Why the ‘Rest’ sided with Russia against the ‘West’, per Emmanuel Todd

It’s the final part in this series analysing 2024’s best political book: ‘The Defeat of the West’

(This is the 8th and final part in a multipart series on Emmanuel Todd’s political it-book of the year The Defeat of the West (La Defaite de l’Occident).)

In Chapter 1, “Russian Stability”, Todd explained why Russia has thrived despite the Western imposition of Iran-level sanctions: essentially, Todd asserts, Western analysts didn’t want to admit that all the readily available data on Russia’s economy, society and leadership was as good as it obviously was. In order to follow the actual thread of the data and conclusions Todd presented I suggested renaming Chapter 2 from “The Ukrainian Enigma” to the more honest “The Ukrainian Suicide”, and the article analysing that excellent chapter is found here. In Chapter 3 Todd turned to Eastern Europe and explained with one word the baffling and swift historical shift from a pro-socialist Bloc allied with Moscow into a Russophobic, liberalism-loving, 2nd-class citizen of Western society: “inauthentic”. The article analysing that chapter is found here, and it’s worth reading because I think we often forget that in the last 35 years no other global region has undergone as counter-revolutionary a change. In Chapter 4 Todd asked “What is the West?” and I noted how his book changed from realism to moralism: per Todd, the West is not just “unstable” but “sick”, and he blames it on the decline of Protestantism and on elitist college-educated intellectuals. Todd would have done better to not pull his punches and title his 5th chapter thusly: “The assisted suicide of Europe”. Or he could have hit upon my new phrase - the “EU-icide” - to quickly describe the obvious failure of the pan-European project, which is the biggest political story of this century. Chapter 6 is titled “In Great Britain: towards a zero-nation (Croule (Crumbling, not Rule) Britannia)”, as bitter Remainers latch on to Russophobia as a way to stay connected with Europe, but the dominant political force in this wayward island is mere “disarray”. In Chapter 8, “The True Nature of America: Oligarchy and Nihilism”, Todd bested by six months the US Democratic Party, which in rage, desperation or sudden enlightenment finally admitted that only an oligarchy was propping up the aged and senile Joe Biden, and which then nihilistically and undemocratically forced in Kamala Harris as their new candidate for November’s election. In Chapter 9, “Deflating the American Economy” Todd writes what everyone in the US under 50 knows - I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness high finance - and how American economic genius is not for genuine production but for obfuscating the huge decline in US economic power since 2000. In Chapter 10, “The Gang of Washington”, Todd describes the US capital as essentially a village of individualistic individuals in thrall to individualism - semi-intellectuals without historical consciousness, subservient to the hierarchical principle, unattached to anything beyond themselves and the “Blob” under-village of Washington DC - and only serving (Todd fails to note) imperialism/anti-leftism. The article summarising those two chapters is found here.

After a break in August here is the final article in this series - I thank you for going along with me!

Todd’s final chapter is titled, “Why the Rest of the World Chose Russia”, and he begins by humbly acknowledging that much of his book’s emphasis on nihilism and narcissism (which I repeatedly noted is an insufficient explanation to the political science questions of why and how the West was defeated) could have been found in Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism.

Todd writes, “It is striking, in effect, to note at what point the West, since the start of this crisis, both its American and European branches, is convinced that it is still the center of the world, or, even better, that it represents the totality of the world. Evil Russia aside, all the newer nations should be in admiration of its values. The West seems stuck somewhere between 1990 and 2000, between the fall of the Berlin Wall and a brief moment of omnipotence.”

Undoubtedly true - the West is stuck in this era. The mid-90s is close, but the problem with that is: the West has lost the youthful euphoria of that period. I suggest that the West is stuck in precisely 2002, because the the 1990s were not plagued by the Western obsession/ruse of “terrorism”, which still dominates its culture, media and many of its basic policies via the inculcation of paranoia, manipulation, duplicity and “realpolitik with a false humanitarian face”. Indeed, the West still behaves as if the credibility-damaging Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not only not fought but not even lost, therefore 2002 seems far more accurate.

