Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 19 August 2023

Niger. Minor Power. Fernández-Armesto. Don Quixote. Snails. Nobels. Mass for Hard Times.

Each week in my newsletter, I offer seven glimpses of world history in the multipolar world. This week, I share glimpses of:

1. The Big Story. Niger as the preamble to BRICS Summit

2. Governing the Multipolar World. Australia’s Minor Power Mentality.

3. Using History Mindfully. Learn from Felipe Fernández-Armesto

4. Fragments of the Burning Archive. Did Don Quixote Discover Australia?

5. What surprised me most. Snails and the History of Food.

6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress.  Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and the Nobels.

7. Reading and Closing Verse. Tokarczuk and a Mass for Hard Times.

Have you checked out my books?

• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing

• my book of essays From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021.

• my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind.

I have given Amazon links for convenience but these books are also available on ⁠Booktopia⁠, ⁠Barnes and Noble⁠, ⁠Kobo⁠ and other online retailers.

So, on with the newsletter….

1. The Big Story: Niger as the preamble to BRICS Summit

The military government in Niger is still standing, and the West African states have delayed, stalled and strung along the USA and EU powers that are demanding, away from cameras, a military counter-coup to restore Western democratic rule in Africa.

This situation remains unresolved, but some prudent hesitation by Nigerian governing elites appears to be improving the prospects for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.

The situation is complex, and one should guard against projecting simple stories of pro/anti Western protest, or national liberation rhetoric. There appears to be a strong sentiment among some African commentators that the events in Niger are the beginning of a second phase of decolonisation; but I will need to do more study before commenting on that further.

I did read a good piece by Simplicius the Thinker on Substack, “Change is in the Air in Africa”. He presented the situation in Niger as one decisive step in a broad advance by African elites against the Western rule-based, resource-extraction international order in Africa. He wrote:

Africa has had enough, and is self-assembling along geopolitical lines. The U.S. stooges of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) seek to keep the status quo going while rival blocs are ready to strip the Western powers of their self-proclaimed birthright to the African land—and its resources—once and for all.

However, I think the most valuable part of Simplicius’ piece is his recommendation of a Substack, Sharp Focus on Africa by Chima Okezue. He emphasises in his excellent updates that the largest, decisive state, Nigeria, is internally divided on the issue of military intervention. They are hesitant to do the dirty work for America, and there is significant support for Niger and opposition to military intervention within the leading state of ECOWAS. While the USA might succeed in twisting the arms of the smaller West African member states, its diplomats are less likely to succeed in Nigeria.

The timing of events is important, and may also make sense of the delays and apparent procrastination by ECOWAS states on military intervention. The BRICS Summit in South Africa is being held next week. Staging a Western counter-coup seems unlikely at this time because it would sacrifice African lives for American and French prestige, during the week when the new power grouping of the multipolar world meets on the African continent. Such action would seem likely to provoke embarrassing UN Security Council and General Assembly debates. So that gives the military government in Niger and the African elite forces opposed to Western proxy coups at least another two weeks to consolidate facts on the ground. That may be all they need to secure their fotthold on power, or so thinks Alexander Mercouris at The Duran.

I will likely comment on the BRICS summit next week. Some commentators are expecting “epochal” decisions from this summit.  For example, Simplicius commented that:

“the upcoming BRICS summit will be the perfect barometer by which to gauge how much of this influence remains over the West’s subordinates…. if the results are even more promising than expected, it could be the quintessential unbolting of the lid on Pandora’s box, which would initiate the final stage of the coup de grâce against the centuries-old Western imperialist hegemonic order.”

Diplomatic summits have a way of being less decisive than expected, and disappointing the vaulting ambitions of strategic thinkers. Communiques are often paper veils over muddy, stained compromises. We will see next week. In any case, this BRICS summit may yet go down in history as a decisive event, because the optics forced the West to tarry, and so prevent a disastrous war in the service of American and French glory in West Africa.

2. Governing the unruly multipolar world: Australia’s minor power mentality.

There has been a growing debate in Australia over its subservient defence and security relationship with the USA. This debate is also leading into a meeting next week, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national conference. There is a campaign among some ALP branches and the Old Independent Left to change the current government’s approach to AUKUS (the military alliance of the Anglo-Americans), the nuclear submarines deal, and the war powers legislation, by which a kangaroo court of Ministers may declare war with no Parliamentary accountability. 

