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\u201cIt\u2019s not that the European Union is a vassal to the United States<\/em>,\u201d Varoufakis remarked. \u201cIt is worse than a vassal. Vassals had a degree of autonomy under feudalism. We are serfs. We are not even serfs, who had certain rights under feudalism<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n I understand Varoufakis\u2019 point. Europe\u2019s capitalist oligarchs \u2014 his term \u2014have too great an interest in U.S. hegemony for the structure of power to change.<\/p>\n But I think Varoufakis, for whom I have the greatest respect, missed a couple of points. One, all power structures are dynamic: There is no stasis in politics. Two, we have to think of Europe today in terms of a destiny that is far more compelling than the power hierarchies of any given period.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s call this a third miss: Varoufakis also neglected to consider the evident decline of American power in our time.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s future looks different when we consider these factors.<\/p>\n What follows is an edited version of my remarks in Switzerland, delivered on April 12. The gathering was sponsored by a publishing cooperative that brings out a journal in English (Current Concerns<\/em>), German (Zeit\u2013Fragen<\/em>), and French (Horizons et d\u00e9bats<\/em>).<\/p>\n China, Eurasia & Europe\u2019s Destiny <\/strong><\/p>\n My topic today can be described many ways. A writer of newspaper headlines might settle on \u201cChina\u2019s great leap<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cChina and the emerging world order<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cChina and \u2018the new world order,\u2019<\/em>\u201d or \u201cChina, the Eurasian landmass, and Europe\u2019s destiny<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n I think what China\u2019s recent emergence \u2014 not just as an economic power but as a diplomatic power \u2014 will mean for Europe is the topic I most want to explore. \u201cHow do we adjust to this \u2018new world order?\u2019<\/em>\u201d I was asked as I prepared to fly to Zurich. \u201cIn Europe we don\u2019t realize what is going on<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n And there\u2019s our headline: \u201cWhat is going on?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Let me begin with three documents the Chinese Foreign Ministry made public in February. As I wrote at the time, there seems little question that there was a lot of design in the publication of these documents.<\/p>\n They were issued over the course of five days, but I think they are intended to be read as one, and \u2014 very important \u2014 in the order they were made public.<\/p>\n I assign this design to Wang Yi, China\u2019s top foreign affairs official, though not formally foreign minister. Wang has emerged over the past couple of years as an intelligent, serious, first-rank statesman, and goodness knows how few of these we have these days.<\/p>\n Three Documents<\/strong><\/p>\n The first of the Foreign Ministry\u2019s communiqu\u00e9s, made public on Feb. 20, is a sharp, harsh attack on America\u2019s conduct abroad for the whole of the postwar era. It is titled U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cSince becoming the world\u2019s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War<\/em>,\u201d it begins, \u201cthe United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain, and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n What follows is 4,000 words of historically informed vitriol. There is even a mention of the Monroe Doctrine, as the Chinese analyze the past two centuries of America\u2019s mistreatment and exploitation of Latin America and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n One day later the Foreign Ministry issued The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper<\/em>. This is a 180\u2013degree turn in tone from the encyclopedic critique of U.S. hegemony. Beijing now turns its attention to constructive contributions to a new world order. If the anti-imperial paper looked back, the global security document looks resolutely forward.<\/p>\n This is from the third paragraph of the introductory section:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an era rife with challenges. It is also one brimming with hope. We are convinced that the historical trends of peace, development and win-win cooperation are unstoppable. Upholding world peace and security and promoting global development and prosperity should be the common pursuit of all countries<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Three days after putting out Global Security<\/em>, the ministry made public the People\u2019s Republic\u2019s views on the Ukraine crisis \u2014 the \u201cpeace plan<\/em>,\u201d which is a peace plan only in the heads of American officials and American journalists.<\/p>\n Wang Yi first mentioned this document at the Munich Security Conference a short time earlier.<\/p>\n It is called China\u2019s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis<\/em>, and that is all it is \u2014 a statement of China\u2019s position. It begins, \u201cUniversally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n This is wholly in keeping with numerous other statements Beijing has made over the past year. The ministry\u2019s evident intent is to apply the principle to the specific case of Ukraine. It includes 12 points, ranging from a ceasefire to negotiations, to a reconstruction program.<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s purpose is not to suggest what to do about Mariupol or Bakhmut or where postwar lines should be drawn on maps. That would amount to the kind of interference in others\u2019 affairs China has stood against since the 1949 Revolution. It is to state where Beijing stands on Ukraine. Full stop.