Choosing the 90s ignores the culture of militarism, Islamophobia and intolerance which permeates Western culture today, but Todd redeems his analysis by grasping what many of my fellow journalists do not understand: with the 2007-8 Great Recession the West ceased to be a winner and also ceased to even look like a winner around the world.

Full stop. There has been no recovery, and the non-West knows it. After all, a certain orange-haired politician came to prominence by saying the US needs to make itself great again - as things had gotten so bad - and he was then vilified like no politician since the end of Jim Crow for it.

“For these poor but growing countries, the American mortgage crisis was a staggering affair: why give poor people high-interest mortgages when they know they won't be able to pay them back? Morality at zero. The irresponsibility of the United States was soon joined by that of Europe, so slow to react. In truth, it was China's massive stimulus policy that pulled the world out of recession. The emergence of the BRICs rebounds from this double Western irresponsibility.”

I give Todd a ton of credit for doing the opposite of what most Western pundits do: not ignoring the impact of the Great Financial Crisis on the non-West’s perception of the West. Most Western pundits do not understand economics, and are also totally unfamiliar with the vital Marxist critique of capitalism and modern history, so not only do they ignore the millions of deaths and ruined lives caused by post-9/11 wars but they also cannot grasp the non-Western public relations impact of the West’s great economic catastrophe.

I give demerits to Todd for saying that Europe was “slow to react”: they reacted incredibly swiftly, but in a reactionary direction. What Europe did was to enforce far-right economic “austerity”, which had a goal of ending Europe’s successful, admired, and beloved post-WWII social democratic safety net in order to become as purely liberalist as the US and UK. Europe reacted in a way which openly aimed to slow the global economy merely to undemocratically liberalise their own social democratic-influenced socioeconomic structure. The US foisted the economic crisis on the world but Europe kept it going. The EU remains the global macroeconomic weak link - the rest of the world sees this and is frustrated by it - and the demise of Europe has been immense ever since the undemocratic imposition of the Lisbon Treaty of 2009. Quick obligatory reference, for which I apologise: my book on the Yellow Vests lays out with street-level, daily detail the impact this process had on Europe itself, which the non-socialist Todd doesn’t apparently comprehend and which the Western MSM will not discuss.

Todd doesn’t say this clearly, but the non-Western world has also seen China’s immense rise since 2008 via non-Western methods - this is another Western MSM taboo, and yet another Western value which the non-Western world will not share. It’s as if the West thinks disaster and hardship could be provoked without consequences, and it’s as if the rest of the world should ignore a clear example of what is actually working?

Todd continues: “Western narcissism, and the ensuing blindness, has become one of Russia's major strategic assets.”

I’m sure the reader is well familiar with the UN vote in March 2022 which saw essentially the entire  non-West (and countries which represent 88% of the world’s population) vote against the West regarding sanctions on Russia, but the key here is: the mainstream-touching Todd is reminding a mainstream reader to not ignore that reality. I think you can imagine Todd’s analysis of this vote, which contained none of the Western MSM’s indignation, intolerance and wilful refusal to not only understand but even merely discuss: “The isolation of the West is clear to see.”

After lamenting the West’s role in the slave trade (and he should have added the West’s role in imperialism… but Todd is not a socialist) Todd wonders at how Ukraine has somehow fabricated the West’s current context of being a naked moral emperor with no clothes: “In Europe and the United States, we are experiencing a great moment of subjective moral superiority.”

He soon continues: “But it's almost surreal to see this theme growing and spreading, while at the same time we're witnessing a resurgence of the feeling that the West holds moral supremacy. The paradox can be resolved: our moral superiority is such that it also enables us to criticise ourselves. As for outer humanity, in our eyes it never really exists.” Todd is saying the West does not criticise itself, nor does it give a fig for non-Western critiques.

Todd continues, excoriating the West’s antagonistic attitude to China, and with yet another amusing turn of phrase, of which he has had many: “This disconnection from reality will make it necessary to call a psychiatrist, or perhaps a geopsychiatrist.”

Why did the world choose Russia over the West? It’s the latter’s “colossal presumption,” “racism”, “arrogance”, “blindness”, etc. - credit Todd for criticising his own people and culture.

Todd finally admits that Marx was right about Western capitalism-liberalism

The passage below sees an extremely rare reference to Marx in this book, combined with Todd’s usual, for him (but unusual for others), reliance on adding an anthropological dimension.

