Recent Speeches by Putin, Lavrov and Xi Signal Fundamental Changes in the Pipeline

Three recent speeches and interviews given by major politicians have sharpened the political debate now raging in the Western media. Ironically, none of the three speeches received significant coverage in the Western media. Ironically, despite the lack of Western media coverage, all three mark a significant development in the world geopolitical dialogue. Two of the speeches occurred at the same meeting of the Valdai Discussion Group, an organisation established in 2004 and modified to become a foundation in 2011. Russia’s President Putin was an initial founder of the group and has spoken at every meeting since then.

In this year’s meeting Putin again gave a keynote speech and although, as is his preference he spoke in conciliatory terms toward Russia’s major geopolitical foe, the United States, there was no mistaking the edge to his remarks. Putin spoke of a new era that in his view was about to begin. The world was not just on the edge of dramatic changes, but in what he described as a “tectonic shift” that would affect all areas of life. The process of change has become most marked in the past 40 years. Russia has been and will continue to be a major force in the process of change, undoubtably to the chagrin of its political foes.

For those in the West who were expecting, and undoubtably hoping for, the decline of Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union, Putin declared that to those still waiting for Russia’s decline,” the only thing we are warned about is catching cold at your funeral.”

Putin identified China as moving quickly towards superpower status, although some, including myself, would argue they have already achieved that status. The United States he identified as having at some point (the period 1990–2008?) having absolutely dominated the international stage, but “can hardly claim exceptionality any longer”. Therein lies enormous risk to the world.

Although Putin did not refer to the point, the United States’ unwillingness to acknowledge and accept the fundamental changes in their world status poses a very grave threat to the planet. He referred to authoritative international institutions (unspecified) as following in the wake of someone’s selfish interests as “saddening.” It is worse than that. Not only does it discredit those institutions (and the recent fiasco over the Navalny affair springs to mind) it exacerbates, said Putin, the world order crisis.

On the positive side, Putin identified the Shanghai Corporation Organisation as having spent almost 20 years contributing to development and the peaceful settlement of disputes in Central Asia. It is shaping, he said, “a unique spirit of partnership in that part of the world.” It is precisely because of this success that has been a major factor in the destabilisation efforts by the United States in the region, which has accelerated in the past few years, including but not limited to a diplomatic effort in the region (to use a polite term) of United States Secretary of State Pompeo.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov also addressed the meeting and gave extensive interviews following his speech. Whereas Putin spoke in his customary polite manner, Lavrov made no attempt to conceal his anger. In his principal speech Lavrov asked the not entirely rhetorically question: “when the European Union is speaking as a superior, Russia wants to know, can we do any business with Europe?”

In a later radio interview, Lavrov made the further point that “no matter what we do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us and undermine our efforts in the economy, politics and technology.” Although he did not use the illustration, the reaction of the West to the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny is a classic example. The inherent stupidity, illogicality and sheer mindlessness of the Western attacks on Russia, not only in the Navalny case but also in the equally ludicrous claims regarding the illness of the Skripal father and daughter has recently been brilliantly ridiculed by former British diplomat and commentator Craig Murray. The West cannot militarily defeat Russia, so this has led, Lavrov points out, to “non-stop harassment and undermining of Russia.” He went on to cite a number of recent examples of this in countries such as Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.

Lavrov referred to the “comprehensive strategic partnership” that has emerged, not least in defence from this sustained Western economic and political attack, with China. He referred to this development making “total Eurasian sense, geopolitically and geoeconomically”.

Several years ago, Vladimir Putin referred to the West has being “not agreement capable.” Lavrov applied the same description to the European Union. Russia, he argued, should stop orienting itself toward the European countries, and caring about their assessments. A similar level of growing exasperation with the West’s persistent disruptive techniques and the waging of all out warfare short of actually shooting is seen in the similarly recent address by China’s President Xi Jinping.

In a major speech Xi gave to commemorate the 70th anniversary of China’s involvement in the Korean War (another regime change operation mounted by the West under other pre-texts) Xi bluntly warned that China was not to be trifled with and would not sit idly by while its sovereignty was attacked. He specifically referred to current United States efforts to foster problems between China and Taiwan. Pretending that Taiwan is a separate sovereign state is a long-standing Western tactic dating back to 1949 when the Nationalists fled to what was then called Formosa. Part of the pretence fostered by the United States and its allies is to ignore the fact that China’s claims in the South China Sea not only pre-date the coming to power of the Communist party in 1949, but that the exact same territorial claims are made by Taiwan, a fact never mentioned in the Western media.

