THE POLITICS OF HALF-MEASURES

 A document  circulating in American conservative  foreign policy circles for some time now proposes a dormant NATO as a solution to the alliance's current crisis of credibility.

 Paradoxically, although the number of members of the alliance has increased recently, NATO's credibility as a peacekeeping force in Europe has all but evaporated.

According to the document, the burden of the EU's common defense would pass from the US to the Europeans, with the Americans only providing the continent's nuclear protection, the rest of the military obligations falling entirely to the Europeans.

In actual fact , the American nuclear umbrella is not even needed, as France can simply beef up its nuclear arsenal already at its disposal. Accordingly , we arrive at the logical conclusion that the proposal in question is meaningless, as it's generally the case with similar American proposals . In truth , NATO should not be sent "to sleep", but rather dissolved as an alliance .

Europe for Europeans

Two hundred years years ago, President Monroe asked the European powers of the time to stop interfering in the affairs of their former colonies, in the Americas. It is now time Europeans ask the US to reciprocate, in order for the EU to be able to build its own security architecture on the continent.

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In his speech before the US Congress on the 2nd of December 1823, US President Monroe outlined what has since become known the "America for Americans" doctrine:

"It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course..."

By and large, European powers heeded Monroe's call. Now it is  European leaders who need to call on the Americans to reciprocate and to dissolve the NATO alliance,  thus enabling European countries to make their own security arrangements.

At the end of the Cold War, German Foreign Minister Genscher, French President Mitterrand and Soviet leader Gorbachev fully expected NATO to be dismantled, as the Warsaw Pact was. They intended to create a new European security architecture, which would have included Russia, but excluded NATO and the United States. The project was rejected out of hand by American leaders, who decided to not only keep NATO going, but opted for its eastward expansion after the implosion of the USSR.

Since 1999, NATO ceased to be a guarantor of peace on the European continent. It started a series of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now, by proxy, in Ukraine.

As of two years ago, NATO even intends to drag European nations into military confrontations in the Indo-Pacific with China, a drive which leading European nations oppose. 

Although most leading IR specialists believe that the current war in Ukraine is a result of NATO's expansion, the fact remains that this is but a consequence of not dismantling NATO in 1991.

Accordingly, today's European leaders should collectively push for the dissolution of the Alliance and for its replacement by a collective security arrangement, not only autonomous but independent of the United States.

In truth, stopping NATO's expansion and the neutrality of Ukraine will not address the root cause of Europe's security woes and will not guarantee that Europe can become again a peaceful continent.

As matters now stand, European nations are captive to a military alliance  emulating  Athens' ancient Delian League, which has become toxic to most of its members. It is therefore not in the interest of Europeans to continue to be part of an alliance that has been redefined after 2000 as an instrument of American global hegemonism.

An Agenda for NATO's 2024 Washington Summit

"The most serious danger to the security of the world right now ? The United States itself. The United States has become the most profound source of instability and an uncertain exemplar of democracy." (Richard Haass, former President, Council on Foreign Relations, July 2023)

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It is not by accident that I decided to write this post on the national day of France. 

Since NATO's foundation, the French have always been ill-at-ease with the US' leadership style of the alliance. In 1949, 13 American senators were also opposed to its foundation. Senator Robert A Taft, the son of the 27th American president, William Taft, refused to vote in favour because 

: “If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and … Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia. Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is. But from the Russian standpoint it may not seem unreasonable…. How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?”

To be sure, NATO's recent enlargement around the Baltic Sea cannot obscure the fact that this alliance has outlived its usefulness by some two decades and that it has, unfortunately, become the main war provocateur and a menace to global peace. 

No European expert or politician of note really believes that EU nations are under threat of invasion from Russia. By contrast, Russia has rightfully complained for years about NATO's expansion from Central Europe eastwards, to no avail. Its misgivings were proven prescient, as NATO has expanded right up to Russia's borders.

Since 1999, NATO has become an offensive alliance, as the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the bombing campaigns in Syria and Libya have demonstrated. Gone are the days when NATO tasked itself with preserving peace in Europe. Nowadays there is even talk of dragging European NATO allies into the Indo-Pacific, presumably to deter China from invading Taiwan. American policymakers cannot truly hope to enlist NATO's European allies to participate in a conflict with China: in 2003 the US was unable to convince them to take part in the invasion of Iraq - a much less dangerous adversary.

These are only a few reasons why the upcoming NATO 2024 summit in Washington should have only one item on its agenda: the peaceful dissolution of this alliance. It can no longer justify its existence in geostrategic terms, and it has become toxic to its European allies. NATO officials should forget about building expensive new headquarters in Europe, opening liaison offices in Japan or pressing its members to increase their military spending. The US is no longer in a position to be the global hegemon, since it now lacks a strong industrial base and its budget deficits have become unbearable for the average American taxpayers. Putting its fiscal house in order should be the main priority for the US. Nowadays it can ill-afford to maintain its 750 military bases worldwide and to simultaneously finance NATO's European allies' defence, as well as Ukraine.

As in our nuclear age the dismantling of NATO is the only rational choice, the entire US political class should give their full support to the executive branch and back a decision to curtail the agony of an alliance which lacks a solid geostrategic justification for its existence. In other words, NATO's main preoccupation in 2024 should not be Ukraine or Russia, but how to fold its war tents from Europe as peacefully as the Soviets did in 1991.

Pivoting Great Powers

 In geopolitics, pivoting is not something only pivot-states do.

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The current debate concerning the management of international relations centres around two key concepts: multipolarity and unipolarity. The opposition of the two concepts is creating a lot of tensions and global security headaches at present, as the Ukraine war illustrates. Consequently, it is worth recalling the origins of multipolarity and of its counterpart, unipolarity.

