The USA, Turkey and the Crisis of the Western System

The USA, Turkey and the Crisis of the Western System

USA :::: Tiberio Graziani :::: 6.2.2011 :::

The unipolar system, which seems to have been filed by history, has entered a deep crisis together with the U.S. – led Western system. The economic and financial collapse and the loss of a reliable partner in the “geopolitical building” such as Turkey determined the end of the U.S. expansion. The U.S. are now on the crest of a very important decision: shelving the project of the world supremacy, and therefore sharing the political and economic choices with other global actors, or instead, insisting on the hegemonic plan, risking their very survival as a nation. The choice will be dictated by the relations that will be established in the short to medium term, among the pressure groups that influence the U.S. foreign policy and the evolution of the multipolar system.

The Turkish crack.

The consolidation of the multipolar context and the continuous expansion of the economic and geopolitical spheres of influence of some Eurasian and South American countries require the current U.S. administration to make an important choice. This is happening because Washington does not seem to be able to manage either the financial and economic crisis that hit the western system, that is to say its geopolitical centre, or the relations with the major Eurasian countries, Russia, India and China, for instance. To this situation, one should also add the difficulties the Pentagon daily has to deal with, such as the coordination of the enormous and expensive military deployment fielded from the first Gulf War. The weakness of the U.S. is reflected, in particular, in the misguided attempt by Obama and Clinton to patch some critical situations, such as the Near and Middle East. The important Turkish partner, once representing the interests of the West and of Tel Aviv, has taken unorthodox positions with respect to the position of Washington in the area which used to be of a fundamental importance in the past for the expansionist strategy of the U.S. in the Eurasian mass. This fact introduced an element of destabilization within the architecture planned by the U.S..

The Turkish crack recalls U.S. strategists of another bitter blow, that is to say the facts that happened in the late ‘70s with the loss of Iran as a pawn in the “great game” that at the time their predecessors led against the Soviet Union. Nowadays, in this different global context characterized by the multipolarity, the Turkish crack could be disastrous for American – centralized system at least for 5 reasons. The first reason is related to its military presence in the West, also known as NATO. For how long will this structure, led by Rasmussen, tolerate the eccentricity of one of its members who is so clearly anti – Israel and therefore anti – America? Is NATO able to balance the Turkish expectations in playing an important regional role, without annoying Israel? These are only two of the main questions that a new and adequate reformulation of the aims of the weak transatlantic institution should answer to, beyond the “historic turning point” reached in the recent summit in Lisbon (November 2010).

The second question is connected to the relations between Ankara and Brussels. The new Turkey of Erdogan is ready to join the European Union, but Downing Street (the strategic partner of the U.S.) and France impede this unification process thanks to the insignificant pretext of human rights, the ideological arsenal developed by the American think tank, which the West took as its, especially by Sarkozy. If the unification is denied to Turkey, the country will strengthen its cooperation with other markets, such as Russia, Iran, China, therefore directly enhancing the economic and productive area of the Eurasian mass.

The third area, partly connected to the second one, concerns the Mediterranean. Turkey, which is considered as the forth European peninsula, seems to attract more and more the economic interests of the coastal States, and those of southern Europe as well as North Africa’s. The South Stream project devised by Moscow plays in favor of strengthening the economic agreements between Turkey and the Mediterranean countries.

The fourth area concerns the relations between Turkey and the Central Asian republics. Turkey is a transit route to Central Area, which represents the space Washington aspires to dominate after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. As long as Turkey was following carefully the direction of the U.S., Washington was pushing its pressure on the Central Asian republics (also known as the “Eurasian Balkans” , as defined by Brzezinski) in order to increase the endogenous tensions, mainly in the anti- Russia direction, but also in the anti- Eurasia one. Now that Ankara seems determined to increase its level of autonomy, the relations that it has with the central Asian republics are not well seen by Washington, although they are well balanced with those with Moscow. Hence, the recent demonization of Turkey made by the Western.

Finally, regarding the fifth question, it should be noticed that the positive relations that Ankara has with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and major South America countries herald a change in the geopolitical plans of Turkey. This change goes clearly in the direction of strengthening of the new multipolar scenario.