Xi accused the United States of attempting to start a war between China and Taiwan to which Xi gave a blunt response: their (the United States) foreign policy will go nowhere. China would make what he called a “quiet strike” in retaliation without specifying exactly what he meant. It was clear from Xi’s speech that he regarded United States foreign policy (and he is not alone in this view) as having been hijacked by the United States’ far right contingent. Irrespective of which of Trump or Biden succeeds in the November presidential election it would be extremely naïve to anticipate any meaningful changes in United States foreign policy towards either Russia or China. Both countries have taken significant steps in recent years to prepare for the fundamental realignment in geopolitical affairs currently underway. The re-emergence of China as the world’s most powerful economic entity is essentially a redressing of the historical aberration that the past 300 years have exemplified.

The great danger to the world comes from the inability and unwillingness of the West to recognise that those 300 years were an aberration, not a blueprint for the future. How well the West copes with that reassertion of the old order may well determine the future of our planet.

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Instability, Poverty and Nuclear Weapons

The President of the United States has the power to fire off thousands of nuclear weapons and destroy the world. As succinctly explained by William Perry and Tom Collina in the New York Times, “Mr. Trump has the absolute authority to start a nuclear war. Within minutes, the president could unleash the equivalent of more than 10,000 Hiroshima bombs. He does not need a second opinion. The defense secretary has no say. Congress has no role.” This is the Trump who contracted the Covid 19 virus and on October 2 was taken to hospital where he was drugged to the eyeballs, referred to the infliction as “a blessing from God”, and declared “I’m a perfect physical specimen.” He then was flown to a massive election rally in Florida on October 12, joining his supporters in shoulder-rubbing maskless happiness and announced “Now they say I’m immune. I feel so powerful. I’ll walk in there. I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women, just give you a big fat kiss.” The mental instability evident in these and many other utterances of that “perfect physical specimen” is disturbing. And the fact that it exists in a man who could destroy the world is terrifying.

The immediacy of nuclear danger is evident in Trump’s attitude to the presidential election itself. As the Financial Times noted, he “has refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power if he were to lose on November 3, citing unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud. He told one rightwing group, the Proud Boys, to ‘stand back and standby’ during last month’s presidential debate.” His ‘Proud Boys’ supporters constitute one of the armed and deeply bigoted militias that have recently surfaced in the U.S., and nobody knows how they will react in the event of a Trump defeat. It is of some concern that “Facebook has taken down at least 6,500 pages and groups linked to more than 300 U.S. militias [emphasis added] after it announced in mid-August that it was culling groups that host ‘discussions of potential violence’ on its platform, including ‘when they use veiled language and symbols’.”

If Trump refuses to stand down and get out of the White House in January in the event of a Biden victory, what happens to the nuclear football that is carried by the military aide who is always the president’s closest shadow? Would Trump insist on retaining possession of the case containing the essentials required for ordering nuclear war? Would the military officer carrying the football obey such an order? What would the rifle-toting ‘Proud Boys’ or other armed militias do about it?

Trump told CNN that “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if this election is rigged” and on October 7 tweeted “This will be the most corrupt Election in American History!” but did not elaborate on what he might do if in his own judgement he lost the election by alleged fraud. The interregnum, the period between announcement of the result and the Inauguration of the 46th President on January 20, will be fraught with uncertainty because Trump will still be in a position of power — power to issue executive orders that do not require Congressional approval and, above all, the power to commit his country to war.

Given Trump’s mental condition and likely reaction to electoral defeat, the immediate future looks dark indeed, but the one certain thing is that Trump will not lift a finger to help the poor and unemployed who are struggling against the effects of the pandemic. It is recorded that in 2019 there were 34 million Americans living in poverty. There were countless millions of children actually going hungry in the world’s richest country and their lives have got immeasurably worse since the virus struck, but the bankers haven’t been suffering, any more than suppliers of nuclear weapons and associated gadgetry.

