Guerrilla History - Multipolarity w/ Ben Norton

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

In this incredibly fun episode, we talk with Ben Norton about multipolarity, from both theoretical and real-world analytical lenses.  Who better to discuss the topic of multipolarity with us than Mr. Multipolarista himself? The conversation itself was excellent, as is Ben's work more generally.  If you don't already check out Multipolarista's content regularly, this is your notice to do so!   Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker based in Nicaragua, and is the founder of https://multipolarista.com/.  You can also see his work on his personal website https://bennorton.com/ and on Twitter @BenjaminNorton.  Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a new (free!) newsletter you can sign up for!

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the

lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Hi, Henry. I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be with you. Absolutely. It's always nice to see you as well. And also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? Doing good. Very excited to be able to talk with Ben today. Absolutely. As you mentioned, we have an excellent guest. And today we have Ben Norton, who is, of course, the founder and I guess lead editor of Multipolarista. We wanted to have a

discussion and intelligence briefing about multipolarity. And we figured who better to bring on than Mr. Multipolarista himself. So we've done just that and brought Ben on. Hello, Ben. It's nice to have you on the show. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So as I mentioned, we were thinking about having a discussion and actually we've been planning it for quite some time now to talk about multipolarity. And we figured why not bring on you to talk about multipolarity? You focus on a lot of contemporary events and thinking of how this may fit into an upcoming multipolar world. So as we start, perhaps you would be able to lay out what is the concept of multipolarity for the listeners. That way we have at least a theoretical understanding of the

concept before we branch into how this fits into the world that we're living in right now. Yeah, well, it's pretty simple. I mean, the name pretty much explains itself. It's multiple poles of power. And we need to understand that really for much of human existence, the world was really a kind of multipolar world. But of course, we've seen different phases of that. And with the rise of European colonialism in the creation of capitalism, and of course, course, imperialism being the highest stage of capitalism, we saw a different kind of multipolarity. And it's true that, you know, you could say that technically the world before World War II was a multi-polar world of a different kind. I'll get to that in a second. It was a

kind of capitalist multipolarity. And then you, of course, after World War II, you have the first Cold War. I say first Cold War because we're in a second Cold War. And the U.S. is not only waging a Cold War now against Russia, but also against China. So during the first Cold War, you had a moment of bipolarity where the world was essentially divided between the socialist-led camp and the U.S. led capitalist camp. The socialist camp was led by the Soviet Union with, you know, other many important countries and movements playing an important role in that. And then, of course, the capitalist camp won that first Cold War through massive bloodshed, killing tens of millions of people in Vietnam and Korea. Korea and Indonesia and Congo and across the global south. And that brings us to the 1990s.

And it was a unipolar world in which there was one significant hegemonic power dominating the planet, the United States. And a point that I constantly stress is I think we need to understand that when we're talking about neoliberalism as a particular phase of capitalism, I think it's important to understand that neoliberalism is the phase of capitalism of U.S. unipolar hegemony. Neoliberalism does not just reinforce itself ideologically. We have to have a materialist understanding of neoliberalism, not just an idealist understanding. Neoliberalism is reinforced materially through financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, which are essentially

arms of U.S. power. It's reinforced through a financial system, the Bretton Wood system, created by the United States, with some modifications, you know, the U.S. took the dollar off of gold. Richard Nixon took the dollar off of gold. But the point is that Nealiener liberalism represents a particular phase of a geopolitical economy of U.S. unipolar hegemony. And now I would argue that we're going into a new kind of multipolarity. But this multilarity is different from the pre-World War I multi-polarity, which was a capitalist multilarity because there's a socialist pull. And just as the Soviet Union was trying to create a socialist multipolarity and was unable to, which led to the first Cold War, because the U.S.

refused to let the Soviet Union have normal diplomatic relations with other countries. It divided the world in two and forced the world to pick aside. Similarly, we now see attempts by China and also to an extent Russia, although Russia, of course, doesn't have a socialist government, but China does, Vietnam does, Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua. We see this attempt to create a new kind of socialist monse polarity. And of course, we see the U.S. Empire's response as in the first Cold War is to divide the world into and to recreate that bipolar order in order to destroy what it refers to as its near peer strategic competitors, specifically China and Russia, in order to reimpose unipolarity, U.S. hegemonic domination of the planet.

And of course, the reason the U.S. wants to do that is not simply because power for power's sake, But to reimpose neoliberalism across the world because neoliberalism, this kind of finance capitalism, is the phase of capitalism of U.S. Unipolar hegemony. And that's what the U.S. capitalist class benefits the most from, extracting the resources of Russia, basically turning Russia into a resource extraction hub, as John McCain called it, a gas station posing as a country. Obama made similar comments. And of course, they want to overthrow the Communist Party of China. and remove all state control of the Chinese economy, privatize the four largest banks in the world, which are all Chinese state-owned banks,

privatize China's land, which is all owned by the state. So, of course, when we're talking about multilarity, I think it's important to also do so in the context of capitalism because there are some bourgeois geopolitical analysts and bourgeois international relations scholars

who try to talk about the concept of unipolarity and multipolarity, but without a geopolitical economic understanding, removing economy from it and making it simply great power competition. But of course, anyone who has a Marxist understanding of politics and economy can understand that that's a very intellectually vacuous understanding of geopolitics. That's a really great survey of the differences between your kind of analysis of what that unipolar and neoliberal. era was. Like, I guess one question that I would have on this is, I think that's a really astute point about that, you know, neoliberalism was really U.S. empire, was sort of founded upon

U.S. empire. A lot of the theorists who have tried to suggest that it is, that globalization was something other than just U.S. extension, extension of U.S. power, would point to the way in which some of these corporations, you know, multinational corporations no longer had the kind of affiliations and loyalty to a nation and that this was to distinguish this era of globalization where it wasn't a nationally based kind of project. What would you say about that after looking at kind of recent decades since the 90s when it was supposedly the era of globalization, taken out of this kind of national imperialism of the U.S. kind of analysis. What would you say to people who think that these multinational corporations

represent something different and a stage of capitalism that is less tied to U.S. Empire or anybody's particular imperial interests? Yeah, well, I think what you're kind of essentially obliquely referencing is Empire, the famous book by Hart and Agri, right? This very, you could say, kind of post-Marxist notion that the nation state in this, you know, post-first Cold War era of capitalism was no longer one of the key agents of political and economic power, but rather that capital was international. I mean, maybe you could say that at the moment of peak U.S. hegemony, that that was to an extent

true, but that's only because the U.S. state was ultimately the supreme power above all. And the U.S. during the first Cold War took it upon itself to become the global protector of capitalism. And we really need to understand that, you know, there's a lot of discussion about why the U.S. has never had a European-style welfare state. And I think there are a lot of convincing reasons. I don't think there's one specific answer. Certainly one of the reasons is because of the legacy of white supremacy and cellular colonialism in the U.S., which wasn't exactly the same in Europe. But another significant factor is because the U.S. was the empire that was protecting capitalism. And there was essentially an agreement that was made in the Keynesian era in which capitalists agreed to provide some, you know, support social safety net and support to labor.