<\/p>\n As I mentioned just earlier, I think we should read these documents together and in the order in which they were published. If we read them in this manner, it does not seem too difficult to discern Wang Yi\u2019s design. They are more, in other words, than the sum of their parts.<\/p>\n Saudi-Iranian Accord <\/strong><\/p>\n Three weeks after the Foreign Ministry made these documents public, Wang surprised the world when he sponsored the stunning accord the Saudis and Iranians signed in Beijing, normalizing relations after many years of animosity \u2014an enmity that defined the Middle East in many ways.<\/p>\n And since then, of course, we\u2019ve seen the Xi\u2013Putin summit, a three-day affair [in Moscow, March 20\u201322] that is probably the most important, or at least among the most important of the 40 meetings the two leaders have had as national leaders.<\/p>\n Wang, being in my reading a clever, resourceful and determined man, figured these events into his design, too, if I am correct about all this.<\/p>\n The first paper addresses the grave state of disorder into which American primacy has led the world \u2014 the disorder of \u201cthe rules-based order<\/em>.\u201d The second gives us the principles by which this disorder can be remedied. It is in effect an outline of the new world order China has made its priority, I would say at least for the past two years.<\/p>\n The third paper takes us from principles to how China will put its thinking into practice. This is how I read the three.<\/p>\n And a short time after Beijing makes the documents public, two events that, in one dimension, stand as examples of what China means. So, the problem, the solution in principle, the solution in practice, examples of the solution in practice.<\/p>\n At this point I should mention a piece published in Global Times<\/em>, which can be read as a reliable reflection of official Chinese perspectives.<\/p>\n The piece appeared a day after Xi and Putin concluded their summit. \u201cChina\u2019s diplomacy has pressed the \u2018accelerate button\u2019<\/em>,\u201d it begins, \u201cand sounded the clarion call in the spring of 2023 with a series of major diplomatic activities that bring positive changes to a world in turbulence<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, China has grown very worried that the disorder of the \u201crules-based order<\/em>\u201d has got dangerously out of hand. And now that the Saudi\u2013Iranian accord is signed and Xi has made China\u2019s Ukraine case clear in Moscow, Beijing is intent on more such initiatives.<\/p>\n Coalescence of Non-West<\/strong><\/p>\n At this point we have to realize, with no help whatsoever from our press and broadcasters because neither they nor the powers they serve can bear to face it, that a new world order is taking shape before our eyes.<\/p>\n I have long viewed parity between the West and non\u2013West, as I put it in the columns, to be a 21stcentury imperative. This is now becoming a reality we need to face, whether we have assistance or no assistance in this from our press and our public institutions.<\/p>\n All manner of relationships are elaborating, as I am sure you will know.<\/p>\n Bilaterally, there is India and Russia, South Africa and Russia, Russia and Iran, Iran and India, Iran and China, now the Saudi kingdom and Iran and the Saudis and China \u2014 this list goes on and on. Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, Brazil\u2019s new president, recently finished a five-day visit to China.<\/p>\n Multilaterally, we see the expansion of organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the S.C.O., and the BRICS, the core group being Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. We see a renewed insistence on adherence to the U.N. Charter<\/em> and international law.<\/p>\n A few aspects are driving these elaborating relationships, this coalescence of the non\u2013West. One, with the emergence of these nations as economic powers in consequence of their development, Western markets are no longer the only markets. For a long time, they were, and this was a source of power. Now they\u2019re not. China is now the Saudis\u2019 No. 2 market for oil, to take one of numerous examples.<\/p>\n Two, these nations share China\u2019s and Russia\u2019s alarm as to the extraordinary, increasingly violent disorder that has resulted from America\u2019s insistence on defending its global primacy.<\/p>\n Three, and this is related to the second point, I detect a strong attachment to the principles of a new order as China articulates them. Although this is never mentioned, these are unmistakably based on the Five Principles<\/em> Zhou Enlai first declared in his negotiations with India in 1953 and 1954 and then took to the Bandung Conference of nonaligned nations in 1955.<\/p>\n They are, of course, mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, noninterference in the internal affairs of others, equality and peaceful coexistence. Apart from the three documents I mentioned previously, the essential statement of these principles, the first outline of a new world order, lies in the \u201cJoint Statement on International Relations Entering a New Era<\/em>,\u201d which was made public during Vladimir Putin\u2019s summit with Xi Jinping on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics last year.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve asserted severally, I count this the most essential political document to be advanced so far in our century.<\/p>\n This statement, too, was very long on Zhou\u2019s Five Principles<\/em> without mentioning Zhou. (And I do not know why his name and his work are never specifically invoked.)