A quarter of a century ago, on March 24, 1999, a combined group of NATO countries launched a military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time consisted of Serbia and Montenegro.
Over the years, quite a lot has been written about the consequences of this aggression—about the clear violation of the principles of international law, since the UN did not sanction any military action against a sovereign state; about the numerous human rights violations during the bombing; about the commissioned information campaigns against the Serbs, which had nothing to do with reality; and about the impact of the war on the civilian population—from post-traumatic stress syndrome to the increase in cancer because of the use of munitions with depleted uranium cores.
However, several important points should be emphasized. This campaign was NATO’s first offensive operation. The military-political bloc, which was conceived ostensibly for defense against a possible attack from the Soviet Union (a figment of the crazy imagination of Western, primarily Anglo-American, politicians) became an instrument of military expansion. From conditionally defensive, it became offensive. First in Europe and then in other parts of the world, in particular against Libya in 2011. The military campaign against Yugoslavia probably gave NATO strategists confidence in the need for further expansion and homogenization of the whole of Europe under the umbrella of Brussels. The next expansion of the alliance came in a whole bundle. In March 2004, seven states were admitted at once: Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia. There is one interesting nuance here—all these countries signed the membership action plan in April 1999, that is, when the bombing of Serbia was in full swing. The connection between the aggression and the co-option of new members is obvious. It should be noted that actually on the eve of the aggression against Yugoslavia on March 12, 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which received an invitation to join in July 1997, joined the alliance. Now NATO’s tentacles are creeping into the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia, as the alliance has various agreements with a number of states in the regions mentioned.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s signing of an agreement to withdraw from the province of Kosovo and Metohija and hand it over to international forces did not mean total political defeat. He remained in power. Although already in May 1999, the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia brought charges against Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo. To get him, it was necessary to lift the diplomatic immunity enjoyed by heads of state.
External tools such as sanctions helped to put pressure and increase social tensions. Agencies at the same time worked on the ground and pumped money into the opposition. The puppet movement Otpor, acting as if on behalf of Serbian citizens, adopted Gene Sharp’s methodology of non-violent (conditionally) resistance and continued to implement its plan step by step.
The moment of the election campaign was chosen to bring people out on the streets.
In October 2000, because of mass protests, Slobodan Milosevic resigned, without waiting for the second round of presidential elections. In fact, the first color revolution, called the “bulldozer revolution,” was successfully implemented in Serbia. What is striking is that many of its thought leaders, such as Professor Cedomir Čupić, are still living quietly in Belgrade and actively criticizing the current authorities. While the younger ones, such as Srdja Popovic, immediately defected to the West and continue their attempts to stage coups d’état in other countries.
A monument, in Tašmajdan Park, Belgrade, to the children killed by NATO bombing. The child represented is Milica Rakić.
Let us now look at the global context of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia.
It should be taken into account that earlier in Yugoslavia a civil war was raging, and NATO countries, including the United States, were actively involved in Bosnia. This gave them an opportunity not only to practice ethnic conflict technologies, as well as new theories of warfare, such as network-centric warfare, but also to use both private military companies and mercenaries (in particular, mujahideen who had previously fought in Afghanistan were brought in as part of the “jihad”). This whole machine was directed against the Serbs, not only to gain operational superiority on the front, but also with far-reaching strategic objectives, which included demonization of the Serbs, creating the image of barbarians who pose a threat to the “civilized world.” And this demonization was successful and was already consolidated in 1999. But if the West then openly blamed the Serbs, it also meant the Russians, who tried to help their brotherly people to withstand the pressure of the West. It is no coincidence that Slobodan Milosevic warned that what the West had done to the Serbs, it would try to do to Russia in the future.
However, a scenario similar to the Yugoslav one had already been conceived for Russia. In the spring of 1999, terrorist organizations intensified their activities in Russia’s North Caucasus. In April, when NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, the self-proclaimed “emir of the Dagestan Jamaat” announced the creation of an “Islamic army of the Caucasus” to carry out jihad in southern Russia. Then began a whole wave of terrorist attacks organized by terrorists under the leadership of Shamil Basayev—seizure of settlements in Dagestan, bombings of houses in Moscow and Volgodonsk.
Therefore, when the question is raised whether Russia could have helped the Serbs more than it did, including the operation to block the Pristina airport, we must remember that the situation was quite difficult for us as well. The North Caucasus was in flames, emissaries of Western security services were working in the Volga region, and separatist projects were emerging in the regions.
It was an active phase of the unipolar moment, which the U.S. used to strengthen its hegemony all over the world, not shying away from any means, including terrorism. And its decline was still far away.
But were there positive outcomes of NATO’s military aggression against Yugoslavia? Let us try to summarize. First: the Yugoslav army seriously repulsed the enemy and as a result NATO had significant losses, which they did not expect initially. Various military tricks were used in different types of military forces and which may well now be adapted for the Special Military Operation (SMO), with appropriate adjustments. Second: the real face of NATO was seen by the whole world, which led to anti-war protests. In particular, Italy left the coalition because of this. Third, the dirty methods of information campaigns and the use of non-governmental organizations as a fifth column were documented and widely publicized. Finally, the international solidarity with the Serbs—Russian volunteers and humanitarian aid, the work of hackers from different countries against NATO, the circumvention of Western sanctions—is also an important experience of a complex nature, which will be useful for crushing the globalist military hydra of the North Atlantic Alliance.
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.
Featured: Milica Rakić, 3-years-old, killed on April 17, 1999, by a cluster munition during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Robert Inlakesh is a well-known documentary filmmaker, journalist and Middle East expert, who knows Palestine well, especially the endless crimes Israel is committing there.
In 2020, he filmed, Steal of the Century, a two-part documentary, which chronicled the devasting effects of Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, a supposed “peace deal,” aka, “the deal of the century,” in which Israel was given everything it needed to destroy more. The supposed author of the deal, Jared Kushner, simply put down everything that Benjamin Netanyahu dictated.
For various reasons, the documentary was banned from Youtube. Given the current, systematic genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel, we thought that it important to allow for this documentary to be seen in its entirety.
War is one of the oldest phenomena of human history, which is so inseparably connected with it that it is difficult to imagine the existence of human society without it. Many treatises have been devoted to “eternal peace,” the problem of war and peace in the works of Friedrich II, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz and others. German authors have shown a variety of approaches to the problem of war and peace. Some adhered to the view that the development of history inevitably leads to universal peace, while others have insisted on the inevitability of wars and conflicts. Thus, Kant, in raising the question of the correlation between eternal peace and eternal rest, unlike Frederick II, who assumed the possibility of establishing “eternal peace” in the conditions of monarchical rule, associated the establishment of “eternal peace” with the conclusion of a universal peace treaty, but necessarily in the conditions of a republican form of government. At the same time, Kant’s “eternal peace” appears to be delayed, and its occurrence is achievable only in the future [Zotkin 2016].
In this regard, it was difficult to hope that in the foreseeable future humanity could find harmony in international relations. To this day, the world continues to teeter on the brink of war and peace; in one region or the other approaching the brink, beyond which Pandora’s box may open. What determines the “periodomorphism” that is manifested in the life of states and peoples? Following Heraclitus of Ephesus, who declared war to be the origin of everything, many philosophers have noted the role of war in the history of human civilization. Plato also considered war as a permanent element in the development of society. In The Laws he wrote: “…what most people call peace is only a name; but in reality, there is an eternal, irreconcilable war between all states by nature” [Plato 1972, 86].
Among European philosophers, Plato was one of the first to speak about the factors determining the emergence of wars. He shrewdly recognized the role of the demographic factor in the emergence of wars between states. Many philosophers of Antiquity considered war as an integral attribute of the existence of the state. This was due to the understanding of war as a way of establishing domination, a source of slave power, wealth, territories, which allowed to reach a higher stage of development of the ancient polis/republic. At the same time, not every war was positively evaluated. For example, the ancient Greeks were against wars between Hellenes, as well as internal wars (called strife), because it could lead to the self-destruction of the Greeks [Plato 1971, 270]. Another criterion of admissibility and moral justification of war was the principle of justice. The causes of wars, political, economic, demographic, social and other consequences were also the subject of philosophical reflection.
For a long time, the comprehension of various phenomena of nature and society remained the monopoly of philosophy. But even the emergence of other approaches for the study of these phenomena has not completely displaced this paradigm, which has been formed over two millennia. The founder of positivism, Auguste Comte, asserted that every science is a philosophy in itself, thus unwittingly assessing the cognitive status of philosophy.
More recent forms of knowledge of war, as compared to philosophy, have set aside their predecessor and claim to have exhaustive knowledge of the phenomenon, using their own tools. As disciplinary approaches to the study of war multiplied, many proponents of non-philosophical approaches had the illusion that it was possible to find exhaustive answers to fundamental questions about war through these approaches. However, as life has shown, these misconceptions were quickly dispelled, as these approaches only partially solved the stated problems.
Where and when does the philosophy of war begin? The works of philosophers that have addressed the issues of war are numerous and diverse. Therefore, it is difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between those works that dealt with the problem of war in fragments and those that had a clear indication of the subject of study at hand, as well as those that were fully devoted to war but were not philosophical treatises. For example, we do not find in Clausewitz a clear indication of the “philosophy of war,” although he is considered one of the main classics in this area. Nowadays, some researchers regard Clausewitz not just as a philosopher of war, but as a political philosopher of war, arguing that Clausewitz was perceived in this capacity within the framework of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the “political” [Belozerov 2018a; Belozerov 2018b].
One of the main merits of the Prussian general is considered to be his ingenious formulation of the determinacy of war by politics. Before him, Navia-Osorio y Vigil, the Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado had written about it [Navia-Osorio y Vigil, 1738]. In an even more precise formulation, the philosophical direction of the study was indicated in the fragment, “Philosophy of War” [Lloyd 1790], from Henry Lloyd’s Military and Military Memoirs, translated as Introduction à l’histoire de la guerre en Allemagne en 1756 … ou Mémoires militaires et politiques du général Lloyd. Traduit et augmenté … d’un précis sur la vie… de ce général (Bruxelles: A. F. Pion, 1784), by Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, a French officer. In it, even before Clausewitz, he laid the foundations of the philosophy of war and before Antoine-Henri Jomini had substantiated the principles of the doctrine of operational strategy. He divided the science of war into two parts: the first was mechanistic in nature and could be taught to students; the second was philosophical in nature and could not be taught. According to a number of researchers, this dichotomy largely determined the strategic thinking of the British theorist. It also influenced the confrontation between two leading strategists of the 19th century: Jomini, a supporter of purely strategic approaches, and Clausewitz, a proponent of philosophy and dialectics [Chalvardjian 2014, 166]. The period of the Napoleonic wars accelerated the process of synthesis of philosophy and military strategy. In France, a participant of the Napoleonic campaign in Russia, Marquis Georges de Chambre, a general of the French army, published his study, which was the result of deep observations, which he called, Philosophie de la guerre (Philosophy of War). In it, he explained the importance of the philosophical approach to the study of war and his attitude to it [Chambray, 1829, V-VI].
The reason for the interest in the epistemological possibilities of philosophy, apparently, was that religious, in particular Christian, interpretations of the origin and laws of war no longer satisfied either political thinkers or military leaders. Niccolo Machiavelli, in addition to political problems, in his works addressed issues of military development. This was because of his official elected position as secretary of the Military Commission of Ten (Dieci di Libertà e Pace), which was responsible for representing Florence in conflicts, as well as his civic position as a political thinker. In his treatise, On the Art of War, he puts forward the idea of replacing the mercenary army with an army of citizens recruited for service by conscription. An essential feature of Machiavelli’s political philosophy was the transition to a secular political-philosophical model of understanding the power interactions of contemporary Italian society, expanding the boundaries of what was permitted by the Church.
As humanity has evolved, new technical means of violence have emerged, and new ways of armed struggle have multiplied, changing the face of war. This in turn led to attempts to rethink its essence and transformations. Each researcher saw in it specific features, the nature of which he sought to penetrate. In methodological terms, this is the basis for synthesizing the general and the singular, the object and subject of the philosophy of war. Is it possible to destroy the philosophical that is present in knowledge as such? The experience of a magnet with a north and south pole comes to mind. Trying to break the magnet in half does not result in the formation of the north and south poles separately in the resulting fragments. Each new piece will have north and south pole just like the original sample. In the same way, philosophy will be inherent in any knowledge that has reached a high stage of development. Whatever the name of a discipline, there will always be a place for philosophy in it. This understanding of the essence of the question of the presence of philosophy in theoretical knowledge became characteristic in the 19th century. New branches of knowledge appeared, where “philosophy” was a constituent part. It was especially widespread in German scientific and popular science literature, where the literary series Natur- und kulturphilosofische Bibliothek appeared. This applied in full measure to the science of war [Steinmetz, 1907].
The changeability of war has been noted by many thinkers, who used various metaphors to convey this property. Thus, Sun Tzu compared war to water: “… The army has no unchanging power, water has no unchanging form. Who knows how to master changes and transformations depending on the opponent and win, he is called a deity” [Sun Tzu, 2002, 51]. Representatives of the French school of polemology also associated changeability with the water element. They compared war with the mythical hero, Proteus, the son of Poseidon, who (according to Virgil) had inexhaustible abilities of transformations. A classic example of the changeability of war is Clausewitz’s statement about the internal and external sources of transformation of this phenomenon: “Thus, war is not only a real chameleon, since it changes its nature somewhat in each particular case, but also in its general forms in relation to the prevailing tendencies, it is a strange trinity made up of violence as its original element, hatred and enmity” [Clausewitz 1997, 58].
The multiplicity of war has been noted and highlighted by many contemporaries. One of them is the French philosopher Alexis Philonenko, who devoted himself to the study of many philosophical problems, among which the philosophy of war occupies an important place. In his Essais sur la philosophie de la guerre [Essays on the Philosophy of War], (1976), he scrutinizes the philosophical work of various philosophers—Machiavelli, Kant, Fichte, Saint-Just, Hegel, Clausewitz, Prudon, Tolstoy, De Gaulle—in relation to the study of the phenomenon of war. In doing so, he addressed the problem of the plurality of interpretations of war, as well as the problem of the correlation between war and peace. Among the reflections on the contributions of European philosophers and thinkers, Philonenko devotes a significant place to the philosophical reflections of Leo N. Tolstoy. Of the twelve chapters, four are devoted to it: “History and Religion in Tolstoy” (IX), “Tolstoy and Clausewitz” (X), “Tolstoy or Fatalism” (XI), “Logic and Strategy: Differential Calculus in War and Peace” (XII). Comparing the two unlike thinkers in their views on war, Philonenko wrote: “If at times it seemed that Tolstoy prevailed over Clausewitz, it must be recognized that a moment later Clausewitz prevailed over Tolstoy, and that in this way the philosopher of violence sometimes prevailed over the apostle of nonviolence, and vice versa” [Philonenko, 1976, 247]. Attention to the philosophical reasoning of Tolstoy, on the part of the French researcher, testifies to his open-mindedness to the work of one of the representatives of the Russian philosophy of war. Such positive interest for Russian thinkers on the part of foreign authors causes positive emotions, because it is not always so. An example of this is Raymond Aron’s arguments about the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of war and the army (which, in fact, was the philosophy of war in the USSR).
Discussing the multidimensionality of the philosophy of war, O.A. Belkov, a Russian researcher at the Research Institute of Military History of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, notes: “Taking into account these questions, the clarification of which constitutes the content of the philosophical understanding of war, and the problems that need such understanding, we can identify the areas of philosophical study of war: war as a state of society, different from peace, its essence and meaning, properties and signs; the role of war in the life of humanity and individual countries, the impact it has on various aspects of this life; social consequences of war; value-oriented analysis of war; sources and causes of wars and military conflicts; ontology of war, its existential content; the structure of war, the relationships between the various components of its content; the relationship between war and various spheres of public life and types of human activity; the spiritual side and ethics of war; political, economic, social and other non-military determinants and factors of the course and outcome of wars; internal contradictions of the war; the place and role of the army, the military class in the destinies of the homeland; conceptual and categorical apparatus and methodological principles for the study of war, typology of wars” [Belkov 2019, 120]. This once again proves that in the presence of a single object of study (war), the subject can vary to a large extent.
