. In ethnosociology, the narod (laos, Volk) is a derivative of the ethnos. According to the model of the fourth political theory, no forms of liberalism, communism, or fascism-nationalism conceive of ethnosociology, ethnos, and narod adequately, either ignoring them, constructing them based on incorrect methods and axioms, or misinterpreting them in terms of race. The science of sociology itself, based on those incorrect methods and axioms, should be supplanted with ethnosociology. Sociology as it has developed elsewhere would be a species of ethnosociology. Ethnosociology “is not only the definition of the formal ethnological characteristics of a narod, but a study of that which is constitutive for the ethnos, an understanding of its ontology, its being.”
English translations of Dugin’s books have tended to transliterate the Russian word narod, since it would be misleading to translate it as “people” (for instance, the demos is not the narod). That would be good practice even in general studies of the Russian word. It is all the more so in the study of a comprehensive theoretical system in which the word, and the phenomena, plays such an important part: the narod is “the absolute, main, central, first and last concept of Eurasian philosophy.”
The Eurasian discussion of the Russian narod differs drastically from Anglo-American political-theoretic talk of the people. That is in large part because it does not operate with, and indeed rejects, civic nationalism for an ethnosocial interpretation of the “people.” We have already seen that the account of the narod is primarily existential. The narod is as important to Eurasian political theory as the individual is to liberal political theory, the class to Marxist political theory, and the race and state to fascistic political theories. Individualism is “heresy”; man is “an ethnic being.”
Dan Avnon once said that Israelis should raise a red card any time a politician is caught using the Hebrew word “am,” which also means “people” in the sense of narod. His thought was that that sense of “people” carried with it too many non-liberal presuppositions and the unacceptable traces of a pre-modern worldview. Eurasianism, by contrast, is an embrace of the non-liberal, pre-modern resonances of the Russian language, and a concerted effort to reject any attempts to mute those resonances out of modern or postmodern commitments. The narod gives “us” its language, and “this is firewood for the soul.” “The simple utterance of a randomly selected Russian word,” Dugin writes movingly, “is real magic, a colossal spiritual deed.” In short, Eurasian political theory must be the magic circle of the Russian language, given its “ethnocentrism” or more precisely narod-centrism.
Democracy
Eurasianism is opposed to modern democracy. This opposition can be presented on religious or philosophical grounds. For instance, Dugin has called global democracy “the kingdom of the anti-Christ.” This philosophical rejection is partly supported by such sources as Plato’s Parmenides. In two papers hosted by platonizm.ru, Dugin postulates that, because of a parallelism between ontology and the political, the Parmenidean theses about the one and the many are isomorphic to eight different political arrangements. The first four theses affirm the One, and the latter four deny the One. Denial of the One is the basis of democracy. By contrast, Eurasianism is a political-ontological embrace of the One, and is hence modeled on the first four theses.
It is worth noting in response to a potential challenge from the deconstructive left that an embrace of the One does not mean a commitment to a closed system of presence, as the following lines indicate:
…the normative Republic must be open at the top. It cannot be self-identical, since the One does not exist immediately. […] An apophatic hole must gape at the center of the Republic. Only then will the Republic be holy. That does not detract from the order of the political cosmos but on the contrary ensures its noetic respiration. Thus, the Republic should not be self-identical; it is always something non-identical to itself. This is not simply the Republic but the Republic of philosophers (the predicate is necessary). As soon as it becomes simply a Republic and self-identical, it at once loses the wave of ontological resonance with the paradigm and turns from a copy into a caricature, cartoon, parody, anti-politeia.
Needless to say, Eurasianism is not the open society championed by Karl Popper. However, both this statement about the necessarily apophatic and open character of the genuine Republic and other statements concerning the place of the figure of khōra in Eurasian thought show that Eurasianism is not interpreted correctly on its own terms as a closed system, because, on its own terms, the closed politeia is a parody and anti-politeia.
