Thinking the Unthinkable, Saying the Unsayable

We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.

– The Showa Emperor, August 1945

A couple of months ago Putin observed that the time of modern day liberalism had passed.

There is also the so-called liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable.

Liberalism, in its current manifestation, he suggested, was failing its people. The remarks were happily seized on to bolster the meme that Putin is the enemy. We were assured that liberalism was just fine and criticism was just what you’d expect from “a bloody dictator“. No, Mr. Putin, liberalism is not dead. Martin Wolf: why Vladimir Putin is wrong to claim liberalism is dead. Putin is wrong. Liberalism is more important than ever. So there the issue sat: Putin had been slapped down and any deviations from happy complacency – maillots jaunes, Brexit, Trump – were his fault. His attempts to wreck us would fail because “Defences have proven stronger; citizens are getting wiser“. In any case, Russia won’t be around much longer; the end was coming soon in 2001, 2009, 2011, 2014, 2014, 2019. Well… someday soon.

And then, out of the blue, appears this (my emphases):

We experience this world all together and you know that better than I, but the international order is being disrupted in an unprecedented way, with massive upheaval, probably for the first time in our history, in almost all areas and on a historic scale. Above all, a transformation, a geopolitical and strategic reconfiguration. We are probably in the process of experiencing the end of Western hegemony over the world. We were used to an international order that had been based on Western hegemony since the 18th century… Things change. And they have been deeply affected by the mistakes made by Westerners in certain crises, by American decisions over the last several years which did not start with this administration, but have led us to re-examine certain involvements in conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to re-think fundamental diplomatic and military strategy and on occasion elements of solidarity which we thought were forever inalienable… And it is also the emergence of new powers whose impact we have probably underestimated for far too long.

China first and foremost as well as Russia’s strategy that has, let’s face it, been pursued with greater success over the last few years.

Putin’s gone over the top here: End of Western hegemony? Mistakes? Reconsider? Russia‘s success? Well isn’t that just what he would want you to think? The sower of divisions, doubts and chaos just wants us to give up.

Except that the speaker is French President Emmanuel Macron

Video, English. Macron understands that things have got worse for many in the West and says so – maybe the maillots jaunes have got their message though. The market economy, that used to work well, today produces serious inequalities:

When the middle classes, which form the basis of our democracies, no longer have a fair share in it, they start to express doubts and are legitimately tempted by authoritarian regimes or illiberal democracies, or are tempted to question this economic system.

if we continue as before, then we will definitely lose control. And that would mean obliteration. (l’effacement).

He even (!) has a kind word for Orbán in Hungary.

(I don’t think he’s fully thought it out: if, as he thinks, the proper role for France and Europe is to balance between the USA and China, then that will require an independent position: Beijing could never regard an ally of Washington as a “balancer”. So… out of NATO. But he hasn’t got there yet.)

But what he says about Russia is more interesting: the West made mistakes (no counterfeit modesty of allowing that, perhaps, we’re in there for one or two percent of the blame):

We are part of Europe; so is Russia. And if we are unable to accomplish anything useful with Russia at any given time, we will remain in a state of deeply unproductive tension. We will continue to be stuck in conflicts throughout Europe. Europe will continue to be the theatre of a strategic battle between the United States and Russia, with the consequences of the Cold War still visible on our soil. And we will not lay the groundwork for the profound re-creation of European civilization that I mentioned earlier. Because we cannot do that without reassessing in depth, in great depth, our relationship with Russia. I also think that pushing Russia away from Europe is a major strategic error, because we are pushing it either toward isolation, which heightens tensions, or toward alliances with other great powers such as China, which would not at all be in our interest. At the same time, it must be said that while our relations have been based on mistrust, there are documented reasons for it. We’ve witnessed cyber-attacks, the destabilization of democracies, and a Russian project that is deeply conservative and opposed to the EU project. And all that basically developed in the 1990s and 2000s when a series of misunderstandings took place, and when Europe no doubt did not enact its own strategy

[l’Europe n’a pas joué une stratégie propre]

and gave the impression of being a Trojan Horse for the West, whose final aim was to destroy Russia, and when Russia built a fantasy around the destruction of the West and the weakening of the EU. That is the situation. We can deplore it, we can continue to jockey for position, but it is not in our best interest to do so. Nor is it in our interest to show a guilty weakness toward Russia and to believe that we should forget all the disagreements and past conflicts, and fall into each other’s arms. No. But I believe we must very carefully rethink the fundamentals. I believe we must build a new architecture based on trust and security in Europe, because the European continent will never be stable, will never be secure, if we do not ease and clarify our relations with Russia. That is not in the interest of some of our allies, let’s be clear about that. Some of them will urge us to impose more sanctions on Russia because it is in their interest.