Realizing the multitude of problems facing the philosophy of war, we will limit ourselves in this article to a few topics: the problem of historical truth about wars and the problem of victory and defeat in war. All the more so because they are related to each other.
Uchronia, or Way of Distorting the Truth
We are all familiar with the term “utopia,” which is applied to something that does not exist in reality but is desirable. It is very often used to refer to an ideal social order, most often associated with an imaginary future. Thomas More used this neologism, an etymological derivative from the Greek “topos” and the negative prefix “u.” That is, it is a place that does not exist. In 1857, a book by French philosopher Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) was published, Uchronie. L’utopie dans l’histoire (Uchronia. Utopia in History). In the very title, the author unambiguously indicated, first, the utopian nature of the concept of “uchronia” and, second, its focus on history. The fabula of this work was the imaginary victory of Napoleon at Waterloo and its socio-political consequences for Europe. Renouvier was far from the first in this kind of historical fantasy. As the sources testify, Titus Livius in his treatise, History of Rome from the Founding of the City (Book IX, sections 17-19) develops a hypothesis about what would have happened if Alexander the Great had directed his conquest to the West instead of the East. A later author, the Abbé Michel de Pure (1620-1680), published in 1659 his novel, Épigone, histoire du siècle futur (Epigone, History of the Future Century), which is considered to be in the genre of uchronia.
Why does such a desire arise—to “remake” history? Most likely, because the real results of the historical process are not satisfactory, which do not always coincide with the desires of the participants, even those who did not take part in them and not even contemporaries. This applies to Marie-Pierre Rey’s four-hundred-page book, L’effroyable tragédie : Une nouvelle histoire de la campagne de Russie (A Terrible Tragedy: A New History of the Russian Campaign) [Rey, 2012], in which the author, deviating from accepted historical facts, gives a modified idea of the events of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. The former President of the French Republic, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, went even further in a book he wrote called, La victoire de la Grande Armée (The Victory of the Grand Army), [Giscard d’Estaing, 2010]. In it he paints a picture of the victory of the French emperor over the Russian army. The triumph of the campaign is the return to the homeland and the acquisition of great power status by France. An example of a beneficial interpretation of real events was Napoleon I himself.
The “rewriting” of history is becoming an increasingly common practice these days. This is the sin of authors for whom the established ideas about the world status quo are an obstacle to changing it and creating a new world order in which a new history will be required to justify it. For this purpose, the historiosophic concept of uchronia, which provides freedom for the most daring distortions of historical facts, is very convenient.
It is quite understandable why history has become a field of struggle for new meanings and values, because it is very profitable to obtain moral, and other, dividends by appropriating what never belonged to the “uchronists” (in the broad sense) and their ideological sponsors, and to take away from those who were the basis for the resolution of crisis situations, especially those of a historical scale. Such attempts are very productive in cases when witnesses of events pass away or when ruling political regimes impose deliberately distorted ideas about real events on society. Sometimes such a desire outstrips and even replaces thoughtful and objective study of factual material. But history is a rather stubborn thing. Sooner or later, the facts of history become the property not only of specialists, but also of the general public.
In the philosophical reflections of the participant of the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns of the Russian army in 1813-1814, Fedor Nikolayevich Glinka sounds a futurological warning to posterity: “The present repeats itself in the future as the past does in the present. Times will pass; years will turn into centuries, and there will come again for some of the kingdoms of the earth a decisive period similar to the one that has now covered Russia with ashes, blood and glory.” [Glinka 2012, 132]. Unfortunately, his warning has been repeatedly confirmed in history.
How can we counter the onslaught of unsafe historical “fantasies” and direct distortions of facts? The surest way is to counter it with historical, documentary truth. This is the only way to bring down the lie, no matter what kind of garb it wears.
In the three-volume work, History of the Patriotic War of 1812, according to reliable sources (1859), the talented Russian historian Modest Ivanovich Bogdanovich gave an objective analysis of the scientific works of Russian and foreign researchers who described the events of the past clash of Napoleon’s and Russian armies. He highly appreciated the contribution of compatriots and foreigners in the reliable description of the events. He praised General Dmitry Buturlin, General Alexander Mikhailovsky Danilevsky, Dmitry Milyutin, Smith, Gepfner. At the same time, he noted the not always high enough level of foreign sources on the War of 1812: “none of them corresponds either to the importance of the subject nor to the current state of science” [Bogdanovich, 1859, IV]. Only a few works by foreigners deserve, in his opinion, praise: “Memoires of the Prince of Wurtemberg” (Erinnerungen aus dem Feldzuge des Jahres 1812 in Russland), “Notes of Count Toll” (Denkwürdigkeiten des Grafen v. Toll) and General de Chambre’s “Histoire de l’expédition de Russie” (Histoire de l’expédition de Russie) (see: [Soloviev 2017, 43]).
M.I. Bogdanovich rightly remarks: “When describing the war, one cannot do without comparing the testimonies of both sides, which alone can serve to impartially investigate the truth.” [Bogdanovich, 1859, V]. Thus he emphasized the methodological significance of the event aspect of the military clash in both epistemological and political terms. This kind of inference honors the author not only as a general, but also as a historian and philosopher.
From the point of view of distortion of the real state of affairs, we should note different levels of this process: distortions of historical truth at the level of concepts and theories, and on the other hand, biased interpretation in their favor at the factual level. The techniques of distorting information for military and political purposes are known at all times. The famous historian Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle relates examples of “information warfare” during the Patriotic War of 1812: “The false bulletins of Napoleon’s headquarters made in France, Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy the impression they were designed to make” [Tarle, 2015, 155]. As some contemporary Russian researchers note, the French often used methods of distorting information, which can be considered as prototypes of “information warfare” [Bezotosny, 2004, 190-202]. The subjects of falsification were military losses, battle results, superiority of military strategy, and civilizational ambitions [Zemtsov, 2002, 38-51].
Victory and Defeat
The theme of victory and defeat in historiosophic terms was of interest to many authors. It was addressed by our famous compatriot Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky, the ideologist of pan-Slavism, one of the founders of the civilizational approach to history. The original ideas of this thinker in the field of philosophy of politics brought out ambiguous responses from contemporaries. At the same time, the statement of problems was characterized by thorough elaboration. In January-February 1879 in the journal, Russkaya rech’ (Russian Speech), he published an article “Woe to the victors!” in which he addressed the problem of Russia’s military policy in the Eastern Question. He assessed the geopolitical situation in the region pessimistically: “…we were to achieve by war: the resolution of all the obstacles, both moral and material, separating the north-eastern Slavs, i.e., Russia, from the south-eastern Slavs and from all the Orthodox peoples inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula. And all barriers were destroyed by the bayonets of Russian soldiers—and rebuilt again, and some were even strengthened and created again by the pens of Russian diplomats. The negative results achieved by Russian policy far surpassed the negative ones achieved by Russian military art and Russian military valor! The strange and ridiculous sounding paradox, woe to the victors, Russia managed to turn into a sad but undoubted fact” [Danilevsky, 1998]. Indeed, this problem has an even longer history. This situation is enshrined in the winged expression “Pyrrhic victory,” understood as a victory obtained at an exorbitant price, which equalized the winner and the defeated (there are earlier analogues of this expression).
French polemologist Julien Freund in his work, Sociology of Conflict addresses the problem of the correlation between victory and defeat in war. This philosophical problem is always in the center of attention of philosophers, thinkers and politicians. Who really enjoys the fruits of military victory, and whether military and political victory are identical? Speaking of military victory, he writes: “Victory, which means the defeat of the other, is a conclusion that corresponds to the internal logic of conflict, since it aims to break the resistance of the enemy in order to impose our will on him. In principle, since it is a bilateral relation, only one of the opponents can be the winner. Thus, phenomenologically, the triumph of one and the defeat of the other essentially constitutes the most appropriate outcome to the spirit of the conflict. From this point of view, the victory should even be, if possible, the most complete and the defeat, if possible, the most crushing. C. Clausewitz never tires of repeating this, varying the wording.” [Freund 2008, 58].
Modern Russian scientists are attentive to the problem of victory and defeat. It is not difficult to find an explanation for this. Victory or defeat for the Soviet Union was a problem of life and death not only for an individual, but for the entire nation. The war waged by Hitler’s Germany against the USSR was a war of extermination. The historical memory of the people eternally preserves the events that were a crime against humanity. It is a kind of genetic immunity against national ignorance, which in the 21st century can internally disarm a citizen of his country.
Andrei Afanasievich Kokoshin, a specialist in military-political issues, reacted to the book, Winning Modern Wars (2003), by retired American general Wesley Clark, with a small paper, “On the Political Meaning of Victory in a Modern War,” devoted to the consideration of the political component in a military conflict. The work sounds modern and, in a certain respect, leads us to think not only about the political meaning of victory in modern or past wars, but also about its moral content.
The object of study of the philosophy of war can be various specific wars or wars in their totality. Each source provides the researcher with rich material for study and generalizations. In this sense, the Patriotic War of 1812 is of great interest, because it is, in our opinion, a model that includes the rich experience of past wars, and which also became a prototype for future wars.
When he began the war against the Russian Empire, Napoleon had numerical superiority, vast combat experience, the combined economic potential of France and conquered Europe, etc., but he failed to use these advantages. The explanations for this on the part of the French were irrational (“barbaric customs”, etc.), but the reasons were quite real—at the minimum, the poor organization of supply of the French army. Napoleonic historian, a participant of the French campaign in Russia, Eugene Labaume described the condition of the French troops: “The weather, which was beautiful all day long, became cold and damp at night. The army settled on the battlefield and settled down partly in the redoubts, which it so gloriously captured. This bivouac was severe; the men and horses had nothing to eat, and the scarcity of firewood made us experience all the severity of a rainy and freezing night” [Labaume 1820, 160]. Labaume, who did not question the victory of Napoleon’s army in the campaign, without wanting to, revealed one of its weaknesses—poor logistics.
Another confirmation of the catastrophic situation of the French troops, who had not yet taken Moscow, is the testimony of Count Philippe-Paul de Ségur, who described the Borodino field after the battle in his memoirs: “…there are soldiers everywhere, wandering among the corpses and looking for food even in the duffel bags of their dead comrades” [Ségur, 1910, 147]. Then he makes a conclusion that diverged from the generally accepted opinion in French historiography, which insisted on the unconditional defeat of the Russians at Borodino: “If the remaining (Russian troops—A. S.) withdrew in such good order, proud and so little discouraged, how important was the mastery of a single battlefield? In such vast areas the Russians will always have enough land to fight on” [Ségur 1910, 148].
But his profound observations and conclusions are disharmonious with other inferences having the character of civilizational superiority: “It is obvious that they (Russian soldiers—A. S.) seemed more resistant to pain than the French; this is not because they endured suffering more courageously, but they suffered less, since they are less sensitive both in body and spirit, which is due to a less developed civilization and to organs hardened by climate” [Ségur, 1910, 149-150]. Similar attempts to belittle the achievements and successes of Russia and its citizens can often be found nowadays in many Western authors.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the problem of war and peace is still a fundamental one, and addressing it from a philosophical perspective is very important for understanding the origins and essential relations arising in the transition from a peaceful state to a state of war and vice versa. The philosophy of war greatly contributes to this, allowing us to penetrate into the essence of changes in the image of war, and in some cases to anticipate the direction of transformations of modern wars.
In his work “Cherished Thoughts”, the great Russian scientist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, reflecting on war and the possibility of its elimination as a social phenomenon, wrote: “No matter how much people wish to live in good harmony forever, and no matter what alliances the states make, still ahead, i.e., in the not distant future, or more precisely, in the twentieth century, wars cannot be avoided, and if governments make peace, the peoples will not stop fighting and demanding wars” [Kozikov 2018, 221]. And if governments do not contribute to peacekeeping? Unfortunately, the history of the 21st century shows the emergence of wars and military conflicts in one part of the planet or another. This provides food for philosophical reflection, a vivid example of which is the study of the “world-war” cycle of human development [Danilenko 2008a; Danilenko 2008b]. More recently, Indiana University professor and political anthropologist Edgar Illas’ book, The Survival Regime. Global War and the Political [Illas, 2019]. This suggests that the philosophical analysis of the political-economic content of the phenomenon of war has been and remains relevant.
For references, please consult the original:
Alexei V. Soloviev is Associate Professor in the Department of the Philosophy of Politics and Law, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov, Moscow.
Featured: Crossing the Berezina River on 17 (29) November 1812, by Peter von Hess; painted in 1844.
We are living in an era of great transition. The era of the unipolar world is ending, and the era of multipolarity is coming. Changes in the global architecture of the world order are fundamental. Sometimes the processes unfold so rapidly that public thought lags behind. It is all the more important to focus on comprehending the grandiose events that are shaking humanity.
No one—except fanatics—is able to deny the fact that the West, after the collapse of the socialist system and the USSR, received a unique chance for sole global leadership, and failed in this mission. Instead of a reasonable, fair and balanced global policy, the West has turned into hegemony, neocolonialism; acting in its predatory selfish interests, using double standards, inciting bloody wars and conflicts, pitting peoples and religions against each other. This is not leadership—it is aggressive imperialism, continuing the worst traditions of the selfsame West—the principle of divide and rule, colonization; in fact, transformation into slavery.
The collapse of the leadership of the collective West is accompanied and reinforced by the precipitous moral decline of Western culture. The values forcibly and stubbornly promoted by the West—LGBT, uncontrolled migration, legalization of all kinds of perversions, culture of abolition, brutal purges and repression of all dissenters, loss of humanistic principles and readiness to move towards Artificial Intelligence domination and transhumanism—have further lowered the prestige of the West in the eyes of global humanity. The West is no longer the universal model, the supreme authority, let alone a role model.
Thus, in opposition to unipolar hegemony, a new multipolar world was born. This is the response of great ancient and original civilizations and sovereign states and peoples to the challenge of globalism.
It can already be said that global humanity began to intensively build independent civilizational poles. These are, first of all, Russia, which has woken up from its slumber, China, which has made a rapid breakthrough, the spiritually mobilized Islamic world, and India, which is gigantic in terms of demography and economic potential. Africa and Latin America, which are stubbornly moving towards integration and sovereignty of their large areas, are on the way.
Representatives of all these civilizations are united today in BRICS. It is here that the parameters of the new multipolar world are being formed; its principles, traditional values, rules and norms are being developed. And on the basis of true justice, respect for the positions of others, with true democratic proportions and without any attempts to make one of the poles claim hegemony. BRICS is an anti-hegemonic alliance where the main resources of mankind—human, economic, natural, intellectual, scientific and technological—are concentrated today.
The unipolar world is the past. The multipolar world is the future.
If the West renounces its violent hegemony and policy of neocolonialism, recognizes the sovereignty and subjectivity of each human civilization, refuses to forcibly impose its rules, norms and values, obviously rejected today by the majority of humanity, it could become a respected and sovereign pole—recognized by all others and existing in the context of a friendly and equal dialogue of civilizations.
This is the goal of building a multipolar world—to establish a harmonious model of friendly and balanced existence of all civilizations of the Earth, without building hierarchies and without recognizing the hegemony of any of them.
Most civilizations—Russian, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, African and Latin American—today unanimously turn to traditional values, to the sacred, to the spiritual content of their cultures and societies. Progress without reliance on deep identity is impossible; it will lead to degeneration and degradation of man himself. Although traditional values differ from nation to nation, there is always something in common—holiness, faith, family, power, patriotism, the will to good and truth, respect for man and his freedom and dignity.
The multipolar world is based on traditional values, which are recognized and protected in every civilization.
