THE EMBARASSING IDEAS OF THE CLASSICS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE

 I said in my previous post about Smith / Ricardo that even to this day we collectively have the misfortune to suffer the consequences of an economic ideology developed by people from peripheral and poor regions of Europe. I was referring, of course, to Adam Smith and his native Scotland, who joined the British Union in 1707.

Smith profoundly influenced Thomas Malthus, who in his well-known essay on the principle of population expressed his revolt over the indifference of the English rulers of the time, who dared to ignore the "recommendations" launched in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," especially those concerning the aids for the poor. (It should be noted here that the only nations with a state welfare system for the entire population in the eighteenth century were only England and the Netherlands. In the case of England, aid laws for the poor were even several hundred years old.)

But here is what Malthus proposes in his essay, re-edited by him in 1817:

"I have been thinking for a long time about the English laws regarding the poor. (...)

... I propose to publish a law refusing parish assistance (in England, state aid was distributed to the poor by law through the network of Anglican parishes) to CHILDREN born from a marriage contracted more than one year after the publication of such laws, and all illegitimate children born two years after the enactment of the same law. "

In 1834, following campaigns mounted against continuing aids for the poor, Parliament decided to stop them ... 

William Senior, who drafted the text of the decree in question, was also the first professor of economics - the new discipline - at Cambridge. From the outset, therefore, classical British economists proved hostile to wage-earners and to the poor. From a social point of view - keeping in mind the fact that economics is a social science - this legislation represented a huge setback.

Here is how Adam Smith saw the solution to the fluctuations in the price of wheat, which quite often generated hunger among employees during that period:  "Smith made us see clearly that the natural tendency in a year of famine is to deprive workers of jobs of any kind or to force a large number of workers to work for a low wage, due to the impossibility for employers to hire the same number of people at the same price as before. An increase in wages  will only lead to an increase in the number of unemployed and would do away, warns this author (i.e. Smith) with the beneficial effects of a period of moderate famine, which tends to make people more industrious, attentive and economical "  (Thomas Malthus," Essai sur le Principe de la Population ", p. 63)

However, another Scottish economist of the time, Sir James Steuart ( 1712 - 1780 ) - who fully deserves the status of co-founder of economics - was knowingly marginalized by Adam Smith. In contrast, James Steuart was a staunch supporter of state intervention in the economy. Thus, Steuart believed neither in laissez-faire in economic policy nor in the existence of the "invisible hand" that would allow markets to self-regulate. During the debate over the increase in wheat prices in his day, Steuart recommended state intervention to stabilize prices and to ensure the quantities of wheat needed for consumption by the population.   "He proposed an intervention scheme reminiscent of the common agricultural policy (CAP) which was adopted by the European Community ". (Gilles Dostaler, "James Steuart, the fight lost against Adam Smith", Alternatives économique, 5/2010, no. 291 p. 76).

Unfortunately, Adam Smith's ideas still decisively influence the political action of some US Republicans. Members of the Washington DC Heritage Foundation for example - very influential during the Reagan and Bush administrations - wore ties printed with the portrait of Adam Smith at ceremonies, until recently. No other comments necessary...

US Diplomacy v. the Military-Industrial Complex

 The last time the United States achieved lasting peace with its former enemies was in 1945. Since then America has been dragged into an endless succession of regional wars, with its diplomats being forced to play second fiddle to the hawks in various US administrations.

Nowadays it's not diplomats who come up with solutions to solve tensions between states, but the direct or indirect representatives of the American, Russian or French military-industrial complexes, that is - military attachés or secret service chiefs posted  in embassies. The situation arose after 1945 and gradually worsened as the military-industrial complexes in question gained increasing levels of influence over politicians.

Of course, unlike diplomats, the people of the military-industrial complex (MIC) do not aim to settle conflicts between states, but to stall solving them in order to keep the level of arms sales as high as possible.

