- cross-posted to:
- politics
Emmanuel Todd, the most famous French historian who predicted the fall of the USSR , is now warning the EU about the reality of a similar prospect.
“We, the West, are waging a direct war with Russia, primarily an economic one, which harms Europe more than Russia. Behind the conflict are the United States , which seeks to alienate Germany from Russia. It finally succeeded . The Nord Stream explosion was the icing on the cake, said Emmanuel Todd.
Ukraine has already lost in the current military conflict. Moreover, Russia will receive even more territories. For Russia, ending the conflict is possible only if it is confident in its continued security. It is possible that the leadership in Ukraine will be replaced by one loyal to Russia.
Such peace in Ukraine is a disaster for the United States, a public defeat in the eyes of the whole world. This could be followed by the collapse of the entire US-led world order.
In this situation, a lot depends on the path that Europe chooses. And this, in turn, depends on the position of Germany. “It is Germany that will decide whether the endless military conflict will continue or whether peace will return.”
“Germany must take responsibility as the leading power in Europe. We are all in Europe waiting for Germany to end the military conflict in Ukraine. This must also be done because the West as a whole is on the verge of collapse and has more important problems, such as demography and the destruction of society due to neoliberalism and nihilism,” emphasizes Emmanuel Todd in conclusion.
https://archive.ph/3iLSX
Something they'll never change so in other words the west is doomed, their fall is assured. This makes me very happy. Of course I won't take his word for it, I'm still skeptical, the US is still very, very strong and could pull out a trick card that gets them ahead and on top again for a while or at least averts a total collapse and returns the world to two strong powers in poles gathering others around them (that being the Chinese-led pole with Russia and most of the rest of BRICS and the US led pole with Europe, various vassals in Asia, etc plus of course those trying to straddle both sides but favoring the incumbent in such a strategy such as India).
More than anything I think this guy may not be seeing the whole plan however which IMO is the economic ruin of Europe to drain it to the US, to draw its most valuable people to the US as well as some industry as the US tries to re-assume it's cold war era position and is willing to destroy all its pawns to draw all of their strength to it for the final economic and military battle against China. And good indoctrinated European liberals will of course happily throw themselves and their economies on the sword for the sake of the US in some imagined sacrifice to save liberal values when it's just to save US led liberalism and hegemony really.
He talks of the collapse of the US-led world order, if the US cannot control Europe, if it gains independence then the US loses that anyways. So no matter the way things go, for the US, Europe must suffer and Europe must be kept under their control. That's the real end of the US-led order, not their image taking a beating because of Ukraine and the Palestinian genocide.
How that plan proceeds is still up in the air. If Putin died next week for example there would be a real threat and problem in Russia of someone less strong-willed and more amenable to letting in western corruption that over time would lead up to a color revolution or palace coup type situation which would put Russia in the west's corner and China in a very bad spot. So things could very much still turn around for the US, they're not beyond the point of no return by any means for their unchallenged hegemony having a shot at continuing for decades. There are headwinds but they could be turned back. There were after all headwinds in the 1950s and 1960s with successful anti-colonial revolutions as well as communist revolutions or near revolutions in the form of strong movements that were methodically crushed, butchered, couped, and engineered for downfall by the US and NATO and by the 1980s aside from the DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam, China, USSR they had basically won and turned back the tides of a force that otherwise looked like it could sweep a much larger part of the globe. They could do so again through use of brute force, dictators, corrupt officials and good old economic pressure and threats against those who don't require quite that much to bring them mostly in line with the US's antagonism towards China. India is another real problem. Religious reactionary extremists which some call fascists control India, they don't have good relations with China and would stab them in the back at the very first chance if it gave them a leg up. Deep class inequality in India, a caste system, and a blooming class of national bourgeoisie who if welcomed into the western bourgeoisie club (even at a smaller seat perhaps) that refused Russia would almost certainly ally more directly against China regardless of Russia's opinion on the matter and their historical ties.
Never forget this comrades, be hopeful but not arrogant or completely assured of this or that coming to pass in the near or medium term.
