https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/nato-west-war-democracy-global-south

Following the NATO summit in Washington, Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss how Western governments are losing elections, ignoring their people to wage war against Russia and the Global Majority
Jul 12, 2024

MICHAEL HUDSON: The first point you mentioned was that the alliance is using it more against Russia, but what are they going to do about it? That's really the question.

Well, NATO, or at least the United States, is desperate. They're doubling down and launching their F-16s with missiles against Russia. And Biden's speech at NATO, I think, it turns out that there's more meaning in that than we first realized.

He kept saying that Russia is going to attack Poland, and it's going to go on from Poland further just into Central Europe. Well, he made the same point when he was debating with Donald Trump. And at the time, this seemed crazy. This seemed to be the old domino theory of the Vietnam War. If you don't stop now, you're going to have to stop them in Brooklyn, and they're just going to march right over the country.

But it turns out that there seems to be some truth in the matter. A few days ago, Poland and Ukraine signed a defense pact, and the Polish Minister Tusk said that Poland was going to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine if it looked like they might be headed for Poland. And of course, anything from Russia headed west looks like it might somehow be headed for Poland, which is a big country. Well, that makes Poland an active player in Ukraine against Russia because they're essentially joining their two armies.

The dream of NATO, or at least of Biden, is now that you've fought almost to the last Ukrainian, now you can fight to the last Polish person. And Poland already houses, as you know, many storage bases for arms. The whole transition of Western arms to Ukraine is all just piling up on the Polish border.

Well, it seems very probable that Russia is going to bomb any missile bases that are ready to shoot down its missiles. It's going to begin to bomb these arms bases that are all trying to arm the Ukrainians. And so there actually may be a war between Russia. Well, Russia will draw Poland into the war, or Poland will draw Russia into the war. That seems to be the NATO idea.

And the center point leading up to NATO and to all the meetings is, we want more money to provide arms to Ukraine so they can fight. That's what Zelensky's saying, just to give us more money for arms. Well, this doesn't make sense on the surface of it, because there aren't any soldiers to use the arms. What on earth is all this money for arms going?

Well, on the one hand, NATO's role is to promote the military-industrial complex in the United States. So we know that there's going to be a lot of arms orders. Where are these arms going to go? Are they going to go to Poland? All of a sudden, the last few days, especially the Polish treaty, has sort of opened up the whole argument. What do you think?

MICHAEL HUDSON: You make two very important points. First of all, NATO began as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union. Now it's an offensive alliance from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But also, the point you just made that the voters of Europe, Germany, France, all over, all the polls show that most people are against extending the war, largely because they want the European budget to be spent on social programs, not on war.

And that brings up one of the most interesting joiners of the NATO meeting, Viktor Orban. Now, as the head of Hungary, he happens also to be the head of the whole EU. Well, you can imagine how furious the EU, anti-Russian, virulently anti-Russian, pro-military leadership is.

The head of the EU, von der Leyen, Callas, and the rest do not represent the voters of Europe. This is why there's such a nationalistic anti-EU arising throughout European voters, because they realize that the EU is governed by NATO, basically. NATO's running European politics, not the national elected leaders.

And you have Viktor Orban there, at his six-month term as head of the EU, saying, look, I just went to Russia, and I just went to China. And they're right. It's NATO that forced Russia to defend the Russian speakers. It's NATO, the aggressive, that you should stop, you should pull back, and NATO should no longer be part of the fighting in Ukraine, so that we can end the war, give Russia whatever the military battlefield is going to result in, and just stop all of this.

Well, he's somebody who is part of the meeting and just sort of upsets everybody. That's his role. And they're saying, well, he doesn't speak for the EU, but he does speak, as he pointed out, for the voters of Europe.

That's the tension we have, the fact that the EU and the military-industrial complex do not represent the voters. What does all this mean politically?

MICHAEL HUDSON: You're talking about the reality of NATO, not what its stated purposes were.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you're right about the continuity of aggression. Stalin was so worried that right after NATO was formed, that it was going to be aggressive, that he was worried about a war on Russia's Western Front. And that was one of the major reasons that he pressed Mao to get involved in the Korean War.

Stalin thought that if he could tie down the American army in Korea, that that would somehow tie it down there, and it would not be threatening Russia on the [west]. People hardly remember that anymore, but that was one of his major fears.

He was always worrying of, needless to say, he was traumatized by the Nazi attack on Russia in World War II, and he kept worrying again and again, that as soon as World War II was over, everyone from General Patton to General MacArthur said, wait, don't stop the war. Let's now finish the job and move against Russia.

America came in and recruited as many of the Nazi leaders as they could and put them in charge of American policy throughout Latin America and throughout the rest of the world. Project Paperclip was taking over the Nazis, and there was always that, from the very beginning, that anti-Russian feeling.

And now that Russia's looking back at the big picture, how did it all begin? They're putting it in exactly the context that you described.

This is part of a long danger, and that's why it's finally time for us to realize that there's not going to be a linkage between Western Europe and Russia, as Putin said, for the next 30 years. There has to be a separation. That's really what it's all about.

