The six major world powers
approach the reorganization of international relations according to their
experiences and dreams. Prudently, they intend to defend their interests first
before promoting their vision of the world. Thierry Meyssan describes their respective
positions before the fight begins.
The
US withdrawal from Syria, even if it was immediately corrected, indicates with
certainty that Washington no longer intends to be the world’s policeman, the
“necessary Empire”. It destabilized without delay all the rules of
international relations. We have entered a period of transition during which
each major power is pursuing a new agenda. Here are the main ones.
The Three “Greats”
The United States of America
The collapse of the Soviet
Union could have caused the collapse of the United States, since the two
empires were leaning on each other. This was not the case. President George
Bush Sr. ensured with Operation Desert Storm that Washington became the undisputed
leader of all nations, then demobilized 1 million soldiers and proclaimed the
quest for prosperity.
Transnational
corporations then signed a pact with Deng Xiaoping to have their products
manufactured by Chinese workers, who were paid twenty times less than their
American counterparts. This led to a considerable development of international
freight transport, followed by the gradual disappearance of jobs and the middle
classes in the United States. Industrial capitalism was replaced by financial
capitalism.
At
the end of the 1990s, Igor Panarin, a professor at the Russian Diplomatic
Academy, analyzed the economic and psychological collapse of American society.
He hypothesized that the country would break up along the lines of what had
happened to the Soviet Union with the emergence of new states. To repel the
collapse, Bill Clinton freed his country from international law with NATO’s
aggression against Yugoslavia. As this effort proved insufficient, US
personalities imagined adapting their country to financial capitalism and
organizing, by force, international trade so that the coming period would be a
“new American century”. With George Bush Jr., the United States abandoned its
position as a leading nation and tried to transform itself into an absolute
unipolar power. They launched the “endless war” or “war on terrorism” to
destroy one by one all state structures in the “broader Middle East”. Barack
Obama continued this quest by associating a host of allies with it.
This
policy paid off, but only a very few benefited, the “super-rich”. The Americans
responded by electing Donald Trump as president of the federal state. He broke
with his predecessors and, like Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, tried to save
the United States by relieving it of its most costly commitments. He boosted
the economy by encouraging national industries against those that had relocated
their jobs. He subsidized the extraction of shale oil and managed to take
control of the world hydrocarbon market despite the cartel formed by OPEC and
Russia. Aware that his army is first and foremost a huge bureaucracy, wasting a
huge budget on insignificant results, he stopped supporting Daesh and the PKK,
negotiating with Russia a way to end the “endless war” with as little loss as
possible.
In
the coming period, the United States will be driven primarily by the need to
save on all its actions abroad, until it abandons them if necessary. The end of
imperialism is not a choice, but an existential question, a survival reflex.
The People’s Republic of China
After
Zhao Ziyang’s attempted coup d’état and the Tiananmen uprising, Deng Xioping
began his “journey south”. He announced that China would continue its economic
liberalization by entering into contracts with US multinationals.
Jiang
Zemin continued on this path. The coast became a “workshop of the world”,
causing gigantic economic development. Gradually he cleaned the Communist Party
of its caciques and ensured that well-paid jobs extended inland. Hu Jintao,
concerned about a “harmonious society”, repeals the taxes paid by peasants in the
interior regions still not affected by economic development. But he failed to
control the regional authorities and fell into corruption.
Xi
Jinping proposed to open up new markets by building a huge project of
international trade routes, the “Silk Roads”. However, this project came too
late because, unlike in antiquity, China no longer offers original products,
but what transnational corporations sell at a lower price. This project was
welcomed as a blessing by poor countries, but feared by the rich who are
preparing to sabotage it. Xi Jinping is taking up positions in all the islets
his country had abandoned in the China Sea, during the collapse of the Qing
Empire and the occupation by the eight foreign armies. Aware of the destructive
power of the West, he formed an alliance with Russia and refrained from any
international political initiative.
In
the coming period, China should affirm its positions in international fora,
bearing in mind what the colonial empires imposed on it in the 19th century.