And, you know, especially in Europe and also Canada, providing, you know, health care, education, some kind of social. social safety net in order to stave off revolution because they knew that this is a time when, you know, in the 1960s, two thirds of the planet was living in a country that identified a socialist, that had a socialist-oriented government. Almost all of the national liberation struggles were led by socialist political movements, revolutionary socialist movements. So basically the agreement made between capital and labor to stave off revolution, what was Keynesianism will allow labor some room. for operation, but of course, you know, it's still going to be a managed capitalism in

which, you know, the bourgeoisie still runs society. And when when the threat of socialism was exterminated, was eliminated by the overthrow of the Soviet Union, and not only the Soviet Union, other countries in the socialist bloc and then counter-revolution in many countries in the global south as well. I mean, I'm a permanent resident of Nicaragua. It's not a coincidence that 1990 was the year of counter-revolution in Nicaragua one year before the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union. And it was a time of counter-revolution. It's not a coincidence that neoliberalism arises in the 1980s at the moment of crisis in the socialist bloc, the weakest moment of the socialist bloc and eventually the overthrow of the socialist bloc. So, I mean, you could say that in the

1990s and early 2000s, there was this kind of transnational capital. But that's only because it was a unipolar world dominated by the U.S. Empire. And that's what U.S. imperialism looked like was international capital, these multinational corporations, being able to go anywhere without limitations, without tariffs, without, you know, Keynesian policies, without economic protectionist policies. And then, of course, the U.S. going and destroying every single country that maintains some kind of socialistic policies, Yugoslavia, the last socialist country in Europe, destroying the economic nationalist model in Iraq. I'm not defending Saddam Hussein, but it is the fact that Iraq did have this economic protectionist model with significant

state control over the economy, health care and education, the oil industry owned by the state, that destroyed. And Libya destroyed. I mean, the only way that you could have this kind of heart and negri idea of capital not being based in one nation is by destroying all nation states that challenge capital, right? So, I mean, that's, that analysis is not necessarily wrong, but it's a very antiquated analysis because we're no longer in that era. And I should point out for people who are, you know, I'm not saying this, I'm not saying, addressing this to you. I think you clearly have a different analysis. But in the academy, Hardenegri, at least when I was in college, which was a decade ago, I mean, Hardenegri was much more, um, sexy and much more

often quoted. But I think, you know, a lot of that has, has clearly been proven to be false. especially with the rise of China and Russia, but also with the war on terror. I often point out that Empire, I mean, I read Empire when I was an undergrad, and that book was written in 2000. So I remember reading Empire and I was like, well, this was written before 9-11. Think about how much the world changed after 9-11, and then think about how much the world has changed in the past few years. I mean, I would say in terms of the phase of the U.S. national security state, we're even

beyond the war on terror. where we move well beyond the war on terror. The U.S. Defense Department in 2018 published its new national defense strategy saying its new top so-called national security threats and scare quotes were China and Russia, not non-state so-called terrorism. So, I mean, this isn't to say that there's still not like elements of extreme Islamophobia and targeting like, you know, these oppressed nationalities, especially Muslim and Arab communities in North America and Europe.

That's certainly part of the legacy of the whole. over of the war and terror, but it's all now the new, new cold war. So I just, I think that that analysis was simply analysis that only worked in this particular historical moment in the 1990s, and it was simply a reflection of this moment of U.S. unipolar hegemony, which is what the U.S. wants to bring the world back to, which is why it's so dedicated to destroying, they say it clearly, they want to overthrow the Chinese government, and they want to overthrow the Russian government. And I mean, I'd be curious, especially, you know, with one of your co-hosts here living in Russia, I'd be curious in hearing your analysis. But I think we can't separate a

materialist understanding of why the U.S. and NATO are so dedicated to overthrowing the Russian government. And it's not simply because of its independent foreign policy. It's because, you know, there's a lot of critiques of Putin, but Putin hasn't governed exactly the same as Boris Yeltsin. And if you look at a plurality of Russian GDP comes from a state-owned company, all of the major exports in Russia are from state-owned companies. The largest companies in Russia are state-owned gas prom. There are numerous state-owned banks, which are the largest banks in Russia. And, I mean, specifically, Europe clearly wants to get access to very cheap Russian energy,

which is what it relied out in the 1990s. In this neoliberal moment of the so-called end of history, a lot of that was not only built on super exploitation of labor in the global south, specifically in Asia and cheap consumer goods from Asia. So in the neoliberal countries in the West, they could make up for the fact that real wages have been declining since the 1970s by saying, well, yes, your wages have been declining, but consumer goods are much cheaper now because we have hyper exploitation of workers in China and Vietnam and Indonesia and India and Bangladesh. And that situation has changed now. we see a massive rise of living standards in in china and vietnam and to a lesser extent

Indonesia and India and so consumer goods are not as cheap as they were in the 1990s and early 2000s and then of course we now see in Europe that Russian energy is not nearly as not nearly as cheap as it was in like the peak of the Yeltsin years and now with their own sanctions they've made it they made sure that it's never going to be cheap again yeah absolutely very insightful now you were saying something earlier about um You know, the emergence of the neoliberal era, you know, paralleling the emergence of unipolarity, U.S. hegemony after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And I think that's on point. And I think it's really interesting.

And when we think about the possible emergence of multipolarity, people often think, you know, on the geopolitical level, on the level of conflict, great powers, as you were talking earlier. But another implication wrapped up in this is the economic implications of the emergence of multipalarity. If unipolarity and neoliberalism arose together, we're entering the end of unipolarity. And I think it's also safe to say that we're entering the end, I think, of the neoliberal error. I don't know what comes next. Maybe not center, but right and left overall neoliberalism is really running out of steam. And the entire approach that neoliberalism entails is being confronted on all sides. So with all of that in mind, what are the economic implications of multipolarity?

Well, very substantial. Now, for critics of multipolarity, because there are also Marxists. critics in multipolarity, and I think they have an element of accuracy in their criticism when they say that, you know, like I said at the beginning of this analysis, that the world before World War I was a multipolar world. That's true. But I think, again, we have to understand now there's a socialist poll. And during the first Cold War, which wasn't a multipolar world, it was more of a bipolar world, but there was an attempt to create a multipolar world. We call it the non-aligned movement, right? That was an attempt essentially to create a multipolar world saying

we refuse to align with one of the two poles in the bipolar world. And if you look at the national liberation struggles that happened at that peak in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which also is the time of the lowest point of the weakness of the U.S. Empire in the past 100 years, we see that those national liberation struggles were made possible by at least a bipolar, if not a multipolar world. Because what people came to realize in the 1990s and early 2000s is you can't, it developed socialism, especially in a country in the global south that's under siege at this moment of unipolarity, the U.S. will impose a blockade on you. I mean, of course, Cuba is the very

honorable exception to this, but as someone who knows of Cuba very well and I've lived in Latin America for a while, I mean, and I will go to my deathbed, always defending Cuba and the Cuban revolution. The 1990s in Cuba were extremely difficult. It's known as the special period. No one in Cuba wants to go back to the 1990s. Cuba survived the unipolar moment, but it certainly did not thrive. And, you know, as China and Vietnam have come to the realization, like, it's one thing for socialism to survive, but you also want to genuinely raise the living standards of the working class and make life easier for people and more comfortable for people. So surviving is one thing. The DPRK has survived under siege-like conditions, but that's certainly not, you know, necessarily a model that a lot

of people around the world wants to follow, they want to follow an economic model that is not simply based on survival, but based on thriving and raising the living standards of everyone in their country. So in the unipolar moment, that was impossible. Any country that had some kind of state-oriented economic model, not even just socialist, I was talking about economic nationalism, countries that say that we want our natural resources to be owned by the state, we'll still have a capitalist model. We'll still have like a market-based capitalist model, but we'll have some state control over elements of, you know, our natural resources and uses economic nationalist model to fund programs. And, you know, that model was made impossible because the

U.S. Empire would go and destroy any country that had that economic model. Now, in the first Cold War, a country that had a revolution against colonialism could play the different polls against each other. Now, in the first Cold War, that was obviously much more difficult because you had to basically pick the side of the U.S.-led capitalist world system or the Soviet-led socialist system. And a lot of countries did choose socialism. They lean toward the Soviet system. The non-aligned movement is actually an interesting example of an attempt at multipolarity. And we see, for instance, India, which the national liberation struggle was led by a mix of, you know, like patriotic bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie, but also socialist elements. You know, the Congress party had some kind of

fidelity a little bit to socialism. Nehru kind of identified a bit with socialism, but the left wing of Congress was also repressed. Congress also repressed the first ever democratically elected communist, who was chief of Kerala in India. So it's a complicated history, but India also was a main ally of the Soviet Union. So we're coming back to, I think, a similar political moment now where if you're a leader of a country in the global south, and especially if you're the leader of a socialist country, you now are able to have other economic possibilities that weren't possible in the 1990s. If you need to have a loan to develop infrastructure, to invest in something, your only option in the 1990s was the World Bank. And if you have a problem with balance of

payments, it was the IMF. And there are political conditionalities. You have to impose neoliberal structural adjustment. You have to cut, you have to privatize all your state assets. You have to cut the minimum wage, all this, that's no longer the situation. And a lot of countries, especially in Africa, are looking to China and the Belt and Road Initiative, right? There's criticisms of that. It's not, I mean, although a lot of the criticisms are also just in bad faith, like the idea that like it's a debt-trap diplomacy, which is ridiculous, it's ridiculous, you know, projection of exactly what the U.S. model was for IMF and the World Bank of trapping countries in debt. I mean, Argentina has been trapped in debt so many times. It still is right now.

