Category: Uncategorised

24-1-24

Dear Partners in Thought,

As we go into 2024 we see many articles, in leading publications and from think tanks, stressing the key challenges the world will be facing due to many issues like an increasingly politically unstable America, an ongoing Ukraine war, or a worsening Middle East. As we go into an election year in America and many liberal and not so liberal democracies globally (70, or half of the world population), it is useful to look at the drivers of liberal democratic decline in the West. While addressing this matter, it is worth noting that elections are also held in countries like Russia, but they are more formal than real, with the outcome already known and thus not a sign of democracy.

The main issues that have hurt our democratic West are a hodgepodge of features, at times inter-linked, that, put together, foster a weakened socio-political system that keeps gradually declining, while simpler autocracies and dictatorships keep thriving the world over. Some of these features are the drastic change of younger generations’ political views, the impact of “hate” social media, the decline in formal education, the excesses of capitalism, the mismanaged migration used as a populist selling point, and the lack of defense readiness on the part of most countries – all while rational discourse increasingly falls on deaf ears.       

The hodgepodge of Western democratic decline features

The young, who used to demonstrate in major cities the Western world-over in 1968, while wanting governments to adopt very radical economic and social policies, are no longer there, many having grown up conservative or far more moderate in a natural life development. However, today younger generations are often keener to adopt extreme-right policies to deal with key issues such as immigration. The extreme-right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, now the second political party in France, and a serious contender to lead the country in 2027, enjoys the support of a large part of the younger French today.

Social media have contributed to the younger generations adopting extreme policies, as knowledge is no longer perceived to be based on classical education and schools, but laptop screens and indeed social media. While each country is different, the young generation, as they reach voting age, naturally listen more easily to populist leaders who reflect the extreme views on many a social media channel. The older generations – especially the 60+ age group – will generally tend to be the ones to uphold traditional liberal democratic values, also as they have a more vivid knowledge of the 20^th century with its two World Wars and nuclear bomb-flavored Cold War.   

The lack of formal education is also becoming a feature (if not a factor) of younger voters backing extreme-right candidates or populist leaders. The US is a case in point, with the vast majority of voters with no college degrees – young or not – backing Trump who, in typical fashion, claims to love “the uneducated ones”. Interestingly the college-educated Americans nicknamed by economist Thomas Piketty “the Brahmin Left” tend to shift to liberal positions also as a reaction to Trump populism, also often reflecting their residing in large urban centers, which tend to be less conservative or indeed reactionary than rural areas.   

Capitalism is not helping today. Free markets, that underpinned Western and world growth, are out of control. There is a feeling of Wild West at play, that is also worsening feelings of social inequalities. Growing up the ladder through work, and indeed capitalism, is no longer clear to many. Leading capitalist figures such as Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, who are the new and even more powerful Rockefeller or Vanderbilt, while highly successful, are hardly role models (even if Bill Gates and others are around). In addition, the wealth of the top five billionaires has more than doubled since 2020, creating a further social disconnect. Recent news such as the annual salary and dividends of GBP300 m of Denise Coates, the CEO of Bet363, the UK gambling group is simply out of the world we knew. While US CEOs earned 21 times the average salary in 1965, today’s number is 344 times. The news that Taylor Swift, a clearly business-gifted singer, became a billionaire in 2023 are senseless at too many levels, all the more given the inequalities the world (including the West) knows, even if such situations are created as people, at times struggling, attend her concerts and buy her songs. Capitalism has become a system of excesses that are allowed by the legal system that is used and protected by its beneficiaries and their vast wealth, under the pretense that all benefit.

Migration is a key issue in the US today, like it was in Europe since 2015-16, and the aftermath of the Arab Spring, that also created local civil wars, prompting many to go for a better life elsewhere. Migration is used by hard right parties as a tool to grab votes in the name of national identity, while the problem today is also more acute than ever, as seen by the US-Mexican borders or on Italian shores. The problem has been compounded by a combination of moderate European governments losing much voter support through not wanting to adopt policies that would have been seen as akin to racial discrimination, while also needing cheap labor for their economy – as was the case for Merkel’s German economy nearly ten years ago, thus setting precedents that kept encouraging unwanted migration.

Apart from the US, the West and especially Europe may not be prepared today for an unwanted major war scenario. Old military powers, like France and Britain, are still very good at special operations, as often seen in the Middle East and Africa. But the talented professional soldiers on their own might not be able to counter a large-scale military aggression from a country like Russia and its allies in Europe. After 30 years of peaceful globalization, we live in times taking us back to the 20^th century and its major conflicts. As a Dutch senior commander of NATO rightfully sadly stated, the populations of Europe would simply not be ready or able to fight today, even to defend their freedom and democratic system. This fact also reflects a lack of community feeling at the national level of many countries, whose populations are no longer concerned on matters of war and peace or freedom preservation, as if those themes were from another age.     

Rational discourse no longer resonates well with many voters also, when they face daily situations like those living in the Southern American borders with Mexico. Principles are hard to matter in those cases also, as time goes by and nothing happens to fix what is not livable with 35% of Republican voters (likely hard core and Trump supporters) still believe in a rising trend that the “January 6” insurrection that stormed the US Capitol was a product of the FBI, which defies any logic. Ninety-one indictments against Trump do not seem to matter to his supporters, who feel invigorated by these actual facts, as if they were proof of a conspiracy by a deep state against their good leader.  Re-elections of moderate governments look increasingly challenging, with polls showing only a one-third success rate across Western countries today (although polls do change as elections get closer and are under-way).     

It is also clear that once rising to power, or having won key elections, many populist leaders, especially in Western countries, put “water in their wine” as the French would say. The recent examples of Georgia Meloni, as Italian prime minister, is very telling, but so are the examples of Geert Wilders in Netherlands or so far Javier Milei in Argentina. The reality of power, all the more in major Western countries, dictates populist winners to throw away many of their principles, a fact that should be stressed to the younger generations and all voters. All the more so as these populist winners are made to win elections these days, but not to exercise power in the best of ways, also given their overall backgrounds.    

Some thoughts to revive the Western liberal democratic course

While possibly naïve, there are solutions which, put together, could change the self-harming decline of Western democracy, and indeed civilization. These simple, but at times tough measures, all inter-linked and part of a Western society revival program, could involve an old-fashioned return to more driven parental guidance, civic education in schools, more sensible regulation of social media, increased taxes of top corporate and individual earners, as well as new tech developments like AI, and more realistic policies on the part of Western governments on issues like migration, as well as the institution, or return, of a national military service given our challenging times and societal needs.

Some could argue that this proposed wide-ranging approach would amount to a form of “dirigisme” that would go against liberalism and its spirit of “laissez faire” (do what you want), but countries need to go back to better social frameworks through which liberalism and democracy can endure. Liberalism should not be a tool for chaos, and our times require some decisive action, both from democratic governments and societies at large in partnerships – so we can survive and keep thriving.    

Both parents (admittedly in traditional families) and schools should work together to ensure that children in their teenage years are able to deal with domestic and world issues in a rational and sensible way. Parents should be more assertive in taking care of their children, and not allow them to stay for hours locked in their rooms watching and listening to social media, whose contents are often damaging to society, or playing video games for hours at a time (on a light note, this approach will come short of dealing with “watching one’s phone while walking down the street” so as to avoid any collision but it is a sound start). Schools, starting in early grades, should develop civic duty courses focused on societal and political matters, stressing the different viewpoints attached to them. The parental-school partnership goal would be to decrease the “hate” social media mind invasion, while giving children a fairer understanding of the issues of our time, and why democracy needs to be preserved.  It is worth noting that some Western governments are already taking some steps, as seen with President Macron’s proposed policies—part of his “civic rearmament” in January to regulate children’s screen time, and also introduce compulsory school uniforms, the latter to develop some better sense of community beyond social differences. 

Regulations should be more severe as to the hate contents from social media, while being fair as to freedom of speech, the latter a challenging balance to reach and an issue especially sensitive in the US today. The point is not to favor any political agenda, but to bring some normalcy leading to more reasonable thinking, and thus approaches to key societal matters, all the more by young generations who will also grow up and lead societies in the future. Similarly, and putting aside all their clear benefits, tech and AI companies should be regulated in a suitable manner to ensure they do not end up “managing” societies directly or indirectly. The EU has already taken steps, now followed by the US, to control notably Big Tech more adequately, also given their strong financial power and massive societal clout.    

Taxation should be reviewed, ideally in a coordinated manner throughout the West, to ensure that sanity comes back and net earnings are no longer out of this world, this for corporations and individuals, and not to let a societal disconnect, however legally framed, to endure. There is a need for governments to keep supporting fair free markets while restoring societal sanity via taxation and fund the lives of those in real need, so as to preserve the social contract. Similarly, AI companies should be taxed in a way that would help fund jobs to be likely lost by so many individuals due to this key tech development that is still unclear and quite worrisome as to its real benefits for society and its well-being (it is amusing to know that both Bernie Sanders and Bill Gates suggested a tax for “job-taking robots” in the past). While the West would engage in a societally-driven tax reassessment it would take appropriate measures to ensure that countries that do not follow suit, or top earning corporates or individuals that move to low if not zero tax jurisdictions, do not benefit from any resulting economic advantage and are publicly identified – putting the start of an end to new non-exotic tax paradises as they would think of rising.   

Government policies led by liberal democratic governments should be able to address sensitive issues liberal democrats traditionally averted from managing, out of social unease, like immigration. It should not be an expression of Nazism to want one’s country to keep its national identity and manage a sensible immigration program. Nor should it be forbidden to enforce the control of one’s own borders. New approaches to these issues would deprive extremist populist parties from winning elections across the West, while forgetting about them once in power and facing its reality. Democracies need to address unwanted migration as it should be, and frontally – with care for all parties involved, notably their own citizens. It would be best to set and enforce workable policies to deal frontally with unwanted immigration, while realizing that some immigration is needed in many key economic and social sectors in the West, and avoiding drastic and last resort questionable programs of shipping back individuals to Rwanda or Albania.    

Finally, there is a dual need to restore a sense of community at the national level of most Western countries, while getting their populations better ready to defend their freedom, and indeed liberal democracy, against any aggression from autocratic powers using wars as an easier way to cement their power at home. The best way to achieve this dual objective, that is key given our newly challenging times, is to institute or re-institute a form of national military service to educate young populations in the basic art of warfare, and also to cement national communities across social classes. Until the mid-1990s, France had a one-year military service for all physically able young men to train them on military matters and give them a sense of national belonging. The end of the Cold War put an end to that process which could be restarted with EU nations also managing exchange programs, as a way to cement the EU project. And young women could also take part in this key process. From a geostrategic standpoint, European nations alone should reconsider national military services, all the more so in the context of a potential return of Donald Trump in the White House and an always-possible withdrawal from NATO (some even seeing this drastic scenario as a disguised blessing, needed to build a stronger and more independent EU or Europe).      

Those suggestions, the list of which could easily be increased, would be clearly challenging, if not impossible for some, to put in place. There is no simple solution, but a concerted and inter-linked approach, which while not being perfect, may be the only way to focus the minds and gradually reverse a trend that risks destroying a still-young historical concept we call modern liberal democracy. Holding elections is not enough today, and may lead to autocracy going forward. Doing nothing and hoping for the best only benefits ill-equipped populist-extremists without any meaningful societal gains in sight. 

Warmest regards

Serge

8-1-24

Dear Partners in Thought,

As we went through the challenging COP28, the latest annual episode of the global grand mass of climate change fighting, hosted by leading oil producer Dubai (creating much early controversy), I thought it would be useful to recap key features of what we know as climate change or global warming and ways to fight it. This Interlude will be thus focused on basic facts and thoughts about where we are on this key matter for human civilization and how to fight it best. While geopolitical unrest and wars we know matter, there are issues that also need our focus, this for future generations and indeed human civilization.

While I am keen on the world doing its best to alleviate the causes of global warming, it is admittedly a new field for me. I was born the year of JFK’s presidential win, a time when we were rightly focused on economic growth, while gradually adjusting to a post-WW2 Cold War that would last for another 30 years. It would also lead to a growing globalization that many of us start regretting today, given its key peaceful features. Very few of us thought about the impact of carbon dioxide in our lives, being very happy to drive great cars and enjoy flying the world over.

Here are a few key points focused on global warming and some of its contributors. I hope that all my scientific friends and experts will forgive me for excessively summarizing matters.       

1. Climate change is unequivocal since 2007 with thousands of research studies clearly making the case, together with its human involvement, since the Industrial Revolution. Climate change worsened in a much warmer way as economic growth was the clear focus, also fueled by consumer demand that industries naturally responded to at a time when climate did not matter. 