The end of the INF Treaty requires us to have this dialogue [with Russia], because the missiles would return to our territory.

He’s not entirely free from delusion:

that great power [Russia], which invests a great deal in arming itself and frightens us so much, has the gross domestic product of Spain, a declining demographic, an ageing population and growing political tension.

(If it were declining it wouldn’t be as successful as he said it was earlier, would it? And the GDP argument is nonsense.) And “cyber-attacks, the destabilization of democracies, and a Russian project that is deeply conservative and opposed to the EU project” is the usual unexamined twaddle. And if Russia dreamed of destroying an entity which was giving “the impression” that its “final aim” was to “destroy” it, it would just have been defending itself, wouldn’t it? But every journey begins with a single step and this is very far from the usual “if Russia would behave ‘like a normal country‘ we might let it back into the club on probation”.

What really struck me was this:

Take India, Russia and China for example. They have a lot more political inspiration than Europeans today. They take a logical approach to the world, they have a genuine philosophy, a resourcefulness that we have to a certain extent lost.

So the West is not “logical”, has a “shallow philosophy” and no ingenuity. (You know it’s true, don’t you?)

One of the major players in the Western World’s ancien régime is saying:

Our day is coming to an end

and the other guys have a better take on things than we do.

We at Strategic Culture Foundation and other alternative outlets may take pleasure that when we said the world was changing, that the Western establishment was dangerously unaware, when we said that Russia and China were stronger and more resilient than complacent op-ed writers thought they were, that the West was fragile, that Western leaders had failed their people, we were not just crazy people shouting at lamp-posts: a principal of the ancien régime agrees with us. Maybe they do read us in the Elysée.

(Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, they haven’t got the memo:

We don’t always get it right. Not always perfect. But our efforts are noble and important, and we try to make America secure and at the same time [improve] the lives of people in every country … to improve their capacity for freedom and liberty in their own nation.)

But, when all is said and done, it’s just a speech. Will we see actions that prove intent? Suggestions: Crimea is Russian; the fighting in Ukraine is a civil war; Assad’s future is up to Syrians; Maduro’s of Venezuelans; everybody out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria ASAP; stop arming the killers in Yemen. Lots to admit to; lots to stop doing.

We may have a clue soon: a Normandy Format meeting on Ukraine to which Macron has invited Putin. If it’s more claptrap about how Moscow must honour its commitments under the Minsk agreement (there are none – the word “Russia” does not appear) then we’ll know that it was just words.

Western media coverage will be interesting to watch – not much at the moment in the Anglophone world and what there is misses the big points; several times it’s presented as just a “turn away” from Trump (which it is – more evidence for my Gordian Knot theory). But what he’s saying is hard to take in if you’ve been cruising along, confident that what is “really obsolete” is not liberalism but “authoritarianism, personality cults and the rule of oligarchs”; it will take time before it sinks in that one of the prominent figures of the Western establishment is pretty close to agreement with Putin.

Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specialising in the USSR/Russia from 1984 and a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow in 1993-1996. He retired in 2008 and has been writing on Russia and related subjects on the Net ever since.

10 thoughts on “Thinking the Unthinkable, Saying the Unsayable”

  1. UNDERSTAND something Folks, “Westernism” is just another word for WHITE-Tism…Therefore it understandable that Putin would make THAT Statement about “Liberalism”…ALL Whites Rulers are SOCIALPATHS…NEEDLESSLY Afraid of Extinction… because GUILT for What they have done to HU-Manity over tens of 1000’s of year ago…They Already KNOW that EVERYTHING they Think they Own was STOLEN from the Creators Original Beings “Seeded” on this planet.
    And Yet are have NOT even considered to RETURN What they have Stolen!
    They are “Attempting” to Play god by selling the planet on a WHITE SAVIOUR (a NON-Existing Jesus Christ as god’s son???)
    They even have the Sheeple “Believing” that god’s so-called “Chosen People” are WHITE JEWS…When the REAL-Story (HIS-story) Proves beyond ALL Doubt that the “Ancient Jews” were ALL BLACK RACED PEOPLE…ALL 12 TRIBES Folks!
    Therefore the Non-Existent JESUS HAD TO A BLACK MAN…Understand???
    It makes this Entire article Redundant, Meaningless.
    ONLY, the RETURN of the MELANIN Beings will bring Back JUSTICE…Instead of the White Mans JUST-US System.

