lundi, 26 février 2018
India and its Strategic Culture
More often than not, rules of conduct in the international field are formed by historical, cultural, religious and philosophical principles of the people (the elite), rooted in a certain geographical area. The persistence with which the mistress of the seas can boast creating new colonies far away from the Albion coasts can be seen even today: Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas in Argentina), the Commonwealth member-states; the American Frontier Spirit transformed into a relentless desire to conduct democratic reforms in the world, and keenness on the Leo Strauss’s ideas (the scientist himself claiming the need to use double standards) helped several American neoconservatives to fulfill their ideas; Jewish messianism allowed not only the creation of the State of Israel, but also to place the country on the international level.
India also has its own national strategy which, perhaps, is not quite clear to us because of the Hindu world view, although this huge country has a significant number of not only followers of ancient polytheistic tradition and its branch, but also representatives of other cultures and religions: Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, all kind of Christians and Jews (six different religious Judaic groups live in different parts of India, some of them are autochthonous and adopted it in the second half of the XX century).
With the use of new analysis of the various doctrinal positions, it is possible to understand India's geopolitical strategy through the prism of the strategic culture of the subcontinent, which affects the entire South East of Asia in some way. Why is it important? The British theorist of international relations Professor Ken Booth gave the answer on the issue in the 1970s: “When thinking about the rational behavior of others, strategists tend to project their own cultural values ... but it should be apparent that one can only predict the behavior of a ‘rational man’ if both observer and the observed share the similar logical powers. Ethnocentric perception interferes in this process: they may mean that’s one own values and sense of priorities are projected onto others. By this process, ethnocentricity undermines the central act in the strategy of estimating how others will see and then will see and act.”[i]
For Hindus, the ethnocentric worldview is quite acceptable, as Hinduism is a “closed” religion, only Hindus can profess it, so the adoption of tradition is not possible. The Sikhs, having prominent positions in the government, are natives of Hindustan; the monotheistic religion began from the Islam and Hinduism contact as the response to the conflict issue. The special case is the Parsees, concentrating in the Mumbai, but, it’s interesting that the Zoroastrianism is a closed religion too; the proselytism is not recognized by the Indian Parsees. Indian Muslims and Christians are interesting in a particular way, even for external forces, because the general political strategy of the current Indian leadership is still based on the Hindu worldview in its various forms (epos, philosophy, religion, culture).
Another British geopolitical theorist, Colin Gray, involved in the connection of the cultural layers and the State strategy said: “No one and no institution can operate beyond culture”, and then added that "the nature and function of the strategy are unchanging and universal, and dynamic historical form and content are inescapably cultural".[ii]
It is necessary to try to look at the political culture of the country to understand its actions in the international arena, not only in terms of pragmatism, which mainly focuses on the supply and security of energy resources, but also in terms of the worldview.
After India became independence in 1947, the country was mainly regarded as pacifist, because of the Mahatma Gandhi strategy toward the British colonialists. A non-resistance to evil with violence was popular in the various anti-war movements in Western Europe and particularly in the USA during the Vietnam War. However, Gandhi used the concept of Satyagraha (insistence on truth) as an instrument of political struggle that was not based on national and popular Hindu tradition, but on the eclectic mixture of reformist Hinduism, the Upanishads and Jainism philosophy, promoting prohibition of the living creature’s murder, including harmful insects. The post-colonial heritage is important too. In the 1980s, А. К. Коul of the University of Delhi said that the whole concept of international law was based on the rationale and justification of the lawfulness of the Third World enslavement and plunder, which has been declared uncivilized.[iii] Such a critical approach sought for new ways to solve problems, and Koul introduced the concept of international law, which aimed at solving the problems of underdeveloped countries. He was supported by the international affairs lawyer R. P Anand, noting that "since international law is now supposed to be applicable to the world-wide community of states, including the new Asian-African states, it needs their consent no less. It must be modified to suit new interests and a new community."[iv] Despite the quite reasonable thoughts, ideas of these scientists were not relevant for the era. But now these concepts may well be applied within framework of BRICS.
If you look at India's political transformation, the Constitutional model was borrowed from the USA, and it was developed considering the cultural characteristics of each region (India has 28 states, 21 official languages, and more than 1,600 dialects). The traditional caste system is preserved in fact, but legally all Indians have equal rights and possibilities, the lower castes representatives in the southern states even formed the Dalit Panthers political movement and gathered foreign assistance (incl. Soros foundation and US organizations) for the promotion of their rights.
Throughout the independent state’s history, within Indian political circles, the fluctuation from secularism to traditionalism was also noticeable. Despite this fact, as Stephen Cohen noted, since Nehru to Rajiv Gandhi’s term and then under the Vajpayee’s Indian People's Party there was antagonism in local cultural issues (the previous ruling Congress was secular, whilst Vajpayee’s Party was culturally nationalistic – Hindutva), the international and defense policy remained the same strategic policy[v]. It is worth noting that the Indian People Party (Bharatiya Janata Party), founded in 1980, received special attention from the American analysts, as, during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee term, the relations with the US were improved. The governing of Jawaharlal Nehru, representing the left wing of the Indian National Congress, called the course to achieve a society based on the principle of continuity and the balance of change, its political program was even named the Neruvianism. It consists of supporting national entrepreneurship, protecting it from foreign competition, private sector state regulation, hard control of financial transactions, and, in the public sector, primary development of main heavy industry sectors.[vi]
However, if we are talking about strategic culture, we need to address the historical heritage of the heroic character whose images attract mass consciousness and the national leader’s thought. Therefore, it is necessary to note the central Indian epos, Mahabharata and Ramayana. The first is the story of the struggle between two clans and an eternal cycle of events where many things are already predetermined, and the second one is about the fight of the gods and their assistants against the demons. It is natural that, as the monuments of national literature, through folklore, celebrations and customs, these imperatives entered the life of the population and the elite. Moreover, the strategy development, especially in state governance and war waging, was affected by the famous work Arthashastra written by a famous Indian thinker Kautilya (IV-III c. BC), which served the interests of the Maurya dynasty. Many Indians and even foreign lawyers quote the book and as a model of pre-Roman legal norms code, the traditional law. According to US analyst Rodney Jones, who wrote a lot of works on the Indian strategy, trying to find out the Hindu code to the international relations lock, Kautilya’s advice to the governors consists of the detailed description of the correct usage of power, espionage and poisons (in modern time, it can be regarded as chemical, bacterial or nuclear weapons)[vii]. According to Kautilya, the region is to face military conflicts, therefore, it needs to be prepared for a plot twist and maybe create military alliances with other states. Naturally, in the XX century, Indian politicians took into account this factor too.
Jones himself is the president of the Policy Architects International Company, and before that he spent a lot of time visiting India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as he was the son of Christian missionaries sent to the countries. In the USA, before establishing his company, Jones graduated from the Columbia University, and he worked as a professor at Kansas State University, and, in the mid-1970s, he carried out research at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked on the security issues in the Carter’s administration. In addition, he worked on arms control at Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International studies. So, in spite of its Western origin, it has in a sense taken his opinion into account.
Jones identifies a number of items that are in fact philosophical and mythological, but are the fundamentals for the strategic culture of India:
1. Sacred things are a part of the Indian identity
2. Objectives are endless and have no deadlines
3. India gained its status, and did not earn it
4. Knowing the truth is the key to action and power
5. World Order is hierarchical, not egalitarian
6. Instrumental meaning
7. Indian appearance is mysterious
8. Personal interest, expressed externally, is impersonal and absolute
9. The contradictions in real life are natural and confirmed
10. Power has its place, but trick can exceed force
11. Actions have consequences; good intention does not justify offense
12. Standards of law prohibit conventional compromise (it is difficult to find the difference, though not mitigated with the quid pro quo)
13. Compromise can be easily mistaken for an internal loss (ephemeral, truth deformation, lack of sovereignty)
14. Confidence is correct knowledge and actions; it is impersonal and difficult to build or to fill in
15. Security is a sit-down (it covers the geographical situation or way of life)
16. Strategy is assimilating (external is changing, reality is constant).
Based on these provisions, Jones proposes to include such categories as war and peace when considering Indian policies. The conflict is directly related to the strategic culture, according to one of the authors of this concept, Alistair Johnston, and the answers on three important questions is at the center of it: war’s role in international relations, the enemies nature and the threats they may pose, and the use of force.[viii] Jones writes that since the 1960’s, India was preparing a defense on two fronts: against Pakistan and China.[ix] The author also notes that until January 2003, the Indian official policy on the use of nuclear weapons stated it is acceptable only if India does not fire first, it must be a response to an attack. This policy was based on India's nuclear doctrine, published in August 1999. However, in 2003, the “Implementation of the Indian nuclear doctrine” stated that nuclear weapons would be used if chemical or biological weapons are used against Indian troops, and, most importantly, even its troops are located outside the Indian territories.[x] The incident in Mumbai, when Islamic Terrorists had successfully crossed the Pakistan border and made a small "jihad" in the economic capital of India, forced the authorities to think about other measures of deterrence and control, including informational systems.
However, the Pakistan issue is more or less clear. The enemy image fits in this scheme: the Indian conquerors (I do not mean the mythical Aryan invasion, but a particular Muslim army that built in the the Mughal Empire north of India) came from the current northwest territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They had to fight and subdue not only the followers of Hinduism, but also by the adherents of the new syncretic monotheistic religion of the Sikhism, who have their sanctuary in the Golden temple dozens kilometers from the Pakistani border, in Amritsar. If the Muslims invaded Indian lands, the “white colonizers” arrived by sea: the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British controlled the south of Hindustan one after the other, exploiting its natural resources. The China issue is more complicated. Historically, Chinese emperors did not disturb the Indians because of the natural border, the Himalayan mountain range and the impenetrable jungle in the south. Although now India has several territorial disputes with China, or rather China has more claims on India, including the Tibetan Dalai Lama, whose headquarters where we takes shelter is located in the border region, Himachal Pradesh. India is more concerned about water resources: the sources of the Brahmaputra and the Ganga starts in Chinese Tibet.
However, in India there are different points of view on the problematic relations with its neighbors. Kanti Bajpai noted that after the end of the Cold War, India had three branches of possible strategic development. He calls them Nehruvianism, hyperrealism, and neo-liberalism. Bajpai insists that the hyperrealists have the most pessimistic view of international relations: “Where Nehruvians and neoliberals believe that international relations can be transformed either by means of communication and contact, or by free market economic reforms and the logic of comparative advantage, hyperrealists see an endless cycle of repetition in interstate interactions. In fact Hinduism regards time as an eternal cycle of sequences, human souls endures these too, continually reincarnating from one essence to another, thus Westerners - with their linear understanding of time - do not understand Indian sluggishness. Conflict and rivalry between states cannot be transformed into peace and friendship, except temporarily as in an alliance against a common foe, rather they can only be managed by the threat and use of violence.”[xi] In addition, hyperrealists reject their opponents’ objections to the unrestrained spending on weapons, and expressed doubt on the roles of institutions, laws and agreements. The IR-hyperrealists take into account only power and the strength; everything else is an illusion. Accordingly, the Nehruvianists and the neoliberalist regard war as one of the possibilities that can take place between sovereign states. For Nehruvianists, a natural state of anarchy can be reduced by agreements between states, so that war preparations to the point where the balance of power becomes a central factor of security and foreign policy are wasteful and useless. The neoliberals find that competitive arming, or arms races themselves, are a conditioning factor in the natural state of anarchy among the states, in particular, since they are interdependent. Therefore, they consider that economic strength is the primary goal for a state to be vital, which should be achieved through free markets and free trade abroad.[xii] The hyperrealists have quite a different point of view. Brahma Chellaney notes that war starts when adversaries determine that the other side has become too strong or too weak.[xiii] Therefore, war preparation is a responsible and wise perspicacity, not an instigation. Therefore, aggression against neighbors, if the issue is about a territorial dispute or any other contradictions, are considered not only acceptable, but even necessary by the hyperrealists.
So, you can extract some conclusions which are quite clear: the Indian hyperrealists can use external forces to justify the escalation of a conflict, while the Nehruvianists would try to reach a consensus, and the neoliberals would resolve issues from the pragmatic (economic) point of view. Russia has a significant advantage. It doesn’t have common borders with India, it has quite a good attitude toward it, that is based on historical experience. India, along with Russia, is part of BRICS, and is ready to participate in the development of new international rules. Russia can interact wisely with the representatives of all three branches of India's strategic culture. The hyperrealists will be extremely interested in Russian weapons, modernization programs and, generally, a wide range of military cooperation. In some cases, Russia can use smart power and send certain signals to countries like Pakistan and China, through the Indian hyperrealists. Parenthetically, Bangladesh and Nepal should not be taken into account, as they don’t have any effect on the regional balance of power. The neoliberal approach can be used from a purely pragmatic point of view: trade, economic, and industrial cooperation. Nuclear energy, as well as research and high-tech, including the aerospace industry, may be quite promising to Russia, and these interests are included in the Nehruvianists’ agenda.
In addition, India's strategic culture can give us another important lesson, which is their economic and market system. These are conducted in such a way that the majority of products and services are oriented towards the domestic consumer, so any financial catastrophe occurring in the external environment, and having a domino effect elsewhere, will not be disastrous for India. If Russia can use a reasonable approach to this issue, such a market model based on the autarky principle (self-sufficiency) may be used in a number of regions of the Russian Federation. On the other hand, external capital flows to India from migrant workers, who settled in other countries: the US, the UK, the Gulf, etc, creates an additional source of revenue for the state.
It should be noted that India is inclined to reconsider its strategies. We are not only talking about the military doctrine of the “Cold Start”, which was recently modified, but also about its strategic culture in general. The National Security Adviser, Shivshankar Menon, believes that it is important to develop a new “vocabulary” and concepts to resolve 19th century issues. According to him, due to the opportunities provided by growth in India, it needs to interact more with the Western world, but the main line of strategic culture of the country will remain unchanged, as it is “'an indigenous construct of over a millennium, modified considerably by our experiences over the last two centuries … Fortunately for us, there is no isolationist stream in our strategy”.[xiv]
[i] Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism. New York: Homes & Meier Publishers, 1979, р 65.
[ii] Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, р 129.
[iii]КоulА. К. The North-South Dialogue and the NIEO//New horizons of international law and developing countries. NewDelhi, 1983. P. 171.
[iv]Anand R. P. International law and the developing countries. NewDelhi, 1986. P. 107.
[v] Stephen P. Cohen. India: Emerging Power. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2001.
[vi]Mukhaev R.T. Geopolitics, Moscow, 2007, p. 553
[vii] Rodney W. Jones. India’s Strategic Culture. Defense Threat Reduction Agency Advanced Systems and Concepts Office. 31 October 2006, р.5.
[viii]Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
[ix]Rodney W. Jones. Conventional Military Imbalance and Strategic Stability in South Asia. SASSU ResearchPaperNo. 1, March 2005, р. 9.