Once upon a time there was the West.

In the situation outlined above, the U.S. – led Western system is very likely to implode. Its expansion to the east is now under braking, considering the more and more leadership of Moscow on the international scene and the disastrous campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that the Pentagon and Washington cannot manage. In Africa, the competition with China is a crucial problem for the whole West. Since neither Washington nor Wall Street nor the Pentagon/NATO – despite the creation of the Africom – succeeded to provide an effective contrast to the Chinese growing power, it is reasonably predictable (and desirable for Europe as a whole) that some European countries, aware of their interests, will try to adapt to the change of the international scenario, enabling new relations with China and African countries, focusing on the bilateral cooperation.

In Japan, despite the failure of the Hatoyama government, which was pretty anti- the U.S., the critical reflection on the benefits that Tokyo would gain in the context of the U.S. – Japan relations established after 1945 continues to increase the distrust for Washington, undermining day after day the U.S. hegemony on the choices of Japan.

Indio Latin America is no longer a “hunting” and useful place for the U.S. incursions, as it used to be in the last century. Brasilia, Caracas, La Paz and in part, Buenos Aires, are increasing day by day their political autonomy. The agreements among these countries, together with those they begin to reach with Iran and Turkey are creating a new “anti – imperialist” cooperation, which is still under construction, and it could catalyze the anti – neoliberal instances in many countries around the globe. The attention the governments of Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires are paying to their welfare state and the renewed strategy of the Russian government are setting a limit to the globalization, in its geopolitical meaning, that is to say the expansion of the U.S. at its highest level. This is more difficult if one also thinks of the social policies Teheran and Ankara are carrying on, also in respect of the particular conception of the Islamic society and economic relations.

The European countries have lost the stability that had enabled them to grow economically, since they started suffering in recent years the dismantling of their welfare states, because of the choice made by the oligarchy connected to the American interests and to the rules of the IMF. The effects the loss of a specific role of importance in the global economy weakens the current economic situation and the western periphery of the system in favor of the centre, which is controlled by the U.S.. This explains the collapse of the U.S. geopolitical construction, built after 1945. In the near future, if there is not anything that keeps Europe united, some European countries could choose the multipolar system.

The time for decisions has come.

The thrust of the U.S. seems to be over. From the geopolitical view, Washington finds itself at a crossroad: to set aside, at least temporarily, the bicentennial project of a global domination, or to insist on it by adopting new standards and methodologies.

In the first case, the U.S. would be forced to review its military and social system, and what is more important, to negotiate its position in the world with the former and new players. However, the acceptance of the multipolar system would mean a crisis in the entire military – industrial complex that is the basis of the political and economic power in the U.S.A.. The direct consequence of an imbalance at the top of the establishment would be the breakup of the giant sphere of influence that the U.S. has acquired over the past 65 years. The downsizing of the U.S. would mean the beginning of a new cycle of geopolitical stability which will be based not only on the free market model, but also on the real needs of the poles of the geopolitical aggregation.

In the second option, if the U.S. opts for the pursuit of the world supremacy, it will be forced to support a massive economy of “permanent war”. Under the sentence of Edward N.Luttwack launched in 1999, during the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation: “Give war a Chance”, the U.S. will have to apply the logic of the constructive chaos of the neocons, with the risk of provoking geopolitical asymmetric reactions in Asia, Africa and Indio Latin America. Whatever solution is chosen, the relation between the “required nation” and the rest of the world will not be the same anymore.

Tiberio Graziani, Director of “Eurasia – magazine of geopolitical studies” and the series “Quaderni di Geopolitica (Edizioni all’insegna del Veltro, Parma), is the President of the ISAG (Institute of Advance Studies in Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences). He is the co-founder of the IEMASVO (Institute of Advanced Studies for the Near and Middle East) and vice President for the years 2007-2008. He is usually invited as a speaker in the international conference World Public Forum – Dialogue of Civilizations. He taught for years at the University of Perugia and L’Aquila. He has taught courses for the ICE (Institute for Foreign Trade) in many countries, such as Uzbekistan, China, India, Libya and Argentina.

