Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 5 August 2023

Australian Abasement. African Decolonization. Oppenheimer. Bhagavad Gita. Heidegger. Rings of Saturn. Public Words.

Aug 05, 2023

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

The Big Story. Australian Abasement.
Governing the Multipolar World. African Decolonization 2.0?
Using History Mindfully. Oppenheimer and History.
Fragments of the Burning Archive. Bhagavad Gita and Translation.
What surprised me most. Heidegger and the Current Thing.
Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress. Rings of Saturn and the Pivot.
Reading and Closing Verse. Books of Jacob and Public Words.

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

Australia abased itself before its American masters.

Australia held a meeting with its American allies as part of the AusMin conference, in which the defence and foreign ministers of the USA and Australia get together. Three main stories emerged from this meeting.

The USA officials made clear that Assange would not be released.
USA Secretary of State Blinken said the threat of nuclear war was not greater than climate change, which is a remarkable statement given concerns of escalation in the conflict in Ukraine.
The Australian Ministers agreed to place US intelligence staff within Australian defence, intelligence and security administration to ensure no Australian public servants depart from the RightThink of the Washington Enforced Consensus.

The third decision is complex, and involves the establishment of a “Combined Intelligence Centre – Australia (CIC-A)” located within Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO). It is well discussed in this article, “Abandoned sovereignty: Australia’s intelligence function colonised by US,” by Mike Scrafton, a former chief of staff to an Australian Minister for Defence.

This decision is as humiliating for Australian citizens, as it is ingratiating for a small number of Austral-American security elites. As Scrafton explained:

The proposed CIC-A is more likely directed at being able to seamlessly command Australian forces and for influencing Australian policy development. And ensuring Australia remains a compliant ally and reliable home to US forces preparing for a war.

Australia has abased itself. There was a lot of shock and horror from the older progressive elites, who had clung to the belief that the modern Labor Party pursued a principled, independent foreign policy. How could Labor do that?, they cried.

But the big story is not this old cycle of illusion and frustration. It is the fact that the Australian Government has consented to be the forward base for the USA’s attempt to maintain its world leadership role and to contain China militarily in the Western Pacific.

We Australians have been drawn into a war, but we have no say in it. US officials will keep tabs on policy within our own public service and military. The Government has introduced laws that give the Prime Minister and select Ministers the power to declare war without Parliamentary approval or debate.

The historian James Curran recently wrote in the Australian Financial Review that it was remarkable that this engagement in an American war for hegemony is cuccurring with no Parliamentary debate. International Relations professor John Minns said in a speech protesting the Australian Government’s decision to collaborate in American aggression against China through AUKUS and nuclear submarines

“ The Australian government is eagerly jumping into this alliance – with eyes wide open – rather than being forced into something not of its own making. There has never been a war conducted by our great and powerful friends that Australia has not been eager to join.”

We, citizens, will need to prepare for the long, difficult war that our leaders have planned. Given the difficulties experienced by NATO, the European Union and the USA in implementing their war plans during the conflict in Ukraine, we will likely also need to prepare for the humility of defeat. We can only pray that our failing elites do not sleepwalk into a cataclysmic war. If we survive, I suppose there is one blessing. This country will no longer be ruled by the degraded elite of the Austral-Americans.

2. Governing the unruly multipolar world

This abasement is a big story in Australia, but has barely been noticed in the bigger world. The coup in Niger and related events of the Russia-Africa Summit are of more significance for governing this unruly multipolar world.

These events mark perhaps a reminder of the importance of Africa to world history and global affairs, and I will come back to this topic another week. Africa is not a part of the world whose history I know terribly well, so it will be an area for learning for me over the next few years as these countries play a more active part in the world. Still I am learning about this situation, and do think it marks a significant turn.

Events have also prompted me to search for good sources of assessment of the situation in Africa. These sources have highlighted the emerging and more assertive role of African nations.

For example, this YouTube channel, Connect Africa, provides a direct African viewpoint on events, and emphasises the strong level of popular support for the coup leaders in Niger. They are doing frequent updates on the situation. Check them out.

