Who is a Jew? Race, “the Chosen People” and Biopolitics

Israel is structured as the “homeland” of the race called “Jews,” but not for the faith of Judaism, since many who say they are “Jews” through faith are not racially qualified to be Israeli, and are thus excluded. To become an Israeli, one must possess state-approved racial credentials. Thus, geography is wedded to genetics (biopolitics), or what Friedrich Ratzel called “anthropogeography”: non-Jews are perpetually the Other who, because of their DNA, have no legitimacy, let alone place, within the state, or on the land; they are barely tolerated and openly hated. To then speak of “democracy” or even “civilization” in the context of Israel is to ignore this biopolitical fact. Historically, we must bear in mind that the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was grounded in the currents of eugenics of the 19th and 20th century. Thus, Israel is a habitation (Lebensraum) for the race officially labeled “Jews,” and none other; and the purpose of the state is the regeneration of “Jews.”

But such a biopolitical set-up requires that there be a clear, genetic demarcation of the “Jew” from the “non-Jew.” This distinction was once based on tradition, in that those people who belonged to historical Judaic faith communities were accepted as “Jews.” This meant that not only the majority Ashkenazi (from Europe) and the Sephardic (from North Africa), but also the Mizrahi (from Iran, Syria, Iraq), the Beta Israel (Falasha) of Ethiopia, the various Jewish groups of Yemen, India, Central Asia and China—were all regarded as belonging to a greater Jewry, although the latter six groups were given this status very reluctantly, if at all. Given the predominance of the Ashkenazi in Israel (since the state has always been a German Ashkenazi project), there is extreme prejudice against “Jews” who do not “look” like the Ashkenazi.

But also given this diversity—is there a distinct racial stock that can be clearly labeled as “Jew?” The state of Israel certainly thinks so, for it has various racial laws in place (the Jewish Nation-State Law, the Law of “Return,” the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law). This protection now also includes a state-mandated DNA test to determine the racial qualification of anyone wanting to immigrate to Israel. In fact, it is illegal and thus impossible for ordinary Israelis to get a DNA test (as commonly done in the rest of the world, as a personal, fun, genealogical project)—such a test is only possible via court order (the Genetic Information Law 5761, passed in 2000)—because only the state of Israel can say who is a proper “Jew.” Such racial policing by the state implies that Israeli bureaucracy possesses clear and precise racial biomarkers. The notion of a distinct race of “Jews” is paramount—which guarantees Israel’s uniqueness. Without it, the logic of Israel as a “the land for Jews” falls apart, and it would then be a country like any other in this world, where just ordinary folk live.

“The Chosen People”

Lurking behind this racial distinction is the Protestant reading of the Bible, whereby modern-day “Jews” are held to be a unique people, especially chosen by God to carry out divine work in the world. The common understanding therefore is that the people known as “Jews” today are direct descendants of individuals inhabiting Holy Scripture. In other words, there is a supposed unbroken racial continuity from Abraham to today, despite the glaring fact that Abraham neglected to leave behind a sample of his DNA. Likewise, there are no DNA samples on record for all the prophets, kings, chief priests, scribes, guards, sadducees and pharasees mentioned in Holy Writ. So, what possible basis can there be for any sort of claim of familial descent stretching back thousands of years?

This model of uniqueness was introduced and codified by the German Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, in his eleven-volume History of the Jews (published, 1853-1870); and then other historians, such as Moses Hess, went on to affirm the notion of “Jews” as a distinct race—thus, there was a jüdische Typus (a “Jewish type”), which was “scientifically” knowable (and here the “science” of the day was utilized, such as skull shape, shape of ears, noses, etc.). These historians, in turn, were following the age-old Protestant project of aligning with God’s “Chosen people,” which created “Christian Zionism,” and which led to various wry remarks, such as, that “Presbyterians are Jews who eat pork.” Here, the question of race was, and remains, central. Non-Protestant Christians, on the other hand, understand the term “the Chosen people” as the Church, the people who follow Christ, and not as a distinct race.

Graetz’s notion also grounds the state of Israel, whereby the Bible is the legal “deed” of ownership of the land once known as Palestine, in that the “Jews” of today are phyletic heirs of the ancient Israelites, whose literary lives and episodes play out against the backdrop of Palestinian geography.

But once we wade into antiquity and actually try to locate the ancient “Jews” outside faith, we run into all kinds of difficulties—lexical, linguistic, archaeological, and historical. First, you might be wondering why “Jew” is here quotation marks—in order to indicate that this racial category is a recent one. In antiquity, we do not have a term that can be rendered as “Jew.” Instead, what we have is a geographical designation: “Judaean,” that is, someone who lived in the area called “Judaea.” In antiquity, there are Judaeans; there are no “Jews.” In other words, geography is not akin to race, and it is impossible to push the racial term “Jew” back, say, 3,000 years.

This also therefore means that it is impossible to pinpoint a distinct genetic marker within the archaeological record for “Jews.” What we have are people (Judaeans) living in the region now called Israel, a region called “Palestine” by the Romans. The race of these people is impossible to determine. Many communities lived in the area, and all of them shared an indistinguishable and thus common material culture (Egyptian, Canaanite, Philistine). In other words, there is no indication at all in archaeology that a tribe of Hebrews erupted into “the Promised land,” conquered and settled it (Grabbe, 2017, pp. 82-88). This then calls into question the sequence of events known as the “Exodus,” which is the etiology used to justify possession of Palestinian land that comprises the modern-day state of Israel. Whoever the people were that God chose have long disappeared in the obscurity of millennia. They have vanished without a trace. Nothing genetically associates them to the people that call themselves “Jews” today.

But the concept of the “Chosen people” also means a racial uniqueness from the rest of humanity (supremacism), which is widely assumed and believed, and given that archaeology, linguistics and history cannot verify such a distinction, a more crucial question arises: to say that modern “Jews” are heirs to an ancient Hebrew matrimony and patrimony (race and land)—means that we possess a precise genetic marker of the “Chosen people”—ancient and modern, both of which match perfectly. Of course, none exists. How then can the modern “Jew” be genetically matched with the people of the Bible, as their living heir?

Here, we could veer into the history of modern Judaism, but suffice it to say that it is not the one talked about in the Bible—whatever that ancient belief system may have been, it has little to do with the faith called “Judaism” today. The only indications we have of that ancient Judaean faith are from Josephus, and they do not match up at all with modern-day Judaic practice. In the words of Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser: “This is not an uncommon impression and one finds it sometimes among the Jews as well as Christians—that Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew Bible. It is, of course, a fallacious impression… Judaism is not the religion of the Bible” (Judaism and the Christian Predicament, p. 59). A fact very clearly enunciated by the Jewish Almanac (1980, p. 3): “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a ‘Jew’ or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.”

In short, there is no unbroken genetic history of the “Chosen people” from Abraham down to our times, nor is there a persistent, unchanging “Judaism,” especially since much suggests that there were systems of belief that were pre-Mosiac (pre-Torah, as it were). Whoever the people of the Bible were, they have disappeared; perhaps because they either became Christians, or later, Muslim. Their genes are impossible to trace let alone find in the populations of today.

But does a race of “Jews” exist today? The majority of the inhabitants of Israel are Ashkenazi, and then Sephardic, and Mizrahi. What history does their DNA contain? In a nutshell, largely Central and Eastern European and with some Asian. The most recent study suggests that the Ashkenazi are from Italy, and are thus Europeans. Very many hopeful studies have been carried out, which seek to “prove” that the “Jews” of today are indeed the descendants of the ancient Israelites. The originary assumption of all these analyses is to assert vague claims about continuity of ancient bloodlines, such as the Levites or the Cohenim. Needless to say, no one possesses the genomes of ancient Levites and Cohenim, against which to compare their modern descendants. Much is also made of the rare disorders that afflict “Jews” (Tay-Sachs, Neimann-Pick, and Gaucher); but again, these diseases are hardly confined to the “Jews” alone and are widespread in other groups.

More sober and neutral studies and analyses come up with a very different picture—that those we call “Jews” today are a mongrel lot of Romans, Greeks, Anatolians, Slavs, Iranians, Greater Turks (Khazar) and North Africans, with very little Middle Eastern components (of course, “Middle Eastern” itself is a vague category, which in no way can imply direct descent from Abraham). Such neutral studies are routinely attacked and vilified by those with vested interests—but they are never negated. In fact, a recent challenge by the eminent Israeli geneticist, Eran Elhaik, to prove “Jewishness” once and for all, using very precise criteria, was accepted and taken up by only two of the many pro-“Chosen-people” geneticists. And the results these two brought in only confirmed once again that a distinct race of “Jews” does not exist. There are only people of varied and mixed descent—like the rest of humanity. Those that believe in the “Chosen people” supremacy simply believe in a lie.

Biopolitics

It was Johann Rudolf Kjellén, who coined the phrase “biopolitics” (as well as the phrase “geopolitics”), by which he understood the state as an “ethnic individuality” which gives it organic power used to dominate others in order to persist. In this process, the myth of the “Chosen people” is essential as the ground upon which the entirety of the Zionist project that is Israel rests. This myth gives Israel power over others, especially over Protestant America whose unbounded support is legendary and uncompromising (billions of dollars and weapons), because it believes that it is thus aligned with God’s “Chosen people” (and all manner of Bible quotations are tossed about as “proof” for such support).

