Angel Jaramillo Torres*
The New Holy Alliance and the danger of a world conflagration
For some historians, the real First World War occurred in 1756-1763.[1] Its theaters were multiple. The war in the United States pitted France and Britain against each other for control of lands west of the Appalachians. However, there was also a conflict between Russia and Prussia and another between India and China. The 19th century—with its scientific achievements and social revolutions—was the heir to this war—until a Serb named Gavrilo Princip lit the fuse of the century of genocides.
Some historians think that there were not two world wars in the 20th century, but one great conflagration from 1914 to 1945, a sort of second Thirty Years’ War, with an armistice in the 1920s, which, in cultural terms, was one of the golden ages of world artistic creativity.[2]
This war did not end in 1945 in the East but continued after Germany and the Axis forces capitulated to the Allies in the West.[3] Understanding this is the key to understanding Ukraine’s dilemma today and why what is happening there has global resonances.
Depending on how the term is translated, Ukraine means Country or Border. Indeed, that country is a border of several civilizations, although today, it only separates Europe from Russia.
It is a war that seems to agree with Samuel P. Huntington, who predicted that future wars would be staged on the frontiers between civilizations in his book The Clash of Civilizations. 4] Conversely, it is a global conflagration, and no nation or community will be left unaffected.
Ukraine is a country with a complex history. But the bottom line is that it is a nation in itself. The Russian part of its history is only one among others. Ukraine is Ukraine because of its historical relations with Poland, the Habsburg family Empire, Lithuania, the Ottoman and Mongol Empires, and the Byzantine Empire.[5] Ukraine is Ukraine because of its historical relations with Poland, the Habsburg family Empire, Lithuania, the Ottoman and Mongol Empires, and the Byzantine Empire.[5
What is certain is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the incredible resistance of the Ukrainians makes one think that if Russia is defeated, Ukraine will have a European destiny.
In Gogol, Ukraine persists in being Russian, but in Joseph Conrad, it looks towards Europe. Paul Celan, another notable Ukrainian, visited Heidegger in his Todnauberg hut and saw in him the other side of the West: that of existentialism and National Socialism.[6]
Putin’s justification, or rather a pretext for invading Ukraine, is a stratagem that hardly deceives the good observer. According to him, it was the presence of NATO near the Russian border that led him, first in 2014 and then in 2022, to launch his military adventure. It is worth asking why Putin himself has done so if it had not been in Russia’s interest to be part of NATO. That is, to be part of Western civilization. After all, that was Catherine the Great’s dream and attempt. It was she who actually brought Russia and Ukraine closer, we would say, for the first time. Having conquered Cossack lands, Catherine christened the Ukrainian territory as New Russia. She changed the names of several cities – many inhabited by Khasan Tatars – to what she thought were Greek names. Her ostensible intention was to connect St. Petersburg with Western Greco-Roman antiquity. Hellenic dreams.[7]
Putin fears NATO less for reasons of “political realism” and more for the fact that, as David Gress has argued in his book From Plato to NATO, it represents the liberal values of Western civilization, which go back in eminent form to the description of Socrates’ life by Xenophon and Plato.[8] To see the most famous philosopher of the 5th century BC of Athens as the focal point of Western liberalism is not gratuitous. Friedrich Nietzsche – a non-liberal philosopher – called Socrates the breaking point and the vortex of world history.[9]
Contrasting visions: if Catherine the Great wanted to integrate Russia into the history of Western civilization, Vladimir Putin intends to forget that connection.
The paradox of the case is that Putin’s rise to power corresponds to the arrival of the Bolsheviks in 1917. Let us recall Lenin’s decision to move the capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It was a geopolitical decision to move Russia away from Europe. From the beginning, Marxism-Leninism had an Asian destiny: Marx striped with Mongolian. Compared to the Romanovs, the Bolsheviks were less Western. The curious thing about the case is that Putin was born in St. Petersburg.
At least since 2012, the former KGB spy, who today holds the reins of power, intended to return Russia to the nomadic prestige of the Golden Horde. Let us remember that the Mongol invasion and the Khan domination of Moscow prevented Russia from having the influence of the great humanistic waves of the West: the Renaissance and the Reformation. In contrast, Ukraine did receive that influence through its relations with the Habsburg family, in the city of Galicia, and its long connection with the Lithuanian-Polish Republic. That is why Ukraine is European.