Multipolarity has a proven historical track record of keeping the peace between great powers, through its balance of power mechanism. It originated in Europe and flourished after the fall of Napoleon, when it included 5 great powers: Britain, France, Austria, Prussia and Russia. Through regular meetings between them, the five powers succeeded in keeping relative peace in Europe for a hundred years, until 1914.

Unipolarity was born out of the ashes of the bi-polar world around the year 2000, being the brainchild of American neoconservatives, with no precedent in modern history. In assuming the role of the only hegemonic power, the US has engaged in almost continuous warfare in the Middle East, Asia and now in Europe, violating - in the process - the UN charter and provoking the devastation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine. 

In the first decade of the 21st century, a number of former and current military powers from Asia and Europe, such as China, France, Russia or Germany, have started to push for the demise of unipolarity and for the transition to a European-style multipolar world order, dominated initially by 4 great powers: the US, the EU (the Franco-German alliance), Russia and China. ( A 5th member, India, would join this exclusive great power club in the next few years). By the end of the current decade, this multipolar system will very likely replace the broken unipolar system put in place by the US two decades ago.

One other issue that is connected with the advent of multipolarity is that of pivot states, which I have already discussed elsewhere. There is, however, one essential aspect I have omitted to mention. That is, whilst no great power can be considered a pivot state, some of them are themselves pivoting quite significantly.

The first to do so was the United States. We all remember the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia". Disappointed by Western Europe's "ungratefulness" for the role the US played in the prosperity achieved by the continent after the devastation of WWII, the Obama administration decided to turn its back on Europe and pivot towards the Pacific region and China instead.

The second superpower pivoting was the EU, under the leadership of France and Germany. After refusing to endorse the US' invasion of Iraq, the two leading European countries started lobbying for "strategic autonomy" from both the US and NATO and pivoted economically towards Russia and especially China.

The latest great power to pivot was Russia, following the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev. Disillusioned with repeated Western invasions of its homeland and the presence of NATO at its borders, Russia itself pivoted east towards China. By 2023, the two countries concluded a comprehensive alliance, directed against what they regard as NATO's expansionist drive in Europe and Asia and against the regime-change crusade promoted by Washington recently.

The only great power that does not need to pivot and keeps to its millenary Middle Kingdom tradition is China. For a few decades now, China's huge market has become a magnet for all the other great powers, which covet Chinese low labour costs and access to the pockets of its large and growing middle class. 

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that China has emerged as the only great power interested in maintaining global peace and stability, as its contributions to the peace efforts between Iran and Saudi Arabia have recently proved.

Accordingly, US policymakers would be well-advised to abandon their mindless quest to keep unipolarity going, and to take their rightful place among the other great powers. Such a course of action could only pay dividends for global peace and prosperity.

How Pivot States Can Affect Global Peace and Security

 The transition from American unipolarity to a multipolar world order is well and truly underway and cannot be reversed. When dealing with threats to international security, Western policymakers should contemplate action starting from this new reality. 

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On the 1st of January 2014, four researchers from The Hague and London published a ground-breaking research report on pivot states and their role in regional and global security. The 57-page report identified 22 pivot states from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America and listed 4 great powers currently in existence : the US, the EU, Russia and China. On its way to achieving the status of a great power, India is currently the only major regional country that still clings to its famed neutrality.

The basis of the report is - clearly - multipolarity, while the notion of spheres of interest and its importance in international relations is fully recognised as such. For the authors, the definition of pivot countries is as follows:

"Pivot states are states that possess military, economic or ideational strategic assets that are coveted by great powers. Pivot states are caught in the middle of overlapping spheres of influence of multiple great powers, as measured by associations that consist of ties that bind (military and economic agreements and cultural affinities) or relationships that flow (arms and commodities trade and discourse).

A change in a pivot state's association has important repercussions for regional and global security. States that find themselves in overlapping spheres of interest are focal points of where great power interests can collide and also clash. States located at the seams of the international system have at various moments in history been crucial to the security and stability of the international system.

Intra-state cleavages often divide pivot states. Such cleavages can be religious, ethnic, linguistic or cultural in nature, and more often than not they are a combination of all of the above. And it is precisely when these pivot states are caught in the middle, when opposing great powers push and pull in opposite directions, that they are torn apart. Hitherto weak centrifugal forces might suddenly become unleashed. Ukraine is currently succumbing to divisive forces, and Iraq is at real risk of falling apart.

In some cases there is an increased likelihood of great power conflict when pivot states fall victim to great powers encroaching on each other's spheres of influence. Great powers competing over respective spheres of influence (think here the US vs Russia) employ what is commonly called brinksmanship, either to change or, alternatively, to uphold the status quo. But brinksmanship can be exercised by pivot states too. These pivot states can be moral hazards or "rogue pivots" if they behave recklessly while betting on the opposing great power to come to their rescue. Georgia in the run-up to the 2008 war with Russia is a case in point. Georgia had been keen on bolstering ties with the West and was betting on Western assistance in its conflict with Russia, while the latter did not materialise in the end. Brinksmanship of pivot states also introduces a real risk of direct or indirect confrontation between great powers. The solution seems simple: do not let a rogue pivot state pull you into a great conflict."

The report provides a useful guide to understanding the current war in Ukraine, as well as the political instability in Georgia and elsewhere. It should be a must-read for policymakers and diplomats alike. 

By clinging to unipolarity, the US foreign policy establishment is actually depriving international relations of the needed shock absorbers and it could, unfortunately, lead the world to nuclear catastrophe.

