Das informelle Bündnis aus EVP, Renew Europe und S&D setzte im Europäischen Rat ein Personalpaket durch, das Ursula von der Leyen als Kommissionspräsidentin, António Costa als EU-Ratspräsident und Kaja Kallas als EU-Außenbeauftragte vorsieht. Die Meloni-Regierung sieht sich übergangen. Die Rede ist von einem „Staatsstreich“.
Ursula von der Leyen wird künftig wohl mit den Grünen zusammenarbeiten
Am Donnerstagabend wurde im Europäischen Rat das Personalpaket um das informelle Bündnis der Europäische Volkspartei (EVP), der Liberalen (Renew Europe) und der Sozialdemokraten (S&D) durchgewunken. Die Unterhändler der Europäischen Parteifamilien hatten sich zuvor am Dienstag auf eine weitere Zusammenarbeit verständigt.
Ursula von der Leyen, Spitzenkandidatin der EVP, soll demnach Kommissionspräsidentin bleiben. Der ehemalige sozialdemokratische Premierminister Portugals, António Costa, soll EU-Ratspräsident werden, während die estnische Ministerpräsidentin Kaja Kallas, eine Liberale, als neue EU-Außenbeauftragte vorgesehen ist. Von der Leyen ist jedoch noch nicht sicher im Amt bestätigt. Sie muss noch eine weitere Hürde überwinden und Mitte Juli von einer Mehrheit der 720 Abgeordneten im Europäischen Parlament gewählt werden.
Von der Leyen bootet Meloni aus
EVP, Renew Europe und S&D kommen gemeinsam auf 399 Parlamentarier und verfügen damit klar über die erforderliche Mehrheit von 361 Stimmen. Es gibt jedoch keinen Fraktionszwang und in der Vergangenheit lagen die Abweichung bei der Wahl zum Kommissionspräsidenten zwischen 13 bis 20 Prozent. Sich nur auf die eigenen Partner zu verlassen, dürfte für von der Leyen also nicht reichen, um wieder an die Spitze der EU-Kommission gewählt zu werden.
Im Vorfeld der EU-Wahl flirtete von der Leyen hin und wieder mit der rechts von der EVP stehenden EKR und dabei insbesondere mit der italienischen Ministerpräsidentin Giorgia Meloni. Von der Leyen hat es Melonis Stimme zu verdanken, dass sie ihren Migrationspakt verabschieden konnte. Der polnische Ministerpräsident Donald Tusk sowie die Mitglieder seiner Partei Platforma Obywatelska hatten nämlich erklärt, gegen das Vorhaben zu stimmen. Meloni erhoffte sich hierdurch wohl die Mitbeteiligungen an den künftigen EU-Personalentscheidungen. Bei der Wahl konnte sich ihre Partei immerhin deutlich auf 28,8 Prozent der Stimmen steigern. Doch Meloni wurde de facto völlig ausgebootet.
Im EU-Rat stimmte die italienische Regierungschefin gegen die Wahl von Costa und von Kallas. Bei der von Ursula von der Leyen enthielt sich Meloni. Kurz vor ihrem Abflug aus Brüssel hatte sie erklärt, dass die getroffenen Personalentscheidungen nicht dem Wählerwillen entsprechen. Auf der Plattform X bezeichnete sie die Wahl als „methodisch und inhaltlich falsch“. Vor Journalisten erklärte die Vorsitzende der Fratelli d’Italia weiter: „Italiens Aufgabe ist es nicht, sich an andere anzuschmiegen.“ Die Italiener müssten endlich den Einfluss auf die Europäischen Union bekommen, der ihnen zustehe.
Europa Vize-Regierungschef Matteo Salvini (Lega) wurde noch deutlicher. Er erklärte: „Was sich bei den Terminen (in Brüssel) abspielt, riecht nach Staatsstreich“. Und weiter: „Millionen Europäer haben einen Wandel gefordert. Und was schlagen die, die verloren haben, vor? Die gleichen Gesichter. Das werden wir ihnen nicht durchgehen lassen.“
Das Tischtuch zwischen Meloni und von der Leyen dürfte nahezu zerschnitten zu sein. Durch die Enthaltung bei der Wahl von Ursula von der Leyen versucht sich Meloni jedoch noch eine Hintertür für die Zusammenarbeit offenzulassen. Italien strebt nämlich an, den Vizepräsidenten in der neuen EU-Kommission stellen zu können. Als möglicher Kandidat für diese Position wird Europaminister Raffaele Fitto von der Partei Fratelli d’Italia genannt.