So, but the point is that now, if you're a country that simply wants to pursue an independent path of national development, even if it's not a socialist path, you have other options. And I think actually Pakistan's an interesting example of this. This isn't to say that, you know, Imran Khan is like some great socialist hero. You know, he had a bourgeois economic model, but it was based on this idea of the Islamic welfare state. It was based on an idea of helping the poor and very, you know, difficult conditions for working people. And, you know, He tried to pursue another economic model working with China, China and Pakistan are close allies, and also went to Russia. And it's not a coincidence, I think, that he went and took this historic trip to Russia the day that Russia initiated special military operation in Ukraine, and then he was overthrown in a coup a few months later. So this multipolarity is still being borne out. But the point is that if you're a country in the global south, and especially if you're

a country in the global south with a socialist government, you want multilipolarity. And that's one of the reasons that I've become interested in this concept and done so much reporting on it is because me personally, being involved in the Latin American left, in the past few years, I've seen a lot of the Latin American left talk more and more and more about this concept of multipolarity. I first saw it talked a lot about by Lula de Silva in Brazil, who's one of the founders of the BRIC system, Brazil, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And then I also saw it more and more Cuba, Fidel, before he died, gave speech just talking about multipolarity. He said China offers the most hope for us. And then I also saw that I went back and did research. And Hugo Chavez, in 1998, when he was running for president before he became a 1999 president

through Democratic elections, he gave this famous speech. And Chavez said, the world was bipolar in the Cold War. it was unipolar, and by God, it's going to be multipolar. So a lot of the Latin American left, these revolutionary figures, they could have, they could see this coming as far back as the late 1990s in early 2000s. And I think Hugo Chavez, more than anyone, probably deserves the most credit for helping to give birth to this multipolar world, going to great lengths to increase Venezuela's diplomatic relations, not only with Russian China, but with Iran, with Syria, with,

with Zimbabwe, with South Africa. Like the Latin American Revolutionary Left, I think, has been a key part of this attempt to build a multipolar world. I'm going to hop in here with a follow-up question. I know that you want to talk about Latin American. I'm sure that you also want to talk about Pakistan as well, which was brought up.

But since those are more regional specific and a little bit more current event related, I'm going to push them back a little bit because I have one more conceptual question before we can get into these current events, which is, Ben, you brought up Iraq and their economic nationalism that had been taking place since the 1950s, and I highly recommend listeners to go back and listen to our episode that we did

with Professor Brandon Wolf Honeycutt on about his book, The Paranoid Style and American Diplomacy. Yeah, fantastic. And the episode that we did is about three hours long. So I highly recommend that the listeners go and listen to that. The episode is titled something along the lines of, coos, the CIA oil and Arab nationalism in Iraq. And then we also had another follow-up episode where we had Brandon and Professor Alexander Avina come together. So that was another

hour and a half or so on a similar topic. So listeners, go back and listen to that. But Ben, you also mentioned Cuba and the sanctions regime that has been put on them. Listeners, you should also be looking for around the same time that this episode comes out actually. We'll have an episode entirely devoted to the sanctions on Cuba with Helen Yaffe. It's part of a series that we just launched today as of the time of recording on sanctions as war. So by the time you hear this, go back and you can find that series, which just dropped. The reason that I'm doing this preamble is that sanctions are a very important thing in modern geopolitics and have been since 1960, really. And in a multipolar world, the role of sanctions is, in theory, very different.

Up until really now, sanctions have been a tool that really the only the United States has been able to wield and they've been able to pressure all of their allies to go along with their U.S. sanctions and essentially either bend other countries to their will under the threat of sanctions or choke countries out and cause the people in those countries to suffer under the sanctions. So, you know, Cuba has been facing this since 1960. And you mentioned the special period. You know, this is when the sanctions were particularly severe and there was no Soviet Union anymore to assist them. But we have many other examples. You mentioned the DPRK. This is another country that has been sanctioned for decades. You mentioned Yugoslavia, another country that has

been sanctioned for decades. And we will have case studies on each of these countries in this upcoming series. Now, in the era of multipolarity, there is alternatives. This is something that we're even seeing with the current operation taking place between Russia and Ukraine. The United States and its Western allies have been putting unprecedented sanctions. I shouldn't say unprecedented because we do have other heavily, heavily sanctioned countries in the world. But a huge number of sanctions on Russia, which typically, you know, in the unipolar world would have been absolutely suffocating. But what have we seen as a result of these sanctions now that we're getting into a slightly more multipolar world, but, you know, China, Russia has some more allies

in the global south, particularly. These sanctions are hurting a lot of Western countries as well. And Russia is actually, you know, it's not doing well. And I can tell you firsthand from here that it's not doing well under these sanctions, but it's not the cataclysmic event that we would have expected had this not been more of a multipolar era than we had previously, you know, the dynamics between Russia and China and the fact that they've been trying to sanction proof themselves, Russia, since 2015, it's really something to think about in terms of how multipolarity will affect the impact of sanctions on countries and how prominent of a role these will play going forward. Because with these alternatives,

in the geopolitical scheme of the world system, you know, maybe the role of sanctions is going to fall by the wayside. Maybe it's not going to be as crippling as it would have been in the past. I don't know if you have anything that you want to add on that, Ben. No, I agree. It's absolutely right. You know, I'll just say here that Condoleezza Rice, back when she was Secretary of State in the Bush administration, in 2006, when Israel began waging war on Lebanon again,

brutal war, she referred to it as the birth pangs of a new Middle East. And I think what we're seeing now is the birth pangs of the new multipolar world. I mean, it's been coming for a few years, but now we're seeing it accelerating. Not only with this war in Ukraine, which is a proxy war. It's a NATO proxy war against Russia. Many U.S. government officials have said that, including, you know, former Raytheon lobbyist and current defense secretary Lloyd Austin. He said the U.S. goals to weaken Russia. And we saw Elliot Cohen, a former state department official. He wrote an article in the Atlantic magazine saying very clearly this is a proxy war. So they're saying it themselves, the ruling class. But also now with Taiwan, the U.S. blatant attempt to encourage

secessionist forces in Taiwan while also encouraging secessionists in Hong Kong. I mean, that attempt failed. But in Xinjiang and Tibet, I mean, this. move toward multipolarity is accelerating. And with the sanctions, it's creating a new international financial architecture. And before this kind of unipolar era in the first Cold War, there were multiple financial systems, like the socialist bloc had its own financial system, right, to do trade. The reason we talk about the global financial system and the concept of globalization is actually simply a reflection of the unipolar era, globalization has always existed for as long as humans have existed, right? This is like when the European colonialists

said they discovered the so-called new world. Well, there were already people living there. They clearly didn't discover where people were already living, right? So even the idea of globalization, I don't even like the term globalization. We can say neoliberal globalization, but the world has always been globalized to various extents. Now, with technology, obviously, it's a level of globalization that hadn't been achieved before. But, I mean, if you go back to the 18th century, South Asia and China were responsible for over half of global GDP. If you go back even further, you go back to the Silk Road. The Silk Road was globalization. I mean, what are we supposed to call that? It was globalization. It wasn't neoliberal globalization like now.

It wasn't the same level of globalization that we see, but it was still a globalization. I mean, what I think in many ways we're seeing is a revert back to the world is reverting back to what it was before European colonization. I think that's one of the most important world historic shifts we're seeing, is that since the rise of European colonization, even Jeffrey Sachs recently gave a presentation about this. I forgot what it was. It was at a university.