• While the climate was warmer millions of years ago (by ten degrees), global warming accelerated much faster over the last 10,000 years due to human impact and, again, the need for economic development since the mid-19^th century. That development itself had a faster path in the 20^th and fast-globalized (until now) 21^st centuries.   

• The concentration of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere has risen by 42% since 1850. Today and as Saudi Arabia and Russia know only too well 40bn tons of CO₂ are released every year by the fossil fuel industry globally.

• While CO₂ in small doses is helpful to avoid the planet freezing, its human-produced quantities have massively contributed to global warming (even more than other natural culprits, like volcanoes). As the Earth needs to adjust its temperature by evacuating excess CO₂, decarbonization has become a key strategic matter for industries well beyond profit-making.

• CO₂ also clearly stimulates the growth of plants, through what is known as “greening” which is a positive development even though it consumes more water. This has resulted in a more intensive agriculture in China and India, though without compensating for the tropical deforestation we saw in Brazil in recent years and its associated biodiversity loss. Forests also play a key role in reducing carbon dioxide as they are living direct air capture machines.  

• Humankind is often slow moving to do the right thing, all the more when economic interests are at stake (and some countries are understandably highly dependent on oil and gas production). At COP28 the heads of the IMF, European Commission and WTO stressed the challenging “trade off of short-term financial health versus the long-term health of the planet”. As such the best way to reduce CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions would be to engage globally in “carbon pricing”, making polluters pay for what they emit under the form of tax (some revenues – the IMF estimates 20% – that would be reallocated to poor households who may suffer from the needed transition) and emissions trading schemes. Such a way forward would create an incentive to shift to cleaner energy sources, while being cost-efficiently revenue-generating for countries for public investment or other tax cutting and would fairly target those producers and consumers that are the most responsible for carbon emissions. Fifty countries have already followed that approach, but more are needed, as well as international cooperation through framework agreements, to lower trade distortions and ensure reduced competitiveness. This approach naturally has many facets at the global level beyond the scope of this short Interlude.

• While the purpose of this Interlude is to address the reality of climate change, and what is behind global warming, while seeing what humankind could do to reduce it by focusing on CO₂, the affected areas and thus battlefields are plentiful.  Climate change massively impacts glaciers, sea levels, hurricanes, the acidification of oceans, droughts, heat waves, floods, mega-fires, biodiversity and even polar bears and many other species beyond man. Global warming is a lethal game-changer that impacts the future of human civilization like no other threats before.   

Climate change deniers find it very challenging to make their case today, even if social media and the like provide them with tools to argue their point on a non-scientific, not to say crazy basis. In our strange times, many people do not need evidence, less so scientific evidence, to support themes that make little sense. This denier group, however, finds it hard to resonate among the “thinking” crowd today – even if they reach many gullible and passionate followers looking for outlets for their existential and societal anger.     

Hard right parties in Europe have seized on the perceived financial impact on living standards of fighting climate change (exacerbated by post-Covid austerity-driven public spending cuts and the energy constraints felt with the Ukraine war) to add this matter to their usual migration and national identity programs. On a side note, the latter two matters, largely and mistakenly neglected by liberal democrats as being too sensitive, opened a vote-grabbing avenue to extremists even if they all tend to practically moderate their positions once having won elections as seen with Georgia Meloni in Italy or recently Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. On the same basis, Donald Trump, now the US climate change denier supremo, clearly stated his “drill, drill, drill” support of fossil fuels (many producers being his backers) if winning the US presidency in 2024, again adding this new hard right theme to his old US-China Cold War focus, a hard to go away Putin-friendly lack of interest in Ukraine and NATO, increased protectionism and unprecedented isolationism at many levels, and his case (which, in all fairness, could be understood better if one lived there) for “more walls” at the Mexican border today.

The good news since the game-changing COP20 in Paris in 2015 is that a vast majority of countries across the various global geopolitical divides now supports global warming resolutions to decrease its increasing trend. One of the last economic sectors COP28 members focused on was food production, which was not an obvious candidate versus oil and gas producers, but shows the global warming footprint to be gradually dealt with as the key issue it is. In spite of such positive COP28 developments and the hard-negotiated final wording stressing a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, it is clear that vested interests, often national in nature, make it hard to get tangible results as seen with the resolution to decrease coal consumption two years ago which led to no change as of today.  

While fighting for liberal democratic values, all the more as Europe and the Middle East go back to more uncertain times and a number of key elections are on the horizon, it is also our moral duty combined with vested interests to fight climate change and ensure our world keeps growing as it should even if financial and restructuring costs may be high on the way.   

Warmest regards,

Serge

19-12-23

Dear Partners in Thought,

We live in challenging times, with major wars in Ukraine or in Gaza playing out, bringing us back to the worst periods of the 20^th century, with globalization and its peaceful features also receding as seen with the increasingly conflictual relations with China. This new era – not so new if we remember the famous line that “History repeats itself” – comes at a time where the West is struggling in terms of leadership due to an America that seems to have lost its values and keeps hurting itself and the Free World it stood for and led for decades. Many columnists, including Americans, recently wondered whether the US was “irreparably off track” with all the implied global consequences.  

America is not well, as most Americans would also agree. A recent Gallup poll showed only 20% felt the country was well versus more than 50% 20 years ago, this in spite of US per capita income higher than in Western Europe or Japan, nine of the top 10 most-valuable companies in the world being American (versus four at the end of the Cold War) and a still-unrivalled defense machine. This pervasive feeling, also shared across the Western world, may be partly explained by America’s unsettling approach to its evolving role in the world. The proximity to an overly-intense presidential election is naturally not helping the situation, also given the nature and profile of the two likely contenders.

The America of Reagan that stood firmly as a leader of the West during the Cold War is no longer there, mainly due to domestic political issues that make it forget what it was and should be. No President is ever perfect, but Trump due to his personality, perhaps more than his policies, started changing the game with deep adverse effects on the country and as a result the West (this even if a Republican Congressman strangely stressed recently that one should separate personality and policies when dealing with Trump). One of the key reasons for American and Western pessimism is to be found in its domestic politics and their dynamics today, compounded with a clear worry globally that Trump could come back. 

The Republican party of Reagan has been taken over by Trump-influenced and practical hard right extremists, who do not even realize what they stand for and their deep historical disconnect with their own roots, but only wish to grab votes, often very locally. It is not even clear what Trump really believes in, as long as he can increase his polling and is strengthening his fame, this in spite of all the legal issues he is facing regarding January 6, 2021 and his own business enterprises. It is remarkable that many primary voters, even if usually more hard line than regular ones, support someone like Trump given his abysmal personal features that many of them should see as un-American. It is clear that resentment against a perceived out-of-touch “elite”, their own social standing and serious and mismanaged issues like immigration do play a role in crafting their simple views, like in Europe today. In addition, the quality of the politicians seems to have gone down over the years, as many bright individuals prefer to take the business road, as many studies show across the Western world.  As for the Democrats, it is a hollow combination of left-wing individuals many who adhere first to inclusion, diversity if not, (to use the word initially invented by right-wing extremists) “Woke” before anything else while there seems to be a very short list of individuals who could be leaders in this party, where Joe Biden is apparently in sole charge, and only the liberal California Governor Gavin Newsom could be seen as a major though differentiated figure. Democrats are simply nonexistent, while the media focus is on outlandish House Republicans like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor-Greene if not, even if no longer, George Santos or an outlandish primary candidate like Vivek Ramaswamy. Hope is fortunately not lost for the GOP, when seeing the likes of Nikki Haley, even if playing a tactically smart game with Trump believers and of course Liz Cheney, two individuals, who still offer some degree of political system redemption for their party. And there are others like Governor Chris Sununu or Senator Mitt Romney who still stand for the right values behind democracy as we knew them. These individuals may feel very lonely in their party at a time of a ludicrous “retribution” impeachment enquiry process against Joe Biden launched by the likes of Representative JD Vance, the Hillbilly Blues author and once, before being a US Senator, a fierce and then fashionable critic in 2016 of Donald Trump, whom he called an idiot.       

The lack of quality of the US political personnel, which one could argue could be seen also in in key European countries is helping the demise of America and its Western leadership. Positions taken notably by House Republicans regarding financial aid to Ukraine risk hurting America’s international standing and its position as leader of the Free World. Not backing Ukraine on the basis that national security should also be managed at home regarding immigration at the Mexican border would risk destroying the democratic West by losing its leader. If Ukraine were to lose the war through lack of US support, Russia might expand its costly imperial fantasies by invading the NATO and EU Baltic state members and even Poland, whatever the risk of a major global conflict. It is noticeable and somewhat redeeming that older GOP Senators and House Representatives, perhaps with a direct memory of the past, are more aware than younger ones, who are more in a perpetual partisan if not extreme mode, about the need to uphold the foreign policy leadership values that made America. One natural step, were Trump to be elected against all rational hopes, would be for him (also given his old liking of Putin) to make the US withdraw from NATO on the grounds of America First and a return to a 1930s isolationism that many of his short-sighted supporters would think would be good for their country (he would now need a Congress majority to do this but anything is possible). Isolationism, that would be a natural step for Trump and has already been felt through some of the tactically protectionist Biden tax policies, would in any case hurt American interests and businesses globally, and as a result the American people, even if many do not see the direct links to their own well-being today.

Getting America back on track and avoiding a global power vacuum will take hard work and require high quality individuals to save the day (or indeed century) in politics, lest a collection of autocracies win the world over. The world has changed with the nemesis of the democratic West not being one single country like the Soviet Union, but a collection of strong and not-so-strong powers with their own different tactical geopolitical interests and a common strategic opposition to America and the West, even if some trading with them in the meantime. America, through its next generation of political leaders, should refocus on its essential global leadership role and the clear benefits attached to it, this for itself, the West and indeed a more peaceful and yet again globalized world focused on trade and prosperity. 

While America needs to go back to its roots, it is also key for European countries to adopt realistic policies to preserve democracy at home while making sure voters do not support extreme right parties on the basis of simple solutions for complex issues. European democracies should also take a firm lead and defend their founding principles abroad, while building a stronger Europe, as seen with Britain and EU member states working closely together in supporting Ukraine as if they were again happily part of the same club of old. In this respect the key decision from the EU to start accession talks with Ukraine is a major step even if their voting process should be reviewed so as to avoid the impossibility of providing a key financial package to Kyiv approved by 26 member-states as one member, Hungary, vetoes it on tactical and strategic grounds as if it were de facto an ally of Moscow. 

I never thought I would ever need to write a piece like this one. On a very personal note I love America and the “Dream” it offered. My America. I am who I am as America and what it stood for reshaped me in my twenties in the 1980s as I was searching for a future. I still want to hope we can get back to those times, all the more given the needs and risks of our very challenging times. 

I wish all of us a Merry Christmas and the Happiest New Year, hoping that our world finally gets back on the right track and Reason prevails.     

Warmest regards,

Serge  

Note: I wanted to state an addendum to my mid-November Interlude that clearly supported the right of Israel to retaliate following October 7 and eradicate Hamas and its terrorist capabilities, this to defend itself. One month following my Interlude we have reached a stage where the eradication of Hamas is proving arduous, even if its capabilities are likely severed, while the death toll of civilian Gazans and the destruction of the city are horrendous even if not the IDF objective (the mistaken killing of three hostages by the IDF is sadly telling in terms of the intensity of the fights). It is now time for the Israeli leadership to realize that they may be fulfilling Hamas’s grand design of creating a global opprobrium against Israel and stop or reduce meaningfully its military operations, including its indiscriminate aerial bombings. Time should now be focused on how to structure (indeed reconstruct) and manage a future Gaza and re-focus seriously on a peaceful future for the Palestinians and Israel. While there might be some political reasons on the part of the current Israeli leadership to keep its military operations going, the standing of the country in the world and among its allies, even like the steadfast US, will decrease while antisemitism may rise as already seen on US campuses today. This natural addendum would not change the clear right and obligation for Israel, like any other country suffering the same horrific blow, to have responded as it did initially to the atrocities of October 7.          

2-11-23

Dear Partners in Thought,

While I was cautious in writing too early on the grave matter, I wanted to share with you twelve points about the Israel-Gaza-Hamas situation that we see evolving in the Middle East, bearing in mind it impacts on the whole world. 

1. Netanyahu needed some very tough retaliation (however justified given the October 7 horrors) to try shifting the blame away. A win, however challenging to get, is his only way to try surviving by year-end. 

2. The fate of the Israeli hostages remains as fragile as before in spite of the occasional liberations and worsens as thousands of civilian Gaza residents die.  

3. Iran, even if not “directly” responsible did everything for October 7 to happen, but in any case, may enjoy the Gaza retaliation to shift the hijab revolution away too, wanting again to be seen as a true Middle Eastern power again, however fragile the regime may be (and indeed is).