“The situation in Egypt is very complicated and confused”

:::: IRNA :::: 4.2. 2011 :::

Interviewed by IRNA (Press Agency of Iran) on the recent events in Egypt, Tiberio Graziani, Director of “Eurasia. Italian Journal of Geopolitics” and president of IsAG – Institute of High Studies in Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences, stated the following:

“The situation in Egypt and the rest of North Africa is very complicated and confused, especially in Tunisia and Algeria.

From the geopolitical point of view, the current destabilization leads to two hypothetical and opposite perspectives.

One of them is the view carried by the mass media and Western analysts that see as possible a democratic solution in accordance with the dictates of the U.S. – based mentality of the West and therefore the evolution could be a laicist one, that is to say a non-Islamic people’s protest.

If this scenario were to come true, as of course Washington and Tel Aviv hope, the direct consequence would be a disastrous one for the entire Middle East, since there would be a militarization of the area in the interest of the U.S. (which is anchored on Camp Bondsteel, Africom, Centcom) until a further expansion of their “special regional partner”, Israel and a process of fragmentation of the region would start with the beginning of the partition of Sudan.

The economic, political and institutional weakening would oblige the successors of Mubarak to follow blindly the instruction from Washington, making therefore Egypt a vassal of the U.S.

The other option, which would be closer to the interests of the people and countries of the Near and Middle East, is the one that could be achieved if the emerging regional powers, Turkey of Erdoğan – Gül – Davutoğlu and the Islamic Republic of Iran, adopted an international role as reference to the ongoing protests. In this case, the influences that are external to the geopolitical unit, that is to say Mediterranean and the Middle East would be balanced and contained. ”

(Translated by Eleonora Ambrosi)

USA: Hegemony and Decline

USA :::: :::: 9.4. 2011

Issue 3/2010 of the review of Geopolitics “Eurasia”, entitled USA: HEGEMONY AND DECLINE, has been released. This 288-page volume contains 24 articles about the USA, a still-hegemonic power in decline, on the scene of the transition from unipolarism to the new multipolarist order. Here follows a list and a short synthesis of each article.

Tiberio Graziani, USA, Turkey and the crisis of the western system

After history put an end to the unipolar moment, the western system led by USA seems to have entered an irreversible crisis. The economic and financial downfall and the loss of a secure pillar of the western geopolitical scene like Turkey mark the end of the US driving force. The USA, today, have to take an epochal decision: either shelving the project of world supremacy, which means sharing decision-making regarding international politics and economics with other global actors, or insist on their supremacy plan and even risk their survival as nation. One or the other will be motivated by the relationships that will be built, on the middle and long term, between the lobbies which are conditioning American foreign policy and by the evolution of the multipolarist process.

T. Graziani is managing editor of “Eurasia”.

Fabio Falchi, The mirror of knowledge. Giorgio Colli and Eurasianism

This essay aims to show, also through a short exposition of Giorgio Colli’s theoretical philosophy, not only that he has the merit, thanks to his talent of “pondering philologist”, to have caught the deep relation between mysticism and logic in the “Greek knowledge”, but above all that the way he is interpreting the thought of the “pre-Socratic” – an interpretation characterized by several and meaningful references to the Indian philosophy – is extremely important for the Eurasianism, if it’s true that “Eurasia” is in the first place a “spiritual concept”. In this perspective, it’s not important that Colli cannot be defined an “Eurasiatist” or the fact that probably he himself had refused to define himself this way. What matters is the path pointed out by his philosophical speech, so that it’s possible to leave behind obsolete and “incapacitating” dichotomies.

F. Falchi is a contributor to “Eurasia”.

Phil Kelly, Geopolitics of the United States

The scope of this essay is to identify the different and typical elements of the traditional US geopolitics. In its path is reflected on the most relevant spatial characteristics in order to delineate the traditional aspects of North American geopolitics, rather than focusing on current international affairs; in spite of this, it comes to conclusion with some observations about the present American and global geopolitics.

