Geopolitics/Geoeconomics Thread - June 2015

[sanman]

Zeihan on UK -- is this an accurate description of where the UK now finds itself?

(In which case, why would we want to trade with them?)

[Haresh]

Geopolitical Plates are Moving

https://kapilskhichadi.wordpress.com/20 ... re-moving/

[tandav]

https://www.arktosjournal.com/p/the-moscow-delhi-axis

Alexander Dugin on Moscow Delhi axis

"Alexander Dugin argues that the Moscow-Delhi axis is one of the most crucial supporting frameworks of a multipolar world order.

Modi and Putin are currently defining the structure of the Moscow-Delhi axis, one of the most crucial pillars of a multipolar world order. Bharat (also known as India) is a state-civilization. Russia-Eurasia is another state-civilization. Clarifying their relations in terms of geopolitics, economics, and culture is fundamental.

We are all now learning to think in multipolar terms, which is a nonlinear system.

Snip
(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)"

Snip

A multipolar world is unstable. Like in gravity 3 body and higher body problems has no stable solution. I believe regardless of India's role the political universe we inhabit will tend to form 2 blocks.

These blocks will ebb and flow in influence. I believe today the world partitions into a Chinese bloc and an American Bloc. 50 years ago it partitioned into Russian and American Bloc. 100 years ago it was Axis Bloc vs Allied Bloc

In all such bloc partitions India has remarkably always been on the fence. A decider of outcomes if you see carefully

[S_Madhukar]

This Russ bonhomie sounds ok until Putin. What’s to say the next guy isn’t a Han stooge ? I would game that scenario as well and expect more adversity coming up

[Vayutuvan]

Mede dev is the next guy, right.

[sanman]

Snip

A multipolar world is unstable. Like in gravity 3 body and higher body problems has no stable solution. I believe regardless of India's role the political universe we inhabit will tend to form 2 blocks.

Nonsense, that's like saying a free-market economy with multiple players is unstable.
These things can certainly be stable - certainly a Multi-Polar World can be stable - when the players communicate with each other.
It's a Uni-Polar world that is ultimately unstable, as the hegemon sucks the life out of everyone else, including its own people.
Because even a hegemon's own people aren't spared from suffering under the hegemony, whose power will keep concentrating itself more compactly to preserve itself, as everything else withers and rots beneath it.

These blocks will ebb and flow in influence. I believe today the world partitions into a Chinese bloc and an American Bloc. 50 years ago it partitioned into Russian and American Bloc. 100 years ago it was Axis Bloc vs Allied Bloc

In all such bloc partitions India has remarkably always been on the fence. A decider of outcomes if you see carefully

The Chinese are aging rapidly. Their economic numbers have dropped badly in recent times, and are behind India's growth numbers.
Go online and see numerous (Chinese-funded) videos emphatically saying that India can never be another China, India can't compete with China, etc.
Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much. Seems a nerve has been with them. They're obviously feeling the pain and are scared.
More than ever, they feel they're on shakier ground.

[Vayutuvan]

Multipolar world is stable in the dynamic sense.

[ricky_v]

https://spacenews.com/gop-platform-lays ... ter-china/

The GOP space plank, at just 50 words long, reveals a determination to win Space Race 2.0 through economic competition, not military conflict. It calls for “a robust manufacturing industry in near Earth orbit,” sending “American astronauts back to the moon, and onward to Mars,” and partnering with “the rapidly expanding commercial space sector to revolutionize our ability to access, live in, and develop assets in space.” Again, the Trump White House understood the economic imperative and laid out the most comprehensive space civil and commercial agenda since the Kennedy years. Trump refocused NASA on returning to the moon with commercial partners and aligned the international community with that goal under the Artemis Accords.




China has a robust national space program with an operating space station and has recently delivered on a series of impressive robotic lunar landings and sample return missions. While their success cannot be ignored, much of their technology has been acquired from Russia and copied (or even stolen) from the America. China has publicly embraced commercial space, but their firms are years behind. China’s nominally commercial space firms have been spun out of the military and civil space agencies and are very closely tied to the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party apparatus. In fact, the Chinese commercial rockets that have been launching payloads below market price are really just repurposed ICBMs. Future rocket designs presented by Chinese firms are nearly always blatant copies of SpaceX hardware. One of these, a knockoff of the Falcon 9, was recently destroyed in a failed test firing so catastrophic it presented a serious threat to the public safety.

[ricky_v]

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ge ... ng-in-asia

At the 2024 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin touted a “new convergence” between the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies and partners that is “defining a new era of security in the Indo-Pacific.” Austin came with a list of accomplishments to back it up, hailing expanded U.S. military access to bases in Australia and the Philippines, a “new era” in U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation, and co-production deals with India.

But this “new convergence” is more of an illusion than reality. As we argued in a longer piece in the Washington Quarterly, the United States still lacks military access to critical parts of Asia, a robust regional security network, and well-armed allies and partners capable of self-defense. Worse, trying harder will not solve these myriad problems because the region’s geography—its vast distances and maritime environment—works against coalition-building. Instead of trying to outmatch or outcompete China, Washington should acknowledge the geographic reality and build a more narrow but sustainable coalition to balance Chinese power and prevent Beijing’s regional hegemony.

Second, most allies and partners—including Taiwan—continue to underinvest in their own defense and spend far too much on big-ticket items like fighter jets and warships, rather than on the anti-ship and anti-air missiles, drones, and sea mines they need to turn themselves into hard-to-conquer porcupines.

Finally, even the administration’s signature project—building a “latticework” of overlapping security partnerships in the region—has met with limited success. Few countries are willing to fully commit to U.S. security networks that they perceive—rightly or wrongly—as requiring them to choose between the United States and China. In December 2023, for example, a few months after entering a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the United States—and raising expectations for closer alignment between Hanoi and Washington on security issues—Vietnam also elevated its relationship with Beijing as part of a carefully balanced refusal to take sides.

Second, the region’s maritime geography offers a powerful defensive barrier—what the political scientist John Mearsheimer terms “the stopping power of water.” This defensive advantage discourages states from making large investments in defense or turning to a balancing coalition for protection. China’s neighbors are wary of its growing power, but few see it as posing an existential threat to their survival. The maritime environment also gives them reason to question the credibility of U.S. commitments, as the air and naval assets that the United States relies on in the region are highly mobile—easy to deploy and easy to withdraw—and raise the perceived risks of lining up behind the United States.

Finally, the unique geographies of Asia’s maritime states tend to focus attention inward and on local security issues and away from more distant regional security threats. Archipelagic states like Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, for example, prioritize protecting their dispersed sovereignty—specifically the internal waters that lie between their many islands. These internal concerns may sometimes overlap with U.S. priorities—as is the case with Japan, as its archipelago extends toward Taiwan—but mostly they reduce regional demand for balancing coalitions. Similarly, coastal states like Vietnam and South Korea tend to focus most heavily on threats to their land borders, content to let the sea’s defensive barrier offer a first line of protection along their coastlines and driving them away from regional coalitions.