You know, this bourgeois scholar who was actually ironically involved in the imposition of neoliberal shock therapy on the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. And the people in Russia remember that, by the way. Yeah. But he's become one of these few bourgeois scholars who's actually kind of seen the light. And he's really feels ashamed about that. And he's also spent a lot of time in China. And I think that's influenced his thinking.

But he actually gave an interesting presentation at this university recently where he acknowledged. She showed this graph of global GDP. And you can see that before European colonization, the global center of the economy was in Asia. And that's what we're seeing now is moving the global center of the economy back to Asia. And, you know, there's a lot of people when we talk about multi-polarity, we talk about the idea of Eurasian integration, which is a huge part of this, of course, the creation of the Shanghai cooperation organization, the BRIC system. Also, you know, Russia has its own security group, which we saw this CTSO, which was, you know, during the coup attempt in Kazakhstan, they were deployed. So you see these Eurasian institutions. But actually, in many ways, although I talk a lot about Eurasia and like on my website, I have a section on Eurasia, the more I think about it actually, I'm kind of preferring just talking about Asian integration because what we're really seeing is that Europe has been kicked out of, sorry, Russia has been kicked out of Europe. That's what we're seeing now is that Europe is part of this transatlantic imperialist access

led by the United States, which is the leader of the capitalist world system. And they're basically removing, ejecting, evicting Russia from that financial system and forcing Russia to integrate with Asia. It's not really Eurasia. I guess if you include the European side of Russia, it's Eurasian integration, but it's more just Asian integration. And that's what we're seeing the world go back to. And China, but also South Asia and Southeast Asia is a huge part of this. Indonesia gets discussed very little. I mean, Indonesia is one of the largest economies in the world. It has one of the largest populations in the world. If you take China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. I mean, we're talking about nearly half of the little population. And now we see

a further deep integration of the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian economies with all of these sanctions. So, I mean, getting back to your original question, sanctions in the unipolar era were a death now. I mean, if someone were to impose sanctions on you, we saw what happened in Iraq. It led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. We saw Madeline Albright, you know, there's been discussions about whether or not 500,000 Iraqi children die. That number might have been a little inflated. But regardless, we saw that the U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Aubright was willing to defend that number, willing to defend half a million Iraqi children dying from these sanctions. But the situation is very different now. Sanctions can do a lot of damage, yes, but we're seeing the creation of a new

international financial system. Apparently, Xi Jinping is going to take a trip to Saudi Arabia, which I did not expect, but Saudi Arabia is going to start potentially selling its oil in the Chinese yuan. Venezuela has already been selling its oil in the Chinese yuan. We see that the U.S. has been pressuring all these countries in the global south to cut off their trade with Russia, but even India, which has a far right, you know, BJP government, which ironically was in the past few years trying to become much more pro-Western and ally with the West. But now because of this new Cold War, India has been forced into this precarious situation where they rely very heavily economically on Russia for fertilizer and cheap energy. So even India, which had been taking this much

more pro-Western approach and is part of the Quad, this anti-China military alliance, even India is pursuing much more close economic relations with Russia. India has created this new system of doing trade with using the Indian rupee and the Russian ruble. So even I saw that there were reports than in Bangladesh, we saw that, which traditionally had been much closer to the Soviet Union and later to Russia and relies a lot on Russian wheat and Russian fertilizer and Russian energy, we see that there are companies in Bangladesh talking about doing trade using the Chinese one in order to do trade with Russia. So this opens a lot of economic opportunities. And obviously, it opens economic opportunities for capitalists in these countries. But

If you are a socialist and you take power, it actually offers a lot of possibilities for a socialist as well, because under unipolarity, as we were talking about, there were no economic opportunities. You had the IMF in the World Bank and neoliberal structural adjustment. Now you have other different possibilities that make it possible for a country to build socialism where it wasn't possible in the 1990s in early 2000s. One quick statistic before I let you hop in, Adnan. So you mentioned this integration between Russia and Asia. I had just seen the statistic today when I was going through some economic figures. In 2015, so the year after the situation in Crimea, in 2015, 90% of the bilateral trade that was done between Russia and China was conducted in U.S. dollars, 90%. Five years later, quarter one of 2020. So this is still a full year before the current operation kicked off. Sorry, two years before the operation kicked off.

That number had dropped to 46%. So they had cut the amount of bilateral trade between Russia and China that was conducted in U.S. dollars by half in a five-year period of time just since the event in Crimea. I have to choose my words very carefully. My wife is from Crimea. So anyway, that's neither here nor there. Adnan, feel free to hop, and I just wanted to throw that statistic. out there. Well, and that number is going to be zero pretty soon. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

if we look at the number since the operation has been going, they're pretty much dealing only in local currency within bilateral trade. But it was just really interesting to me that even before the operation, they had already been transitioning away from using the U.S. dollar and bilateral trade between themselves and China. Well, and I'm sorry to cut you off, but one other quick note. I did an article recently about how in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Iran was just accepted as a full member last year. And it's going through a bureaucratic process, but is essentially a new member and is going to officially be a new member in very soon. And Iran has already talked about creating a new currency for trade among the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes over 40% of global population and over one third of global GDP.

We're talking about China and India, the two biggest, two most populous countries, along with Pakistan and Russia. and the Central Asian republics and Iran. I mean, that's a huge landmass. And they're talking about creating a currency to do trade among each other, along with Latin America, by the way, Lula da Silva has proposed a currency for trade in Latin America. So all these things that were these developments we're talking about, I think they're going to accelerate in the decades to come.

That's so fascinating. So many interesting threads to pick up on here. Maybe eventually we'll come back to Latin America, but I really have to pick up on this idea of Asianism as the center of the world economy. And listeners, it should remind you, perhaps, of our discussion with Dr. Ariel Salzman about world systems and the history of capitalism and about the work of André Gunder Frank, whose book Reorient suggested that this period of European colonialism and imperialism, the so-called European takeoff, which was

forged in, you know, blood and conquest, basically, to develop capitalization. as a global system, really was just a brief period out of the main run of history, which for thousands of years had China and Asia at the center of the global economy. And I'm glad that you pointed out that globalization has always existed. There's just in different phases and different forms of it. As a medieval historian, you know, I'm always prepared to say that things that we think are new have maybe a longer, you know, history while appreciating differences and changes. But so I I think that's very, you know, important, you know, recognition. And I guess one of the interesting things about this Ukraine, Russia kind of war and this conflict is that in some ways, it seems to be forcing Europe out a possible Eurasian system in some ways.

It seems that before, you know, before this happened, there were a lot of discussions taking place about Europe maybe, you know, developing an independent economic relationship with China and not being so concerned about U.S. kind of tariffs and, you know, anti-China policies that they wanted to have their own independent business and economic relationships. And in some ways, this, you know, the U.S. has fomented the conditions for trying to discipline Europe. out of possibly going in this sort of direction. So I'm wondering if you think that that is the case or one of the consequences of it. But I guess the larger question that I would have, you yourself reference that there are some Marxists who don't really adhere to this idea of an emerging multipolar sort of world. And I'm thinking even of somebody like Vijay Prashad, who we just recently had a conversation with that will come out toward the end of this month about his.

and Chomsky's collaboration for this book, Withdrawal, is I saw him on Rania Khalik's dispatches and a couple of other places where he has suggested being a little cautious about thinking that, you know, we're entering into a multipolar world. And I think his caution really rests, seems to rest on U.S. military hegemony still existing to discipline, you know, kind of the world where it can. And so I'm wondering what you think about, you know, about the tensions. You know, what are these, you know, are we in the birth pangs? What are the consequences of these birth pangs? I mean, sometimes they're not what we think. I mean, when Condoleezza Rice said, as the birth pangs of a new Middle East, she thought it's going to lead to kind of U.S.

