The first of a two-part analysis. Here, we dissect the ideological and historical roots of Western elite panic. Next, we examine its material base and the dangerous military doctrines it has spawned.
Superb analysis! Thank you! In your work you quote the Military Intelligence Bulletin: "We misapplied our own worldview to Russia and assessed Russia as European after the collapse of the Soviet Union, seeking to bring them into the NATO tent in the fight against violent extremism. We were disappointed when Russia acted as a distinct Eurasian nation state, wholly apart from Western Europe, that rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” How do you explain this statement in view of the fact that the West had explicitly rejected the suggestion of Putin to join NATO? Is it just a lie for the purposes of narrative, an illusion and self-deception or actually a form of belated error admission? Would be curious to know your interpretation.
And also subsequently "rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” How unsportingly un-European of them. Obviously they don't belong 'here'.
Superb analysis with such rigorous demonstration through policy papers as discursive evidence -- racial liberalism and its passing-- and yes, among other thigns, a redux of Cesaire's boomerange effect. Its incredible (as an academic) to see uses of the essay -- as a form -- towards these urgent, public, or public-forming ends.
Thank you for your kind words, Tania. And yes, exactly, this is very much about using policy papers as discursive evidence, even as cultural artifacts. Your reading, especially invoking Césaire’s boomerang effect, is right.
I must say, I’ve always loved being part of academia, and in some ways still am, in a quiet way. But it’s through independent research and the essay form that I feel we, as academics or adjacent thinkers, can really reach toward public-forming ends (and, also through other types of media). Absolutely.
Thank you, Nel. Your essay is a real gem. You have achieved the rare feat of multidisciplinary clarity and the result is a coherent narrative where each strand, far from being tacked on, serves as a reinforcing thread in a unified argument, revealing how macro forces and micro behaviors converge on the same outcome. It reads like a natural conversation between disciplines. The result is not just breadth, but depth through interconnection. This is how complex global phenomena should be analyzed.
Subscribed. Would love to interview you on our podcast "What's Left?" and keep up the great work! We need insights like this if we are going to exit from this mess! Thank you! andrewlibson@gmail.com
What reads as strategic delay could also be something less controlled: systems that can no longer produce decisive outcomes defaulting to ambiguity because they have no clear path to resolution.
In that sense, the fog isn’t just engineered, it may also be symptomatic. Not only a tool to buy time, but a signal that control over outcomes is already slipping.
My small uninformed mind had 2 thoughts many years ago: kill NATO and kill the dollar. Now I realize the real fight is for our minds.Control over your own information network is the existential challenge to lift the dreadful fog.
Thank you for the excellent piece. I do think there is much racism in western elites, which is coming decompensated as they reach panic level, but i feel that your view is biased.
First you have an anachronic regard on the past, say 6 centuries ago; then racism was natural and common to all populations. Your presenting westerners as somehow mentally ill then is not realistic, not neutral. Racism is still very much present in most peoples of the world - even say in Thailand, Cambodia,... against chinese. What is surely acute in the West is the dialectic of enlightenment degenerating - i recommend the eponymous book-essays by Horkheimer, Adorno. The current period is quite peculiar and it would be a mistake to extrapolate too much.
Second i would advise making a clear dichotomy between western peoples seeing mass immigration deeply disrupt and threaten their culture (among other forces) and western (transnational) leaders actually promoting that immigration all the while behaving in a very racist way on the international scene.
In other words i think it would be a mistake to let oneself fall into caricature like the people we rightly criticize have, and it is always worthwhile to try and avoid collateral damage in the criticizing.
Parallel to the esoteric mist of stalling tactics masquerading as strategy, and the palpable signs of panic expressed in increasingly infantile hegemonic discourse (sometimes known as the Marvel Comics School of International Relations), there is also a "diffuse and omnipresent" fog of intellectual decay working its way across Western society as well, and it's not only limited to the PMC class.
I would describe your style of writing as "impregnated wind", and it reminds me a little bit of the mental high I once had when reading Negri and Hardt. We are going though some truly terrifying times, and I don't even mean local kinetic conflicts, but the sheer insanity of the media and the almost totalitarian colonisation of culture and minds by the empire (which of course can be seen as part of what you refer to as MDO). The empire rules by projection and works itself into a narcissistic rage when the rest of the world holds up a mirror to its face.