UKRAINE IS A GEOPOLITICAL BLACK HOLE

 The readers of my blog can be forgiven if they are still under the illusion that what the world is doing in Ukraine is safeguarding the independence of a newly-minted country against the aggression of Russia. On a superficial level this seems indeed to be the case.

In fact, we should look at Ukraine as the ultimate - man-made - geopolitical black hole. 

Such a place sucks up the resources of neighbouring countries, human or material, leading to their economic and even physical destruction. This black hole has a sick form of nationalism at its centre of gravity, which is aggressive, domineering and intolerant with other ethnic groups happening to live within the same borders. 

The Ukrainian black hole has a history of 31 years and it started after the implosion of the USSR with Kiev's refusal to allow ethnic groups at its fringes to revert to the countries they were severed from, by Stalin or his successors.

The saga continued with the involvement in the region of the US, which since 2008 started sponsoring Kiev's intolerant nationalism in earnest, with a view to weakening, destroying or partitioning its old (new) foe, Russia. 

By 2014, all the essential elements that led to the creation of the Ukrainian black hole were in place, culminating with the Maidan coup against the Yanukovich government.

Gradually, the new geopolitical black hole, an initial creation of western services, went from bad to worse. From 2014 to 2022, the US, EU and Russia all fought a losing battle to use and control the political centre of this black hole. The Russians lost first, hence the Ukrainian intervention and their annexation of Donbas. This however does not mean that the Americans or the EU won, and this is why:

The peculiarity of a geopolitical black hole is that it eventually becomes uncontrollable. Its political leaders develop an agenda of their own and bleed their sponsors dry, financially, militarily or economically. Thus, it is enough to consider the 60+ billion dollars spent only by the US so far this year, or the economic disaster currently affecting Europe from London to Berlin, to grasp the danger of the existence on the edges of the continent of the Ukrainian geopolitical black hole.

Like Serbia before it, Ukraine will not ultimately end up in control of the territories - inherited from the USSR - it now claims as its own. We now know that the Serbian black hole was also a man-made one, having been the creation of a freemasonry bent on destroying the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires. The Serbs ended up controlling parts of the former Austro-Hungarian territories like Croatia and Slovenia, but they lost it all some decades later. An identical fate is in store for Kiev's ultranationalist regime, although I suspect its territorial losses are coming much sooner, if the Russian annexation is any guide.

The task of politicians everywhere is to resist being sucked into the Ukrainian black hole - an occurrence that would have disastrous consequences for world peace. 

The Kiev regime has no intention to run a normal country. It refuses to correct the errors of its ways and negotiate an end to the conflict. This attitude, however, is in perfect accordance with the essential characteristics of a geopolitical black hole, whose gravitational pull towards generalised conflict is very hard, if not impossible, to resist.

America's Imperial Apparatchiks in Eastern Europe

Upending constitutional order or undermining the political systems of Orthodox members of the EU or NATO will not work for the Alliance in the long run. Furthermore, cultivating hate of Russia in these countries is bound to backfire.

Very few Westerners know that in 2014 the actions in Maidan Square were mirrored in neighbouring Romania, albeit without violence. On the cusp of the presidential elections, American-backed Romanian secret services replaced the Liberal Party's president at the time with an ethnic German, Klaus Iohannis, who was hand-held to win the country's presidency that year. This, to be sure, was one of the freakiest developments ever in the country's political history, very similar to Ukraine being led by a Jewish president.

The former president of the Romanian Liberals was definitely an unsafe choice for the US in the region because he was friendly towards Russia. As Nato was gearing up for a major confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, neighbouring states like Romania, Bulgaria or even neutral Moldova had to have at their helm political leaders that the US could control 100 percent.

It's a well known fact that - generally speaking - Catholic Western politicians have always been mistrustful of politicians hailing from Orthodox countries. Even when they were accepted as EU members, for example, Romanians and Bulgarians were made to feel like tolerated, second-class citizens and prevented from enjoying the full benefits attached to their membership. Thus, even 15 years on since their accession to the EU, neither Romania nor Bulgaria have been accepted into the Schengen zone. 

These double standards in the way the EU is being managed, where its Catholic member states are favoured and where its Eastern Orthodox members are regularly derided or have their economic performances downgraded, are too well-documented to insist upon here. The important point to mention at present is that the meddling of the US and EU in the above-mentioned Orthodox countries' selection of their political leaders is not only extensive, but highly detrimental to the very ideas of democracy, freedom and self-rule.

In preparation for the current conflict in Ukraine, the US felt it needed to promote to executive office in Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria an Americanised breed of politicians who, although natives of the countries concerned, have been trained at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or have done stints at the World Bank. Orthodox nations, it seems, are not to be trusted to make decisions about what is happening in their region: they have to be guided and kept on a short leash by Washington. 

Current events in Ukraine show why the US and the EU have worked in tandem over the last few years to demolish what was left of the Romanian or Bulgarian democracies which emerged after the 1989 revolutions. Like nowadays in Ukraine, opposition leaders have been regularly jailed on corruption charges that in the rest of Europe could attract at most a fine. In so doing, the US has made sure that the "right" politicians get into high office, and once there, they do America's bidding against its eternal foe Russia. 

At the end of the day, these countries are going to be left with quasi-dictatorial political regimes manned by Western-trained politicians who act as Washington's puppets and seriously affect their countries' national interest, if Bulgaria's recent loss of gas supplies is any guide. Furthermore, pushing these countries' leaders to prove their loyalty to the Western alliance and adopt a much more bellicose stance towards Russia than what their citizens would normally approve of, makes their territory prime targets of Russian missiles if and when the Ukraine conflict reaches boiling point. But who cares, right ? They are only some poorer, second-class citizens of an alliance lacking the most basic respect towards their traditions, religion and culture...