To build a balancing coalition, the United States should prioritize the security of the region’s major centers of industrial power, including India, Japan, and South Korea, supporting them in providing for their own self-defense with arms sales, intelligence sharing, and defense industrial base cooperation. At the same time, Washington should deprioritize areas less likely to shift the balance of power—for example, much of continental Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Second, to reinforce its regional staying power, the United States should invest more heavily in improving its existing defense infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific, including hardening aircraft shelters and submarines pens, moving more resources to pre-positioned equipment stockpiles, and increasing air and missile defense capabilities. These investments would send costly signals that increase the credibility of long-term U.S. commitments to Asia. They would also create the capacity for rapidly surging forces into the region in a conflict and increase the resilience of U.S. posture in Asia without the need for additional forward-deployed U.S. ground forces, which can create their own escalation risks.

[ricky_v]

https://tomdispatch.com/trusting-the-five-eyes-only/

The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences

Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. “Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.

TOMGRAM
Michael Klare, Early Signs of the Failure of American Global Power?
POSTED ON JULY 4, 2024
In his years in power, Joe Biden and his top foreign policy officials have come up with a distinctly more aggressive and militarized approach to a rising China and, in particular, its claims to areas of the South China Sea or the island of Taiwan. As an old Cold Warrior who lived through the era of “containing” Soviet power, the president has taken a strikingly similar approach toward China, even if he’s repeatedly denied that it’s a policy of “containment.”

Typically, American Green Berets have recently been stationed on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, just a few miles off the coast of the People’s Republic (though the head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command insists that it’s not a permanent change). Four new military posts are also being established in the Philippines, all of them strategically closer to China than the other U.S. bases there. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Marines opened their first new base in 70 years on the Pacific island of Guam as a “strategic hub” for the region, even as the American military command in Japan was also being strengthened.

(Imagine for a moment, how this country would react if China were challenging America’s “aggressive” behavior by establishing military bases throughout, say, the Caribbean or off the Mexican coast. Truly beyond belief, right?)

And then, of course, there’s Australia, where the U.S. is now stockpiling military supplies (and conducting joint war games) for a possible future conflict with China over Taiwan and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes strikingly clear today, that’s just the beginning when it comes to future military connections with that country. (Think nuclear submarines!)

And all of this is happening, as Klare points out, while American power globally is actually on the wane and its crucial alliances (in a world where the Global South is finally rising), increasingly… well, let’s not say “white” but, as Klare makes clear today, distinctly Anglo-Saxonified. Tom

Trusting the “Five Eyes” Only
The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences
BY MICHAEL KLARE
Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. “Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.

America’s Growing Isolation

To get some appreciation for Washington’s isolation in international affairs, just consider the wider world’s reaction to the administration’s stance on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden sought to portray the conflict there as a heroic struggle between the forces of democracy and the brutal fist of autocracy. But while he was generally successful in rallying the NATO powers behind Kyiv — persuading them to provide arms and training to the beleaguered Ukrainian forces, while reducing their economic links with Russia — he largely failed to win over the Global South or enlist its support in boycotting Russian oil and natural gas.

Despite what should have been a foreboding lesson, Biden returned to the same universalist rhetoric in 2023 (and this year as well) to rally global support for Israel in its drive to extinguish Hamas after that group’s devastating October 7th rampage. But for most non-European leaders, his attempt to portray support for Israel as a noble response proved wholly untenable once that country launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians commenced. For many of them, Biden’s words seemed like sheer hypocrisy given Israel’s history of violating U.N. resolutions concerning the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and its indiscriminate destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and aid centers in Gaza. In response to Washington’s continued support for Israel, many leaders of the Global South have voted against the United States on Gaza-related measures at the U.N. or, in the case of South Africa, have brought suit against Israel at the World Court for perceived violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In the face of such adversity, the White House has worked tirelessly to bolster its existing alliances, while trying to establish new ones wherever possible. Pity poor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made seemingly endless trips to Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East trying to drum up support for Washington’s positions — with consistently meager results.

Here, then, is the reality of this anything but all-American moment: as a global power, the United States possesses a diminishing number of close, reliable allies – most of which are members of NATO, or countries that rely on the United States for nuclear protection (Japan and South Korea), or are primarily English-speaking (Australia and New Zealand). And when you come right down to it, the only countries the U.S. really trusts are the “Five Eyes.”

Although largely a Cold War artifact, the Five Eyes intelligence network continued operating right into the era after the Soviet Union collapsed, spying on militant Islamic groups and government leaders in the Middle East, while eavesdropping on Chinese business, diplomatic, and military activities in Asia and elsewhere. According to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, such efforts were conducted under specialized top-secret programs like Echelon, a system for collecting business and government data from satellite communications, and PRISM, an NSA program to collect data transmitted via the Internet.

As part of that Five Eyes endeavor, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia jointly maintain a controversial, highly secret intelligence-gathering facility at Pine Gap, Australia, near the small city of Alice Springs. Known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), it’s largely run by the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Its main purpose, according to Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers, is to eavesdrop on radio, telephone, and internet communications in Asia and the Middle East and share that information with the intelligence and military arms of the Five Eyes. Since the Israeli invasion of Gaza was launched, it is also said to be gathering intelligence on Palestinian forces in Gaza and sharing that information with the Israeli Defense Forces. This, in turn, prompted a rare set of protests at the remote base when, in late 2023, dozens of pro-Palestinian activists sought to block the facility’s entry road.


From all accounts, in other words, the Five Eyes collaboration remains as robust as ever. As if to signal that fact, FBI director Christopher Wray offered a rare acknowledgement of its ongoing existence in October 2023 when he invited his counterparts from the FVEY countries to join him at the first Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit in Palo Alto, California, a gathering of business and government officials committed to progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. Going public, moreover, was a way of normalizing the Five Eyes partnership and highlighting its enduring significance.

Pillar II of AUKUS has received far less media attention but is no less important. It calls for American, British, Australian scientific and technical cooperation in advanced technologies, including AI, robotics, and hypersonics, aimed at enhancing the future military capabilities of all three, including through the development of robot submarines that could be used to spy on or attack Chinese ships and subs.

[drnayar]

I don't think Modiji or the BJP will easily forget the role played by western countries in influencing Indian elections. The Moscow visit is the literal middle finger to the collective western cabal.

[krithivas]

The end of South Asia
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-as ... south-asia

[Amber G.]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Ukraine in August.

https://www.wionews.com/india-news/indi ... ust-744593

[ramana]

French scholar Emmanuel Todd's book in French reviewed here

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/emmanuel-to ... in-ukraine.

03.10.2024
France
Religion Theory
Emmanuel Todd Prophesies the Defeat of the West
BY
MICHAEL LEDGER-LOMAS
French demographer Emmanuel Todd’s new book argues that secularization has left Western societies weak and divided. But his account of the US and Europe’s secular nihilism is deeply reductive, leaving no space for forward-looking political change.


French anthropologist, historian, and demographer Emmanuel Todd in 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)

“Town & Country,” our focusing on rural politics, is out now. Subscribe to our print edition today.