[x]Ibid. p. 13.
[xi] Kanti Bajpai. Indian Strategic Culture. — South Asia in 2020: Future Strategic Balances and Alliances, Strategic Studies Institute, November 2002, P. 245 — 305.// http://www.stramod. ru/SP_001.html
[xii] Shiv Shankar Menon. K. Subrahmanyam and India’s Strategic Culture. National Maritime
Foundation, 19 January 2012 http://www.maritimeindia.org/article/k-subrahmanyam-andin...
[xiii] On the importance of national power or strength, См. Brahma Chellaney, .Preface,. in idem, ed., Securing India’s Future in the New Millennium, p. xviii
[xiv] India needs to modernise strategic culture. Sify News. Jan 20, 2012. http://www.sify.com/ news/india-needs-to-modernise-strategic-culture-news-national-mbus4jccahb.html
00:21 Publié dans Actualité, Géopolitique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : inde, asie, affaires asiatiques, politique internationale, géopolitique, géostratégie, leonid savin | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
jeudi, 22 février 2018
Multipolarity and polycentricity
Multipolarity and polycentricity
Ex: https://www.geopolitica.ru
The very term “multipolarity” is of American (Anglo-Saxon) origin, and in the third chapter we examined similar concepts that have been developed in other countries. As various scholars have indicated, varying interpretations of multipolarity have provoked certain conceptual dilemmas. For instance, a report on long-term global trends prepared by the Zurich Center for Security Studies in 2012 noted that:
The advantage of ‘multipolarity’ is that it accounts for the ongoing diffusion of power that extends beyond uni-, bi-, or- tripolarity. But the problem with the term is that it suggests a degree of autonomy and separateness of each ‘pole’ that fails to do justice to the interconnections and complexities of a globalised world. The term also conceals that rising powers are still willing to work within the Westernshaped world economic system, at least to some extent. This is why the current state of play may be better described as ‘polycentric’. Unlike ‘multipolarity’, the notion of ‘polycentricism’ says nothing about how the different centres of power relate to each other. Just as importantly, it does not elicit connotations with the famous but ill-fated multipolar system in Europe prior to 1914 that initially provided for regular great power consultation, but eventually ended in all-out war. The prospects for stable order and effective global governance are not good today. Yet, military confrontation between the great powers is not a likely scenario either, as the emerging polycentric system is tied together in ways that render a degree of international cooperation all but indispensable.
The Swiss scholars involved in this summation approached the issue from the standpoint of reviewing security issues in a globalized world and tried to find an adequate expression for contemporary trends. However, there also exist purely technical approaches and ideological theories which employ the term “polycentric”.
The concept of “polycentricity” had been used before to describe the functioning of complex economic subjects. Accordingly, if management theories are springboards for geopolitical practice, then this model’s basic elaborations already exist. In a literal sense, the term “polycentric” suggests some kind of spatial unit with several centers. However, the term does not specify what kind of centers are in question, hence the obvious need to review various concepts and starting points before discussing polycentrism.
Four levels of this concept can be discussed in the context of political-administrative approaches. The analytical-descriptive level is needed for describing, measuring, and characterizing the current state of a spatial object by means of precisely determining how long a country or capital can be “polycentric.” Secondly, this concept can be understood in a normative sense which might help, for example, in reorganizing the spatial configuration of an object, i.e., either to promote/create polycentrism or support/utilize an existing polycentric structure. Thirdly, when it comes to spatial entities, it is necessary to specify their spatial scale, i.e., at the city level, city-region, mega-regional level, or even on the national or transnational levels. Upon closer examination, the concept of polycentrism concept thus challenges our understanding of centers in urban areas, since such can concern either their roles and functional ties (relations) or their concrete morphological forms (the structure of urban fabric). This differentiation between the functional and morphological understandings of polycentrism constitutes the fourth dimension.
In the contemporary situation which features the presence of city-states and megalopoli that can easily compete with some states in the classical understanding in the most varied criteria (number of residents and their ethnic identity, length of external borders, domestic GDP, taxes, industry, transport hubs, etc.), such an approach seems wholly appropriate for more articulated geopolitical analysis. Moreover, in the framework of federal models of state governance, polycentrism serves as a marker of complex relations between all administrative centers. Regional cooperation also fits into this model since it allows subjects to “escape” mandatory compliance with a single regulator, such as in the face of a political capital, and cooperate with other subjects (including foreign ones) within a certain space.
To some extent, the idea of polycentrism is reflected in offshore zones as well. While offshores can act as “black holes” for the economies of sovereign states, on the other hand, they can also be free economic zones removing various trade barriers clearly within the framework of the operator’s economic sovereignty.
It should also be noted that the theory of polycentrism is also well known in the form of the ideological contribution of the Italian community Palmiro Togliatti as an understanding of the relative characteristics of the working conditions facing communist parties in different countries following the de-Stalinization process in the Soviet Union in 1956. What if one were to apply such an analysis to other parties and movements? For example, in comparing Eurosceptics in the EU and the conglomerate of movements in African and Asian countries associated with Islam? Another fruitful endeavor from this perspective could be evaluating illiberal democracies and populist regimes in various parties of the world as well as monarchical regimes, a great variety of which still exist ranging from the United Kingdom’s constitutional monarchy to the hereditary autocracy of Saudi Arabia which appeared relatively recently compared to other dynastic forms of rule. Let us also note that since Togliatti the term “polycentrism” has become popular in political science, urban planning, logistics, sociology, and as an expression for unity in diversity.
In 1969, international relations and globalization expert Howard V. Perlmutter proposed the conceptual model of EPG, or Ethnocentrism-Polycentrism-Geocentrism, which he subsequently expanded with his colleague David A Heenan to include Regionalism. This model, famously known by the acronym EPRG, remains essential in international management and human resources. This theory posits that polycentrism, unlike ethnocentrism, regionalism, and geocentrism, is based on political orientation, albeit through the prism of controlling commodity-monetary flows, human resources, and labor. In this case, polycentrism can be defined as a host country’s orientation reflecting goals and objectives in relation to various management strategies and planning procedures in international operations. In this approach, polycentrism is in one way or another connected to issues of management and control.
However, insofar as forms of political control can differ, this inevitably leads to the understanding of a multiplicity of political systems and automatically rejects the monopoly of liberal parliamentarism imposed by the West as the only acceptable political system. Extending this approach, we can see that the notion of polycentrism, in addition to connoting management, is contiguous to theories of law, state governance, and administration. Canada for instance has included polycentricity in its administrative law and specifically refers to a “polycentric issue” as “one which involves a large number of interlocking and interacting interests and considerations.” For example, one of Canada’s official documents reads: “While judicial procedure is premised on a bipolar opposition of parties, interests, and factual discovery, some problems require the consideration of numerous interests simultaneously, and the promulgation of solutions which concurrently balance benefits and costs for many different parties. Where an administrative structure more closely resembles this model, courts will exercise restraint.”
Polycentric law became world-famous thanks to Professor Tom Bell who, as a student at the University of Chicago’s law faculty, wrote a book entitled Polycentric Law in which he noted that other authors use phrases such as “de-monopolized law” to describe polycentric alternatives.
Bell outlined traditional customary law (also known as consolamentum law) before the establishment of states and in accordance with the works of Friedrich A. Hayek, Bruce L. Benson, and David D. Friedman. Bell mentioned the customary law of the Anglo-Saxons, ecclesiastical law, guild law, and trade law as examples of polycentric law. On this note, he suggests that customary and statutory law have co-existed throughout history, an example being Roman law being applied to Romans throughout the Roman Empire at the same time as indigenous peoples’ legal systems remained permitted for non-Romans.
Polycentric theory has also attracted the interest of market researchers, especially public economists. Rather paradoxically, it is from none other than ideas of a polycentric market that a number of Western scholars came to the conclusion that “Polycentricity can be utilized as a conceptual framework for drawing inspiration not only from the market but also from democracy or any other complex system incorporating the simultaneous functioning of multiple centers of governance and decision making with different interests, perspectives, and values.” In our opinion, it is very important that namely these three categories - interests, perspectives, and values - were distinguished. “Interests” as a concept is related to the realist school and paradigm in international relations, while “perspectives” suggests some kind of teleology, i.e., a goal-setting actor, and “values” are associated with the core of strategic culture or what has commonly been called the “national idea,” “cultural-historical traditions”, or irrational motives in the collective behavior of a people. For a complex society inhabited by several ethnic groups and where citizens identify with several religious confessions, or where social class differences have been preserved (to some extent they continue to exist in all types of societies, including in both the US and North Korea, but are often portrayed as between professional specialization or peculiarities of local stratification), a polycentric system appears to be a natural necessity for genuinely democratic procedures. In this context, the ability of groups to resolve their own problems on the basis of options institutionally included in the mode of self-government is fundamental to the notion of polycentrism.
Only relatively recently has polycentrism come to be used as an anti-liberal or anti-capitalist platform. In 2006, following the summit of the World Social Forum in Caracas, Michael Blanding from The Nation illustrated a confrontation between “unicentrism” characterized by imperial, neo-liberal, and neo-conservative economic and political theories and institutions, and people searching for an alternative, or adherents of “polycentrism.” As a point of interest, the World Social Forum itself was held in a genuinely polycentric format as it was held not only in Venezuela, but in parallel also in Mali and Pakistan. Although the forum mainly involved left socialists, including a large Trotskyist lobby (which is characteristic of the anti-globalist movement as a whole), the overall critique of neoliberalism and transnational corporations voiced at the forum also relied on rhetoric on the rights of peoples, social responsibility, and the search for a political alternative. At the time, this was manifested in Latin America in the Bolivarian Revolution with its emphasis on indigenism, solidarity, and anti-Americanism.
It should be noted that Russia’s political establishment also not uncommonly uses the word “polycentricity” - sometimes as a synonym for multipolarity, but also as a special, more “peace-loving” trend in global politics insofar as “polarity presumes the confrontation of poles and their binary opposition.” Meanwhile, Russian scholars recognize that comparing the emerging polycentric world order to historical examples of polycentricity is difficult. Besides the aspect of deep interdependence, the polycentricity of the early 21st century possesses a number of different, important peculiarities. These differences include global asymmetry insofar as the US still boasts overwhelming superiority in a number of fields, and a multi-level character in which there exist: (1) a military-diplomatic dimension of global politics with the evolution of quickly developing giant states; (2) an economic dimension with the growing role of transnational actors; (3) global demographic shifts; (4) a specific space representing a domain of symbols, ideals, and cultural codes and their deconstructions; and (5) a geopolitical and geo-economic level.
Here it is necessary to note that the very term “polycentricity” in itself harbors some interesting connotations. Despite being translated to mean “many”, the first part (“poly-“) etymologically refers to both “pole” and “polis” (all three words are of Ancient Greek origin), and the second part presupposes the existence of centers in the context of international politics, i.e., states or a group of states which can influence the dynamic of international relations.
In his Parmenides, Martin Heidegger contributed an interesting remark in regards to the Greek term “polis”, which once again confirms the importance and necessity of serious etymological analysis. By virtue of its profundity, we shall reproduce this quote in full:
Πόλις is the πόλоς, the pole, the place around which everything appearing to the Greeks as a being turns in a peculiar way. The pole is the place around which all beings turn and precisely in such a way that in the domain of this place beings show their turning and their conditions. The pole, as this place, lets beings appear in their Being and show the totality of their condition. The pole does not produce and does not create beings in their Being, but as pole it is the abode of the unconsciousness of beings as a whole. The πόλις is the essence of the place [Ort], or, as we say, it is the settlement (Ort-schaft) of the historical dwelling of Greek humanity. Because the πόλις lets the totality of beings come in this or that way into the unconcealedness of its condition, the πόλις is therefore essentially related to the Being of beings. Between πόλις and “Being” there is a primordial relation.
Heidegger thus concludes that “polis” is not a city, state, nor a combination of the two, but the place of the history of the Greeks, the focus of their essence, and that there is a direct link between πόλις and ἀλήθεια (this Greek word is usually translated into Russian as “truth”) Thus, in order to capture polycentricity, one needs to search for the foci and distribution areas of the essence of the numerous peoples of our planet. Here we can once again mention strategic cultures and their cores.
Translated from Russian by Jafe Arnold.
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18:44 Publié dans Définitions, Philosophie, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : leonid savin, polycentricité, multipolarité, géopolitique, philosophie, philosophie politique, théorie politique, sciences politiques, politologie, définition | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
jeudi, 23 novembre 2017
U.S. conspiracy theories and the American mentality
U.S. conspiracy theories and the American mentality
History shows an increased interest in American society in conspiracy theories, no matter who is represented as the conspirator.
While there are a lot of various extravagant theories in the United States, among which we can find a fantastic story, for example, that the country's leadership are either aliens or reptilians. There is an historical continuity, which confirms that the American consciousness, whether being of the middle class, farmers and influential political circles, are deeply permeated with the idea of the conspiracy.
For example, with their conspirological mentality, Democrats and globalists gave recent statements that Russia had carried out regular hacker attacks, and that this had even affected the outcome of the election campaign in the United States. Political scientists and experts from various American think tanks try to give pseudoscientific data declarations that come from the senior management of the country. Similar operations were being held in relation to other states and even non-state actors, who caused suspicion for unknown reasons among the American establishment (Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah, the institution of Ayatollahs, the Russian Orthodox Church, Communists, right-wing parties in Europe and so on).
History of the conspiracy theory in the US
This tradition began to come into being in the United States in the wake of the exclusion of former colonists from the British metropolis. In addition, the powerful stimulus to look at the causal relationships from the perspective of possible conspiracies was the idea of the enlightenment, related to desacralization and attributing all actions exclusively to human will.
Initially, the search for conspiracies with the following “witch-hunt” were peculiar to Western Europe, where, in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition was raging, and the Renaissance palace intrigues had become the norm. In Britain (where the United States largely borrowed this conspiracy tradition) there were a lot of talks about French, Irish, Jacobite and Catholic conspiracies and real attempts to organize a coup or an attack on the government. Only they confirmed rumors that such evil plans did really exist. For example, the failed plan was to blow up the Parliament, masterminded by Guy Fawkes.
According to Gordon Wood, “by the 18th century the conspiracy had become not simply a means of explaining how the rulers were overthrown; it became a commonly used tool for an explanation of how the rulers and the others who controlling political developments acted in real life”.2
Since the Renaissance, God was being gradually squeezed out of the social and political life, so the control of all processes (and promises about domain over natural elements in the future) was assigned to a person. Such a mechanistic paradigm reduced all human actions solely to purposes and motives.
Now everything was conceived in the human mind, and depended on these moral norms, prejudices and beliefs. Therefore, all social processes began to come to reflect individual passions and interests.
Some called for a curbing of these passions by offering a specific plan of socio-political activity, naturally offering themselves to manage these plans, while those first attempting to usurp power were blamed for trying to instill tyranny and oppression.