Therefore, Israel presents itself as the land of the racially homogeneous “Chosen people,” and this explains its authoritarianism when it comes to the Palestinians—because Israel is a closed community with supposed common DNA, inherited from dim antiquity, which can only mean that other races must exist in a hierarchy of inequality with “Jews,” since these Others mean to harm the “Chosen people.” In effect, the life of Israel (past, present and future) is determined by perceived hereditary biology for the welfare and protection of “Jews.” The baseline protection consists in discouraging and religiously denying any mixed marriage and extra-marital sex between “Jew” and “non-Jew.”

The entirety of Israel’s actions, political and social, are best understood as expressions of “Jewish” biology, whose welfare is guaranteed by the state’s innate race-based structure—that is, the essentialized association of DNA with geography. “The Chosen people” thus can do no wrong, for they are merely pursuing their biological destiny.

Perhaps, Israel some day will learn to live without the crutch of race and will abandon its supremacist ideology. If it does not, it will eventually disappear, as “Jewish supremacism” is a deadend.

C.B. Forde writes from rual Canada.

Featured: The Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea, by Frédéric Schopin; painted ca. 1850-1860.

“Armageddon Lobby”: How Christian Zionists Influence U.S. Policy

Despite the fact that not only hospitals and mosques but also Christian churches were destroyed during the bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces, many people who call themselves Christians and who are not ethnic Jews actively support Israel’s actions. Where did this phenomenon come from?

The fact is that Zionism as a Jewish political movement emerged in the late 19th century, but similar ideas appeared much earlier. And, paradoxically, they were born in a Christian environment.

The Birth of Puritan Zionism

One of the first supporters of the immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans. This Protestant sect emerged in the late 16th century and became quite influential in England and later in the American colonies. They showed considerable interest in the role of the Jews in eschatology, or end-time theology.

For example, John Owen, a seventeenth-century theologian, member of Parliament, and administrator at Oxford, taught that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end times prophecy. And in 1621, Sir Henry Finch wrote a sermon calling for the support of the Jewish people and their return to their biblical homeland.

One of the most influential strands of Christian Zionism has been dispensationalism, a system of interpretation that uses information from the Bible to divide history into different periods of administrations or dispensations and views the biblical term “Israel” as referring to the ethnic Jewish nation established in Palestine.

Dispensationalism was originally developed by Anglo-Irish preacher John Nelson Darby in the nineteenth century. Darby believed that the God-ordained destinies of Israel and the Christian church were completely separate, with the latter to be physically “raptured”—raised to meet Jesus—before the period of upheaval predicted in the Apocalypse, called the Great Tribulation.

According to Darby, the Great Tribulation will begin after the construction of the Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. During the Great Tribulation, according to this teaching, 144,000 Jews will convert to Christianity, and this will reveal to them the true intentions of the Antichrist. Thus, they will become the epicenter for the conversion of all unbelievers who have not been raptured to the Christian faith.

It is these 144,000 converted Jews who will meet Antichrist in the final battle known as Armageddon and defeat the Antichrist. After this battle, the seven years of tribulation will end and Jesus will return to imprison Satan and establish a thousand-year Messianic Kingdom on earth.

Despite its absurdity and lack of any reference in the Bible, the concept of physically moving Christians to heaven on the eve of Armageddon has been enthusiastically embraced by some churches in England and especially in the United States.

Darby’s approach to Christian eschatology coincides with similar developments in Jewish eschatology, namely, the ideas of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and the creation of a new branch of Jewish messianism. Its representatives believed that Jews should actively work to hasten the coming of their messiah by immigrating to Israel and building the Third Temple on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located.

Darby himself traveled throughout North America and several other countries to popularize his ideas, meeting with several influential pastors throughout the English-speaking world. Among them was James Brooks, Cyrus Scofield’s future mentor, who later disseminated the concept; and his interpretation was published widely in the United States and is known as the Scofield Bible.

Another figure influenced by Darby’s doctrine was the American preacher Charles Taze Russell, whose church later gave rise to several different sects, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses (an organization banned in Russia). Decades before the founding of modern political Zionism, Russell began preaching—not only to Christians but also to Jews in the United States and elsewhere—the need for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Russell wrote a letter in 1891 to Edmond de Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family, as well as Maurice von Hirsch, a wealthy German financier of Jewish descent, about his plan to settle Palestine. He described his plan as follows: “My proposal is that wealthy Jews buy from Turkey at a fair value all her property rights in these lands: that is, all public lands (lands not belonging to private owners), provided that Syria and Palestine are formed as free states.”

The book, The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, considered the founder of Zionism, was published only in 1896.

American preacher William E. Blackstone, greatly influenced by Darby and other dispensationalists of the era, also spent decades advocating Jewish immigration to Palestine as a means of fulfilling biblical prophecy. His efforts culminated in the Blackstone Memorial Petition, which called on then-United States President Benjamin Harrison and his Secretary of State James Blaine to take action “in favor of the return of Palestine to the Jews.”

Signers of the petition included bankers J. D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, future President of the United States William McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, Chief Justice Melville Fuller, the mayors of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and Chicago, the editors of the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, as well as members of Congress, influential businessmen, and clergy.

Although some rabbis were included among the signers, most American Jewish communities opposed the content of the petition. In other words, the primary goal of Zionism, even before it became a movement, was widely supported by the American Christian elite.

Modern Rise

Yet for the first half of the twentieth century, Christian Zionism was not very widespread or influential in the United States.

However, then preacher Billy Graham enters the arena and had close relationships with several presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. Finally, dispensationalism entered the mainstream of American political discourse with evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority organization in 1979.

Another prominent dispensationalist of great political and literary influence was Hal Lindsey. Ronald Reagan was so moved by his books that he invited Lindsey to speak at a National Security Council meeting on nuclear war plans and made him an influential adviser to several members of Congress and Pentagon officials.

To this day, the Republican Party still leans heavily on Christian Zionists for both cash and votes. They have a profound influence on party ideology.

Christian Zionists in the United States now have many names. Some call them the “Armageddon Lobby,” others call them the “Christian AIPAC” (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Christian Zionists themselves number about 20 million in the United States, and they sponsor the migration of Jews to Israel from Ethiopia, Russia, Ukraine and other countries. That is, in fact, there are more of them than ethnic Jews around the world, although not all Jews support Zionism.

During the administration of George W. Bush Jr. and especially on the eve of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the administration was also heavily influenced by Christian Zionists in the form of neoconservatives. During a 60 Minutes interview in October 2002, Jerry Falwell even stated, “I think we can now count on President Bush to do the right thing for Israel every time.”

Falwell was referring to President Bush’s actions in April 2002 when he turned a blind eye to Israeli actions in the West Bank during Operation Protective Wall. Falwell met with President Bush several times during his first term, specifically to discuss United States support for Israel. According to him, the president’s views on Israel were in line with his own.

Christian Zionists also helped oust Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, who suggested that it was done for Israel’s benefit by the Jewish lobby. And the Apostolic Congress and the group Americans for a Secure Israel effectively derailed Bush’s plan to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by flooding the White House with petitions.

There is also an organization in the U.S. called United Christians for Israel, which was founded in 2006 by Pastor John Hagee and has more than seven million members. Its members include former CIA head and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and well-known hawk John Bolton. All of them were quite active during Donald Trump’s presidency.

During a speech in Kansas in 2015, Pompeo openly stated that he believes in the “rapture of Christians,” and in an interview said that as a Christian he believes that “God chose Trump to help save the Jews from the threat of Iran.”

It was Christian Zionists who lobbied Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and its sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas and Trump supporter led a prayer for peace in Jerusalem during the relocation of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv on May 14, 2018. He called it “a momentous event in the life of your nation and in the history of our world.”

Another entity from the U.S. called, Proclaiming Justice for the Nations, also lobbies for Israel’s interests. At the end of October 2023, they began calling for the resignation of the UN Secretary General for his criticism of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians.

As we can see, the issue of support for Israel has a longer and more complex history than even that state’s creation in 1948.

Whereas many Jews deny even the very statehood of Israel, calling it a violation of Talmudic commandments (e.g., the Hasidic Naturei Karta movement), there are ardent supporters of Israel among the followers of Christian denominations, including justifications for any of its government’s actions, including repression of Palestinians.

And, of course, American Protestants, who link Israel’s fate to their eschatological worldview, play a huge role in this. And among them are influential political figures who make decisions on U.S. foreign policy.

Leonid Savin is Editor-in-Chief of the Geopolitika.ru Analytical Center, General Director of the Cultural and Territorial Spaces Monitoring and Forecasting Foundation and Head of the International Eurasia Movement Administration. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.

Belt and Road at Ten

China wanted to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with a sumptuous ceremony in Beijing in mid-October. This was intended to mark the success of the project which represents the net of all kind of agreements, accords and presences that bind a large number of nations across the globe and which the competitors, primarily the USA and EU, understand that Beijing’s assault on world power can no longer be stopped.

