- 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
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.