Why Ukrainians Should Stop Listening to Zelensky

March 10, 2022. I have recently researched Dmytro Kuleba's entry on Wikipedia and the news is disastrous. Ukraine's foreign minister suffers of Asperger's syndrome, like Greta Thunberg. (The Wikipedia  entry about his syndrome was deleted on March 12th). Him holding such a high position in Kiev in these calamitous times for Europe calls into question the sanity of the entire Ukrainian leadership and that of their enablers in the Anglo-Saxon world.

March 9, 2022. If Ukrainians were in any doubt whether the armed resistance Zelensky and his team have organised against the Russian army was not about their own country or their people, now they have the proof. Their president's speech to the British lawmakers and Boris Johnson's televised reply show that Ukraine and its people have been used from the outset by the United States and Great Britain to provoke regime change in Moscow.

By asking for more weapons and tighter sanctions, Zelensky is fulfilling this particular agenda, which has nothing to do with the deaths and the suffering of ordinary Ukrainians. He has even had the cynicism to end his speech with a Shakespearean quote - "to be or not to be"- proving to the world that once an actor always an actor.

If Zelensky, Kuleba and the rest of the team had indeed been animated by strong patriotic feelings, the Russian intervention would never have taken place. Solutions to prevent it existed of course, but the two were not prepared to heed any sensible advice whatsoever. 

Thus, one month before the Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, I wrote the following letter to Dmytro Kuleba, which naturally remained without a reply:

"January 23, 2022

His Excellency Kuleba Dmytro

Ukrainian Minister for Foreign Affairs

Kiev

Ukraine

zsmfa@mfa.gov.ua

Your Excellency,

I would like to approach your office, during these tense times for your country as well as for the whole of Eastern Europe, with a proposal that might defuse the threat of military action in Ukraine.

When it comes to achieving lasting peace in Ukraine, the key is not in Washington, Moscow or Brussels, but in Kiev. This is because you and your colleagues are the only ones capable of deciding to adopt a full neutrality status for Ukraine, forgoing any military alliances with the East or with the West which may jeopardise the territorial integrity of your country.

As an Australian historian born in Romania, I am of course familiar with the issues affecting peace and security in Eastern Europe. On the 18th of December last year I wrote a post about Ukraine on my geopolitical blog, recommending a status of neutrality for your country. My professional opinion has recently been echoed by the renowned International Relations professor Stephen M. Walt, who is also of the opinion that your best hope for peace in Ukraine is to become a neutral country, although he seems to believe that Ukrainian politicians lack the will to select this option (please see links below). 

I would further like to suggest to you the adoption of a federal formula for Ukraine, which would be the most useful in putting to rest the current ethnic tensions you are experiencing. 

I take this opportunity to mention to you that the more than 500,000 citizens of Romanian heritage living in Ukraine are very unhappy with the nationalist policies adopted lately by Kiev and would welcome a larger degree of autonomy in education and public administration within their native lands.

If successful in these two endeavours, Ukraine would be able to join a group of prosperous and influential nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia or Germany and Belgium in Europe.

Needless to mention, the alternatives are dire and involve more or less permanent military conflict with Russia, which would only make Ukraine a permanent customer of the military-industrial complex of the United States.

[...]

Yours faithfully

"

A once prestigious Western institution like the Westminster Parliament yesterday has become the scene of a grotesque Zelensky & Johnson political show aimed not as much at British voters, but at the Ukrainian public, whose support for their president is understandably faltering. To be sure, more weapons and sanctions would not lead, as Boris Johnson told the British parliament, to regime change in Moscow, but to even more deaths and destruction in Ukraine. 

Naturally, it is up to Ukrainians themselves to decide if they want to continue to die for a country and a leadership that has practically been at war since the 2014 violent change in government. Before doing so, however, they should consider the opinions of colonel Douglas Macgregor from the United States, who knows best who bears the main responsibility for the carnage now taking place in Ukraine:

"  Meanwhile, the Washington elite remains committed to any course of action that promises to prolong the conflict and kill more Ukrainians. No one inside the Biden Administration or in the Senate seems remotely interested in crafting a ceasefire, let alone developing the basis for a potential solution that will save lives and halt the destruction.

Europeans must realize that Washington and London, along with their obedient media, will forgive any sin—deception, graft, murder—if it is committed against Moscow. Before it accepts any change in the regional status quo, Washington is prepared to sow chaos in Eastern Europe. This is hardly in Europe’s interest."

Multilateralism and the Remaking of G7

Following the oil shock of 1973, the G7 was created in 1975 to coordinate the West's macroeconomic and fiscal policies so as to avoid a global recession. Today the world economy faces an even bigger predicament, which could be addressed by restructuring the membership of the G7 and ending the war in Ukraine.

It is obvious by now that the biggest casualty of the conflict in Ukraine - second only to the human casualties -  is the world economy. Oil and gas prices have spiked in all major economies to unacceptable levels and could go even higher, jeopardising a timid economic recovery which followed the shock of the pandemic, and adding a few percentage points to existing inflationary pressures. The culprits here are both the US' unilateralism in foreign affairs and the current design of the global economic system's governance, which is also US-centric.

After the demise of the bipolar world, it should have been obvious to Western policymakers that the next stage in the governance of international affairs can only be multilateralism. Unfortunately, American neocons decided to launch their unipolar project which led to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and ultimately to Maidan and the current conflict in Ukraine. This situation, if left as is, won't lead to a second Cold War as some would hope, but to all-out nuclear war.