    1. Are you sure you are not reflecting similar fearful qualities? There happen to be between one and two billion of your boogie men on this planet Kenny.

      1. The FACT is that the White race represents only 10% of this worlds population…The Majority of this planet’s people are Colored people.
        The Fact is their numbers are numbers are declining dramatically each year compared to others.
        This is WHY They are so worried about MIGRATION all over this planet…Yet They have the attitude that THEY are Gods.
        There are MANY sources available Proving that THEY have Altered the so-called “HIS-Story” of this Planet to Suit Their desires.
        Just ONE of those sources proving this FACT is explained in a DVD entitled: “OUT OF DARKNESS”…Still available on line.
        Another VERY GOOD source is a book entitled “THE ISIS PAPERS, The Keys to the Colors” written by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing…also available at many book stores (Barnes & Nobel)
        Research material about the “Golden Race” while You are at it too.
        Hopefully, There are SOME Whites that will AWAKEN Soon enough BEFORE they become EXTINCT.
        So Far THEY Haven’t….Just LOOK at WHAT They did on the morning of September 11th 2001 in New york city…ALL to STOP THE NESARA/GESARA Laws from being Enforced WORLDWIDE.
        NESARA was a WHITE SUPREMEST EVENT…Actually designed to PREVENT THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THIS WORLD’S WEALTH TO PEOPLE OF COLOR….WHOM IT WAS STOLEN FROM…UNDERSTAND???

  2. “Liberalism” and its “Critical Theory” twin brother are one of the Jews’ chief instruments of chaos and destruction. “Liberalism” plays a major role in their Protocols. “Liberalism” is the ideology they planned, and are using, to undermine, seize, and then destroy our societies, and us.

    Their plan is right on track, unfortunately.

    Protocols 1:14. “In any State in which there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have lost their personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, I find a new right – to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to become the sovereign lord of those who have left to us the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their liberalism.”

    Protocols 9:9. In order to annihilate the institutions of the Goyim before it is time we have touched them with craft and delicacy, and have taken hold of the ends of the springs which move their mechanism. These springs lay in a strict but just sense of order; we have replaced them by the chaotic license of liberalism. We have got our hands into the administration of the law, into the conduct of elections, into the press, into liberty of the person, but principally into education and training as being the cornerstones of a free existence.

    And many more on “Liberalism in the Protocols.

    “Ignorance Is Strength.” I’m weak.

    1. The goyim are not the white people?Perhaps some nut guy over here will tell you the goyim must be the black people.lol

      1. Largely, the ONLY people occupying Israel are the Kharzarian people who happen to be ALL White….It was THEY that wrote that Satanic Talmud, referring to All other people as Goyim.
        The ORIGINAL people that once occupied that nation were ALL BLACK “Beings” who had a “Divine Connection” with our “Creators”…In FACT ALL Original “Civilization” was BORN in the African area…Israel being PART of Africa.
        One MUST research the REAL-Story about AFRICA to Learn about it, because HIS-Story “Attempted” to WHITE-OUT the Real-Story about It.
        The BEST source for This info can be found all over the Internet…But for the BEST research of the subject can be Seen and Read by Dr. Walter Williams; Entitled The Historical Origins of Christianity and Islam (Separate books)
        Check it out!

    2. ALL those so-called “Protocols” are Meaningless, because they were written by Satanic WHITE Men.
      AND…To be VERY CLEAR about what happened with 9/11…IT WAS CARRIED OUT BY “WHITE SUPREMEST”…TO STOP NESARA/GESARA from ever being ENFORCED.

  3. As a Canadian it is perfectly understandable why you are so negatively obsessed with Russia and in particular viciously so against Putin. Given Putin’s assertiveness in the Arctic region, you are not entirely wrong in being Russia-focused though.

    But purplexingly when most Europeans who share closer physical proximity with Russia, themselves are taking this on their strides, why should you sound exceedingly alarmist ? Despite Russia’s record in Crimea and its worrying moves on Ukraine and Syria, it has still largely kept its strictly geo-political dimensions within bounds.

    What is currently in greater focus across the world, except perhaps in China, India and Brazil, is not classical geopolitics as such, as you seem to portray, but much more on what we may term as Geo-climatics, as is appropriately now reflected too even by the theme of UNGA 74.

    This is, however, not to suggest that functional diplomacy and liberalism would damp down all legitimate geopolitical concerns and grand peace constructs, the world over, anytime soon !

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