A NEOCON FOREIGN MINISTER IN TITULESCU'S COUNTRY

 

 I have lived to see this one too! In Titulescu's country, they have installed as  foreign minister a certain Bogdan Aurescu, who acts abroad as if he were an employee of the US State Department and his boss were Blinken, not the president of Romania.

On January 24, Aurescu proposed - without his EU counterparts paying any attention - that the next regular meeting of EU foreign ministers be held in Kiev, in an apparent show of "solidarity" with Ukraine. Without mentioning a single word about the Ukrainian government's policies of denationalization through the language suffered by the 500,000 Romanians who actually live in the middle of the Ukrainian nightmare, Aurescu is worried about the fate of Ukraine! (I won't mention here the fact that in 2015 the same Romanians living in Ukraine complained that the Kiev authorities were forcibly recruiting them and sending them to fight the Russophones in the Donbas.)

As a matter of interest, in 1998 - anticipating trouble in the region - I sent a letter to Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, advising him to try to relocate the Romanians from Ukrainian Bukovina to the villages in Transylvania left empty after the massive migration of Transylvanian Saxons to Germany after 1989. Naturally, the former president turned a typical deaf ear , as if those Romanians did not exist for Bucharest. President Iohannis can find the letter in the archives of the Presidency and could try, as a fellow Transylvanian Saxon, to save willing Romanians of Ukraine from  Kiev's nationalist excesses in the way I proposed back then. He could consider that, of course, once the ski season comes to an end...

As for Aurescu, a resignation of honour would be the most appropriate exit from the scene, even more necessary than that of Prime Minister Ciuca. I am sure that just as the Ukrainians have found a job for the former Georgian president Shakashvili, Aurescu too would be able to find a job over there with the help of American neocons, maybe even as Kiev's foreign minister.

An Analogy Between Scotland and Ukraine

  The United Kingdom and Russia have more things in common than they think: a glorious imperial past, loss of international clout and a troublesome rogue province each

Analogies between the history, geography or culture of nations are used to illustrate both the similarities and differences between them, in order to better understand historical realities.

Since 1991, following a referendum, a new state - Ukraine - has appeared on the map of Europe. Detached from Russia, of which it was an integral part since 1654 - at the request of Bogdan Khmelnitsky's Cossacks - the new state is in fact only a rebellious province of Russia which decided to abandon the Russian Federation in order to join the EU. For Russia, the most contentious decision made by Kiev was that of applying to join NATO.

Ukraine's population is 40 million, or about a quarter of the total population of the Russian Federation before the separation. Ukraine's economy is based on coal mining and heavy industry, especially steel or aluminum production. Agriculture is also an important branch of the economy. Ukraine is the poorest state in Eastern Europe.

In 1996, Scotland became an autonomous province within the United Kingdom, of which it has been an integral part since 1707. Since 1999, Scotland has its own parliament. Scotland covers a third of the UK land area, but only has about a tenth of its population (5.5 million). The Scottish economy was based on coal mining and heavy industry for decades, especially shipbuilding.

Until 1560, Scotland was a staunch ally of France for 250 years and fought the English armies on numerous occasions, including during the Hundred Years' War. Scotland was also the northern gate through which French armies came to the rescue of their Scottish allies fighting the English for independence. For the English kings, subduing Scotland and incorporating it into Great Britain represented their main national security concern for centuries.

At the beginning of this millennium and about a decade before Brexit, Scotland tried to secede from Britain by referendum, and it has failed so far. However, being one of the poorest areas of Western Europe, the exit from the British common market in favour of its EU membership would cause a significant drop in the living standards of its citizens, just as the Ukrainians experienced after they left the Russian Federation.

The analogy between the two provinces - one Russian and the other British - reveals that leaving the economic, political and military structures of which they have both been an integral part for centuries is not only very risky, but can result in a failed state, like today's Ukraine.

As for the current British political leaders' interference in the problems between Russia and Ukraine, I refrain from commenting. I am sure however of one thing, namely that the British authorities would react quite violently if Russia intervened on the side of Scotland in its campaign to break the current arrangements linking it to Great Britain ....

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 Failed Presidents of Eastern Europe

  With each passing day, I am more and more convinced that the Ukrainians have fallen into the same political trap as Romanian voters did when they elected Iohannis as president in 2014.

To be sure, Iohannis did not have the necessary national political experience : until his election, he was the mayor of a Transylvanian city atypical for Romania, nor was he a member of the Liberal Party (he had been active in the German Forum). No, he was elected because Romanian voters thought that by endorsing a Saxon they would get a better treatment in Brussels and that they would be accepted faster in the Schengen area by the EU:

"The election of Iohannis is undoubtedly linked to high expectations and hopes. But these alone do not fundamentally change the political situation in Romania,"  a leading German CDU MP said. "Doubts about Romania's accession to the Schengen Area persist (...) (Romania) will not achieve this goal in 2015," he added. The reaction of the chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs comes in the context in which, recently, the president Klaus Iohannis declared in the German press that he will make efforts for Romania's accession to Schengen to take place in 2015. "( Adevarul newspaper from 2015)

In turn, Zelensky was elected president without any previous political experience. In my opinion, the Ukrainians voted for him because of the supposed connections that someone of his ethnicity might have in Washington. Ukrainians seem to have believed - wrongly, as it comes out - that the mere choice of Zelensky as president would secure their admission into NATO. ( Unfortunately, neoconservatives of Jewish origin's perceived domination of US State Department structures had created a vulnerability for the United States, which is currently being exploited by the likes of Zelensky. )

Both Iohannis and Zelensky were also elected with a mandate to end corruption, which has not happened. Instead, Iohannis became - ironically for a descendant of Hitler's allies in Transylvania - a vocal champion of campaigns to combat anti-Semitism in Romania ...