They also emphasise the extent to which many African counter-elites are fed up with the arrangements between Western nations and African leaders that enable resource expolitation of Africa that enriches the G7 and African leaders, but disappoints Africans’ hopes for genuine relief from neo-colonialism. Consistent with this theme, the new regime in Niger has cancelled exports of their gold and uranium to France. Similarly, Mali has cancelled French as an official language.

Simplicius the Thinker, a fellow Substack writer, has also written an excellent post, “The Hegemon Begins to Unravel,” which includes discussion of the African situation. He includes footage from the Africa-Russia Summit, including Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki explaining we are at the beginning of the global wars of independence.

Maybe. I have been impressed at the ideas and emotions expressed by African elites who are breaking away from the Washington Consensus that has trapped their continent in an unsatisfactory path out of the old empires for too long. We may certainly be seeing a phase of growing independence of African nations, with multilateral support from Russia, China and even India. It may be African Decolonisation 2.0.

That will not occur without international and internal conflict. Clearly the coup in Niger, and other African countries in recent years, represent conflicts between elite and counter-elites in these countries. Elite fragmentation has long been a characteristic of Africa. But it seems Africa has choices now for other investment partners, and the US is experiencing declining influence there.

During the week I released my paid subscriber post only series on the World Crisis that focussed on social fragmentation and elite competition. It affects many countries in the world it seems, not just the West. Upgrade your subscription if you would like to read the whole series. I am posting a new 3000-5000 word essay each week and they are forming the first draft of a book. You can be one of the advanced readers as I think through these issues.

3. Using history to live mindfully in the present.

I made a video during the week on the film Oppenheimer, and how it presents Oppenheimer’s famous remark about becoming the “Destroyer of Worlds,” a reference to the Bhagavad Gita. I held back some video I had prepared on other major history questions raised by this film including:

What's the historical role of science in producing weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction?
What is the role of intellectuals in making war and other destructive acts?
How well has USA acted on its moral responsibility as the only state to have used nuclear weapons to destroy cities?
Was USA’s use of those nuclear weapons justified as a way to end World War Two?

There is a great article by distinguished historian, Adam Tooze, here on Substack on the “urbicide” or fire bombings of Tokyo and German cities from 1943. He described the fire bombing of Tokyo and German cities as representative of “liberal militarism” and on a continuous scale with the horrors of the 1945 nuclear attacks by the USA. It is well worth reading here on Substack.

The discussion of Oppenheimer’s presentation of historical issues is, in a way, an example of mindful history. My course on mindful history is now available, and I am offering it currently, especially to Substack subscribers, at a first mover price of $49 (one-quarter of the planned full price). I would love your feedback on the course. If you are interested, please let me know with a comment.

4. Fragments of the Burning Archive.

On the podcast this week I remastered my episode on elite competition. But my Fragment of the Burning Archive this week relates to my video on Oppenheimer.

In later life, Oppenheimer did a television interview in which he reflected on his reaction to his nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This clip from the interview has had 26 million views on YouTube. He quoted a line by Krishna/Vishnu/Shiva from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.” It is this representation of the Gita that Christopher Nolan placed in the middle of a steamy sex scene in Oppenheimer, and so provoked a major controversy in India. As one of my Indian YouTube viewers commented “if the maestro [Nolan] had depicted that [Oppenheimer’s original interview] in the movie, it would have been so marvellous. But we felt it to be just bad in taste. Although, a marvellous movie.”

Reportedly, Oppenheimer read Sanskrit. But one small archival discovery I made in making the video was that Oppenheimer may have misquoted or used a poor translation of the line from the Gita. Here are the two translations I had to hand.

The Penguin Classics Bhagavad Gita 1962 translation of this verse was:

I am all-powerful Time which destroys all things, and I have come here to slay these men. Even if thou dost not fight, all the warriors facing thee shall die.

The Penguin Classics 2009 Mahabharata translation (which contains the Gita) was

I am time, the destroyer of worlds, fully developed, and I have set out to bring the worlds to their end. Even without your presence in battle, all these warriors arrayed in opposing ranks will cease to be.