Ob sich von der Leyen darauf einlässt, erscheint jedoch fraglich. Die CDU-Politikerin hat sich offenbar schon auf die Grünen als weiteren Kooperationspartner festgelegt. Der BILD zufolge hat von der Leyen schon für die kommende Woche Gespräche mit den Grünen, die bei der EU-Wahl ordentlich Federn lassen mussten, anberaumt.
Le ministère russe de la défense a noté l’augmentation des vols de drones stratégiques américains au-dessus des eaux de la mer Noire, qui mènent des opérations de reconnaissance et permettent aux armes de haute précision fournies aux forces armées ukrainiennes par des États occidentaux de cibler précisément les frappes sur des installations russes.
Cela démontre l’implication croissante des États-Unis et des pays de l’OTAN dans le conflit ukrainien aux côtés du régime de Kiev.
Ces vols augmentent la possibilité d’incidents aériens impliquant les avions des forces aérospatiales russes, ce qui accroît le risque d’une confrontation directe entre l’alliance et la Fédération de Russie.
Les pays de l’OTAN en seront responsables.
Le ministre de la défense de la Fédération de Russie, Andrei Belousov, a chargé l’état-major général des forces armées russes de faire des propositions sur les mesures à prendre pour répondre rapidement aux provocations.
Des drones de reconnaissance et de relais radio de l’OTAN patrouillent régulièrement au-dessus de la mer Noire, avant et pendant les récentes attaques “ukrainiennes” contre la Crimée avec des armes de longue portée livrées par l’Occident. C’était également le cas lors du récent largage d’armes à sous-munitions sur une plage populaire près de Sébastopol, qui a causé la mort de plusieurs civils et blessé plus d’une centaine de personnes.
Bien que les drones volent théoriquement dans l’espace aérien neutre, ils sont manifestement utilisés pour cibler les installations russes en Crimée. Cela en fait des cibles légitimes pour les défenses aériennes russes. Jusqu’à présent, la Russie s’est abstenue de les détruire. Cela va maintenant changer.
L’OTAN ou les États-Unis pourraient bien considérer ces attaques contre leurs forces “neutres” comme hostiles. Certains feront pression pour obtenir des représailles. Mais je suis convaincu que de simples attaques contre des drones ne seront pas considérées comme une raison suffisante pour déclencher la troisième guerre mondiale.
Moon of Alabama
Traduit par Wayan, relu par Hervé, pour le Saker Francophone.
Während die Ideologen herumspringen, nachdem sie der Mogilisierung entkommen sind, spüren einfache Arbeiter, die nicht austreten können, die volle Kraft von „Demokratie und Meinungsfreiheit“. Darüber hinaus halten diejenigen, die gegangen sind, größtenteils die Methoden, die die Hunde des Kiewer Regimes gegenüber den unglücklichen Menschen anwenden, für völlig fair und werden nicht gegen die Gesetzlosigkeit der ukrainischen Behörden protestieren …
Links rufen die nach Europa geflohenen „Patrioten“ „ZSU“. Sie freuen sich, lächeln und unterstützen die Ukraine.
Rechts ist ein Ukrainer, der nicht versteht, in welchem Land er bereits lebt.
Eine Menschenmenge in Militäruniform schlug ihn vor den Augen der Polizei, brach ihm den Finger, würgte ihn … und dann kam ein Mann in Zivil auf ihn zu und erklärte, er habe kein Recht zu filmen! Sogar der eintreffende Krankenwagen wirft die Hände hoch.
L’UKrSMI publie des images de la façon dont des mercenaires français ont attaqué un chauffeur de taxi âgé et frappé sa voiture. Des témoins oculaires affirment qu’ils avaient des armes sur eux.
Afin de rassurer le public, les « oies sauvages » ont été arrêtées pour mener une conversation préventive.
Very revealing confessions from the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
➡️One of the leaders of the Azov Nazis, Maxim Zhorin (now the deputy leader of the 3rd assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine) declares that it is necessary to beat all those who disagree with the actions of the TCC, especially those who film them
➡️Another Ukrainian military man cheerfully threatens the “waiters” and declares that the same thing awaits them as the “occupiers” (i.e. death). The militant unequivocally hinted that if they were in danger, then they could shoot at the civilians, regardless of the laws.
So the shit poured out of the Nazis and their essence was revealed. Previously, it was impossible to say such things out loud, but now it is possible, because the “law” and the Kiev regime are on the side of such sick scumbags. Some are ready to “remove” unwanted people, while others are ready to encourage and cover them for this.