I believe that world leaders should start addressing the problems created by American unilateralism and unipolarity by first rebuilding existing collaborative institutions, such as the G7. In truth, the global economy can no longer be governed successfully by a G7 which has an almost exclusively Western membership, while leaving huge emerging economies like China to be part of a second-class economic grouping known as the BRICS.

In order to reflect today's economic realities, the G7 has to shed its purely Western image and drastically restructure its membership. This means including in this group systemically essential countries like China, Russia and Brazil as the next engines of economic growth, which would replace countries such as Great Britain, Italy or Canada. Granted, Russia cannot be called these days an economic power, but its huge oil, gas and mineral wealth makes it essential as a supplier of energy to all the other major economies in the group, as current events have amply demonstrated.  

To bring the world back from the brink of a prolonged economic recession and a potential nuclear war, American and EU leaders should also stop ignoring Russia's security concerns and the material support for the Maccabeean state Zelensky has been trying to build in Ukraine since 2019. In its 30 years of existence, Ukraine has proven to the world that it is unable to govern itself independently and build a state that can contribute to the peace and stability of Eastern Europe. Even more worrying is the fact that under Zelensky's leadership the Ukrainian constitution has redefined Ukraine as an anti-Russian state, a fact that Russia cannot overlook or tolerate on its Western border.

For me as a trained historian from the region, Russian tutelage of Ukraine looks more productive than any weird geopolitical designs recommended by a distant superpower like the US. I have always been convinced that "cancelling" Russia, instead of involving it in the macroeconomic management of the global economy, is not only self-defeating but also plain stupid. 

The fact that the Zelensky administration has to be replaced as soon as possible should be a given not only for Moscow, but also for the leaders of those Western powers still interested in peace and stability in Europe, a stop to war casualties and a steady supply of energy to the EU.

A Post about Ukraine from the 2nd of March, 2014

I wrote the following post on the 2nd of March 2014 on my Facebook wall. This document correctly assesses the impact of Maidan on Russia from a geopolitical angle and accurately anticipates today's events.

 As none of the architects of the 2014 Ukraine policy have been held responsible by the US Congress, the world is now closer to nuclear war than it has ever been.

Today one thing is clear: sanctioning Russia for Western policy failures is morally wrong and it is only adding insult to injury. The events now unfolding in Ukraine are the harbingers of NATO's  future demise and probably that of the EU itself.

 2 March, 2014. HOW TO EXPLAIN THE RUSSIAN REACTION. Russia, the largest state on the planet, a state with huge resources, a strong army and sophisticated nuclear weapons, feels attacked today in its security zone, Ukraine.

The British lent a helping hand in the 19th century to craft and guarantee the security of the Belgian state: that meant when Belgium and the Netherlands   - that is, the British isles'  protection zone on the European mainland - were attacked , Britain automatically went to war against the aggressor. The island of Hawaii has the same geo-strategic situation for the United States: when it was attacked by the Japanese, the United States automatically went to war.

What the US and the EU have planned for Ukraine with the help of dissatisfied citizens in the west of that country is a huge error of the North Atlantic Alliance. All the Western officials in charge of managing the situation there for the last few years or months deserve to lose the positions they currently hold. The hard times we are going through now are ultimately the responsibility of these officials, who have obviously made the wrong career choice for themselves.

The phony outrage displayed now by some Euro-Atlantic political leaders, the threats, cannot hide the fact that Russia's security needs, its economic and geo-strategic interests, have been trampled on by all those who have made possible,  logistically and tactically, the mob insurrection that led to the overthrow of the Kyiv regime.

Russia could not tolerate the way the events in Maidan unfolded, nor the belligerence and threats of politicians - perceived in Moscow, not without reason, as representatives of a puppet regime - installed by Western countries to deal a deadly blow to the security interests of Russia in its own backyard.

 Through the policies they adopted, the new leaders which were appointed in the wake of Maidan  have shown that they do not understand the enormity of the mistakes they made, from the repeal of the law on nationalities, to the threat of suspension of the Russian naval base agreement in Crimea, or their anti-Russian rhetoric. Consequently, the possibility of a major military conflict in the area can no longer be ruled out, but it is even very likely.

(Author: Florian Pantazi 

Posted on Facebook on the 2nd of March, 2014

Translated from Romanian by the author)

WHO WiLL TAKE OVER NATO'S TOP JOB ?

 The mature Western liberal democracies are lately in the habit of promoting representatives of some Lilliputian states, devoid of any military importance within the alliance, to fill NATO's top job.

This explains the fact that President Obama, himself a representative of a minority, promoted a Danish citizen as Secretary General of NATO in 2009, namely Anders Fogh Rasmussen, representing a minority of small states within the alliance.

In 2014, the same Barack Obama promoted Jens Stoltenberg, the representative of a state of only 5 million people, as Secretary General. (This may also be related to the decline of NATO's importance as a politico-military organization after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.)

Compare this situation with the one before 2003, when the job of NATO Secretary General was occupied by the representatives of the great European nations: Britain (Lord Ismay, Lord Carrington or George Robertson), Germany (Manfred Worner) , Spain (Javier Solana), or Italy (Manlio Brosio), with two or three Belgians or Dutch among them when tensions during the Cold War were lower in intensity.

If the appointments of new NATO Secretaries-General continue in the same tradition, we can expect Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians to be appointed to this post. They have in common with their Danish and Norwegian predecessors the fact that their states, although tiny and insignificant militarily, are close to Russia or have a common border with it. This is because NATO's number one enemy is no longer the USSR, but Russia.