President Vladimir Putin, on his first trip outside Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine, visited China for the summit. This decision underlined Moscow’s growing dependence on Beijing for trade and political support, in an attempt to circumvent Western sanctions but also that Xi Jinping is now the majority partner of the global anti-Western alliance. China exploits Russia aggressive approach worldwide, hoping to concentrate on the attention of the USA, Europe, NATO and the G7 on Moscow. For China, this would weaken the response towards Beijing’s initiatives and actions, trying to take advantage of Western divisions and difficulties. During a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the visit, Putin stressed the need for close coordination of Sino-Russian foreign policy to address the current difficult circumstances. A sentiment echoed by Xi, who praised their “close and effective strategic coordination.”

In reality this meeting was of a minor nature, given that the number of participating foreign leaders was constantly decreasing from one summit to another; further, the “allure” of the meeting was heavily affected by the news of the growing difficulties afflicting China (and which Beijing is no more in condition to hide or camouflage), such as a heavy slowdown in economic development, a looming financial disaster in the immense real estate programme, the growing youth unemployment, the sharp decline of foreign investments, the piling errors of Xi Jinping’s governing style, such the disastrous Covid management and the re-nationalisation of large sectors of production and services.

But there are also other reasons, a growing number of states, especially African ones, are starting a slow but steady disengagement from China. There are various reasons for this. First of all, the very heavy Western pressure; secondly, there is a growing awareness that Chinese offers of help and financing have a greater counterweight, and the failure to repay the loans have similar punitive consequences, for the indebted country, not very different from those of the IMF and similar institutions (methodologies that originally pushed many nations to move closer to China, believed to be more generous and objective) and discovering the dark face of Beijing. Another reason of growing distancing is the fact that China started to reduce the flow of financing and loans to the continent, and tighten further the reimbursement of credits policies, as witnessed at the Africa-China Summit in Dakar on 2021, where was announced the new approach.

This situation is a window of opportunity that the competitors of Beijing do not want to lose as they try to recover political and commercial positions in Africa, and try to improve their strategic autonomy in some specific sectors, such as rare materials, a sector in which Beijing maintains a strong position on the continent (but not only, given the infiltrations in Australia and in North America itself).

The tool which appears leading the counteroffensive is the G7, thanks to its informal nature of interstate conference, more flexible than the structured architectures like EU, NATO (and OECD).

The US and the EU have joined forces with the African Development Bank (AFDB) and the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC, a pan-African multilateral development financial institution established in 2007 by 40 African states [out of 54 of African Union] to provide pragmatic solutions to continent’s infrastructure deficit and challenging operating environment) to launch the west’s latest attempt to counter BRI in the continent, and as said above, to regain control over the market of rare hearts.

The four partners signed a memorandum of understanding setting out plans to develop the “Lobito Corridor” which will setup a link across Atlantic Ocean Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean façade of the continent through a number of large mining area, joining Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (in the Katanga province), Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya and, with the real aim of replacing China, or, at least, undermining her influence there.

In the area, there are already existing railways, even if with narrow gauge, the “Benguela railway,” the Portuguese colonial time mining exploitation line of 1344 kms and the “Tazara railway” of 1860 kms. The first one was rebuilt by China in 2014, and the second was completely built by China in 1975. But there is a large gap of 800 km between the two lines and the US and EU initiative look to fill it. The railway, with Lobito, the main harbour of Angola and Mombasa (Kenya), Dar Es Salam, Bagamoio (this one under construction by Chinese firms) in Tanzania on the Indian Ocean coast will represent a transcontinental corridor for trade and development of global profile in consideration of the raw materials which are found along the planned line.

This also describes how stiff is the rivalry between the non-African competitors and the values on the table. The deal was done on the margins of the Global Gateway Forum in Brussels, an invitation-only meeting of EU governments with companies, banks, and international organisations intended to promote international infrastructure. Washington labelled the project as “the most significant transport infrastructure that the US has helped develop on the African continent in a generation, and will enhance regional trade and growth as well as advance the shared vision of connected, open-access rail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.”

The projects will be carried out under the auspices of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the G7’s operational sub architecture established to counter to the BRI. The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment was launched in June 2022 at the G7 summit in Germany.

The aim of the Partnership is to invest over $600 billion by 2027 to close infrastructure gaps around the world and exclude China from geographical strategic areas and markets. The Western block has already launched initiatives to compete with Chinese infrastructure largesse in the developing world. In 2013, then president Barack Obama launched his “Power Africa” initiative aimed at investing $7 billion to add more than 10,000 megawatts of clean electricity—but it did not work. The G7 tried again in June 2021 with its “Build Back Better World” scheme, intended to funnel billions into infrastructure in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. At the end of 2021 EU launched the “Global Gateway,” a project of $300 billion only for Africa for a time length of 2030.

The G7 initiative appears to be more targeted and takes into consideration the interests of the African countries to develop exploitation and trade in the region. The project aims to expand and improve the “Benguela Railways,” which runs within Angola, to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and a new railway from northwest Zambia will join that line. The project also involves building 260 kms of roads and about 550 kms of track in Zambia, spanning from the Jimbe border to Chingola in the country’s copper region. As well as the railway, the corridor will involve 4G and later 5G telecoms systems and a billion-dollar investment in solar farms and microgrids.

Analysts suggest that this is a direct challenge to BRI, largely viewed as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and that it will be impossible to avoid working with Beijing on the Lobito project, as for example in the telecommunications sector, since local firms, partly owned by China Communications, signed an agreement to run the Lobito Corridor network. These analysts foresee that Beijing, despite the internal difficulties, will fight stiffly to face the response of the Western countries and will continue to bet on the campaign to reinforce her position on the rare materials, essential elements for the environmental conversion and technology developments.

As example of this enlarged battlefield, China is the world’s top graphite producer and exporter. It also refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into the material that is used in virtually all EV battery anodes, and the demand for graphite over the next decade will grow at an annual compound rate of 10.5%, but supply will lag, expanding at only 5.7% per year. While there is a need for 200,000 tonnes of graphite to meet demand, the reality is, the current US supply capability is zero. But there are signs that, slowly a dynamic by the Western countries is beginning, like the reopening of North America’s only graphite producing mine in Canada.

Other than China, the world leaders in graphite exploitation are Madagascar, Mozambique, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Canada, Norway, India, North Korea, while the US Geological Survey states that Africa has been a recent focus for graphite exploration, with projects under development in Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania (this list clearly shows that few exporter countries are close to the Western security and economic architectures).

With the BRI, China wants to seek its own space and assert its global leadership; and the “New Silk Road,” as it is also informally called, is part of a series of architectures (some under its full control, like the SCO, with others less, like the BRICS), which are part of a large-scale project. The “broadened” Western system has understood that the confrontation will be at least long and certainly not easy, even if China itself does not want to take the confrontation to extreme consequences, as it is aware that the price would still be high. The internal difficulties are starting to have an impact on Beijing’s policy-making and proof of this is the bilateral meetings between Xi and Biden, on the sidelines of the San Francisco summit; they are the signal of a possible resumption of dialogue, though China will not give up its ambitions, but it will reorient them, based on circumstances, needs and resources.

Enrico Magnani, PhD, is a retired UN official and expert in military history and international politico-military affairs.

The Wars of Nagorno-Karabakh

Good books are rare, and clear, concise works are even rarer. Jean-Marie Lorgé’s Les guerres du Haut Karabakh (éditions Baudelaire, 2021) has both these qualities. It should be published in English.

To understand this tragic conflict, you need to know Erdogan’s vision of the international chessboard (or his geopolitical vision, if you prefer) as the author describes it. And we can trust him.

Erdogan anchors Turkey on two pillars: the “Blue Homeland” and “Pan-Turkism.” The “Blue Homeland” is a kind of bread-and-butter patriotism aimed at taking control of the southern and eastern Mediterranean Sea and its resources. This should put Europe on its guard. The counterpart to this “Blue Homeland” is the realization of Enver Pasha’s grand design: the coalition of Turkish-speaking regions from the Bosphorus to the Altai Mountains, under Turkish leadership. Azerbaijan, the Muslim-majority country ethnically, culturally and linguistically closest to Turkey, is the second link in this Pontic chain: from Turkey to Kirghizia, via Azerbaijan, Turkmenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The first Nagorno-Karabakh war (1990) pitted it against Azerbaijan. The second war (2020) brought Turkey into the picture. Its unwavering support for Azerbaijan is in line with Ankara’s policy. Added to this, and no one dares say it, is Islam’s age-old hatred of Christians. And on this point, Turkey has shown throughout history that this hatred has gone as far as genocide, not only of Armenians but also of Aramaic-speaking Christian populations. The press calls it ethnic cleansing, but religious cleansing too.

