THE GOLDEN AGE, OR WISHFUL THINKING IN REVERSE

(The next subsection starting with this entry, is devoted to the great utopians of history. However, before we embark on the present journey, let us ask ourselves a very important question. Considering that every utopia [at least those of them that are forward-looking] represents its author’s hope for a better future world, what can be called the most recent utopia of our time? Humanity needs “utopias,” to have an idea of what kind of world we would wish our grandchildren to inherit. Well, to be sure, there have been a few books, published in the last fifty years, which can be found on the same library shelf as the more traditional utopias, yet it does not make them comparable to the “oldies.” I suspect that our modern world doesn’t have the vaguest idea of what “a better world” might look like. As for our Christendom, it appears preoccupied with personal, rather than wholesale salvation, and probably takes the inevitability of Armageddon too literally to care too much about a better secular future anyway. As for the lucky saved ones, pretty soon they will all be dancing “in the streets that are golden,” and they have no need for utopias to know that for a fact… Summarizing all this in one sentence, the state of modern utopia is bleak, and the future of the world with it.)

It could be easily assumed that the old fascist Plato was the first political wishful thinker in history, with his totalitarian Politeia. After all, Thomas More’s Utopia was explicitly written as a response to, and under the influence of Plato. We are not going to dispute the fact that Plato’s work is the earliest serious philosophical work in the genre, and one of the most important such works in history. But his entry comes only as number two in this series, as there had been some earlier examples of toying with this genre, in pre-Socratic Greece, and elsewhere, which require our attention, and this entry number one will be dealing with these.

One could surmise from this that just about any idyllic environment, such as the Biblical Garden of Eden or Pan’s Arcadia of Greek mythology, might pass off as an ancient version of Utopia. But this is not so. In our understanding and usage of the term, Utopia is an ideal social organization. The Garden of Eden was not an imagined country, but an idyllic abode of Adam and Eve, before human civilization exceeded the number of two. By the same token, there wasn’t any social organization in mythical Arcadia, where carefree flocks of adorably ugly satyrs and dainty nymphs reveled happily, in total ignorance of what it takes to make a world, or at least a responsible Hobbesian Commonwealth.
By far the most significant effort to paint a social utopia (as opposed to some asocial paradise) was made by the great Greek poet Hesiod in his work Erga kai Hemerai/Opera et Dies/Works and Days, primarily in the part of it, which is known as the Myth of the Five Ages.
The first original Age was the Golden Age. Unlike Arcadia, it was populated by humans, and unlike Eden, it contained a multitude of humans not limited to just one happy couple. Chronologically, Hesiod ascribes it to the reign of Kronos, that is, the time before Zeus and his siblings came to rule the world. During that blessed age, “men lived among the gods and freely mingled with them.” They did not have to work, as the earth was generously producing food to feed them all. They lived to an old age, remaining physically young, and they passed away peacefully and painlessly, their spirits lingering on as guardians of the successive generations.
The Golden Age ended with the arrival of Zeus on the scene, and the end of Kronos. During the Silver Age, humans lived for the first hundred years of their lives as ignorant infants, but having grown up, their lives as adults were short and marred with strife. During the Silver Age, “men refused to worship the gods” and were destroyed by an angry Zeus for their transgression.
During the next Bronze Age men were hard with nothing but war in their hearts and on their minds. All their arms and tools, and even the homes they lived in, were made of bronze.
The fourth Age was the Heroic Age. Unlike the other four ages characterized by a gradual degeneration, this age stands out as the time of heroes, celebrated in Greek mythology as the Argonauts, the Seven who fought against Thebes, heroes of the Trojan War, etc.
The last Iron Age is described by Hesiod as his contemporary age. Human life is mired in hard toil and deep misery. Children dishonor their parents, brother fights brother, and the rules of hospitality toward strangers do not apply. Might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good. At the height of this age, humans no longer feel shame or indignation at wrongdoing; very soon babies will start being born with gray hair and “the gods will have completely forsaken humanity” so that “there will be no help against evil.”

Paying tribute to Hesiod’s great opus, written around 700 BC, we must realize that there is a big difference between this work and Plato’s Politeia, written more than three centuries later. Hesiod does not provide any explanation of how come the humans of the Golden Age had been so good, as though their being good had no connection to their personal and/or collective merits, but was the hand of destiny (most likely associated with the reign of Kronos, as opposed to Zeus, and having nothing to do with anything else). Intriguingly, the progression of the ages in Hesiod, as if from better to worse (with the already noted exception of the Age of Heroes), represents wishful thinking in reverse, and thus possesses no edifying virtue, being a nostalgia for an irretrievable past and providing the reader with no clue as to how to better the world, except for instilling doom and gloom in him, as there is no sense in being good and righteous, because this is not going to bring Zeus down and Kronos back, bringing in the good old Golden Age back with him.

In my judgment, Hesiod had almost succeeded in turning his backward gaze toward the future, which would have qualified his work as the first true utopia, yet he had failed to make the necessary step of extrapolating from his Kronos mythology toward Kronos nostalgia, treating the Kronos phenomenon as a principle, rather than as merely a thing of the mythological past. Hesiod could have become the first “totalitarian,” wrestling this title from Plato, but he had missed his chance…
Plato, on the other hand, did not miss his. He was a professing totalitarian, and his thinking radically differs from Hesiod’s in this respect. It is forward looking, and our next entry in this series elucidates this point…

ONE INTEREST, INDIVISIBLE

I confess that my particular appetite for the concept of “national interest” has been whetted by certain rather odd patterns in American domestic politics and foreign policy during the last couple of decades. To start off this entry with the most explicit introduction of my key point, here is Wikipedia, defining “national interest” in the following illuminating manner:
“The national interest of a state is multi-faceted. Primary is the state’s survival and security; also important is the pursuit of wealth and economic growth, and power,” etc.
What I like most about it is the part that says “Primary is the state’s survival and security,” which is, of course, a basic tautology, but it goes a long way to distinguish a vital interest from all sorts of frivolous and opportunistic interpretations of the general concept of national interest. From now on, we shall assume that our subject here is “vital interest,” and none other.
Next, we shall see that by focusing on “vital national interest” we are effectively eliminating a multiplicity of alleged “national interests,” which, being several, can easily come into a contradiction among themselves, and through such a contradiction undermine the integrity, and even legitimacy, of the larger concept. As we certainly want to avoid this kind of debacle, we must agree that, provided that we know what we are talking about, all minor instances of national interest must necessarily be treated as representations of one interest, and in order to be able to talk about any ‘minor’ national interest at all, we must have a succinct formulation of that “big one” right there, in the focus of our mental eye.
In other words, it is one interest, indivisible, or else we shall quickly make fools out of ourselves.
Mind you, I am not arguing that some narrow survivalist urge should somehow eliminate all other interests, such as our interest in increased wealth and power, but only that any quest for wealth and power, etc., which might jeopardize our vital interest, must be seen as a bogus quest, and treated as such.

Not surprisingly, all democracies seem to suffer from the same chronic disease of a poorly defined “national interest.” Plurality of interests and their adequate representations are in the driver’s seat, and as a result, one interest, indivisible suffers.
On the other hand totalitarianism as the highest expression of nationalism, assumes the existence of a single, and overriding all, national interest, and insofar as a citizen stands in whole-hearted support of that interest, he is a citizen in good standing, but whenever his personal interest contradicts the common interest, he turns into a criminal in the eyes of the state and society. Stalinist Russia was essentially run on this principle.
Marx’s introduction of the inevitability of class struggle in all pre-communist societies does not contradict the principle of unity of national interest. It is not at all as though several class interests coexisted within a very confused national interest at one time. No, even at the height of an intense class struggle, and, perhaps, especially during such struggle, the unity and indivisibility of the national interest stand out in sharp focus and leave no doubt as to whose side in the struggle upholds it, to the exclusion of all other parties. Indeed, Marx’s inevitability of the historical process, in my view, is totally based on the concept of oneness of the national interest, and the genuine forces of progress are the citizens who hold that interest to heart, whereas their opponents are fighting not just against that other side, but against the common interest of the nation as a whole.
A single national interest naturally coincides with the state interest for the totalitarians, which, in Marxism, triumphs in a successful revolution, leaving the state at the height of its power in all practical applications of the revolutionary transformation of society. In the meantime, the Marxist-Leninist eventual dissolution of the state is a chimera, the most impractical and faulty part of that political doctrine. In fact, no successful revolution can result in a self-destruction of the new order it has imposed, and the new state is the best and only guarantee of the enforcement of the new order.
Incidentally, the concept of separation of powers is not necessarily an anti-totalitarian concept, promoting separate interests within the single framework of society and state, as long as the powers thus “separated” are secondary to the main power of the state and subservient to it. Secret police, as a tool of the State, here becomes a separate power watching over the administrators, the legislators, the military, the justice system etc., but having been given such immense power it itself undergoes periodic sweeping purges, to thwart its ambitions manifested in the natural urge to abuse it.

There is an erroneous tendency, in my view, to somehow equate this hugely important concept of “national interest” with the concept generally expressed by the French term "raison d’État," that is, reason of state, the rather contrived and manipulative term, which often disguises political hypocrisy, deceit, and aggression, and, therefore, cannot serve in good faith to represent the notion of national interest, which has to be more genuine, more wholesome, and more non-intrusive than the other. In other words, national interests have an enduring permanence, whereas raisons d’État are always more fleeting, opportunistic, and never vital, or otherwise they would be spelled out as vital, in the first place. At the same time, national interests are far less in-your-face, far more adaptable to peaceful coexistence within the international sorority of world nations, and, because of their intrinsic legitimacy, they command far more international respect than their disingenuous counterpart of raison d’État, and cannot be too easily mistaken for a quest for hegemony, on the part of their upholders. (To capsulate this paragraph, in my deliberate usage, national interest represents the proper national interest, while “raisons d’État” represent improper interests.)

