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samedi, 28 décembre 2013

Vitali Klitschko's American Coaches

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Vitali Klitschko's American Coaches

Alexander SAVCHENKO

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

 

It has become the custom in independent Ukraine that there is not a single government ministry or agency and not a single political party in parliament besides the communists where "quiet Americans", or Britons, or Germans, have not ensconced themselves in order to tell the Ukrainian politicians and officials how they should run the country.

And this is not likely to change if Vitali Klitschko becomes the next president of Ukraine.More likely this affliction will then be manifested in full. Lacking the knowledge and experience needed to govern a country, Klitschko will inevitably become a pawn in the hands of people who will raise him to the top of the state hierarchy and ensconce themselves in the shadow of his "throne". Among them will be the American consultants who work with the UDAR Party. It is interesting to take a look at just what kind of companies are mediating in contacts between Klitschko and the U.S. Congress and American government agencies, as well as advising his staff on organizing the early presidential race …

Until recently, according to UDAR's political strategist Rostislav Pavlenko, the party was working with the American company PBN, which specializes in the field of so-called "strategic communications" on the markets of Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries. According to PBN's site, the key areas of the company's activities are "corporate and crisis communications, public and government relations, and financial communications and investor relations".

Considering that PBN's board of directors includes such people as Mikhail Gorbachev's former press secretary Georgy Oganov and chairman of the board of directors of the international investment company Alfa Capital Bernard Sucher, it is quite reasonable to assume that PBN is one of those Western organizations which have long attached themselves to post-Soviet countries like leeches in order to pump money out of them and into American banks using connections in the upper echelons of the government and big business.

The company's Ukrainian office is headed by American citizen Myron Wasylyk, a former State Department employee, member of the supervisory board of the U.S.-intelligence-linked Eurasia Foundation, and member of the supervisory board of the International Centre for Policy Studies, founded on the money of George Soros. This center, by the way, contributed to the writing of a draft of a free trade zone agreement between Ukraine and the EU that the president of Ukraine considered a threat to the national interests of the country. 

Wasylyk's wife, Maria Ionova, has been a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada for UDAR since 2012. It's not clear right away, of course, how she went from being a small entrepreneur and deputy's assistant in 2005 to suddenly becoming a consultant to the President of Ukraine (!) and then a member of his administration. This goes to show what kind of power the head of PBN's Ukrainian office had after the "orange revolution".

After the creation of UDAR, PBN started working with Vitali Klitschko's team, helping it establish ties with the White House, Congress, the State Department and the U.S. National Security Council. PBN set up a number of visits to Washington for the party leader and his assistants. It was this company that introduced Klitschko to Senator John McCain, as well as a number of State Department and National Security Council officials who react especially nervously to everything connected with Russia.

In helping Vitali Klitschko establish needed connections in the American establishment, the head of PBN's Ukrainian office mainly depended on his long-time acquaintance from his time at the Eurasia Foundation, Fiona Hill, who belongs to the most reactionary wing of American neoconservatives. She is best known for supporting the actions of the Wahhabis in Chechnya, thinking up justifications for the terrorist attack in Beslan, and opposing the designation of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist group at hearings in the U.S. Congress. During the presidency of George W. Bush, Fiona Hill was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. She maintains close ties with the Ukrainian diaspora and considers herself a great friend of Ukraine (for some reason only the nationalist part).

Thus, if Vitali Klitschko becomes president (and it looks like Washington is pushing for just that, however much Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleh Tyahnybok might pout), the PBN Company's opportunities will be just as great as they were during Yushchenko's presidency. But then again, maybe not. Because, according to omniscient Ukrainian political scientist Kost' Bondarenko, UDAR recently started working with a different American company, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR). 

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is an even larger consulting company with operations in 80 countries. It does the same kinds of things as PBN. But perhaps the main difference between it and PBN is that in the U.S. GQR is oriented more toward the Democratic Party than toward the Republican Party, like Myron Wasylyk's organization.

The decision to replace one American coach with another is most likely connected with the fact that the closer the presidential elections in Ukraine get, the better those in UDAR are beginning to understand that now Vitali Klitschko needs to rely mainly on the American Democrats, who will still be in the White House in 2015. So reorienting on Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which consulted on the election campaigns of U.S. President Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Al Gore and has helped the Democratic Party in congressional and gubernatorial elections, is a wise move.

GQR is not a newcomer to Ukraine, or to the former Soviet Union in general. In 2007, for example, the company worked with the party Our Ukraine. The party's results were lamentable, but when UDAR was choosing a new partner, apparently old connections played a role. It didn't matter that GQR's previous election campaigns in Ukraine ended in failure; some pleasant aspects of collaboration apparently remained in the memories of Ukrainian and American colleagues. Maybe it was the pleasure of "carving up" the party's pre-election budget, who knows? Such things are closely-guarded secrets in any tight-knit team of political consultants.

GQR also has had successes in conducting presidential and parliamentary campaigns in a number of countries. They met with success, for example, in Romania, Germany and Great Britain, where GQR still has connections in government and political circles. And this will significantly increase the spectrum of opportunities for GQR to provide services to the future president of Ukraine, if everything goes well for Vitali Klitschko. At least for a while. Like for Mikheil Saakashvili, who GQR also brought to power and then taught to run Georgia according to American formulas until the Georgians got sick of it.

How everything will go later for Ukraine is difficult to say as of yet. Maybe, as with Georgia, Ukraine will have yet another Maidan revolution. It's already used to such things. Because however many times one might switch American coaches, the result is still the same - not to the advantage of the country they are coaching.

vendredi, 27 décembre 2013

RCA: la France est bien responsable...

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RCA, LA FRANCE EST BIEN RESPONSABLE

Reste à savoir de quoi ?

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr

L'ambassadrice américaine à l'ONU Samantha Power a effectué une visite surprise en République Centrafricaine. Samantha Power est une diplomate américaine, spécialiste de la question du génocide dans les conflits du 20ème siècle, notamment en ex-Yougoslavie et au Rwanda. C'est un signal fort et même très fort des Etats-Unis, de plus en plus scandalisés par les violences interreligieuses qui ont déjà fait près d'un millier de morts dans un territoire normalement pré-carré de la France. Samantha Power est la plus importante responsable américaine à se rendre en République centrafricaine, où l'administration US a qualifié la situation de «pré-génocidaire». Elle a rencontré le président centrafricain de transition et ex-chef rebelle de la Séléka, Michel Djotodia et s'est entretenu avec les hauts dignitaires musulmans et chrétiens tous impliqués à titre divers dans les massacres.
 
« Les populations (centrafricaines) sont en très grand danger et nous avons tous la responsabilité de les éloigner de l'abîme», a-t-elle déclaré en préambule à son déplacement.  Sa visite intervient alors que Bangui, patrouillée par les militaires français et la force africaine, connait une relative normalisation même si de l'avis de tous, la situation reste fragile. "De graves violations des droits humains continuent d'être commises dans le nord du pays ainsi qu'à Bangui", s'est alarmée une organisation de défense des droits de l'homme, Human Rights Watch (HRW),pour qui « le risque de nouvelles violences généralisées est extrêmement élevé ».

La République Centrafricaine est plongée dans l'anarchie et le chaos depuis la prise du pouvoir en mars 2013 par la Séléka, coalition hétéroclite de groupes armés musulmans venus du nord du pays. Or, cette coalition, la France ne l'a-t-elle pas souhaitée puisqu'elle a lâché l'ancien président chrétien qui avait eu le malheur de se tourner vers la Chine ? Certes, la France fait le sale boulot comme elle le fait aussi au Mali, comme elle l'a fait en partie en Libye. Pourtant, pour Samantha Power, les Etats-Unis sont «reconnaissants envers les Français et les courageux soldats africains qui risquent leurs vies pour aider à protéger des civils» tout en ajoutant aussitôt que Washington fournit un soutien logistique à la Mission de maintien de la paix en Centrafrique (Misca) avec le transport aérien en cours de 850 soldats burundais vers la Centrafrique.
 
De la Fomac à la Misca ou comment cacher les paras...

Forte de 3.700 hommes, cette Mission internationale de soutien à la Centrafrique (Misca), mandatée par l'ONU, a pris officiellement le relais de la Fomac déployée depuis 2008. Le drapeau de la Communauté des Etats d'Afrique centrale (CEEAC) a été baissé et remplacé par celui de l'Union Africaine (UA). Ce transfert d'autorité marque l'élargissement de la force africaine, jusqu'à présent composée de contingents des pays voisins (Cameroun, Congo, RDC, Gabon, Tchad, Guinée Equatoriale) à d'autres pays du continent, tel que le Burundi. A terme, la Misca devrait compter environ 6.000 hommes pour mener à bien, au côté de l'armée française, sa difficile mission de rétablir la sécurité dans le pays.
 
De son côté, l'armée française a lancé le désarmement forcé des milices et groupes armés à Bangui. A ce jour, ce sont environ 7.000 combattants de l'ex-Séléka qui ont été désarmés et sont cantonnés dans leurs casernes à Bangui.. Après avoir désarmé en priorité les ex-Séléka, les soldats français visent maintenant les milices "anti-balaka", très présentes dans certains quartiers chrétiens. La France ne cesse de réaffirmer son "impartialité" sur le plan militaire. Or, la France avait bien en RCA choisi son camp par le lâchage prémédité de l'ancien président François Bozizé qu'elle n'a jamais volontairement aidé à prendre le contrôle du Nord du pays. En participant plus qu'activement au dynamitage de la Libye, la France n'a-t-elle pas par ailleurs rendue l'Afrique noire incontrôlable ? 

Tout l'été, les organisations non gouvernementales ont dénoncé les pillages et les atteintes aux droits de l'homme en RCA. Il était bien clair qu'un conflit à teneur confessionnelle se profilait en RCA. Les membres de la Séléka sont essentiellement de confession musulmane alors que la population centrafricaine est composée à 80 % de chrétiens. Le conflit devait cristalliser les sentiments d'appartenance religieux. A quoi a pu servir toute l’aide à l'éducation fournie par la France depuis des années à la RCA ? Quid des journées des droits de l'Homme à l'Alliance française ou des programmes humanistes du lycée français de Bangui ? Certes il existe en République centrafricaine, depuis de longue date, des conflits traditionnels, tant économiques que religieux, entre éleveurs nomades musulmans et paysans sédentaires chrétiens, pourtant, ce qui arrive reste inédit dans un pays où les populations jusqu'alors vivaient dans les mêmes quartiers et les mêmes villages. Ce sont  bien des religieux sunnites qui ont déferlé à leur façon, en 4X4, par petits groupes, armés et financés par le Qatar et l'Arabie Saoudite sur la RCA comme sur toute l'Afrique noire. 

Le problème de la RCA n'est pas un problème néocolonial comme les esprits chagrins voudraient nous le faire croire en raisonnant sur de vieux schémas dépassés, ceux de la Françafrique. Il pose la question des effacistes et des remplacistes français qu'ils soient solfériniens ou sarkozistes. Il pose la question de la dépendance politico-financière de la France à l'égard de Ryad et des monarchies du Golfe comme de la faiblesse de notre budget de défense et de nos finances tout court.

Mali : un an après l’opération Serval

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Mali : un an après l’opération Serval

La France entre l’enclume sudiste et le marteau nordiste
Bernard Lugan*
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Le 27 novembre, et pour la première fois depuis le début de l’opération Serval, une manifestation anti-française s’est déroulée au Mali, à Bamako, aux cris de « A bas la France ». Ces Maliens bien peu « reconnaissants » de ce qui a été fait pour eux font à la France un reproche de fond : interdire à leur armée de se repositionner à Kidal, au cœur du pays touareg. Or, durant la campagne de l’Azawad, notamment lors des combats dans les Iforas, les forces françaises furent renseignées par les Touareg du MNLA contre la promesse de ne pas laisser l’armée malienne se repositionner à Kidal…

Culbutés par les Touareg, les militaires maliens qui se sont enfuis vers Bamako fin 2011-début 2012, veulent aujourd’hui profiter du bouclier français pour prendre leur revanche et réoccuper la totalité du territoire national, ce que les Touareg refusent. Le 30 novembre dernier, le MNLA, rejoint par le MAA ( Mouvement arabe de l’Azawad) et par le HCUA ( Haut conseil pour l’unité de l’Azawad) a d’ailleurs déclaré qu’il reprenait la guerre contre l’armée malienne. 

Nos forces vont donc se trouver prises entre deux feux. Comme en Côte d’Ivoire avec Laurent Gbagbo, ceux que nos éléments sauvèrent dans un premier temps, risquent donc de devenir des ennemis qui nous reprocheront de ne pas les laisser rétablir la souveraineté nationale sur l’ensemble du pays. Une aide salvatrice se transformera donc en entreprise néo-coloniale… et la France devra une fois de plus payer l’incohérence de sa politique ! 

Comme il fallait s’y attendre, et comme je n’ai cessé de le dire , le problème de fond n’a pas été réglé par l’Opération Serval car il n’est pas militaire. Il n’est pas davantage islamiste, le jihadisme n’étant que la surinfection d’une plaie ethnique millénaire. La question est ethno-politique car le sahel, monde contact entre les civilisations sédentaires des greniers au Sud, et l’univers du nomadisme au Nord, est un Rift racial le long duquel, et depuis la nuit des temps, sudistes et nordistes sont en rivalité pour le contrôle des zones intermédiaires situées entre le désert et les savanes.
 
Les élections ne résoudront donc évidemment pas cette réalité géo-ethnographique. Elles ne feront que confirmer la mathématique ethnique locale, l’ethno-mathématique selon ma formule qui me fut tellement reprochée par les butors de la bien-pensance universaliste, mais qui est désormais reprise par les plagiaires qui « pompent » littéralement mes analyses sans jamais me citer. 

Dans un communiqué en date du 14 novembre 2012, j’écrivais ainsi que l’intervention au Mali ne devait pas être construite comme une synthèse entre divers courants, à l’image de ce qui se fait lors des congrès du parti socialiste. Il fallait certes des objectifs militaires clairs -et l’armée française a parfaitement rempli sa mission à cet égard-, mais avant tout une vision politique cohérente et réaliste, à savoir la définition d’un nouvel équilibre entre le nord et le sud du pays. 
Après avoir bloqué les colonnes d’Ansar Eddine qui fonçaient sur Bamako, il fallait donc conditionner nos opérations de reconquête de Gao et de Tombouctou à l’acceptation par les autorités maliennes de l’impératif d’un changement constitutionnel qui aurait une fois pour toutes réglé le problème nord-sud.
 
Au lieu de cela, les cerveaux à nœud qui inspirent la politique africaine de la France sont restés englués dans leurs dogmes universalo-démocratiques, refusant de voir que les nordistes ne sont pas les sudistes, que les élections n’ont jamais réglé en profondeur les problèmes ethniques africains et qu’en définitive, nous n’avons fait que repousser le problème.
 
Mais qu’importe, puisque les militaires français sont sur place pour solder leurs continuelles erreurs…

*Bernard Lugan dirige et rédige L'Afrique réelle, revue internet.

Made in Saudi Arabia: Salafist Radicalism in Africa

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Made in Saudi Arabia: Salafist Radicalism in Africa

Wayne MADSEN

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

 

Hardline Islamist radicalism, nurtured by Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth, is spreading through Africa at a rapid pace. Radical Salafist and Wahhabist groups with names like Boko Haram, Seleka, and Uamsho, unheard of a decade ago, are massacring Christians during church assemblies, razing Christian villages, and assassinating moderate Islamic clerics. Of course, this Saudi-made mayhem is a godsend for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which can point to the spread of «Al Qaeda»-linked terrorism to Africa as a reason to increase America’s military presence on the continent and add armed muscle behind Uncle Sam’s quest for Africa’s oil, natural gas, and mineral resources…

While U.S. leaders like President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and others continue to kowtow to Saudi Arabia’s misogynist princelings, including the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York has ruled that families of the victims of the 9/11 attack can sue the government of Saudi Arabia for providing material support to the hijackers. In 2005, a federal judge dismissed plaintiff claims against Saudi Arabia ruling that Saudi Arabia enjoyed immunity from such claims pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That decision has not been overturned by the federal appellate court.

The court ruling came shortly after former Florida Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attack, once again called for the declassification of 28 pages of the 800-page «Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,» issued by the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees in 2002. The blacked out 28 pages lays responsibility for the worst terrorist attack on American soil on the doorstep of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, particularly Prince Bandar and his Washington embassy. 

Prince Bandar and his wife paid the San Diego handler of two of the hijackers, Osama Bassnan, through an account at Riggs Bank in Washington. There are now bipartisan calls in Congress for the 28 pages to be declassified. However, the Saudis, who have close ties with the Bush oligarchy and the Israelis, can use their clout to suppress the «smoking gun» U.S. intelligence evidence against them.

It also behooves the American «deep state» to allow the Saudis to continue their support for terrorism because it gives the U.S. military and intelligence community as casus belli for continued military intervention in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Saudi Wahhabist fingerprints are being found more and more behind the coordinated activities of anti-Christian and anti-Western Salafist groups in Africa. The Nigerian Salafist group Boko Haram, which has attacked Christian villages and moderate Islamic mosques throughout Nigeria and slaughtered Christian and moderate Muslim men, women, and children, made common cause with another Salafist group in Mali, Ansar Dine, in attacking moderate Tuaregs who took over control of northern Mali after a military coup deposed the country’s civilian leadership. Boko Haram, Ansar Dine, and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb began systematically destroying ancient UNESCO-protected shrines of Sufi Muslim saints in Timbuktu and other Malian cities. Ansar Dine pronounced the shrines «haram» of forbidden, according to Salafist dogma.

Boko Haram has also appeared on the scene in the Central African Republic where Muslim Seleka guerrillas helped topple the government of President Francois Bozize and installed one of their own, Michel Djotodia in power in a country where Muslims make up only 15 percent of the population. No sooner had Djotodia and Seleka cemented their hold on the government in the capital of Bangui, Seleka guerrillas began attacking Christians throughout the country, pillaging their villages. Bozize loyalists organized «anti-Balaka,» which means «anti-machete» because many of the Seleka Salafists wield machetes in killing Christians, including women and children. The arrival of 2000 French troops in Bangui did little to assuage the fears of the Christian majority in the country. The Saudis are also fond of blades in carrying out murder. The Saudi government’s preferred execution method for convicted criminals is a sword to the back of the neck on Riyadh’s infamous Deera Square, also known as «Chop Chop Square.»

Attracted by the nation’s oil boom, a large influx of Muslims from abroad have migrated to Angola to work in the oil infrastructure. When, at the end of November of this year Angolan authorities issued requirements for hastily-built mosques to comply with the country’s building registration laws, Salafist interests spread the rumor that Angola was banning Islam and indiscriminately closing mosques. The Angolan government denied the charge. 

The Angolan government announcement may have been too little and too late for the Angolan and other passengers, as well as six crew, aboard Mozambique Airlines flight TM470, which crashed in Namibia while en route from Maputo, Mozambique to Luanda, the Angolan capital. Investigators concluded that the Embraer 190’s captain, Herminio dos Santos Fernandes, tampered with the plane’s autopilot to deliberately crash the plane into the ground. However, investigators failed to consider that many Salafists decided to declare war on Angola after the false rumors were disseminated that Angola had «banned Islam.» 

The lessons of EgyptAir 990, which crashed in 1999 en route from the New York to Cairo, should have been germane. The captain of the EgyptAir Boeing 767 was said to have deliberately crashed his plane into the Atlantic in an act of suicide terrorism, killing all 217 people aboard. But many believe the plane had been tampered with and was used as a dry-run for the 9/11 attack two years later. The plane’s co-pilot, Gameel Al-Batouti was said to have commandeered the controls of the plane to commit suicide and mass murder in the same manner that Mozambique Airlines’s Captain Fernandes was said to have done with his aircraft en route to Luanda.

However, with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, several members of Congress, and a federal judge all pointing to Saudi Arabia as the culprit behind the aviation terrorism of 9/11, a Saudi hand cannot be ruled out being involved in either the EgyptAir 990 or Mozambique Airlines 470 «suicide crashes.»

In Zanzibar, the Saudi-supported Salafists have taken a different tack. Saudi-financed local clerics have formed Uamsho, which has called for acid attacks on foreign tourists such as that committed against two 18-year old British female teachers last August. Uamsho, which is Swahili for «Awakening,» has also claimed credit for brutal acid attacks on Christian and moderate Muslim clerics. 

Saudi-backed Salafists have also attacked Christians in other parts of Africa, particularly in Egypt, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Bandar, the Saudi intelligence chief, reportedly warned Russia that Saudi Arabia would not hesitate to set loose Chechen and other Salafists on the Winter Olympiad in Sochi if Russia did not cut ioff aid to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. Saudi handicraft was also seen in Salafist bombings of St. Theresa's Catholic Church, outside of Abuja, Nigeria; Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad; and Saints Church in Alexandria, Egypt. In the case of the Alexandria bombing, Israeli intelligence was also fingered with the Saudis in the attack, an insidious alliance that legitimate researchers of the 9/11 attack have become all-too-familiar with. 

Saudi Arabia cannot escape responsibility for attacks on Christians, moderate Muslims, Shi’as, Ahmaddiyas, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and others around the world. One of Saudi King Abdullah’s cabinet advisers in the Salafist Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Aal al-Sheikh. The «holy man» urged his followers to blow up churches outside of Saudi Arabia. President Obama and his top officials, including CIA director John Brennan, have gone to great lengths to appease Saudi terrorism. If the United States truly wants to put a dent in international terrorism, especially in Africa, a couple of well-placed U.S. cruise missile strikes on a few Saudi palaces in Riyadh and Jeddah ought to do the trick.

Les Tchadiens, chiens de guerre de la France et terreurs de la Centrafrique

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Les Tchadiens, chiens de guerre de la France et terreurs de la Centrafrique

Un écusson perturbe plus les médias que les massacres

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Les tchadiens de guerres en guerres  sont devenus les prussiens de l’Afrique noire. Les alliés préférés de Paris ont fait merveille au Mali. Ils pratiquent une guerre sans complexe mais non sans cruauté. Au Mali, ils n’ont pas hésité à affronter des musulmans comme eux, menaçant leur vision de l’islam et l’unité de leur pays indirectement.

En Centrafrique, c’est très différent et Paris a commis une très grave erreur. Se servir de soldats musulmans pour désarmer des milices musulmanes, c’est les mettre à la merci de la vengeance des populations chrétiennes ultra majoritaires.  Idriss Déby, le président tchadien est plus important dans la région que François Hollande. Le Tchad, menacé sur toutes ses frontières (Libye, Soudan, Nigeria et Cameroun) avec Boko Haram , redoute la poursuite de l'instabilité chez son voisin méridional, un glacis sur lequel il estime avoir un droit de regard. À la tête d'un pays qui s'affirme comme la puissance régionale émergente, le président du Tchad tire depuis longtemps les ficelles centrafricaines.

Le Tchad est présent, avec des conseillers, dans les hautes sphères du pouvoir mais aussi avec 7000 à 15 000 ressortissants à Bangui. De nombreux centrafricains originaires du nord du pays sont également désignés comme «Tchadiens». Ces «arabes» sont souvent des commerçants qui tiennent un large pan de l'économie centrafricaine, ou ce qu'il en reste. Un tiers des membres des ex-Séléka seraient des Tchadiens. Idriss Déby affirme en détenir la liste, par groupes et par régions. Parallèlement, les soldats tchadiens constituent le premier contingent de la Fomac, avec 650 hommes. «Seul contingent musulman de la force africaine, le rôle des Tchadiens est important pour garantir la protection des populations musulmanes», assure une source officielle française. Accusés de protéger les ex-Séléka, les soldats tchadiens sont haïs par nombre de centrafricains, majoritairement chrétiens. Notre stratégie est donc suicidaire et devrait rapidement retourner la population contre la France.

« Il faut que tous les Tchadiens partent ! On ne veut plus d’eux dans le pays ! Dehors les Tchadiens, traîtres, lâches, chiens ». Dans les rues de Bangui, la capitale centrafricaine, les habitants ne cachent pas leur hostilité au passage des soldats tchadiens de la force africaine. Ces soldats sont pourtant membres de la Misca, la Mission internationale de soutien à la Centrafrique, qui, appuyée par l’armée française déployée depuis le 7 décembre, a pour but de ramener l’ordre dans le pays, où les tensions inter religieuses s’accroissent. Mais les Tchadiens, qui viennent d'un pays majoritairement musulman, ne sont pas les bienvenus en République centrafricaine. On les accuse d’exactions et de massacres de chrétiens. On les accuse d'être proches des Seleka. La France aurait donc mis un loup dans le poulailler pour désarmer le renard. Pas de quoi rassurer les poules même avec la présence d’un coq français.

