The defeats of the West. Did Russia win?

John Sadkiewicz and I are talking about Emmanuel Todd's book "The Curse of the West" – Russia, which not only survived sanctions, but strengthened where alleged experts predicted its collapse; about the war in Ukraine as a brutal test of real economical and military strength of the West; and about Todd's diagnosis that conflict over our east border exposes the deepest political crisis of the Western planet for decades.

(Interview is simply a edited and completed version of the podcast Are you aware? p. The defeats of the West. War in Ukraine – hammer smashing bubble)

Rafał Górski: In the introduction to Emmanuel Todd's book, you wrote: “The hammer hit glass” erstwhile titled Stanisław Mackiewicz his review of Adolf Bocheński's book. A akin effect can, yes, be triggered by Emmanuel Todd's book. With his thoughts, his hypotheses, his predictions, the French break the worldview and communicative bubble we live in. It indicates phenomena, processes, threats that are not so much mentioned, which is frequently not noticed at all. The categories and concepts it introduces, the analytical framework it proposes, inspire reflections that go far beyond the reading time."

Who is Emmanuel Todd and why should we believe him?

Jan Sadkiewicz: Emmanuel Todd is simply a French anthropologist, sociologist and historian. In his book he formulates any predictions about the future, but it is much more crucial for him to analyse what was, due to the fact that in his investigation he straight refers to the French school of past of long duration.

He is curious in long historical processes and how they appear in the current geopolitical situation. It is frequently portrayed as a prophet due to the fact that in the 1970s it predicted the fall of the powerful russian Union on the basis of sociological analysis alternatively than political analysis. However, on intent I do not exploit this in the promotion of his current book, due to the fact that it seems to me that its values are determined primarily by the considerations contained in it, alternatively than the reputation that the author owes to his predictions a fewer decades ago.

Therefore, I think that we should not believe him, but alternatively consider the hypotheses he is formulating. Why should we scope to that?

First of all, due to the fact that the next 4 years of the Ukrainian-Russian war will pass, which in terms of this author, but besides many another analysts, is the confrontation of the West with Russia. And in those 4 years, we've been swamped with quite a few information that turned out to be false, starting with how the sanctions were going to rapidly overthrow Russia, or how it was going to weaken the clash at the front, Putin was going to die and so on.

Our media-created image of the West, its power, its cohesion, its position in the planet towards not only Russia, but above all, the alleged Global South, to which Todd assigns large importance here, is far from reality. It seems that it is time to consider another hypotheses about the cohesion of the West, its capabilities, economical condition, military condition, but besides moral.

Todd formulates any theories about the condition of the West and justifies them. Even if we do not agree with these justifications, it is harder to refuse to be right.

This book should primarily provoke same - thinking.

If we do not want to agree with the author, we should effort to explain in a different way that the West, contrary to promises, was not able to outweigh this confrontation on its own side.

Yes, I remember present – erstwhile the war broke out, alleged experts spoke various nonsense in Polish media. any inactive preach it. Others changed their narratives due to the fact that “the wind of past has changed.”

Todd writes: “In Western Europe, thousands of politicians, journalists, and dormitories accustomed to surviving in a akin ellipse were convinced that Western sanctions would put Russia on its knees. The complacency of our elites was sincere. The French Minister for economical Affairs and Finance showed off on 1 March 2022 with the words: “Sanctions are effective. economical and financial sanctions have an incredible power of destruction. We will lead to a collapse of the Russian economy.”

What is the frightened author of the book “The Curse of the West”?

Todd is terrified that our Western planet is going to fail, whose full consequences are just ahead of us.

Western politicians, including European politicians, frequently act as if war were winning and dictated the conditions of peace. Todd, on the another hand, fears that we are only at the brink of disaster. Many global survey theorists or American geopoliticists believe that the United States can get out of this confrontation rather painlessly – for themselves, because, of course, not for Ukraine – to retreat and proceed to compete with another powers; it will be a failure of the United States, but not crucial for the global participation of forces, akin to those in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam.

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On the another hand, Todd believes that this is the first strategical defeat of the United States in their full history, a disaster not only military – due to the fact that the Ukrainian army, armed, trained, supplied by NATO, was incapable to tip the scales on the battlefield against the Russian army – but besides industrial failure, as the Western manufacture was incapable to supply adequate equipment to the Ukrainians.

It is besides a global disaster. The strategy adopted by the West in this confrontation, consisting in the fact that Russia's main tool of defeat being sanctions, required force on the remainder of the planet to guarantee that non-Western countries join these sanctions.

Thus, by adopting specified a strategy, the West made the remainder of the planet choose. They could not stay neutral, they had to take sides either on the side of the West or on the side of Russia.