On October 14 the New York Times reported that the bank Goldman Sachs “had a significantly more profitable quarter than expected, lifted by continued strength in the trading of stocks and bonds and gains from certain investments. The bank reported earnings of $3.62 billion, far higher than Wall Street analysts had projected, and revenue of $10.78 billion for the third quarter.” Just along the road, JPMorgan Chase enjoyed third-quarter profits of $9.44 billion which was a mighty increase on its $4.76 billion last quarter and even better than the $9.08 billion it raked in the same quarter a year ago. This year in the United States, while children starve and banks are making vast profits, the nuclear arms’ industry is being given $28.9 billion for “modernisation” of its vast assets, including $7 billion for command, control and communications, $4.4 billion for Columbus Class nuclear submarines, and $2.8 billion for B-21 long range strike bombers. What is ignored by the war boys is that the $4.4 billion committed to nuclear submarines could, for example, build 40 hospitals each with 120 beds and all associated facilities.

So Trump is assured of much support from the money kings, and great approval from the military of which he is Commander-in-Chief. He behaves erratically to the point of psychosis, but has many millions of supporters who chant adulatory slogans in the middle of his unhinged diatribes.

Mitt Romney is a longtime Republican who was the party’s selection to run for president against Barack Obama in 2012. Now a Senator, he is ferociously opposed to such humanitarian schemes as Social Security and Medicare, insisting that even the poorest of the poor should pay for medical attention. He is committed to increasing military spending and opposes reform of the financial sector of the economy. In short, he is a card-carrying, ultra-rightwing authoritarian near-copy of President Trump.

But Romney has realised what is happening in America and unlike other Republicans who have similar sentiments has spoken out against its current state. On October 13 he tweeted that the country “has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation. The world is watching America with abject horror.” He now admits that Trump has spent four years confronting and insulting fellow-Americans as well as nations that have even mildly opposed his disjointed foreign policy.

America is suffering from instability in the White House and carnage on its streets. While poverty is rife and the pandemic is killing thousands in the richest country in the world its nuclear weapons are under jurisdiction of an unhinged egotistical sociopath. Given Trump’s public pronouncements it is likely he will not accept defeat in the November 3 election. The country will then descend even further into what Romney calls a “hate-filled morass” — but the main international anxiety concerns control of nuclear weapons. Is this unstable man in the White House going to be allowed to continue to wield his present authority to start a nuclear war?

It is not surprising that the world is “watching America with abject horror”, and it must be hoped that there is planning proceeding in world capitals concerning the range of Trump intentions.

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The Double De-Coupling

The defining event of this post-Covid era (whomsoever wins in the U.S. elections), will likely be the U.S. de-coupling from China – Tech de-coupling of telecoms (from Huawei’s 5G); de-coupling from Chinese media and chat platforms; the purging of all China tech from the U.S. microchip ecosystem; the disconnecting of China from internet, from app stores, from undersea cables; and from access to U.S. cloud-based data storage systems – under Pompeo’s Clean Network programme.  This represents the first heavy artillery barrage to a prolonged, and mud-laden, trench-warfare ahead. This is not Cold War, but a reversion to an earlier era that then ended with hot war – when policy-makers (and markets) famously failed to appreciate the rising danger that was accreting during the sleepy-summer hiatus that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, and the outbreak of the First World War, five weeks later. Diplomats of course understood that two heavily-armed alliances were on potential a collision course, but there had been episodes of sabre-rattling for several years before, whose failure to come to a head had induced a sense that the status quo would extend indefinitely. Opinion then had been influenced by Norman Angell’s 1909 best-seller, The Great Illusion, arguing that war had become impossible, because global trade and capital flows were too closely interlinked.

What they did not understand at that earlier moment was that the circumstances of mid-1914 (the Sarajevo moment) seemed so propitious both for Germany to aspire to empire, and for Britain to believe that it could quash it utterly.  Just as circumstances are believed – by some in Washington – to be serendipitous today.

Trump et al seem convinced that the U.S. can use its financial and trade muscle – whilst America still predominates – to crush China’s rise, contain Russia, and arm-twist Europe into tech vassalage.  The Balkan war in the early 20th century locked Germany’s fickle ally Austria-Hungary into Germany’s greater fight against Russia.  And today, Pompeo hopes to lock (fickle) Europe into America’s containment of Russia. The Nordstream threats and the Navalny scam are just some of Pompeo’s ‘levers’.