This debate has occurred particularly in Pearls and Irritations, where notable contributors include Paul Keating (former Prime Minister),  Mike Scrafton (“The Courage to End the Alliance”), and Mike Keating (former Head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, when Paul Keating was PM, “Australia’s International Strategy”). Oh, and once or twice, me. There I wrote:

Only by breaking the seal on the prison of impunity can America reverse the forces of disintegration. In early 2021, Tooze wrote, “the haunting question remains: Is the United States as a nation-state capable of responding in a coherent and long-term fashion to the challenges of the great acceleration?” After more than two years of rule by an old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, can any honest person answer, ‘Yes’?

And what of the peoples of secondary status on the periphery of the empire? Like Australia. While the unhappiness of America reveals itself to the world, this outer reach of the empire could choose its own way, like some middle powers not suborned to America. But the haunting question remains: Is Australia as a nation-state capable of responding in a coherent and long-term fashion to disarm the vengeance of an unhappy American empire?

I discussed these issues and my article, Australia, Little Country Lost (that is, lost in space somewhere in the “free and open Indo-Pacific”) on my appearance on the Hrvoje Moriç TNT Radio Show this week. Thanks to Hrvoje for another great interview, and I will post next week my edited segments on my YouTube channel (do please subscribe, I am almost at 1,000 subscribers!) .

One comment in Mike Keating’s article helps illuminate Australia’s dilemma. He argued there is a contradiction between Australian defence and foreign policy, and implied perhaps some healthy difference of views between security and foreign policy thinkers.  He hints that the defence and security elites are all the way with Old Joe Biden and American unipolar dominance. On the other hand, he holds out hope that the foreign policy establishment has a more subtle appreciation of the new realities of the multipolar world. Mike Keating wrote that:

In sum, it is clearly in Australia’s interests to work with both China and the US. But we need to get on the front foot in working to establish the multipolar region that Foreign Minister Wong talks about. That will require Australia to work closely with the many other like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region, and if necessary, be less subservient in our future dealings with America.

I agree with this direction, but remain sceptical of the idea of the “Indo-Pacific region”. Moreover, the Foreign Minister’s phrase that Australia is interested in a “multipolar region” is an unconvincing bureaucratic fudge. 

Why talk about a multipolar region when a multipolar world is being born? It is a way to retain American dominance in the Western Pacific, when American withdrawal from military presence all over the world is the essential step to secure a truly peaceful, multipolar world. It is a skilful diplomatic argument by Mike Keating to appeal to the hint of reality that emerges from this phrase used by Penny Wong. But ultimately I find that this phrase in Australian foreign policy doctrine is an unconvincing head feint. We have a “multipolar region” already, but unlike Australia’s current elites I want a truly multipolar, free and fair world. The use of this phrase by the foreign policy establishment shows they are not yet ready to act as a middle power independently in the multipolar world, and remain suborned by bad American strategy in a minor power mentality. 

3. Using history to live mindfully in the present: Learn from Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Please listen to my extended interview with Felipe Fernández-Armesto on The Burning Archive podcast this week. It is full of such wisdom, wit and humour. I will be releasing part two on 25 August.

I also released on the YouTube channel a video introduction to my Mindful History course.

You can enrol at the course here. I am offering an additional 30% off the early adopters price to my substack readers it you enter the coupon code ‘Burning23’.

4. Fragments of the Burning Archive. Don Quixote and the Discovery of Australia

During my conversation with Felipe Fernández-Armesto this week, we discussed the way in which some of the great journeys of exploration were inspired by stories of chivalric romance. This same dynamic of the way in which people live out in reality the stories they tell themselves in their minds is the central dramatic structure of the great Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. Chivalric inspiration drawn from fiction, as much as, if not more than, religious zeal, drawn from the Church, drove explorers like Columbus and Magellan. 

Felipe Fernández-Armesto remarked in Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan (2022) that “Fiction has a habit of anticipating reality, especially if readers take it seriously and model their lives on it.”¹ This interweaving in our mental lives of fiction and fact, past and present, myth and history has long been a theme of the Burning Archive. However, I did not anticipate the surprising connection between Don Quixote and the discovery by Europeans of Australia in 1605.

Chivalric inspiration persisted throughout the “great age” [of exploration]. In the very year of the publication of Don Quixote, Pedro Fernández de Quirós, the Pacific explorer who discovered the island he called La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo, celebrated his achievement by knighting every member of his expedition, including his cooks, and clothing them in blue robes as chevaliers of “the Order of the Holy Spirit”.²

Be sure to listen to the podcast next week for part two of my interview with Felipe Fernandez-Armesto to hear his recital of this tale.