Yes, a little wordy in parts, but I believe it does deal with the heart of the matter. Logistics are crucial in terms of understanding military operations, but they do not explain why the military players in question are busy trying to obliterate each other. It is a sad irony in human history that nearly all wars, when all is said and done, boil down to religious differences. This is not necessarily because all religions are by definition evil – as many here have on occasion expressed. Rather that evil does arise in human affairs at which point struggles break out and those struggles ultimately boil down to different views about the nature of reality and thus society. In other words, religion for religion is the collective spirituality of any given State or narod.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jan 14 2023 18:03 utc | 66
TASS published a story based on the original French article:
US may lose control of world finance due to conflict in Ukraine — French expert – TASS, January 14, 2023
Emmanuel Todd is certain that the United States is in a phase of long-term decline and, against the backdrop of its waning influence in the world, it has decided to press for greater influence in its “original protectorates,” acquired after World War II
PARIS, January 13. /TASS/. The Ukrainian conflict is existential for the United States, which, in the event that friendly European economies become exhausted, will run the risk of losing its grip on world finance, French historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd said in an interview with Le Figaro.
In his commentary, he recalls a piece of analysis offered by Professor John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, who argued that whereas for Russia this conflict was “existential,” for the United States it was just another game among other countries, and that victory or defeat in it would be of little importance to the US. “But this analysis is insufficient. [U.S. President Joe] Biden now has to hurry. America is fragile and the Russian economy’s resistance is pushing the US imperial system towards the abyss. Nobody had expected the Russian economy would be able to withstand the ‘economic power’ of NATO,” Todd said.
He is certain that the United States is in a phase of long-term decline and, against the backdrop of its waning influence in the world, it has decided to press for greater influence in its “original protectorates,” acquired after World War II, in other words, Europe and Japan. Against this background the European economy’s collapse, the expert notes, is fraught with great risks for the United States itself.
“If the Russian economy offers long-term resistance to sanctions and manages to bleed the European economy white and manages to survive with Chinese support, US monetary control of the world will collapse, and with it, the US’ ability to finance its mammoth trade deficit for next to nothing. This war has become existential for the United States. It cannot get out of the conflict before Russia. They cannot let go. This explains why we are now in an open-ended war, in a confrontation that is bound to result in the collapse of one side or the other,” Todd says.
Economic and social problems
The conflict in Ukraine “leads to a real economy that allows for gauging the real wealth of states and their productive capacity,” the expert states. In particular, he points to a two-fold increase in Russia’s wheat production after the first major sanctions were introduced in 2014, as well as Russia’s leading position in building nuclear power plants, not only at home, but also abroad.
The outcome of the conflict “will depend on the ability of both systems to produce weapons,” Todd believes. The historian notes that the transition to a war of attrition reduces the influence of advanced US military technologies, being used by Ukraine. It brings to the forefront the availability of skilled personnel, material resources and industrial potential. “At this point the
West’s fundamental problem of globalization begins to intervene: we have moved so many industries [from our territory] that we don’t know now whether our military plants will be able to maintain the desired production pace,” he added.
In addition to natural and industrial resources the expert notes the great role of human resources and education. He points to the United States’ more than twofold advantage over Russia in population, but advises his readership to remember that in the United States only 7% of students master engineering professions, while in Russia there are about 25% of them, which ultimately gives Russia a competitive edge. “The United States is filling this gap with foreign students, mostly Indians and even to a greater extent, Chinese. This substitution resource is unreliable, though, and is already dwindling,” he said.
Clash of ideologies
Todd also urged not to forget about the “ideological and cultural balance of power.” He recalled that during the Soviet era, the Communist ideology was used as soft power, which won acclaim in China, and partly in India and Europe. However, for the Muslim world, that ideology was not attractive due to its official atheism, the expert believes. “Today, Russia, which is again positioning itself as a great power, not only anti-colonial, but also patrilineal and conservative in relation to traditional mores, can attract far greater support,” he explained.
“Western newspapers are tragically funny: they keep saying: ‘Russia is isolated. Russia is isolated.’ But when you take a look at the votes at the UN, it will turn out that 75% of the world does not follow the West, which at such moments looks very small,” Todd says. “The current conflict, which our media tend to describe as a clash of political values, at a deeper level is a conflict of anthropological values. It is this lack of awareness and depth that makes the confrontation dangerous.”