4. After 44 years, a regime change may happen in Iran if the latter goes too far, especially with Hezbollah. Tehran seems to know this but is still ambivalent about its next steps.  

5. As seen with demonstrations, diplomatic break-ups and even the unacceptable odd terrorist act, it is clear that Israel is hurting itself globally by making the Gaza population unduly pay for October 7 even if to rightly eradicate Hamas. The only way Gaza will ever be rebuilt is if it comes under UN supervision and Hamas is gone. 

6. “Over time” the Israeli-Saudi rapprochement may go on as MBS has changed the Saudi MO, wanting to make it a more normal but powerful world player (golf, football, away from oil) thus needing a stable Middle East. 

7. The US has played its cards very well – surprisingly. The display of diplomacy and defence was first class. The Truman, Eisenhower but also Carter, Reagan and of course Clinton eras are back. Biden will (should?) eventually benefit from this, leading him potentially to rejig his ticket as he goes. 

8. Hamas is indeed going to be erased. One wonders what went through their minds but have they any? They will always stress wanting to put the Big P point back on the map (and will never address the October 7 horrors). It is possible that the PLO will come back to what it once was.  

9. It is also clear Israel should have addressed the P question long ago and found a solution if only to avoid enabling big scale terrorists doing an unexpected October 7. It is also sad that Netanyahu got trapped in such a useless coalition of so many populists only seeking votes (lesson to be learned), while allowing settlers of the extremist kind to go way too far as the world was not looking. 

10. Putin is curiously “rather absent” from the crisis even if he gained from the (it turns out temporary) Western shift away from Ukraine also as US popular support for Kyiv was “wavering”. He is indeed trapped into naturally backing Hamas/Iran and upsetting Israel given the latter’s earlier cautious stance regarding the Ukraine war and any military equipment support for Kyiv. 

11. As shown at the UN, the world finds it hard to deal with a conundrum created by unacceptable horrors of October 7 and the onslaught on so many civilians in Gaza—the latter caused by the Israeli Defence Forces but resulting from a tragic and unforgivable plot from Hamas and de facto their Iranian backers. One can take sides for many justifiable reasons but the whole picture lacks clarity and sanity at any moral level.    

12. While globalisation retreated and protectionism rose again as a result of the American-China feud, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the new war in the Middle East bring us back to the forgotten era of the 20th century which most of us thought was long gone forever – making us think that WW3 is no longer an academic matter. 

I have limited my points to twelve but the list could be longer, including the impact on our own societies with street demonstrations favouring one specific party, terrorist attacks as seen in Belgium or France, or less lethal but divisive situations on campuses like in America. The situation we see developing today is like another chapter of a book all hoped was finished, but is never-ending—so strong are its ethnic, religious and historical roots for the world.  

Warmest regards,

Serge           

17-8-23

Dear Partners in Thought,

After eighteen months of the staggering (and failed) Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is worth trying to understand what drove it – and what supports it. Many recall the surprising statement from Foreign Minister Lavrov that led to massive audience laughter at a conference in India that Russia launched its “special military operation” as NATO was about to invade Russia. In July 2022, Putin, who had already written a big pre-war philosophical piece on the existential nature of Russia and its unity with Ukraine in mid-2021, made a speech at the Duma stressing that “the war was unleashed by the collective West, which organised and supported the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine in 2014 and justified genocide against the people of Donbass”. Hence the strange use of neo-Nazi appellation to describe the Ukrainian leadership (all the more knowing the religious roots of the Ukrainian president). Putin made it clear, probably to find some hard to find justification and a way to decrease the lack of results on the ground, that the West was the instigator and the culprit of the invasion of Ukraine. This invasion became no less than “the start of the breakdown of the US-style world order” also responsible for so many Russian and indeed world problems. This was “the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multi-polar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, and not on hypocritical double standards but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live with their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions.”  

The invasion of Ukraine had taken on a very practical existential role for Russia so as to make the move very noble, in a drive for Gaullian grandeur-restoration, all the more in what was portrayed as an increasingly value-less world without moral compass. All of this while Ukrainian civilian infrastructure was massively hit, civilians themselves were butchered like in Bucha (even if Russia would later argue this was staged by Ukraine) and a massive number of children were deported to Russia to welcoming new parents, in what would become a clear war crime against humanity. All these official statements would easily project a world upside down that only the boldest science fiction movies and books, like Orwell’s 1984, could have shown before. While many were ready for a Kremlin going to any length to achieve its goals, one of the key questions would then become: How could the Russian people buy this type of story-telling? As they seemed to do.          

Russia displays many, largely noble, explanations for this invasion that do not resonate well in the mostly Cartesian (even if declining for the Kremlin and many Russians) West. Notwithstanding the plausible argument that the West is in fact much stronger at many key levels today. Two major features to review are the war, led by a values-based Russia against the degenerative West via Ukraine that needs to be saved, and the feelings of a strong majority of Russians that Putin is right, and the war is just or that they are not opposed to it also in a form of apathy and refusal to see things for what they are. Jade McGlynn just wrote “Russia’s War” (and not just “Putin’s War”) to explain the two key points and its related ones from a Russian perspective. McGlynn is a young King’s College War Studies scholar with much actual exposure to Putin’s Russia, and her needed book is enlightening, even if some Russian critics may point to some unlikely support from MI6 or the dark corridors of Langley. This is a very detailed book that goes into many features around those two key points, making it for an arduous and possibly repetitive read at times, all the more given the challenging times we know.     

No leader in the West launching an invasion of a neighbour (admittedly all the more in the heart of old Europe) would enjoy an 80% approval rating – but Putin does. While the reliability of poll ratings in Russia can be discussed, a leader like Putin rarely goes down below 60%. On a key note, even the younger generations (18-24, 25-39 groups) support Putin (although slightly less so than the older ones). This can be explained by a majority of Russians wanting (if not needing) a strong leader—this mainly as the result of the shock linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the terrible 1990s that created societal disorder. A consequence of which was the ascension of a kleptocratic system that Putin eventually controlled and used to serve his (and his nascent co-leadership’s) needs in a strange and inflexible virtuous model. Many Russians— especially of the younger and skilled generations with post-cold war global aspirations—left Russia in 2022, some simply to avoid conscription. Yet a vast majority is not keen to go against the war and the authorities (especially in non-major urban areas as expected but clearly not only). This is helped by a unique propaganda machine, operating in a welcoming target population territory, and a highly repressive system that guarantees long-term jail if the word “war” is even publicly mentioned. (On a side note, it would appear that the Kremlin would actually prefer passivity to the actual support of its population). 

The Russian liberals who do not like Putin are actually rather condescending when it comes to Ukraine, as seen with the likes of Navalny’s and other groups. As a result, Russians do not oppose the war and are rather apathetic, some even blaming the West for the Western sanctions that deprived them of products they came to like since the 1990s (not the main objective of such sanctions for sure). Some analysts draw bold comparisons with the attitude of most Parisians during the German “occupation”, as they generally preferred to go on with their daily lives as if nothing had really happened (forgetting the many actions of the “resistance” back then, and de facto implying that Russians were actually “occupied” by their own in the Putin era). Even religion is playing a role in supporting the “special military operation” in Ukraine, notably with the well-known and politically-engaged Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, who is naturally close to the Kremlin. To what would be his forebear’s spiritual dismay, the grandson of atheist Soviet leader Molotov, who is a member of the Kremlin-captive Duma, stressed multiple times the “holy” nature of the war. 

In one of the ongoing features strengthening the Kremlin’s Orwellian propaganda approach, Russian history is officially rewritten in ways the country has known under Stalin with the main objective of creating a new Russian identity. The focus is permanent and on school textbooks, television shows, films, festivals, military history tours and even historical re-enactment clubs and student discussion societies while murals and even statues are added, especially in the last ten years, to the existential and patriotic display. The Christian roots of Russia, the defeat of Napoleon and the Great Patriotic War are much stressed alongside Peter and Catherine the Great while the lost Gorbachev and anarchic Yeltsin eras are quasi-demonised, the latter responding to the natural sorrows of many Russians. Ukraine, which was initially to be saved, is now often depicted as the ultra-nationalist state where no dissent can exist and opposition is banned while anything Russian is deemed to be hostile.  The Russian population is flooded day in day out with messages that underpin an existential Russian and indeed imperialistic rebirth, this without any easy access to alternative views, most if not all Western or opposition conduits being banned as deemed propaganda-flavoured.        

Jade McGlynn often refers to Dmitri Trenin, a former senior officer in Soviet and Russian military intelligence, who led the Carnegie Moscow Center, the key local post of the well-known think tank since the mid-1990s (on a personal note he even gave an internship to my older daughter). While a very fine, highly intellectual man, and de facto one of the most sensible Washington-Moscow “conduits”, he decided to leave the Carnegie Endowment a few months into the invasion as he felt deeply supportive of it. Trenin, a former member of the “Westerniser realist camp”, who knows the West better than most Russians, made statements about the need to defend Russian culture also against what the West represents today “with its civilisation of consumption, its gender innovations and so on”.  To him, clearly winning in Ukraine and “inflicting damage to the Western enemy” is about survival for Russia – not simply a return to imperial history as Putin likes. I was exchanging with him at the beginning of the conflict but did not foresee such a drastic position and rupture (which I took initially as a proof that he was de facto a prisoner of the system and had too much family in Russia as he does). While Trenin’s statements are very strong, it is also clear the state of affairs across the West (and especially in the US with its great and quasi un-American political divide, wild mass shootings and exacerbated forms of capitalism), does not help in rejecting the Kremlin scenario. Nor does this scenario not fall on deaf ears, with many Russians looking at the world and grieving post-Cold War shocks. 

It is also true that Russia was not treated with the most care by Western powers in the early to mid-1990s, as they wanted to ensure it would quickly become part of a nascent globalised, and increasingly rootless, world—even if wanting to improve the material conditions of many along the way. On a side but key note, McGlynn stresses that the main enemy of old Russia is often seen today as Britain, due to its ancient imperial history (and the odd fact that it founded America) far more than the US, in spite of its massive aid to Ukraine to date, or Western Europe—this perhaps also linked to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak’s fierce support of Kyiv. While the invasion is now seen in Moscow as a war of liberation, Russia would also seem to endure it in order to get rid of Anglo-Saxon influence across Europe. To some in the Russian leadership, the Ukraine “special military operation” is not simply about Ukraine but also much more about Europe, of which Russia sees itself as a key part, and its very soul. 

It is hard not to try to understand, admittedly to some difficult extent, the Russians who do not want to face the horrors of the war and prefer to find some noble or practical rationale for it or stay away from the topic. Many of us would follow that sad path in their very shoes, and given their too often tragic history. Until late 2021 I wanted myself to ensure that we anchored Russia not only to the West but to the world through globalisation that would ensure a lesser focus on military solutions and would nicely “trap” nations over time into working together, as they would have too much to lose otherwise (a recipe applicable to China today that seems to need it more than Beijing may have initially thought). It is also our duty to explain to Russians that the course taken by the Kremlin goes against the interests of all parties, and at the same time makes them supportive of mass murders and war crimes. This is true, even if the latter are still well managed by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine and totally dismissed as fake news or hard to accept by most of the general population. 

Jade McGlynn’s book reveals a Russia most of us did not know, and which needs to gradually change over time, but will also unlikely support a coup in the Kremlin. The sanctions-rooted 40% decline in value of the rouble in 2023, and the likely associated inflation surge and economic crisis to follow (not ideal when funding a large-scale war) may hurt Russians and (some Western analysts hope) make them question the cost of the war, given the roots of such developments. However, it may largely remain a private or dinner table matter, given the known dynamics. As often seen in history, a coup would more likely come from the current weakened leadership (the odd Wagner insurrection, if there was one, being an erratic example, even if it showed inherent autocratic weaknesses) but is no guarantee for a better scenario for a Ukraine war that will otherwise last long—possibly with Western population support gradually waning as seen today in the US and that could be lethally dealt with in a “Trump 2024”. Hence the need for a strengthened Western resolve and speedy delivery of what is needed to win or reach the negotiation table (also making sure Kyiv is not adopting unmanageable positions like regarding the future of Crimea).  

On a very personal note that may resonate with many in the West, I would like to stress that we should not see all Russians as evil, even if one supports Ukraine and/or is naturally opposed to outdated imperialistic moves, especially in old Europe. Many Russians left their country as they could not stand the invasion, or did not want to be part of it for many personal reasons. Many Russians lived outside Russia before the invasion and even liked a Putin style, following the shambolic state of their country in the 1990s. Russians should never be rejected for being Russian, even if they ought to be sensibly and respectfully engaged on the matter of the Ukraine tragedy and its many ramifications at all societal and world levels. At some point, we will rebuild Ukraine (as many development financial institutions seem to be ready to go for in a well-planned but premature way) but we will also need to help re-building and re-shaping Russia – with the Russians and for us all.   