Pompeo’s Clean Network assault is today’s ‘Sarajevo moment’.  Policy-makers, and markets, remain blasé (as in 1914, when markets awoke to the risks, only in August, on the outbreak of war).  By late January next year, the U.S. is very likely to be paralysed in an intractable, possibly violent, constitutional crisis – and in all-out tech war with China.  By then, Europe and America are likely to be in full recession, as Coronavirus fires up for the winter.

Tech de-coupling is not explicitly military, yet nor is it system-neutral: Who it is that sucks up our data, and then mines it via algorithms, to know what we think, what we feel, and do, precisely has the power to shape our society socially and politically.  The point here is that our data – were we to remain in the U.S. digital sphere – is about to be used and shaped, in a polarized, adversarial manner.  And with the drums of war beating, inevitably comes the call for public full commitment.

It is obvious that, with the Clean ‘Fortress America’ project, Pompeo is taking Antonio Gramsci’s thesis that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political struggle – and is inverting it.  Thus, instead of culture being the site of revolutionary action against an élite (per Gramsci), U.S. social net-platforms, cleansed of non-western rivals, become precisely the site where the system reasserts itself – neutering the possibility of political resistance via its most powerful weapons: big platform algorithmic and MSM demonisation of China (i.e. the ‘China Plague’) and Russia (‘assassination of its dissidents’).  These can be the means by which a largely war-adverse Europe can be turned against China and Russia, in the name of advancing its ‘universal’ liberal values.

There is however, another equally significant de-coupling edging its way ahead:  “Russia has been watching with growing disquiet that Germany is in another historical transition”, Ambassador Bhadrakumar writes, “that holds disturbing parallels with the transition from Bismarck in the pre-World War 1 European setting … To illustrate the change sweeping over the German ideology, in an interview with the weekly magazine Die Zeit in July, the German Defence Minister (who is also the acting chairwoman of the ruling CDU) stressed that it is “high time” to discuss “how Germany must position itself in the world in the future”. She said, Bhadrakumar continues, that Germany is “expected to show leadership, not only as an economic power”, but also in “collective defence … it concerns a strategic view of the world, and ultimately it concerns the question of whether we want to actively shape the global order.”  “Plainly put, the German voice is no longer the voice of pacifism, the Ambassador concludes”.

Kramp-Karrenbauer said “the claim of the current Russian leadership” to advocate their interests “very aggressively” must be “confronted with a clear position: We are well-fortified, and in case of doubt, ready to defend ourselves. We see what Russia is doing and we will not let the Russian leadership get away with it”. “Suffice to say”, Bhadrakumar summarises, “seventy-five years after the end of World War 2, German imperialism is stirring — and, [its élites] once again, targeting Russia … Berlin plays a leading role in the western offensive against Russia and leads the NATO battlegroup in Lithuania. Germany and the U.S. are also working closely together on NATO moves against Russia. Germany is the most important staging area for NATO units deployed at the Eastern European border with Russia. And the German media is awash with opinion demanding that the NATO commitment should now finally be fulfilled and military spending increased to 2 percent of GDP”.

The well-connected, Carnegie Moscow bureau chief, Dmitri Trenin, writes in a similar vein: “Berlin is ending the era launched by Gorbachev of a trusting and friendly relationship with Moscow. Russia, for its part, no longer expects anything from Germany, and therefore does not feel obliged to take into account its opinion or interests … One can only imagine how Putin reacted to Merkel’s announcement that Navalny had been poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent. A stab in the back is the mildest reaction that comes to mind”. Trenin writes: “Thirty years ago, German reunification seemed to be not only a historic reconciliation, but also a guarantee of future friendly relations and close cooperation between two peoples and states. Now that, too, has become a thing of the past … Russia is also embarking on a new chapter. The situation is accordingly becoming both simpler and more risky: The Kremlin is unlikely to take any drastic action immediately, but will from now on view Germany as being controlled by the United States.  [And] as for the United States, Russia has long been engaged in a zero-sum hybrid war with it, in which there are fewer and fewer inhibitive factors left”. Merkel’s generation of German politicians are staunchly ‘Atlanticist’, but only in the ‘liberal way’ – as she herself is.  That is, they are committed to upholding the ‘universal liberal value system’. This places her, of course, at loggerheads with Trump; yet paradoxically, that makes the German leadership that much more susceptible to U.S. manipulation on China and Russia (which are now fully bi-partisan issues in Washington) – since, as Samuel Huntington noted, “universalism is the [useful] ideology of the West for confronting other cultures”.  Shades of 1914, when Austria-Hungary was locked into the greater fight with Russia, in a similar fashion! It is not hard to see the German élites’ bottom line: they are counting on a Biden win. 

