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.

On the G8 and NATO

 In the spring of 1997 during my lobbying activity to foreign chancelleries, I was very preoccupied with the need to create an appropriate institutional framework for the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world. American neoconservatives and NATO had other plans, however. If they wanted Russia as an enemy, well ... now they got it.

In the spring of 1997, I came up with the idea of ​​recommending to the Clinton administration the inclusion of Russia in the G7, a proposal that was accepted by the Americans. Thus, in June 1997 the G7 became G8 with Russia as a member.

My geopolitical suggestion was based on solid economic reasons, but also on the fact that Russia felt immense frustration with its international status after the disappearance of the bipolar world. Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in a series of international conferences organized by EuroForum or IBC (two London companies) in Bucharest, Prague and London on the transition of Eastern European states to a market economy and the necessary reforms. On those occasions, I was able to see the dissatisfaction of the Russians with the way this process was evolving in their country, but also with the uncertain status of the new Russia internationally.

Unfortunately  at the time , the West had not yet framed a coherent post-1989 foreign policy, so as to give the Russians the feeling that they had not become a third-hand power, as many US or EU political actors would have liked. The fact that my proposal was accepted proves that at that time the Clinton administration had not yet come to be dominated by neoconservatives, the artisans behind American unipolarity, that was inaugurated by President GW Bush after the 2001 terrorist attack.

In the end, Russia was arbitrarily reduced - at the instigation of the neoconservatives - to the status of a big state with an oil pump ( Nina Khrushcheva ) and was removed from the G8 in 2014, after it annexed the Crimean peninsula.

In the summer of 1997, I also sent a lobby letter to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in support of Romania's NATO membership. My motivation was by no means anti-Russian. At that time, the country was in a dire economic situation, failing to attract - like the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland - foreign investors to take over large bankrupt companies in Romania. It was only years later that I realised that the military goal of the alliance had really become that of encircling Russia, and it never crossed my mind in 1997 that NATO would accept the Baltic states in 2004 as members of the alliance. ..

Certainly at that time, I did not grasp that I was trying to gain Romania's accession to a politico-military alliance, NATO, which would become responsible two decades later for the outbreak of hostilities heralding World War III, because this is the phase which we are all in after the events of 2014 in Ukraine. Mea maxima culpa !

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)

On Russia's Global Importance

 Over the last 30 years, Western officialdom's policies concerning Russia have grown increasingly irrational. Europeans tend to forget that long before the US or the Ukraine ever existed, Russia was always there in their hour of need. Unfortunately, after the latest events, Russia might not be there for us any longer.

For me as an historian, the only Slavic state that deserves all the respect and consideration of social scientists is the Russian state.

Unfortunately, the European Slavs proved an absolutely incredible inability to create solid states that would last over time and prosper. Neither the Serbs, nor the Czechs, nor the Slovaks or even the Poles have proved to Europe or the world that they have the attributes necessary to live in peace with each other, to build well-organized or consolidated state structures (see Ukraine).

To be sure, the Poles disappeared for 200 years from modern history, reappearing as a state only since 1918. Federal Yugoslavia disappeared after only 70 years, Czechoslovakia around the same time. Most of the time, these branches of the Slavic people became the victims of their stronger neighbours - Turks, Germans, Russians or Austrians - because of this inability to build solid state structures.

Please compare the European Slavs now with the Russians, who have a millenary history of existence as a state, although their central position in Eurasia is an extremely difficult one geopolitically. During the Middle Ages, they managed to defeat both the Mongol invaders and the Tartars, not to mention the Turks. In modern times, they colonized Siberia as far as the Pacific and came to expand their territories in the west to the borders of Romania or Poland. All this time, Russia has overall been a factor of stability in Europe, being a reliable ally of both the Germans and the Western powers - England and France, but also the United States - in the first half of the twentieth century.

Nowadays most of the European Slavs have joined the NATO umbrella and are barking like puppies at the big dog, Russia, which has done nothing to antagonize them in recent decades, on the contrary. The Russians have instead been busy rebuilding their economy and developing their agriculture. From an importer of wheat during communism - according to Gorbachev they used to purchase it with gold bullion at one point - they became one of the biggest exporters of grain.

Russia has always been run by the secret services, whether we are talking about Tsarist Ohrana, the Soviet KGB or now the FSB. This is one of the secrets of the Russian state's longevity and stability, since the Russians are not at all convinced that professional politicians or Western-type democracy could ensure their survival as a state. They were willing to give it a go during the nineties, but the experiment failed miserably and was never going to be repeated.

