The USA was powerless to prevent Russia from acting in Ukraine to guarantee its security. And its adventurism, in the face of its loss of hegemony, excludes the possibility that the USA could ever be part of a solution to Europe's security problem. To have any security at all Europe will, one day, be forced to recognize the fact that the grand-mother of all civilizations is the sole impartial mediator that has the necessary wisdom to possibly avoid a Europe-wide conflict by guiding the parties directly concerned to a solution that is acceptable to all.
But the intensity of the ideological rage that is presently overwhelming Western minds is so profound and intense that it could possibly also derail the conception of a solution that would be potentially acceptable to all. Such an unfortunate outcome most probably would mean a nuclear harakiri for the human species as a whole ! This just shows how special the present moment is in the story of humanity.
"The shocking part is that it has become a no-holds barred struggle that is being fought with tooth and claw, as hidden racial and religious prejudices lying just below the surface have welled to the surface in the Western world. ... It is when traumatic times come that the veneer of culture and modernity of the Europeans peels away and true human nature surfaces in all its naked crudity. This is not a matter of education or wealth. " (1)
Bernhard from Moon of Alabama correctly states, that most serious Western scholars in International relations agree that the West bears the full responsibility for the consequences of humiliating Russia over the last 30 years. But Western politicians don't seem to care at all about the views of their scholars and scientists... What is even more significant is that the Western ideological narrative is shared by no other country outside of the Western world itself.
"The U.S. government and 'Western' media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is however far from reality. It is only true if you believe 'the world' solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore. The view differs when you zoom out.
The much bigger 'rest of the world' has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore. This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and 'partners' like Turkey (Nato's second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel. The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished. " (2)
A rapid back of the envelope calculation gives 1.7 billion people in the Muslim world, 1.4 in China, 1.4 in India which gives 4.5 billion people. This compares with the world population that is estimated to reach some 7.8 billions by the end of this year 2022. In light of this fact more than 60% of the world population refuse to condemn Russia.
"Not a single Muslim country has voiced support for Washington in its confrontation with Russia. Although they are stakeholders in a Third World War, they prefer not to think about it. The heart of the matter is that they think this is another crusade of the Christian countries — cloaked as values and ‘rules-based order’ — which they’ve experienced so often. They see that the Western countries are back to their bestial wars endemic to European history through centuries. " (3)
The vote of a non-binding
motion by the General Assembly of the United Nations was merely a
political maneuver which changes nothing to the fact that more than 60%
of the world population refuses to follow in the path of Western hysteria. And the fact that Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and other nations,
that in normal circumstances would have voted with the West, refuse now to
align with the West says it all.
We have entered into a world-war that pits 10% against 90% !
Having thus situated the Ukrainian actuality I have to say that I'm personally not very much interested in the day to day military operations that take place on Ukrainian territory. I'm more interested by the big picture of what is going on in the life of our species and how the Ukrainian actuality fits in the Geo-Political situation and in the dynamic of societies and individuals.
I trust that Russia will eventually terminate what it thinks it has to accomplish in Ukraine and I trust that it will then report to the world what it did during its operation there, what it discovered, and how it thinks that Ukraine and Europe should fare from that point on. And the rest of the world will then have to decide how to move forward.
If, for whatever reasons, the West refused to listen and to cooperate in devising a security solution that is acceptable both for Russia and for Western Europe then I fear that Russia would be firmly convinced that it has no future any longer as a nation.
And, in such a case, I'm personally convinced that Russia could take an ultimate decision that would be fatal for to all of us. That's why I firmly trust that the wisdom of the grandmother of civilizations is humanity's last hope for a solution that would appear acceptable to all parties concerned.
I repeat. I'm interested foremost in the big picture about the order of the world which I think rests on — the societal evolution of nations — and their international relations. But before pursuing my argument let me state the obvious which is that the last Ukrainian episode in this world series is fraught with an unacceptable bellicosity coming out of the West that leaves no space any longer for reason, or for that matter, for any reasoned conversation.
