THE FUTURE TO COME
What follows is my English translation of an article by Franco Maloberti, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on 26th August 2024. (All formatting original).
One can divide the world into three parts: the South, i.e. the poor and defenceless part, the West consisting basically of the G7 countries, and the middle kingdom made up of Russia, China, with the addition of India and Iran (or Persia).
The people of the so-called Global South, like all humans, aspire to better living conditions and a secure future.
What do they suffer instead? Poverty, economic dependence, social contempt, and a bleak future due to suffocating Western hegemony. It sees a past history of humiliation, impositions, expropriation of resources, obtained by force, both military and technological. Why is all this possible, and why is it accepted?
There are its own responsibilities, of course: the corruption and incompetence of the ruling class, but also, and above all, the power that dominates. Domination and robbery are accepted because the people of the South feel weak, unable to resist, and the few who try to react are brutally repressed.
The so-called South sees an overpowering reality without morals, spoilt, arrogant, aggressive people who behave like bullies in a run-down suburban neighbourhood. And the bullies are in a pack, the G7, with the top dog doing and undoing at will. The bullies call themselves superior, not only militarily, but also morally and ethically.
They consider others to be sub-humans worth one hundredth of themselves. In fact, the fall of one bully must be compensated by a hundred falls of sub-humans. Dependence also applies to products. The global South has to produce things of low technological value that the West buys at a very low price. In practice, the West has prospered by exploiting the toil and suffering of the South, which feels enslaved by the West.
On the other hand, the West thinks that its prosperity depends on superiority in all fields and, because of this, it considers itself the master of the world. In reality, prosperity, which in the past was due to the plundering of other people's resources, now depends fundamentally on energy and its effective use, achieved by the products of technology.
Watt's invention of the steam engine in 1775 was the turning point. The then Eastern technological supremacy began to decline because the transformation of energy into motor power was massively used to wage wars of conquest and supremacy. Energy is the “fuel” of technological advancements; energy dominance, achieved through looting of various kinds, maintains (for now) the gap and dependence of the rest of the world. The South is weak and winning with the weak is easy. Since fighting the weak is sordid by definition, over time, the effect has been to put the strong in an intolerable position. The weakness of the adversary makes the actions of the bullies who commit indiscriminate violence and inflict inhuman collective punishments cruel. Due to the growing realisation of the absurdity of their behaviour, some of the bullies have begun to despise themselves, taking refuge in ephemeral pleasures and, increasingly, self-destructing with dysfunction and drugs.
What is referred to as the middle kingdom is made up of countries that have suffered humiliation from the West, and are aware of it. China, a civilisation thousands of years old, well remembers the period 1839-1949, which it calls “the century of humiliation”. Repeated defeats in the Opium Wars forced China to make concessions to the West, to pay indemnities and territorial cessions.
As for Russia, a country with great cultural and scientific traditions, the Cold War, which started shortly after the end of World War II, caused containment by the United States and the Allies and wore down the Russian economic and political structure. In particular, Russians believe that perestroika, the reform made by Gorbachev, caused a weakening and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union, a dramatic event for the Russian people.
The political consequences caused a humiliating subordination of Russian military and geostrategic power to the NATO countries. India, also rich in tradition and culture, was dominated by the Anglo-Saxons for more than two centuries. It was initially outsourced to the East India Company, which collected taxes. It then became a British protectorate that exploited labour and stole mineral resources. The mortifications suffered are still well felt: Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in 2019: “India has experienced two centuries of humiliation by the West”.
Finally, Iran, or rather Persia, one of the richest places in history, culture and beauty. Even for this millennial reality, there have been almost a hundred years of humiliation, basically due to the attractiveness of its oil wealth. The current sanctions, killings and bombings exacerbate the sense of revenge for these decades of humiliation.
It is important to note that the Middle Kingdom has histories and cultures far superior to those of most of the West. The cultural base and strong traditions mean that the rulers are highly capable. In contrast, Western rulers are ignorant cretins who use brute force to maintain hegemony.
As mentioned, the dominance of the West is based on power. But there are two types of power, one overt, which is military and economic, and the other invisible, called “soft power”. It is with these forms of power that the West maintains hegemony. The question is how much of this power is real and how much is fictitious.
