In his fresh work “The Curse of the West”, historian and demoographer Emmanuel Todd notes that the United States and their associates no longer know how to respond to any global crisis, unless in the form of violence, which allowed them to grant on October 8, 2023 approval for unlimited killing for the Israeli army.
This "reaction" recorded by Todd goes much further than the manifestation of nihilism of a civilization found in distress, it surely proves the moral decline of the dominant elites in Western countries. But this is besides the consequence of the continuous strengthening in these countries of the importance of the private military-industrial complex, which has late developed there at the expense of civilian production, useful for economical and social advancement of societies. This has caused the relocation of factories to low-wage countries and the transition of the Western bloc to dominate its financial sector over the industrial sector.
The fight for peace and against the militarisation of our societies is so not only a moral demand, but a essential part of the fight for the defence of existing enterprises and the promotion of the policy of reindustrialisation of our countries. And this can only be done under planned economical policies by state authorities under social control, favouring social income, productive and creative investment at the expense of death traders. The fight against the sending of arms to Ukraine or Israel, against military interventions or sending soldiers or mercenaries to Ukraine, to Israel, bombing Yemen or another NATO-targeted countries, against the presence of abroad troops in European countries or elsewhere, against sanctions and blockade policies, is besides a conflict to rebuild our manufacturing forces, to make investigation and social progress.
Only in these conditions will we be able to overcome the forces that stand on the side of murderous interests of death traders moving around the planet to increase their profits. The profits from which laborers, workers, precursors and the unemployed receive less and less crumbs from your table due to the declining trend in profit rates. Globalized Late Capitalism has come to an end today, as the full earth has been subject to its principles and prices; it no longer has fresh markets to conquer and in consequence nations and local bourgeoisies have begun to support the economical improvement of the territory in which they live, work, produce and create. This explains the birth of counterhegemonic powers specified as China or Russia, or states that have made choices against “capitalism without borders”, specified as Cuba, Venezuela, Korea (North), Nicaragua, Belarus, Iran or Eritrea, etc.
The fight for peace is so aimed at disarming forces that have failed to fulfil their obligations, specified as those contained in Article 2 of the Polish Constitution: "Rzeczpospolita Polska is simply a democratic legal state that implements the principles of social justice" and those contained in the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the usage of force outside the right to self-defense, a law which should be interpreted exclusively within the framework of the United Nations system.
Geopolitics as a method for analysing global conflicts and social relations
Geopolitics was initially a method of analysis that developed among researchers serving a alternatively circumstantial colonial empire. It aimed to analyse on the basis of geographical and territorial data of the basic interests of each country which should be opposed or, conversely, to be a partner of another countries. This method tended to identify in an first alternatively mechanical manner conflicts perceived as almost "natural" and unavoidable to control "lifespace", which in the most utmost form led to the justification of Nazism aimed at obtaining the "lifespace essential for the German people". This delegitimized geopolitics after 1945 as bourgeois and imperialist science, before it was gradually rediscovered in the USSR in the 1970s, as well as in the United States, the essential elements contained in this method, especially if we give them dynamics by utilizing the class policy analysis of each state.
In order to dynamically exploit geopolitics, it is so essential first to specify the class base of each country, knowing that in our times there is no "chemically clean" system, due to the fact that each country faces tendencies either towards greater capitalism, to a deregulated market, or, on the contrary, to distance it from that system. It is in this context that all country in the "international division of labour" has a place in globalisation, with its territory and economical potential. This explains why our era is simply a de facto planet War III between the unipolar forces centered around the US, NATO and associated states, facing the forces that counter them and stand on the side of multipolarity. However, thanks to atomic weapons, this war is present in the form of a "hybrid", or many "local" and hot wars, supported by participants who cannot or do not want to face themselves directly.
This "pacifying" origin is all the more timely, since the dominance of the consumer society model and triumphant individualism under neoliberalism pushed human masses towards rejecting the request to hazard life in the service of a higher cause. The dominant Western powers are controlled by bourgeoisie, which can decide on the prices of goods (Terms of Trade) and derive riches that can sometimes, depending on the balance of forces between countries and social classes, service them to corrupt the elites of subordinate countries and at least part of their own working class, which has an nonsubjective interest in breaking up with capitalism centered around Wall Street and London City.