empire and hegemony and the neoliberal order in the Middle East. And that really has not worked out to be, you know, perhaps what was promised or what she imagined. So I'm just wondering what you think about that kind of cautionary note. What is your sense of of it? Yeah, two great questions. I'll start with the second one. I love you, Jay. He's been a big influence on me. I almost always agree with him. And I think he's right. I think we do have to be a little cautious. Maybe I sometimes can get carried away by my optimism in this, in the sense, you know, revolutionary optimism. But yeah, I mean, the U.S. Empire is still very powerful. The U.S. economy is still very powerful. But, you know, the Chinese economy is larger than the U.S. economy, and it has been for several years according to purchasing power parity, which is a much better measurement of the size of an economy. And it's continuing to grow at a faster rate than the U.S. economy. But if you look at it per capita, the Chinese economy is still significantly smaller than the U.S. economy. The average Chinese person, because the population in China is four times larger than the U.S. population, has much less economic power than the average person in the U.S. So there's a big

There's also the military element. And yeah, the U.S. is still by far the main military hegemonic force. And we see this conflict in this war in Ukraine going on this proxy war. And the U.S. military is not directly involved. Now, it's involved in every single way it could be without having boots officially on the ground. It does have CIA officers involved on the front lines. It does have special operations forces. it's sending tens of billions of dollars of weapons. It's overseeing Ukrainian intelligence. So in every single way except boots on the ground, the U.S. military is overseeing this war. But it's not the power of the U.S. military machine. It would be very different if it were. So, yeah, I think maybe we shouldn't be a little too optimistic about this decline. I'm certainly not one of the people who says that, like, you know, the U.S. Empire is going to collapse tomorrow.

I always try to temper my analysis by saying that we're talking about a decline of decades. And actually, I just said a few minutes ago, I did say in the decades to come. So I don't think we're talking about these massive shifts in just a few years. I think it's going to take a little more time. But, you know, if they are the birth pangs, I think, you know, this is a birth that's happening and it's going to continue to grow in the decades to come. And right now we're seeing that emerge. Now, as for your other question, I mean, I agree 100% with that analysis of the proxy war in Ukraine.

I think that this is all about Europe. This is exactly what it's about. It's about Russia, but it's about Europe more than Russia. And Russia has been kicked out of Europe. And I have to say that, like a lot of people, I was very skeptical at first of the claims that the U.S. and other Western governments were making about the Russian military operation. And I said, I'm on record in an interview saying that it's not going to happen. Russia's not going to send his troops and all of that. I was wrong about that.

I mean, in my defense, even Zelensky repeatedly went out and said, no, we have intelligence. Russia is not planning on anything. Russia is not planning a military operation. So when Zelensky was saying it, I was like, well, obviously this is. But the point I was saying in my analysis before, and I think this analysis has been borne out, is what I was saying is that it's very clear what the U.S. is trying to do. The U.S. is trying to provoke Russia as much as it can, right on Russia's borders, insisting that Ukraine's going to join NATO, ignoring Russia's demand for written security guarantees, which it demanded in November and December of 2021, doing everything it can to provoke Russia in order to kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That's what I thought it was about. And then you saw Victoria Newland, who's the third in command of the U.S. State Department, who was the main architect of the coup in Ukraine in 2014. She went out and gave a speech and she said that our goal,

we want the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to not be certified. We want to kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. For people who don't know who are listening, this is a massive pipeline that would have brought cheap Russian gas to Germany. And it would have been, I mean, this is a project that Germany actually wanted. It was Angela Merkel who met with Putin and called for creating Nord Stream 2. It was not something that Russia had initially advocated for. it was the specifically even further it was the german industrialists it was the german national bourgeoisie

which have different economic interests compared to the u.s financialized bourgeoisie they wanted this cheap source of russian energy and the u.s killed that with this war in ukraine norrstream too maybe there's going to be a change in germany i honestly don't think so i think even if you look at the imperialist world system and you look at europe's role europe is a junior partner to to the U.S. And we say this very clearly. We also saw this when the U.S. withdrew unilaterally from the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which we call the Iran nuclear deal, but it's actually a global deal, which included the five permanent members of the Security Council, which includes China, Russia, the U.S., Britain, and France. It's P5 plus one, along with Germany and the European

Union. They were all signatories to the JCPOA. So the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA. But all of the other countries that were signatories stayed in compliance. And there was discussion in Europe of creating an alternative to the swift, uh, a U.S. dominated payment system in order to do trade with Iran. And of course, nothing came out of that. France, you know, Macron who fancies himself like this independent Europeanist, he said that, you know, we're going to do trade with Iran. It didn't happen. And now Nord Stream 2 is dead. We see Europe talking.

talking about remilitarizing. We see European countries saying they're going to double their military budgets in order to be part of the NATO demand for 2% of GDP being spent in military spending. And now we see that Europe is firmly in the U.S. camp. So I think in many ways that the U.S. wanted this war in Ukraine. I mean, the U.S. started the war in Ukraine in 2014 with the coup that the U.S. orchestrated. And that war, there was a war going on. before the Russian operation between 2014 and February of this year, in which 14,000 Ukrainians died, according to the United Nations, a majority of civilian casualties were in Donbass. So, I mean, the U.S. has been trying to prevent Europe, Western Europe, but also in general,

Europe, from being economically reliant on Russian energy and Chinese markets. And this war has made sure that Europe is going to be reliant on U.S. energy and to an extent West Asian energy, although we'll see what happens in the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, and also U.S. markets. So as Michael Hudson has been saying, I think his analysis has been borne out, it's been proven to be correct. The U.S. is turning Europe into an economic dead zone. And we see protests led by unions in Germany, warning that this is destroying German industry, and it's going to destroy large parts of the European economy. And who benefits the U.S., of course, U.S. companies, U.S. corporations, they no longer have

the competition from European capitalists. So this is the point that economist Michael Hudson has pointed out that for 100 years, being a U.S. ally is very dangerous, because being a U.S. ally means the U.S. capitalist class it's going to, when it's politically convenient, economically inconvenient, they're going to destroy your economy. This is what they did to Japan. It's what the Reagan administration did to Japan. It's what they're now doing to Europe. That leads really well into this question I have. And I thought at first it might be semantic, but I think it's actually more than that. You mentioned earlier the Cold War. And this is a moment of not multipolarity, but bipolarity.

And then you have little manifestations like the non-aligned movement trying to create multi-polarity, we can argue about that really didn't take off, right? So we talk about bipolarity, then we talk about unipolarity. Now we're talking about multipolarity, but specifically in the face of the U.S. is overwhelming military power. Economics aside, their military is still spends more than the next 10 combined. It's huge. I mean, you know, even a coalition of very strong countries would have a hard time taking down the U.S. military in a head-on conflict. So my question is, you know, under the Soviet Union is bipolarity. So how do we know that what's emerging is not necessarily multipolarity, but a new sort of block being constructed that in the face of overwhelming

U.S. military power specifically, but other variables as well, will actually form into something more like bipolarity with two major blocks and less like multipolarity with multiple different poles of power, kind of keeping everybody else in check. What are your thoughts on that? Well, increasingly, I've said this in my analysis, you know, over the past few years, maybe like year, especially the past several months with the war in Ukraine, I think that's increasingly actually what's happening. A lot of people, you know, if you read speeches present Daniel Ortega here in Nicaragua just gave a speech talking about polarity just a few days ago. And we saw on, by the way, on the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution on July 19th, Ortega spoke. at the anniversary, and he was joined on stage by top Nicaraguan officials and representatives from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. So, I mean, that's like the new alliance, right? But, you know, if you listen to a lot of these speeches, especially from Chinese diplomats and Russian diplomats, they talk a lot about multilateral. In fact, a few weeks before the Russian

operation, in the beginning of February, there was this historic meeting between Putin and Xi, and they released this 6,000-word manifesto, which was essentially a manifesto for a multipolar world. It's very good reading. And then, of course, the war in Ukraine accelerated and all of this. So, yeah, I've been saying a lot that I think the U.S. strategy is to bring back bipolarity to prevent multipolarity. That's the strategy.