Enfin tout ça n’inquiète pas trop nos médias tétanisés hier par la découverte sur facebook d’une devise SS sur un insigne.  « Notre honneur s’appelle fidélité »  est une bien belle devise sauf qu’elle a été utilisée par l’armée d’élite des nazis. En conséquence, on assiste à la mobilisation de la sphère de la délation, répercutée par les journalistes presque aussi indignés par cet insigne que par les derniers propos volés de Dieudonné. La démocratie de la délation des déviants n’a pas la vie facile et les dénonciateurs bien pensants ne manquent pas de chair impure à livrer aux inquisiteurs de presse pour allumer les autodafés et les buchers audiovisuels.

L'état-major des armées a retiré immédiatement de son site la photo d'un soldat français déployé en Centrafrique qui arborait cet insigne qualifiant cette attitude d'"inadmissible" et ne reflétant "en rien la réalité dans les armées". Le militaire sera "immédiatement suspendu", dès qu'il aura été identifié, a déclaré à l'AFP le colonel Gilles Jaron, porte-parole de l'état-major.
  
On respire en Centrafrique la situation reste sous contrôle…. En tout cas pour l’essentiel.

lundi, 23 décembre 2013

Pour une Europe-puissance dans un monde multipolaire !

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Pour une Europe-puissance dans un monde multipolaire !

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous un entretien donné par Aymeric Chauprade à Boulevard Voltaire et consacré à la question de l'Europe au sein du monde multipolaire...

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com

«En 1991, après la chute de l’URSS, nous avons manqué une chance historique…»

Un monde bipolaire pouvait induire un possible choc des civilisations. Mais l’univers multipolaire qui s’annonce est-il forcément plus rassurant ?

Le monde bipolaire n’était pas le choc des civilisations, il était le choc de deux utopies mondialistes, le libéralisme et le socialisme planétaires, chacune adossée à la logique de puissance d’une nation motrice, les États-Unis et la Russie. Remarquez que la théorie du choc des civilisations a repris de l’actualité juste après l’écroulement de l’Union soviétique, avec Samuel Huntington, quand précisément les Américains, pour ne pas voir leur alliance otanienne connaître le même sort que le pacte de Varsovie, ont tenté de réveiller les représentations civilisationnelles.

Ce qui s’est passé à partir de 1991 est assez simple. Le projet unipolaire américain (l’Amérique-monde) s’est accéléré, et il lui a été offert d’un coup, par l’effondrement soviétique, des territoires immenses à intégrer dans l’OTAN, comme dans l’OMC. En opposition au projet unipolaire, les émergents importants – Russie, Chine, Turquie, Inde, Brésil – se sont mis à reconstruire leur puissance régionale et à marcher vers la puissance. Seuls les Européens sont interdits de « puissance » par l’Union européenne et donc incapables de préparer l’Europe-puissance dont nous aurions besoin pour affronter les défis à venir. Bien sûr que le monde multipolaire n’est pas plus rassurant que le monde bipolaire. Si nous voulons la paix, il faut en réalité l’équilibre des puissances. La bipolarité a reposé sur l’équilibre de la terreur. La multipolarité doit reposer sur l’équilibre de toutes les puissances, nucléaires ou conventionnelles.

Est-ce l’occasion pour l’Europe, non pas de retrouver son rôle dominant de naguère, mais au moins de reprendre la main sur l’échiquier mondial ?

En 1991, après l’écroulement de l’URSS, les Européens ont raté une chance historique. Ils pouvaient décider de s’émanciper des États-Unis (sans se fâcher avec eux, là n’est pas le but !) et construire une Europe-puissance. Mais avec le Royaume-Uni (le général de Gaulle avait vu juste) et une logique d’élargissement à l’Est (intégration horizontale) qui diluait tout effort d’intégration verticale, c’était impossible! Le triste bilan des 23 années qui suivent la fin de l’ère bipolaire, c’est que les Européens ont finalement abdiqué leur souveraineté non pour une « Europe-puissance », mais simplement pour s’arrimer aux USA et la dynamique d’élargissement de l’OTAN. Sur le continent eurasiatique il y a place pour trois blocs de puissance – l’Europe, la Russie et la Chine –, seulement les Américains n’en veulent surtout pas car ils perdraient alors la main sur l’histoire mondiale.

Ne serait-ce pas le moment, pour la France, de remettre à l’honneur ses vieilles alliances : Turquie, Amérique latine, monde arabe ?

L’échec géopolitique, économique, social de l’Union européenne doit nous imposer une remise en cause complète du cadre actuel, fondé sur le couple OTAN/UE. Nous devons retrouver notre souveraineté nationale et proposer à nos amis et partenaires européens d’en faire autant (ce qu’ils feront dès lors que nous le ferons), puis refonder le projet européen sur l’idée d’une Europe confédérale et d’un partenariat fort avec la Russie. Les Allemands peuvent ouvrir à la France l’Europe centrale et orientale, tandis que nous pouvons aider les Allemands à se développer outre-mer grâce à notre présence mondiale (nous avons le deuxième espace maritime mondial derrière les Américains, et une grande partie des ressources de demain est en mer). Un véritable protectionnisme européen doit être mis en place sur le plan économique. L’Europe de demain devra aussi avoir une véritable flotte européenne reposant d’abord sur l’alliance de trois puissantes marines – française, allemande et russe – qui ensemble pourront peser autant que la flotte états-unienne, nous assurer une présence maritime mondiale et assurer la sécurité de nos approvisionnements. Tant que nous dépendrons de la thalassocratie américaine, nous ne serons pas indépendants.

Contrairement à ce que l’on entend souvent, les souverainistes ne sont pas opposés à l’idée européenne, bien au contraire. Ils veulent simplement la refonder sur un authentique projet de civilisation (les racines chrétiennes de l’Europe, l’affirmation de nos identités) autant que de puissance (la puissance ne signifie pas l’agression !), tenant compte des réalités nationales et des complémentarités possibles entre nations européennes. La preuve même que l’Union européenne est en train de tuer la puissance européenne, c’est que tous les budgets de défense nationaux européens sont en train de s’effondrer sans qu’aucune défense européenne n’émerge en échange ! Il y a une règle simple dans la vie, c’est que si un système en place depuis maintenant plus de vingt ans a produit un effondrement identitaire, économique, social, géopolitique de l’Europe, c’est qu’il n’est pas bon et qu’il faut en changer sans plus tarder.

Aymeric Chauprade, propos recueillis par Nicolas Gauthier (Boulevard Voltaire, 11 décembre 2013)

Why Neo-Isolationism Is Soaring

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Why Neo-Isolationism Is Soaring

By

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

“Neo-isolationism is the direct product of foolish globalism. … Compared to people who thought they could run the universe, or at least the globe, I am neo-isolationist and proud of it.”

Those are not the words of an old America Firster, but the declaration of that icon of the liberal establishment Walter Lippmann in 1967, a year before he endorsed Richard Nixon.

In 1968, it was Nixon urging we stay the course in Vietnam, as Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy were clamoring for retreat and swift withdrawal.

In 1972, it was Democratic nominee George McGovern who would run on the neo-isolationist slogan “Come Home, America!” and win the endorsement of the New York Times and Washington Post.

Today, neo-isolationism, bred of that “foolish globalism” of which Lippmann wrote, has made a comeback. For the first time since polling began in 1964, it is the dominant sentiment of the nation.

According to a new Pew poll, 52 percent of Americans believe “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” Only 38 percent disagree.

Asked if the United States should think less in “international terms but concentrate more on our national problems,” Americans agree by 80-16, or a ratio of 5-to-1.

As Max Fisher of the Washington Post writes, this sentiment manifest itself decisively in the uprising last summer against U.S. intervention in Syria. Red line or no red line, the people told Obama, we want no part of Syria’s civil war. It is not our war. Obama belatedly agreed.

The roots of the new isolationism are not difficult to discern. There is, first, the end of the Cold War, the liberation of the captive nations of Europe, the dissolution of our great adversary, the Soviet Empire, and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Cold War, our war, was over. Time to come home.

The Bushes and Bill Clinton said no.

So we let the New World Order crowd have its run in the yard. We invaded Panama, intervened in Haiti and Mogadishu, launched Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait, bombed Serbia for 78 days to force it to surrender its cradle province of Kosovo.

Came then the blowback of 9/11, following which we had the Afghan war to overthrow the Taliban and create a new democracy in the Hindu Kush, the invasion and occupation of Iraq to strip Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction he did not have, and the air war on Libya.

Others may celebrate the fruits of these wars but consider the costs:

A decade of bleeding with 8,000 U.S. dead, 40,000 wounded, $2 trillion sunk, Iraq and Libya disintegrating in tribal, civil and sectarian war, Afghanistan on the precipice, and al-Qaida no longer confined to Tora Bora but active in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

While America was caught up in these wars, China swept past Britain, France, Germany and Japan to emerge as the second largest economy on earth. Using her $250-$300 billion annual trade surpluses with the United States, she has been locking up resources across Africa, Latin America, Australia and Asia.

Now Beijing has declared its own Monroe Doctrine to encompass the East and South China seas and all islands therein and to challenge the United States for hegemony over the Western Pacific.

Consider, now, what America was up to this past week.

Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was in Kiev, egging on protesters demanding the resignation of the elected president, should he choose a Russia-led customs union over the EU.

Will someone explain exactly what business it is of the United States which economic union Ukraine chooses to join, or not join?

Even as we are pushing Kiev toward the EU, conservative and populist parties are rising across Europe to get their countries out of the EU, including in Britain where the Tories are demanding a vote.

John (“We are all Georgians now!”) McCain was also in Kiev threatening sanctions if the government clears its main square of squatters the way we cleared Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street.

The demand that Ukraine be gentle with its demonstrators was issued as the U.S. was lifting sanctions on Egypt’s army, which this year arrested President Mohammed Morsi, jailed thousands of Muslim Brotherhood, and mowed down hundreds in Cairo’s streets in an action John Kerry described as “restoring democracy.”

What hypocrites we must seem to the world.

Now, President and Mrs. Obama and Vice President Biden have, on the high moral ground that Russia has outlawed LBGT propaganda, declared they will not attend the Sochi winter Olympics.

Yet, are we not courting Iran? Did not Obama bow to the king of Saudi Arabia? When was the last time they had a gay pride parade in Riyadh, Tehran, Mecca or Qom?

How can a nation as polarized morally and paralyzed politically as ours lead the world? It cannot. The people sense what the elites cannot see.

The American Century is over. Time to restore the republic.

dimanche, 22 décembre 2013

L’Amérique Latine fait la leçon à l'Europe

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REMEDES ANTI-CRISE
 
L’Amérique Latine fait la leçon à l'Europe

Actualidad.rt *
Ex: http://metamag.fr

L’Europe devrait suivre l'exemple de l’Amérique Latine pour sa capacité à faire face à la crise économique, selon l'avis de divers économistes.  Au cours des deux derniers siècles, les anciennes colonies ont appris à utiliser habilement les instruments destinés à combattre la crise, tandis que les ex-colonisateurs n'ont fait qu'aggraver la crise économique.


C'est ce que pensent les économistes A. Vegh, de l'Université Johns Hopkins, et Guillermo Vuletin, de l'Institut Brookings, qui se sont demandé comment les économies de la Région avaient pu surmonter leurs difficultés passées. Pour répondre à cette question, ils ont étudié une série de collapsus économiques ainsi que leur durée moyenne et leur intensité.


Ces scientifiques ont noté une caractéristique intéressante : à partir de 1998, les crises en Amérique Latine sont devenues plus courtes et ont causé moins de dommages à l'économie, notamment au Brésil, au Chili et au Mexique. 


Après s'être livrés à l'analyse des politiques monétaires et fiscales, les économistes sont parvenus à la conclusion selon laquelle la réaction des gouvernements et des banques centrales a radicalement changé durant les 30-40 dernières années. 


L’Amérique Latine à l'avant-garde de l'économie


Au début les autorités ne faisaient pas preuve d'interventionnisme et avaient tendance à subir les cycles économiques. Cependant, à partir de 1998, de nombreux États ont modifié leur façon de répondre à la crise en prenant des mesures de nature à stimuler l'économie. C'est le cas du Brésil, du Chili et de la Colombie qui ont réduit leur taux d'intérêt pour répondre à la récente crise financière mondiale. 


Ces mêmes scientifiques soulignent que l’Amérique Latine a appris à réagir face à la crise avec plus d'efficacité que par le passé et avancent l'idée que les pays de la Région seront capables de surmonter sans heurt les dernières étapes de la politique de fléxibilisation quantitative de la Réserve Fédérale des États-Unis. 


On ne peut en dire autant de l'Europe qui est actuellement confrontée à de grands difficultés financières. La récession se faisait encore sentir au cours du premier trimestre de 2013 dans 7 pays de la zone euro, dans des proportions inconnues en Amérique Latine même à l'époque de Simon Bolivar : le PIB de la Grèce a baissé de 24 % depuis le début de la crise. 


Après avoir analysé les politiques budgétaires des gouvernements européens, les scientifiques sont parvenus à la conclusion que, pour répondre à la crise, les Européens se sont mis à appliquer des politiques procycliques. En d'autres termes, ils se sont mis à épargner, avec pour conséquence, une aggravation de la crise. 


Par conséquent, aux dires de ces experts, la politique fiscale procyclique menée durant la crise de la zone euro a, de fait, contribué dans certains pays à prolonger et à aggraver la crise actuelle ».


*Traduit de l'espagnol par Lucas Navarro

vendredi, 20 décembre 2013

Les États-Unis reformatent le Moyen-Orient

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Les États-Unis reformatent le Moyen-Orient
 
Ils veulent imposer les valeurs occidentales

Actualidad.rt *
Ex: http://metamag.fr
 
"Les États-Unis sont en train de reformater le Grand Moyen-Orient pour lui imposer les standards nord-américains”, affirme le Directeur du Centre de Géopolitique de Russie, Valeri Korovin. 

Aux dires de ce géopolitologue, Washington a mis en œuvre un plan de réorganisation du « Grand Moyen-Orient » dès 2004, bien avant le début du Printemps Arabe. L’expression « Greater Middle East » est un terme utilisé par le président George W. Bush et son administration pour désigner un espace s'étendant du Maghreb et de la Mauritanie au Pakistan et à l'Afghanistan, en passant par la Turquie, le Machrek et l'ensemble de la péninsule Arabique.

Le processus de reformatage consiste, selon cet expert, à désorganiser la structure sociale traditionnelle de la région. « Y est conduit un processus de désorganisation qui vise à imposer les valeurs libérales occidentales, fondées sur l'individu, c'est-à-dire sur un être atomisé ». Pour y parvenir, il convient au préalable de détruire la subjectivité collective, comme facteur constitutif de la base de l’ordre social des États et peuples traditionnels », explique Korovin, cité par le journal « Vzgliad ». 

Selon lui, pour atteindre leur objectif, les États-Unis utilisent la théorie du « chaos contrôlé », tel que théorisé par Stephen Mann. “Certains processus, qui ne semblent réglés que par leur propre mouvement et se mouvoir de façon purement chaotique, finissent  par atteindre des objectifs dûment prédéterminés », précise le Directeur du Centre de Géopolitique de Russie.  

« Par conséquent, le chaos introduit de l'extérieur provoque un résultat prédéterminé. Le Moyen-Orient est ainsi entré dans un processus de désorganisation de son espace social propre à établir la démocratie étasunienne dans la région », affirme cet expert. 

Celui-ci ajoute que Washington, après avoir engagé ses manœuvres de désorganisation, commence à fragmenter l'espace social pour y favoriser la pénétration des valeurs libérales nord-américaines. L'expert russe souligne que ces menées sont bien connues de la Russie, pays qui a subi le même processus à la fin des années 90, après la chute de l'URSS. 

Korovin pense que c'est ce plan « Grand Moyen-Orient » qui est appliqué en Syrie, « où se répète le scénario libyen », ainsi que dans d'autres pays du Moyen-Orient. « Mais l'objectif principal dans la région est l'Iran », conclut cet expert. 

Source: actualidad.rt.com

*Traduit de l'espagnol par Lucas Navarro

jeudi, 19 décembre 2013

The West's Alliance with «Jihad Warriors» in Syria: Sinister Fruits

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Dmitry MININ
Strategic-Culture.org

The West's Alliance with «Jihad Warriors» in Syria: Sinister Fruits

After suffering one military defeat after another, the Syrian radical opposition, backed by the support of the West and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, are increasingly retaliating cruelly against the civilian population. The jihadists seize towns and cultural and religious sites which up to that point had remained outside the combat zone, loudly proclaiming their victories. 

For example, in response to the advance of the government army into the Qalamoun mountains between Damascus and Homs, where a powerful group of rebels had gathered for a sudden advance on the capital from the north (this group grew from 5,000 men a year ago to 20,000 in November of this year), the jihadists once again rushed into the nearby Christian town of Maaloula. After vandalizing and desecrating the ancient churches, on December 2 they took 12 nuns from the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla hostage, hiding them in the city of Yabrud, which is held by the rebels. The rebels stated that they would burn the convent and kill the hostages, including the abbess, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, after which the army retreated. The Free Qalamoun Brigades, which are part of the Army of Islam (Jeysh al-Islam), took responsibility for these barbarous acts.  News agencies reported only an offer to exchange the kidnapped sisters for a thousand female prisoners accused of aiding terrorists, but in fact the rebels demanded that the government forces stop their attack on Yabrud and lift the siege against the rebels in East Ghouta in exchange for the lives of the unfortunate nuns, in other words, encourage their barbarism by handing them the victory. The Qatari television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast video meant to show that the sisters «are being treated well in captivity» (as if they can be considered prisoners of war!). However, it is clear from the broadcast that the nuns were forced to remove their crosses, which is an insult to the symbol of their faith.  At the same time, hundreds of rebels from the groups Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham Al Islami were redeployed from Yabrud to Rankous in an attempt to occupy the nearby Christian city of Saidnaya. During the attack on the city they used grenade launchers, from which they shelled the local churches and convent. In eastern Syria, in the city of Ar-Raqqah, the group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) destroyed all Christian symbols in one of the city's churches and established its headquarters there. 

In a conversation with the Antiochian patriarch John X, Syrian Prime Minister Najib Mika promised to do everything possible to free the kidnapped nuns, as well as two metropolitans of the Orthodox and Syrian Jacobite churches who have been abducted by rebels. He emphasized the government's dedication to keeping sacred sites of all religions out of combat zones. The widespread desecration of Christian churches by the rebels is only one side of the coin; the other is their sacrileges against Shiite shrines, including those connected with the veneration of the direct descendants of the founder of Islam, as well as turning mosques into fortified posts and military supply depots.  

The British Independent reports that the terrorist threat to Europe and the United States from the «jihad warriors» in Syria is growing rapidly. MI5 and Scotland Yard have detected the first case of rebels sent from Syria to London for the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks there «when needed». In June of this year the number of jihadists from Europe who were «broken in» in Syria was estimated at 600; since then this figure has almost tripled. «With regards to the European figures, we estimate it’s between 1500 and 2000», says Belgian Interior Minister Joelle Milquet. «It’s a phenomenon which is very generalized». 

Intelligence analysts in the West are already making recommendations to preserve the Syrian government army after the «overthrow of Assad's regime» for the fight against the Islamic radicals in order not to repeat the mistakes made in Iraq and Libya. Salim Idris, the commander of the pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA), has supposedly already agreed to this. But will the Syrian army itself agree? Idris is seen more often in Paris and London than on the battlefield, and his intention to lead a united «opposition-government» army against al-Qaeda evokes nothing but sarcasm. 

Currently the Islamists have total control over the FSA. According to the Independent, there are 22,500 fighters in ISIS alone. This organization is especially active in taking hostages. For example, they have abducted and detained 35 foreign journalists, as well as 60 various political and public figures. According to U.S. intelligence, over half of the 17,000 foreign insurgents fighting in Syria against the government are part of the Islamic State of Iran and Syria group.  The Russian-speaking wing of this group, which numbers several hundred fighters, is led by a Chechen from the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Sheikh Omar al-Shishani... As the Wall Street Journal reports, Batirashvili received his military training in the American-backed Georgian army. His troops include not only emigrants from former Soviet republics, but Europeans who are notable for their «unusual violence...even by the gruesome standards of the war in Syria». Although those close to Batirashvili say that he is trying to strike a blow against one of the Kremlin's allies, he also does not hide his hatred for America, writes the Wall Street Journal. In 2008 he fought against Russia in a Georgian military intelligence unit. It is worth noting that in September 2010 the restless Batirashvili was arrested in Georgia for illegally harboring weapons and sentenced to three years in prison. However, in early 2012 he was released from prison and immediately left for Syria. One could assume that this turn of fate took place with the participation of then-president of Georgia M. Saakashvili. Threats from Syrian jihadists toward the Sochi Olympic Games are also linked with Batirashvili's name.

In late November the majority of organizations on which the FSA has been counting declared their commitment to «Islamic values and sharia». They united to form the Islamic Front (IF), announcing their closeness to the «brethren from Jabhat al-Nusra». The total number of fighters in the newly-created front is estimated at 45,000-60,000 men. Western governments, which are rapidly losing control over events in Syria, have already hastened to declare the IF «a force with which it is possible to have a dialog», and even started preliminary negotiations with them. In fact, the IF is a cover and a means of political legalization for the same uncompromising «jihad warriors». Suffice it to say that those who abducted the 12 Orthodox nuns in Maaloula belong to the Islamic Front. 

At the same time that ancient Christian Maaloula was being vandalized, representatives of Western countries, including the U.S. and Great Britain, were meeting with the leaders of the IF in Ankara through the efforts of mediators from Qatar. The fate of the nun martyrs was not discussed at this meeting. According to information in the press, during the negotiations in Ankara the Western allies tried to convince the Islamists to moderate their criticism of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army and its leader Salim Idris. For their part, those who were uncompromising before the meeting demanded that the Military Council show them more active support, particularly with regard to weapons. And apparently they received this support. One of the British participants in the negotiations admitted to The Daily Telegraph that there are «sinister» elements in the Front.

In making contact with the Islamic Front, Western diplomats are hoping to prevent it from joining the even more radical groups Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, which unlike the IF openly declare their ties with al-Qaeda. However, these hopes are not likely to be justified. Just a few days after the meeting in Ankara, the IF began pushing the Free Syrian Army out of Syria. Fighters from the Islamic Front  have begun seizing bases and weapons depots from the FSA along the Turkish border in the Idlib Governorate. They have already occupied the largest weapons storage facilities in Bab al-Hawa. 

In late November at hearings in the U.S. Congress, leading expert Andrew J. Tabler from the Washington Institute acknowledged that the processes taking place in Syria are not going to stay there, but will inevitably spill out into the entire region. And the abrupt increase in extremist elements among the Syrian opposition makes the possibility of helping its pro-Western parts while bypassing the jihadists unlikely.

«We need to start talking to the Assad regime again about counterterrorism and other issues of shared concern,» stated Ryan Crocker, an experienced diplomat who has served in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, to The New York Times. «It will have to be done very, very quietly. But bad as Assad is, he is not as bad as the jihadis who would take over in his absence». Even Z. Brzezinski, not known for his sympathies toward Russia, states that the threat of an explosion in the Middle East, and in Syria in particular, means that the U.S. needs to work closely with Russia and China «to some extent more than...[with] Britain or France». And cold war paladin Brzezinski knows what he's talking about here.

Foto: bloomberg.com

 

mercredi, 18 décembre 2013

Milestones of Eurasism

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Milestones of Eurasism

By Alexander Dugin 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Eurasism is an ideological and social-political current born within the environment of the first wave of Russian emigration, united by the concept of Russian culture as a non-European phenomenon, presenting–among the varied world cultures–an original combination of western and eastern features; as a consequence, the Russian culture belongs to both East and West, and at the same time cannot be reduced either to the former or to the latter.

The founders of eurasism:

  • N. S. Trubetskoy (1890–1938)–philologist and linguist.
  • P. N. Savitsky (1895–1965)–geographer, economist.
  • G. V. Florovsky (1893–1979)–historian of culture, theologian and patriot.
  • G. V. Vernadsky (1877–1973)–historian and geopolitician.
  • N. N. Alekseev – jurist and politologist.
  • V. N. Ilin – historian of culture, literary scholar and theologian.