“The economic antagonism stems from the simple fact that globalisation has turned out to be a re-colonisation of the world by the West, this time under American rather than British leadership. The exploitation of less advanced peoples (the extraction of surplus value, as the Marxists would say) has been more discreet but far more effective than in the years 1880-1914.

Anthropological antagonism stems from the fact that in most countries of the ‘Rest’, family structures and parenting systems are opposed to those of the West.

Russia lives by its natural resources and hard work; in no way does it intend to impose its values on the world. Nor would it have the means to exploit the 'Rest' economically, or to export its culture there. In the face of an America that lives off the labor of the 'Rest' and extols a nihilistic culture, Russia has generally appeared amenable to the 'Rest'. The Soviet Union had contributed mightily to the first decolonisation; a multitude of countries now expect Russia to contribute to the second. ”

That’s a vital explanation which uses historical and Marxist analysis to explain why the non-West sided with Russia. It’s a vital explanation which many in the West have never heard, which their pro-war intellectuals have no response to and it’s a vital explanation that would likely go in one ear and out the other.

I have repeatedly pointed out where Todd’s lack of a socialist lens renders his analysis less deep and more unsatisfying - combined with my ability to translate this French book into English, that’s basically what I am bringing to the table with this series! - but Todd is anti-capitalist enough to reject not just imperialism but also the most anti-social-democratic version of liberalism, which pro-liberal-capitalists want us to now refer to as “globalism”:

“Westerners failed to recognise that, by delocalising their industry, they were setting themselves up as a kind of planetary bourgeoisie, exploiting the underpaid labor of the rest of the world. This exploitative relationship has transformed the populations of the 'Rest' into a generalised proletariat, while at the same time allowing local ruling classes to subsist, albeit unconsciously.”

Indeed, the US and Europe thought they could become a purely bourgeois society - one without any proles, only politically-neutered service sector employees/servants. I don’t think any factory workers in Detroit in 1980 ever believed this goal was possible, or would have wanted it, but the larger point is that Western Liberalism has always revolved around enabling a multinational aristocratic class which has more in common with themselves than with their fellow citizens. It should be clear to see how this resembles the long (still going on, actually) age of European monarchism/aristocracy. Americans have such a hard time grasping this  historical fact because they are a nation in total isolation - geographically, culturally and historically - and thus cannot grasp cross-national historical trends, nor see their role in them.

These passages are the first and only use of Marxist-influenced analysis and terminology Todd has used in the entire book. Todd has finally started to refer to Marx, Lenin, Hobson and Engels, and it’s essentially to say: we have seen this all before.

Or, as I say: stop saying “globalism” and “neoliberalism” as if it wasn’t just the same old “liberalism”! Indeed, “liberalism” was - rightly - a dirty word from the mid-19th century until as late as WWII - will it take liberalism’s forcing of a WWIII to regain our historical consciousness of liberalism’s pernicious, pro-aristocratic aims and results? Todd himself admits the problems caused by his stubbornness:

“I've just realised, a little late I admit, that this world has come about thanks to globalisation, which has taken consumer society to its final stage. Until around 1980, workers in America, France and elsewhere consumed, for the most part, what they produced: this was the first consumer society, born out of the Thirty Glorious years (a French phrase to describe 1945-75). But then the delocalisation of Western factories transformed people. The objects of their consumption are now produced elsewhere. The hard-working proletariat of the 1950s became a plebe in the 2000s, at the instigation of the theorists and practitioners of the globalised economy.

[…]

As Engels and Lenin foresaw, the free-market corrupts, but we can add: the absolute free-market corrupts absolutely.”

Would have been nicer if this was on page 1, but hey - I’m just glad Todd finally got here!

The reason China has ascended to dominance; the reason Russia has been able to convert its economic capabilities to military production, and thus is winning the war in Ukraine; the reason that Iran has been able to economically transform despite decades of sanctions equalled only by poor Cuba; the reason for success is state leadership in the economy. The reason for Western failure since the optimistic 1990s is the Western state’s abdication of leadership in favor of free-market oligarchic corruption. Marx and Engels didn’t just foresee this about liberalism in 1849 - they chronicled it, as Lenin, Hobson and others have continued to do.