In this context, the work “the Paranoid Style in American Politics” of Columbia University Professor Richard Hofstadter3 is very interesting, where he shows that a whole generation of Americans thought in terms of conspiracies throughout the US history. In this article, firstly published in 1964, Richard Hofstadter noted: “The idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. In the history of the United States one find it, for example, in the anti-Masonic movement, the nativist and anti-Catholic movement, in certain spokesmen of abolitionism who regarded the United States as being in the grip of a slaveholders’ conspiracy, in many alarmists about the Mormons, in some Greenback and Populist writers who constructed a great conspiracy of international bankers, in the exposure of a munitions makers’ conspiracy of World War I, in the popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right wing, and on both sides of the race controversy today, among White Citizens’ Councils and Black Muslims. I do not propose to try to trace the variations of the paranoid style that can be found in all these movements, but will confine myself to a few leading episodes in our past history in which the style emerged in full and archetypal splendor”.4
American historian James Hutson considers American behavior in general as a product manifesting out of envy and suspicion towards the government power.
At the same time he pointed out that the fear of abusing political power led to the American conspiracy being viewed as “completely trustworthy”, at least until about the 1830's. Thereafter, attention was switched over to non-governmental organizations and groups such as the Masons, and the Roman Catholic Church.5 In the 19th century fears of various conspiracies united many groups in the United States. If Abraham Lincoln believed in imaginary subversive activities, then what could be the problem if an anti-Masonic league or some protestant denominations do? At the same time, protestants found the personification of the work of the devil and all sorts of dark forces directly in political activities both inside the US and abroad. Certainly, the rational explanation for this phenomenon could be found in linking this fear with some symptoms of severe social and psychological overload, in which American society was at that period of time.6
The 20th century and the new myths
The twentieth century has also been full of the conspiracy theories. At the beginning of the century, specific fears in the United States were associated with Germany, the Russian Empire, and China. It would be enough just to mention the book of Brooks Adams “The New Empire”, published in 1902, where he was talking about the need to avoid combining the interests of Russia, Germany and China.7
The situation with the Russian Empire was particularly complex because of the passport issue, which led in 1911 to the break of the US Russian-American treaty of commerce and navigation of 1832. This happened under the influence of the Jewish lobby in the US, which from the second half of the 19th century were actively defending the rights of European and Russian Jews. Naturally, such influential organizations, not without the involvement of big business - in particular money of Jacob Schiff from the American Jewish Committee - which funded the anti-Russian campaign in the media and even blackmailed President Taft, because they could force the country's leadership to meet their demands, automatically fell into the category of 'plotters' in the eyes of American citizens who had no connection with these lobby groups.8
The era of the Great Depression sharply polarized the American society, while Hollywood and its establishment were trying to project their vision of solving problems. Depending on the place of residence and social status, American citizens found their own “scapegoats” in the face of Republicans, bankers, speculator migrants. However, religious preachers thought that the cause of crop failure for several years was the scourge of God, fallen upon the American people for their sins.
Before the Second World War there was a peculiar suspicion among the military and political leadership towards Japan, although at the beginning of the century the United States supported this country during the conflict with Russia.
The era of McCarthyism was a well-known as "witch hunt", but here women were pursued for their difficult to prove relationship with the evil spirit, and those sympathetic to communist ideas. These facts were imposed on the racial issues in the United States and in its broader ideological confrontation.
The murder of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the emergence of AIDS, global warming, the role of the Trilateral Commission in the international economy, all such cases necessarily were always considered from the perspective of conspiracy theory. Accordingly, within the framework of conspiracy thinking, the murders were implemented or adjusted by CIA agents, doctors commissioned by the federal government developed the deadly virus (this issue was further developed and enriched with new facts and speculations), and the broader phenomena was considered as a kind of cover-up and supporting interests of large companies and lobby groups.
However, the Watergate scandal confirmed that the Republicans were really behind the organization of wiretapping in the room where the Democrats held their talks. In the 50's of the last century the CIA really conducted the experiment MKULTRA, where LSD and other narcotic drugs were administered to subjects in order to obtain “mind control”.9 The US Ministry of Defence plan for Operation Northwoods is also well-known to have been against Cuba in order to organize provocations with further military aggression in the Isla de la Juventud.10
The incident in Roswell (New Mexico) in 1947 is a peculiar episode. According to the official version, aliens landed, and the US government was keeping this information in secret.
Moreover, the publication of declassified documents from both official sources such as the State Department, the Defense Department, the FBI and the CIA, as well as documents of various international groups such as Bilderberg Club and the Club of Rome, show that certain secret plans on various issues were developed and implemented in reality.
In recent years, the most common topics in the United States related to conspiracies, have become the attacks of September 11th, 2001 (9/11, Truth Movement), the influence of the neo-conservatives in the adoption of decisions on the invasion in Iraq in 2003, as well as any facts concerning the corporate influence and the US military-industrial complex. Certainly, some leakage, spread with the help of the resource WikiLeaks, provide additional ground for the circulation of the view that the US establishment holds some secret game and does not work in the interest of the American society, but supply various financial and industrial groups with their preferences.
Neoliberals’ fears and manipulations
The scandals connected with the financing of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Clinton family ties with all sorts of fund structures and involvement in dubious projects have also shown that in some organizations, the real purposes significantly are at odds with the stated principles. However, in recent years no one is surprised with such level of the corruption, especially since in the US lobbying has become protected by the law.
As these cases are also falling into the categories of the conspiracy theory, representatives of the scientific community in the US, which are connected with the policy, conduct some attempts to present the conspiracy as a “sub broad category of false beliefs”. For example, Cass R. Sunstein pointed it out in his scientific publication, published in 2008, under the auspices of Harvard and Chicago University (Law & Economics Research Paper Series Paper No. 387)11.
To make a following clarification is necessary. Cass R. Sunstein is an American lawyer and scholar, a member of the Democratic Party. In 2008, he actively opposed the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton. He served as administrator of the Information and Regulatory Policy in the White House in 2008 – 2012. Cass R. Sunstein is also a developer of the theory of “Nudge”, the latest trend in behavioral sociology of the USA.12 The main idea of which is that people can be directed to carry out any action. But at the same time, they need to consider this “boost”, as their own decision. To do this it is necessary to create the appearance of alternative choices. Precisely because of Sunstein’s theory Barack Obama signed a decree on the application of behavioral science methods in the public administration and domestic policy, on September 15th.
It was significant that Sunstein treated the possible causes of the conspiracy theory in his own way. At the same time he provides the link to the work of Richard Hofstadter, where he was warned that his proposed "paranoid style" did not refer to psychological abnormalities and diseases, and expressed the social phenomenon.
Obviously Sunstein commissioned by the government to co-author articles suggest measures to counter the conspiracy theories: “We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help." However, the authors advocate that each "instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).”13
This article was severely criticized by the United States scientific community.
But there is no doubt that the interest to the conspiracy has remained at a fairly high level in the corridors of American power. The question is how to apply and manipulate information according to the interests of the White House.
And Donald Trump’s victory also showed that conspiracy theories were strong enough within the US society. But now the liberals are looking for those responsible within the United States (the right-wing or the conservatives), and outside, in the attempt to accuse Russia of hacking attacks and manipulation of the public opinion.
Conspiracy theories will continue to affect average Americans, as well as decision making at the highest levels.
Notes:
2 Gordon S. Wood. The Idea of America. Reflections on the Birth of the United States. New York: The Penguin Press, 2011.
3Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.
5 James H. Hutson, "The American Revolution: Triumph of a Delusion? in Erich Angermann, et al., eds., New Wine in Old Skins , 179 - 194.
6 Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown, eds., Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History. NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972.
8 L. Marshall to S. Wolf. Oct. 18,1916 // Louis Marshall: Champion of Liberty. Vol. 1. P. 86.
9 George Lardner Jr. & John Jacobs, Lengthy Mind-Control Research by CIA Is Detailed, WASH. POST, Aug. 3, 1977
10 Memorandum from L. L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Secretary of Defense, Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (Mar. 13, 1962), http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf.
12 Sunstein, Cass R. Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism. The Storrs Lectures Series, Yale University Press, 2014.
19:04 Publié dans Actualité | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : actualité, leonid savin, conspiration, conspirationnisme, états-unis | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
vendredi, 12 février 2016
Les Cinq Grands, la sécurité eurasienne et autres projets
Leonid SAVIN :
Les Cinq Grands, la sécurité eurasienne et autres projets
Effectuons un bref retour au passé, revenons en 2001 : l’un des principaux analystes du groupe bancaire américain Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Jim O’Neill, utilisait l’acronyme BRIC pour désigner les économies en croissance. Il utilisait certes cet acronyme dans le cadre du néolibéralisme globalisateur mais cela n’a pas empêché les Russes de « coopter » le terme, en proposant dans la foulée au Brésil, à l’Inde et à la Chine de mettre en œuvre un organisme de coopération multilatéral. En un temps relativement bref, un grand nombre d’initiatives ont été lancées pour développer des mécanismes d’interaction entre ces puissances et économies émergentes. Plus tard, l’Afrique du Sud a rejoint ce premier groupe de quatre pays, donnant simultanément naissance à un acronyme élargi, celui de BRICS.
Ces cinq pays couvrent 26% de la surface du globe, représentent 42% de la population mondiale et génèrent 27% du PIB mondial. On les considère généralement aujourd’hui comme le nouvel acteur collectif d’un monde tendant à redevenir multipolaire, en se basant sur un principe de décentralisation et sur la capacité à répondre aux défis du 21ème siècle. Lors de son « briefing » suite au sommet des BRICS à Oufa le 9 juillet 2015, Sergueï Riabkov, représentant le ministre russe des affaires étrangères, déclarait : « Les pratiques des BRICS n’ont aucun précurseur sur la scène de la politique internationale » ; ce groupe d’Etats, a-t-il ajouté, est devenu « un facteur important dans les relations internationales ». Les BRICS deviendront bientôt les « 8 Grands » mais assoiront leurs relations sur des bases nouvelles, celles de l’égalité, de la transparence et du consensus entre tous les membres.
Le dernier sommet d’Oufa a démontré que ce ton informel, sur lequel reposait la coopération entre les participants, n’a pas empêché de créer une association internationale à part entière, bien plus démocratique en son fonctionnement que toutes les autres alliances du siècle écoulé. A Oufa, les participants ont approuvé un plan pour de futures actions : on peut le considérer comme une sorte de résumé des « opérations matricielles » que mèneront les BRICS dans un futur proche. Le document comprend une déclaration générale quant aux finalités et à la stratégie sous-tendant le partenariat économique ; il annonce également l’ouverture d’un département virtuel, c’est-à-dire une page web officielle des BRICS qui publiera tous les documents officiels et offrira des textes pertinents pour comprendre le fonctionnement de cette association informelle. A Oufa, on a également mis sur pied la Banque des BRICS ainsi qu’un fond commun de réserves pour les échanges avec l’extérieur. Le capital combiné s’élève à 200 milliards de dollars. Les premiers projets cofinancés démarreront au printemps de 2016 et ne se limiteront pas aux cinq pays participants : ils viseront une perspective internationale. Pour l’essentiel, il s’agit là d’une alternative financière au FMI des Rotschild qui investira dans les secteurs où cela s’avèrera nécessaire et dans l’économie réelle des pays, ce qui signifie que cette alternative ne se livrera pas à des transactions d’ordre spéculatif en fournissant des prêts aux taux d’intérêt prohibitifs comme le font les banques étrangères, les bourses ou autres fonds de financement.
Entre les pays du groupe des BRICS, on cherchera en permanence à consolider la coopération en tous domaines financiers et économiques. En particulier, le directeur des « affaires européennes et centre-asiatiques », Gui Congyou rappelle que la Russie constitue une priorité pour les investissements chinois, non seulement sur le plan des infrastructures mais aussi dans l’immobilier bon marché et dans la haute technologie.
Cette année, la présidence russe des BRICS s’est montrée particulièrement dynamique. Comme l’a dit le Président Vladimir Poutine le 9 juillet 2015, « l’année de la présidence russe nous a permis d’organiser les premiers fora des BRICS sur les matières civiles et parlementaires ainsi que le forum « jeunesse ». La création du réseau universitaire des BRICS est en voie d’achèvement, de même que la mise sur pied d’un Conseil des Régions de l’organisation.
Il faut ajouter que la coopération se développe désormais non seulement dans les domaines financier et économique : il y a eu des réunions interministérielles dans les domaines de la santé, de l’enseignement, de l’agriculture, de la fiscalité, de la science et des technologies, de la sécurité sociale, des communications, du travail et de l’emploi et de la culture. La coordination accrue entre les pays ont eu un impact indirect mais réel sur toutes les questions internationales brûlantes, telles les conflits régionaux, les menaces dues au narcotrafic, le domaine spatial et la piraterie maritime. Pour faire face à ces problèmes, les participants ont délibérément évité de faire usage de techniques rendant les relations multilatérales trop bureaucratiques. Tous les dirigeants des pays BRICS ont été d’accord pour dire que le modèle actuel de négociations non bureaucratiques devait être maintenu dans l’avenir.
Ce refus de tout bureaucratisme indique aussi que les BRICS ont des objectifs essentiellement civils. Cette thématique, abordée lors du sommet d’Oufa, a ensuite été remise sur le tapis à la veille du forum tenu à Moscou, avec la participation d’experts. Notamment grâce au « BRICS Business Council », bon nombre d’accords ont été scellés, avec les recommandations de dirigeants syndicaux adressées aux chefs d’Etat. Le Président de la Fédération des Syndicats indépendants de Russie, Mikhael Chmakov, a signalé, lors d’une entrevue avec le Président Poutine, la nécessité impérieuse qu’il y a à éviter les méthodes néolibérales, responsables de toutes les crises qui sévissent aujourd’hui dans le monde. Cette déclaration est importante car elle montre que les pays du BRICS agissent sur base d’un consensus au niveau idéologique et politique, consensus qui guidera la politique général de ces Etats.
On peut aussi considérer que les BRICS constituent un club dont les membres suivent le principe de réciprocité. Le Premier Ministre indien, Narendra Modi a indiqué, lors d’une très importante réunion des dirigeants des pays BRICS, qu’il était important de mener à bien une réforme au sein des Nations Unies et du Conseil de Sécurité. Selon Modi, une telle réforme contribuerait à résoudre plus efficacement les requêtes. Le constat du dirigeant indien est significatif quand on aborde le problème des sanctions : seules les sanctions décrétées par les Nations Unies devraient être suivies d’effets ; toute autres initiative relevant d’une tentative de certains pays d’imposer leur point de vue. C’est inacceptable. Dilma Rousseff, la Président du Brésil, a également évoqué la thématique d’une réforme des Nations Unies et a affirmé la disponibilité de son pays à participer à divers projets comme l’harmonisation des flux migratoires ou le contrôle des changements climatiques.