Warmest regards, 

Serge

11-04-23

Dear Partners in thought,

The war in Ukraine has been a catalyst for what many see as the start of a potential reshaping of the world order—an order we have known since WW2 and the end of the Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union gave rise to three decades of relative world peace and strong growth (even if they were peppered by crises like in 2008), driven by an unprecedented globalisation. Both world peace and globalisation are under threat today as new and stronger party lines are being defined along two camps. It is worth calmly reviewing the situation and assessing whether this new world order forecast will materialise and endure. Or whether, more importantly, the West may lose its historical supremacy.    

The two not-so-new camps are being largely defined on one side by the West—a strong unity between the US and Europe rooted in the transatlantic alliance via NATO (allied with, among other countries, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand). This is indeed reminiscent of the post-WW2 era, and has been strengthened as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As stated in a recent Book Note, the West—while its societies suffer from too much social media-focused individualism, vote-grabbing incompetent populism, and capitalism at times losing its soul—is still predominant worldwide. And that is despite an uncertain American leadership, weakened by many domestic challenges, and a Europe still going through existential changes and weakened by a specious Brexit.  

The other camp, that is not yet defining itself easily, is led by President Xi’s resurgent ambitious-for-world-supremacy China, and an increasingly-lost Russia, that needs a strong partner even though it is relegated to a new and very junior role. While the US-Europe camp is based on democratic values, the China-Russia camp is reflecting an autocracy that has risen over the last ten years in their midst. There is more coherence and commonality of values and interests within the US-Europe camp than in the China-Russia one, even if the defining basis of the latter is primarily found in its opposition to (if not rejection of) America and its longstanding world leadership. While Europe and the EU may fight against America on trade subsidies and similar economic matters, they are one on issues of democracy and the international world order as we have known it. The China-Russia camp is more the expression of the “enemy of my enemy must be my friend” which may be tactically viable but not the strongest construct in its essence. Meanwhile the world is at a crossroads since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Major emerging world actors position themselves alongside one of the two camps depending on the policy or matter at hand. The US-Europe camp, even if going through many travails in recent years, is still much stronger than its “would-be” rival and its relatively weak and disparate club of (at times sizeable) followers—this in spite of many recent developments. If anything, the main achievement of the China-Russia club, however partly unwitting, was to provide the world with future years of likely slower economic growth, through the combination of two events stressed last week by the Head of the IMF, viz. Covid-19 and the Ukraine invasion. This is hardly a positive advertisement for any future aspiring world order. 

A third camp-in-the-making, or actually sub-camp, is the Global South—comprising disparate members with, at times, little in common, each following one of the two main camps (depending on their tactical priorities of the moment). Of late, the Global South has seemed to look after its economic interests first, and Western concerns or the old-fashioned international world order and its values later—this being helped by the fact that a war in Europe is clearly not their concern. The Global South is increasingly taking neutral or tactical stances in the rising “great new rivalry” (if not yet conflict), when not actually taking sides with the China-led coalition-in-the-making. Not a surprising stance given rooted resentments for the traditional Western supremacy, if not ancestral or at times perceived actual colonialism. Africa has been a clear example of such positioning with many of its countries (notably including currently problem-ridden South Africa) wanting to deal with China and its Belt and Road Initiative, or clearly putting the West and the US in competition with China or indeed Russia as VP Kamala Harris noticed during her recent “marketing” trip there.

As for Latin America, a new world order-in-the-making may also be perceived as a potentially better redistribution of cards in relation to dealing with its closer (and also too powerful) Northern neighbour. Turkey in its election year plays a high wire act between being close to the West, a helpful and well-paid migrant manager for the EU and a key NATO member (even if still not willing to open the door of the latter to Sweden) while being an understanding mediator and at times a bit more with Moscow. Saudi Arabia, that now often oscillates between both factions, has clearly chosen a path disliked by the West at this particular juncture in reducing oil output with OPEC and triggering a price rise in early April. Modi’s India seems to go increasingly the autocratic way, looking at its crass treatment of the opposition while buying more Russian oil.  Many Global South members naturally play a very opportunistic and inconsistent card of their own, without necessarily formally taking sides—all while periodically affecting the great new rivalry in the making.         

Besides sheer geography, the new world order, as it might be redefined, clearly pins a recently-weakened democracy against a stronger autocracy, the latter of all flavours. It is yet not clear that democracy as we know it, a still young historical construct, will survive if it is not ready to stand firm and eventually fight through its many means. It would, however, be too early to believe that the West is in a losing position as the world evolves, even if democracy may be actually much harder to manage in a fast-paced 21^st century than a simpler autocracy—especially for leaderships and populations more historically at ease with this concept and way of life. When looking at this potential new world order—or indeed disorder—reshaping, it is best to look at the various components and dynamics at play.

While remaining the undisputed leader of the (so-called for some) Free World, America today is dealing with domestic challenges not experienced in recent history. Moderate America seems to have been replaced by a rise of the extremes in both of its main parties. The unforeseen Trump presidential ascendency in 2016 gave rise to a hardening of positions taken by the Republican party, and more voice to extreme conservative (if not reactionary) types not much heard previously. At the same time, the Woke movement on the left took extreme positions in many walks of American life: both extreme wings also being driven by a strong financial incentive to many of their leaders and promoters, themselves helped by ever-present social media and traditional media squabbling over a declining audience.

Moderates in America, historically driven by public common sense, have become a minority—as shown by the legislative inability to enact sensible gun control to avoid daily mass shootings in schools and malls across the country. The recent Trump indictment, whatever its rationale, be it political or not, is another example of what many would describe as another proof of the American decline—while some would also rightly argue it shows that no one is above the law, even in our troubled times. A new Trump presidency in 2024, however unlikely, would be a major blow for the West—especially Europe—all the more as only 25% of US GDP is linked to international trade. This makes isolationism or “America First” an easier way of government than would be the case in any other major country, China included. (It is clear that Trump’s indictment increases his chances of winning the GOP primary, which many Democrats like Biden or another Democratic candidate would rightly prefer him as a more easily-beatable candidate in November 2024).

American extremism is also shown in the handling of its foreign policy with unnecessary trips to Taiwan by the House majority Leader, or quasi-provocations rooted in domestic politics. Both fuel a Chinese leadership’s anger that needs little provocation in the new assertive Xi era. The best American way to protect Taiwan is simply to be found in supporting Ukraine and ensuring its victory—a stance that some leading GOP members like Ron DeSantis may unwisely (and it turned out at their own costs) disagree with. The US approach to TikTok, whatever its merits, is also another expression of a shift to a Cold War mentality even if, by the same token, spy balloons should never be welcome. Moderation and common sense are what may be missing most in the US domestic and international political discourse, but these key features seem to still prevail at the right time. Not least because they are also based on the fact that America’ strengths have not disappeared in terms of actual leadership: world GDP, innovation, culture, military clout and overall message to other nations. America is still the leader of the West, and the latter is more united than ever due to the Ukraine war, even if the word “free” attached to the old appellation of “Free World” is harder at times to recall or notice for some.      

While China is still searching for ways to capitalise on its global ascension, it seems to be hesitating between being a peacemaker (as seen with its concocting the Saudi-Iran rapprochement) and belonging to an anti-Western front, through an unclear Kremlin visit and military exercises together with an imperial—if not imperious—Russia and an outcast self-searching Iranian follower. It is clear that Xi’s style is more focused than ten years ago on making China a world leader and on the rivalry with the American nemesis. This new approach also takes place as China’s economy and demographics are no longer what they were, forcing the Chinese leadership to be more practical, for example by not heavily controlling the local tech sector (see the potential return of Jack Ma at least in the news) and its foreign investors as it did in recent years. China is far more pragmatic than some of Xi’s official statements may suggest, also remembering that its rather obedient middle class is more vocal than their parents, and its formerly docile behaviour was also linked to enjoying the benefits of a peaceful globalised world—notably through outbound tourism and buying Western goods.

Not being the China of Mao or Deng, its desire to be respected as a global power is natural. The West should encourage its willingness to be more active in the context of a peaceful, if competitive, relationship with the US. China is first and foremost a pragmatic country that has little to gain from military confrontation—assuming it could indeed manage a conflict. This might be unlikely, given the rigid Chinese command structure which mirrors the Party one. Perhaps as with Russia, this is a common feature of autocracies. It is unlikely that China would invade Taiwan, even if military exercises close to its shores are often seen as retributions, like for the recent meeting in California between the Taiwanese President and US House Leader McCarthy. China is unlikely to back Russia militarily in Ukraine, given the clearly-stated red line, or to get closer to Moscow than what we see today. As long as it is perceived as a true leading country worthy of world supremacy aspirations, Beijing will play a tactical supportive game with Moscow, provided it can continue to play its chips well in international trade, and salvage the remaining needed globalisation. The Belt and Road Initiative, which so far has been an economic burden, if not failure for China, is more likely to continue being one of its main tools of foreign policy, as long as no provocations arise from Washington. Xi’s desired legacy is not to be remembered for his wars, but through an assertive will to build a stronger China by other strategic means. While China is clearly building a leading world role, its natural ascension is not imperialistic in a return of old history like Russia under Putin, for which other peaceful ways to exist meaningfully are closed off today.               

Russia is going through its most existentially-challenging period in its modern history. From a major power during the Cold War, and still a key country post-Soviet era having adjusted gradually to a globalised world, its leadership felt it had lost its deserved historical status and reverted to old imperialistic ways, unseen in Europe on that scale since WW2, to reassert itself. Far from regaining its perceived lost status, Russia showed unforeseen military weakness and poor leadership, giving it today no choice but to resort to being a China-follower in what would be a new autocratic world order. It is unlikely that China would support a more aggressive Russia elsewhere in Europe (beyond Ukraine, the mercenary Wagner Group is now rumoured to be looking at the Western Balkans) or in Africa (where the Wagner Group helps Russia make a comeback though with a military focus, like in Mali and Burkina Faso). However, the Russian economy, which the West expected to collapse nine months ago, has shown strong signs of resiliency and indeed reorientation—helped by both China and India buying its oil and gas. It remains to be seen whether Russia and its leadership can go on as if there had been no invasion of Ukraine, given the situation after 14 months, and the unlikely short-term ending or positive outcome for the Kremlin. Russian leadership traditionally falls on badly-managed wars, as clearly seen in 1917.

Russian society, while well under control today with no information outside the realm of state media, and an increased security apparatus in action, is questioning the war more and more — all the more within its elite that feels deprived of what the post-Soviet world had offered them (as shown in recent phone call leaks reflecting the general mood). Rage and despair are noticeable among technocrats and bureaucrats, military officials and even security service “siloviki” who now have joined the unhappiness of the oligarchs who have lost their yachts and ways of life. The recent trend of unhappiness may strengthen the Kremlin’s hard societal management, though not without avoiding the fate of previous Russian leaderships when the wider population and its elite (those who stayed) are gradually confronted with reality that time does not help. With the likes of the mercenary Wagner Group’s criticism of the Kremlin management of the “special operation” it is not clear that a coup or a leadership demise would naturally result in a more liberal and Western-like Russia in the short term. While an Ides of March’s Julius Caesar scenario is not unthinkable, most astute observers are wary of its aftermath with, at best, the rise of a less warmongering, but still hyper-nationalist post-Serbia-like Milosevic Russia that would evolve in a flawed democracy, while remaining at odds with the West.

Hopes of a Western-like liberal democratic Russia ended on a Moscow night and bridge in 2015 when Boris Nemtsov was assassinated. Today Russia, with its oil and gas that it sells less to Europe, is more and more looking like an isolated Saudi Arabia with nukes. The state of Russia today is not a sign that the new world order shows a very strong replacement for the West, again given that autocracies are not the best at such grand designs, being focused on domestic control first and foremost. It is clear that the West, while supporting Ukraine and ensuring Russia does not win there, should also make sure the natural divide of the opportunistic weak partnership between Moscow and Beijing is further affected, thus the need for the avoidance of noble but ill-thought-through provocations against the latter. Having said this, an alliance of nationalists is always an odd concept, even if there is never any guarantee that a Sino-Soviet-like split would always occur, however likely. The last thing the world needs is a collapse of Russia leading to a period of domestic chaos with ultra-nationalists eventually taking over a now hard-line Soviet-styled but still predictable Putin regime.              