It is my understanding that the economic, social, and political situation in Western countries is fast approaching a point of no-return. And I also understand that the powers that be are rushing to institute extreme totalitarian forms of governance in order to preserve their power over their societies at any cost. But the fact is that even that does no longer seem to portend being sufficient to keep the Western street under control.
I was thus not surprised, over the last few months, to start hearing and reading about an ultimate escape of the powers that be through war. I know. That seemed farfetched at the time. But this last week's abrupt 24/7 media coverage about Ukraine confirms that I was not wrong after all.
Humanity seems to have reached an inflection point.
The sheer madness, of Western societies, should be recognized by the rest of the world for what it is. The fact is that the West is posing an existential threat for the human species as a whole ! But what are we going to do about it?
Whatever, the current fleeting Western propaganda high might be, the fact of the matter is that the profound meaning, of the reality of the present moment, has still not reflected in Western minds ...at least not until now.
But soon the boomerang effect, of the Western sanctions on Russia, will attain such catastrophic proportions that questions will fuse from all sides and the populations' distrust of their national authorities will reach a breaking point that will collapse Western systems of governance.
At this point of the reasoning we have to be aware that Western big capital holders own the institutional setup of their nations and of the International Institutions. And in full knowledge of the collapse I just mentioned, their plan is to survive, the chaos wrought by the great convergence of Late-Modernity, with their servants, — the politicians — the managers — the technical personnel, by flying their jets over the borders to islands of social stability from where they think they will be able to operate their worldwide affairs after the earth has been cleansed of all the 'non-productive' individuals and the population stabilizes at a low of some tens to low hundreds millions.
The strategy of survival, of Western big capital holders and their servants, rests on a path of destruction that goes as follows :
1. Russia has to be broken into pieces so that they can take ownership of its resources in order to starve China. And once China's economic move forward has been slowed the country will be broken up into pieces too. And so they think they will acquire the ultimate and full control over the entire earth. And in that new normal the 90% will be left to starve to death.
2. And the new normal, for the 'non-productive' populations in the 10% zone, will also be to starve to death.
As I already mentioned such a large scale genocidal cleansing of the earth's population will bring total counts to a few tens perhaps reaching the low hundred millions. In the meantime Western big capital holders will have become the owners of the entirety of our earth resources. And their servants will be in charge of new systems of governance and new robotic systems of production.
The only chance to survive such a genocidal folly, unleashed by less than 1% of the Western 10%, is for the rest of the world 90% to stay clear-headed. And this implies that they have to build-up their own multilateral order while rejecting any participation in Western initiatives to answer the 6th mass extinction, or climate change, at least until the 10% has finally paid-up for the totality of damages that they have accumulated along the path of Western Modernity.
The ultimate question that confronts humanity today is the following. Are we going to continue to tolerate that 10% of us have the freedom to take away the freedom of the 90% majority of us ?
We know for a fact that the future of humanity will be vastly different that the present ! We know for a fact that our species is confronted with a predicament that is vastly larger than our present Geo-political contradictions. But the fact is that to address this predicament successfully we first have to resolve our Geo-Political contradictions.
Let me stage what is our present predicament as a species.
Humanity has reached an inflection point that is not solely related to our Geo-Political context but is related to the fact that two gigantic forces are currently converging and starting to generate what soon will be a maelstrom of destructive interactions in our habitat.
I call this inflection point "The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity". It is a process that unleashes a mass extinction of life on earth that, if we don't react rapidly enough as a united species, risks to wipe out the human species from the surface of this earth !
But what is "the Great conversion of Late-Modernity' ?
It is the convergence of two factors : — the crisis of the governance-world that currently affects the West and is reflected in a growing Geo-Political disorder — and the historical accumulation of side-effects by Western Modernity. These two factors are presently converging and unleashing a flood of interactions which inevitably result in feed-back loops that will generate not only many known unknown consequences but also many unknown unknowns.
These two factors are the following :
1. The convergence of an accumulation of Modernity's side-effects :
By that I mean that, for centuries, capital has externalized many of the costs related to its activities with the consequence of accumulating all kinds of chemicals in the land, in the water, in the air and in the atmosphere of the habitat of living species.