And we see the U.S. going around the world and basically doing that. So when Biden took this trip to Saudi Arabia, it was partially about oil. which is related to all this, but a lot of it was trying to tell Saudi Arabia, don't ally with China and Russia. Don't ally with China and Russia. We see that Linda Thomas Greenfield was sent to Africa to tell Africa, which, I mean, is incredible, this neo-colonious mentality, don't do trade with Russia. The only thing you can buy from Russia is wheat and fertilizer, nothing else, telling over 40

sovereign countries in Africa that they can't have their own economic relations. So that's the whole point of the new Cold War. And if you listen to the statements, if you read the statements of Chinese diplomats, and I read them a lot, Chinese diplomats are very good. Their statements are very measured. Russian diplomats are also very good. Their statements tend to be much more adversarial, which is something that I like. I mean, they push back against, like, you know, against the hegemon, right?

Russia has, especially in the past decade, but also going back, to Russian diplomats in the Soviet Union, it has always had a long history of these very adversarial diplomats, whereas Chinese diplomats tend to be much more cautious. They're always very cautious, and with their words, they're very careful. And if you read Chinese diplomat statements in the past few years, they constantly repeat this. They say they warn against the Cold War mentality. They warn against, we don't want a Cold War mentality. They talk about win-win cooperation. It's not China and it's not Russia that are pushing for the New Cold War. It's the U.S. And it's an attempt by the U.S. ruling class to reimpose this bipolar order because they

understand that that makes it more likely for them to overthrow China and Russia to reimpose unipolarity. So if they have to choose between multiplicity and bipolarity, of course, they choose bipolarity. And that's why they're trying to reimpose this kind of new cold, let's try to reimpose this first Cold War kind of orientation where every country around the world has to pick a side. They're not allowed to balance different sides. They have to pick one.

Yeah. And I think that that brings me to something that I wanted to talk about, which is the weakest length theory. So this is Lenin's theory of the weakest link, talking about breaking the imperialist chain. I think that when we're talking about multipolarity and we're talking about these relations that are able to take place between different states in the geopolitical scheme of things, it may actually provide for another way to break these links of the imperialist chain. You know, back in Lenin's Day, because this was, you know, a unipolar world at that point, you know, it was a multi-polar world. A multipolar world, but an imperialist multipolar world. Well, no, no, but with no socialist poll, that's the difference.

Yes. And that's like when people, and that's the thing that like some of the people now, sorry to cut you off because I'm curious in your thought here, but like there's been a lot of discussion of the KKE, the Communist Party of Greece and a lot of criticism of their analysis of this conflict going on, this proxy war in Ukraine. They say it's interimperialist rivalry. I think that analysis is very misguided. And I think the people who say that that talk about multilarity is just. try and go to go back to pre-World War I, they misunderstand that there's a categorical distinction between now and pre-World War I geopolitics. When Lenin wrote imperialism, the highest age of capitalism, he wrote that in 1916. There was not an existing socialist power. There was not

an existing socialist state. The situation is very different today. There is an attempt to build multi-polarity with a socialist poll. Multi-polarity of different capitalist polls, yes, you can call that inter-imperialist rivalry. But multipolarity with a socialist poll is fundamentally distinct. No, I totally agree with that. And I may have misspoke slightly. So in the same way that I say that the United States has one political party, this is, you know, quoting Julius Numeri.

Yeah, with the United States. Yeah, the United States is a one-party state, but in typical American extravagance, they have two of them. in the same way that we're talking about, you know, there's two entities, but really in reality, they're the same. I view the pre-World War I era in much the same way. It's multipolar in terms of there was many competing imperialist powers, but it was a strictly imperialist world system dominated by these imperialist countries. So were there different countries that had power on the global stage? Absolutely. And in that way, yes, it is multipolarity.

But there was, as you mentioned, no competing. at that point. And yes, I probably misspoke when I tried to say that, but this is what I was trying to say is that, you know, there was one conception in this era. What I was trying to drive towards now is that in those days, talking about the weakest link theory is it was an imperialist world order. There was competing, you know, imperialist powers that were competing with one another. But if we could break the links of this imperialist chain, where the contradictions between

growth and the productive forces were at their strongest, the contradictions were at their strongest, that it could lead to an unraveling of the imperialist order of that day. But I think that, and this is something that I haven't put too much thought into, so this is why I'm asking you, maybe you can either affirm my hunch or set me straight, is that with the coming of this multipolarity with a competing vision, right, this is, you know, unique. With this coming multipolarity, hopefully, with this competing vision, we could have countries that are integral within the imperialist chain that aren't unraveling from this chain. They're not being broken by the contradictions of capitalism, but they're abandoning the chain

for this other vision. So you mentioned Saudi Arabia, for example, Saudi Arabia is very integral within the imperialist world system. I mean, very integral. They are, of course, imperialists themselves. in many, many ways, but they also fuel, you know, the American imperial machine in many ways as well. But it's possible that under a multipolar world, it's not necessary for, you know, maybe you say, okay, Saudi Arabia is a relatively weak link. I don't think so. But let's just for the sake of the argument say that Saudi Arabia was a weak link. And we would rely on them crumbling in order to break the imperialist chain. Now, due to the coming multipolarity, again, hopefully,

it's possible that even though it's not a super weak link in my opinion, compared to some other countries that I could go through at some other time, it's possible that they abandon the United States, for example, for China and join this other conception within the multipolar world. Saudi Arabia hasn't fundamentally changed itself, but it is realigning itself within the multipolar world in a way that could be a pretty big blow to the imperialist system that we currently live under, even with this multipolarity. We still live in an imperialist world system driven by the United States. So I'm

curious as to your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, that's exactly what we're seeing. I agree with that analysis, definitely. And I would, I would slightly change one word that you said. Otherwise, I agree with your analysis. I don't think that we're going to see these countries abandon a country like the U.S. and the imperialist world system, but rather what we'll see is they, they will play the different polls against each other for what's in their own economic interest. And this is exactly what Saudi Arabia is doing. Turkey is a classic example of this. I mean, you know, there's all these memes about like Turkey supporting Russia and Ukraine at the same time. Like, Turkey is a member of NATO. Erdogan just attended the NATO summit in Madrid, where they released this new NATO strategic

concept document, their first blueprint in 12 years, basically declaring the new Cold War on both China and Russia, referring to Russia as a threat, referring to China as a strategic competitor who challenges the so-called rules-based order in which Washington makes the rules and orders everyone around. So Erdogan attended that. And then a few weeks later, Erdogan went to Tehran and met with the Iranian president, Rysi, and Putin in Tehran. So Turkey's an example of that, of playing the different polls. And of course, Erdogan has his own imperial ambitions. But the point is that within the imperial world system, yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to add, you mentioned Turkey. And so before I let you finish that, I just want to add that you mentioned

Turkey is a member of NATO. It also is selling, you know, its most advanced drones to Ukraine, which are a very big boon for the Ukrainian forces. But within the last, let me see, what day was this. I've got it pulled up on my phone here about one week ago today. Turkey and Russia just announced a new trade agreement where they're looking for $100 billion U.S. dollars in yearly trade turnover. There was a direct meeting between Erdogan and Putin at the same time that they're a NATO member and at the same time that they're selling their most advanced drones to Ukraine. So as you mentioned, Turkey is really playing everybody against each other. I mean, that's even going beyond the whole Finland, Sweden entry into NATO fiasco, but yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there,

that that was a week ago today that they just met with, you know, Erdogan met with Putin and signed this huge new potential trade deal. Yeah, well, and Turkey wants to buy the Russian S-400 missile defense system and the U.S. threatened sanctions on Turkey because the S-400 system also has an intelligence component. So anyway, the point is that, I mean, this is, this is an example of this kind of growing multilarity. And it does weak the imperialist world system. And to the extent that there is a socialist poll that's progressive. Now, I agree with the Marxist critique of polarity. If there's no socialist poll, it is just interimperialist rivalry. But when there is a socialist poll, this can help to strengthen the socialist poll. And, you know, people can talk about

the differences between the Chinese model and the Soviet model. There's certainly a lot of differences. They're not the same. But the point is that there are. multiple countries with socialist-led governments that are trying to pursue paths of socialist development, China, Vietnam, Lao, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. You know, there's countries with progressive, oriented, socialistic governments, you know, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, and then there's countries with slightly more, you know, social democratic governments. To the extent that this gives them more economic opportunities, that's a great thing for them. And that helps to strengthen this socialist poll or progressive pole that weakens the imperialist world system.