But it should refrain from military intervention and remain a strictly economic
power.
The Russian Federation
When
the USSR collapsed, the Russians believed they would save themselves by
adhering to the Western model. In fact, Boris Yeltsin’s team, trained by the
CIA, organized the looting of collective property by a few individuals. In two
years, about a hundred of them, 97% of them from the Jewish minority, took
everything available and became billionaires. These new oligarchs fought each
other mercilessly with machine guns and attacks in the middle of Moscow, while
President Yeltsin bombed parliament. Without a real government, Russia was
nothing more than a wreck. Warlords and jihadists armed by the CIA organized
the secession of Chechnya. The standard of living and life expectancy
collapsed.
In
1999, FSB Director Vladimir Putin rescued President Yeltsin from an
investigation for corruption. In exchange, he was appointed President of the
Council of Ministers; a position he used to force the President to resign and
get himself elected. He put in place a vast policy of state restoration: he put
an end to the civil war in Chechnya and methodically killed all the oligarchs
who refused to comply with the state. The return of order was also the end of
the Russian Western fantasy. Living standards and life expectancy improved.
Having
restored the rule of law, Vladimir Putin did not stand for re-election after
two consecutive terms. He supported a pale law professor, worshipped by the
United States, Dmitry Medvedev, to succeed him. But not intending to leave
power in weak hands, he was appointed Prime Minister until his re-election as
President in 2012. Wrongly believing that Russia would collapse again, Georgia
attacked South Ossetia, but instantly found Prime Minister Putin in its path.
He then saw the pitiful state of the Red Army, but managed to overcome it
thanks to the effect of surprise. Re-elected President, he focused on defence
reform. He retired hundreds of thousands of officers, often disillusioned and
sometimes drunk, and placed the Tuvan general (Turkish-speaking Siberian)
Sergei Choïgou in the Ministry of Defence.
Adopting
a traditional Russian management style, Vladimir Putin separated the civilian
budget from part of the military budget. The first is voted by the Duma, the
second is secret. He restored military research, while the United States
imagined that it would no longer have to invest in this area. He tested a
number of new weapons before deploying the new Red Army to help Syria. He
experimented with his new weapons in combat situations and decided which ones
would be produced and which ones would be abandoned. He organized a quarterly
rotation of his troops so that all of them, one after the other, would become
stronger. The Russian Federation, which in 1991 was nothing more than nothing,
became the world’s leading military power in eighteen years.
At
the same time, he used the Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine to reclaim Crimea, a
Russian territory administratively linked to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev. He
then faced a campaign of European Union agricultural sanctions that he used to
create self-sufficient domestic production.
He
forged an alliance with China and forced it to modify its Silk Roads project by
integrating the communication needs of Russian territory to form an “Extended
Eurasia Partnership”.
In
the coming years, Russia will try to reorganise international relations on two
bases: to separate political and religious powers; to restore international law
on the basis of the principles formulated by Tsar Nicholas II.
Western Europeans
The United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland
When the USSR fell, the
United Kingdom subscribed with reservations to the Maastricht Treaty.
Conservative Prime Minister John Major intended to take advantage of the
supranational state under construction while keeping his currency out of the
way. So he rejoiced when George Soros attacked the Pound and forced it out of
the EMS (“monetary snake”). His successor, Labourist Tony Blair, restored full
independence to the Bank of England and considered leaving the EU to join
NAFTA. He transformed the defence of his country’s interests by substituting
references to human rights for respect for international law. He promoted the
US policies of Bill Clinton, then George Bush Jr., encouraging and justifying
the enlargement of the European Union, the “humanitarian war” against Kosovo,
and the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he developed the
“Arab Spring” plan and submitted it to the United States.