The two presidents both belong to microscopic ethnic minorities from Romania or Ukraine, which unfortunately do not have a history of harmonious coexistence with the majorities of the two states. This fact makes their selection for their state's top job  even more inexcusable.

The consequences of choosing the two presidents are worrying, to say the least. Romania's domestic political instability has become chronic over the past year, while Zelensky has managed to endanger peace across Eastern Europe through his uninspired neighborhood policy.

It is obvious today that at the instigation of domestic and / or foreign services, both peoples made a colossal electoral error. I am curious to see, however, how all this will play out in the end.

An Original Interpretation of Marxism

Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989) succeeded in interpreting Marxist thought from the standpoint of Marx's virulent atheism. Historical materialism and the inexorable evolution of universal history in the direction of victorious communism are therefore shown by him to be the  fruits of Marx's atheism and of the influence exerted on him by Hegel's ideas, and nothing else.

Marx was also the one who subordinated philosophy to politics. In his view, as we all remember,  philosophy was not meant to interpret the world, but to change it. This is also the fundamental reason why Marxism cannot even be considered a proper philosophical system and why Marx is not a philosopher in the true sense of the word: from a melange of  ideas from different philosophers - some materialists, others idealists - one cannot build a truly original philosophical system.

The same can be said of Marx the "economist", who had little to add to Adam Smith's labour theory of value or to the economic ideas borrowed from David Ricardo. The analysis of the mechanism of exploitation of the proletarians by the owners of capital is more pertinent in the work of Eugene Buret, whom Marx plagiarized copiously, and so on.

But Del Noce's analysis shows that the political philosophy of the affluent and technocratic West was also influenced by Marxism, although Western atheism is based on eroticism, not class struggle. ( at this point it is important to note the essential role played by neo-marxists like Herbert Marcuse in igniting the sexual revolution during the sixties in the West ).

Soviet communism - or today's Chinese communism - was therefore only the revolutionary version of Marxist thought, as it was put into practice by Lenin.

Marx's belief that science and technology would emancipate man from faith in God was adopted in the West by liberalism, thus spawning today's technocratic societies. The two traditional enemies of liberalism - revolutionary ideology and religion - were thus eliminated in the wake of an ideological fusion between liberalism and Marxism, whose messianic dimension got amputated. The result, says Del Noce, was the emergence of Western neo-totalitarian societies, which only retain the appearance of democratic societies.

US DIPLOMACY AND THE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

 Today's American diplomacy refuses to accept the existence of spheres of influence. Both Hillary Clinton and Blinken have unequivocally stated that spheres of influence belong to the past, although the 50-year long peace that characterized the Cold War period was based on the existence of two spheres of influence, one American and the other Soviet.

The United States has consistently pursued a foreign policy based on spheres of influence since the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, completed in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary . Thus, the United States has reserved for itself the status of regional policeman in the Western Hemisphere and the right to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of any South or Central American state.

The hypocrisy of American diplomacy and its current representatives is devoid of pragmatism and could lead to serious military conflicts, which can be avoided by simply acknowledging that there are other great nations in the world - such as Russia or China - with major geostrategic interests in their immediate vicinity.

THE INVENTION OF SOCIOLOGY, MORE BENEFICIAL THAN THAT OF ECONOMICS

 

Working classes and the poor in England and the rest of Europe had a better fate after the appearance of the positivist doctrine of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and after the "invention" of sociology. Comte's field surveys and positivist philosophy inspired two altruistic British businessmen, Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, in the late 19th century , who laid the foundations of British sociology.

The two paid out of  their own pocket for sociological surveys to be conducted on the phenomenon of poverty in London and York. The Booth-sponsored survey found that by the end of the 19th century, 30.7 percent of London's population was still living in poverty (according to a World Bank study, the proportion of poor people in Western Europe in the early 19th century was about 84 percent). Rowntree 's survey gave a similar proportion for Yorkshire and set a sociological poverty line. 

Together, their investigations and lobbying led to the introduction by the British government of a system of social insurance and pensions, starting in 1909. In 1909, the report of the Royal Commission on the Laws of the Poor (Majority Report) was based on the findings of the sociological surveys sponsored by Charles Booth. Rowntree - the owner of a chocolate factory - introduced an 8-hour working day, a 5-day working week into his company and decided to increase the salaries of his employees. For his measures in industrial relations, welfare and management, Rowntree was proclaimed as "the British management movement's greatest pioneer" (Lyndall Urwick).

Neither Booth nor Rowntree flirted with socialism, both reformers having been staunch supporters of liberalism.

 It is a well-known fact that Rowntree and Booth were deeply influenced in their actions by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte. In other words, the father of sociology had a beneficial influence on his European contemporaries, clearly superior to the detrimental influence exerted by the founders of classical economics - Adam Smith and David Ricardo - on most economists and much of nineteenth-century liberal politicians.

 It can therefore be said with some certainty that the new science of sociology arose from the need to counteract the negative effects on British intellectual and political elites of the mistaken or retrograde ideas inherited from the classics of economics.