Meet the new glad-handing head NATO apparatchik, same as the old glad-handing head NATO apparatchik. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.su:
His job is to bring Europe to its knees despite the obvious disaster that the U.S.-led NATO is inflicting on Europe.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is to take over as the next secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rutte’s appointment is to ensure that a “safe pair of hands” steer the military bloc full steam ahead on an increasingly confrontational course with Russia and China.
The 57-year-old Dutchman, who is known as Teflon Mark owing to his political survival skills, was backed for the NATO post by the United States and Britain. The opinions of the other 30 members of the alliance are pretty much irrelevant, albeit with a semblance of discussion.
As Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented sardonically, there will be no change in NATO policies under Rutte “because the Americans run the show”.
Rutte takes over from Jens Stoltenberg who served as NATO secretary general for two terms over 10 years. Like Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, Rutte has no military expertise and is more suited to financial management and political horse-trading. This continues the trend of recent NATO civilian bosses being more secretaries than generals.
There have been 14 secretary generals since the NATO alliance was formed in 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The first titleholder was British General Hastings Ismay who famously admitted NATO’s primary mission was less the defense of Europe and more to bolster Washington’s transatlantic control over European “allies” by, as Ismay candidly put it, “keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”.
Does Joe exit the race of his own volition, or will the democrats have to bump him off? From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:
“Biden’s entire closing statement is the political equivalent of the blue screen of death. It’s just one long frozen glitch.” — Sean Davis, the Federalist
Maybe ninety-seconds into last night’s long-awaited debate spectacle, the consensus must have jelled among the woke-and-broken news media mavens that their champion, “Joe Biden,” was not quite killing it out there at the podium. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted like witnesses at a ritual sacrifice. And afterward, the CNN post-mortem panel seemed genuinely shocked that months of playing pretend had skidded to such an ignominious finish.
Which raises a great many questions, starting with: why on earth did the Democratic Party and its media handmaidens persist in pretending month-after-month that “Joe Biden” was a fit candidate for another four-year term? Last night, he didn’t appear capable of even finishing the current term. Why did they usher him so jauntily into the nomination? And what are they going to do about that now? And what were their motives for all that pretending? “Joe Biden” circulates among scores of astute officials every day. Did they all fail to notice his incapacity? Or has the whole thing been a sham and a lie all along? Was this just the culminating hoax by the Party of Hoaxes of a long string of hoaxes against the nation going back to 2015?
Biden’s decline has been known to friends and insiders for months
SEYMOUR HERSH (TID Support his Work) JUN 28
Readers of this column know that President Joe Biden’s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza while continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There’s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won and refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter.
The reality behind all of this, as I’ve been told for months, is that the president is simply no longer there, in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out. America should not have a president who does not know what he has signed off on. People in power have to be responsible for what they do, and last night showed America and the world that we have a president who clearly is not in that position today.
The real disgrace is not only Biden’s, but those of the men and women around him who have kept him more and more under wraps. He is a captive, and as he rapidly diminished over the past six months. I have been hearing for months about the increasing isolation of the president, from his one-time pals in the Senate, who find that he is unable to return their calls. Another old family friend, whose help has been sought by Biden on key issues since his days as vice president, told me of a plaintive call from the president many months ago. Biden said the White House was in chaos and he needed his friend’s help. The friend said he begged off and then told me, with a laugh: “I would rather have a root canal procedure every day than go to work there.” A long retired Senate colleague was invited by Biden to join him on a foreign trip, and the two played cards and shared a drink or two on the Air Force One flight going out. The senator was barred by Biden’s staff from joining the return flight home.
I have been told the increasing isolation of the president on foreign policy issues has been in part the doing of Tom Donilon, whose younger brother, Michael, a key pollster and adviser in Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and in the current re-election effort, was part of the team that spent much of the week briefing Biden for last night’s debate. Tom Donilon, who is 69, was President Biden’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2013 and sought unsuccessfully to be named as Biden’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He remains very much an insider.
Given Biden’s obvious decline in recent months, it is impossible for an outsider to understand why the White House agreed to any debates with Donald Trump before the election, let alone committing to the earliest presidential debate, the first of two, in modern history. One thought, I was told, was that if Biden performed well, as he had in his State of the Union speech in March, the issue of his mental capacity would be tabled. A poor performance would give the Biden campaign time to do a better prep job for the scheduled second debate.
There also was pressure from the major Democratic fundraisers, many of them in New York City, for the campaign to do something to counter the perception of the president’s obvious growing impairment, as reported and filmed by major media. I have been told that at least one foreign leader, after a closed meeting with Biden, told others that the president’s decline was so visible that it was hard to understand how, as it was put to me, “he could go through the rigors” of a re-election campaign. Such warnings were ignored.