You are offering people out there in the wilderness a glimmer of hope. And as a convicted believer in civilizational cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics, just want to say that Western hegemony is not going to MDO its way out of its terminal decline this time. It will be forced to accept multipolarity one way or another, by the adults in the proverbial room.
it should be noted that, at least in the specific case of the USA, China’s rise was not rise is qualitatively different, from the early 1980s on China’s system has been actually quite similar to the USA’s old system, in fact in some key ways its political-economy more closely resembles the political-economy of the USA’s Old Republic than contemporary USA’s does.
In fact, in the latter 1970s and early 1980s, some CPC local party branches actually referenced the reforms of the mi 19th century American Jacksonians to argue for the reforms that ended up being enacted, and the Chinese system has in key ways looked remarkably like the system of America from the 1830s until some point after ww2 (although some of those features had been diminishing over time, but they were still quite there), for example, the Guangzhou Municipal Party School in the late 1970s, there are reports from interviews with later reform officials (such as in Deng era memoirs) that Guangzhou’s reformist intellectual circles made reference to designs established during the period of Jacksonian Democracy such as infrastructure financing models, local tax share-dominance and retention, the benefits of city-led economic experimentation, etc. And Shanghai Economic Research Institutes in the early 1980s compared 19th-century American city-state relationships to their desired trajectory for Chinese coastal cities, which were strong port cities with fiscal and legal tools to manage foreign trade, investment, and currency operations.
"We were disappointed when Russia .... rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” This is self satire at it's delusional zenith. What Russia rejected was NATO encirclement and neocolonial pillage . All the talk of a difference in DNA is reminiscent of nothing so much as early 20th hysteria over the 'yellow peril'. An excellent if disquieting article.
Thank you for this considerable effort. It's always gratifying to read analysis that clarifies and delineates what one knows in the core of one's being. Of course, there's a lot more to be said about where we find ourselves but not the ears to hear nor intellects to fathom, not to mention the hearts to receive.
You are spot on in your analysis. I heard you on Neutrality studies and I was so impressed with your honest style of putting forward the facts sans rancour. Thank you for your work.
Superb analysis! Thank you! In your work you quote the Military Intelligence Bulletin: "We misapplied our own worldview to Russia and assessed Russia as European after the collapse of the Soviet Union, seeking to bring them into the NATO tent in the fight against violent extremism. We were disappointed when Russia acted as a distinct Eurasian nation state, wholly apart from Western Europe, that rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” How do you explain this statement in view of the fact that the West had explicitly rejected the suggestion of Putin to join NATO? Is it just a lie for the purposes of narrative, an illusion and self-deception or actually a form of belated error admission? Would be curious to know your interpretation.
And also subsequently "rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” How unsportingly un-European of them. Obviously they don't belong 'here'.
"to bring them into the NATO tent" - that's code for aligning with Washington, not to allow them to enter NATO as a member.
Superb analysis with such rigorous demonstration through policy papers as discursive evidence -- racial liberalism and its passing-- and yes, among other thigns, a redux of Cesaire's boomerange effect. Its incredible (as an academic) to see uses of the essay -- as a form -- towards these urgent, public, or public-forming ends.
Thank you for your kind words, Tania. And yes, exactly, this is very much about using policy papers as discursive evidence, even as cultural artifacts. Your reading, especially invoking Césaire’s boomerang effect, is right.
I must say, I’ve always loved being part of academia, and in some ways still am, in a quiet way. But it’s through independent research and the essay form that I feel we, as academics or adjacent thinkers, can really reach toward public-forming ends (and, also through other types of media). Absolutely.
Another exceptional article, thank you!
Thank you, Nel. Your essay is a real gem. You have achieved the rare feat of multidisciplinary clarity and the result is a coherent narrative where each strand, far from being tacked on, serves as a reinforcing thread in a unified argument, revealing how macro forces and micro behaviors converge on the same outcome. It reads like a natural conversation between disciplines. The result is not just breadth, but depth through interconnection. This is how complex global phenomena should be analyzed.
Subscribed. Would love to interview you on our podcast "What's Left?" and keep up the great work! We need insights like this if we are going to exit from this mess! Thank you! andrewlibson@gmail.com
A melhor análise que eu ja li sobre geopolítica.
Excellent article, Nel, your analysis of current geopolitics is interesting.
What reads as strategic delay could also be something less controlled: systems that can no longer produce decisive outcomes defaulting to ambiguity because they have no clear path to resolution.
