The Great Turning (09)

8. The Russian operation in Ukraine is a rallying cry against uni-polarity (1)

At the image of a train, whose engine has stopped running for lack of energy but that continues to move powered solely by the force of its physical inertia, a society, that is atomized, loses the existential power conferred to her by the initiative of her citizens, but it continues to move forward for some more time powered by the sole force of its societal inertia.

But both the train, and the atomized society, inexorably come to a stop after having consumed the entirety of their force of inertia. For a train that means physical immobility but a society is a living organism and so coming to a stop means death which for a society means institutional collapse and the ending of all known daily ways of living. In other words an atomized society ends by leaving its citizens on their own to fend for survival in nomad-land, city-tents, or earth-bags.

This should serve as an existential lesson to the rest of the world. Postmodernism and Neo-liberalism are ideological traps set by Western big capital holders to take the control of national state institutions in order to expand the field, of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”, to all citizens on this earth.

In light of the outcome of “the reason” for Western societies it is in the interest of the rest of the world to re-assert its control over its own societal path forward. The Russian military operation in Ukraine is acting like a rallying cry to all non-Western societies to reject Western diktats and to take their affairs in their own hands.

 

 

 

8.1. the context as a preamble... 

Power in today’s world is far more complex than a matter of military dominance. Moscow, Beijing and Washington have furthermore an acute understanding that the present Geopolitical contradictions can’t be solved by a world war which would simply cut short the future of their societies and plunge their citizens in a Berezina. In that sense Geopolitics has now to be viewed as the systemic complexity of the interactions between the open societal fields (internal and external) of all nations on earth.

The present Geopolitical moment is thus a very special moment indeed :

1. Two trends have been solidifying over the centuries of Western Modernity :
   
   On one side the center of gravity of the economy-world has been shifting, away from the West, toward East-Asia and more particularly toward China :
   
   
   • This is the 8th such a shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world over the entire span of Modernity… What is different this time is that the center of gravity is leaving the territorial area of the Western civilization which explains the madness that has overtaken Western capitals.
   
   
   • On the other hand Western countries have been accumulating a multitude of side-effects over the last centuries of Modernity. The nature of these side-effects is double : — damages to the habitat of living species (nature) — damages to the societal organization of the human species through the pollution of ever more individualism that is concluding presently with the cancer that is societal atomization.



2. The present moment is more particularly characterized by “The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” :
   
   
   • The convergence, within Western societies, of Neo-liberalism and Postmodernism has unleashed a superficial globalization of Western Modernity to the 4 corners of the world while internally this convergence has forced Western societies into— societal inequality — pauperism — hyper-individualism — a complete loss of meaning — an individual feeling of isolation — and so many more unfortunate facts that are all aspects of societal atomization which means that such societies are no longer united entities and in that sense successful collective undertakings are no longer in their reach (no shared worldview left to glue the individuals in a unified societal whole).
   
   
   • The multitude of side-effects, of Modernity, were in fact “externalities” imposed by the rationality of “the reason that is at work within the transformation of money into capital”. Capital preferred to reject all kinds of costs on nature, or on the individuals, instead of paying for eliminating their life disrupting character. But these rejections, also called externalities, provoked side-effects that have been disrupting the equilibrium that has ensured the abundance of flora and fauna and more particularly the climatic stability that ensured an ever increasing complexity of human societal life over the last 10,000 years.
   
   
   • Lately the effects of these disruptions, within Western societies and within nature, have started to converge and are unleashing a predicament on humanity that begs the question “what now ?”. Most of us are still oblivious to this predicament. But most scientists and some public decision-makers, a rarity in the West, are well aware of this situation… Those of us who listen carefully know for a fact that Beijing and Moscow are realist and are thus well aware of the extreme complexity of the present situation :
     
     
     • An acute awareness has emerged in the minds of the realists that to face the predicament of humanity it is indispensable, first and foremost and also urgently, to solve the problem of the governance-world which basically calls for a new world order in which the West is forced to play by the rules of the game that the community of nation decides upon.
     