Norbert Röttgen, chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, and a candidate for the leadership of the CDU, put it this way: “Should Joe Biden win, I would expect his government to return to a partnership based on rational thinking and cooperation” i.e. the Euro-élites are counting on the return to ‘business as usual’.  It won’t be though – the ‘old normal’ is well behind us. European Council President, Charles Michel, spoke this week about how the EU can achieve ‘strategic autonomy’: The EU “wants to be stronger, more autonomous, and firmer”. The EU, Michel continued, is about to develop an “open model with greater awareness of our strength, with more realism, and perhaps less naivety. We have faith in the virtues of free and open economies, never in protectionism … But from now on, we will better enforce the level playing field, in a market open to those who respect its standards”.

Oh yes?  Well, this may be fine for minnow states to be treated as vassals seeking an opening with Empire’s good grace for its manufactures, but it won’t work for tech, the New Economy, U.S., or the China-Russia axis. (Never mind that hypocrisy that the ‘level playing field’ is not a form of EU protectionism). The U.S. is pulling the commanding heights of tech and its standards and taking them ‘back home’.  China will continue to be expelled from the western digital sphere – as far as the U.S. is able.  Wolfgang Munchau reports that the German coalition now has approved a de facto Huawei ban. It’s goal is to kill Huawei through full-force application of German bureaucracy. And Russia is de-coupling from Europe to work more closely with China, (thanks to Merkel and her cohorts).

But what then?  Europe has no substitute to Huawei. 5G networks effectively represent the nervous system connecting the political, strategic, military, informative, economic, financial, industrial and infrastructural dimensions at a personal, local, national, international and transnational level.  5G networks, together with the exponential progresses in computing power and advances in AI, are the transformative agency of the New Economy.  The point here is latency: the ability to integrate differing streams of data all together, and with virtually no delay.  It is key not just to everyday ways of life, but to defence systems too. Machine Learning is a specific subset of AI that trains machines. It trains AI to learn and adapt, and without the latency of human-driven decisions, efficiency can be at the forefront. Machine Vision: From autonomous cars and drones to robots and so much more of today’s cutting-edge technologies, they all share a dependence on machine vision. That means these machines must be able to “see” to perform their tasks in the physical world.

And all these need 5G to reduce latency. The U.S. hasn’t got it.  And China leads. It leads on Big Data and on AI. Yes, the U.S. leads on semiconductors or ‘chips’, but for how long? China simply won’t allow itself to be expelled from the global semiconductor market.  IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei are explaining, as Pepe Escobar reports, what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5 nm (billionth of a metre) to 3 nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. China’s breakthroughs have involved a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in this switch, and is nearly ready to transpose its lab work into industrial production. To whom then is China turning for tech co-operation?  It is not Germany.  As Asia Times’ David Goldman notes, “the cumulative impact of a series of sanctions on Russia has pushed Russia toward a strategic alliance with China, including close cooperation with China on 5G telecommunications and semiconductor R&D. Russia’s economy may be the size of Italy’s, but its brain is bigger than its body: It graduates more engineers per annum than the United States, and they are very well trained”.

And so – back to our ‘Sarajevo moment’.  Pompeo has pulled the trigger on the Arch Duke. Dynamics have been set in motion. Yet we remain stuck in the interregnum waiting on the U.S. – whilst Euro-leaders count that Biden must win, and ‘normality’ be restored. In the early twentieth century, Britain’s attempt to rip-apart global supply lines – to preserve its own; and to deny Germany its external links, effectively channeled resurgent German ambitions eastwards, across the plain of Europe, and ultimately, to a drive on Russia. It ended with war and economic depression.