Il nous paraît important de souligner que d’autres pays montrent un intérêt croissant dans les BRICS. Par exemple, lors du forum financier des BRICS et du Groupe de Shanghai, qui eut lieu le 8 juin, le vice-président de la Banque de Développement Industriel turque, Cigdem Içel était présent. Qui plus est, la participation formelle des chefs des Etats du Groupe de Shanghai, qui avaient tous été invités, a puissamment contribué à rehausser le statut de l’événement. Toutefois, en dehors de l’ordre du jour officiel, les dirigeants ont pu communiquer lors d’une session informelle et discuter d’un bon nombre de sujets, tous également important pour bâtir un partenariat reposant sur la confiance mutuelle.
L’Occident s’est comporté à sa manière habituelle, en usant de deux poids deux mesures et en menant une guerre indirecte sur le plan de l’information. Exemple : la publication de Bloomberg était totalement manipulée, comme si les économies conjuguées de BRICS avaient pratiquement dépassé l’économie américaine. Ce n’est pas vrai : le FMI avait déjà déclaré depuis longtemps que la Chine seule avait dépassé les Etats-Unis en 2014. En revanche, le « Council on Foreign Relations » a tenu un langage plus réaliste, en soulignant que les BRICS visaient tout simplement à réduire l’influence de l’Occident. Le centre d’études stratégiques Stratfor, pour sa part, ajoutait que les BRICS et le Groupe de Shanghai s’étaient transformé en une sorte de plateforme pour résister aux pressions américaines. A l’évidence, les analystes américains n’ont pas entendu, ou n’ont pas voulu entendre, les discours répétés des dirigeants et ministres des BRICS, qui ont plus d’une fois déclaré que leurs efforts n’étaient dirigés contre aucun Etat ou puissance tout simplement parce leurs ordres du jour étaient clairement énoncés. De même, le Groupe de Shanghai a été créé pour résoudre des problèmes de sécurité régionale dans l’espace eurasiatique, pour réguler la production d’énergie et pour établir des corridors de communications.
Mais il est tout aussi évident que ces deux structures apporteront, le cas échéant, une réponse appropriée à toutes les tentatives de miner les assises de la souveraineté de leurs Etats et d’immixtion dans leurs affaires intérieures. Lors de ces sommets, les Russes et les Chinois ont pris le temps de se consacrer à un sujet important, celui de préserver la justice historique et de répondre immédiatement à toutes les tentatives de réécrire l’histoire et de justifier des phénomènes comme le fascisme ou le nazisme.
Le sommet du Groupe de Shanghai a eu lieu immédiatement après les réunions des BRICS à Oufa et a été marqué par la prise de décisions importantes. Pour la première fois depuis l’existence de ce Groupe, les participants ont reçu de nouveaux membres, l’Inde et le Pakistan. En plus, les participants se sont mis d’accord pour élever au statut de pays observateur la République de Belarus. Sont désormais partenaires dans le dialogue entre membres : l’Azerbaïdjan, l’Arménie, le Cambodge et le Népal. Lors d’une conférence de presse à Oufa, un journaliste occidental a soulevé une question cruciale : celle des problèmes graves subsistant entre l’Inde et le Pakistan ; et comment ces deux Etats envisagent-ils leur future coopération, si différends et conflictualités potentielles demeuraient inchangés ? Ce qu’il faut comprendre, c’est que le Groupe de Shanghai travaille d’une manière complètement différente de l’Occident qui adhère aux thèses de l’école dite « réaliste » avec son équilibre de la terreur, sa pratique de la confrontation, sa propension à créer des conflits d’intérêts, etc. Le Groupe de Shanghai, lui, cherche à promouvoir une méthode entièrement différente et nouvelle en matière de sécurité collective ; il vise à respecter les intérêts et les souverainetés existantes de tous les Etats membres de l’organisation. Cette attitude intellectuelle et morale, hissée aux dimensions « polycontinentales » des BRICS, permettra de normaliser les conflits les plus ancrés dans les réalités régionales, comme par exemple celui qui oppose l’Arménie à l’Azerbaïdjan.
Encore plus important : l’adhésion de l’Inde et du Pakistan transforme le Groupe de Shanghai une alliance informelle de quatre puissances disposant de l’arme atomique. Le Président de l’Ouzbékistan, Islam Karimov, a précisé que cette nouvelle donne pourrait modifier l’équilibre des forces dans le monde. Autre thématique de toute première importance : l’adhésion future de la République Islamique d’Iran. Téhéran subit les sanctions des Nations Unies : il est donc impossible de faire adhérer la RII dans ces conditions. Mais comme l’a dit le ministre russe des affaires étrangères, Sergueï Lavrov, l’Iran a marqué des points dans les négociations avec six pays et l’on peut espérer, suite à ces progrès, que les problèmes seront résolus à court terme, à condition, bien sûr, que l’Occident ne tente pas de revoir le cadre des accords acquis, comme il l’a fait maintes fois auparavant.
Lors du sommet du Groupe de Shanghai, les participants se sont mis d’accord pour coopérer au sein d’un programme de lutte contre les terrorismes et les séparatismes pour la période 2016-2018. Il vaut la peine de noter que la Russie assumera la direction du Comité Exécutif du Groupe de Shanghai pendant cette période. La convention du Groupe de Shanghai, visant à lutter contre les terrorismes, a commencé à être activée, de même que le « Centre de riposte contre les menaces et les défis à la sécurité », sur base des décisions prises antérieurement au sein du RATS (= « Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure »). L’organisation terroriste qui se nomme « Etat islamiste » y a été considérée comme une menace sérieuse et tous les membres du Groupe de Shanghai ont réitéré leur intention de la combattre, ainsi que d’autres groupements extrémistes internationaux.
La stratégie de développement du Groupe de Shanghai, planifiée jusqu’en 2025, a été acceptée sous la dénomination de « Déclaration d’Oufa ». Cette stratégie prévoit que le Groupe de Shanghai travaillera à établir « un système de relations internationales polycentrique et démocratique », faisant référence aux assises d’un espace sécurisé indivisible. Il sera important, dans cette optique, de respecter l’identité et les principes structurants des Etats membres du Groupe et de leurs peuples, dans le cadre historique qui est le leur.
Dans son discours consacré aux résultats obtenus lors des deux sommets, le Président Vladimir Poutine a montré que les efforts fournis tendaient « à faire émerger une banque de développement du Groupe de Shanghai, doublé d’un Fonds de Développement. Cette idée de créer des institutions sur base de l’association interbancaire du « Centre International du Projet de Financement » du Groupe de Shanghai, est prometteuse. Le dirigeant russe a lancé un appel pour utiliser de manière plus dynamique les possibilités offertes par le Groupe de Shanghai aux Etats BRICS.
Mis à part le tandem BRICS/Groupe de Shanghai, nous verrons de nombreux projets régionaux se joindre tout naturellement aux projets. Les dirigeants russes et chinois ont déclaré qu’ils étaient prêts à œuvrer en étroite collaboration pour mettre définitivement en place deux grands projets d’intégration, l’Union Economique Eurasiatique et le Projet Economique de la Route de la Soie. Il faut ajouter à tout cela la relation triangulaire qui s’est créée entre la Russie, la Chine et la Mongolie. Dans les coulisses du sommet des BRICS, les dirigeants de ces trois pays ont trouvé un accord pour intensifier leurs coopérations à plusieurs niveaux : création de projets infrastructurels, activités culturelles communes, échanges d’informations. Le Président du gouvernement chinois, Xi Jinping, a eu une formule heureuse : « Il est nécessaire de former une communauté liée par un destin mutuel et de promouvoir la multipolarité ».
Les BRICS coordonneront la défense de leurs positions au sein du G20. Cette dernière plateforme, ils l’utiliseront pour parfaire divers projets propres à leurs Etats. Le sommet du G20 aura lieu en novembre 2015 en Turquie. Ils poursuivront leurs pourparlers afin de préparer la banque commune et les autres objectifs décidés dans la Déclaration d’Oufa.
Tout cela signifie automatiquement que toute tentative de manipulation extérieure, même sous des prétextes apparemment plausibles seront voués à l’échec (par exemple, les Etats-Unis tentent de faire triompher leur propre projet de « Route de la Soie »). Le monde, avec l’aide des BRICS et du Groupe de Shanghai sera plus sûr et plus harmonieux.
Leonid Savin.
(article paru sur http://www.katehon.com – repris en versions anglaises et espagnole sur http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com , le 5 septembre 2015.
09:44 Publié dans Actualité, Eurasisme, Géopolitique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : leonid savin, eurasie, eurasisme, russie, inde, brésil, chine, afrique du sud, brics, géopolitique, politique internationale, actualité | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
jeudi, 31 décembre 2015
Lex Pluriversalis - foundation for next world order
Lex Pluriversalis - foundation for next world order
Presently there is a situation when mutually exclusive phenomena, such as the erosion of statehood through the reduction or disappearance of sovereignty, and the attempt to develop new rules for international relations, impose one on the other.
The paradox is that international law is based on the concept of sovereignty, and if someone tries to introduce new definitions or concepts, it simply means that the sovereignty of one or some actors dominates over the others. Therefore, this is what the United States is doing in trying to introduce the matrix of Anglo-Saxon law at the international level. However, all legal systems in the world, as well as the 'sense of justice', are rooted in national traditions, and they react differently to the existing reality. If Colin Gray said that the military strategy depends on the culture of the people, although it is not that obvious, in this case the situation is the same: religion, history, and philosophy of the people forms the 'sense of justice' that influences collective behavior, including those relating to the interaction with other peoples.
Now we have a situation where peoples' 'sense of justice' is different from the enforcement, in other words, the implementation of the legal regulations that often do not correspond to their material and spiritual needs. The European Union is a typical example.
Traditionally, Europe has Continental law, based largely in Roman legislation. Carl Schmitt and other classical theorists wrote numerous works on the subject. The second major legal system is Anglo-Saxon Common Law. This is not based in the right of principles, rather it is based in the right of precedent, and legal experts; which comes from England and then took root in the United States, and from there spread to the countries of the English-speaking world; now we have the attempt to make this become universal.
It is assumed that the roots of the differences between these systems are in a different understanding of justice and values. Although Max Weber noted the Protestant influence on modern capitalism (opposed to the Catholic tradition), there are more profound differences between the two legal systems.
Looking at the roots of differences will naturally raise the question about the influences of the traditions from other regions traditions such as Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, polytheism, Taoism, African cults and pre-Columbian traditions of Latin America.
Islamic law is not connected only with notorious Sharia law and Madhhab, but also with local traditions that differ in the North Caucasus, North Africa, Indonesia and Iran.
However, even with the “emasculation” of religions of the modern era, we can find rudiments of Roman law that were broken under the influence of regional cultures and eras. While in the US you can constantly hear the appeal to God and Christianity, the moral and ethical complex in that country is significantly different from similar ones in Latin America that had the same rudiments of Roman law, but combined with the influence of Catholicism.
Now, the expansion of Common Law continues at the global level, so-called Common Space: the air, the sea, the space, the cyberspace.
It seems a little bit strange that the initiative to establish control over the spheres comes from a country that has not signed a number of important documents on sailing, on space (the US denied the initiative of Russia and other countries to ban the use of weapons in outer space), as well as on new artificial space, cyberspace.
On the other hand, we see an attempt to preserve sovereignty with compulsory control over the mentioned spaces, if they are under state jurisdiction.
However, these efforts, taking into account the influence of the globalization process, can be wasted or even destructive for the countries themselves.
The only way out of the situation is a civilizational approach, based on alliances of culturally close countries of a certain region. Such unions should be formed on the principle of voluntariness (Bona fides), and understanding the necessity of long-term cooperation.
The current economic and political partnerships are likely to be transformed due to the specifics of transitivity.
Famous scholar Roland Benedikter warns that a seven-dimensional global systemic shift is underway, which is related to the three epoch-making ends:
– New World Order (changes in the politics of the US unipolar hegemony creating multipolarity, backed by Russia, China, India and others actors);
– Neoliberalism (in the economy, which is characterized by the 2008 global financial crisis);
– Postmodernism (in culture).
The three ends are directly connected with 4) global Renaissance of Religion (which becomes politicized), 5) Technology and 6) Demography that is shown by the global migration flows.
As the result, we have a seventh point: changes in the order structure of the entire social system.
To make these changes with as few problems as possible, it is necessary to implement new approaches to international law, as soon as possible, to limit the spread of the Anglo-Saxon legal model which claims to be global and universal.
Proposed alternative must be on pluriversal basis that respect local traditions and may be implemented on the planetary level too.
10:07 Publié dans Actualité, Géopolitique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : leonid savin, actualité, géopolitique, politique internationale, multipolarité, russie | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
vendredi, 30 octobre 2015
«Cibergeopolítica, organizaciones y alma rusa» de Leonid Savin
Novedad editorial:
«Cibergeopolítica, organizaciones y alma rusa» de Leonid Savin
Tenemos el placer de presentar a nuestros lectores una nueva obra que, como viene siendo costumbre en nuestras publicaciones, no tiene precedente alguno en lengua castellana. «Cibergeopolítica, organizaciones y alma rusa» de Leonid Savin, un prestigioso analista geopolítico y pensador ruso que lleva años haciendo importantes aportaciones en el ámbito de la geopolítica, una rama de la ciencia política con la que recientemente nos estamos familiarizando y cuyas categorías analíticas son del todo necesarias para comprender el mundo actual.Siguiendo la senda marcada por «La geopolítica de Rusia. De la revolución rusa a Putin» del gran politólogo y filósofo ruso Aleksandr Duguin queremos seguir explorando un campo del pensamiento político que consideramos poco conocido en España en general, y por extensión en toda la Europa occidental, donde desgraciadamente contamos con una visión limitada y con una escasa pluralidad de puntos de vista. Los mass media, desde su papel de difusores de las verdades oficiales, nos imponen un denso velo que actúa entre la realidad y nuestras percepciones de la misma.
De Savin, el autor que nos ocupa, cabe destacar su gran labor tanto como analista geopolítico como dentro del ámbito de la filosofía, que desde un denodado esfuerzo siempre está desarrollando nuevas obras sobre la situación geopolítica del mundo o sobre la situación de Rusia. Pluma y voz de diversos portales geopolíticos como geopolitika.ru y katehon.com, abiertos a la participación de nuevos analistas geopolíticos, filósofos, sociólogos, politólogos, etc., en ellos Leonid Savin escribe sobre los hechos actuales desde la perspectiva rusa y eurasianista, que cada vez resulta más conocida en lengua castellana por la gran expectación que levantan sus publicaciones, especialmente en distintos portales de habla hispana como «Página Transversal», donde han sido publicados algunos de sus trabajos. De modo que el pensamiento ruso ya no parece una cosa alejada del resto del mundo, sino un análisis diferente y completo de la realidad que concierne a todo el mundo por igual.
