Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 15 April 2023

Leadership failures, Europe and America, leaks, pensions, protests, violence in revolutions and for freedom, diplomatic incompetence

Apr 15, 2023

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

Gratitude. The US Intelligence Documents Leakers.
Reading. Shvarts and CIA television dramas.
Governing the Multipolar World. France, Pensions and the Art of Governing.
Using History Mindfully. Avoiding False Hope with People Power Protests.
Fragments of the Burning Archive. Violence in Revolutions, Schama and Arendt.
What surprised me most. American Diplomatic Incompetence and BRICS vs G7.
Works-in-Progress. A new op-ed coming soon on American foreign policy.

1. Gratitude

I am thankful to the brave people who leaked the US intelligence documents on the situation in Ukraine, and American shenanigans in other parts of the world. These documents are discussed at the blog of former intelligence officer, Larry Johnson. I hope the young man, who has been arrested for the deed, and hunted down with the assistance of so-called journalists and Bellingcat, that Anglo-American intelligence cut-out, will endure his ordeal.

2. What I am reading

I have been reading the poetry of Elena Shvarts in a bilingual edition. My Russian reading has got to the level that I can appreciate the poetry in both languages now. I have written a few appreciations of Shvarts on my earlier blog experiment, Flowers of the Mind in late 2021 and early 2022, here, here and here.

But I have also been watching two more American television series about the CIA, Treadstone and The Recruit. These shows were entertaining, but full of excuses for supremacist prejudices about the world outside America and whitewashing of American malfeasance. The Recruit, however, is a damning portrait of the waste of the US intelligence state. I wondered, will we ever live in a world freed from the grand American illusion that it can conduct, from a special room in Langley, kill operations all around the world?

3. Governing the unruly multipolar world

On the podcast this week I examined the enormous protests in France caused by President Macron’s changes to the minimum qualifying age for retirement pensions.

There was some material that I could not add because of time to the podcast. In particular, I think commentary by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Todd is of interest.

Emmanuel Todd is of particular interest because he is a demographer, and one key thing demographers do is to advise on pension reforms and how they relate to family and otehr social systems. It is well worth reading Todd, Lineages of Modernity. I provided a brief review of it here, and this review is also in my book, From the Burning Archive.

Part of the problem in France is the failure of the technocratic bureaucratic elite. Todd is scathing about them. Curiously, Vladimir Putin commented on the pension protests in France. Putin himself implemented changes to the pension some time ago, and these changes did more to weaken his support than any stunt by Alexei Navalny and his American and British allies. Putin commented that,

“But there is a big difference between what we did in Russia and how they have proceeded in France. Firstly, we retained the five-year difference in the pension age of women and men. In France there is no such distinction. Second, we set a long time period for the transition – 10 years. This significantly relieves the burden on citizens. And finally, most importantly, we preserved all the privileges of taking retirement early. But in France, as far as I know, they did not do this. They liquidated all such privileges. Citizens of France saw this as excessively tough and unjust, because various forms of labor require different approaches to the question of going on pension.” (Interview with Pavel Zarubin Rossiya 1, News of the Week, 25 March 2023)

The French political crisis shows, in part, the decline in skills of the art of governing that is contributing to the crisis of post-democracy in the West.

Also I had to release the podcast prior to the French Constitutional Court decision on the legality of the reforms. However, this decision has now been released, overnight Australian time. The Court upheld the legality of the decision. The French Government now has 15 days in which to enact the law. The Government’s intention is the changes to pensions will take effect from 1 September. Some minor elements of the reforms were struck down by the Court. A proposal to the Court by the left-wing opposition that a referendum be held on the law was also rejected by the Court.

So, we are back to resolution of political disputes by politics, not courts. That is, normality outside the USA. The protests will resume. Macron appears determined to press the claims of the people over the rowdy crowd. Le Monde quoted him saying,

“The riot does not prevail over the representatives of the people and the crowd has no legitimacy over the people who express themselves, as sovereigns, through their elected representatives. That must be remembered."

Unions and some political leaders have vowed to continue the fight. Other leaders have said the only way to change the policies is to change the leadership, but elections are a long way off. Some commentators have speculated whether the powers of Presidency, which the court has affirmed, expose a fundamental failure of the Fifth Republic. Could the pensions protests undo Macron and the Fifth Republic?

We will see over coming weeks and months. My intuition tells me the height of the storm has passed. Macron will serve to the end of his presidency. Opposition will fade. The American Wars will enervate the political leadership and demoralise the public. And the ‘contentious French’ (Charles Tilly’s patronising American term) will withdraw from the streets, and realise they too have lost their democracy. Je suis, Charlie.

4. Using history to live mindfully in the present.

I comment in the podcast on the social myths of the revolutionary crowd. They take different forms in different periods. In recent years, they have become strongly associated with colour revolutions. Many have pointed out the hypocritical standards in the media. The same journalists who tweeted liberation in Iran and Georgia were silent about abuses and demonstrations in Paris. Other critics of the narrative regime, the global reset and other tropes of controlled discourse, have grown excited by the protests. This is what we need more of, some have tweeted. Finally, the people stand up to the elites. But, then what?

Mass protests form powerful social myths, stories about history that both motivate and mislead people. People’s response to the protests can be driven by the social myths they attach to the revolutionary crowd.

