Multipolar Forum: Section «The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?»

The Section: "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?", which took place on 26 February.

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Multipolar Forum: Section «The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?»
Multipolar Forum: Section «The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?»
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  1. Speech by Lorenzo Maria Pacini on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    The Multipolar Mediterranean: The challenge of a better future and a Pax Mediterranea

    The old heart of the world

    In the wide-ranging and detailed international reflection on geopolitics, there is a tendency to reflect on the major intercontinental systems, concentrating mostly on the two macropowers that the 20th century has consecrated, namely the United States of America and the Russian Federation, taking them as references in an almost univocal manner; when new major powers present themselves, as has been the case since the beginning of our century, there is an attempt to make a comparison with the two majority powers and study the relations and ties that exist with them. This manifests, in my opinion, a kind of formal flaw that is entirely legitimate but at the same time necessary for revision.

    Geopolitics, in fact, has since its foundation given a privileged space to geography, which is one of its constituent sciences, putting history in second place, a positioning more related to functionality than disciplinary importance. Without therefore discriminating clumsily, it has created a sort of bubble of the eternal present (or eternal future) in which many geopolitical analyses take place, omitting the past and the historiographical construction of geopolitical events, the understanding of which is indispensable not only to understand the present, but above all to suggest a direction for the future.

    Let us think of the Mediterranean. It is the heart of the so-called 'Old World', an acronym that comes from the ideology of American Occidentalism, which has permeated Europe for decades, for which severing the links that have bound European peoples with their geographical and geological context was a primary duty. The physiognomy of Europe underwent a major reshaping in the space of a century, decentralising from the Mediterranean, which had been the cradle of civilisation models and great empires, to move between London and Brussels, much further north than the historicity of the facts. A variation not only geographical, but existential and, therefore, noologically speaking, capable of irreversibly changing the manifestation of the spirit of the peoples inhabiting the continent.

    If Halford Mackinder had been born two or three centuries earlier, he would probably have uttered different words about the Heartland, which we could borrow as follows: 'He who controls the Mediterranean, controls the world'. The Mediterranean, then, is not the 'heartland of the Old World' but the 'old heartland of the world', because until the misalignment of power structures towards the Atlantic, the Mediterranean was the nerve centre and the object of lust and conquest. Taking a quick look at European history, this seems to have been the leitmotif for centuries, from the ancient Greeks until at least the Great War. Controlling the Mediterranean, defined as a closed sea and, for that reason, extremely prolific, rich and strategically advantageous, meant having control over the entire world at the time. Because for all intents and purposes, the Mediterranean is not simply the southern part of the continent of Europe, with the Italian geographical extension and its islands; it is not even just a bit of water enclosed between wonderful fertile coastlines; it is, first and foremost, dominion.

    The Mediterranean has always been a great open space where many different entities have converged, whose destinies have intertwined since the remotest epochs, weaving flows with dense relational plots that have generated a wealth of identities, cultures, arts and techniques that still today make any other people pale in comparison. A reconsideration of its importance, without for that reason wanting to subvert the 'classical' canons of geopolitics as a science, can however give a boost to reflections and analyses with a different character from the usual western-centrism of contemporary political science.

    The Sea is Multipolar

    The sea has a very powerful multipolar afflatus. The Mediterranean is, as already mentioned, multipolar by its very constitution, because it has continuously experienced the control and encounter-clash of a myriad of territorial cells, ethnic groups, languages, religions, economies distributed around the edges of the maritime universe. It is the mare nostrum that we have written in our blood, it is the place of competition between regional and global powers. The sea laps and allows us to reach several poles of the geopolitical chessboard, constituting the favourite space for large-scale movements; it also covers most of the entire globe, and stores within it the main resources that drive the international economy.

    Let us look at history again: the Roman Empire is generically considered a tellurocratic power. Rome, however, expanded not only thanks to the legions that travelled across the vast central European highlands, reaching as far as the borders of the great mountains in the east, but also and from the very beginning towards the mainland by crossing the great sea. The multiethnic and multicultural richness of the conquests of what became the Empire took place precisely because of the sea. A coincidence of strategic and doctrinal domains that is probably unique on the entire planet. Such greatness was also economic precisely because of the sea, which made it possible to trade with the East and with the South from the very beginning, tracing a dense network of trade routes on water and on land, so well constructed that they still function well today.