Entrando ya en la temática que sirve de propósito a este libro, esta es una obra que reúne elementos muy diversos, que pueden parecer heterogéneos, pero que sin embargo mantienen una unidad interna en su propósito y en la idea global de la misma: Desde la Cibergeopolítica —un concepto que puede resultarnos novedoso— Leonid Savin establece una serie de criterios e ideas entorno a la guerra y la geopolítica en un nuevo ámbito o espacio de combate, que no es otro que el de las redes sociales (englobadas en lo que se conoce como Web 2.0), medio desde el cual es posible llevar a cabo actividades muy efectivas tanto para dañar al enemigo como para controlar a la población. De modo que la irrupción del mundo cibernético (que no virtual, puesto que pese a no ser tangible, realmente existe) en el campo de la geopolítica está teniendo unas consecuencias decisivas en los nuevos enfoques de este campo de estudio. Las consecuencias de los nuevos usos tecnológicos y su papel ascendente lo vemos reflejado en la organización militar y el empleo de conceptos y técnicas como el «coaching» que nos descubren otras variables y elementos a tener en cuenta. No es casualidad que casos como el de Edward Snowden o Julian Assange hayan sido considerados tan relevantes para la geoestrategia norteamericana, sus aliados europeos occidentales y el resto de fuerzas que integran la órbita atlantista. Asimismo la regulación del ciberespacio y las leyes y normas internacionales que deben regir en el susodicho también han sido motivo de tensión y enfrentamiento entre las grandes potencias.
Podemos distinguir un segundo apartado, donde concurren una serie de reflexiones que podríamos ubicar más en un plano teórico, en lugar de aquel técnico del que nos hemos ocupado en el párrafo anterior, en el cual Savin profundiza en aspectos más intelectuales y culturales, y que se refieren a la lengua y espiritualidad de la Federación Rusa. Desde un interesante artículo donde nos remite a las teorías de Sorel y el sindicalismo revolucionario, hasta la geopolítica de la lengua rusa o la extensión y los matices que caracterizan al rico y variado universo de religiones y creencias del territorio ruso. En este contexto nos movemos más en el terreno de la geopolítica nacional de Rusia, de las confesiones religiosas y su particular relación con el Estado, las normas y regulaciones en el ejercicio de su práctica, la existencia de una pluralidad religiosa única en el mundo, o bien la importancia que es necesario conferir a esa religiosidad junto a la lengua, la genealogía de ambos conceptos, desde sus orígenes y posteriores desarrollos, la expansión por los vastos territorios que integran el territorio ruso y las relaciones existentes entre éstos conceptos y la propia configuración del poder político devienen como herramientas de conocimiento esenciales en la comprensión geopolítica de la Rusia actual. Evidentemente hay una mención especial del cristianismo ortodoxo, por ser la fe mayoritaria de los pueblos que integran Rusia, y las relaciones que vertebran la existencia de su jerarquía religiosa y eclesiástica respecto al estado ruso.
Igualmente podemos ver que en el contexto del análisis de los patrones religiosos y culturales de Rusia hay una dialéctica muy clara respecto al Occidente europeo —donde las formas de cultura y religiosidad se han visto notablemente erosionadas en su conjunto— el proyecto ilustrado, con todos sus atributos racionalistas y secularizadores, que han servido para vehiculizar toda una suerte de procesos destructivos en aquellos elementos más arraigados en la cultura de los pueblos. Dentro de este contexto, y entrando en la etapa de indefinición de la llamada posmodernidad, vemos cómo esta sociedad occidental se ha visto socavada por el multiculturalismo y la negación de aquellos patrones culturales y religiosos que formaban parte de las correspondientes identidades nacionales. El contraste entre el tratamiento del ámbito religioso en Rusia marca un importante contraste respecto a la Europa occidental, especialmente por las políticas activas desarrolladas por el estado ruso en ese contexto y la total integración de los preceptos religiosos a la cosmovisión de Rusia y los propios estamentos políticos.
Todo el conglomerado de artículos y reflexiones que integran el libro que presentamos a nuestros lectores cuentan con unas fuentes y conocimientos densos, bien pertrechados y que no están exentos de la carga ideológica que es inherente y característica de los postulados de la Cuarta Teoría Política, donde el propio Savin se alinea en la misma corriente de pensamiento que su homólogo Aleksandr Duguin, asumiendo un punto de vista crítico y el rechazo sin paliativos hacia la cosmovisión homogeneizadora que plantea el liberalismo y sus distintos apéndices y adláteres. En este sentido la dialéctica entre modernidad y antimodernidad también la vemos presente en el rechazo hacia la era actual de la Posmodernidad, una época de caos e indefinición, en la que la globalización y una serie de procesos derivados de ésta destruyen la esencia y fundamentos de cada cultura mediante el multiculturalismo, atacando cualquier vínculo profundo y enraizado con la idea de Comunidad, Tradición o Espiritualidad.
Por último, nos complace informaros que el libro ya está a la venta en Amazon o, si lo preferís nos lo podéis pedir por correo electrónico o comprárnoslo personalmente en las presentaciones del libro cuya celebración ya anunciaremos en nuestros canales habituales.
Fuente: Hipérbola Janus
00:05 Publié dans Géopolitique, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : cybergéopolitique, géopolitique, livre, leonid savin | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
mardi, 22 avril 2014
Cybergeopolitica
Cybergeopolitica
Desde nuestra red de alianzas con think-tanks acercamos el análisis del intelectual ruso Leonid Savin. Siguiendo el objetivo de acercar diferentes perspectivas desde diversas capitales del mundo, compartimos conceptos sobre la evolución de la geopolítica en la interpretación de Leonid Savin sobre “cybergeopolítica” y otro espacio para la disputa de intereses.
Este año se podría llamar un punto de inflexión para el surgimiento de una nueva tendencia que yo llamo cybergeopolítica. El impacto de las redes sociales es cada vez más palpable. La divulgación de Edward Snowden destacó la importancia y la instrumentalidad del cyberespacio para la seguridad nacional y los procesos de la política internacional.
Si la geopolítica ya tiene definiciones y aparatos científicos muy desarrollados, operados por los políticos, expertos y académicos, el cyberespacio ha sido la «terra incognita». Y para la posesión de este espacio, se despliega la lucha muy activa.
Es muy significativo la confrontación entre diferentes Estados en la regulación del espacio de Internet. Esta dicotomía literalmente reproduce el deslinde megacivilizacional que se ha operado entre los países y pueblos pertenecientes al Poder Marítimo (Sea Power) y al Poder Terrestre (Land Power), según la geopolítica clásica. EE.UU., los países de la UE y sus satélites velan por el “Internet libre”, lo que es una hipocresía evidente, mientras que Rusia, Irán, China, India, Brasil y algunos otros Estados requieren que Internet fuera soberano y estuviera bajo la jurisdicción del derecho internacional, o bien de la Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones en el sistema de las Naciones Unidas. En este caso, la distinción claramente encaja en el esquema de Carl Schmitt, indicador fiable de lo Político, - las categorías duales “amigo” y “enemigo”. Estas categorías no son las morales, sino las características técnicas que se manifestaron en las posiciones acerca del funcionamiento del espacio de Internet.
El cyberespacio tiene una diferencia significativa respecto con la tierra, mar, aire y espacio cósmico, o sea, no es creado por la naturaleza sino es una construcción artificial que tiene componentes que pueden cambiarse con el tiempo.
Sin embargo, todas las vías de comunicación, servidores y sitios industriales que están relacionados con Internet tienen una ubicación geográfica. En segundo lugar, ciberáreas tienen cierta identidad nacional en el sentido de las zonas de dominio, del control estatal y del lenguaje utilizado. En tercer lugar, el cyberespacio hace hincapié en la geografía física de una manera especial – con sensores de diferentes servicios, dispositivos de navegación, dispositivos técnicos y dispositivos móviles que incorporan un mapa interactivo con los flujos cruzados de la información, la tecnología y las personas.
El cyberespacio arregla y homogeniza el espacio físico de modo especial - con el uso de la tecnología GPS y otras herramientas, la globalización se mete en los rincones más recónditos del planeta.
¿Qué es la cybergeopolitica? Creo que tenemos que entender este neologismo en doble sentido:1) como la nueva disciplina científica que estudia lo que pasa con una interfaz hombre-máquina en el contexto de la política y la geografía, incluyendo, pero no limitándose, con la interacción interactiva de las redes sociales, el espacio virtual, la diplomacia web.2.0 y 2) como la actividad corriente que afecta e incluye los principios de relación retroactiva en los sectores sociales, políticos y militares, y donde el establecimiento y la propagación del poder, aunque sea en la forma más sofisticada, es el imperativo.
Stuart Umpleby destacó que la cibernética ha desarrollado los estudios relacionados con una amplia gama de procesos, incluyendo a las personas como organizadores activos, comunicadores, los que intercambian información y son personas responsables.
Como la geopolítica, la cybernética también se aplica a muchas áreas de la vida pública. Por lo menos, a ella se dedicaron y desarrollaron sus definiciones no sólo los físicos y matemáticos, sino también los políticos, sociólogos, teóricos de la gestión y la educación, antropólogos, lingüistas, filósofos y estrategas militares.
Alguien puede preguntar – ¿qué pasa con la política, también considerada por los filósofos griegos antiguos como el arte de la administración del Estado? Hay que señalar la diferencia fundamental. La cybernética trata más bién con la gestión eficaz (el timonel del barco, y en un sentido más amplio el gobernador es el cibernético), pero no con todos los casos que involucran la participación de la gama mucho más amplia de los ciudadanos (residentes de la ciudad o los súbditos del imperio). El principio fundamental de la política es tener un oponente, y en el caso límite, el enemigo. No por casualidad, las palabras griegas antiguas «guerra» πόλεμος y “política” πολιτική tienen la misma raíz.
En 1987 el profesor Larry Richards, eminente estudioso norteamericano cibernético, dijo que la cybernética deben aprender algo “nuevo” de la interacción dinámica del sujeto y la práctica de la comunicación, independientemente de sus intereses en el campo de la electrónica, la vida, la sociedad, o lo que toman de la ciencia, el arte o la política.
Jeff Dooley sugirió el nombre “cybernética” para la ciencia sobre el comportamiento intencional. Nos ayuda a explicar el comportamiento como una acción continua de alguien (o algo) en el proceso, tal como lo vemos, manteniendo ciertas condiciones cercanas a la situación de la meta.
La cybernética se dedicó activamente a la ciencias políticas en los años 90 del siglo pasado. Se vio afectado por una serie de nuevos conceptos, como los de la evolución política, del ecosistema político, synergetics, biopolítica, etc. Peter Corning del Instituto del Estudio de Sistemas Complejos menciona que la característica más importante de un sistema cybernético es que está controlada por la relación entre tareas endógenas y medio ambiente externo… Cybernética habla de la viabilidad, los objetivos, los flujos de información, la toma de decisiones en la gestión y la retroalimentación (bien definido) en todos los niveles de los sistemas vivos. Hay muchas otras definiciones de la cybernética, que se interpreta incluso como “el estudio de la intervención bien fundada”.
Ya en estos ejemplos se puede encontrar mucho en común con la geopolítica: la forma de vida, el proceso de control, la propagación del poder, la dinámica del cambio político, el diseño de los objetivos y de su posterior aplicación, e incluso las circunstancias de fuerza mayor.
Sin embargo, en los últimos treinta años se ha vuelto más común la primera parte de la palabra – “cyber”, que se hizo la narrativa en la política, la cultura, los medios de comunicación y las distintas ciencias.
En consecuencia, no se trata tanto de las redes de información computarizada como de los procesos sociales más amplios. Y puesto que con el advenimiento de Internet, y más recientemente, debido a la disponibilidad de los aparatos técnicos para el público en general y la institucionalización de la cybergeopolitica, estos procesos se hicieron internacionales, podemos hablar con certeza de su escala geopolítica y global.
Así, la geopolítica cobró otra área, la cybernética, a la cual sus axiomas básicos se han extendido; al mismo tiempo, es la realidad de otro nivel, donde operan nuevas reglas, y existen otros niveles, zonas, límites y posibilidades.
00:05 Publié dans Actualité, Défense, Militaria | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : cyberguerre, politique internationale, leonid savin, géopolitique, défense | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
mercredi, 02 avril 2014
The Dark Side of Globalization
The Dark Side of Globalization
Despite the fact that research on globalization has been ongoing for decades, a clear definition of the phenomenon, accepted by the entire international scientific community does not exist. Further, it is not possible to think about globalization in only one particular field of science or discipline in isolation, because of its interconnected and complex nature.
Axel Dreher has proposed looking globalization in three ways:
- Economic globalization: characterized by the long-distance flow of goods, capital, and services, as well as the information and perceptions that accompany these market exchanges
- Political globalization: characterized by a diffusion of government policies
- Social globalization: expressed as the spread of ideas, information, images, and people[1].
UNESCO’s 2001 Annual Report states that, “globalization can be defined as a set of economic, social, technological, political and cultural structures and processes arising from the changing character of the production, consumption and trade of goods and assets that comprise the base of the international political economy”[2].
Promoters of globalization share many common perceptions.
Zygmunt Bauman, for example, attempts to determine the mechanisms of interaction between states and nations, proposing a transformation from existing “inter-national” organizations to what he sees as truly universal and global institutions. He no longer has any interest in the social institution of the ‘state’, but, instead, envisions a ‘social planet’[3]. Many others scholars and politicians who similarly promote globalization in its current form are full of joy and optimism about the future. However, some critique is required for an objective assessment of the phenomenon.
Jacques Derrida said many years ago that the ideal or euphoric image of globalization as a process of opening the borders that makes the world more homogeneous must be challenged with absolute seriousness and vigilance. Not only because this homogenization, where it was made in reality or assumption has both positive and negative sides, but also because any apparent homogenization often hides the old or new forms of social inequality or hegemony. Josef Stiglitz, who has been intimately involved in the globalization process from within, has also produced numerous works critiquing globalization since leaving the World Bank.
As a whole, the process of globalization is very abstract, and so requires an assessment from within and between various discrete fields of the social sciences. David Harvey notes that “…if the word ‘globalization’ signifies anything about our recent historical geography, it is most likely to be a new phase of exactly the same underlying process of the capitalist production of space”[4]. Anthony G. McGrew , a professor of International Relations at Southampton University, describes globalization as “a process which generates flows and connections, not simply across nation-states and national territorial boundaries, but between global regions, continents and civilizations. This invites a definition of globalization as: ‘an historical process which engenders a significant shift in the spatial reach of networks and systems of social relations to transcontinental or interregional patterns of human organization, activity and the exercise of power”[5].
It’s very important to note that in many definitions of globalization we can see the primacy of economics, particularly of neoliberal capitalism, as well as the distribution of power that thus flows and its influence worldwide. Faster, more flexible and more robust nodes of such economic power have an advantage in spreading their own flows of the production and exchange of ideas and knowledge, in effect, a normative and reality-defining process. They make globalization in their own image.