There is an enormous literature on the revolutionary crowd and the agency of political violence of the mob. Rudé, Le Bon, Tilly and Schama are examples. Since 1989 the revolutionary crowd has been remythologised as the colour revolution. It is a big topic.

In brief, my view is that crowds, mass protests and demonstrations, especially when the fringes of authorities and rebels act with violence, rarely achieve constructuve political change. They usually disappoint. After the demonstration, the world goes home, and the elites continue to rule. There is an interesting discussion of the myths of the people and elite theory in Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion. Again, this is one of the ideas that I will return to in Life After Western Democracy.

5. Fragments from the Burning Archive

On the podcast I referred to Simon Schama’s Citizens and Hannah Arendt, On Revolution.

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (available here and here) reflects on these contrasting models of revolution and war. She explored the connection between war and revolution, their common part of violence,

“revolutions and wars are not even conceivable outside the domain of violence is enough to set them both apart from all other political phenomena. It would be difficult to deny that one of the reasons why wars have turned so easily into revolutions and why revolutions have shown this ominous inclination to unleash wars is that violence is a kind of common denominator for both.”

Arendt, On Revolution is also a notable reflection on the gulf between political elites in supposed democracies and the supposedly equal, but in fact suborned, demos. I will return later in the year to her reflections in my long essay/book, Life After Western Democracy.

Schama, Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution is an important text in my own intellectual history. After I left ANU, with my PhD near but not finished, and joined the public service, I could not bear to read history for a while. Schama, Citizens brought me back and for that I am eternally grateful. It also released me from any final vestiges of Romanticised radicalism.

In the podcast I quoted from text, near the end of Citizens, on this topic on the links between Romanticism and violence, in deed, words and thoughts. Schama wondered, why was the French Revolution was, from the beginning, “powered by brutality”? He noted the fascination with imagery, metaphors and stories of seismic violence; the idea of ‘le peuple’ as a volcano ready to explode for their leaders’ purposes. Ideas and violence forged a partnership in terror. Schama wrote (as I read on the podcast),

“These events were, to borrow from Burke, both sublime and terrible. And it was perhaps Romanticism, with its addiction to the Absolute and the Ideal; its fondness for the vertiginous and the macabre; its concept of political energy as, above all, electrical; its obsession with the heart; its preference for passion over reason, for virtue over peace, that supplied a crucial ingredient in the mentality of the revolutionary elite; its association of liberty with wildness. What began with Lafayette’s infatuation with the hyena of the Gévaudan surely ended in ceremonies of the pike-stuck heads.”1

Image: The wolf shot by François Antoine on 21 September 1765, displayed at the court of Louis XV. Gallica Digital Library

But Schama also noted the élite’s obsession with the patriotic death, and how revolutionary France, like that democratic empire of America, peered into stories of Rome to recognise itself, and celebrated the liebstod of freedom and revolution.

“Their France would be Rome reborn, but purified by the benison of the feeling heart. It thus followed, surely, that for such a Nation to be born, many would necessarily die. And both the birth and death would be simultaneously beautiful.”2

These ideas that entangle freedom, nation, revolt and death are still with us.

6. What surprised me most this week.

The relatively new US Ambassador to Russia, Ms Tracy, spoke this remarkable illusion (sourced from Twitter).

“I have visited different countries, talked with different leaders of states, but only next to Putin did I feel uncomfortable. It felt like I wasn't in charge here, but he was. Never experienced this before. Very unpleasant.” (emphasis added)

America does not do diplomacy. An indispensable nation, a higher ethnos, which sees further than others, has no need of diplomacy. American diplomats assume they are in charge in every corner of the world. Pride comes before a fall.

We also saw Senator Marco Rubio lambast President Macron because he dared to speak for Europe autonomously, without cribbed lines from American Psycho. One grunt Congressman even blurted out that the war with Taiwan was about control of semi-conductors. Sorry, he really meant ‘freedom and democracy’, those well known implanted chips.

The incompetence of the American leadership class, its bloated foreign policy ideaplex, surprised me most this week.

But, there was also one fact. The economic output of BRICS nations now exceeds the output of the G7 club of Atlanticist nations. The multipolar world is being born.

7. Works-in-progress and published content

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

on the podcast I published Episode 96. France’s People’s Revolt on Pensions. Tricoleur Revolution?
On the YouTube Channel I published videos - have a look and give them a like or comment:
- 8 Viewer Questions Answered on the History of America and USA role in the Multipolar World
- The End of the US Dollar Empire The Burning Archive Podcast 95
I filmed most of my online course on mindful history for busy people, and hope to have it up available for purchase within a month.
I edited transcripts of my podcasts on the Russia-Ukraine-NATO War, and am aiming to publish it by August, depending on how the war unfolds
I drafted part of a memoir essay for the end of 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat
On Twitter I largely promoted my work on the podcasts and youtube and earlier article published in Pearls and Irritations, The West’s Grand Delusions in Ukraine
I wrote a new piece on the American threat to world peace and submitted it to an online journal. I will publish an extended version here soon.
On other social media I asked questions during Salvatore Babones’ live stream, commented on this great discussion by Alistair Crooke of the need to enable a ‘retreat’ by the USA and NATO and yet avoid humiliation
I also engaged in delightful exchanges on poetry with Felicity Plunkett and Ferenc Hörcher
I also tried out SubStack’s new Notes platform.

Let me know if there are issues or topics you would like me to talk about on the podcast or the YouTube channel or on the Sub-Stack.

Burning Archive