P. Kelly is teaching at the University of Emporia (Texas, USA) and member of the Scientific Committee of “Eurasia”.

Daniele Scalea, How an “empire” has risen (and how it will crumble soon)

Today’s United States, in origin, were an united group of colonies of a small underdeveloped island; nevertheless, in a few centuries, they have become the first and the only world superpower. In this essay are retraced the geopolitical and strategic reasons that led to the rise of the original thirteen colonies, to their independence and expansion in North America; the rise of the USA and their informal empire are analyzed and how the passage from isolationism to hegemonism, that was not ineluctable, is leading them to lose it.

D. Scalea is editor of “Eurasia”.

F. William Engdahl, The USA’s geopolitical position today

At the end of the first decade of the 21th century it’s time to locate the United States in the political, economic and above all geopolitical world context. It’s clear to every impartial observer that the emerging giant, proclaimed in 1941 by Henry Luce, “the Time-Life” publisher, as the dawn of the “American Century”, is today, in 2010, a nation and a power whose foundations themselves crumble. In this short essay are analyzed the particular nature of this disintegration and its implications.

F.W. Engdahl is associate director of “Global Research” and member of the Scientific Committee of “Eurasia”.

Fabio Mini, Projects and debts

The Americans are no more able to recognize their deficiencies and vulnerabilities: they act as if they still controlled the entire world, when in reality they have lost great part of their autonomy relating to multinationals which control the economy and to national or transnational bodies they are indebted to. To the debt financing must be added the political debts, acquired to nations which are not secure thanks to the US politics of force: Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Somalia, Rwanda and even Europe. This essay explains how power is the destroying drug of the USA, and how the “New American Century” has come to an end before coming to life.

F. Mini is a retired Lieutenant General of the Italian Army, he led the KFOR and the NATO’s Command Allied Forces Southern Europe”.

Eleonora Peruccacci, The evolution of USA-Russia relationships after the downfall of the bipolar system

The idea – to which Keohane already drew attention – that power is now based on the influence of ideas, on using cleverly skills like persuasion and cooptation, on the ability to manipulate mass communication as well, rather than on the traditional attributes of military force and wealth, is useful for the analysis of this essay, in which it is tried to comprehend how, after the end of the bipolar system, the relationships between the two ex world superpowers, USA and Russia, developed and changed, going through the stages of 4 treaties on nuclear disarmament.

E. Peruccacci, MA in International Relations, contributes to “Eurasia”.

Spartaco Alfredo Puttini, China, the sea and the United States: the Sino-American naval antagonism

The development of a modern military fleet in the People’s Republic of China has given rise to serious concerns in Washington and adds an element of tension to their relations. On the horizon beckons the danger of a naval antagonism between the two giants that could represent one of the more serious and meaningful elements for the international order of the 21th century. In this essay is talked about the Chinese willingness to develop marine force, about the stages of the fleet modernization, about the importance that Sino-American naval antagonism can assume in the near future.

S.A. Puttini, MA in History.

Chiara Felli, A miracle for Obama’s “new beginning”

Israeli-American relations seem to be at a crossroads again: new negotiations in order to achieve the much desired peace in Near East hold the balance of power. In Washington, the atmosphere is tense, in contemplation of twelve months of negotiations the danger of a possible immediate bankruptcy outcome is reduced but concerns about the current state of the international comparison raise. Will the USA be finally able to play on their strong position as influential mediators? Does Israeli regional isolation risk worsening following the blind pursuit of nationalistic strategies? Are we really close to the “great compromise” and to the calm after a decade-long storm?

C. Felli, MA in International relations, contributes to “Eurasia”.

Francesco Brunello Zanitti, American Neoconservatism and Israeli Neo-revisionism: a comparison

The G.W Bush Jr. Presidency has been strongly influenced by a political movement, commonly known as Neoconservatism, which started at the beginning of the ‘60s and was already significant during the Ronald Reagan Presidency. The neoconservatives have inspired in particular the recent North American politics in the Near East. The last decade, concerning Israeli politics, has been characterized by the strengthening of the right-wing party, the Likud, which, since its origins, has been not prone to any form of compromise with the Arab world. This essay offers a comparison between American Neoconservatism and Israeli Neo-revisionism, identifying various similarities.