Eurasism’s main value consisted in ideas born out of the depth of the tradition of Russian history and statehood. Eurasism looked at the Russian culture not as to a simple component of the European civilization, as to an original civilization, summarizing the experience not only of the West as also–to the same extent–of the East. The Russian people, in this perspective, must not be placed neither among the European nor among the Asian peoples; it belongs to a fully original Eurasian ethnic community. Such originality of the Russian culture and statehood (showing at the same time European and Asian features) also defines the peculiar historical path of Russia, her national-state program, not coinciding with the Western-European tradition. 

Foundations

Civilization concept

The Roman-German civilization has worked out its own system of principles and values, and promoted it to the rank of universal system. This Roman-German system has been imposed on the other peoples and cultures by force and ruse. The Western spiritual and material colonization of the rest of mankind is a negative phenomenon. Each people and culture has its own intrinsic right to evolve according to its own logic. Russia is an original civilization. She is called not only to counter the West, fully safeguarding its own road, but also to stand at the vanguard of the other peoples and countries on Earth defending their own freedom as civilizations. 

Criticism of the Roman-German civilization

The Western civilization built its own system on the basis of the secularisation of Western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism), bringing to the fore such values like individualism, egoism, competition, technical progress, consumption, economic exploitation. The Roman-German civilization founds its right to globality not upon spiritual greatness, as upon rough material force. Even the spirituality and strength of the other peoples are evaluated only on the basis of its own image of the supremacy of rationalism and technical progress.

The space factor

There are no universal patterns of development. The plurality of landscapes on Earth produces a plurality of cultures, each one having its own cycles, internal criteria and logics. Geographical space has a huge (sometimes decisive) influence on peoples’ culture and national history. Every people, as long as it develops within some given geographical environment, elaborates its own national, ethical, juridical, linguistic, ritual, economic and political forms. The “place” where any people or state “development” happens predetermines to a great extent the path and sense of this “development”–up to the point when the two elements became one. It is impossible to separate history from spatial conditions, and the analysis of civilizations must proceed not only along the temporal axis (“before,” “after,” “development” or “non-development,” and so on) as also along the spatial axis (“east,” “west,” “steppe,” “mountains,” and so on). No single state or region has the right to pretend to be the standard for all the rest. Every people has its own pattern of development, its own “times,” its own “rationality,” and deserves to be understood and evaluated according to its own internal criteria.

The climate of Europe, the small extension of its spaces, the influence of its landscapes generated the peculiarity of the European civilization, where the influences of the wood (northern Europe) and of the coast (Mediterraneum) prevail. Different landscapes generated different kinds of civilizations: the boundless steppes generated the nomad empires (from the Scythians to the Turks), the loess lands the Chinese one, the mountain islands the Japanese one, the union of steppe and woods the Russian-Eurasian one. The mark of landscape lives in the whole history of each one of these civilizations, and cannot be either separated form them or suppressed.

State and nation

The first Russian slavophiles in the 19th century (Khomyakov, Aksakov, Kirevsky) insisted upon the uniqueness and originality of the Russian (Slav, Orthodox) civilization. This must be defended, preserved and strengthened against the West, on the one hand, and against liberal modernism (which also proceeds from the West), on the other. The slavophiles proclaimed the value of tradition, the greatness of the ancient times, the love for the Russian past, and warned against the inevitable dangers of progress and about the extraneousness of Russia to many aspects of the Western pattern.

From this school the eurasists inherited the positions of the latest slavophiles and further developed their theses in the sense of a positive evaluation of the Eastern influences.

The Muscovite Empire represents the highest development of the Russian statehood. The national idea achieves a new status; after Moscow’s refusal to recognize the Florentine Unia (arrest and proscription of the metropolitan Isidore) and the rapid decay, the Tsargrad Rus’ inherits the flag of the Orthodox empire. 

Political platform

Wealth and prosperity, a strong state and an efficient economy, a powerful army and the development of production must be the instruments for the achievement of high ideals. The sense of the state and of the nation can be conferred only through the existence of a “leading idea.” That political regime, which supposes the establishment of a “leading idea” as a supreme value, was called by the eurasists as “ideocracy”–from the Greek “idea” and “kratos,” power. Russia is always thought of as the Sacred Rus’, as a power [derzhava] fulfilling its own peculiar historical mission. The eurasist world-view must also be the national idea of the forthcoming Russia, its “leading idea.”

The eurasist choice

Russia-Eurasia, being the expression of a steppe and woods empire of continental dimensions, requires her own pattern of leadership. This means, first of all, the ethics of collective responsibility, disinterest, reciprocal help, ascetism, will and tenaciousness. Only such qualities can allow keeping under control the wide and scarcely populated lands of the steppe-woodland Eurasian zone. The ruling class of Eurasia was formed on the basis of collectivism, asceticism, warlike virtue and rigid hierarchy.

Western democracy was formed in the particular conditions of ancient Athens and through the centuries-old history of insular England. Such democracy mirrors the peculiar features of the “local European development.” Such democracy does not represent a universal standard. Imitating the rules of the European “liberal-democracy” is senseless, impossible and dangerous for Russia-Eurasia. The participation of the Russian people to the political rule must be defined by a different term: “demotia,” from the Greek “demos,” people. Such participation does not reject hierarchy and must not be formalized into party-parliamentary structures. “Demotia” supposes a system of land council, district governments or national governments (in the case of peoples of small dimensions). It is developed on the basis of social self-government, of the “peasant” world. An example of “demotia” is the elective nature of church hierarchies on behalf of the parishioners in the Muscovite Rus’. 

The work of L. N. Gumilev as a development of the eurasist thinking

Lev Nikolaevic Gumilev (1912–1992), son of the Russian poet N. Gumilev and of the poetess A. Akhmatova, was an ethnographer, historian and philosopher. He was profoundly influenced by the book of the Kalmuck eurasist E. Khara-Vadan “Gengis-Khan as an army leader” and by the works of Savitsky. In its own works Gumilev developed the fundamental eurasist theses. Towards the end of his life he used to call himself “the last of the eurasists.” 

Basic elements of Gumilev’s theory

  • The theory of passionarity [passionarnost’] as a development of the eurasist idealism;
  • The essence of which, in his own view, lays in the fact that every ethnos, as a natural formation, is subject to the influence of some “energetic drives,” born out of the cosmos and causing the “passionarity effect,” that is an extreme activity and intensity of life. In such conditions the ethnos undergoes a “genetic mutation,” which leads to the birth of the “passionaries”–individuals of a special temper and talent. And those become the creators of new ethnoi, cultures, and states;
  • Drawing the scientific attention upon the proto-history of the “nomad empires” of the East and the discovery of the colossal ethnic and cultural heritage of the autochthone ancient Asian peoples, which was wholly passed to the great culture of the ancient epoch, but afterwards fell into oblivion (Huns, Turks, Mongols, and so on);
  • The development of a turkophile attitude in the theory of “ethnic complementarity.”

0_9b9e1_f9f45d79_L.jpgAn ethnos is in general any set of individuals, any “collective”: people, population, nation, tribe, family clan, based on a common historical destiny. “Our Great-Russian ancestors–wrote Gumilev–in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries easily and rather quickly mixed with the Volga, Don and Obi Tatars and with the Buriates, who assimilated the Russian culture. The same Great-Russian easily mixed with the Yakuts, absorbing their identity and gradually coming into friendly contact with Kazakhs and Kalmucks. Through marriage links they pacifically coexisted with the Mongols in Central Asia, as the Mongols themselves and the Turks between the 14th and 16th centuries were fused with the Russians in Central Russia.” Therefore the history of the Muscovite Rus’ cannot be understood without the framework of the ethnic contacts between Russians and Tatars and the history of the Eurasian continent.

The advent of neo-eurasism: historical and social context

The crisis of the Soviet paradigm

In the mid-1980s the Soviet society began to lose its connection and ability to adequately reflect upon the external environment and itself. The Soviet models of self-understanding were showing their cracks. The society had lost its sense of orientation. Everybody felt the need for change, yet this was but a confused feeling, as no-one could tell the way the change would come from. In that time a rather unconvincing divide began to form: “forces of progress” and “forces of reaction,” “reformers” and “conservators of the past,” “partisans of reforms” and “enemies of reforms.” 

Infatuation for the western models

In that situation the term “reform” became in itself a synonym of “liberal-democracy.” A hasty conclusion was inferred, from the objective fact of the crisis of the Soviet system, about the superiority of the western model and the necessity to copy it. At the theoretical level this was all but self-evident, since the “ideological map” offers a sharply more diversified system of choices than the primitive dualism: socialism vs. capitalism, Warsaw Pact vs. NATO. Yet it was just that primitive logic that prevailed: the “partisans of reform” became the unconditional apologists of the West, whose structure and logic they were ready to assimilate, while the “enemies of reform” proved to be the inertial preservers of the late Soviet system, whose structure and logic they grasped less and less. In such condition of lack of balance, the reformers/pro-westerners had on their side a potential of energy, novelty, expectations of change, creative drive, perspectives, while the “reactionaries” had nothing left but inertness, immobilism, the appeal to the customary and already-known. In just this psychological and aesthetic garb, liberal-democratic policy prevailed in the Russia of the 1990s, although nobody had been allowed to make a clear and conscious choice.

The collapse of the state unity

The result of “reforms” was the collapse of the Soviet state unity and the beginning of the fall of Russia as the heir of the USSR. The destruction of the Soviet system and “rationality” was not accompanied by the creation of a new system and a new rationality in conformity to national and historical conditions. There gradually prevailed a peculiar attitude toward Russia and her national history: the past, present and future of Russia began to be seen from the point of view of the West, to be evaluated as something stranger, transcending, alien (“this country” was the “reformers’” typical expression). That was not the Russian view of the West, as the Western view of Russia. No wonder that in such condition the adoption of the western schemes even in the “reformers’” theory was invoked not in order to create and strengthen the structure of the national state unity, but in order to destroy its remains. The destruction of the state was not a casual outcome of the “reforms”; as a matter of fact, it was among their strategic aims.

The birth of an anti-western (anti-liberal) opposition in the post-Soviet environment

In the course of the “reforms” and their “deepening,” the inadequacy of the simple reaction began to be clear to everyone. In that period (1989–90) began the formation of a “national-patriotic opposition,” in which there was the confluence of part of the “Soviet conservatives” (ready to a minimal level of reflection), groups of “reformers” disappointed with “reforms” or “having become conscious of their anti-state direction,” and groups of representatives of the patriotic movements, which had already formed during the perestroika and tried to shape the sentiment of “state power” [derzhava] in a non-communist (orthodox-monarchic, nationalist, etc.) context. With a severe delay, and despite the complete absence of external strategic, intellectual and material support, the conceptual model of post-Soviet patriotism began to vaguely take shape.

Neo-eurasism

Neo-eurasism arose in this framework as an ideological and political phenomenon, gradually turning into one of the main directions of the post-Soviet Russian patriotic self-consciousness. 

Stages of development of the neo-eurasist ideology

1st stage (1985–90)

  • Dugin’s seminars and lectures to various groups of the new-born conservative-patriotic movement. Criticism of the Soviet paradigm as lacking the spiritual and national qualitative element.
  • In 1989 first publications on the review Sovetskaya literatura [Soviet Literature]. Dugin’s books are issued in Italy (Continente Russia [Continent Russia], 1989) and in Spain (Rusia Misterio de Eurasia [Russia, Mystery of Eurasia], 1990).
  • In 1990 issue of René Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World with comments by Dugin, and of Dugin’s Puti Absoljuta [The Paths of the Absolute], with the exposition of the foundations of the traditionalist philosophy.

In these years eurasism shows “right-wing conservative” features, close to historical traditionalism, with orthodox-monarchic, “ethnic-pochevennik” [i.e., linked to the ideas of soil and land] elements, sharply critical of “Left-wing” ideologies.

2nd stage (1991–93)

  • Begins the revision of anti-communism, typical of the first stage of neo-eurasism. Revaluation of the Soviet period in the spirit of “national-bolshevism” and “Left-wing eurasism.”
  • Journey to Moscow of the main representatives of the “New Right” (Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, Carlo Terracciano, Marco Battarra, Claudio Mutti and others).
  • Eurasism becomes popular among the patriotic opposition and the intellectuals. On the basis of terminological affinity, A. Sakharov already speaks about Eurasia, though only in a strictly geographic–instead of political and geopolitical–sense (and without ever making use of eurasism in itself, like he was before a convinced atlantist); a group of “democrats” tries to start a project of “democratic eurasism” (G. Popov, S. Stankevic, L. Ponomarev).
  • O. Lobov, O. Soskovets, S. Baburin also speak about their own eurasism.
  • In 1992–93 is issued the first number of Elements: Eurasist Review. Lectures on geopolitics and the foundations of eurasism in high schools and universities. Many translations, articles, seminars.

3rd stage (1994–98): theoretical development of the neo-eurasist orthodoxy

  • Issue of Dugin’s main works Misterii Evrazii [Mysteries of Eurasia] (1996), Konspirologija [Conspirology] (1994), Osnovy Geopolitiki [Foundations of geopolitics] (1996), Konservativnaja revoljutsija [The conservative revolution] (1994), Tampliery proletariata [Knight Templars of the Proletariat] (1997). Works of Trubetskoy, Vernadsky, Alekseev and Savitsky are issued by “Agraf” editions (1995–98).
  • Creation of the “Arctogaia” web-site (1996) – www.arctogaia.com [2].
  • Direct and indirect references to eurasism appear in the programs of the KPFR (Communist Party], LDPR [Liberal-Democratic Party], NDR [New Democratic Russia] (that is left, right, and centre). Growing number of publications on eurasist themes. Issue of many eurasist digests.
  • Criticism of eurasism from Russian nationalists, religious fundamentalists and orthodox communists, and also from the liberals.
  • Manifestations of an academic “weak” version of eurasism (Prof. A. S. Panarin, V. Ya. Paschenko, F.Girenok and others) – with elements of the illuminist paradigm, denied by the eurasist orthodoxy – then evolving towards more radically anti-western, anti-liberal and anti-gobalist positions.
  • Inauguration of a university dedicated to L. Gumilev in Astan [Kazakhstan].

4th stage (1998–2001)

  • Gradual de-identification of neo-eurasism vis-à-vis the collateral political-cultural and party manifestations; turning to the autonomous direction (“Arctogaia,” “New University,” “Irruption” [Vtorzhenie]) outside the opposition and the extreme Left and Right-wing movements.
  • Apology of staroobrjadchestvo [Old Rite].
  • Shift to centrist political positions, supporting Primakov as the new premier. Dugin becomes the adviser to the Duma speaker G. N. Seleznev.
  • Issue of the eurasist booklet Nash put’ [Our Path] (1998).
  • Issue of Evraziikoe Vtorzhenie [Eurasist Irruption] as a supplement to Zavtra. Growing distance from the opposition and shift closer to the government’s positions.
  • Theoretical researches, elaborations, issue of “The Russian Thing” [Russkaja vesch’] (2001), publications in Nezavisimaja Gazeta, Moskovskij Novosti, radio broadcasts about “Finis Mundi” on Radio 101, radio broadcasts on geopolitical subjects and neo-eurasism on Radio “Svobodnaja Rossija” (1998–2000).

5th stage (2001–2002)

  • Foundation of the Pan-Russian Political Social Movement EURASIA on “radical centre” positions; declaration of full support to the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin (April 21, 2001).
  • The leader of the Centre of Spiritual Management of the Russian Muslims, sheik-ul-islam Talgat Tadjuddin, adheres to EURASIA.
  • Issue of the periodical Evraziizkoe obozrenie [Eurasist Review].
  • Appearance of Jewish neo-eurasism (A. Eskin, A. Shmulevic, V. Bukarsky).
  • Creation of the web-site of the Movement EURASIA: www.eurasia.com.ru [3]
  • Conference on “Islamic Threat or Threat to Islam?.” Intervention by H. A. Noukhaev, Chechen theorist of “Islamic eurasism” (“Vedeno or Washington?,” Moscow, 2001].
  • Issue of books by E. Khara-Davan and Ya. Bromberg (2002).
  • Process of transformation of the Movement EURASIA into a party (2002).

Basic philosophical positions of neo-eurasism

pour-une-theorie-du-monde-multipolaire.jpgAt the theoretical level neo-eurasism consists of the revival of the classic principles of the movement in a qualitatively new historical phase, and of the transformation of such principles into the foundations of an ideological and political program and a world-view. The heritage of the classic eurasists was accepted as the fundamental world-view for the ideal (political) struggle in the post-Soviet period, as the spiritual-political platform of “total patriotism.”

The neo-eurasists took over the basic positions of classical eurasism, chose them as a platform, as starting points, as the main theoretical bases and foundations for the future development and practical use. In the theoretical field, neo-eurasists consciously developed the main principles of classical eurasism taking into account the wide philosophical, cultural and political framework of the ideas of the 20th century.

Each one of the main positions of the classical eurasists (see the chapter on the “Foundations of classical eurasism”) revived its own conceptual development.

Civilization concept

Criticism of the western bourgeois society from “Left-wing” (social) positions was superimposed to the criticism of the same society from “Right-wing” (civilizational) positions. The eurasist idea about “rejecting the West” is reinforced by the rich weaponry of the “criticism of the West” by the same representatives of the West who disagree with the logic of its development (at least in the last centuries). The eurasist came only gradually, since the end of the 1980s to the mid-1990s, to this idea of the fusion of the most different (and often politically contradictory) concepts denying the “normative” character of the Western civilization.

The “criticism of the Roman-German civilization” was thoroughly stressed, being based on the prioritary analysis of the Anglo-Saxon world, of the US. According to the spirit of the German Conservative Revolution and of the European “New Right,” the “Western world” was differentiated into an Atlantic component (the US and England) and into a continental European component (properly speaking, a Roman-German component). Continental Europe is seen here as a neutral phenomenon, liable to be integrated–on some given conditions–in the eurasist project.

The spatial factor

Neo-eurasism is moved by the idea of the complete revision of the history of philosophy according to spatial positions. Here we find its trait-d’union in the most varied models of the cyclical vision of history, from Danilevsky to Spengler, from Toynbee to Gumilev.

Such a principle finds its most pregnant expression in traditionalist philosophy, which denies the ideas of evolution and progress and founds this denial upon detailed metaphysical calculations. Hence the traditional theory of “cosmic cycles,” of the “multiple states of Being,” of “sacred geography,” and so on. The basic principles of the theory of cycles are illustrated in detail by the works of Guénon (and his followers G. Georgel, T. Burckhardt, M. Eliade, H. Corbin). A full rehabilitation has been given to the concept of “traditional society,” either knowing no history at all, or realizing it according to the rites and myths of the “eternal return.” The history of Russia is seen not simply as one of the many local developments, but as the vanguard of the spatial system (East) opposed to the “temporal” one (West). 

State and nation

Dialectics of national history

It is led up to its final, “dogmatical” formulation, including the historiosophic paradigm of “national-bolshevism” (N. Ustryalov) and its interpretation (M. Agursky). The pattern is as follows:

  • The Kiev period as the announcement of the forthcoming national mission (IX-XIII centuries);
  • Mongolian-Tatar invasion as a scud against the levelling European trends, the geopolitical and administrative push of the Horde is handed over to the Russians, division of the Russians between western and eastern Russians, differentiation among cultural kinds, formation of the Great-Russians on the basis of the “eastern Russians” under the Horde’s control (13th–15th centuries);
  • The Muscovite Empire as the climax of the national-religious mission of Rus’ (Third Rome) (15th–end of the 17th century);
  • Roman-German yoke (Romanov), collapse of national unity, separation between a pro-western elite and the national mass (end of the 17th-beginning of the 20th century);
  • Soviet period, revenge of the national mass, period of the “Soviet messianism,” re-establishment of the basic parameters of the main muscovite line (20th century);
  • Phase of troubles, that must end with a new eurasist push (beginning of the 21st century).

Political platform

Neo-eurasism owns the methodology of Vilfrido Pareto’s school, moves within the logic of the rehabilitation of “organic hierarchy,” gathers some Nietzschean motives, develops the doctrine of the “ontology of power,” of the Christian Orthodox concept of power as “kat’echon.” The idea of “elite” completes the constructions of the European traditionalists, authors of researches about the system of castes in the ancient society and of their ontology and sociology (R. Guénon, J. Evola, G. Dumézil, L. Dumont). Gumilev’s theory of “passionarity” lies at the roots of the concept of “new eurasist elite.”

The thesis of “demotia” is the continuation of the political theories of the “organic democracy” from J.-J. Rousseau to C. Schmitt, J. Freund, A. de Benoist and A. Mueller van der Bruck. Definition of the eurasist concept of “democracy” (“demotia”) as the “participation of the people to its own destiny.”

The thesis of “ideocracy” gives a foundation to the call to the ideas of “conservative revolution” and “third way,” in the light of the experience of Soviet, Israeli and Islamic ideocracies, analyses the reason of their historical failure. The critical reflection upon the qualitative content of the 20th century ideocracy brings to the consequent criticism of the Soviet period (supremacy of quantitative concepts and secular theories, disproportionate weight of the classist conception).

The following elements contribute to the development of the ideas of the classical eurasists:

The philosophy of traditionalism (Guénon, Evola, Burckhardt, Corbin), the idea of the radical decay of the “modern world,” profound teaching of the Tradition. The global concept of “modern world” (negative category) as the antithesis of the “world of Tradition” (positive category) gives the criticism of the Western civilization a basic metaphysic character, defining the eschatological, critical, fatal content of the fundamental (intellectual, technological, political and economic) processes having their origin in the West. The intuitions of the Russian conservatives, from the slavophiles to the classical eurasists, are completed by a fundamental theoretical base. (see A. Dugin, Absoljutnaja Rodina [The Absolute Homeland], Moscow 1999; Konets Sveta [The End of the World], Moscow 1997; Julius Evola et le conservatisme russe, Rome 1997).

The investigation on the origins of sacredness (M. Eliade, C. G. Jung, C. Levi-Strauss), the representations of the archaic consciousness as the paradigmatic complex manifestation laying at the roots of culture. The reduction of the many-sided human thinking, of culture, to ancient psychic layers, where fragments of archaic initiatic rites, myths, originary sacral complexes are concentrated. Interpretation of the content of rational culture through the system of the ancient, pre-rational beliefs (A. Dugin, “The evolution of the paradigmatic foundations of science” [Evoljutsija paradigmal’nyh osnovanij nauki], Moscow 2002).

The search for the symbolic paradigms of the space-time matrix, which lays at the roots of rites, languages and symbols (H. Wirth, paleo-epigraphic investigations). This attempt to give a foundation to the linguistic (Svityc-Illic), epigraphic (runology), mythological, folkloric, ritual and different monuments allows to rebuild an original map of the “sacred concept of the world” common to all the ancient Eurasian peoples, the existence of common roots (see A. Dugin Giperborejskaja Teorija [Hyperborean Theory], Moscow 1993.

A reassessment of the development of geopolitical ideas in the West (Mackinder, Haushofer, Lohhausen, Spykman, Brzeszinski, Thiriart and others). Since Mackinder’s epoch, geopolitical science has sharply evolved. The role of geopolitical constants in 20th century history appeared so clear as to make geopolitics an autonomous discipline. Within the geopolitical framework, the concept itself of “eurasism” and “Eurasia” acquired a new, wider meaning.

From some time onwards, eurasism, in a geopolitical sense, began to indicate the continental configuration of a strategic (existing or potential) bloc, created around Russia or its enlarged base, and as an antagonist (either actively or passively) to the strategic initiatives of the opposed geopolitical pole–“Atlantism,” at the head of which at the mid-20th century the US came to replace England.

The philosophy and the political idea of the Russian classics of eurasism in this situation have been considered as the most consequent and powerful expression (fulfilment) of eurasism in its strategic and geopolitical meaning. Thanks to the development of geopolitical investigations (A. Dugin, Osnovye geopolitiki [Foundations of geopolitics], Moscow 1997) neo-eurasism becomes a methodologically evolved phenomenon. Especially remarkable is the meaning of the Land – Sea pair (according to Carl Schmitt), the projection of this pair upon a plurality of phenomena – from the history of religions to economics.