<\/p>\n If we pause to think about it for just a moment, these principles as they are included in these documents are American foreign policy turned almost exquisitely upside down.<\/p>\n And here I need to make a point we cannot allow ourselves to miss: It seems especially pertinent for Europeans: There is nothing anti\u2013Western or even anti\u2013American in what is going on in the non\u2013West as we are considering this today. I think the non\u2013West altogether would welcome American and European participation in the making of a new world order suited to our century.<\/p>\n But this cannot mean a continuation of half a millennium of Western superiority or 75 years of American hegemony. This means: It is up to Americans and Europeans to decide if they will participate in this grand project or stand against it.<\/p>\n A Symbiosis for Europe to Consider<\/strong><\/p>\n For the moment and for the foreseeable future, I would say, the nations most essential to developing a new world order are China and Russia. This is why and where Europeans, I think, need to begin learning how to think for themselves.<\/p>\n There is the question of size. China\u2019s economy, depending on how you count, is either the world\u2019s largest or second-largest. It has without question the world\u2019s largest industrial base, and it is advancing in such fields as high technology at such a rate that the Americans can think of no way of competing with China other than to subvert its technological progress.<\/p>\n This is what we used to call \u201cinfra-dig<\/em>\u201d \u2014 \u201cbeneath dignity<\/em>\u201d \u2014 but there it is. This is American policy in 2023.<\/p>\n The Russian economy is much smaller, but it is a major producer of oil, gas, minerals, wheat and other resources. So there is a symbiosis. Bilateral trade and investment are no small part of the relationship. Putin and Xi talk about it each time they meet.<\/p>\n Another factor is one of perspective and geopolitical position. Moscow and Beijing are both on Washington\u2019s enemies list, depending on the day of the week one or the other Public Enemy No. 1 or No. 2. Naturally they have a strong sense of common cause \u2014 not, once again, in defeating America or the West but of superseding American hegemony.<\/p>\n Halford Mackinder & Eurasia<\/strong><\/p>\n Now we come to a topic of special importance.<\/p>\n China and Russia account for the vast majority of the Eurasian landmass. We should understand this in the context of Beijing\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative<\/em>, for instance. Russia and the Central Asian republics, along with Iran and indeed Syria and other such nations, will be important links as China develops its plans for the BRI. And as we all know, the final terminus \u2014 or termini \u2014 of BRI are the cities and ports of Western Europe.<\/p>\n I do not know if Halford Mackinder has much of a readership in Europe, but we need to consider his thinking now.<\/p>\n Mackinder was primarily a geographer, who lived from 1861 to 1947 and gave us, for better or worse, the concepts of geopolitics and geostrategy. Henry Kissinger, for better or worse, is among the many public figures to claim him as an influence.<\/p>\n Mackinder\u2019s titled his most celebrated work The Geographic Pivot of History<\/em>. This was an essay he submitted to the Royal Geographic Society in London in 1904. In it he reasoned that the world was centered on what he called the World Island, which extends from East Asia through to Europe and Africa north of the Sahara.<\/p>\n North and South America, along with Oceania, were given the status of Outlying Islands, while Japan and Britain were Offshore Islands. This seems a little off to me, but let us stay with the thesis.<\/p>\n The Heartland of the World Island, which he also called the Geographic Pivot<\/em>, stretches from the Yangtze to the Volga, and is today just as Mackinder had it \u2014the world\u2019s most populous and richest-in-resources region.<\/p>\n In a later book, published in 1919, Democratic Ideals and Reality<\/em> \u2014 which I have always found a curious binary \u2014 Mackinder famously had this to say:<\/p>\n \u201cWho rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; and who commands the World Island commands the world<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Mackinder seems to be a little \u201cold hat\u201d among Americans these days, but I never pay attention to fashions, and to the extent he may be dismissed as pass\u00e9 I suspect it is because what he had to say a little more than a century ago is too painfully evident now for the West\u2019s big thinkers to bear.<\/p>\n Americans can pretend all they like that the Mackinder thesis has no contemporary pertinence, and as in so many other ways, they don\u2019t pay so heavy a price as others for their errors. It will be far costlier and more consequential if Europeans flinch from the implications of Mackinder\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n The Great Promise of Europe\u2019s Future<\/strong><\/p>\n We come to the question of Europe\u2019s fate and back to our initial question: What\u2019s going on? And what are Europeans, supposed to do?<\/p>\n The question that may be obvious by now, the question of fate, is simply stated: Does Europe\u2019s destiny lie in its Atlantic identity, or is it better understood as the western flank of the Eurasian landmass?<\/p>\n There is a certain \u201ceither\/or\u201d implicit in this question as I have stated it, but I don\u2019t think the most logical answer involves any such thing. I see the great promise of Europe\u2019s future, assuming its leaders are sensible enough to see it themselves \u2014and this is a very sizable \u201cif,\u201d I realize \u2014 as lying in its position as both the eastern edge of the Atlantic world and the western edge of Eurasia.