Consider military power, which the West needs to do business. The sale of weapons generates an exaggerated profit, and showing that one's weapons are efficient is of paramount importance. In order to show superiority, conflicts are fomented against weak and unprepared peoples in order to defeat them handily, so that, crucially, the weapons can shine and get publicity. The problem arises when weapons meet weapons of equal or superior efficiency that, in addition, cost much less. Or, one encounters proud populations that do not bow to abuse and reject the invader. The harmful effect in these cases is twofold: negative publicity and a demonstration that military power is shattered. Continuing in conflicts becomes counterproductive and it is urgent to find a way out. Examples of this are the escapes from Vietnam, Afghanistan and soon Ukraine, with the hot potato remaining in the hands of European fools (after kissing them on the little head).
Economic power depends on currency dominance. There are experts who can argue for hours on the subject but, in short, power is given by the fiat nature of money, i.e.: fiat money is an artificial means of payment, untethered from the price of commodities such as gold and silver, which rests on the trust placed in its value by governments and central banks and therefore has no value in and of itself. The value of money lies only in the trust placed in the issuing state that gives value to fiat money. If trust persists, money can continue to be printed, creating fictitious value with which to take possession of other people's businesses and property. The currency, when printed without control, becomes similar to the beads used by the Dutch to buy Manhattan. Currency becomes more or less the equivalent of uncollectable bills of exchange that pass from hand to hand like a lit match or an ice cube on an August day.
The evidence of the ice cube is the debt of Western countries. America's is over thirty-five trillion dollars, and has tripled in ten years. To understand how inappropriate confidence is, one only has to read what “fiscaldata.treasury.gov” says: The comparison of a country's debt to its gross domestic product (GDP) reveals the country's ability to repay its debt. This ratio is considered a better indicator of a country's fiscal situation than the simple national debt number because it shows the debt burden relative to the country's total economic output and thus its ability to repay it. The US debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 100 per cent in 2013, when both debt and GDP were about 16.7 trillion. (In 2023, US debt was 123% of GDP). (And note that GDP is far higher than manufacturing output, which, in reality, is what counts).
For Italy, the public debt is around two trillion euro or more than 140% of GDP. Japan is another country full of debt (more than nine trillion dollars, 236% of GDP), but it is 45% held by the Bank of Japan. Overall, the average debt of the G7 countries is 127% of GDP. It is true that a certain fraction of the debt is in the hands of G7 citizens, but for those who are not members of that “club” to own some of the G7 debt is a tad risky. Perhaps it is on the basis of these considerations that China, which held more than USD 1.3 trillion of US debt in 2013, is now down to less than eight hundred billion with a downward trend of more than a hundred billion a year. In its own small way, Japan is also reducing its commitment while the UK, Luxembourg and Canada are happily buying US bonds.
Let us now consider “soft power”. This corresponds to the ability to create consensus through persuasion rather than coercion. The United States has built “soft power” by using film, the press, television, social media and by exploiting the potential of smartphones and information technology. The effectiveness of their action is demonstrated, for example, by the dominance of the media and television and film productions, which have made people believe that it was a meritorious work to ethnically cleanse the American Indians, or convinced the world that grilled patties with a cheese leaf (called hamburgers) or a drink that is worse than the chinotto of my youth, are sublime culinary examples. It follows that Western “soft power” is not about asserting the values of one's own culture or founding historical values, but is the product of a powerful disinformation machine that makes one believe that the West is superior in every activity both moral and cultural.
The transmission of national culture and traditions, understood as the knowledge and values that characterise one's own societies, has been annulled and replaced by bizarre beliefs instilled by Hollywood film products and other similar disinformation agents.
“Soft power” is particularly effective in vassal countries, such as Italy, where it imposes “values” such as deterrence, conflict, the use of weapons and violence; these are instilled in minds using crime dramas, monster stories and an infinite number of “trashy serials” of shootings and fisticuffs broadcast on national television, which, in practice, are deadly accomplices of that “soft power” aimed at making people stupid.
A second factor that helps “soft power” is the mediocre culture of rulers in vassal countries. It is of great help to have rulers who are semi-illiterate, with a trivial educational qualification, or who have grown up in problematic environments, such as run-down suburbs. Daddy's boys who dropped out of school out of listlessness are also fine.
On the contrary, countries with a strong national identity and feeling, whose writing does not use Western characters, believe marginally in the fictitious Hollywood “soft power”; they value their own culture, traditions and customs and, among other things, follow the food customs of their own country.
The framework outlined constitutes the preconditions for predicting the future. The Middle Kingdom has evidently decided that it will never again suffer humiliation and has begun to counter the power of the West and, in a visible way, its military and economic power. A path that takes time, but is already underway. It takes even more time to refute “soft power”, particularly in the South, but, to some extent, the West itself is responsible for crushing “soft power”, with ridiculous drifts in customs and sexual behaviour, sold to the foolish Westerners as “modernity”.
