© Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping chairs a China-Africa leaders' meeting in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019.
Chinese President Xi Jinping chairs a China-Africa leaders' meeting in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019.
We can argue all we like about how the new international order will look but one thing is clear: it will not resemble any previous incarnation. History does not tend to repeat itself, which always means that recourse to historical analogies remains a sign of intellectual unpreparedness for contemporary events.
It's the same today - any attempt to find a firm basis for comparison between the past and the processes and phenomena of international life that we currently observe is inevitably confronted with convincing arguments as to why this or that analogy is not appropriate. It was even difficult in the past, when the main issue was the changing power capabilities of a relatively small group of states. It is all the more impossible to find examples now, in a completely changed international context. And it is very likely that paying attention to the context will help us to better visualize the contours of the order that will emerge in a few years, if not over decades.
The most important revelation of the first year of the open military-political confrontation between Russia and the West is that international politics is being shaped by a significant group of states that do not seek to align themselves with the banners of the opposing sides. Moreover, they are pursuing their own active policies, which are not entirely comfortable for either Russia or its adversaries. On the other hand, since Moscow is not the initiator of tensions with the United States and its allies and does not pursue an aggressive policy towards them, the restrained behavior of most of the world's countries becomes a factor that significantly influences the situation in favor of Russian interests. Except for a few powers, the majority of the world's states cannot directly support Russia either. As a leading Chinese expert on international relations rightly pointed out in an interview, Russia is going through a conflict with the entire West "practically alone."
However, regardless of the extent to which the behavior of the so-called world majority conforms to Russian or Western expectations, the very fact of its involvement in international affairs has become quite clear. The same is true of the lack of intention on the part of this multitude of countries to align themselves with the US, China or Russia in a future great-power confrontation. But this does not negate the need to understand the motives and driving factors of such a significant and influential group of states - a structural feature of contemporary international politics.
There may be considerable scope for theoretical and applied reasoning in this regard. The importance of this area of intellectual inquiry is linked to the fact that the behavior of the majority is the most important factor among those that will determine the structure of the future international order. The stances of the great powers, especially the nuclear states, is more or less clear: they will ensure their own security by relying on their unique military capabilities. In addition, the closeness of Russia and China and their lack of objective clashes of interest also provide a degree of certainty. The same goes for the United States and its European allies: with dwindling resources, they will be on the defensive about all their post-World War II privileges. But we cannot say the same about the world majority. This is why, incidentally, many respected colleagues are keen to base their assessments on the one relatively stable factor that represents a coherent community of Western interests and values.
However, it remains unclear to us how this large group of countries will behave in relation to the nature of the particular conflict on which they are expected to take a position. The lack of an answer to this question means that we continue to have to make very shaky assumptions. We are currently dealing with a confrontation in which the opposing sides are comparable military powers - Russia and the United States, although the latter is acting through intermediaries. Russia is also a major player in the global markets for energy, food and a range of other commodities for which demand is stable. Standing behind Russia is China, which, like Moscow, is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and wields considerable influence in the world.
In other words, we have a unique example of a struggle in which the forces of the adversaries are roughly comparable, although the superiority of the West, in many areas, is considerable. And we do not know how the countries of the world majority would behave if the US and Europe launched an offensive against a weaker opponent - Iran or another country of comparable size, for example. It is therefore impossible to speculate on the extent to which the assertiveness of those countries which ignore US orders now would have manifested itself in a different situation. This could be important in the future, as new conflicts involving a major nuclear power cannot be ruled out.
In general, it is difficult to determine how much of the behavior of most countries is restrained by their own capabilities. It is generally accepted that this has become the main determinant of the actions of a wide range of states, from the wealthy monarchies of the Gulf to those of Southeast Asia. But there is no denying that their degree of dependence on the infrastructure of the outgoing liberal world order, led by the United States, remains very high. Undoubtedly, the dramatic events of 2022 have set in motion the aspirations of many medium and small powers to gain practical tools for their autonomy. But they still have a long way to go.
Perhaps this is why the West believes that, if it succeeds against its main adversaries, Russia and China, it can easily regain control over everyone else. And until the comparative individual capabilities of small and medium-sized states become serious enough to allow them to be truly self-reliant, Western self-confidence will continue to push the US and Western Europe into confrontational behavior.
At the moment, the majority of the world's countries are seeking short-term gains from the general turmoil caused by the struggle between the great powers. But the extent to which such tactical gains can form the basis of a long-term strategy is unknown.
Any resultant chaos will inevitably be replaced by a more or less systematic engagement between the main adversaries. And we do not know how countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam or Pakistan will be able to defend their independence when the international environment is less conducive to it. Some of them may indeed be motivated by the values that Moscow and Beijing are now proclaiming: equal rights, equal benefits and the authority of international law for all. But it cannot be ruled out that the rising powers will find it harder to defend these gains as the world becomes increasingly divided into major warring regions.