In conclusion of this entry, I must reassure all readers from Western democracies that I am not advocating a sudden switch to totalitarianism as some kind of blood sacrifice to the idol of national interest. As always, it is my primary intention to make the reader think about it, and perhaps find a way to improve on this crucial political concept’s understanding, thus getting a chance to improve on the workings of democracy, without jeopardizing its principal benefits to democratic societies.

POLITICAL SYSTEMS AND "PERFECT" GOVERNMENT

The term political system, as defined by Britannica, is “the set of formal legal institutions that comprise a “government” or a “state.” More broadly defined, it comprehends actual, as well as prescribed, forms of political behavior, not only the legal organization of the state, but also the realities of political life. Still more broadly defined, the political system is seen as a set of “processes of interaction” or as a subsystem of the social system interacting with other, non-political systems, such as the economic system.”
It was exactly one of the points in my previous entry, differently stated and now receiving corroboration in an alternative reformulation, highlighting the reasons for the disconnect between theory and practice. Like Britannica’s “political system,” political philosophy, even of the best possible kind, exists in a vacuum for as long as it has not been applied among the realities of political life. Once it has been applied, however, it finds itself not as the mistress of the house, as it desires to be, but only as one of the all-too-many factors all becoming subject to the above-mentioned “processes of interaction” as a “subsystem of the social system,” which is far more difficult to control.
Quoting Britannica, “the most important type of political system is the nation-state.” It is indeed the most stable and integrated state of political organization, if seen in a vacuum, that is, in isolation from the other political realities of the supranational kind. But, in reality, we will be hard-pressed to find more than a few reasonably outlined nation-states either in the modern world, or in antiquity. Iceland may be cited as one, but if we get, say, to Belgium, which, back in 1830, taught us something about the stability of nation-states, the situation suddenly becomes complicated. Is a bilingual nation, like Belgium, a true nation-state? Or, is Canada a stable nation-state? Returning to Europe, we will find that the great powers, such as Germany or France, have been too much changed by multicultural immigration to meet the strict definition of “nation-state.” Like the term “capitalism,” the term “nation-state” may have become a chimera!
On the other hand, Britannica gives a rather unflattering treatment to the supranational term empire: “All empires, since they are composed of peoples of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, are ultimately held together by coercion and the threat of forcible reconquest.”
This sounds like a rather old-fashioned, and even outdated, pronouncement, ever since the fall of the British and Soviet Empires, revived today mostly through the exploits of American neo-imperialism, but only with some substantial qualifications. It is much more interesting nowadays to revisit our Britannica, ignoring the specific term “empire,” but looking at such commonplace entities that “are composed of peoples of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds,” whether historically, or by reason of massive immigration. In the current multicultural Russian Federation, the word “Federation” provides the initial key: It is reasonable to expect that local cultures would enjoy a quasi-dominance within the respective federated states: Kalmyk culture in Kalmykia, Chechen culture in Chechnya, Jewish culture in the Jewish Autonomy, etc., although the Russian language is obviously omnipresent as the principal official language of the Russian Federation. But whether they live within their ethnic borders or outside them, all these diverse peoples living under one national roof are reasonably well accustomed and accepting of the fact that the Great-Russians are the dominant culture in the Federation, and do not really seek independence and self-determination, except for random outbursts of recklessness, occasional posturing and quite often these days direct and indirect hostile foreign intervention. Now, on the other side of the fence, lies the American multicultural entity, millions of whose citizens every day commit the unthinkable act, from the Russian standpoint, of identifying themselves as citizens of other nations and not as Americans either by virtue of double citizenship or having no American citizenship at all, and such conflicting national loyalties are very difficult and, as I would argue, impossible to reconcile, even if these people themselves see nothing wrong or at least strange in this.
Among the political systems of today there are dictatorships, oligarchies, constitutional democracies of the... well, non-Western type, and constitutional democracies of the Western type. It’s very tempting to look most favorably upon the last sort as the paragons of a “perfect government,” but the picture is hardly that simple. Winston Churchill famously joked about Western democracy being the least effectual form of government, which he, however, preferred to all others. This does not negate the fact that such democracy does not offer to the world the best type of “government” per se, which was exactly Churchill’s point.
This is not to say of course, that, democracy being unsuitable for perfect government, such government is to be found among some other, less attractive, but more efficient kind. It only proves that an ideal government has no historical precedent, nor can it be found in existence today, and so the practical question as to what kind of governing ought to be considered the best is a perennially wide open one, and it is also relative to the world’s particular cultures, which is to say that it cannot be happily generalized.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AS WISHFUL THINKING

In assessing the importance of political philosophy, much has been made of the fact that a number of political philosophies have served as the foundations of some pretty disastrous social experiments, and are thus inextricably tied to political action. Fascism and communism are particularly cited as such glaring examples. So what? an intellectual purist might ask. We are clearly looking here at some expected connection between any kind of philosophy and its application to life, between theory and practice, and this is an established fact that even the best of such theories get easily corrupted as soon as they “get real,” that is, as soon as they are implemented into the reality of life. Once we start judging the tree of knowledge by its rotten fruit, much of political philosophy gets a failing grade, and is stuck with it. And this is exactly how we are content to deal with such situations.
Apparently with all political philosophies it’s glory to the victor, and vae victis! Why, for instance, need we be intellectually interested at all in those political systems of Europe, whose military defeat in World War II and universal condemnation have been casting too dark a shadow on the political philosophies behind them, for us to be able to discern even the faintest glimmer of the light illuminating the minds of those admittedly failed thinkers whose ideas had been instrumental in bringing them to life? On the other hand, who is eager these days to study the political philosophy of the Soviet apologists, when the USSR was officially declared dead two decades ago, and, for all intents and purposes, many would say, good riddance?
Pity, though! Philosophy, with its constant emphasis on ethics (the so-called “philosophical analysis,” in all its known and unknown manifestations, is a method, and must not be confused with the ultimate objective of all philosophy, which is always necessarily moralistic and didactic), is a constant search for the ideal, which vastly infuses it with wishful thinking. Political philosophies of all kinds from Plato to Marx and beyond are no exception. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in my general approach to it, I am emphasizing the dominant utopian element in all philosophies indulging themselves in social engineering. And, while the philosophers themselves confine their theories to the realm of the mind, there are indeed myriads of zealous political activists, yearning for action per se, rather than for a consistent philosophical perspective, who are eager and anxious to take such action at the first opportunity which presents itself to them.
Thus it happens that even fairly sensible political philosophies are being hijacked by political activists, and twisted by them to fit their specific agendas, while their actual creators are required either to conform to the new “practical” mold, or to get out of the way in a hurry, before the political bus runs them over. And thus we end up, in our postmortem, analyzing not the philosophy of our wretched wishful thinker, which contains a few grains of wisdom that can be found objectively interesting, and even enlightening, but the failed social experiment, where even our best analysis is hopelessly tainted by foregone conclusions.
…All political philosophy wishful thinking? Yes, and I bet, had we always kept this in mind, we could have learned a few more very important things about the world we live in, and think in.