Now since all people must die in time, there is always a sense in which time can be death. But with both of these translations, it appears the mythologised Oppenheimer might have misread his Hindu scriptures. Almost certainly, Christopher Nolan has misrepresented them in his celebrated film.

5. What surprised me most this week.

I was surprised this week by the accidental discovery of an insight from the famously difficult-to-read German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. It came courtesy of another online thought entrepreneur, Michael Millerman. He wrote a great tweet and made a great video on Heidegger’s thoughts on “idle talk”. This section comes from the deeply ponderous Being and Time that I may yet read, due to Millerman’s encouragement.

Millerman summarised this section as “Heidegger’s take on the Current Thing.” He updated Heidegger’s dense philosophical prose in this way:

Everyone yaps about everything and prefers to be allowed to guess at what’s happening more than to know for sure and this to be deprived of the right to speculate.” (Millerman, ‘Heidegger on Public Discourse’)

By contrast, here is a sentence by Heidegger from Being and Time, which expresses the same idea, (I think):

“In the language which is spoken when one expresses oneself, there lies an ‘average intelligibility’ and in accordance with this intelligibility the discourse which is communicated can be understood to a considerable extent, even if the hearer does not bring himself into such a kind of Being towards what the discourse is about as to have a primordial understanding of it.” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 212)

It is actually quite a profound observation on public discourse, and Millerman is to be thanked for resurrecting it from Heidegger’s awful prose. It encourages us to adopt the right mindset when we think about the many surprising events of the multipolar world. I try to convey a similar sentiment about thinking about the stories we tell each other about the past and its links to the present in my online course, Mindful History.

6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress

I am grateful to WG ‘Max’ Sebald. He is one of those writers who opened my mind to a whole new genre of writing, and an attempt to pursue something better than idle talk in difficult conditions. His The Rings of Saturn is a masterpiece, and influenced my Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I have also been grateful for reflections at the start of this book, where Sebald reported his exhaustion at the end of a long period of work.

“In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.” (Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, p. 3)

Releasing Thirteen Ways is one such change for me, and I can feel myself replenishing in these weeks while making a few pivots in my new life of witer and content creation. I am valuable for this lesson: to take some time before launching straight into the next project, or the next topic of idle talk.

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

on the podcast I published Episode 112 Social differences, elite competition and political breakdown.
On the YouTube Channel I published my video overview of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, my interview with Hrvoje Moriç on the book, and my video on Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad Gita, and got back on the train with uploading my podcast, Four Social Changes Unsettling the Modern World. Four videos!
On Twitter, I did not post much at all, but did share this important piece on NATO, USA and Ukraine by Andrew Bacevich from the Quincy Institute
On SubStack I published World Crisis: Social Fragmentation, Part Two, Is Peter Turchin right about social collapse? and Glimpses
I reviewed my ‘content strategy’; more anon.
I fully loaded my Learn Worlds site with my online course, Mindful History. Try it!
I updated my author website in a plainer style to feature all my work, rather than its origins as a blog. Check it out.
I even got my Amazon Author page sorted out here.

Busy week!

Question for Readers

Here’s a question for you, dear reader. What do you think of the form of this newsletter? It began in the spirit of ‘sharing my work’. Is it too long? Are there topics you want to read more or less about? Is it working for you? Should I focus it more? Let me know and I will use your feedback in my writing plans.

7. What I am Reading and Closing Verse

I read more of Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob.

I close the newsletter with a stanza from a poem I have enjoyed during the week. On the theme of idle talk, I thought I would share the first stanza of one of my poems, “Public Words”.

We blind ourselves in a swaddle of blind mouths
Our public men and women
Amidst their giggles and stunts
Stammer their faith in having no words to speak
Relentlessly talking crap

You can read the whole poem by buying Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020. Both ebook and paperback are less than $20 at the moment - that’s a bargain. If you do, leave me a kind review on Amazon or your preferred book retailer.

Until next week, take care, and stay sane.

Burning Archive