Today, the U.S. demands that Europe sever from Russia and China, yet America has entered into internal crisis – and even at the best of times, cannot substitute for the Asian axis in most tech spheres.  It would be hubris for Europe to imagine it can build a New Economy in rivalry to the Big Two, and absent their tech and diplomatic strategic co-operation.  For Europe to try to sit out the present ‘phony war’ like the Grand Panjandrum, waiting for tech suitors to come to it, is no strategy, but rather a receipt for Depression. It is not a great prospect … for European peoples struggling, not with the chimaera of Euro-empire, but with trying to manage their lives in difficult Corona times.  One cannot help but notice that European politics at the national level is all domestic (school openings, virus restrictions and shrinking economies), whilst far-away Brussels fantasises about building a stronger, more autonomous, European ‘empire’.

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Take Pity on Britain Because It Is Approaching Catastrophe

Countless millions in Britain are suffering economically and/or medically from the effects of the government’s erratic whack-a-mole approach to the Covid-19 crisis. On the other hand, criminal gangs and some very rich citizens have prospered greatly from the effects of the pandemic, and morally it is difficult to draw a line between these elements of the community. Scams by criminals have included fake websites offering supposed cures for the virus, and bogus claims for job support. There have been many news reports about such things but these are just the ones that have surfaced because their originators have been inefficient or unlucky. There are countless other scams out there, with evil people making a lot of money by defrauding innocent citizens. It was ever thus, but the charity Age UK has listed a number of particularly squalid con-jobs aimed specifically at cheating the old and vulnerable, and when one examines them it is difficult not to doubt that human beings are indeed far from being nature’s last word in moral development.

Which brings us to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest person and a vulgar creep who was honoured by being made a knight in 2018 for “Services to Business and Investment”.

Britains honours system is discredited and devoid of utility. It is officially intended that a distinction such as a knighthood or the Order of the British Empire (patently an anachronism) is given to those who have made a “major contribution” to the nation at a national or local level. Deterioration set in during the prime ministership of David Lloyd George in the 1920s, when a series of squalid shenanigans devalued the system. A conman called Maundy Gregory sold honours, with a knighthood, for example, being available for the equivalent of half a million dollars in today’s money. Official inquiries cleared people (they always do), and the system continued, with lots of skunks being given honours for indefinable services. On 25 September it was reported that Britain’s richest person had ditched the country that had honoured him for “Services to Business” and that “Ratcliffe, a petrochemicals magnate with an estimated £17.5 billion fortune, has… changed his tax domicile from Hampshire to Monaco, the sovereign city-state that is already home to many of the UK’s richest people. It has been estimated that the move will save him £4 billion in tax payments. People who live in Monaco for at least 183 days a year do not pay any income or property taxes…”

There have been several periods when Britain was greatly in need of money for reasons of national survival, but this time the situation is desperate. The Financial Times noted the Bank of England’s “forecast that the coronavirus crisis will push the UK economy into its deepest recession in 300 years…” and it is obvious the country needs every penny it can get in order to weather the present economic typhoon and try to get back on the rails of development and progress. So it’s just the right time for Britain’s richest man to conjure up a scheme whereby he can avoid paying billions that his country so urgently needs.

The casual obscenity of this man’s greed would be entirely his own business (used in the widest sense) were it not for the fact that if he condescended to pay tax in the country that has provided him with his fortune, he would not suffer in the slightest. He would still have his bling-bling yacht and his flashy mansions confetti-scattered over England (and now Monaco). He would still have his four luxury jet aircraft, each of which cost over 50 million dollars. His lifestyle is redolent of his immense wealth and would not change in the slightest were he to live in Britain and pay his taxes, and unfortunately he exemplifies the moral tenor of the country’s rich and influential top dogs : it’s all for me and nothing for them.

Which leads to the British government, headed shakily by Boris Johnson, a cartoon figure with the morals of an alley-cat on happy pills whose accession to leadership of the Conservative Party was the result of a campaign of squalid deviousness. The Conservative Party has a majority of eighty in Parliament but is lurching from crisis to crisis because of ham-fisted management and the machinations of unelected “special advisers” (known as Spads) and other highly-placed political appointees who are paid by the taxpayer and wield power without responsibility. The antics of Johnson’s chief Spad, a repulsive scumbag called Cummings, are well documented and give a fair indication of the government’s ethos, but there are other signals that are equally alarming.