US: from Nation-Building to all-out War

"Billions spent on the Kennedy School, grand strategies seminars, and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service has bought us an elite that's about to blunder us into a Ukraine war."(J.D. Vance)

In a few days from now, President Biden will host German Chancellor Scholz in Washington. The expectation of Washington neocons is that he will succeed in pressuring Germany to join a pan-European alliance against Russia. 

To be sure, the German refusal to send weapons to Ukraine - and thus help ignite a fratricide war between Ukraine and Russia - makes sense. Germany was right in refusing to join the neocon-inspired war against Iraq in 2003 and is even more justified in refusing to join NATO in sponsoring a war against Russia now.

Unfortunately, France is no longer led by a president as experienced or astute as Jacques Chirac: Macron seems willing to send troops to Romania, regardless of how pointless this is from a military point of view.

Since 2001 the US have embarked in quite a few military interventions or coups around the world, which were followed by a disastrous drive to promote nation-building: in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Ukraine (2014). All these ill-conceived nation-building efforts have backfired miserably. Undaunted, the Washington neocons who have monopolised American foreign policy for the last two decades are now promoting a war by proxy, encouraging the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.

Since 2007 onwards, Vladimir Putin has cautioned the West against pushing the boundaries of NATO eastwards. His pleas went ignored and - at the NATO summit in Bucharest one year later -  the George W Bush administration officially announced the intention of the US to include countries like Georgia and Ukraine in the alliance (these efforts were thwarted by the refusal of France and Germany to endorse the expansion). In 2014, the US engineered a coup d'etat in Kiev, replacing Yanukovich with an American puppet regime that ultimately bled Ukraine dry and is at the origin of today's crisis.

Unfortunately, after 14 years of unsuccessfully calling for a stop to NATO's eastward expansion, the Russians were deliberately left with no other option by US negotiators than to put a stop to this expansion through military action against Ukraine. 

The fact is that the treaty they are seeking to guarantee Russia's security can only be concluded after fighting a war, not before.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, Western intellectuals have elaborated projects aimed at achieving "perpetual peace". Some of the fruits of this labour have been the multilateral institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Sadly, however, humanity has been confronted with some of its biggest and most devastating military conflicts regardless of such well-intentioned efforts. To this day, no lasting peace treaty has been able to be concluded without fighting it out on the battlefield first.

The recent, ill-conceived US nation-building efforts abroad have coincided with a period in American history when consensus has evaporated, the nation is deeply divided and American society itself is in danger of internal collapse. Sure, the Pentagon and the US Defence Department are against a war breaking out in Ukraine, but the neocons in Washington and their supporters in the military-industrial complex want it and will most probably get it. 

As long as the American polity remains unable to expunge from their ranks the neocons putting America's future in jeopardy, however, the string of military and nation-building failures experienced by the US is set to continue.

UKRAINE AND THE END OF PEACE IN EUROPE

In an unfortunate turn of events, it seems Ukrainians are intent on finalising their nation-building at the expense of European peace.

Today Romania celebrates 163 years since the double election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler of the United Principalities of Moldova and Wallachia. The double election capped a 3-year diplomatic offensive by Romanian intellectuals in leading European capitals, aimed at securing  international recognition for the new state - formed through the unification of Moldova and Wallachia - by the great powers of the day. 

Cuza's double election was the gimmick used by the founders of the modern Romanian state in order to circumvent the restrictions imposed on the unification of the two principalities by the European great powers during  the 1856 Paris peace congress . The unity of the new Romanian state was thus obtained peacefully, albeit by defying the will of Western and Central European rulers, most notably those of Great Britain and the Austrian empire. Less than a decade later, the Romanian state became a kingdom and in 1877 it obtained its independence from the Ottoman empire.

This outstanding example of diplomatic skill and statecraft allowed the new state to survive and prosper. At the end of WWI, the Romanian kingdom more than doubled its territory and population, reuniting within its borders all the Romanians hitherto living in Austro-Hungarian or Russian empires. To this day, for all its shortcomings, Romania is a functioning democracy, a stable and peaceful nation of Europe.

Europe is unfortunately witnessing today the different saga of yet another new state, Ukraine, at its doorstep. The evolution of Ukraine since 1991 has not matched Romania's peaceful model in any way shape or manner. The initial Western enthusiasm from the 1990's having evaporated, Ukraine is barely functioning and looks set to put an end to peace in Europe - a peace that has lasted largely uninterrupted since 1945. 

In my professional view, this is happening because Ukraine lacks a patriotic elite. Sure, there are pro-western politicians and parties, as there are pro-Russian parties and politicians. What Ukraine badly needed, however, is a breed of politicians and intellectuals who are pro-Ukrainian, that is, exclusively dedicated to advancing a purely Ukrainian agenda on the international stage. 

The lack of such an elite was and is currently being used by interested parties, like Russia and the United States. Their geopolitical designs, however, have very little to do with the core interests of the new nation. Sadly, however, the Ukrainians have failed to prove to them both that they have what it takes to build a strong and peaceful nation.

The very latest developments are a case in point. In an open-for-all-to-see international conspiracy, some politicians from the UK and the United States are using the Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border to sell rumours and unconfirmed stories to the Western public about Moscow's intention to install a puppet regime in Kiev. Echoing the London or Washington storyline, current Ukrainian authorities have vowed to round up all the local politicians who might be part of the plot. In so doing, they seem to overlook the fact that they behave as a puppet regime of the West themselves. Moreover, Ukrainian leaders are showing a bizarre willingness to send their own citizens to the slaughter , by beating the drums of war with Russia on behalf of the West.

