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The EU, with much ado, this week announced the NINTH sanctions package on Russia. What is it about sanctions the EU doesn’t ‘get’? Russia has comfortably survived Western financial sanctions (even the fervently anti-Putin Economist concurs). Perhaps it is the tech sanctions which ultimately will ‘strangle Russia’. Good luck with waiting that one out! Who ends up strangling whom?
We have all lived by a mental model that has served well for anticipating much of the post-war era: Geo-political tensions spike between America and some recalcitrant state. Its’ leadership is demonised. A coalition of US proxies faithfully echoes the hate-speech. Sanctions are imposed, and preparations for regime chang
We now have an embarrassment of ‘wars’ of which paradoxically, Ukraine is perhaps of lesser strategic import – though it does retain significant symbolic content. A ‘flag’ around which narratives are spun and support rallied.
Yes, there are no less than five overlapping and interlinked ‘wars’ underway – and they need to be clearly differentiated to be well understood.
These last weeks have witnessed several epochal shifts: The Samarkand Summit; the OPEC+ decision to reduce the oil production of member nations by a (headline) two million barrels per day as of next month; and President Erdogan’s explicit declaration that “Russia and Turkey are together; working together”.
Bedrock U.S. allies, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, India, South Africa, Egypt and groupings such as OPEC+ are taking a major step toward autonomy, and toward the coalescence of non–Western nations into a coherent bloc – acting to its own interests and doing politics ‘its own way’.
In the structure of the modern Western world, wars currently no longer serve the purpose of settling scores between two countries, moved by the principle of self-determination of peoples. Rather, they are the excuse to justify geopolitical events aimed at the expansion of the power of those financial lobbies, for some time now unchallenged, commanding and deciding over the lives of a large part of the planet.
The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia.
Is Europe’s ‘totalitarianism’ of today of a more refined type – not so-violent, and therefore deserving of a ‘pass’?
Alain de Benoist, born in 1943, is a writer, philosopher, and public lecturer; director of the magazines Nouvelle Ecole and Krisis, and editorialist in the magazine Eléments; author of 110 books, 2000 articles, and 700 interviews.
Interview with Alain de Benoist. Translated by Eugene Montsalvat
The G-7 meeting was held in Canada in June 2018.It demonstrates the tension within the liberal world order.We can see the challenges. Be it cracks in cross-Atlantic relationships.The formation of war, trade barriers and trade protectionism.
Boulevard Voltaire introduces its readers to a recent book that the editorial team appreciated. Every day, a new extract is published. Le Moment populiste. Droite-gauche, c’est fini!, by Alain de Benoist.
©2023
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