The main idea of multipolarity is peace and harmony. But it is obvious that any change in the world order—especially such a significant one—is invariably met with fierce resistance of the old structure. The downward wave of the unipolar world prevents the upward wave of the multipolar one. This explains most of the conflicts today—in Ukraine, Palestine and the wider Middle East, the escalation of tensions in the Pacific around China, trade wars, sanctions policies, and the fierceness and hatred of the declining hegemon against all those who challenge it.
But unipolar globalism has no chance of winning and maintaining its completely discredited “leadership,” if the supporters of multipolarity—and this is global humanity (and in the West itself, where the percentage of sober-minded people with an independent consciousness that does not succumb to propaganda is still very high)—stick together, clearly understand the contours of the new world and support each other in the common struggle for a just and truly democratic system.
This is the most important thing now—to comprehend the contours of the new multipolar, polycentric world order, to lay down the principles of friendship, respect and trust between civilizations, to unanimously fight for peace and harmony, to strengthen our traditional values and respect the traditional values of others.
If we all together oppose the universal will for peace to the globalist instigators of wars and bloody conflicts, sponsors of color revolutions and the moral decay of public morality, we will win without firing a single shot. The collective West—despite its still considerable potential—cannot stand alone against the unity of humanity.
This year, 2024, Russia becomes the president of BRICS. This is deeply symbolic. There is much to be done in this direction—to admit new members, to develop and launch new economic mechanisms, to make financial institutions (first of all, the BRICS Bank) work, to promote security and conflict resolution, to make the cultural exchange between civilizations more intensive. But most importantly, all of us will have to not just comprehend, but to develop, create and establish a philosophy of multipolarity, learn to live with our own minds, and carry out a profound decolonization of consciousness, culture, science and education. During the epochs of its colonial domination, the West has managed to inculcate in many non-Western societies the false idea that thought, science, technology, economic and political systems are truly effective only in the West, and that all others are offered only “catch-up development,” completely dependent on the West. It is time to put an end to this slave mentality. We are humanity, representatives of different ancient cultures and traditions, in no way inferior to the West, and in many ways superior to it.
These are the conclusions of our Multipolarity Forum. Despite all the differences, we all agree on the main thing—we are entering a new era and what it will be depends on ourselves and no one else.
We will create the future together!
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 Geopolitika.
The fact is little known outside a few specialists: a large part of the territory of today’s Azerbaijan corresponds to the borders of an ancient Christianized kingdom (probably as early as the 2nd century) known as Caucasian Albania (or Alwania). It disappeared in the 8th century, partly as a result of the Muslim conquest, and partly under pressure from its large Armenian neighbor.
The coveted Karabakh (known as Artsakh) is one of the regions of this small kingdom attested by Greco-Latin and Armenian historiographical sources.
The discovery of an Albanian lectionary in 1975 at the Sinai monastery suggests the early Christianization of Albania, with links to Jerusalem, where Albanian communities financed the construction of several churches. The discovery was not widely publicized, but is well recounted by Bernard Outtier.
While this vanished Christianity is of no interest to the Christian or Catholic world, the Turks are particularly well-informed about the history of the Albanians of the Caucasus (the Baku school of history), and they are today exploiting this knowledge admirably to support their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh and assert their legitimacy over this territory, which they regard as a “proto-Azerbaijan.”
In February 2022, AZERTAC (Azerbaijan’s State Information Agency) posted an article by Mr. Rahman Mustafayev, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Holy See: ” Les racines chrétiennes du Caucase. L’histoire de l’Église d’Azerbaïdjan [“The Christian Roots of the Caucasus. The history of the Church of Azerbaijan”]. In it, the author begins by tracing the main lines of the history of this small kingdom, which was Christianized very early on, a Church that, if not apostolic, was at least closely linked to the chain of the first disciples. And what he traces is consistent not only with what academic research has elaborated, but also with extant traditions, often oral.
The problem lies in the Azeri account of recent history: “At the beginning of the 19th century, following the Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars, won by the Russian Empire, the process of settlement of Armenians from the Ottoman and Persian Empires began on the territory of the Karabakh, Erivan and Nakhchivan Khanates of the Russian Empire.”
All these territories were Armenian long before the Muslim occupation. It is not a question of “appropriating” Muslim territories, but of reappropriating the land from which they have been dispossessed, and this of course involves major human problems on both sides.
Assuming that the Armenians had to familiarize themselves with an Albanian architectural heritage and that they restored and renovated the monuments by introducing elements of Armenian architecture “that are not characteristic of Albanian architecture,” why is this scandalous? The two architectures, while not twins, are very similar. To claim that the Armenian epigraphy on medieval Albanian monuments constitutes the beginning of a process of “Armenization” is quite absurd, because the “Albanian” community has practically disappeared today. What remains is a “Udi” church, and a few speakers of the Udi language, which researchers admit is the heir to the Albanian language. In April 1836, the Tsarist government had abolished the Autocephalous Church of Albania, which was then subordinate to the Armenian Gregorian Church, according to the ambassador, in order to strengthen the position of the Armenian population and clergy in the Muslim territories of Transcaucasia. This may well be the case, and it was undoubtedly a pity for the little Albanian church. But it was also a political act. Since 2003, this small Albanian church has once again become autocephalous.
The extravagance of Azerbaijan’s accusations is astounding. If we are to believe their allegations, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Armenian Gregorian Church—with the authorization of the Russian Holy Synod—destroyed all traces of the archives of the Albanian Church, as well as the library of the Patriarchs of Albania in Gandjasar, which contained the most precious historical documents, as well as the originals of Albanian literature. The destruction (or concealment) of archives would thus have enabled Armenian historians and archaeologists to deny the autocephalous nature of the Albanian Church, the Albanian ownership of the Christian temples (?), monasteries and churches located on the territory of today’s Karabagh region, and to claim that they are the cultural heritage of the Armenian people and the property of the Armenian Church.
Today’s Albanian heritage obviously belongs to the Church of Armenia, not to the Muslim Azeris. To believe that the Azeri state has set up the great dome of secularism to give all churches their place in the country is to be naive or totally ignorant.
It is true that in the 8th century, Chalcedonian Albania was pressured by its large and prestigious neighbor to submit to Armenia’s anti-Chalcedonian choice. And after the conquest of the Caucasus by the armies of Islam, while Georgia emerged as a regional power and Armenia survived as a Christian power, Albania disappeared, at least politically. This is a matter for historical research. It is delicate because Albanian history is known mainly through Armenian historiography, and since history shows that spiritual and theological divisions were reflected in relations between states and kingdoms, religious theological conflicts were unfavorable to the small Albanian kingdom.
When the ambassador to the Holy See rejoices at “the liberation of Karabakh after 30 years of occupation,” and asserts that a new stage is beginning, so that “the Christian churches are returning to their masters, to the Albanian-Sudinian Christian community of Azerbaijan,” he is mocking us. The Albanian-Azerbaijani community is a mere pittance located in three cities in Azerbaijan (not even Baku). Are they naive enough to believe that their heritage will be restored to them under a Muslim regime? We are not. We have been searching the web in vain for images of the Albanian community so highly praised by the Azeris.
The tourist guides tell us: the Artsakh Ministry of Culture has restored the conventual buildings of the Gandjasar monastery, a major center for the copying of illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages, and has set up a Matenadaran (Yerevan’s BNF, albeit on a more modest scale) with the same functions: to exhibit the manuscripts created on Artsakh soil, some 100 of which are housed in the Matenadaran.
Vatican News has relayed Pope Francis’ call to protect the spiritual and architectural heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh. Here is what it says, written by Delphine Allaire:
“Nagorno-Karabakh’s millennia-old spiritual heritage makes it the cradle of Armenia. This pivotal region contains hundreds of churches, monasteries and tombstones dating from the 11th to the 19th century. Being mountainous, it was not evangelized at the same time as Armenia. However, Christianity in Nagorno-Karabakh is mainly because of the action of King Vatchagan the Pious who came to the throne in 484. He spread the cult of saintly relics, and the region owes him the construction of Karabakh’s oldest religious monument, the mausoleum of Grigoris, grandson of Saint Gregory the Illuminator and Catholicos of Albania in the Caucasus. Today, this monument is the Amaras monastery in eastern Artsakh. The history of Armenia and Caucasian Albania has been linked since the Christianization of the two countries in the early 4th century.”
This calls for a few comments.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an ancient region of Caucasian Albania, and thus the cradle of the Christian Albanians. But of these Albanians, only a tiny community remains: the Udi, whose language is that of the ancient Albanians, but whose writing has been lost. Thus, there is nothing wrong about this, and it is no falsification to claim it as the historical cradle of medieval Armenia, once the Albanian kingdom had disappeared.
At the beginning of January 2022, journalist Anastasia Lavrina (in the pay of the Azerbaijani government) carried out a curious investigation in Karabakh into “how the Christian churches of Karabakh were destroyed by Armenian separatists,” which was published on the website of the Journal musulmans en France a few days later. An impressive video shows the alleged exactions of the Armenians, as well as the testimony of an Orthodox priest from Baku on the freedom of worship enjoyed by the churches and the repair of this fabulous ancient heritage of which they are so proud. The images only show a priest commenting on all this in front of a small pile of old stones.
The same Journal des musulmans de France plagiarized Ambassador Mustafayev’s text to proclaim the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh: “A new stage… in the history of Christian churches in Azerbaijan—a stage of restoration after destruction and historical falsifications, a stage of healing wounds, of rebirth to life in the name of peace and cooperation between all religions of Azerbaijan.”
Who can believe that Azerbaijan will finance the restoration of Armenian heritage once it has emptied the country of all Armenians? We know the devastating rage of Islam. Mosques will cover the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, erasing Christian memory and the religious roots of humanity, just as Turkey did in two bloody genocides.
But there is a lesson to be learned from all this propaganda, and it is an important one: Muslims have admitted the existence of a very old Albanian Christianity, old enough to confirm a very old, apostolic first evangelization, which Eastern tradition has maintained to the last.
Over and above this ancient history and the existence of a third Christianity in the Caucasus (totally ignored by the Caucasologists of our French media), most articles specializing in Caucasus affairs never cease to evoke “ethnic” or “racial” hatreds, and never mention “religious hatreds.” This ignores the Armenian genocide, which has been documented, even if not recognized by the nation historically responsible for it.
Almost all the articles available do not go beyond 1993, the supposed start of hostilities between Azeris and Armenians.
This silence is irresponsible, not to say guilty.
The question of Nagorno-Karabakh is an old one, whose seeds of death were sown by the British when they awarded Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 1919. Stalin merely ratified their decision.
At the end of 1918, Great Britain moved into the Caucasus. Through diplomacy, it made up for the few material resources it had in this “turbulent” region, as the experts put it. The cunning, deceitfulness, cynicism and well-understood self-interest of this England of the dying empire are well known. Her own, of course. The pretext invoked by the most imperialist circles in London to justify this presence in the Caucasus is that it was one of the roads into India. In reality, it is because of Baku’s oil. During British rule in 1919, Azerbaijan still had access to the oil that crossed Georgia to the port of Batumi (promised to Georgia, but occupied by the British). As for Armenia, it had been promised vast territories in Anatolia. But without the means to conquer or hold on to them. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees were crammed into a tiny territory. Of what was then called “Turkish Armenia,” only one vilayet remained, that of Sivas, and only a handful of Armenians.
For Turkey, the Batumi treaties were nothing more than legal façades providing a pretext for invading the Caucasus. At the beginning of August 1918, Nuri Pacha demanded the annexation of Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The Armenian Republic refused. Once. Then a second time. The Turks then sent a Turkish-Azeri detachment against the capital, Shushi, which the Turks entered on October 8. The villages went into sedition, and the following month, taking advantage of their withdrawal, the Armenians regained control of the region.
In October 1918, Enver Pasha sent precise instructions to the Army of the Caucasus for the regions between the Transcaucasian republics and the line of retreat of the Turkish forces. Before withdrawing, the army was to arm the Kurdish and Turkish populations, leaving behind officers capable of organizing the region politically and militarily. The main objective was to prevent the repatriation of Armenians.
The commander-in-chief of British forces in the Caucasus, General William Montgomerie Thomson, was on the best of terms with the Azerbaijani government, which enabled Great Britain to obtain very large quantities of oil. On January 15, 1919, he authorized the appointment of an Azeri governor for the provinces of Karabakh (165,000 Armenians vs. 59,000 Azeris) and Zanguezur (101,000 Armenians vs. 120,000 Azeris).
In February 2019, the Azerbaijani administration entered Karabakh under British protection, while the Armenians held their fourth assembly in Shushi, which still refused to submit. Talks continued at the fifth assembly, held at the end of April with the participation of the Azeri governor and General Digby Shuttleworth, Thomson’s successor.
Armenian refusal persisted, and relations soured. On June 2, the Azeris attacked.
In August 1919, the Armenians accepted Azeri authority. Did they have any other choice?
On January 8, 1920, the Armenians signed an agreement with Major General George Forestier-Walker, commander of British forces in Batumi, for the establishment of an Armenian civil administration in Kars. When it arrived, escorted by the British, the Muslims refused to submit and, at the end of a large congress, proclaimed the provisional national government of the south-west Caucasus. General Thomson arrived in Kars and de facto recognized this government, while the Armenian administration turned back. With the Turks and Kurds making it impossible to repatriate Armenians to the west, the Armenians decided in January to attack Nakhichevan.
Thomson offered to help the Armenians take control of Kars and Nakhichevan, if they agreed to cede Karabakh and Zanguezur to the Azeris. Following an agreement in principle, Thomson occupied Kars on April 13 and dissolved the South-West Caucasus government. The British withdrew from Nakhichevan, leaving the administration to the Armenians. In July, the Muslims of Nakhichevan attacked the Armenians and forced them to evacuate the district.
When Colonel Alfred Rawlinson visited the Kars region in July, he found that, apart from the towns, the rest of the territory was held by the Kurds, from the Aras valley to Oltu and Ardahan.
What about the French? They knew, of course.
On December 10, 1918, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre-Auguste Chardigny, commander of the French detachment in the Caucasus, sent a six-page letter to the Minister of War, in which he outlined the situation in the Caucasus and the proposed organization of the country.
He pointed out that “recent attempts at Russian colonization have produced a complete mixture of races and an incredible dispersion of populations,” and asked whether the organization of the Caucasus into four independent republics, “following the collapse of Russian power and the threat of Turkish invasion, is likely to provide the populations with the peace and prosperity to which they aspire?”
This is no rhetorical question. Here is the answer in extenso.
What is this organization?
“1. It is none other than the realization of our enemies’ plan, which can be summed up as follows:
a) Constitution of a large Muslim state in the Caucasus, uniting under Turkish protectorate the highlanders of the North Caucasus and the Tatars of Azerbaijan. This concept, of purely pan-Islamic origin, would have brought the Crescent to the edge of the Caspian Sea in the event of victory for the allied powers. The Republic of Armenia, born of necessity and reduced to infinite proportions, would have been short-lived, the disappearance of what remained of the Armenian people being the direct and fatal consequence of the Turkish plan.
b) Creation of an independent Georgia, under the protectorate of Germany, which would itself be responsible for exploiting the natural wealth of the most favored region in the Caucasus.
2. That none of the four new republics had sufficient resources to create an independent life for themselves, ensuring the country’s future development. Two of them, that of Azerbaijan and that of the Montagnards, do not even have an educated class large enough to ensure the direction of affairs, the mass of the people having so far remained in a state of profound ignorance.
In a note, the lieutenant-colonel pointed out that while in Georgia all Russian civil servants had been replaced by Georgians, in Azerbaijan, given the absolute lack of educated Muslims, Russian civil servants had been retained.
…Georgians and Tatars (Azerbaijanis), supported by German and Turkish bayonets, incorporated parts of the Armenian regions into their respective territories.“
Lieutenant-Colonel Chardigny concluded with a novel and intelligent proposal: that the Swiss model should be copied in the Caucasus and the region organized into “cantons.”