So now what, Emmanuel?

Of course, as is the subtext of all my criticism of Western liberal democracy and capitalism-imperialism, the only alternative is socialist democracy. The nuances - not the broad strokes - are up for debate and national democratic choice, but free market of liberalism will only end in inequality, repression, the death of national sovereignty and the undemocratic tyranny of the 1%. Todd doesn’t say this - as he would be labelled a red commie and would never get reviewed by the The New York Times ever again - so he prefers to dwell in nihilism, instead:

“This cruel analysis also helps us understand why reindustrialisation is so difficult. While the relocation of many productive activities has contributed to the increasing destruction of our provinces and suburbs, the free market has kept its promise: to turn the producer into a consumer, and the productive citizen into a parasitic plebeian, hardly eager to return to the path and discipline of the factory.” Not being a socialist, and thus a capitalist, Todd goes on to essentially promotes protectionism.

He must have been listening to the Supreme Leader? However, Khamenei is promoting it in a context where the government, thanks to 1979, already has majority ownership of every medium- and large-scale industry. This is a large part of why US protectionism (started under Obama in response to the Great Recession, promoted by Trump, kept by Biden) which is not even supposed to exist in liberalism, has not even had the desired results, as Todd noted in his previous discussions on the US. Or perhaps the main issue is simply the problem of reforming the average Western “parasitic plebeian”… but this is certainly just elitism and not the true sticking point.   

Todd notes how the supporters of France’s National Rally or America’s Trump have become so socially and politically marginalised that society:

“…increasingly condemns them to reckless behavior and submits them to an abnormal excess mortality.

I think this will come as a surprise to Western readers, who are so happy to contribute through their purchases to the rise of the Chinese, Indian or Thai middle classes, who are then destined to become staunch supporters of liberal democracy. This gratifying representation is proving idiotic at a time when liberal democracy is withering away in the West itself.” Indeed, this promise of Western economic theoreticians in the 1990s and beyond has proven to be false.

But hey - let’s keep party like it’s 1992: liberalism has won and all we need to do to win is to buy foreign goods on credit. Of course, the only winners with this approach have been the 1%.

To summarise: “The economic opposition between an exploitative West and an exploited Rest of the world is a reality.”

So why wouldn’t they choose Russia?

The question the West and Todd doesn’t ask is: How many centuries has it been since the West didn’t aim to exploit the rest of the world?

Ask them something like that and their answer has been, consecutively: you must be a nigger-lover, you sound like a commie, socialism has failed and everyone wants liberalism, stop with your political correctness, stop with your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Get Woke Go Broke, this is just the way it is and always will be (historical nihilism), all systems are based around the orders of an elite ruling class (political nihilism), etc. and etc.

The Defeat of the West is an incredibly of-the-moment book because it treats the first quarter of the 21st century as though it was 200 years ago, and it’s right: so much has been set in stone and cannot be erased from the pages of history, nor remedied.

Where we end up when we refuse to take the proper turn at the ‘class struggle’ fork in the road: Endless debate over nonsense

The final half of the chapter talks about the risk of World War III, and how economic sanctions risk provoking it. If so, the Rest of the world has already chosen their side, per Todd:

“Because they must choose one side or the other, we can propose that the Rest of the world has supported Russia in its effort to break NATO, by buying Russia’s oil and gas, and giving it spare parts which it has needed to continue the war and function without too much difficulty for its civil society.” (emphasis his)

Todd notes the elite of the rest of the world sends their children to Western schools, uses Western tax havens, participates in dollar supremacy, etc., even though - anthropologically - their cultural values are quite different. He warns that attempts to force them to follow sanctions on Russia  - to gut their own society as Europe has done, I would say - while also replacing their own cultural values with Western ones could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Todd returns to something he mentioned in Chapter 1: In 1946 there was genuine awareness among the US elite that the rest of the world had different values, and this was not a huge problem but merely a simple fact of life on Earth. However, this awareness and acceptance evaporated somewhere in the 1960s. Further on, the definitely-different USSR’s disappearance created - as Todd terms it - a “McDonald’s Hegelianism” which heralded the start of an Earth dominated by Western values. He goes into an extended riff on the patrilineal “Rest” of the world, giving an anthropological explanation of why McHegelianism just won’t take. Cultural anthropology is as hit-or-miss as the classic French tendency to dare to guess the inner lives of both a person and an entire culture - of course, this is not a mathematical intellectual endeavour and can never be judged “right” with 100% certitude. However, when it’s right it’s - at the very least - incredibly illuminating, and Todd is quite unique among political analysis for his ability to use the microscopic/telescopic lens marked anthropology.