One would think that Putin would turn his gaze to the East, which would mean a grand bargain with Beijing, as Aleksandr Dugin proposed.[10] That would have advised avoiding the Ukrainian adventure. The problem is one of security. As Peter Zeihan has identified, Russia needs to reach the Vistula and the Danube, in addition to the Dnieper in Ukraine, to feel secure since its territory, which has no natural barriers, has always been vulnerable to foreign incursions.[11]
The Security Conference in Munich this year was devoted, in large part, to illustrating the intimate need for European nations to stop practicing indifference to what is happening in Ukraine. Indeed, several representatives of the governments of the Baltic countries raised their voices to warn their wealthier colleagues in Europe of the enormity coming from the East.[12] Which brings us to the German case. Germany is a country that has forgotten that it wanted to conquer Ukraine. During the Cold War – though especially after the 1960s – German policy was to apologize for the Holocaust. The scenes of Willy Brandt kneeling in Auschwitz went around the world, and that concentration camp became the focus of the memory of Nazi barbarism. However, it is forgotten that most of the European Jews died in Ukraine.[13]
The “German forgetfulness” was ratified by the German premier, Gerhard Schröder, who decided to overlook the conversion of Putin’s government into a quasi-fascist tyranny and all that this meant for Ukraine.
Schröder’s betrayal took the form of a gas pipeline. As long as the gas reached Germany, future horrors in Ukraine could be swept under the rug. In excess of greed, Schröder accepted a management position in the Russian company he had negotiated from power with. This act would not have detracted from the banker in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education: a man so accustomed to corruption that he would have paid for the pleasure of self-selling out.[14] Although in a less vulgar manner, Angela Merkel continued Schröder’s policy, founded on the very understandable but short-sighted idea that European prosperity could turn its back on history and its delusions.[15] .
It was the idea that history was over and that, therefore, Europe would have before it a future without war, where the Welfare State, in conjunction with capitalism with a human face, would be the key to contentment.[16] But to paraphrase Gandhi, Europe would be a good idea if it could really get going.[17]
The march of Russian troops across the Ukrainian border is hardly making Europeans, and Germany in particular, know that there is no way around history.
They will now have to be like almost everyone else and raise their military spending as Russia lurks.[18] Germany will have to learn from the Baltic countries, which have never forgotten the risk Russia poses to their national security.
Putin’s foreign policy is based on establishing agreements with America’s enemies, rebuilding the former Soviet Union’s border with Europe, and minimizing NATO’s potential.[19] After the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government is building a Holy Alliance with Beijing and Tehran. However, we would be very cautious if we consider that everything will be solved by these alliances between states. True to his past as a spy, Putin knows the importance of political propaganda and has understood how to use it in social networks by hiring cybersecurity wizards.[20] From there, he influenced right-wing movements in Europe and the United States.
But now Putin is weaving an axis that can challenge the West.
Russia has had a relationship with Persian civilization since before the founding of Kievan Rus and Vladimir the Great’s adoption of the Byzantine-style Orthodox religion in 988. Men who came from the Iranian world joined with Slavs and other groups to form what was already a multicultural civilization in the Kievan Rus area.[21] Russia knows that an alliance with Iran would give it an outlet to the Indian Ocean. [22] However, the partnership with the core of the Shiite world is also strategic, as it symbolizes the rejection of European and American Atlanticism. 23] For the time being, Russia has acquired drones from Iran, Shaded 136, for use in Ukraine. 24] While the alliance with Tehran is significant, the essence of Moscow’s Eurasian policy is with Beijing.
After the sanctions on many Kremlin-linked potentates, Putin knew the turn to China would be necessary.[25] Historically, this alliance is not as natural as it might seem. The great Russian odyssey of the seventeenth century was to conquer the icy areas of the East that took the Russians to the Bering Strait and even to California.[26] It was an imperial move that occurred simultaneously with the Americans from the East Coast to the Pacific but in the opposite direction. This undoubtedly led Alexis de Tocqueville to prophesy that the twentieth century would belong to the United States and Russia.[27] So it was and thus it was for us. However, those steppe conquerors could not penetrate southward because the Chinese of the Ming and Qing dynasties stopped them. Since then, relations between China and Russia have been pendulum swings. Mao knew that his version of Marx would have to oppose that of the Bolsheviks. If the Chinese revolution brings to mind the Daoist rebellions – the yellow turbans – the Russian revolution brings to mind the Pugachovshina and the Decembrists.
The Russian-Chinese alliance has as one of its focuses the financial aspect. The goal is for the yuan to replace the dollar as the exchange currency. There are other plans involving greater cooperation in trade and infrastructure. What is certain is that China has deposited billions of dollars in Russian banks to counteract the sanctions imposed by the West.[28] The problem is that China faces serious economic, demographic, and political problems.[29] On the one hand, its economic dynamism has declined in recent years due, above all, to the effects of the pandemic, which has destabilized supply chains. In political terms, the arrival of Xi Jinping represented the capture of the bureaucracy of the Communist Party mandarins by an autocrat who concentrated power. This has had repercussions on the efficiency of China’s economic management, which does not promise a bright future in the years to come. But China’s biggest problem is demographics. An analysis of China’s demographic pyramid shows that in the next ten years, the young population will no longer be able to support the old population.