LEADER PRINCIPLE

The actual formulation of the Leader Principle is attributed to the German political philosopher Graf Hermann Alexander Keyserling (1880-1946) who promoted the idea that, sticking by the canons of the so-called Social Darwinism, geniuses are born in various fields of human endeavor, which include social leadership. Such extraordinary individuals are born leaders, and it is natural to expect them to fulfill their vocational destiny. There should be little or no controversy if we just stop there. Indeed, some people are born with a talent for leadership, whereas others are more comfortable as followers, while still others, the bona fide individualists, are loath either to lead or to follow, and prefer to be left to their own individualistic pursuits.
A far more loaded, and admittedly, highly controversial, question is whether society ought to organize itself internally along those lines, that is, honoring its born leaders by providing them with permanent structurally codified positions of social leadership, which include the topmost position as leader of the given society.
There is a natural correlation here with the totalitarian principle, which I have already discussed at length in previous sections, and will, no doubt, be discussing again and again, as one of the most important topics of political-philosophical discussion in existence.
It is well known, however, that free societies utterly reject the totalitarian ideal, and the Leader Principle with it. No genius of political leadership, even had one descended from heaven, would be allowed to be entrenched in a permanent position as leader for life. Totalitarians would argue in this case that leaders must be allowed to serve in their specific position, including that of the effective or nominal Head of State for as long as they continue to be effective in this capacity, or nominally, when their name becomes a State symbol. But this is anathema to the champions of free society. The term of leadership for the Head of State must be fixed, and must expire after a certain maximum stretch in office, no matter what. Remarkably, Franklin D. Roosevelt stayed in office as President of the United States of America for just twelve years (1933-1945), which may look like an eternity to the later generations of Americans, but that was wartime, and after that, in 1951, the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States limited the President’s maximum stay in office to two terms plus half, in the case of a Vice President succeeding an incapacitated President in mid-office. (Which amounts to the absolute chronological maximum of ten years.
Thus it is the United States of America, where the internal safeguards against the totalitarian principle, and the Leader Principle associated with it, must be the strictest in the world, especially during the last sixty years. Paradoxically however, when projected from the internal state of affairs to the nation’s external outlook, the situation is turned on its head. It seems that the Leader Principle has been very much in play in the American geopolitical stance, and, as for who is destined to perform the glorious role of the leader of the world, every voice in Washington DC joins in a resounding chorus, chanting in unison: U-S-A!-U-S-A!!!
To be fair, until some twenty years ago, America had enjoyed a rightful role as the leader of the free world, during the cold-war superpower confrontation. (The phrase “leader of the free world” actually dates back to the early years of the cold war.) In a natural polarization of forces, where two camps emerge, especially in a mutually recognized state of war, call it cold war or what, there are indeed the acknowledged commanders and the commanded, leaders and followers, with a virtual equivalency between commander and leader. But this is not what Keyserling had in mind when he formulated the Leader Principle.
...The situation changed dramatically with the dissolution of the USSR and America’s assertion of a unipolar leadership in the post-Soviet world. It was only then that America’s claim of leadership had become devoid of legitimacy. Does the world need or want a leader nation? Not according to the level of utter disdain and undisguised contempt, which it has been showering upon its self-proclaimed leader lately!
Now, if the world wanted to elect itself a leader, what would be wrong with, say, the United Nations, where each nation has representation, and therefore none finds itself in the inferior position of a follower? Besides, there are dozens of international organizations today utilizing the principle of rotating presidency. This can be the only type of democratic leadership that the nations of the world will agree to accept in good faith in peacetime… I am sure that by this time my reader gets the picture…
I am rather cynically predisposed regarding the current international “war on terror,” declared by the United States a decade ago, which presumably serves today to legitimize the American leadership of the “civilized world” under the conditions of an artificially perpetuated state of war. (Perhaps this is exactly why America has been so vehemently insisting on a state of war: to justify a modern-day equivalency between leader and commander.) But, as I wrote almost a decade ago, terrorism as such is a perennial phenomenon, in national and international experience. And it has traditionally been treated not as a military, but as a criminal activity, requiring police action, rather than military force, to be mounted against it.
Claiming world leadership on the grounds of the ongoing “war on terror” is false and disingenuous. It would be far more honest to claim world leadership on the grounds of America’s Manifest Destiny, because this is what America really-really honestly and sincerely believes!
Which is, of course, a manifestation of America’s belief in the Leader Principle, amounting in practical terms to the belief that America has been called to lead the world.

A STATE OF WORSHIP

There is little doubt that in civil multicultural societies a certain multiplicity of religious denominations and creeds must be maintained under the freedom of religion umbrella. This is particularly necessary where each religion corresponds to a legitimate cultural tradition of which this religion is an inalienable part. While one may look with great apprehension upon the newest waves of foreign-culture immigration to one’s country, a clear distinction presumably ought to be made in the case of cultural-religious diversity that had historically existed within the country’s borders even before there was a country itself. Yet, the catastrophic collapse of the formerly stable and relatively prosperous nation of Yugoslavia along religious, far more than ethnic, lines has taught us a history lesson in most recent times to the effect that deadly religious/cultural strife which can destroy whole nations is neither a dark memory of the past, nor a mark of hopeless backwardness. There can be no disputing that Yugoslavia had been a “perfectly” civilized country before it descended into chaos and dark-age barbarism.
It is objectively observed today that in certain Moslem countries there is a tendency to insist on cultural and religious homogeneity of society thus favoring Islam at the expense of all other non-Islamic religions. There is a similar, although somewhat more nuanced, effort being made in China. Now, there is an understandable uproar about this among nations whose religions are being thus discriminated against. However, to be quite honest, with the experience of Yugoslavia still fresh in our memory, such a tendency is also understandable, as social homogeneity is a prized condition in all societies where its absence has led to civil wars and milder forms of internecine conflict.

A little history and a dose of Thomas Hobbes are now in order. In his quoted passage below we see Hobbes owning up to his metaphor comparing the State to an individual man.
Here is that remarkable passage from the 31st Chapter of his Leviathan:
“Seeing a Commonwealth is but one person, it ought also to exhibit to God but one worship; which then it does, when it commands it to be exhibited by private men publicly. And this is public worship, which is to be uniform: for those actions that are done differently by different men are not public worship. Therefore, where many sorts of worship are allowed, proceeding from different religions of private men, it cannot be said there is any public worship, nor that the Commonwealth is of any religion at all.”
Leaving logical deduction aside, Hobbes shows himself as a practical philosopher as well. Considering the long legacy of deadly religious strife among civilized European Christians, produced by the Reformation, it is understandable that he shrinks with horror from any suggestion of multiculturalism or religious diversity in his Commonwealth. Of course, his tough stand in this matter seems totally unsustainable in our day and age, at least among the civilized Europeans. But I keep wondering, nevertheless, how the current excesses of multiculturalism in Europe (and specifically the unaccommodating and uncompromising Islamic invasion) had been made possible, making poor old Hobbes keep turning in his grave: I told you so! There are many people in Europe today who do not answer the description of bigot, yet who will wholeheartedly agree with Hobbes.
Let us therefore take a deep breath before we begin our indignant grandstanding in censuring the Hobbesian insistence on monoreligious uniformity. Perhaps, he understood something that modern Europe has failed to understand…

But, anyway, we can see right away one of the pitfalls of comparing the State to the homo sapiens, as, in the tricky question of religion, it is indeed inconceivable for one person to have more than one religion. Hobbes is rather disingenuous here, of course, as he is an Englishman living in a country known to profess more than one major Christian faith: Protestantism and Catholicism. (If we wanted to describe the situation accurately, we would find several conflicting denominations in British Protestantism, which have been no less resentful of each other than in their common attitude toward Rome.)
It may be useful to remember that Thomas More, a whole century before Hobbes had described his religious utopianism in multireligious terms. There is a complete religious tolerance in More’s Utopia (as long as the citizens of his commonwealth do not profess atheism!) More, obviously, had his own agenda in doing this, as he wished to reconcile warring religions in his own country, and from a purely humanitarian point this ought to make better sense. Hobbes, on the other hand, hated the “Papists” so much that he would not allow them anywhere near his Commonwealth, a very personal, rather than philosophical approach to the subject, yet in harmony with his “artificial man” metaphor.
From a purely practical point of view, and in contradiction to Hobbes, we might say that in all countries where Protestantism had taken root, it is impossible to maintain a single worship (even under my own principle “to each great culture its own religion”). All these cultures were not born at Wittenberg or Augsburg! They had been Catholic before they had become Protestant, and in any European culture that embraces Protestantism there had to be a state of split religious personality ever since. No wonder that Nietzsche marks the Catholic countries of Europe with a “talent for religion,” while denying this “talent” to the Protestant countries. Poor Hobbes probably failed to realize that only the Papist “artificial man” among all Christian nations (with the exception of the Orthodox, who trace their faith to the earliest and purest form of Christianity and denounce the Pope for corrupting it, while denouncing the Protestants for moving even further away from Orthodoxy) could be consistently monoreligious.
But even in the broad sense of multiculturalism, Hobbes is incorrect. It is possible for one Commonwealth to be multicultural and multireligious without stopping to be a single commonwealth, as Russia’s example has proved itself to be. The solution to the problem of social multiculturalism in the context of one country is simple: the separation of Church and State, which does not mean the abolition of all public worship, but only its restriction to the appropriate constituent cultures. Ironically, the case of the United States has ceased to be representative of a multicultural unity. American society is becoming increasingly fractured, and the process of erosion of a single national identity carries the danger of becoming irreversible.
The case of Russia is of special interest, as the existing duumvirate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the State clearly establishes the dominance of the Great-Russian culture over all other minority cultures, within the Russian commonwealth, without anybody to seriously challenge this incontestable fact of political and cultural reality. On the contrary, the officially recognized minority cultures (Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism) seem to like the arrangement, seeing in the strength of the great-Russian Church/State Duumvirate their best guarantee of protection against domestic bigotry and unwelcome foreign influences. By the same token, it is the dominance of Russian Orthodoxy which makes it feel secure and therefore exceptionally tolerant toward the non-Christian minority religions as long as they stay within their clearly established cultural borders.
But Russia is, as usual, an exception, rather than the rule, and the rule is that neither in the commonwealth of a single nation, nor in a compound commonwealth, such as the European Union or the United Nations of today, or in any supranational conglomerate of tomorrow, religion must stand in the way of a political unity.
Incidentally, nor can the world ever become one Commonwealth, but it must remain a loose community of nations, where no uniformity of political organization, or any kind of interfaith common religious worship can ever be imposed by any international corps of social engineers. Let the nations remain themselves, and they will want to come together. But try to mold them into a common mold, and they will explode even the best of these molds into a thousand pieces.
Having said all that, I am compelled to end this entry with a coda. Going back to the beginning of this entry, take a look at today’s Europe’s multicultural mess, and, perhaps, the “monoreligious bigotry” of Hobbes’s quoted passage will now be seen in a new light. Could he have been a prophetic seer of bad things to come?...

ALL "HARVARD" MEN?