<\/p>\n In this way it could serve the very highest purpose as the 21st century evolves \u2014 as a sort of mediator between West and non\u2013West. I think Havel, a person of considerable vision, thought in this way, if he did not speak and write in precisely these terms.<\/p>\n Reclaiming Autonomy<\/strong><\/p>\n As to what you are supposed to do, I am not in the business of telling anyone what to do \u2014 apart from American presidents and secretaries of state, of course \u2014 but I will share some thoughts with you a little in the way the Chinese put forward their views on Ukraine \u2014 with a proper sense of distance and detachment.<\/p>\n I think it is vital, and well within reach, for Europe to begin cultivating\u2014reclaiming, if you like \u2014 a sense of its autonomy in foreign policy and security that it has not known since the days of de Gaulle, Churchill, Antony Eden and other figures of their generation. I have very little time for Emmanuel Macron, to put my point mildly, but he has been right about this question many times in the past.<\/p>\n Setting aside Macron\u2019s many faults, he has articulated some important positions: Europe should regain its autonomy from the U.S., Europe should take responsibility for its security, Russia should be understood as part of Europe, and Europe\u2019s destiny is inextricably involved with Russia.<\/p>\n The important point here is that such ideas are within Europe\u2019s reach. They simply require leaders of greater character than Macron to advance them, develop them, win acceptance for them, and begin putting them into practice.<\/p>\n Europe missed a great opportunity to play such a role when it so hastily followed the U.S. into the proxy war in Ukraine. It should have insisted vigorously that Russia\u2019s security interests be acknowledged when the reckless fools in the Biden administration insisted they could be ignored.<\/p>\n An enduring settlement of benefit to all sides slipped through the West\u2019s fingers. Europe could have grasped it. This is a great shame. It is easy to see what an immense difference Europe could have made for itself, for Ukrainians who now suffer \u2014 for the course of history altogether.<\/p>\n In this same line, Europe still has a chance to admit the truth about NATO and act according to this truth. This alliance is outdated, it is in no way to be described as defensive, and proves now to be an incalculably destructive force.<\/p>\n Europe has another chance now to make the kind of difference it could make were it to determine to follow a course of its own making.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s relations with China still hang in the balance, if I understand events correctly. It should make the most of this moment by declining to participate in the Sinophobia that now defines America\u2019s policy toward the mainland.<\/p>\n Further Democratization<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ll conclude with two thoughts as to Europe\u2019s domestic arrangements. They both concern ways to advance the democratization of the Continent.<\/p>\n Some years ago, while he was Germany\u2019s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier developed quite an elaborate plan within the ministry for the renovation of German policy abroad. This was called The 2014 Review<\/em>. It was finished in the autumn of that year, and Steinmeier presented it in the Bundestag in the early months of 2015.<\/p>\n There were many dimensions to this plan, but the one that seemed to me most original was Steinmeier\u2019s proposal to subject foreign policy to direct democratic review and assent, so dismantling the traditional wall that separates foreign policy from the will and aspirations of the citizenry.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know where The 2014 Review<\/em> sits in German discourse today. Some scholarly papers have been written on it, I discovered when I looked it up before joining you. But it seems an excellent idea.<\/p>\n My second concluding thought concerns the way the European Union works. To my understanding, the three-legged stool \u2014 administration in Brussels, finance in Frankfurt, parliamentary politics in Strasbourg \u2014 was long ago broken. As I like to ask American friends, when was the last time you read a newspaper story with a Strasbourg dateline?<\/p>\n To put a complex thought simply, technocrats and bankers have taken over the EU and it needs to be re-democratized.<\/p>\n I imagine that these kind of ideas could make a significant difference in determining Europe\u2019s future. It is a question of the goal but also getting to the goal.<\/p>\n Author: Patrick Lawrence (correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, columnist, essayist, lecturer and author)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a new world order takes shape before our eyes, the author (Patrick Lawrence), in a recent lecture, considers how Europe can best make use of its position on the eastern edge of the Atlantic world and the western edge of Eurasia. Yanis Varoufakis, noted economist, who served as Greece\u2019s finance minister when Athens resisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":128177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-power-and-corruption-the-matrix-of-the-master-and-slave-3480-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128195,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128167\/revisions\/128195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/2-21-300x200.jpg\")
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\nJuly 22, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n