F.Brunello Zanitti, MA in History of society and contemporary culture.

Julien Mercille, The fight against drugs in Afghanistan: a critical interpretation

This article offers a critical interpretation of the “fight against drugs” waged by the United States in Afghanistan since 2001, in contrast to the conventional view proposed by some of the most representative authors. While the conventional interpretation takes for granted that the US are leading a fight in Afghanistan against drugs in order to reduce their consumption in the West and to weaken the Taliban, who are closely linked to narcotics traffic, in this article it’s argued that in fact there are few signs from Washington of a real and concrete struggle against drugs. The rhetoric of the fight against drugs is largely motivated by the need to justify military intervention in Afghanistan and the fight against insurgent groups opposing to American hegemony in the region, rather than by a genuine concern about drugs themselves.

J. Mercille is Professor at the National University of Ireland.

Matías Magnasco, Geopolitics of the United States in the Southern Cone

The South American region is nowadays a geostrategic scenario of great importance and will grow in importance in the future because of the race for raw materials (oil, gas and drinking-water) and the rise of Brazil as a regional and world power. South America must look with concern to US withdrawal from those difficult regions, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and from those where Russia and China have virtually overcome their influence, because this reopens the possibility of looking back at their “backyard” and their “mare nostrum” ( the Caribbean Sea).

M. Magnasco is Director of the Argentine Centre of International Studies.

Jean-Claude Paye, The euro crisis and the transatlantic market

The offensive against the euro, implemented by the financial markets during the months of April and May 2010, is not simply an episode in the economic war between the two continents. It is indeed the symptom of a geopolitical change. The American initiative aimed to weaken the EU was led with the participation of European institutions themselves, that sacrificed euro in order to recover the Greek debt. This convergence confirms the choice of both protagonists which was already made to integrate the EU into a great future transatlantic market.

J.-C. Paye is a sociologist and essayist.

Ivan Marino, “Nabucco” versus “South Stream”

The US-backed Nabucco pipeline is a choice which sprang from political and economic reasons, and, in substance, aims to avoid the Russian territory and consequently to contrast the interests of Moscow; but the choice of “Nabucco” may be dangerous for the same energy safety of European Union. Italy’s choice of supporting the “South Stream” has a strategic and objective value. The essay evaluates the strategic importance of this option on the long-term in the dialogue between EU and Russia.

I. Marino coordinates the Observatory on the Constitutional Political System of the Russian Federation.

Fabrizio Di Ernesto, US and NATO bases in Europe

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, Europe struggles to regain its political and military autonomy. This is mainly due to the forced occupation set on by USA through NATO, the military alliance started in 1949 and that with the passing of time has become the real armed wing of the Pentagon. During the years of the Cold War Washington justified this presence with the need of defending its interests against possible attacks of the Red Army and of the Warsaw Pact. Now that this pretext is becoming ever more anachronistic, the White House continues to support the need for this forced militarization hiding behind the scarecrow represented by Islamic terrorism. This presence also leads to various problems, summarized in this essay.

F. Di Ernesto is a journalist and essayist.

Stefano Vernole, The strange story of the “International Money Orders”

According to some sources, during the first months of 1992 the U.S. government developed a sophisticated financial-economics operation, using US taxpayers’ funds, for secret aims. The money, nominally allocated for a “humanitarian” operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, would have been mainly used to finance Bill Clinton’s election campaign and to pay debts acquired by the Saudi financier Adnan Kashoggi to the procurement office of the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army), but later it was put back in circulation to be used in the most various financial-economics operations.

S. Vernole is editor of “Eurasia”.

Tomislav Sunic, In Yaweh we trust: the “divine” US foreign policy

The North American aspiration to “guarantee the democracy in the world ” is above all originated by the biblical message. Whatever many European critics of US may say, US military interventions have never had as their sole purpose economic imperialism, rather the desire to spread the U.S. democracy all over the world. Anyone who dares to defy the US military, incurs the risk of being declared out of humankind, or at least of being branded as terrorist. Once someone is declared a terrorist or out of the human race, it’s possible to dispose of a person or of a nation at one’s pleasure. The ideological element in the history of US foreign policy is described in this essay, a revised version of a chapter, named after it, of the book Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age (2007).