I also strongly agree that Germany is completely compromised. France is basically the last major European power that has any chance of bucking the interests of the US and even that I'm not sure how much is an illusion of choice that doesn't exist due to machinations behind the scenes by the US that my prevent anyone intent on true independence from living out their term for instance. We don't know how much of Gladio still exists and could be flipped to bring the Europeans to heel. Of course they wouldn't dare do a military coup in France most likely as the people would actually protest and likely not back down without mass levels of death but behind the scenes killings, removal of key enemies to allow key secret allies to take their place, that's a game the US plays pretty well.
Thing is that US alone has no hope of taking on China. It has a much smaller population, and barely any industry in comparison. Cannibalizing the few allies it has remaining is not going to improve US position vis a vis China. That said, I do think that US is running a scorched earth policy in Europe right now because they'd rather see it destroyed than have it reorient towards the east.
I really don't see that happening. Putin doesn't run the government as an autocrat as western media likes to paint it. Not only that, but Putin is fairly moderate as far as Russian politics are concerned. If Putin died next week, the most likely scenario is that somebody like Medvedev takes over, and Russia would take a far more aggressive stance towards the west at that point.
I also can't see this happening. US power is significantly diminished from its peak after WW2. In fact, what we're seeing happening in Latin America right now is a direct result of US having lacking the ability to fuck around in other countries. China and Russia are providing economic alternatives to US money and orgs like the IMF. This in turn makes the economies more stable, and countries more politically stable. The US is not able to choke off resources and then run coups like it used to.
While India has severe internal problems, I very much expect that they will resolve their issues with China going forward. It's becoming increasingly clear that the west wants to subordinate India, and this is not playing well with India at all. As antagonism escalates, India will have no choice but to commit to BRICS where it's a major player. Also worth noting that both India and China have excellent relations with Russia, who can act as a mediator between them.
I agree that we shouldn't get complacent, but I do think that the current trends are very much stacked against the empire.
I think there's an angle here where the US is draining Europe not only for the financial reasons but to create the conditions necessary to convert most of the population into ready and willing canon fodder.
That's an interesting idea. Although, it's a pretty risky scheme since a lot of the people in Europe are now starting to turn on the liberal order more than Russia. Outside online lib circles, most people don't actually see Russia as a big threat to Europe. However, they are increasingly starting to see their governments as working against their interests. And what we see happening in France is likely just the start.
I don't know if risk factors into it as much as what other alternatives are there? If Europe turns on the USA, there's not much to be done. The only real hope is for Europe to become the front lines.
For sure, pillaging what they can, and then burning down what's left of Europe to try and harm Russia in the process is the best US can hope for at this point. I'm just saying that my expectation is that it's going to be hard to get Europeans to throw themselves into the meat grinder. Recall that the whole war was sold as we are not a party to the conflict, we're just helping Ukrainians materially. This has been a very important aspect of the narrative because Europeans have very little interest in fighting Russia directly. I also imagine that once Russia wins decisively in Ukraine that's going to dampen the spirits even further.
That's what Galdio and the fascist parties are for. Thankfully France showed them the door, but Italy and Germany are still high risk, as is Poland
Yup, fascism is very much on the rise in most of Europe. I wouldn't get too excited about France either to be honest. NR is still very popular, and they only lost because of a very loose coalition got formed. The coalition isn't likely to last long because it's such a big tent, so sooner or later we'll see NR get in power.
I'll just say that I don't think that Putin rules as an autocrat but there is something to be said about changes in regime and people with it that can let in the NATO rats. It wouldn't happen immediately but cracks would be opened, that kind of thing.
I won't be confident or happy or certain until the empire is dead and the second shovelful of dirt has been tossed on its unresponsive face so to speak. Or it's not over until it's actually over I guess. De-dollarization seems to be happening but slowly and it could be reversed and even if not it's a process that will take a decade most likely to really hit home in the US, during which time the US I think still has a lot of power. Admittedly the US could do things that accelerate this further by antagonizing to the extreme certain parties but I'm not confident they'd be that foolish and think they realize to some degree their problem with Ukraine and Russia sanctions and China and Iran, etc.
