by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with Consortium News by special agreement with the author)
Get ready for a major geopolitical chessboard rumble: from now on, every butterfly fluttering its wings and setting off a tornado directly connects to the battle between Eurasia integration and Western sanctions as foreign policy.
It is the paradigm shift of China’s New Silk Roads versus America’s Our Way or the Highway. We used to be under the illusion that history had ended. How did it come to this?
Hop in for some essential time travel. For centuries the Ancient Silk Road, run by mobile nomads, established the competitiveness standard for land-based trade connectivity; a web of trade routes linking Eurasia to the – dominant – Chinese market.
In the early 15th century, based on the tributary system, China had already established a Maritime Silk Road along the Indian Ocean all the way to the east coast of Africa, led by the legendary Admiral Zheng He. Yet it didn’t take much for imperial Beijing to conclude that China was self-sufficient enough – and that emphasis should be placed on land-based operations.
Deprived of a trade connection via a land corridor between Europe and China, Europeans went all-out for their own maritime silk roads. We are all familiar with the spectacular result: half a millennium of Western dominance.
Until quite recently the latest chapters of this Brave New World were conceptualized by the Mahan, Mackinder and Spykman trio.
The Heartland of the World
Mackinder
Halford Mackinder’s 1904 Heartland Theory – a product of the imperial Russia-Britain New Great Game – codified the supreme Anglo, and then Anglo-American, fear of a new emerging land power able to reconnect Eurasia to the detriment of maritime powers.
Nicholas Spykman’s 1942 Rimland Theory advocated that mobile maritime powers, such as the UK and the U.S., should aim for strategic offshore balancing. The key was to control the maritime edges of Eurasia—that is, Western Europe, the Middle East and East Asia—against any possible Eurasia unifier. When you don’t need to maintain a large Eurasia land-based army, you exercise control by dominating trade routes along the Eurasian periphery.
Even before Mackinder and Spykman, U.S. Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan had come up in the 1890s with his Influence of Sea Power Upon History – whereby the “island” U.S. should establish itself as a seaworthy giant, modeled on the British empire, to maintain a balance of power in Europe and Asia.
It was all about containing the maritime edges of Eurasia.
In fact, we lived in a mix of Heartland and Rimland. In 1952, then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles adopted the concept of an “island chain” (then expanded to three chains) alongside Japan, Australia and the Philippines to encircle and contain both China and the USSR in the Pacific. (Note the Trump administration’s attempt at revival via the Quad–U.S., Japan, Australia and India).
George Kennan, the architect of containing the USSR, was drunk on Spykman, while, in a parallel track, as late as 1988, President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters were still drunk on Mackinder. Referring to U.S. competitors as having a shot at dominating the Eurasian landmass, Reagan gave away the plot: “We fought two world wars to prevent this from occurring,” he said.
Eurasia integration and connectivity is taking on many forms. The China-driven New Silk Roads, also known as Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU); the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and myriad other mechanisms, are now leading us to a whole new game.
How delightful that the very concept of Eurasian “connectivity” actually comes from a 2007 World Bank report about competitiveness in global supply chains.
Also delightful is how the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski was “inspired” by Mackinder after the fall of the USSR – advocating the partition of a then weak Russia into three separate regions; European, Siberian and Far Eastern.
All Nodes Covered
At the height of the unipolar moment, history did seem to have “ended.” Both the western and eastern peripheries of Eurasia were under tight Western control – in Germany and Japan, the two critical nodes in Europe and East Asia. There was also that extra node in the southern periphery of Eurasia, namely the energy-wealthy Middle East.
Washington had encouraged the development of a multilateral European Union that might eventually rival the U.S. in some tech domains, but most of all would enable the U.S. to contain Russia by proxy.
China was only a delocalized, low-cost manufacture base for the expansion of Western capitalism. Japan was not only for all practical purposes still occupied, but also instrumentalized via the Asian Development Bank (ADB), whose message was: We fund your projects only if you are politically correct.
The primary aim, once again, was to prevent any possible convergence of European and East Asian powers as rivals to the US.
The confluence between communism and the Cold War had been essential to prevent Eurasia integration. Washington configured a sort of benign tributary system – borrowing from imperial China – designed to ensure perpetual unipolarity. It was duly maintained by a formidable military, diplomatic, economic, and covert apparatus, with a star role for the Chalmers Johnson-defined Empire of Bases encircling, containing and dominating Eurasia.