T. Sunic was Croatian diplomat and University Professor in the USA.

Kees van der Pijl, Transatlantic ideology and neoliberal capitalism

In this essay we deal with three issues: the first concerns the origins of western ideology, an ideology marked by possessive individualism, free enterprise and intensive nature exploitation and that, with zeal of protestant missionary, claims universal validity for these principles. After that, we observe how neo-liberalism has emerged as the most radical western ideology and allowed capitalism to become a machine scam into which the world economy of the last thirty years has been drawn and that just now has suffered a setback. Finally, some lines of development are drawn, through which Ukraine, and perhaps Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and others, could break with the present strategy of slavish adaptation to the neoliberal economy, which has damaged them so much, and stop to absorb the western ideology so different from their traditions, to implement a common strategy that combines their unique experience with the form of a multinational State and with elements of planned economy, whose strengths and weaknesses they know better than anybody else.

K. van der Pijl is Professor at the University of Sussex.

Paolo Bargiacchi, Is international law really law? A critique to John Bolton’s negationism

In the US the (minority) idea that the international law does not exist and the (most common) one that customary international rules only bind States that accept them find a common root in the improper comparison between International context (and International law) and internal context (Internal law). This comparison, in turn, is direct consequence of the Austinian positivism, that, not catching the autonomy of the political and juridical international context compared to the domestic one, mistakenly uses logics, methodologies and categories of internal law to analyze the international law. An example of this modus procedendi comes from J. Bolton, who wonders if “Is There Really “Law” in International Affairs?” and concludes that “International law is not law”. In this essay a general-theoretical and empirical critique of his thesis is developed.

P. Bargiacchi is Professor at the University Kore of Enna.

Alessandro Lattanzio, US nuclear forces

U.S. strategic forces, that since 1990 are no longer the backbone of US Army, a role now appertaining to the force projection (aircraft carrier, airborne troops and marine divisions, tactical air force) have undergone a significant downsizing in quality and above all quantities. But this reduction has been sold successfully at the table of international negotiations about nuclear disarmament. With the recent ratification of the START II Treaty, US strategic forces are kept on 500 ICBMs single-warheads, 14 SSBNs each carrying 24 SLBMs, and finally 96 strategic bombers. The budget deficit, the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the priorities for other programs, including the so-called theatre ballistic missile (THAAD), and the US financial-economic crisis will probably stop the last modernization programs of the U.S. strategic arsenal.

A. Lattanzio is editor of “Eurasia”.

Claudio Mutti, Pietro Nenni against the Atlantic Pact

Interjecting into the parliamentary debate in accordance to the Italian democracy rules for enter the NATO, the secretary of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) pointed put how the inclusion of Italy among the countries bordering the Atlantic was a violation of the basic elements of geography and history. He also contested the political justifications of this accession: partnering with the American superpower, Italy, which “compared to the US is like San Marino compared to Europe”, instead of securing her independence would have further reduced her sovereignty, already harshly limited by the international treaties imposed by the winners of the Second World War.

C. Mutti is editor of “Eurasia”.

Erika Morucci, 1991-2003: rehearsal of a superpower

In the twenty years since the first Gulf War to the present, different administrations came one after the other at the White House, giving different directions to American foreign policy. Apart from that, these were crucial years of a new historical course, that after the Cold War has opened up a reality whose facets were hidden for a long time and was fed by the iron curtain that divided the world. For the US widened its perspectives: they behaved as if they knew they can reach for primacy, pushing it to the manic search for global power. The multipolarity on the international scene has strongly emerged with the presence of other actors, including Russian, Chinese, European, and so the perspective is now to defend their lead and not lead the world.

E. Morucci, MA in International Relations.

Antonio Grego, Interview with Robert Pelo

Roberto Pelo is the director of the Moscow office of Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) and coordinator of the ICE office-network in Russia, Armenia, Belarus and Turkmenistan.

Antonio Grego, Interview with Livio Filippo Colasanto

Livio Filippo Colasanto is the first Director-General of RusEnergosbyt-Enel.