Europe is known today through the EU as the world-leading trading bloc. But it is also a Western sub-club of, at times, 27 very different member-states across the ancient Cold War divide: from an old France, with a very deep history, to a new Croatia. The EU today comprises very pragmatic Germany and foreign policy-ambivalent Hungary. Not to mention the ceaselessly Brussels-sensitive (but Ukraine-highly supportive) Poland. As previously stated, one clear lesson to be drawn for all European nations, including those that made past world history, is that “the power of the bloc”, such as with the EU and the critical need for it to go beyond its main trade focus, is now essential.  While Europe is broadly the EU and its former UK partner, the concept and reality of the bloc matters more today. A probable Labour government in two years will likely continue, more strongly than any moderate and clear-thinking Tory one today, to bring the UK closer to the EU, while likely not re-joining it for some years. The Ukraine invasion transformed the EU through unexpected and rapid changes in its energy, economic and security policies—not to mention the rejection of any future Merkel-inspired plans to integrate Russia more closely into Europe, at least for the foreseeable future. In a stark contrast with decades of quasi-pacifism, Germany notably abandoned a historically-rooted and virtuous but not economically unhelpful refusal to focus on defence and military matters—even if actual transition takes time.

Key EU member states like France are adopting a less antagonistic stance towards China— the EU largest trading partner—than the US, serving both parties’ interests as China also needs Europe on trade. All while EU Commission President von der Leyen (incidentally a former German defence minister) clearly stated to Xi that China’s active Ukraine mediation would be a determining factor in EU-China relations. Taiwan is not much mentioned in European capitals, even if they support its “independence” and Prague is closed to Taipei, having cancelled a twin city partnership with Beijing in 2019. Macron’s visit to Beijing last week clearly showed a more moderate approach, not only aimed at bolstering trade and cultural relations with China, but also attempting at making Beijing more neutral in its stance towards Moscow with the challenging aim of finding “a shared responsibility for peace” or an equivalent to the Saudi-Iranian settlement the latter engineered, even if for its own diplomatic rationale. While the EU will get stronger at many levels, including on defence as wanted by Macron for some time, it will distance itself from Russia with relationship rebuilding taking at least a generation. At the same time the EU will redefine its position towards China in focusing more on “security and control” away from “an era of reform and opening” without weakening economic relations, or forgetting mutual work on the environment and nuclear proliferation, so as to keep working together on common issues. If anything, Europe, through the EU and its likely gradually closer British partner and eventually member anew, may unexpectedly emerge following the ill-fated Russian move in Ukraine as the inherently strongest member of the West, even if the latter will still be led by a soul-searching America.         

At a time when the Middle East, known for having been the centre of world upheaval since 2001, following the disastrous Iraq war and subsequent Arab Spring, is going through another set of unsettling developments, largely due to the rise of an extremist Israeli government, the world order has not yet changed in spite of the unprecedented since 1945 full-scale invasion of a European country. It is important for the West, democracy—and by extension the world—that Ukraine wins (or does not lose) a war that is far more than territorial in nature. At this point, the world order is still the one we know, and is unlikely to change soon. But it requires some serious attention and care from the West and especially its leader, still the “indispensable country” of my youth, also at home.   

Warmest regards,

Serge    

24-3-23

Dear Partners in Thought,

I wanted to introduce you to a great book that is perhaps one of the best concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine today—even while the subject matter is still unfolding before us.

“Invasion” is a timely book and also, indeed, great reportage for its quality and that of its author, Luke Harding.  I met Luke in February at an event of the Prague Center for Transatlantic Relations, an excellent think tank in Prague whose focus and location vividly reflects our times and indeed geography. Luke Harding is a seasoned journalist from The Guardian with a longstanding focus on Russia and its society for years. As a sign of the new Russian times to come he had been The Guardian Moscow correspondent as of 2007 and was expelled in 2011, already being a nuisance to the Kremlin at a time when only the dreadful Litvinenko murder and the unexpected old-style invasion of South Ossetia had happened and made public news. At the time, the West was rather silent with only “limited and conventional responses” to gradual Russian aggressive moves as a prelude to its relatively mild positions when Crimea would be taken and eastern Ukraine occupied in 2014. Putin felt the West was weak and irresolute, thus fuelling his ambitions for a Russian imperial return that would be skilfully sold within Russia via now state-controlled media and an only too willing “captive” audience—the latter being expertly addressed in the book.

In its opening, Harding addresses the many events led by Putin that announced the invasion, while relating many comments of Russians about them. He starts by exploring how Putin tried to “rationalise” (a word that is admittedly hard to apply to the Russian leader) the non-existence of Ukraine as an independent country, stressing its inherent belonging to Mother Russia. This was clearly demonstrated in Putin’s two-hour historical tirade on Russia and Ukraine in June 2021, that left scholars around the world puzzled, where he tried to give a quasi-academic justification for events to come eight months later. Harding reminds us of the war against neo-Nazis and the liberation of Ukrainian brothers well before stressing that the war (or “special operation”) was essentially a pre-emptive strike against NATO and the West who were about to attack Russia. Putin’s statements that left the West speechless were only a prelude to comments, such as Sergei Lavrov’s at a conference in India one year into the invasion, stating the West had actually attacked Russia, thus triggering a massive laughter from the audience, even if from the rather neutral and (for many) too accommodating Global South. As the war turned out to be challenging for Russia, Harding provides insights as to Putin’s leadership style, micro-management and martial tendencies combined with utter ignorance about military matters (not unlike Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu) in a reminiscence of his admired Nicholas I and his failed Crimean war, Nicholas II and the regime-changing WW1 (or a Stalin who did not want to listen to Russian intelligence about a forthcoming massive Nazi offensive, as he knew better). In stark contrast to someone now also under Hague ICC warrant for the forced transfer of children, Harding projects Zelenskyy and how a great local actor, who played President in the famed “Servant of the People” and was an early proponent of dialogue with Russia, became a new Churchill and the most admired leader on earth—or at least in the West.

Harding was on the ground in Ukraine immediately before and during the invasion, giving us both a reminder of events most of us saw on our screen and read about—as if it were a distant story or a movie that could not be real in our day and age. He sensed that the invasion was coming in February 2022, an event that US and British intelligence had repeatedly stressed, but might have been dismissed by too many as unrealistic in 2022, 77 years after the end of WW2 and all the more at the heart of Europe. Harding’s connections with many key individuals in not only Ukraine but also Russia, provide us with a very personal perspective of all these events. Names like Kherson oblast, Mariupol, the Donbas region and even the small city of Bucha, where the first known war crimes occurred, all covered by specific chapters, are coming back to us. His book is a “first rough draft of history” as it infolded in front of us. He also gives us a better understanding for Ukraine through a number of poets and political thinkers from both Russia and Ukraine, while stressing the tolerance of the West for all the exactions of the Kremlin ranging from the killings of dissidents outside Russia to the annexation of Crimea in 2014—eight years before the full-scale invasion. He stresses the incredible failure of Russian forces to seize Kyiv in a week as planned, and the impact on the image of the Russian military, due to its many weak features reminiscent of a history most had forgotten. Russian soldiers and their “Z”-marked vehicles did not know where they were going, expected a short trip with no resistance, and had been told they would be welcome as liberators from the neo-Nazis by the Slavic brothers. Supply lines broke, food disappeared and looting started. Harding stresses the reckless approach of the Russian military command in its seizure of the forbidden area of Chornobyl, putting the lives of its own troops in clear danger with likely future health consequences. Then Kharkiv, home to Russian speakers and nationals, and its residential buildings starting to be the target of missiles and drones in a derailed Russian war scenario. We remember the long convoy of Russian tanks and trucks on their way to Kyiv ultimately going nowhere. He witnesses for us the awakening of a nation and its indomitable fighting spirit. Harding naturally addresses the Kremlin-unexpected resilience of the West and strengthening of NATO as a result of the invasion from another age.

While the war in Ukraine still rages—now at times with days without major news (short of missile strikes launched against residential buildings) likely triggered by a lack of ammunitions on both sides but mainly Russia’s—Harding’s earlier conclusion is that “Russia had basically lost”. This sentiment, which is rooted in the fact that war is still on after one year is definitely correct, but Ukraine needs support so it wins the war—not only for itself but also for all of us and for the heart of Europe to go back to a stable peace where old-fashioned warmonger and existentially-lost states are kept at bay. Harding’s book may be the first chapter of a redefinition of the world order as we have seen it since WW2 and then the end of the Cold War. The West, while its societies suffer from too much social media-focused individualism, vote-grabbing incompetent populism, and capitalism at times losing its soul, is still predominant worldwide, with an uncertain American leadership weakened by many domestic challenges and a Europe (still going through existential changes) that was weakened by an illusory Brexit. While China is still searching for ways to assert its global ascension, it seems to be hesitating between being a peacemaker (as seen with the Saudi-Iran rapprochement) and belonging to an anti-Western front, through an unclear Kremlin visit and military exercises together with an imperial—if not imperious—Russia and an outcasted self-searching Iranian follower (even if an erratic North Korea is not sought as a partner yet in this opportunistic construct). There is an odd and opportunistic alliance in the making based on “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend” that, if unclear and not based on solid foundations, also carries its own set of problems—not only for the West but for the world. To borrow from Mao’s prescient 1957 words, as the FT’s Gideon Rachman reminded us this week, there is a possible risk that the East wind might indeed be stronger than the West wind just now. This world order redefinition takes place as the now newly-defined Global South is increasingly taking neutral or tactical stances in the rising “great new rivalry” (if not yet conflict) when not actually taking sides with the China-led coalition in the potential making. The new world as it is redefined clearly pins democracy against autocracy, the latter of all flavours. It is not clear that democracy as we know it, a still young historical construct, will survive if it is not ready to stand firm and eventually fight through its many means. One clear lesson to be drawn for all European nations, including those that made past world history, is that “the power of the bloc”, such as with the EU and the critical need for it to go beyond its main trade focus, is now essential. 

Democratic survival is why the West (and many in the Global South) should support Ukraine so it wins and Russia is squarely defeated—thus prompting regime change in Moscow along traditional historical lines (even if never a guarantee of a return to more Kremlin rationality). The time, which is clearly tougher for Western citizens with higher energy and food prices though not lethal, is not for weak and slow support of Ukraine, which will be self-hurting later for the West. The Ukraine conflict is not simply about territory, even if Estonian PM Kaja Kallas might rightfully be more nuanced on the point, while by the same token, President Zelenskyy should adopt a sensible and wise approach to Crimea today. It is also about the world as it should be, according to the sound rules of law and values the West has promoted since the last global conflict, however imperfect they may be. Once Russia is squarely defeated (but not before), our times may oddly be back to those of George Kennan and his containment approach found in his famed February 1946 “long telegram,” already dealing with an expansionist Kremlin. We should all hope for the likes of Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis to get the message regarding support for Ukraine beyond sheer electoral tactics sadly fitting our current Western political era. While Russia may have lost, Ukraine, now “a proven state” as stressed in the last chapter of the book, has not won yet, this with few end game scenarios being offered (my very point to Harding at the think tank) short of getting ready for a long conflict. We should make sure Luke Harding’s next and tenth book will tell us how Ukraine and the right values finally won. Today we are all Ukrainians.

Warmest regards,

Serge

20-4-22

Dear Partners in Thought,

The Russian invasion was a wake-up call for the West, or the “Western liberal order” (as it is no longer a geographic concept), and especially the younger generations for whom war in Europe was only seen in movies and, if they still read them, history books. While collective historical memory of WW2 died away as those who fought or lived through it passed away and their children became grandparents, the people of the West woke up to a reality long-forgotten that unprovoked wars from another age can also arise in otherwise peaceful Europe. Most observers stressed the strong unity of the West in responding to Russia, which was all the more surprising considering its current station in history. For decades the West focused on the economy, leading to a point where money-making became naturally the prime objective of a business ecosystem – all while rising inequalities gradually became secondary, as the masses were gradually served for the last 15-20 years a power-grabbing populist menu of grievances, making them also forget what was going on in their daily lives. Not only this, but the Russian invasion happened just as the West had weakened itself in recent years. And while the West – and indeed the US – still have tremendous assets and power, it may not be premature to disagree with “Paris 1919” historian Margaret McMillan, in seeing the signs of a gradual decline and then fix it once and for all at this tragic but timely juncture of history.

While technology or “tech” has changed our lives for the better, and sadly also for the worse, we additionally see today many examples in the world of business and finance of grievous developments that have slowly helped destroy Western society and hurt the many for the benefit of the few, all while forgetting the core values that made the West what it once was. The combination of technology, business and finance has led many times to adverse societal change in the West and also the world. The behaviors of many Western leaders in the political and business worlds, at times mixing both, has also added to the debasement of the societal values upon which the West was once built.