     
     • The United Nations’ effort to combat climate change has taught a few important lessons already :
       
       
       • The West will never contribute in an adequate manner for the bulk of externalities that it is directly responsible for !
       
       
       • Climate change is merely one symptom of the larger problem which is that multiple side-effects of Modernity are converging and destroying the habitat of most living species !

8.1.1. A Geopolitical Christmas Tale…

Moscow and Beijing are well aware of the disintegration of the cultural, social, and economic realities in the West, that I sketched here above, and they have patiently been waiting for the most propitious moment to initiate a strategy to placate the West. Whatever the Western propaganda might be trying to force in the minds, of the people of this earth, the fact of the matter is that Western countries, in 2020, have entered the greatest depression ever in their Modernity and this depression is bound to last, at least 10 years but most probably more, creating massive poverty and misery while disintegrating the sickest among Western societies.

Covid-19, like a pin, first deflated the Western financial bubble in 2020. The FED’s response was to shuffle uncounted trillions of dollars of paper money around the economy in the hope of igniting the animal spirits on Wall Street. This was realized, among other, by :

• Cutting Federal funds rate to a range of 0% to 0.25%


• Purchasing massive amounts of debt securities with a questionable value


• Colossal amounts of low interest rate loans to the largest primary dealers


• Lending to banks against collateral in IOUs or commercial paper
  
  
  • Funneling cash to overnight repo-markets
  
  
  • Expansion of International swap lines
  
  
  • Massive amounts of funding to foreign central banks without swap lines
  
  
  • Cash to the banks against questionable paper collateral at the discount window
  
  
  • Support of the flow of credit to U.S. corporations
  
  
  • Lending to corporations through the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
  
  
  • Lending to households, consumers, and small businesses against asset-backed securities
  
  
  • Backstopping municipal and state borrowing
  
  
  • Etc…

The result of this financial largess became visible in the second part of 2021. An ever increasing inflation started to sow misery in the poorest families and people resisted this inflation by claiming higher wages which resulted in the multiplication of social conflicts.

In sum the West is now confronted with the following societal sicknesses :

• Societal atomization disintegrates Western societies


• The greatest of all depressions is rendering life miserable for the majority of Western citizens


• An initial bout of hyperinflation due to a failure in the offer of goods, caused by a disruption of the supply-chains that had been initiated by the Trump administration, will normally be followed by a bout of deflation due to a failure of liquidity in the hands of consumers


• Social conflicts will multiply demanding higher wages


• The aftermaths of Covid-19 will most probably be far worse than the sickness itself :
  
  
  • Administering vaccines during a raging epidemic had never been done before because it was considered that this would force the virus to accelerate the production of mutations in order to survive which would leave the vaccinated individuals at the mercy of repetitive mutations that would eventually overcome the protections procured by those initial vaccines.
    
    Vaccination had always been considered a protection against the future manifestations of a sickness but had never been administered to halt an epidemic.
  
  
  • It had always been considered that vaccines need to be tested thoroughly for years, sometimes decades, before the risks of side-effect have been mitigated sufficiently to avoid a health catastrophe later. And epidemics were thus over before a safe vaccine was developed. In the case of Covid-19 the need for prudence was forgotten and vaccines were developed that never got tested seriously. The results are now coming in. Studies after studies are documenting the deleterious impact of those mRNA vaccines but the authorities and the media are trying to distract peoples’ attention… 

In consequence of all that the trust, of Western people, in their elites has definitely evaporated. The least we can say is that this evaporation of trust in Western elites has accentuated societal atomization which was already in an advanced stage. This means that the US, and Europe, are now stuck with what are largely unmanageable societies.

To protect their accumulated wealth, and other privileges, Western big capital holders, and their state servants, will now inevitably harden their governance into totalitarian state structures that no longer accept any deviance in ideation nor any critique of their management. Such a totalitarian hardening of Western governance will also procure the necessary distraction to realize the transformation, by Western big capital holders, of nature into capital that I invoked in part 2.

8.1.2. And then came the following ...

1. 2021-12-07 : Putin and Biden have a 2 hour video-talk about the Ukraine crisis.