The search for a global alternative to globalism, as an ultra-modern phenomenon, summarizing everything that is evaluated by eurasism (and neo-eurasism) as negative. Eurasism in a wider meaning becomes the conceptual platform of anti-globalism, or of the alternative globalism. “Eurasism” gathers all contemporary trends denying globalism any objective (let alone positive) content; it offers the anti-globalist intuition a new character of doctrinal generalization.

The assimilation of the social criticism of the “New Left” into a “conservative right-wing interpretation” (reflection upon the heritage of M. Foucault, G. Deleuze, A. Artaud, G. Debord). Assimilation of the critical thinking of the opponents of the bourgeois western system from the positions of anarchism, neo-marxism and so on. This conceptual pole represents a new stage of development of the “Left-wing” (national-bolshevik) tendencies existing also among the first eurasists (Suvchinskij, Karsavin, Efron), and also a method for the mutual understanding with the “left” wing of anti-globalism.

“Third way” economics, “autarchy of the great spaces.” Application of heterodox economic models to the post-Soviet Russian reality. Application of F. List’s theory of the “custom unions.” Actualization of the theories of S. Gesell. F. Schumpeter, F. Leroux, new eurasist reading of Keynes.

Source: Ab Aeterno, no. 3, June 2010.

 


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URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/12/milestones-of-eurasism/

dimanche, 15 décembre 2013

Israel es el único aliado fiel que le queda a Arabia Saudí

Ex: http://www.elespiadigital.com

Israel es el único aliado serio que le queda a Arabia Saudí, señala el periódico Al Akhbar. Los saudíes creen que ellos están apostando por un caballo que ganará la carrera, pero Israel se enfrenta, en realidad, a una crisis estratégica. En definitiva, es posible afirmar que Israel se sirve de Arabia Saudí para obtener más territorios en Cisjordania, expandir más los asentamientos y seguir adelante con la judaización de Jerusalén.

Sin embargo, Tel Aviv no tiene nada que ofrecer a Arabia Saudí en contrapartida. El reino está, pues, en vías de suicidarse.

Un despertar saudí de esta realidad es siempre posible, pero el tiempo es muy limitado. Tal hecho sería prácticamente un milagro, señala el periódico.

Por otro lado, medios israelíes han subrayado recientemente la existencia de contactos entre Israel y Arabia Saudí, que comparten un cierto número de intereses en la región frente a la “aproximación irano-estadounidense”.

Yediot Aharonot considera que estos contactos han alcanzado su punto álgido porque ambos países temen el programa nuclear de Irán y están interesados en luchar contra Hezbolá en Siria.

Arabia Saudí no abandonará a sus protegidos en Siria debido a EEUU y todavía posee medios para proseguir esta guerra, señalan analistas israelíes.

Los medios israelís creen que existe una oportunidad histórica para que Israel se alíe con Arabia Saudí.

Los “enemigos comunes” y los intereses económicos llevarán a ambos a alcanzar esta alianza, señalaron dichos medios.

dimanche, 08 décembre 2013

TWO STUDIES ON NEO-EURASIANISM

das-sakrale-eurasische-imperium-des-aleksandr-dugin-074326820.jpg

TWO STUDIES ON NEO-EURASIANISM

by Martin A. Schwarz

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org

Marlene Laruelle: Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, 288 p.

Alexander Höllwerth: Das sakrale eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin. Eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen Rechtsextremismus. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 59. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag 2007. 735 p.

Different strands of Russian Eurasianism (Laruelle, part 1)

Marlene Laruelle, a young but prolific French-American scholar, who has already published books about the classic Eurasianism and about its precursor in the 19th century, has now written “Russian Eurasianism. An ideology of Empire”, one of the first comprehensive academic studies of Neo-Eurasianism, or at least in the West. In difference to other works of this kind, the author sticks to her principles of impartiality, which does not mean that she does not present her own theories about history and function of Eurasianism as an “ideology of Empire”, but, in her own words “this book analyzes Neo-Eurasianism without judging it, for two reasons. First, I do not think one may, either methodologically or ethically, judge and analyze at the same time. Knowledge is a prerequisite of argument, but the former must precede the latter. Second, as Pierre-André Taguieff has remarked, ‘There is no need to put words into an author’s mouth or demonize him in order to critically examine theses that one believes must be opposed.’” (Laruelle, p. 13)
 
russian-eurasianism--an-ideology-of-empire.jpgAfter a brief introduction in which she points to the relevance of the subject, her different approach (as mentioned), and the specific weight of the personalities she choose for presentation, the first chapter is devoted to the original Eurasianism from 1920-1930. This is a rather brief outline, as she has already written a book on the subject (L’Idéologie eurasiste russe ou comment penser l’empire, Paris 1999) , and brings not many new or original informations about a movement, which was the “conservative revolution” á la Russe, borrowing from Fascism and Bolshevism, but denouncing their short-comings and “Western” features. Two things though seem to be central for Laruelle’s understanding of the Eurasianists: the notion of a “geographic identity” for Russians, instead of the Western self-understanding of a “historic” and therefore progressive understanding of the identity of nations (which of course was transferred as “historical materialism” to Russia, and also was promoted by liberals and – inverted – by nostalgic monarchists). Therefore the geographic orientation of Eurasianism lies at the core of the movement, but was paradoxically developed in the Western exile: “The Eurasianist doctrine must be grasped in its fundamentally provocative character. It was born of the malaise of young nationalists who were reluctant to integrate into the host culture and who refused to resign themselves to the thought that links with homeland were definitely broken. Their rejection of Europe can only be understood if we remember that it was elaborated in the West by those Russians who, culturally speaking, were the most Europeanized.” (p. 25) While it is undeniable true, that Eurasianism as self-affirmation could only become self-knowledge in the encounter and subsequently (at least partial) rejection of Western ideologies, Laruelle shows a tendency to psychologize the phenomenon: “(Eurasianism) attempts to theorize what is above all an experience and a feeling: the experience of young men in exile who feel humiliated by the defeat of the Whites and try to understand the reality of the motherland and stay in touch with it.” (p. 47)
 
Another paradox or ambiguity can be found in the Eurasianist re-evaluation of the Far Eastern part of Russian history and culture, the Mongolic and Islamic one. „(…) before Eurasianism in the 1920s, no Russian intellectual movement displayed a real openness to the Turko-Mongol world. Asia was only ever highlighted under the aspects of Aryanism; it was a mere detour to reinforced claims of Europeaness.“ (p. 4) While this heritage was now used by the Eurasianists as an argument for the distinction of Russia not only to Western Europe but also to Pan-Slavism, the religions and cultures of Buddhism and Islam as such were denigrated in favor of a militant Orthodox Christianity. As the final parts of this book are dedicated to the relation between (neo-)Eurasianism and Islam, this question has not to be answered at this point.
 
After this brief, not very differentiated presentation of the original Eurasianists, Laruelle looks more in detail in the thinking of the three most influential neo-Eurasianists. These are, in her words “the theories of ethnogenesis elaborated by the Orientalist Lev N. Gumilëv (1912-92); the fascistic geopolitics of the fashionable theorist Aleksandr Dugin (1962-); the philosopher Aleksandr Panarin’s (1940-2003) defense of a multipolar world.” (p. 2)
 
Lev Gumilëv, the missing link – or rather: not missing link – between “old” and “new” Eurasianism enjoys nearly universal popularity in Russia. His theories of Ethnogenesis are generally excepted and taught in schools and universities, often without reference to the Eurasianist Weltanschauung, although they are deeply connected with their organic understanding of peoples and societies. While Gumilëv shares with the Eurasianists the idea that the individual draws the meaning from the totality, Gumilëv’s theory of ethnos is definitively on the more biologistic and deterministic side of possible variations of this idea. One that, as I must say, does not fit well with the ideas of an supra-natural origin of culture, which is the normal religious concept, and also especially stressed by the representatives of integral traditionalism (René Guénon, Julius Evola, and others), whose ideas were introduced to neo-Eurasianism by Aleksandr Dugin and Geidar Dzhemal. As Laruelle writes, “he [Gumilëv] takes up the original Eurasianists’ organicism and radicalizes it, using numerous biological or even genetic metaphors with far-reaching political implications”, although “he does not, strictly speaking, develop a political theory; and […| he cannot be considered a partisan of conservative revolution.” (p. 82) Instead he stressed (as must remembered: in the time of Soviet stagnation of the Brezhnev era) very social conservative norms: endogamy, family life, respect for the elderly, the nation, and rejection of any challenge to the powers that be, all necessary for the survival of the ethnos. Laruelle considers him – understandably – “the least intellectually relevant and the least original (Neo-)Eurasianist.” (p. 82) As Gumilëv was neither in touch with Western intellectuals nor in tune with Soviet science , “his thought, the product of intellectual solitude, was fundamentally autistic” (p. 82), This result, if true, is by the way in striking contradiction to his notion of the supremacy of the collective ethnos as a sovereign whole, and also a total contrast to the very mercurial and alert ideologue of Neo-Eurasianism, Aleksandr Dugin, well-known in the West and very present in Russian media.
 
Before devoting space to Dugin, Laruelle discusses Aleksandr Panarin, whom she clearly favors. She calls him intellectually superior to Dugin and Gumilëv, or to be exact: she writes that “many”, but unnamed “Russian scholars” (p. 86) did consider him to be. Be this at it may, Panarin was in the Yeltsin era a promoter of “people’s capitalism” (p. 87) and in the Putin era an advocate of “the restoration of both Orthodox spirituality and Stalinist statehood.” (p. 88) Maybe he could be considered as flexible or opportunist as Dugin? Nevertheless he presented a “civilized Eurasianism”, “civilized” here being the indicator of “the exact opposite to Dugin’s variety.” (p. 88) Nevertheless Panarin became a member of the Central Council of Dugin’s Eurasian Party in 2002, and planned to write a foreword to a book by Dugin, but as Laruelle writes, “death put an end to this unlikely cooperation.” (p. 89) Panarin’s work was marked by the search for a third way, “between the West’s egalitarian universalism and the ethnic particularism of the non-European world.” (p. 93) Panarin’s model for an Eurasian Empire in his words, as quoted by Laruelle: “The principle of cultural pluralism, as well as attention and tolerance for different ethnocultural experiences are combined with a monist political authority that tolerates no opposition.” (p. 97) One of the intriguing but also problematic ideas of Panarin was the need for a combination of the Eurasian religions into something, what he calls the “Great Tradition” (p. 98), especially a fusion between Orthodox Christianity and Islam. In his quoted words: “We need a new, powerful world-saving idea that would ensure a consensus between Orthodox and Muslim culture for the benefit of a common higher goal.” (p. 99) Later he seemed to have abandoned this attempt in favor of an Orthodox supremacism and a renewed pan-Slavism, according to Laruelle in reaction to the NATO bombardment of Serbia. (p. 100)
 
The chapter on Aleksandr Dugin in titled “Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?“ and was published before as a study by the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, DC. While the title indicates the direction and the somewhat limited approach to the multi-faceted Dugin, it can be said that this attempt to analyze the influences of the New Right and the „Traditionalist school“ on Dugin’s theories is of much superior quality than the ramblings of the ubiquous Andreas Umland and his school of Dugin bashing. Like the New Right in Western Europe Dugin has attempted to adopt the teachings of Carl Schmitt, Karl Haushofer, Ernst Niekisch and Moeller van den Bruck, the so-called “Conservative Revolution” in Germany’s Weimar period, to the present situation of Russia, which largely means the attempted forced Westernization through Globalization and the counter-measures of the re-establishment of state power. This “conservative revolution” intellectual heritage is accompanied by two more currents, the New Right or rather: Nouvelle Droite, and the „integral Tradition“, both not so much of German but French and Italian origins, although the thinking of Alain de Benoist not only has a strong „Conservative Revolutionary“ foundation, but was also influenced by Armin Mohler, the personal link between Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt, and Alain de Benoist. Additionally and largely unrelated to Benoist was the Belgian European activist Jean Thirirat, whose model of an „European nation“ has preformed Dugin’s „Eurasian nation“ as much as the French Nouvelle Droite’s think tank GRECE and their meta-political approach did for the somehow fluctuating style of Dugin’s intellectual enterprises. Therefore Laruelle is not mislead, when she writes: “Dugin distinguishes himself from other figures in the Russian nationalist movements precisely through his militant Europeanism, his exaltation of the Western Middle Ages, and his admiration for Germany. All these ideological features contrast strongly with the ethnocentrism of his competitors.“ (p. 128)
 
Even more on the point is her acknowledgment of the influence of René Guénon and Julius Evola, and their minor intellectual allies and successors, on Dugin. She calls „Traditionalism“ the „foundation of Dugin’s thoughts“. While it can correctly be said, that the notion of a primordial Tradition as the common origin of all the religious-cultural traditions of Eurasia, can not be found in the writings of the „founding fathers“ of Eurasianism and was directly alien to some of their ideas – the rambling against the „Roman-Germanic civilization“ - , nevertheless Dugin could find only here the organic and integral solution to some of the most urgent problems of Russia’s Eurasian (com)position between Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and other more minor elements: the transcendent – esoteric - unity of the exoteric different heirs of one primordial Tradition. Which is why – in our not Laruelle’s view – and without considering possible personal idiosyncrasy and political opportunism, his brand of neo-Eurasianism must be considered superior to those of his „competitors“, take for example the ill-fated attempt of Panarin’s Islam/Orthodoxy „melting pot“. Dugin’s claim of post-Guénonism because of his attempt to „Russify“ Guénon and to criticize the lack of references to Orthodox Christianity (p. 123), should be seen rather as a complementary effort. Similar is his attempt to reconcile Evolian „paganism“ (p. 123), or rather Aryanism, with Russian Christianity, with its strong national element. And not only of theoretically value is the distinction between Traditional Islam – as represented in the Sufi traditions and in Shiite Iran – and the Western-allied Wahhabite branch. In this context Laruelle makes reference to the important symposium “Islamic Threat or Threat against Islam?” (p. 118) which intended to establish a Russian-Muslim strategic partnership.

A „discourse analysis“ of Aleksandr Dugin (Höllwerth)

Alexander Höllwerth’s doctor thesis in Salzburg (Austria) on the „sacred Eurasian empire of Alexander Dugin“ impresses by it sheer quantity of more than 700 pages. The reader expects to gain access to fundamental texts of Russian neo-Eurasianism, otherwise only available in Russian. This expectation is fulfilled only partially because the author does give way to much space to his own objections, considerations and assumptions. A part called „contextualisations“, which brings nothing new, but gives an oversight of the historical Eurasianist movement, follows the book’s methodological reflections (reaching from Foucault’s discourse notion to Buruma’s occidentalism model).
 
Höllwerth then summarizes the literature from Stephen Shenfield („Russian Fascism“) to Andreas Umland (who is the editor of this volume and wrote its preface) on the biography of Aleksandr Dugin. He gives his estimation of the relationship between the subject of the book and the current Russian regime. Höllwerth states that Dugin is one of the few prominent intellectuals in Russia whom it is allowed to criticize the Kremlin without being banned from public discourse into the small niches of opposition media (which are rather the domain of Dugin’s enemies, the Western orientated liberals). Dugin has written in 2005 that the “acting of Putin can be evaluated as an artificially masked continuation of the pro-American, liberal, pro-oligarch strategy of Yeltsin, as a camouflage of the decline of Russia and its geopolitical spheres of influence.” (Höllwerth, p. 182) But this harsh assessment was followed by a phase of “reconciliation”. One could consider this as an evaluation of differing politics by a principled intellectual, the changes being on the side of the Kremlin and not on the side of the commentator. Höllwerth tends to mystify this point of view, but with the help of Dugin himself or rather his edition of Jean Parvulesco’s book “Putin and the Eurasian Empire” which differentiates between “Putin-1”, the real Putin, and “Putin-2”, the metaphysical Putin, the “mysterious builder of the Great Eurasian Empire of the End” (p. 184), the agent or tool of the great Eurasian conspiracy, a vulgarized or at least popularized variation of the initiation as described by René Guénon, but assuming in the sketch of Parvulesco rather counter-initiative features.
 
But what is the real and not “metaphysical” influence of Aleksandr Dugin, according to Höllwerth? “The attempt to estimate the ‘real political influence’ of Dugin is confronted with the difficulty to separate the plane of staging from the plane of factuality. This difficulty, with which the external scholar is confronted, seems to be part of a conscious strategy: the meaning of Dugin’s staging does, metaphorically put, not be to let the viewer look behind the scenery of the staging, but to focus his attention on the staging itself. (…) ‘Behind the scenery’ activities in connection with the Dugin phenomenon (secret services, political string-pullers, etc.) can not be excluded, are even probable, but should not lead to ambitious speculations based on few evidences.” (p. 194 f.) By the way, a sensationalist piece of work, based on such “ambitious speculations based on few evidences” was published by the same publishing house, which did not dare to include it in their scientific series and did flank it with cautious remarks. (Vladimir Ivanov: Alexander Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke. Fakten und Hypothesen zu den internationalen Verflechtungen der russischen Neuen Rechten. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2007) And of course also with a preface by the inevitable Andreas Umland. A work to be put on the same shelve with Jean Parvulesco’s political fiction, but one has to admit that it has better entertainment value than Höllwerth’s rather sour work.
 
With page 197 starts the real discourse-theoretical body of the book, being also the real achievement of Höllwerth: „Dugin’s construction of world and reality“. Which is itself parted into three: Space, Order, Time, or also: Geopolitics, State, and History. But through these 500 pages goes one leitmotif: Höllwerth tries to reduce the complexity of Dugin’s system of synthesis and distinction to simple dualisms; we and the other, Eurasia (=Russia) against the West, Empire against democracy, etc., which are in return recognized as redundant repetitions of one and only mantra of power. After Dugin’s philosophy and policy has passed through Höllwerth’s mechanism of discourse analysis we arrive at exactly the same result, a more temporizing genius like Andreas Umland did achieve with one piece of paper and only two quotes of Dugin out of context: the exposure of a dangerous enemy of freedom and democracy. Vade retro, Dugin! But with Höllwerth’s help the Western reader can uplift himself by dining from a broad protruding self-affirmation of Western values with a more than saturating scientific apparatus.
 
The most compelling aspect of Höllwerth’s de- and reconstruction of Dugin’s discourse is its stringent structure. Also the obvious inclusion of the most important Western and Eastern authors must be noted. The confrontation with the matadors of Western liberalism (Jürgen Habermas, Sir Karl Popper, Bassam Tibi, Jean-François Lyotard) could be seen as helpful. But the extensive reproduced arguments of Dugin’s counter-parts are put on the same level of discourse with Dugin, even where Höllwerth notes the metaphysical character of Dugin’s traditionalists argument. The resulting impossibility of a dialogue between equals is construed by Höllwerth as a deficit of Dugin’s discourse.
 
Another example of Höllwerth’s inadequate approach: Höllwerth did indeed – and this is rather remark- and laudable - read the French metaphysician René Guénon. But only to point out the deviations of Dugin from the Guénon traditionalist “standard”, which is rather pointless, because Höllwerth himself has already classified Dugin correctly as Russian Evolianist (p. 355 ff.) and most of Höllwerth’s arguments seemingly advocating Guénon could also been directed against Julius Evola, and on this subject a large intra-traditionalist discussion could be cited. More than once Höllwerth argues that Dugin postulates a metaphysical dichotomy of East and West, while Guénon did stress the common original unity and only accepted a difference East-West since the decline of the West beginning with the modern era. But the West is the Occident, the sphere of sunset, by definition, and essential before the temporal decline began. So Dugin and Guénon are both correct, if they are read correctly!
 
Not unrelated is another important objection, which may indeed be problematic if true. This is the dependency of Dugin not only from Western authors in general, but also in his understanding of Eastern, meaning mainly Russian-Orthodox authors. Höllwerth tries to argue this in detail in some examples (for example: p. 664 ff.), this unfortunately cannot be assessed by me, due to my lack of knowledge of the Russian sources. But one thing is clear, this argument of Western influence can cut in two directions. Höllwerth points out that in one of Dugin’s best known texts “The metaphysics of national-bolshevism” Dugin does refer to Sir Karl Popper’s view of Platon, (p. 320 ff.) but everything the ideologue of the “open society” does characterize negatively is affirmed by Dugin, therefore he arrives at the holistic, total state of the philosophical rulers and the caste of watchers, this not through an adequate study of Platon, but as the reverse of an one-sided caricature made by Popper. If we see the Western history of philosophy not as a footnote to Platon, as was famously said, but as the decline from Platon to Popper, which really was the case, we can still see a partial truth in Höllwerth’s criticism of Western dependency by Dugin, but we have also to recast it into a much greater blame against the West, not to have remained true to its origin.
 
The adherence of Dugin to a kind – and which kind - of nationalism or a nation-transcending form of Eurasianism would be another question which would need a deeper consideration than Höllwerth provides. The question of nation can in the East not be separated from the confession. From the point of view of metaphysics and tradition (in the sense of René Guénon) most of the values attributed to the Russian nation should be rather connected with the Russian-Orthodox church. The formulation of the “angels of peoples” by the great Russian philosophers and theologians are thought from the premise of the identity nation=religion and correct for all authentic traditions but certainly not for nations in the modern Western sense, where Evola’s and Guénon’s critique of nationalism is totally applicable. Höllwerth’s attempt to find a contradiction between Dugin and the different strands of thought which convene in his own – traditionalist, conservative revolutionary, Orthodox and Russian – can therefore not be followed so easy.
 
Russia’s Eurasian mission, which lies in the simple fact to be Eurasia in the excellent sense (there is a incomplete Eurasia possible without China or India or Western Europe, but without Russia it makes to sense to speak from Eurasia), is not necessarily a chauvinism of thinking of itself as the hub of the world, but a fact of geopolitics, which can be confirmed by a look at the world map. If the space called Russia would be not be populated by Russians, there would be another people populating this space, and it would have to adopt to the stated property of large space, and would become exactly “Russian” in this way. Thus it becomes clear, why Höllwerth can quote Dugin’s definition of the being (Wesen) of the Russians as space (extension) (p. 401). All this is to keep in mind, when Höllwerth agitates himself on Dugin’s corresponding affirmation, that Russia is the whole (of Eurasia).


The difference between land (Eurasia) and sea (Anglo-America), coincident with rise and decline, Orient and Occident (in the afore mentioned sense of temporal difference by same origin in the metaphysical North, p. 212 ff.) would demand another thorough study. Höllwerth makes a lot out of the seemingly different use of the term “Nomos of the earth” (Nomos der Erde) by Carl Schmitt and Aleksandr Dugin. While Schmitt did mean the search for a new principle of international law for the whole globe, Dugin exclusively uses the phrase as synonym with “Nomos of the land” as contrasted with “Nomos of the sea” (p. 249). This dichotomy of laws according to the different Nomos is not the only problem of mediation, the intra-Eurasian and therefore more urgent is the juristic mediation of the different tradition, when according to Dugin the law is not universal but traditional (for each tradition) (p. 475 ff.). The “integral traditionalism” is exactly the only possible foundation to preserve the differences of the traditions while acknowledging their common and in this sense universal origin (the primordial Tradition). The “universalism” of traditionalism allows to stress the discerned internally and the common ground externally. Especially Hindu tradition and Islam have traditionally absolutely no problems in recognizing the other traditions as varieties of the one Tradition. (But Dugin may not evaluate these two as much as would be desirable, especially in their function of beginning and closing the cycle of mankind.) Finally it becomes absurd when Höllwerth in his “discourse analysis” regards the universalism of all traditions as structurally equivalent to the arrogant “universalism” of Western liberalism. On the one hand, favored by Dugin, the land-bound traditions take all part in the whole of Tradition (analogue to the classic model of idea by Platon), on the other hand, the Western universalism, championed by Höllwerth, is nothing more than a particular, very late development deviation from one specific tradition, the rejection of Western Christianity in its own boundary, and its violent expansion on the way of the world’s seas, postulating itself as the only valuable, and this exactly because it is anti-traditional (“enlightened”)!
 