All dreams about a better future world are just dreams without the solid foundation in good laws. Plato has shown us an excellent example, by moving from his Dialogue on Politeia to the next Dialogue on Laws. But once such good laws have been written, good law enforcement is not a surefire panacea for a normal functioning of a healthy republic, for even the best laws can fall victim to bad interpretations.
No society can be secure, functioning on an auto-pilot, that is, by entrusting its security and wellbeing to its law enforcement authorities. Let us take, as an example, the American society, and reformulate our query as follows: Are modern American laws (ostensibly the best national laws in existence) sufficient to guarantee a smooth operation of the political system, and to ensure the “liberty and justice for all”?
To begin with, the whole point of the “checks and balances” is to protect the laws from abuse and false interpretation, likely to be visited upon them, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the two kinds of such perpetrators: the wicked, and the ignorant. Society can, of course, make the expensive effort to protect itself from the ignorant public official, by allowing only top professionals (“all Harvard men,”) to apply for governing jobs (although I do not think that America is ever going to permit such elitist job discrimination!), but then, what about the wicked? They go to Harvard too, and more than occasionally graduate from it with highest honors!
But, even before any basic “checks and balances” even come into play, it is the duty of the people to make sure that their elected officials are not chosen frivolously, but have proved themselves to possess both good judgment and moral integrity. While those who have somehow “wormed their way through the cracks” in the selection process and while in office have exhibited serious flaws of character, or lack of adequate perspicacity ought to be resolutely and speedily impeached.
But unfortunately, American politics are deficient on both counts. Among the candidates running for public office, not the best and the wisest are chosen, but those who are best financed and staffed with the cleverest spin doctors. With regard to removing bad officials from office, the American political system has come to view impeachment of public officers as a disruption, rather than a correction of the normal political process, and this puts a big strain on the system of checks and balances, occasionally rendering it unworkable.
The importance of thoughtful selection of government officials comes clear from the following paragraphs of Hobbes’s Leviathan, Chapter XXVI:
“For, whatever men are to take knowledge of, for law, not upon other men’s words, but every one from his own reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all; which no law can be, but the law of nature. The laws of nature, therefore, need not any publishing nor proclamation; being contained in one sentence approved by all the world: 'Do not do to another, which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.'
Secondly, if it is a law that obliges only some condition of men or one man and is not written or published by word, then also it is a law of nature, and known by the same arguments which distinguish those in such condition from other subjects. For whatever law is not written or some way published by him that makes it law, can be known no way but by the reason of him who is to obey it; and is also a law not only civil, but natural. For example, if the sovereign employs a public minister, without written instructions what to do, he is obliged to take for instructions the dictates of reason: as if he make a judge the judge is to take note that his sentence must be according to the reason of his sovereign, which being understood to be equity, he is bound to it by the law of nature: or if an ambassador, he is, in all things not contained in his written instructions, to take that which reason dictates to be most conducing to his sovereign's interest; and so of all other ministers of the sovereignty, public and private. All which instructions of natural reason may be comprehended under one name of fidelity, which is a branch of natural justice.”
What Hobbes is essentially saying here is that governing is a serious and much-demanding business. A lot of things can and will go wrong, if the most excellent laws are entrusted to the care of the wrong people. A public officer (from the “President” down) must make decisions that are not self-evident, but based on his personal judgment, coming from his experience and moral standards, in accordance with natural reason. It is therefore essential that each public figure’s personal morality be seriously examined, but not with regard to his particular religious views, which always tend to be sectarian and divisive, but from the angle of how he or she understands, and has a track record of following, "universal" moral principles. One of such universal and practical natural laws is suggested here by Hobbes as his one-sentence rule of thumb: “Approved by all the world: Do not to another which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.”
In the same Chapter XXVI of Hobbes’s Leviathan, he makes this further argument for the importance of the public official’s good judgment not in enforcing the law, which happens to be less complicated, but in this law’s proper interpretation:
“The legislator known, and the laws by writing or by the light of nature sufficiently published, there wants yet another material circumstance to make them obligatory. For it is not the letter, but the intent in which the nature of the law consists; and, therefore, all laws, written and unwritten, have need of interpretation. The unwritten law of nature, though it be easy to such as without partiality and passion make use of their natural reason and therefore leaves the violators thereof without excuse; yet considering there be very few, perhaps none, that in some cases are not blinded by self-love, or some other passion, it is now become of all laws the most obscure, and has consequently the greatest need of able interpreters. The written laws if short are easily misinterpreted, for the diverse meanings of a word or two; if long, they be more obscure by the diverse significations of many words: in so much as no written law delivered in few or in many words, can be clearly understood without a perfect understanding of the final causes, for which the law has been made; the knowledge of which final causes is in the legislator. To him there cannot be any knot in the law insoluble, either by finding out the ends to undo it by, or else by making what ends he will by a legislative power; which no other interpreter can do.”
Here is the proper role of the Supreme Court spelled out and this will be a truly most outstanding institution to appeal to, when in doubt about what ‘is’ is. I wonder if a similar version of such a Court might be found, or even if the Supreme Court itself can be charged with this essential task: to clarify the definitions of basic political terms, being used by the other branches of power so that this nation can have its dignity restored by the responsible use of all such terms and by their appropriate applications.
Because---and this is the bottom line of everything I have said so far in this entry---the tragedy of grotesque misinterpretation of both national and international laws by wicked or ignorant public officials can be justly attributed mostly to the flaws in the definitions of the terminology being used, but alas, so far, looking at the US Supreme Court in action, I have not found in the Justices a particular desire to have this terrible flaw of ambiguity in usage rectified. Nor have I found such a desire in any international body so far, including the overpaid, but underperforming Secretariat of the United Nations, where bureaucrats are ever welcome, but serious thinkers are just as out of place as in any other bureaucracy.
(My last comment must in no way be interpreted as a disparagement of the United Nations as such, but this good institution, to which I once happened to belong, surely needs to improve the quality of its bureaucrats.)

A PORTRAIT OF THE STATE AS A HOMO SAPIENS

(This is an intriguing project of an entry, when fully and properly developed. I do not even have to wait for the next round of revisions to develop this one whenever I feel sufficiently inspired to do it. Meantime, my hope is that the reader will treat this entry as a work in progress, even more than most of the others. One may argue that, from the asteroid belt of morality and justice, I have moved closer to the solid state of the planets, as we are about to start a multi-entry discussion, after Hobbes, of the matters of state, and next, of “superstate.” (What this means, will become clear shortly.) However, I am not quite willing to commit myself to a particular structure, and the still tentative course of action may not necessarily materialize that way. So, bear with me, and wait for the next stage.)

The opening salvo of Hobbes’s Leviathan (in its Introduction) contains a fascinating metaphor, comparing the State to the body and soul of a man. Here it is:
"For, by art is created that great Leviathan called Commonwealth, or State, which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended; and in whose sovereignty is an artificial soul giving life and motion to the whole body while judiciary and executive officers are artificial joints, reward and punishment are the nerves, the wealth and riches of all members, its strength, salus populi, its business, counselors, its memory, equity and laws, artificial reason and will, concord is health, sedition is sickness, and civil war is death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of the body politic were first made, set together and united, resemble the Let us make man fiat, said by God in the Creation.”
The greatest value of this clever metaphor is that it allows us to “humanize” the state, studying its political institutions like one studies human anatomy and physiology in a medical school. It also allows us to apply the scientific method of studying the human body to the fanciful construction of an ideal state (turning us into a more enlightened kind of followers of Dr. Frankenstein, that is, glorified social scientists, unlike those rather crude social pathologists, who have recently gained some notoriety, some in their writings, others in applying their half-baked fancies to real life). It has an additional function, I should say, in allowing us to rise one or more levels above Hobbes’s rank of the individual state, to examine the organization and functioning of international organizations, both real and ideal, arriving at some enlightening and sober conclusions.
Whenever we thus get to the business of utopian thinking, it allows us to keep our feet on the ground, even if our wishfully thinking head is high up there, in the pink clouds of the setting dusk, which, high up there, can, alas, be easily mistaken for a rising dawn. There is not much wishful thinking going on in the anatomy classes, mind you, and such sobriety is surely precious in that most irresponsible science of politics: social engineering.

(As an immediate follow-up, see my entry Dr. Frankenstein The Nation Builder, posted on this blog on March 31st, 2011.)

FORGETFULNESS AS A PREREQUISITE OF A BETTER WORLD

“…How little the world would look moral without forgetfulness!” (Nietzsche: Menschliches 92).

How is forgetfulness, discussed in this entry, related to the dream of a better world to come? Looking at the substance of modern international conflicts, particularly, the most hopeless ones, we see their primary cause in bitter memories of past offenses. Examples are so numerous and so overwhelming that one is hardpressed to single out one that would be more bitter than the rest. (Any "singling out" is always subjective, and shows a distinct bias toward other such conflicts around the world.) Actually, we can safely say that all international conflicts in existence today are the results of bad memories.

With this in mind, my promotion of the "larger than life, ergo sterile" superpower rivalry between the United States and Russia, which was openly acknowledged during the cold war era, but today, although very much alive, has been unwisely driven into the shadows, makes plenty of sense. This structural rivalry is not based on bad memories, and is, therefore, non-lethal. With the world deprived of such “good rivalry,” the vacuum has been filled with old deadly scores. It seems like the old coldwar superpower rivalry had put a damper on the deadly conflicts, but now that lid is off, and here is a world in a much worse shape than it had ever been since the end of World War II.

A myriad practical questions are rising in this regard and some of them will certainly become the subjects of separate entries in this section. Perhaps, the most important of them is whether the future of Russo-American relations has been permanently damaged by the misguided American policies and actions in the post-Soviet era? I hope not. It takes a true nobleness of character, some would call it national-chauvinism, to rise above the insults and unpleasantnesses of the past, and I am quite sure that the Russians are good national-chauvinists, in this sense. Haven’t they, in recent memory, risen above the tragedy of the German aggression in WWII or above some lingering unpleasantness, including a series of nasty military skirmishes with China, to befriend both these nations in unprecedented rapprochements of our time?