This feeds into a final riff on the “conservative soft power of Russia”, which has replaced the “revolutionary soft power of the USSR”. In many ways it’s been an amazing post-1991 trend: the social and political power of homosexuals, transgenders and sexual non-normatives have become so dominant in the West, and their elite have made this such a point of both domestic and foreign policy, that global debate over the issues of these groups have become as intense as the concepts of class warfare, capitalist exploitation and imperialism were pre-1991.

“But let's think about the deeper meaning of transgender ideology, as I analysed it in Chapter 8. It says that a man can become a woman, and a woman can become a man. It is an affirmation of the false and, in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism. But how can adherence to a cult of falsehood lead to a more secure military alliance? My own view is that there is in fact a mental and social connection between this cult of falsehood and the now proverbial unreliability of the USA in international affairs. Just as a man can become a woman, a nuclear deal with Iran (Obama) can be transformed overnight into an aggravated sanctions regime (Trump). Ironically, American foreign policy is, in its own way, 'gender fluid’.”

An amusing ending to a subject hardly worth talking about - thus my inclusion.

Todd isn’t red enough to lose his mainstream-touching status via an open promotion of socialist democracy, but his stance on transgender issues could cost him his major publisher….

We have these issues foisted on us precisely in order to distract us from the vital, universal concepts of class warfare, capitalist exploitation and imperialism. Of course, the 1% would be quite content if such issues never get resolved, and they seem to be like the issue of abortion in the US: an issue that has nothing to do with class warfare which gets endlessly unresolved for 50+ years (and counting).

‘Conclusion: How the United States Fell into the Ukrainian Trap’

That is the title of Todd’s final chapter, which he begins with: “The period which has passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall has not been understood properly.”

The primary issue is not the West’s disputes with the non-West - the main problem is that it has suffered another humiliating and costly defeat in an(other) effort to subvert Russia.

Todd reassembles into a proper chronology all the preceding parts of his book, in order to show how the Ukraine war marks the end of a cycle which began in 1991. To summarise: 1991 kicked off a wave of expansionism which sapped the West of its substance and energy, and which is now nihilistically smashing itself against the stable and solid nation of Russia, a nation which appears as unconquerable as the United States.

Allow me to make a useful historical analogy: In 1812 the French Revolution, after 20 years of total European war against it, and after the failure of Napoleon’s long efforts to diplomatically woo Russia into France’s camp, decided upon an invasion of Russia as a necessary prelude to the invasion of the only nation which had been militarily involved in all five so-called “Coalition Wars” against revolutionary France and its revolutionary allies - the United Kingdom. The invasion of Moscow succeeded, it’s often forgotten, but the retreat spectacularly failed. A weakened Grande Armée would lose the 6th Coalition War, and Napoleon was exiled to Elba. Popular demand swept Napoleon back into office, but the 7th Coalition War exiled him to St. Helena - the monarchical European 1% had finally smashed the first modern popular democratic revolution. We can say that the West is repeating this pattern today: trying to subdue Russia as a prelude to smashing a larger enemy (China), but with what may be the same self-immolating results as the French Revolution’s 1812 campaign against Russia.

I think there’s a lot in that comparison which rings true. Personally, I will gladly wager anyone that the West will never get a chance to invade China any more than Napoleon-led Revolutionary France got to focus on the UK.

(My regular readers may smile to see once again my historical analysis of 1792-1815 not as two unrelated and distinct eras - the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, as is normal -  but as the “the Seven Coalitions Against the French Revolution”, which dispenses with typical liberal “great man-ism” and restores the primacy and political agency of the revolutionary masses in that long political era.)