That said, perhaps the great powers will emerge from the acute phase of their confrontation so weakened that they will not be able to dictate their will to the others.
Timofey Bordachev is the Valdai Club Programme Director
Welcome to Absurdistan is read in all 50 States and in 47 countries.
"Some of us have been saying this for a very long time: green will bring down the world. Green creates a vicious circle, a term you may remember from Economics 101. It is when the serpent eats itself, no wealth is created and collapse results. That is what we are doing with ESG, with carbon taxes, with the forced adoption of unreliable vertiginously expensive green energy. It has skewed every single market. No one is investing in sound enterprise, and anything once sound is a Jenga tower, unstable, rotting from within. This. This is what threatens to bring down the world.
Green is built on subsidies. And not just government subsidy. Every mutual fund, every hedge fund, every multinational and every local or national corporation has a green monster within preventing innovative investments, sucking profits and growth. Every local, regional and state government leaks millions to green morons promising to “bring sustainable prosperity”. The only prosperity is theirs. They fiddle around in lakes and watercourses, producing ‘studies’, all of which are hysterical and exaggerated. They muck around in forests, buying as much as possible, shut them down, never visit again, leaving them to desertify. They buy farms and ranches, leaving them to rot. They are termites, eating us alive.
These outfits have burrowed into every level of government and every ministry. They are purely extractive. They do not produce anything of value. They leech. They move in and out of government. When in government, they identify sources of funds to plunder once out of government. In 2015, I did a cross-ministry analysis of just how much money these folks take from the government annually. It is in the hundreds of billions in the US alone. From private foundations they take more billions. All this money is used to shut down economic activity.
Last week was one of those weeks where an entire decade happened, but what was most interesting to me was the meeting in Moscow between two putative commies who have decided to ally themselves against the West’s suicide mission, along with the BRICS, adding in Saudi and Iran, where China actually brokered peace. I mean, come on, impressive.
Indeed, the economy of imaginary wealth is being inevitably replaced by the economy of real valuables and hard assets.” - Putin “
From now on, our currency is going to be based on natural resources”, says Putin. He has been buying gold hand over fist via the money he has been making from natural gas. That currency, by the way, will be stable, unlike ours which is collapsing. For the next 50 years, the BRICS will ascend and we will fall, until we become satellites of whatever strong man decides to mess with us.
Here is the nasty little secret that lies at the heart of environmentalism. It has been long captured by plutocrats and WEFers, who use it to take resources once thought to belong to the people, to everyone, to use in order to innovate and develop. This freedom and access, and only this was the source of prosperity in the United States. It powered the entire world. It made America the beacon, the lighthouse of the world. It produced strong healthy brilliant young people who performed one feat of innovation, athleticism, and creation after another. All those kids today are working on ever more vicious ways to surveil, control and suppress via AI.
And the interior is being cleared of people, businesses, farms, ranches, working forests, mines, and oil and gas installations.
In pursuit of 2030 goals, Biden’s agents are busily acquiring hundreds of millions of acres from private owners, from state and regional land banks, which they will then lock down. Many ranchers, including the heroic Wayne Hage, believe that government is taking that land to use as collateral for its massive debt to the Band of International Settlements. The only people who will be able to use those resources are multinationals who pay a fee to government and to the BIS to pay down the loans. No citizens will be able to access those resources to make money for themselves, to build families and businesses and towns and cities. The environmental movement has, within 40 years, returned us to serfdom, where we eat what we are told to eat, go where we are told to go, take whatever medicine they want to give us, and eventually, fight when we are told to fight.
The environmental movement is so evil, it has twisted ethical standards to the point where we are able to kill each other with impunity. Their PR is so strong, so invasive, that every school child now believes there are too many people (this is nonsense), and population must be drastically drawn down (a genocide unrivalled in history). Every adult secretly fears this is true. This appalling lie has created a culture of death. What are the effects of this thinking, that life is no longer sacred, but a threat?
Our culture is being deliberately broken by mass immigration, its purpose to break us, to burden and impoverish us. Our food is poisoned. I buy only local if possible now, if not non-GMO, organic, from small batch providers. For decades I thought chemtrails wer conspiracy. No longer. Our air is filled with God only knows what poisons, what nasty little bits of metals meant to “reflect back the heat of the sun”. The evidence of brain cancer and 5G is hard to ignore, despite the blanketing of the internet with propaganda disguised as refutation. I believe nothing from health authorities after Covid. After Covid, I view the public health system as executioner and the hospitals as killing fields. If I am sick now, I go to a naturopath. When I am old, I plan to take my chances in Mexico or El Salvador where people are still kind, still allied to goodness. This week, Tom Renz of RenzLaw released a video of a whistle-blowing nurse/pharmacist who has a recording of nurses saying they know they are killing people with the Covid drug protocols, and then doing it . What on God’s green earth happened to nurses that they would comply with such an order? But they did. Renz claims this is systemic, and is in court right now trying to stop it.