    In the Mediterranean basin, Italy[1] is (or, rather, should be) by its very nature the holder of strategic leadership, a prominence that has been decisively thwarted over the last eighty years. This natural projection has been at the heart of our foreign policy since before Italy was a unitary state. The European Union and NATO[2] are well aware of this strategic location, so much so that both soft power policies and the positioning of international alliances[3][4][5] are focused on the Mediterranean peoples.

    The very concept of the Enlarged Mediterranean, considering the sea as a complex multidimensional domain capable of incorporating continental Europe, the Middle East, and the northern and sub-Saharan belts of the African continent, as well as connecting with the Far East and, of course, opening westwards towards the Ocean, is an ideal and strategic continuation of the mare nostrum of Roman memory[6].

    Carthage misaligned, Rome occupied and History reversed

    One can understand why the strategic interests of the Anglo-American pole, constituting the thalassocracy par excellence, were to subjugate the Mediterranean with its peoples. A certain level of control, both direct and indirect, would have guaranteed the exploitation of that sea in a manner functional to hegemonic expansionism, but also the possibility of keeping the growth and recovery of European nation-states limited and within manageable limits following the First and Second World Wars. Subjugating the governments bordering the Mediterranean guarantees control over the Mediterranean, and this has been done militarily, financially and politically over a little over a century of international relations, armed conflicts and economic crises, but always with a precise and coherent plot.

    Carthage, Rome's arch-enemy, is now misaligned and decentralised, no longer geographically where it used to be, but is located between London and Washington, and from there it has successfully operated its plan to re-appropriate the sea it once ruled. The Pillars of Hercules have been overcome, they are no longer a fearsome natural and metaphysical boundary of the Mediterranean peoples' livelihood. History is, in a sense, reversed because Rome no longer has power and is subservient to the heirs of Carthage, to the point of suggesting the non-existence of a Mediterranean civilisation, which is possible by admitting the continuation of a non-multipolar, but unipolar world, with Atlantic hegemony. Rome is, in a sense, occupied by the emissaries of Carthage.

    The Mediterranean powers[7] have within themselves an enormous potential for revenge against the Anglo-American pole; a potential that, however, is at least hypothetically unable to cope on its own with the proportions of a world thalassocratic conflict, where by conjunction of elements the Anglo-American pole is in any case larger, stronger and more organised. Strategically, the eventuality of a conflict to regain independence would mean an effort so great as to risk annihilation; similarly, economically, this would entail a sufficiently strong autonomy to disengage the Mediterranean from all international economic and political partnerships and dependencies.

    However, the dislocation of Carthage is not the dislocation of the Mediterranean and its peoples, which means that there is still a viable potential for reconquest.

    A Mediterranean Partnership

    At the end of this discussion, hoping for the reaffirmation in a multipolar key of the Mediterranean with its peoples, it is interesting to launch a projection on a possible Mediterranean partnership, composed of the countries that are bathed by it and that have sufficient strategic, geopolitical and geo-economic interest in reaffirming the macro-regional autonomy and the rebalancing between the dominion of Land and Sea, the fulcrum of Europe's historical greatness.

    Such a partnership is factually already possible and to some extent NATO's administrative and strategic decentralisation, some might argue, already represents such an alliance. In truth, it is precisely with a view to decoupling from Atlantic dependence, and only on this route, that an integral Mediterranean autonomy will be possible. Again from a multipolar perspective, the Mediterranean partnership would allow the reconstitution of old treaties and alliances that would allow the states of the basin to consolidate as a nerve centre between Europe, Eurasia, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, with the possibility of consolidating a strategic bloc so strong that it would leave the American continent in the background compared to the hyper-region 'to the east'.

    Such an international agreement would reopen the door to an enormous strengthening of alliances in a European key - and not necessarily according to the model of the European Union -, both economically and strategically, strengthening the continental bloc and making it a non-abdicable reference point for the routes and borders of the 'old world', as, moreover, it has been over the centuries of the presence of the European empires. It is difficult today to think of a Mediterranean-centric Europe, and not an Atlantic-centric one, because once domestic and international independence was lost, the bonds established caused such a strong subjugation that the very existence of political institutions depended on it. It is difficult, still, to think of European countries, primarily Italy, as economic powers that can dictate the course of the markets, and not be subjected to them.

    It is precisely this prospect of prosperity (pun intended) that the United States does not want, but which Europeans, the Mediterraneans, are called upon to regain.