Review of La Défaite de l’Occident by Emmanuel Todd (Gallimard, 2023).

The Western admirers of Vladimir Putin’s Russia are a strangely assorted bunch, with each finding quite different things to like about it. Tucker Carlson raves about the living standards. He returned from a recent journey to Moscow enthusing over the spotless Metro system and the cheap supermarkets. The Putin-understanders of the German far right see in him a fellow champion of ethnonationalism. The French demographer, sociologist, and all-around provocateur Emmanuel Todd is cooler and higher minded in his praise: he is drawn to Putin’s mastery of geopolitics.

Todd’s latest book argues that Western powers are locked in a doomed effort to prop up Ukraine in its war with Russia. While it has sold well in France, it has also earned some scornful reviews. Le Monde dismissed him as a false prophet and a copyist of “the Kremlin’s propaganda.” La Défaite de L’Occident (The Defeat of the West) is undoubtedly soft on Putin. Yet it abounds in imaginative and occasionally shrewd explanations for the fears and jealousies which rack Western states. Its appearance is an opportunity to take the measure of a thinker at once systematic and mercurial, a cynic but also a moralist whose one consistent aversion is to self-satisfaction.

Family Fortunes
Todd’s dual identity as a demographer and firebrand is unusual. In a brilliant recent study, the historian Jacob Collins makes sense of it by placing him in what he calls an “anthropological turn” in French intellectual life, which began in the 1970s. The events of 1968 had shaken a narrow and repressive establishment but had not brought about a socialist nirvana. The Communist Party’s vote in national and presidential elections slumped and union membership tailed off. The oil shock of 1973 dampened economic growth and cast doubt on the Left’s assumption that the aim of politics was to share out an expanding affluence. These reverses encouraged some youngish intellectuals — who were not themselves anthropologists but read a lot of their work — to reground their understanding of politics and citizenship in the systematic study of human nature. Although Todd is the grandson of Paul Nizan, a celebrated Communist writer, and a youthful member of the French Communist Party, he soon shed a Marxist understanding of politics as the epiphenomena of class struggle and sought alternative models in the anthropological study of history. Perhaps it helped that he is also related to Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Todd ended up at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Peter Laslett supervised his doctoral study of peasant communities in preindustrial Europe. This was an important detour. Todd might seem in manner to be the model of a Left Bank intellectual who is viscerally opposed to “les Anglo-Saxons.” David Frum, the Bush staffer turned hack, once devoted a think tank blog post to sneering at Todd’s exquisite hair and reflexive skepticism about American power. Yet his thinking owed much more to Laslett’s wistful empiricism than to the antifoundational French Thought which once alarmed North American conservatives.

In his celebrated book, The World We Have Lost (1964), Laslett had argued that the key to past societies was less their economies than their distinctive family structures. Contrary to what Marxists claimed, it was not capitalism that had ripped apart the fabric of English life by subordinating it to market forces. In this telling, preindustrial England was already capitalist — what mattered was that its unit of production was the household of a nuclear family and its servants. Before the coming of factories, there were no faceless masses, few lonely people, and no social classes to speak of. Labor was intimate, rather than alienated, which did not make it any less exacting than modern work, merely different in kind. England’s patriarchal politics had followed its family structure: they reserved power to the tiny proportion of gentlemen whose horizons stretched beyond the villages in which they lived.

In Todd’s telling, preindustrial England was already capitalist — but its unit of production was the household of a nuclear family and its servants.
Laslett’s thesis reinforced Todd’s sympathy with the nineteenth-century French sociologists who had already found in the family a means of explaining the comparative political stability and economic vitality of European societies. In a series of voluminously documented books, Todd went on to chart elaborate homologies between political ideologies and family structures across not just Europe but the world. The republican triad of liberty, equality, and fraternity oscillated according to the relationships between fathers, sons, and siblings. Freedom flourished in societies such as England and the United States where most families were nuclear: children escaped from the authority of their parents and formed households of their own. Germany or Japan, where children had lived under the thumb of their parents in “stem families,” tended towards authoritarianism. The French Revolution had drawn its egalitarian inspiration from the Paris region, where families had divided up inheritances between siblings. Communitarian ideologies did best in societies such as Russia, where families had lived in large agricultural communes.

The Discrete Charms of Demography
France’s national institute for demographic study, which soon hired Todd to undertake such work, was a globally minded but thoroughly centrist body. When its founder Alfred Sauvy coined the term “the Third World,” he evoked the insurgent “Third Estate” whose demands had triggered the French Revolution. Yet the point of studying developing countries was to identify structures which could assist their integration into the global market. The institute also sought to benefit the domestic economy by determining the rate at which economic migrants should be admitted to France.

Todd recognized that his charts and maps could become a platform for prophetic interventions in public life. He made his name even before his arrival at the institute with his 1976 book, La Chute Finale (The Final Fall). This work marshaled stray but alarming indications of the Soviet world’s demographic problems — such as rising infant mortality and falling fertility, despite an absence of economic growth — to predict its collapse. Profile writers to this day mention it as an example of his prescience, even though the trends he identified no longer seem grave or permanent enough to explain the meltdown of the Eastern bloc.

After his lucky essay in Sovietology, Todd became better known as an analyst of France, who celebrated what he saw as the Hexagon’s uniquely complex weave of family systems and thus of ideologies. He regarded such diversity as positive, not least because it would militate against a nativist rejection of the North African economic migrants whose presence in France became a much-discussed phenomenon in the ’80s and ’90s. Yet by the time he published Après la Démocratie (After Democracy) in 2008, he was fretting about social divides which threatened the coherence of the republic and the viability of its democracy. One of these was education. Todd had always regarded the spread of universal literacy as an engine of democratization and a potent solvent of prejudices and inequalities, especially between the sexes. But he came to lament the later twentieth-century expansion of higher education, which in France and other Western countries was introducing a rift between the 40 percent or so of citizens who had benefited from it and all the rest. Globalization exacerbated this divide, because people with higher education sided with the wealthy elite in the misguided hope of sharing in its gains.

Religion, however, was the prime agent of division. In 2015, Todd’s interest in it generated his most incendiary intervention in debates about France’s democracy. After terrorists in Paris killed the staff of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine and four Jewish shoppers and staff in the Hyper Cacher supermarket, mass marches took place throughout France. These proclaimed the unity and secularity of the republic and the right to freedom of speech — up to and including the blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad published by Charlie Hebdo. Several months later, Todd caused great offense by publishing Qui est Charlie? (Who is Charlie?), which interpreted the marches as the symptom of a “religious crisis.” He argued that they were dominated by the professional classes, by regions peripheral to the egalitarian core of France where more authoritarian family structures lingered, and — crucially — by former Catholics.

“Zombie Catholics”
Todd’s earlier work had always stressed the importance of religious divisions but put them second to his cartographies of the family. He viewed family structures as foundational to all ideologies, including religion. He noted that regions with authoritarian and inegalitarian family structures were under the sway of the Virgin Mary, whereas the Parisian region had long ago cast off the Church in favor of Marianne, the incarnation of republican liberty and reason. However, religious practice had collapsed since the 1960s, even in traditionally faithful regions. How then could Catholicism be a factor in the Charlie marches?