A recent example from Australia illustrates how toxic a MIC can be for the conduct of normal diplomatic relations between states. Thus, a country like France - hitherto known to have the oldest and most prestigious diplomatic service in Europe - recalled its ambassadors from 2 of its oldest Western allies, namely the US and Australia, simply because the French MIC lost an order to supply submarines to the Australian Navy in favour of the Americans.

The Russian MIC is also a strong competitor to the American MIC when it comes to sales of military hardware.Thus, the Russians have succeeded in selling sensitive military hardware even to NATO members like Turkey. Cash-strapped nations like India are also traditional customers. The huge success of the Russian MIC, however, lies elsewhere. Twenty-odd years ago one of their own - Vladimir Putin - took over the presidency and made sure that no traditional politician will ever gain power in Russia again. The domination of the Russian MIC over state institutions is so complete due to the fact that no alternative power centres have been allowed to exist.

" Russian defense companies do not need to spend money on lobbyists (as their U.S. counterparts do) because key individuals working for them simultaneously hold senior political posts and already take part in high-level decision-making. Thus, Russia’s defense-industry lobbying, such as it is, focuses on access to the federal budget—funds distributed by the government with the active participation of the presidential administration and Putin himself for arms procurement, R&D and industrial modernization programs. " ( Pavel Luzin )

Many analysts and Western politicians have mistakenly compared Putin to the likes of Stalin or Hitler. For a start, unlike them, Putin is not a politician and has never aspired to be one. Secondly, unlike Stalin, he has an excellent working relationship with the top generals of the Russian army, or with the heads of Russia's main secret services like the GRU and the FSB. Thirdly, Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that when his country is backed into a corner, he and his army commanders act as one in pushing back against what they see as trespassers to the Russian security sphere. And finally, Putin and the other top leaders of the Russian MIC take a dim view not only of traditional politicians, but also of the role diplomats can play in solving international crises. In other words, unlike his Western counterparts, Putin is not a politician but the leading PR representative of the Russian MIC.

In the United States, the typical political representatives of the MIC are the  neo-conservatives, the most belligerent of Americans. They are often found in important positions, either in the White House or in the state or defense departments , where they exert a strong influence on US foreign and defense policy. (Two best-known such people are Paul Wolfovitz or Victoria Nuland.)

Even worse, four of the top 5 corporations in the military-industrial complex in the US are run by women , who unfortunately have a dubious reputation for being more aggressive in negotiations than men ...

Whenever the issue of diplomatic negotiations between states  comes up -  such as the planned Biden Administration negotiations with Russia this month - representatives of the mass media associated with the complex fill up the public space with articles describing the diplomatic efforts as being a sign of weakness on the part of the US, insisting instead on the need to send more weaponry to the US' allies.

In other words,  when it comes to extinguishing armed conflicts,  the tactic of ​​the American military-industrial complex is to pour more gas on the fire, in order to be able to provide as many weapons as possible to the conflict zones of the world.

TIME TO GET OUT OF HISTORY

Once economic modernization is completed, all communist regimes have to face up to their lack of legitimacy. The Chinese communist regime is no exception. Taking into account the recent history of communist regimes worldwide, China's current leadership will soon have to make a choice between 2 options. The first is the one Gorbachev chose in 1991. The second is the one that Ceausescu opted for in December 1989. Unfortunately, there is no third option available.

One of Lucian Blaga's brilliant remarks - which referred to the period in which there is an absence of data on the Romanian people in medieval European historiography - is that Romanians "went out of history to remain in history."

Nowadays, I would apply Blagian thinking to the impossible situation currently facing the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. For several years now, the latter have been making furious plans aimed at perpetuating the unbroken political monopoly they have held  since 1949.

Like the USSR communists in the interwar period, the Chinese Communists succeeded in the economic modernisation of China, which in a few decades was transformed from a poor agrarian nation into a strong and prosperous industrial nation.