Gordon
Brown hesitated to pursue this policy and tried to regain some room to
manoeuvre, but his energy was caught up in the 2008 financial crisis, which he
managed to get through. David Cameron implemented, with Barack Obama, the
Blair-Bush plan for the “Arab Spring”, including the war against Libya, but
eventually only partially succeeded in placing the Muslim Brotherhood in power
in the broader Middle East. In the end, he resigned after the Brexit voters
voted, when the project to join NAFTA was no longer on the agenda.
Theresa
May proposed to apply Brexit with regard to the exit of the supranational state
from the Maastricht Treaty, but not with regard to the exit from the common
market prior to Maastricht. She failed and was replaced by Winston Churchill’s
biographer, Boris Johnson. He decided to leave the European Union completely
and to reactivate the kingdom’s traditional foreign policy: the fight against
any competing state on the European continent.
If
Boris Johnson remains in power, the United Kingdom should in the coming years
try to pit the European Union and the Russian Federation against each other.
The French Republic
François
Mitterrand did not understand the dislocation of the USSR, going so far as to
support the generals’ putsch against his Russian counterpart, Mikhail
Gorbachev. In any case, he saw an opportunity to build a European supranational
state, big enough to compete with the USA and China in the continuity of the
Napoleonic attempt. Together with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he promoted German
unification and the Maastricht Treaty. Worried about this United States of
Europe project, President Bush Sr, convinced of the “Wolfowitz doctrine” of
preventing the emergence of a new challenger to the US leadership, forced him
to accept NATO’s protection of the EU and its extension to former members of
the Warsaw Pact. François Mitterrand used cohabitation and the Gaullist
Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, to fight the Muslim Brotherhood that
the CIA had made him accept in France and that MI6 used to oust France from
Algeria.
Jacques Chirac developed
French deterrence by completing air nuclear tests in the Pacific before moving
on to simulations and signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
At the same time, he adapted the armies to NATO’s needs by ending compulsory
military service and integrating the Alliance’s Military Committee (planning).
He supported NATO’s initiative against Yugoslavia (Kosovo war), but – after
reading and studying 9/11 The Big Lie [1]- took the lead in global opposition to aggression
against Iraq. This episode allowed him to bond with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and
to advance the European supranational state, which he always conceived as a
tool of independence around the Franco-German couple. Disrupted by the assassination
of his business partner, Rafik Hariri, he turned against Syria, which the
United States referred to as the mastermind behind the murder.
Advocating
a radically different policy, Nicolas Sarkozy placed the French army under US
command via NATO’s Integrated Command. He tried to enlarge the French area of
influence by organizing the Union for the Mediterranean, but this project did
not work. He proved his worth by overthrowing Laurent Bagbo in Côte d’Ivoire
and, although he was overtaken by Arab springs in Tunisia and Egypt, he led
NATO’s operation against Libya and Syria. However, for the sake of realism, he
noted the Syrian resistance and withdrew from the theatre of operation. He
continued the construction of the United States of Europe by having the Lisbon
Treaty adopted by Parliament, even though the voters had rejected the same text
under the name of the “European Constitution”. In reality, the modification of
institutions, which are supposed to become more effective with 27 Member
States, is profoundly transforming the supra-national State, which can now
impose its will on Member States.
Coming
to power without being prepared for it, François Hollande followed in Nicolas
Sarkozy’s footsteps in a somewhat rigid way, forcing him to adopt the latter¹s
ideology. He signed all the treaties that his predecessor had negotiated –
including the European Budget Pact allowing Greece to be sanctioned – adding to
them each time, as if to apologise for his reversal, a declaration setting out
his own point of view, but without binding force. Thus he authorized the
establishment of NATO military bases on French soil, putting a definitive end
to the Gaullist doctrine of national independence. Or he continued the policy
of aggression against Syria, making a verbal overbid before doing nothing on
the White House’s orders. He assigned the French Army a mission in the Sahel,
as a ground-based substitute for AfriCom. Finally, he justified the CO2
emissions trading exchange by the Paris Climate Agreement.