The left and public service have blown through so much money that the government can no longer fund the aging of the boomer generation - our unfunded liabilities to that generation are over $200 Trillion - so they have to encourage us to die faster. I haven’t had a cancer screening for something in my genetic history for five years, my doctor is oblivious. I can no longer see her in person. Nurses report they have been told to extend the time between screenings, to hand out sedatives and anti-depressants without question, to stop recommending weight loss, nutrition or exercise. A friend writes from Toronto: “Everyone is choosing MAID.” (the assisted dying program). It is typical that people in Toronto, which is full-on demonic, would be choosing to die. They kill more babies in Toronto than are being born. Worldwide, half of all of us who die annually, die in the womb. Environmentalism is so evil our entire culture is expressing death. Our leadership, without exception, is death’s handmaiden.
World-wide, half of all annual deaths occur in the womb.
Some estimate that as many as 10,000,000 illegals have entered the US since Biden. Last year, in Canada, we admitted 1,000,000 legal immigrants, though illegals pass through the borders in a stream all year round. We are a very small country, the size of Michigan, and strung out. We are being replaced, slowly but surely by disparate races who have no cohesion, or purpose other than to take our towns and cities and overwhelm our ethics, religion, and history. In Canada, a once uber-peaceful country, murder is common and women are raped and killed and stalked and you can only find evidence of this on Rumble or TikTok. In the US, on Tik-Tok, pretty women give lessons on how to go to big box stores on their own, or how to enter drive-throughs, because so many have been robbed and raped in the suburbs of America. Our leaders want us hopeless, easy to manipulate. The middle classes of the US, Canada and western Europe are too independent, too hard to suppress, too hard to kill. Our entertainment is violent and our arts hate-filled. Nothing is uplifting or hopeful. Our culture is being deliberately broken.
One can argue that the malignant effects of the digital economy arrived as a result of the environmental business’s destruction of civic peace and civic growth. “Sustainable” means stasis. Sustainable means stagnant. Third life, or the metaverse, is the only place you can be free.
Given environmentalists’ prevention of growth. the only way for the government and business to make money is to institute modern prison camps, or 15 minute cities. There they can harvest data for money. As a marker of how very absurd life in the west has become, the freezing far northern Edmonton, because “climate change”, has elected to become a 15 minute city. Edmonton has always been populated by the extractive left who live off public money or are heavily unionized. They are docile as long as their leadership is left-wing. Across that city, a massive multi-national has been installing new lighting at a cost of more than a billion, those poles and traffic lights will track every move made by Edmonton’s people. The citizens of Edmonton are paying to build their own prison camp. They will be harvested for data and both government and business will make money thereby. Frankly, with the immigration overwhelming their city and the fact that we are shutting down our only heavy industry, oil extraction, upon which one-third of the Canadian economy depends, they are going to need that level of surveillance, because crime is going to become the only reliable employment.
The road to prosperity is so simple that your grandfather with a sixth grade education could guide us. The only way to create economic growth is to allow for all and any innovation, and accept that creative destruction comes along with it. That ‘sustainable” is directly opposed to both innovation and creative destruction. That property rights, that which a man or woman earns with the fruit of their labor, is inviolable, it is the only route to universal prosperity. The government must give back land to the people. There can be no ‘court’ party, where people vie for government favors. Opportunity is open to all, based only on ability. A level playing field is everything. Political power is distributed widely and centralization is established to maintain law and order.
Only people with such rights will be willing to invest and increase productivity. A businessman who expects his output to be stolen, expropriated or entirely taxed away will have little incentive to work, let alone any incentive to undertake investments and innovations. But such rights must exist for the majority of people in society ¹ . This, and only this, creates a virtuous society.
The environmental movement has destroyed a once virtuous society. It has destroyed hope and will create an unimaginable hell-scape for our children. It must face its own creative destruction.
Why should you believe me? I did not go to Oxbridge or the Ivies, I have no Ph’d, I am not famous or allied with a famous organization. But I have studied and written about the movement for 20 years. Unlike its other critics, I live among them, and watch them destroy everything, every person and business they target and they target the successful and unprotected. If you are super-rich, you skate free. If you are on the rise, they take you down. Where I live we are 90% undeveloped but we have no housing for hospital or school workers or even check-out clerks in the grocery stores. Old women and single mothers live in their cars because the movement prevents affordable housing. Our average age is 67, there are few children, there is no vitality, people drag themselves around arrayed in shades of grey and brown looking miserable and old beyond their years, their backdrop the most spectacular landscapes... (rest below)