On the another hand, in economically dominated countries, we are dealing with the Komrador bourgeoisie, which benefits from its function as a local relay for the interests of abroad imperialist bourgeoisie. But we besides meet a national bourgeoisie there, who is trying to defend its national market, its territory and launch a stand-alone improvement policy to face up to the emergence of competition from the dominant forces on the planet market. employment workers in countries dominated and overused, but besides in the ‘centre’ countries, play a function in this context as an incentive to encourage them to be more self-centered in defending their local interests national bourgeoisies to show greater independence.
In this fight, working forces and national bourgeoisie are based on the assets that national territory provides them in the form of resources or geostrategic position. With a view to achieving an area of autonomy enabling them to conduct improvement policy, industrialisation and even socially progressive reforms. Geopolitics can so be a useful technological method if it combines an analysis of the territorial situation of each political entity at the level of strategy, resources, historical links with the environment ("geoeconomics" and "geoculture") etc. with an analysis of the class base of each state formation. It is in this context that it seems to us that from the forty armed conflicts in the planet today, known or unknown, more or little active or "frozen", since October 2023, the conflict in Palestine has become a "central conflict" between the monopolar bloc and a full scope of countries and nations exhibiting counterhegemonic tendencies. This is simply a conflict that prolongs the wars and tensions that we are seeing, especially in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, in the African countries of the Sahel, but besides around Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula, in peculiar around the Eurasian core.
Geopolitics of Palestine
If we look at the map of Palestine and the Israeli state creature, which took full control of it from 1948 to 1967, the first thing to be seen is that its boundaries were set after 1918 in the framework of the Sykes-Picot English-French Agreements, in specified a way that it covers the full confederate desert (Negew or Naqab), which allows this territory to scope all the way to the Red Sea, which thus gives to those who control Palestine, the "stagger" cutting halfway across the arabian people, the muslim planet and the Afro-Asian space ("the 3rd World" or "Global South"). These 2 sides of the Palestinian territory, which has been mapped by the English colonizer, can no longer communicate straight without crossing Palestinian territory (‘Israeli’). As a result, all Arab, all Muslim, as well as all anti-colonial activist from Africa or Asia sees its space of territorial, national, cultural, religious, or anti-colonial solidarity, and thus both an imaginary and political space blocked or at least hindered for its movements. specified a situation was already in past the reality of the Crusader State in the mediate Ages and, geopolitically speaking, it is precisely the same position as the Israeli creator.
For this reason, the Palestinian issue has become in the fullest sense an emblematic issue of all anti-colonial movements in the world. Everyone, depending on their political and cultural sensitivity and class divisions, could emphasize the anti-imperialist, nationalistic, cultural or spiritual component of this state of affairs. So in the geopolitics of Palestine there is besides an anti-Western geopolitical aspect, a social aspect aimed at supporting the conflict of the folk classes against the imperialist bourgeoisie of the "collective West" and a symbolic and identity aspect which can adopt a form of arabian nationalism, arabian socialism, more circumstantial Palestinian nationalism, or Islam considered an component of its own affirmation in the face of the colonizer. Because, as he stated, Thomas Sankara“We read neither the Bible nor the Quran in the same way, whether we are rich or poor, otherwise there would be 2 editions of the Bible and 2 editions of the Quran.” The period that followed the collapse of the socialist camp and the russian Union proved this.
Palestine in the midst of the geopolitical contradictions of the modern world
This central aspect of the Palestinian issue, at the same time geopolitical, political and identity-based, explains why there is simply a peculiarly violent division between the arabian Compradorian bourgeoisie leading the regimes with small legitimacy and so peculiarly authoritarian, which are against the "Arab Street", which describes the arabian masses, in peculiar the Palestinians, including the masses of Palestinian refugees in neighbouring countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gulf Gulf countries. This situation besides explains why all conflicts in Western Asia, North Africa, but besides in another parts of the world, are more or little straight related to the Palestinian issue. We see this very clearly in the Arab-Islamic area, but we besides see its manifestations in Sub-Saharan Africa, in socialist countries, in Latin America and in various layers of marginalized population in the West. The exceptional mobilisation of the Irish for Palestine present and in the past so seems highly symptomatic of the above-mentioned nonsubjective and subjective reasons for fighting for the national liberation of the Irish people, as Ireland is geopolitically and historically confronted with British imperialism, which inactive exists present in a single-polar planet focused on Anglo-Saxon powers.