Compare this recent idyllic past with Brzezinski’s – and Henry Kissinger’s – worst nightmare: what could be defined today as the “revenge of history”.
That features the Russia-China strategic partnership, from energy to trade: interpolating Russia-China geo-economics; the concerted drive to bypass the U.S. dollar; the AIIB and the BRICS’s New Development Bank involved in infrastructure financing; the tech upgrade inbuilt in Made in China 2025; the push towards an alternative banking clearance mechanism (a new SWIFT); massive stockpiling of gold reserves; and the expanded politico-economic role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
As Glenn Diesen formulates in his brilliant book, Russia’s Geo-economic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia, “the foundations of an Eurasian core can create a gravitational pull to draw the rimland towards the centre.”
If the complex, long-term, multi-vector process of Eurasia integration could be resumed by just one formula, it would be something like this: the heartland progressively integrating; the rimlands mired in myriad battlefields and the power of the hegemon irretrievably dissolving. Mahan, Mackinder and Spykman to the rescue? It’s not enough.
Divide and Rule, Revisited
The Oracle still speaks.
The same applies for the preeminent post-mod Delphic Oracle, also known as Henry Kissinger, simultaneously adorned by hagiography gold and despised as a war criminal.
Before the Trump inauguration, there was much debate in Washington about how Kissinger might engineer – for Trump – a “pivot to Russia” that he had envisioned 45 years ago. This is how I framed the shadow play at the time.
In the end, it’s always about variations of Divide and Rule – as in splitting Russia from China and vice-versa. In theory, Kissinger advised Trump to “rebalance” towards Russia to oppose the irresistible Chinese ascension. It won’t happen, not only because of the strength of the Russia-China strategic partnership, but because across the Beltway, neocons and humanitarian imperialists ganged up to veto it.
Brzezinski’s perpetual Cold War mindset still lords over a fuzzy mix of the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Clash of Civilizations. The Russophobic Wolfowitz Doctrine – still fully classified – is code for Russia as the perennial top existential threat to the U.S. The Clash, for its part, codifies another variant of Cold War 2.0: East (as in China) vs. West.
Kissinger is trying some rebalancing/hedging himself, noting that the mistake the West (and NATO) is making “is to think that there is a sort of historic evolution that will march across Eurasia – and not to understand that somewhere on that march it will encounter something very different to a Westphalian entity.”
Both Eurasianist Russia and civilization-state China are already on post-Westphalian mode. The redesign goes deep. It includes a key treaty signed in 2001, only a few weeks before 9/11, stressing that both nations renounce any territorial designs on one another’s territory. This happens to concern, crucially, the Primorsky Territory in the Russian Far East along the Amur River, which was ruled by the Ming and Qing empires.
Moreover, Russia and China commit never to do deals with any third party, or allow a third country to use its territory to harm the other’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
So much for turning Russia against China. Instead, what will develop 24/7 are variations of U.S. military and economic containment against Russia, China and Iran – the key nodes of Eurasia integration – in a geo-strategic spectrum. It will include intersections of heartland and rimland across Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and the South China Sea. That will proceed in parallel to the Fed weaponizing the U.S. dollar at will.
Heraclitus Defies Voltaire
Voltaire
Alastair Crooke took a great shot at deconstructing why Western global elites are terrified of the Russian conceptualization of Eurasia. It’s because “they ‘scent’…a stealth reversion to the old, pre-Socratic values: for the Ancients … the very notion of ‘man’, in that way, did not exist. There were only men: Greeks, Romans, barbarians, Syrians, and so on. This stands in obvious opposition to universal, cosmopolitan ‘man’.”
So it’s Heraclitus versus Voltaire – even as “humanism” as we inherited it from the Enlightenment, is de facto over. Whatever is left roaming our wilderness of mirrors depends on the irascible mood swings of the Goddess of the Market. No wonder one of the side effects of progressive Eurasia integration will be not only a death blow to Bretton Woods but also to “democratic” neoliberalism.
What we have now is also a remastered version of sea power versus land powers. Relentless Russophobia is paired with supreme fear of a Russia-Germany rapprochement – as Bismarck wanted, and as Putin and Merkel recently hinted at. The supreme nightmare for the U.S. is in fact a truly Eurasian Beijing-Berlin-Moscow partnership.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has not even begun; according to the official Beijing timetable, we’re still in the planning phase. Implementation starts next year. The horizon is 2039.
(Wellcome Library, London.)
This is China playing a long-distance game of go on steroids, incrementally making the best strategic decisions (allowing for margins of error, of course) to render the opponent powerless as he does not even realize he is under attack.
The New Silk Roads were launched by Xi Jinping five years ago, in Astana (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and Jakarta (the Maritime Silk Road). It took Washington almost half a decade to come up with a response. And that amounts to an avalanche of sanctions and tariffs. Not good enough.
Russia for its part was forced to publicly announce a show of mesmerizing weaponry to dissuade the proverbial War Party adventurers probably for good – while heralding Moscow’s role as co-driver of a brand new game.
On sprawling, superimposed levels, the Russia-China partnership is on a roll; recent examples include summits in Singapore, Astana and St. Petersburg; the SCO summit in Qingdao; and the BRICS Plus summit.
Were the European peninsula of Asia to fully integrate before mid-century – via high-speed rail, fiber optics, pipelines – into the heart of massive, sprawling Eurasia, it’s game over. No wonder Exceptionalistan elites are starting to get the feeling of a silk rope drawn ever so softly, squeezing their gentle throats.
Pepe Escobar is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.
“Russia for its part was forced to publicly announce a show of mesmerizing weaponry to dissuade the proverbial War Party adventurers probably for good – while heralding Moscow’s role as co-driver of a brand new game.”
VS PC Roberts
“The question is whether Putin will forever in his pointless desire to appease Washington again permit Washington’s strikes against Russia’s ally. Did he send to the combat arena Russian forces that can annihilate at will all American forces present at zero cost to Russia to do the required job, or did he send them as a potential threat that he does not intend to exercise, hoping against hope that the Americans in their world of total unreality will realize their impotence and back off?”
Roberts may underestimate Putin, Shoigu et al in what they are doing: The Russian and other militaries get real time test capability against aggressor armaments, in limited aggression. So Russia et al are getting real defense capability testing and ability to develop improvements, without the aggressors being able to overrun Syria. Syria has a real war of aggression imposed on it, that is also a war game/war testing.
Pepe, very interesting take on the situation at hand. While China is, at this moment, on the receiving end of the “Tariffs”, which are just another form of Russian sanctions. While Russia takes the sanctions like a man, China is crying to the UN that one-sided sanctions (Tariffs) should be illegal. This is the kind of reaction, I would expect China to make. So lame. And there are more sanctions against Russia coming. Eventually USofA will run out of sanctions to use, and will finally die as it should have long time ago.
You seem to have missed the fact that beyond ‘crying to the UN’ China is also matching tarrifs tit for tat in exactly the same way Russia has matched the sanctions tit for tat.
What PC Roberts and so many other miss by a country mile is that its not just about the USA. These sorts believe the sun orbits around the USA and that there is no rest of the world. And yet, for those who don’t have the sun in their eyes and who aren’t locked into such we-hate-science notions as the Americans, its obvious that both China and Russia have had a great deal of success in appealing to the rest of the world. You know, the rest of the world that the arrogant Americans pretend doesn’t exist.
Thus, while PC Roberts talks about the failures of Putin and Lavrov appearing reasonable in the face of provocations, and while now we hear whines and complaints about how China “crying to the UN” and appealing to the WTO, the rest of the world is watching and is slowly shifting away from the American unipolar orbit into a multipolar orbit. The immediate effect of all of this is that now it is Trump who is talking about leaving the WTO as he doesn’t like the idea that fairness and rules might be applied to arrogant America.
Its only the American gangsters that mistake a reasonable response as weakness and thinks that anyone who doesn’t immediately ‘gun-up’ and fight back is weak. This of course simply shows they don’t have the wisdom that the Chinese have had for centuries.
Anon, generally speaking I would agree with you. As for Roberts, I do not bother reading his articles, as he is constantly pushing Russia to fiery conflict.
As for China, my buddy, China does not have a spine, it’s not in Chinese nature. Russia resists the sanctions gang with finesse, it also has what counts to back it up with. It’s history shows it. Why do you think China and India have 1.5bln people each, not because they had to endure the suffering Russians and Europeans did, in general. The rest is just BS.
And no, I do not advocate hot conflicts to solve the differences, but Russia had no choice throughout its history.
Anonius, appears your bias. “China does not have a spine, it’s not in Chinese nature.” Doesnt have a spine? And, you know “Chinese nature” ? Do you speak Mandarin? Have you visited or read about China? geez they still speak the same continuous language for the last few thousand years. Man I could go on… Look, the reason they go to the “UN” is because they still belive in a multipolar system and making use of it since that’s what its for. it sets good presidence for the other hundred or so countries.
As for China’s large population, as a result, you say, “not because they had to endure the suffering Russians and Europeans did”. Common sense who say well, they are an older cicilization thus more people…btw they did loose close to 20 million Chinese in WW2. Tell me is that suffering? They are a very wise and proud people. Dont underestimate them. Check your arrogance and ignorance. Geez….
@ wisdom that the Chinese have had for centuries.
Correction: ‘for millennia’.
At the same time USA reportedly seek to press charges against Russia in WTO.
Eating cake and having it.
interesting point of view, expansive and makes me for one think in a broader manner. yet PCR says that the Americans takes it for weakness and would push the envelope…. and they can push the envelope to extent that is truly harmful to us all.
that is PCR’s point: the neo cons are stupid, rabid, but powerful and reasonable they do not understand nor care to. reasonable they see as weakness and will act on that conclusion making nuclear war inevitable.
so you see for the neo Cons to avoid war it is necessary very early to eschew reason and gun-up. that they understand. and if they see guns bugger than theirs that would smash them to smithereens,in the hands of people as mad as they are, that may just do the trick..may constitute a failure to facilitate their removal from the american power
Another most excellent report, a GeoPolitical SitRep, from Pepe. Who more knowledgeable to deliver it? Who more in touch on the ground everywhere?
The details and historic touchstones of Eurasian Integration are denoted in very digestible form in this article.
Archive it. Spread it as far and wide as you can.
It contains the roadmap to end the Hegemony and endless wars of our lifetime. It describes the institutions that are newly constructed and the processes underway that flow from the Eurasian Superpowers.
Merely reading it offers an uplifting from the gloom of the nihilist Russophobia, Sinophobia and Eurasian Dread that pours from the Atlanticist Think Tanks and MIC War Machine doctrinists.
They pursue chaos, death and eternal poverty for everyone outside their cult.
Eurasian Integration offers development, enrichment, and joyful rise of two-thirds of mankind.
(a small sample was seen in the World Cup hosted by Russia, considered the best ever experienced, played and constructed.) The four great civilizations of Eurasia blend. The dying Western civilization spasms in necrotic failure.
While uplifting, Escobar does not address the elephant in the room: who is going to be the hegemon?
Standard geopolitics emphasize, and with good reason, that all nation states/groups strive to be “top dog” in order to improve their security from competitors. As a consequence, a more unipolar world order reduces strife overall. A mulitpolar environment increases strife, as more nation states/groups fight for supremacy/security of their borders and interests.
Based on this the question has to be: who comes out on top, if the temporary alliance of the SCO (China and Russia) manages to eke out a victory over NATO (US)?
To forestall the rebuttal that China and Russia will coexist in peace forever and ever, do you really think that easily crossed land borders allow militarily and economically expanding nation states to do so if they have to secure vitally important resources (think oil, rare earths, food, technology) via trade routs and satellite nations?
I do not.
There is such great potential for this Eurasian integration, providing improved living standards for so many and peace. There are also some real and present dangers. For one, these countries are still beholden to and working with BIS, IMF and World Bank. If they don’t end this relationship, the dark powers of the west will simply slip in and subvert the entire effort and the world will end up as it did with Russia in the 1990’s, being financially raped and the people destitute. They must break this cooperation with the money masters. The next real danger is found in the psychopathy of the western elite. When all efforts have been exhausted against the designated enemy who has resources they want, when sanctions and embargoes don’t produce the desired results, when color revolutions fail to topple the government to give way to a western puppet, when sending blood thirsty proxy forces finally fails the dark forces play their last card. They manufacture an event to serve as a pretext to militarily attack and destroy that country. What makes anyone think they won’t try this last resort with countries involved in Eurasian integration?
Yes, Ronald Reagan was indeed honest (probably unintentionally) when he stated that two world wars were fought to prevent the rise of Eurasia, namely the creation of a German-Russian-Chinese alliance, something that Bismarck advocated in the 19th century. The bankers, using the Kaiser, had him removed, which led to two horrible and totally unnecessary world wars. In 1945 the US stepped on the international scene, with the world watching a former colony assume an imperial role. Alas for Washington and Wall Street, this empire which the US created is destined to become the shortest lived in history.
Analysts are already stating that Continental Europe is slowly, but surely moving towards the East. The question is can Washington stop it, short of a wider war. At the moment it’s using EU exports to the US as a leverage to prevent Europe from siding with Russia and China. It’s not going too well. Germany has refused to terminate the building of the Nord Stream -2 gas pipeline, while China is one of Germany’s major trading partners.
The two chief factors in Europe are Britain and Germany. Britain had BREXIT, the intent being to turn over to Germany the political and financial burdens of running the EU. At the same time Britain, through the Rothschild’s, kept control of the EU Central Bank. Both Britain and the US applied pressure on Merkel to accept more than one million false refugees, the additional intent being to weaken Germany politically, ethnically, culturally, economically and financially. This move has caused Germany considerable damage, but the move will not be fatal, as compared to the situation we have in France when immigrants are in question..
When it comes to Germany, it’s waking up, having at last realized it was outplayed in two world wars. Two weeks ago Putin comes to the wedding of the Austrian Foreign Minister. The reaction of the Western media was pretty cool, the event receiving stoic, bureaucratic coverage. However, the symbolism was overwhelming. The Austrian FM invited Putin, but not Trump. Not a single US representative was present. During the course of the same day, Putin flies to Germany, where he meets with Merkel. Both visits were obviously planned and coordinated.
There is no question that Germany is slowly moving towards the East. Once it does, it will drag others with it. This leaves the question of NATO and the EU. NATO’s days are numbered, while the EU will either be reduced in size or else terminated. There is no way for it to function properly when the less developed South is draining the more developed North.
This leaves the role of France. What role is it really playing ? Macron is making some overtures towards Russia and has stated that Europe must create it’s own EU Army. At the same time he is prepared to join Britain and the US in a new attack against Syria. Some analysts have even stated that France is trying to assume leadership of the EU, which I find absurd, bearing in mind France’s financial, economic and immigrant problems. Also, what can one expect from Macron, a Rothschild’s banker.
Finally, the chief question is if the neocons in the US will accept reality, or if they will do their utmost to preserve the collapsing US empire. If they do decide to go all the way, what are they going to do ? Use monetary means ? The dollar during the past week has risen, but only due to US political and military pressure against other countries, with threats of sanctions. However, analysts have stated that this rise in the value of the dollar was expected and that it’s going to be short lived, as countries are slowly discarding the dollar, using domestic currencies, while both Russia and China have accumulated large reserves of gold, preparing to introduce gold backed rubles and yuans. This leaves the military option, the chief candidates for attack being Syria, Iran and North Korea. Will the US apply force ? This remains to be seen. If it does, it will drastically weaken both the EU and NATO, with Turkey being the chief candidate to leave NATO, in due course followed by others. The near future is going to be interesting.
Germany and France are together making opening moves to ‘leave Nato’.
The Americans have always opposed the idea of an “EU Army”, as such would be a direct competitor to Nato and with America on the outside of such an EU Army, it would be beyond America’s direct control. Germany and France agreed after one of Trumpette’s tantrums to launch the beginnings of a EU Army. It is in the guise of a EU Reaction Force. But the key point is that its under european control and not under American control.
Germany refused to join the Pentagon’s last missile strike on Syria. France did join, but was incompetent and couldn’t launch its missiles on time. But that was back when Macro appeared to be trying to suck up to Trumpette and be friends. Macro appears to have moved beyond that position, so it will be interesting to see if France joins the Pentagon’s upcoming Syrian adventure and threat to start World War III and kill us all.
Canada also recently formed a new Cabinet committee, called the Incident Response Group. From the Aug. 28 release: “The Prime Minister is also creating a new Incident Response Group, similar to those in place with our Five Eyes allies. It will be a dedicated, emergency committee that will convene in the event of a national crisis or during incidences elsewhere that have major implications for Canada. The Group will bring together relevant cabinet ministers and senior government leadership to coordinate a prompt federal response and coordinate fast, effective decisions to keep Canadians safe and secure at home and abroad.”
Maybe a reaction to decisions by the EU?
“This move has caused Germany considerable damage, but the move will not be fatal, as compared to the situation we have in France when immigrants are in question..
Why do you say this?
Not arguing or disagreeing. Just curious.
Is tht becasue so many “migrants” to France actually come from former French overseas departements and thus basically are French citizens?
Katherine
“This leaves the military option, t
Does this remain viable if the dollar is weakekned?
How does anything or anyone get paid (for)?
Or, does the dollar end up being kind of like scrip that can be used in a circumscribed area?
How is “Eurasia” actually delivering?
There is a great deal of talk about China’s OBOR plan, but very little action. The collapse of the Iranian economy continues to accelerate and it is having trouble exporting its only meaningful product, oil.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/the-sound-of-mullahs-whining.php
China and Russia have little to gain and much to lose by trying to bail out failing MENA countries. It would take little effort to redefine the land “road” between these nations as heading north out of Bejing and joining up with the trans-Siberian railway to reach Europe.
Regarding your comments based on your efforts to research the OBOR:
If you look in garbage dumpsters, you find garbage.
I just pointed to Pepe as a source (this article and all his work for the past half-decade, for starters).
You might want to fill your head with good factual information instead of blogs filled with negative propaganda.
You really are at the wrong blog for this claptrap you presented.
We have a high standard here, fought by some and attacked by many.
You don’t have to have the same opinion of anyone. We love diversity.
But abject stupid statements are space-fillers we don’t need.
To post that there is nothing to gain for China and Russia in MENA is preposterous stupidity.
At the most base level is enormous petrochemical, natural gas resources. At another level are military equipment sales in the billions. And finally, Russia is most interested in the long war against Muslim Brotherhood, AQ and ISIS terrorism being fought on foreign turf, not allowing it to be exported or re-imported to Russia.
So, you apparently have no context for your opinion or are a beginner.
Start reading Pepe and Saker and come back in a few years with some cogent comments.
Larch,
I notice you failed to answer the question I asked.
I conclude that your lengthy response was an attempt to distract from the fact that you are unable to do so, as “Eurasia” has no success to date.
Define success.
If you have bothered to actually red the article, you might have observed the following sentence:
“The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has not even begun; according to the official Beijing timetable, we’re still in the planning phase. Implementation starts next year. The horizon is 2039.”
Odd, that comment, as the obor hasn’t really got going yet!
Well most of Eurasianism IS happing, or has happened, if you pay attention.
Back in middle 1990s, dark days of russian society, a document was made by A. Dugin, a plan to save Russia and bring back its power-Foundations of Geopolitics. Long time ago i read a translation and it blew my mind how accuratley it became true.
Key points I remember-
1.Land (collective) vs Sea (merchant) societies- encourage Europe to become anti USA/UK imperialist and return to collectivism model. The Global Market system must be dismantled, it was built according to Sea Power rules. only to benefit themselves. Make this clear to Europeans.
2. ‘Finlandise’ the societies in middleeuropa such as Czechia, Austria, Hungary. Encourage Russian energy and buiness contracts in these regions, they will be natural partners. They will rely on good relations with Russia to supply their energy.
3. Encourage isolationism in USA and UK (trump, brexit)..Which will inevitably lead to ecnomic collapse of the Merchant globalist Anglo Saxon empire.. An empire cannot be isolationist.
4. Territory of Belarus, Trans-Dneistr, Abkhazia, Ossetia and Russian speaking Ukraine areas- All must return eventually to Russia, they are historical and spiritual Russia as much as Saratov, Krasnoyarsk etc. Only the Sea power benefits from unnecesary division.
5. China.- A threat and partner simultaneous. Watch it carefully- Siberia is full of rescources and land, China needs them. Trade Energy with China in good terms, then they have no need to attack Russia. Encourage China to expand southwards in influence. Chinese Navy must control the South China sea and pacific trade routes to prevent USA domination. Make China pressure Korea to Unify on its terms.
6. Africa, Latin America. Kruschov and misled Communist was obsessed with these regions and spend too much helping them. However for Eurasia these regions are not important, as the Sea Powers can isolate them and the factors of culture are open to bribes of the West. Central Asia and East Europe is the natural and prime interest of Russia historically. The Eurasianist Russian era will abandon this fully, although still help the friendly nations.
7. Stop Liberalism in all its forms- Economic, Cultural and Religious. Liberalism only leads to slavery to Sea power, and the destruction of all traditions.
8. Resist all forms of Neo Nazism and Trotskyism.
And lots of other stuff, most of it has been proved right.
@Balck Sea Monster
Impressing, really really impressing. Thanks for the resume.
Really sharp deep analise of Dugin. You need to have deep historical roots to see through it all and make an conclusion like this.
Im not sure an American will even be able to understand the depth of Dugin´s picture. But a Brit may catch it.
“Im not sure an American will even be able to understand the depth of Dugin´s picture. ”
Many Americans have common sense and can recognize it when they see it in others.
Katherine
Brilliant,Black Seam Monster.I really wish you’d remember the title of this Alexander Dugin article. I’ve trawled the internet for three hours looking!
Originally I think its was on the website ‘arctogaia.com.’, but now the site does not function properly.
Thank you, pepe, for another valualbe analysis and enjoyable read. Theadditoin of the Voltaire and Heraclitus portraits is a delightful bonus. You make the dangerous game look easy all around.
I still wonder where climate change fits in to all of this planning.
I wonder what Mackinder would say in light of a 4-5 degree C warming by 2100 of all of the best-laid plans of mice and H. economicus and hegemonicus
Katherine
@Katherine
Its disturbing with all these fake campaigns of defined reality from Wall Street appearing in serious discussions.
Its double negative because we waste time to contraprove a lie instead of moving forward with truth.
Just for the sake of good order:
There exists no Global Warming, Clima Change, Clima Disruption, Global Cooling, its all profit concepts from Wall Street Think Tanks.
In real life its called the weather!
If you want proff on weather, look back in history: Global tropical clima at the times of dinosauros, Ice ages, Reversal of the pools, Tectonic plate movements, Floods, Vulcanos, Black death, etc.
The solution for us humans? Adaption to our Creator´s wonderful heart pumping living nature.
I hate to get into this argument, so won’t
.
I will just say that we are now at 400 ppm or CO2 in the air.
So, I think “What would Mackinder say” is a valid question.
Certainly the U.S. DoD does.
Katherine
Its difficult to get out of the Wall Street illusions created and campaigned through schools group thinking and MSM. Its hard inner work to insist on facts, own integrity and go against UN, Governments and MSM false narratives.
But if you search “abiotic oil” you will find there is unlimited oil/gas down under. The “limited fossil oil” is also a profit scheme from Finance, like the “limited drinking water”, “overpopulation” and “limited food”.
”In theory, Kissinger advised Trump to ’rebalance’ towards Russia to oppose the irresistible Chinese ascension. It won’t happen, not only because of the strength of the Russia-China strategic partnership, but because across the Beltway, neocons and humanitarian imperialists ganged up to veto it.”
It’s always promising when your enemies are too stupid and self-obsessed to pretend any positive interest in your accomplishments. No sweet temptations along the lines of subversive flattery and its ensuing ideological rot which are truly dangerous things, unlike the insane barking of rabid, ugly dogs.
The West’s impotent rage and fury looks ever more comical. Will we be hearing soon about sanctions against Sino-Russian meetings from the entirely uninvited lot? The notion of ”The Great Unwashed” springs to mind immediately, LOL.
China will break up within a generation. Its government is tyrannical and its territory is inherently unstable. There is a reason why China kept within precise borders for millennia. The future belongs to Siberia and Southern India.
Is this some kind of psychosis? “If the World Trade Organization doesn’t “shape up,” the US president said he “would withdraw from the WTO.”
“If they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO,” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday. It’s not clear what topic under discussion led Trump to make the remark.
However, this isn’t the first time Trump has taken aim at the Geneva-based organization.
US Files Lawsuit Against Russia in WTO Over Tariffs on Imports of US Goods – WTO
The multilateral organization must “change their ways,” he has said, since Washington has been treated “very badly” by the WTO for a while.
“We’re demanding fairness with the World Trade Organization. It’s been a disaster for the United States, and we want fairness. We lose court cases. We always had a minority of judges; they gave us fewer judges than other countries had,” Trump said in July.
“And we’d lose cases — nobody knew why. I said ‘I know why: because you don’t have judges from this country.’ You have a minority. Three to two, with three being on the other side,” he said. “And we started to do much better lately in winning cases.”
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in January it was a “mistake” for the WTO to allow China to enter the organization. Trump and Lighthizer have spearheaded a tit-for-tat trade fight with Beijing by imposing tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese products sold to the US market. China has responded in kind with retaliatory tariffs. Bloomberg reported Thursday that Trump intended to sign off on tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods next month. “https://sputniknews.com/business/201808301067614231-trump-threatens-pull-out-wto/
Eurasian integration is inevitable. The ‘Silk roads’ exist for millennia, periodically interrupted by barbarian marauders and pirates but inevitably reformed.
The dawn of the recent period was marked by Russia’s integration of Siberia following the final demise of the Mongol power under Ivan IV (not incidentally the first Tsar of All the Russias). In fact we must consider the Mongolian Empire as a stage of the same process.
A whole sale assault, external and internal of the ‘West’ on Russia ensued and lasted until the Romanovs restored the situation and resumed the process of Eurasian integration.
Leibniz wrote a ‘program’ of an Eurasian Alliance in which Europe, Russia, and China would come together based on the infrastructural exploration of these countries, in particular Siberia; on the founding of scientific academies; and on a common effort to engage in scientific, historical, and comparative language studies—which subjects were all to serve as the strategic and scientific guidelines for the work of the scientific academies of Europe.
It is essential to understand that in the vision of Leibniz, the basic principles of Confucian philosophy with and the principles of Platonic-Christian philosophy were the same, that in the ancient Chinese culture, the same universal questions concerning a Supreme Being, the laws of the universe, and man, were asked, as they were asked by Plato and answered by the Christians.
Leibniz project was met with indifference in Germany and open hostility in England, but it has been enthusiastically endorsed by Peter the Great.
Beyond the mutual interest of Russia and China in economical matters, their common worldview makes put the integration of a solid rock basis.
It is, as Pepe rightly said ‘Heralcitus vs Voltaire’. The Platonic-Christian Leibniz worldview vs Newton-Voltaire worldview.
Chinese religious philosophy is not comparable with Western Platonic Christianity. In polytheism there is a celestial monarch but not a cosmic creator or ‘Supreme Being’. Above the pantheon there is always a higher abstract principle, for the Greeks it was ‘Necessity’, for the Persians ‘Time’, and for the Chinese the ineffable ‘Tao’. As for Confucius, the Master never spoke about such things.
Platonic Christianity is not ‘polytheist’.
That’s why it is not comparable with Chinese religions. Buddhism and philosophical Taoism are non-theistic, Confucianism and Chinese folk religion are polytheistic. Projecting Western theism onto Oriental religions went out of fashion around 1900.
Discussion was really about the project of Leibniz and the role he saw for Russia and China.
Leibniz concluded that the three main principles of Confucianism all come very near to what the Christians conceive as God. Of course, one of the objectives of Leibniz was Christianization of China, and he saw that feasible because the ‘Natural Theology of the Chinese’ (it is the title of an essay of Leibniz), i.e. ethics (not ‘folk religion’) came very close to the ethics of Plato and Aristotle based on the notions of piety, justice, religion, prudence, and faith, revived by the Incarnation, which adds to the ‘natural law’ the revelation and grace. Leibniz expands on an comparative analysis of the basic concepts of Chinese philosophy (not of ‘folk’religions) with those of Europe and draws the conclusion that they form the basis on which cooperation of Europe with China should be built.
“China is a great empire, no less in area than cultivated Europe,and indeed surpasses it in population and orderly government. Moreover, there is in China in certain regards, an admirable public morality conjoined to a philosophical doctrine, or rather doctrine of natural theology, venerable by its antiquity, established and authorized for about three thousand years, long before the philosophy of the Greeks, whose works nevertheless are the earliest which the rest of the world possesses, except for our sacred writings. For both of these reasons, it would be highly foolish and presumptuous on our part, having newly arrived, compared to them, and scarcely out of barbarism, to want to condemn such an ancient doctrine because it does not appear to agree at first glance with our ordinary scholastic notions. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that one could destroy this doctrine without great upheaval. Thus, it is reasonable to inquire whether we could give it a proper meaning. I only wish that we had more complete accounts and greater quantities of extracts of Chinese classics, more accurately translated.”
He wrote to Peter the Great: “Have moreover also wanted to enclose an extract from Chinese or Cathay letters, from which to see, how also there one considers scientific advancement and how therein Your Majesty could attach China and Europe with one another … . P.S.: It appears, it is God’s Providence that science should transform the circle of the Earth and henceforth also come to Scythia and that Your Majesty could be the instrument thereof, since he could take the best, on the one side from Europe, on the other side from China, and could improve what both did through good institutions.”
As always, another excellent article written by maestro journalist, Pepe :)
> Alastair Crooke took a great shot at deconstructing….
And in that perfect British manner he mistranslated his now-designated-enemy Lenin’s words.
Just like earlier British history “scientists” mistranslated tzar Ivan 4th nickname
With all Lenin’s contempt to Russia he saw competitor, what he said on Russia was waving off rather than shadenfraude.
…..With up to 10 million Russians left dead by his cleansing, Lenin said “I don’t care a bit about Russia. [Russia is] only one stage we have to pass through, on our way to world revolution [i.e. to his vision of a universal Communism].
That, if to translate it properly without the urge to use charged wording and anglosaxon bloodlust projection.