Coping with Dugin’s philosophical and geopolitical notion of sacredness, Höllwerth seems to misled by a point of view, which he seems to have adopted from Mircea Eliade, a founder of the modern science of comparative religion (p. 209, p. 529 f.). A partial truth, the difference of profane and sacred, is been used as absolute segregation. There exist sacred places (and times), and on this the sacred geography (and sacred history) is founded, whose importance for Dugin’s geopolitics Höllwerth does carve out – much to his credit, as this level of argument is overlooked to often as pure rhetoric. But are there also in a strict sense profane things? “Come in, here do dwell Gods, too”, Heraclitus did say. Or, speaking with Guénon: there exists no profane thing, but only a profane point of view. Dugin seems to look at all questions also – certainly not only – in a metaphysical perspective, and in general he is able to explain why a certain political action is seen as necessary in this metaphysical perspective by him. This opens here the possibility of misuse through the sacralization of the profane, as on the other hand the profanization of the sacred in the West. The Western man is the one who takes the utilitarism as the measure for all things. The pure action – of which Julius Evola speaks - , which principle of not-clinging to the fruits of action has been affirmed by Dugin, the exact opposite of utilitarism, can only be seen as measure for the validity of Dugin’s decisions. To say, that he may not always be in the right in his metaphysical decisions is a different thing than saying he is guided by profane utility, as the sacred point of view does not make a saint. Höllwerth´s grasp of this problems is flawed because of his attempt to arrange the perceived oppositions into mirrored congruencies, instead of acknowledgment their structurally inequality, which would lead to the necessarily conclusion of the metaphysical superiority of the Eurasian tradition over its Western descent and rival.

Eurasianism and Islam (Laruelle, continuation)

In the last two chapters of her book Marlene Laruelle gives attention to the Muslim Eurasianists, first between the Muslim minorities of the Russian federation and then outside. This topic, though well-known by specialists, did not grasp the attention of a broader public as much as for example Dugin’s role in relation to the Kremlin. Therefore Laruelle’s retelling of the sometime short-lived organizational and personal development is very helpful, but can obviously not been retold in this review. In general there are two kinds of involvement of the Muslim minorities, one in specific Islamic Eurasianist parties, and the other the involvement of Islamic representatives in the general Eurasianist movement. There are two rival organizations representing the Muslim citizens of the Russian Federation, who were headed by two personal rivals, Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, who died shortly ago, and Mufti Ravil Gainutdin. The first was a member of Dugin’s party, close to the Kremlin, and a friend of the Russian patriarch Alexis II (p. 156), who coincidentally also died shortly ago. Gainutdin on the other hand keeps more distant to the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin (p. 158), and supports one of the more important Eurasianists rival of Aleksandr Dugin, Abdul-Vakhed V. Niizaov and his Eurasianist Party of Russia. (p. 161) The author summarizes the differences of the Muftis, which also reflect the differences of Dugin and Niizaov: “Tadzhuddin and Gainutdin embody two poles of traditional Russian Eurasianism: on the one hand, Russian nationalism and Orthodox messianism; and on the other hand, a more secular patriotism, which combines great-power ambitions with an acknowledgment of Russia’s multiethnic and multireligious character. Thus Eurasianism has become one of the crystallization points between the various Islamic representative bodies (…)” (p. 161 f.) Alongside these two mainstream bodies of Islam in Russia, there exist many smaller groups. One deserves special mention, the Islamic Commitee of Russia, lead by a former ally of Aleksandr Dugin, who broke with him on several issues, Geidar Dzhemal. The philosopher Dzhemal is an Azeri Shiite (Shiism being the dominant branch of Islam in Azerbaijan), with a close relation to the Islamic Republic of Iran, what separates Dzhemal from the other mentioned Muslim representatives. Strangely this fact is not mentioned by Laruelle. What she stresses, is the importance Dzhemal gives to Islam for securing Russia’s future: “Dzhemal […] states: ‘Russia’s only chance to avoid geopolitical disappearance is to become a Islamic state.’ Thus the movement remained on the borderline of Eurasianism, because it talked of conversion rather than cultural symbiosis ” (p. 147) Dugin’s apparently strong opposition to any conversions on the other hand is self-contradictory given his heavy reliance of his “Traditionalist” foundation on the teaching of René Guénon, also known as Sheikh Abd al-Wâhid Yahya. But it cannot neglected that the Orthodox-Islamic tension in the Eurasianist movement is as much ethnic as religious. The Turkic people can claim to represent “Eurasia” even more than Russians do. “In this view, the Russian people are European and party alien to Eurasia, as opposed to the Turkic people, who are considered to better illustrate the great meeting between Europe and Asia. Russia is no longer understood as a great power but as the most backward part of Europe, by contrast with the dynamism of the Far East and China.” (p. 169) A certain ambiguity in this question goes back to the classic Eurasianist movement of the Twenties of the last century, as Laruelle earlier in a different context has already stated: “Eurasianism’s place within the Russian nationalist spectrum has remained paradoxical due to the fact that it can be interpreted in either a ‘Russocentric’ or a ‘Turkocentric’ way. However, the paradox is not simply in the eye of the outside beholder; it has also divided the Neo-Eurasianists, who have accused each other of advocating the supremacy of one people over another.” (p. 5)
 
Naturally there is no question on which side the Eurasianist interpretation leans in the cases of Turkish Eurasianism outside of Russia, which is the final topic of this manifold book. In Kazakhstan one can state a “Eurasianism in Power” (p. 171), but a pragmatic Eurasianism this is, without any of the eschatological or traditionalist features of Dugin’s world-view. But Kazhakh Eurasianism as a whole is a multifaceted movement: “’Eurasianist’ Kazakh nationalism has several embodiments: a literary tradition introduced by Olzhas Suleimenov; a highly pragmatic variety used by the presidential administration; and a type of Eurasianist rhetoric that merely masks a much more traditional view of the nation and its right to exist, and mentions Russia only in the negative.” (p. 172) Suleimenov being a friend and ally of Lev Gumilëv (p. 175) and an apologist of “multiethnicity, tolerance, and diversity”, as characteristics of Eurasia. (p. 175) Also present in this intellectual Eurasianism seems to be a religious syncretism, “embracing all the religions that have ever (co)existed in the steppe. For example, the Kazakh Eurasianists make a great deal of archaeological traces of Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism, trying to go beyond the classic Orthodox-Islamic dualism.” (p. 176) President Nazarbaev proposed a “Union of Eurasian States” already in 1994 (p. 177) and embodies a mainly “economically based Eurasianism, whose integrationists ideas are popular among those who have suffered from the breakdown of links between the former Soviet republics.” (p. 177) But Nazarbaev is nothing less than an ideology-free technocrat, he has written even a book “In the stream of history”, in which he claims the Aryan and sedentary origin of Kazakhstan, predating the Mongol nomadic arrival. (p. 186) Additionally, the country’s Muslim character of the country is stressed, and Nazarbaev is proud of the global Islamic relevance Muslim scholars of Kazhakh origin like Al-Farabi and Al-Buruni.
 
Finally the only example of Eurasianism beyond the border of the former Soviet Union, studied by Laruelle, is the case of Turkey. Here the Eurasianist claim of the Turkish people goes along with the implication, “that Russia and Turkey are no longer competing for the mythical territory of Inner Asia – which both Eurasianists and pan-Turkists claim as their people’s ancestral homeland – but are Eurasian allies.” (p. 171) Laruelle starts by postulating common ideological roots of Eurasianism and Turkism, the “official Turkish state discourse on the nation’s identity” (p. 193), in romanticism and “Pan-“Ideologies (p. 188), but this seems to be rather a feature of Pan-Slavism than of Eurasianism with its re-evaluation of the non-Russian strands of the Empire. A similar development in the development from Turkism to Avrasyanism seems to be lacking. Rather it can be seen as a turning the back to the West, to which Mustafa Kemal, the so-called Atatürk (Father of the Turks), wanted to direct the aspirations of the Turks. The author states the original competition between the Turkish Avrasyian tendency and the Russian Eurasianist movements, similar to the natural antagonistic relation of nationalisms. But the interesting developments are the recently “attempts (…) to turn the two ‘Eurasias’ into allies rather than competitors” and parallel “a Dugin-style ideologization of the term in response to American adcendancy.” (p. 198) The few pages Laruelle dedicates to these developments are rather brief, and she has in the mean time published a more extensive study (Russo-Turkish Rapprochement through the Idea of Eurasia: Alexander Dugin’s Networks in Turkey, Jamestown Foundation, Occasional Paper, 2008), which itself has been overtaken by the dismantling of large parts of these „networks“ through the Ergenekon affair, but which is definitively outside the scope of this review.
 
The different manifestations of Eurasianism in this book leave the author and the reader with the question of the unity of Eurasianists idea. Laruelle states that Eurasianism is “a classic example of a flexible ideology. This explains its success, its diversity, and its breadth of coverage.” (p. 221) Without arguing about sheer words the author cannot be followed in her strict subsumption of Eurasianism under the term nationalism. At least a more nuanced view of nation in a more traditional sense, common to both Orthodox and Islamic thinking, in difference to the Western concept of nation-state (as I discussed in the part on Höllwerth) would have to be considerated instead of stating that the Eurasianists “concept of ‘civilization’ is only a euphemism for ‘nation’ and ‘empire.’” (p. 221).

 


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IL “NIET” DELL’UCRAINA ALL’UE: MITI E REALTÀ

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IL “NIET” DELL’UCRAINA ALL’UE: MITI E REALTÀ

Giuseppe Cappelluti

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org

Il 21 novembre 2013 il Primo Ministro ucraino Nikolaj (in ucraino Mykola) Azarov ha annunciato che il suo Paese non intende più firmare l’Accordo di Associazione con l’Unione Europea e che intende invece rilanciare le proprie relazioni commerciali con la Russia, l’Unione Doganale Eurasiatica e i Paesi della CSI[i] [1]. Nello stesso giorno, in una seduta parlamentare condita da forti polemiche e scambi di accuse, il voto contrario dei comunisti e del Partito delle Regioni attualmente al governo ha impedito il trasferimento a Berlino per cure mediche dell’ex Primo Ministro Julia Tymošenko, che l’Unione Europea aveva posto come una delle maggiori precondizioni per la stipula dell’accordo che avrebbe portato alla liberalizzazione degli scambi commerciali tra UE e Ucraina, salvo che per i prodotti agricoli[ii] [2].

Si tratta, probabilmente, dell’atto finale di una commedia che perdura ormai da diversi anni, e la cui conclusione ha lasciato sorpresi in molti. Dopo la guerra commerciale tra Ucraina e Russia dello scorso agosto e l’approvazione da parte del governo di alcuni dei provvedimenti in termini di giustizia, sistema elettorale e riforme economiche richiesti dall’Unione, la prospettiva che il Vertice di Vilnius previsto per il prossimo 29 novembre si sarebbe concluso con la sottoscrizione dell’Accordo di Associazione tra Unione Europea e Ucraina non era più così lontana. A metà ottobre, poi, il futuro europeo dell’Ucraina pareva ormai vicino quando il Presidente Viktor Janukovič annunciò la possibilità di concedere alla Tymošenko la possibilità di recarsi all’estero per cure mediche[iii] [3]. Ma così non è stato, e anzi gli ultimi giorni prima della decisione finale hanno visto un raffreddamento dei rapporti euro-ucraini e una parallela intensificazione dei contatti tra Janukovič e Putin. Un epilogo quasi preannunciato, malgrado tutto, e che non ha mancato di suscitare polemiche.

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Dall’Occidente, come si può facilmente immaginare, sono arrivate forti critiche nei confronti di Janukovič e della Russia. L’Alto Commissario per la Politica Estera Catherine Ashton ha dichiarato che “la decisione è un fallimento non solo per l’UE, ma anche per il popolo ucraino” e il Ministro degli Esteri svedese Carl Bildt, uno dei protagonisti delle trattative tra l’UE e l’Ucraina per l’Accordo di Associazione, ha accusato la Bankova di essersi chinata alle “brutali pressioni” del Cremlino. Più contenuta la reazione del Ministro degli Esteri tedesco Guido Westerwelle, il quale ha affermato che “l’Ucraina ha il diritto di scegliere quale percorso seguire”[iv] [4]. Anche la stampa occidentale è schierata in gran parte contro Janukovič e Putin. Deutsche Welle, ad esempio, titola “Le minacce russe bloccano l’accordo commerciale euro-ucraino”[v] [5], e il titolo del New York Times è sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda[vi] [6]. Non pochi, poi, hanno accusato Janukovič di aver sacrificato la prospettiva europea sull’altare dei propri interessi personali mantenendo in carcere una sua pericolosa rivale. Putin, dal canto suo, ha rispedito al mittente le accuse di minacce denunciando un “ricatto” dell’Europa nei confronti dell’Ucraina[vii] [7].

Si tratta, però, di posizioni che non focalizzano il problema, oltre a denotare una palese faziosità antirussa. La Tymošenko, infatti, è solamente la punta dell’iceberg, e se Azarov alla fine ha scelto di gettare la spugna i motivi sono soprattutto di natura economica. L’Ucraina, pur avendo un notevole potenziale agricolo e industriale, è stata notevolmente colpita dalla fine del sistema sovietico e dalla rottura dei legami tra le Repubbliche dell’URSS, ma il Paese, a differenza delle Repubbliche Baltiche, è stato incapace di sostituirli con qualcosa di nuovo. Allo stesso tempo, però, non ha potuto né voluto mantenere forti legami economici con la Russia e i Paesi della CSI come ha fatto la vicina Bielorussia. Questo limbo è dovuto in gran parte alle forti divisioni tra la popolazione ucraina: l’Ovest è culturalmente legato all’Europa, le regioni orientali e meridionali guardano verso la Russia e sono di religione ortodossa, mentre una porzione non marginale degli abitanti del Paese, pur ricordando i Russi sotto molti aspetti e parlando russo più che ucraino, guarda con favore alla prospettiva di entrare nell’Unione Europea e agli apparenti benefici che comporta quest’adesione, mentre vede la Russia in una luce tutt’altro che positiva. Tutto ciò ha limitato in maniera non indifferente lo sviluppo del Paese, condannato a oscillare tra Occidente e Russia ma senza diventare parte integrante dell’uno o dell’altra.

Negli anni Duemila l’Ucraina ha goduto di un buon andamento economico, ma la crisi del 2008 ha colpito il Paese molto duramente. Gli anni successivi hanno visto una leggera ripresa, ma il Paese continua ad essere uno dei più poveri d’Europa. La Naftogaz, la società nazionale degli idrocarburi nonché la maggiore azienda del Paese, è fortemente indebitata con Gazprom, anche a causa di quei contratti sfavorevoli al Paese sottoscritti nel 2009 dalla Tymošenko quando era ancora Primo Ministro[viii] [8]. Nel 2011 la prospettiva di una fusione tra Naftogaz e Gazprom in cambio di sconti sul gas è stata rigettata dal governo ucraino[ix] [9], mentre il passaggio al colosso russo della gestione  della rete di gasdotti, ma non della proprietà, è al momento bloccato in quanto tale passo richiederebbe l’approvazione di una riforma costituzionale[x] [10]. Il problema, però, resta: Kiev paga a Mosca prezzi esosi per il suo gas (400 dollari ogni 1000 metri cubi), e a fine ottobre Gazprom ha richiesto alla controparte ucraina un pagamento di ben 882 milioni di dollari per le forniture di gas di agosto, portando così il debito della compagnia a 1,4 miliardi[xi] [11].

I contratti firmati nel 2009 hanno valenza decennale, e la Russia si è mostrata disposta a una loro revisione solo in cambio dell’adesione dell’Ucraina all’Unione Doganale. Lo sconto proposto da Mosca consentirebbe a Kiev di risparmiare circa 8 miliardi l’anno[xii] [12], ma malgrado tutto il Paese non sembra intenzionato a compiere un passo che implicherebbe dire addio alla prospettiva europea. Il Paese, anzi, ha avviato da circa due anni una strategia per la riduzione della dipendenza dal gas russo, basata soprattutto sulla diversificazione degli approvvigionamenti e sullo sfruttamento delle riserve di gas non convenzionale (il cosiddetto “gas da argille” o shale gas)[xiii] [13]. Si tratta, però, di una mossa tardiva, che probabilmente non darà i risultati sperati, e in ogni caso la strategia di diversificazione degli approvvigionamenti portata avanti da Kiev è di gran lunga in ritardo nei confronti di quella delle vie di trasporto che la Russia porta avanti da più di quindici anni e che, con la futura entrata in funzione del gasdotto South Stream, potrà dirsi a pieno regime. E’alquanto probabile, quindi, che la Russia uscirà vittoriosa da questa “guerra”.

L’intreccio tra gas e politica è un altro grande problema dell’Ucraina odierna. La possibilità di offrire gas a prezzi politici è infatti un importante cavallo di battaglia per i politici ucraini, specie a ridosso degli appuntamenti elettorali, ma i vari governi hanno sempre osteggiato la possibilità di accettare una soluzione affine a quella bielorussa, che recentemente ha venduto alla Gazprom la società che gestisce la rete di metanodotti del Paese. Il risultato è che l’Ucraina, pur acquistando il gas a prezzi piuttosto alti, lo vende ai suoi cittadini a prezzi convenzionati, con conseguenze che si possono facilmente immaginare. Nel 2011 l’Ucraina ha dovuto chiedere un prestito di 15 miliardi di dollari al Fondo Monetario Internazionale, ma l’organizzazione pose come precondizione l’abolizione dei sussidi sul gas, e il rifiuto di Kiev segnò il fallimento dell’accordo[xiv] [14]. Un’analoga richiesta di prestito presentata all’FMI due anni dopo si è anch’essa risolta con un fallimento, e questo solo il giorno prima del gran rifiuto di Azarov[xv] [15]. Il fallimento delle trattative tra l’Ucraina e l’FMI ha avuto senza dubbio un ruolo cruciale nell’allontanare Kiev da Bruxelles e nel riavvicinarla a Mosca. Un riorientamento che ha già iniziato a dare i propri frutti: il 24 novembre, infatti, il Cremlino ha annunciato la propria disponibilità a una revisione dei termini dei contratti sul gas con l’Ucraina[xvi] [16].

Accanto alle questioni del gas e dei debiti, va ricordata quella della bilancia commerciale del Paese. Per la Russia un eventuale ingresso dell’Ucraina nell’Unione Doganale rappresenterebbe senza dubbio un grande successo geopolitico e morale, ma dal punto di vista economico i benefici sono più limitati, sebbene consentirebbe al mercato eurasiatico una maggiore autosufficienza e lo renderebbe più attraente agli occhi di esportatori e investitori stranieri. Ben maggiori sono invece i vantaggi per l’Ucraina: secondo alcune stime, infatti, gli sconti sul gas, l’abolizione delle misure protettive e delle barriere tecniche e la rimozione delle tasse sulle esportazioni garantirebbe al Paese esteuropeo guadagni pari a 11-12 miliardi annui[xvii] [17]. Ben diverso, invece, è il discorso nei riguardi dell’Accordo di Associazione con l’UE. L’industria ucraina, malgrado il suo potenziale, non è competitiva con quella dei Paesi europei, e si prevede che un’eventuale stipula dell’accordo provocherebbe un peggioramento del 5% della bilancia commerciale del Paese[xviii] [18]. L’impatto sarebbe particolarmente pesante nelle regioni orientali, polmone industriale del Paese nonché roccaforte elettorale di Janukovič, e agli inizi di novembre Azarov ha dichiarato che il Paese necessiterebbe di 150-160 miliardi di euro per allineare agli standard europei l’industria ucraina[xix] [19]. Ma l’UE non risulta particolarmente propensa ad aiutare Kiev: alla richiesta di quest’ultima di un prestito di 8 miliardi di dollari, infatti, Bruxelles ha risposto offrendone uno di 1 miliardo di euro (ossia circa 1,3 miliardi di dollari), e peraltro ha posto come condizione l’approvazione di tagli potenzialmente destabilizzanti per il Paese[xx] [20].

Nell’UE l’Ucraina sarebbe una seconda Grecia, mentre il suo habitat naturale sembra essere un’Eurasia dove il suo potere sarebbe secondo solo a quello di Mosca. Un Ucraino occidentale o particolarmente “patriottico” può dire che “l’Ucraina non è la Russia”, e ciò è sostanzialmente vero se si parla, ad esempio, di Leopoli o della Transcarpazia; ma, allo stesso modo, non è la Lettonia, e non ha la stessa propensione ai sacrifici che ha dimostrato Riga nel cammino che l’ha portata all’adozione dell’euro. Nella prima metà di ottobre Azarov ha dichiarato che “nulla vieta all’Ucraina di sottoscrivere l’Accordo di Associazione con l’UE e, nel contempo, creare un’area di libero scambio con l’Unione Doganale”[xxi] [21], ma quest’idea, all’apparenza la migliore soluzione per il Paese, non è fattibile per il tipo di rapporti che si sono venuti a creare tra Russia e Ucraina. I due Paesi, infatti, hanno frontiere sostanzialmente aperte, e l’abolizione dei dazi tra UE ed Ucraina provocherebbe, almeno secondo il Cremlino, un’invasione di prodotti europei a prezzi non gravati dai dazi sui mercati dell’Unione Doganale, rendendo così necessaria l’introduzione di misure protettive nei confronti di Kiev[xxii] [22]. Le perdite dovute alle sanzioni, a detta di Janukovič, si aggirerebbero attorno ai 15 miliardi di dollari, e ciò, per il Paese, sarebbe un’autentica pugnalata[xxiii] [23]. Il fatto che l’accordo di libero scambio con l’UE escluda i prodotti agricoli, che per l’Ucraina sono una delle maggiori merci di esportazione, non è propriamente di secondaria importanza.

La svolta del 21 novembre, che alcuni in Ucraina hanno già ribattezzato “il giovedì nero”, è senza dubbio una sconfitta non solo per l’Unione Europea, ma per l’intero Occidente, che malgrado l’impegno degli Stati Uniti si rivela più debole della Russia nello spazio ex-sovietico. Per la Russia, invece, si sta per chiudere un autunno denso di successi: la mediazione di Putin per prevenire l’intervento americano in Siria, la svolta eurasista dell’Armenia, le elezioni in Georgia e il miglioramento della posizione della Russia in una serie di indicatori economici. Ma la virata di Kiev verso l’Eurasia è tutt’altro che priva di risvolti positivi per l’Europa. La Russia forte e imperialista tanto osteggiata da politici europei e attivisti dei diritti umani, infatti, per l’Europa è di gran lunga meno pericolosa di una Russia debole. La Russia moderna, infatti, non è l’Unione Sovietica, e a differenza di quest’ultima non ha e né può avere ambizioni universaliste. L’assenza del ruolo dell’ideologia comunista obbliga il Paese a promuovere i propri interessi nel mondo non in quanto portabandiera della rivoluzione mondiale, ma in quanto Russia, e ciò riduce di molto il suo raggio d’azione impedendole di intervenire qualora non siano in gioco i propri interessi diretti o quelli di una nutrita schiera di cittadini russi o di Russi etnici. Allo stesso modo l’Unione Doganale, ispirata ai principi del libero mercato, non propone un ritorno al passato. Ma molte delle sfide che oggi la Russia si trova ad affrontare sono comuni all’Occidente: il fondamentalismo islamico, il traffico internazionale di stupefacenti, la stabilità di regioni potenzialmente a rischio come l’Asia Centrale. Per l’Europa, quindi, è di fatto più utile un’Ucraina filorussa che non un’Ucraina nell’UE: la prima contribuirebbe in maniera sostanziale al miglioramento della sicurezza e della situazione economica dell’Eurasia, la seconda si trasformerebbe inevitabilmente in una nuova Grecia. Ma, per vedere l’Ucraina fare domanda di ammissione nell’Unione Doganale (o, in alternativa, intraprendere seriamente il cammino dell’eurointegrazione), dovremo probabilmente attendere il 2015. L’anno delle prossime elezioni presidenziali.


[viii] [38] I contratti del 2009 sono stati la causa della condanna della Tymošenko a 7 anni di carcere per abuso di potere.

[xii] [45] R. Dragneva e K. Wolczuk, Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU: Cooperation, Stagnation or Rivalry?, Chatham House, Londra, 2012, p. 11.

'Israël en Saudi Arabië ontwikkelen super-Stuxnet virus tegen Iran'

'Israël en Saudi Arabië ontwikkelen super-Stuxnet virus tegen Iran'

Iraanse official: Obama heeft ons tot nieuwe strategische partner gemaakt

Ex: http://xandernieuws.punt.nl


De Iraanse kerncentrale in Bushehr was 3 jaar geleden één van de doelen van het Amerikaans-Israëlische Stuxnet virus.