Todd’s earlier work had always stressed the importance of religious divisions but put them second to his cartographies of the family.
Todd’s answer was that even people who had abandoned their faith might still perpetuate its reactionary attitudes. Arguing that a religion can shape minds in its absence may seem a bit of a stretch, but the Charlie marchers skewed old and had been thoroughly socialized in the faith they abandoned. Todd called them “zombie Catholics.” His weakness for a zinging phrase makes them sound ghastlier than he perhaps intended, because he actually regarded the residual commitment of Catholic regions to social solidarity as an advantage in the age of neoliberal competition. The overrepresentation of the zombies in the Charlie marches exposed their hollowness: they were more concerned with maintaining France’s distribution of social power than with defending universal rights and freedoms.

If Catholicism’s implosion left the “zombies” relatively unscathed, French secularists did not fare anywhere near as well. Todd — an atheist himself — once believed that the French had coped with the death of God rather well. Life no longer had any meaning, but it carried on decently and comfortably enough. Yet it had now become clear to him that the “flying buttresses” of the Catholic Church had propped up atheism all along by giving it something to oppose.

Secularization bereaved well-educated and well-off secularists. Missing the thrill of metaphysical combat, they cast around for a new enemy to unite them. They found it in Islam — the religion of a marginalized minority in France, but one they now professed to see as a threat to Western civilization. Although the French critics of Charlie were right to allege that many of the correlations it drew between the marches and the past geography of religious allegiance and family structure were sloppy and lacking in causal power, its warnings about the rise and social anchorage of “Islamophobia” stand vindicated today — and not merely for France. In countries such as Britain, the conviction that Islam and Muslims pose a threat to Western societies differs from crasser forms of xenophobia in being a pathology of anxious elites, one spouted by newspaper columnists as often as it shouted by street brawlers.

Who’s Afraid of Russia?
“Russophobia” performs the same function in The Defeat of the West as “Islamophobia” did in Charlie. When this book gets translated into English, it will startle many readers with its fond portrait of Russia as the very model of a sovereign nation state. Casting an eye over its vital signs, Todd argues that the country compares favorably to the United States: its level of infant mortality is markedly lower and — if you subject the figures to judicious tweaking — it apparently trains more engineers, a distinctively French, almost Bonapartist criterion for a state’s success. Yes, Russia is a very authoritarian democracy, but there is no need to be too exercised about that: it has just the kind of polity you would expect its patriarchal and communitarian family patterns to generate. The important thing for him is that Russia is a “conservative” power largely content to live within its borders. It nurses no grand designs and its aging and stagnating population affords no demographic basis for expansion: Russia is not “interesting” in the “eyes of a geopolitician.”

Todd uses all the tools in his kit to cast Russia’s adversary as a “failed state.” Ukraine is a mess of different family types — what counts as laudable diversity in France becomes fragile artificiality here. Since the Orange Revolution of 2004, the rural West has tried to impose its peasant tongue on the urbanized and industrialized East, which naturally prefers the Russian language of science and high culture. Todd even takes Ukraine’s thriving trade in surrogate pregnancies as a sign of its imminent collapse, arguing that it shows a plummeting estimate of human life. Putin’s invasion becomes a preemptive strike to protect Russian speakers against the aggressive pawns of Washington. If the “suicidal” determination of the Ukrainians to subjugate the Crimea and the Donbass brought on the war, their “nihilism” has perpetuated it: conflict gives a rationale to their “levitating state,” which only Western subsidies keep aloft.

Todd’s Putin bears little resemblance to the rambling spinner of historical fables who recently sat down with Tucker Carlson.
Todd’s Putin — an “intelligent” reader of world affairs, who gives “highly structured” speeches and outsmarts triflers like Emmanuel Macron with his “excellent” timing — bears little resemblance to the rambling spinner of historical fables who recently sat down with Tucker Carlson. Todd’s book gets more interesting when it moves from defending Russia’s war to asking why so many states came to see it as an existential matter for the West. It rightly criticizes the magical thinking which urged that sanctions would quickly collapse Russia’s war effort, or hoped that non-Western and nonaligned powers could be persuaded to enforce them. Even the United States does not have a sufficient industrial base to supply the Ukrainians with the tanks and shells that they would have needed to roll back Russian forces. So why the passion for this war?

Toward Point Zero
Once again Todd casts the West’s search for its enemies as the sign of a religious crisis. This time though, he points not to zombie Catholicism but to the implosion of Protestantism in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavian countries, who have been Ukraine’s cheerleaders in Europe. Writing for a French readership which imagines that its secular and republican model of state formation is normative, he emphasizes that states such as the United States and Great Britain had derived a sense of nationhood from the Bible long before the Bastille fell.

As a “good student” of Max Weber, he then adds the argument that their prosperity initially derived from Protestant habits of self-regulation and industry. No wonder, then, that their gradual but irreversible secularization is proving socially corrosive and politically destabilizing. Initially, this process strengthened democracy by producing a generation or two of “zombie Protestants,” who redirected their religious zeal toward the creation of welfare states. Even zombies, however, cannot live forever. “Phantasmal” Protestantism has given way to “point zero,” sweeping away what Todd wistfully regards as America’s once-benevolent WASP elite. It has been replaced by gangs of Washington insiders, whose only bond is their addiction to military grandstanding and the rentier profits of empire. Todd makes moralizing use of demographic data to suggest that dechristianization is sickening Protestant societies, as their godly industriousness degenerates into mere greed. The contrast between svelte Frenchmen and obese Americans suggests that the latter’s self-control has disappeared along with their God.

Weber would not have set so much store on waistlines. The breezy crudity with which Todd discusses Christianity blunts his insistence on its importance. For instance, his choice of gay marriage and the acceptance of transgender people as indicators of its passing is strangely arbitrary (not to mention echoing Russian diatribes against Western decadence). The emphasis on dechristianization is also inconsistent: he does not explain why it has not shaken Russia — where Orthodoxy is just as much in suspension — to the same extent.

America is led by gangs of Washington insiders, whose only bond is their addiction to military grandstanding.
All the same, Todd is surely right that societies flounder without the kind of public doctrine that churches once provided. It allows him to give a particularly shrewd account of the United Kingdom. He sees its Lilliputian bellicosity as a desperate attempt to revive its vanished standing as an elect nation. Although an inveterate enemy of the single currency and the neoliberal European Union, Todd is unimpressed by Brexit, which he presents as a symptom of a fraying Britishness, rather than a revival of it. Its leaders have fled this disarray by posturing as defenders of the West, even though decades of deindustrialization have so sapped its military that they cannot even emulate the French and make themselves “hated in Africa.” Boris Johnson embraced and armed Volodymyr Zelensky with an alacrity that surprised even the Americans.