Palestine and National Liberation Fights
Palestinian Geopolitics has been marked by Zionists since the beginning of the colonization of Palestine by attempts to “deteritorialize” the indigenous population in order to replace its imported colonial population, which is to “territorialize” in their place. When, today, all conflicts around the issue of globalisation are actually raising the issue of territory and its function in improvement rights policies in the face of productive relocation policy and promoting the strategical choices of the "transnational" economy. This explains why “Israel” was and remains seen by all arabian nations as a “foreign body” blocking any anticipation of regional integration and development. This situation besides explains why, until the russian Union disappeared, Palestinians could naturally trust on socialist and uninvolved and decolonized countries. After the crisis, and then the end of this "two-polar" world, the Palestinians proved to be isolated in a region where – rather natural – there was already an indivisible bourgeoisia of the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. So more broadly, all the nations of the planet view the Palestinian origin as a symbol of their own attitude towards the right to improvement recognised in the 1970s by the UN, global capitalism, neocolonialism and imperialism.
The Iranian Revolution, reaching the power of the People's Chinas, and then returning to the politics of planet Russia, in which the national bourgeoisie partially established itself in opposition to the "oligarch", in fact to the local Komrador bourgeoisie, were the origin of the improvement of the Eurasian integration process which led to the establishment of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. These organisations are counterbalances to aid loosen the imperialistic grip, especially in western Asia and Africa. And erstwhile Euro-Atlantic imperialism entered a deep crisis, especially since 2008, bourgeois factions in key countries specified as the Gulf States, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Venezuela, etc. have been subject to expanding temptation to distance themselves from the single-polar center and to "move towards multi-polar adventure". The latest episode is joining BRICS, countries specified as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And in this context, marked by many planetary and social contradictions, we can see that objectively the processes of affirmation of anti-governments in the planet have enabled a fresh phase of opposition of the Palestinian people as a consequence of weakening the Western Pole.
Today, the Palestinians, thanks to the military dimension of the actions of October 7, 2023, as well as the American-European defeats in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and at least in part Ukraine, managed to regain their central place on the line between the "collective West" and the "global South", a fresh counter-hegemonic origin to which the most independent countries of east Europe are besides heading. China, so far very cautious on the Palestinian issue, has just highlighted in a peculiarly prominent way before the global Court of Justice, which has been before it for the first time since the 1970s. The 20th century justified the armed conflict as a legitimate and internationally recognized means of combat of a colonized nation.
A fresh phase in the fight for sovereignty between nations, countries and states
The relocation and deindustrialisation of NATO block countries centered around the United States, Anglo-Saxon "Five Eyes", the EU and Japan, and Israel as a colonial settlement facility at the Afro-Asian junction reinforced the importance of the only production sector that was not sent outside, or military-industrial complex. For their part, emerging counterhegemonic forces have the temptation to advance a more productive and thus peaceful economical improvement policy. This explains why Russia waited from 2014 to 2022 before reacting to NATO's threatening push to the east in Ukraine and why China or Iran put diplomatic and economical relations ahead of the usage of force in order to change the global agreement of forces. This corresponds to the interests of the local national bourgeoisie, who is reluctant to face any global tensions that could drive the people to take direct control of the conflict for national sovereignty and thus the sovereignty of the people and the democratisation of social and economical relations and political systems.