It is also necessary to understand the hybrid nature of globalization, comprising a global market economy, technological development, and societal transformation and global homogenization.
David Steingard and Dale Fitzgibbons, in a scholarly critique of global capitalism as driving the process of globalization, defined globalization “as an ideological construct devised to satisfy capitalism’s need for new markets and labour sources and propelled by the uncritical ‘sycophancy’ of the international academic business community"[6]. However, globalization has also been conceived as a discursive practice. In this sense, it is not the result of ‘real’ forces of markets and technology, but rather is a rhetorical and discursive construct, formed by practices and ideologies which some groups are imposing on others for political and economic gain[7]. Globally prestigous educational institutions, such as Harvard , the LSE, and Colombia University are incubators for a transnational political and economic elite institutionalized with a neoliberal ideological agenda. Thus they provide neoliberalism as the driving and defining force of globalization with ‘intellectual legitimacy’ and an academic facade.
New possibilities to communicate faster and network with more people are not only good for personal and professional interrelations, but sharing and collaboration on scientific experiments, academics, lessons learned, and best practices. In this sense, “globalization must be understood as the condition whereby localizing strategies become systematically connected to global concerns…Thus, globalization appears as a dialectical (and therefore contradictory) process: what is being globalized is the tendency to stress ‘locality’ and ‘difference’, yet ‘locality’ and ‘difference’ presuppose the very development of worldwide dynamics of institutional communication and legitimation”[8].
In parallel of globalization it can be noted that, “broad economic, technological, and scientific trends that directly affect higher education and are largely inevitable in the contemporary world. These phenomena include information technology in its various manifestations, the use of a common language for scientific communication, and the imperatives of society’s mass demand for higher education…”[9].
In other words, new scientific language promoted by winners of
globalization level the cultural differences and undermine traditional and regional aspects which include, but are not limited to religious, historical, cultural and philosophical features of the world's peoples. It can also be said that globalization through the exchange of ideas also threatens the institution of the sovereign state. How? Both the independent exchange of ideas and the formal institution of public education is key not just for human development, but for the institutionalization, norm creation, and legitimacy formation of the state. People, as ‘human capital, are developed and utilized by the modern state as any other natural resource at its disposal.[10]. If a government is not involved in the process of public and special education, there are external powers that will act to fill this void. As result, the human capital potential and stability of any given state will be decreased.
We can also attempt to see this aspect of hegemony from other cultures’ point of view. The process of globalization suggests simultaneously two images of culture. “The first image entails the extension outwards of a particular culture to its limit, the globe. Heterogeneous cultures become incorporated and integrated into a dominant culture which eventually covers the whole world. The second image points to the compression of cultures. Things formerly held apart are now brought into contact and juxtaposition”[11].
I do not think it controversial to characterize the current globally dominant culture as a mass-pseudo-ersatz culture produced in the U.S. and promoted by worldwide consumerism as the fruit of liberal ideology.
Liberalism itself is a synthetic creation of the Western-dominated global power structure, a humanitarian facade behind which the dirty work of policing the world can go on uninterrupted by idealistic spasms in the body politic[12]. So in a radical sense “globalization is what we in the Third World have for several centuries called colonization”[13].
Finally, we come to the question of values. Globalization is occuring in a paradigm of post-modern values[14]. In this way it rejects traditional values and traditional education systems, because the logic of postmodernism is the absence of a center, absolute principle. It a priori is prejudiced against all other cultures and ideas, and, as well, for the carriers of these ideas. It seeks to reduce to all other cultures to a hollow and harmless caricature and cliché that can be easily digested and regurgitated within the context of global consumer culture. It is impossible for the dominant global neoliberal culture to co-exist and harmonize with traditional cultures and create an artificial single type of global citizenship without essential damage to these peoples and societies. Thus globalization becomes a process of cultural destruction and forced homogenization.
The only way to remedy the process of globalization is the leveling of the disparity of global power and the establishment of a new international order based on genuine multipolarity, where will be several civilizations centers capable of projecting power regionally. This will preserve civilization-based cultural and educational-scientific paradigms, connected with the peoples’ will, values, and heritage, yet at the same time remain open to international cooperation and discourse, but built on a platform of trust, mutual aid, respect for cultural difference, and of the right for each societies own historical and developmental path looking to the future.
In Russia we can see the beginning of some attempts to theorize and build the precursors of a new system of education as an answer to the dark miracles of postmodernism. Professor Alexander Dugin from Moscow State University has proposed the idea of a Eurasian educational framework that reflects the contemporary global situation and interdependence of countries and nations, as well as recognizing the necessity to keep our traditions alive and to protect our peoples from the creative destruction promoted by Western liberalism.
Joint efforts with scholar, experts, analysts and activists from Third and Second World as well as academic critics from core of industrial developed countries known as founders of contemporary neo-liberalism and capitalism itself will be very useful for first steps to draw new scientific paradigm and basis for non-western international relations that will promote to establish Newest and more adequate World System than actual one.
[1] Dreher A. Does Globalization Affect Growth? Empirical Evidence from a New Index. Applied Economics 38 (10), 2006. P. 1091-1110.
[2] United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), MOST Annual Report 2001, see http://www.unesco.org/most/most_ar_part1c.pdf.
[3] Zygmunt Bauman. From Agora to Marketplace, and where to from Here? //Journal of Globalization Studies Vol. 2, Num. 1, May. 2011, p.13-14.
[4] David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), p. 54
[5] Anthony G. McGrew, “Global Legal Interaction and Present-Day Patterns of Globalization”, in V. Gessner and A. C. Budak (eds.), Emerging Legal Certainty: Empirical Studies on the Globalization of Law (Ashgate: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1998), p. 327
[6] David Steingard and Dale Fitzgibbons, “Challenging the Juggernaut of Globalization: A Manifesto for Academic Praxis”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1995, pp. 30-54
[7] C. Walck and D. Bilimoria, “Editorial: Challenging ‘Globalization’ Discourses”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1995, pp. 3-5.
[8] Cesare Poppi, “Wider Horizons with Larger Details: Subjectivity, Ethnicity and Globalization”, in Alan Scott (ed.), The Limits of Globalization: Cases and Arguments (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 285.
[9] Philip G. Altbach, “Globalization and the University: Realities in an Unequal World”, Occasional Papers on Globalization, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2005, Globalization Research Center, University of South Florida, see http://www.cas.usf.edu/globalresearch/PDFs/Altbach.pdf.
[10] Volker H. Schmidt. Modernity, East Asia’s modernization and the New World Order
P. 115. https://ap3.fas.nus.edu.sg/
[11] Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture, Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 6-7
[12] Eric Norden, “The Tender Tyranny of American Liberalism,” The Realist, June 1966, 1-6, http://www.ep.tc/realist/a-b-set/09.html
[13] J. A. Scholte, “The Globalization of World Politics”, in J. Baylis and S. Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics, An Introduction to International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 15.
[14] Endre Kiss. The dialectics of Modernity. A theoretical Interpretation of globalization//Journal of Globalization Studies Vol. 1, Num. 2, Nov. 2010, p. 16
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samedi, 23 novembre 2013
Выпуск № 5. Контргегемония
Выпуск № 5. Контргегемония
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mercredi, 02 octobre 2013
Myth, Utopia, & Pluriversal Realism
Myth, Utopia, & Pluriversal Realism
By Leonid Savin
Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com
Georges Sorel divided social and political formations into two types: (1) those which had a myth as the basis for their ideology, and (2) those which appealed to utopian ideas. The first category he attributed to revolutionary socialism, where the true revolutionary myths are not descriptions of phenomena, but the expression of human will. The second category is utopian projects, which he attributed to bourgeois society and capitalism.
In contrast to myth, with its irrational attitudes, utopia is a product of mental labor. According to Sorel, it is the work of theorists who are trying to create a model with which to critique existing society and to measure the good and evil within it. Utopia is a set of imaginary institutions, but also offers plenty of clear analogies to real institutions.
Myths urge us to fight, whereas utopia aims at reform. It is no accident that some utopians after gaining political experience often become adroit statesmen.
Myth cannot be refuted, since it is held in concert as a belief of the community and is thus irreducible. Utopias, however, can be considered and rejected.
As we know, the various forms of socialism, both on the left and right of the political spectrum were actually built on myths, as readily evidenced in their advocate’s works. It is sufficient to recall the Myth of the 20th Century by Alfred Rosenberg, who became an apologist for German National Socialism.
At the opposite end of socialism we also see a mythological basis, although it is analyzed post-facto. Even while Marx said that the proletariat does not need myths that are destroyed by capitalism, Igor Shafarevich conclusively demonstrated the link of the eschatological expectations of early Christianity and socialism. Liberation Theology in Latin America also confirms the strong presence of myth at work within left socialism of the 21st century.
If we talk in terms of the second and third political theories that have struggled with liberalism, it is pertinent to recall the remark of Friedrich von Hayek, who in his work The Road to Serfdom notes that, “in February 1941, Hitler felt it appropriate to say in a public speech that National Socialism and Marxism are basically the same thing.”
Of course, this does not diminish the importance of modern political myth, and also explains the hatred of it exhibited by the representatives of modern liberalism. Thus, political alternatives—whether the New Right, Indigenism, or Eurasianism—present a new totalitarian threat for neoliberals. Liberals, both classic and neo-, deny us our ideals, because they think they are largely mythological in character and thus cannot be translated into reality.
Now back to utopia. Liberal political economy, as rightly noted by Sorel, is, itself, one of the best examples of utopian thought. All human relationships are reduced to the form of free market exchange. This economic reductionism is presented by liberal utopians as a panacea for conflicts, misunderstandings, and all sorts of distortions that arise in societies.
The doctrine of utopianism emerged from the works of Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon, Thomas More, and Jonathan Swift, as well as philosophers-liberals such as the leader of the British radicals Jeremy Bentham. The embodiment of utopia was erected at first on a rigid regulatory policy, which, at the same time included violence as a form of coercion on its citizens. It then switched to colonial expansion, which allowed for the accumulation of capital and the establishment of a single so-called “civilized standard” for other countries. Then liberal utopianism went even farther, becoming, in the words of Bertram Gross, “friendly fascism,” in that it started to institutionalize dominance and hegemony through a regime of international law and regulations. By this time, liberal utopia has itself become a modern myth: technocentric, rational, and totalitarian—emasculating the first utopian idea of a just society and replacing it with materialism and utilitarian law, becoming, in effect, a dystopia.
In the case of both myth-centric societies, and utopias, consistently implemented through experiments with law, economics, philosophy, and politics, there was a major mistake in trying to extend the model globally. Fascism and Marxism fell first historically. However, liberalism has also now been called into question, as presciently noted about 20 years ago by John Lukacs in his work The End of the 20th Century and the End of the Modern Era.
Myth and utopia both drew their strength from the pluriversal world, homogenizing it and destroying its wealth of cultures and worldviews. The pluriversum was the basis on which the superstructure of Utopia was formed. It also where certain modern forces that aimed at implementing violent historical projects drew upon mythological deep mythological layers.
Within pluriversal reality there is space both for myth and utopia, if they are limited to a certain spaces with unique civilizational characteristics and separated from each other by geographical boundaries. Myth can be realized in the form of a theocracy or a futurological empire. Utopia could at the same time strive towards a biopolitical technopolis or a melting pot of the nations, but of course separately from myth-centric orders.
Carl Schmitt suggested the construction and recognition of such self-contained “Big Political Spaces” or Grossraume. The formation of these spaces would require a global program of pluriversalism, appealing to the distinctive myths and cultural foundations of different peoples. But all parties to a pluriversal order must have one thing in common as a prerequisite: the deconstruction of the superstructure of the nascent neoliberal utopia.
Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com
URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/09/myth-utopia-and-pluriversal-realism/
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jeudi, 29 août 2013
Европа, глобализация и метаполитика
Европа, глобализация и метаполитика
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mercredi, 28 août 2013
Selective Jihad
Selective Jihad
Notes:
00:05 Publié dans Actualité, Islam | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : proche-orient, sunnisme, chiisme, politique internationale, islam, islamisme, djihad, syrie, leonid savin | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
samedi, 29 juin 2013
Africa in the Context of BRICS and Geopolitical Turbulence
Africa in the Context of BRICS and Geopolitical Turbulence
by Leonid SAVIN
Ex: http://www.geopolitica.ru/
After the terrorist attacks on the WTC in New York, the US began to implement a new foreign policy vision and strategy for global order. Its elements synchronized with the doctrine of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ that was detailed in the 1996 Defense Department policy directive “Joint Vision 2010”[1]. In accordance with this concept, US armed forces should be "persuasive in peace, decisive in war, pre-eminent in any form of conflict"[2]. The militarization of the Africa continent is to be conducted hand-in-hand with the exploitation of African resources by Western corporate interests. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 opened US eyes to the strategic advantage of creating a relatively ‘safer’ West and West-Central African, in particular Nigeria, whose sources of high quality crude oil are rapidly transportable across the Atlantic Ocean to refineries in populous cities on the North American eastern industrial seaboard[3]. For example, 92.3 % of African imports to U.S in 2008 consisted of oil[4]. The ‘War on Terror’ has also provided US-NATO command with justification for securitising the ‘dangerous’ West African Muslim states.
In 2006 the US began military exercises on land and sea in different African countries. Since 2008, AFRICOM, the US military Command Center responsible for Africa, has been officially operational. In 2010 the Pentagon began active military cooperation with several governments in the region (Senegal, Cape Verde, Ghana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of São Tomé e Príncipe, Mali, and Niger) and has established a military presence in the southern and northern states of Nigeria where the oil fields are located.
The argument that AFRICOM is primarily designed to provide humanitarian support has largely disappeared. Yet the United States still struggles to persuade the African people of the benefits of AFRICOM. To most observers, Africa has never been the intended beneficiary of AFRICOM. Based on the historical record, including direct comments from National Security Advisor James Jones, co-founder of AFRICOM, the goal of the new command is to protect U.S. access to oil and to protect U.S. corporate interests in Africa. Many African countries certainly have serious security concerns. But the behaviour of the states and the national militaries in question, combined with international economic interests, are often the catalysts for that insecurity. The question is whether the United States supports the forces of democracy and rule of law in Africa or whether, by treating dissent with military force rather than traditional law enforcement techniques, the United States has undermined democratic movements and encouraged extremism and the growth of anti-Americanism[5]. Another strategic goal of AFRICOM is to counter and roll-back Chinese economic expansion in the region[6].
The other reason that African policy is a US priority for the next decade is geopolitical and strategic order. In the midst of the current economic-financial crisis, Washington should, as a major global player, direct its efforts in maintaining its positions in global zones, penalty to pay, in the best outcome, a rapid reorganization in regional power, or in the worst, a disastrous collapse, difficult to overcome in the short term. Instead, in line with the traditional geopolitical expansion that has always marked its relations with other parts of the planet, Washington chose Africa with its ample space to manoeuvre, from which to relaunch its military weight on the global plane in order to contest the Asian powers for world supremacy[7].