    Now, for the realisation of any partnership or alliance, certain objective conditions are necessary, the most important of which is peace. Pax, in Latin, is not the simple absence of war, but rather the adoption of a modus vivendi, imposed by a competing power or established by agreement between the parties. A Pax Mediterranea would be a peace of the Mediterranean peoples, of the European peoples, a harmonisation of the civilisation models traditionally found in that geographical macro-area; a peace between the North of Africa, between the Crescent of the Middle East, between Southern Europe, between the peoples of the Balkans; a peace that opens up to the Atlantic Ocean but does not allow itself to be influenced by its power, because the Pillars of Hercules remain firmly in defence of the Mediterranean; a peace that is geo-economically convenient, insofar as it attracts investment and guarantees flows; a peace, finally, capable of stabilising the plane of international relations on a genuinely multipolar shared identity.

    Notes: 

    [1] It would be necessary to clarify, but this is not the place, whether Italy is a power 'more' of Sea or Land, where in the course of history, even simply that of the unitary state, it has varied its strategic predominance several times.

    [2] The Mediterranean constitutes the 'southern flank' of the Atlantic Alliance, a definition that already renders the idea of geopolitical subjugation. Partner countries perform a dual function: cooperative, i.e. of interaction and military diplomacy towards partner countries in the region, also within the framework of multilateral initiatives; operational, of presence and deterrence.

    [3] The experience of Greece's bankruptcy, a tragic episode in contemporary history, is a possible example of what happens to countries that do not align themselves with Brussels' and Washington's decision to remain subservient to an overseas power.

    [4] Italy, being at the centre of the Mediterranean, also receives almost all migratory flows, fuelled by a series of concauses, a situation that influences relations between Allies and European Member States.

    [5] One should not omit the context of hybrid wars within which the grey zone makes the blurring between Defence and Security and between domestic and international conflicts increasingly blurred.

    [6] As a whole, the Wider Mediterranean represents an area characterised by instability, uncertainty and an articulated dynamism stemming from the conflict in Libya, the border tensions between Morocco and Algeria, the Tunisian political crisis, and the unresolved question of the territorial sovereignty of Western Sahara. Added to this is the highly degraded security picture of the Sahel, pervaded by the distributed presence of DAESH, the insecurity of the Gulf of Guinea, defined by the IMB (International Maritime Bureau) as a world piracy hot-spot, and the Horn of Africa. The Yemeni instability, its repercussions on Bab El Mandeb and the crisis in Ethiopia linked to the Tigray region on the border with Eritrea remain. Without forgetting, in the areas outside the 'triangle', the continuing fragility of the Balkan area and Lebanon, the Syrian crisis, the energy and territorial competitions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the recrudescence of the Ukrainian crisis and that on the Turkish-Syrian border, up to the Iraqi instability and the rise of tension in the Persian Gulf area, with repeated attacks on merchant ships and, more recently, on coastal countries.

    [7] Assuming one can speak of powers.

  2. Speech by Prof. Dr. Erdem İlker Mutlu on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    A Multipolar World for International Peace and Neutrality

    Today I would like to explain my view on the relationship between sovereignty, peace, neutrality and multipolarity. Each concept has a wide range of definition. Therefore, I am going to proceed with their usual classical meanings and Weberian approach to state theory.

    Focusing on the relationship of sovereignty with state powers through the perspective of Weberian approach to state theory, it is no surprise to find the equity that sovereignty brings a state the monopoly of violence attached with legality and legitimacy. The state, therefore, becomes the sole authority within its physical sovereign area. This authority is not questionable. If the state violence goes beyond its jurisdictional area physically and mentally, the matter becomes a question of international law.

    For this reason, the state is now a subject that creates law and [dis]order on international plane. The state auto-limits its jurisdiction in the international arena by declaring its own practice and its belief in what the law is. Under the condition of non-existence of other sovereign against it, it will not see any harm in expanding its area. For instance, before 1899 Peace Conference of Hague, a powerful state could hardly favor a status of peace with a weaker counterpart. Therefore, the question appears to be the availability of a proper defense against a powerful state challenging physical borders.

    However, in some cases, with the invention of colonialism, the game has changed. A group of states, specifically colonial powers and their allies, have established a structure to create a new hegemony on some other parts or the entire world. This structure has intimidated or destroyed all opponents without hesitation.

    Therefore, for a state without a defending power or powerful allies, the conclusion of a colonial attack may end up with fatal results. For centuries, the merciless colonialism has destroyed many civilizations, including those existed on the lands of major powers of today.

