The war between Israel and Gaza is the umpteenth chess piece of the Western world on the geopolitical chessboard, equivalent to those already used, and mostly failed and broken, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine…
It is absolutely disheartening to watch our democracies languish. It is especially sad and disheartening to see how European leaders genuflect to an Anglo-Saxon vision of the world that is totally incompatible with the search for global peace. The multipolar world in which we now find ourselves, however much some Western leaders may regret it, requires cooperation that respects the heterogeneity of peoples. But this is incompatible with the current political and economic ruling class in the United States, fearful of losing control of the planet. They have not yet realized it, but they have already lost it. Many countries have already lost their fear of not following the slogans dictated from Washington and London.
The war between Israel and Gaza is the umpteenth chess piece of the Western world on the geopolitical chessboard, equivalent to those already used, and mostly failed and broken, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine… The problem is that before, from the West, the audience could be manipulated under a smokescreen, simulating the Hollywood recreation in that magnificent movie, Wag the Dog. Trying to reduce the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas to a script where we are presented as the good guys those who have been breaking UN resolutions for decades, setting up an apartheid against an entire people, the Palestinian people, is, to say the least, grotesque.
The West and the democracies have much to lose in this conflict. If they do not put limits on the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Israel and continue to make a distinction between first and second class dead, our decline will accelerate, most especially that of the United States. Two additive political scenarios are playing out. On the one hand, the political anticipation of Frank Biancheri, a French political scientist, one of the fathers of the Erasmus scholarships, made back in 2010, according to which we were heading for a global conflict if Europe did not throw off the Anglo-Saxon yoke. On the other hand, and as a consequence of the above, I do not rule out that in the end the prediction of the Norwegian mathematician and sociologist Johan Galtung, who anticipated the loss of US global power in the decade we are now in, will also come true.
Frank Biancheri and Johan Galtung’s forecasts
But let’s take it one step at a time. Europe had the opportunity to change the roadmap, to promote a global cooperative model, which undoubtedly involved definitively throwing off the Anglo-Saxon yoke. That moment was the Great Recession. But it did not do so. As a consequence, we entered an alternative scenario of conflict. I highly recommend the careful reading of a visionary book by the great Franck Biancheri, one of the driving forces behind the Erasmus scholarships: “The World Crisis: The Path to the World Afterwards“. Biancheri detailed two scenarios, cooperation or chaos. And it was Europe that decided. In the end, the path followed by Europe leads us to a world in conflict, which Franck, more than 10 years in advance, predicted (Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, … or what may now happen in the Middle East).
The underlying problem is that the dominant empire, the US, is certain that it will soon lose its hegemony to another, the Chinese. Behind it all, a reality: no one can compete with China, which took advantage of the gap and the opportunity given to it by the West. It is going to regain the world throne it has held for millennia. The last 150 years are, in the Chinese interpretation, a parenthesis from which they have learned their mistakes. What we are seeing can be summed up in one sentence: “China is not emerging. It is re-emerging.” The United States knows this and is trying to gain time and influence so that, when the time comes, it is not left behind, or, worse still, spread conflicts in different areas of the world that could end in an escalation of global war.
I have maintained this reasoning since I started analyzing the political derivatives of the current governance system, Neoliberalism, from Current Inverted Totalitarianism to Fascism. China’s technological and educational drive is so powerful that it is unstoppable. No one can compete with a country with such technological development as China, which also has state control of land, banking and long-term strategic planning. Only a military conflict can stop what is inevitable. The danger is that the United States is making this interpretation, as I believe is already happening.
This allows me to introduce, finally, the Conflict Theory of the Norwegian sociologist and mathematician Johan Galtung, who predicted, among other things, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and warned that the global power of the United States will collapse in the current decade. Many years ago, Galtung developed a theory of conflict based on the idea of synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions, which he uses to make his predictions. The model is based on comparing the rise and fall of 10 historical empires. In 1996, he wrote a scientific paper published by George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution warning that the United States would soon follow the same path as previous imperial constructs: decline and fall. But the main book that establishes Galtung’s prognosis was published in 2009, “The Fall of the American Empire” where he presents the 15 synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions afflicting the American country that, according to him, will lead to the end of U.S. global power in this decade. The problem is that during this phase of decline the United States is likely to go through a phase of reactionary “fascism” that would stem from a capacity for tremendous global violence; a view of the American exception as the “fittest nation”; a belief in a coming final war between good and evil. But if their allies cease to behave as such, they will have to fend for themselves. What Galtung predicts is that the support of their once allies will not continue beyond the current decade. We shall see.
Juan Laborda
Source: “La geopolítica occidental se agrieta a marchas aceleradas”, ElDiaro.es, 20/10/2023
Franck Biancheri playing chess in Sevilla