In September-November 2020, the immediate aim of the Azerbaijani “steel fist” offensive was to break the Shushi lock, to block the Lachin corridor (10 km long) through which the only road linking Karabakh to Armenia passes, and to cut off the second road linking two Armenian towns. In other words, the aim was to suffocate Nagorno Karabakh. The defeat, both military and political, was total. Armenia was left with the choice of either toning down its desire for Westernization and accepting closer political and military relations with Russia, Iran and China, or accepting the path outlined by Erdogan on December 10, 2020 at the Victory Parade in Baku”: vassal status within a regional coalition dominated by a Turkey drunk with its Ottoman past. And we know all about the Ottoman past: from Islamic oppression to massacres and genocide.

There remained a third way: to start a desperate war all over again. That’s what we’ve seen recently. With a new debacle. The second war was part of Erdogan’s vision of a Bosphorus/Altai territorial continuum, of which the Turkey/Azerbaijan territorial continuity was the first step. To achieve this, the Nagorno Karabagh lock had to be broken.

And that’s now done. There’s still one more lock: Siunik, which has been Armenian for two millennia, and which the Azeris also claim, but taking the 19th and 20th centuries as their starting point; that is, when their state was born. Before that, there is no history of Azerbaijan comparable to the long and dramatic history of Armenia or Georgia. The Azeris can therefore make no claim before the last three centuries. The capture of central and southern Siunik by Turkey, through Azerbaijan, would see the realization of Pan-Turkism’s major political objective: a Turko-Azerbaijani mass (Muslim and hardline), with three maritime windows.

Once Turkey joined Europe, we can imagine the consequences. The third Nagorno-Karabakh war did indeed take place. But not the one we might have expected. Which may mean that it’s not over yet. On the territories recovered by Azerbaijan under the terms of the November 9, 2020 agreement, some 80 Christian religious buildings have been destroyed.

Marion Duvauchel is a historian of religions and holds a PhD in philosophy. She has published widely, and has taught in various places, including France, Morocco, Qatar, and Cambodia. She is the founder of the Pteah Barang, in Cambodia.

Israel: Between Fear and Loathing

The razzia inside Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 uncovered the extent of the hatred that circulates in that part of the world.

First, the obvious hatred of the Palestinians for Israel, being the outcome of a displaced people who face on a daily basis needless cruelty and a deep-seated racism at the hands of Israelis. Instead of using the past seventy-odd years of its existence to nurture goodwill and support, Israel instead has chosen to sell itself to the West as the final bastion of “civilization” before the vast sea of Eastern barbarity. It wins this “civilization” through naked force. The razzia did not come out of the blue; it was yet another bitter fruit of this Israeli “sales pitch.”

Second, the razzia revealed how deeply divided Israeli society is—those who support Prime Minister Netanyahu versus those who do not. If the razzia had not happened, Mr. Netanyahu would have been in serious trouble, with millions out on the street protesting his rule. That rift cannot be mended and the differences suddenly forgotten because of this new Gazan war. Thus, Israel now is caught between the “right-wing” Jews who hold power and those who oppose them. These right-wing Jews control the Israeli administration of PM Netanyahu. In fact, Reform, or liberal Judaism is dying out in Israel; it is the Orthodox (often right-wing) versions of the faith that are flourishing and who teach Jewish racial supremacism. The current Knesset is dominated by the right-wing whose supporters regularly gather to shout “Kill Arabs” and spit on Christian pilgrims and at churches, and who attack Christians. And then there are the laws which openly discriminate between Jew and Arab, so that there is an effective apartheid.

Third, and despite the fact the razzia was merciless and cruel, internationally it had the opposite effect than the one expected, of worldwide outrage against Hamas—instead, it has created two camps. The one led by Washington, along with all its vassalage, which supports Israel “for as long as it takes” (to lift a quotation from another recent US-led failed war), and a second camp which has galvanized around the Palestinians and has brought into focus Israel’s deeply anti-Arab culture.

It is a very curious thing—many Jews pride themselves on their charitable works and organizations, and yet they fail to practice the most basic charity when it comes to the Palestinians. It is also the mantra of such pro-Israel Jews therefore that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic, which would make Jews like Rabbi Yisroel Feldman and his followers, the Neturei Karta or those of the American Council for Judaism very anti-Semitic. Thus, this charge, in this context, is meaningless and pointless. Israel has no answer to the many anti-Zionist Jews, who call for the dismantling of Israel and who just want to live peacefully with their God-fearing Arab neighbors. For Jews such as these, Zionism is the cooption of their faith for political ends and thus for whom the state of Israel is an affront to God.

In other words, Jewish identity is a very foggy and very contentious notion. Is a Jew a member of a race, or a follower of a faith? As is obvious, the answer will depend on what kind of a Jew is asked the question. There is no blanket defintion of a “Jew.”

Then, there are the Jews in the West who are well-attuned to this anti-Arab racism in Israel. As soon as the razzia took place, there was a rush on social media to channel the expected outrage into the “proper” narrative: Hamas are Nazis killing Jews. The first one out of the starting gate, it would appear, was one Ezra Levant of Rebel Media who brutally dumbed things down, via a meme, to make sure that you would have no choice but to “see” this event through the “correct” lens:

“The Nazis are back.” Mr. Levant, no doubt guided by the addage about a picture and the thousand words, failed to elaborate how the two images depict “the same thing,” let alone what that “thing” might be. When it comes to Palestine, there can be no complexity, no subtlety; there can only be Jews against Nazis. The other side of this logic is equally grim—that Israelis killing Palestinians is simply Jews killing Nazis, which can only be an aggregate “good.” And, of course, “Hamas” equals all Palestinians, equals all Arabs.

As for the young Israeli woman shown…

More importantly, for people like Mr. Levant, they fail to first explain how Palestinians were responsible for what Hitler did and why they must now assume the mantle of “Nazis?” And more crucially still, why must Palestinians suffer displacement and give up their own ancestral land to compensate European Jewry for what happened during World War Two? Answering these two questions is crucial before comparisions can be made. But racial stereotyping and then scurrility are far easier than facing the reality of the brutality of recent Israeli history.

The loudest spokesman of such a mindset is the American Ben Shapiro, a social media celebrity-commentator, who recently put things bluntly: “The idea is Israel kills enough of these sons of bitches that this is not a problem again.” In other words, ethnic cleansing is the only way forward for Israel to live in peace. What such a “peace” could possibly be is left undefined, or unconsidered. Back in 2002, the same Mr. Shapiro wrote an article in which he channeled Madeleine Albright (also Jewish, who considered 500,000 murdered Arab children a good price for peace): “…when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don’t really care. In fact, I would rather that the good guys use the Air Force to kill the bad guys, even if that means some civilians get killed along the way.” In this article, Mr. Shapiro summarized the “ethic” bolstering his bloodlust: “There is a Jewish proverb from Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers): He who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind.” Needless to say, it is up to people like Mr. Shapiro to tell us who is “cruel” and who is “kind,” and how many Arabs need to be killed to make it all worthwhile.

Adding to the problem is the easy recourse to ontological reductionism, where the reality of what has been happening to the Palestinians for the past seventy-plus years can be rendered as a simplistic Hitlerian trope of Jews vs. Nazis, with the Israelis as always the “good guys.” Thus, having concluded that Hamas, and by extention Palestinians, and by extension Arabs, and by extention Muslims are all the same, Mr. Levant has since been busy on X exposing these new “Nazis.” For example,

And one more example:

What people like Mr. Levant fail to realize is that their strategy is easily used against them. Thus, for example, why is much of big finance in the hands of Jews (Blackrock, the Rothschilds, George Soros, Paul Singer, Moshe Kantro, etc.)? Why are so many people in President Biden’s adminstration also Jews, not to mention that Biden’s own family is Jewish as well as Mr. Trump’s? Therefore, of course, the Jews in power are always going to favor Israel, no matter what, and of course they are going to be anti-Arab. There are also the various influence-peddlars who promote hasbara, explaining Israel to the world (especially in Washington). And then there are agencies that police the non-Jewish West, lest it veer away from a pro-Jewish, pro-Israel stance, such as the ADL and AIPAC. But to ask such questions and say such things means being called “anti-Semitic.” However, when Jews, such as Mr. Levant and Mr. Shapiro, use the same strategy to target Arabs, it is not anti-Semitic and not racism (even though Arabs indeed are also Semitic), because the target group has been labeled as “Nazis.”

Needless to say, Mr. Levant and those like him have nothing to say about the on-going violence routinely carried out by ordinary Israelis against Palestinians. Why do such Israelis feel that they must wrest their way of living from the Other by bullying and through violence?

The good thing in all this—the ever-tiresome Jordan Peterson has finally abandoned his vocation of snide-sayer on X and gone back to his first love—offering bootless advice to the anserous.

Dr. Peterson was initially lusting for revenge, before being publically admonished…

After catching much flak, the good doctor got back to his stock-in-trade—stating banal obviousisms…

But let us leave these fantasists to their hobbyhorses and look at the reality of the situation.

As of March 2023, the total population of Israel is 9.7 million. Of these, 7.1 million are Jews, 2.1 million are Arabs (including Christians), and the remainder are other communities.