2. 2021-12-07 : President Biden says that putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine to deter a potential Russian invasion is "not on the table" and that he hoped there would be an announcement by Friday 9th of high-level meetings with Russia and major NATO allies to discuss Moscow's "concerns relative to NATO writ large" and the possibility of "bringing down the temperature along the eastern front".


3. 2021-12-15 : President Putin and President Xi have a video call and discuss tensions in Europe and the "aggressive" U.S. and NATO rhetoric. Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, answered the following to a reporter who asked him what was the outcome of this video-call :
   

   “The world is witnessing the combined forces of changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century against the backdrop of complex and profound changes in the international and regional landscape. We believe that China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, take on an important mission in defending regional peace and stability and promoting development and the revitalization of all countries.
   
   For some time, certain countries have been drawing ideological lines, building new military blocs and stoking regional tensions, which have all brought grave threats and challenges to regional peace and stability and global strategic stability. China and Russia firmly reject this.
   
   We will continue to follow the two leaders’ consensus, take up responsibility, unite all forces that love peace and support peace, and make active contribution to realizing sustained, universal and common security in the region and the wider world." (2)

   There was no way for China to assert more clearly that it is siding with Russia in its demands… but everyone seems to have missed the seriousness of the Chinese side ...except for M. K. Bhadrakumar (3) who is one of the most lucid Geo-political observers out there.
   
   Few people understand the meaning of the expression “the two leaders’ consensus”. This expression relates to the will of their countries to see these two leaders in place for the long haul during the set-up of the post-Western world order. Both countries, not in their unanimity but certainly in their large majority, have sensed since some years already that they have someone unique in their present president. A person who outshines the other decision-makers around them in term of their stamina and their mental clarity. The West unfortunately does not get this.


4. 2021-12-17 : Moscow releases the texts of two documents in the form of two draft treaties that many interpreted as an ultimatum of Russia to the West.


5. 2021-12-17 : Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asserts NATO’s prerogative to intervene in Ukraine and bluntly rejects Moscow’s notions that it could have a say on the alliance’s future expansion plans.


6. 2021-12-19 : Christine Lambrecht, German Minister of Defense, Asserts that NATO was willing to discuss Moscow’s demands but would not allow Moscow to “dictate” to the alliance or its partners.

By the 20th of December Western media were littered with articles belittling the partnership between China and Russia as “still having an artificial flavor” and suggesting that China would never fight the US along Russia. Ultimately, they proclaim, Russia will join the West in defeating China. This is the uggly propaganda of a rear guard of Western ideologues who are bluffing their way forward by trying to force their madness on all nations that refuse to submit to their unilateral order.

The Russian treaty/ultimatum has to be understood as a first act in a wider strategy, of setting up a Post-Western World Order which would be greatly eased by the financial, economic, and social fall of the US.

8.1.3. why pushing the US to fall precisely now ?

The present context offers a unique opportunity. The Chinese sages never tired to repeat that if you are forced to fight you do it when your enemy is at its weakest ! And the present Geopolitical context announces the coming of the peak bacterial catalysis infecting Western minds. This is why pushing the US to fall precisely now has the best chances to succeed.

Now about China more particularly. This is undoubtedly a ‘a-religious’ country. Its early-power society grew, as the outcome of the cultural unification of its tribes, sometimes between 6000 and 5000 years ago. And thereafter it constantly actualized animism with present changing trends by topping it with add-ons in the same way as open-source software integrates innovations from the community…

Animism was a highly pragmatic knowledge formation approach that was rooted in observation over the very long haul that led to the induction and verification of abstract principles. Animism remains in application today in its appellation of “Chinese Traditional Culture” which is a form of animism that has been continuously adapted along the path of the country’s power-society. So in summary China is — a-religious — highly pragmatic — and a reserved nation populated by reserved individuals. What this means is that the Chinese thinking is not driven by ideology and is not experiencing the need to impose itself on others.