And he concluded, with a certain realism, that to save order in this country, a foreign master was needed, who could only be the Allies, acting in the name of Russia, until calm had been restored.
He concluded this intelligent letter with the fate of Russian Armenia (Caucasian Armenia) and that of Turkish Armenia, “a devastated and deserted country whose reconstitution would be a long-term task.”
The constitution of a large Muslim state in the Caucasus, uniting under Turkish protectorate the highlanders of the North Caucasus and the Tatars of Azerbaijan, is still on the agenda.
This is President Erdogan’s project.
The “fourth republic” of the North Caucasus did not last, but there is still Azerbaijan, a Turkish protectorate (or satellite) that takes the Crescent all the way to the Caspian.
The great Muslim state of the Caucasus, in a Turkish-speaking zone stretching from the Bosphorus to Central Asia: that is Turkey’s geopolitical vision.
Erdogan is moving forward, barely masked, with the same determination of his great predecessors, the gravediggers of the Christian Caucasus who did most of the work, with the duplicitous complicity of the Entente powers.
Today, France’s absurd support for Ukraine and the press’ aversion to Putin have foolishly deprived it of Russian gas. Today, it is turning to Azerbaijan (Baku) to obtain, in an unnatural alliance, what it could have continued to negotiate if it had chosen realism and common sense: to leave Zelenski to his destructive madness and demented plans; to turn away from a war decided and willed by NATO; to develop ties with Christian Russia prepared by three centuries of political, cultural and linguistic history.
Today, the gravediggers of the Christian Caucasus are still there, slyly preparing the ruin of the small Armenian state, an unfortunate landlocked state which today lies on the route of tomorrow’s oil pipelines. And by the same token, irresponsibly organizing a future Muslim Caucasus.
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.
Featured: Albanian Church in Kish, Shaki Rayon, Azerbaijan.
We are pleased to bring you this excerpt from Colonel Jacques Baud’s latest book, which deals with the genocide in Gaza currently being carried out by Israel. The book is entitled, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher. We will update this page as soon as this book becomes available. in the meantime, here is the excerpt.
Doctrinal Apparatus Ill-Suited to an Asymmetrical Conflict
The BETHLEHEM Doctrine
This doctrine was developed by Daniel Bethlehem, legal advisor to Ben-jamin Netanyahu and then to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It postulates that states are entitled to preventive self-defense against an “imminent” attack. The difficulty here is to determine the “imminent” nature of an attack, which implies that the terrorist action is close in time and that there is a body of evidence to confirm it.
In February 2013, NBC News released a Department of Justice “White Pa-per” defining “imminent:”
the imminent threat of a violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have proof that a specific attack against American persons or interests will take place in the immediate future.
While the principle appears legitimate, it’s the interpretation of the word “imminent” that poses a problem. In intelligence circles, the “imminence” of an attack is defined in terms of its proximity in time and the likelihood of it taking place. But, according to Daniel Bethlehem, this is no longer the case here:
It must be right that states should be able to act in self-defense in cir-cumstances where there is evidence of imminent attacks by terrorist groups, even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack.
In this way, a terrorist attack can be considered “imminent,” even if the de-tails and timing are unknown. This makes it possible, for example, to launch an air strike simply on the basis of suspicions of an imminent attack.
In November 2008, while a ceasefire was in force, an Israeli commando raid killed six people in Gaza. The explanation given by the Israeli army illustrates the BETHLEHEM doctrine:
This was a targeted operation to prevent an immediate threat […] There was no intention to break the ceasefire, rather the aim of the op-eration was to eliminate an immediate and dangerous threat posed by the Hamas terrorist organization.
This doctrine is similar to the one enunciated in 2001 by Dick Cheney, then Vice President of the United States, also known as the “Cheney doctrine” or the “1% doctrine:”
If there’s a 1% probability that Pakistani scientists are helping terrorists to develop or build weapons of mass destruction, we have to treat that as a certainty, in terms of response.
It’s the strategic/operational version of the Wild West “hip shot.” It’s symp-tomatic of the way we understand the law and the way we wage war: without values and without honor.
The problem with the BETHLEHEM doctrine is that it has been systematically used by Israel to justify ceasefire violations. This is true of extra-judicial kill-ings, which are not considered ceasefire violations. A study of Palestinian rocket attacks shows that they are always carried out in response to an Israeli attack, which does not generally appear in our media. From this stems our perception that Palestinian organizations—Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Ha-mas in particular—wantonly attack Israel with their rockets, and therefore engage in terrorist practices.
In its February 2018 report, the Human Rights Council (HRC) reports that during the Gaza border protests (Return Marches), the Israeli army shot dead 183 civilians, including 154 who were unarmed and 35 children. In February 2019, he reports that the Israeli army “intentionally” shot children, medical personnel (wearing badges and shot in the back!), journalists and disabled people. The Palestinian children shot by Israeli snipers with fragmentation bullets while simply standing in front of the border in Gaza in 2018, or the handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian youth shot in the back in April 2019, are war crimes.
Israel’s supporters claim self-defence, but this is fallacious, as the videos published by the United Nations show. Firstly, because the victims were in a 150 m security strip inside Gaza, separated from Israel by a fence and a wide berm, from which Israeli snipers fire. Secondly, because those killed were “armed” only with stones, and thirdly, because some of those hit (notably children) were shot in the back.
So much for the world’s most moral army, which the United Nations has asked to stop shooting children.
The DAHIYA Doctrine
The Israeli army deliberately ignores the principles of international humani-tarian law and applies the “Dahiya doctrine,” drawn up by General Gadi Ei-senkot, now Chief of the General Staff. It advocates the use of “disproportion-ate force” to create maximum damage and destruction, and considers that there are “no civilian villages, these are military bases… This is not a re-commendation. It’s a plan.”
It’s a doctrine that presents itself as a deterrent, but contrary to Wikipedia’s assertion, it’s a tactic that can only work in a symmetrical context, i.e. when the action has a linear effect on weakening the adversary. In an asym-metrical context, where the determination of combatants depends on the brutality of their adversary, such destruction only serves to stimulate the will to resist and the determination to use a terrorist approach. This is the essence of jihad.
In fact, the very existence of this doctrine shows that the Israelis have failed to understand their adversaries and their operating logic. This explains why Israel is the only country in the world not to have mastered terrorism in three-quarters of a century.
In October 2023, the same logic will be applied. The British newspaper The Telegraph quoted Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, as saying that for the strikes “the emphasis is on damage, not precision,” the aim being to reduce Gaza to a “tent city” by the end of the campaign.
***
The HANNIBAL Directive
Our media never mention the “HANNIBAL directive,” which came into force in 1986 in the Israeli army, designed to prevent Israeli prisoners from being used as bargaining chips by the Palestinians. It stipulated that those holding the prisoner were to be destroyed by any means necessary (including at the cost of the prisoner’s own life and that of civilians in the area). Applied during Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE, it was behind the total destruction of a Rafah neighborhood on August 1st, 2014, an event known in Palestine as Black Friday.
This directive seems to be still in use, naturally without much publicity. It ex-plains why the Israelis are not impressed by the hostages taken by Hamas:
The European diplomats were also struck by the lack of interest shown by the Israeli government in prioritizing the lives of the hostages held in Gaza.
Very soon after the start of the Hamas operation, Israel announced the deaths of 1,400 Israeli civilians. This number became a leitmotif for refusing any dialogue with Hamas and other Palestinian groups. But this number was revised downwards after 200 charred bodies were recognized as those of Ha-mas fighters. Then, on December 2, 2023, it was lowered again to 1,000 in a tweet from the Israeli government.
An Israeli air force colonel would later confirm that on October 7, a “free fire” was ordered from the air force, described as a “mass HANNIBAL.”
The HANNIBAL directive is applied not only in cases of hostage-taking, but also when soldiers are at risk of capture. For example, on January 24, 2024, near Khan Younès, a tank was damaged by rocket fire, and the Israeli military was unable to approach it to retrieve the three wounded crewmen. The gen-eral staff therefore preferred to bomb the tank and its occupants rather than risk them falling into the hands of Hamas.
In any case, we can see that the Israeli army applies the precautionary prin-ciple neither to the Palestinians nor to its own men. One could say with a cer-tain cynicism that, at least here, Palestinians and Israelis are treated equally.
In mid-December 2023, the discovery of three bodies in a tunnel in Gaza sparked controversy. They were three men held by Hamas, whom the Israeli army spokesman had declared killed by the Palestinian organization. They have no apparent injuries and appear to have been killed by poisoning. Were they killed by the deliberate use of a combat toxicant or accidentally by toxic fumes from explosions (such as carbon monoxide)? We don’t know, but the mother of one of them, Ron Sherman, believes he was deliberately sacrificed by the army. In any case, this illustrates the Israeli army’s failure to respect the precautionary principle.
Extrajudicial Executions
Extra-judicial executions are an important element in Israel’s policy of de-terrence against Palestinian movements. They consist of eliminating militants outside the judicial process, using killers or “one-off” strikes such as air attacks. Legally questionable, they are often strategically ineffective. Three countries use them regularly: the United States, Israel and France. Presented as a preventive measure, they are generally carried out in a punitive manner, like Sicilian vendettas, without any real assessment of their strategic conse-quences. In practice, they fuel a growing process of violence and are a source of legitimacy for terrorism. In fact, they often reflect a lack of real coun-ter-terrorist strategy.
The archetype of this mode of action is Operation ANGER OF GOD (Mivtza Za’am Ha’el), also known as Operation BAYONET, carried out by the Mossad to punish the perpetrators of the attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972 (Operation BERIM & IKRIT). Within a year, almost the entire Palestinian commando was eliminated: Wae Zwaiter (Rome, October 16, 1972), Mahmoud Hamchari (Paris, January 9, 1973), Abd El-Hir (Nicosia, January 24, 1973), Basil Al-Kubaissi (Paris, April 6, 1973), Ziad Muchassi (Athens, April 12, 1973), Mohammed Boudia (Paris, June 28, 1973), Kamal Nasser, Mahmoud Najjer and Kamal Adouan (Beirut, April 9, 1973). Its leader, Ali Hassan Sala-meh, was killed in Beirut on January 22, 1979, followed by his sec-ond-in-command, Khalil al-Wazir (alias Abou Djihad), on April 16, 1988 in Tunis. In the end, only one member of the group, Jamal al-Gasheï, seems to have escaped the wrath of GOD, while an innocent man was mistakenly killed in Lillehammer (Norway).
These actions are punitive operations. What our countries and Israel con-sider part of the game is called terrorism when others do it. By accepting it from Israel, we create a permissive environment that could well legitimize the elimination of some of our political leaders. Which could happen.
Since 1988, Israel has been using specially trained units to operate clandes-tinely in the occupied territories. Known as “mista’aravim” or YAMAS, these are ad hoc formations that operate clandestinely (in Arab clothing—hence their name) in the occupied territories for reconnaissance missions, comman-do actions or extra-judicial executions. Mista’aravim actions are mainly car-ried out in the West Bank by Sayeret Duvdevan (Unit 217).
The best-known of these was Mossad’s attempt to poison Khaled Mashal, political leader of Hamas in Jordan, in 1997. It ended in failure: the two Israeli agents carrying Canadian passports were arrested; then Israel had to provide an antidote and release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in exchange for the release of his agents. The result was Israel’s loss of credibility with the international com-munity and the mistrust of Jordan—with which Israel has a peace treaty.
Mista’aravim are the equivalent of the Groupe Antiterroriste de Libération (GAL) units used in Spain in the 1980s, which are considered a form of state terrorism. However, the advantage of this type of action is that it can elimi-nate an individual without razing an entire neighborhood or destroying entire families. But it requires agents who are all the more competent and coura-geous because the Palestinians have strengthened their counter-espionage and internal security capabilities. This is why this type of operation has be-come almost impossible to carry out in Gaza, but is still common practice in the West Bank. In Gaza, Israel prefers to carry out its actions “at a distance,” using more sophisticated means such as drones or guided missiles, which have a devastating effect on the civilian population.
With some 2,300 known assassinations, Israel rivals the United States as the country that regularly assassinates opponents and terrorists. When carried out on foreign soil, an “elimination” is a complex operation, relying on a net-work of local informers (“sayanim”), most often recruited from the Jewish diaspora. But this has a perverse effect: it turns the previously well-integrated Jewish community into an object of distrust, perceived as a “5th column” in many countries of the Near and Middle East.
But extra-judicial executions not only carry a significant political risk if un-successful, they tend to legitimize illegal violence and terrorism, as evidenced by the Arabian Peninsula Jihad Base’s (APJB) Inspire magazine:
[The assassination of leaders of the civil and military unbelievers] is one of the most important arts of terrorism and one of the most advanta-geous and deterrent types of operation. These methods are also used by the enemies of Allah. The CIA has authorization from the US gov-ernment to assassinate presidents, if it is in the national interest of the United States, and they have used it more than once. In the CIA, there’s a special department for that! So I don’t know why we’re prevented from doing it? This is a case of Islamist asymmetry: the “cure” is worse than the “disease.” The assassination of leaders has no dissuasive effect. It makes the dead a martyr and an example to follow. It hardly ever leads to the end of terrorist action, but keeps the flame of resistance alive and takes on more varied forms.
With highly decentralized structures, the elimination of cadres does not necessarily weaken the terrorist group, but it does force its hierarchy to renew itself more rapidly and apply new methods and policies of action. This is what happened with Hamas.
But on August 21, 2003, Israeli forces eliminated Ismaïl Abou Shanab. At the time, he was considered a Hamas moderate, and his assassination triggered widespread condemnation and an unprecedented mobilization of the Pales-tinian population. Attacks resumed in step with the eliminations carried out by Israel.
In September 2023, on the LCI channel, where journalist Darius Rochebin praises the assassinations carried out by the Ukrainian secret services, Gen-eral Christophe Gomart explains that France also carries them out. He is a perfect illustration of the Western way of thinking. Like the Israelis, he thinks it’s useful to shoot a leader “because in fact it’s the leaders who decide, and it takes longer to train a leader than it does to train an ordinary soldier,” so:
We destabilize, we disorganize, and the idea in war is to disorganize the adversary in order to weaken him and make it possible to win, and therefore to overthrow him… that’s what we did in the Sahel against the terrorist leaders: we sought to disorganize the terrorist or jihadist Not only does this illustrate a tactical approach to the fight against terror-ism, but it is not valid for highly decentralized insurgent structures, made up of small, quasi-autonomous groups. This partly explains the operational and strategic failure of French action in the Sahel.
This somewhat childish vision of war may work in a conventional conflict, but not in an unconventional context, and certainly not in a jihadist one. It flies in the face of what a British SAS officer told me during my counter-terrorism training in Britain during the war in Northern Ireland in the mid-1980s. The British had extremely detailed files and information on the various command-ers of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), down to knowing their every move. When I asked why they didn’t eliminate them, the officer replied:
Because we know them. We know their psychology, their families, their networks, their way of fighting, and we can better anticipate their ac-tions, even pre-empt them. If we kill them, others will come along, per-haps more effective, more aggressive, and we’ll know nothing about them.
Of course, such an answer is only possible when you have studied your op-ponent thoroughly and know him in great detail. The fact is that today, we know very little about our opponents. Even public figures like Vladimir Putin are so poorly known that he is diagnosed with illnesses he doesn’t have. It’s the same in Palestine.
Experience shows that extra-judicial executions have no operational effect. On the contrary, they encourage the spirit of vengeance and tend to mobilize the spirit of resistance. This phenomenon is all the stronger when civilians are killed in the process. They inspire contempt rather than admiration, as they represent a success not achieved in face-to-face combat. Moreover, as in the case of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Israeli military are not fighting a “brave” battle. This is why these executions become a substitute for real suc-cess against terrorism. They therefore appear more as proof of weakness and incapacity than as a demonstration of effectiveness.