From Ukraine to Gaza
While The Defeat of the West is less scientific and more anecdotal than Todd’s earlier books, it remains thoroughly “anthropological” in its insistence on the power of a political unconscious. To understand the decisions of individual politicians, one should consider the unseen and deep-seated structures that influence them. The risk of such an approach is that the analyst will find in the unconscious whatever they find amusing or convenient to put there. Todd’s book contains too many examples of such whimsy to mention. Let one example stand for many: he speculates that Antony Blinken’s Jewish roots in antisemitic Ukraine might be motivating him to keep it embroiled in a ruinous war as a “just punishment” for persecuting his ancestors. Todd’s references to his own Jewish ancestry hardly excuse such conspiratorial flourishes.

Todd has often essentialized and overdetermined the world as he finds it, a tendency evident in The Defeat of the West. His admittedly gripping portrait of America and Europe’s post-Christian nihilism is so overwhelming that it leaves little space for solutions. Only the Germans inspire him with some hope. Although Todd has always classed Germany as an authoritarian society and disliked its efforts to foist economic austerity on the European Union, he loathes American power more. He has long hoped that Germany might shed its status as an “inert” nation and team up with the Russians to break NATO’s hold over Europe, which has allowed America to “robotize” its political and economic elites. Todd impatiently anticipates Ukraine’s defeat primarily because it might reopen the opportunity for such an alliance, which seems neither a very plausible nor inviting prospect.

Whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, it seems unlikely to vindicate Todd’s fading reputation as a prophet. For all their confused values and stuttering economies, European societies remain stronger and wealthier than his gloomy prognostications or his loaded comparisons with Russia allow. Perhaps the “nihilism” and the “narcissism” which characterize their politics are in the eye of the beholder. By contrast, the war in Gaza, which began just as Todd wrote the coda to his book, is vindicating some of its wilder flourishes. The unconditional support of America’s elderly political elite for Israel’s invasion does indeed suggest they are in the grip of a psychic crisis which finds expression in a “need for violence.” The “childish simplicity” with which President Biden likened Israel to Ukraine as beleaguered bastions of freedom show how quickly Western values can become discredited by their addled defenders. The “irrational” commitment of America’s military materiel to the destruction of Gaza’s cities — which met with the protracted, if uneasy, acquiescence of its European allies and the mainstream media — suggests that all is not well with the West.

[Pratyush]

https://youtu.be/tXZYDtBt9k0?si=89YqHu5hzw0E9W0S


This is a podcast from a you tube channel The Burning Archive. On the topic of the Emmanuel Todd's book the Defeat of the West and the various teams covered by him.

It was published on 1st of July 2024.

The reviewer is retired Australian bureaucrat, historian and author .

Given my reading and observations of the West from an Indian lense. I personally don't have many reasons to disagree with what Todd has written.

[chetak]

Multipolar world is stable in the dynamic sense.

Vayutuvan ji,


Dynamic stability is only possible during the interplay of multiple forces, each acting sometimes collectively / individually / bilaterally/ multilaterally coordinating, and at times opposing in a similar fashion, and yet some others staying neutral in the dynamic sense, depending wholly on the individual state(s) and their requirement(s) of specific desired outcomes in a nationalistic sense.

Also, stability in the dynamic sense is a live construct, subject to the pulls, pushes, and the random vagaries of the global narrative as perceived by individual nations keen to optimize their individual interests in a geopolitical and geo economic sense, meaning you either have a seat at the high table, or you are on the menu.

The affect of even a seemingly random event like an internationally significant political assassination can reverberate on the geopolitical stage, causing a rapid realignment of regional and geopolitical interests in coalescing of the emerging response of various nations trying to maximize their supreme national interests and the international heft of their perceived status .

The rules based order as a concept is a blatant attempt at the imposition, by some erstwhile geopolitically dominant hegemonistic powers who are still living in the past, by the brute force artifice of foisting their "rules" on others and are thus very keen to reassert the colonial hierarchy in the modern sense, albeit in a disguised manner, the said hierarchy that prevailed under their unchallenged colonial reign(s) and ensured their past glories and crowned their supremacy as the dominant player(s).

They seek, above all, to divide the world into two classes, the rulers and the ruled.

They push but disguise cleverly the narrative of “might is right” and are "openly" in favour of "others" being a “good international citizen” by the opportunistically self serving appropriation the entire "rule-making processes”. It's a diplomatic "my way or the highway" narrative that they seek to enforce on those whom they consider as "inferior" powers

These ku klux clan type of hegemons are unable to digest, and thus unwilling to recognize and accommodate the rise of newer economic powers backed by defensive nuclear military muscle, who seek not only to upset the biased "rules based order" apple cart, but are demanding the unconditional entry into what was once a very exclusive abrahamic and whites only club whose hegemony they wish to challenge and ultimately break.

china is a malevolent monster that these ku klux clans willingly created because they did not fully comprehend or even understand the chinese civilization, a monster that they cannot handle like they did with the soviet union, and however much they try, they simply do not have the collective power to put this particular genie back into the bottle and this monster has now sunk its venomous fangs into the very heart of the western civilization and is devouring them alive.

kissinger and nixon were footpath goondas who metastasized into geopolitical louts, collectively and criminally responsible for wantonly unleashing dark forces of which they knew nought

[bala]

Dynamic stability is only possible during the interplay of multiple forces, each acting sometimes collectively / individually / bilaterally/ multilaterally coordinating, and at times opposing in a similar fashion, and yet some others staying neutral in the dynamic sense, depending wholly on the individual state(s) and their requirement(s) of specific desired outcomes in a nationalistic sense. ....

Super writeup Chetak ji! Summed up Geopolitics very well.

[chetak]

Dynamic stability is only possible during the interplay of multiple forces, each acting sometimes collectively / individually / bilaterally/ multilaterally coordinating, and at times opposing in a similar fashion, and yet some others staying neutral in the dynamic sense, depending wholly on the individual state(s) and their requirement(s) of specific desired outcomes in a nationalistic sense. ....

Super writeup Chetak ji! Summed up Geopolitics very well.

[ramana]

This is an Islamic revolution in Bangladesh. Same as Iran.
Moderate Shah overthrown by Islamic radicals with US support. Key then as now is the military did not support the government. US had persuaded the Iran military to not support the Shah then. We don't know their role now with the BD army.

[Vayutuvan]

Super writeup Chetak ji! Summed up Geopolitics very well.

@CHETAK JI, I concur. Good exposition of the game theory behind geostrategy.

[chetak]

@CHETAK JI, I concur. Good exposition of the game theory behind geostrategy.

[bala]

On this business of Dynamic stability, I want to borrow another concept from stability of Rockets that Dr. Nambi Narayanan learnt from Prof Crocco - you have to induce some instability to get overall stability. This implies that the world will still have some pockets of instability somewhere at all times - which is part and parcel of the culinary institute strategy. But if they overdo the instability part too much it would backfire and the whole thing could go out of control. As a corollory, those who strive for excess stability in ham handed fashion like the Cheen within their nation would face catastrophic implosion sometime down the road because that little tiny instability would become too large suddenly. The analogy is somewhat similar to having periodic small earthquakes to relieve the pressure on the large impending one which would wreck havoc on the system. In Bharat we face the scenario of some instability somewhere, but overall we manage the situation much better, maybe tis an attribute of democracy. The trick is wordly systems are ruled by Triguna - sattva, rajas and tamas and balancing them all without having one dominate the other is the what we mean by dynamic stability. There is no pure guna anywhere in the world.