Of course, the West would prefer Russia to be run by an alcoholic like Yeltsin or someone like that. But the Russians - who have recovered economically from the disaster of the 1990s under Vladimir Putin, have paid off their outstanding debts, rebuilt their army and amassed important financial reserves for the first time in their recent history - have other options. In fact, this is the fundamental reason why Putin is not liked by leaders in the West, the rest is just propaganda.

In terms of international relations, Russia cannot agree to a unipolar world  ruled exclusively by Washington, just as China does not agree. The Russians' preference for a multi-polar world, in which they have a say, is hundreds of years old. They were the ones who put an end to the French hegemonic plans in 1814, they were also instrumental in the fight against German hegemony that caused two world wars last century. 

Russia had peacefully and voluntarily given up, without armed conflict, the bi-polar world that appeared after 1945, but it cannot agree not to participate at all in global decision-making. This approach is an extremely dangerous neoconservative utopia, which could trigger World War III, even a nuclear one. Unfortunately, since the inhabitants of the Anglosphere  are not Russians, I don't think they will peacefully give up their plans for a unipolar world that the American neoconservatives have been trying to impose globally for 25 years now ...

Epilogue to the End of the USSR

The events unfolding in Ukraine are the final act in the disintegration of the Soviet Union which began peacefully, Czech-style, in 1991 and is unfortunately about to end in bloodshed, Yugoslavian-style, now. This time, however, the part played by Milosevic in Belgrade is being emulated by Zelensky in Kiev with the West backing the wrong side in this conflict.

Astute and knowledgeable observers of European affairs may have noticed for a few decades now that European Slavs do not always know how to live peacefully together in the same country.

During the nineties we witnessed the implosion of two Slav states, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The differences between Czechs and Slovaks or between Croatians and Serbs were in fact minor and were related to different dialects, in some cases to religion or belonging to different political blocks before unification. To give but one example, while Serbs were until the end of the 19th century part of the Ottoman empire, the Croatians lived in the Austro-Hungarian empire. (In 2006, even Serbia and Montenegro dissolved their union dating back to the 19th century)

The disintegration of Yugoslavia took a full 8 years to complete, between 1991-1999, and was marked by wars between the Serbs and the Croats, the Serbs and the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Kossovars. The wars ended only after NATO took the decision to bomb Serbia and destroy critical infrastructure in 1999.

For most European nations of mixed ethnic backgrounds, like Belgium or Switzerland, such differences did not prevent them from building well-managed states, which outlasted cataclysmic events like the two world wars, and are still around today. Belgium, for example, separated in 1830 from the more powerful Dutch state and was subject to military aggression. The military aggression against Belgium was stopped in its tracks by the London Conference of the Great Powers, when its independence and neutrality were affirmed and recognised.

To the East of the continent, Romania provides another example of a country made up of territories of the former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, but which displays remarkable national unity and a high degree of tolerance towards the Hungarian minority on its territory. 

In the beginning, the 1991  dissolution of the USSR happened peacefully . The Soviet empire stands as a shining example of a multinational state that folded without igniting a war or provoking ethnic violence. This situation lasted until 2014, when American neoconservatives decided to play nation-builders in Ukraine. 

The 2014 change in government in Kiev and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea marked the beginning of an armed struggle between the Russophones living in the Donbas and the Ukrainian army. After another 8 years of skirmishes which made 14,000 victims, as documented by the OSCE, Russia has decided to intervene militarily a few days ago and to start the aerial bombing of the main Kiev military installations. Unlike the mighty NATO intervention in Serbia in 1999 - which shied away from putting boots on the ground - the Russian army entered Ukraine in force. Also, whilst NATO's actions in Serbia were questionable from an international law point of view, Russia is trying to put order in its own neighbourhood.

The events unfolding over the past few days in Ukraine and Russia's military intervention  are, unfortunately, badly distorted by Western media and diplomats. The most disgusting aspect of the current events is the Western leadership's hypocritical reaction to them. Thus, while the West deplored the fate of a few hundred Kosovar victims and was quick enough to bomb the Milosevic regime out of existence, the thousands of victims and millions of refugees from the Donbas have not registered at all on its radars. In fact, the condemnation of the Russian intervention has a lot to do with the West's irrational and unjustifiable dislike of Russia as a state and of Putin as its leader.

What we are in fact witnessing now is the epilogue of the USSR's 1991 disintegration, which left Russian-speaking populations in countries like Georgia or Ukraine at the mercy of unscrupulous political leaders, like Shakashvili or Zelensky, and their external backers, especially in the US. Both these leaders have done their utmost to drag the entire Western alliance into a much bigger military conflict with Russia, in an eerily similar manner in which the Serbs had done in 1914. If ultimately successful, such efforts would have surely degenerated into a nuclear war.

