Russia Sees Multi-Polar World as It's Future -- Not Trump

[David Guyatt]

A multi-polar world is the best possible alternative at the moment, given humanity's present state of mind. Together with China and other Asian nations there is developing a political and economic bloc that can operate irrespective of the US need to dominate the world with their neoliberal lust, greed and never-ending-war.

David, I'm not quite as ready to sign on to this as I might have three years ago. Certainly Russia is in a position to adopt a rope-a-dope foreign policy and with China appears to practice an foreign economic policy of reciprocity, its internal policies strike me as rapacious and designed to benefit the government's sponsors -- the oligarchical class. It strikes me that Russia is at the moment organized around the eternal threat of war to benefit its nucleus. It is an internally neo-liberal economy as I see it.

Witness Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich's yacht.



I am marginally in agreement with you but still not hopeful. The most dire threat comes from the result capitalism in its various forms driven by the logic to the endless accumulation of capital. The arctic sea ice reached lowest maximum in since the last great warming event, many millennia ago. The physics of the polar ice sheet point toward a catastrophic collapse perhaps this summer due to winds tearing it apart. This would be a blue water event leading to a dramatic arctic warming and sudden climate disruption.

I agree partly Lauren and fully agree about neoliberal economics which are ruinous and designed to benefit a tiny, tiny ruling class of elites. That the latter has so easily been sold to the many reflects how captive most of us are content to be.

It would naive to believe that any nation is focused on anything other than what it likes to call its "national interest" which only usually benefits its elite and business class. For example, here in Blighty, exporting arms to some of the very worst nations in the world - Saudi for example - is something we have done for a very long time indeed while, at the same time making loud noises internationally against other nations about their abuses of freedoms etc. It's completely and utterly hypocritical.

Since most Brits see absolutely no hypocrisy about these most obvious double standards it becomes evident that an element of schizophrenia has been designedly inculcated into the national psyche. We see a similar thing in the US today where hypocrisy and double standards likewise rule supreme.

So, in the final analysis I don't see Putin's Russia or Xi Jinping's China in any different light, except that I do think both are generally a lot smarter than most of their Western counterparts.

However, I do think it makes sense that Putin's and Xi Jinping's focus is to develop a closer relationship and to also help develop the One Road - One Belt project with a view to creating a bloc that can compete with America and G7 as equals. I've repeatedly said that I view this as a positive thing because the US as a single global power has shown its unable to act reasonably but inflates as power floods to its head and it becomes a puritanical tyrant - the very worst sort for it sees all its actions as being righteous.

Waning philosophical for a moment, it's a great pity but money and its accumulation has become mankind's new deity to worship and to prostrate themselves before. That wealth is still the dominant standard of measuring one's worth simply reflects how backward we all still are.

Collective Consciousness is still a long way off.

Consequently, I would, therefore, argue that the most important thing for anyone to achieve in the short term is to avoid at their peril any and all group-think and to cease falling head first for all state propaganda and to especially avoid rejoicing/weeping over short term partisan political victories/losses; for whoever falls into these intellectual man-traps simply becomes a captive pawn to be further manipulated by the most cynical of men.

Roman Abramovich btw, lives here in London where many other Russian oligarchs fled to when America's place man, Boris Yeltsin, was replaced by Putin and he began to stop the foreign plundering. If I remember correctly that is one of three super yachts he owns. Not a pleasant man by all accounts. Being a crook pays eh...