Having said that the Chinese have been observing the vile racist bout of verbal aggression that has been coming out of the West over the last few years. They have spoken little. They have observed and have been thinking hard. And now they are at the end of their strategic patience. Chinese leaders know darn well that they have not much of a history in diplomacy which means, if I may say so, that their practice has not had the time yet to grow into a perfectly polished discipline. That is why China, in all humility, openly recognizes Russia’s ‘panache’ in the diplomatic field and now relies on it to position its own.

So it was only natural for China to let Russia publicly initiate the decisive movement forward in their common play for a new world order. China publicly sided with Russia when it announced its treaty-proposal/ultimatum and what is most important is that China detains the weapon of last resort which is the termination of US dollar payments for the delivery of its goods and services.

8.1.4. Fast forward…

Russian leaders had informed their Western counterparts that if they did not start to negotiate in earnest soon they would take “the necessary technical and military measures” to make them understand that they are deadly serious indeed. But Westerners have not understood the seriousness of Russia.

Coincidentally President Putin and President Xi had decided to meet in Beijing to open the Winter Olympics on the 4th of February 2022 at Beijing National Stadium. The Russian timing of the conclusion of its negotiations with the US and NATO coincided thus with the very public and media relayed meeting of President Putin and President Xi.

Now the fact is that the discourse of Russian leaders left no place for a 3rd alternative as a possible outcome of their talks with Western countries and Nato. From what was said it was — or “we have a deal” and the West accepts a retreat to its posture before the fall of the Soviet Union — or “we have no deal” and China and Russia, on the 4th of February, announce their further game-plan to the world.

 

 

 

8.2. Geopolitics was shaken to the core on February 4th 2022 !

Some Western commentators speculate that Western societies are facing a moment of truth because “...perhaps we are touching the crux of what is hybrid warfare that threatens the System with general upheaval”. But there is another hypothesis, based on much more prosaic elements and whose weight in the daily life of Western citizens is all too real. This hypothesis can be summed up in three words : Western Societal Atomization.

8.2.1. Western societal atomization

Western politicians have taken the habit to accuse “the others” for their own failures at home. But the fact is that they are directly responsible for the historical levels of social inequality, the rampant poverty, the societal atomization, and the governance ineptitude they demonstrated during Covid-19. All these facts, and many more, are the direct result of internal political choices. Accusing “others” like the Chinese is scapegoating to distract people’s attention from the responsibility of Western decision-makers.

The societal atomization of Western countries, for example, could not have arisen in the context of any country of the Global South. It is intrinsic to the context of Western societies as I laid out in “Modernity. 4.5.2. first real existential troubles in Modernity”.

To this day the concept, of “societal atomization”, has not been approached in any systematic way to my knowledge. I personally have been writing about it for the last 6 years and I find the following 3 aspects determinant from a Geo-political perspective :

1. The end of Western grand-narratives
   
   The disappearance of any foundational narrative, which once aggregated citizens into united national groups, has given way to individual atoms who are isolated in an unhappy solitude that many of them compensate by fleeing into artificial paradises where they lose their lives, which, by the way, explains how American life expectancy, from 2019 to 2021, was down more than 3% ! The intensity of this fall is comparable to the fall in Russia during the period of the collapse of the USSR between 1988 and 1991 !



2. The people against the elites
   
   The disappearance of the natural and traditional solidarity, of the united national groups of yesteryear, has given way to the total corruption of Western societal institutions by a small minority representing far less than 1% of the citizens. Forced to suffer the social consequences of this state of disrepair of their societies, the vast majority of citizens are disgusted by the misery, that this small privileged minority imposes on them, in order to pay for its own opulence. The spirit of the times has therefore turned towards revolt.



3. Western societies have definitely lost their unity
   
   The disappearance of foundational narratives + the disappearance of natural and traditional solidarity → the disappearance of the unity of Western societies.
   
   This means that these societies have lost their institutional operationality and, going forward, they will thus be incapable to act as united national entities ! Their treatment of Covid-19, and their handling of the greatest depression ever, are proof enough of their lost unity. But what will have a far more determinant impact on the future of these countries is their incapacity to successfully wage a large war against an economically powerful, united, and cohesive entity as China.
   