Treating the current events in Ukraine as similar to the final disintegration of Yugoslavia, however, can go a long way towards preventing Western officials from making fools of themselves out of sheer lack of understanding of the political culture of Slavic nations and of their propensity to use violence against other Slavs who happen not to share their religion or language, as Kiev's treatment of the Russophones in the Donbas has shown. 

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.

EUROPE v USA : TWO CENTURIES OF IR HISTORY COMPARED

 Compared to the US' attitude to border changes today, the leaders of the Great European Powers of the 19th century - although generally opposed to territorial modifications themselves - proved to be much more flexible when these occurred, as illustrated by the examples of Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Romania. As leaders of land-based powers, they knew from historical experience that border changes can never be completely avoided.

 I believe that the current crisis in Ukraine gives us historians the opportunity to make a comparison between two centuries of modern world history, the one between 1815 and 1914 and the period of American hegemony between 1920 and 2020, as well as one between autocrats and democrats.

The 19th century was dominated by several great European powers, united in alliances designed to prevent the spread of secularism and border changes in Europe. Beginning with the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia and Austria), continuing with the so-called European Concert (Russia, Prussia, Austria, France and Great Britain) and ending after the unification of Germany with the Bismarckian League of Emperors (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) the 19th century was, with a few small exceptions, one of peace.

The promoters of this formula for managing military conflicts on the European continent were, with the exception of the French or British leaders, autocratic emperors, namely the rulers of  Germany, Russia or Austria. The collective guarantee of the great powers, as it is known in the history of diplomacy, prevented major armed conflicts, promoted Christian spiritual values, and in 1848 opposed the violent changes via revolutions of the states they ruled.

However, the European concert did not oppose the independence and neutrality of Switzerland, for example, or the appearance of Belgium, Italy, Germany or Romania on the map, which are still among the solidly built states of Europe.

Between 1920 and 2020, the United States was the leader of global affairs, the champion of liberal democracies, and since 1945 the number one military power, becoming the only superpower since 1989.

Although official propaganda has always affirmed that the democracies in the American camp are essentially peaceful or peace-seeking, the conflicts of this period have unfortunately proved otherwise.

Since the end of World War II and continuing with the wars in Korea (1953) Vietnam (1960s and 1970s) or those in Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Yemen, the list of military conflicts, most  of them initiated by the US and/or NATO , is getting longer. 

Both in the 19th century and between 1920 and 2020, new state constructions appeared on the map of Europe or the world. The most solid were and remained the states formed during the time of the autocrats,  namely Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy or Romania.

States which appeard after 1920 based on the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, did not last long. Thus, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia disappeared from the map after 1990, while Romania lost the territories it  acquired after 1920 in the east and in the north, which have not been recovered. Puppet states like South Vietnam have disappeared, and South Korea lives daily under the military threat of North Korea and with American troops who have been there for decades.

However, since neoconservatives have taken over the management of American foreign affairs, things have gotten worse. The post-1989 period, which led to the implosion of the USSR, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, proved to be very turbulent. The construction of new states under the auspices of the Americans began with the creation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, which has never experienced political stability and is in the process of disintegration.

After 2000, the United States tried its luck in the Orient, sponsoring nation-building in Afghanistan or Iraq, or in North Africa, where Libya is still a deeply divided and dysfunctional state. Since 2014, the American neoconservatives have also become deeply involved in the internal affairs and administrative reforms of Ukraine, with dismal results .

The fashion of allied occupation of a defeated enemy began with the occupation of post-Napoleonic France. Its occupation by Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain and Bavaria started in 1815 and lasted until 1818.

During the 20th century, a new coalition of victors at the end of WWII occupied defeated Germany. The Soviets remained in East Germany between 1945 - 1990 and were the first to retire their troops from Germany. The last French battalion, however, left Germany only in 2014; the British contingent left in 2020; while the US still has 20 military bases and around 35,000 soldiers on German soil. Worse still, the NATO military alliance has not been wound up after the end of the Cold War and it even expanded to the Russian border.

Undaunted, however, Antony Blinken has commented - during the recent Russian-CSTO military intervention in Kazakhstan - that it is the Russians who are in the habit of overstaying their welcome in the countries they offer military assistance to.

After a brief review of the two formulas for managing global international affairs, one from the 19th century and today's,  one will be able to judge for themselves whether and to what extent the Americans have succeeded in giving the world more peace and stability than their 19th century predecessors, the crowned autocrats of Europe.