So to the extent that Saudi Arabia is now trying to hedge its bets and do its in its own best interest for China, you know, working with China and Russia and balancing them against the West, obviously I don't think Saudi Arabia is or ever is going to be a progressive force. But at the same time, it does weaken the imperialist world system, which does provide space for the left. I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I just wanted to come back in on that. And first day, I was just in Turkey. And so it was really quite an interesting place to be during all of these. You know, they brokered the, you know, grain, you know, shipments. And, you know, it's so interesting to see how Turkey is trying to carve its own sort of path through this. I sometimes wonder how long it's going to be able to remain in NATO. I mean, you know, this is, it's becoming a bit of a problem, you know, having Turkey in NATO. And in fact, You can recall that, I mean, when Trump somewhat presciently was, you know, talking about, you know, in 2016, for the 2016 election, he was criticizing NATO. I mean, he framed it partly as they're not paying their fair share, which is his typical sort of way of analyzing things. We're not getting a good deal.

But I think one thing he also mentioned at the time is like, how can you have Turkey in NATO, you know? I mean, his idea of it was is that they have to be reliable Western Christian, European, you know, that's his vision. of who belongs in NATO. And I just think that there will be pressure. It'll be interesting to see how long Turkey actually can maintain its position there. But the question I want to ask. If I can just cut you up very briefly, just really briefly, I think it's interesting for people to study Soviet-Turkish relations.

Yeah. Because in the 1920s, the Soviet Union supported the chemists. Yes. And there was actually like this kind of golden era of, because of course, people probably know that historically going back hundreds of years, Russia, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire had a lot of conflicts. And Russia and Turkey have these kind of historic conflicts. But interestingly, even when Lenin was still alive and then, of course, after Lenin died, the Soviet leadership maintained this policy early on of allying with Turkey. And then of course, later on in the 1930s and then especially with World War II when Turkey was officially neutral, the Soviet Union and Turkey's relations became much more strained and then Turkey became member of NATO. But there was this kind of moment, you know, when the Soviet Union was at his most revolutionary stage in the 1920s and 30s of actually very good relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey. So, I mean, even at the,

even like the Soviet leadership has always understood the importance of trying to win over some of these allies that don't, certainly don't have socialist governments, but have more independent governments, especially in the global south. And, you know, if you read Lenin's thoughts recognizing the, I mean, Lenin himself had said that even if the national liberation struggle is led by bourgeois forces, you should support the national liberation struggle. And this has influenced, this is what led to the third international, right? The third international has always been about, not just about the class struggle, but it's not just about class, it's also about national oppression. And when you understand that element within the imperialist world

system, it actually helps understand, like, what a socialist foreign policy could look like. Yeah, I think, well, that sort of anticipates where I wanted to go with this, which is exactly how do you see a socialist poll function? What are the consequences potentially of having a socialist poll in a multi or an emerging multipolar system? And what kind of socialism in just the same way that you mentioned that neoliberalism was really a kind of projection of U.S. unipolar imperialism, you know, I guess in some ways one might want to think about what kind of socialism and prospects for forms of socialism might we see in these international relations because many of the, you know, allies and components in the global south, you know,

will not be overtly socialist government. So, but what is the prospects for social change as a result of having a socialist poll functioning in this system? Do you think that? it will. You know, I mean, you know, can Turkey become socialist? Can there be, you know, a kind of network of countries in Latin America with China that begin to create a counter system that actually functions to produce greater prospects for, you know, popular social movements and trends in the global South? I mean, that's the hope. I think it would be. it would be, you know, interesting to see if having a socialist poll has revolutionary consequences or is it just going to be a matter of some space for those countries to be able to create a

sustainable, you know, a possibility for survival. I'm wondering what you think about the consequences of this. Yeah, this is the question and it depends on two significant factors. One, it becomes to the question of the internal contradiction of the power of left-wing forces inside each country, right? And then the other significant factor is what are the policies of that socialist poll? Now, this is one of the other significant differences between the Chinese government and the Soviet government. And obviously, you know, we, the whole thing with the sign of Soviet split, it's a very long conversation, but I'm talking about today. The Chinese leadership today, and there's clearly a turn back toward the left by the leadership of the Communist Party of

China, and Xi Jinping has clearly taken a more, I'll say, a more nationalist foreign policy. But one of the differences is that China and the Soviet Union have very different foreign policy. China still is extremely hands-off in its foreign policy. China, for instance, also its goals to have good relations with pretty much everyone. China has good relations with apartheid Israel, which is something that a lot of people criticize rightfully. China, you know, it doesn't have this same very adversarial policy of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, I mean, of course, under Khrushchev, it was a little different. But after Khrushchev, you know, this idea of peaceful coexistence, under Brezhnev, it kind of changed a bit. And the Soviet Union was

providing a lot of weapons and support to national liberation struggles and revolutionary movements around the world that were engaged in struggles and armed conflicts. China is not, does not have that kind of foreign policy. Now, could it return to that kind of foreign policy in the decades to come. I think that's a very real possibility. China, before the Sino-Soviet split, it did have that kind of policy, as we see in the Chinese intervention in the Korean War and the Chinese support for the Vietnamese before the Sino-Soviet split, when China turned against Vietnam, it's long complex history. But the point is that if China does change its policy and become more openly supportive of revolutionary movements, then yes. I think clearly

the answer is yes to your question that China could play that role. now China doesn't have an international like it doesn't it doesn't have like the common turn like the Soviet Union did and of course the common turn was later disbanded but I think there's a very real possibility we could see a return to that kind of policy and then the other the other major factor is the domestic situation so I mentioned earlier that not to downplay you know there's this term it's become very popular among liberals the concept of agency and obviously you know I'm not in any way downplay the agency of people who led these struggles. But being realistic, there were struggles in colonies against European colonialists for hundreds of years. In my view, it's not a

coincidence that most of the national liberation struggles, pretty much all of them, were not successful until the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s when they had that material support from the Soviet Union from China and from this other poll, right? Because, for instance, in the case of the British Empire, in the Indian subcontinent, for hundreds of years, for nearly 200 years, there was resistance, including armed resistance against British colonialism. And some of the most famous figures in history still today, not only in India, but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh, people like, you know, Bahagat Singh. Antipu Sultan, even now. Well, but, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, in terms of like more the socialist tradition, like Bahagat Singh, who was kind of

more of an anarchist, but like, you know, who was also very young, but like who tried an armed uprising against the British empire. And he did so at a time, you know, in the 1920s when the Soviet Union was very weak and the socialist pole was very weak and wasn't able to provide support. Well, when does, when does national liberation succeed in Indian Pakistan? on 1947, when the European empires are destroyed through this war. And then across Africa, you have, you know, you have the Algerian revolution, which gets material support from the socialist bloc. And then you have Patrice Lumumba, allied with the Soviet Union.