Another tool of US penetration into Africa is economic-financial structures and programs (seen in the case of sanctions against Sudan and the interference of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the relationship between the Democratic Republic of Congo and China) with such initiatives like the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Communication strategy should also be seen as a vector for US interest promotion in Africa, such as Obama’s speeches, already considered “historic”, in Cairo and Accra[8].
Attempts to establish control over Africa runs under the guise of new generation partnership and dialogue as well[9]. Africa underdevelopment is also a strategic concern for US geopolitical designs. U.S. military strategist Thomas Barnett has spoke about the ‘non-integrated gap’ of Africa and Middle Asia that must be integrated into the functional global core[10].
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), as an influential instrument of U.S. foreign policy also provides the US government with recommendations for dealing with African states. In Contingency Planning Memorandum No.11 "Crisis in the Congo" issued in May 2011 CFR advocated Washington to take several bilateral and multilateral steps to reduce the risk of violent instability, including: to improve Regional Engagement, use its influence through the office of the World Bank's American executive director, ensure a UN Presence, increase support for basic military training , etc.[11].
The US’s military presence in Africa also facilitates control over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, particularly in light of the emergence of new phenomena and threats such as piracy, the spreading of information technologies that can to be used for destabilization, water crises, and demographic crises.
The potential threat of conflicts rooted in ethnicity, religion, and tribal politics is a serious challenge for Africa. For example, in Nigeria with a population of 150 million, there are about 250 different ethnic groups, the population is divided between Christians and Muslims, and there are several active rebel groups. Out-of-the-box Western principles of parliamentary democracy based on class divisions do not function in societies divided in terms of identity on these lines[12]. A more complex and tailored approach taking into account regional history, culture, and identity divisions is needed. African critics claim that Europe and the US do not understand the nature and needs of social mobilization in Africa, where economic concerns coexist with ethnic and other divides.
But the economic crisis also demonstrates the contradictions and instability of the neoliberal global economic system, because of which, on the one hand African countries are threatened by transnational capital and re-colonialism, and on the other hand alternatives open to the issues of multilateral cooperation and self governance[13].
An important strategic initiative is the bloc of BRICS countries that have the possibility to turn African policy into a new paradigm. Geopolitically, Russia, India, Brasil and China are Land Powers (Not excluding of course, the necessity to have strategic sea lines of communication for transportation of goods, energy and natural resources).
China, India and Brazil are building relationships that take place within the framework of interaction between post-colonial countries[14], and therefore, these States inspire a higher degree of confidence and trust in Africa, than does the EU and the US with their colonial legacies The most successful foreign policy has been demonstrated by China, through the mechanisms of soft power for economic, industrial and cultural penetration.
One possible alternative trend also is the possibility of the strengthening of the East African Community – a regional economic group with a population of more than 126 million people, whose members include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. South Sudan with its huge oil reserves also has the potential to join this group[15].
Italian geopolitician Tiberio Graziani notes that,
Africa, in order to safeguard its own resources and stay out of disputes between the US, China, and probably Russia and India – disputes that could be resolved on its own territory – needs to get organised, at least regionally, along three principal lines that pivots with the Mediterranean basin, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean.
The activation of economic and strategic cooperation policies, at least regarding security, between the countries of North Africa and of Europe, on the one hand and similarly with India (to that aim note the Delhi Declaration, drawn up in the course of Summit 2008 India-Africa), on the other, besides making the African regions more interconnected, sets up the basis for a potential future unification of the continent along regional poles and entered in the broadest Euro-Afro-Asian context. Likewise, the Atlantic line, that is the pursuit of strategic south-south cooperation between Africa and Indo-Latin America, would foster, in this case, the cohesion of western African nations and would contribute to the unification of the continent. In particular, the development of the Atlantic line would reinforce the weight of Africa relative to Asia, and to China in the first place[16].
But this plan is based on the old geopolitical scenario of the political game. We have proposed to look at this situation from another point of view. Besides the established concept for global order of unipolarity and multilateralism, there exists the alternative concept of multipolarity (or pluripolarity).
In the unipolar world model, the BRICS countries are thought of separately, as intermediates zones between the core and the periphery of the world or between the centre of globalization and the non-integrated gap. With this approach, the elite of these countries must integrate into the global elite and the masses be consumed in a global melting pot with other lower social strata, including through migration flows and in so doing, lose their cultural and civilizational identity.
But in terms of the multipolar world view, the BRICS can be conceived fundamentally differently. If these countries can develop a common strategy, form a consolidated approach to major global challenges, and develop a joint political bloc, there will come into being a powerful international institution capable of birthing the multipolar world, with enormous technical, diplomatic, demographic and military resources[17].
This project should change the structure of the BRICS to that of a powerful global organization that will be able to dictate their demands to other participants (three countries of BRICS have armed with own nuclear weapons).
So, with the economic and intellectual potential of the BRICS countries and the experience of intercultural and interethnic relations of complementarity, the only true geopolitical strategy for the African continent and in relation to it will be multipolarity.
[1] Joint Vision 2010. Pentagon. Washington, DC. 1996. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.dtic.mil/jv2010/jv2010.pdf (дата обращения 01.09.2010).
[2] Ibid. P. 2.
[3] Ifeka C. AFRICOM, the kleptocratic state and under-class militancy. 2010-07-22, Issue 491. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66140 (дата обращения 12.03.2011).
[4] U.S. - African Trade Profile. Dept. of Commerce of the U.S. [Электронный ресурс] http://www.agoa.gov/resources/US_African_Trade_Profile_2009.pdf (дата обращения 15.12.2010).
[5] Africa Action and FPIF Staff. Africa Policy Outlook 2010. January 22, 2010. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.fpif.org/articles/africa_policy_outlook_2010 (дата обращения 04.03.2011).
[6] Энгдаль У. АФРИКОМ, Китай и война за ресурсы Конго. 06.12.2008. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.warandpeace.ru/ru/exclusive/view/30290/ (дата обращения 15.12.2010).
[7] Graziani T. L’Africa nel sistema multipolare. 27 novembre, 2009. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/lafrica-nel-sistema-multipolare/2311/ (дата обращения 15.05.2011).
[8] Ibidem.
[9] Molefe M. Oxford opens a New Chapter on Pan-Africanism. 2011.03.16. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/71762 (дата обращения 15.12.2010).
[10] Barnett T. The Pentagon's New Map. Putnam Publishing Group, 2004.
[11] Marks, Joshua. Crisis in Congo. Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 11. N.Y.: C.F.R. May 2011. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.cfr.org/democratic-rep-of-congo/crisis-congo/p25031?cid=nlc-rfpbulletin-memorandum_crisis_congo-051911 (дата обращения 15.05.2011).
[12] Amin S. Eurocentrism. Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism. Fahamu books, 2010.
[13] Dani Wadada Nabudere. The Crash of International Finance-Capital and its Implications for the Third World. Fahamu books, 2009.
[14] Emma Mawdsley, Gerard McCann (ed.). India in Africa: Changing Geographies of Power. Pambazuka Press, 2011.
[15] Marco Picardi and Hamish Stewart. Building Africa: Where's The United States? May 27, 2010. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.fpif.org/articles/building_africa_wheres_the_united_states (дата обращения 15.12.2010).
[16] Graziani T. L’Africa nel sistema multipolare. 27 novembre, 2009. [Электронный ресурс] URL: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/lafrica-nel-sistema-multipolare/2311/ (дата обращения 15.05.2011).
[17] Дугин А.Г. Геополитика. – М: Академический проект, 2011. С. 511.
00:05 Publié dans Actualité, Géopolitique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : actualité, politique internationale, géopolitique, afrique, affaires africaines, leonid savin | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
jeudi, 13 juin 2013
Europe, Globalization and Metapolitics
Robert Steuckers:
Europe, Globalization and Metapolitics
Questions by Leonid Savin (April/May 2013)
Ex: http://www.geopolitca.ru/
Mr. Steuckers, we would like to start our interview by describing the current situation in the EU, especially in its North-West region. What could you tell us about it?
Interviewed by Leonid Savin
19:58 Publié dans Actualité, Affaires européennes, Entretiens, Eurasisme, Géopolitique, Nouvelle Droite, Synergies européennes | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : politique internationale, entretien, robert steuckers, europe, affaires européennes, géopolitique, leonid savin, russie, synergies européennes | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
lundi, 25 mars 2013
Interview with Mr Leonid SAVIN
Interview with Mr Leonid SAVIN of the International Eurasian Movement
- Could you describe in a few key words the essence and goals of your movement? Does it place itself in an existing sociopolitical-historical trend of Russian politics? Does it lobby in Russian government circles to achieve its goals?
The main idea and goal of the International Eurasian Movement is to establish a multipolar
world order, where there will be no dictatorship of the U.S. anymore or of any other country or actor of world politics. In the sector of ideology we strongly reject (neo)liberalism and the
globalization process as its derivative. We agree that we (as well as other nations) need a
constructive platform for our alternative future. In the search of it, our work is directed to
dialogue with other cultures and peoples who understand the meaning and necessity of
conservative values in contemporary societies. Speaking about Russian reality, we are heirs and assigns to the former eurasianists (this ideology was born in the 1920s): Piotr Savitsky, Nikolay Trubetskoy, Nikolay Alekseev as well as Lev Gumilev – the famous Soviet scholar. They all studied historical processes and proposed a unique vision of our history, separate from the eurocentric science approach. The understanding that Russia is not part of Europe or Asia, but forms a very own unique world, named Eurasia, is also implemented in our political activity. In cooperation with members of parliament or the Council of the Federation or other governmental bodies, with our advices and recommendations, we always provide a strong basis linked to our history, culture, diversity and so on. And I must tell you that many people understand and support our ideas and efforts (in governmental structures, local and regional authorities, science and education, religious institutions and in society at large).
- What is your vision on a multipolar world? Which role do you see for Western European
nations? Do they have any future at all on the world stage of the 21st century? Will they
surmount the actual crises on a demographic, metaphysical and mental level?
In my opinion, a multipolar world is the order with 5 or more centers of power in the world and this reality will keep our planet more safe and balanced with shared responsibility between the regions. But it is not just interdependence by the logic of liberalism: some regions might well exist in relative political and economic autarky. Beside that, there might exist a double core in one center (for example Arabs and Turks in a large Muslim zone or Russia and Central Asian states for Eurasia) and shifted and inter-imposed zones, because, historically, centers of power can be moved. Of course at the moment the most significant centers of power are described in terms of nuclear arms, GDP, economic weight/growth and diplomatic influence. First of all we already have more poles than during the Soviet-US opposition. Secondly, everybody understands the role of China as a ‘Bretton Woods-2’, as well as emerging countries under acronyms as BRICS or VISTA, “anchor countries” and so on. And, thirdly, we see the rise of popular and unconventional diplomacy and the desire of many countries (many of them are strong regional actors such as Iran, Indonesia and Brazil) to not follow the U.S. as satellites or minor partners.
Of course, Washington does not like this scenario and tries to make coalitions based on states
with a neocolonial background or on dutiful marionettes. But even in the U.S., politicians and
analysts understand that the time of unipolar hegemony has gone. They are trying to build a more flexible approach to international relations, called ‘multilateralism’ (H. Clinton) or ‘non-polarity’ (R. Haas), but the problem is that the U.S. do not have enough confidence in foreign actors united as joint, but who still have no strong alternative to the contemporary world order. So, they use another option for destabilization of rising regions, known as controlled chaos. Because of its military presence over most parts of the globe and its status of promoter of democracy and the protection of human rights, the White House can justify its own interests in these places. And cyberspace is also the object of manipulation, where the whole world is divided in two camps that remind us of the times of the Cold War (I call it ‘Cold Cyber War’).
We think that the contemporary West European nations are one of the poles (centers of power) in a forthcoming multipolar world order). But the problem for now is their engagement in U.S. proatlanticist politics, as manifested in the Euro-Atlantic chart of cooperation (common market, legislation and regulation mechanisms, including items of domestic politics), as well as NATO activity. The same we see on the other side of Eurasia – attempts of Washington to start trans-Atlantic cooperation with Asian countries. The contemporary crisis is neither good nor bad. It’s a fact. And the European nations must think about the way they’ll choose, because it will form the future (at least in Europe). It is not the first time in history: during the middle ages there was decline of population because of pestilence and wars. Religious schisms also occurred, so Europeans have some experience in metaphysics and ethics dealing with system failure too. The point is that now we have more interconnected reality and the speed of information sharing is fantastic, that was not possible, imagine, a century ago. And European society becomes more consumerist! But even in Europe, there are a lot of voices in respect of nature (organic greens), anti-grow movements (in economics) and traditionalists who try to keep and preserve ethnic and historical values and manners. Even the Soviet experience could be useful: after the Great Social Revolution there was a strong anti-church attitude promoted by the government, but after 70 years we’re back at our roots (of course during all this time not all people were atheists and the return to church happened during Stalin’s period when the institute of the Patriarchy was restored).
- How do you see the dialogue of civilizations in the light of more than 10 years of wars
between the West and the Muslim world? Where does Russia stand in this opposition? Are there fears of an islamization process within the Russian Federation, or are Russian
authorities setting on long-time accommodation with Muslim minorities and actors?
At first we must bear in mind that the idea of Huntington (the ‘clash of civilizations’) was
developed out of necessity of justifying the U.S.’s military and economic expansion. His book
was issued when the first wave of globalization as the highest principle of Westcentrism just
began its tide in the Third World. By the logic of neoliberal capitalism it must be re-ordered and re-programmed in the search for new markets. All non-western societies must consume western products, services and technologies by this logic. And let’s remember that war against the Muslim countries originated from the neocons from Washington. So, these 10 years of wars that you to mention is nothing more than a provoked conflict by a small group that was very powerful in American politics at the beginning of the 2000s. By the way, all kinds of radical Islam (Wahhabism) were promoted by the United Kingdom. This version of Islam was founded in Saudi Arabia only with London’s special support. The Great Game in Eurasia was started many years ago and Britain has played here a most significant role. The U.S. took this role only after WW2, but many destructive processes were already unleashed. Of course, Russia is suspicious of the radical Islam, because emissaries of the wahhabis and al-Qaeda were already in the Northern Caucasus. And still now, there are different terrorist groups with the idea of the socalled “Emirate of the Caucasus”. There were also attempts to spread another sectarian belief promoted by Fetullah Gullen (Nurjular), but for now this sect is prohibited here. Actually Islam is not a threat to Russia, because, traditionally, a lot of people living here are Muslim. Regions like Tatarstan, the North Caucasus republics, Bashkortostan have an Islamic population. And our government supports traditional Islam here.
