Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 17 June 2023

Undersea Cables. India, Great Power. Memoir of a Bureaucrat. Ideas of Eurasia. USA to nuke...? Russians with Attitude. Elena Shvarts.

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

1. The Big Story. Vulnerable undersea communications cables.

2. Governing the Multipolar World. India as one of five Great States

3. Using History Mindfully. Memoir and the Bureaucrat.

4. Fragments of the Burning Archive. Eurasia, Mackinder and Dugin.

5. What surprised me most. USA plans to use nuclear weapons in Iraq 1991.

6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress. Russians with Attitude and Channel Review.

7. Reading and Closing Verse. Pushkin and Elena Shvarts.

Do check out my latest published article, Australia, Little Country Lost. I also discussed these issues on my podcast and YouTube channel. If you enjoy my content have you considered upgrading to a paid subscription?

You can also buy my books.

• 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 

The big story of the week was the catastrophe of the Ukrainian offensive against Russian defensive lines in Southern Ukraine/Russia, together with the remarks of the Deputy President of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev. He tweeted, “Based on the proof of western countries’ complicity in blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, we have none, not even moral limitations left to refrain from destroying our enemies’ undersea communications cables.”

https://twitter.com/MedvedevRussiaE/status/1668908185229426688

In case you are wondering, the world’s undersea cables are arranged like this.

Eastern Australia is cut off this map, but surely is vulnerable. I would guess a target might be that island Britain, that serves as the main American intelligence collection agency on Russia, and is determined to restore its special status in a new Atlantic Union with the USA. The world is on a dangerous course.

2. Governing the unruly multipolar world

Over the last week there have been debates in the USA about drawing India closer into the nexus of American alliances, perhaps in connection with PM Modi’s visit to the USA. There was even the odd idea to turn the Indo-Pacific into a Euro-Atlantic lake, by including India in an extended NATO alliance. A US congressional committee proposed "including India in NATO Plus" to "deter" China. On June 9, the Indian External Affairs Minister, Dr S. Jaishankar rejected this proposal. He said:

"A lot of Americans still have that NATO treaty construct in their heads... that is not a template that applies to India."

America needs to adapt to the reconfigured world of great states and middle powers in this crisis of the multipolar world. Earlier this week, I released for paid subscribers to this substack my article, World Crisis. Empires and Nations. How the Polycrisis Reveals a Reordering of the States of the World. In the article, I discuss how India is now one of five Great States of the World, and how this creates a new dynamic in international relations.

Great States compete and cooperate with other great states for control or influence over each other’s power. In this respect identifying five Great States advances discussion beyond hegemony, or arguments about a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar system. America cooperates and competes with the European Union for sway over Russia and China. It seeks to bring India on board in that competition. But Europe also cooperates with China to balance out this influence and tries to restore strategic autonomy. Russia and China have a deep strategic partnership but are not allies. America and the European Union are allies, but also independent actors. India has emerged during the Ukraine conflict almost as a key swing Great State, in part because of its diplomatic and cultural influence with middle powers.

Jeff Rich, World Crisis. Empires and Nations. How the Polycrisis Reveals a Reordering of the States of the World.

You can read the full article by becoming a paid subscriber.

3. Using history to live mindfully in the present. 

This week, I finished editing 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writings on Governing, and realised that this collection of essays is also a kind of memoir. It is a way for me to use my own history to live mindfully in the present. Bringing it to publication has made me realise how long I have reflected on the issues of political disorder. It also allows me to let go of many things that, as they say, no longer serve me.

I begin the book with this description of my career as a bureaucrat

When I look back now on my life as a bureaucrat, I see a man lost in a maze. The man imagined himself into this maze. His imagination threw him into this maze. The maze was made from images and mirrors of power, and at the centre of the maze, so the story was told, was the minotaur of power itself.

This lost man, who called himself alternately writer and bureaucrat, both with blends of pride and shame, wandered lost in this maze for thirty-three years. The maze of power was not a diversion from life. It was the necessary adventure of my life. Few who called themselves both writer and bureaucrat have left the maze.

Jeff Rich, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat

13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat will offer something new to the world I hope - the honest reflections of a literary bureaucrat and historian who has witnessed the collapse of Western liberal democracy, from behind the stage curtain. It will be available as a paperback and ebook in July 2023 (all going to plan, fingers crossed).

There is a meditation that looks for the universe in a grain of sand. My upcoming book looks into my very, very minor career as a failed bureaucrat, and finds the universe of today’s political disorder. I include as an epigram to the book this quotation from Shakespeare.

Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance,

Of thee thyself and all thy complices,

Edward will always bear himself as king:

Though Fortune's malice overthrow my state,

My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

(Shakespeare, King Henry IV, IV 3)

My book is a story of survival. My mind did, finally, exceed the compass of the wheel of power. I will let you know when the book is out.