[sanman]

If China Can Use This Loophole, Why Can't India?

(Listen closely to the part about "leased vehicles")

[vera_k]

The loophole is available to all. But Jaguar Land Rover is building a plant in India now, after dropping the idea of building one in the USA. No other manufacturer out of India has expressed any interest in making cars in the USA.

[ricky_v]

a dedicated thread to track the movements in the indo-pacific is needed, us is wholesale embracing this, the grasping and rapacious occident is victorious whenever it deals with the orient from the east, it is imperative that orient powers remove this so-called "out of the box thinking" blinkers from the fdf and make it a clearer western orient vs eastern occident, particularly by contesting the arctic circle and trade routes and more show of strength towards the red, black and med sea, the most obvious benefit to india is that in such cases it has depth, plus its instc trade routes (traversing the core / heartland of the orient) is secured; land and other trade routes within the mackinderian heartland must be given a priority because the ocean routes are coveted, and now there are movements to translate this desire into practical land holding


https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/bac ... ward-asia/

Europe has consistently sought to avoid being drawn into this unfolding US-China rivalry, aiming to maintain trade relations with both sides. This has left the United States bearing the bulk of the defense costs for countering China, while also providing roughly 70% of NATO’s defense funding. At one point, the Trump administration was even considering withdrawing Washington from its defense commitments to Europe in order to focus on the more pressing threat of China in the Pacific.

NATO did not begin discussing China until its 2019 summit, and even then the official declaration used a subdued tone, carefully avoiding the word “threat.” The declaration stated: “We recognize that China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance.” This contrasts sharply with the US Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment of the same year, which declared: “Russia and China will continue to be the leading state intelligence threats to US interests.” Additionally, the US Department of Defense’s 2019 China Military Power Report assessed China’s ambitions as aiming to build a powerful, prosperous China equipped with a “world-class” military, seeking to secure its status as a great power and emerge as the preeminent power in the Indo-Pacific region.

In 2020, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg commissioned the report “NATO 2030: United for a New Era.” Though not an official NATO document, the report aimed at strengthening the Alliance politically and militarily in the face of future challenges. It warned about the “simultaneous geopolitical and ideological challenges posed by Russia and China” and urged NATO to “remain the platform around which the Alliance organizes itself for an era of truly global challenges.” The new language laid the groundwork for NATO to address global security issues, including those posed by China.

2021 represented another evolution in the NATO narrative on China, with that year’s NATO Brussels Summit Communiqué acknowledging that “China’s stated ambitions and assertive behavior present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and areas relevant to Alliance security.” The communiqué highlighted concerns such as China’s expanding nuclear weapons stockpile, growing military capabilities, increased cooperation with Russia, civil-military fusion strategy, and actions in space, cyberspace, and disinformation. However, it also emphasized the importance of maintaining an open dialogue with Beijing.

The Ukraine war catalyzed a tangible shift in European defense thinking. A Russian invasion of Europe – the exact scenario NATO was created to prevent – had become a reality. The shock prompted European nations to increase their defense spending across the board. Ukraine also garnered support from Australia and New Zealand, creating new linkages between Indo-Pacific and European interests. Simultaneously, Russia and China strengthened their “no limits partnership,” with China supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Their joint naval exercises in the Indo-Pacific highlighted China as a European problem, not just a US rival. European leaders now recognize that security in Europe and Asia is interconnected, with the China threat extending to their doorstep.

The China threat and the Indo-Pacific region remain more critical for the U.S. than for Europe, as 70% of Europe’s shipping still traverses the Atlantic rather than the Pacific. This explains why Europe, while increasingly cooperating with the US in the Asia-Pacific, is hesitant to overtly label China as an enemy. The 2023 NATO Vilnius Summit Communiqué called on China to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, stop supporting Russia’s war efforts, and cease disseminating disinformation blaming Ukraine for the conflict.

In recognition of the Indo-Pacific’s importance, NATO has increased its cooperation with Indo-Pacific nations through various high-level summits. NATO has established dialogues with India and formed bilateral relations with the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) – Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. These relations are guided by the Individually Tailored Partnership Programme, a jointly agreed framework identifying mutual areas for cooperation, including cyber defense, the Women, Peace and Security agenda, military interoperability, maritime security, and the Science for Peace and Security programme. The 2024 Washington Summit marks the third consecutive year that the IP4 countries have been invited to the annual NATO summit. However, the summit declaration only mentioned China twice, indicating a level of concern that does not match the heightened US focus on China.

In summary, China poses both direct and indirect threats to Europe, particularly through its support of Russia. NATO’s shift toward the Indo-Pacific reflects its recognition of the interconnected security landscape created by the China-Russia alliance, making it increasingly difficult to separate North Atlantic and European security from Indo-Pacific security. However, NATO’s response remains more subdued and diplomatic compared to the United States, as Europe is cautious about alienating China or triggering a trade war or military conflict with the PRC. This caution is evident in NATO’s increased cooperation with regional allies like the IP4, which, while deepening, stops well short of anything resembling a mutual defense agreement.

NATO’s primary focus remains on Euro-Atlantic security, with the Indo-Pacific receiving relatively less attention. Consequently, while NATO will enhance its activities and partnerships in the region, it will not fully expand its mandate to Asia. This suggests that the United States and its Pacific allies should continue to expand initiatives like AUKUS and the Quad to address the China issue specifically.

[ricky_v]

an upside down perspective



us must not break apart from eu in terms of geo polity, breaking means more focus on apac, while being with eu means more focus on atlantic and arctic

also, the instc in this angle looks like very cosily nestled in the core of the heartland

[JE Menon]

I don't think Modiji or the BJP will easily forget the role played by western countries in influencing Indian elections. The Moscow visit is the literal middle finger to the collective western cabal.

100% I agree. This was a gross error of judgement made by the Biden administration, to the detriment of the larger American interest going forward.

[sanman]

[ramana]

https://tomdispatch.com/trusting-the-five-eyes-only/

The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences

Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. “Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.

TOMGRAM
Michael Klare, Early Signs of the Failure of American Global Power?
POSTED ON JULY 4, 2024
In his years in power, Joe Biden and his top foreign policy officials have come up with a distinctly more aggressive and militarized approach to a rising China and, in particular, its claims to areas of the South China Sea or the island of Taiwan. As an old Cold Warrior who lived through the era of “containing” Soviet power, the president has taken a strikingly similar approach toward China, even if he’s repeatedly denied that it’s a policy of “containment.”

Typically, American Green Berets have recently been stationed on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, just a few miles off the coast of the People’s Republic (though the head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command insists that it’s not a permanent change). Four new military posts are also being established in the Philippines, all of them strategically closer to China than the other U.S. bases there. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Marines opened their first new base in 70 years on the Pacific island of Guam as a “strategic hub” for the region, even as the American military command in Japan was also being strengthened.