A few developments seen in the last decade underline the weakening of the West into a new version of an Ancient Rome declining through “games and circus” – but also now greed. This Ancient Rome-like decline has been unwittingly encouraged by tech, small or Big, and the financial and business worlds on the altar of profit, and while finding all the justifications needed on the way – like job creation or customer satisfaction. Having said all that, it is clear that Winston Churchill’s legendary quote in 1947 should always apply to the West, in that it is also another word for “democracy”: it is indeed the worst form of government except for all the others. This admittedly long note is not only about the key problems facing the West but also and crucially the ways to fix them – so it should be read until its end with an open mind.

The key examples of Western demise stated below may be seen by many, who still wish to hope that thinigs are just fine, as unfairly stated. These are only inter-related features of a darkening trend. In 2022, the few key features of what has promoted the de-strengthening of the West over the last 20 years with marked acceleration over the past decade, especially in Europe and the US, are as follows:

Tech and the damaging loss of critical thinking. Tech, like Aesop’s tongues, is the best and the worst of things. While tech undoubtedly brought many societal advancements in the way we live – be it in science, medicine, telecommunication and many other key areas – it also lavished the world with tools that strengthened isolation, fixations and behaviors leading to natural selfishness that was not planned and happened unnoticed by users. This damaging tech user behavior is seen with video games, social media and people walking down the street while watching their phone. Tech unwittingly shaped a world where increasingly self-centered users started to think less for themselves while relying on ready-made tools not devoid of agendas (indeed like this blog) though increasingly extremist in their message to shape their views. It should be no surprise that the younger digital generations, as seen in France in the current presidential election, espouse more extremist views and candidates than their markedly more liberal elders. In other cases, now known as “predatory”, the likes of TikTok and Instagram would encourage teens and young adults to self-diagnose with mental conditions with expensive solutions being provided by their sponsors whose business ran unchecked. One of the latest developments allowing to escape the real world well beyond its virtual aspects is now the selling of the metaverse providing users with a parallel world and existence, sheltering them away from the reality that real shells would now destroy. It is clear that many tech creators and users would not know who Aesop is today, but they would also benefit from taking a back step while enjoying their tools. The Chinese leadership, while seeing the damage that tech selfishness could do to its overall system (and likely not only key autocratic feature) decided to control access to and usage of video games and the internet – drastic measures that are obviously not fitting the West and its values. There is a need for a collective wake-up call regarding tech behavior, which is indeed challenging to make happen – if not at the core family and school level for a start. One can argue ad nauseam about the part of the responsibility of tech in a Western decline, though critical thinking looks to be gradually on its way out.

The foolish valuations of profitless tech companies. While tech (and not only Big Tech) rose to new heights in the last decade, a huge number of tech start-ups were created worldwide. While the venture capital industry was long known to be an area of finance where fund platforms were as a whole struggling to make any returns, as in private equity and its larger, more mature deals, the times suddenly changed. The new Thomas Edison times were born when venture capital firms focused on selling dreams and the motto that “profits will come” was heard again after a 20-year lull since the dotcom Bubble. The new Edison times reached incredible heights and indeed status when in 2019 a famous company called Uber was listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a market valuation of USD 90bn – without having made any profits in its ten years of existence. Based on its name, Uber, while being a simple car ride hailing company, had attracted the dynamics of offer and demand (often the key issue in a world with too much money) while subsequently losing USD 30bn in market value over 12 months. Venture capital, belonging to an ecosystem of “supportive” investment bankers and lawyers earning huge fees, went through a new age when anything was possible. This new era – sold as one of “progress” – was emblematic of money-losing start-ups active in attractive fields like an AI start-up being listed in 2021 at USD 35bn, only to lose half of its value in nine months – all while the ecosystem was becoming very wealthy if only for venture capitalists via the carried interest rewards of venture capital firms and involving minimal financial investment and risk-taking. Tech venture capital today is driven by a numbers game and is akin to gambling, where the key skill is to know when to leave the table, which invariably is very early post-listing and when legally allowed to do so for the principals behind the scheme. At least the real value is there in identifying early tech start-ups that will make investors dream. However, the lack of link between the results and the market value of these tech firms is a direct attack on rationality and reflects the declining Ancient Rome aspect of our current Western world. Investing in tech companies and promoting them to listed stock exchange status should not be about “when to leave the casino table” to cash in before the expected fall.

The advent of the cryptocurrency gamble. Cryptocurrency, started with the now-famed Bitcoin twelve years or so ago as an experiment based on fashionably libertarian-put “decentralization” (read: that no entity controls or indeed “unregulated”) and was emulated by many crypto-firms and now exchanges. “Crypto”, that is gradually becoming a poster child for “innovation is not always good”, is another example of the Western demise and is likely a worse example than the profitless tech start-up market valuations (which at least reflect real companies and their strategies). The basis for the value of cryptocurrencies is non-existent, while the “market” is being fed tech stories that it is to be found in what is known as “mining” in caves walled with computers like in Kazakhstan. Crypto is not only valueless and driven by irrational offer and demand, with huge daily price gyrations – but is also a terrible blow to the green world given its abysmal electricity consumption. Crypto, which has been largely unregulated thus far, is the favorite financial transaction means of the criminal world, which has found a tech way to shelter its activities, while Russian oligarchs have tried going crypto to evade sanctions and saving some of their kleptocratic assets. Young people, including teenagers, are known to buy fractions of cryptos to fund their lifestyle, seeing it as easy money until they lose it. Turkish citizens facing a declining Lira at home buy fractions of cryptos just hoping to get by. The problem with crypto and its often-huge daily value gyrations is that its time is already probably behind passed, even if there was a peak during the Covid years due to too much time “at-home”. Making real fortunes, however temporary, unless again bold enough by leaving the table early enough (usually too hard a move), implied more of a buy in the mid-1990s when crypto was still a relatively low-key “tool”. While initially cautious for a decade, many western financial institutions and well-known investment banks have jumped carefully on the crypto bandwagon not to let the “techies” be the sole winners of the fashion that became more popular under the pandemic. In one of his outbursts, libertarian tech investor Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, early discoverer of Facebook and early 2016 Trump supporter, recently attacked Warren Buffett as the “sociopathic grandpa of Omaha” while similarly describing JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Blackrock’s Larry Fink as “finance gerontocrats” for locking cryptos out. On the free market libertarian side, some US legislators comprising pro-business advocates and leftwing technology utopians would have started to create a “crypto caucus” in Congress, where ideology takes over business sanity. However, and in spite of what appeared as an upward trend, while crypto would apparently follow the stock market recently, the values of most cryptos has taken a dive over the last nine months. While a strangely slow process, crypto is also getting more under regulatory scrutiny in most of the Western markets while China has expediently banned it (perhaps to launch its national version) and Russia had taken a rare sane move in recent times against it too. Only El Salvador – under the aegis of its young reverse cap-wearing President – has decided to make crypto a national treasure and role model for the world. In spite of the founder of Binance, a leading crypto exchange, claiming it, crypto is not an asset class (while amusingly, as if a great admission, recognizing it is not a currency as it was initially promoted). Crypto is not about investing and is totally about gambling, which should be regulated as such. In the meantime, cryptos and Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs (or virtual art, such as the famed drawing of the “bored monkey” strangely valued at exorbitant amounts) hurt Western society and gradually the world by debasing the notion of sheer financial value while perverting the mind of too many people, all the more among the younger digital generations given their fittingly innovative tech flavor.

The rapid rise of easy money financial structures like SPACs. One of the recent developments to raise capital and do big deals has been the development of SPACs or Special Purpose Acquisition Companies. More than 1,000 such SPACs were set up since the beginning of the pandemic in a times-fashionable “SPAC mania”. They each floated on stock exchanges worldwide, promising to merge with an amazing private company to make their investors very wealthy. The SPAC fashion was promoted by financially illiterate celebrities in exchange for SPAC shares in the same way Kanye West and other luminaries promoted new cryptos and received free ones in exchange in a no-lose and win-win potential upside game. Politicians, sports stars and even Wall Street greats joined in the game. After two years, in the midst of Covid, 600 SPACs are still looking for a partner while some of the latter have been known to make incredibly false claims as to their potential achievements (a segment being electric car-making where incidentally revenue-inexistent Rivian, heralded as a rival of Tesla, was listed at a market valuation of USD 100bn in late 2021). The shares in the USD 40bn merger or de-SPACing Grab, the largest tech SPAC in Singapore, saw their value going down by 70% in three months while other de-SPACing entities showed revenues at 20% of what they were forecast. Only 63 SPACs were listed on stock exchanges in the first quarter of 2022, an 80% decline on 2021. SPACs are now under heavy scrutiny as if regulators had learned from their clear ineptitude in dealing early enough with the vagaries of tech market listings or cryptocurrencies. Regulators like the SEC have now decided, faster than with crypto, though they look at it now too, to stop the abusive schemes and make the sponsors and their bankers more accountable on the promises of future SPAC successes as well as disclosing fees and other costs. Finally, an 18-month deadline would be set up for SPACs to merge to avoid the current stagnant situation. In the meantime, a large number of class action lawsuits (admittedly also benefitting lawyers in the contemporary American fashion) have been launched in the US. SPACs exemplified the desperate need from investors to buy growth stocks in an indiscriminate manner led by the dream driver not dissimilar to that found with profitless growth stocks or easy-money crypto. At least this nightmare seems to be on its way out and may seem with hindsight like a very bad hiccup.

The amazing payouts and non-role model of corporate leaders and their related matters. In 2021 the median annual salary of US CEOs for more than half of the S&P 500 that had reported results by March-end was USD 14.2m. This staggering figure even created a huge gap with their highly-paid senior staff, this reflecting a world driven by greed where rewards have become out of proportion, while some regular people, often consumers of the goods and services of those business leaders, cannot make ends meet. The CEOs of Discovery, Intel and Amazon each made annual salaries between USD 178m and USD 247m. Even the CEO of Carnival Cruises operating in a badly pandemic-hurt sector, made USD 15m including a USD 6m bonus in 2021. This situation is not American-only, as seen with the furor arising from the EUR 19.1m payout of the CEO of Peugeot-maker PSA following its merger with Fiat, creating a major issue in the French presidential campaign with both Macron and Le Pen in a rare if tactically timed agreement to condemn it and what it means for the French workplace, this even if the CEO led a strong recovery for an ailing well-known automaker. One sign of hope and potential turning point on such matters was shown when only 64% of Apple shareholders endorsed CEO Tim Cook’s 2021 pay, the Norwegian oil fund voting no. Leading corporate billionaires now comprise figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg whose human values and charitable contributions are not what define them most – if at all. Times when Bill Gates (even if he had a few shortcomings the world did not know then) or a Warren Buffett (his hidden no-green side aside when it was not an issue) representing successful corporate and investment leadership are gradually gone, also from the very top of the Forbes billionaire ranking list. Again, our times would seem to show that the objective of entrepreneurs and business leaders is to achieve quick wealth and fame in the shortest time possible (for the former) or when the window of opportunity allows them to get away with it (for the latter), with not much consideration of such an impact to Western society. While many corporations still behave as they should, in too many instances basic morals no longer matter much any more, and rewards can never be excessive as long as they can be received – this creating a great disconnect with our Western world and its roots, not to mention common decency.

This unacceptable trend in corporate payouts has also been linked to and indeed reflects the financialization of most key sectors such as healthcare in the US which has affected a large number of families and as always and naturally gradually found “export markets” via the globalization of the major players in the healthcare industry. Another unacceptable slide into the maximization of profits is the rising cost of higher education in many Western countries, the US being again a market leader in the problem with the UK following suit. Such educational financialization ensures that meritocracy fails and that students face crippling debt that then becomes a political issue in terms of forgiveness. Sadly, the list of such slides is long and always efficiently rationalized by corporations or institutions and their leaders.

The bad behavior of former mainstream politicians. When Gerhard Schroeder left his position as German Prime Minister in 2005, he was known to have said that “it was now time to make money”. He then joined the Board of Russian energy company Rosneft, finding himself in the middle of the Ukraine invasion sanctions, not reacting swiftly to them and losing his reputation. Politicians, often with little added value but their public past to offer in business set-ups, find themselves able to maximize unduly the returns that past high public office can produce. David Cameron, an otherwise very acceptable (if not very competent regarding Brexit) British Prime Minister, and even a former minister from across the bench were caught unawares in the well-documented Greensill Capital scandal, trying to keep a very low but challenging profile. Many members of the House of Lords in the UK find themselves often in trouble having monetized their status through large numbers of board directorships and senior advisory roles for companies wanting to benefit primarily from their names and public image to legitimize their own operations. While many provide useful advice and guidance, quite a few do not provide adequate advice or governance, and at times put their own name at great reputational risk. Similar examples can be found through the Western democratic world. Once again, the driving factor in these poor developments is personal greed that affects the Western values that made a world as we knew it. Reforms are hugely and quickly needed to restore integrity in the way democratic leaders behave following their public roles and life. It is also a question of restoring confidence in the Western system and its leadership.

