L’Occident a maintenant un grave problème avec ses élites.
Le bon sens permettait déjà de s’en douter, les observations s’accumulant dans le sens d’une déconnexion de plus en plus importante et aux conséquences de plus en plus graves des élites du reste du peuple. Une étude récemment menée par Scott Rasmussen (fondateur de l’institut Rasmussen Reports) permet d’apporter des éléments factuels à ces intuitions.
Drawing on his extensive experience as a historian and diplomat, Philip Zelikow warns that the United States faces an exceptionally volatile time in global politics and that the period of maximum danger might be in the next one to three years. He highlights lessons from the anti-American partnerships developed by the Axis powers in World War II and Moscow and Beijing during the early Cold War. Zelikow reminds decision-makers who face Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea today to remember that adversaries can miscalculate and recalculate and that it can be difficult to fully understand internal divisions within an adversary’s government, how rival states draw their own lessons from different interpretations of history, and how they might quickly react to a new event that appears to shift power dynamics.
Forget the “Pax Americana.” The unipolar moment, that brief interlude where the United States reigned supreme, is over. China’s rise, coupled with a growing discontent with the American-led rules-based international order, has ushered in a new era: a multipolar world with multiple power centers jostling for influence.
What would become of the world if the United States became a normal great power? This isn’t to ask what would happen if the United States retreated into outright isolationism. It’s simply to ask what would happen if the country behaved in the same narrowly self-interested, frequently exploitive way as many great powers throughout history—if it rejected the idea that it has a special responsibility to shape a liberal order that benefits the wider world. That would be an epic departure from 80 years of American strategy. But it’s not an outlandish prospect anymore.
With Russia pressing from the east and Trump polling well in the west, the EU needs a dramatic increase in its defense capabilities.
European strategic autonomy, strategic independence, and emancipation—these concepts have been ambiguously defined and, consequently, unconvincingly operationalized since they became buzzwords after the publication of the 2016 EU Global Strategy. While the Trump presidency may have awoken Europe to the transatlantic partnership’s fragility, particularly as the U.S. under different administrations seems keen to redefine its global leadership, the current turbulent European security landscape renders the EU’s ability to defend itself more relevant and challenging than ever. Greater strategic autonomy will require rapid defense integration among EU member states, an emphasis on understanding the perceptions and requirements of its Central and Eastern member states, and a commitment to a strong European pillar in the NATO structure that can at least maintain a first line of defense in case of strained U.S. capabilities.
The new Iron Curtain that’s descending upon Western Eurasia from the Arctic (Finland) to Central Europe (Poland) via the Baltics is for psychological purposes to scare Europeans into doing whatever their leaders demand on false security-related pretexts so that the US can continue dividing-and-ruling them.
The U.S. was born out of ideas and the geopolitical schemes of competing maritime empires, forging a foreign policy approach that dominates its foreign relations today.
Considering whether modern states are empires tells us almost nothing useful about either modern states or empires. A better question is what policies and structures pioneered by empires are still employed by states today, and how.
Most modern aspects of just war theory found in the West can be traced to Saint Augustine of Hippo, and later specified by Saint Thomas Aquinas. The basic purpose of this theory was to teach Christians, and other just rulers, that waging war in general was not sinful if war was waged under certain circumstances for certain moral purposes. This theory is broken down into two parts. First is the right to go to war, and second is how states are to act during war. The principles of just war theory have been the underlying justifications for many modern conflicts, even if not acknowledged explicitly.
D’un point de vue pratique – puisque la politique tient avant tout du pragmatisme collectif -, le plein-emploi est sans doute le premier critère observable d’une société réellement inclusive. Avec ses 3 millions de chômeurs, on peut raisonnablement dire que la France actuelle est en crise et pratique plus ou moins directement l’exclusion, malgré les diverses offensives sociétales menées par les gouvernements successifs. Nous ne parlerons pas des offensives migratoires qui, alimentant au mieux l’économie parallèle (traite d’êtres humains, exploitation sexuelle, trafic d’organes…), ne font qu’apporter une misère exotique à la misère locale.