   There is a good reason why the Pentagon is so averse to a world conflagration. Not only do most war games conclude with a Chinese victory but “Falling Military Recruitment Is Another Sign of Waning Faith in the Regime” (4) and “71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude” (5)
   

   As of Monday, the war gamers had studied the scenario 22 different times. In 18 of the 22 cases, Chinese missiles destroyed “a large part of” the U.S. and Japanese naval fleets and “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at CSIS, told Bloomberg News. He did not specify how many U.S. warships were lost in the cases.
   
   “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict,” he told Bloomberg News. “That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” (6)

   The recruiting difficulties mentioned by the “U.S. Army Recruiting Command” are for a great deal caused by the atomization of US society which impacts also those who get recruited and this implies all kinds of troubles that are impacting not only on the military’s fighting spirit but also on its organization capability as was observed, by the whole world recently, at the occasion of the departure of the US military from Afghanistan.

8.2.2. A new world order

From a realistic geopolitical perspective, it has become obvious today that the West must urgently wake up to take the measure of the new reality of the world that its own ineptitude has helped to create over the past 50 years.

Blaming others will not change the new situation. The fact is that it was indeed Western ineptitude that opened a breach which China hastened to engage in. The whole world then witnessed the irresistible economic rise of that country. And the only good explanation that we have for its uninterrupted rise resides in its unparalleled governance system that got polished, over the last 2,000 years, by the formation of a rich theory of public governance (7).

Accepting this new reality is imperative for the West. Failing to do so will push East-Asia to ignore the West in the future. This was already emphasized by China and Russia in their February 4 Beijing Declaration (8). These two nations indicate that the time to look in the rear view mirror has passed.

And their declaration is a first approximation of the new multilateral order which they have decided to build in association with the other nations that wish to participate. This document is the most detailed to date in its description of a new multilateral order based on the recognition of three fundamental principles :

1. The will of the people is the sole criterion of the principle of democracy and its application by nations must naturally be adapted to their cultural and historical context. There is no perfect single model of the democratic principle and, in this sense, no nation has the right to impose its own conception on others. The sole judge of the governance of a country is its own people !



2. The sovereignty, equality and security of all nations is the necessary foundation of a new multilateral order that seeks to exclude the hegemony and domination through force by the strongest.



3. In the current context, the UN is the sole institution recognized by all nations and in this sense the decisions of the UN form the only legal platform binding all nations. Any attempt by a minority of nations to impose their own vision of a “rules-based order” is therefore void which the magazine The Diplomat recognizes explicitly :

“The 'rules-based order' is a new and vague description of how the world should work. More established and legitimate descriptions refer to the United Nations and international law. Although the United States has shaped the UN and much of international law, its relationship with these institutions has become increasingly strained, especially since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. why it fell back on the 'rules-based order'."  (9)

All trials to impose a “rules-based world order” by force shall thus be resisted by the force of 85% of the people on this earth. But after the Geopolitical situation stabilizes the Nations of this earth shall have to sit down and talk.

The Institutions of the UN were created by the US at a time when that country represented 50% of the world's economic output and when it held 80% of the world's gold reserves !

Since then much water has run on the roofs of these institutions and the time has come for the nations of this earth, or to deeply reform the present institutions, or to create a new set of institutions that are better adapted to the present age.

But the negotiation, of the future institutions that will manage a new Multilateral world order, are only conceivable in a world where the democracy, in the decisions between nations, is restored and they no longer fear the loss of their sovereignty, equality and security at the hands of a brutal hegemon like the West.

8.2.3. Western Exceptionalism does not accept that the center of gravity of the economy-world moves to China

In 2015 Nikolai Starikov gave this excellent description of what the USA wants :

"In order to survive and preserve its leading role on international stage, US desperately needs to plunge Eurasia into chaos, to cut economic ties between Europe and APR (Asia-Pacific Region). The States need to turn the territory that lies between them (Russia, Central Asia, Middle East) into a zone with local armed conflicts, falling economies, deficient governments and general instability.

.… Russia is the only territory within this potential zone of instability that is capable of resistance. It is the only state that is ready to confront the Americans. Undermining Russia’s political will for resistance, shifting its foreign policy – is a vitally important task for America.