You have Bangladesh, which gets material support from the Soviet Union and also from India when it took a more left-wing turn. So the point is, that that leads some more complex contradictions with, like, the sign of Soviet split. But the point is that, like, you have all these national liberation struggles here in Nicaragua. Soviet Union supported the Sandinistas. Cuba only survived thanks to the support from the Soviet Union. Ironically, when Fidel, when he took power in 1959, he did not, well, he was not a socialist. He did not declare it a socialist. Che Guevara was a socialist, but Fidel was a very progressive left-wing

revolutionary nationalist, and it was actually the U.S. blockade and coup attempt at the invasion with Bay of Pigs that pushed Cuba into becoming a close ally of the Soviet Union and then Fidel declared the revolution Marx's Leninist. So the point is that not to downplay the importance of leadership, obviously, because you can't have those revolutions without, without, you know, Sukarno, without Patrice Lumumba, without Fidel, without Daniel Ortega. Like, you obviously, you obviously have to have the political leadership and the organizations domestically, the FLN and Algeria, you know, Ben, like, you have to have, like, all these figures who are revolutionary figures, Ben Bella, who will leave these revolutions. But you can have so many great

revolutionaries, but if they don't have material support, it's much less likely that those revolutions are going to succeed. So what I, what I hope is that as these contradictions continue to intensify and the conflict between the U.S.-led imperialist system, this capitalist system intensifies that China and Russia will start providing more support revolutionary movements and that will actually provide them not only space but actually I mean material support to actually succeed in the revolutionary struggle if we're talking about things just beyond you know bourgeois electoral politics you know in Latin America it worked Hugo Chavez understood that there was this

moment of like a weakness where they they could actually come to power through elections. And then the U.S. has made sure that that couldn't happen again with these sanctions and all this. But it looks like we're going back toward a period of kind of more revolutionary politics where bourgeois democracy is no longer going to be the end of history. So the answer to your question is, yes, there's a real possibility. The question is, with this new poll that's emerging, led by China, but also with, you know, Russia,

Vietnam, other countries are kind of playing different sides. Are they going to go back to what they did in the first Cold War where they were actually providing guns to the revolutionaries? Yeah, it's really insightful stuff. And actually it feeds well into this last question because I know you've been very generous with your time. So I'm just going to fire one more at you and then we'll let you go. But specifically with that whole idea about, you know,

Russia and China funding movements abroad. Of course, we hope they're revolutionary. I'm more optimistic on the Chinese front than the Russian one necessarily. I think when Russia gets involved in U.S. domestic politics, they'll fucking play anybody off anybody just to make more chaos. And Europe. Yeah.

Yeah. The right wing, the right, even far right forces in Europe. Yeah. Exactly right. So with all of that in mind, I'm kind of interested as the last question in what role the U.S. domestic situation could play in helping or hurting, whatever, the emergence of multipolarity. Certainly, it's hard to maintain unipolarity when at home everything is in complete chaos.

And there's obvious motives on all ends to sow discord in each other's countries. America certainly participates in that all over the world. So, yeah, that's my basic question is what role does the U.S. domestic situation play in the trajectory of everything we're talking about today? Well, it has everything to do with it. And it's affected by it in so many ways. but a lot of them are bad ways. I'll be honest. I mean, I don't like to be very pessimistic, but it's hard to be very optimistic about the domestic U.S. political situation is looking at realistically the political balance of forces because what you have is this contradictory tendency,

right? It's dialectical where as those contradictions intensify between the U.S.-led poll and this China-Russia-led poll, what that does is it also, encourages and strengthens domestic forces of repression against anyone who is against imperialism and against war. And you're going to have more repression. You're going to have especially a crackdown on the left, which we've already seen, you know, the FBI just raided the African people socialist party. We're going to see more of that. And I think it's going to be a new McCarthyism. We've seen it. I mean, I've been attacked by the New York Times, like, accusing me of spreading like Chinese and Russian disinformation at the same time as like,

anyway, whatever. Like, I mean, it's going to be much more of that. That's an honor to be targeted by the New York Times. Yeah, I mean, they also like put a red line through my face. I mean, insane stuff. So it's going to get worse and worse. But I mean, like, look, this is, this is how all revolutionaries have been throughout history. Like, Lenin was exiled. People forget Lenin was in exile. So the domestic repression is going to get worse. We should be very realistic about that. We shouldn't be flipping about it. We should be. encourage people to to engage in risky behavior because we know that any invitation given to the state is going to be used by the state to crack down on the left. But as the empire is in

crisis and weakening, it is going to engage in more and more reckless behavior. We see this with Ukraine. We see this with Taiwan internationally, but also domestically. And it's going to lead to more domestic conflict. And whenever there's domestic conflict, that also leads to political radicalization, which means that the left could have an opportunity to grow, but the fascist movement is going to grow in the U.S. It has been growing. I mean, basically the Republican Party is almost full on fascist. I mean, it's just like, like the U.S. is in a very dangerous, precarious political situation. A huge faction of the U.S. ruling class of, you know, Republicans are talking about political violence and like civil war. So in the context of the U.S., I mean, it's a very dangerous

situation. And I'll often point out that when empires are in decline, it's often when they commit their worst atrocities. The Ottoman Empire committing genocide against Armenians and Assyrians and Greeks. The French Empire committing basically genocide, killing over a million Algerians, not only in Algeria, but in France, these massive massacres of Algerians in France and other Arabs in France. The German Empire, we all saw what happened there. The British Empire with the, you know, famines in South Asia. Like, I expect the U.S. Empire to be even more authoritarian, to be even more violent, and especially in Latin America.

That's what really scares me. Next year is the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. And we see more and more U.S. politicians, including John Bolton, former national security advisor under Donald Trump, also both of Donald Trump's secretaries of state, Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson. All of them invoked the Monroe Doctrine in terms of Latin America, specifically in terms of Latin America's relations with China and Russia. So I expect more domestic repression, but I also expect that the revolutionary left in the U.S. is going to grow. And especially as conditions get worse,

I'm not an accelerationist. I think we should be very careful when we're talking about it. I'm not saying that it's a good thing that poverty is getting worse in the U.S., that living standards are dropping, that life expectancy is dropping. Those are all very important. bad things. And I'm not an accelerationist because I also understand throughout history that when you have these moments of crisis, that there's also a very real possibility of fascism. And I think in the U.S. as conditions get worse, a much more likely possibility is not a revolution, a social revolution. It's a fascist counter-revolution. So I say this by understanding the gravity of what I'm saying. But realistically, looking at the situation, I think that as the U.S. unipolar

system collapses and thereby neoliberalism collapses. The emperor no longer has any clothes. I talked earlier at the beginning of this about how the point of the neoliberal model was that in the imperial core, workers who were getting paid less than wages were, they didn't feel it as much because they had cheap consumer goods from Asia and they had cheap energy from Russia. Well, both of those have gone. And now we see that, you know, inflation is rising in the U.S. in Europe. The far right is rising. So I truly do think that with all these political crises happening, it's a very dangerous moment domestically for the U.S. and for Europe. I think that that's a great note to end this episode on. Again, listeners, our guest was Ben Norton from

Polarista. Ben, how can the listeners find you in the excellent work that you're doing? Well, thank you. People can find my work at multipolarista.com. It's all there. There's also links to not only English and Spanish language articles for people who like to read articles, but also links there to my videos and to my podcast. And it's all just under the name Multipolarista. So it should be pretty easy to find. And I'm guessing, I mean, obviously everyone who's listened to this this far is an English speaker. But if there's anyone who's interested in Spanish language coverage, I, you know, I live in Latin America and I have a lot of coverage in Spanish as well. Excellent. Brett, how can the listeners find you and the other content that you produce?

Everything I do is at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. Excellent. Adnan. Where is your other podcast and how can the listeners follow you? Well, if you're interested in the Middle East Islamic world, Muslim diasporic communities in the West, issues of Islamophobiae and so on, you can listen to the Mudgellis podcast, M-A-J-L-I-S, and follow me on Twitter at Adnan A-Husane. And I'll make the disclaimer that I make pretty frequently when you look for the M-U-L-L-S podcast. Do not click on the radio-free Central Asia one. Click on Adnan's. It's much better. I promise you.

As for me, listeners, you can- polar opposites, I imagine. Oh, totally. You know, you have Adnan, which we see Adnan, and we have radio-free Central Asia. I mean, really no more needs to be said. Oh, God. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter

at H-H-U-C-1-995. You can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla-U-R-R-I-I-I-E-R-I-S. LLA underscore pod. I really want to push the new newsletter that we've been coming out with. You can find it at GorillaHistory.substack.com. It's totally free, and it's basically a reading list and listening list compiled by the hosts of the show as well as former guests of the show.

It's a really good resource for political education. And again, totally free. So gorillahistory. ubstack.com. And of course, you can support the show and get some bonus content by going to patreon. com forward slash gorilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A. Until next time, listeners, Solidarity. Thank you.