Generally speaking, whether we like it or not, in the absence of a decent distraction (like the old superpower rivalry used to be), the only solution for our sad world’s mounting problems must be a self-induced amnesia, or, better worded, a new moral spirit displaying a common will to forget.

INSTEAD OF A HOLLYWOOD ENDING

(This is the final installment of my 2006 piece on "Global Security.")

Above was only a partial list of challenges to a successful implementation of the idea of Global Security, if such an idea is implementable at all. But isn’t America “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” and the buck presumably stops with her? Isn’t she free enough to think with her own head, and brave enough to look into her own soul?
There is a lot to be said for optimism when it comes to the last segment. Take the original movie classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for instance. Wasn’t it supposed to end depressingly, on a busy highway, where our truth-screaming hero, looking like a madman and probably on the verge of a total collapse, is hopelessly trying to stop the traffic... But the wise men of Hollywood insisted on a happy ending, and they got one, to be sure…
So, here is mine.

I will never say that this nation is beyond redemption. She does have lots of knowledgeable, well-educated, perceptive individuals, and eminently qualified scholars, to educate the general public, and especially those who desperately need such education: American political leaders. But the voices of wisdom are drowning, while folly prospers. The reason may well be that the government by the people has become a government possessed by an ideology.
It is always dangerous to allow ideologues of any persuasion to decide national policy. By definition, an ideologue, rather than serving his Nation, becomes a promoter of his ideology. Most of us know that only the Word of God is sacred and perfect, and because all ideologies are man-made, therefore, they are neither sacred nor perfect. Reliance on a rigid ideology, rather than on basic common sense, deprives this nation of flexibility in responding to the challenges of a changing world. Even worse, it allows her clever enemies to study the vulnerabilities of this very flawed ideology, and to manipulate events in such a manner that would expose her weakness in the most unfavorable way. In other words, her enemy gets an opportunity to control her through her unsound predictability.

Unless America is emancipated from her ideological shackles, unless she reemerges as a healthy nation with good judgment and common sense, unless her public debate becomes genuinely free (no forbidden subjects and other political taboos!) and meaningful again, allowing all voices of reason and good will to be heard, “Global Security” will remain nothing more than an object of wishful and wistful thinking.

(Written in July 2006.)

SECURITIES AND INSECURITIES

(…This item was written in 2006 and contains a laundry list of geopolitical problems which were current at that time. I kind of marvel [although, honestly, I am not surprised], however, how current they still are, as if time has been standing still all this time… This is probably the main reason why I have decided to deliver it essentially in its 2006 form, both as a historical curiosity and as a compelling testimony to the fact that five years have not produced much of a difference.)

Global Financial, And Other Insecurities:
Soon after President Bush took his famous look into Mr. Putin’s soul, the Russian President paid a visit to the Old Country, where, during a press conference, he complained, with mock indignation, that Europe must stop paying for Russian oil in U.S. currency, and switch to Euros. His devious comment did not result in an immediate fall of the petrodollar, but, in my judgment, ushered in a new era of dangerous instability for the world’s staple currency. Considering the huge deficits America has been running and accumulating during the last few years, shored up, to a large extent, by the power of the petrodollar, this country may be soon, if not already, finding herself at the mercy of some rather unsympathetic strangers--- with a trillion-dollar-plus (today, it may be as high as three trillion, and, I suspect, tomorrow it will be four) claim against her. Even if the Europeans keep coming to the U.S. dollar’s rescue again and again, to forestall a world financial crisis, America and the West are still facing the problem of Global Financial Insecurity, in which the Russians are fairly successfully playing the mischief-makers, recently suggesting, for instance, that the petroleum and gas pricings might well switch to the Russian Ruble, or the Chinese Yuan, or both.

Russia’s position on her WTO entry is also unquestionably duplicitous. A strong argument is being made in Moscow that Russia is much better off outside the WTO with all its restrictions, whereas her advantages can always be obtained from separate bilateral or multilateral agreements, which Russia can now negotiate from a position of strength. It is therefore a big mistake for Washington to see its consent to Russia’s WTO entry as a humongous favor, on America’s part, that the Russians somehow have to deserve. In reality it would be to Washington’s advantage to have the Russians covered by the WTO agreement, rather than allowing them to play the role of spoilers, with relative impunity, thus contributing to global instability in the crucial area of international trade. As a result of Washington’s probably deliberate misreading of Moscow’s intentions, it is giving Russia an excuse to stay out of the WTO, and an advantageous “victim status,” into the bargain. (2011 update on this: I understand that the seemingly perennial impasse on the issue of Russia’s acceptance into the WTO has moved a few inches, but there are a few hurdles still left: one is the reluctance of the U.S. Senate to see Russia in the WTO, and another one is the strong possibility of non-ratification by the Russian Duma, if all other hurdles fail to stop the process. I somehow bet on this matter remaining unresolved at the end of 2012, and even farther than that, by the end of this decade.)

Prerequisites of Global Security:
Repeating the last pronouncement of my Cat Allegory, “Global Security requires that we understand the tiger inside us, and do not misunderstand him inside others.” Here outlined, are the two key prerequisites of the condition we call Global Security.

Teipse nosce. Does America know who she is and what she is doing? What is her national interest if she still has one? Let us take a simple question: Why did America invade Iraq?-- Was it faulty intelligence? Saddam being an obnoxious thug? To spread democracy? To help Israel? Perhaps to build a permanent military base in the Middle East? To pump their oil? To create a puppet government? I have recently heard Dr. Michael Evans, on Chris Matthews’ Hardball, on MSNBC. (Remember that this was written in 2006!) He claims to represent 40 million Evangelical Christians in this country. He is not bothered by the failure to find WMD in Iraq or to tie Saddam to Bin Laden. In his own words, he does not “give a bleep about Iraqi Democracy.” He is in Iraq to stay, to build military bases, and to project American power across the Middle East for the direct benefit of Israel… So, please, will the real reason of America’s Iraq adventure stand up! Until it does, America’s basic competence to address the subject of Global Security will be severely impaired.

Understanding others. Several years ago, on the McLaughlin Group, Mort Zuckerman, the well-known media mogul (US News & World Report being among his more conspicuous assets), and a political pundit, made a comment which made me jump up and cry out in helpless frustration. He confidently declared that Mr. Khodorkovsky, Russia’s “Oil Czar” at the time, was by far more powerful in Russia than… President Putin. A billionaire vs. some fellow living on a measly salary? No contest!!!
There is a profound Russian poem, by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, which must be memorized by anyone who ever opens his mouth to talk about Russia:

All is mine, said the Gold. All is mine, said the Sword.

I’ll buy all, said the Gold. I’ll take all, said the Sword.

It is probably hard to grasp for a foreigner that in Russia money does not buy power, but power rules over money. Today Mr. Putin is the most influential world leader, according to the international media consensus, and Mr. Khodorkovsky is serving a lengthy sentence in a remote Siberian penal colony. I could have told you this ending without having to watch the whole movie, because I know Russia. Mr. Zuckerman was terribly wrong, yet it was his misdiagnosis which was accepted without a challenge. With such glaring ignorance on the march, there is no hope to find a key to Global Security. We cannot solve a riddle when its language is so totally foreign to us.

Its Practicality.
The two prerequisites above: teipse nosce and understand others, must not be taken as a light banter on my part. They go to the heart of the matter. America has no power to force the world into a good behavior. The biggest fellow in the class, in order to be liked, must show some real respect to the others, otherwise, he will be called a bully, and by the law known as the Balance of Power, they will all gang up on him whether he is right or wrong. To avoid the image of a bully, they need to be shown some humility! Humility is the sugar coating on the bitter pill of America’s strength, if America wants the world to swallow it. Arrogance is the self-defense of the weak, it is unbecoming a great nation…

“...Humility, arrogance? Give us a break! What about the real issues: arms control, non-proliferation, etc.?”
…Political science is notorious for making large marble pedestals for monuments made of dust…
Global security is not some general theory suspended in a vacuum. It is a game, where the rules are vague and cannot be set by a single player. In the absence of clear rules, the importance of each individual player becomes the main criterion. Therefore, I stand by my two principal prerequisites. And first, before anything else, America must take a long hard look at herself.
Next, she must look around, assessing the real strengths and the real weaknesses of the others. I suggest to start with a radical reexamination of Mr. Putin’s Russia. Here is certainly number one concern, not the man, but the whole rejuvenated, reinvigorated nation. You want arms control? Say “Russia”! Non-proliferation? Say “Russia”!

China. America has a good point, being apprehensive about China. But China has some serious limitations and natural weaknesses. What makes China truly formidable is her close alliance with Russia, an unbeatable combination. As you see, the key, again, is Russia!

Terrorism. This is a disaster. America has not exactly created the monster, but she has built it up. To fight terrorism, she must first deflate it. She should be fighting specific enemies, not a formless specter. Terrorism, like crime, is invincible, unless this term is put into a proper perspective.