In truth, taking part in a conspiracy against peace in Europe is not the way to advance Ukrainian nation-building. As an historian, I am more convinced today than ten years ago that what we are dealing with in Ukraine's case is the failed launch of the new state. In other words, over the past 30 years Ukrainians have proved to the rest of the world that they are not mature enough to have their own state and to govern themselves peacefully , with only minimal foreign interference.

Unfortunately, as Ukrainians rejected neutrality out of hand - which is the only realistic solution to their problems -  they are running the serious risk of disappearing again from the map of Europe as an independent state. In case that happens, they will not be able to blame Russia or the West, but only themselves.

THE CRISIS OF DIPLOMACY II : " MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR " ☺

 

With each passing day, Western states are taking resolute steps towards becoming  irrelevant.

Woke ideology, left-wing feminism, critical race theory  are all undermining a civilization that seems determined to shed its  past achievements and give up the pre-eminent role it has played until recently.

States that are much less economically developed or that are more primitive from a social or political point of view are, as a result, becoming much more insolent and confident that they will soon take over the world.

A last-minute trend in the demise of the West is the so-called " feminist foreign policy, " which is sure to strike a blow at the diplomatic profession,  already badly affected  by the changes of the past 30 years.

Feminists who fancy themselves  as diplomats do not seem to understand that the essential role of diplomats is to sign peace treaties, to settle conflicts between states, not to catalyze them. Feminist assumptions about diplomacy being mistaken, their "contributions"  are useless. It's enough to consider the performance in office  of Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton or  Victoria Nuland and one gets the picture.

Thus, if  Albright had tempered the Baltic states' desire to become NATO members, for example, Russia would not have a casus belli today against the West. She was also responsible for botching the peace negotiations with Milosevic and for the bombings in Bosnia and Serbia from 1999. There are a few American IR specialists who have deplored the way NATO turned out after 1989. Thus from a military alliance tasked with keeping the peace in Europe, NATO has emerged as an aggressive organisation which started quite a few wars since 1999. In no small measure, this shocking shift in NATO's mission is the legacy of the first woman to become Secretary of State in the history of the US, and not that of  any "toxic" NATO general.

We should also remember the disaster in Libya patronized by the then head of American diplomacy, Hillary Clinton. Counter to the advice of the Defence Department , which was opposed to military action against Gaddafi, Hillary Clinton convinced Obama to authorize the bombing campaign in Libya, with devastating consequences .

One should not forget the "contribution" to peace in Ukraine made by Nuland , who personally oversaw the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime in Kiev...

So far, therefore, the presence of women in diplomacy has not shown that they are better negotiators, less aggressive than men, or better trained professionally. So where are the exaggerated claims of German feminists coming from?

Ukraine and the Crisis of Diplomacy

  I propose to look at the current crisis from another angle, that of the crisis of the diplomatic profession.

200 years ago, in a turbulent European context marked by the Napoleonic Wars, a neutral state appeared on the map of the continent, a republic in the middle of the kingdoms of the time: Switzerland.

This was made possible by the support of Tsarist Russia and the diplomatic genius of its Foreign Minister Ioannis Kapodistria . Thanks to his talent and sustained efforts, Switzerland's independence and neutrality have been recognized and guaranteed by all the great European powers.

Fast forward to the 21st century, when the tradition of competent diplomats has almost completely disappeared. The main cause for this situation is without a doubt the usurpation of the competencies specific to the diplomatic profession by the heads of Western states, eager to appear as great international crisis solvers (they are not!) in the spotlight of the TV cameras. This has delegitimized the field of diplomacy and marginalized career diplomats, who would now have been the only ones able to negotiate a neutral status for Ukraine and help resolve the political-military stalemate the tensions have reached.

What's worse is the fact that seasoned diplomats like Kennan or Kissinger have been replaced by militant women, either feminists like Hillary Clinton or neoconservatives like Victoria Nuland, who have greatly aggravated the geostrategic situation throughout Eastern Europe. Such "diplomats" not only did not help ease geostrategic tensions, but even catalyzed them (see Victoria Nuland's actions in Maidan Square in 2014). It is well known that in diplomacy the persons for whom ideological options prevail cannot function effectively, regardless of the nature of their ideology.

It is interesting to note that the role of diplomats in international negotiations, which has been severely eroded over the last hundred years, has never before been so completely affected, not even by interwar dictators, such as Hitler or Stalin. The latter did not take any interest in Soviet foreign policy until 1936, leaving the field almost exclusively in the care of Litvinov, the USSR's foreign policy commissioner. Litvinov's replacement in 1939 was followed by one of the great failures of Soviet diplomacy: the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. However, the treaty in question was negotiated and signed on behalf of the two states by Ribbentrop and Molotov, respectively, on behalf of the USSR.

The trend for summits between the leaders of the world's most important states started during World War II, with Churchill, Rosevelt and Stalin meeting in Tehran and Yalta. It was resumed in 1989 when Presidents GH Bush and M. Gorbachev met in Malta, and summits have remained in fashion to this day.

The most important successes during the Cold War, however, such as the policy of detente or the signing of strategic arms reduction treaties, are attributed to diplomacy corps led by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, not Leonid Brezhnev. The signing of the peace treaty that ended the Vietnam War was negotiated by Henry Kissinger, not by Richard Nixon, etc.

Let's be serious, the United States (and for some time Russia, France or the United Kingdom) no longer have well-trained diplomats who will play a key role in reducing tensions between states or blocs of states. In crisis situations, such as now on the Ukrainian border, it is not Blinken or Lavrov who are called to resolve the stalemate, but President Biden or Vladimir Putin directly.