Todd begins by noting how US military spending as a percentage of GDP has had 4 recent distinct phases: 1990-99, falling from 5.9% to 3.1% of GDP after the fall of the USSR; increasing up to 4.9% from 1999 to 2010, via their misguided War on Terror; dropping to 3.3% by 2017 under the (allegedly) pacific Obama; and then a small increase in military expenditure during the current “leaving reality behind” phase.

Todd concludes that the recent increase has only been small because the US has actually renounced expansionism - a cycle begun in 1991 is ending. The US clearly does not want a direct confrontation with Russia, and therefore there is no huge ramping-up of military production. Ukraine is indeed yet another military debacle for the West, but it may be the last one for a while - at least compared with the past 23 years. While many say the US and EU truly want to increase military production but simply cannot, due to dysfunction, the end result is certainly the same: it looks like less war is coming, in a welcome change.

Todd then opines that a key US policy since 1991 has been to keep Germany and Russia separated, but that this will fail along with the US-Ukrainian war on Russia. However, Todd is thinking in pre-EU terms, along old national lines which no longer exist in Europe: Germany cannot have a truly full embrace with Russia without Brussels doing the same. France and Germany have ignored some EU rules when they wanted - like on fiscal policy - but the EU is a real, genuine power and political reality. Todd ignores that here, and in much of this book.

Returning to his four phases, Todd adds more detail, which I will paraphrase.

• 1990-99: “The Peaceful Phase”. The world thought the fall of the USSR meant the victory of the US, but they were wrong. Bush I accepts the reunification of Germany despite the opposition of Mitterrand and Thatcher. Todd’s analysis is that the EU and euro were concocted to prevent this new Germany from dominating - this is the limited and faulty analysis of a non-socialist, who cannot see supranational ideas (like capitalism-imperialism) and cliques (the 1%) at play. An expansion of NATO - which was unimaginable at this point - is promised to Russia.

• 1999-2008: “Hubris” - In keeping with a theme which makes his book quite pro-religion, Todd says the hubristic phase began when the US transformed from a “zombie religion” nation to a “zero-religion” one, as posited in detail across earlier chapters. In 1997 Poland, Czechia and Hungary are invited to join NATO, and in 1999 NATO’s destruction of Yugoslavia begins. Todd says we still cannot yet see an “anti-Russian fixation”, but he crucially doesn’t note that the West’s anti-socialism fixation still reigns supreme. Putin comes to power in 1999. He notes that the 2003 invasion of Iraq marks a new phase in American history: a war of aggression, pure and simple, and there’s much truth in this. This gives Todd the space he wants so very much to give to nihilism, as he cites the lies behind Iraq as proof that: “Nihilism denies truth and reality - it is a cult of the lie.” He calls letting China into the World Trade Organisation in 2001 “the most irresponsible political and economic act which can be conceived”. Of course, insisting that joining the WTO fully explains China’s post-2008 ascendance - as opposed to the virtues and successes of their socialist democratic-inspired system - is a common trope of anti-leftism, but Todd is right that the West believed the move was without risk because of Western hubris in the alleged victory of Western liberal democratic values. Todd notes how the Germany economy became reorganised around cheap labor from Eastern Europe but doesn’t discuss the increasing role of the pan-European project: it’s as if Todd, due to his age, nationality or personality, simply doesn’t see the EU as an actual, concrete thing? In my reporting from Europe: Todd’s is not alone in his age bracket in his waving away of the EU, but this is even though people the age of Emmanuel Macron and lower clearly have the pan-European project at the heart of their worldview? Todd posits that the rise of Russophobia actually began when the US establishment was alerted by the Russian-French-German refusal to join the war in Iraq (Todd notes that it was France that followed Germany here, and not the other way around.) In 2007 Putin openly declares in a speech that Russia will not accept a unipolar world where the US makes the laws - the tide is turning.

