No matter how we feel about the US and its hegemony, it seems the time for international unipolar diktat is coming to an end. The achievements of science and technology, created and put into widespread use by the global conversion of the late twentieth century, which created a fundamentally new matrix of information and digital society, are no longer an American know-how that ensured the right of the hegemon to reduce world governance to a step-by-step admission of countries and territories to this matrix, the price for which was a greater or lesser share of national sovereignty. However, every game comes to its logical end. The Andropov-Reagan era military-industrial complex capabilities are exhausted. The US of course retains the lead in AI and controls the production of lithographic equipment for making microchips, but in equally fundamental areas such as robotics and the fifth-generation Internet, China has pulled ahead. Of course, you can’t have robots without chips. But if you dig even deeper into more fundamental areas, such as organic chemistry, China once again takes the lead.
The advantage is still sort of there, but it is no longer absolute. And in American science and engineering the Chinese have become something like the Jews in late Soviet science. When confidence levels are low, but there is no scientific infantry without them. And although at the head of projects and where the highest clearance levels are required, these unreliable people are not really allowed in, without them the wheels won’t turn. The mass exodus of Jews from the USSR literally buried Soviet science. But this is largely because, for example, Sergey Brin’s father could have gone to Moscow State University and even worked for the USSR State Planning Committee, but no one would have trusted their son with a corporation like Google. Here too, in the struggle between the US and the PRC, it appears that a further partnership will lead to a gradual shift of the pole to the Celestial Empire, and its breakdown will only hasten the collapse of the hegemon.
Washington, meanwhile, is struggling to cling to the old world order, increasingly using force and clashing with increasingly powerful adversaries to reshape previous spheres of influence in its favor. It all started with the fall of the Twin Towers and the invasion of Afghanistan. Russia, by the way, supported all this — providing hubs for military logistics, ostentatiously resisting, but not lifting a finger when the US went to war in Iraq. It seemed to Moscow that it would in turn be allowed to act as crudely in the post-Soviet space within the framework of an anti-Islamist coalition of American republicans, Putin’s jihadist Caucasus victors and Israel as the centre. The funny thing is that in Moscow one can still find supporters of this path, and even in the most loyalist circles.
At the same time, among the so-called neoconservatives, who were behind the futurological concept of the «great transformation,» an initiative called the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) emerged. To call its membership robust is to say nothing of it. Members of the PNAC governing council were Vice President Cheney, Pentagon chief Rumsfeld and his deputy, and later World Bank head Wolfowitz. PNAC was founded by political scientists William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The first became a later adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, the chief specialist in managing escalations with Moscow since the Nixon era, and Robert Kagan is the husband of Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. All these people are major hawks in American politics since the Cold War and are rabid Russophobes. However, this did not bother Moscow. The Kremlin, which reformatted itself fortunately for its inhabitants in the 1990s, saw the threat not in American hegemony but in the ideology of human rights. With the hegemonists, they seemed to have built a relationship based on ideological affinity, cemented by anti-communism and a willingness to take donations from people such as Oleg Deripaska.
Deripaska, by the way, is not just an oligarch who is periodically banned from entering the US, and then allowed again. Deripaska is the son-in-law of Boris Yeltsin’s son-in-law Valentin Yumashev. That is, the main pocket of a family that has done much for the US, respected and loved in the West. Morover, Deripaska also personally introduced American political strategist Paul Manafort (also a neoconservative) to Viktor Yanukovych, with the latter being introduced as a consultant to the same McCain while riding in the company of the aforementioned gentlemen on the yacht of Montenegrin President Djukanovic, known in Europe as the continent’s chief drug baron. Deripaska is generally fond of yachts. On another yacht, one of his own, he, along with Deputy Prime Minister Prikhodko (one of the most influential clan figures in the Russian Federation), found himself at the center of a scandal with ex-escort girl-whistleblower Nastia Rybka. In particular, in a scandalous phone video he discusses Victoria Nuland: she has been sailing with Soviet fishermen for six months, “and no one has ever fucked her. That’s why she’s so angry». Navalny made an anti-corruption fuss about the whole scandal — an oligarch and an official on a yacht with prostitutes — but it was the comments about Nuland that were far more important, reinforcing the personal animosity between yesterday’s partners.