… The only way to achieve this is to drag the leadership of the country into a long and debilitating stand-off with its own people.

… In the long term, the unity of Russian people and their leadership can be broken by providing liberal answers to questions that are important for the apolitical majority. (10)

I totally subscribe to Nikolai’s description of the US agenda which is “to plunge Eurasia into chaos, to cut economic ties between Europe and APR (Asia-Pacific Region)". I would only add that this would be the sole way for the US to suffocate China by cutting its energy and resource supply lines.


8.2.3.1. The USA wants to destroy Russia

Nikolai Starikov again gave this excellent description that I prefer to leave in his own words :

"... The only path to survival for the usa is to demolish russia from within and have her collapse. Either that, or a radical change of power in Russia which would abruptly turn the country’s ship of state around and permit the subsequent chaos and war. This would, in turn, give the States the necessary conditions for breaking the financial and economic channels of interaction in Eurasia and the weakening of both Europe and China, but at the “fault” of the new Russian government.

… We are dealing with opposition between the USA and Russia, in which Europe and China play the part of tactical (within certain bounds) allies of the battling sides as they pursue their own goals in the confrontation. Therefore, neither Europe nor China is interested – unlike the USA – in the total destruction of Russia."

The Russian Military Operation in Ukraine has unfortunately disproved Nikolai’s prognostic that Europe was not interested in Russia’s total destruction; at least until now. But as I wrote somewhere else the price that the European elites are billing to their fellow-citizens is bound to provoke a harsh reaction that will side-line them from submitting to the Biden’s diktat of fighting Russia. The popular side-lining of the present generation of European leaders will irrevocably separate Europe from the USA. But only the future will tell how long, and how much damage, the present generation of European leaders will inflict to their countries.


8.2.3.2. The USA wants to generate chaos in and around China

Groups in Mainland China, Hong-Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet are being beefed-up by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) to foment trouble in their respective regions (11) in order to destabilize China’s governance. But that is not sufficient. The USA wants also to shed chaos in all bordering states that want to engage in commercial relations with China.

The riots that engulfed Kazakhstan in January 2022 were such an operation that was meant to install a government opposed to Russia and China which would have cut the flow of goods and ideas on the New Silk Roads towards the West and Africa. The events in Burma, or Myanmar, are equally meant to cut China from the Indian Ocean and to impeach the construction of the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone and deep-water port.


8.2.3.3. The incompetence of USA decision-makers leads them to their own demise

Richard Wolff gave an interesting short video presentation about the implosion of the US institutional set-up (12) that questions the sanity of its present generation of decision-makers. I borrowed some of Richard’s ideas and arranged a short compilation of my views on the consequences of the incompetence of US decision-makers :

1. Political decisions have consequences
   
   Privileging the spending of US resources on the military while neglecting the well-being of its own people has resulted in a generalized corruption of the state machinery and it has also sickened the USA as a nation. All this was the achievement of political decisions. Things could have been different...


2. Extreme inequality weakened the cohesion of US society
   
   Anger and violence have become rampant over the entire territory and life, in many places in the United States, is no longer secure. As I signaled earlier this weakens the societal cohesion of the country which has ramifications for its presence in foreign lands and its warring enterprises. But it also discourage foreign students to go study in the US. The annual arrivals of Chinese students in the US are already down 40% from their height in 2017 and this will have ramifications on the R&D of the country a few years down the road.


3. Extreme poverty decays the societal entity
   
   Average life expectancy, for example, fell by 3 years between 2020 and 2021 (from 79 years in 2019 to 76 years in 2021) which is a demographic fall of life expectancy similar in its intensity to what happened in 1991 after the fall of the USSR ! Could this be suggesting that the collapse of the USA has already set in !


4. Societal atomization broke the unity of the US
   
   Hyper-individualism, and societal atomization, broke the unity of the US as a national entity and the nation has become incapable of any large undertaking like a war, or the re-localization of production capacities, or anything else. This is the deep reason why the 3 letter agencies are so intensively recourcing to virtual reality and wokeness to foment a profound chaos that destabilizes the minds of those citizens who still have a faculty to think.