• 2008-2017: “The American Withdrawal and the German (Peace Special) Hubris” - The Subprime Crisis showed that the American economy was a sham; the empty promises of the Obama brand change was a similar sham. The US partially withdrew from the Middle East because fracking began to pay off. In 2011 the outskirts of the US empire begins to revolt, first in Tunisia. He correctly notes that it was the Europeans - led by the French - much more than the Americans who pushed for the breakup of Libya. The Fukushima disaster pushes Angela Merkel - in a fit of green hubris - to phase out nuclear energy. Todd doesn’t mention this, but in this era the West is in a fit of banker-worship due to the 1%-enriching policies of QE and ZIRP, even as protests rage every spring and fall across the EU due to popular opposition to austerity. The EU, pushed by Germany to demand Kiev to choose between them and Russia, offers succour to the Ukrainian “Maidan Revolution” of 2014. Per Todd, the US gets involved in Ukraine only to control Germany and block any autonomous policymaking of the EU. Crimea votes to join Russia in 2014, and in 2015 Russia gets decisively involved in Syria - yet the US curiously doesn’t move against Moscow.

• 2016-2022: “The Trap of Ukrainian Nihilism” - With Brexit and Trump occurring, Todd posits 2016 as a new Year Zero for the West. In the context of this post-1991 era we can say that 2016 is the year the West’s decline becomes not evident but unstoppable. Trump’s “America First” slogan obviously clashes with the 1%’s and uniparty’s vision of unending Western liberal democratic capitalism-imperialism, causing the Washington Blob to become “regressive-violent”. Trump, like Obama, refuses to arm the Ukrainians. The American economic decline is denied by their elite, which was probably busy watching the play Hamilton for the umpteenth time and pathetically gushing over the use of non-White actors in White historical roles. Trump’s erratic foreign policies are replaced by Biden’s continuation of not Obamaism but Clintonism, which began in 1992, the start of this cycle. In 2022 the supposed successful resistance of the Ukrainian capital spurs hope for victory but, as Todd notes, “The dynamic of the war has become irresistible because war is, always and everywhere, one of the imagined falsehoods (virtualités) of nihilism.” Biden arms Ukraine but only in a piecemeal and restrained fashion, constantly violating his own red lines, which gives more credence to Todd’s idea that the West does not want a direct military confrontation with Russia. The US defeat in Ukraine has become global in a way which few could have guessed: not just militarily but economically (sanctions backfiring to spark record Western inflation) and ideologically (the “Rest” siding with Russia against the West).

Todd concludes:

"Defeat now would mean German-Russian rapprochement, the de-dollarisation of the world, the end of imports paid for by 'internal collective money-printing’, and great poverty.

But I'm not at all sure that the people in Washington are aware of this.

[…]

The zero sociological state of America precludes any reasonable prediction as to the ultimate decisions its leaders will make. Let's keep in mind that nihilism makes everything, absolutely everything, possible.

Doëlan, September 30, 2023”

However, events just one week later compelled Todd to add a short postscript, titled “American Nihilism: the Proof from Gaza”, which Todd says proves the preference of Washington for violence. He also notes how a UN vote on the issue shows the same opposition between the “Rest” and the West on this issue just as much as on Ukraine.

Todd’s support for Gaza and Russia is as morally sound as it is contrarian within the West, and he has continued what is a very impressive career in taking the correct side of things… though support for Gaza today is perhaps the easiest call he ever made.

“As far as the United States is concerned, the concept of nihilism allows us to go further than interpretation: their unthinking, unqualified commitment to Israel is a symptom of suicide.”

He finally concludes his book:

“If we want to anticipate the strategic choices of the United States we must then, with all urgency, abandon the axiom of rationality. The U.S. is not in the business of making money by estimating costs. In the village of Washington, in the land of mass shootings, in the age of religion zero, the primary impulse is a need for violence.”

Brief final thoughts on this book and on writing this series

I think these last two quotations encapsulate my ultimate problem with this otherwise superb, necessary, current, incredibly original and rare book: because Todd does not believe in socialist-inspired analysis he too often settles for the conclusion of mere “suicide”, “nihilism” and blaming not the system of capitalism-imperialism but simply the latest cartel employing it the best - now in Washington, but previously in London and Paris, etc. The Defeat of the West in Ukraine and the collapse of the West has happened to the West multiple times before in the Liberal Democratic era  (1861, 1871, 1914 and 1945, to name four major instances) - liberal democracy produces the same problems, inequalities and failures, and Todd doesn’t grasp this obvious historical pattern. It’s not “suicide” - it’s the murder of the 99%; it’s not “nihilism” - it’s the immoral refusal to allow socialist-inspired morality into public policymaking; it’s not a small gang in Washington or Davos - it’s a liberal democratic system which refuses to prosecute them.