Volgens het Iraanse persbureau Fars werken de inlichtingendiensten van Israël en Saudi Arabië samen aan een nieuwe, nog schadelijkere variant van het Stuxnet computervirus, dat in 2010 grote delen van het Iraanse nucleaire programma wist te ontregelen. Een Iraanse official wist te melden dat president Obama deze keer niet meedoet met de cyberoorlog, omdat hij van koers is veranderd en besloten heeft om Iran tot zijn nieuwe strategische partner in het Midden Oosten te maken.

Algemeen wordt aangenomen dat het originele Stuxnet-virus ruim 3 jaar geleden werd ontwikkeld door Israël en de VS. Als recente berichten kloppen, zou dit virus nog altijd de ronde doen en zowel een Russische kerncentrale als het Internationale Ruimtestation hebben bereikt.

In drie jaar tijd zijn de machtsverhoudingen op de wereld flink verschoven. Wie had ooit kunnen denken dat de Verenigde Staten, dat net als Israël jarenlang dreigde met militair ingrijpen, een radicale ommezwaai zou maken, en dat de inlichtingendiensten van Israël en Saudi Arabië zouden gaan samenwerken.

Saudi"s zien deal met Iran als 'westers verraad'

Dat is althans wat Fars beweert. Prins Bandar bin Sultan, hoofd van de Saudische inlichtingendienst, en Tamir Pardo, leider van de Israëlische Mossad, zouden op 24 november -kort na het tekenen van de interim overeenkomst met Iran- samen met hun beste cyberoorlogspecialisten in Wenen bij elkaar zijn gekomen om een virus te ontwerpen, dat erger is dan Stuxnet en dat de software van het Iraanse nucleaire programma moet gaan vernietigen.

Het project werd in gang gezet nadat de 5+1 machten hun handtekening onder het voorlopige akkoord met Iran zetten, dat door de Israëliërs een 'historische fout' en door de Saudiërs zelfs 'Westers verraad' werd genoemd.

Publiek geheime ontmoetingen

Dezelfde Iraanse bron 'onthulde' dat prins Bandar en Tamir Pardo elkaar meerdere malen hebben ontmoet in de Jordaanse havenstad Aqaba. Toen dit een publiek geheim werd, zou de Saudische kroonprins Salman bin Abdulaziz prins Bandar hebben gewaarschuwd dat de nauwe samenwerking met de Mossad het koninklijke huis toch zorgen baarde.

De bron wist ook te melden dat prins Bandar in het geheim naar Israël reisde, precies op het moment dat de Franse president Francois Hollande op 17 en 18 november op bezoek was in de Joodse staat. Bandar zou samen met de Israëliërs en Fransen hebben overlegd over hoe het Iraanse nucleaire programma alsnog een halt toe kan worden geroepen.

Diplomatiek schaakspel

Om diplomatiek tegenwicht te bieden, stuurde Iran minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Javad Zarif naar enkele Arabische Golfstaten, maar niet naar Saudi Arabië. Door prins Bandars samenwerking met de Mossad te benadrukken, hoopt men in Teheran de interne machtsstrijd over de troonsopvolging in Riyad verder aan te wakkeren. De Iraanse mullahs maken zich namelijk grote zorgen over de samenwerking van het land met Israël.

De 'onthulling' van deze samenwerking moet tegelijkertijd de interne oppositie in Teheran overtuigen hun verzet tegen de deal met de 5+1 machten op te geven. Iran zou, bijvoorbeeld als het weigert de afspraken met het Westen na te komen, anders alsnog alleen tegenover Israël en Saudi Arabië kan komen te staan.

Israëlische defensiespecialisten merken op dat de onthullingen wel door de Russische media, maar niet door de Westerse werden overgenomen. Dit zou kunnen duiden op een nauwe samenwerking tussen de Iraanse en Russische inlichtingendiensten.

 

Xander

(1) DEBKA

samedi, 07 décembre 2013

The Monroe Doctrine is History, But the Empire is Attacking Everywhere

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The Monroe Doctrine is History, But the Empire is Attacking Everywhere

Nil NIKANDROV - Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org
 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has announced the end of «the era of the Monroe Doctrine». On November 18 he gave a keynote speech on partnership with Latin America at the headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington. For almost 200 years U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere has been based on the doctrine named after the fifth president of the U.S., James Monroe, which declares that the countries of Latin America should not be seen by European powers as objects of colonization… 

«America for the Americans» - the United States used this slogan to mask the imperialist essence of the doctrine, which was used in the Cold War years to counter «Soviet expansion».  The Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify the suppression of revolutions in Guatemala and Chile, the physical elimination of popular leaders, and military operations against guerillas in Cuba, Nicaragua and other countries… 

The key point of Kerry's speech was the assertion that in today's historical conditions, the U.S. views the states south of the Rio Grande as «equal partners» which must «promote and protect...democracy,» «sharing responsibilities [and] cooperating on security issues». It is difficult to interpret these wordings clearly. On the one hand, Washington seems to be stating that it will not resort to armed intervention in the region to defend its «vital interests». On the other hand, the statements about «sharing responsibilities» and «cooperating on security issues» sound quite equivocal. Cooperating with whom, exactly? Against whom? And on what terms?

However, against whom the «cooperation on security issues» is to be directed follows from the speech itself. Kerry assailed Venezuela and Cuba with criticism. In his opinion, «democratic institutions are weakened» in Venezuela. Most likely Washington is irritated by the fact that the National Assembly voted to give President Nicolas Maduro special powers which he has already begun to use to stop the economic war on Venezuela (speculation, hoarding consumer goods and food, and undermining the purchasing power of the national currency, the bolivar). Venezuelans approve the measures being taken by President Maduro. The authority of the Bolivarian leadership has grown noticeably. In Cuba the head of the State Department is dissatisfied with the pace of the democratic process. Kerry stated that the U.S. hopes these processes will gain speed, that «the Cuban Government embraces a broader political reform agenda that will enable its people to freely determine their own future». And the U.S. would very much like the process of democratization in Cuba to take on a landslide-like character, similar to the process which destroyed the USSR. 

The U.S. has shelved the Monroe Doctrine, but it has not given up pressuring Latin American countries or conducting complex operations to destabilize them. Targeted propaganda attacks are carried out against undesirable leaders. Streams of slander pour down on Bolivian President Evo Morales, first and foremost because of his government’s «insufficient efforts» in fighting against illegal coca plantations and drug trafficking. And this when Bolivian intelligence agencies are battling fiercely with drug cartels financed, as a rule, though banks controlled by U.S. businessmen and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Morales gives as good as he gets, confident that the best defense is a good offence. He has more than once advocated handing over Barack Obama to a «tribunal of the peoples» to be tried for «crimes against humanity». His accusations were loudest of all in his address at the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. The Bolivian president claims that in order to maintain its dominant position in the world, the U.S. makes use of the most criminal of methods, extensively organizing conspiracies and assassination attempts. Morales has reduced contacts with representatives of the U.S. to a minimum, preferring to conduct business with China, Western European countries, Russia and Belarus. The president of Bolivia has threatened, «If we need to, we will close the U.S. embassy altogether». 

Washington has never ceased its hostile activities against Ecuador. After the CIA's failed attempt to get rid of President Rafael Correa using agents in the Ecuadorian police, the U.S. embassy is sparing no efforts to «reform» him. Adam Namm, the American ambassador in Quito, criticized President Rafael Correa for cultivating closer relations with Iran and Belarus. The response was immediate: «I am not surprised at his [Namm's] pronouncements, because the diplomat is new at these issues. Ecuador will not ask permission from anyone to maintain sovereign relations with whatever countries it wishes. It is enough to note how many countries where absolutely no elections are held at all have privileged relations with the United States. Absolute monarchies! So that's enough! We are not anyone's colony. While I am the president of this country, there will be no neocolonialism!»  Correa's harsh comments on Obama's pronouncements about the «exceptionalism of the American people», who are supposedly concerned with protecting the interests of «all humanity», are also conspicuous. The Ecuadorian president compared these claims with the «Nazi policy» of the Third Reich. 

In October Correa visited Russia, where he discussed, among other things, armaments cooperation issues and shipments of Russian armaments to Ecuador, in particular air defense systems, as well as an additional shipment of Mi-171E transport helicopters. Russia is interested in implementing several large oil and gas projects in Ecuador. The Ecuadorians are discussing prospects of intensifying military cooperation with China; recruiting Chinese specialists for the construction of an oil refinery (Refineria del Pacifico), to be completed in 2017, has also been proposed. Even now there are 60 Chinese companies working in Ecuador in the mining industry and road infrastructure construction. All of this is causing great concern in Washington, which is why the spying activities of American intelligence agencies have intensified in Ecuador. According to the site Contrainjerencia.com, in 2012-2013 the number of CIA personnel at the Ecuadorian station doubled. Agents with experience in subversive operations in Latin America are being sent to Ecuador: U. Mozdierz, M. Haeger, D. Robb, H. Bronke Fulton, D. Hernandez, N. Weber, A. Saunders, D. Sims, C. Buzzard, М. Kendrick and others. 

The problems which Washington is now having with Brazil and Argentina due to the scandalous revelations regarding the wiretapping of these countries' presidents, Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, have yet to be resolved satisfactorily. The Americans have still not really apologized for the total espionage in these countries. And the espionage not only has not stopped, it has become more subtle, forcing national intelligence agencies to develop joint measures to combat the operations of the CIA, the NSA and U.S. military intelligence. At the same time, steps are being taken to create a system for fighting electronic espionage within the framework of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). In Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean Basin, American intelligence run things with almost no interference, unless you count Cuba and Nicaragua, whose counterintelligence agencies occasionally strike painful blows against the CIA's agent network.

Today the most important task for U.S. military and intelligence agencies is maintaining control of Honduras, which is often called the «unsinkable aircraft carrier of the U.S.» in Central America. There are already U.S. military bases located on the territory of Honduras, but the Pentagon is planning to build new air and naval bases. Washington's cynical interference in the election campaign which just took place in Honduras is yet another signal from the Obama administration to Latin America: we will protect our interests at any cost; no other outcome is acceptable to us. 

The «U.S.'s man» in the elections in Honduras is Juan Orlando Hernandez, the candidate from the conservative National Party. For over three years he headed the National Congress and contributed greatly to the consolidation of political forces hostile to ex-president Manuel Zelaya and his wife Xiomara Castro. It is she who was his main competitor in the elections as the candidate for the center-left Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE). Hernandez supported the 2009 military coup d’état which led to the overthrow of Zelaya, maintains close ties with the military, and facilitated the expansion of the «security» functions of military personnel, including in fighting drug trafficking. 

For the U.S. embassy, not allowing Xiomara Castro to come to power is a matter of principle. Upcoming events will show how it will be resolved. In a radio interview with Radio Globo, Manuel Zelaya stated, «Xiomara has won the fight for the post of president of the republic. They [the Supreme Electoral Court of Honduras] are stealing the victory from Xiomara Castro. The Court's count does not stand up to statistical analysis. We do not acknowledge this result; we reject it». 

Lisa Kubiske, the U.S. ambassador in Honduras, actively interfered in the election process in order to guarantee victory for Hernandez. In essence, it is she who is Xiomara Castro's main rival. Whether the U.S. embassy will be able to ensure that Hernandez comes to power will be seen in the near future. But there is already information in the international media that in the process of counting the votes, he is leading by a wide margin.

vendredi, 06 décembre 2013

Dollar survival behind US-China tensions

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Dollar survival behind US-China tensions
 
By Finian Cunningham
 
Ex: http://www.presstv.ir
The escalation of military tensions between Washington and Beijing in the East China Sea is superficially over China’s unilateral declaration of an air defense zone. But the real reason for Washington’s ire is the recent Chinese announcement that it is planning to reduce its holdings of the US dollar.


That move to offload some of its 3.5 trillion in US dollar reserves combined with China’s increasing global trade in oil based on national currencies presents a mortal threat to the American petrodollar and the entire American economy.

This threat to US viability - already teetering on bankruptcy, record debt and social meltdown - would explain why Washington has responded with such belligerence to China setting up an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) last week extending some 400 miles from its coast into the East China Sea.

Beijing said the zone was aimed at halting intrusive military maneuvers by US spy planes over its territory. The US has been conducting military flights over Chinese territory for decades without giving Beijing the slightest notification.

Back in April 2001, a Chinese fighter pilot was killed when his aircraft collided with a US spy plane. The American crew survived, but the incident sparked a diplomatic furor, with Beijing saying that it illustrated Washington’s unlawful and systematic violation of Chinese sovereignty.

Within days of China’s announcement of its new ADIZ last week, the US sent two B52 bombers into the air space without giving the notification of flight paths required by Beijing.

American allies Japan and South Korea also sent military aircraft in defiance of China. Washington dismissed the Chinese declared zone and asserted that the area was international air space.

A second intrusion of China’s claimed air territory involved US surveillance planes and up to 10 Japanese American-made F-15 fighter jets. On that occasion, Beijing has responded more forcefully by scrambling SU-30 and J-10 warplanes, which tailed the offending foreign aircraft.

Many analysts see the latest tensions as part of the ongoing dispute between China and Japan over the islands known, respectively, as the Diaoyu and Senkaku, located in the East China Sea. Both countries claim ownership. The islands are uninhabited but the surrounding sea is a rich fishing ground and the seabed is believed to contain huge reserves of oil and gas.

By claiming the skies over the islands, China appears to be adding to its territorial rights to the contested islands.

In a provocative warning to Beijing, American defense secretary Chuck Hagel this week reiterated that the decades-old US-Japan military pact covers any infringement by China of Japan’s claim on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

It is hard to justify Washington and Tokyo’s stance on the issue. The islands are much nearer to China’s mainland (250 miles) compared with Japan’s (600 miles). China claims that the islands were part of its territory for centuries until Japan annexed them in 1895 during its imperialist expansion, which eventually led to an all-out invasion and war of aggression on China.

Also, as Beijing points out, the US and its postwar Japanese ally both have declared their own air defense zones. It is indeed inconceivable that Chinese spy planes and bombers could encroach unannounced on the US West Coast without the Pentagon ordering fierce retaliation.

Furthermore, maps show that the American-backed air defense zone extending from Japan’s southern territory is way beyond any reasonable halfway limit between China and Japan. This American-backed arbitrary imposition on Chinese territorial sovereignty is thus seen as an arrogant convention, set up and maintained by Washington for decades.

The US and its controlled news media are absurdly presenting Beijing’s newly declared air defense zone as China “flexing its muscles and stoking tensions.” And Washington is claiming that it is nobly defending its Japanese and South Korea allies from Chinese expansionism.

However, it is the background move by China to ditch the US dollar that is most likely the real cause for Washington’s militarism towards Beijing. The apparent row over the air and sea territory, which China has sound rights to, is but the pretext for the US to mobilize its military and in effect threaten China with aggression.

In recent years, China has been incrementally moving away from US financial hegemony. This hegemony is predicated on the US dollar being the world reserve currency and, by convention, the standard means of payment for international trade and in particular trade in oil. That arrangement is obsolete given the bankrupt state of the US economy. But it allows the US to continue bingeing on credit.

China - the second biggest economy in the world and a top importer of oil - has or is seeking oil trading arrangements with its major suppliers, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, which will involve the exchange of national currencies. That development presents a grave threat to the petrodollar and its global reserve status.

The latest move by Beijing on November 20 giving notice that it intends to shift its risky foreign exchange holdings of US Treasury notes for a mixture of other currencies is a harbinger that the
American economy’s days are numbered, as Paul Craig Roberts noted last week.

This is of course China’s lawful right to do so, as are its territorial claims. But, in the imperialist, megalomaniac mindset of Washington, the “threat” to the US economy and indebted way of life is perceived as a tacit act of war. That is why Washington is reacting so furiously and desperately to China’s newly declared air corridor. It is a pretext for the US to clench an iron fist.

FC/HJL
 
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation.

La voie ukrainienne

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La voie ukrainienne

http://www.dedefensa.org

Bien entendu, les “images” abondent, c’est-à-dire les illustrations des habituelles narrative en développement pour ce genre de situation. («A broad desire to change the way their country is run is driving Ukrainians to the streets.», nous disent, la plume mouillée, Jana Kobzova et Balazs Jarabik, dans EUObserver le 3 décembre 2013.) Il y a, dominant le tout, la narrative vertueuse et pleine d’espérance démocratique de la “Révolution Orange-II”, qui a l’avantage, pour nombre de plumitifs de la presse-Système, d’user de la technique du “copié-collé” avec leurs articles de 2003-2004 pour nous présenter d’excellentes analyses-Système de la situation ukrainienne de 2013. Cela, c’est pour le décor de carton-pâte et la facilité de la lecture.

Les protestations de l’opposition ont commencé après le refus du gouvernement ukrainien de signer l’accord de coopération avec l’UE. Le lien entre les deux était évident, dans la narrative de convenance, et il a été aussitôt imposé comme allant de soi. Pourtant, la phase de la protestation n’est peut-être si complètement liée avec la question de l’accord UE refusé. C’est une interprétation qui est assez courante, et par ailleurs assez évidente ; c’est celle de Poutine, comme celle du Polonais Mateusz Piskorski, député et directeur du European Centre of Geopolitical Analysis, qui juge que si l’opposition qui tient la rue venait au pouvoir, elle-même ne signerait pas l’accord avec l’UE («I guess that even the opposition, if it comes to power in the coming months, wouldn’t be ready to sign free trade agreement with Europe...»).

Nous dirions que la phase des protestations de rue doit être détachée de la phase des négociations avec l’UE et de la rupture, pour être considérée en elle-même comme une crise interne ukrainienne, renforcée par les diverses forces extérieures de déstabilisation (celle-là, certes, sur le modèle de la “Révolution Orange”, bien entendu, avec les usual suspects, ou pour faire plus net, les coupables habituels, tout l’appareil “sociétal” de subversion et de déstructuration du bloc BAO). Finalement, la situation interne ukrainienne joue le rôle central, avec une prodigieuse corruption, touchant tous les appareils politiques, celui du gouvernement comme celui de l’opposition, une gestion grossière des situations de crise (les violences de la police), une tension endémique entre les deux parties du pays, s’opposant selon des fractures religieuses, ethniques, culturelles, etc., entre “pro-russes” à l’Est et “anti-russes” à l’Ouest. Tous ces éléments sont archi-connus et admis, d’une façon beaucoup plus évidente qu’en 2003-2004, d’autant que la situation n’a fait qu’empirer à cet égard. Le soi-disant pro-russe et président ukrainien Viktor Ianoukovitch et son gouvernement ne sont guère plus appréciés des commentateurs russes que des commentateurs du bloc BAO, et en général pour des raisons sérieuses, dénuées de l’affectivité sociétale qui marque les écrits des seconds. (Fédor Loukianov, le 29 novembre : «Mais l'esprit de compétition va se dissiper et on ignore toujours quoi faire avec ce pays voisin et aussi proche. Après tout l’Ukraine n'a fait aucun choix en faveur de Moscou, elle l’a une nouvelle fois esquivé en espérant pouvoir continuer à mener par le bout du nez les uns [l’UE] et les autres [la Russie]...») On citera ici plus en détails quelques observations sur la situation en Ukraine.

• Quelques observations sans ambages de Poutine (Russia Today, le 3 décembre 2013) lors d’une visite en Arménie, assorties de l’affirmation officielle que la Russie se tient de toutes les façons complètement en dehors des actuels événements, selon le principe de la souveraineté.

«“As far as the events in Ukraine are concerned, to me they don’t look like a revolution, but rather like 'pogrom'. However strange this might seem, in my view it has little to do with Ukrainian-EU relations,” Putin said. [...] “What is happening now is a little false start due to certain circumstances… This all has been prepared for the presidential election. And that these were preparations, in my opinion, is an apparent fact for all objective observers,” Putin stressed.

»He has said that now the Ukrainian opposition is either not in control of the protests, or it may serve as a cover-up for extremist activities. The footage from Kiev clearly shows “how well-organized and trained militant groups operate,” the Russian President said. Nobody seems to be concerned with the actual details of the Ukrainian-EU agreement, Putin said. “They say that the Ukrainian people are being deprived of their dream. But if you look at the contents of the deal – then you’ll see that the dream may be good, but many may not live to see it,” he argued. Putin then explained that the deal offered to Ukraine by the EU has “very harsh conditions”.»

• L’analyste William Engdahl estime que les événements actuels en Ukraine son essentiellement la réalisation d’un programme du bloc BAO, avec les USA “manipulant“ l’UE, avec les habituels outils de subversion (thèse de la “Révolution Orange-II”). Il met aussi en évidence la responsabilité de la direction ukrainienne. (Russia Today, le 2 décembre 2013.)

«First of all I think it’s quite right about the economic damage with the special association with the European Union. This was a Washington agenda and has been for more than six years. The EU is simply acting as a proxy for Washington to essentially strip Ukraine from Russia and weaken and isolate Russia even more. So the geopolitical stakes are huge in this.

»The Ukrainian police made a colossal blunder, the same as Milosevic made back in Yugoslavia, and the same blunder that Bashar Assad made at the onset of the protests in Syria – and that is to react with state violence, because that is exactly what the opposition was hoping and praying for: that they would lose their cool and give a red flag for the protesters to come out on mass. And that’s precisely what has happened.»

• Enfin, on citera le Polonais Mateusz Piskorski, interviewé le 2 décembre 2013 par Russia Today. Ses réponses, qui reprennent les lignes générales déjà vues, donnent des détails intéressants sur la situation interne de l’Ukraine et sur les événemets.

Russia Today : «Ukraine is a divided country, with the West ardently supporting European integration and the East historically more pro-Russian. Do you think the opposition intends to have some kind of dialogue with the easterners?»

Mateusz Piskorski : «I guess, first and foremost, all the protests that we can now see in the central squares and streets of Kiev are protests that have been raised or supported by some external factors and actors of the Ukrainian political scene. First, we see a huge professionalism of those who have organized the protests, because before the protests we heard about the activities of several embassies and NGOs financed and supported by different foreign countries. So we see this kind of pressure exerted by the external forces for the Ukrainian government to think once again about which geopolitical and geo-economic choice would be right and better for Ukraine. We can, of course, see the protests organized by the other side, by the Ukrainian Communist Party, by some members of the Party of Regions, which are in the eastern and southern towns of Ukraine. Unfortunately, in Europe and the United States we only see what is happening now in Kiev, but we cannot see the reaction of the other parts of Ukraine.» [...]

Russia Today : «Should the opposition succeed in overthrowing the government in Ukraine? Do you think the EU want to associate with such a turbulent nation as Ukraine?»

Mateusz Piskorski : «I think for the moment being any kind of association and signing a deeper and more comprehensive fair trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine would be a kind of economic suicide for Ukrainian side. If we look at the things which have happened during the last few months, I mean during the economic conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it was a clear proof that Ukraine’s economy is very closely connected to Russia. These are the ties that have remained from the Soviet times; we perfectly know that Ukraine is a part of the post-soviet economic area which is now integrating into the Eurasian bloc. We can tell only that the EU is not capable of compensating all the financial losses that Ukraine would encounter in case of closer cooperation with the EU. I guess that even the opposition, if it comes to power in the coming months, wouldn’t be ready to sign free trade agreement with Europe if it studies the possible results of such an agreement, as well as of the association agreement. This pro-European rhetoric aims at causing internal crisis and early elections, perhaps next year.»

D’une façon générale, on trouve dans ces diverses déclarations la confirmation des différents éléments déjà mentionnés : l’aspect catastrophique pour l’Ukraine de l’accord avec l’UE, la situation de corruption générale de la classe politique, l’absence d’habileté des réactions des autorités, l’intervention sans doute très importante d’éléments extérieurs de désordre et de déstabilisation. Certains détails, certaines précisions sont discutables. Il y a, notamment pour notre compte, l’analyse d’Engdahl faisant de l’UE un outil d’un “agenda” US : notre analyse est bien que l’UE agit dans ce cas sans nécessité d’impulsion ou d’“ordre” washingtonien, mais de son propre chef, selon l’impulsion-Système affectant tous les acteurs du bloc BAO dans la course à l’expansion et à la puissance quantitative. Bien entendu, les différents groupes et réseaux de déstabilisation US suivent, comme ils n’ont jamais cessé de faire en soutenant tout ce qui a un ferment de déstabilisation. Le but de déstabiliser les voisins de la Russie sinon la Russie elle-même est également évident, mais comme un comportement quasiment mécanique, se nourrissant de lui-même depuis la chute de l’URSS et surtout depuis 9/11. Il n’y a là-dedans rien de nouveau ni rien d’absolument efficace...