In that sense, the fog isn’t just engineered, it may also be symptomatic. Not only a tool to buy time, but a signal that control over outcomes is already slipping.
My small uninformed mind had 2 thoughts many years ago: kill NATO and kill the dollar. Now I realize the real fight is for our minds.Control over your own information network is the existential challenge to lift the dreadful fog.
Thank you for the excellent piece. I do think there is much racism in western elites, which is coming decompensated as they reach panic level, but i feel that your view is biased.
First you have an anachronic regard on the past, say 6 centuries ago; then racism was natural and common to all populations. Your presenting westerners as somehow mentally ill then is not realistic, not neutral. Racism is still very much present in most peoples of the world - even say in Thailand, Cambodia,... against chinese. What is surely acute in the West is the dialectic of enlightenment degenerating - i recommend the eponymous book-essays by Horkheimer, Adorno. The current period is quite peculiar and it would be a mistake to extrapolate too much.
Second i would advise making a clear dichotomy between western peoples seeing mass immigration deeply disrupt and threaten their culture (among other forces) and western (transnational) leaders actually promoting that immigration all the while behaving in a very racist way on the international scene.
In other words i think it would be a mistake to let oneself fall into caricature like the people we rightly criticize have, and it is always worthwhile to try and avoid collateral damage in the criticizing.
Parallel to the esoteric mist of stalling tactics masquerading as strategy, and the palpable signs of panic expressed in increasingly infantile hegemonic discourse (sometimes known as the Marvel Comics School of International Relations), there is also a "diffuse and omnipresent" fog of intellectual decay working its way across Western society as well, and it's not only limited to the PMC class.
I would describe your style of writing as "impregnated wind", and it reminds me a little bit of the mental high I once had when reading Negri and Hardt. We are going though some truly terrifying times, and I don't even mean local kinetic conflicts, but the sheer insanity of the media and the almost totalitarian colonisation of culture and minds by the empire (which of course can be seen as part of what you refer to as MDO). The empire rules by projection and works itself into a narcissistic rage when the rest of the world holds up a mirror to its face.
You are offering people out there in the wilderness a glimmer of hope. And as a convicted believer in civilizational cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics, just want to say that Western hegemony is not going to MDO its way out of its terminal decline this time. It will be forced to accept multipolarity one way or another, by the adults in the proverbial room.
it should be noted that, at least in the specific case of the USA, China’s rise was not rise is qualitatively different, from the early 1980s on China’s system has been actually quite similar to the USA’s old system, in fact in some key ways its political-economy more closely resembles the political-economy of the USA’s Old Republic than contemporary USA’s does.
In fact, in the latter 1970s and early 1980s, some CPC local party branches actually referenced the reforms of the mi 19th century American Jacksonians to argue for the reforms that ended up being enacted, and the Chinese system has in key ways looked remarkably like the system of America from the 1830s until some point after ww2 (although some of those features had been diminishing over time, but they were still quite there), for example, the Guangzhou Municipal Party School in the late 1970s, there are reports from interviews with later reform officials (such as in Deng era memoirs) that Guangzhou’s reformist intellectual circles made reference to designs established during the period of Jacksonian Democracy such as infrastructure financing models, local tax share-dominance and retention, the benefits of city-led economic experimentation, etc. And Shanghai Economic Research Institutes in the early 1980s compared 19th-century American city-state relationships to their desired trajectory for Chinese coastal cities, which were strong port cities with fiscal and legal tools to manage foreign trade, investment, and currency operations.
"We were disappointed when Russia .... rejected a progressive NATO encroachment toward Moscow.” This is self satire at it's delusional zenith. What Russia rejected was NATO encirclement and neocolonial pillage . All the talk of a difference in DNA is reminiscent of nothing so much as early 20th hysteria over the 'yellow peril'. An excellent if disquieting article.
Very cogent and well thought analysis. I wish I had more to add but you've got it right.
Thank you for this considerable effort. It's always gratifying to read analysis that clarifies and delineates what one knows in the core of one's being. Of course, there's a lot more to be said about where we find ourselves but not the ears to hear nor intellects to fathom, not to mention the hearts to receive.
Exceptional overview and condensation of what we have been witnessing.
You are spot on in your analysis. I heard you on Neutrality studies and I was so impressed with your honest style of putting forward the facts sans rancour. Thank you for your work.