4. Fragments from the Burning Archive

On the podcast this week I spoke about Eurasia including briefly Aleksander Dugin’s apocalyptic vision of the confrontation between the West and Russia. Dugin sees it as Armageddon, a final conflict between the “civilization of the land and the civilization of the sea”. I disagree with this view, and will explain why in podcast 106 on Eurasia coming out on Friday June 24. Ironically, Dugin’s work is a reworking of Halford Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History. This odd 1904 essay founded “geopolitics” in some ways. I will discuss it more in next week’s podcast.

I have a couple of essays in my book, From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021, on Anglo-American ideas of the grand strategies of geopolitics in my collection of essays on culture, history and literature.

During the podcast I also refer to the recently released, Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (March 2023), including its specific references to the Eurasian Continent and the World Ocean. I see no trace of Dugin’s grandiose, black mirror of Mackinder in this measured foreign policy statement.

5. What surprised me most this week. 

The Duran hosted Scott Ritter for an amazing 3-hour discussion of the war in Ukraine. At about the two-hour mark, Ritter comments on the risk of nuclear exchanges if this war escalates. In particular, he referred to American commentators and officials who put the nuclear option on the table. I knew that many reckless American hawks seem to believe they will survive or even win a limited nuclear war. What surprised me, however, was Ritter’s reference to the actual American contingency plan to drop nuclear weapons on Iraq during the first Gulf War. Do check out this video. It is quite remarkable.

This kind of thinking is also why I wrote in my article, The Derangement of the American Mind, that:

“America is out of control, and is the main threat to the world’s peace, security and civilizations…. But the world now needs to stand up to the real bully. The world should no longer appease the real threat to world peace. The world should no longer be afraid of Americans. The world must defeat America.”

Please read my article and watch the Scott Ritter interview on the Duran.

6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress

I am grateful to the Russians with Attitude podcast. They provide expert, humane coverage of Russian history, culture, life and perspectives on the Ukraine war. They are also beginning a series of podcasts on Russian Tsars, beginning with the enigmatic Ivan IV. You might want to listen and compare with my own treatment of Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Groznii, on my podcast, episodes 75. Ivan the Terrible - Part 1 and 76. Ivan the Terrible - Part 2.

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

• on the podcast I published Episode 105 Why is Eurasia becoming more important in geopolitics?

• On the YouTube Channel I did the livestream on the Indo-Pacific. This is my last live stream for a short time while I rejig my content plans.

• I completed editing 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, and have begun the final stages of design and publication.

• I completed shooting my Mindful History online course, and expect to release it through the Learn Worlds platform in July.

• On Twitter, I highlighted a fine discussion with Jeffrey Sachs on paths to peace, reminded people, after the Trump arraignment, of my remarks on political comity in the USA, and quoted Voltaire on the need to tend your garden when the world falls apart.

Let me know if there is something you would like me to discuss on any of my content. Don’t forget my 100th podcast reader/listener “competition” or participation exercise. Until 30 June 2023 you can respond to two optional questions:

1. What is your favourite episode of the Burning Archive podcast, and why?

2. What is a ‘fragment of the Burning Archive’ (a cultural or historical artefact meaningful to you and the times) that you would like featured on the podcast?

I have also put up a poll on favourite episodes with some favoured options on Spotify. It is easy to vote over the next month.

You can submit your ideas in response to the Substack chat thread or can leave a comment right here

Next week, I will be writing my next article in the series on the World Crisis. It will discuss political disorder. It will draw on some reflections in my upcoming book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. On Tuesday I will do a short world history focussed video on Youtube. On Friday on the podcast I will talk about Russian and Western ideas of Eurasia in world history and geopolitics.

7. What I am Reading and Closing Verse

I read Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, which was wonderful, and watched a few long geopolitical discussions of the situation in Ukraine. I did some more video-assisted meditations, and found myself more able to switch off the poorly performed spectacle of dreadful politics.

I am closing my newsletter with a stanza from a poem I have enjoyed during the week. Daily reading of poetry is a simple way we can all bring a little more beauty, calm and depth to our world.

Please enjoy these final stanzas of Elena Shvarts (1948-2010), “Sale of a Historian’s Library”, Paradise: Selected Poems (1993, trans. Molnar and Kelly)

What he loved still more was to find in the archives

a name that time had forgotten for good;

how strange it was to sit in the lamp-light

and look on the blind, gummy eyes of the dead,

but he knew they were grateful. There wasn’t much chance

that he himself would survive the past;

a tide of souls eddies where we come in

and we draw our names from a hat like straws.

In Russian,

Но больше он любил в архивах находить,

Кого напрочь забыто имя, -

При севете ярком странно так скрестить

Свои глаза с смеженными, слепыми.

Но благодарными. А сам он знал,

Что уж его наверно не вспомянут.

У входа, впрочем, душ един клубится вал,

А имена - как жребии мы тянем.

I hope you enjoy this different ending to the newsletter. Please share my work with your network, and see you next Saturday for more glimpses of the multipolar, many-cultured world.