I'm hopeful but wary. Many things stand in the way of successful multipolarity. The US has erected a labyrinthine fortress to buttress its power, the financial institutions and SWIFT stuff is one key cornerstone but it has others such as a security council seat, a navy that can bully trade of weaker powers, strong integration in the global economy with strength in advanced industries including electronics, chemistry, pharma, etc that they can use to bully others via limiting access to their industry, technologies, and goods with complying with their sanctions. The high-ground in the online space as first mover advantage in most of the world with control of social media, much of the infrastructure, etc. A complex spying infrastructure as Snowden revealed. Decades of experience in destabilizing regions, fomenting extremism, coups, etc. A blackbook full of global military officers who have trained with the US or gone to schools of the americas. They can't directly take on China in an all out fight and come out winner with only a few scratches but their plan is to isolate China so it's not about taking on China directly necessarily so much as shutting them off from the rest of the world and at that point you're talking about targeting weak links.
Like I said, I fully expect that the government in Russia would remain stable. Medvedev is broadly expected to succeed Putin anyways, so it's not like there would be a power vacuum and infighting that might create cracks that would facilitate external interference. This isn't the Russia of the early 90s. Also worth noting that US itself is far less politically stable than Russia at this point.
I completely agree that not being overly confident is the rational thing to do, but I do think it's important to have something to look forward to as well. As Gramsci put it, pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
I very much disagree that dedollarization can be reversed now. Everybody can see what US tried to do to Russia, and everyone understands that US would do that to them too. It is only possible for countries to have sovereignty if they dedollarize, and that's precisely why BRICS is growing so rapidly right now. Countries want to get out of US dominated economic system. It will take a few years still, but it's a self reinforcing process.
US remains a formidable hegemon, but it's increasingly being challenged all across the globe, and it can't be everywhere at once. It's really important to consider the current conditions when applying examples from the past.
I would also argue that US doesn't have any actual plan to isolate China. It's a very transparent scheme that doesn't actually have any actionable path to success. China is the main trading partner for majority of countries in the world, and unlike the US, China produces things people actually need. If US wasn't even able to isolate Russia, there is zero chance of US being able to isolate China.
I have to strongly disagree. I'm not trying to overstate Russia as being unstable, just perhaps less so than the US given the age and time each has had to peacefully consolidate from a position of strength. One after all suffered a collapse and change of economic systems in the last 35 years which gave lots of openings, upset lots of people, while the other has been stably steeped in a national myth and revisionist reactionary civil religion for 70 years now stably since their emergence as an empire and global top power. Russia can't just remove all the possible people who might be resentful hold-overs or people who got in deep with the US/CIA in the 90s and still owe them big time. With those who fully bought into the western narrative and myth they shopped around successfully (remember, only the US has this myth they spread and sell globally to great success among liberals, sure Russia is sewing a few minor counter-myths lately about being based and trad but these are only beginning to take root whereas the US mythos runs deep and is a strong, big plant).
The deep state is quite stable. Sure there is some quibbling over exact implementation details but there isn't really any deviation. Trump says he's going to be tough on China, he starts a trade war. Biden gets in, doesn't do anything but double down on it despite not campaigning on it as Trump did. Same thing with border policy. New faces, some people get drone striked who wouldn't otherwise, others who would be don't get so, x gets a tariff instead of y. One side applies 70% power, the other only 50%, they're still headed in the same direction on the same road. A war is started in Ukraine instead of Iran or the SCS. It's just timing basically, who goes first, if a stage of the plot gets skipped over or not. Make no mistakes they're all working out of the same playbook. The same career nat-sec ghouls are there, new faces each time whether Victoria Nuland, Blinken, or Pompeo, etc. Slight differences in implementation, public feuding and squabbling (and indeed I think within the realm of what they understand as possible they viciously hate and angrily, passionately disagree with each other's choices in private as well but it doesn't change the facts that they serve the same overall master with the same overall types of plans). The best we might get out of someone like Trump is delay on some fronts and facets such as a direct war which he may be wary of getting into, he'll advance the plot everywhere else and when the US wants that direct war they'll start it with his replacement or they'll engineer a situation which so offends the "honor" of the US and Trump's own tough guy image that he has no choice but to respond with force and gets locked in escalation.