The Middle East. If America really wishes to help her friend Israel, she must insert herself into the picture, but only as an honest broker. Being “a city on a hill, the eyes of the world upon us,” let her not abandon that high ground. After all, her friends will be better served with her as a referee than as a player on their side.
As for the conflict itself, I am skeptical about “a permanent solution.” When vital interests of the opposing parties are clashing, we can either try to downgrade one or both of them to non-vital, which I do not see in the cards, or seek a remission, trying to prolong it for as long as possible, until, hopefully, the high tide of the parties’ mutual hatred, causing their incompatibility, subsides to a treatable level… Sadly, the current ongoing tragedy in Lebanon (written in 2006!) has sent the Middle East “Peace Process” back to the Stone Age, while raising serious concern about the future of Israel itself…

North Korea. Doesn’t America have any experts at all?! Can someone, at last, tell the truth to the public and to her misguided politicians: Forget China, it’s Russia, stupid! A million North Koreans are now financing the rogue state’s regime by serving as migrant workers in Russia’s Far East. If anybody has a say there, it is Mr. Putin: he and Mr. Kim have by now looked into each other’s soul so many times, it’s probably time to send Mr. Kim’s special train to a shop for major maintenance. The bottom line: The only thing America can do about North Korea, unless she doesn’t want to do anything, is to make Russia responsible for her client: the Russians will accept this challenge, and many other challenges too as long as America is ready to restore to them the clout of a global power she had rushed to take away from them a generation ago, without a good cause.

Iran. Once again, it’s Russia, stupid! With the Russians firmly behind them, Teheran relishes standing up to the American Colossus. However, Persia is very different from North Korea. It possesses a great power syndrome. It means, the Iranians are not exactly happy with putting all their eggs in one basket. They are eager to play both sides. Besides, they owe America some serious gratitude for having bumped off their enemy number 1, Saddam, and destroyed the Sunni power in Iraq. Now America has a terrific opportunity here to undo some damage from the fall of the Shah, if she is smart and liberates herself from her ideological jail, to breathe again the free air of American interest. The bottom line here is that the lingering problems of Iran’s nuclear program and its general animosity toward the United States have a chance of being somewhat alleviated (but they will hardly go away), through a direct and reasonably respectful communication between America and Iran, as otherwise, it will be all up to Russia.

Old Europe --- New Europe. America needs to be realistic about Europe. Her old friends may not seem too happy with her these days, but they have common blood running in their social veins, and even these angry days blood is still thicker than water. These are not the coolest of days, so, let us not judge an old family by the bitterness of its latest quarrel, nor a new friendship by the sweetness of our victory over a former suitor. Squeezed between “Old Europe” and the Russian Colossus, Eastern Europe will surely have to make certain neighborly adjustments, in the long run, leaving America eventually in the role of an outsider… I would not count too much on those ‘forward bases’ either. The Poles and the Czechs are yet to learn the exact meaning of Zero Option, especially now that some top Russian Generals are publicly threatening to turn their lovely landscapes into a desert…

Post-Soviet Space. One of the most unfortunate of recent American illusions… Having become at odds with the concept of her own interest, America is blissfully ignoring the reality of Russia’s vital interest. I am not suggesting here to get out of Russia’s own backyard. I am only saying, Let’s get real! Just one example will hopefully suffice here. The West has paid billions of dollars for an oil pipeline out of Azerbaijan, to lessen its dependence on Russian oil. In the meantime, President Ilham Aliyev’s much-beloved daughter Leila has recently (written in 2006) married an Azeri/Russian businessman/songwriter Emin Arasovich Agalarov, to live happily ever after… in Moscow, where the climate is much healthier than in Baku, and where her Dad also has a place of his own, both literally and figuratively speaking… (Current update: Recently, in September 2011, Aliyev’s younger daughter Arzu married another important Russian citizen and resident of Moscow, of mixed Azeri/Russian parentage, Samed Aydynovich Gurbanov. The couple has several residences, but their main residence is in Moscow.)


The Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, America’s own backyard has become so badly neglected that this has emboldened the Russians to invade it with impunity. These days America is in such a bad shape all the way south of the border that the consequences of her blindness, caused by a stubborn ideological preoccupation with ‘other things,’ constitutes, in my judgment, one of the worst long-term nightmares, a major setback for global security, and a clear and present danger (actually, one of several!) to American national security…

…To be continued…

THE CAT ALLEGORY

The Allegory:
I think of nations as cats…
Civilization does to nations what domestication does to cats. It makes them want the same thing: a rug by the fireplace, where they can lie and purr. To all, but their owners, cats kind of look alike and purr alike, yet it would be a terrible mistake to think that’s all they want, which seems to be the basic tenet of Globalism. Unique and feral, inside each cat there is a tiger. Among the nations this is called their national spirit. One cannot ignore this tiger, one cannot kill this tiger, and, the trickiest of all, one cannot tame this tiger: by the definition only cats are open to domestication. The only way to deal with our tiger is to make him like his life as a cat. And one more thing: To understand the world, we must understand the tiger inside us (teipse nosce!), and not misunderstand him inside others.

Definitions:
One of my articles opens with the following lines: “Democracy to the Middle East? What is ‘democracy’? How often do we engage ourselves in a passionate debate, marveling at the complexity of issues involved, yet hardly realizing that all this complexity proceeds from the simple fact that we don’t know what we are talking about.” Elsewhere I put it more scientifically: “We need to define concepts before we apply them.”

Now, what is Global Security? One answer is obvious: It is not what we are having today.
Should I go further to suggest that we have probably failed to come up with a meaningful definition so far; otherwise, we would have been in a better position to understand what is going on? The key word here is meaningful, which means that the correct diagnosis must always contain in itself the promise of a cure.
Perhaps, we can start with the specific before moving to the generic? For instance, what is Global Energy Security? So far, I can come up with only one definition: in real political terms it means being nice to the Russians. Somehow, I do not feel that such a definition is totally adequate…
Returning to the general definition of Global Security, sometimes a metaphor works better than scientific prose. So, let me here again return to my unabashed allegorical definition:
--Global security is an international arrangement that allows each tiger to like his life as a cat.
...To be continued...

GLOBAL SECURITY: A HISTORY OF THE TERM

A Little Spurious History:
According to the Russian opinion, the original concept of Global Security belongs to… Mikhail Gorbachev. Gone into oblivion with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has allegedly been resurrected in its new, improved version by Vladimir Putin, who has also introduced the term Global Energy Security, a tribute to Russia’s smart policy of virtually cornering the energy market.
…They say that world history is always written by the winners. Mr. Putin certainly feels like a winner these days: no matter what happens on this planet seems to work to Russia’s advantage. If you do not believe me, “follow the money!” …But the Russian approach to Global Security is necessarily disingenuous. It is being shaped by Russia’s perception of her national interest, which is currently focused not so much on finding an equitable solution to the world’s problems, as on weakening the arrogant power of the United States. (Come to think of it, who can blame Russia for trying to take advantage of the recent world events? The temptation must be too great, given the historically unprecedented opportunity!) It seems as if in the eyes of practically the whole world, Global Security today has come to mean curtailing the American dominance and making a better deal on oil and gas with the Russians.
Meanwhile, the term “Terrorism,” quite ambiguous in itself, is becoming an almost pointless, yet extremely dangerous phrase, an international symbol of resistance to authority, an anarchist’s bonanza, providing an enormous clout to all sorts of local and homegrown movements, gaining them ever more glory-seeking recruits, through an unprecedented and undeserved world-wide fascination with terror (reminding me of Robert Downey Jr.’s obsession in the Oliver Stone movie Natural-Born Killers), and all the resulting publicity.
Preoccupied with inchoate terror, and a lingering suspicion that the United States is taking advantage of the general frenzy, the world community has again and again been proving its inability to handle specific crises. The most apparent threat to global security today is not some kind of SPECTRE-like conspiracy against the world order, even though it often surely feels that way, but a glaring incompetence of the powers in charge. Is it possible that this incompetence is deliberate?

A Little Factual History:
Incidentally, the idea of Global Security does not originate with Gorbachev, except that he was attempting, in those closing days of an era, to give it a pro-Soviet tilt. In 1983, two years before he would take power in Moscow, I was elected Fellow of a little-known Californian think tank, headed by Richard Smoke, called Peace And Common Security Institute, or PACS. As I then discussed the meaning of “Common Security” with Richard, the idea was to boost International Security primarily through meaningful cooperation with the Russians, both bilaterally, and within the format of existing International Organizations, and of newly created public forums.
I am making this personal comment not to suggest that this whole idea of “Global Security” was born in Berkeley, California, or in Richard Smoke’s head, but only to indicate that the concept itself is a natural one. There are more roads than one to approach it, and, considering the abysmal failure, so far, to reach a tangible practical result (epitomized by the stunning universal paralysis in the face of unstoppable nuclear proliferation, the suddenly exponential escalation of the nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia (sic!!!), the horrific carnage in the Middle East, etc.), there surely must be some really defective thinking, going on out there.
We are desperate for a creative brainstorm, not just another theory; a flash of intuition, rather than a labor of belabored scholarship. Perhaps we need some serious citizen initiative? Only our citizens ought to be much-much better informed…

My Angle:
…Talking about “citizen initiative,” I have often been asked what exactly is my agenda. I guess it is to be a good citizen myself and to help other citizens become better informed… ¿Simplë? -- ¡No!