Le plus extrême de cette situation, d’un point de vue institutionnel, serait la chute de Ianoukovitch et l’arrivée au pouvoir de l’opposition. On se trouverait alors devant une nouvelle phase de la même séquence, aboutissant au délitement du nouveau gouvernement dans la corruption et le reste. Le seul facteur qui pourrait interrompre cette espèce d’évolution “en boucle” comme l’on dirait de l’inventeur du mouvement perpétuel serait une rupture opposant les deux parties du pays, la pro-russe et l’antirusse. Dans ce cas, le processus de déstabilisation-déstructuration de l’Ukraine passerait au stade du processus de déstabilisation-dissolution, toujours selon un cheminement classique des événements dans la crise générale qui nous affecte. On se trouverait alors devant des perspectives inconnues, les acteurs extérieurs étant cette fois directement concernés, mais des perspectives inconnues toujours marquées par les contraintes et les pesanteurs autant de l’Ukraine elle-même que de la domination du facteur de la communication.

Le principal enseignement se trouve plutôt dans le constat de la tendance au désordre de la situation considérée objectivement, et le constat de la tendance à accentuer le désordre de la part des acteurs du bloc BAO qui sont les principaux représentants du Système. On dira : rien de nouveau là-dedans, notamment par rapport au temps de la “Révolution Orange-I”, et alors pourquoi ne pas parler effectivement d’une “Révolution Orange-II” en reprenant les logiques et les accusations qui accompagnèrent l’événement ? Simplement parce qu’il s’est écoulée une quasi-décennie entre les deux événements, et si les composants ukrainiens (situation interne et interventionnisme déstabilisant) n’ont pas changé, par contre les situations internes du bloc BAO ont complètement basculé dans la crise ouverte. Dans ce sens, la poursuite des mêmes tactiques de déstabilisation et de déstructuration change complètement de sens et pourrait conduire, au niveau des relations internationales, avec le chaudron ukrainien toujours actif et conduit à une nouvelle phase paroxystique, à des situations de tension renouvelée ou accentuée, induisant alors par conséquence d’enchaînement indirect un désordre encore plus accentué où tous les acteurs seraient concernés.

C’est-à-dire qu’on ne peut revenir à la situation de la “Révolution Orange-I” où il semblait qu’une Russie encore affaiblie était assiégée par les acteurs occidentaux (non encore constitués en bloc BAO), semblant alors encore triomphants malgré les premiers revers (évolution de la situation en Irak). Aujourd’hui, la crise interne du bloc BAO, c’est-à-dire la crise du Système, et même la crise d’effondrement du Système, tout cela est partout présent et produit constamment des effets et des interférences aux conséquences insaisissables et souvent catastrophiques. Par conséquent, et à terme assez court, si le désordre en Ukraine se poursuit et débouche sur une nième déstabilisation du pays, la Russie en sera affectée, mais également le bloc BAO d’une façon ou d’une autre. En langage express des experts-Système, il s’agit d’une situation lose-lose classique, comme on en voit partout, avec la diffusion du désordre nihiliste caractérisant les effets des politiques en cours. A ce point du raisonnement, on irait même jusqu’à observer, malgré la proximité du nouveau foyer de désordre, que la Russie serait la première à réagir d’une façon constructive, si elle s'appuie comme elle a coutume de faire sur sa politique principielle de fermeté, contre le désordre anarchique des “valeurs” du bloc BAO. Et, certes, dans le cas contraire, si la situation en Ukraine s’apaise, ce ne sera que temporaire vu l’état intérieur du pays et surtout de sa direction, et le mécanisme de déstabilisation-déstructuration se manifesterait à une prochaine occasion.

Tout cela témoigne non pas d’affrontements ordonnés assortis d’“agendas” cohérents, notamment de type géopolitique, mais bien du tourbillon de désordre de l’ère psychopolitique. Chercher un vainqueur dans une telle occurrence n’a pas de sens, tout comme la situation elle-même. (Les résultats obtenus finalement, quelques années plus tard, par les diverses “révolutions de couleur” de la période 2003-2005, pourtant parties de bases infiniment mieux maîtrisées, sont éloquents à cet égard : accentuation du désordre partout où ces événements eurent lieu, renforcement de la Russie autour de sa politique principielle, qui en fait l’acteur le plus sûr mais tout de même sans capacité de vaincre ce désordre [voir le 2 décembre 2013].) Bien évidemment, si l’on s’arrête aux événements du jour, aux vociférations de foules plus ou moins malheureuses et plus ou moins manipulées à la fois, aux slogans du bloc BAO et à la narrative de ses commentateurs, on peut toujours s’exclamer devant la puissance du Système et à nouveau proclamer son invincibilité. Pour notre cas, nous verrons dans tout cela, selon notre analyse classique, la manifestation évidente de sa surpuissance se transformant instantanément en effets d’autodestruction.

Svoboda: nieuwe lieveling van de westerse media?

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Svoboda: nieuwe lieveling van de westerse media?

Ex: http://www.solidarisme.be

Svoboda is een Oekraïnse nationalistische oppositiepartij die deel uitmaakt van de Europese Alliantie van Nationale Bewegingen, waarvan ook de British National Party, het Franse Front National en het Hongaarse Jobbik deel uitmaken.

Niks bijzonders, ware het niet dat de (West-)Europese partners van Svoboda bij de westerse massamedia als extreem-rechts geboekstaafd staan en dus als politieke paria's behandeld worden. Svoboda, dat dezer dagen prominent aanwezig is op antiregeringsbetogingen in Oekraïne, kan daarentegen op een (schijnbare) voorkeursbehandeling rekenen. Aanleiding voor die onlusten was de weigering van de pro-Russische president Viktor Janoekovitsj om een associatieovereenkomst met de Europese Unie te ondertekenen.

Is dat overigens geen eigenaardig déjà vu? Toen Viktor Joestsjenko, de pro-westerse presidentskandidaat en latere president van Oekraïne, in 2004 door 'neonazi's' en 'skinheads' (zoals dat heet) bleek te worden gesteund en zelfs een beroep op hen deed, namen diezelfde westerse media dat immers ook voor lief:

De Vries, C. (30 december 2004). Neonazi's en skinheads steunen Joestsjenko, De Morgen/De Volkskrant, p. 6

De westerse media en opiniemakers kennen weinig scrupules als het erom gaat nieuwe 'wingewesten', zoals nu Oekraïne, in te lijven bij de EU (en uiteindelijk ook de NAVO). Zo ook hadden twee bekende nationale veiligheidsadviseurs van de Verenigde Staten, Henry Kissinger en later Zbigniew Brzezinski, in de jaren '70 geen scrupules toen ze, om de USSR te verzwakken, de diplomatieke betrekkingen met maoïstisch China herstelden (en Taiwan opofferden). Nochtans was maoïstisch China een regime dat de 'conservatieve' (poststalinistische) USSR in wreedheid en collectivistische waanzin vele malen overtrof:

'KOESTER HET GEWELD'

Al van bij de aanvang laat Dikötter er geen twijfel over bestaan dat Mao geweld en terreur koestert om z’n doel te bereiken. Mao haalt daarvoor de mosterd bij z’n sponsor en leidsman, Sovjet- dictator Jozef Stalin. Dikötter legt minutieus uit hoe Mao het gemeenschapsgevoel in de dorpjes kapot maakt door per se ‘klassen’ in te voeren - zoals ‘landheren’ - die er eigenlijk niet zijn. Daardoor zet hij iedereen tegen iedereen op. Bovendien introduceert hij grootschalig georganiseerd geweld tegen ‘contrarevolutionairen’. Mao werkt net als Stalin met quota: minstens één op de duizend tegenstanders moet worden omgebracht. Op tal van plaatsen wordt dat door ijverige communisten opgedreven tot drie op duizend. In totaal gaat het om miljoenen mensen die vaak zonder enige reden de dood worden ingejaagd. Dat schept een sfeer van angst en terreur in heel China. De oorlog in Korea, waarin China meegezogen wordt doet daar een schep bovenop.

Bron: De tragiek van de bevrijding - Frank Dikötter (cobratv.be)

Diezelfde pro-Chinese politiek leidde er overigens ook toe dat de VS het uitermate wreedaardige regime van de Rode Khmer ('Democratisch Kampuchea') bleven erkennen, ook nadat het allang met Vietnamese (en Russische) steun in het grootste deel van Cambodja was verslagen.

Eenzelfde verdeel-en-heers- of machtsevenwichtpolitiek werd nadien in Centraal Azië voortgezet door Brzezinski, die werkzaam was onder Jimmy Carter, de VS-president die als eerste de 'mensenrechten' tot thema maakte (waaruit zich vanaf de jaren '90 dan weer het 'humanitaire' interventionisme zou ontwikkelen). Hij had onder meer het lumineuze idee om in Afghanistan een internationaal netwerk van moedjahedien (jihadisten) op te richten en te bewapenen, om zo het Rode Leger tot een uitputtingsoorlog te dwingen en de USSR (verder) te verzwakken. Zo is Al Qaeda (alias De Basis) ontstaan vanuit de tactische berekening (misrekening?) van Brzezinski en als covert operation van de CIA:

Sinds het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog en sinds dat bewuste akkoord met de Saoedi's [het Quincy-pact, n.v.d.r.] is de Amerikaanse politiek in het Midden-Oosten zeer stabiel geweest : petromeum was de drijfveer. De Amerikanen hadden uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog een zeer belangrijke les getrokken : om een machtspositie te bekleden in de wereld is de bevoorrading in grondstoffen en brandstof van kapitaal belang. En de controle over de grondstoffen in de landen van het Zuiden was met de Koude Oorlog bijzonder complex geworden. Vandaar dat de oorlog in Afghanistan zo'n belangrijk moment is geweest in de Amerikaanse geschiedenis. Het ging hier om een oorlog met het Rode Leger, waarmee de Amerikanen wraak wilden nemen voor hun nederlaag in Vietnam. Vanaf 1979 hebben de VS deze oorlog gevoerd met hulptroepen : de omkadering was Pakistaans, de financiering - met publieke en privé fondsen - was Amerikaans en Saoedisch. Op die manier werden de meest radicale islamistische milities - zoals de groep van Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - gevormd, getraind en gefinancierd. Na de nederlaag en de terugtrekking van het Rode Leger uit Afghanistan is dit apparaat van de Amerikaanse politiek in deze regio niet verdwenen. De islamistische netwerken bleven onverminderd gesteund door de Pakistaanse geheime diensten (de ISI of Inter Service Intelligence), de Amerikaanse CIA en tal van privé agentschappen. Je zou kunnen stellen dat de Amerikanen uit louter bureaucratische overwegingen deze netwerken in stand hebben gehouden.

Bron: "Islamitisch fundamentalisme is vooral islam-business" aldus Richard Labévière (Uitpers)

Berucht om zijn machtsevenwichtpolitiek (en imperalisme) kreeg het Britse Rijk als bijnaam 'het perfide Albion' van de Franse keizer Napoleon. Tot in de recente geschiedenis zijn de voorbeelden van Brits verraad dan ook legio. Laten we even terugkeren naar, alweer, Oost-Europa. De Polen, die altijd al sterke anti-Russische sentimenten gehad hebben (kijk maar naar Brzezinski, zelf van Poolse afkomst), zijn na de Tweede Wereldoorlog behoorlijk bedrogen door hun westerse 'geallieerden'. Churchill en Roosevelt gaven Stalin hun Poolse vaderland op een serveerblaadje cadeau (en al wie Stalin niet zinde erbij). De massamoord op 25 000 Poolse officieren, bevolen door Stalin en bedoeld om van de Polen een volk zonder elite te maken, werd op het Nürnberg-tribunaal ei zo na niét in de schoenen van de 'boze nazi's' geschoven. Stalins beulen mogen al van geluk spreken dat de slachting nooit werd berecht! Maar wacht even: was Polen niet de aanleiding voor heel de Tweede Wereldoorlog? En hebben Polen niet hun leven gegeven, in het bijzonder bij de slag om Monte Cassino, om hun vaderland terug te krijgen zoals het was? Stalin, die drie weken na Hitler zélf Polen was binnengevallen, mocht de door hem veroverde gebieden in Oost-Polen - in strijd met alle beloftes en charters! - behouden. De geallieerden hebben hem ook nooit de oorlog verklaard, zoals ze dat na de Duitse inval met Hitler deden...

Who Started WWII - Lecture by Victor Suvorov

De westerse media en opiniemakers doen niets anders dan dit spel van machtsevenwichten meespelen. Natuurlijk houden ze niet écht van Oekraïnse nationalisten, laat staan van primaire xenofobe boneheads (zoals die die in het oudere artikel hierboven werden opgevoerd). En natuurlijk houden ze ook niet écht van de islamistische 'haatbaarden' van Al Qaeda of Al Nusra in bijvoorbeeld Syrië. Het is dan ook niet slim om bijvoorbeeld over 'linkse' media te spreken en zich daarop blind te staren, zoals een nieuwskanaal dat zich ReAct (van reactionair?) noemt zo vaak doet. De houding van de media is 'dialectisch' net zoals de geopolitiek van het Westen en net zoals het liberalisme zelf: een spel van alles en zijn tegendeel. Van links én rechts dus, voor zover ze het stempel 'politiek-correct' hebben gekregen, d.w.z. de regels van het spel en de (onderliggende) waarden en denkbeelden van het liberalisme aanvaarden of gewoon (tijdelijk) bruikbaar zijn om een bepaald doel te bereiken (bijv. bepaalde jihadisten). De beste (geo)politieke 'strategen' zijn degenen die zich bewust zijn van het 'vloeibare' karakter van deze machtsstructuur en aldus (letterlijk en figuurlijk) een 'bewegingsoorlog' in plaats van een 'stellingenoorlog' kunnen voeren. Zodoende waren figuren als Kissinger of Brzezinski in staat om hun eigen (ideologische) tegenstanders in (tactische) medestanders te veranderen en hen als pionnen op een schaakbord vooruit te schuiven. Daarbij werden ze niet gehinderd door enige scrupules, in de veronderstelling dat ze die hebben natuurlijk...

Zbigniew Brzezinski to Jihadists: Your cause is right!

Hetzelfde perfide, 'anglofiele' en liberale Westen probeert de laatste jaren met alle mogelijke middelen (telegeleide 'burgerbewegingen', denktanks, lobby's, ngo's, massamedia enz.) onrust te stoken in de onderbuik en zelfs in het hart van Rusland. Het doel is daarbij vooral de onrust zélf, ook al hebben de liberale opiniemakers natuurlijk meer sympathie voor Femen (tegenwoordig gepatroneerd door de Oekraïnse 'filantroop' Vadim Rabinovitsj) en voor Pussy Riot dan voor etnische en religieuze separatisten, die evenzeer op tijd en stond vanuit het Westen werden en worden gesteund, en wel om het centrale gezag van Moskou te ondermijnen (bijv. American Committee for Peace in Chechnya). Als Russische nationalisten door Poetin vervolgd worden, krijgt dat echter véél minder weerklank. En toch, ook tijdens de betogingen tegen diens herverkiezing waren de zwart-geel-witte rijksvlaggen van de Russische (Slavische) nationalisten prominent in beeld. Ze hadden en hebben hun plaats in de 'bonte' oppositiecoalitie die zich toen rond voormalig schaakkampioen Gary Kasparov en vandaag vooral Alekseij Navalny geschaard heeft. Als etnische nationalisten hebben zij vooral een afkeer van het feit dat Rusland een Russische Federatie, m.a.w. een meervolkerenstaat is. Dat maakt hen op zijn minst tot een potentiële bondgenoot van de westerse strategen:

“To understand Russian nationalism, even racism, you need to realize that despite their political, cultural, and numerical dominance, many Russians see themselves a nation without a state,” Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies wrote in The Nation.

Bron: The Kremlin Is Losing Control of the Nationalist Movement It Helped Create (The Atlantic, 8 november 2013)

De westerse geopolitiek bespeelt dus 'links' en 'rechts' om door het stoken van onrust 'pluralisme' (lees: verdeeldheid) ingang te doen vinden in relatief homogene samenlevingen, met relatief gesloten economieën en een relatief sterk centraal gezag. En dat pluralisme is uiteindelijk niets anders dan de voorbode van multiculturalisme en nationale desintegratie naar westers model. Het is een 'spel' van zaaien en oogsten. En de 'oogst' of, beter gezegd buit, die bestaat uit de onmetelijke bodemrijkdommen en staatseigendommen waar westerse bedrijven geen rechtstreekse toegang toe hebben. Op langere termijn hopen strategen als Brzezinski, die Anglo-Amerikaanse geopolitiek bedrijven naar het voorbeeld van Halford Mackinder, dat nergens in Eurazië een tegenmacht kan opstaan voor hun eigen neokoloniale, unipolaire wereldorde.

Ukraine : le coup d’état bruxellois

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Ukraine : le coup d’état bruxellois
 
La démocratie totalitaire en action

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Il y a eu en Ukraine une révolution orange. On sait que c’était un leurre. Il s’agissait d’une opération préparée par les Usa et leurs alliés pour renverser un régime pro-russe au nom de la démocratie libérale alignée sur les intérêts économiques de l’occident. Le mouvement présenté comme spontané avait été préparé avec une formidable logistique mise en place par des mouvements humanitaires financés par les américains et dans un but de subversion démocratique.


Le résultat immédiat de la Révolution orange fut l'annulation par la Cour suprême du scrutin et l'organisation d'un nouveau vote le 26 décembre 2004 qui voit la victoire de Viktor Iouchtchenko avec 52 % des voix contre 44 % pour son rival Viktor Ianoukovytch. Sa présidence est cependant entachée de crises politiques multiples avec les gouvernements successifs. D'un point de vue géopolitique, la Révolution orange marque un rapprochement de l'Ukraine avec l'OTAN et avec l'Union européenne. Pro-européen convaincu, mais accusé de russophobie dans un pays très divisé entre l'est russophone et l'ouest plus pro-occidental, Iouchtchenko battra très vite des records d'impopularité. Il ne parviendra pas à gérer les problèmes de la crise économique mondiale de 2008-2010 dans un pays qui en est fortement affecté. La révolution orange était considérée comme close par la victoire du pro-russe Viktor Ianoukovitch à l'élection présidentielle ukrainienne de 2010. Quant à Iouchtchenko, il recueillera seulement 5,45 % des voix. Comme quoi !


Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui est peut être une deuxième révolution orange. En tout cas les manifestants contestent une décision d’un gouvernement légalement élu. C’est le refus de la signature d’un accord avec l’Europe de Bruxelles et un nouveau rapprochement avec Moscou qui est à l’ origine de ces manifestations qui veulent renverser le pouvoir, ce qui, n’en déplaise à Washington, est tout de même la définition d’une révolution.


Tout cela bien sûr est préparé pour stopper le retour en force de la Russie sur la scène internationale et rendre en fait à Poutine la monnaie de sa pièce de Damas. Ces manifestations sont devenues « incontrôlables » et leurs instigateurs utilisent des « méthodes illégales » pour renverser le pouvoir, s'est indigné dans la journée le premier ministre ukrainien, Mykola Azarov. « Ce qui se passe présente tous les signes d'un coup d'Etat. C'est une chose très sérieuse. Nous faisons preuve de patience, mais nous voulons que nos partenaires ne pensent pas que tout leur est permis », a-t-il ajouté. 


« Nous ne considérons certainement pas des manifestations pacifiques comme des coups d'Etat », a déclaré le porte-parole du président Barack Obama, Jay Carney. Emboîtant le pas aux diplomates de Bruxelles, le président français François Hollande et le premier ministre polonais Donald Tusk avaient condamné plus tôt « les violences ».


Les médias soutiennent la révolution et ont même trouvé une figure emblématique. Ce n’est plus une blonde ukrainienne mais une brute de boxeur qui serait également- pourquoi pas – un intellectuel  raffiné. Le chef du parti libéral Oudar est donc l'opposant le plus en vue. Cet ancien boxeur – il a été champion du monde dans la catégorie poids lourds – est entré en politique il y a quelques années pour rapidement s'imposer comme l'une des étoiles montantes de l'échiquier politique ukrainien. Malgré un physique impressionnant (2,02 m pour 110 kg) et sa forte médiatisation, son manque de charisme lui est reproché, tandis que sa légitimité politique reste à construire.


Candidat malheureux à la mairie de Kiev en 2006, le seul mandat qu'il a exercé est celui de député, depuis 2012. Ces derniers jours cependant, devant la foule de manifestants, ses discours étaient les plus applaudis et son nom fréquemment scandé. Klitschko, qui a fait de la lutte contre la corruption sa principale bataille, est respecté dans le pays pour avoir bâti honnêtement sa fortune, par ses victoires sportives, et non par des affaires frauduleuses.Voila la boxe devenu subitement  à nouveau pour les journalistes «  un noble art » et un sport éthique….adieu Rocky.


Reste à savoir si le judoka Poutine laissera ses alliés ukrainiens être mis Ko par un boxeur aux gants préparés par Bruxelles et Washington.

lundi, 02 décembre 2013

L’Océan Pacifique est-il devenu radioactif ?

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APRES FUKUSHIMA…

L’Océan Pacifique est-il devenu radioactif ?

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr
Il faut de l’abnégation et chercher l’information pour entendre parler de Fukushima. Or on apprend assez vite que de l’eau hautement radioactive en provenance des ruines de la centrale de Fukushima se déverserait toujours dans l’océan Pacifique, créant un état d’urgence sanitaire difficilement maîtrisable selon les propres dires d’un responsable de l’agence industrielle Tepco, en charge de la gestion des équipements nucléaires japonais. 

Le problème aurait deux sources : l’eau souterraine contaminée et l’eau stockée dans des réservoirs dont une partie s’écoulerait, suite à des fuites. 300 tonnes d’eau contaminée aurait ainsi déjà atteint la mer, a reconnu Tepco au mois d’Août dernier. Mais les autorités japonaises continuent de nier et affirment que l’Océan Pacifique n’a jamais été atteint ou que le total cumulé d’éléments radioactifs s’écoulant en mer s’inscrirait dans des limites légales et autorisées pour la santé. Qui croire ? Les déclarations ou les cartes de radioactivité des chercheurs indépendants ?
 
Des mesures de contention ont été prises, tel qu’un système de décontamination prévu pour traiter 500 tonnes d’eau par jour ou encore le pompage de l’eau avant qu’elle n’atteigne la mer et enfin, la construction d’une barrière sous-marine qui a débutée en mai 2012 et qui sera achevée en septembre 2014. 

Toutes ces mesures reconnaissent donc bien que le système de décontamination existant n’est pas complètement opérationnel et qu’en tout cas, il est nécessaire. En outre, le chef de l’Autorité de sûreté nucléaire japonaise a déclaré en octobre qu’une brèche avait été détectée dans une barrière souterraine laissant émerger de l’eau contaminée dans des quantités supérieures à la radioactivité légalement admise. 

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Tepco a répliqué aussitôt en indiquant : “Nous ne savons toujours pas pourquoi le niveau de radiation a bondi, mais nous poursuivons les efforts pour éviter une nouvelle expansion de la contamination”. S’il a souvent été reproché aux autorités japonaises une certaine opacité sur la question, des chercheurs indépendants souvent américains ou canadiens se penchent régulièrement sur le sujet et leurs estimations sont alarmantes. Ce seraient des quantités extrêmement dangereuses de strontium, tritium et césium qui se seraient échappés de Fukushima pour se déverser dans tout l’Hémisphère Nord portés par les courants, la pluie et le vent. 

Face aux derniers aveux de Tepco, les risques semblent bien tangibles et s’étendraient, selon les spécialistes, sur toute la côte ouest des Etats-Unis et cette pollution radioactive pourrait potentiellement affecter la vie marine et la santé de millions de personnes vivant dans l’hémisphère nord au bord des côtes du Pacifique. 

Ce que craignent surtout les spécialistes, c’est un nouveau séisme, un de ces tremblements de terre dévastateurs dont le Japon est coutumier. La revue “The New Scientist” a tenu à préciser que la centrale nucléaire de Fukushima contenait à l’origine 1760 tonnes de matières nucléaires alors que Tchernobyl en contenait 180. Mais vous l’aurez noté, on parle beaucoup moins de Fukushima en France malgré la Polynésie française toute proche. 

dimanche, 01 décembre 2013

Is the Superpower Afraid of Iran?