The difference between national bourgeoisie and Compradorian bourgeoisie in the countries of the Global South is clearly noticeable erstwhile we observe fear of those who endanger the latter, while the erstwhile seeks to keep the support of their people while trying to keep the monopoly of power. A clear betrayal in some, and a tendency to any opportunism in others. Palestine and Gaza are a kind of "quick" planet that erupted due to attempts made by Western powers and conservative arabian and African regimes to bury the Palestinian issue on little pressing issues. This is why we find 1 of the reasons why Palestinian Hamas military leaders have decided to respond actively to the desperate situation of the people of Gaza and Palestine, but besides to neighbouring and more distant countries that feel humiliated. In fact, Hamas has been preparing the 7 October bombing for a long time, which – no substance how detailed we feel about it – fundamentally changed the global agreement of forces. This explains the extraordinary reaction Gaza has experienced in people around the world, including Western countries.
For example, in the United States, mobilization for Palestinians has led to the most massive demonstrations that have taken place in the last 2 decades, to the point that 40% of Jews in the United States are cut off from Israel and 30% of neo-Engangels are now in favour of Palestinians. This shows that prejudices designed to senionalize 1 spiritual group or another are counterproductive. In France, Emmanuel Macron's government's ban on demonstrations condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the repeated attacks on Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank do not show power but, on the contrary, its weakness.
The French authorities are conservatively committed to demonstrating peculiar authoritarianism, advising against those forms of repression that were seen during the Algerian War and gradually since the time of the mass movement of Yellow Kamizelek. They do so in order to avoid the possible "concordance of combat" between "pro-Palestinian" movements, districts mostly inhabited by immigrant populations, decent pensions movement, farmers, peripheral cities, yellow vests, unionists, social activists, extremist political activists, Muslims, Marxists, priests – workers, etc.
For all spokesperson for social advancement in France and elsewhere in the world, no substance what any may think of the Palestinian tool Hamas itself, he has been able to take into account the local and global contradictions of the planet of the present. This explains that it is besides supported by secular or Marxist allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. So it was a qualitative leap, which besides explains why no Palestinian organization, including even the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, was able to criticize this action. We must always avoid fetishism that leads to flattering any organizations or, on the contrary, demonizing others, but we must besides be able to observe how they are able or incapable to change the arrangement of forces in the long term. Organisations are only tools that sometimes consciously, sometimes little consciously, can trigger a fresh historical process that will reverse the situation and lead to the delegitization of the full existing block of power.
This explains the large joy of the “Arabic street” and more broadly the districts and classes working around the world, in view of the young Palestinian “bosonogy” storming the state-of-the-art Israeli tanks, at the same time as high-tech tanks sent by Western powers were destroyed in Ukraine. That is why we have been told to forget these extraordinary military feats of Palestinians and to focus on the “horrors” committed by these fresh fedains, even since any Israeli witnesses and any investigations conducted by the fewer inactive free Israeli media began to question them.
All of this reminds us of Karl Marx's article in the "New York regular Tribune" describing the force committed by Indian insurgents, the soupai against British colonists liable for much more painful force and humiliation. Thus, even if the pain we feel in the face of martyrdom in Gaza, which reminds us of another martyrs in past – the Paris Commune, thousands of Soviet, Yugoslav, Polish, Chinese, Greek, Algerian, Vietnamese, Korean, etc., whose population was murdered in order to punish them for spawning rebels who could besides commit dubious or even reprehensible acts of violence. From the point of view of history, it is alternatively crucial that the Palestinian issue goes far beyond the Hamas issue itself, which is simply a tool of the Palestinian people at a given phase of history. Hamas' actions enabled the Palestinian issue to be re-established at the centre of the global contradiction, the key issue of the power arrangement between the imperialist pole and the various counter-hegemonic streams in the world. That's what people in the planet remember and remember the past of the world.
The current situation of the "hybrid planet war" so shows that geopolitics is simply a useful method of analysis that can be combined with an analysis of social and economical relations. At our phase of history, it becomes essential to make an intellectual effort to realize the planet as a full and to connect the tragedy that Palestinians are experiencing today, with the tragedy that Ukraine is experiencing, as well as all another countries that are at war or under economical blockade in the face of a dominant world, whose sterile character appears to us increasingly clearly.
Prof. Bruno Drwęski (Paris)
fot wikiepdia
Przemyśl Polska, nr 13-14 (24-31.03.2024)