Don't they? Sewing chaos and terrorism in the middle east to block belt and road, isolating Russia and cutting it off from Europe to block belt and road routes there. Building an island chain of steel bases around China which can throw up a maritime blockade of China and choke them. Their Ukraine thing I posit is seen by some of them and should be seen by us as a test run for the willingness of Euros to jump when told to jump, to cut off Russia and injure themselves, a test run for when the US instigates over Taiwan and tells Europe to stand up for "democracy" and they do so and slap on sanctions and trade cuts and slit their own wrists but importantly drive themselves away from China and hurt China on command. If they can instigate over Taiwan, get Europe to decouple voluntarily, throw up a maritime net in the seas then they can block trade with Africa and having stopped it with Europe basically isolate China. Their problem of course is Russia, it should have been defeated by now, humiliated, forced to their terms and its neck within a hairsbreadth of their sword for a killing stroke if they help China. That didn't happen. But even as a bloc China and Russia alone, isolated from the rest of the world would be in trouble.
Further there are signs the US only wants a partial embargo on China, a tech embargo. They want to keep them 10 years behind them technologically at least, make Chinese products inferior or reliant on western tech, to deny them raw materials and the know-how as well as markets in Europe and the US. If you take out the NATO/Eyes/EU+Aus+NZ+Asian vassals (Japan, occupied Korea) and get India on-board (they very much want to be on board this with their made in India plans and would benefit greatly) they basically cut off China and Russia from most of the world's consumers who have the income and desire to need things like AI, high tech silicone chips, advanced processes, advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, etc. At which point China's economy starts hurting pretty badly. Yes they might still make precursors to those things and the west will be forced to allow them, but China will be stuck in a trap, if they refuse to sell the west even those then they hurt themselves even worse, they voluntarily slice themselves whereas the easier path which the US calculates they'll take is to grit and protest but bear it, continue selling, continue innovating at home even though they can't sell abroad and that's not a problem for this plan in the near term. Sure in 10-15 years China could prepare to decouple with less pain though still some (US grows a lot of food and has control over South America in enough ways to prevent most of them selling to China if they really want to stop such trade) but the US figures they'll have figured something out or be in a better place themselves then, that they can decouple faster.
They can turn inward at that point but they'll be stuck behind a wall of the choose of the US, much like the cold war and the US will move to move as many people and developing countries into this tech blockade as possible while they still have things to threaten them with. China may well endure and advance to peer status with the US or overtaking it but the US would rather build a wall around its kingdom and holdings and make those as great as it can and then sit behind that wall trying to wait out China, to destroy Russia and to destroy China, to foment terrorism, to wait for the worst ravages of Climate Change to hit China in particular to hurt it, to try and corrupt and bribe people, to maneuver, to do all this stuff. And things will not be good in the west in this time at all but that's one possible, probable plan I see from their statements and actions. Campism basically, a hard curtain between spheres and using force and propaganda to keep themselves king, ruler of their sphere while trying to keep that sphere as big as possible and to make China-Russia sphere as small and miserable as possible.
I guess we fundamentally disagree on that. What I see is that US is rapidly losing social cohesion, and the population is becoming highly discontent. There is no sign that economic situation will improve in the foreseeable future, and we're already seeing this translate into things like political violence. This will be getting worse with each and every passing year.
Meanwhile, Russia does not have these problems. Standard of living is rising steadily, and the economy is becoming stronger. There is broad public support for the government, and people generally have a vision for the future that's utterly lacking in US.
Oh they very much can, and there have been purges in the political system already. The war provided a further excuse for that as well. The whole Prigozhin mutiny was a perfect example of just how aligned the state is right now. Everyone fell in line immediately.
The deep state in US might be stable, but if the country is in a disarray then its power is very limited in practice. Take for example the fact that US isn't even capable of producing basic things like artillery shells right now. This is a result of deindustrialization, and this problem can't be fixed easily. US is not a self sufficient country by any stretch of imagination.
And what has US achieved there exactly? BRI is going from strength to strength, BRICS is growing, China just restored relations between Iran and the Saudis. The only thing US managed to do was isolate its vassals in Europe from the rest of the world.
Finally, I urge you to read up on just how dependent US is materially on China. This relationship is not reciprocal either. Things might get hard for China if it was cut off from trade with US and vassals, but it would be absolutely catastrophic for the west.
The world is moving on, and the west is declining. That's the reality of the situation. There is nothing the west can do to reverse this trend.