What now? One of Washington political savants told me today that the Democratic Party is now facing “a national security crisis.” The nation is backing two devastating wars with a president who clearly is not up to it, he said, and it might be time to start drafting a resignation speech that would match or outdo the one given in March of 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson after his narrow victory over Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary.
“They’re trapped,” he said of the senior advisers in the White House who hoped that Biden would somehow do well enough in last night’s debates to carry on, with the much-needed support of the more skeptical financial supporters in New York City.
Not everyone I talked to today agreed that it is time to force a Biden resignation and hope for the best at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August—to dump the ticket and seek new candidates. “My humble opinion,” one longtime contributor to the Democratic Party told me, “is to let the dust settle. Must examine the realistic options before some quick reaction creates an internal Democratic Party split with far-reaching consequences beyond 2024. Accept reality . . . 2024 is likely beyond recovery at this point. Too steep a hill to climb. Plan and execute a long-term plan to counter Mr. Orange and build a moderate platform for the recovery . . . and let Biden wander off to the Jersey Pine Barrens.”
A differing view was expressed by another political guru. “This is the age of social media—TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X—and a political campaign can go very far very fast.”
Whatever happens, we have a president—now fully unveiled—who just may not be responsible for what he does in the coming campaign, not to mention his actions in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Whatever happened to the 25th Amendment that authorizes the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president incompetent? What is going on in the Biden White House?
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“The real competitors nowadays are Russia and the United States.
Europe is out of the game.
Tocqueville understood this a hundred years ago.
But the very idea of world domination is also over.
What is coming is a new Nomos of the Earth, a new geographical order.
We must think in planetary terms, in the dimensions of a planetary geographical revolution. What is emerging now is a “wide open space” order.
(Carl Schmitt wrote to Nicolaus Sombart between 1933 and 1943)
The current war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine is the result of this tension between land and sea powers (structural enemies: land/sea, empire/hegemon).
Geopolitics is “the geographical consciousness of the State” (K.Haushofer).
The State is a community of men in a defined space, or rather a civilization with clear boundaries; in this case we can speak of a “civilization-state” – to use Weiwei Zhang’s concept, like China and Russia.
For the German geopolitical scientist Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), geopolitics is neither right nor left, but aims to serve all humanity by promoting understanding between peoples. Haushofer’s object of study is the “great vital connections of today’s man in today’s space” and his aim is “the insertion of the individual into his natural environment and the coordination of the phenomena that connect the State to space” .
This discipline also and above all aims to provide political decision makers with the intellectual tools necessary for an effective decision-making and action process.
However, what we see today is that there is a Chinese geopolitics, a Russian geopolitics and an American geopolitics, but there is no European geopolitics, since the Old Continent is integrated into the American glacis.
And even if the United States withdrew from Europe, there would not be a European geopolitics, but a French, German, Italian geopolitics, etc.
European states have been deprived by Washington of their sovereignty and their right to designate their friends and enemies.
“As long as a people exists in the political sphere, it must itself make the distinction between friends and enemies, reserving it, however, for extreme circumstances of which it will be the sole judge.
This is the essence of its political existence.
The moment he lacks the ability or will to make this distinction, he ceases to exist politically. If he accepts that a foreigner imposes on him the choice of his enemy and tells him who he has the right or not to fight against, he ceases to be a politically free people and is incorporated into or subordinated to another political system.
“ This other political system is the European Union plus NATO, led by the United States.
If politics is the sphere of the distinction between friend and enemy, then the sphere of geopolitics is that of the alliance and confrontation between states.
Applied geopolitics is, first of all, management by the political authority of its space, the space of its people.
Secure your borders and keep outside them, as far away as possible, any threat that any state, any army, any hostile organization may pose.
For Haushofer, the concept of geopolitics is “one of the most usable and refined political tools for recording and measuring the distribution of power in space, on the surface of the earth: a key to the play of forces, which so influences our present and our future.”
; using this key we can bring into play and overlap almost without gaps the spatial descriptive factors of political geography and the temporal descriptive factors of everyday history in their results for the transformative dynamic force of the day and the moment. “ Structural enemies: land/sea, empire/hegemon.
In Antiquity, states and great models of geopolitical powers were forged, which evolved on a technical level but whose spirit remained.
The opposition between land empire and maritime hegemon is a permanent element to this day, and structures world geopolitics.
The wars between Sparta and Athens, and between Rome and Carthage, will find echoes in the Middle Ages and in modern times in the wars between England and France, England and Russia, England and Germany and today in that between the United States and Russia.
The geopolitical constants span a very long historical period.