The rise of a new class of populist autocrats. The last twenty years have seen the rise of populist autocrats with their easy solutions to complex issues (leading to this blog birth) and whose main objective was to seize power in a democratic context, often to weaken the latter if the goal was achieved. The list of these personalities, not all evil, is long from Donald Trump to Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Nigel Farage or Viktor Orban or newcomers like the French media star Eric Zemmour with similar party leaders and personalities across the West. Some were once mainstream politicians having shifted to authoritarianism in style and deeds over the years like Orban. Others, like Boris Johnson, are also gradually adopting a tactical and expedient populist style to achieve their goals (like Brexit or redefining his Tory Party) while staying within democratic confines – if not always abiding by the rules. A tiny few were indeed elected to the top role in their country (Hungary and Poland or even Italy pre-Draghi coming to mind) this with diverse results and usually not staying more than one term (except for Orban as recently seen) or remembering history or basic funding gradually going back to more sensible approaches (the Polish government when now dealing with the EU Commission, this further helped by the war in Ukraine and its consequences). With the natural history-based exception of Poland, these leaders and parties were usually warm to or liked Putin (which for Orban and those who voted again for him is puzzling considering 1956, though knowing collective living history is gone, clearly in some of parts of Hungary unlike the Czech Republic for which 1968 may be closer). Those populist leaders strongly played the immigration card, especially when it was coming from Africa or the Middle East (apparently Ukrainian refugees are no problem so far for the Polish Law and Justice Party, unlike those from Afghanistan at the Belarus border two months before). Issues linked to crime rise-flavored identity politics, which is an easy and sadly also understandable tool to now convince unsophisticated even if average voters, has grown to be critical for many Europeans also, as a result of being long-neglected by mainstream parties as too uncouth or below what reasonable people should focus on – especially when those leaders were living in very upstanding neighborhoods in the quiet and uniform centers of their capitals. Those mainstream leaders, waking up too late, never saw the populist rise coming, allowing for new faces with simple programs to challenge and potentially or eventually ejecting them from power. Clearly the major test in the West will shortly be French when Marine Le Pen, who tried hard to soften her extremist image and is relatively unskilled at leading a G7 country, could surprisingly if still theoretically defeat Emmanuel Macron, a President molded in the elitist ENA technocratic fashion, who is competent but can irritate many as representing the ever-leading elite. Such a victory, while being worse than a Brexit for the West, given her issues with NATO (if probably no longer – in theory so far – with the EU and Euro) could also give an unexpected victory to the Kremlin given Le Pen’s historical admiration for Putin, even if she tried to distance herself from him recently, though hedging her bets later by stating that sanctions could one day be lifted and Russia be a natural ally of France (curiously the war in Ukraine that took Macron’s focus away from the campaign would appear to have affected only very few French voters in their voting intentions, which were more driven by domestic matters relating to cost of living – even if linked to the war -, security, immigration and retirement schemes, all points Le Pen tactically capitalized upon).

Where we are today:

One could be forgiven for seeing the West living in a culture of money, where existence is linked to it, and citizens are de facto thoughtless consumers being taken advantage of as they can no longer think for themselves in a traditional way. The West is felt to be going through its declining Ancient Rome phase, which Putin’s Russia took advantage of (though also might stop through the great wake-up call on what really matters). This is a unique opportunity in an ideal world for parents to lead their children to read history, stay away more from video games and social media and start re-developing an individual and autonomous thought process in a return to the roots that made the West.

There is a need to have the younger Western – and especially European – generations who now face the return of history very directly, and may live with it as they grow old if Russia stays the same, to go back to the values that make the West thrive ¬¬– this also away from a tech-enabled selfish and isolated existence. There is a need to restore Western value-based integrity all the more as the societal tech-driven developments (and admittedly also advancements) experienced over the last thirty years will be trivial in comparison to the ones we will know in the next thirty.

Unrelenting value-less greed, too often seen at the top of what was a largely sound capitalist society and permeating it gradually, has weakened the West, even if unwittingly, which tech, while also bringing great advancements, has helped fostering through its many applications. While tech has been about tools, its many users are building on a daily basis a societal decline, even if they were unknowingly led to forget basic values by powerful business and political forces which wanted them first as a mix of consumers and voters. Democracy, through its many tech tools of our times that symbolized freedom and made people exist more may have heralded its own decline. In all fairness the good political side of tech is obviously also seen as a game-changer – from the Soviet days for those in Russia wanting to receive information not from the Kremlin, even if through challenging VPN set-ups in the current internet clampdown. Citizens of the West, and indeed the world, should welcome and enjoy the advancements that the tech tools have provided but not let themselves be taken over by them and change who they really are as a civilization.

It is possible that the Covid era worsened the Western decline, as it may not have helped in the rise of shiny cryptos as retail buyers, often unskilled at sheer investing, had too much time to spend at home while financial engineers could also focus on new breathtakingly get-rich adverse developments like SPACs. Such a Western decline may also explain why Putin may have seized the time he did for an opportunity to purify and expand Russia, however ill-thought, continent-destroying and self-devastating in the process. Putin may have felt the weakness of the West derived from its new Ancient Rome declinist habits would make it a sheer observer of his grand scheme as the music kept going and the bell had not rung.

What to do going forward:

How to fix the decline of the West can be expressed in four words: GOING BACK TO BASICS. This approach would entail both a review of who we are and have become and help refining the system that has defined the West for so long and until 20 years ago quite successfully.

Remaking ourselves: Remaking ourselves in the West is not about sheer politics or related to the old and moving left and right divide landscape that is so often no longer relevant. Remaking ourselves is about refocusing on what matters and linked to education which is where efforts should start, primarily at school so the young generations benefit from it but also, whenever possible, at family level. Things the West took for granted need to be seriously refocused on and strengthened. Education is key.

Key areas of focus should involve: i) multi-disciplinary education comprising old and new key themes and fields focused not just on job-getting but on mind-shaping; ii) reading books by authors who shaped Western roots, including ancient philosophers; iii) developing critical thinking to ensure tech tools and their derived products like social media are adequately managed; iv) understanding history so it does not repeat itself too often; v) learning the basics of economics so later individual decisions are wiser and; vi) receiving civic instruction so the workings of society are clearer, including in the EU member states the workings of the EU so its benefits are also known and rug salesmen do not cheaply prevail. These should be accompanied by seeing the elite for what it should be – as projecting skills and competence – and not only one created by privilege, but fostered by renewed meritocracy, however always imperfect, and aspiring to joining it through once-old fashioned hard work and achievements. These few focus areas would help going back to successful cultural roots and combining them with what tech can offer, without compromising the values and ultimate outcomes that made the democratic West. These few changes in attitude would greatly help remaking who Westerners were and should be – this leading to a stronger, more independent and healthier West.

Remaking capitalism: The Western liberal order is about democracy but is also about capitalism. Democracy and capitalism were indeed the two pillars upon which the modern West was built. The West was capitalism with its rules and ethos while capitalism was also the West. It is time now to go back to basics and take utter greed out of the capitalistic equation to make it more attractive to all anew. Capitalism is also a Western role model to promote globally as true capitalism is not at home with autocracy and can be a useful weapon, if deployed with integrity (indeed a far too often forgotten word), to promote global change. Capitalism finally fosters globalization which itself fosters peace as partners (and all the more, democracies) do not go to war against each other or launch unprovoked military tragedies.

The wealthy of previous generations are the well-offs of today while inequalities have grown and billionaires, having taken advantage of market developments, have benefited from a tax regime that is not relevant to our times and is also self-hurting image-wise. Billionaires should not be victimized, but they should contribute more of their wealth to the common well-being of Western societies. President Biden was right to decide for billionaires to pay more taxes so they can contribute more to – and be part of – society and more accepted. Higher taxes will not affect their wealth, while they will be a meaningful message about their contribution to society and the well-being of their fellow citizens. The West as a whole should once more follow the American lead.

While venture capital is absolutely essential to society, and indeed brings in innovation often linked to tech, it would be wise and productive for our financial sector to launch a reality check on the way tech start-ups are valued, so sanity comes back in their initial investment rounds and later on the stock market. Venture capital, while keeping on selling dreams, should go back to a more rational valuation approach that is linked to the private equity and M&A sectors where companies are indeed valued at a multiple of earnings, this even if there could be a huge premium, even large but not in ephemeral and self-serving billion dollars, for the start-up dream. It is key for venture capital and associated parties like investment banks and law firms to redefine what this investment segment is about if they do not want regulators to step in and drastically overly-interfere with market dynamics. However, if no action is taken, regulators should step in to stop the casino from staying open as it is now.

Another area would be for the West to ensure that key areas such as healthcare and education – which are key to the good functioning of a fair and happy society – are not considered excessive profit areas for all business stakeholders, but are run at reasonable cost within a capitalist framework, and might even possibly imply state subsidies when necessary. The list of sectors needing a corrective approach is obviously longer than those two. Institutional shareholders, like large public pension funds, should take the lead in bringing sanity to what companies in which they are invested do, and how their top executives reward themselves, also as a self-preservation move, as increasingly seen recently for the latter.

This re-making of capitalism would also mean an efficient, rigorous and still fair regulation of the finance and tech sectors, which is in theory already done – this without fostering a police state hurting entrepreneurship, but to also ensure and trigger a change of behavior at the level of consumers dealing with tools they often did not fully understand in the past. Capitalism cannot be left unbridled on the altar of creativity and innovation as would be defended by too many in the current Western business leadership ranks, who are mainly focused on payouts for shareholders but also themselves. There is also a need for sanity, not only in terms of the fair functioning of the markets, but also of society, to avoid the adverse impact on individual consumers of such gambling slides as crypto and the like or the predatory methods used on social media, the latter that should also be more scrutinized by social media themselves as to contents, including fake news and hate speech. This regulatory drive, which is needed at government level to be impactful, while preempted by corporations themselves, would need to go in parallel with a realization at the individual and for the young at the family level that “remaking ourselves” is key to making us stronger and happier as a society and indeed civilization.

Remaking alliances: While the West should always focus on preserving peace and fostering a productive globalization that underpins the former, it should focus on building military strength in both Europe and this time also Asia. NATO should be the natural focus of European military strengthening with the EU taking a more committed role as proposed by Macron and now unequivocally supported by a new Germany. NATO’s new motto should be the tried and tested Latin “si vis pacem para bellum” so as the latter never happens (if you want peace, prepare for war) so as to keep an isolated and likely dangerous Russia in clear check, if it has not reformed in the distant future. In Asia, the times have come to build a NATO-like defensive-focused organization to make sure that China will be naturally inclined to focus on trade and globalization, not tempted by military adventures as seen with Russia in Ukraine. Such an organization could be WAPO (or the Western Asian Partnership Organization), a name that jokingly would be well received in DC due to the Washington Post, and could include on the same lines as NATO, the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia (perhaps a different India, even if part of the smaller anti-China Quad and in spite of its “practical” trade-related neutrality on Ukraine) as key members. Such organization could supersede existing ones, like the recent AUKUS that combines the US, Britain and Australia through an Anglo-Saxon only club following the sudden French nuclear submarine sale cancellation. As both alliances would evolve, there would be merits in allowing WAPO members such as Japan to be involved in NATO operations and vice versa, like with large EU member states, the objective being to build a stronger and truly global Western alliance that would be the ultimate deterrent to any hostile power in both key world theaters.

Putin may have unwittingly helped the West wake up at a critical time in its history, including its younger digital generations who one day will run it, or for the most part live through it, when seeing what happens when basic freedom is violently stolen and war crimes happen in otherwise peaceful villages. Putin has given the West a unique opportunity to change its gradual and still comfortable southern course to oblivion and offer once again hope to those who want a better world. However, he will not be thanked.

Warmest regards,

Serge

6-4-22

Dear Partners in Thought,

In our last post, the key points of regime change led and/or supported by the Russian people, the need to avoid weakness in dealing with the Kremlin, and the plan to redefine a new Europe – eventually comprising another democratic and liberal Russia – were stressed.

