Leonid IVASHOV: The Global Geopolitical Revolution

Strategic Culture Foundation
Online magazine

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=942&search=ivashov

06.09.2007

Leonid IVASHOV

The Global Geopolitical Revolution
 

The past 15 years saw revolutionary changes in the development of the human civilisation. The world’s geopolitical structure has dramatically changed. The outcomes of WWII led to the formation on the planet of two super-civilisations.

One of these is based upon the traditional world outlook, the primacy of spiritual and moral values and priority of an individual’s personal development along with its organic linkage with collective social structures. The R& D and economic development of the states belonging to this civilisation pattern were oriented at the attainment of socially significant state-related achievements. Individual enrichment and simply material welfare were regarded as something secondary. And individual’s welfare in such a society depended on the collective welfare, that of the society and the state. The foundations of this type of super-civilisation were the USSR, the PRC and the European Socialist countries. To a degree, the nations liberated from the colonial yoke were close to it (Africa, Asia and Latin America). The moral code of this super-civilisation was conscience and justice.

The other super-civilisation was the antipode of the first one. The basis of its world outlook was individualism and greediness: saving up money, profit, extension of the area where money acted and the increase of the influence of money on all the sides of social life. Alongside that, the concentration of the financial resources within the framework of the states, corporations and physical entities promoted the technological progress, raising the living standards, comfort and the entertainment industry. Elevated culture and fundamental science were lagging behind and the realm of the spiritual was commercialised.

These two super-civilisation systems, taking the shape of two geopolitical blocs were in a stringently complex, and not only the ideological, standoff. At the same time the acute competition of the two global opponents was the primer of the global historic development given to the presence of the market of ideas and concepts, where the sides tried to outdo one another.

Following WWII, in parallel to the two super-civilisations (Capitalism and Socialism) the “third world” was also formed. It combined both the ideas of Socialism and Capitalist economic techniques along with the traditional power system. This tri-polar system of the world order had future and was strategically stable (regardless of the nuclear standoff), allowing whole nations and states to choose their own development path in the conditions of relative security.

The crush of the USSR and other Socialist countries attributed the contours of unipolarity to the development of the world. The West proclaimed itself the winner and the European-U.S. elite began to regard themselves as the global elite, and the thinking of the financial and political Western circles as that of the thinking of the whole world.

The system of international relations and the principles of international security that were formed in the epoch of the geopolitical balance of forces began to destruct being replaced by the standards of power and supremacy. The global power began to be transformed to transnational capital. The age-long adoration of “the golden calf”, the mammon, was nearing its end, the global obeisance of the human community to the power of money on the global scope, and turning the human being from a subject of history into an object of pecuniary slavery. Mother Nature also became a means of earning profits. The human being began to be degraded both morally and intellectually.

Therefore, due to the revolutionary changes of he past 15-20 years the role of a human being in the present-day world and the structure of the international community have changed. The evident spiritual and moral blind alley became visible in the development of the mankind’s civilisation. Exploitation of natural resources has grown, and whole nations (including Russians and other peoples of the Russian Federation) climbed from the plough, the machine tool and the book to wholesale mercantilism, the hammering up of fortunes by hook or by crook, including amoral ways, and international norms began to be dictated by the financial Internationale and big transnationals.

The states as subjects of international law and order are now losing their role and their attributes of sovereignty, whereas the mineral resources they own are declared “the property of mankind” and are bought or taken by force by stronger and richer states.

In essence, a global economic war has been unleashed against the background of the construction of the global empire of capital. This war uses the military force, contagious combat viruses, financial crises, arrangement of starvation and poverty, bankruptcy of whole states and debt suffocation.

Mass media controlled by the global financial centres have become an aggressive and efficient weapon. Using them, the situation in different parts of the world is being formed, with public opinion focused in the required direction and human conscience is being broken down.

Counter to the United Nations and other internationally acknowledged institutions new significance is being attributed to the global structures of supranational power (the Beldberberg club, the G7, the Davos Forum, etc), the power components (CU.S. army, NATO and international military forces) as well as the system of jails and secret operations within the framework of the empire of capital.

The states that put up resistance to being included in the global empire of the capital and trying to pursue their own independent development policies are destroyed by the use of U.S. and NATO force and are dismembered into small quasi-states (Yugoslavia and Iraq), with hotbeds of conflict and chaos created in strategically significant regions and inter-national and inter-confessionals wars are being provoked (Kosovo, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq).

The formation of the new global elite based on the pseudo-religious “chosen people” is the principal moment, whereas all the rest should become auxiliary, and the remaining ones to be destroyed. Heads of state and government are to be appointed by the global centre just imitating democratic procedures. They are becoming the authorised bodies of global management.

Quite naturally, an empire cannot stand the presence of two or more ideologies. That is why traditional religions, value guides, norms of national living and orientations are being destroyed and discredited, being replaced by a standardised surrogates.

These are the most common outlines of the coming epoch of the mondialism (globalism).