The total Palestinian population is 5.3 million; and if we add the 2.1 million Arabs living inside Israel, the total Arab population in the area equals 7.4 million. How exactly does a population of 7.1 million Israeli Jews hope to battle the Palestinians, plus the entire Muslim world which numbers well over two billion? Right now it is doing so because of Washington’s largesse for fealty rendered. But America is a very fickle friend to its vassals (just ask Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc.). What does Israel hope to achieve in the long-run—revenge or survival? As it is perhaps beginning to find out, it cannot do both. Defiance is hardly a good long-term foreign policy. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will leave you both eyeless and toothless.

Another factor to consider. The Jews in Israel have come from all corners of the world (yet another reason that makes the term “anti-Semitic” meaningless). What is it that truly unites them all? Many of these Jews are dual citizens from the West who can easily go back should the going get tough. Of course, this luxury of dual-citizenship can never be available to the Palestinians.

Then there is the deep-rooted problem of racism in Israel. Something hardly mentioned. There exists a strict racial hierarchy among Israeli Jews—those that are the Falasha and other visible-minority Jews form the underclass and are treated horribly as menials. This Jew-on-Jew racism is deeply embedded in Israeli society, which means that the notion of a unified Jewish identity is a myth. What is Israel, therefore, for the Falasha?

This racism is also evident in the way Israel has treated the Black Hebrew Israelites, it has expelled them for not being “ethinically” Jewish. In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, they are “infiltrators,” who can either “leave the country and take their money or to spend the rest of their life in an Israeli prison.” Does this mean that converts to Judaism are not welcome in Israel? If so, then why are atheist Jews welcome? If Jews are a distinct race, then Israel is meant only for ethnic Jews? Where does that leave “democracy?”

It is this culture of normalized racism which allows utterances made, for example, by the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, possible: “We have abolished all the rules of war. Our soldiers will not be held responsible for anything. There will be no military courts.” Killing Palestinians is no crime, because (again the words of Mr. Gallant, and the irony of his surname is best left unexplored): “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

The “human animals” he is referring to is the 2.1 million (some say 2.3 million) Gazans, 50 percent of whom are children (under the age of 18). It is these children who are the vermin that need to be cleaned out so Israel can live in peace?

Interesting is it not, how deeply Israelis have imbibed the rhetoric once used against Jews during the time of Hitler and now they use it against the Arabs? Thus far, Mr. Gallant’s campaign has killed well over 7,000, of whom nearly half are children, as the Israelis try to imitate the fire-bombing of Dresden, which they regard as the gold standard in achievement in Gaza. Notice too that the term “Hamas” has been expanded to include all Gazans. Such slaughter is worth it, to use Ms. Albright’s rationale.

But despite superiority in weaponry, it is Hamas that is winning this war—because it has shown the world a very ugly side of Netanyahu’s Israel which has been well-hidden; or rather, ignored: the original inhabitants of Palestine are dehumanized to the point of slaughter, and current Israeli officialdom thinks racially and regards Palestinians as non-humans, as animals, which means that all brutality is therefore permissible. Such is the bastion of “civiliazation” in that region?

This dehumanization also makes a more sinister point—what’s the use of giving Palestinians their own country? They will only blow it up and then come after the Jews. Therefore, a two-state solution is a bust from the get-go. Or as the ever-boisterous Ben Shapiro once put it: “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.” His words are backed up by some top rabbis of Israel who have stated: “racism originated in the Torah.”

What the Gazans managed to build, despite Israeli hindrances and cruelty, deserves also to be remembered, and which must be compared to the hell that Israel has wrought there.

Perhaps it is time for the more sensible Jews to show a way to escape from the quickening cycle of hatred. Can Israel find another way to live in the region, other than through belligerence and defiance? Can it become more integrated as a Middle Eastern nation, rather than some imagined “crusader state?” Perhaps it is time at long last to begin cultivating goodwill that might lead to real peace, and to learn to share the land. But that would mean changing the entire Israeli power structure. What will eventually survive of Israel should hatred be allowed to achieve maximum destruction? Violence is a deadend.

C.B. Forde writes from rual Canada.

The Middle East: An Eschatological Scenario

Let us try to describe one of the possible scenarios of further escalation in the Middle East.

****

The Palestinian uprising begins in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Fatah cannot contain the situation. Seeing Israel carrying out a full-blown genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians launch an all-out revolt. The IDF continues to annihilate civilians in the Gaza Strip. There are growing protests around the world against Western, pro-American liberal elites standing unanimously in favor of Israel. Hezbollah gets involved and crowds of Arabs from Jordan break through cordons at the border. The U.S. launches preemptive strikes against Iran, which is increasingly involved in the conflict, and they launch strikes against Israel. Syria enters the war, attacking the Golan Heights. There is a rapid mobilization of the entire Islamic world.

Pro-American states—Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.—are forced to join the confrontation on the side of the Palestinians. They are joined by Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia. The story of sending the Taliban to the Middle East from fake news becomes reality. The black banners of Khorassan are hoisted over the world. Problems between Salafists and traditionalists, including Shiites, fade into the background. The great jihad of the Islamic world against the West and Israel begins.

Russia takes a neutral stance, but is slow to support Israel as it is at war in Ukraine with the West, which in turn is completely on Israel’s side.

At some point in the uprising in East Jerusalem, Palestinians proclaim the need to cordon off the Al-Aqsa Mosque for protection from the IDF. This is what started the uprising in the Gaza Strip, the Al-Aqsa Storm. Israel, in the course of fighting armed Palestinian militias and in self-defense, launches a rocket attack on the mosque. It collapses. The path to building the Third Temple is cleared. But… a billion Muslims, of whom 50 million (officially) are in Europe, start an uprising now in the West itself. Civil war erupts in Europe. Some Europeans are on the side of LGBT, Soros and Atlanticist elites, and some make an alliance with Muslims (on the model of Alain Soral) and join the anti-liberal Revolution.

The US uses tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. Russia launches a tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine, which seeks to cling to the West at any cost and provokes Moscow in every possible way to do so.

World War III erupts with the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Russia finally makes up its mind and sides with the Muslims.

China quietly attacks Taiwan, distracting the U.S. and NATO to a new target. India refrains from the direct support the US is counting on. The evening of history ceases to be languid.

Feminists, gay activists and environmentalists demand an end to it all, but no one listens to them.

The West is forced to fight against all in the name of some goal it can no longer articulate—all the old theses about human rights, civil society and other incantations have disappeared in the harsh reality of the coming total death. Elon Musk admits that he has completely stopped understanding what is happening.

Israel begins the construction of the Third Temple under attack from all sides. Only the Moshiach can save the day…

****

This is where the text of the predictive analysis (prophecy) ends.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Featured: The Triumph of Death, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder; painted ca. 1562.

Subtracting the Sahara

It is no surprise to see a party of the Spanish left betraying the Saharawi people. Moreover, they seem to sacrifice their own principles in favor of a PSOE completely devoted to the narco-dictatorship of Mohamed VI and his expansionist aspirations.

The affinity of the Spanish left with the Saharawi cause has been a constant in their electoral programs and public statements. However, the repeated betrayals to this cause have sown doubts. It all began with a young Felipe Gonzalez, who in 1976 promised, on a trip to the Saharawi refugee camps, to accompany the Saharawi people in their just struggle until the final victory. However, when he came to power, Gonzalez strengthened his alliance with the Moroccan monarch, forgetting the already punished Saharawi people.

The left has united and regrouped under various acronyms, from “Izquierda Unida” to Podemos, now Unidas Podemos, and recently SUMAR. It seems that the Spanish left only knows how to move and survive between the hopeful novelty and the supposed definitive alliance that promises much but falls, devoured by its own failure, being reborn again under new acronyms and promises.

This is how we Saharawis have been for more than 40 years, listening to false promises, receiving “solidarity” politicians in our refugee camps and falling again and again into the same mistake by believing those who disappoint us. I have to make it clear that we do not expect anything from the Spanish right wing, which is neither here nor expecte;, they never promised nor were there. Those who championed the Saharawi cause were the leftist political parties in Spain, which have always disappointed and disillusioned. From Gonzalez, through Zapatero, who was the president who sold the most weapons to Morocco, weapons then used against the Saharawi people, to Sanchez who was the most indecent president to publicly recognize that Western Sahara should be an “autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty,” supporting a fierce illegal occupation and violating the international legality that calls for a referendum of independence in Western Sahara. This position contradicts the will of the majority of Spaniards who support the Saharawi cause and tramples on the aspirations of the Saharawi people who have been resisting for more than 50 years for their independence.

Looking at the parties to the left of the PSOE, we Saharawis may have to settle for a tweet or, hopefully, a statement in the press in support of the “just struggle of the Saharawi people.” But beyond this media gesture, there will be no clear initiatives or actions, and it is time that we recognize and accept it. We are only an electoral slogan, a badge to wear on our chest to look really “leftist” in some demonstration or public act, but beyond that, we are nothing. Morocco will always be the friend, the ally and the chosen one.

The party led by Yolanda Diaz, SUMAR, promised to reverse the decision taken by Pedro Sanchez and return Spain to its “neutral” position on the Western Sahara issue. However, in the recent government agreement signed between the PSOE and SUMAR, the Saharawi question is nowhere to be found. SUMAR had to choose between the just Saharawi cause or the illegal occupation of Mohamed VI. It had to choose between fidelity to its promises or ambiguity out of self-interest. In both cases, I choose the second option.