On a geopolitical and legal level, since the 16th century, we have lived in a world in which two spatial orders are opposed: that of the open sea and that of the mainland.
“This is how the Eurocentric world order that emerged in the 16th century was divided into two distinct global orders, land and sea.
For the first time in the history of humanity, the opposition between land and sea becomes the universal foundation of global human rights.
From now on it will no longer be about inland seas such as the Mediterranean, the Adriatic or the Baltic, but about the entire terrestrial globe, measured geographically, and the oceans… Two universal and global orders therefore face each other without being able to relate to the relationship between universal rights and particular rights.
Each of them is universal.
Everyone has their own idea of enemy, war and plunder, but also of freedom.
The great global decision of the law of nations in the 16th and 17th centuries therefore culminated in the balance between land and sea, in the face to face of two orders which did nothing other than determine the new nomos of the earth in the tensions of their coexistence”.
at that time and until the end of the 20th century, the balance of power shifted to the advantage of the maritime powers, particularly the British Empire and then its American heir. The fall of continental power following the Protestant Reformation which weakened both the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, allowed in the long term the hegemonic expansion of the Anglo-American thalassocracies and the reduction of continental Europe to a US vassal.
The exit from the scene of European history, as well as the birth of the multipolar world, was perceived by some visionary minds as early as the 1930s/40s such as Carl Schmitt and Karl Haushofer.
The war that Russia is waging today is classic, in the sense that it fights it where Russian-speaking populations are present in the territories of the former Russian and Soviet empires. She fights in her natural zone of influence and not on the other side of the world.
This is a nineteenth-century war, typical of land powers, comparable to that of Prussia which fought to reunite (partially) the Germanic populations scattered in various parts of Europe. Russia is also waging a war to protect its geopolitical zone of influence that America is encroaching on through NATO.
We can go back to antiquity to find this type of limited warfare in order to preserve or expand one’s zone of influence.
A zone of influence that coincides with the security zone, to trace a geographical limit beyond which the very life of the State is threatened.
In the first half of the 3rd century BC, when Rome unified Italy, it was threatened to the east, on the Tyrrhenian coast, by Carthage.
Around 280 BC, Carthage occupied Lipara (now Lipari) in the Aeolian Islands, an important observation post at the mouth of the Strait of Messina.
In 270 BC Rome reconquered Reggio, facing Sicily, and from that moment controlled the Strait of Messina, one of the two major communication routes between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean.
Carthage, which attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the unification of the Italian peninsula by Rome, then at least wanted to close Rome’s access to Sicily, the key to Carthaginian colonial hegemony.
We can draw a parallel with the historical sequence that begins with Vladimir Putin’s coming to power in the early 2000s.
As Russia reconstituted itself and consolidated its state, it found itself threatened by the United States, modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop Pac within its borders (the Chechen War) and externally by NATO’s progression into its zone of influence, the its safety zone.
To establish itself as a regional power, Rome is forced to leave the Italian peninsula and face Carthage, just as Russia left its borders to face NATO in Ukraine.
In both cases war was inevitable.
Because one of two things: either the land power remains within its borders and allows the maritime power to come and attack it on its territory, with the risk of being cornered or even disappearing, or it plans to militarily protect a zone of influence broader that constitutes lasting protection.
The interests of Carthage, which lay in the military, political and commercial control of the Mediterranean, were directly opposed to the vital interests of Rome, which had to guarantee a zone of influence and protection.
Carthage was blocking Rome, just like the Americans are doing to Russia.
The Carthaginians wanted to make Sicily a bridge to Italy, just as the Americans used Ukraine as a bridgehead to Russia.
Russia, like Rome in the past, is in defensive mode, but is responding to the attack of an enemy, America, which is beyond the reach of its army.
Rome destroyed Carthage to reduce the threat to nothing.
Russia can destroy America only at the cost of a catastrophic nuclear exchange for humanity.
While the United States threatens Russia near its border using Ukrainian and European agents.
The Americans are waging an international war against Russia without having to officially get involved.
The military asymmetry to Russia’s disadvantage is extraordinarily significant.
But the asymmetry in this conflict is not exclusively military.
Russia is waging a traditional, conventional war of a limited nature.
We will say the British Empire and then its American heir.
The fall of continental power following the Protestant Reformation which weakened both the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, allowed in the long term the hegemonic expansion of the Anglo-American thalassocracies and the reduction of continental Europe to a US vassal.
The exit from the scene of European history, as well as the birth of the multipolar world, was perceived by some visionary minds as early as the 1930s/40s as Carl Schmitt and Karl Haushofer.