5. The world’s opposition to US long arm jurisdiction
   
   Using the US legal system as a long arm to expand its national jurisdiction around the world is not only illegal internationally it is also provoking a wide opposition worldwide that will eventually conclude in the complete rejection of the US authority in world affairs

David Goldman from Asia-Times, in my eyes, gives a masterful summary of how the stupidity of USA decision-makers is procuring China with all it wants on a silver platter :

"Washington has backed Putin into a corner, forcing him to take drastic measures to protect Russian minorities in Ukraine. That in turn forced Europe’s leaders into Washington’s camp, and within 48 hours, the European discourse has shifted away from economic cooperation with Russia to a possible boycott of Russian gas.

Putin will sell the gas to China, which last month proposed to construct a pipeline that would increase Russia’s deliveries tenfold. More importantly, Russia’s considerable scientific and engineering resources—by some measure on par with those of the United States—will be put in the service of China’s high-tech industry.

... the West has pushed Putin into an alliance with China. It is perhaps the dumbest thing the Western powers have ever done. It could be the last."  (13)

4 8.2.3. Inflicting pain where it hurts most

China and Russia clearly understand that the U.S. does not want to raise interest rates because this most probably would result in the collapse of its financial system. But they also understand that its hyperinflation is forcing it to do it. As Alastair Crooke suggests China and Russia also know that they can force US inflation to rise at even higher rates inflicting thus so much more economic pain :

"It is unlikely that Moscow ever entertained any grand illusions about their ‘non-ultimatum’ ultimatum. The documents were never intended ‘to lure’ the West into ad aeternam negotiations. The point is that Moscow had already decided to break in a fundamental way with the West. What is afoot today is the manifestation of that earlier decision.

...If they were not intended as a basis for negotiations, what then were Russia’s treaty drafts about? It seems that they were about Russia and China coming down off the fence. This is much more important than many appreciate. It marks the beginning of a period of rising tensions (and maybe clashes), until a modified Global Order emerges.

...Russia clearly understands the geo-political and geo-economic pressure points that it controls. They can see that the U.S. does not want to raise interest rates, but has to. They can also see that they can force inflation far higher, inflicting significant economic pain. They can see that food prices are soaring, with potash from Belarus blocked, and Russia banning the export of ammonium nitrate.

The consequences for fertiliser prices – and therefore European food prices – is obvious, as is the consequence of European spot energy prices, were Russian gas to be barred from Europe. That is how economic pain works. The West slowly is discovering that it has no pressure point versus Russia (its economy being relatively sanctions-proof), and its military is no match for that of Russia’s." (14)

As the last two years have so powerfully demonstrated China has a firm grip on the East-Asian manufacturing chains which gives it the controlling hand in the supply and the shipment of components and finished products to the USA and to Europe and this is not going to change in the foreseeable future.

But in the meantime the shipping disruptions are thinning the range of products on Walmart's shelves thus destabilizing the supply of daily use commodities which directly impacts the mood of the citizens whose anger against their elites is growing by the day.

Those who seriously try to sift from the daily news, the actions and moves that are determinant in shaping our near future, are well aware by now that we have entered the great game for the soul of humanity in tomorrow's world. And everything goes in this hybrid war :

“...the new principles of war are no longer ‘using armed force to compel the enemy to submit to one's will,’ but rather are ‘using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one's interests.’

This represents change. A change in war and a change in the mode of war…” (15)

 

8.3. A shared future or no future at all !

The community, of nations on this earth, is now in the most urgent need of alternative societal cultural field narratives. This is something that starts to be vaguely perceived in the north as well as in the south. Such alternative societal cultural field narratives will unmistakably put substance on the bones of the architecture that President Xi Jinping some time ago titled “a community of nations with a shared future”.

There is something special about China that very few appreciate. The country finds the resources to sense, amidst the present societal chaos, the necessary attributes of its societal continuity in its millennial governance system. And the title, “a community of nations with a shared future”, given by President Xi Jinping, to the future architecture of humanity’s governance, intuits that the future shall be shared or shall not be at all.