A former Australian politician, one Tony Abbott, has been appointed Britain’s international trade envoy, a post of considerable power and importance, given that he will be required to negotiate international trade agreements from the UK’s position of post-Brexit weakness. His competence to do this is open to question, but the main doubt about his selection by the British government is not his lack of technical ability but his totalitarian convictions.

It is barely credible in this time of world plague crisis that any prominent individual would declare that the media had spread “virus hysteria” and that people should be allowed to make their own decisions. Abbott regrets that governments around the world have policies designed to save “almost every life at almost any cost” because instead of trying to save lives these governments should behave “like health economists, trained to pose uncomfortable questions about a level of deaths we might have to live with.” He costed the value of life in cash terms and announced that “if the average age of those who would have died is 80, even with roughly 10 years of expected life left, that’s still $200,000 per quality life year or substantially beyond what governments are usually prepared to pay for life-saving drugs.” In other words, Abbott and his disciples believe that older people aren’t worth much and should not be protected from the Covid-19 virus and in order to save money should just be allowed to die. His pitiless stance has no doubt been welcomed by those in the British hierarchy who intend to introduce a system whereby refugees seeking asylum in the UK will be confined in processing centres “offshore” in small desolate islands or disused ferries or cruise ships (as in Australia which operates several establishments resembling the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay). The inhumanity of such a suggestion might pass belief in the minds of real people but is consistent with the convictions of many in power in Britain.

In the Covid emergency the UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe and is the worst hit of all major world economies. It is in the middle of complex Brexit negotiations with the European Union, and will suffer even more when its exit is final. As always, it will be the poorest and least technically or academically qualified who will suffer most, but, like the old people who aren’t worth much, the poor and underprivileged do not figure on the screens of the rich and influential. And they can’t go to Monaco.

Britain is on the skids, economically and morally, and is approaching catastrophe. Certainly there is blame to be allocated — but what the real people need is support and guidance from a considerate and responsible government. They won’t get it; and all we can do is pity them.

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Peace without victory

Some European nations (such as the French or the Poles) share many historical episodes with the Armenians. However, it is also possible to point to other moments from centuries ago, when the same nations had special, even allied relations with the Turks. But can this determine contemporary geopolitics? Of course not, because these are events from the past, of course, to be used for propaganda and to influence emotions, if concious European policy required them to be stimulated, whether for cooperation with Armenia or Turkey. However, such episodes must by no means determine the establishment of today's and future intrests. Sentiments are tools, not determiants of politics.

Meanwhile, in the entire Karabakh crisis, there are too many emotions, screams, and propaganda. So much that it brings to mind another state and nation, which forces obedience to its reasons by shouting and moral blackmail. Especially that while browsing the superficially excited pro-Armenian Internet, isn't it striking how similar Armenian propaganda is to the Israeli one? The same emotionality, the same tone of "historical justice", threatening with "another holocaust", and invoking "thousands years old rights to lands" (the more absurd that also thousands of years ago, Armenians left Transcaucasia, spreading over the entire ancient and medieval Middle East, and the areas of Karabakh were re-populated by them only in the 1870s, with the support of the Russian authorities, but also with the consent of Azeri and Lezgin peoples, who were then the hosts of these lands). Sure, it is interesting that someone has finally decided to plagiarize the masters of propaganda, but not yet a reason to succumb to these tricks. Both for copies and for the original.

There Are No Saints In Geopolitics. Facts defend against one-sided perception of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Let’s remember 25 February 1992, when Armenian troops encircled the town of Xocalı, where then stayed over 4,000 refugees from the rest of the Karabakh, being cleared of Azeris, Turks, and Lezgins. Although the Armenians agree to the evacuation of the city, they then attacked the refugee column. During the all-night raid organized by the Armenians, and then mass executions, 613 people were murdered, including 106 women and 83 Azerbaijani children. In fact, this war was and is terrible. And it is not true that one side was only sacred and the other only genocidal. The only way to end this nightmare is through a permanent peace based on compromise. And as it happens with compromises, both fighting nations will probably be dissatisfied with it. But thanks to this, it can and must prove to be permanent. Peace without victory. This is the only possible scenario for Karabakh and the entire South Caucasus.

