Seven Glimpses of the Multipolar World

Babones. Jaishankar. Niemi and Clausewitz. Columbus and Magellan. Thiruvallar. Nuclear famine. Causes of War.

Each week the Burning Archive shares seven glimpses of the emerging multipolar world, so that readers can stay sane, keep calm and carry our cultures onto another time or even another place.

This week’s glimpses have been lit by the minds of India, and shadowed by Seymour Hersh’s revelations, also here on Substack, of the USA’s secret, reckless actions to take out the Nord Stream pipelines. 

1. Gratitude 

I am thankful to Salvatore Babones for giving my content some air time on Twitter. I reached out to him and he kindly responded, even acknowledging and helping my work as a poet. Oh yes, did I mention I published a book of poems last year, Gathering Flowers of the Mind? His kindness is especially welcome since I did not even know he was Executive Director of the Indian Century Roundtable.

2. What I am reading 

I have read Dr S Jaishankar, The Indian Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World. Dr S Jaishankar is the External Affairs Minister of India. He is in many ways the world’s leading diplomat. I was struck by the depth of insight, and the range and complexity of vision of this book that Dr Jaishankar published in the last two years.

For example he wrote, "We have been conditioned to think of the post-1945 world as the norm...[but] the natural state of the world is multipolarity." How appropriate as a glimpse of the multipolar world. This is also the theme of John Darwin’s great book, After Tamerlane (You can watch my summary video of that essential guide to the historical reality of ‘world orders’ here).

He also wrote of Indian foreign policy and strategy,

This is a time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neigbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expand traditional constituencies of support.

Yet how many Western leaders have read Dr Jaishankar’s book? The West would do well to listen more carefully to Dr Jaishankar, and stop the lectures from loud Americans and celebrity journalists on the 'liberal rules-based order'.

3. Governing the unruly multipolar world

Finnish independent political, economic and military analyst, Seppo Nieme, publishes an insightful blog on the state of the unruly multipolar world, and his assessment of the Russia-Ukraine-NATO War.

His updated analysis of Ukraine (and NATO) losses was published this week. His conclusion is that the war is approaching a culminating point. He also emphasises the importance of the RAND Report, Avoiding a Long War; U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict (January 2023). I agree with his analysis that there is clearly a split among the American military-political-security elite about the course of the war, and the consequences of America’s aggressive Eastward expansion of NATO, the most recent Northern Crusade. It is worth quoting Seppo Nieme at length

“If the reader can set aside emotion and consider the current situation unfolding in Ukraine, the evidence shows that Kiev’s army (AFU) is moving backwards on all frontlines. Without support from the United States and NATO, Ukraine does not have the manpower, munitions, tanks, artillery, air craft, financial resources and industrial capability to stop Russia. Even with more Western support flowing in, Ukraine will still lack the manpower to block the Russian advance.

Western analysts and MSM are downplaying the Russian offense in the Donbass along the Ukrainian defensive line that stretches from Bakhmut to Seversk in the north and to Ugledar in the south as some sort of sideshow with no strategic importance. That is nonsense. As said above, Russian winter offensive is underway on multiple fronts and Ukraine is paying a heavy toll.

Carl von Clausewitz in his book “On War” introduced the concept of “The Culminating Point.” In military strategy, this is the point at which an opposing military force is no longer able to perform its operations. The military situation in Ukraine is just closing to the culminating point. My realist assessment is: the irreversible culminating point will be reached by Russia in March, by the latest.”

I published last night to YouTube a video on on the causes of war as they are discussed in the Rand report, which relies on the ideas of Geoffrey Blainey, Causes of War. Geoffrey Blainey taught me history at the University of Melbourne. The whole world can still learn from him. We need to deflate the balloon of optimism about Ukraine winning the war or the West overthrowing Putin. Check out the video at my YouTube channel @theburningarchive - and maybe subscribe while you are there.

4. Using history to live mindfully in the present. 

I listened to a podcast hosted by Douglas Murray with perhaps my most treasured historian, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. It was the podcast, Uncancelled History (January 2023). Fernandez-Armesto was speaking about the ‘Age of Explorers’ including Columbus and Magellan, both of whom he has written about at length.

He told the story of how Columbus like all educated people of his time had his head filled with classical myths and legends that informed his understanding of the beings he would encounter across the ocean. Was he like Odysseus, and finding Cyclops and sirens and sea-monsters on these distant islands? Ye he looked at the beings before his eyes in the newly discovered America, and saw them as fellow humans. He may still have done some wicked things, but he still managed to overcome the prejudices and preconceptions of the assumed authorities of his day. Fernandez-Armesto makes the point that we all find it very hard to overcome such prejudices.

I would add that we have our own version of such dehumanising myths and legends in the Virtual Reality state today. Look at the deep prejudice and distorted hate expressed as a matter of course about Russians in the Western media and entertainment complex.

History can be a great antidote to such prejudice. But it can also be a great amplifier of narratives of grievance and dominance. But if you use history wisely, you can free your mind from the narrative, and live mindfully and think flexibly.

I have done a series of podcasts on Fernandez-Armesto, Civilizations that is available both as the audio podcast and on the YouTube channel.

5. Fragments from the Burning Archive

I discovered this week’s fragment from the Burning Archive of our multipolar world’s cultural heritage when reading the very first page of Dr S. Jaishankar, The Indian Way. It is from Thiruvallar, the great Tamil Poet known for a large text of ethical couplets, the Tirukkural.

‘Wisdom is to live in tune with the mode of the changing world.’

6. What surprised me most this week. 

There have been many surprises, including Seymour Hersh’s revelations about the attack on the Nordstream pipelines. The surprise in that case was the story of the story, not the substance of the story, whose villain I always suspected.

But perhaps the most confronting and difficult surprise came only a couple of hours ago. It relates to what happens in a nuclear winter, and how it is caused by the firestorms released by nuclear bombs, not the lasting radiation. This revelation came from the Steven Starr who publishes at https://nuclearfamine.org. The famine will kill most of us. This podcast changed my mind about changing my mind on nuclear power. It convinced me that we need regime change and disarmament, not in Russia, but in Washington DC.

7. Works-in-progress and published content

I hope you have enjoyed these glimpses.

Check out the video I have just released on the Causes of War on the YouTube Channel. Next week I will be posting videos on Dr Jaishankar and Indian foreign policy, and also some suggestions for history books that can help tone down the rhetoric of conflict between China and the United States. I am posting main videos on YouTube on Tuesday and Friday, with occasional shorts in between.

Coming out on The Burning Archive podcast on Monday will be an episode of how I wrote my poetry. I give some insights about the connections I make between poetry and history.

I also made good progress with a online course on history that I am developing, and with the editing of three forthcoming books. More soon on the podcast and here about all of them.

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 you some worthwhile insights.

The best way you can support me is to share these glimpses of the multipolar world, and 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 has passed 500 subscribers, 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 performing tweet of the week was this praise of Dr Jaishankar, quoting Thiruvallar. I attempted some banter and mockery of Michael McFaul, but will give that a rest, and focus in on positive visions of a better life after the American Empire.

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.

In Monday’s podcast I tell the story of the publication of this book, and read five poems from it.

You will find out a lot about me and my writing if you tune in, like and subscribe to that podcast.

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