According to Todd, refusing to join sanctions, and frequently trading with Russia, providing her society with the ability to function in a comparatively undisturbed way and at the same time helping to persist on the battlefield, the remainder of the world, the alleged Global South, de facto sided with Russia.

What does that mean?

The West has joined this confrontation in the belief, as Todd writes, that he is the world's master, that he represents the full global community. The war proved to be the minute erstwhile reality said, "I'm checking." It turns out that the remainder of the planet does not admit the leadership of the West and has no intention of following it.

Moreover, the usage or effort to usage those financial tools at the disposal of the United States against Russia has awakened fear in the elites of the remainder of the planet and has made financial independency from the West, especially from the United States and from the dollar a rational goal for the countries of the Global South, even if it must be pursued slow and cautiously. And that makes the consequences of this disaster more severe and worse before the West.

Let's halt for a minute over the remainder of the world. erstwhile we faced a cold war in Europe, there was a hot war in Southeast Asia, Latin America and South America. We didn't want to hear about it and see it. I urge reading a book ‘Year 501. Conquest continues’ Chomsky. How does Todd answer the question why the remainder of the planet choose Russia today?

Todd believes that between the West and the remainder of the planet there was a latent antagonism that came out erstwhile there was a confrontation between Russia and the West and the West demanded that the remainder of the planet take his side against Russia. This antagonism is double.

First, it has an anthropological background. Todd believes that communities in different parts of the planet are characterised by different household structures and there is simply a link between these structures and political ideologies that dominate the respective nations. These household structures find the relation between spouses, siblings, children and parents, whether families are multigenerational or nuclear. This household education creates a vulnerability to circumstantial ideologies in individual societies. And this, according to the French, can be explained why liberalism appeared in any countries, in others communism, and in others Nazism and so on.

And in this context, Todd notes that Russia with its household structures and ties of kinship is anthropologically closer to most of the remainder of the world, especially Africa and Asia. In contrast, the West with its household structures creates an environment that is friendly to another ideologies, and here there are differences. This antagonism is further exacerbated by the fact that the West is trying to impose its ideology on the remainder of the world, which is resisting in these countries.

The second antagonism is of an economical nature. Globalization, according to Todd, was mostly based on Western exploitation of the remainder of the world. This was the sense of relocation, that is, the relocation of factories and industrial production from the West to poorer countries, mainly in Asia, behind which was more or little unaware of the presumption that the West would be a global bourgeoisie that would live off the work of the proletariat in the remainder of the world.

And these 2 factors make

The remainder of the planet has no intention of submitting to the West, and seeing his inability to deal with Russia, he uses, according to Todd, the chance and is already in the process of emancipating the remainder of the planet under Western domination.

Todd recalls David Teurtrie’s book “Russie. Le retour de la puissance" [Russia, the return of power] issued months before the war in Ukraine. Why?

According to Todd, if only a tiny number of our analysts, politicians, journalists reached for this book, we would be spared this ridiculous belief in the financial power of the West and that Russia from the stroke of sanctions would spread like a home of cards and the West would triumph after a fewer weeks of confrontation.

Todd cites this book and the data the author cites, pointing to the astonishing even reflection that Russia had made under Putin, although he himself points out that any indicators improved even before Putin took power, that is, in the late 1990s.

Russia reached bottom in the 1990s in terms of its strength, the condition of society. For us, the collapse of the russian Union was a blessing, but in Russia communism served as a kind of substitute religion and promoted social cohesion. So erstwhile this ideology was completely compromised, the Russian society felt it strongly. All economical and life rates in Russia were peaking.

And it is astonishing, according to Todd, how, after specified a deep fall, Russia was able to lift up and gradually rebuild its forces, to the degree that – contrary to Western propaganda, whose symbolic expression was John McCain's statement, with large pleasance cited in our media, that Russia is simply a gas station with atomic warheads – Russia was able to accomplish astonishing advancement in many areas.

This explains why he resists sanctions so well that the 4th year of the war is about to pass, and the Russian state's ability to fight does not diminish.

And not only did Russia not fall apart, as it was foretold at the beginning of this confrontation, the features appear on the cohesion of the West.

The ability to romanticist stories of our experts, commentators, generals, journalists, politicians knows no boundaries. Serge Halimi in "Le Monde diplomatique" hits the center of the shield in a very good way, writing: "The short chapters of this frequently provocative book – which the author seemingly wrote with pleasance – release the reader for a minute from propaganda mazi, which surrounds him almost everywhere else."

How did Poland, Europe and the United States fall into a Ukrainian trap?