Meanwhile, the Saharawi people continue to believe in the Spanish “new left” that always finds a way to be reborn under new acronyms, new colors and new promises that, of course, will never be fulfilled.

Finally, we recall that the Saharawi people do not ask for solidarity or alms, they simply ask that Spain fulfills its legal duty as a colonial power in Western Sahara; but this request becomes a demand, especially to those who have championed our struggle and have promised to carry out the long-awaited decolonization, and then betray us in the most shameful ways. At this point, I recommend to my fellow Saharawis to change the demand for a simple request: that the Spanish left stop trafficking in our pain and using our cause as a bargaining chip.

Taleb Alisalem was born in the Sahrawi refugee camps and grew up in Spain. He trained in International Cooperation and Development Aid at The Open University. He is a prominent political activist and analyst who specializes in the Western Sahara, the Middle East as well as African issues. This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia.

Martians!

What will happen when Putin signs an alliance with the little green men?

There is a danger greater than Putin, greater even than Trump—it is aliens, those that in our childhood we knew as Martians. The Yankee establishment seems very interested in drawing the attention of the American public to non-human technologies and extraterrestrial threats, which seem as problematic to demonstrate as the climate apocalypse. The Pentagon declassifies files with a transparency that would delight the late Dr. Jiménez del Oso. Those who once laughed at UFOs now seem to be convinced that we already have them here. The viewer cannot believe his eyes, while the shadow of a mothership looms over the defenseless United States: What will happen if Putin signs an alliance with the little green men? We can imagine panic on the West Coast, chaos in Washington and desperation in London: Putin is going to enter Paris, escorted by scaly Cossacks.

Such a threat to national security well deserves an increase in the Defense budget, two, three, four, five, as many times as necessary to provide us with the reverse technology that will allow us to overcome the challenge posed at Roswell. Soon, without a doubt, we will see the autopsies of the big-headed Martians who crashed their saucer after a reckless maneuver. And the public will swallow the millstone and cry out for the Military-Industrial Complex to defend them from the legions of Ummo or Ganymede. If intellectual and scientific credit is given to the girl Greta, why not give it to the abductees? At least these have been through a psychiatrist.

Popular Revolutions in Black Africa

Further down, a few thousand kilometers away from this decomposing Spain, in that Africa which we care so little about and from which so many problems come and will come to us, the wrongly labelled “European” Union is witnessing the volatilization of its influence in the Sahel, because of Russia, according to the press addicted to the Regime? Of course, since Putin replaced the coronavirus, all the evils of humanity come from Moscow.

However, the African military leaders who have taken power in recent years in Mali (2021), Burkina-Faso (2022), Guinea (2021) and this year in Niger have not resorted to the Wagner coup d’état, unlike in the past with French paratroopers and mercenaries hired by Paris. They have been military and popular coups that were fueled by France itself, a mere executor of the policies of the American Africom. After the overthrow of the Libyan state in 2011, the jihadists have found a terrestrial paradise in the lands of Fezzan and from there have intervened in Niger and Mali. France orchestrated two interventions to halt the march of the Tuareg fundamentalists on the Sahelian space, but soon discovered that it was much more practical to appease the Salafists in order to maintain their influence in Africa. The military of these countries began to see from their sad experience that the French services always had time to warn the members of the Islamic State of government attacks, in time for them to get their Qatari instructors to safety, for example. Meanwhile, and taking advantage of the occasion, Nigerian uranium was transported to France at ridiculous prices. Somehow the “protection” had to be paid for.

The Sahelian coups are true popular revolutions, like the Egyptian one of 1952, and which have been greeted with enormous popular support. Russian flags and portraits of Putin are more an expression of rejection of French (and European) perfidy than anything else. Macron, completely overwhelmed by his African debacle, has urged a military intervention by ECOWAS (a sort of African NATO) in Niger, as this country provides more than thirty percent of France’s nuclear fuel. However, knowing the internal rejection that an intervention by the sepoys would bring to their regimes, the governments of the zone refuse to move their forces. The United States, that faithful ally of Europe, has already negotiated on its own with Niger and has left Macron and dressed up and nowhere to go, as our grandmothers used to say. It was not for nothing that it was Victoria Nuland—she of F**k Europe!—who was in charge of negotiating the new state of affairs with Niger’s leaders. In case anyone thinks that this does not affect them, they should check their electricity bill in the coming months. France is the powerhouse of Europe.

Nor does it seem to be news that a good part of the weapons destined for Ukraine by NATO are turning up in Africa, where a certain power, very concerned about gender identity, climate change and aliens, is training its jihadist partners for a future pan-African war. Apparently, they can’t find a better way to end the growing influence of China and Russia on that continent. The Sahel and the Caucasus seem to be the next theater of global warfare. And we are not talking about aliens here, but surely the well-informed viewer, who knows where the star Sirius is and also knows that there are sixty genders, has no idea what Nagorno-Karabakh is or who the members of Boko-Haram are. He will find out eventually. And at his own expense.

Sertorio lives, writes and thinks in Spain. this review comes through the kind courtesy of El Manifiesto.

Featured: “Watching From Mars,” number 13, from the Mars Attacks! trading card series (1962). Drawings by Wally Wood, painted by Norman Saunders.

Breaking Away from the Civilization of Death

We need to do a mental experiment and imagine what else—other than a nuclear strike—could the West at war with us do to us? What sanctions to impose? Who to expel? How to humiliate? Kick us out of where? Deprive us of what? (We are not considering a nuclear strike, because they won’t, and if they do, it won’t matter, because we will).

Well, the West will do it all. And nothing will stop it.

And there is no need to build illusions here—in fact, the West does not depend on us for almost anything substantial. And if it does, it is intensively looking for a replacement. And more often than not, it finds one. Trying to pin it down with some natural resources or something else is unlikely to have any effect. It is good that we have stopped reassuring ourselves with “severe European winter, which Europe will not survive, allegedly, without us.” It survived the last one and it will survive this one. And Ukraine will not collapse and surrender by itself—until we ruin it and force it to surrender. By will, by force and by relying on ourselves. Only on ourselves.

We have to learn to live without the West. Completely.

We simply discard everything that binds us to it. Radically cut off all contacts, cut off all forms of dependence, stop all transactions, stop all interaction in the technical, economic and humanitarian spheres.

No grain and no fertilizer. No publications in Western scientific journals, withdrawal from SCORUS, revision of RINC criteria. Not waiting until Russian scientists are given an ultimatum: either betray your homeland or you are no longer scientists. And even now it is already practically so.

In sports that is how it is. In politics, it’s even more than that. In economics and finance—everything is moving in the same direction.

The West is cutting us off from itself, and putting forward conditions as to not cut us off further—betray the country, the people, the society, Russia, betray Putin. And then we will see whether you are still an oligarch or no longer an oligarch, a scientist or no longer a scientist, a politician or no longer a politician.
Anything that they can hit us with, the West will hit us with it. With whatever it has already; and with what it does not yet have, it will hit us gradually.

It’s easy to imagine. And if you imagine it, prepare yourself.

We are condemned henceforth to live without the West.

It’s completely unexpected. But it makes perfect sense.

Everything Western is deeply toxic from now on (frankly, it always has been). It is, after all, an addiction to what we do not control, but what the enemy controls. Any hint of liberalism, any recognition of Western universalism, any acceptance of the normativity of anything that comes from the West, any acceptance of Western rules, criteria, practices, anywhere and in anything, is already a step toward betrayal, if not betrayal itself.

That’s what it means to be a Civilized State.

Not to depend in anything and in any way on another civilization, and above all on the one that is waging a merciless war against us.

Once we completely sever all relations with this global model (of degeneration and dehumanization) called the modern “collective West,” we can focus on establishing our own civilizational foundations.

Frankly speaking, we have not looked in this direction at all yet. Everyone has tried to integrate into the West while preserving sovereignty. It is impossible, unrealistic and pointless. And that is exactly what it was at once. The West does not need any “corporation Russia,” even if it is loyal to the West. The good Russia for them is the absent Russia. It is not even Yeltsin’s Russia; it simply does not exist.

It is costly to prolong this process. It is time to cut this thread, because these are civilizational fetters, not the desire to join the “mainstream of development.” The West is a dead end. But that is their business. For us it is just an enemy, death and the end.

Russia will live only in a world where the West does not decide and means nothing. At least for us. In any other cases, it will be the torture of the Etruscan bride, when the criminal was tied alive to a decomposing corpse. There is nothing more horrible than such torture. A man dies slowly, necrosis enters his body cell by cell.

The modern West, too, is a decaying, rotting corpse tied to humanity.

It is not enough for it to perish; it wants to drag everyone else with it into the abyss.

Look at Ukraine, what they have done to it—a poisoned, twisted, psychologically broken people. A destroyed state. Massively crushed on the fronts of a senseless and obviously lost war, or a distraught society fleeing the country. The dead bride of Western control is firmly bolted to that still (barely) breathing country. But death in Ukraine is winning. Staring out of the eyes of its rabid rulers—already crossed over to the other side, already dead but still outwardly alive.