Global confrontation
“The reality is that World War III has already begun. It is obvious that the conflict, initially a limited territorial war, has evolved into a global economic confrontation between the entire West, on the one hand, and Russia, supported by China, on the other, to have become a world war,” Todd believes. He speculates that given current economic and demographic factors, the hostilities should be expected to end within five years.
He believes that one way or another the European countries are “participating in killing Russians” by supplying military equipment to Ukraine, even though they do not put themselves at risk. “The Europeans are primarily focused on the economy. We can feel the real involvement in the war through inflation and shortages of various goods,” the expert stressed.
Russia, he says, while participating in an economic war [with the West], is partially restoring the military economy, but at the same time it is doing its utmost to take care of the people.”
“This is the purpose of the pullback of troops from Kherson that followed the pullback from the Kharkov and Kiev regions. We are counting the square kilometers captured by the Ukrainians, while the Russians are waiting for the fall of the European economies. We are their main frontline,” Todd stated.
Posted by: Petri Krohn | Jan 14 2023 19:39 utc | 76
B
Thanks again. Others have tired of this conflict, you continue to dig.
I feel the need to say: “Pope Francis said it first.”
That is not quite a rhetorical statement. Pope Francis’ comment, while coming in the context of the Russia-Ukraine/NATO conflict, is really rooted in the observation that across the world, the US is fighting dozens of wars of hegemony.
None of this was supposed to happen in the post-Soviet world. History was to have ‘ended’. Corporate America could safely transfer production overseas – to China, to Mexico – and NATO could restructure, because the Communist threat had been vanquished.
…But the economics of the world had already moved far beyond the situation that had prevailed at the end of World War II – in part thanks to the work of the USSR. In fact, I have argued that one of the reasons the Communist Party lost its consensus within the USSR was that it had not really absorbed the new reality it had, itself, created on the world scene. The end of the Vietnam war marked a critical shift in the balance of power between the Socialist/National Liberation front on the one hand, and US Imperialism (Corporate America – no point in using mystifying terminology like ‘the Empire’ or ‘the Elite’. Call it what it is.). Decades of Reaganomics, Bushonomics, Clintonomics, Trumponomics, Bidenonomics, have not changed that reality. Momentary boosts in US Corporate profit margins are, every time, followed by drastic falls, each fall worse than the one before.
What Todd’s analysis misses:
The US is not a monolith. Decades of antisocialist propaganda and a long, long history of racism have created a society short on analysis. But people learn. The GOP loss at the midterm is, to my mind, an example of that. Yes, the country is over-focused on culture wars. But the uptick in strikes and labor organizing, across the political spectrum, suggests that the US is no exception to the laws of social economics. Even the contradictory posts of other USers here point to a growing understanding of the nature of US Corporate imperalism.
Europe is not ‘merely’ a ‘colony’. If it were, Meloni would not be Prime Minister in Italy, and Germany would not have passed a Constitutional amendment to expand its military. For that matter, were Europe truly a US colony, the NordStream pipelines would never have been built.
What we do see in Europe – my analysis, of course – is a split in the ‘ruling elites’ – the Corporate capitalist interests of Germany, France and Italy. Current German and French leadership have both indicated a need for the EU to ‘free’ itself from US influence. The problem, for them, is that this will of necessity be a costly process. US corporations have deeply penetrated parts of Europe in the last twenty years; the US has a practical fief in the Baltic States and Poland; and not unlike the situation that prevailed in Argentina throughout the 20th Century, there are sections of European Capitalism that benefit greatly from the Continent’s subservience to the US. And let us not forget that any German political leader with a sense of history will be remembering the consequences of their country’s previous attempts to assert its Continental dominance: World Wars I and II, which were utterly devastating for Germany.
Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all ‘existential’ wars for Corporate America. None of the conflict it has engaged in since the beginning of the 20th Century has been ‘incidental’. One can fight an ‘existential’ fight and lose – the two things are not contradictory. Corporate America has been locked in an existential fight against the USSR and the National Liberation Movements worldwide. What shocks it now is the fact that – somehow – the ‘racial inferiors’ of the world continue to limit its ability to act unhindered, even after the victory over the Soviets. But to not believe in their own, ultimate, victory is not only not an option – it is unthinkable. It is, for them, the equivalent of saying that the lesser apes will inheret the world.