Over time such an accumulation resulted in imbalances in the life conditions of species which eventually resulted in the acceleration of the number of species going into extinction.
Climate change is one of many such consequences.
While human activities have been observed to raise the rate of extinction of species far above natural levels since thousands of years already scientists started to observe that the current rates of extinctions were accelerating dramatically :
"... current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than natural background rates of extinction and future rates are likely to be 10,000 times higher." (5)
Such a dramatic acceleration, of the current rates of extinction, portends that a mass extinction is ongoing....
2. An earth-wide crisis of the governance-world :
2.1. Internal governance :
Non-Western nations have been suffering the aggression of Western countries since the dawn of Modernity. Their biggest problems stem from their "economic under-development" that is forced on them by a systematic Western post-colonial extraction of their natural and human resources.
Over the last 50 years the capital formation of Western nations has also shifted from the generation of profits from real productions to a financial model of capital formation that rests on debt. This shift to a financial model of capital formation has unfortunately completely destabilized Western societies which are now mere shadows of their nineteen-sixties selves.
The addition of this systematic Western post-colonial extraction, of non-Western natural and human resources, to the complete destabilization of Western societies is intensifying the destabilizing of both the Western and non-Western economies and systems of governance while also complicating their interrelations on the Geo-political field.
2.2. International governance :
The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the US to China is unfortunately being resisted by Western countries. While China had willingly integrated the Western created and managed world-economy, and while from all accounts it was respecting its Western established rules, the bellicose Western resistance of its economic success is forcing that country to think deeply about following a path of its own that surfs on the discontent of Non-Western countries with the Western model of extraction that penalizes them.
The fact is that it is the Western resistance of China's success that is forcing China to ally with the Non-Western world to form a new multilateral international order that opposes the unilateral order that had been built after the second World War by the USA.
The paradox of the situation is that it is the thinking, behavior, and actions of the USA itself that are driving that country to its own demise !
To understand how such a paradox is at all possible it is necessary to dig in the field of societal evolution and how the continuum of the cultural field evolves slowly over time. The perception by both China and the West, of the "other-worldliness" of "the other", is rooted in the different historical paths that were taken at the origin of both their civilizations. If you are interested to dig in those matters go check my book "The Continuum of the Cultural Field". (6)
The current crisis in Ukraine fits in the general context that I just sketched. Russia's insecurity in the face of Nato installing bases on its borders is comprehensible and justified. But we have to understand that Nato's march East is dictated by an hegemon that is losing its hegemony and who thinks that it could sabotage China's path forward by filling the Eurasian space between Europe and China wth chaos. Russia is thus the victim of the refusal by the USA to accept the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world toward China that is already well advanced.
The chaos inflicted on humanity by the USA's tantrum has unfortunate repercussions on the chances to survive the predicament that Modernity is inflicting on humanity.
Notes
1. "Ukraine makes strange bedfellows", Indian Punchline, by M K Bhadrakumar. 2022-02-28.
2. "Disarming Ukraine - Day 7", Moon of Alabama, by Bernhard. 2022-03-02
3. "Ukraine makes strange bedfellows", Indian Punchline, by M K Bhadrakumar. 2022-02-28.
4, "One week into the Russian special operation in the Ukraine – update" by The Saker. 2022-03-02.
5. "Estimating the normal background rate of species extinction" Conservation Biology, by Jurriaan M. De Vos, Lucas N. Joppa, John L. Gittleman, Patrick R. Stephens, Stuart L. Pimm. 2014-08-26.
"Past and future decline and extinction of species", The Royal Society, by Christopher N. Johnson.
6. "The Continuum of the Cultural Field" by me laodan"Our knowledge of past and future extinction rates makes it clear that the problem of extinction is urgent. The problem has two main components. First, the extinction of species is reducing the total diversity of life on the planet. Although the extinction tally does not yet represent a large proportion of all species, it is substantial and ecologically important. The rate of extinction is rising fast, and on current trends a large fraction of all the world’s species could soon be gone. Second, the combination of extinction of some species and declining abundance of many others is causing a general loss of abundance and diversity of wild species and compromising the functioning of ecosystems."
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