At the same time, the attempts to build on this planet a global empire of capital based on the financial fundamentalism are unreal and extremely dangerous for the whole of mankind as a civilisation.

The implementation of the global impersonal power of money exhibits the epoch’s main contradiction – the antagonism between the unrestricted concentration of wealth and Mother Nature. The habitat of a human being cannot stand its excessive exploitation, avenging by unbelievably frequent disasters: fires, hurricanes, flooding and earthquakes. Simultaneously, the mankind is made to believe that there are “too many” people in the world. For example, a report published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council has it that some 3 billion people will by 2015 be regarded as redundant, as allegedly there will not be enough resources to go round to sustain them.

The second biggest contradiction is the antagonism between the Atlantic and other civilisations of the world. According to S.Huntington, the world has entered the epoch of the “civilisations clash” which is just at its beginning. Events in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and - to some degree –in France are primarily the episodes of the war waged by Islam, the Orthodox Church against Atlantism, Judaic Protestantism, totalitarian globalism, the new “body of political authority rather than the fight for territorial integrity, autonomy or the withdrawal of foreign troops from the territories of the countries involved. And the principal theatre of this war is the realm of the spiritual.

The greedy egotistic civilisation (that negates God and spiritual wisdom) cannot win this war. So, the project of a unipolar world cannot be implemented. The condition of the chief power tool the only “superpower” can rely on, the American dollar that is not backed materially is extremely unstable, so the zone of its influence is shrinking. U.S. policies of supporting its economy by financial robbery and total subordination of national banks to American financial institutions is collapsing due to the galloping growth of the U.S. debt to the rest of the world. The global financial system is on the brink of a crush.

Finance and economy-related tensions within the Atlantic community are also aggravating, reflected by the relations between the United States and China, Russia, Latin America and Europe. Inside the United States the strategy of installing the police regime is being implemented. Living standards area declining. In the conditions of the absence of the USSR acting as the global competitor, the world’s financial elite is unwilling to make the life of 300 million Americans decent.

Thus we can become witnessed of the growth of civilisation contradictions in the United States itself. G.Patrick Buchanan could have been right about his prediction in his book “The Death of the West” of a break-up of the United States by 2015, with the follow-up creation of three independent states: Afro-American, Latin American and Anglo Saxon.

The third global contradiction has to do with natural resources. The striving to give money the global supremacy has caused the omni-present unbridled growth of consumption of natural resources, primarily hydrocarbons. A slow but steady depletion of their stocks is giving rise to the aggravation of the struggle for control over them and the routes of their transport. The growth of the virtual dollar supply on the threshold of its inevitable devaluation makes owners of billions of dollars use them to obtain assets backed by natural resources, or in other words, to further rape the environment.

The global elite is incapable to win the battle for oil and natural gas relying on petrodollars and military might, but it can aggravate the military strategic situation and unleash new wars, as it would never give up claiming its power over the whole world. With this in mind the United States is building up an unprecedented military might, implementing the mindless idea of the global anti-missile shield, the doctrine of prevention strikes, including nuclear strikes, in an attempt to set its sights on the whole planet Earth. It is insistently implementing the formula of the global dominance based on the control of the key regions of the world, strategic communications and resources of the planet.

As for NATO, from a military alliance with a comparatively narrow zone of responsibility it has turned into an aggressive tool for attaining dominance over the world. This alliance no longer defends the interests of European states and Canada; it rather contradicts them, drawing Europe into confrontation with Russia and the Islamic world. And there is no saying that the “good old Europe” is prepared to take on this role without a murmur.

Increasing the military potential of the United States and NATO, the forces of the global empire of capital are striving to attain the decisive supremacy over all other civilisations, fixing their military technological breakaway regarding other states.

Speaking globally, we mark the confrontation of the two principles of ensuring military security – the balance of forces and the overpowering supremacy. On the one hand, Russia, China, India, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Finland and the Islamic countries, Latin America stick to the principles of the balance of forces (or sufficient defence) both at the global and regional levels. On the other, the military technological supremacy has become the state ideology for the United States, taking the shape of the world outlook for the Western financial and political elite.

At the same time events in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that the virtually absolute military and technological supremacy of the coalition of Western nations does not guarantee them either a victory or strategic stability.

Relations between the U.S. and Russia, as well as those between Russia and Europe play an important role in the area of global security and strategic stability. What is seen nowadays is the aggravation of these relations with voicing conclusions about the return to the times of the “cold war”.

What is happening in reality? Russia and the United States are the geopolitical competitors, two different worlds, two power centres and two foundations for putting in place of different civilisations. The strong Russia, and the USSR before it is a serious stumbling block for the building of the global empire of the capital and instalment of unified standards in the development of states and nations of the world.

It was no accident when Britain’s H.MacKinder, one of the fathers of Western geopolitics, fixed a sign on Russia (the Soviet Union) reading “the geographic axis of history”, or “the continental heart of the world”, the Heartland. He concluded that without putting this Heartland under control, putting Eurasia under control would be impossible.