Here we gotta briefly callback the difference between Todd and American analysts.

Todd points out that the deep causes of the Western crisis are evident in long-term processes – health, educational, spiritual indicators above all. War as a large whistleblower, and at the same time an accelerator of historical processes, not only these processes revealed, but besides accelerated them. On the another hand, there are American analysts who think that this war could be something like Iraq or Afghanistan for the United States – that is, they can easy retreat from it. Meanwhile, the ephemeral successes of the Ukrainian army, the fact that it could defy the Russian army, withstand the first strike, and later even decision on to the counteroffensive and recover any of the lost territories, according to Todd, drew the United States into a trap due to the fact that it awakened hope that Ukraine was able to win this war militarily. According to the French, this hope was deceptive from the beginning.

After first experience, the Russians changed their strategy to wage war to exhaustion, which, as most commentators of this war agree, Ukraine is incapable to win, even with the support of the full West.

But the extension of this war led to the inconsistency of American politics, primarily Trump's policy, due to the fact that Americans know that the war is militaryly lost and the situation on the battlefield cannot be reversed, but at the same time they have invested adequate in it that they cannot now retreat without disaster for their image.

The Western power relied mostly on the belief in this power, on the reputation of the most powerful alliance of states in the world. And the war has shown that the West is incapable to mobilize, incapable to produce adequate weapons, incapable to support Ukraine adequate to defy the Russian army.

The consequences of defeat will be disastrous for the American Empire, and that is why, according to Todd, the key to American diplomacy, already behind Trump's presidency: the United States presents itself as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia, but are de facto 1 of the sides of the confrontation.

Hence, these mutually contradictory statements by Trump, who erstwhile speaks of Putin positively and otherwise negatively, likewise about Zelenski. It's 1 thing, it's the another that the Americans point out to be guilty of not reaching an agreement.

According to Todd, this is due to a dilemma that the United States cannot solve: they are incapable to win this confrontation, and at the same time cannot find a way to retreat from it so as not to lose their face.

Samuel Huntington in his book "The Crash of Civilization" pointed out already in 1996 that Russia only cares about east Ukraine. And I wonder if in the Polish public debate we will always announcement this. That Putin didn't want to take over Ukraine from the beginning.

Can the European Union be corrected according to the author of “The Curse of the West”?

Todd is very negative. It draws attention to the long-term and depth of processes that find the weaknesses of the West, and above all to the fact that they cannot be corrected in a fewer years. It is not even known whether the reversal of these negative trends – deindustrialisation, the failure of religion – is possible. In his opinion, these social processes make Western societies to be atomized, polarized, dividing into an elite that despises the people, and a people who have no assurance in the elite, not feel represented by it.

All this makes Western societies incapable of mobilizing, incapable to unite around any cause.

A fewer days ago, analysts pointed out that the Russian run in Ukraine has been going on longer than the Russian large Patriotic War, that is, the clash between the russian Union and the 3rd Reich, and considered it a symptom of Russia's weakness or inability. Yet at the time erstwhile the russian Union was at war with the 3rd Reich, Britain and the United States were at war with the 3rd Reich. And all you gotta think about is how much mobilization these societies showed up at that time erstwhile it comes to turning manufacture into a war mode or the willingness to bear casualties.

In our case, he is most likely to mock his opponent, but there is very small reflection on how we deal with this situation.

So possibly alternatively of mocking the Russians' inability, it would be better to consider what determination and mobilization the West has shown during these 4 years of war. And here Todd's book is so crucial that it shows why the West is incapable of this mobilisation.

Returning to your question about the European Union, Todd points out that if it is highly hard to act effectively within individual countries, it is only in the case of the European Union, which has only become a quadrupled version of what the national states themselves have become: by-products, incapable to work together.

Todd besides believes that rising the West will be hard and lasting, if at all possible.

What question has no 1 asked you in the context of this book yet, and what is the answer to it?

I have late read an interview with General Jarosław Gromadziński, entitled “Let's decision War Action to Russia”. Contrary to this fighting title, the general says that the 5th year of the war is coming, and Poland is completely unprepared for a possible confrontation. The general even says that the plan for the improvement of the Polish armed forces contains dreams alternatively than realistic assumptions, and we are at the phase of declarations and promises. In conclusion: an interview in which the general talks mainly about what to do We're not capable., was titled "Let's decision war action to Russia".

Why am I talking about this in the context of Todd's book? due to the fact that

The French, explaining why we are in specified a place and not another place, points, among another things, to the function of the media, which does not let us to decently measure the reality around us. reflection on the Western title defeat should besides include reflection on the function played or played by the media.

Thank you for talking to me.