- What do you think about the American/Western strategy of strategic encirclement of
Russia? Can we see this as well in the process of the so-called 'Arab Spring'? Is an open,
Western-waged war against Syria and Iran possible and would it be the onset to a major
world conflict, a 'Third World War'? Where would Russia stand?
It works. Not only because of the reset of the Anaconda strategy for Eurasia by means of military presence. Sometimes it doesn’t manifest in classical bases. Logistics is the main element of contemporary warfare, as well as C4ISR – Command, Control, Computer, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance – works in the vein of smart engagement. Other tools are: economics, promotion of democracy and human rights, cyber politics. The Arab Spring is a very complex phenomenon – there are a couple of components, but you can see that the U.S. has a bonus anyway: Egypt has asked for a huge loan from the World Bank; Western companies go to Libya; Muslim extremists are being manipulated against moderate Muslims, because they are a threat to western interests and so on. Organized chaos is just another view on the socio-political reality in turbulence. As Steve Mann (famous theorist of the chaos principle in diplomacy) wrote: the state is just hardware and ideology is its soft version. It were better to use ‘virus’ (in other words ‘promoting democracy’) and not to break PC. Syria and Iran are interesting for many nations now. The hysteria of Israel is not good, because this country has nuclear weapons. What will come of Israel using it? The Palestinian question is also on the table. I think that Israel is a more serious problem than Syria and Iran. Russia firmly supports Syria and takes a moderate
position on Iran. During the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia declined to provide the “S-300” rocket complex to Iran (we had already signed the contract) and the deal was canceled. You bear in mind that during the same time Russia supported resolution 1973 of UN Security Council and the West started operation “Odyssey Dawn” against Libya. So, even VIP politicians in Russia sometimes do wrong things! But Mr. Putin is actively pro-Syrian and I think that the position of Russia about Iran and about Western pressure will be more adequate than before. As foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told: “we got experience with Libya and don’t believe the West anymore”.
- What do you think about the Western Europeans: should they remain loyal to their
historical-political heritage of individualism and atlanticism, or should they rethink
themselves and orient themselves towards Russia and continentalism? What about pro-
Russian elements in European society? Can they be partners or are they, politically and
socially spoken, too marginal for that?
John M. Hobson, in his brilliant work The eurocentric conception of world politics, made very
clear that the West is rooted in the logic of immanence instead of the logic of co-development
that is characteristic of non-western societies. He continues that the formula “the West and the Rest” is wrong, because without the rest there is no place for the West. Now we see one United Europe, but in real life we have two levels. The first one is presented by the bureaucratic establishment with its symbols, history, power projections and procedures. The second one is active publicity with movements, political parties and personal activists who are not interested in an Orwellian future with “Big Brother”, universal values and so on. Actually, in geography we have more than one substance. And where is the border between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe? It’s mostly in the minds. From history we remember the Celtic space, the Roman Empire, the Germanic and nomad invasions (Huns, Avars, etc.), that shows that the face of Europe permanently changed throughout the centuries. Now the European population includes people from Africa and Asia and soon the demographic balance will change. Political culture will change too. Without Russia, Europe is impossible. Not only because of geography (just look at the map and you will see that the EU is just the small, overpopulated western peninsula of Eurasia), but also because of the role of Russia in European history. Napoleon and Hitler – the two most significant unifiers of Europe - were stopped and defeated in Russia and, after that, new political orders were established. And for now in Europe we have so many Russian “prints”: in culture, history, the role of some persons and diasporas. I think that pro-Russian elements just now have a very good choice, because the window of opportunity is open. All these elements could form an avant-garde of a new kind of cooperation: in trade relations, science, art and education and public diplomacy. The last one is the tie for all activities. Actually Minister Lavrov just today (i.e. 26.02.2013) announced that, because of the Russia year in the Netherlands and vice versa, there will be more than 350 actions on state level. It is a good sign of mutual respect and it may be deeper.
- What about key power Germany? Do you believe in, let's say, an 'Indo-European bloc',
an axis Berlin-Moscow-New Delhi, as a formidable counterweight to the atlanticist bloc of
the axis Washington-London-Paris? Do the horrors of the Second World War still affect
Russians' views of Germany and the Germans, or is it possible to turn the page on both
sides and look forward? What about the French: do they belong in the atlanticist bloc, or
can they be won for the continentalist bloc without giving in to their chauvinism? And what
about China: will it turn out to be an even more dangerous enemy than the USA, or will
both Russia and China remain strategic partners, e.g. within the SCO?
Because the EU has two levels, the same is true for Germany. One Germany, represented by the political establishment, is pro-U.S. and cannot do anything without Washington. Another one (latent or potential) is looking for closer cooperation with Russia. At the time of the Russian Empire a lot of German people came to our country at the invitation of Empress Catherine the Great. Even before that, many foreigners were in Russia as military officers, teachers, technical specialists, etc. People’s potential can do a lot of things. We must keep in mind that, besides Sea Power and Land Power in geopolitics, we have Man Power, which is the unique and main axis of any politics. The problem is that, after WWII, there was in most European countries a strong influence of Britain and the U.S.. They used very black propaganda and the peoples of Europe were afraid of a communist invasion. The U.S. even started more horrible projects in Western Europe (for example Propaganda-Due and operation “Gladio” in Italy, as well as “Stay Behind” NATO secret armies, formed from right-wing extremist elements). Still now in the EU, we see anti-Russian propaganda, but our borders are open and any European can go to Russia and see what happens here. The case of Gérard Depardieu is just one example.
If we look at what happens in China we’ll understand that it is a very strong actor and that its
power grows from year to year. In the UN Security Council China is an important partner of
Russia (for the Syria voting too). Russia is a supplier of oil and gas to China and we have new
agreements for the future. Besides that we provide military equipment to China, though they
have good weapon systems of their own as well. In the SCO we had good results and I think that cooperation in this organization must be enlarged through strategic military elements with the entry at least of Iran, Belarus, India and Pakistan (they have an observer or dialogue partner status). Turkey is interested as well, but because of its NATO membership it will be difficult to join.
I know that some Russians and Europeans describe China as a possible enemy, a “yellow threat” (the Polish writer Ignacy Witkiewicz even wrote about it in his novel in 1929!!!) and so on, but in reality China has no intents of border pretence to Russia. We have had some incidents in Siberia with contraband, but these are criminal cases which do not deal with state politics. China will focus on Taiwan and on the disputed islands in the Pacific and it will take all geopolitical attention and may be some loyalty from Russia and SCO members.
Also China has the same view on the future world order – multipolarity. Actually this idea
(duojihua) was born in China in 1986. And with the strategic cooperation with many other
countries in Africa and South America, joint efforts against western hegemony will be fruitful.
So, I think China and Russia can do a lot for a reform of the forthcoming world order.
A lot of people now want to forget their own origins and the origins of other peoples. Bavaria,
for example, was populated centuries ago by Avars from Asia (part of them still live in the
Caucasus) during the Migration Period. Groups of Turkish origin also went to lands of
contemporary Austria. So in contemporary Europe we have a lot of Asian elements. And vice
versa in Asia we have people of Aryan origin. Not only in the North of India, but also in
Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran (arya is the self-name of the people of Iran and India). And
hybridization is continuing as we speak in Europe and in other regions. Just before Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union we had a pact with Germany and had been cooperating extensively in technologies and in the economy. And France was attacked first by Germany, but now relations between both countries are normal. I think that historical harms between Germany and Russia have been mostly forgotten. And I think that many Germans still remember that the most destructive attacks did not come from the Soviet army but from U.S. and British air forces (Dresden, Leipzig...). It was not a war, but a deliberate destruction of cities and non-armed refugees. Actually now Germans is mostly good businessmen for Russians, compared to representatives of other European nations (these facts have been confirmed by many friends who do business with Europeans).
I can not to speak with enough certainty of what happens with Russian-French relations, because I'm not very interested in this sector. During the XXth century we had many deals with France and after WWII it was the idea of Stalin to give the winner status to France. Charles de Gaulle also was pro-Soviet in a geopolitical sense. But after the legalization of the gay marriage in France, many Russians feel suspicious about this country. But every people and every country has its own specifics. We have had many interesting philosophers from France who have had influence on Russian thinkers too.
- Turning to domestic Russian problems: Russia under President Putin has been able to
make enormous progress in the social field, mainly due to energy sales during the 2000s.
Has this changed the face of Russia? Has this period come to an end or is there stagnation? How will Russia cope with its domestic problems, such as the demographic crisis, which it shares with Western Europe? Should the Siberian land mass be 're-colonized' by Russians and other Europeans, in order to make it an impregnable 'green lung fortress' for the white peoples?
The grand contribution of Mr. Putin is that he stopped liberal privatization and the process of
separatism in Russia. Persons such as Chodorkovsky were representatives of the Western
oligarchy, especially of powerful financial clans (for example, he is a personal friend of
Rothschild) and he had plans to usurp power in Russia through the corruption of parliament. We still have the rudiments of predatory liberalism such as misbalances, corruption, fifth column, degradation of traditional values, etc. For now we see in Russia efforts to build a smarter kind of economics, but it must be done very carefully. The questions that must be at the center are: how to deal with the Federal Reserve System? What about a new currency order that may be represented by BRICS? How to start mobilization? What to do with the neoliberal lobby within the government? The demographic crisis is also linked with neoliberalism and consumerism. A century ago, there was a rise of population in Russia, but two world wars have cut it. Even during Soviet times we had a good demography index. Now the government has started supporting young families and the process of human reproduction. In addition to birth programs we have an initiative dealing with the return of compatriots to Russia and all people who were born in the USSR can come to Russia very easily and get certain funding from the state. But I think that, because the Russians were the state-forming people, there must be a preference for Slavonic origin, because migrants from Asian countries (who do not speak Russian and have other traditions) will flow to Russia for economic reasons. Many Russian activists who take a critical stance on Asian people are already disappointed by this program. I think that the attraction of Byelorussians and Ukrainians can equalize this disproportion. But, strategically, the state must support a system of child-bearing with all necessary needs (fosterage, education, working place, social environmental, etc.). In some regions governors personally start up that kind of programs dealing with local and regional solidarity. First of all, Siberia is still Russian. The Siberian type of Russian is different from citizens from the central or southern regions, but till now it's still mainly Russian, not only institutionally, but also ethnically. Actually, according to our statistics, most labor migrants to Russia come from Ukraine! So, in spite of strange relations between both countries and with strong anti-Russian stances on the part of Ukrainian nationalists and pro-western "democrats", people just make their own choice. Rationally speaking, Siberia is not only interesting, because of its virgin forests and natural resources, but also because of its neighbors - and China is one of them with an emerging economy. So Siberia could serve as a hub in the future. I think that Europeans would also go to
Russia (not only to Siberia), but this migration must be done meticulously, because of the
language barrier, with a period of adaptation to different social conditions and so on. Maybe it could be useful to organize towns of compact residence and also city-hubs for foreign people who come to live in Russia, where they can live and work in new conditions. New Berlin, New Brussels, New Paris (of course translated into the Russian language) will then appear on a new Russian map.
- What is your opinion about the future of Putinist Russia? Will the government be able to
enduringly counter Western propaganda and destabilization campaigns, and come to a
'generation pact' between the older generation, born during Soviet times, and the younger
generation, born after 1991? What will be President Putin's fundamental heritage for
Russian history?
The key problem for Russia is a neoliberal group inside the Kremlin. Putin has the support of
people who want more radical actions against corruption, western agents and so on. But a
“colored revolution” in Russia is impossible, because the masses do not believe in the prowestern opposition. Ideas of democracy and human rights promoted by West have been
discredited worldwide and our people understand well what liberalization, privatization and such kind of activities in the interest of global oligarchy mean. And because of the announcement of the Eurasian Customs Union Russia must work hard the coming years with partners from Kazakhstan and Belarus. As for counterpropaganda, the new official doctrine of Russian foreign policy is about soft power. So Russia has all the instruments officially legalized to model its own image abroad. In some sense we do this kind of work, just as other non-governmental organizations and public initiatives. You mention a “generation pact”, referring to different ideals of young and older people, especially in the context of the Soviet era. Now, you would be surprised that a figure as Stalin is very popular among young people and thinking part of the youth understands well that Soviet times were more enjoyable than contemporary semi-capitalism. As I told in my previous answer, Putin is important because he stopped the disintegration of Russia. He already is a historical figure.
- Is there a common 'metaphysical future' for the whole of Europe after the downfall of
Western Christianity (catholicism, protestantism)? Can Russian Orthodoxism be a guide?
What do you hold of the modest revival of pre-Christian religious traditions across the
continent? What about countering the influence of Islam on the European continent? Is
there a different view concerning that discussion between Russia and Western Europe?
Russian Christian Orthodoxy is not panacea, because there are also some problems. Christianity in XIIth century, XVIth century and nowadays is very different. Now many formal orthodox Christians go to church two times a year, at Easter and at Christmas. But Orthodox Christianity is also a thesaurus of wisdom where you can find ideas from ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, cultural heritage, transformed paganism and psychology. In this sense, Russian Christian Orthodox old believers keep this heritage alive and may be interested as well in forms (ceremonies) as in the spiritual essence with its complex ideas. Speaking about paganism, Russia is the only country in Europe that still has authentic pagan societies (Republics of Mari-El, Mordovia, Komi) with very interesting rites and traditions. Actually Finno-Ugric peoples historically were very close to Slavonic people and assimilated together, so there is a good chance to research these traditions for those who are interested in Slavonic pre-Christian culture. But the postmodern version of a restored paganism in Europe or any other region to my opinion is just a fake and there is not so much from true paganism. As for Islam, as I told before, in Russia there exist a couple of versions of traditional Islam, which are presented by several law schools (mazhabs). In the Northern Caucasus, the regional government has tried to copy the idea of multiculturalism and to implement EuroIslam as an antithesis to spreading wahhabism. But it has not worked and now more attention is paid to traditional religious culture linked with education and the social sector. But the project of multiculturalism has failed in Europe as well, so all common Euro-Russian outlooks on Islam are finished. But, to be honest, I think that Europe must learn from the Russian experience of coexistence of different religions (not forgetting paganism and shamanism – this belief is widely found in Siberia). In Europe, they use the term tolerance but we, eurasianists, prefer the term complimentarity, proposed by Lev Gumilev, meaning a subconscious sympathy between different ethnic groups. As Gumilev explained, Russia became so large because Russians, during the expansion, looked on other people as on their own and understood them. This differs from the point of view (more specifically in ethnosociology) that all ethnic groups have the idea of “We are” against “The Other”, represented by another group. The imperial principle works with the idea of mosaics where every ethnos is a “We are”. And our famous writer and philosopher Fjodor Dostoevsky told about all-human (all-mankind) nature (not common to all mankind) that is represented by
the Russians, because inside, you can find all radical oppositions. I think it is a good reason to turn to Russia and its people.
Thank you, Mr Savin, for this very interesting and open-hearted interview.
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