According to some (unconfirmed) reports, SHABAK has set up a clandestine unit, code-named INDIGO, whose mission is to hunt down the perpetrators of the crimes of October 7, 2023. But with evidence mounting that the vast majority of these crimes were the result of errors of conduct, the question of the extent to which this group will punish the real perpetrators of the massacres remains open.
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Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
Strategic Objectives
Over and above the historical objectives of Palestinian resistance, which are aimed at creating a Palestinian state or returning to the land taken from them, the objectives of Operation AL-AQSA DELUGE essentially concern the situation in Gaza.
The operation’s central strategic objective is to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip and restore normal living conditions for the population. This includes the end of permanent surveillance by Israeli forces, restrictions on trade in goods, and measures that prevent economic and social development. This objective follows on from the “Marches of Return,” which were led by civil society, but were met with sniper fire.
Achieving this goal involved enabling objectives, the most important of which was to bring the Palestinian question back onto the international stage. In November 2012, the United Nations General Assembly granted Palestine the status of “non-member observer state of the United Nations.” Since then, however, no progress has been made in dealing with the Palestinian question, and the situation has even deteriorated with the arrival of Israel’s ul-tra-nationalists in power.
The second intermediate objective was to interrupt the normalization pro-cess between Israel and certain Arab countries. Not because of normalization itself, but because it sidelined the Palestinian question. The Palestinians had always wanted these issues to be linked, so that there would be leverage to force Israel to implement UN decisions.
The third intermediate objective was to rally the Muslim community around the issue of the future of the Esplanade of the Mosques (or Temple Mount), which is closely linked to the Palestinian question. As Ihsan Ataya, a mem-ber of the political bureau of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PID) and head of the PID’s Arab and International Relations Department states:
The aim of Operation AL-AQSA RELIEF was stated from the outset: to prevent the Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) from being attacked, Muslim religious rites from being insulted or defamed, our women from being assaulted, efforts to Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque and normalize its occupation by Israel from being implemented, or the mosque from being divided in time and space.
It has to be said that, while the blockade of Gaza has not been lifted, these three intermediate strategic objectives have been at least partially achieved. To what extent they will lead to a lasting and just solution to the Palestinian question is an open question, but Hamas has clearly underlined the responsi-bility of the international community to enforce the decisions it has taken.
Operational Objectives
First Objective: The Gaza Division
The first objective was to destroy the elements of the Gaza Division and the surveillance installations encircling the Gaza Strip. On October 12, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Phalanges, explains:
Operation AL-AQSA DELUGE was aimed at destroying the Gaza Division, which was attacked at 15 points, followed by 10 more. We attacked the Zikim site and several other settlements outside the Gaza Division headquarters.
This objective may seem outdated to us, since it was clear from the outset that the Palestinian operation could not maintain its momentum for very long, and that the fighting would necessarily continue in the Gaza Strip itself. Con-sequently, the destruction of infrastructure could only be temporary, but highly symbolic.
To understand this, you have to put yourself in the Palestinians’ software. Victory is not achieved by destroying the adversary, but by maintaining the determination to resist. In other words, whatever the Israelis do, however much destruction and death they cause, the Palestinians have already emerged victorious from this operation. Faced with a numerically and materi-ally stronger adversary, victory in the Western sense of the term is not possi-ble. On the other hand, overcoming fear and feelings of powerlessness is al-ready a victory. This is the very essence of the notion of jihad.
Consequently, all the humiliations the Israelis can inflict on their prisoners or the civilian population can only make the Palestinians feel better, and lower the military’s thirst for vengeance. In fact, this is what is happening around the world: the Israelis are obliged to use their censorship to hide the crimes com-mitted by their soldiers, and the idea of “the most moral army in the world” is now totally discredited.
Second Objective: Take Prisoners
The second objective was to seize prisoners in order to exchange them for those held by Israel. Very quickly, testimonies in the Israeli press showed that the aim of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PID) fighters was not to carry out a “pogrom,” but to seize soldiers in order to exchange them for Pal-estinians held by Israel. The aim was to gain leverage to resume the negotia-tions interrupted by the Israeli government in November 2021. Since then, it has been known that Hamas would carry out such an operation. The depu-ty chief of staff of the Al-Qassam Phalanges, Marwan Issa, had declared that “the prisoners’ file will be the surprise of the enemy’s next surprises.”
Clearly, the aim was not to kill civilians, but rather to obtain a bargaining chip for the release of some 5,300 prisoners held by Israel. Eyewitness ac-counts in the Israeli press suggest that the original idea was to take only mili-tary prisoners (who are “more valuable” than civilians for an exchange). These same accounts show that the Palestinians were surprised to find so few mili-tary personnel on site, which can be explained by the fact that part of the gar-risons had been redeployed to the West Bank a few weeks earlier. Yasmin Porat’s testimony, mentioned above, shows that Hamas fighters stayed with civilians in their homes, waiting for the security forces to intervene. The testi-monies indicate that the Palestinian fighters left with civilian prisoners only after the Israeli military had intervened, firing indiscriminately into the houses with their tanks. It therefore appears that the capture of civilians was more the result of a combination of circumstances than a decision taken in advance.
The death of civilians was therefore not an objective, and the fact that the freed hostages declared that they had been treated with respect, and even in a friendly manner, tends to confirm that this was not a “pogrom” against the Israeli population.
The prisoner exchanges of November 2023 illustrate Hamas’s strategy, at the heart of which were military prisoners, not civilians. That’s why the Pales-tinians released the women and children first, and kept the military (especially the top brass) for later. We’ll come back to this later.
Tactical Objectives
The Hamas attack targeted 25 military objectives located in the “Gaza en-velope.” The three main tactical objectives of the operation were:
the Zikim naval base in the north of the Gaza Strip, which was attacked by Hamas marine commandos, who resisted Israeli counter-attacks for several days;
the Erez checkpoint, in the north of the Gaza Strip, which manages part of the fence’s surveillance facilities; the Gaza Division command post at the Re’im site, where the heaviest fighting will take place on October 7; and the Urim intelligence center some 17 km from the Gaza Strip, in order to damage Israeli surveillance installations.
A document discovered near Kibbutz Mefalsim, 2 km from the Gaza Strip, containing data on the number of soldiers and security forces, shows that the operation was meticulously prepared and directed against military installations.
Reports of Alexei Navalny’s death in a Russian prison on February 16, 2024 quickly spread around the world, accompanied by unanimous condemnation of the Russian government, accused of suppressing an opponent. But in reality, no one knows what happened or the cause of his death. As with all current crises, our governments judge not by the facts, but by a narrative.
Was Navalny Vladimir Putin’s Main Challenger?
First of all, we need to understand who Alexei Navalny was. Our media present him as the “head,” or “leader” of the opposition in Russia. Yet, as the French newspaper Libération acknowledged, he was simply the most visible opposition figure in the West. He was part of the so-called “off-system” alternative opposition, made up of small groups often located at the extreme left and right of the political spectrum, too small to be able to form parties.
Navalny began his business career in the 2000s. In a common practice during the Yeltsin period, he would buy state-owned enterprises, liquidate the unprofitable parts and privatize the profits of the more profitable elements. This illegal practice is at the root of Vladimir Putin’s fight against certain oligarchs, who ended up taking refuge in Great Britain or Israel. Navalny was given a five-year suspended prison sentence in a first case (Kirovles).
But the most high-profile case was that involving the Yves Rocher cosmetics group. This is a relatively complex case, beyond the scope of this article, which is best described in the Yves Rocher press release and on the Russian version of Wikipedia. In a nutshell, it is a case of personal enrichment through abuse of an official position by Oleg Navalny, Alexei’s brother. In 2008, Oleg was a manager at the Russian Post Office’s automated sorting center in Podolsk. To streamline the delivery of Yves Rocher products to the sorting center, he encouraged the French company to use the services of a private logistics company, Glavpodpiska (GPA). But as GPA was owned by the Navalny family, there was a clear conflict of interest, leading to an investigation for unlawful enrichment and abuse of an official position. In addition to this corruption-like affair, there were accusations of overbilling. In this case, Oleg Navalny was the main defendant, while Alexeï Navalny was “only” an accomplice. This is why Oleg was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, and Alexeï to three and a half years suspended. It is this suspended sentence which, on appeal after appeal, was postponed—prohibiting him from leaving Russian territory—before being applied in 2021.
On February 4, 2019, French-speaking Swiss radio claimed that “Russian authorities, who were already investigating the Navalny brothers, allegedly pressured Yves Rocher in 2012 to file a complaint against them.” This was a lie. In fact, Navalny was not convicted for the damage caused to Yves Rocher, but for the abuse of an official position. Just the day before, Yves Rocher declared in a press release:
Yves Rocher Vostok never filed a complaint against the Navalny brothers, nor did it make any legal claim against them at any time.
Oleg and Alexei Navalny took this ruling to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that it was politically motivated. However, contrary to the claims of the Western media, and the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, the ECHR did not invalidate this judgment, as it did not judge the substance of the case, but its form. On October 17, 2017, the ECHR delivered its verdict, partially upholding the two brothers on certain points of law and concluding that the Russian justice system should pay them compensation. On the other hand, it rejected the allegation that their conviction was politically motivated (paragraph 89).
In 2018, Alexei was not allowed to run in the presidential election. Our media claim that the reasons are political, but this is not true. The reason is that—as in other Western countries—you cannot run for president if you have been convicted. Furthermore, as we have seen, his conviction was not political in nature.
Politically, Alexei Navalny’s background was more that of an activist than a politician. In the early 2000s, he was an advisor to Nikita Belykh, Governor of Kirov. At that time, he was a complete unknown whose activism had no national or international visibility to justify harassment by the Russian government. In 2005, he co-founded the Democratic Alternative (DA) movement. This is an alternative opposition movement funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In June 2007, he co-founded the unsuccessful nationalist group Narod (“People”), which merged in June 2008 with two other Russian nationalist far-right movements: the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (MAII) and Great Russia, to form a new coalition: the Russian National Movement.
In 2010, on the recommendation of Garry Kasparov, Navalny was invited to the United States to take part in the Yale World Fellows Program. This is a fifteen-week, non-degree-granting training program offered by Yale University to foreigners, identified as potential relays of American policy in their respective countries.
Back in Russia, Navalny campaigned for the rights of small shareholders in large corporations and denounced abuses in corporate practices. His Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) attracted sympathy, but also a great deal of distrust and antipathy. His accusations were often spurious, as in 2016 against Artyom Chaika, son of Russia’s Prosecutor General; in 2017, against Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, or in 2018, against businessman Mikhaïl Prokhorov.
As for his ideas, the picture is hardly any brighter. In 2007, he was expelled from the center-right Yabloko party for his regular participation in the ultra-nationalist “Russian March” and his racist “nationalist activities.” At the time, in a now-famous video for the liberalization of handguns, he mimed shooting Chechen migrants in Russia. In October 2013, he supported and stirred up, the Biryulyovo riots, castigating the “hordes of legal and illegal immigrants.” In 2017, the American media outlet Salonclaimed that “if he were American, liberals would hate Navalny far more than they hate Trump or Steve Bannon.” In 2017, the American media outlet Jacobin, even referred to him as “Russia’s Trump.” In fact, as Princeton University’s American Foreign Policy Magazine noted in December 2018, he emerged through far-right groups, and his ideas were more akin to what is described as “populist” in the West. The Grayzone did a remarkable interview with two activists on the “anti-Putin” left, which shows how much our mainstream media have distorted our image of Navalny.
On Radio-Télévision Suisse (RTS)’s “Géopolitis” program on Navalny, broadcast on February 21, 2021, a presenter asserted that “nothing remains of Navalny’s ultra-nationalist beginnings and anti-migrant declarations.” This is not true: in April 2017 in The Guardian, then in October 2020 in the German magazine Der Spiegel, Navalny confirmed that he had not changed his opinion.
In order to attract the votes of the extremes on the right and left—which are not sufficiently numerous separately to field candidates in elections—Navalny applied the concept of smart voting, inspired by American strategic or tactical voting. Whereas in France, the “useful vote” consists in giving one’s vote to the candidate who is closest to one’s opinions, Navalny’s “smart voting” principle was to give one’s vote to anyone except a member of United Russia (Vladimir Putin’s party). “Smart voting” is not based on preference, but on detestation. Very symbolic!
The advantage of this process is that it enables the votes of extremists to be pooled. This explains Navalny’s “success” in the Moscow municipal elections of 2013, when “he” won 27 percent of the vote. But it was a deceptive success: it did not express a preference for Navalny, but a rejection of the then incumbent mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin.
This election showed that Navalny’s supporters are a very disparate and unholy mixture of left-wing and right-wing extremists, where internal rivalries are very strong. But it also showed that his supporters were not rallying around a project for Russia, but around a determination against “power.” This is yet another example of the Western approach, which does not seek to promote an improvement for Russia, but, on the contrary, its weakening. It is also symptomatic that none of our media report on Navalny’s political project. For a good and simple reason—it does not exist.
In 2019, on the occasion of the Moscow Duma elections, 20,000-50,000 demonstrators calling for “free elections” attracted the attention of the Western media. Headlines such as “27 candidates have been excluded” (Le Figaro) or “Authorities exclude opposition candidates” (Le Monde) suggestws that the validation of candidacies was discretionary. The BBC claimed that the candidates were “ignored” and “treated as if they were insignificant.” Not true. In fact, as in France for the presidential election, candidates must have a certain number of signatures in order to take part. In France, candidates must have the signatures of 500 elected representatives.
In Russia, a non-party candidate needs the signatures of 5,000 ordinary citizens, which does not seem too much in a city of 12 million inhabitants. Naturally, these signatures are checked by an electoral commission to prevent fraud, and despite a 10 percent tolerance, some candidates fail to reach the required number. This is what happened to these small groups, whose tendencies ranged from the extreme right to the extreme left, who have no popular base, and some of whom did not even try to collect the signatures.
This is the same phenomenon that affected Alexei Navalny’s Progress Party in 2015—it simply did not have enough supporters to have branches in at least 85 entities of the Russian Federation. It was therefore struck off the electoral rolls, not by arbitrary decision, but because it did not meet the criteria defined by law.
In reality, Navalny’s popularity was very low. A poll carried out between August 20 and August 26, 2020 (just after his “poisoning”) by the Levada Center (funded by the USA and considered in Russia as a “foreign agent,” so not really ” regime-friendly”) showed the difference in popularity between Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny (Table 1).
Table 1: Voting intentions in November 2020 (among voters who intended to vote). August 2020 figures come from a poll conducted in the week of August 20-26, 2020, after the Navalny “poisoning attempt.” [Source: Levada Center]
Alongside these institutional problems, the reason why the non-systemic opposition—i.e., that which is not structured into parties with sufficient popular representation to be elected—is sidelined is that it is funded from abroad. In part by oligarchs guilty of illegal enrichment who have fled the country to Britain or Israel, and by foreign powers, notably the United States and Great Britain. By financing political parties in Russia, our countries are, quite logically, turning them into “foreign agents.”
The US uses the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to fund “non-systemic” opposition in Russia. According to the New York Times, the NED was created in the early 1980s to alleviate the workload of the CIA. In 2021, it supported no fewer than 109 political and influence activities in Russia, for a total of $14 million. As for the UK, it participates in this effort by funding anti-Russia media in the countries surrounding Russia. According to investigative journalist Matt Kennard, the UK spent around €96 million between 2017 and 2021 on “counter-information” in 20 countries.
In response to a situation that has only worsened since the early 2000s, Russia passed a law in 2012 similar to the one in force in the USA since 1938, allowing the banning of foreign-funded political organizations. In November 2017, following the United States’ decision to classify the Russian media outlet RT as a “foreign agent,” Russia tightened its policy and passed a law allowing foreign journalists and media outlets to be classified as “foreign agents.” In 2018, this law was extended to individuals and NGOs funded by foreign countries.