A final thought on ‘culture wars’ in the US and the West. I can well see what Todd is saying – that Russia, in projecting an image of itself as staunchly conservative (no LGBTQ+, for example) is playing to be a reference point for countries like Modi’s India, or Saudi Arabia. But this bipolar school in not hegemonic throughout the non-Western world. We see, today, the depth of feeling among Iranian women that they are, in fact, equal to men. China, at least in its official ideology, holds men and women to be equals. This attitude is also a product of the National Liberations struggles of many countries, where women fought alongside men, built munitions, learned to lead. It is dangerous to ascribe non-binary, non-male-dominance attitudes across the world to ‘pernicious Western influence’.
By the same take, racism has been and continues to be one of the most potent weapons in the Corporate arsenal. It marks a fundamental divide between the anti-Corporate left and the anti-Corporate right. When Trump talked of ‘shit countries’ he was mirroring an attitude that runs deep in Coporate circles. At the same time, that attitude runs deep beyond Corporate circles, and keeps a chunk of what otherwise would, and should, be anti-Corporate forces, tied to the Corporate cart.
Posted by: Myke Simonian | Jan 14 2023 20:19 utc | 81
What about the citizens of Soledar? Komsomolskaya Pravda does pay attention to this fact, that even during the fierce fighting there were still citizens hiding in the town.
https://www.donetsk.kp.ru/daily/27452.5/4706163/
“We saved lives!” Residents of Soledar told about what they had to endure
Denis Pushilin met with residents of Soledar in one of the temporary accommodation centers
On January 14, the Acting Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, met with residents of Soledar and other settlements from the vicinity of Artemovsk in one of the temporary accommodation centers in Shakhtersk.
We will rebuild and restore everything!
– I’m glad you’re alive – that’s the most important thing! Pushlin says. – As for Soledar… unfortunately, we are facing this throughout the entire period: Mariupol, Volnovakha, and other settlements. They (Ukrainian militants) destroy inhabitants, infrastructures, and especially when retreating. Unfortunately, this is true, but we, as residents of Donbass, are well aware that we will rebuild and restore everything! Moreover, now we are already Russia!
– Thanks guys! We are very grateful to them, they saved our lives, – one of the residents says about the Russian fighters.
– I was in shelter for eight months in the basement, both of my legs were injured, it was difficult to move around, since my aunt Nina was nearby, – says the girl. – On January 11, at night, the fighters took us out of one shelter and transferred us to another, from where they gradually took us out. First, they took out older people, the disabled, the elderly, and children. Thank you so much for keeping us alive!
– My daughter and children were evacuated earlier, to Berdyansk. I’ll go to her, and then you need to start all over again, – says another resident with tears in her eyes.
Without holding back emotions and tears, people talk about what they had to go through – Ukrainian militants committed outrages, fired at civilians, and destroyed infrastructure.
– Ukrainians deployed “dryers” and fired at Otradovka. Then they rolled out, – says the surviving resident of the Artemovsky district.
“People were shot in the basement, they threw a grenade, it didn’t finish off, they (Ukrainian militants) killed them later,” the woman says.
“There’s nothing left but life”
After a trip to the temporary accommodation center and communication with the residents of Soledar, Denis Pushilin spoke about this in his Telegram channel. The leader of the Republic noted that in the near future Soledar would be included in the zone of administrative responsibility of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Citizens with a residence permit in Soledar will be able to count on all social guarantees that apply to residents of the Republic.
– They were rescued by the Russian army and taken out, many with small children, from places shelled by Ukrainian militants. People with tears in their eyes tell stories about what they have experienced, they say that there is nothing left but life. But, the main thing is that they were saved, – the head of the Republic wrote in the Telegram channel. – Today they are provided with all the necessary support, including in paperwork. People were interested in employment. He explained that we really need builders in the Republic now, and the participation of men in temporary work in construction teams would be very helpful, – summed up the Acting Head.
Posted by: Oblomovka daydream | Jan 14 2023 20:59 utc | 84
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