(Imagine for a moment, how this country would react if China were challenging America’s “aggressive” behavior by establishing military bases throughout, say, the Caribbean or off the Mexican coast. Truly beyond belief, right?)

And then, of course, there’s Australia, where the U.S. is now stockpiling military supplies (and conducting joint war games) for a possible future conflict with China over Taiwan and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes strikingly clear today, that’s just the beginning when it comes to future military connections with that country. (Think nuclear submarines!)

And all of this is happening, as Klare points out, while American power globally is actually on the wane and its crucial alliances (in a world where the Global South is finally rising), increasingly… well, let’s not say “white” but, as Klare makes clear today, distinctly Anglo-Saxonified. Tom

Trusting the “Five Eyes” Only
The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences
BY MICHAEL KLARE
Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. “Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.

America’s Growing Isolation

To get some appreciation for Washington’s isolation in international affairs, just consider the wider world’s reaction to the administration’s stance on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden sought to portray the conflict there as a heroic struggle between the forces of democracy and the brutal fist of autocracy. But while he was generally successful in rallying the NATO powers behind Kyiv — persuading them to provide arms and training to the beleaguered Ukrainian forces, while reducing their economic links with Russia — he largely failed to win over the Global South or enlist its support in boycotting Russian oil and natural gas.

Despite what should have been a foreboding lesson, Biden returned to the same universalist rhetoric in 2023 (and this year as well) to rally global support for Israel in its drive to extinguish Hamas after that group’s devastating October 7th rampage. But for most non-European leaders, his attempt to portray support for Israel as a noble response proved wholly untenable once that country launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians commenced. For many of them, Biden’s words seemed like sheer hypocrisy given Israel’s history of violating U.N. resolutions concerning the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and its indiscriminate destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and aid centers in Gaza. In response to Washington’s continued support for Israel, many leaders of the Global South have voted against the United States on Gaza-related measures at the U.N. or, in the case of South Africa, have brought suit against Israel at the World Court for perceived violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In the face of such adversity, the White House has worked tirelessly to bolster its existing alliances, while trying to establish new ones wherever possible. Pity poor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made seemingly endless trips to Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East trying to drum up support for Washington’s positions — with consistently meager results.

Here, then, is the reality of this anything but all-American moment: as a global power, the United States possesses a diminishing number of close, reliable allies – most of which are members of NATO, or countries that rely on the United States for nuclear protection (Japan and South Korea), or are primarily English-speaking (Australia and New Zealand). And when you come right down to it, the only countries the U.S. really trusts are the “Five Eyes.”

Although largely a Cold War artifact, the Five Eyes intelligence network continued operating right into the era after the Soviet Union collapsed, spying on militant Islamic groups and government leaders in the Middle East, while eavesdropping on Chinese business, diplomatic, and military activities in Asia and elsewhere. According to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, such efforts were conducted under specialized top-secret programs like Echelon, a system for collecting business and government data from satellite communications, and PRISM, an NSA program to collect data transmitted via the Internet.

As part of that Five Eyes endeavor, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia jointly maintain a controversial, highly secret intelligence-gathering facility at Pine Gap, Australia, near the small city of Alice Springs. Known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), it’s largely run by the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Its main purpose, according to Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers, is to eavesdrop on radio, telephone, and internet communications in Asia and the Middle East and share that information with the intelligence and military arms of the Five Eyes. Since the Israeli invasion of Gaza was launched, it is also said to be gathering intelligence on Palestinian forces in Gaza and sharing that information with the Israeli Defense Forces. This, in turn, prompted a rare set of protests at the remote base when, in late 2023, dozens of pro-Palestinian activists sought to block the facility’s entry road.


From all accounts, in other words, the Five Eyes collaboration remains as robust as ever. As if to signal that fact, FBI director Christopher Wray offered a rare acknowledgement of its ongoing existence in October 2023 when he invited his counterparts from the FVEY countries to join him at the first Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit in Palo Alto, California, a gathering of business and government officials committed to progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. Going public, moreover, was a way of normalizing the Five Eyes partnership and highlighting its enduring significance.

Pillar II of AUKUS has received far less media attention but is no less important. It calls for American, British, Australian scientific and technical cooperation in advanced technologies, including AI, robotics, and hypersonics, aimed at enhancing the future military capabilities of all three, including through the development of robot submarines that could be used to spy on or attack Chinese ships and subs.

Quite a belated realization on part of the author. The core of the West since the Industrial Revolution has always been UK and US. And US FP was always Anglo-Saxonized from after US Civil War. They were the apprentice to the UK sorcerer. WWII advanced them ahead of UK. End of Cold War reduced the UK and removed all constraints on US.

[ramana]

I don't think Modiji or the BJP will easily forget the role played by western countries in influencing Indian elections. The Moscow visit is the literal middle finger to the collective western cabal.

100% I agree. This was a gross error of judgement made by the Biden administration, to the detriment of the larger American interest going forward.

After election interference failed to cut down Modiji, Bangladesh plans were hastened to cork Indian expansion into South East Asia.
Indian Act east is the millennium swing to wards SE Asia that US wants to prevent.
This means the US has decided China is not a threat anymore to Taiwan.
China takeover of Taiwan makes US exit East Asia which they can allow.

[bala]

Invasion of American University Campuses | Rajiv Malhotra & Sree Iyer in PGurus




Rajiv Malhotra talks about US Oligarchs who want to subvert the US with left and islamic jihadic groups. The US Oligarchs are like SoreAss, Omidyar, Bill Gates, etc. Indian oligarchs like Murthy of Infosys (he being of the left bent) fund Universities with left and islamic jihadic groupings. Narayana Murthy recently has taken a position supporting left agenda and has become an open supporter and recently he has supported the actions of Yunus/Soros group in Bangladesh. The latest Palestinian support in US University is a case in point. Islam groups don't like LGBTQ groups, but all these groups are together to disrupt on a global scale. It is not just an American grouping, this is worldwide and growing fast. India will be targeted, already USCIRF org is filled with jihadi types writing about religious freedom of India. The framework is Marxist idealogy. All the DEI, Environment norms for companies ESG, etc are variations on marxist idealogy. All kinds of people are co-opting this framework - khalistan, dalits, muslims, wokes, etc. This is being mainstreamed, young children are corrupted into this thinking. Meritocracy is also being attacked. And for those who are IIT Alum, there is a concerted effort to diss IIT by these groups. There is a steady decline in academic standards. Note that this trend is also true in India. Many Indian states have lowered admission criteria.

Surprisingly Jewish Billionaires are pushing against Palestinian causes in Universities. They threatened US University presidents to cut this shit out otherwise no funding. Harvard, MiT, UPenn, etc., backed of based on Jewish pushback. However Indian billionaires like Mahindra, Murthy, Piramal, Mithal, Ambani, etc don't seem to care, they are gluttons for self punishment, strange. The Univ take their money and work against India, height of stupidity! Why are these morons funding anti-India agendas in foreign universities. Also the Indian students in these Univ, to be cool and in the trend, join these moronic protests and think they are against "authoritarian" systems and "standing for justice". Bunkum of the highest kind. The amount of indoctrination messes up young minds. If the best and brightest students are subject to such influences, what hope is there for the new generation to lead the world.