The war that Russia is waging today is classic, in the sense that it fights it where Russian-speaking populations are present in the territories of the former Russian and Soviet empires. She fights in her natural zone of influence and not on the other side of the world.
This is a nineteenth-century war, typical of land powers, comparable to that of Prussia which fought to reunite (partially) the Germanic populations scattered in various parts of Europe. Russia is also waging a war to protect its geopolitical zone of influence that America is encroaching on through NATO.
We can go back to antiquity to find this type of limited warfare in order to preserve or expand one’s zone of influence.
A zone of influence that coincides with the security zone, to trace a geographical limit beyond which the very life of the State is threatened.
In the first half of the 3rd century BC, when Rome unified Italy, it was threatened to the east, on the Tyrrhenian coast, by Carthage.
Around 280 BC, Carthage occupied Lipara (now Lipari) in the Aeolian Islands, an important observation post at the mouth of the Strait of Messina.
In 270 BC Rome reconquered Reggio, facing Sicily, and from that moment controlled the Strait of Messina, one of the two major communication routes between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean. Carthage, which attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the unification of the Italian peninsula by Rome, then at least wanted to close Rome’s access to Sicily, the key to Carthaginian colonial hegemony.
We can draw a parallel with the historical sequence that begins with Vladimir Putin’s coming to power in the early 2000s.
As Russia reconstituted itself and consolidated its state, it found itself threatened by the United States, modern-day Carthage within its borders (the Chechen War) and externally by NATO’s progression into its zone of influence, the its safety zone.
To establish itself as a regional power, Rome is forced to leave the Italian peninsula and face Carthage, just as Russia left its borders to face NATO in Ukraine.
In both cases war was inevitable.
Because one of two things: either the land power remains within its borders and allows the maritime power to come and attack it on its territory, with the risk of being cornered or even disappearing, or it plans to militarily protect a zone of influence broader that constitutes lasting protection.
The interests of Carthage, which lay in the military, political and commercial control of the Mediterranean, were directly opposed to the vital interests of Rome, which had to guarantee a zone of influence and protection.
Carthage was blocking Rome, just like the Americans are doing to Russia.
The Carthaginians wanted to make Sicily a bridge to Italy, just as the Americans used Ukraine as a bridgehead to Russia.
Russia, like Rome in the past, is in defensive mode, but is responding to the attack of an enemy, America, which is beyond the reach of its army.
Rome destroyed Carthage to reduce the threat to nothing.
Russia can destroy America only at the cost of a catastrophic nuclear exchange for humanity.
While the United States threatens Russia near its border using Ukrainian and European agents.
(The Washington Post, April 18th, 2023)
The Americans are waging an international proxy war against Russia without having to officially get involved.
The military asymmetry to Russia’s disadvantage is extraordinarily significant.
But the asymmetry in this conflict is not exclusively military.
Russia is waging a traditional, conventional war of a limited nature.
We will say straight that the Russian offensive is limited by the very nature of Russia.
The United States is waging a war beyond all limits, that is to say a war whose space of action is no longer just military, but also civil, economic, legal and social.
Off-limits war is total war.
And it is precisely this all-out attack that Russia has been facing for many years.
The establishment of geopolitical blocs in reaction to the hegemonism of thalassocracy: China/Russia against the Anglo-American hegemon
The order for large spaces has arrived.
This is what we call a multipolar world of great powers gathering nations around them to form geopolitical blocs.
The unipolar sequence was only a brief moment during which the Russian and Chinese powers had to be reconstituted.
A historical misunderstanding, in the end.
This short period, of about twenty years, was interpreted by some Americans as the end of history, signifying their hegemony on the planet.
This beginning of the 21st century is not only that of multipolarity, but also that of the shift of the center of gravity towards the East, towards the continental heart of the world, to the detriment of the peripheral thalassocracies.
This is a phenomenal reversal of the balance of power on a historical and planetary scale. The major energy resources (oil, gas, without forgetting raw materials) and the major economic and military powers are held by the continental states that control large spaces and ally themselves with numerous states of the immensity of the African continent.
The United States and the rest of the Western world represent twenty-five percent of the world population, with the remaining seventy-five percent grouped around the two continental powers Russia and China.
It is the end of the thalassocratic era.
Even Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) more than a century ago warned the British Empire of the danger represented by Russian land power, as the continental power had a better chance of triumphing against the maritime power in the face of diplomacy, for how ingenious of the latter.
Those who are surprised to see the Sino-Russian rapprochement are simply ignoring the constants and fundamentals of geopolitics.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signature (from left to right: Ribbentrop, Molotov and Stalin)
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, concluded on the eve of the Second World War, was justified by the need for the two land powers, German and Russian, to unite and form a “bloc” against the Anglo-American maritime powers, and this despite their differences ideological.