But back to the neo-conservatives (neocons) and their influence as the root cause of U.S. intransigence in the international arena, and of the brute force method of resolving all issues. In the early days of its political career, this group, which lobbied for Israeli interests in the US and adopted the habit of bluffing by playing steel balls from the Israelis, achieved enormous influence in the Reagan administration. The nuclear bluff that the US used to intimidate the Soviet leadership during the generational change period proved to be a successful strategy, and it is being tried again today in relations with Russia.
As Paul Craig Roberts, head of treasury in the Reagan administration, and a strong critic of neocon policies since the 1980s, wrote in a recent publication: “Relations between Russia and the West have reached the point of no return”, the neocons have managed to convince the Russian leadership that a nuclear war between Russia and the US is inevitable, and only the self-deterioration of Russia can prevent this war: “Try to understand the huge failure of US foreign policy that has brought Russia to this despairing conclusion. Here you can see the consequences of the arrogance and hubris I have written about at length, on the part of the totally unrealistic neoconservatives who control US policy”. Miles of trenches in Crimea and other unprecedented measures taken by the Russian military in preparation for war, no longer with Ukraine but with NATO, show that this time Russia is not about to give up. The article began: «As our grandmother taught us — never go to war with Russia and China at the same time. And Henry Kissinger taught us the same».
Paul Craig Roberts is, of course, an alarmist. He holds no office and is able to influence policy solely through media publications. However, it is only in the post-Soviet space that it is commonly believed that a man who holds no position is a downed pilot. In developed democracies, resigning from public office is a real opportunity to speak up for oneself and begin to finally influence processes personally, rather than to do the collective will of the structures that the top officials formally govern. And the alarmists exist precisely to change the debate by injecting new talking points into it. Otherwise, their attitude simply turns on the principle of “you ain’t got the floor, asshole!”.
The article about the point of no return saw the light of day immediately following President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow and on the eve of a visit to China by French President Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Beijing has probably made it clear to its European partners that the Kremlin today is not Gorbachev’s Central Committee, that it has no worse balls than the neocons, and that if Moscow and Washington continue to measure their strength, the entire globe will be blown to pieces. The West, which until recently had believed in the impossibility of a Russian-Chinese alliance due to the mutual distrust of the parties, suddenly realised that such a position by Moscow was in line with Mao Zedong’s concept of paper tigers, and Chairman Xi is a direct follower of the Great Helmsman’s doctrines. And nuclear war, as the same Helmsman argued, is the end of capitalism and therefore should not be feared. And behind the current chaos following the Russia-China summit there is clearly a sly Chinese smile and a reptilian dragon’s eye.
The outcome of the visit was not long in coming. And now France is blocking arms deliveries from the EU to Ukraine, while the Office of the President of Ukraine complains about difficulties in placing propaganda material in the international media. According to Ukrainian Telegram channels specializing in leaks, the situation has depressed many in the President’s Office. Especially the return of Russian ads: Sberbank, VTB, etc. to the advertising rotation of Youtube, and the lower priority given to news from Ukraine on Twitter. And the tone itself is changing. For example, there was a story on CNN that millions of our fellow citizens, including through the EU, had left for Russia. That is, they chose Russia of their own free will. And all this against a backdrop of accusations of the Russian Federation of kidnapping Ukrainian children who, in fact, were taken from the conflict zone to Artek and other children’s camps. To top it all off, the Pentagon has hit hopes with its trump ace, declaring that aid to Ukraine cannot be unlimited.
So what does this change in the wind mean? Of course, we can continue to convince ourselves that these are not undercurrents, but only ripples on the surface. However, much evidence suggests otherwise. For example, the head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine suddenly stated that a Ukrainian counter-offensive is taking place now and every day. That no one is going to throw unprepared troops at the fortifications. And there’s no need to push it. And all this daily counter-offensive is taking place against the backdrop of the planned, street by street surrender of Bakhmut-Artemivsk, the holding of which was an important psychological factor for the continuation of military supplies from the West. All in all, self-deception is a dangerous thing. Living in this mode since 2004, Ukraine has already placed itself on the brink of survival. Therefore, as the Ukrainian issue recedes from the front pages, the situation will be deconstructed, mostly at the expense of Ukraine. And the neocons will start the next round of the domination game. An Asian one. In Indonesia. After all, the Malacca Strait is more important to China.