And NATO now is trying to prevent this separation. It's trying to isolate Russia, but what it's really doing, of course, is isolating the West from Russia, China, Iran, and the whole BRICS-plus. The war in Ukraine, sort of catalyzed by the war in Israel and Palestine, has just vastly accelerated this world split that we're seeing right now and what you and I are always talking about.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, for the last 75 years, it did seem that the Rimlands were really taking over. And the reason is that after World War II, the international trade vastly expanded. But the international trade was really raw materials and low-priced labor from the global South up to the US and Europe. It was a trade.

Now, what has finally been the nightmare for people who believe in Mackinder is China's Belt and Road Initiative. All of a sudden, what this initiative is trying to do is ignoring the whole foreign international trade and focus on trade within Asia itself.

That's the investment that was sponsored by the World Bank since 1945 has been mainly a port development. Let's empty out the raw materials of South America and Africa. Let's make them plantation crop exporters, and they'll import things from the West.

But there was almost no development at all by the World Bank of mutual trade and investment and transportation and communications contacts within Asia, within Latin America, within Africa.

All of a sudden, this is the whole essence of the Chinese development. China has not pressed the ideological wrapping for this that you and I have been discussing, but Russia certainly has, saying, you know, they're looking back.

You're having many Russian writers like Karaganov, but also Lavrov has been mentioning the speeches. He said, look, it all began a thousand years ago. It began with the Crusades. The Crusades were from backward Europe. Norman warlords were attacking Constantinople, and they ended up looting it, destroying it, completely wrecking it. That's what led to the invasions of Asia. That's what led to the shift of the Christian church in Constantinople to Russia, which for Putin especially is very important.

He's looking at a thousand years war of the West against Russia, not only geopolitically, but religiously. Russia has been developing this whole broad context of the logic of how we're having a new view of geopolitics. Instead of cutting up the specialization of labor and dependency of the global South on the former colonial powers, replacing political colonialism with financial colonialism, all of a sudden this has all changed.

Since America, in fighting Russia, has driven it together with China, driven China and Russia together with Iran, and now you have this Shanghai Cooperation Organization that's just been meeting in Kazakhstan.

You're having the whole Western dream of domination, the end of history falling apart right before our eyes.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this attempt to develop Asia internally leads to a whole shift in diplomacy, the kind of diplomacy. The western diplomacy with a foreign country is that of settler states. We will conquer you and we will take control of everything we want, your raw materials and infrastructure. We don't care about the people, just that. And they've achieved western dominance by military force.

But China and Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, realizes that, well, we're not able to integrate Central Asia and other countries, all the Asian countries by force, because we're not going to waste our army on that. The time of militarily invading a country is all over.

There's only one way that we can integrate Asia into a common framework with Africa and with Latin America, and that's voluntarily. We have to offer them something to make them want to join this. And what can we offer them? Well, we can offer you a non-exploitative form where you gain as well as us.

We will build up your ability to broaden your economy on the basis of your raw materials, so we can all interact in a way that we can all grow together, instead of our basic philosophy being, how much can we take from you, which is the western philosophy.

So you're having a whole different kind of economic model stemming from all this, because of the necessity of achieving this new union voluntarily, instead of by military force.

Now, that's what's frustrating NATO and America so much. All they have is military force. They don't have anything to offer the global majority, because they've already de-industrialized. They've shifted industry to Asia. They've shifted raw materials dependency to Asia, refining of the raw materials to Asia, technology to Asia.

So all of a sudden, the West is left not only with nothing, but with the impossibility of trying to recover western industrial growth, because of the huge debt overhead resulting from financialization, Thatcherism, Blairism, Reaganomics, and now your wonderful new Labour Party in England.

The West does not really have a problem. It has a quandary. There is no solution.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think that's right. And what he's done that's so important, he's translating these generalities, the statements that we've just heard from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of World Peace. He's saying, well, what does that really mean? That really means separation.

And he said, of course, the United Nations is going to continue to exist, but then it'll be maybe minor agencies. We really need a new global majority United Nations without a U.S. veto so that we can indeed coordinate in a peaceful way and create an international law instead of the arbitrary American rule of law. We'll have real principles of international law.

We really need an alternative creation of a whole set of institutions.

Well, you're seeing this break occurring right now, just yesterday and today. You're having countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They're caught right in the middle of this. All of their linkages so far have been with the West. Turkey's part of NATO. Saudi Arabia has all of its money in the United States. And yet they're part of BRICS. How can you be part of two different groups at the same time for all of this?

Well, two days ago, Saudi Arabia told Europe, if you don't give back the money that you've saved from Russia, we are going to withdraw all of Saudi Arabia's monies in Europe. Turkey then said, we cannot trust Europe anymore. America may be afraid to grab our money, but you're just the servants, literally the vassals in a feudal sense of America. You're going to grab our money. Give Russia the money back now, or we're pulling all of our money out.