However, Chinese leaders - like Ceausescu before them - believe that they can stay in power forever with the help of electronic means of mass surveillance or by putting tanks in the streets. They do not seem to understand that the only way to secure a prestigious role in Chinese history is to voluntarily relinquish power - yes, as Gorbachev did - and to allow other political forces to take over and continue China's institutional and political modernization. In other words, to go out of history in order to remain in history.

Any communist society, no matter how economically  or militarily advanced, suffers from a major flaw in the logic of its governing program. When communist governing programs reach this point - like China today or  the USSR in the 1980's - the system goes haywire. The solution chosen by the Chinese leaders - that of strengthening political repression and mass surveillance of the population - only aggravates the situation.

Of course, China's problem is  not the system's lack of economic performance, as in the case of the USSR. However, China urgently needs the demonopolization of its political system, even a controlled one,  as well as numerous institutional and legal reforms that would guarantee, not violate, the fundamental rights of Chinese citizens in their relations with the state.

In conclusion, a minimum of political intelligence should prompt the current Chinese leaders to leave power now, while they are still on top. The growing complexity of the problems facing the Chinese society today imposes this. The intensification of the Marxist education of the population and of the repression and surveillance of citizens are only pseudo-solutions, totally inadequate for this moment in history.

Unfortunately,  the Chinese communist leaders do not seem to be able to understand a simple fact, namely  that their historical role has ended and that  time has come to "get out of history in order to remain in history", since their governing program no longer meets  the needs of Chinese society and has even become toxic.

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.

When History repeats itself as a Farce

 

On the 20th of October the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin visited Bucharest, where he met with President Iohannis and Defence Minister Ciuca. A day later, President Iohannis designated Ciuca as the next Prime Minister of Romania, to replace the disgraced Vasile Citu. 

At first, General Ciuca sought a parliamentary vote of confidence in a PNL minority government and failed. For his second attempt, President Iohannis enlisted the help of Romania's social democratic party (PSD), which he brought - against the wishes of many Liberal party members - into a coalition with the ruling Liberals, not before destroying the former coalition between the Liberals and a smaller centre-right party, USR Plus.

Iohannis - who for years has campaigned and got re-elected as president on an anti-PSD platform (which was regularly labelled by him as the "red plague") - has thus stunned most members of his Liberal party, as well as the country's leading writers and artists who had hitherto supported his policies and presidential bids. Moreover, he single-handedly imposed Citu as the new president of the Liberal party and provoked the expulsion of the incumbent party president, former PM Ludovic Orban, who was against undoing the coalition with USR Plus. (To fully understand the character of Iohannis, it's worth mentioning the fact that it was Ludovic Orban who had convinced his party members in 2014 to accept Iohannis and to support his presidential bid.)

Lloyd Austin came to Bucharest in the middle of the crisis provoked by the political clumsiness of the Romanian president. In all probability, he was the one who advised Iohannis to promote general Ciuca to the post of Romanian PM, the first general to lead the government since the end of WWII.

A historical retrospective is in order here. In 1940, Hitler was preparing the invasion of the USSR and badly needed Romania's oil reserves and military help. As a result, general Ion Antonescu was the prime minister selected to lead Romania during the war, with the support of Nazi Germany. The tragedy of Romania after 1945 sprung from the nefarious alliance concluded by Antonescu with Hitler, which ended up in the occupation of the country by the victorious Red Army.

As Marx was fond of reminding his readers, history can only be repeated twice: first as a tragedy, and the second time as a farce. 

To put things into perspective, it is fair to say that Putin is nowhere near as fierce an enemy of the West as Stalin once was. Lloyd Austin's efforts to prepare the Eastern flank of NATO for a Russian invasion of Ukraine are largely misguided. What's more, the American Secretary of Defence is guilty of gross interference in Romania's internal political affairs and of playing an identical role in Romanian eyes to that of Hitler in 1940. In other words, Lloyd Austin behaved in Bucharest like a Hitler 2.0 of sorts, provoking the ire of the Romanian intellectual and artistic elites who feel they're witnessing a grotesque political farce all over again.