…To be continued…

GLOBAL SECURITY: PREREQUISITES AND PRACTICALITY

(My next subsection will center around the lecture synopsis (under the title: Global Security: Prerequisites and Practicality), which I offered back in September 2006 as one of my two choices for lecture/seminar to the organizers of the GSS, Global Security Seminar in Los Angeles, which I was then attending. This summary was written for the sake of being written, and I did not actually expect it to be presented as a lecture, although, had this happened, it would have been a terrific lecture! As I expected, my alternative offer was accepted, and in December 2006, on the heels of my controversial Baltimore Sun article on the perils of conventionalization of strategic delivery systems, I was the GSS speaker with the intriguing title: Russia: the Misplaced Key to a Stable World.)

The Preamble. Presenting my lecture synopsis in this oddly unconventional form, I am not indulging some secret urge for non-conformity, at least not without a perfectly sensible rationale. The form I have chosen is the best way for me to convey not only the content, but also the flavor of this presentation. After all, this is not a solemn point-by-point condensation of a scholarly thesis, but, as I see it, an engaging introduction to a meaningful sharing experience. Let us have an important conversation, whose time is long past due!

Of Best-Laid Plans, And My Twopence. They say, rather uncharitably, that the road to hell is littered with good intentions. The last century has indeed made a mockery out of man’s search for a formula to bring in a lasting peace. Enlightened thinking, the miracles of science, the labor-emancipating technologies, nothing seems to have worked. On the contrary, human progress has apparently found its highest expression in an out-and-out global arms race, in which even the poorest nations see better, that is, deadlier, weapons as the ultimate status symbol, the topmost criterion of national prestige.
There was a hope for a while, maybe it is still lingering in some minds, that in this nuclear age, the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction, introducing the fear of certain death into the equation, the realization that wars have become unwinnable, should be powerful enough to contain, or even paralyze, the Martial spirit, thus bringing a permanent Peace-through-Fear to the greater nations of the earth, who, in turn, would restrain the lesser, non-nuclear nations from engaging in smaller wars.
There is a certain logic there, but alas, human affairs are not susceptible to logic. Looking around us today, we see glaring madness, reckless folly, cunning agitation and bare propaganda, but little common sense. Introducing wisdom into international relations is a daunting task, but, being a sine qua non prerequisite of global security, this task has to be performed. I will be dwelling on this point at some length in this lecture, later on.
My treatment of Global Security is a pensive Commentary, rather than a systematic exposition, a call for action, rather than a plan of action. General theories have the tendency to be debunked. Perhaps, they pay too much attention to the regular cards, forgetting that every deck has at least a couple of jokers, and those are tricky fellows. The world may not be ready for treatment yet: we need to improve the process of triage. My present effort goes in that direction.

(…A lot of wishful thinking in the paragraphs above, and probably worth less than the twopence declared in their title. But there is an interesting sober point made there, concerning the possibility that after all, the mischievous nuclear genie let out of the bottle through the failure to enforce non-proliferation, can actually help the world by making impossible not only wars between the nuclear powers, but also any acts of aggression perpetrated by the stronger nations against the weaker ones. Peace through fear sounds sort of tacky, but if that works, and peace does indeed come through that back alley door, we might think about an eventual moral revaluation of the unpleasant Machiavellian phrase “the end justifies the means.”)
…To be continued in my next posting tomorrow…

DIALECTICS AND CAUSALITY

I confess that in all of my discussions of dialectics, I have been influenced not so much by Hegel, as by his brave revisionists Marx and Lenin. Unlike the majority of modern philosophers, I do not consider that duo either philosophically incompetent, or out of line, because, in my judgment, as I have said again and again, the most important legacy of any philosopher is not his philosophical system, but the degree of a stimulating effect he has on the generations of successive thinkers, myself not excluded.
My seeming obsession with the dialectics of “thesis and antithesis,” which I interpret as the philosophically rationalized foundation of the bipolar world order, does not gloss over the historical essence of dialectics, which is the process of gradual approximation of the truth, or the Absolute, using the questions and answers technique. This process was effectively developed by the pre-Socratics, although Socrates is often credited with inventing it.
For Hegel, dialectics at first does not seem to leave the domain of epistemology, representing the process of the acquiring of knowledge by the Spirit. It is only when he specifies the object of knowledge, in relation to the world-historical process, that Hegel’s dialectics becomes distinctive, and the notions of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (incidentally, suggested not by Hegel, but by one of his interpreters, who borrowed these terms from Fichte) enter the picture, allowing Marx and Lenin later to jump on them.
Is there a logical sequitur within the dialectic chain between its champions dialecticians? There is a certain consistency in the progression between the Pre-Socratics and Hegel, and between Hegel the epistemologist and Hegel the philosopher of history, but the legitimacy of the transition from Hegel to Marx is questioned particularly by subsequent Western philosophers. There is no consistency breach however between Hegel’s idealism and Marx’s materialism, insofar as dialectics itself is concerned. The only strong objection to the treatment of this process by Marx and Lenin is that, in their approach, the world-historical process freezes over with the advent of communism (or, to be more modest, socialism), which undermines the principle of dialectical change without a proper justification. Indeed, even if we can imagine an arrival at the Absolute by Hegel’s self-realizing Spirit, such terminal point is only anticipated within idealistic systems, while no such conclusion of the world-historical process can be logically anticipated within the materialistic system, as professed by the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Apparently, both Marx and Lenin were closet idealists, who treated the last Communist stage of the world-historical process exactly like Hegel had envisioned the ultimate self-realization of the Spirit, only with much greater clarity and determination.
In my analysis of the fundamental nature of a stable world order, I have been contending that the stabilizing geopolitical principle of bipolarity appears to be the only logical principle of international organization. No claim, however, can be made that bipolarity is an ideal state of global affairs, because it is only a physical, only a material principle, whereas the clear dividing line between the material and the ideal remains intact in this consideration.
This is not to say that, as a material principle, bipolarity cannot have a say in our discussion of the ideal, as long as we have drawn proper conceptual lines, and are conscious about not overstepping them. Mindful of these constraints, we can nevertheless speculate about the viability of the bipolar principle in international politics and its exact position within the quasi-Hegelian dialectical chain of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Assuming that unipolarity is an oxymoron, and multipolarity is a transitional state, bipolarity comes out as the most natural dialectical thesis. However, being physical, rather than ideal, it can be expected to meet a perpetual challenge to its legitimacy in a variety of temporary forms, be that the illusory state of unipolarity, or the transitional reality of multipolarity. And, being the only stable state of reality, it can be expected to be recurring each time having been challenged by a fleeting antithesis, first as a synthesis, which our world is experiencing right now, and then as a new, yet familiar old thesis. Es ist eine alte Geschichte, doch bleibt es immer neu...
As I am on this subject now, I am curious about one other, consummately speculative thing: How does our recurring dialectic process fit into the causal chain? Can it be thus: Thesis is the cause of antithesis, which is the cause of the struggle between the thesis and the antithesis, then the struggle itself must be the cause of the synthesis, which right from the moment of its birth becomes the new thesis, and so on… Or, maybe, the thesis is not the cause of the antithesis, but only of the strife, generated by its appearance, a struggle against everything that is non-thesis, and now that the thesis has arrived, the antithesis takes shape from within the non-thesis crowd?
The preceding paragraph was not a vain wild exercise in speculative dialectics, but a serious and legitimate inquiry into the relationship between dialectics and causality, which is not at all obvious, and an invitation to a thoughtful contemplation of this argument’s application to the specific matters of superpower politics, bipolarity, unipolarity, multipolarity, and such. The practical questions of political science are fascinating here. So far, mind you, I have not involved into this discussion the question of the thesis and the antithesis in its application to the specific powers of the modern world. Of the two superpowers of cold war, how do they relate to each other, if at all, in the context of causality? But before getting into this some questions still remain to be discussed regarding the pure mechanics of the political world order. Such as these:
Is multipolarity a disguise for bipolarity? Will this disguise, granted, of great usefulness to the clandestine antithesis ever be discarded and the dialectic simplicity of the world order be restored? One thing, however, does not have to be asked, because the answer is obvious: There can be no such thing as unipolarity in real life, but only an arrogant chimera in the inflamed minds of the make-believe emperors of the universe, the classic case of emperors without clothes, their suspense allowed to last for a while only because the rest of the world is having such great fun at their expense and also trying to take maximum political advantage of the poor blind emperors…