    Today, one can hardly deny the still existence of the historical roots and similarities between the acts of Western Allies and colonial masters of pre-19th century. When two or more former colonial powers come together, the behavior of this alliance turns into creating a world of ally-centrism and unipolarity. Because, when sovereignty and power are on one side, there is nothing to prevent it from developing by creating its own legality and legitimacy. Moreover, if the power held by hegemony is brutal, the socio-political ends will get closer to walls of a world of globalist totalitarianism. Therefore, in today’s world, unipolarity is not a danger itself, however it may become the Dr. Frankenstein creating a Global Leviathan.

    Multipolarity, contrary to all this picture, creates a world of counterforces that will thwart each other’s limitless expansion efforts. Therefore, in a world of multipolarity, we can talk about an existing practical international law, where sovereigns comply with their obligations to each other. These obligations also include, primarily, respect to status of peace and keep away from conflict. Otherwise, the post-1945 structural design of the world through a United Nations representing a multipolar world remains fictive. None of the bodies can avoid infant war victims.

    This Global Leviathan, using proxy combatants, causing mass civilian causality in the conflict, is not a recent fact. My country, Türkiye, since 1980s, has lost thousands of citizens’ lives under terrorist attacks backed by this imperial -hegemonic structure. Another proxy in Donbass region since 2014 targets civilians and destroyed thousands’ lives.  Therefore, less than a decade later, finding civilians in Gaza suffering from heavy bombings with the existence of Global Leviathan is no surprise and all these similar attacks leave no room for doubt on the necessity for a multipolar world. In order to save the peoples of Minor Asia, Middle East, Caucasus, Donbass and many other places of the planet, the victims of war need allies who have proportionate powers with aggressors. Otherwise, the aggressor allies, which have no mercy, put forth their own narration of law and legitimacy in international order.

    Multipolarity is also a prerequisite for neutrality of third states. The third states of a conflict always feel more comfortable to stay neutral without pressure of a major power. In today’s conditions, there is no doubt that the Western allies expanding their hegemony over the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Eastern Asia put pressure on third states, which prefer to stay neutral against conflicts. These allies, under the conditions of multipolarity, cannot create a sphere of hegemony to oppress the third states which are willing to stay neutral. Multipolarity welcomes neutrality of states which do not want to get involved in the conflicts on behalf of expanding hegemonic structures. Therefore, in other words, multipolarity also preserves other parts of world to become expanded lands of ongoing conflicts.

    Source

  3. Speech by Conrad Franz on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Orthodoxy in America

  4. Speech by Blas Piñar Gutierrez on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Gibraltar, only colony in Europe, uncceptable situation.

  5. Speech by James-Kisito NGUEMA on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    The west after Egemony. It is to save the europeen civilization

  6. Speech by Nuño Rodríguez on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    History and Europe theories of social rights

  7. Speech by Valentin Katasonov on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Valentin Katasonov is a Russian scientist-economist, Doctor of Economics.

  8. Speech by Eliseo Bertolasi on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Eliseo Bertolasi, PhD in Anthropology, journalist, public figure, has been heading the representative office of the International Russophile Movement in Italy.

  9. Speech by Patrick Henningsen on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Anglo-Americans Subdue Europe, Again

  10. Speech by Josue Cardenas Gomez on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Journalistic censorship in the unipolar world

  11. Speech by Dr Musawenkosi Mdluli on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Is it possible to Western Civilization change of Western Democracy

  12. Speech by Jan Carnogursky on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic within Czechoslovakia in 1991-1992

  13. Speech by Prof. Dr. Ali Murat Özdemir on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Today, we see an increase in anti-imperialism in the world. The anti-imperialist struggle of the Russian Federation, the non-imperialist development of China and the decline in the capacity of neoliberalism as a mode of regulation to postpone the contradictions of the collective imperialist bloc are among the causes of the rising anti-imperialist wave. However, despite the growing anti-imperialism, we do not observe an increase in the areas of discussion that can transform the anti-imperialism of the peoples of the world into concrete policy proposals. This short speech proposes discussion topics that can transform the recent anti-imperialist current into concrete policy proposals.