The conclusion to the above is clear. In the absence of competent senior diplomats, fully in charge of the foreign policy of their states, crises between blocs can degenerate into military conflicts, which jeopardize peace in Europe or elsewhere in the world. The absence of the diplomatic buffer is therefore very ominous for all parties involved in economic or military conflicts. However, until the role of diplomats in international relations is restored, situations of this kind can only degenerate.

The EU's Übermensch Politicians

 Initially at least, the advent of the EU seemed like a great idea. After two devastating world wars, six nations most affected by them decided to set their differences aside and form an economic union that would prevent further armed conflicts. Today Europe has known almost 70 years of peace, although the jury is still out as to where the credit should go for this. As an historian, I believe that keeping the peace in Europe is mainly the legacy of NATO, and less that of the EU itself.

Over this period, some politicians have conspired behind the scenes to transform the EU's community of nations into a federal superstate. Such politicians ignore the fact that - for better or for worse - the nation-states are the building blocks on which Europe stands. They hope that the EU superstate would in time be able to push member states to transfer most of their sovereignty to Brussels and that a new breed of politicians, as well as institutions, will replace current leaders  and national parliaments.

The philosopher in vogue among this federalist group of politicians is none other than Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's ideas about transcending national politics and building a pan-European polity, totally emancipated from Christian morality and any concept of good and evil, have unfortunately brought to power in major EU countries such as France, for instance, political leaders like Macron.

According to Hugo Drochon (author of "Nietzsche's Great Politics"), Macron is a true blue Nietzschean political figure. An Ubermensch, so to speak. From Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", we all know what the Ubermensch stands for in political terms. Such a politician is animated by "the will to power", he or she does not have any strong principles and they believe that the state is just an overseer of the operations of private companies. Together with a bunch of like-minded intellectuals, this type of politician is basically anti-democratic and believes in a sort of a future "caste society" in which the servile Untermenschen are supposed to produce the goods and services for the new European elites. 

In short, what we are witnessing is the advent of one of the most illiberal elites ever, bent on repressing the will of European national political leaders and ultimately bringing about the fusion of nation-states into the EU superstate. 

Naturally, Macron is only the most accomplished product of Nietzschean political philosophy, but of course there are others sharing these values and a pronounced distaste for democracy. One can easily recognise them by their support for EU federalism, for the primacy of EU directives over national legislation, or by their advocacy for the creation of transnational political parties.

As Brexit has already proved, however, European nations will not put up for long with politicians and EU bureaucrats inspired by a German philosopher who at 45, in the prime of his life, suffered the complete loss of his mental faculties.

The Canary in the Coal Mine

 Last December, Germany finalised a Comprehensive  Agreement on investment  with China on behalf of the EU, angering many EU members in the process. While somewhat understandable from a German point of view, the speed with which the agreement was concluded and the opportunity to do so in the current context leave much to be desired.

Before signing it, officials should have taken clues from last year's attack by the Chinese government on Australian exports. As dependent as Germany is on the Chinese market for a significant share of its exports, Australia has seen its barley, beef, wine, lobster, timber and even coal exports brutally affected by an official ban. China has revived its old imperial kow-tow policy, according to which countries around it could see their access to its market denied if the political leadership in Beijing feels slighted by them in any way.

Australia has displeased Beijing last year when it called for an international inquiry on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The call was seconded at the time by the EU and is fully justified in scientific terms, even if the Chinese leadership preferred to give it a political spin. Soon thereafter the Chinese government started targeting Australian exports one after another on an almost monthly basis, trying to make an example of Australia should any other country try to follow in its footsteps. Problem is, Australia had signed a bilateral free trade agreement with China back in 2015, which should theoretically have protected the two countries' companies from such unwarranted political disputes. It follows that concluding treaties with China is not worth the paper treaties are written on and will clearly not protect anyone .

The EU-China investment protection treaty ( CAI) should not be ratified until the Chinese government abandons such harmful commercial tactics with Western countries like Australia, with which they have a free trade agreement in force. In this case, Australia is no more and no less than the canary in the coalmine for the EU, blinded - as it were -  by the false hope of enjoying normal economic relations with China.

Once it concludes major trade agreements, China succeeds in modernising and in boosting its own economy's growth. However, it does so at the expense of its trading partners, as its record attests when examining its economic relations with first the USSR and then the US.

This is why Australia's recent commercial predicament should be taken seriously in Brussels and should act as a powerful brake against the type of wishful thinking that disregards Chinese polity's true nature and its hidden geopolitical agenda.

Italy and the Euro

 

June 17, 2018

The change of government in Italy calls into question the German leadership of the European Union, which was myopic at best.
Italy has never benefited from the introduction of the euro. Its GDP per capita after the introduction of the common currency has stagnated. German-imposed austerity measures and the lack of solidarity among member countries in the euro club have contributed to transforming a once-promising monetary initiative into a fiasco. The common currency was supposed to bring prosperity and unity among its members. Instead, it brought misery in the South and pitched countries against one another (Joseph Stiglitz).
Sadly, nobody within the EU expects Germany to live up to the fact that it should have done much more to avert the euro crisis or to help countries in deep financial trouble. President Macron’s valiant efforts at reforming the Union and its common currency are likewise being torpedoed systematically by the German chancellor, who had lost touch with reality a long time ago and looks set to become the Union’s gravedigger.
In the current political climate, nationalists are gaining power in one member-state after another and xenophobia is on the rise. Such developments can only spell doom for the embattled Union, already weakened by Brexit and the debt crisis. Unfortunately, many economists or political analysts are not optimistic when it comes to the EU’s chances of overcoming its current woes. One can only hope that they are wrong and that the worst – i.e. the implosion of the Union – could still be avoided.