I think that this series has been full of my conclusions, analyses and thoughts on this book - there’s no need to recapitulate them here any more fully. Anyone who has read this far - and I thank you, truly! - knows my analyses on these subjects.

My hope is that I’ve included enough food for your own reflections; enough balance to Todd’s ideas; enough new facts and viewpoints which Todd ignored; enough reports from the actual European and American street to satisfy the time which you entrusted me with here.

I think my other hope is more secure: Todd has written a book which has rightly been judged incredibly timely and which is indispensable in 2024. The problem, of course, is that it is only available in French! I think my efforts to translate and condense the best parts was a useful service: the West thinks highly of Todd - once again, here’s The New York Times take on this book from back in March - but I doubt they are rushing a copy of this book out for the English-speaking masses.

I thought this would be a big job, but I have done this sort of thing before with other necessary books. It is the first French-only book I’ve given my personal multipart treatment to, however - guess all that French study really paid off! I do admit I was more in-depth in my analysis than I originally anticipated, but I think that’s due to the quality of Todd’s ideas, which demanded explanation and attention.

At eight parts and nearly 50,000 words this series is only a bit short of an appropriate length for a political science book, but I don’t plan to make it available in book form. I haven’t done that with all the other multipart analyses of books I’ve done over the years, and it’s because this format just isn’t original enough; it’s too reliant on the work of others. My books on Iran and France - I truly believe you can’t get that information in English seemingly anywhere else. My book on China was similar to this series, but it was a unique comparison of not one but two very different books, and it was only published by the late, great leftist journalist Andre Vltchek at his insistence (for which I am eternally grateful).

I will certainly try to get a hold of Todd to see what he thinks, if anything. I’m certain no one else in the Anglophone world has given his book, only published in January, such a rapid and thorough treatment. I will let my Substack readers know if he gets back to me!

Lastly, a bit of personal information: I apologise for the long delay between the 7th and 8th part in this series. Yes, we all deserve a summer vacation, but the truth is my enthusiasm for writing is not as strong as it used to be. I have just relocated, temporarily, to Washington DC to cover the US election circus for PressTV, and it takes a rather large amount of effort to do 2-3 TV reports and 2-3 columns per week, plus 1 book every year or two, plus all the reading, research and reflection required for these types of works, as I did for much of the last decade. And I don’t want to lie to the incredible souls who are actually reading this: it’s more motivating to have a big audience like I had at the now terminally-frozen The Saker website then I have after building up this Substack from scratch 10 months ago. At the same time, I truly can’t believe I even have as many subscribers as I do! But gathering together a big audience for something like this is just incredibly difficult, and I just have too much to do (largely to pay my bills, LOL, like everyone else), and too little interest in self-promotion to try and build this Substack into something much larger.

I am not writing that I’m going to stop writing this Substack - I just wanted to explain why my output has been down over the past year.

Yes, it shouldn’t be hard for a trained print journalist to pump out a couple columns a week and keep a larger project going - as I did for years - but I wanted to relate to you wonderful readers that I have been putting my time into other projects and areas of my life, recently. Somehow, the world has kept turning despite my decreased output… LOL!

But I can’t thank you enough for reading this series! I hope you enjoyed it, and I love any and all comments.

I think Todd did a great job and it’s a fantastic, prescient, honest, humane book. I think my analyses would have improved his book but - LOL - I am likely biased in my favor. But in the final regard: I do believe we made a good tandem in 2024!

As always: I believe these efforts of mine to write - and your equal efforts to read and discuss these ideas (which are in no way mine but are entirely universal and shared) in your own lives - are all small but necessary drops in the huge ocean wave of humane leftism which is slowly and inexorably sweeping our beloved planet.

<—>

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland, Tunisia and elsewhere. His latest book is France's Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West's Best Values. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese. Any reposting or republication of any of these articles is approved and appreciated. He tweets at @RaminMazaheri2 and writes at substack.com/@raminmazaheri