To what extent the Russian opposition is free to express itself is certainly debatable, but the fact that we are funding it makes it ipso facto illegitimate and illegal. No country accepts foreign funding of its opposition. What is more, if the opposition were as strong and vibrant as they say it is in Russia, it would not need our financial support.
In fact, Western countries fund the Russian opposition not to improve the situation for Russians, but to put pressure on the government.
The Poisoning
On Thursday August 20, 2020, on his flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Alexei Navalny was suddenly in severe pain. The flight was diverted to Omsk so that he could be rushed to hospital.
Although no analysis was ever carried out and no one knows the exact nature of Navalny’s illness, his spokeswoman claimed that he was deliberately poisoned. The rumors circulating on social networks about alcohol consumption combined with medication were immediately described as “defamatory” and dismissed as “slanderous” by our media, which readily prefered, without any supporting evidence, a more romanticized narrative—Novitchok poisoning on Putin’s orders.
Assuming that the poisoning was deliberate (and therefore criminal), how it occurred remains a mystery, and explanations have varied. In the first version, his entourage claims that he was poisoned while drinking tea at Tomsk airport. The problem was that the tea had been brought to him by Ilya Pakhomov, one of his colleagues. Later, another video shows a waitress placing cups on the table.
Navalny’s entourage then presented a second version: poisoning with water bottles at the hotel, which Navalny’s team (remaining in Tomsk) recovered on August 20. The British media outlet The Sun published the video of the operation, which took place before the arrival of the police, thus altering the presumed crime scene. Navalny’s entourage claimed to have taken the bottles to Germany for analysis. But scans of the Navalny team’s luggage at the boarding gate, published by the private Russian media REN TV [30 percent of is owned by the RTL Group], confirmed that there were no bottles (which would have been confiscated anyway), while surveillance cameras show one of Navalny’s relatives buying water from a vending machine after the luggage check. In September 2020, one of Navalny’s associates himself confessed that the bottle of water was not the cause of the poisoning. In any case, according to the BBC, Navalny had ingested nothing but his tea at the airport that morning.
Navalny’s entourage then came up with a third story: the poisoning of Navalny’s underpants, “revealed” on December 21, 2020, with the video of a telephone conversation with what is presented to us as an “FSB [Federal Security Service] agent,” named Konstantin Kudryavtsev. It was widely circulated on Western media. Conspiracy theorists claimed that, after this conversation, “there can be no doubt.” But there is absolutely no proof that a) this is the person in question, b) that he really is an FSB agent, and c) that he was actually involved in the poisoning attempt.
The video was shot with the help of Bellingcat, a British government-funded outfit. The problem is that its methodology for identifying Kudryavtsev is technically questionable. In fact, instead of starting with the crime and working backwards to its perpetrator (as a Sherlock Holmes would do), Bellingcat looks for the individuals who best fit the hypothetical course of the crime. It builds a profile of culprits based on an assumed scenario, and then looks for the individuals who are most likely to match it. This is the principle of artificial intelligence. In this way, we arrive at the result through a succession of approximations—we have the probability of the probability of the probability of the probability that what we find is true. To put it simply: facts are selected on the basis of conclusions—whereas facts should lead to conclusions. This is a method that police forces try to avoid, as it leads to miscarriages of justice.
Such a methodology could be used if all the details of the crime were known in advance. The problem is that, in this particular case, numerous facts show that Bellingcat knew neither the functioning nor the structure of the Russian security services, nor even how the crime was committed and under what circumstances. The probability that Bellingcat arrived at the right result is therefore extremely low. What is more, the American channel CNN—which investigated the case on site—admitted that it has “not been able” to confirm Navalny’s accusations.
Furthermore, assuming that Navalny’s contact was indeed a member of a team of “poisoners,” would he speak freely with a stranger, on an unencrypted phone, and give details of an operation that would presumably be highly classified? Assuming that this “agent” had been involved in Navalny’s surveillance for four years, would he not have recognized his voice on the phone? With so many contradictions and errors about the way the services work, we have every right to believe that Navalny’s contact person was not the one we have been led to believe.
Russian opposition media outlet Meduza asked four lawyers whether Navalny’s video constituted proof that the FSB tried to poison him. All agreed that, even if it were legally possible to present the video at a trial, its content was highly open to manipulation and insufficient to prove anything.
As to Bellingcat—regularly referred to by far-right conspiracists, Conspiracy Watch and many Western media outlets—an internal UK Integrity Initiative document from June 2018 on countering Russian disinformation judged it as follows:
Other concerns were that the CPDA and ISD had analytical shortcomings, and that Bellingcat was somewhat discredited, both by spreading disinformation itself, and by being willing to produce reports for anyone willing to pay.
This telephone conversation was therefore not credible in its form. But neither was its substance. Assuming that it was Novitchok poisoning, and even that the poison was of Russian origin, there was nothing at that stage—not even Navalny’s conversation—to link the Russian authorities to this attempt. Moreover, as we shall see, the various reports on this poisoning, published by the Charité hospital, the OPCW, Germany, Sweden or France, were based on biomedical samples (blood and urine samples), and none confirmed the mode of poisoning, nor refered to bottles or underwear. This was confirmed by the German government in its answers to parliamentarians.
I was trained in the Swiss Nuclear Biological and Chemical (NBC) Defense School, based in Spiez, which is a center of excellence for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). So, the alleged assassination attempts on Sergei Skripal in Britain (2018) and then Alexei Navalny (2020) caught my interest. In both cases, Russia allegedly used a poison “a single gram of which could kill a thousand people in seconds.” However, not only none of the “victims” died, but their symptoms were totally different from each other’s, and moreover, these symptoms did not correspond to those of nerve agents.
In fact, the symptoms of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulya (and the testimony of a British National Health Service (NHS) emergency doctor in Salisbury) suggest that they were probably victims of food poisoning by a toxin related to saxitoxins, as were other customers of the same restaurant a few months later. As for Navalny, the military laboratories never published the results of their analyses.
Assuming that Novitchok had been put on Navalny’s underwear, he would have died when he picked it up and would not even have had time to put it on! In reality, the facts are poorly known. Our governments and the mainstream media exploit this ignorance to create a narrative that justifies their policies towards Russia. In this respect, our governments are behaving in a way that meets the definition of conspiracy theorists. The stories reported to us without nuance in the media are artificial constructs, which must “play” with the facts to appear credible.
Let’s remember a few facts. First of all, Novitchok was not listed in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) until 2018, simply because the USSR (then Russia) never adopted it: it was merely a research product.
Secondly, it was at Russia’s request that several variants of Novitchok were added to the CWC list in 2018. Why? Because the laboratory that had developed it had been dismantled by the US, and the Americans had supplied samples to several NATO countries. The Americans themselves synthesized it for research purposes back in 1998. This is why the British laboratory at Porton Down refused to confirm to Theresa May that the toxin analyzed in the Skripal affair was of Russian origin.
In short, scientific evidence tends to contradict the claims of politicians and other propagandists. So we cannot say for sure, even if the report from German doctors at Berlin’s La Charité hospital indicates that Navalny’s poisoning seemed to have been caused by a wrong combination of drugs.
The Results of the Analyses
There is little available data to assess the reliability of the Western accusations made in 2018 and 2020. The analyses carried out by German, French and Swedish military laboratories in September 2020 remain classified and have neither been published nor communicated to Russia, despite its requests. On the other hand, we do have the medical reports of the doctors who treated Navalny in Omsk and Berlin, the declassified version of the OPCW report and—to a certain extent—the German government’s answers of November 19, 2020 and February 15, 2021, to questions from Bundestag lawmakers.
Analyses by military laboratories tended to assert the presence of Novitchok, but their content is unverifiable. Observations by civilian doctors tended to contradict their conclusions, while government responses seemed much less categorical than the media, and invoked military secrecy when facts appeared to contradict their statements.
On August 24, the Charité hospital issued a press release stating that clinical analyses “indicate intoxication with a substance from the cholinesterase inhibitor group.” However, the Omsk doctors did not detect any. So, conspiracy? Not necessarily. As the opposition media outlet Meduzaexplained, the German doctors were looking for evidence of poisoning, whereas the Russian doctors were looking for the cause of Navalny’s illness. As they were not looking for the same thing, they obtained different results, but they were not inconsistent.
In Sweden, lawyer Mats Nilsson requested publication of the results of Navalny’s blood analysis by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). FOI only published a text in which the name of the substance had been redacted, stating that “the presence of XXXX has been confirmed in the patient’s blood.” A blackout which suggests that something other than Novitchok, which Westerners had expected, was found. What is more, elements of his medical file published by doctors at Berlin’s Charité Hospital in the medical journal The Lancet, tended to show that he was probably the victim of a toxic combination of drugs.
The name of the substance was hidden and obviously covered by military secrecy. So we do not know anything about it, but we can imagine that if it had been Novitchok (which Western countries expected), there would have been no reason to hide it. On January 14, 2021, the Swedish government refused to declassify this result so as not to “harm relations between Sweden and a foreign power,” without specifying whether this was Germany or the United States. So we do not know. But we do know that Sweden is a country whose honor is a fiction subordinated to political interest—in the Julian Assange affair, the Swedish government had already literally “fabricated” rape accusations, according to Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.
As it turns out, the “traces of toxin” which the German government found in Navalny’s blood (but which the doctors at Berlin’s La Charité hospital did not find) were not on the CAC list. Apparently, this toxin was so dangerous that the German government even refused to put it on the CAC list! So, the Germans found an unnamed toxic substance so dangerous that they have decided not to ban it.
Only our journalists can understand such deranged logic.
The German doctors’ report, published on December 22, 2020, in the medical journal The Lancet, clearly stated that they were unable to identify the presence of Novitchok when Navalny arrived, but only of “cholinesterase inhibitors.” They stated that the identification of Novitchok required further analysis by the IPTB.
But the analyses carried out by the Charité hospital on Navalny’s arrival spoke for themselves. They are the subject of an appendix to The Lancet article. An appendix that no mainstream media has published, reported or analyzed, because the German doctors’ findings call into question the military version of events.
The presence of cholinesterase inhibitors could therefore simply be explained by the drugs ingested by Navalny himself, likely in combination with alcohol. This would explain why his symptoms were totally different from those of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018, who were claimed to have been victims of the same poison.
Furthermore, the German doctors’ report reveals that when the French, Swedish and OPCW took their samples–a fortnight after Navalny’s arrival in Germany—his cholinesterase levels were close to normal. At this stage, these laboratories were only able to detect “cholinesterase inhibitors,” but not the substances found at the Charité a few days earlier, such as lithium or drugs, which would have favored their appearance. In the absence of published results, we do not know exactly what the military found, but it is likely that, having no other explanation for the presence of these inhibitors, they were led to conclude that it was Novitchok.
By keeping their results secret, these laboratories had probably not anticipated that the German doctors would publish the results of their analyses. Thanks to the latter, the hypothesis that Navalny was the victim of accidental poisoning appears more likely than deliberate poisoning.
Navalny must obviously have known this, just as he must have known that these results were going to be published; and it was probably to disqualify their conclusions that, the day before The Lancet article was published, Navalny posted online his telephone conversation with an “FSB agent.”
Navalny’s Death
The official version given by the Russian authorities is that Alexei Navalny died from a form of cerebral embolism. Whether this is true or not, we do not know, and only an autopsy can tell us. In the absence of medical data, it is impossible to determine the cause of his death, let alone whether it was of criminal origin. However, it is now clear that Alexei Navalny’s death is of no interest to the Russian government.
In Ukraine, Russia controls the military situation and is making gains along the entire front line. Ukrainian institutions are in crisis, and the threat of a cut in Western aid is contributing to mounting political tensions. Ukraine and the West expected a rapid collapse of Russia thanks to sanctions, and convinced themselves that Ukraine could only win. Two years after the start of the Russian operation, the opposite is true: the Russian economy is growing, while those of the West are tending towards recession. We were told that the Russian army had no more tanks, no more artillery, no more missiles, no more fighters, that it was isolated from the world, that it had to find its micro-processes in washing machines; and today we are told that it is ready to invade Europe.
Faced with the failure of its strategy in Ukraine, the West is moving deeper into the war of narratives. As Josep Borrell, head of the European Union’s foreign policy department, puts it: “It is clear that the wind is blowing against the West, it is blowing against us. And we have to win the battle of narratives.”
But here too, Russia appears to be the winner. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin went round the world, showing a Kremlin leader more stable, coherent, rational, and intelligent than his White House counterpart.
Furthermore, the approaching presidential elections in Russia made the timing of Navalny’s elimination unlikely. In fact, Alexei Navalny was transferred from his prison on the outskirts of Moscow to Penitentiary Colony No. 3 (IK-3). According to the opposition media Novaya Gazeta, when Navalny was transferred to IK-3, the Russian government gave instructions that he should be protected and not die before the elections. Did the Russian authorities have any information about possible threats against Navalny? We do not know.
What we also know from the German and Ukrainian media is that Russia was negotiating with the US government to exchange Navalny for Vadim Krasikov, a former Russian spy.
The problem here, as in all matters concerning Russia or Belarus, is that our leaders are reacting on the basis of their hatred of noth these countries, not on the basis of the facts. Already during the alleged “hijacking” of flight FR4978 to Minsk in May 2021, European leaders had tweeted that President Lukashenko was responsible, even before the plane had landed in Minsk, and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had tweeted that activist Roman Protasevich had been arrested, demanding his immediate release and calling for sanctions against Belarus, even before he had stepped off the plane.
With the Nord Stream affair in September 2022, on the French television channel LCI, French general Michel Yakovleff claimed that Russia had sabotaged its own gas pipelines, before anyone knew what had actually happened.
The same thing happened with Navalny’s death: within minutes after his death was announced, all European leaders immediately accused Vladimir Putin of having had him assassinated. This shows that our leaders have no robust decision-making processes. They decide according to the mood of the moment, not according to decision-making processes documented by the work of the intelligence services. Here, too, our intelligence services show their weakness and their inability to integrate into decision-making processes. In Switzerland, the state of intelligence analysis is catastrophic, and this is reflected in the decisions of a political class which, like its European counterparts, is incapable of thinking things through. We have reached a point where, as a Belgian minister said in the 1990s: “things are too complex to be answered with the brain, so we answer with our guts.”
By the way, what do Ukrainian intelligence services think? On February 25, Kirillo Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), told journalists, “I may disappoint you, but he really had a blood clot come off.”
Jacques Baud is a widely respected geopolitical expert whose publications include many articles and books. His lastest works areThe Russian Art of War He has researched Alexei Navalny in The Navalny Case.
The Multipolarity Forum and Russophile Movement Forum, which took place from February 26-27, 2024, is a unique event that brought together influential experts, activists, politicians and members of the public to discuss key issues in international relations, politics and diplomacy. These forums have fostered dialog and exchange of views on current topics related to global politics.
The Multipolarity Forum discussed the problems of a multipolar world, new challenges and opportunities for global development. The forum participants talked about the role of different states and regions in the world, strategies of cooperation and conflicts, as well as modern trends in international relations.
The forum of the Russophile movement, in turn, is aimed at discussing and popularizing Russian culture, history, language and values. Forum participants discussed issues related to the preservation and promotion of Russian heritage, Russia’s cultural influence, and the Russian language in the world.
Both forums featured highly qualified speakers, discussions, plenary sessions, workshops and roundtables. Participants had the opportunity to exchange experiences, knowledge and ideas, strengthen ties and forge new partnerships. These forums will have a significant impact on global politics, culture and diplomacy, fostering greater international cooperation and understanding.
The Multipolarity Forum and the Russophile Movement Forum are important platforms for discussing contemporary challenges and finding joint solutions on a global scale. Participation in these forums allowed participants to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary processes in international relations and to share their ideas and proposals for achieving peace, justice and development.