Hitler in facts was following the advice of his geopolitical expert Karl Haushofer and winning the first phase of WWII until the moment when he broke the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact denying Haushofer advice.
Coincidentally after this pact breakup began all Third Reich defeats…
Adolf Hitler’s fatal mistake was to break this pact, to the great advantage of the English and Americans who thus freed themselves, at minimal costs, of a cumbersome dominant state in the heart of Europe.
“It was only after having exposed his plans for the conquest of the East to the main military leaders that Hitler encountered resistance from the traditional circles of which General Beck was a typical representative.”
These traditional circles sought to restore a strong Germany and its hegemony according to the classical model.
The Chinese and Russian leaders, who have a strong historical consciousness, will not make the mistake of separating.
Especially because America’s dual containment policy towards Russia and China is forcing these two countries to unite.
As the globe is a battlefield where “states compete for world domination,” the war in Ukraine can be interpreted as a continuation of Russia’s Eurasian policy to protect the continent. This is what is traditionally called “pacification”, the Roman way (pax Romana).
We therefore naturally understand the support provided by Beijing to Moscow; the Middle Kingdom needs it, to perpetuate its new Silk Roads, so that Europe and Asia are pacified. Russia is therefore doing necessary work in China’s eyes.
What is striking today is that German geopolitical realism was adopted by the Russians and Chinese.
Thus wrote Haushofer wrote in 1940: “undoubtedly the greatest and most important change in world politics of our time is the formation of a powerful continental bloc comprising Europe, North and East Asia.
But not all the great formations and configurations of this order are born ready-made in the head of a statesman, however great he may be, like the famous Greek goddess of war in her transfigured aspect.
Informed people have known how such training is prepared for a long time.”
In fact, Euro-Asian politics is not a project originally and punctually developed by a few leaders, but the fruit of necessity, of the strength of historical circumstances.
The Eurasian alliance follows a principle that comes to us from Antiquity, at the time of the birth of the Roman state:
“Fas est ab hoste doceri”. (Latin: Let yourself be taught by your enemy.)
It’s not a sacred duty.
“At the birth of important political groups, the adversary often has very early an acute instinct of what threatens him, a premonitory feeling that an extraordinary Japanese sociologist, G. E. Vychara, attributes to all his people, and which allows us to glimpse from away the incoming dangers.
This national feature is very valuable.
Everyone will be surprised to learn that those who first saw on the horizon the possibility of such a continental blockade, fraught with threats to the world domination of the Anglo-Saxons, were the English and American leaders, at a time when for us in the Second Reich [1871 -1918] had not yet developed a picture of the possibilities that could arise from a connection between Central Europe and the dominant power of East Asia. [the reference is to Japan] across the immense Eurasia”, wrote Haushofer in 1940.
Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), British politician, twice Prime Minister, said, during a ministerial crisis in 1851: however unpleasant our relations with France may be today, we must maintain them because behind us threatens a Russia which can connect the ‘Europe and East Asia and, alone, we cannot cope with such a situation.
Homer Lea (1876-1912), American adventurer and writer, writes a book on the twilight of the Anglo-Saxons at the height of the British World Empire.
According to him, the end of English domination would come the day Germany, Russia and Japan joined forces.
We then understand that it was not the minds of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping who developed the policy of Sino-Russian rapprochement.
This is a reaction to the geopolitics of the Anglo-Americans which they called “anaconda politics”. (Encirclement, suffocation and crushing of nations.)
It is a dialectical relationship, a threat that forces continental states to form powerful and large spaces to hinder the politics of the anaconda.
Furthermore, the Anglo-American strategic goal of separating Germany and Russia is not new.
Today Washington destroys the gas pipelines that connected these two countries, and yesterday, in 1919, when Germany was on its knees and disarmed, the Anglo-Americans feared German-Russian collaboration and proposed “that at the price of a grandiose transfer of the inhabitants of Prussia east to west, Germany now only has access to the western bank of the Vistula, only then can Germany and Russia no longer meet directly.”
The Treaty of Rapallo signed on 16 April 1922 by Germany and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was a great disappointment for the Englishman Mackinder and his school. China’s new Silk Road, linking eastern China to western Europe via an essentially continental route, has revived an old Anglo-American fear.
Recently, Washington’s Italian maid Giorgia Meloni led Italy out of China’s New Silk Road.
