Glimpses from the Multipolar World

seven stories for seven days

The Burning Archive has always been about history, culture and the emerging multipolar world. And being both grateful for and curious about the new global ‘republic of letters’ that is enabled by the internet and digital media with low barriers to entry. 

It just took me until now to work out how to present that in a weekly newsletter, with seven glimpses for seven days. Enjoy this week’s offering of glimpses into my world and my mind. 

1. Gratitude 

I am thankful to Marie Favereau for listening to my podcast. Marie Favereau is a Professor of History at the Université Paris Nanterre. She wrote a brilliant book, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (2021). I reached out to her to thank her for her book, and to let her know that I had made two podcasts/videos based on her book - a short review of the book and how it changes your vision of world history, and an episode in my series on The Black Legend of Russian History. She was kind enough to respond, and even say she would recommend her podcast to her students.  It made me, an outsider intellectual estranged from institutions, feel more accepted and connected in this great new global ‘republic of letters’.

Thank you, Marie Favereau. You can buy her insightful, inspiring book through this Amazon affiliate link, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World.

2. What I am reading 

I read Walter Laquer, Putinism: Russia and its Future with the West (2015). There are so many books of low quality on Putin, and I have long resisted plunging into them. Laquer’s book is the most culturally sophisticated of them, but he still suffers from a sneer towards the Russians. Laquer (1921-2018) was a distinguished German-born historian who lost his parents in the Holocaust, and made a successful career as a historian of political violence and European ideas. He was long part of the European émigré mandarins in the American Cold War establishment, and for decades was part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although the book is erudite, the sneers and habits of the Cold War seep through. In his epilogue, he wrote “Self-criticism has not been in fashion in Russia for a long time; if something goes wrong in Russia, it is virtually always the fault of foreigners.” After Laquer’s death, Americans are learning this lesson too. 

Despite their sophistication and assumptions of global mastery, Laquer, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the entire American foreign policy establishment suffer what the Cambridge University historian, Mark B. Smith, calls The Russia Anxiety. I have a video on this book coming out next week. Subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive so you don’t miss it.

3. Governing the unruly multipolar world

The big news in governing the multipolar world this week is the panicky drums of peace coming out of the American military or security elites. Over the last week I read the paper published by the RAND corporation, Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict (2023).

It is an interesting piece, but you need to read it between the lines. It cloaks in the usual rhetoric about Russia being weakened, an admission that the USA and NATO are losing the war against Russia. They state that a long war would harm American interests, and that Ukraine has no realistic prospect of achieving its war aims. However, it does not openly acknowledge that the ‘long war’ has been going on for some time, and the USA, as John Mearsheimer and others have said bravely, far from avoiding it, actually started it.

I did my first ever experimental ‘live stream’ on this topic during the week, and may do a cut down version as part of my weekly YouTube post on governing the multipolar world. Subscribe to my YouTube channel @theburningarchive so you don’t miss it.

4. Using history to live mindfully in the present. 

The Modern Wisdom podcast this week had a fascinating and helpful show on how to take control of your attention. The host interviewed Dr Gloria Mark, University of California, about her research on attention and human-computer interaction.

What has that got to do with history? Well, I thought while listening to the show that history does train your attention to longer, slower rhythms. It is an antidote to screen-switching and three-second jump-cuts. One of the many benefits of history for mindful living.

5. Fragments from the Burning Archive

One of the greatest texts of literature is the Mahabharata. I read it when I was in my twenties during the 1980’s. What brought it to my attention, inspired me to read the text, and imprinted these epic stories in my imagination was the film and theatre version of the story by British experimental theatre director, Peter Brook. I have discovered this morning that this landmark cultural artefact can now be watched in a single five-hour YouTube video. Please enjoy.

6. What surprised me most this week. 

I was surprised and delighted this week when there was such a positive reception to my talk, ‘Has India - the world's largest democracy - now become the real leader of the free and fair world?’, released as both video and podcast. It was picked up and even quoted by Salvatore Babones, for which I am grateful. And equally importantly, several Indian commenters on Twitter and my YouTube community also thought it hit the mark. It gave me confidence to keep doing what I am doing, and to look beyond the provincial boundaries of this state and this country.

7. Works-in-progress and published content

And what is that which I am doing? It is writing, speaking and creating content about stories of the multipolar world - its history, its culture, its geopolitics (not a word Walter Laquer was fond of, perhaps rightly). And how we can all stay calm and sane amidst the turmoil. I am even preparing an online course on the mindful use of history for life. News on that soon.

I am now doing this for my living, and am entirely reader-supported. I am still working out just how to make a business as an independent author - the best plan seems to be to offer value to readers. I hope I can offer unique insights.

The best way you can support me to share these glimpses of the multipolar world is to subscribe to my work and to help me build an audience for these insights.

First of all, please subscribe to this newsletter on SubStack.

Please also subscribe to my YouTube Channel. It passed 500 subscribers this week, and I have planned some great content for the next few weeks.

Follow me on Twitter. I share news and fragments of the texts I admire there. And sometimes I attempt a little bit of Twitter banter. My best banter of the week was in response to the Australian defence and security academic, John Blaxland. He tweeted about the Rules Based International Order, and I replied alluding to Voltaire and Bacon.

And you can buy my books! I am a writer, after all.

You can buy my new book of essays, edited from my blog, here From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021.

You can buy my collected poems, here Gathering Flowers of the Mind.

Over the next couple of weeks I am doing podcasts on how I wrote and published these books while working full-time as a bureaucrat. Those were the days.

I trust you have enjoyed this first full edition of my refreshed weekly newsletter providing seven glimpses into my mind and the multipolar world.

Please share with a friend.

I will be back in your and your friend’s inbox next week.

And do remember, “What thou lovest well will not be reft from thee” (Ezra Pound, Cantos)