This intuition certainly matches the necessity that we see arising in “The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity”. But a title does not make the narrative of an alternative cultural field. Each nation will have the responsibility to devise its own local and adapted version rooted in its traditions and adapted to the new realities of “The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity”.

The economic success of China over the last 40 years has surprised the whole world and all eyes are now watching Beijing for answers to the Late-Modern predicament of humanity. But in its spite, at losing its hegemony, the USA is now shaking the China shop in the hope of breaking the world’s dream. So before even starting to think about rebuilding their cultural field the nations of this earth will first have to tame the West !

In the present moment we have reached this historical junction when 85% of the world population refuse to follow the diktat of the West to punish Russia for its military operation in Ukraine. The 85% understand that NATO had pushed Russia with its back on the wall thus threatening its existence as a nation.

The West is visibly furious all the more so now that its internal order is beginning to crumble :

• extreme social inequality is generating anger that explodes in violence


• extreme poverty is generating the feeling of having nothing to lose any longer


• societal fragmentation is pitting different interests against each other 


• societal atomization is separating people and plunging them into loneliness in front of their screens where the web procures them the illusion that they have free will and know better than anyone else about anything


• Neo-liberal financialization has trivialized the reality of the factors of production like : —  labor — raw materials — energy. But recently the real-world factors of production have started to reassert their reality over the illusion of paper finance.


• Western printing of mountains of fiat money is now ending in hyper-inflation and printing more will not resurrect the lie of their dying world order.

In conclusion the west has reached the end of its game of Modernity while the rest of the world wants to definitively tame it. In this historical moment lurks the danger of Western spite... which could engage a mushroom cloud.

I am convinced that at this point, more than anything else, the world needs the animist wisdom of the grandmother of all civilizations to deflect western grudges…

 

 

 

Notes :

1.   This part 8 is an edited compilation of my series of 14 articles, about the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, that I wrote on my blog between 2021-12-23 and 2022-04-20.

2. “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference”, website of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Hungary, on 2021-12-17.

3. "Spectre of war is haunting Europe", in Indian Punchline, M. K. Bhadrakumar. 2021-12-17.

4. “Falling Military Recruitment Is Another Sign of Waning Faith in the Regime”, Ron Paul Institute, by Ryan McMaken. 2022-08-26.

5.  "Facts and Figures". U.S. Army Recruiting Command.

6. "US loses half its fighter jets, tons of warships in China war game", American Military News, by Ryan Morgan. 2022-08-09.

7. “The Governing Principles of Ancient China”. Volume 1. Volume 2. Volume 3.

"At the beginning of the Zhenguan Era, Emperor Taizong (599–649) of theTang dynasty decreed that Qunshu Zhiyao (The Compilation of Books and Writings on the Important Governing Principles) be compiled. The result was a collection, titled “Qunshu Zhiyao”, carefully excerpted from 14,000 books and 89,000 scrolls of ancient writings—500,000 words in all, and covering sixty-five book categories—dating from the era of the Five Legendary Emperors to the Jin dynasty."

8.  “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development”. 2022-02-04.

9.  "The Trouble With Washington’s ‘Rules-Based Order’ Gambit", in The Diplomat, by Ben Scott. 2021-08-03.

10. "Western Financial System Is Driving It to War" Nikolai Starikov. Mar 12 2015

11. Brian Berletic is a former US marine who is based in Bangkok-Thailand from where he diffuses his excellent program "The New Atlas" that reviews US interference in the countries bordering China and within China itself. Brian demonstrates how the National Endowment for Democracy finances these groups and how it stirs trouble in and around China.

12. “Our System is IMPLODING!”, YouTube, by Richard Wolff

13. "Biden throws Putin into Xi’s briar patch", Asia-Times, by david goldman. 2022 -02-24

14. "Turmoil Will Continue Until a Modified Global Order Emerges", Strategic Culture Foundation, by Alastair Crooke. 2022-02-07.

15. "Unrestricted Warfare", PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House Beijing, February 1999, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui.