By Nicholas A. Biniaris
Many things cause terror and
wonder, yet nothing
Is more terrifying and
wonderful than man.
Sophocles Antigone
“The New York
Times reported on Monday what Merkel really thinks of the Russian president:
The paper wrote that she told Barack Obama via telephone that she is not sure
if Putin is "in touch with reality." Berlin did not officially
confirm the quote, expressing it in more diplomatic terms -- that Putin and the
West have a "very different perception" of the events in Crimea.” (Spiegel
4/3/2014). On March 13 the same Merkel speaking in the parliament “warned of
“catastrophe” unless Russia changes course.” (Reuters)
What does it actually mean to
be not “in touch with reality”? Whose reality was Merkel referring to? Is there
a different reality for her and Obama from that of Putin’s? What does it mean
to have a different perception of the events in Crimea? Is this whole drama
unfolding about how various leaders perceive an historical event? Perception is
a technical philosophical field of inquiry preoccupying the field of epistemology
and the theory of mind. Actually the ways we perceive is the way we define our
ontology, what kind of objects we believe exist, interacting with us and
informing our understanding of the world. Perception is also a field of inquiry
for psychology and most importantly of neurophysiology. Is Putin a megalomaniac
schizophrenic as a commentator wrote in the Bloomberg News? Is he mad and are
all the rest sane? All these questions and many more lead to some disturbing
and even gravely dangerous conclusions about the state of mind of Western
leaders relatively to the reality they perceive as such. Perhaps, it may also
show that Putin and also other leaders in today’s world are indeed out of touch
with reality. So a madman is loose and there is a catastrophe looming over our
heads. Could this catastrophe have been eschewed by self-restrained realists
who knew a bit of history?
The crucial question here is:
what is reality? Do we have a single description of reality by Obama, Merkel,
the unemployed Hellenes all 28% of them, the 13% of actually unemployed
Americans according to the U6 statistics of the US bureau of Statistics and not
the 7% reported referring only to the ones who collect unemployment checks? Is
this the reality of a Taliban insurgent in Waziristan or in Kabul, the
miserable Syrian refugees, Morsi in jail, Snowden as a refugee in Moscow, or an
armchair analyst working on an article about the world as it is? Philosophy
asks: is there a world independent of us out there that we can investigate and
find out how it really is? In short: is there truth or a relativized opinion
changing as times flows and humanity changes its social conditions?
Societies consist of
self-reflecting individuals and hence with a historical perspective, traditions
as memories and interests which vary according to contingency and necessity. Leaders
have different perceptions about reality but are they mad if their views differ?
Is it just real for Putin to say yes to EU’s plans? Is it real for Putin to say
yes to whatever happens in Ukraine? Is it real for Putin to let NATO encircle
Russia with anti-missile defense systems and accept all decisions by Berlin,
Brussels and Washington? Is Putin mad for having his own views about history
politics and Russia’s interests? Was Bin-Laden mad for having an Islamic vision,
a Caliphate, for the future of Muslims in rivalry to that of a secular,
liberal, and rich ‘West’? Is king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia mad for bankrolling
madrassas which are the breeding ground of terrorists and at the same time
threatening to blockade Qatar because the latter supports the Muslim
Brotherhood? Is President Xi mad for
enacting a EADZ for China? Is Mahmoud Abbas mad for not accepting Israel as a
Jewish state?
Tom Engelhart (TomDispatch
2/3/2014) wrote a noteworthy article asking “A New World Order?” He enumerates
a number of events since the 50s which if put together make no sense or as he
says “we are driving with our head lights off the wind whipping up, and the
rain pouring down on a planet that may itself, in climate terms, be heading for
uncharted territory.”
The chart
Let us follow our tweeting
leaders who play with words and meanings with deadly consequences.
Former Undersecretary Burns
stated: “… it was important for the U.S. to make clear that Russia’s military
assault on Ukraine strikes at a vital U.S. interest, which is a free and stable
Europe. The Obama administration “shouldn’t be cowed” by worries about Russia’s
response on other issues, where it could interfere, he said.” (Bloomberg
4/2/2014)
The first signal to follow is
that there are vital interests of the USA in Europe, and by implication and
factual observation in Panama, Brazil, Egypt the Fiji Islands, the North Pole,
and the Galapagos. This means the planet. The implications of such a doctrine
which we see unfolding since 1989 has spread in the most inchoate and
unstructured trope. This doctrine which
is presumed to increase order, on the contrary increases entropy almost exponentially.
The second signpost to follow
is the terms ‘free’ and ‘stable’. Does ‘free’ mean the opposite of slavery as in
Russia, China or Iran versus political pluralism and free elections, habeas
corpus, the right to choose sex orientation? Probably all the above and many
more. Does ‘stable’ mean that which
adheres to the rules and regulations from Brussels?
The third is, as Secretary
Kerry stated, the U.N Charter as a signpost for our journey to the future and
as Bloomberg editorial (March 11/2014) says: “China ultimately has the same
goals in Ukraine as the rest of the world: the sanctity of international
borders, avoid bloodshed and restore stability in international markets as
quickly as possible.” This statement
affirms the sanctity of the international borders of Yugoslavia, Serbia’s
dismemberment, the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian-Syrian borders, the Cyprus borders
from an occupying Turkish army, Pakistan’s and Yemen’s sovereignty, the Hutu
Tutsi genocide! All U.N states have indeed piously observed
this Charter like China in Tibet, India in Kashmir and as most democratic and
humanitarian states in Africa and in the Middle East!
The fourth but actually the
major signpost to be followed is free market and free movement of tax evasion
funds, tax loopholes; capitalism made in the stock and commodity markets and
banks too big to fail: an actual travesty of capitalism. This is a default
compass repetitiously evoked by pundits to hammer out the economic imperative:
act always as to protect the stability of the market. This is the deontological
Kantian imperative of the 21st century. As the above quotation from
the Bloomberg editorial stresses China should restore the stability of the
markets. This is what Burns was most probably insinuating with his high minded
peroration. This signpost, stability of the markets, the economic components of
any move or calculation for acting, reacting, speaking out, fighting for,
rebelling against, is the globalization as a presumably liberating strait-jacket
we are all wearing
Perception, power and pleasure
What all the above try to
encapsulate is the desperate attempt we make to shape reality and at the same
time understand it. ‘Man is the measure
of everything’ as Protagoras enunciated and Plato in the Theaetetus tried to put in the frame of
his epistemology Man as the measure of all things means that perceptions about
reality are as many as the perceivers. There is no real world but a world we
build according to our prejudices, passions, ignorance and individually
perceived interests. Reality is not one
and hence the understanding about it is not fixed. So if Putin has his own
perception about Ukraine, Netanyahu about Palestinians, Indians about a caste
system, China about the Communist Party rule, how do we go reconciling Putin’s
with Merkel’s or Obama’s? The chart, given the guidelines above, leads nowhere.
It leads nowhere because we have intentionally left out of the equation two
vital parameters, power and pleasure. Power and its correlatives are too
well-known. Pleasure is nothing but old utilitarianism, a calculus of hedons developed
by the mathematics of dead souls. What
hedonism boils down to is economic prosperity which can satisfy our quest for unquenched
pleasure. Calculating pleasure with the
ruler ‘time is money’ we have destroyed pleasure as the encapsulation of
eternity. We have turned ourselves to dead souls.
If stability must be preserved we have to
avoid war as a risk for our investments. So how we avoid war? By mutual
compromise and preventive diplomacy or in the old fashioned way by alliances,
as balance of power where the risk of war became too costly to incur? All these
methods have failed time and time again. What saved the day in this post-modern
world-up to now- was a Deus ex machine, literally speaking, an infernal machine
called nuclear bomb. Who could imagine that the Soviet Union would have fallen
without a shot if there were no nuclear bombs around?
History, post-modernity and Europe
Europe is a post-modern
multi-state formation with diverse economies and political traditions which was
unable to evolve into a federation with a unified economic structure. It is a
meta-modern construct because it tried to supplant the classical model of a
nation-state with treaties among sovereign states, legal institutions and
supranational decision making bodies without a single government. It is a
unique project ousting the grand old narrative of modernity by a piecemeal
unfolding of agreements which in a utopian future will lead European states to
a complete integration. The project is Marxist oriented; some would call it
Abrahamite, not in content but in spirit. A utopian goal of a united and secure
Europe redeemed from the old follies and the curse of fratricide wars. It
doesn’t bring an end to Marx’s favorite war, class war but it brings an end to
war between European states and consolidates their humanistic heritage. The goal of integration though is as utopian as
it can be because some of the members have no intention to participate in such
a deal as Great Britain, Sweden, and Denmark and recently Hungary plus a
reluctant Hellas dragged from the abyss of its idiosyncratic and disastrous
relation with the euro. Eurozone’s
common currency without a lender of last resort and an internal balancing
mechanism of surpluses and deficits amongst its members is forcing the economies
of several states to bankruptcy. EU’s edifice has thrived only under the US
military umbrella. It became a consumer of security being unable to provide
security for itself, either driven by economic considerations, supporting a
social-democratic utopia or by the USA’s hegemonic plans or both. Thy Europeans
are still dependent upon the USA for their security and for actually projecting
foreign policy, mostly American inspired, besides trade agreements. As a
non-unitary state it is unable to reconcile British, French and German world
views and project power cohesively.
As a giant in terms of trade
and production the EU aspired to bring to the fold all the former East European
states and also an Islamist Turkey recently embroiled in a fratricidal
tug-of-war. The mindset of the EU
leaders and the bureaucrats in Brussels is unidirectional and one-dimensional.
Their perceptions consist of agreements, compromises and taking decisions with
a variable voting system. All these were working in a world which had a rich
and easy life that is no more. Amongst an economic crisis which is still
visible they offered an association agreement to a corrupt and authoritarian Ukraine
knowing too well that Russia was opposed to this plan. The EU offered an
agreement to a state which is bankrupt and is mostly relying economically on
Russia. There is no doubt that life in the EU is better than in Ukraine or
Russia. How the rich liberal European states did approached their neighbors so
that they could prompt them to a different mode of life? Did the EU initiate an open discussion with
Russia and Ukraine about a common ground to pull Ukraine out of its dire
condition? No. Did they respond to Russia’s proposals to bring about such a
discussion? No. Did they consider the historical and security concerns of
Russia and its perceptions about how the EU and the USA views Russia? No. So a
set of perceptions was set against another and because this is not a
philosophical dialectical inquiry the main arbiter for such a dispute is power.
Europe after 1989 made a move, the offer to Ukraine, which she had no means to
follow except if the big brother, the USA came to the rescue. This meta-modern
construct came in direct collision with the world as it is. Now we need to read
Thucydides again.
This last recommendation is an
anathema for certain historians or philosophers of history. Thucydides held a
cyclical model of history. He had no conception of it as a manmade process; a
narrative which shapes both reality and man as Giambattista Vico argued and
believed that history and action constitute the only criterion of knowledge.
Thucydides had no conception of history as man’s march to freedom as old Hegel
would continue. The ancient historian wrote that he wanted his ‘history to be a
lesson for ever’. But this means that
history repeats itself and we should study it very carefully so that we can
learn from our mistakes. In this respect he preceded G. Vico by twenty two
centuries. Old Marx had said in the 18th
Brumaire of Luis Bonaparte: “Hegel remarks
somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history
occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the
second as farce.” Hegel was wrong according to his philosophy of history. A
progressive view of history cannot believe in recurrence except if Hegel
referred to something specific with ‘twice’.
But Marx was also wrong. The second and the third and the nth time they
occur they do so as humanity’s drama not a farce. No doubt Marx has his model
of history in mind which involves deep social structures as the real historical
events which shape history and not individual occurrences of battles or
personalities which may be caricatures of previous ones as Napoleon’s nephew in
comparison to his uncle. For Marx, Sedan and the fall of Napoleon III was a
farce, but for those who died in the battles of the Franco-German war was a
drama. So was the creation of a greater Germany which ended up in two world
wars. History is very rarely a farce. Only, if someone has an Aristophanean vein
and can write a Lysistrata or the Acharnians condemning war by ingenious
social satire can give us a sense of history as a farce. Aristophanean satire though is too meaningful
to be considered just a farce.
Thucydides believed that there
is an underlying human nature which when similar conditions from time to time
are present tends to act in the same disastrous way over and over again.
Henry Ford the industrialist
was quoted saying: “I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a
nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is
more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in
the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history
we make today.” Under this perception of history we may view human action is a
relentless struggle to overcome tradition and create an ever new history, the
ever present one. This is perhaps the American world view which now is wrapped
up in democracy, human rights, free trade and an incipient multiculturalism.
But there is not such an entity as an ever invented history; this is a
contradiction in terms. History cannot be a perpetuum mobile. If it not
internalized as a living tradition it is not history but disjoint events, motley
of colors without shape, and an academic exercise with no real content. The
reason we study history, even if we do not get any wiser by it, is to come to
self-understanding, to acknowledge that history is us right through our own
lives and experiences, to recognize our own limits and perhaps try to overcome
them through our creative imagination.
Part II
By nature man closely resemble
each other
In practice they grow wide
apart.
Confucius, the Analects.
About idiot(e)s
The term idiotes in ancient Hellas referred to those citizens who were
privately oriented, those who were engaged in their own affairs not tending or
worrying about the affairs of the state; they abstained from politics. Such
people were considered as having a reprehensible, antisocial mentality which
was of no use for promoting the common good. They were not useful for solving
problems in the political arena. By synecdoche the meaning of the word became
synonymous to the mentally deficient, a person incapable of solving problems.
Individualism perceived today as self-expression and self-realization outside
of the public sphere was not understood as the good life, as a human life worth
living in ancient Athens. It didn’t promote human eudemonia
Inward looking, tending only
their own business, could be also the trait of a society, and even that of a
state. A society of idiot(e)s or a country with a world view of an idiot(e)s is
the one which conducts its affairs in a dysfunctional way by avoiding acknowledging
the ‘other’s’ point of view or interests. Such groups are unable to co-operate
constructively to achieve the common good of humanity. Intractable differences
of all types can hinder co-operation about security and material well-being or
perceived pride or humiliation, personal fame or accountability to the
past. History for many may be more real
than the present is for others. Putin, King Abdullah, General Sisi and the new
government of Ukraine bestow different value upon history than the
industrialist Ford. The West through its power and its holier than thou
attitude behaves as an idiot(e)s who sees others in the market place as wasting
their time, as profligates and misfits. It has become incapable of assessing
the risks of its self-perception as a unique individual, as an exceptionalism
which the Americans still believe in. Historically the phenomenon isn’t new at
all. All empires behaved in a similar way and all declined as long as they
perceived the world, the ‘other’ as ‘mad’. In this way they made monumental
mistakes as idiots who cannot solve problems swamped in their idiocy turned ideology.
The chasm between utopia and reality.
Since WWII the West has created
the UN, after the failure of the League of Nations. It has founded numerous
international institutions and non-governmental organizations about human
rights, environmental protection, and the spread of democracy, international courts
and committees for the advancement of co-operation among races, creeds and
dialogue among civilizations. An array of such ideas, all a stream of Western
social and political development, became part and parcel of the West’s paradigm
versus authoritarian and inhuman regimes and ideologies. Irrespectively of the
criticisms against the West no other civilizational paradigm advanced such
beliefs and practices. These were and
still are stepping stones for more humane and tolerant co-habitation of social
groups and states but just stepping stones and not as yet internalized ethos.
The stark reality is that this
whole edifice of normative injunctions became a basis for criticisms from all
sides if and when the West transgressed its own high minded standards. What has been a divide between deontological
injunctions and the all-pervasive objective for power and pleasure has been
ignored, if vital interests prevailed, by the ‘West’ itself.
These high minded principles have
created the belief that any deviation from these norms is hypocritical. Numerous
excuses can be called upon to counter innumerable crimes and inhuman actions
from various diverse groups and states. But beyond excuses the world is not yet
a single village as some wish it to be. The world is big, diverse, and in many
ways apart in terms of what constitutes its view as a coherent and explicable
whole. The chasm between reality and a crusade for human rights, democracy and
rule of law is the cause of the West’s failure to lead effectively. It is a
schism in the ‘West’s’ psyche between the reality of the id’s thirst for power
and pleasure and the ego’s high-minded admonition and good manners. When things
turn rough force is used avidly but always for ‘a good cause’. It seems utterly
hypocritical but it is much worse, it is self-delusion. Morality and justice in
politics, a deadly game of power, is a measure of expediency. What the ‘West’
has tried to propagate is the discourse of liberation from all evil, a catholic
gospel of salvation with ever changing demands emerging from its own social
becoming, for redemption: freedom, economic prosperity, democracy and identity
politics. For the last seventy years with some few ups and downs all went well
for the West. It was the pacesetter and the absolute ruler of the planet. It
still is, notwithstanding its vociferous critics and multiple enemies. But this
is an illusion, based upon hubris, for the West is the worst enemy of itself.
Utopias, contradictions, theoria and praxis
The fact that the first steam
engine was built in England is sufficient to explain why the world is speaking
to a large extend English, and the fact that the Hellenic language was the
language of the literate elites in the Roman Empire explains that the New Testament
was written in that language. If the Chinese or for that matter the Arabs had
pursued their technological drive sometime between the 10th and the 11th
century creating their own scientific revolution, then the world would have a
different narrative.
What distinguished the West
from all other previous and concurrent civilizations was the pursuit of science
and technology which gave them the power over the others to dictate their terms
and conditions about commerce, governance and ways of life. This created a
sense of omnipotence which was used and abused in the most cruel and predatory
way, since this power was administered with the purpose of aggrandizement and
enrichment.
Plato in his long life work
dealt with the problem of power trying to argue against power without virtue.
Was Plato an enemy of the open society? Actually he was a critic of what he
experienced through the decline of Athenian democracy and its follies. He
actually never offered an argument which could be plausibly entertained by the
proponents of power and injustice. In the Philebus
he took up the issue of pleasure which he defined as infinite and hence for the
ancient mind unfathomable, irrational and destructive. Still the question of
power and pleasure, in the case of states as their safety and economic well-being,
is unresolved and open-ended. What the West has done with its power and its
economic well-being was no different than others through history. Still it has,
even by default, spread its most precious achievement, science and technology
as modernization and a humanistic set of rules and political liberalism as
westernization. These two core aspects of the western social imaginary
constitute a utopia of sorts for the rest of humanity. The planet has embraced
modernization. But westernization is still a debatable proposition. Utopia, the subject of religions,
philosophical inquiry, and scientific and technological progress from Plato to
St Augustine, Thomas a Beckett, plus “scientific socialism” and Rorty’s rich
liberal Western societies are still unfinished projects under various mantles
and interpretations.
‘Scientific socialism’ is a
term from a Marxian vocabulary. It is a project which collapsed in 1989 and it
is still part of a utopian future for some and a nightmare for others. Marx
studied capitalism and came to the conclusion that it was riddled with
contradictions as between forces of production and social forces or as between
production and demand. For him the forces of production or class struggle or
both define social forces and thus history. Hence, history is based on
contradictions. But the world isn’t a logical contradiction as A and not A. What does a contradiction mean for us: to
search for peace and cause war, to ask for profit and end up bankrupt, to love
and be hated? An underlying contradiction is the emergence of the mind out the
material of the universe through evolution. This material, the stuff of our
experience, brought about the mind which is a self-reflexive, conscious and
intentional stuff. It is what orders and thus perceives the word. Contingency
evolved into the intentional. It is this mind which is incongruent,
contradictory to its progenitor, nature. It is this mind which has set the
conditions for the public vs the private, tyranny vs anarchy good vs evil. It
is utopian views which try to explain and hence to smooth out contradictions
for a better human living. The Utopia of the West has shifted from the
onto-theological to the liberal, to the scientific. These utopias constitute
contradictions in themselves, with no visible compromise, without a visible resolution
of their internal incommensurabilities.
The praxis, as yet, using Alexander’s sword cuts the Gordian Knot and
conquers living behind the epigones to fight for the utopia of power, the
Empire. For our purposes, utopian views work
as premises for theories and practices for international relations and prompt
different reactions to questions of security or human well-being. What the
irreconcilability of all these utopias failed to do is to capture the
infinitely rich fabric of human reality and thus up to now have proven unable
to prevent war and human degradation. These utopias have colored our
perceptions and as theories have become writs of faith. The West isn’t the only
paradigmatic victim of history’s contradiction. The worst is that this
post-modern Gordian Knot can be cut only, up to now, by Alexander’s sword
turned to a nuclear bomb. The advent of power which is not an argument but
praxis is the mind’s ultimate self-delusion. Praxis becomes the nemesis of
theoria.
Part III
The follies of the West
Man was created weak
The Koran
. The post-modern ‘West’, and
globalization as a de facto post-modern construct, has left behind all previous
grand narratives of politics, statehood and culture. And what they firstly
abrogated was the notion and practice of the citizen. The paramount element for
a democracy the demos (democracy means the citizens’ rule) is the members of
the set that decides about their lives in an open and fairly debated manner. Who are the citizens of the states, most of
them nation-states which comprise the ‘West’? Citizenship is extended to
persons who move in and out of these states with dual citizenships, dual
allegiances and diverse interests, lobbying for other states, media expressing
views of suspect origins or organized corporate interests. How many of the
citizens of Western countries participate in elections? In some cases less than
50%. Voting is voluntary. In ancient Athens it was obligatory. How can we
advertise democracy if the demos is not well defined and it doesn’t even
participate in public life?
Instead, we have indulged in
self-expression and self-realization advancing an individualistic paranoia. Man
is a social animal Aristotle said. He used the term ‘political’ which for him
was equivalent to our notion of the social. By creating, as Castoriadis
analyzed in his The Imaginary Institution
of Society, social imaginary significations, each society creates itself.
What kind of social imaginary significations can be crated from an undefined
demos not engaged in the public sphere? The post-modern West as we have
described it above is no more than an institution of the banality of
self-fulfillment without any recognizable limits for man. Democracy is a
self-imposed, autonomy, individuality of man in his/hers social
expression.
The second self-destructive
practice which the ‘West’ has embarked upon is the demise of education.
Universities abound, degrees are earned by the millions, interdisciplinary
studies multiply, but effective citizen’s education is going out of fashion.
The foundations of history, art, philosophy, rhetoric, are terra incognita. For
to dabble in this or that subject, or to read blogs and social media messages
is not education. Brilliant and well educated men do exist amongst us, most of
them technocrats, but the demos knows only the here and now of the media and
the tenets of the profession they make a living from, no more. Public education
has lost its meaning for the creation of a responsible citizen, a social
individual able to question its leaders and him/herself. Education has erased a
large part of the ‘West’s’ past, perhaps some of its worst part, but has also
thrown the baby away with the waste water.
Historically for the ‘West’ the
Cold War was the most misconceived conflict in its history. It still is and
this has created one of the biggest confusion about the world we live in. The ‘West’s’
civil war of 1914 transformed a Tsarist Asiatic Imperial Russia to a
Marxist-Leninist Imperial Russia aka Soviet Union. What actually happened was
that Russia modernized in a radical way by a heresy of the mainstream
capitalist bourgeois called “scientific socialism”. This heresy was a
continuation of the civil war of 1914 which offered the opportunity for
European nihilism to plunge in unhindered efforts of how to institute crime as
ideology by both ‘socialism’ and Nazism. Today terrorism, a view of instituting
crime as an act of resistance or projection of power from another
civilizational paradigm comes to coincide with the crime of executions by
drones in one of the most regressive phenomena of human civilization. Even the
institution of war, a criminal activity no doubt, but mythologized as an act of
heroism and sacrifice for the social, has turned to an act of pure criminal
activity.
For the European intellectuals
nihilism, not a belief in nothing but a psychic void expressing the disbelief
in any foundations, was a topic of intense study and for some to the view that
the Enlightenment project failed thus leading to ideologized and state organized
crime. Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud all ended up in Sade’s castle
of absolute pain as pleasure and self-annihilation as Camus argued in the Rebel.
For complex historical reasons the civil war of 1914 is still going on
today. Huntington had classified Russia as an Orthodox civilization, not a Western
one. This is at least a half truth but fairly convenient to keep a popular
mindset focused on an imaginary non-western enemy associated with the evil
empire of the Soviet Union. Hellenic-Roman tradition, the Judeo-Christian
tradition and the Enlightenment are the common cultural and political heritage
of the West. Russia has this tradition plus some others. Still Russia is the
Eastern West of the West. Today we have created a new tradition, a post-modern
one, which the rest of the world is very reluctant to participate as yet.
Actually they are just tolerating it with disdain.
Russia after 1989 remained as a
patriarchal-hierarchical society it always was, but fully modernized. It is a
difficult place to live and feel secure, but so is ¾ of the planet. How do we
go about changing its social imaginary to a more compliant, human and tolerant
one? We don’t threaten and humiliate, downbeat it and castigate it as a boorish
poor relative who must turn to a sophisticated liberal New Yorker. For this
boorish relative is 7 feet tall and has a few thousand nuclear warheads. It is
also the case that we may be wrong about some of our progressive ideas and we
may have to be more cautious about our new found moral high ground.
Since the demise of that evil
empire, the USA has treated the Russian Federation with utter disdain,
downgrading it to the periphery which has to be rehabilitated and chastised. It
has foregone the oral guarantees of Secretary Baker and Chancellor Kohl about the
non-expansion of NATO into east Europe, incorporating seven of these states
into the alliance plus three former Soviet states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
The Clinton administration, the worst administration for the last hundred
years, bombed Serbia without taking under consideration Russia’s historical
sensitivities about that country. The USA keeps harping against Putin as an
authoritarian leader, who does not condones protests, suppresses his political
opponents, is against identity politics and views the world in a different way
from that of Washington. These characteristics also fit the description of
Erdogan, King Abdullah, President Xi, General Sisi, PM Netanyahu, the Indian PM
and many other world leaders. However, Russia is a part of the West, a slowly
adjusting member but a member all the same. And it is a very important part of
the West in more than one ways. It is the only western member of Asia, the
powerhouse and the probable center of a nuclear conflict of the 21st
century. The traditional West can do very little to steer Asia to a path of
westernization. Moreover, what is happening right now with the Ukrainian crisis
proves to the rest of the world the incapacity of the West to come to terms
with itself and its perennial fratricidal clash for power. This clash as WWI
and WWII proved is a world-wide concern.
The ‘West’ is again split between perceptions
of each other and continues to churn up divisions instead of building
understanding and respect. News Agency Xinhua
reports of the Presidents Obama and Xi discussion: “China was ready to work
with the United States to build the new model of the major-country
relationship, respect and accommodate each other's core interests and major
concerns, and enhance dialogue, mutual trust and cooperation, in a bid to
achieve a sustainable and healthy development of the China-U.S. relations, Xi
said.” Read carefully: “major-country relationship respect and accommodation…”
Is this the relationship between Russia and the USA?
What is the objective of this tug of war with
Russia? Is this ‘West’ fighting an enemy or is trying to assess its control
over this huge and lucrative territory? Is the West seeing this as a serious
threat of its security keeping military exercises anti-ballistic shields and
military assets poised against Russia? What is the purpose of all these
military posturing of NATO? Do we have a defensive alliance against Russia?
Does the EU and the USA expect an attack from Moscow? Is it the perennial war
for oil and oil routes from Central Asia? Is it again Pepe Escobar’s ‘Pipelineistan’
on the rampage again? The fact is that Russia is too big a player. It should
march in step with us or it must be persuaded to do so. Presto the use of the
retribution of history. All former Soviet member states which suffered under
Stalin and the subsequent abject tyranny are Russophobes. Ukrainians after they
installed their new government abrogated the use of Russian as a second
language and declared their anti-Russian and anti-communist feelings loud and
clear. They have the right to feel as they like, but Ukraine is a county with a
large Russian minority, it relies on Russian trade, and its economy is
bankrupt. The Ukrainian toppling of its government because it didn’t sign an
agreement with the EU is a demand for change and most clearly to distance
themselves from Russia. This is legitimate as a desire and an aspiration but a
difficult project to implement peacefully without the consent of Russia which
has huge strategic interests in this country and also a Russian population
which is afraid of a government which starts off with statements not of
democratic reconciliation but vengeance for its former oppressors. Ukraine is
in the midst of a battle of giants used as a provocation to settle scores and
open new frontiers of conflict. The legitimate aspiration and grievances of
Ukraine were used as the Epidamneans’ is ancient Hellas to provoke the great
civil war between the Athenians and the Spartans. (Thucydides Book I).
The worst folly of all is
centered in the EU. Its post-modern project has become a reality which in just
twenty years has transformed the perception of politicians from a pre-1991 mindset
of caution and circumspection to a Davos-type of economic and managerial
fantasy. When John Kerry accused Putin "You just don't, in the 21st
century, behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on
completely trumped up pretexts," he was expressing his exasperation for
Putin’s backwardness and refusal to adjust to these post-modern rules of
conduct. So said Chancellor Merkel and then went to discuss the Italian and the
Hellenic and the Portuguese sovereign debt and the new plan for the Eurozone’s
banking union, which Germany is reluctant to endorse.
Ignorance and self-deception is
bliss; hypocrisy is lack of an argument.
When perceptions of a world as already a realized project of breaking
from modernity advances the view that the axiomatic prerogative of any state to
be the guardian of its internal and external security is abrogated, then we
come to meet our idiot(e)s as spokesmen of a fantastical world.
The last but not the least
folly of the EU is its acceptance of a government takeover by ultra-
nationalistic forces. For the EU nationalism is a specter to be exorcised from
Europe. There is an election for the European Parliament coming up in May 25.
Various nationalistic and anti-European parties are poised to win a substantial
number of seats. What does the acceptance of Ukrainian revanchists signal for
the Eurosceptics? Are Ukrainian nationalists also pro-European or they measure
their European love-affair with the yardstick of their hatred for Russia?
Historically this is banal but for a European project as it unfolds it is a
travesty between means and ends. The
follies of the EU extend to the effect that they condoned and abetted an
uprising by people with legitimate grievances but who had the option to go to
the polls and even form a unity government. This is nothing else than a
provocation, an act of defiance promulgated by idiot(e)s sojourning in Brussels
whose perception of a crisis and a civil war is beyond their mindset. It is
also an act orchestrated by Washington in total disregard of the bloody history
of the area as Patrick Cockburn writes “to see what Ukraine’s future may be,
look at Lviv’s shameful past” (Independent 9/3/2014)
Conclusions
Russia will never relinquish
Crimea in some form or another. Yanukovych’s flight was most probably nothing
more than an acknowledgement of his inability to manage the oligarchs and the
economy. Ukraine’s economy will play a crucial role for the future of this
country since it is a big divide between eastern and western parts of the
country, with the east having over $5,000per capita income and the west only
$1,800. The annexation of Crimea will
set a diplomatic precedent which may lead other states to do the same. Some analysts believe that Putin is just pre-empting a
revolution of the Ukrainian kind in Russia. Yulia Timoschenko predicts
Kaddafi’s fate for Putin. For the Ukrainian people this is a painful and
confusing period. They may see their society and their lives disintegrating in
a multi-layer ethnic, religious and economic conflict. This ‘West’ vs Russia dispute may reach a
point of antagonism in other theaters of conflict or grievances. Ambassador
Bhadrakumar has clearly adumbrated this case for the steppes of Central Asia.
(ATol, March 11 2014). We already have
an announcement from Russia building to nuclear reactors in Iran. Another
outcome is that Russia may suffer itself from internal political instability. The
outcome of this would be negative for the ‘West’. If Russia becomes
ungovernable the world is becoming an alarmingly dangerous place. If it
disintegrates what will happen to its huge arsenal of nuclear weapons? If
Russia turns to China what will be the new balance of power in Asia? All
probable options are negative for the ‘West’. Moreover, the West is currently
facing a fractured and highly conflictual Moslem world which will see with glee
the fall of Russia which is considered one of its arch enemies. The West is
actually sowing the seeds for a more violent conflict with Islam. Prince Sultan
of Saudi Arabia must be celebrating in Riyadh. Perhaps the announced possible blockade
of Qatar if it doesn’t close down Al-Jazeera and keep supporting the Muslim
Brotherhood is an outcome of the marginalization of Russia. At the same time
Pakistan is in chaos with the government discussing with the Pakistani Taliban
issues which will end up with their demand to turn Pakistan to a Sariah-law
state.
For most of Russians it has
become plainly obvious that the ‘West’ is antagonizing them. Their perceptions
about a hostile brother are becoming realities. Fear ensues from these set of perceptions
and this feeds the fire of distrust, suspicion and resentment. We are in the
midst of history repeating itself, the ‘West’ against the West, not as a farce
but as a new tragedy. If the West as a whole cannot redefine its
inter-relations with respect and mutual acknowledgement of its differences, then
how is it possible for it to come to terms with the deep divide between itself
and a resurgent Islam and/or the Chinese paradigm? The idiot(e)s in Brussels,
Berlin and Washington whose perceptions of the world result in categorizing
some portions of it as madmen, is time to wake up from their self-deception and
fantastical contradictory globalized paradigm.
Europe is facing another self-destructive
scenario: a split between Europe or parts of it and the USA. It is not easy to
keep all states in line enforcing an embargo on Russia. Hellas, Bulgaria,
Serbia, a recalcitrant Hungary, and even France are for many historical reasons
on more intimate terms with Russia than Britain of Germany, even if the last
has substantial economic interests with Russia. The Kiev uprising opened the Pandora’s
Box which may include a three way split of the ‘West’
We are confronted with the
monumental folly of a dysfunctional EU with Germany as a make-believe leader traditionally
inept in foreign policy, and traditional heavyweights as British and French
leaderships completely discredited in Iraq and Libya. These actors have caused
a huge crisis in Europe. Secretary Kerry in his statement after meeting with FM
Lavrov on March 14th acknowledged: “Russia has legitimate rights in
Crimea, historical, security concerns, and the right to protect its people in
Ukraine. He proposed greater autonomy for Crimea and peaceful resolution of the
conflict through direct talks. What was important for the USA was the
territorial integrity of Ukraine and the right to make their own choices. There
is no threat for Russia or any other consideration geostrategic or otherwise by
the West.” FM Lavrov told him that President Putin will make a decision after
the referendum in Crimea. He also proposed a federal Crimea which is the only
sensible way to structure this historically fragmented country with innumerable
historical splits and divides. Now Crimea is annexed and the ‘West’ has imposed
sanctions on persons close to President Putin. There are military exercises by
NATO in East Europe and Russian forces at the borders with Ukraine. What is
most probable is that Ukraine will be split between an eastern and a western
part as history and culture necessitates. The east will ask help from Russia
and this may be resisted by Ukraine. This will be a real escalation or the
conflict with further the alienation of the two parts, Russia and the ‘West’.
International security will then be on the line as a number of other hotspots
are active in the Far East, Central Asia and the Middle East.
The ‘West’ has failed once more
to realign itself with itself acknowledging its vital interests to keep itself
intact and place its house in order. If this is accomplished at some future
time, then the world may turn to a more secure and peaceful place.
Nicholas A. Biniaris 20/3/2014