Despite this, Russia is betting on forming a Moscow-Tehran-Beijing axis that certainly represents a real threat to world security.[30]
In the history of populism, 1999 is an axial year. It was when Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela came to power. From Moscow, Putin mounted a successful campaign to propagate an authoritarian right-wing ideology. From Caracas, Hugo Chavez successfully spread an authoritarian leftist ideology. On the other hand, in the West, in the main centers of higher education – above all in the social sciences and humanities – liberal ideas were successfully attacked from different sides.[31] This resulted in weakening the philosophical foundations on which liberalism is based. At the political level, there has been an increase in the number of people supporting authoritarian positions worldwide.[32]
The propagandistic success of the 21st-century populist wave has been a major challenge to liberal persuasion across the globe and has constituted a veritable second Cold War.[33]
However, Putin’s actions in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 and, subsequently, the invasion of Ukrainian territory, manu militari, have replaced the cold war with a hot war.
In retrospect, it is unsurprising that the ideological battle has transformed into military combat. However, we would be wrong to think that the Putin government’s incursion into Ukraine is a local war. It is a global conflagration. It is crucial to connect the dots. In 2022, Russia acquired drones from Iran for use in Ukraine. While this happens, Beijing and Moscow are consolidating a currency market that can dispense with the dollar. Meanwhile, Putin recently called a meeting of friends of Hamas, and the North Korean regime is participating in Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.[34]
The three fronts of military tension existing today-Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the South China Sea-constitute the military and political version of this global war. On the one hand, there is the European front. This can be divided into four main sections. Firstly, the theater where the war conflict is staged, i.e., Ukraine. Secondly, Eastern Europe is comprised of the countries that were once signatories of the Warsaw Pact. These are the countries that would immediately be in danger of being assaulted by Moscow if Putin establishes his sovereignty over Ukraine. Third, there are the Baltic countries, which, although they were not under the orbit of the Warsaw Pact, are geopolitically vulnerable to a military incursion by Russia. Finally, there is Western Europe, which is at the mercy of a nuclear attack by Putin’s regime.[35]
It is not possible to separate the conflict in Ukraine from that in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The incursion of Hamas Islamic terrorists into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, has been described by several analysts as Israel’s 9/11. This assault must be viewed from three angles. First, from the perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, isolated from the regional context. This war dates back to at least 1948. Seen in this light, it is a question of the legitimacy claimed by both sides, and the Palestinian cause appears just without undermining the justness of the Israeli position. Secondly, the attacks must be placed in the broader context, where the determining factor is the radicalization that Islam has undergone in recent decades[37]. The main dates for this are April 1, 1979, the date of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and September 11, 2001, the date of the notorious terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Between these two dates, the world witnessed the consolidation of a new paradigm of government, in practice and in theory, which we could call modern Islamic theocracy. This project encompasses the two main Muslim denominations: Shiism and Sunnism. Modern Islamic theocracy seeks 1) to establish a political order dominated by a clerical hierarchy based on an authoritarian interpretation of the Koran. 2) to continue a holy war (Jihad) mainly against the infidel West, i.e., against Europe and the United States. 3) to eliminate the State of Israel from the Middle East.
For many reasons, the Persian Shiite version of Islam is prevailing as the most potent. The Iranian government has enormous influence today in Palestine, Yemen, and Lebanon. There is, therefore, an opportunity for an anti-Western alliance between the orthodox Russia of Putin’s tyrannical regime and the Shiite theocracy of Iran. But this Holy Alliance – never more aptly named – requires a third party in concord: China.
That is why the war in Ukraine has an Asian backdrop. It is clear that Xi Jinping’s increasingly autocratic regime is carefully watching what is happening in the Ukrainian theater. If it senses indecision in Western backing for Ukraine, it will be sorely tempted to invade Taiwan. The consolidation of Beijing’s power in the South China Sea is a sine qua non for the shoring up of the Moscow-Tehran-Beijing Holy Alliance.
For the time being, the world is arming itself. South Korea has become the ninth-largest arms-selling power. Australia has been spending money to build the largest shipbuilding industry in its history since World War II. Turkey is selling jets to the Persian Gulf and Asia. In Japan, the Komeito and the Liberal Democratic Party are seeking to introduce an exception to the limitations on defense equipment sales.[38]
The situation is reminiscent of the interwar world in the 20th century. The happy twenties were also the years of preparation for the global conflagration that led the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo alliance to attempt to establish an order which, if it had come to pass, would have been the negation of all the values that make civilized and peaceful life possible. This is none other than the dream – or shall we say the nightmare – that the new Holy Alliance is trying to impose on us. In the name of all that is worthwhile, it should be opposed.
Notes
[1] Matt Schuman & Karl Schweizer W., The Seven Years War: a Transatlantic History, (New York: Routledge, 2012).