According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, there is an increasing substitution of concepts in the world. Freedom, as Western leaders see it, means forced adherence to their understanding of world order and hegemony. Despite what used to be said only about the interests of certain clubs, today all countries, including the Global South and Global East, have equal rights. This has been achieved thanks to Russia’s efforts. Today, the real-world majority gathers not at Western conferences, but here in Russia.
According to Alexander Dugin, today humanity is experiencing significant changes in the civilization process. He advocates the idea of a multipolar world, which is based on the criticism of Western universalism and its racist and imperialist aspects. Previously, Britain claimed to be the center of consciousness of humanity, which led to the establishment of a world with the only acceptable political system, economic approach and culture. Dugin argues that there is a need to move towards diversity and get rid of the monopoly of one country or culture.
Multipolarity is a philosophy which argues that the world is not limited to the West alone, but is a multitude of civilizations. Russia, China, India, the Islamic world, African countries, and Latin America are all distinct civilizations with their own traditions and values. Despite their differences, they do not clash with each other but strive for peaceful coexistence.
Western civilization has the potential for harmonious coexistence with other civilizations, the Russian philosopher argues. Multipolarity is not opposed to the West as a whole, but rather to its claims to exceptionalism, world leadership and universality. The West’s toxic ideology has undermined the national elites of many countries, using them to support one hegemon. Today, however, this state of affairs is on the wane.
Russia is engaged in a deadly battle with the collective West in Ukraine, seeking to resist a unipolar world. Sanctions and pressure from the West are trying to strangle us, but our victory will be important for all of humanity, Dugin argues. China is leading on the economic front, fighting the West. The Islamic world is resisting pressure on religious and family values. Africa is moving from being a raw material colony to a global giant. Latin America continues on the path of anti-colonial struggle, representing all its countries in the forum.
As an example of the new world order, we can cite the unification of representatives of six civilizations out of seven within the BRICS framework. This indicates the formation of an institutional system of multipolarity. At the same time, the West is not unified. The peoples of Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world are subjected to their globalist governments that seek to destroy their cultural and national identity. This remark by Alexander Dugin drew a round of applause. The peoples of the West are not opponents of a multipolar world, but rather victims of the despotism of their elites.
Chang Weiwei, a leading international relations expert in the Communist Party of China, emphasized that the concept of a unipolar world is already outdated. “Unipolarity is outdated. This order will change with the strengthening of the international influence of China, Russia and the expansion of the BRICS by adding countries from the global South and East to the alliance,” he said.
The speeches of Cardinal Vigano and Archpriest Tkachev delivered a verdict on the hegemony of Western elites, condemning their diabolical roots and the private club of Satan-worshippers. They openly criticized the hatred of traditional biblical man, dotting the i’s and calling things by their names.
After the plenary session of the forum there was a division into three thematic sections devoted to different centers of world civilization. During the discussion in the section, “Prospects of the Western World after Hegemony: Is the Salvation of European Civilization Possible?” the participants deeply analyzed the ways of development of Western countries.
Representatives of Italy, Cyprus and Greece spoke in favor of returning the Mediterranean civilization to its roots and getting rid of the influence of the United States. The section “China’s Role in a Multipolar World” discussed the Eastern center of gravity of state-civilization. China, as a country that has achieved prosperity through its unique model of cooperation without hegemony, offers its economic support for the prosperity of many countries. The “One Belt, One Road” global project aims to unite the interests of different states and world development centers to achieve common goals.
A guest from Kyrgyzstan, Valdai Club expert, Kurbat Rakhimov, examined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an important institutional structure for regional development. He emphasized the need to develop the world without one superpower prevailing over another. Rakhimov expressed the opinion that multipolarity does not always guarantee the absence of conflicts between countries and blocs, and called for striving to ensure that the actions of one pole do not provoke conflicts with others.
The multipolarity forum held in Moscow emphasized that diversity of cultures and beliefs facilitates the exchange of ideas and creates harmony in the development of the global economy. The section “Global South: Changing the Global Architecture” attracted a lot of attention from participants who expressed a desire to unite after a long time of division and to stop the exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations.
For the representatives of Iran, Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, it is important to create a new economic model, different from the liberal Western dictatorship of global corporations. They see the battle in the Red Sea and Palestine as having not only military but also cultural and economic significance. African countries have highlighted the fight against terrorism and the pandemic as top priorities. The example of Mali, the Central African Republic and Niger showed that with Russia’s support it is possible to quickly and successfully defeat the terrorists they have been fighting for many years.
The guest from Zambia expressed her desire to quickly overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, taking inspiration from the history of African victories over measles and polio. This requires effective vaccines available through Russian efforts and increased public awareness of the importance of vaccination. She noted that the continent’s current main challenge is the development of the health care system and protection of public health.
The Forum on February 26,.2024 turned out to be productive and allowed participants to exchange views and experiences, as well as to outline further steps to build a more sustainable and just world order.
Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the Congress of Russophiles, emphasized that the development of international relations is an important priority for Russia.
Russia strives to be friendly and open to all countries of the world. We pursue an independent, pragmatic and peace-loving foreign policy, supporting the democratization of international relations in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter. Our efforts are aimed at developing this task through our chairmanship of BRICS, CIS, active work in EAEU, SCO, G20 and other multilateral formats. We are also strengthening ties with regional integration associations.
“Multipolarity is important because it offers the world alternatives. We hope that Senegal will join BRICS. It would be better if the alliance accepts countries that have applied to join as soon as possible,” said Oumi Sen, secretary general of the Kalinka Cultural Center in Senegal.
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Jeff Monson also attended the forum and spoke in favor of deepening economic cooperation among the BRICS countries: “If the BRICS countries came to an agreement to introduce a common currency, it would be a very effective step. It could be used for joint trade,” Monson noted.
According to the idea of the organizers of the event, the platform is designed to unite scientists from different countries who advocate the concept of a multipolar world based on mutual respect.
To date, the International Movement of Russophiles actively advocates for the dissemination of Russian culture and humanitarian values.
Anastasia Gavrilova writes from Russia. This articles appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.
The political, economic and security context in Northeast Asia has suffered a constant deterioration in recent years. The reason of it is the growing strategic rivalry between China (hereinafter PRC) and US. Both countries are engaged in a competition to expand their spheres of influence, security architectures and the creation of commercial blocs and the restructuring of their commercial and industrial policies, promoting, in turn, a race to achieve technological leadership.
Likewise, North Korea (hereinafter DPRK) has developed intense military activities since years and tensions around Taiwan have been increasing. Within this framework of instability, South Korea (hereinafter ROK) plays a critical role. The traditional policy of maintaining military ties with the US and seeking greater economic cooperation with PRC shows more and more its unsuitability. As this balance between the two great powers is more unstable, the long-term strategic ambiguity should be replaced by a clear choice of the bloc to which ROK wishes to belong.
The incumbent president Yoon Suk-yeol seems to have re-chosen that the national path heads towards Washington. However, this decision is not free of obstacles, the overcoming of which is not guaranteed. PPP’s (Power People Party) Yoon Suk-yeol’s victory in 2022 against Lee Jae-myung, the DP (Democratic Party) candidate, marked a new direction for ROK foreign policy, which moved away from the priorities and positions of the previous guest of the ‘Blue House’ (the presidential palace of Seoul). There are two concepts on which this new foreign policy has been founded.
The first is the perception that the previous Government had put aside the alliance with the US, going so far as to suspend bilateral military exercises, which generated a progressive weakening of such ties.
Secondly, it is perceived that the attitude of the previous ROK Government towards DPRK and PRC was considered too conciliant; in the opinion of the current Seoul’s Administration damaged the country position. Based on the above premises, the Yoon Government has designed a foreign policy aimed at integrating the country more firmly into the Washington-led system. In this way, President Yoon aims to move from ambiguity to strategic clarity. Unlike the previous Government, he has not hesitated to consolidate ties with the US, as could be seen during President Yoon’s visit to Washington on the occasion of the trilateral summit with Japan. While the previous Government exercised extreme caution when assessing the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, the current one has not hesitated to integrate this vision into its National Security Strategy. The concept of global pivotal state aims to project ROK as a key partner not only for the US, but also for the countries of Southeast Asia, Oceania, Africa or Latin America in the construction of a global and regional system based on international legality and rules, open and free. As a result of this interest in greater military cooperation, the US Government did not hesitate to reaffirm to Japan and ROK its commitment to deterrence, supported by all of its capabilities, in the Washington Declaration (26 April 2023).
Additionally, the three countries committed to the massive resumption of trilateral exercises to improve military capabilities and coordination. Critical point is the new ROK strategy the rapprochement with Japan and the attempt to normalize bilateral relations after years of continuous tension, which led to the Japanese trade blockade on the export of basic materials for the ROK semiconductor industry. While the rapprochement with the US is seen favorably by a majority of the population, the rapprochement with Japan represents an obvious political risk for the ROK Government, due to the constant tensions due to historical and territorial disputes between both countries.
Economically, Korea has decided to participate at the IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework). This US-led initiative aimed at presenting an alternative to PRC’s economic partnership offers, despite IPEF framework has at the eyes of the Asian partners elements of dissatisfaction, especially on trade. IPEF is made up of four pillars: A) trade, B) supply chain resilience, C) clean economy and D) fair economic practices.
Within the economic sphere, it is necessary to highlight Korea’s participation in the ‘Chip 4 Alliance’, along with the US, Japan and Republic of China/Taiwan (hereinafter ROC). This initiative aims to reduce the dependence of the PRC semiconductor industry by returning factories to ROK, protecting intellectual property and diverting investments to friendly countries. The US, ROC, ROK and Japan meet most of the world’s semiconductor demand. They sit on most of the capacity to design, produce and test tiny chip components. Vis-à- vis DPRK, the conciliatory tone and favorable stance of the previous leadership has been transformed by the incumbent conservative party in a policy that is committed to toughness in the face of any nuclear or ballistic test by Pyongyang. The Yoon Government aims to denuclearize the peninsula through a hard line of condemnation of DPRK actions and pressure through international sanctions, which reduces the incentives of the neighboring country to follow this provocative line. This approach is intended to be an alternative to the previous policy of compromise and dialogue, which showed the intrinsic weakness of it. However, the international context seems less favorable to led to the resolution of the inter-Korean conflict. All these actions aimed at strengthening the alliance with the US and Japan and antagonizing DPRK will have the direct consequence of South Korea heading a worsening of the relations with PRC (and Russia as well, especially now that Pyongyang provide weapons to Russia). For PRC leadership, ROK had always been the weakest point in the US security architecture in the region.
The nationalist tendencies present in ROK, which sought greater autonomy and decision-making capacity within the alliance and which till now prevented the normalization and effectiveness of coordination with Tokyo, also played in Beijing’s favor barring the consolidation of a cohesive security architecture for the North East Asia. By putting a stop to these dynamics, President Yoon has strengthened that link and has made feasible one of PRC’s main concerns: the existence of a firm trilateral relationship between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and the creation of a bloc that can contain Beijing push.
However, China has two powerful tools at its disposal: on the one hand, the interdependence of the PRC and ROK economies; on the other, the relationship with DPRK. At the same time, there is another variable that may represent a limit to the rapprochement between the US and ROK: the unstable electoral life in Seoul. No doubt that PRC occupies a preeminent place in the analysis of the foreign policy of any ROK government.
Historically, Korea was strongly linked to China both politically, economically and culturally. The disparity in power between the two nations forced successive Korean dynasties to take their neighbor’s interests very seriously, carefully calculating each step, in order to maintain relative autonomy and a certain margin of maneuver in a dangerous neighborhood.
Korea has always stood out for its close relationship with China, which meant its integration into the so-called ‘Sinocentricsphere’ that predominated for centuries in East Asia. Korean emperors were invested as such by the Chinese ones, and embassies sent by Korea boosted trade between the two countries.
In the eyes of Beijing, Korea, was relevant also during the imperial era, especially for XVII Century, giving that China saw Korea as a gateway for other great powers such as Russia, Japan and the US to penetrate in the area. There was a long disengagement process from the Sinocentricsphere due its weakening started in 1895 following the war with Japan, the Russo-Japanese war and the occupation of the peninsula by Tokyo and the bilateral relations hit rock bottom during the Korean War, which led to the partition of the country.
The PRC role in supporting the government of Kim Il-sung and his successors severely damaged the perception of Beijing in ROK. The end of the Cold War and the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992 gave way to a recovery of ties, supported by economic growth, the openness of both countries and the boost to bilateral trade promoted by the governments of Kim Dae-jung and by Roh Moo-hyun. The bilateral relationship was expanded to the level of strategic cooperative partnership during the presidency of Lee Myung-bak, which continued the path of improving relations initiated by his predecessors.
However, behind this continuous improvement, remained untouched numerous serious unresolved problems and the creation of new file of confrontation. Trade ties between both countries took off in the 1992. Only three years after, ROK exports to PRC reached 9.56 US$ billion and PRC exports to ROK amounted to 7.37 US$ billion.
During the following two decades, trade between both countries grew more than 11% on year basis. This has meant that the number of exports from ROK to PRC exceeds 158 US$ billion and those from PRC to ROK exceed 140 US$ billion in 2021. This explosion in commercial interactions has placed PRC as the main ROK client, absorbing 22.8% of exports and its main supplier, PRC is the origin of 21% of ROK imports. The main product of bilateral trade is integrated circuits, which have become an essential resource within the current geopolitical chessboard. Computers, transmission equipment, cyclic hydrocarbons and refined oil are other important products in bilateral trade.
Another factor to take into account in the economic relationship is the tourist flow from PRC to ROK. In 2017, almost 8 million Chinese tourists entered in ROK. This figure fell almost 50% after the Seoul Government’s decision to install the US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system units in its territory, considered by PRC as a threat to its interests and safety. Before the crisis that broke out in 2016, Chinese citizens made up 47% of visitors to ROK and were a considerable source of income for ROK businesses. Beijing did not hesitate to restrict both the flow of Chinese citizens to ROK and the dissemination of Korean music, television programs and films in PRC. Cosmetic products and video game development companies were also affected by PRC government instructions.
It should be noted that the use of economic power to punish countries that make decisions contrary to its interests has become an increasingly component of PRC’s foreign policy, highlighting the risks posed by an increasingly asymmetric economic relationship in dealing with Beijing. In order to reduce the threat of PRC retaliation in the face of greater trilateral coordination with Tokyo and Washington, perceived as an hostile move by Beijing, the ROK Government decided to join the IPEF, which has a pillar dedicated to the redirection of supply chains. production towards the US or countries close to its orbit.
Although the strategy seems reasonable to avoid the worst consequences of commercial subordination to PRC, giving the deep existing interdependence, the challenges for the ROK economy are extraordinarily complex. The reactions of the PRC could be resumed in the words of the Beijing Ambassador to Seoul who stated that “those who bet on China’s defeat will regret it.” Considering the fact that many ROK components are found in PRC end products and vice versa, the trade restrictions mutually imposed by PRC and the US will end up indirectly affecting ROK and its companies, especially those specialized in integrated circuits and LCDs.
As said, due to the deep and strong ties between the two economies, the decoupling of ROK from PRC is a real challenge, with the persistence of economic pressures from Beijing, with possible impacts on consumer prices and employment and consequences on the voting dynamics. After winning the election, President Yoon Suk-yeol announced a new initiative aimed at achieving peace and denuclearization of the peninsula called the “bold initiative.” Despite this new strategy, the deterioration of global geopolitical conditions makes it very difficult to make substantive progress.
One of the main obstacles to the resolution of the conflict has traditionally been the primacy of PRC national strategic interests on the Korean Peninsula. The first aspect to take into account is the nature of the link between PRC and DPRK. The mutual assistance treaty that they signed in 1961 has been one of the bases of their bilateral relationship, founded at first on ideological solidarity and later on the joint experience of the Korean War and PRC support for DPRK during the following decades.