As Indians we have to worry about these brain washing. The US toolkit pdf is being used worldwide and India needs to brace itself for sudden protests, overthrow of elected people, chaos and unsavory elements taking charge of your life. The progressive left fringe of the democratic party has caused maximum damage. US democrats of Indian origin like Ro Khanna, Pramilla Jayapal, etc are all of the progressive left fringe.

[Vayutuvan]

After election interference failed to cut down Modiji, Bangladesh plans were hastened to cork Indian expansion into South East Asia.
Indian Act east is the millennium swing to wards SE Asia that US wants to prevent.

Also all the objections from NGOs and that green tribunal (of India, I forget the name) for placing radars on A&N and building a container ship terminus.

Since India bhas a stationary aircraft carrier right at the mouth of malacca strts, they want to sit on St. Martins monitoring Kolkata, Gopalpur on Sea, Vishakha on the eastern seaboard.

[sanman]

After election interference failed to cut down Modiji, Bangladesh plans were hastened to cork Indian expansion into South East Asia.
Indian Act east is the millennium swing to wards SE Asia that US wants to prevent.
This means the US has decided China is not a threat anymore to Taiwan.
China takeover of Taiwan makes US exit East Asia which they can allow.

Not only should we continue to Act East, but we should also even Act Farther East -- ie. expand to Pacific Islands -- and we should bring China with us, because at that point we'll both be in America's backyard, just as America has now come into our backyard and likely brought China with them. We should also coordinate with China in America's Latin America backyard too.

[Mukesh.Kumar]

I would not totally agree with his neat breaking up history into blocks, nor of the equal lengths, nor of his prescriptions. But this person has touched up on a pattern that I believe is true- the cyclical nature of history. Just like poetry, each verse is different but it rhymes or fits into a pattern.



More than ideology, I am coming to believe that economics, drives history (am influenced greatly by Yuval Noel Hariri's writings) but yes, it's economics that drives human history.

The question that arises is why does a discarded philosophy like 'Marxism", still exist. Possible answers could be that the whole world does not move in sync, and that while Marxism may have been discredited in Eastern Europe, it found an economic justification in the West. N.B. Marxism, isn't fashionable because it works, it is fashionable, because economic conditions make it attractive to a large group of people. It's promotion is actually done by a small group of powerful individuals who want to use this opiate to beguile the masses, so that they seize absolute power.

A further point of investigation, could be how the whole world interacts, because at the same time, there will be groups who have abjured Marxism, and groups like the collective West, who are embracing it now.

This video, is posted from the POV of the US, and with the US still being a dominant economic player, what is happening in the US will affect the rest of the world. The reason, tehre is global friction, is because while still not as powerful, other countries, namely China, India to an extent and others are at this moment becoming significant and are not in sync with the rest of the world.

If we look through the economic justifications, as to why societies embrace leftist policies, or identity, or religion, it maybe a way to decode what's happening and finding alternative paths.

Thoughts?

[Pratyush]

In order to work with China. China also has to be able to work with India.

The point is that enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

We have to stop thinking in terms of the post 1947 boundaries of India. At least on the eastern side of the country.

[sanjayc]

After election interference failed to cut down Modiji, Bangladesh plans were hastened to cork Indian expansion into South East Asia.
Indian Act east is the millennium swing to wards SE Asia that US wants to prevent.
This means the US has decided China is not a threat anymore to Taiwan.
China takeover of Taiwan makes US exit East Asia which they can allow.

Not only should we continue to Act East, but we should also even Act Farther East -- ie. expand to Pacific Islands -- and we should bring China with us, because at that point we'll both be in America's backyard, just as America has now come into our backyard and likely brought China with them. We should also coordinate with China in America's Latin America backyard too.

Are you sure China wants to coordinate and collaborate with us? It is one-sided love, the same mistake as made by that woolly headed philosopher Nehru. China wants to see us as a vassal, not as a collaborator (which implies equal status)

[sanman]

Are you sure China wants to coordinate and collaborate with us? It is one-sided love, the same mistake as made by that woolly headed philosopher Nehru. China wants to see us as a vassal, not as a collaborator (which implies equal status)

We don't really need China's consent for this type of "cooperation". All we need to do is help tilt the balance in favour of China in its forays into America's backyard.
So we help tilt balance towards China in areas which will increase US-China frictions. I don't think China will back away from that.

I'm talking about America's backyard, not our backyard.
In our backyard, China must be treated as an enemy.
In America's backyard, we must treat China as a friend - or at least as a lesser enemy whom we want to promote against a stronger enemy.

Since America has invaded our backyard, we have no choice but to support America's next-strongest rivals (China, Russia, NKorea, etc) against America.
In our own backyard, China must be treated as an enemy. But in or near America's backyard, then China is a lesser threat which must be supported against a bigger threat.
We must help America's rivals to gain footholds in America's backyard, just as America has helped our enemies to gain footholds in our backyard.
We must also mobilize the Global South against the Global Hegemon.

The Americans have done a Pearl Harbour on us. We must give them a Midway.

[S_Madhukar]

Bhai - start with simple stuff. Stop aiding US immigration of our bright students in science and immigration of our less bright students in liberal arts. By now Garlic Shetty should have been kicked out. At industrial scale start incentivizing NRIs to come back to India. 1 stone 2 targets. Let Unkil stew with its motley new immigrants. Bring in smart Russian/Europeans/Americans to upskill ourselves. They don't want us to stick out at govt level cooperation , fair enough, do it at company/individual level like the Chinese do.

[sanman]

Bhai - start with simple stuff. Stop aiding US immigration of our bright students in science and immigration of our less bright students in liberal arts. By now Garlic Shetty should have been kicked out. At industrial scale start incentivizing NRIs to come back to India. 1 stone 2 targets. Let Unkil stew with its motley new immigrants. Bring in smart Russian/Europeans/Americans to upskill ourselves. They don't want us to stick out at govt level cooperation , fair enough, do it at company/individual level like the Chinese do.

We can accomplish that by helping to bring about an alternative to US Dollar.

We need to put our heads together and come up with some useful approach.

Maybe we need to bring back Gold.
India is a Gold superpower, after all.

[ernest]

Instead of playing the China-US balance game, it would help us better if we can work with factions within America that are more pro-India comparatively. Recognize whatever groups in the SD/DS are pushing anti India agenda, and extend support to relatively better options, helping them get to power.

We need good flows and integbration with US economy for our growth to continue. We shouldn't help Chinese in anyway just to get back to the US as a whole. We also lose in that scenario. We need to cultivate strong relations with Americans, who can back pro India policy in all speheres-military, political, academia.... We already are seeing some engagemnt with Republican/Conservative meetups recently, where Ram Madhav and Swapan Dasgupta spoke.