Szabo, Franz A J. Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe: 1756-1763 (Modern Wars In Perspective), (New York: Routledge, 2013).
[2] Jeremy Black, The World at War 1914-1945, (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). Carls, Alice-Catherine Carls & Stephen D. Carls, Europe from War to War 1914-1945, (New York: Routledge, 2018).
[3] Tymothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
[4] Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
[5] Timothy Snyder, op. Cit.
[6] Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Marko Pavlyshyn, Marko, & Serhii Plokhy. (eds.),
Ukraine and Europe:
Cultural Encounters and Negotiations,
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).
[7] Kelly O’Neal, Claiming Crimea. A History of Catherine the Great, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
[8] David Gress, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and its Opponents, (New York: Free Press, 2004).
[9] Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragedie in Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe, (Giorgio Colli & Mazzino Montinari (eds.), 2012).
[10] Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening vs The Great Reset. (London: Arktos, 2021).
[11] Peter Zeihan, Disunited Nations: the scramble for power in an ungoverned world, “Russia’s Report Card”, (New York: Harpers Collins Publishers, 2020).
[12] Silvie Kauffmann, “Europe is at last adjusting to the reality in Ukraine,” Financial Times, March 7, 2024.
[13] Timothy Snyder, Ibid.
[14] Gustave Flaubert, L’Education Sentimentale, Oeuvres Complètes. (Delphi Classics, 2011).
[15] Philip Blockeet er al, Merkel: Die kritische Bilanz von 16 Jahren Kanzlerschaft, (Munich: FBV, 2021.
[16] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. (New York, Free Press, 2006). Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. (London, Bloomsbury, 2018).
[17] Arvind Sharma, Gandhi, A Spiritual Biography. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
[18] Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, (New York, Random House, 2004).
[19] Dmitry Shlapentokh, Ideological seduction and intellectuals in Putin’s Russia, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Douglas E. Shoen & Evan Roen Smith, Putin’s Master Plan: to destroy Europe, divide NATO, and restore Russian power and influence (New York: Encounter, 2016).
[20] Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News, (New York: Penguin, 2017). Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy. (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016).
[21] Maureen Perrie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 1: From Early Rus to 1689, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
[22] Alexander Dugin, Last War of the World Island: The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia, (London, Arktos, 2015).
[23] Ibid
[24] “Will Russian drone attacks change the war in Ukraine,” The Economist, October 19, 2022.
[25] “Russia’s Alliance on China will outlast Vladimir Putin, says Alexander Gabuev,” The Economist, March 18, 2023.
[26] Maureen Perrie (ed.), op. Cit.
[27] Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique. Alexis de Tocqueville, (Paris, Institute Coppet, 2012).
[28] “Chinese lenders extend billions of dollars to Russian banks after Western sanctions, Financial Times, September 3, 2023.
[29] Peter Zeihan, “China’s Report Card”, Op. Cit.
[30] “The Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Axis: A New Challenge for US Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, March 23, 2023.
[31] Daniel J Levitin, Weaponized Lies: how to think critically in the post-truth era, (New York: Random House, 2016).
[32] “Younger people more likely to doubt merit democracy” global poll”, The Guardian, September 11, 2023.
[33] Simon Dalby, Creating the Second World War, (London, Bloomsbury, 2016).
[34] “Iranian drones pose a fiendish military problem for Ukraine,” The Economist, October 19, 2022. “Kremlin invites top leaders of major Palestinian groups, including Hamas, to Moscow,” The Grand Continent, February 19, 2024.
[35] “Putin warns West of risk of nuclear war, says Moscow can strike Western targets”, Reuters, February 29, 2024.
[36] Gideon Rachman, “Israel and the lessons of 9/11,” Financial Times, October 23, 2023.
[37] Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism, (NewYork: W. W. Norton and Company, 2004).
[38] “How South Korea’s defense industry transforms itself into a global player,” Breaking Defense, November 6, 2023. Jake Dietsch, “Naval shipbuilding industry: Western Australia secure continuous industry creating new job opportunities”, The West Australian, November 23, 2023. “Turkey’s defense industry is on the rise”. Ali Bakir, The GCC is one of its top buyers”, Atlantic Council, August 4, 2023. “LDP and Komeito to resume talks on defense equipment export rules”, The Japan Times, October 15, 2023.
*Ángel Jaramillo Torres holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the New School for Social Research in New York. He is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI). Author of Leo Strauss on Nietzsche’s Thrasymachean-Dionysian Socrates: Philosophy, Politics, Science, and Religion in the Modern Age and co-editor (with Marc Benjamin Sable) of Trump and Political Philosophy. Leadership, Statesmanship, and Tyranny. He is a contributor to the American Affairs Journal, The National Interest, and Letras Libres.
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