Complete liberation from the West is the only way to salvation. Everything bad in modern Russia is from it. Its miasmas have eaten away our politics, economy, culture, science, psychology, everyday life, youth. This is a carcinogenic process. And the faster and harder we cut off the affected cells, the more chances for salvation and revival of our Motherland, the great Russia.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Featured: Disparate n. 7, Disparate matrimonial, by Francisco Goya, ca. 1816 and 1823.

New Multipolar Order: Heptarchy and its Meanings

The world order is changing so rapidly today that institutions related to international politics do not have time to adequately respond and fully comprehend it. In Russia, there is a tenuous theory that international law is something solid and stable, taking into account the interests of all parties, while the theory of “rules” and the rules-based order promoted by the collective West and North American elites is some kind of trickery to consolidate hegemony. This is worth exploring in more detail.

Premodern World Order

Let us summarize the fundamental mutations of the world order in the last 500 years—that is, since the beginning of the New Age (the Modern era).

Before the beginning of the era of Great Geographical Discoveries (coinciding with the transition from Premodern to Modern, from traditional society to modern society), the world was divided into zones of several autonomous civilizations. They exchanged with each other on different levels, sometimes conflicted, but none of them questioned the very fact of each other’s existence, accepting everything as it was.

These civilizations were:

  1. Western Christian (Catholic) ecumene;
  2. Eastern Christian (Orthodox) ecumene;
  3. Chinese Empire (including cultural satellites—Korea, Vietnam, partly Japan and some states of Indochina);
  4. Indosphere (including partly Indochina and the Indonesian Islands);
  5. Iranian Empire (including areas of Central Asia under strong Iranian influence);
  6. The Ottoman Empire (inheriting in outline much of the Abbasid dominions—including the Maghreb and the Arabian Peninsula);
  7. A number of independent and developed African kingdoms;
  8. Two American empires (Inca and Aztec).

Each civilization included several powers and often many very different ethnic groups. Each civilization had a distinct religious identity that was embodied in politics, culture, ethics, art, lifestyle, technology, and philosophy.

In essence, this was the zoning of mankind in the epoch when all societies, states and peoples lived in the conditions of traditional society and built their existence on the basis of traditional values. All these values were divine, sacred. At the same time, they were different for each civilization. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the specific case, but in general all civilizations accepted the existence of others as a given (if, of course, they encountered them).

It is worth paying attention to the fact that both the Christian West and the Christian East thought of themselves as separate ecumenes, as two Empires—with the predominance of the Papal beginning in the West and the imperial beginning in the East (from Byzantium this was passed on to Moscow—the Third Rome).

This order Buzan and Little call “antique or classical international systems.” Carl Schmitt refers to them as the first nomos of the earth.

This was the first model of international relations. No general international law existed in this period, because each civilization represented a complete and completely autonomous world—not only a sovereign culture, but also a perfectly original understanding of the surrounding existence and nature. Each Empire lived in its own imperial cosmos, the parameters and structures of which were determined on the basis of the dominant religion and its tenets.

Modern Times: The Invention of Progress

This is where the most interesting part begins. The Western European New Age (Modernity) brought with it an idea completely alien to all these civilizations, including the Catholic-Christian one—the idea of linear time and the progressive development of mankind (later this was formalized into the idea of progress). Those who adopted this attitude began to operate with the fundamental ideas that the “old,” “ancient,” and “traditional” are obviously worse, more primitive, and coarser than the “new,” “progressive,” and “modern.” Moreover, linear progress dogmatically asserted that the new removes the old, overcomes and surpasses it in all parameters. In other words, the new replaces the old, abolishes it, takes its place. This negates the dimension of eternity, which is at the heart of all religions and all traditional civilizations and constitutes their sacred core.

The idea of linear progress simultaneously redefined all forms of traditional society (including the traditional society of Western Europe). Thus, the “ancient international system,” or the “first nomos of the Earth,” came to be regarded collectively as the past, which should be replaced by the present on the road to the future. At the same time, the model of post-traditional, post-Catholic (partly Protestant, partly materialistic—atheistic in accordance with the paradigm of the natural-scientific worldview) European society was taken as the present (contemporary, Modern). In Western Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the idea of a unified civilization (civilization in the singular), which would embody in itself the destiny of all mankind, was first conceived. This destiny consisted in the overcoming of tradition and traditional values; and thus, it swept away the very foundation of the sacred civilizations that existed in that period. They meant nothing more than backwardness (from the modern West), a set of prejudices and false idols.

The Second Nomos of the Earth

Thus began the construction of the “global international system” (according to Barry Buzan) or the “second nomos of the Earth” (according to Carl Schmitt).

Now the West began to transform itself and, in parallel, to influence the zones of other civilizations more and more actively. In Western Europe itself there was a rapid process of destruction of sacral foundations of its own culture, dismantling of Papal influence (especially through the Reformation), formation of European nations on the basis of sovereignty (previously only the Papal See and partly the Western European Emperor were considered sovereign), breaking and moving to the periphery of theological dogmatics and transitioning to natural sciences on the basis of materialism and atheism. European culture was demi-devived, de-Christianized and universalized.

In parallel, the colonization of other civilizations—the American continent, Africa, Asia—was in full swing. And even those empires that resisted direct occupation—Chinese, Russian, Iranian and Ottoman—and maintained their independence, were subjected to cultural colonization, gradually absorbing the attitudes of Western European Modernity to the detriment of their own sacred traditional values.

Modernity, progress and scientific atheism colonized Western Europe, and Western Europe in turn colonized the rest of civilization, either directly or indirectly. At all levels it was a struggle with Tradition, sacredness and traditional values. The struggle of time against eternity. The struggle of civilization in the singular with civilizations in the plural.

Peace of Westphalia

This process of building the second “international system” (the second nomos of the Earth) culminated in the Peace of Westphalia, which ended a 30-year war, the main parties to which were Protestants and Catholics (with the exception of Catholic France, which took the opposite side because of its hatred of the Habsburgs). The Peace of Westphalia approved the first explicit model of international law, the Jus Publicum Europaeum, completely discarding the principles of the medieval order. Henceforth, only nation-states were recognized as bearers of sovereignty, without regard to their religion and political system (however, all states of that time were monarchies). Thus, the supreme authority of foreign policy was recognized as the nation-state (État-Nation), the model of which was not traditional empires or civilizations, but modern European powers, entering the era of rapid capitalist development, sharing in general the principles of the New Age, natural sciences and progress.

Western Europe of the New Age became synonymous with civilization as such, while other non-European political entities were considered “barbaric” (if culture and politics were sufficiently developed in them) and “savage” (if peoples lived in archaic societies without strict vertical political organization and stratification). “Wild societies” were subject to direct colonization and their “hopelessly backward” populations to slavery. Slavery is a modern concept. It came to Europe after the end of the Middle Ages and with the New Age, with progress and the Enlightenment.

“Barbarian powers” (to which Russia belonged) posed a certain threat, which could be dealt with both by direct military confrontation and by introducing into the elite elements that shared the Western European worldview. Sometimes, however, “barbarian powers” used partial modernization and Europeanization in their own interests to oppose the West itself. A striking example is the reforms of Peter the Great in Russia. But in any case, Westernization corroded the traditional values and political institutions of the era of “antique international systems.”

That is why Barry Buzan calls this second model of the world order a “global international system.” Here only one civilization was recognized, built on the idea of progress, technological development, materialistic science, capitalist economy and national egoism. It was to become global.

Sovereignty: Evolution of the Concept

Although this system nominally recognized the sovereignty of each nation-state, this applied only to European powers. The rest were offered the status of colonies. And “barbarian states” were subjected to derogatory ridicule and arrogant contempt. The past—including the Western European past—was vilified in every possible way (hence the myth of the “Dark Middle Ages”), while progress—humanism, materialism, secularism—was glorified.

Gradually, however, the status of sovereignty began to extend to some colonies, if they managed to get out from under the authority of the metropolis. This happened during the War of Independence of the United States. Later, this path was followed by other colonial entities, which were gradually accepted into the European club. Henceforth, the Westphalian principles applied to them as well. This is called the Westphalian system of international relations.

By the end of the 19th century, it had spread to some of the liberated colonies and a number of “barbarian powers” (Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, China), which retained their traditional ways of life inside, but were increasingly drawn into the “global international system” established by the West.

World War I was the peak of the Westphalian order, as it was the major national powers—the Entente, Tsarist Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary—that clashed with each other. In this conflict, coalitions were created arbitrarily, as the participants were independent and quite sovereign units. They could conclude an alliance with some and start a war with others, relying only on the decision of the supreme power.

Ideologization of the International System

By the 1930s, the Westphalian system began to transform. The Bolshevik victory in Russia and the creation of the USSR led to a dramatic intrusion of the ideological dimension into the system of international relations. The USSR fell out of the dualism of “modern societies” and “barbaric states,” as it challenged the entire capitalist world, but was not an inertial continuation of traditional society (rather the opposite—modernization in the USSR was extremely radical, and sacred values were destroyed to an even greater extent than in the West).