While “lessons”, “key facts” and “remarks” were made in the midst of a deluge of news over the last six weeks following the Ukraine invasion, seven key reality checks are worth noting today:

The world is not the West after all. Even if the West was united and well-heard (including pro-Russia Orban’s Hungary and traditionally Serbia, however vacillating), the whole world did not follow its unanimous condemnation of the Russian invasion. Many countries stayed neutral for geopolitical reasons, or because it was not their fight, had close trading or political ties to Russia, or simply wanted to follow an old-fashioned and easier-to-live-with non-alignment. China, India, Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Iraq and Turkey, a NATO ally (though admittedly a key and needed mediator) did not condemn Russia at the UN. China staying neutral, even if playing a high wire act like with the EU, is obviously not what Putin’s Russia wanted, but is led by following its economic self-interest while not siding with the US mega-rival. 25 African countries did not vote or stayed neutral, including South Africa, partly on the grounds of the Soviet support in the old apartheid fight, or as Russian wheat was key for their citizens like Zimbabwe. The divide was often along soft-to-hard autocracies vs. democracies more than on geographic lines, and was often tainted by the potential opening of war- and sanctions-resulting trading opportunities as in the case of Modi’s India. The Ukraine invasion opened the road for a redefinition of the world order, possibly along the lines of a dual cold war with Moscow and China leading the anti-West camp with different battlefields and agendas.

Ukraine and Europe are far away for many people. Many residents of countries in the Middle East, Africa or Latin America – some ravaged by previous wars and strife – are not reacting to a war in Europe which is not their problem, and for people who did not care about their own similar issues in the past. Putting aside geopolitics and alliances, the Ukraine war is perceived at times as an ethnocentric matter to many in the non-Western world, or a white people’s problem. This feeling of non-interest can easily graduate to anger when some countries suffer from wheat supply – and therefore bread – shortage, leading to riots like in Egypt, allowing for some repositioning of relationships: in this case with Saudi Arabia. However, while the crisis brought its fair share of neglect in the non-Western world (apart from Taiwan and Singapore, and of course Westernized Japan), it also created some never-seen developments such as the previously unheard-of meeting in Jerusalem between an “open-minded” Israel wanting to play “Western” mediator, the UAE (even if having hosted al-Assad just earlier), Egypt, Morocco and the US to deal with the war in Ukraine and its consequences. At the same time, horrendous crises like the Afghan famine and resurrected Taliban treatment of girls and women barred from schools have been sadly eclipsed, leading understandably to more resentment locally from those who suffer or help there.

The basis of peace plans seems unsound in its structuring. Putting aside whether Russia can be trusted, which is a fair question based on tested experience, it is not sure that peace plans based on guarantees provided by the US, France, the UK and Germany amongst others to preserve Ukrainian independence would ever realistically be given if Ukraine never joined NATO. At the very best, Ukraine, which could join the EU, would benefit from an implicit though not formal guarantee. The danger of such a peace plan would be to provide yet again too much recognition to an aggressive Russian behavior all the more in the context of a continuing Putin leadership. The focus of stopping the conflict may not be enough for some in the West to potentially get into a new one in the future on a similar basis seen with the current invasion. Similarly, the potential acceptance of forced neutrality by Ukraine, not only being a blow to standard sovereignty, may reward and embolden an aggressive Russia that would see its unacceptable means justify its ends whatever they may be.

The refugee influx may likely be even more tragic in the medium-term. It is unlikely that the 4 million refugees moving Westward will continue to be welcome with open arms as weeks and months go by, all the more in Poland where there are already nearly 2.5 million. Western financial assistance, especially from the EU to the EU member states on the frontline, will be key. While most of Europe will bear the brunt of the refugee influx, not all of Europe or other parts of the world will face the same issue. The US, which plays a key role in the crisis but is much farther afield – indeed a key advantage in any European war scenarios – is not facing the same problems as it only provided 100,000 visas for people with relatives already on US soil, this small number also explained by the fact that refugees usually wanted to stay near Ukraine. While Boris Johnson is very firm in the British stance against Russia, only very few visas were granted to refugees, this officially due to administrative issues. Countries like Switzerland where many citizens have offered rooms and beds to refugees saw little take-up due to the distance from Ukraine and the local cost of living, this even though many refugee assistance programs were ready since the Syrian war. It is likely that host countries neighboring Ukraine will get tired at some point of their status, this even with EU financial assistance, while refugees themselves will not only comprise law-abiding guests or simply wanting to leave and return to Ukraine at some point. Another issue, largely unmentioned, is the brain drain for the Ukrainian economy combined with a permanent population loss that would have a multiple societal impact.

Energy is the other battlefield that needs total European commitment. While nothing can distract from the destructions, losses of life and indeed war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, the other battlefield especially for Europe is energetic. European countries need to be ready to restructure their energy supply routes away from Russia (a subject that will redefine the geopolitical cards with countries like Iran and its needed oil). The subject should no longer be to pay in Euros or Rubles but to stop trading with Russia, which needs these proceeds to fight its very expensive war in Ukraine and potentially other conflicts in the East (while the EU provided EUR 1bn to assist Ukraine in the war, it had paid EUR 100bn to Russia for its oil and gas in 2021). While this strategic change will be costly and might create temporary shortages, the reshaping of energy supply is key and the US and other allies should assist Europe as it goes through a painful transition. This change has taken too long already even if all parties knew that it would be bound to happen. And then the other key challenge when Europe has secured its warmth is food security notably in relation to wheat as seen across the world like with Egypt and given the Ukrainian and Russian “wheat granary of the world” and the rising wheat prices since the invasion. One drastic way to deal with both key strategic issues, and if willing to indulge in unacceptable dark humor in such a tragic time, would be to find a nuclear safe way to yet invade and temporarily occupy and “train” a gradually reforming Russia which would solve many problems in one go and this time perhaps bring a quicker democratic process to the land of the Czars.

The Russians now seem to support the war and Putin. Latest Russian polls from Levada, that can be questionable, have shown an increase in the approval ratings for the war and Putin and condemnations of the West. From 69% to 83% the Russian population “would seem” to back the Kremlin and its fights against the Nazis and the US biochemistry laboratories in Ukraine while showing anger at the West generally, something the sanctions should exacerbate when they are finally felt. The opponents to the war have either left or stay quiet at this stage (15,000 arrests were made) while the state propaganda machine reinforces the general population feelings in what is not a revolution but an involution or a devolution characterized by a political and economic return to a Soviet-like era. Sanctions may change these feelings or reinforce them but have not yet drastically have the expected impact on the Ruble or daily Russian life even if signs of a downturn are seen. There seems to be a comforting rallying around the flag in what may also be perceived as desperate times when patriotism of a nation under siege from the West, thus also justifying the preemptive war, is a natural and easier recourse. Such a development dampens the possible regime change that would help stop the current game, even if a coup would most likely be required so led at the top with the population, most likely in Russia, rallying around the flag again though this time behind the new regime.

A new world order may be redefined along a dual cold war. The Ukraine invasion – which was the first classical and unprovoked military aggression of a sovereign country in Europe since WW2 – will in the short-term, lead to a US-led West and EU facing Russia and its few allies like Belarus against a backdrop of many non-aligned and neutral nations that stayed aside for their own reasons. This cold war will be reminiscent of the 20th century version of such rivalry between the West and the Soviet Union and their allies, with the risk of military confrontation very likely. One of the show-stoppers of such a scenario will be linked to Putin’s longevity in the Kremlin and the likelihood of regime change. The other cold war, already in motion prior to Ukraine, will directly pit the US and China and be focused on world supremacy – while the latter will keep combining an autocratic but socially-accepted regime at home, and a thriving economy still dependent on an old but now fragile globalization. While the other cold war should not involve military means (short of a Taiwan invasion following an emboldening Ukraine scenario to be well delivered), the principle of globalization, combined by the impact of a new Iron Curtain with the more classical twin, would be endangered at the risk of being left behind, with countries looking first for autonomy at all levels. With such a novel cold war scenario II, globalization would then become more Western-centered and China-focused with two worlds oddly developing in parallel with little inter-action. The two cold wars, different in nature and their occasional tactical links, would be a US-EU West led contest between Russia and China respectively and their respective cold war partners. It would also embody the fight of democracy vs autocracy in the 21st century.

Having raised the seven reality checks, it is good to take a view on where the players are today and stress the obvious fact that nobody wants to recognize.

Where we are now. As the war in Ukraine has reached its sixth week, losers and winners can already be seen. From a victimized loser, Ukraine is emerging an unexpected winner as the odd champion of democracy and liberalism even with a patchy biography in these two fields. The war has cemented the likelihood of its EU membership which even Russia would likely have to accept. The biggest loser is gradually becoming Russia on military, diplomatic, economic and even more so existential terms. A now stronger Europe has naturally joined the winner’s camp by showing a unity of “views” while expectedly remaining cautious not to foster WW3, while Germany showed a new military self and Italy rose to the occasion in spite of trade links with Moscow. The US looks like the real winner, strengthening its role as the clear leader of the West and energy beneficiary of the European resupply lines game, while taking necessary risks with global peace with a needed hawkish stance to face Russia. China sits aside from the winner-loser camp in a quasi-parallel world through an “understood” neutrality driven by economic and social self-interest that is still marginally stronger than its desire to overtake the US through an ill-fated axis with a lost Russia under Putin.

The Siberian cat in the room (pun indeed). One development that neither the West or Russia want to recognize is that the US and to some extent the EU are de facto at war with Russia. WW3 in a different, subtler and yet less non-directly lethal mode has started between the West and Russia. The West is increasingly providing, even if too slowly, all the military equipment and assistance to a newly reborn Ukraine to face and defeat Russia so it can fight for its independence, democracy, liberalism, human dignity and indeed the West.

Warmest regards,

Serge

29-3-22

Dear Partners in Thought,

As the war in Ukraine goes into its second month, three key themes should be stressed for today and tomorrow.

While the West and the world should always keep hoping that Putin sees the light and stops the onslaught in Ukraine, there are realistically not many ways to deal with him given his clear dynamics and lack of rationality – whatever noble basis exists in his mind for the invasion. It is clear to all students of history and international affairs that there is only one way forward, however drastic.

The West should not hope for the best while unwittingly displaying weakness if it wants to stop what should no longer happen in Europe. Weakness resulting from not standing firm to a dictator from another age will only be useless and counter-productive in its objectives.

As and when the guns cease to be heard – and while it will take time to stop sanctions against Russia and restart normal relationships – it will be crucial for Europe to define what should be a new continent with the end of history as we knew it.

Regime change is indeed key: When President Biden finished his Warsaw address on March 26 stressing that Putin “cannot remain in power”, he went off script. He was quickly corrected by White House officials stressing that the US position was not regime change. Many Western leaders, like Emmanuel Macron, stressed the same, underlining that we should try finding a diplomatic way forward, and thus not corner the Russian leader. All these well-meant backtracking moves only showed indecision combined with weakness, and further emboldened rather than cornered a lost Russian leader. Whether he spoke off script, Joe Biden was right and said from the heart what every Western leader and most if not all their citizens thought. While we can still boldly hope for a rational diplomatic outcome to the crisis, regime change, given the Russian dynamics at play, is indeed the only way to not only stop the Ukrainian tragedy, but one day to resume normal relationships with a new Russia. Regime change is to happen with patriotic and farsighted Russians leading it for their own good and the future of Europe and the globalized world as we know it.

Weakness is to be avoided: History has shown, notably leading to what became WW2, that weakness or accommodations with warmonger dictators do not prevent wars or their escalations in the end. The West, through its strengthened if not reawakened key transatlantic alliance, should remember the lessons of history and avoid easy self-deceiving options to resolve the crisis. Wishful thinking will not save Ukraine, Europe and what we call globalization – which is another potential victim of Putin’s Ukrainian move. While sanctions are justified and may also hurt temporarily the West and global trade, they may not be enough. Nuclear weapons and their largest world arsenal are not reasons to let Putin’s Russia do what it wants and invade sovereign countries in the heart of Europe or anywhere. A lack of resolve in supporting Ukraine will only embolden a Russia that may go further in its delirious imperial re-building that would only result in more wars across Europe. Red lines should be stressed and this time enforced as the only way to stop the Kremlin nightmare.

A new Europe in the making: This war, when eventually over, should also gradually help redefine a new Europe where another Russia is not the adversary of the West but is an integral part of it. It should be a time when we change the dynamics that have been Europe’s since WW2, even if there had been a pseudo-transition since 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union. Like other great European powers of the past (Britain, France, Germany) Russia under a new leadership should once and for all espouse the democratic and liberal tenets that define what a peaceful Europe and the Western world are today. A more unified Europe, without an ever potentially-threatening Russia, would make for a more stable world in which productive and sensible globalization could be pursued with climate change being the common enemy, and actors like China and India being part of it – without the constant threats of a new Cold or Hot War involving perennial foes from another age. It would clearly be the best unwitting medium-term outcome arising from Putin’s follies.

Warmest regards,

Serge