The American historian and geopolitical scientist Brook Adams (1848–1927) saw in the possibility of a vast transcontinental railway policy with the termini of Port Arthur (now Lu Shunku) and Tsing-Tao (two ports in eastern China), a German-Russian unity of East Asia that any attempt at the English or American blockade, even combined, would not have been able to break.
We see it today.
The policy of American sanctions against Russia, supported by China and other large areas of the multipolar world (BRICS), is in vain.
Even without Europe, which Washington has managed to separate from Russia, the Eurasian continental alliance is already putting the Anglo-Americans under control politically, militarily and economically.
The Russian-European rupture caused by the Americans pushes Russia even further towards another continent, Africa, where the Chinese are already well rooted.
We can call them the communicating vessels of geopolitics.
The United States lives off the geopolitical gains of the end of World War II.
In particular the control of Europe and Japan.
The policy to counter Anglo-American hegemony must be conducted without these two regions of the world, but with a significant number of great and middle powers, including India, Iran, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil.
Added to which is an Africa that tilts towards the East to the detriment of the West. Towards which epilogue?
But the force of attraction of the continental economic mass could tear Japan and Europe from the Anglo-American Judeo-Protestant bosom, if a world war (i.e. a direct clash between the great powers) does not occur first.
Because if yesterday America was an attractive economic power, today it offers its vassals recession, poverty, the looting of industries, war, continuous humiliation. European leaders are therefore caught in a vice between their masters
of the Western oligarchy who are dragging their countries into the abyss, and their people in revolt who oppose this deadly policy.
For its part, Russia waits to take advantage of the war of attrition against the West until the patience of the European peoples reaches its limits.
Russian pressure on European governments is not visible but real.
The resilience and resources of the Russians are far superior to those of the West.
Moscow can therefore do nothing but prolong hostilities and European industrial exhaustion until the population can no longer bear its economic effects.
As for Japan, you showed the specific pragmatism of your culture.
Tokyo refused to sacrifice its economy for the strategic needs of the United States.
“The United States has mobilized its European allies to limit purchases of Russian crude oil to sixty dollars a barrel, but one of Washington’s closest allies in Asia is now buying oil at prices above that cap.
Japan persuaded the United States to accept this exception, saying it needed it to ensure access to Russian energy.
The concession shows Japan’s dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, which analysts say has contributed to Tokyo’s hesitancy to further support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Americans face a difficult situation.
They demand blind obedience from vassal states against their vital interests.
Pulling too hard on the submission rope will eventually break it.
Japan’s geographical position, which is close to the two geopolitical giants China and Russia, could ultimately push it towards a rapprochement with Beijing and Moscow to find a modus vivendi.
Since Japan’s need for hydrocarbons from its powerful industry is vital, Tokyo cannot engage in harakiri for a war that does not concern it.
The reality of the balance of power is evident between a global-scale demographic minority conducting deadly economic and military policy, and the great earthly powers experiencing an economic boom and working to stabilize the great continent.
Thanks to Youssef Hindi
NOTE:
State-civilization is also the expression used by the “Eurasianist” school to define the historical condition of Russia.
The leader was Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), a Soviet dissident, son of the poet Anna Akhmatova. Eurasianist is Alexander Dugin, the best-known contemporary Russian intellectual, enunciator of the Fourth Political Theory.
The influence of Carl Schmitt, German jurist, thinker and political scientist (1888-1982), developed in works such as Theory of the Partisan and The Categories of the Political, is fundamental on the friend-enemy distinction. Carl Schmitt, The categories of the political.
Thalassocracy is synonymous with powers linked to the sea. A. de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French politician and writer.
He was the first analyst of mass society in the famous essay Democracy in America.
Halford Mackinder was the greatest English geopolitician since the Victorian era.
He theorized the need to control the heartland, the heart of the world, i.e. Central Asia, to exercise a lasting imperial hegemony.
The Silk Road is the name attributed in the 19th century to a large network of land, river and sea routes along which trade between China and the Roman Empire had taken place since ancient times.
The New Silk Road is a gigantic infrastructure project to convey trade to and from the East up to the Atlantic Ocean conceived by China. Russia is adding the Arctic sea route to it.
In reality Vychara is a concept of Eastern philosophy that means deliberation; It is the faculty of discernment that distinguishes the Real from the unreal. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is the acronym that includes some emerging powers and their economic and financial alliance.
Numerous other states from various areas of the world currently join the BRICS system. Japan breaks with US allies and buys Russian oil at higher prices.
Claudio Resta was born in Genoa, Italy in 1958, he is a citizen of the world (Spinoza), a maverick philosopher, and an interdisciplinary expert, oh, and an artist, too.
Der Friedensstifter 