The emergence of the phenomenon of European fascism and especially German National Socialism further aggravated ideological contradictions—now horrible in Western Europe itself. After Hitler came to power, Germany began to rapidly build a new European order, based not on classical nationalism, but on the racial theory, glorifying the Aryan race and humiliating all other peoples (partly Aryan—Celts, Slavs, etc.).

Thus, by the end of the 1930s, the world was divided along ideological lines. In fact, the Westphalian system, still recognized in words, was a thing of the past. Sovereignty was now possessed not so much by individual states as by ideological blocs. The world became a tripolar one, where only the USSR, the Axis countries and the liberal Anglo-Saxon Western powers really meant anything. All other countries were offered to join one or another camp, or…. to fend for themselves. Sometimes the issue was settled by force.

The Second World War was a clash of these three ideological poles. In fact, we dealt with a short-term sketch of a three-polar international model with a pronounced conflict and antagonistic ideological dominance on the system of international relations. Each of the poles for ideological reasons actually denied all the others, which naturally led to the collapse of the League of Nations and the Second World War.

Here again, different combinations could theoretically be formed—the Munich Pact suggested the possibility of an alliance between liberals and fascists. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact—fascists and communists. As we know, the alliance of liberals and communists against fascists was realized. Fascists lost, liberals and communists divided the world between them.

Bi-polar System

At the end of World War II, a bi-polar system emerged. Now not all nominally recognized “sovereign” countries had sovereignty, and only two of the three ideological camps remained. The Yalta Peace consolidated the division of the world between the capitalist and socialist camps, and the UN became the expression of this new model of world order. International law was henceforth based on parity (primarily nuclear) between the capitalist West and the socialist East. The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement were given a certain freedom to balance between the poles.

Carl Schmitt calls bipolarity and the balance of power in the conditions of the Cold War “the third nomos of the Earth,” while Barry Buzan does not single out a special model of the world order, considering it a continuation of the “global international system” (which somewhat weakens the relevance of his general theory).

The Unipolar Moment

The collapse of the socialist camp, the Warsaw Pact and the end of the USSR led to the end of the bipolar world order, based on the ideological principle of capitalism versus socialism. Socialism lost, the USSR capitulated and collapsed—and moreover, recognized and accepted the ideology of the enemy. Hence the Russian Federation, built on the basis of liberal-capitalist norms. Together with socialism and the USSR, Russia lost its sovereignty.

This is how the “fourth nomos of the Earth” began to take shape, which Carl Schmitt himself did not live to see, but whose probability he foresaw. Barry Buzan defined it as a “postmodern international system.” By all accounts, this new model of international relations and the emerging system of international law should have consolidated the established unipolarity. Of the two poles, only one—the liberal one—remained. Henceforth, all states, peoples and societies were obliged to accept the only ideological model—the liberal one.

At this time, theories that consolidated unipolarity emerged. An example of this is Robert Gilpin’s “stable hegemony theory.” Charles Krauthammer cautiously called it a “unipolar moment,” i.e., a temporary situational state of world politics, and Francis Fukuyama confidently proclaimed the “end of history,” i.e., the irreversible and final triumph of liberal democracy; that is, the modern West, on a global scale.

At the political level, this was reflected in Senator John McCain’s call for the creation of a new international organization—the League of Democracies—to replace the irrelevant UN, which would explicitly recognize the complete and total hegemony of the liberal West and the supremacy of the United States on a global scale.

Objections to this mood of radical transition to a unipolar-globalist-postmodern international system were raised by Samuel Huntington, who rather unexpectedly for a culture based on Modernity and linear progress, on the acceptance of the universalism of Western civilization, and at its apogee, suddenly suggested that after the end of the bi-polar world there will be not the end of history (i.e., the complete triumph of liberal capitalism on a planetary scale), but the resurfacing of ancient civilizations. Huntington decoded postmodernity as the end of the Modern as a return to the Premodern, i.e., to the international system that existed before the age of the Great Discoveries (i.e., before the planetary colonization of the world and the beginning of the New Age). Thus, he proclaimed the “return of civilizations;” that is, the new emergence of those forces that dominated the “first nomos of the Earth”—the “antique-classical international system.”

In other words, Huntington predicted multipolarity and a completely new interpretation of postmodernism in International Relations—not total liberalism, but on the contrary, a return to the sovereignty of civilizational “large spaces” on the basis of a special culture and religion. As will become clear in the future, Huntington was absolutely right, while Fukuyama and the proponents of unipolarity were somewhat hasty.

Synchronism of Different Types of World Order

Here we should again pay attention to the concept of “rules-based world order.” In the 2000s there was a peculiar situation where all systems of international relations and, accordingly, all types of international law operated simultaneously. Long-forgotten and expunged civilizations reasserted themselves in a renewed form and began to move towards institutionalization—this is what we see in BRICS, SCO, Eurasian Economic Union, etc. The premodern has intertwined with the postmodern.

At the same time, many provisions of the Westphalian system have been preserved in international law by inertia. The sovereignty of nation-states is still recognized as the main norm of international relations, even if only on paper. Such realists as Stephen Krasner frankly recognized that the thesis of sovereignty applied to all but the truly great powers in the modern world order is pure hypocrisy and does not correspond to anything in reality. But world diplomacy continues to play the game of the Westphalian world, of which the smoking ruins remain.

Peace of Rules-Based Order

At the same time, the Yalta peace system retains its influence and normativity. The UN is still built on the presumption of bipolarity, where a kind of parity of two nuclear blocs—capitalist (USA, England, France) and former socialist (Russia, China)—is preserved in the Security Council. In general, the UN maintains the appearance of a balanced bi-polarity and insists that this is the system of international law (although this is more of a “phantom pain” after the collapse of the socialist camp and the collapse of the USSR). This is what the leaders of modern Russia like to appeal to in their opposition to the West.

The West seeks to consolidate the unipolar system—the League of Democracies, the Forum of Democracies, recognizing those who do not agree with this hegemony as “rogue states.” So far, this cannot be done at the level of international law, which remains nominally Westphalian-bipolar, so the globalists decided to introduce the concept of “rules” and proclaimed a world order based on them, where the rules are created, implemented and protected by only one center—the global West.

The theorists of globalism see in the triumph of Western liberal-capitalist civilization the proof of the theory of progress. All other systems—civilizations, nation-states, confrontation of ideologies, etc.—are in the past. They are removed, overcome. The rules of global domination of the collective West become in this case a prolegomenon to a strictly unipolar New World Order.

That is why Russia, which claims to restore its civilizational sovereignty, attacks the rules so fiercely, seeking to insist either on its Westphalian sovereignty (the second nomos of the Earth) or on something even greater, which is guaranteed by nuclear weapons and a seat on the UN Security Council.

Only recently, after the beginning of the Special Military Operation, has the Kremlin begun to think seriously about real multipolarity, which is, in fact, a return to the traditional pre-Columbian civilizational world order. Multipolarity presupposes a system of international law, fundamentally different from unipolarity, transferring the status of sovereignty from the nation-state to the State-Civilization, i.e., a new edition of the traditional Empire, as well as the principle of equality of all poles.

Heptapolarity

Today, after the XV BRICS summit, such a heptapolarity of seven civilizations is broadly outlined:

  1. Liberal West;
  2. Maoist-Confucian China;
  3. Orthodox Eurasian Russia;
  4. Vedantic India;
  5. Islamic world (Sunni-Shia);
  6. Latin America;
  7. Africa.

Its contours are quite clearly outlined. But of course, this model has not yet become a new system of international law. It is a long way off.

However, attention should be paid to how deep a complete and radical break with the West must become in order to justify the right of civilizations and their traditional values to exist. All poles will need to reject the basic postulates of the West that have been consistently and compulsively inculcated in themselves and in all of humanity since the beginning of the New Age:

• individualism,
• materialism,
• economism,
• technology as destiny,
• scientism,
• secularism,
• the dominance of money,
• the culture of hedonism and decay,
• progressivism, etc.

This must be taken out of one’s culture by anyone who claims an independent pole, a distinctive civilization. None of the big cultures, except Western culture, is based on these principles. All traditional values are completely opposed to it.

The gradual liberation from the West’s colonial ideology will, of necessity, predetermine the basic parameters of the new system of international relations and the new model of international law.

For now, the proponents of a multipolar order are called upon to reactively counteract the entrenchment of rules dictated by the global West, clinging in agony to the unipolar moment. But soon this will not be enough, and the countries of the expanded BRICS—the civilizations that have surfaced—will have to raise the question of the meaning of sacredness, of Tradition and its values, of eternity and the transcendent dimension of existence.

The new nomos of the Earth lies ahead. A fierce battle is going on now for its outlines. First of all, in Ukraine, which is the frontline between the unipolar and multipolar world order. And all the structures of different layers of international law—from antique-classical to Westphalian, bipolar and unipolar—are clearly present in this brutal war for the meanings and orientations of the new world that is being created before our eyes.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Featured: Fra Mauro map (1460).