Elected
thanks to the American investment fund KKR, Emmanuel Macron is first and
foremost an advocate of globalization according to Bill Clinton, George Bush
Jr. and Barack Obama. However, he quickly adopted the vision of François
Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac according to which only a European supranational
state would allow France to continue to play a significant international role,
but in its Sarkozy-Holland version: the Union allows constraint. These two
lines sometimes lead to contradictions, particularly with regard to Russia.
However, they are united in a condemnation of the nationalism of the Member
States of the European Union, a short Brexit, or a desire to restore trade with
Iran.
In
the coming years, France should measure its decisions in terms of their impact
on the building of the European Union. It will seek as a priority to ally
itself with any power working in this direction.
Federal Republic of Germany
Chancellor
Helmut Kohl saw the break-up of the Soviet Empire as an opportunity to bring
the two Germanies together. He obtained the green light from France in exchange
for German support for the European Union’s single currency project, the euro.
He also obtained the agreement of the United States, which saw it as a way to
divert the East German army into NATO despite the promise made to Russia not to
allow the German Democratic Republic to join.
Once
German reunification was achieved, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder raised the
question of his country’s international role, still under attack from its
defeat in the Second World War. Although Germany is no longer militarily
occupied by the four major powers, it nevertheless hosts huge US garrisons and
the headquarters of EuCom and soon AfriCom. Gerhard Schöder used the
“humanitarian” war against Kosovo to legally deploy German troops out of the
country for the first time since 1945. But he refused to recognize this
territory conquered by NATO as a state. Similarly, he is very strongly
committed alongside President Chirac against the United States-British war in Iraq,
stressing that there is no evidence that President Saddam Hussein was involved
in the attacks of September 11th. He tried to influence European integration in
a peaceful way. He therefore strengthened energy ties with Russia and proposed
a federal Europe (including Russia in the long term) based on the German model,
but he met with opposition from France, which is very attached to the project
of a supra-national state.
Chancellor Angela Merkel
returned to the politics of her mentor Helmut Kohl, who handed her over in one
night from her responsibilities at the Communist Youth of Democratic Germany to
the Federal Government of Germany. Closely monitored by the CIA, which is not
sure how to define her, she strengthened Germany’s ties with Israel and Brazil.
In 2013, on Hillary Clinton’s proposal, she asked Volker Pethes to study the
possibility of developing the German army to play a central role in CentCom if
the United States moved its troops to the Far East. She then commissioned
studies on how German officers could supervise the armies of Central and
Eastern Europe and asked Volker Perthes to write a plan for Syria’s surrender.
Very attached to Atlanticist and European structures, she distanced herself
from Russia and supported the Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine. In order to be
effective, she required that the European Union impose its will on small Member
States (Lisbon Treaty). She was very tough during the Greek financial crisis
and patiently placed her pawns in the European bureaucracy until Ursula von der
Leyen was elected President of the European Commission. When the United States
withdrew from northern Syria, she immediately responded by proposing to NATO to
send the German army to replace it in accordance with the 2013 plan.
In
the coming years, Germany should focus on the possibilities of military
intervention in the framework of NATO, particularly in the Middle East, and be
wary of the project of a centralised European super-national state.
Feasibility
It is
very strange to hear today about “multilateralism” and “isolationism” or
“universalism” and “nationalism”. These questions do not arise because everyone
has known since the Hague Conference (1899) that technological progress has
made all nations in solidarity. This logorrhoea does not hide our inability to
admit the new power relations and to envisage a world order that is as unjust
as possible.
Only
the three Great Powers can hope to have the means to implement their policies.
They can only achieve their ends without war by following the Russian line
based on international law. However, the danger of internal political
instability in the United States raises more than ever the risk of a
generalized confrontation.
When
they left the Union, the British were forced to join the United States (which
Donald Trump rejected) or to disappear politically. While Germany and France,
which are losing ground, have no choice but to build the European Union.
However, for the time being, they assess the time available very differently
and consider it in two incompatible ways, which could lead them to disrupt the
European Union themselves.
—
[1] 9/11 The Big Lie,
Thierry Meyssan, Carnot 2002.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
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articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is
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