NOSTALGIA FOR THE OLD WORLD ORDER

Nostalgia is a form of wishful thinking. But there are two different types of nostalgia. One is unreasonable, for something that can no longer be, such as nostalgia for one’s forever lost youth. The other type is a longing for something familiar, because we have already experienced it and appreciated its positive aspects, but even though this something was experienced in the past, it is our familiarity with the events and phenomena in question, which allows us to extract their healthy essence from the past experience and desire to have them in the present, which currently lacks these elements, or strive to infuse them into the future. Such nostalgia is good and healthy, it compels us to learn from history, to analyze the merits and demerits of each event under consideration and to apply our analysis to the new reality at hand.
My nostalgia for the old world order focuses on the current temporary breakdown of bipolarity in international relations, which, I have no doubt, will eventually be restored to the world, as it has never really gone away. In this connection, here is an interesting Nietzschean passage from Menschliches (92), which, I believe, supports and clarifies my point, bringing together the concepts of equality and justice.---
“Justice (fairness) originates among those, who are approximately equally powerful: where a fight would mean inconclusive mutual damage, there the idea originates that one may come to an understanding, and negotiate one’s claims. The initial character of justice is the character of a trade. It has gradually come to appear as if a just action were unegoistic; but the high esteem for it depends on this appearance.”
Nietzsche clarifies his understanding of justice as fairness, which immediately discards any interpretation of justice as blindly following the law (“good or bad, this is the law!”), and sets our mind on the pursuit of the ideal of justice. Remarkably, Nietzsche incorporates into his discussion the uncannily familiar principle of restraint through the threat of “inconclusive mutual damage” (does the old and much vilified term “Mutual and Assured Destruction” still ring a bell?), but he also makes it clear that in order to achieve such a restraint (which is essentially the state of peace, as opposed to the state of [hot] war), the parties have to be “approximately equally powerful.”
The implications here are obvious. Without structural equality in the modern world there can be no stability, no justice, no peace.
In other words, the assumption of a single-superpower hegemony, which of late seems to have been so very much to the taste of the Washington politicians and their ideologically possessed advisers, not only does not promote, but, in fact, undermines the principles of stability, equality, and justice. By definition, hegemony has nothing in common with equality, thus overruling international justice and undermining global stability.
So, here’s the “new world order” to you!
Now, on the other hand, the existence of two superpowers on the international stage corresponds precisely to what Nietzsche calls “approximately equally powerful,” and it is between them that, according to him, justice ought to originate. The newest conception of “multipolarity” in the modern world (as opposed to bipolarity and the utterly phony concept of "unipolarity") looks to me as something slightly artificial and disingenuous, and also distinctly reactive, but at least it reveals a will to justice, which is more than can be said about the “one-nation’s hegemony” principle.
The multipolarity principle actually corresponds to the physical world in a state of flux. There appears to be no order in it, and multitudes of apparently independent forces are running amok. But just give this chaos a chance to settle down, and you will see a familiar pattern of polarization of forces around two major centers of power, positive and negative, and eventually this consistent and certain polarization will reorganize the chaos and will reestablish stability and predictability to the maverick system's order. Whether such course of events is desirable and welcome by all its constituents doesn’t really matter, as there is nothing an individual force can do of itself to prevent the reestablishment of the eventual bipolar stability.

For this reason, nostalgia for the old bipolar world order is not exactly the common kind of nostalgia for the good old times, which have passed away. When the current despicable state of the world becomes a thing of the past, only certain reprehensible characters can be nostalgic about it, but no person of good conscience anywhere in the world, certainly including America, should have a single good thought left about it, as this ‘New American Century’ has brought nothing good to America, but humiliation, isolation, and degradation.
Thus, my current nostalgia is a futuristic nostalgia for the once and future stability of the badly destabilized international system. As a result of the current instability, many thousands have already died and many more are yet to die, none of these deaths for a good cause, but most of them for a tragic nothing. It is ridiculous to infer from this that a bipolar cold-war world is problem-free, but at least the one we used to have, possessed a legitimate thesis and antithesis, and therefore it was a world about something, no matter how imperfect and even ridiculous that something may have turned out to be.

THE TWO SUPERPOWERS

In the course of this ongoing series, my main appeal to what I have been calling the old world order refers to the condition of structural bipolarity, which existed during the cold war between the United States of America and the USSR. This condition was representative of a conflict, which was “larger than life, ergo sterile” as I put it in one of my earlier articles. I still insist that this kind of conflict ensured the world balance and international stability far more effectively than whatever we are having today, under the auspices of the “new world order.” What, I insist, it also ensured was the perpetuation of the American Empire. As long as the bipolarity factor was clearly identified and acknowledged, the international "balance of power" was kept along those lines, and the responsible nations of the world had a vested interest in maintaining the two poles of power, in order to maintain the global balance. With the collapse of the USSR and the refusal of the United States to recognize Russia as its successor in the post-Soviet world order, the global balance of power was dealt a devastating blow, which immediately denied the American Empire its life-saving status of a stabilizing factor, but instead suddenly made America just as vulnerable as the crumbling Empires of the past, turning her into the only bully on the block, thus alienating former friends and virtually sending most of them off to the opposite camp. That’s “balance of power” to you. It is that simple!

So, what is to be done?
I am hardly advocating a return to cold war, of course, but, in my view, the bipolar conflict between the two major antagonists, America and Russia, has not gone away at all, but has been driven underground, which is making it less manageable, and the international situation as such, less predictable and less stable. But it can still be managed, and a measure of global stability can still be reestablished and maintained, as long as we are prepared to reaffirm the necessary existence of the structural bipolarity in modern world. Such a recognition calls for the psychological acceptance of the fact, and, whether we like it or not, this is a condition sine qua non.
Otherwise, the future is rather bleak, and ultimately unpalatable, for the self-proclaimed sole superpower. In reality, a second superpower is looming large today, mightier and more threatening than the USSR ever was, and ultimately far more powerful than the United States herself… No, it is not China, whose military power cannot compare to the military power of the United States, and whose conspicuous deficiency in key energy resources makes her sorely dependent on outside sources. No, it is not Russia either. Although militarily on a par with the United States, and, in terms of her energy resources, an uncontested “sole” superpower, while her current dominance in space can hardly be contested either, Russia has no desire to go it alone this time. I will argue that Russia’s current strengths added together still qualify her as a global superpower, and yet she does not wish to press on with this distinction. Why settle for less when you can have more? And Russia has that “more” in her geopolitical arsenal as we speak, and, to be blunt, for as long as America and China are at odds, which, it appears, may be forever. Yes, for as long as China sees America as an adversary, an alliance with Russia is undoubtedly the top priority of China’s national interest. And now we come to the big point.

---The real “other superpower” of today is the joint power of Russia and China, a mutually super-beneficial conglomerate of the two colossi, in which the weaknesses of one are amply compensated by the strengths of the other. An unbeatable combination, of which fact both Russia and China are fully, and most satisfyingly, aware.

…Ironically, most political analysts, for different reasons, prefer to talk about China (customarily) or Russia (in the rare moments of audacious candor) always in isolation from each other. As if not talking about the elephant in the room will make him go away…

GREAT EMPIRES AND THE CONCEPT OF BIPOLARITY

There is a reason why the idea of bipolarity may be vigorously dismissed as unnecessary and defeatist, in so far as America’s hegemonic dream is concerned. Once upon a time in history, there was a viable and mighty Pax Romana, many will say, and, in fact, have been saying all the time, so what is wrong with having a Pax Americana rule the world, for a change? Pax Romana was in place for hundreds of years, Pax Americana is a clearly superior international arrangement, and it can stay in place for a good thousand years, now that the blight of Soviet communism has been removed from the face of this planet…
What’s wrong with this line of thinking? Great empires have indeed existed throughout human history. They rose and fell, and here is the first snag in the Pax Romana--Pax Americana logic. There are many people in the world today, no friends of the United States, who are very anxious to cite the parallel, but with their own spin on it. Their logic is that all great empires had been doomed from the start. Alexander the Great built an uncontested empire, which collapsed on the day of his death. So did Charlemagne’s empire’ later on. There were also other great empires built by their founding geniuses. Genghis Khan’s broke into pieces right away after his death, just like Alexander’s, and other such examples are a few. (Such empires as Napoleon’s, and, perhaps, Hitler’s Third Reich, were contested from the very beginning and collapsed even before the demise of their respective founders.)
We cannot talk about the “stability” of an empire built on the laurels of its founder and destroyed as soon as those laurels had faded. It reminds me of a big rock hurled into the air by the powerful arm of a prodigious athlete and sustained by that propelling force until the natural forces of friction and gravity must inevitably bring it down.
Getting back now to the Roman Empire of the Pax Romana fame, its historical reality was less glorious than its legend. I don’t think that, digging up all historical facts, the idea of the United States somehow emulating the Romans in our modern age would look just as charming in the eyes of its proponents as it appears on the most superficial level of the Pax Romana--Pax Americana parallel. Built on military strength and nonstop warfare, the Roman Empire relied culturally on foreign (Greek) wisdom, and during its maturity, it relied on foreign mercenaries in most of its military and security matters, leading to disastrous results. Besides, the sheer weight of its colossal bulk could not be sustained, leading to its split into Western and Eastern Roman Empires, with its crowning jurisprudential achievement, the Codex Justinianus, coming not out of Rome but out of Constantinople!
But the key argument against the parallel of Pax Romana--Pax Americana can be gleaned from the famous book Russia and Europe, written in 1869 by the Russian political thinker Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky, a botanist by profession, who saw the series of coming and going civilizations as biological cycles in nature. Great Empires, like flowers, bloom, blossom, and then fade, leaving the field to later bloomers. He saw the British Empire as a bloomer soon to fade, and believed that the future belonged to Russia. What he said of the British Empire and of the preceding civilizations, however, could be just as easily applied to the United States, which taints this whole line of thinking, and ought to prompt the apologists of the American Empire to start looking for other arguments in support of their Imperial claim.
I am not making an argument here, however, for an imminent demise of the American Empire of the twenty-first century, as my principal thrust is toward the validation of the bipolarity principle. Promoting my thesis, I seek support not from Danilevsky, who, in my opinion, brilliantly exposes the downside of the hegemony quest by a single superpower, but from Alexis de Tocqueville, whose vision of the rise of two superpowers, America and Russia, testifies in defense of my bipolarity principle.
In a nutshell, as long as the hegemony principle is withdrawn and the bipolarity principle has been properly recognized and acknowledged, the American Empire has nothing to fear. What it has to fear though, is the current geopolitical ambiguity, where the "antithesis" to America unquestionably exists, but it has not been properly identified. Against such an "antithesis," the American Empire stands no chance.
...This discussion continues in my next entry The Two Superpowers.