    The first of these is what we can call debt imperialism. Today, despite increasing global indebtedness (leaving aside the failed formation in Latin America in the 1970s), there is no global organization of debtors. However, in a world where the dollar is not indexed to gold, it can be said that lenders lend without producing value yet on the other hand borrowers have to repay their debts by producing value. What I mean is this: If lenders were to use the money they lend to borrowers in domestic markets instead of transferring it to them, what they would face would be high inflation. When we add to 1971, the year the gold standard was abolished, the process of financialization – as it emerged after the 1990s – and add the recently invented task of “defending interests outside the national sphere” assigned to central banks and other government institutions, the situation we face becomes dire. At this point, there is not a contractual economic relationship between equals, but a system of blatant abuse and exploitation. Therefore, since creditors have organizations while debtors do not, the issue of “establishing a worldwide organization of debtor states” should be discussed. The discussion could also include the return to the “Gold Standard” and the prohibition of “mechanisms that grant a particular state the right of seigniorage at the international level”.

    Secondly, one could investigate how intellectual property rights exacerbate development problems in developing countries. In this context, it should not be forgotten that the central capitalist world had developed by plundering what belongs to the rest of the world for free, and therefore the issue of intellectual property rights should be rethought in a more egalitarian manner in this context.

    Thirdly, new proposals on the existing international migration and asylum regulations and practices can be brought forward. It should not be forgotten that the promise (the utopia) that liberalism, and thus the current wave of imperialist globalization, makes to legitimize itself is the free movement of the elements of production. While money and similar instruments, raw materials, ideas and services, which constitute the elements of production, circulate freely, the confinement of labor, the most basic element of production, to the borders of “under developing states” – let alone us – constitutes a contradiction in terms of neoliberal discourse. In many cases, the centers/cities where refugees want to arrive are the capitals of the countries that make up the collective imperialist bloc. In fact, the countries of these people have become uninhabitable due to collective imperialist expansion. Therefore, the last topic of discussion that we can propose in this short talk should be titled “the obstacles erected by the collective imperialist countries in the process of international movement of labor”.

    Thank you for listening.

  14. Speech by Tomasz Jankowski on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Tomasz Jankowski is a graduate of the Faculty of International Relations at the University of Wrocław.

  15. Speech by Bobana Andjelkovic on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Good day, good evening, friends. I will continue in English. I would say several things about the state of Paris in our Europe. Paul mentioned German philosopher, Oswald Spengler, who wrote a book more than 100 years ago. The title of the book is The Decline of the West. And that book precisely described or analyzed how European culture will become civilization, and then it will fall apart. And I think that this is now. European civilization is now falling apart as a declining state of affairs in Europe.

    The second part, second point, more precisely, is connected to World War III, which you’ve mentioned many times. I think that World War III started with the destruction and demolition of the Berlin Wall, but it didn’t start with weapons.

    It started with urban warfare, and it continued with small wars, local wars of various kinds, including non-armed aggressions, which are called colonial revolutions or alleged descriptions. So comparing to the First and the Second World War, Third World War is much longer, or First and Second World War might look like special operations.

    In the third point, we connected to UK and USA as the main colonizers or neo-colonizers of the last phases of destruction of European civilization started by synchronizing Brexit and the election, or better said, the election, of Donald Trump as President. A lot of people see him as less evil than others in the United States establishment, but in reality, but he’s just another wing of the classical military industrial complex.

    And Biden, or maybe better say Obama, who is now on the third stir, is from the high-grade complex, which can be called military-informational-pharmaceutical-media-security force. The killing of General Soleimani and not withdrawing troops from Syria made Donald Trump no better than others in the United States.

    The fourth point which I will make is connected to language. Regarding the multipolar world, it should get rid of foreign office terms for the world. For example, the term Middle East is a very wrong name for Western Asia. It was invented before an office in 1896, and since then it has been used to describe Western Asia.

    And the fifth and last point is connected to the end of the World War III and the revival of Europe over the other parts of the world which are oppressed. It will not be finished until Ukraine is denazified, Kosovo is returned to Serbia and Serbs in the Republika Srpska are not being oppressed by a colonial government from the European Union, which is just a political game of names.

    Thank you.

  16. Speech by Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Chairman of the Slovenian National Party (Vodja stanka SNS)

  17. Speech by Adam Bark on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    From Free Territory of Trieste

  18. Speech by Archpriest Alexander Tylkevich on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Archpriest Alexander Tylkevich, rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in the town of Shilka, Transbaikal Territory.

  19. Speech by Christoforos Michailidis on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    Christoforos Michailidis, Cypriot public figure, member of the Association of Graduates of Soviet and Russian Universities

  20. Speech by Palmarino Zoccatelli on the section of "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    member of MIR of Italy

  21. Final speech by Larry Johnson to the participants of the session: "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?"

    The Section: "The West after hegemony. Is it possible to save the European civilization?", which took place on 26 February.