5. What surprised me most this week: Snails in Food History

This wonderful conversation also gave me my great surprise this week. It turns out that snails and similar molluscs provide the answer to one of the central mysteries in the history of food, and indeed civilization: “Why and how did the human animal begin to breed and herd other animals for food?”³

Listen to the podcast and read Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Food: A History for this surprising food history fact. Australian readers may be interested in the discussion on the podcast that linked this surprising fact to the debate on Dark Emu’s claims on the practice of agriculture by Australian Aboriginal societies before 1788.

6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress

I am profoundly grateful to Felipe Fernández-Armesto for his interview.

This week my works-in-progress and published content were:

• on the podcast I published Episode 114. Exploring World History with Leading Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto - Part 1

• On the YouTube Channel I published How to use Mindful History to make wise decisions and take care of your mental health.

• On Twitter, I had a quiet week and promoted my podcast interview with some quotes from Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

• On SubStack I published World Crisis of Too Much Change: Can Social Change Overwhelm Society?

• I conducted an interview with Hrvoje Moriç on Indo-Pacific, AUKUS and Australian foreign policy that also revisited my article Australia, Little Country Lost

• I shot some of my new online course, Masterclass in Government Writing.

Next week, I will be writing the next instalment of my Sub-Stack series on the World Crisis, on cultural decay. I will be revising my thinking substantially, prompted by the ideas of the Russian literary scholar, Mikhail Bakhtin, on the carnivalesque. I think it will offer a fresh insight into the experience of our times. Upgrade your subscription to read the full piece.

On Youtube I will be releasing all parts of the 90-minute video interview with Felipe Fernández-Armesto according to this schedule (slower than the podcast to offer shorter, more specific chunks to the scrolling YouTube viewer): 

1. World History, Food, Environment and Civilizations (19/8)

2. Ideas, Culture and Change in World History (26/8)

3. Hispanic America in the Multipolar World (2/9)

4. Exploration, Cultural Exchange and the Past (7/9)

5. Complete Interview (16/9)

Next week, I will also be releasing my video-essay reading from an excerpt of chapter one 1 of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, and my interview with Hrvoje Moric.

On Friday on the podcast I will release the second half of the interview with Felipe Fernández-Armesto

I will also be conducting my second interview with an historian - more on that in next week’s newsletter.

And in the lead-up to the Nobel Prize for Literature announcement on 5 October 2023 I will be doing a series of podcasts and youTube videos on Nobel Prize Winners: Olga Tokarczuk, 2018 winner; WB Yeats (1923 winner, 100th anniversary); Patrick White (1973 Winner 50th anniversary); Annie Ernaux, 2022 winner; and 2023 Winner announcement, and possibly live stream.

Let me know if you’d be interested to watch a live stream on the Nobel Prize winner.

7. What I am Reading and Closing Verse: Tokarczuk and R.S. Thomas

I have been rereading Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob. It is worth quoting the long subtitle of that book since it reinforces Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s emphasis on imagination, and reminds me that the most genial perspective on history is the comic.

The Books of Jacob, or: A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, Five Languages, and Three Major Religions, not Counting the Minor Sects. Told by the Dead, Supplemented by the AUthor, Drawing from a Range of Books, and Aided by Imagination, the which Being the Greatest Natural Gift of Any Person, that the Wise May Have It For A Record, that My Compatriots May Reflect, Laypersons Gain Some Understanding, and Melancholy Souls Obtain Some Slight Enjoyment.

I close the newsletter with a stanza from a poem I have enjoyed during the week. This week, I discovered the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (1913-2000). In 1992, he published a collection, A Mass for Hard Times. The need for some things does not change, hey? From this collection let me cite the first stanzas of a poem, Retired, that speaks to aspects of my renewed life as a retired government official, and independent author.

Not to worry myself any more

if I am out of step, fallen behind.

Let the space probes continue;

I have a different distance to travel.

Here I can watch the night sky, 

listen to how one grass blade

grates on another as a member

Of a disdained orchestra.

There are no meetings to attend

now other than those nocturnal

gatherings, whose luminaries

fell silent millenia ago.

You can read the whole poem in Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (2004).

Until next week, take care, and stay sane.

1. Straits, p. 288.

2. Straits, pp. 288-289.

3. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Food: A History (2001), p. 64.