Unfortunately, the de-escalation of the conflict is made more difficult by the seemingly incomprehensible actions of Armenia. The attack on Ganja is an obvious attempt to bring the conflict out of Karabakh, provoke Baku to retaliate on the territory of Armenia, and thus lead to a casus belli within the meaning of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Yerevan plays with matches all the time, crying to the whole world that is burned. The question is what for? After all, no one is calling for a repeat of the pogroms of Armenians (or anyone else). The thing is, however, that everyone can feel sympathy for whomever they wish to, but no European interest makes us engage in this conflict at all, including on the side of Armenia. On the contrary, in the interests of Europe, for several reasons, there is rather a lasting peace in the Transcaucasia, and this is not possible without concessions from both sides, especially Yerevan/Stepanakert, which must finally withdraw from at least part of the buffer zone, and Armenians also perfectly know it.

In turn, pacification is a task that may, and even must, check the reality of the Astana triangle. Of course, it was created and worked to solve completely different issues (Syrian and more broadly Middle Eastern), but this is how it happens that life suggests new tasks for proven formats. For while Russia's leading role in the negotiation process is recognized especially by Azerbaijan, but also by Armenia (although not necessarily honestly in Yerevan…), the events of this year have confirmed that both the Kazan formula and Lavrov's plan for the region are at an impasse. And this, in turn, means that Iran, a traditional ally of Armenia, but also having more than proper relations with Azerbaijan, should get involved in solving the problem, apart from Moscow and Ankara.

The key to peace in the Transcaucasus is therefore the Armenia-Azerbaijan-Iran-Russia-Turkey format, with the rejection of American-French meddling. It is therefore also a test, especially for Russian diplomacy, with the key question whether it will be able to break away with Westernisation sentiments and the completely unnecessary, even harmful to Moscow, tendency to build some concerts of powers only with Western states. Because having the key to the peace, it is also possible to open the door to power. And its sources are in Eurasia, not Euro-Atlantis.

Flyktingströmmens off-knapp

Sedan attackerna den 11 september 2001 har USA:s krig tvingat minst 37 miljoner människor, och kanske upptill så många som 59 miljoner, på flykt. Rapporten som bekräftar dessa siffror finns i Brown Universitys Costs of War Project, har lagt fokus på de orimliga kostnaderna i form av mänskligt lidande som det "globala kriget mot terror" orsakat civila. Rapporten uppskattar att åtta av de mest våldsamma krig som USA:s regering har initierat sedan 11 september; de i Afghanistan, Irak, Libyen, Pakistan, Filippinerna, Somalia, Syrien och Jemen har förorsakat 8 miljoner flyktingar och 29 miljoner internflyktingar. De totalt 37 miljoner fördrivna är totalt mer än de som fördrivits av något annat krig sedan början av 1900-talet, utom möjligen andra världskriget. The Costs of War Project, gör en fenomenal insats i att belysa de ofta okända kostnaderna för den amerikanska regeringens 19 år långa terror mot terrorstrategi. 

Naturligtvis är det komplexa konflikter där många aktörer och i många fall inte främst amerikanska aktörer som har begått det våld som har fördrivit människor. Men den amerikanska regeringen har spelat en obestridligt systemisk roll i samtliga konflikter.  Militärt stöd, bidrag till militärt stöd och informationsstöd. Poängen med rapporten är att tiotals miljoner har fördrivits av de krig som den amerikanska regeringen har bedrivit sedan 2001; för att bekämpa terrorism, som dessutom bara växt till följd av dessa aggressioner. Bara i Afghanistan och Irak nådde det totala antalet fördrivna i befolkningen 14,5 miljoner. Tänk också 3,7 miljoner fördrivna pakistanier; 1,7 miljoner fördrivna filippinare; 4,2 miljoner fördrivna somalier; 4,4 miljoner fördrivna jemeniter; 1,2 miljoner fördrivna libyer; och 7,1 miljoner fördrivna syrier. I slutändan kan inget antal förmedla denna folkomflyttnings skada. För individer, familjer, städer, städer, regioner och hela länder har krigsflyktingarna orsakat oberäknelig skada fysiskt, socialt, emotionellt och ekonomiskt. Vi måste alltså fokusera på att avsluta kriget mot terrorn för att stoppa flyktingströmmar.