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Is the Superpower Afraid of Iran?

Buchanan-Pat.jpg“Iran’s Nuclear Triumph” roared the headline of the Wall Street Journal editorial. William Kristol is again quoting Churchill on Munich.

Since the news broke Saturday night that Iran had agreed to a six-month freeze on its nuclear program, we are back in the Sudetenland again.

Why? For not only was this modest deal agreed to by the United States, but also by our NATO allies Germany, Britain and France.

Russia and China are fine with it.

Iran’s rivals, Turkey and Egypt, are calling it a good deal. Saudi Arabia says it “could be a first step toward a comprehensive solution for Iran’s nuclear program.”

Qatar calls it “an important step toward safeguarding peace and stability in the region.” Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have issued similar statements.

Israeli President Shimon Peres calls the deal satisfactory. Former Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin has remarked of the hysteria in some Israeli circles, “From the reactions this morning, I might have thought Iran had gotten permission to build a bomb.”

Predictably, “Bibi” Netanyahu is leading the stampede:

“Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

But this is not transparent nonsense?

In return for a modest lifting of sanctions, Tehran has agreed to halt work on the heavy water reactor it is building at Arak, to halt production of 20-percent uranium, to dilute half of its existing stockpile, and to allow more inspections.

Does this really make the world “a much more dangerous place”?

Consider the worst-case scenario we hear from our politicians and pundits — that Iran is cleverly scheming to get the U.S. and U.N. sanctions lifted, and, then, she will make a “mad dash” for the bomb.

But how exactly would Tehran go about this?

If Iran suddenly moved all its low-enriched uranium, to be further enriched in a crash effort to 90 percent, i.e., bomb grade, this would take months to accomplish.

Yet, we would be altered within hours that the uranium was being moved.

Any such Iranian action would expose Barack Obama and John Kerry as dupes. They would be discredited and the howls from Tel Aviv and Capitol Hill for air and missile strikes on Natanz, Fordo and Arak would become irresistible.

Obama and Kerry would be forced to act.

War with Iran, which would mean a shattered Iran, would be a real possibility. At the least, Iran, like North Korea, would be sanctioned anew, isolated and made a pariah state.

Should Iran test a nuclear device, Saudi Arabia would acquire bombs from Pakistan. Turkey and Egypt might start their own nuclear weapons programs. Israel would put its nuclear arsenal or high alert.

If, after a year or two building a bomb, in an act of insanity, Iran found a way to deliver it to Israel or a U.S. facility in the Middle East, Iran would be inviting the fate of Imperial Japan in 1945.

So, let us assume another scenario, that the Iranians are not crazed fanatics but rational actors looking out for what is best for their country.

If Iran has no atom bomb program, as the Ayatollah attests, President Hassan Rouhani says he is willing to demonstrate, and 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded six years ago and again two years ago, consider the future that might open to Iran — if the Iranians are simply willing and able to prove this to the world’s satisfaction.

First, a steady lifting of sanctions. Second, an end to Iran’s isolation and a return to the global economy. Third, a wave of Western investment for Iran’s oil and gas industry, producing prosperity and easing political pressure on the regime.

Fourth, eventual emergence of Iran, the most populous nation in the Gulf with 85 million citizens, as the dominant power in the Gulf, just as China, after dispensing with the world Communist revolution, became dominant in Asia

Why would an Iran, with this prospect before it, risk the wrath of the world and a war with the United States to acquire a bomb whose use would assure the country’s annihilation?

America’s goals: We do not want a nuclear Iran, and we do not want war with Iran. And Iran’s actions seem to indicate that building an atom bomb is not the animating goal of the Ayatollah, as some Americans insist.

Though she has the ability to build a bomb, Iran has neither conducted a nuclear test, nor produced bomb-grade uranium. She has kept her supply of 20-percent uranium below what is needed to be further enriched for even a single bomb test. Now, she has agreed to dilute half of that and produce no more.

If Iran were hell-bent on a bomb, why has she not produced a bomb?

Just possibly, because Iran doesn’t want the bomb. And if that is so, why not a deal to end these decades of sterile hostility?

B52 EN ASIE : UNE PENTE DANGEREUSE

 

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B52 EN ASIE : UNE PENTE DANGEREUSE

Les stratèges américains en plein chambardement

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Nous l’avions écrit: le prochain théâtre de guerre sera asiatique et en partie maritime (l’Océan Pacifique). Deux bombardiers américains B-52 ont pénétré dans la très controversée « zone aérienne d'identification » (ZAI) mise en place par la Chine.  Cette zone est récente et même très récente puisque elle date tout simplement de samedi dernier ! On nous dit que les Etats-Unis n’en auraient pas référé à Pékin mais heureusement puisque cette ZAI n’existe pas dans les textes ! Les avions US, qui n'embarquaient aucune arme mais sans doute de bons outils de renseignements, ont décollé de l'île de Guam dans le Pacifique lundi soit à peine deux jours après l’annonce unilatérale chinoise. Le soutien des Américains à leur allié japonais est donc total.

Aucun plan de vol n'avait été déposé au préalable auprès de la Chine et la mission s'est déroulée "sans incident". Les deux avions sont restés "moins d'une heure", - ce qui est assez long - dans la dite "zone aérienne d'identification". Ils attendaient sans doute les avions de chasse chinois que Pékin s’est bien gardé d’envoyer. Cette "zone aérienne d'identification" a suscité l'opposition ferme et justifiée du gouvernement japonais car elle englobe les îles Senkaku, îles fermement revendiquées par Pékin sous le nom de Diaoyu. Mais la ZAI chinoise de samedi va aussi plus loin : elle englobe des eaux revendiquées par Taïwan et la Corée du Sud, ces derniers ayant également manifesté leur mécontentement après la décision de Pékin.

CHINA_-_JAPAN_-_Diaoyu-Senkaku.jpgDans sa déclaration de samedi, la Chine exigeait que tout appareil s'aventurant dans cette ZAI fournisse désormais au préalable son plan de vol précis, affiche sa nationalité et maintienne des communications radio permettant de "répondre de façon rapide et appropriée aux requêtes d'identification" des autorités chinoises, sous peine d'intervention des forces armées. Le ton est monté lundi entre Tokyo et Pékin à la suite de la décision chinoise d'imposer cette zone de contrôle aérien. Le même jour et en solidarité avec son allié japonais, le colonel Warren, porte-parole de la Défense américaine a qualifié la mesure chinoise d'"incendiaire". Des responsables du Pentagone ont alors précisé que les avions de l'armée américaine continueraient de voler dans cette région comme avant, sans soumettre de plans de vol à Pékin au préalable.

Le différend territorial entre les deux puissances asiatiques s'est aggravé depuis septembre 2012, lorsque le Japon a nationalisé trois des cinq îles qui appartenaient à un propriétaire privé nippon. Cette décision avait entraîné une semaine de manifestations anti-japonaises violentes en Chine, et une forte contestation de Pékin. Le Japon fit de son côté patrouiller ses garde-côtes dans les mêmes eaux et ce chassé-croisé avait suscité les craintes d'un éventuel incident armé entre les deux puissances.

B52 dans le Pacifique mais lâchage en Afghanistan

Par ailleurs, poursuivant leur politique de « changement de pivot stratégique », la conseillère de sécurité nationale américaine Susan Rice en visite à Kaboul a prévenu le président afghan Hamid Karzaï qu’il ne serait « pas viable » de retarder la signature de l’accord de sécurité entre leurs deux pays. Elle a haussé le ton en affirmant que sans signature rapide d’un accord réciproque, les Etats-Unis n’auraient d’autre choix que de prévoir un après-2014 où les troupes américaines et de l’Otan ne seraient plus présentes .Le gouvernement de Karzaï se retrouverait seul et sans appui financier. Sans le dire ouvertement, les USA affirment qu’ils sont prêts à lâcher l’Afghanistan, quitte à  entériner un retour taliban dans le secteur. Un peu déroutant tout de même pour nos défunts soldats : pour qui, pourquoi sont-ils morts finalement ?

La relation entre les Etats-Unis et l’Afghanistan est extrêmement tendue. L’enjeu est la signature du traité bilatéral de sécurité (BSA) que Washington et Kaboul négocient actuellement depuis plusieurs mois. Kharzaï ne cesse de faire monter les enchères. La Loya Jirga, grande assemblée traditionnelle afghane, a pourtant approuvé dimanche le Traité, qui doit définir les modalités d’une présence militaire américaine en Afghanistan après le départ des 75 000 soldats de l’Otan. En fait, d’ores et déjà, ce retrait fait craindre une recrudescence des violences dans le pays et même une offensive taliban au printemps prochain entraînant une déstabilisation de la partie indienne ou pakistanaise.

Pour précipiter cette signature, la Maison Blanche tente de jouer des divisions locales et s’est donc vivement félicitée de l’approbation du Traité bilatéral de Sécurité par la Loya Jirga pachtoune. Elle demande des comptes à Kharzaï ! Or, ce dernier aurait énoncé de nouvelles conditions pour signer l’accord et aurait même indiqué qu’il n’était pas prêt à signer rapidement.

Hamid Karzaï est aux abois 

Il souhaite que la promulgation de l’accord ait lieu après l’élection présidentielle d’avril 2014, à laquelle cependant la Constitution lui interdit de se présenter. Les Etats-Unis ont refusé catégoriquement les nouvelles exigences de Karzaï et répondu que « retarder la signature jusqu’aux élections de l’année prochaine n’était pas viable, car cela ne donnerait pas la clarté nécessaire aux Etats-Unis et à l’Otan pour planifier leur présence après 2014. L'absence d’un BSA signé mettrait en danger les promesses d’aides faites par l’Otan et d’autres pays aux conférences de Chicago et Tokyo en 2012 ».

La diplomatie a aussi des perspectives économiques. En Iran, les entreprises automobiles américaines s’apprêtent à revenir dans le pays, satisfaites au passage d’avoir pu, avec l’aval du blocus occidental, éliminé les compagnies françaises concurrentes, Renault et Peugeot ! En fait, on n’est pas vraiment sûr que la diplomatie française ait compris les changements d’alliances en cours, qu’elle ait réellement pris la mesure de la rapidité avec lequel les Etats-Unis, très bien informés sur l’état réel de la défense chinoise sont aujourd’hui déterminés à pivoter à cent quatre vingt degrés. Ils ont accéléré l’accord sur le Sahara occidental et renforcé l’alliance militaire avec le Maroc. Ils sont en train  d’éclaircir leurs positions en Amérique latine tout cela pour se concentrer ensuite sur le Pacifique et l’endiguement de la Chine. Il serait peut-être temps que le Quai d’Orsay se réveille. Mais après tant de décisions irrationnelles, le peut-il encore vraiment sans se désavouer totalement ?

samedi, 30 novembre 2013

In Syrië ontluikt een Koerdische Lente

In Syrië ontluikt een Koerdische Lente

door Dirk Rochtus

Ex: http://www.doorbraak.be/

Volgt er op de Arabische Winter een Koerdische Lente? Ook in het noorden van Syrië verstevigen de Koerden hun positie. Een conferentie in de Belgische Senaat boog zich over de toekomstplannen van ‘Rojava’ of Syrisch Koerdistan. 

De hele twintigste eeuw door streden de Koerden, die verspreid leven over Irak, Iran, Turkije en Syrië, voor meer autonomie binnen deze staten. Er vloeide veel bloed; foltering, verbanning en dood vielen vele Koerdische militanten ten deel. Maar hun ‘gastheren’, de staten die hen dulden, geraakten vaak verwikkeld in buitenlandse conflicten en van de daaruit volgende interne verzwakking konden de Koerden ook profiteren. Saddam Hoessein overspeelde zijn hand in conflicten met de buurstaten en met de Verenigde Staten van Amerika (VSA) en daardoor konden de Koerden in het noorden van Irak hun autonomie uitbouwen. Turkije kreeg de PKK, de Koerdische separatistenbeweging in eigen land, niet klein, evenmin als de  BDP, de partij die als belangenvertegenwoordiger van de Turkse Koerden in het nationale parlement in Ankara zetelt. Bovendien beging de Turkse premier Tayyip Erdoğan de strategische fout om de oppositiebeweging tegen de Syrische president Basr al-Assad te ondersteunen. Deze laatste reageerde daarop door de Koerden in het noorden van zijn land meer ruimte te geven. Niet alleen kon hij zich zo in de strijd tegen de opstandelingen concentreren op voor hem meer vitale regio’s, maar bovendien zette hij ook een Koerdische pad in de korf van Erdoğan. Want Turkije is als de dood voor een autonome Koerdische regio in het noorden van Syrië, een gebied dat wordt gecontroleerd door de Democratische Eenheidspartij (PYD), een zusterorganisatie van de gehate PKK.

Rojava

In Syrië leven bijna drie miljoen Koerden, een tiende van de Syrische bevolking. Twee miljoen ervan leven verspreid over drie regio’s in het noorden van Syrië, in Efrîn (een half miljoen), Kobanê (400 000) en Cizîre (1,2 miljoen). De Koerden hebben het hier over West-Koerdistan of Rojava (terwijl ze het zuidoosten van Turkije Noord-Koerdistan, het noorden van Irak Zuid-Koerdistan en het Koerdische deel van Iran Oost-Koerdistan noemen). Alleen cartografen geraken hier het noorden niet kwijt. Assad liet de Syrische Koerden na tientallen jaren onderdrukking los maar dat betekende niet dat ze zich geen zorgen meer moesten maken. Moslimextremisten zaaiden de laatste maanden terreur in Rojava, het Koerdische gebied van Syrië. De Koerden vochten terug tegen deze nieuwe vijand en slaagden erin rust en orde in de regio te doen weerkeren. Samen met vertegenwoordigers van de Arabische en Assyrische bevolkingsgroepen en andere Koerdische partijen heeft de PYD op 12 november een conferentie georganiseerd om te beraadslagen over de toekomst van de regio. Het resultaat ervan is de installatie van een Overgangsregering en van een parlement met 82 afgevaardigden. De Koerden ontkennen dat dit een eerste stap naar afscheuring van Syrië zou zijn. De bedoeling zou erin bestaan om een democratische vredelievende orde in het leven te roepen waaraan een toekomstig pluralistisch Syrië zich zou kunnen spiegelen.

Internationaal

De vraag of dit democratisch project kans op slagen heeft, maakte het voorwerp uit van een conferentie die senator Karl Vanlouwe (N-VA) samen met het Koerdisch Instituut en het Centrum Maurits Coppieters op vrijdag 22 november in zaal M van de Belgische Senaat organiseerde. Verschillende grote namen uit de Koerdische Beweging zoals Salih Muslim, covoorzitter van de PYD, kwamen er het nieuwe project toelichten. Van Vlaamse kant en met het oog op de internationale context namen Ludo De Brabander, stafmedewerker bij Vrede vzw en VRT-journalist Rudi Vranckx het woord. De Brabander wierp zijn licht op de ‘Internationale actoren en hun bondgenoten’. Zonder in complottheorieën te willen vervallen, dichtte hij gas en olie toch een belangrijke rol toe in de conflictsfeer waarin het Midden-Oosten baadt. De ontdekking van olie- en gasvoorraden in de maritieme zone van Cyprus roept Rusland, dat een basis heeft in de Syrische havenstad Tarsus, op het voorplan; de ontsluiting van gasvoorraden in de Perzische Golf versterkt de rivaliteit tussen Iran en Katar, terwijl deze laatste een transportroute over land zoekt als alternatief voor de Straat van Hormuz. Het hoeft dan ook niet te verwonderen dat Iran en Katar in de kwestie Syrië met gekruiste degens tegenover elkaar staan.

Vranckx zocht een antwoord op de vraag waarom de burger in het Westen schoon genoeg heeft van alles wat het Midden-Oosten en inzonderheid Syrië te maken heeft. Er leeft heel wat wantrouwen bij de westerlingen tegenover de ‘Arabisch-islamitische wereld’, zo van ‘het zijn allemaal terroristen’. Op den duur wagen zelfs Westerse journalisten zich niet meer in het land, zo gevaarlijk is het geworden, en zeker sinds het fenomeen targeted killing opgang maakt. In 2013 werden er liefst 53 journalisten vermoord, en dan zijn er nog heel wat die ontvoerd worden of vermist zijn. Westerse nieuwsagentschappen sturen hun journalisten niet graag meer naar Syrië en zo wordt het natuurlijk moeilijk om een juist beeld van de situatie te krijgen. Ludo De Brabander vergeleek de huidige door terroristen verziekte sfeer in Syrië met het Bosnië van de jaren ’90. De fundamentalistische groeperingen die er toen lelijk huis hielden, zijn na het vinden van een politieke oplossing gemarginaliseerd en De Brabander denkt dan ook dat hetzelfde zal gebeuren in Syrië.

Hoop

Misschien kunnen de Koerden van hun kant bijdragen tot zo’n politieke oplossing voor Syrië. In Noord-Irak hebben ze bewezen dat ze voor democratie en voor law and order kunnen zorgen. Als dat ook lukt voor Syrië, groeit er wellicht hoop voor de wijdere regio. De Arabische Lente is volgens vele analisten uitgedraaid op een Arabische Winter maar de Koerdische Lente is nog niet in de knop gebroken. Vraag is natuurlijk wat Turkije gaat doen. Ankara heeft geen goed oog in het succes van de PYD en vreest dat de groeiende autonomie van de Syrische Koerden de eigen (Turkse) Koerden op ‘gedachten’ zou kunnen brengen.

Vindt u dit artikel informatief? Misschien is het dan ook een goed idee om ons te steunen. Klik hier.

- Dirk Rochtus - chef Buitenland (25.11.2013)

Brzezinski sentencia el fin de la hegemonía de EU

por Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

En un panel de gran trascendencia, debido a los alcances prospectivos del imperativo ajuste a la política exterior de EEUU, celebrado el 22 de noviembre en la Escuela de Estudios Internacionales Avanzados (SAIS, por sus siglas en inglés) de la Universidad Johns Hopkins –considerada la más influyente en el listado de las universidades estadounidenses–, fue examinado por notables geoestrategas domésticos un libro de Charles Gati (director de Estudios Rusos y Euroasiáticos en el Instituto de Política Foránea): Zbig: estrategia y el arte de gobernar de Zbigniew Brzezinski.

A mi juicio, el contenido del trascendental panel de marras (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHzoXLxXlwY) debe formar parte del acervo de las universidades globales interesadas en el rumbo geoestratégico de los próximos años que se ha empezado a desplegar en el planeta que vive el fin de la era de la hegemonía unipolar de EEUU que solamente duró 13 años, según Brzezinski, quien se explayó generosamente sobre su visión del acomodamiento en curso entre las tres superpotencias –EEUU, Rusia y China–, lo cual es notorio en el arreglo diplomático para salir del embrollo en Siria –sin despreciar el sorprendente ascenso de Irán, que evidentemente no es una superpotencia, pero que puede desempeñar un relevante papel regional, lo cual ha empezado a causar reverberaciones telúricas en la nueva correlación dramática de fuerzas en el golfo Pérsico, en particular, y en el gran Medio Oriente, en general.

Brzezinski –ex asesor de Seguridad Nacional del presidente Carter e íntimo de Obama, y creador conceptual de latrampa islámica de Afganistán, donde se inició la implosión de la URSS–, propone que EEUU debe llegar a un acomodamiento inteligente con Irán. Sin duda.

Brzezinski es muy crítico sobre la ignorancia de la opinión pública de EEUU, que no conoce al mundo y que es presa de la demagogia de los noticiarios que promueven sus agendas interesadas.

Incluso profiere que, a excepción de cuatro o cinco multimedia en EEUU que informan con credibilidad los asuntos mundiales, los restantes medios domésticos peroran sobre temas que ignoran y que confunden a la opinión pública que sobrereacciona, malentiende o ignora, lo cual perjudica la toma de decisiones de la Casa Blanca.

El principal escollo subyace en que los candidatos a sitios de representación popular llegan a sus puestos con una visión muy limitada y hasta primitiva (¡supersic!) del mundo, al unísono de su ignorancia de la historia universal. A mi juicio, tal constituye primordialmente uno de los signos letales de la decadencia de los imperios cuya nesciencia deshumanizada les hace perder tanto universalidad civilizatoria como magnanimidad ética y estética.

Pese a la percepción contraria, Zbig considera que Daddy Bush y Obama conocen profundamente la agenda de la política exterior de EEUU y explaya que medios extranjeros como BBC, TV-24 Horas de Francia y Al-Jazeera, son mejores que los canales de EEUU, obsesionados con noticias medicales, para aportar una mejor visión de los eventos globales.

Claro: en cuanto se refiere al mundo occidental, ya que a Brzezinski se le pasa por alto la obligatoriedad para cualquier hacedor de la política exterior de enterarse dialécticamente de las opiniones relevantes de los multimedia de Rusia y China, las noticias notables son ya también tripolares.

Por cierto, Russia Today (24/10/13) abunda sobre los días contados de la hegemonía de EEUU en la visión de Brzezinski, para quien “la convicción en nuestro excepcionalismo y universalismo, son al menos prematuras desde el punto de vista histórico”. Brzezinski sentencia que la hegemonía global es inalcanzable para quien sea cuando el mundo sufre una transformación dramática después de una lucha por la hegemonía que fue la realidad dominante y que duró 200 años desde la era napoleónica. En el mundo de hoy la hegemonía global no es más posible debido al despertar político global de la era digitálica.

A mi juicio, más que una vulgar traducción onírica, el términodespertar en EEUU es muy profundo, en el sentido teológico del protestantismo. En el asunto de Siria juzga que EEUU, pero al mismo tiempo EEUU hubiera podido fracasar si la situación se hubiera vuelto explosiva, lo que llevó a un cierto acomodamiento entre ambos. Juz­ga que lo mismo sucedió con los chinos, que ya están entrando a jugar en el proceso iraní debido a las limitaciones inherentes de una probable explosión regional: No existe una solución militar sencilla en Siria que puede ser regional en escalada. Pregona la prudencia en un conflicto regional que puede afectar también a la misma Rusia y China, quienes hubieran visto sus intereses vitales afectados. Sugiere que hoy se deben tomar decisiones más cuidadosas en no comprometerse, aunque sean justificables por imperativos morales, debido a que las consecuencias de comprometerse demasiado pudieran ser desastrosas, ya que la estrategia hoy es más compleja porque tiene que tomar en consideración a Rusia y a China, además de que existe un despertar político global que desencadena fuerzas políticas que ninguna superpotencia puede fácilmente controlar, contener o reprimir.

Lo más relevante de lo proferido por Brzezinski es que desde hace mucho EEUU no gana una sola guerra: ni la de Corea, ni Vietnam ni Afganistán ni Irak. Pronostica que China no nos va a atacar hipotéticamente en los próximos 20 años, pero si China desarrolla capacidades sin precedentes, como la ciberguerra, podemos ser derrotados súbitamente en un solo día sin saber que fuimos derrotados.

Después de 13 años como superpotencia desde 1990, hemos retrocedido dramáticamente y lo más probable son conflictos ambiguosque no entiende la opinión pública, por lo que es imperativo que los hacedores de la política exterior tomen cursos de negociación, autocontrol y cooperación con otros con quienes debemos compartir las responsabilidades en el mundo.

El despertar político global causará más conflictos en un mundo más anárquico, por lo que exhorta a la moderación y a la respuesta colectiva (sic) en el contexto de un nuevo mosaico globalNo estamos en la posición dominante de hace 20 años; ya no seremos los únicos omnipotentes que en los pasados 20 años y difícilmente nos recuperaremos en la próxima generación, cuando el mundo se perfila a un multilateralismo ambiguo en medio del desorden y la incertidumbre que serán la realidad prolongada donde EEUU deberá buscar socios más que aliados que compartan nuestros básicos intereses en estabilidad económica (¡supersic!) y social.

Insta a acercarse a la Unión Europea sin excluir a China cuando en un periodo de 20 a 30 años se desplegará lo más complejo de las relaciones internacionales. Pronostica que probablemente EEUU sea prominente pero no más la superpotencia hegemónica.

A mi juicio, Brzezinski propone para EEUU el papel de algo así como el primum inter pares –primero entre iguales– en el nuevo (des)orden tripolar de regionalismos emergentes que deberá compartir con Rusia y China.

Debo agregar que aquellos países que se ajusten convenientemente a la nueva realidad geoestratégica tripolar correrán menos riesgos de fracasar.

27/10/2013

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