So already you're creating a break. The question is, how do you institutionalize this break? You need to create a new financial organization with a different philosophy of the IMF. The philosophy that you increase your economic surplus and labor productivity by raising living standards, not austerity programs. A whole different economic theory. You're having a whole set of differences.

And I think that the Karajanov's purpose is to put all of these particular points in the perspective of, there really is a break in the economic philosophy of the West and the global majority. That's really the key. And that's what we've been talking about in all of our shows.

MICHAEL HUDSON: But they're not able to do that. That's the problem. The U.S. would rather destroy countries that don't obey it than negotiating a trade and investment with them. That's the real problem. And it's, you could say it's the fight of finance capitalism against socialism, and remember, go back to Russia. The fight basically is against socialism.

You're having neoliberalism in the West be, it's an anti-government theory. In other words, it's against government regulating corporations, regulating the economy. It's against government pursuing social investment programs. It's for big government militarily and in a fascist way, but not in a socialist way. So just as the first response of America and Britain to the Russian Revolution was to send armies in to try to overthrow it, you're having the same thing today.

The West seems unwilling to accept the logic that you just pointed out.

And when you and Karaganov and me say the West should realize the reality of the situation and say, okay, you know, you're able to grab what you wanted for the last thousand years. It's over. You're having President Biden say, and the West say, it's not over. You know, it's the end of history. Don't you get it? History doesn't begin again. It's the end of history. And they're going to continue to, they're unwilling to recognize this reality.

So what can Russia do in a situation? Well, you pointed out a few minutes ago that Russia had to spend a lot of its income militarily defending itself against the Western threat. And certainly the global majority is going to have to reach the military alliance. And that's why most of the discussions that have come out against the economic diplomacy, the programs are at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the military.

They have to figure out how to, we have an idea of how we want to develop, but we have to get rid of the 800 U.S. military bases in our country. And Karaganov says, you know, essentially we have to drive them out. We have to say, if you don't accept our socialist philosophy, he didn't use the word, but that's what it really means. If you don't accept our philosophy, then let's just separate. You go your way, we'll go ours.

The West doesn't want to go its way. So all the global majority can do is say, well, we're just going to keep you out, just stay away. Anytime you try to do what you're trying to do with Russia and Ukraine, or any problem you're trying to create between Taiwan and China, you know, we're just going to have to slap you down. And we can do it, and you can't because you've de-industrialized.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think the context for what you've just talked about is the argument within Russia about the red lines. There's a belief in the West that, well, Russia said that it has red lines, and we can't do this, we can't do that. But we've been doing this and that. Look at we've been, we've been using like the sausage, slicing, slicing, slicing away, as we've gone over one red line after another, including bombing Russia itself in the Ukraine, sending missiles into residential areas and oil refineries in Russia.

So I think Karaganov has said, we have to do something to shock the West into saying, look, we are going to fight back, we are going to stop it. So far, we've been able, the reason we've been going so slow is in Ukraine is, you've been destroying yourself internally in the West. Look, while we're going slow, you're tearing yourself apart.

We don't want to interfere with that, you know, go right ahead, but we don't have to do anything. Well, you're acting in such a crazy way.

But you are becoming more and more belligerent. And now, your Polish attempt to bring Poland into the Ukrainian war, that's the red line. At some point, Karaganov said, you know, look, we've got to give them a shock and show, look, if we do come back, we're going to do very much like what Hezbollah did in Israel. It sent all of the harmless missiles to every major military site in Israel to say, look, if we really wanted to get you, we can wipe out all of these. You really want to do something.

Karaganov wants Russia to do something to let the West say, look, we're really going to slap you down. We can slap you down instead of just letting yourself destruct. But if your self-destruction involves attacks on us, we're going to knock you out.

But you also said something, you very often say two things in one presentation. You mentioned capitalism versus the global maturity. What you have today is no longer the industrial capitalism of the 19th century, it's finance capitalism.

And industrial capitalism had a certain ideal. Marx pointed it out, and the American protectionist pointed it out. The capitalism was going to evolve towards increasing government provision of infrastructure, increasing protection of labor, to promotion of living standards, to raise productivity. That was what they expected capitalism to be. And everybody in the 19th century was using the word socialism.

Well, that didn't happen. But it is happening. If we're seeing a whole circle of history being picked up, now it's being closed. Now, the dream of industrial capitalism, of evolving into socialism, is occurring in the global maturity, occurring in Asia. It's not in the West. It's in Asia that it's developed. And the failure of the West to let its capitalism develop in the logical way towards a mixed economy, supporting living standards, the failure to do this means that's why the West is lost to Asia.

And it's not going to change this ideology, because the ideology is like an ideology of hatred, simply built in to the way they think. And as you know, the media don't let the audience even understand what you and I are talking about, what Putin is talking about. They've closed down RT. Our audience is on the internet. It's not on the New York Times.

MICHAEL HUDSON: I think you've summarized the problem very well. It's the United States that withdrew from all of the short-term missile agreements. The United States has withdrawn from all of the agreements that were supposed to prevent atomic war. And that, I think, is what's prompted Karaganov's point. You've summarized it very well.