In the 1990s, the Yeltsin time, a regime of “external management» was installed in Russia. The United States has attained the military supremacy over Russia, excluding the sphere of the strategic nuclear arms. But the situation in the strategic sphere was devoloping in such a way that due to an unequal reduction and degradation of the Russian strategic nuclear forces the U.S. had a serious advantage. The U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty along with a large-scale deployment of combat systems based in space, the air, the land and the sea brought about the threat of undermining the Russian missile and nuclear potential and the complete destruction of the foundations of the global strategic stability.

However, the class of oligarchs that has with time became a part of the common system together with the ethno-criminal groups, intending to deprive the peoples living in Russia of the hope of a return to the ideals of conscience, truth and justice began to sense the danger from outside, coming from a much stronger financial predator that aimed at both the Russian territory and the resources, but also at the capitals of oligarchs and the officialdom, and their control of Russia. At this point it was absolutely necessary to begin thinking of the security of the state.

In the past several years Russia’s military and political management has been trying to alter the threatening tendency in order to save the potential of a reciprocal or advance nuclear strike. The issue is not the restoration of a nuclear parity within the framework of a new arms race. What is being realised is the principle of retaining the capacity to do irreparable harm in retaliation to an adversary rather than a preventive strike, which would be a measure of containment of a potential aggressor.

Russia inherited the ideology of retaliation–advance strike from the USSR. Russia is still retaining the guaranteed real possibility created by the Soviet people to deliver to the United States or the territories its allies occupy – should they venture to go into a nuclear missile adventure – several megatonnes of nuclear warheads.

The understanding of the fact that the security of the Russian state and international security can be ensured by achieving balance of international forces is getting back.

Experts have aid attention to the summit of the Shanghai Organisation of Cooperation (SOC) and joint manoeuvres of the armed forces of that organisation that took place in August of 2007 in Russia.

On the one hand the activities of the SOС can be characterised as the process of formation of a second world’s pole that will be principally different from the pole of Atlantism. Involved in this process are the states that represent five global civivlisations. On the other, the SOC manoeuvres demonstrated their preparedness to defend their sovereignty and their systems of values, which radically changes the geopolitical situation..

Undoubtedly this is not at all to the liking of the adepts of the totalitarian power of “the only superpower”. Questionless, Russia is getting to the fore to become the leader of the world’s second pole. What reasons do we have to think so?

To begin with, Russia has no claims to global hegemony, capture of territories, resources and the conquest of other nations. It is self-sufficient, even though not totally independent. The Russian oligarchic capital is in no position to claim other countries’ resources, being aware that the global financial centres can “drown” it overnight.

Second, Russia has a geopolitical potential incomparable with that of any other nation. First and foremost, this is the favourable (unique) location of this country on the planet that binds together whole continents, oceans and civilisations. That also includes its vast territory with diverse climatic conditions, uniquely rich with natural resources. Then it is also - on the whole – high intellectual level of Russia’s population.

Third, the Russian civilisation is open to all other world’s civilisations and compatible with most of them according to the scale of culture and moral values and philosophy of living.

And last but not the least, Russia has its missile nuclear potential comparable to that of the claimers for the global dominance.

So, the control other nations may dream of having over the Heartland is out of the question. The Russian society has retained the foundations of its statehood potential, which, given the will, wisdom and honour of the elite at power can become the basis of success of the global significance.

This is exactly why Russia is now experiencing the mighty pressure, threats and the consolidated Western interference in its internal affairs.

We can expect complications of the situation inside Russia and around it, especially during the period of the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 – 2008 and immediately after the replacement of the Kremlin’s master. The secret forces of the global empire are already skilful enough in the art of destabilisation of both whole countries and continents, making whole nations oppose each other and launch the mechanisms of terror.

The situation is aggravated by the absence in the Russian state management system of a central body of a system analysis, strategic planning and working out of strategic solutions. Figuratively speaking, Russia does not have a General Headquarters (this is not to mean the Headquarters of the RF Armed Forces) and the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief. That is why there is generally lack of observance of solutions and unheard-of corruption that are in existence against the background of the ugly management of socio-economic, regional and ethno-demographic processes.

The present-day Russia is a fragile vessel that can remain whole only in strong and caring hands. Some sort of an illusion of stability in this country does exist mainly due to the shared criminal responsibility of managers and those managed by them in their common neglect of law. Any outward action on a so fragile “vessel” could ruin it.

But we are willing to hope that the Russian society and state have learnt the lessons of the past. Moreover the circle of friends of Russia in the world is getting wider little by little. With God’s help we could sail through the strait between Scylla and Charybdis.

The main thing is to prevent our oligarchic capital from amalgamating with the forces of the global financial empire against the peoples of Russia.

__________________

The article has been made on the basis of a lecture the President of the Academy of Geopolitical problems, General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov delivered to foreign military attaches in Moscow in August of 2007.