However, this strong relationship, described by Mao Tse-Dong as close as that of “lips and teeth”, has not been free of turbulence during the last seven decades. The origin of the aforementioned turbulence lies in the difficult fit between PRC’s desire to exercise increasing influence and control over DPRK decisions in order to adjust Pyongyang’s actions to Beijing’s preferences.
The relations between Beijing and Pyongyang, despite appearing difficult to believe, quite often are indeed difficult; tensions between PRC and DPRK have arisen periodically over the past thirty years. Especially critical were Beijing’s recognition of ROK and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Seoul in 1992. This action was perceived by Pyongyang as a betrayal that degraded its security in the face of a possible abandonment of its traditional ally. A year later, DPRK threatened to withdraw from the NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) indicated that it could not conclusively assure that nuclear weapons were not being developed in the country. This tense period was followed by a rapprochement caused by the recurrent famine and crisis suffered by DPRK, in addition to international sanctions due to the development of its nuclear program. In this stage of extreme DPRK’s vulnerability, an intense economic dependence was forged that has marked the relationship between both countries ever since. Despite this, the first years after the rise of Kim Jong-Un as supreme leader once again brought tension to the bilateral relationship, since DPRK nuclear and missiles actions were perceived by PRC as a useless provocation that could destabilize the region at a critical moment for Beijing strategies.
Both the nuclear tests and missile launches of 2016 and 2017 and the brutal executions of important officials of Pyongyang (Jang Song-thaek and Kim Jong-nam), considered close to Beijing, led to a cooling in relations, which was only recovered with the summits between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un prior to the latter’s meeting with Donald Trump. The failure of ROK’s policy of rapprochement with DPRK during Moon Jae-in’s mandate and the stalemate reached at the Singapore and Hanoi summits have blocked any possibility of progress. Now, the growing tension between the US and PRC has eased the joint pressure to which DPRK was subjected through UNSCRs (UN Security Council Resolutions) 2371, 2375 and 2397. The PRC position continues to be one of support for the DPRK Government. Despite international sanctions, PRC continues to be Pyongyang’s economic support both in terms of legal trade and irregular exchanges that occur on the Yalu’s border or on the high seas to circumvent the aforementioned sanctions.
In this way, although there is no reliable data, a high percentage of DPRK trade is carried out with PRC, which has been an economic lifeline in the worst times. For PRC, DPRK’s survival remains a priority but also a deep strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the imbalance of political, economic and military power is evident and the relationship of dependency is critical; however, this does not translate into greater docility of DPRK with respect to Beijing interests. The constant provocations show that, despite the manifest asymmetry in the capabilities of the partners, Pyongyang’s search for autonomy and independence will continue to generate discomfort for Beijing.
Regardless of the tensions that may periodically arise in the relationship between PRC and DPRK, Beijing’s long-term interests have remained unchanged for decades. Firstly, one of Beijing’s main objectives is to ensure that Pyongyang’s interests are aligned with its own in order to obtain a partner that is increasingly attentive to its needs and objectives. Preventing DPRK from acting alone and putting the stability of the region at risk or spurring other actors to acquire nuclear weapons has been and will be a primary objective of Beijing. In fact, exists inside Beijing leadership two lines regarding the position that the country should adopt in Korean affairs. The first current, associated with the Ministry of Defense and the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), defends the close association with Pyongyang in the face of any crisis and continued support to sustain its survival. The second current considers that this support could be counterproductive for Beijing interests and represents more of a burden than an asset, since if PRC wants to be recognized as a responsible actor in the region and globally, it must cut its ties with Pyongyang, but at the moment appear the prevailing opinion is the first.
The importance for Beijing of the survival of DPRK derives from the possible negative consequences that the fall of the communist’s dynasty would have. Among other reasons, PRC fears the flow of refugees that could lead to state collapse, which would put severe pressure on the neighbouring provinces, with a humanitarian catastrophe due to general insecurity or a cut in the supply of food and social services, with a flow of desperate refugees, repeating the nightmare scenario of the 1990s famine crisis when half millions of people crossed the Yalu River.
Secondly, DPRK represent as a buffer zone for PRC that guaranteed the security of its northeastern border. Given the alliance between ROK and the US, ensuring that those forces were as far away as possible from PRC territory has been a factor to take into account when considering the benefit of support of DPRK.
However, this approach, that a strategic logic decades ago, has been losing meaning due to the advances in military technology have reduced the role of DPRK as ‘buffer zone’ to stop any conventional threat from ROK (and Japan as well). A third reason for Chinese support for DPRK is related to the ROC situation. The possibility that, in the face of PRC military actions, US forces will be gripped by a double crisis on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait is one of the advantages that the DPRK Government offers to Beijing. The resolution of the inter-Korean conflict is one of ROK’s main strategic objectives. PRC’s influence over DPRK thus becomes an asset for Beijing, which can derail any Seoul initiative that does not match with its strategic interests. One of the great limitations that ROK foreign policy suffers from and that puts it at a disadvantage compared to its neighbors is the country’s acute political split. This polarization poses a threat, due to the blockade to which it can subject the nation at critical moments originated by DPRK actions.
The difficult geostrategic situation of ROK, trapped in a dynamic of confrontation between the two great powers and with a dangerous neighbor to the north, makes it extremely necessary for its internal political situation to be stable and solid. However, the last elections in 2022 produced very close results, which led that the government party does not have a majority in the National Assembly, which reduce its room of maneuver in foreign policy matters.
The angry 2022 election campaign is an example of the increase in polarization in the country, reflecting it in matters of foreign policy, with hypersensitive matters like relations with PRC, DPRK, US. The polarization is aggravated by the ROK political system itself, which prevents the re-election of the president, whose term is reduced to five years, in which he must design and implement a new foreign policy in the event of a change. The alternance between conciliatory and hardline policies of Seoul is a serious obstacle for the country, preventing governments from developing their strategies in a continuous and stable manner, generating confusion at the national and international level.
The deterioration of the security context in Northeast Asia requires the careful planning and execution of a clear foreign policy, free of ambiguities and not subject to possible political fluctuations. This year legislative elections will be decisive for the Government, which hope to remove the National Assembly majority is in the hands of the opposition party. Given this situation and given the existing limits, ROK’s strategic possibilities risk to be limited.
Over the last three decades, the country lived in a very comfortable situation, based on maintaining military ties with the US and establishing a powerful commercial relationship with PRC. In this way, ROK has been able to take advantage of the US defensive shield to counter the DPRK nuclear threat and, at the same time, has boosted its economic growth through trade agreements with PRC, constantly improving the framework of the bilateral relationship until reaching a partnership of strategic cooperation. This political balance has been a constant in recent ROK governments. During the Roh Moo-hyun government, ROK began a progressive rapprochement with PRC and criticized Japan, weakening the good relationship with the US. However, at the same time it began negotiations for a future free trade agreement with the US. The Lee Myung-bak government, for its part, carried out diplomatic improvements with both countries. With the US he promoted the reinforcement of their alliance, launching the concept of strategic alliance for the 21st Century. With PRC, it placed the bilateral relationship at the level of a strategic partnership for cooperation while beginning negotiations to sign a free trade agreement.
Although this strategy was possible and useful in a context of relatively harmonious relations between the US and PRC, the progressive deterioration of the relationship between Beijing and Washington makes the balancing act that the ROK governments have resorted to since 1992 increasingly unviable. Regardless, Seoul will see its room for maneuver reduced, limiting its options to three strategies. The first would be to continue with the balancing exercise between the two powers to extract the greatest benefit from their bilateral relations. The second would be to opt for an accommodation with PRC in the face of Beijing’s foreseeable regional dominance in the near future. The third option would be to achieve strategic autonomy through nuclear weapons and the renegotiation of the military agreement with the US, but Washington is reluctant that junior partners are equipped with nuclear weapons, of whatever origin (self-built or Washington provided), with risk of lower control of their use and potential destabilization. The first strategy is, perhaps, the most desired by ROK.
However, the dynamics between both countries outline an extension of the confrontation scenarios and an intensification of the rivalry. Given this situation, it is worth asking how long the ROK governments will be able to continue with the balancing act and if at some point the US or PRC will demand that Seoul clearly define in which field it wants to place itself. For this reason, the current strategy does not seem to have guarantees of success in the medium and long term. The second strategy, less likely and riskier for ROK, is to get closer to PRC, leaving aside its alliance with the US. As we saw, there is a sector within PRC that sees DPRK more as a burden than an asset. This sector advocates a rapprochement with ROK that culminates the path begun in 1992. Beijing has been close to declare officially that there is no conflict between the fundamental interests and values of PRC and the ROK, adding that its rise does not pose a threat to neighboring countries, given that its security concept is based on respect for the full sovereignty of nations and bilateral cooperation.
In reality the perception of Beijing in ROK has worsened decisively in recent years due to economic boycotts, historical and territorial issues, and PRC support for DPRK. The main risk of this strategy is the very possible loss of Pyongyang’s autonomy if it is absorbed into Beijing’s sphere of influence, which awakens worrying memories of its past as a member of the PRC tributary system. Added to this is the erosion of China’s image among Korean citizens. Seoul’s third strategy would be to seek strategic autonomy that would avoid possible retaliation from the great powers and allow the Government greater room for maneuver. This autonomy would only be possible if three extremely complex requirements are met. The first would be the diversification of ROK foreign trade to avoid excessive dependence on the PRC domestic market in both imports and exports. Moon Jae-in’s government attempted through its “New Southern Policy” to explore the options of the Southeast Asian and Indian markets.
However, reconfiguring ROK value chains to distance themselves from China would entail notable changes for the economy that will not be feasible in the short and medium term. Second, it would be necessary for the ROK Armed Forces to reclaim their own full OPCON, which currently falls under the triad of USFK (US Forces in Korea)-ROK/US CFC (Combined Forces Command)/UNC (United Nations Command). The last requirement, which has considerable support among the population, would be to obtain nuclear weapons that shield ROK against threats from DPRK and retaliation from Beijing. The present geostrategic rivalry between the US and PRC will mark the regional scenario in the coming years.
The era in which ROK has been able to grow economically and enjoy security in a context of optimal regional stability is coming to an end. The rivalry between the two great powers is moving to all areas and is forcing the actors to make a series of complex decisions and choices. With the Yoon Government, ROK seems to have decided which direction to follow, although, there are conditions and limits that could derail its strategy. However, all the other options are full of destabilizing elements in its economy, security, its autonomy or its independence.
Enrico Magnani, PhD, is a retired UN official and expert in military history and international politico-military affairs.
This proposal sheds important light on Russian attempts to cooperate with the West when it came to a comprehensive defense agreement. Thus, Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the Soviet Union join NATO. The West rejected this proposal because of a lack of “democracy” in the USSR. In other words, the purpose of NATO was to oppose Russia.
It is important to revisit this proposal in the light of the Russophobia that now pervades the psyche of the Western ruling class.
Presidium, CC CPSU
To: Comrade G.M. Malenkov and Comrade N.S. Khrushchev
According to reports from Soviet embassies and missions and in the foreign press, the Soviet draft of a General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe has provoked positive responses from quite broad public circles abroad, including such French press organs as Le Monde… At the same time, the Soviet draft has, for understandable reasons, provoked a negative reaction from official circles and from supporters of the “European Defense Community” in France, England and other West European countries. It should be noted that official circles in France have also taken measures to mute the Soviet proposal. Among opponents of the European Defense Community there are also those who don’t support the proposal for a General European Agreement. In this regard the main argument advanced against our proposal is the thesis that the Soviet draft is directed at dislodging the USA from Europe so that the USSR can take its place as the dominating power in Europe. Especially broad use of this thesis is being made in France. Meriting attention in this connection is a conversation between our ambassador in Paris, comrade Vinogradov, and the Gaullist leader [Gaston] Palewski, who said the Soviet proposal is unacceptable in its present form because it excludes the USA from participation in the collective security system in Europe. According to Palewski attitudes to the Soviet proposal would change if the Soviet government declared the USA could take part in the system of collective security in Europe in its capacity as an occupying power in Germany, bearing in mind that the occupation of Germany would not last forever. From this statement of Palewski’s it follows that the USA’s participation in the General European Agreement on a system of collective security would be of a temporary character and limited to the period until the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany.
The thesis of the dislodgement of the USA from Europe is also being used against the Soviet proposal by supporters of the European Defense Community in England and other countries, by official circles that support the plan for the creation of such a “community” and its so-called European army.
Taking this into account, the Foreign Ministry considers it advisable to limit the possibilities of using this argument against the Soviet draft by sending the governments of the USA, England and France a note which states that on its part the Soviet government sees no obstacle to the positive resolution of the question of the USA’s participation in the General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe. In the Foreign Ministry’s view it would be inadvisable to declare that the participation of the USA would be of a temporary character. In this regard the Foreign Ministry proceeds from that fact that from the point of view of the interests of the struggle against the European Defense Community it would be inexpedient to indicate the temporary character of the USA’s participation in the General European Agreement.
In introducing a proposal for the participation of the USA in the General European Agreement, the Foreign Ministry considers it advisable not to change the previous proposal that the Chinese People’s Republic would participate in the system of collective security in Europe as an observer
It is necessary to consider another argument deployed against the Soviet proposal, namely that it is directed against the North Atlantic Pact and its liquidation. In order to limit the use of this argument against the Soviet proposal the Foreign Ministry considers it advisable that simultaneously with our proposal about the participation of the USA in the General European Agreement we should, in the same note, pose, in an appropriate form, the question of the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the North Atlantic Pact. Raising this question would make things difficult for the organizers of the North Atlantic bloc and would emphasize its supposedly defensive character, so that it would not be directed against the USSR and the people’s democracies.
The simultaneous posing of the possible participation of the USA in the General European Agreement and possibility of the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact would be advantageous for us because it would be perceived as demanding a concession in return for the USSR’s agreement on the participation of the USA in the General European Agreement… However, the Foreign Ministry’s view is that our agreement on the admittance of the USA into the General European Agreement should not be conditional on the three western powers agreeing to the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact.
Most likely, the organizers of the North Atlantic bloc will react negatively to this step of the Soviet government and will advance many different objections. In that event the governments of the three powers will have exposed themselves, once again, as the organizers of a military bloc against other states and it would strengthen the position of social forces conducting a struggle against the formation of the European Defense Community. Such a negative attitude toward the initiative of the Soviet government could, of course, have its negative side for us in so far as it affected the prestige of the Soviet Union. Taking this into account, the Foreign Ministry proposes that the Soviet note should not state directly the readiness of the USSR to join the North Atlantic bloc but limit itself to a declaration of its readiness to examine jointly with other interested parties the question of the participation of the USSR in the North Atlantic bloc.
Of course, if the statement of the Soviet government meets with a positive attitude on the part of the three western powers this would signify a great success for the Soviet Union since the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact under certain conditions would radically change the character of the pact. The USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact simultaneously with the conclusion of a General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe would also undermine plans for the creation of the European Defense Community and the remilitarization of West Germany.
The Foreign Ministry considers that raising the question of the USSR joining NATO requires, even now, an examination of the consequences that might arise. Bearing in mind that the North Atlantic Pact is directed against the democratic movement in the capitalist countries, if the question of the USSR joining it became a practical proposition, it would be necessary to raise the issue of all participants in the agreement undertaking a commitment (in the form of a joint declaration, for example) on the inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of states and respect for the principles of state independence and sovereignty.
In addition the Soviet Union would, in an appropriate form, have to raise the question of American military bases in Europe and the necessity for states to agree to the reduction of military forces, in accordance with the position that would be created after the USSR’s entry into the North Atlantic Pact.
At the present time, however, it will be sufficient, taking into account the above considerations, to include at the end of the note a statement of a general character: “the Soviet Government keeps in mind that the issues arising in connection with this question must be resolved in the interests of strengthening world peace and the security of peoples.”
The draft resolution for the CC of the CPSU is enclosed
I ask you to examine it.V.M. Molotov26 March 1954
This document appears through the kind courtesy of the Digital Archive at the Wilson Center.