A reasonable solution would be peaceful coexistence with mutual respect of cultures, customs and traditions, without hegemonic impositions. Reasonable, but impossible, reasonable solutions are found with those who are reasonable and not with those who think that maintaining hegemony is a matter of survival.
Noam Chomsky wrote this in 2003 in his book “Hegemony or Survival”. According to Chomsky, since the end of World War II, the ruling class in the United States has been pursuing an “imperial” strategy to maintain global hegemony by military, political and economic means. It is the Wolfowitz Doctrine that said in 1992 that American supremacy must be preserved at all costs by eliminating rivals wherever they may emerge. Contempt for democracy and the rule of law, mass violations of human rights - including ethnic cleansing and genocide -, the illegal use of “preventive war” against states that oppose global hegemony, and many other filthy things have characterised the strategy implemented, even in our times.
It is certain that the above has been well in the minds, and for some time, of the ruling class of the Middle Kingdom, which has formulated a project, initially left uncoordinated, of counteraction and ultimate solution. This project is similar to the moves in a chess game: one quietly prepares the conditions and then goes on the attack for a victory independent of the opponent's moves.
What do you do when a bully bullies and hears no reason? What do you do when a ferocious beast prowls around? It is the answer to these questions that leads to strategy. The final solution is to isolate the bullies (or beasts), to confine them after rendering them harmless. Total isolation, a new Berlin Wall separating the beasts of the G7 (who knows if any little pawns, like Italy, will be saved?) from a “new world” based on mutual respect and civilised coexistence.
The new world will no longer have economic, financial and trade relations with the “beasts”. The rule is: do not feed the beast because if you feed the beast, the beast eats you. And this is the only way to break free from Western hegemony. There have been many attempts to make the West realise that there is room for everyone.
In official meetings, the Chinese president has repeatedly told the American president this, but the latter refuses to understand and confusingly believes that the only path is “hegemony or survival”. Certainly, the Middle Kingdom has no faith in the West, as the West has proven to be a patent liar. The middle kingdom knows that there is no way to make the bullies come to their senses; attempts to make them see reason are just a test of their unreasonableness and probably to try to open the eyes of the vassals.
The basic conditions of the project are:
The economic and social growth of the South, so as to make it an effective partner and create a market for medium- and high-tech products, with mutual benefits. For the South, high technology is useless (and perhaps even harmful to the West). The technological developments in the Middle Kingdom are more than sufficient to meet the needs of the “new world”. In the field of microelectronics, for example, the two-nanometre technologies deemed vital by Western governments are inessential to much of the world. They only serve to wage wars with artificial intelligence and better control their subjects.
A second condition is technological, cognitive and manufacturing independence. The current set-up entails dependencies of various kinds. Technologies are kept secret so as to keep advanced manufacturing processes in the hands of the West. Knowledge is protected by patents and its use is limited to those who own them. Manufacturing capacity is a weak bastion that the West struggles to defend, even though the compartmentalisation of production limits an overall view of the final product.
A third, essential condition is to make the South realise that the West is what it is: a lying, outlaw, arrogant and cruel bully. That is, it is necessary to crumble that soft power that creates around the West a shell of respectability and “modernity”.
Finally, counteract, while remaining within legal limits, and erode military and economic power. Actions outside the law are neither advisable nor in the nature of the Middle Kingdom. In contrast, being outlawed is now a practice in the West and favours point three.
With these four points in mind, one can understand what has happened, [what] is happening and what is likely to happen. The Middle Kingdom has long been working towards the first goal. China's initiatives in the South seem to be inspired by the Confucian idea of “Ping Tian Xia”, i.e. bringing peace and order to the world, rather than being driven by the desire for conquest. Obviously, the initiatives are not free of charge, but are nevertheless aimed at mutual benefit and characterised by respect for local cultures and traditions. Russia has acted similarly on the mining front and in the supply of grain and fertilisers, as well as in the military field.
For the second condition, China's MIC 2025 project is well known. This defines the high-level industrial strategy and technological development. Beijing has always opposed US “technological containment” aimed at limiting China's development. For this, technological and cognitive self-sufficiency is essential. However, super-advanced technologies are only useful for interchange with the West. Their use for the “new world” is currently premature and will be diluted and largely deferred over time. Strategically, however, it is important to display super-technological capabilities that compete with those of the West.
The third condition is favoured by the West itself. There are many outlawed and inhuman behaviours that Western censorship obscures from its own citizens. This makes the stupid rulers believe that not being valued by their own citizens for who they are will allow their reckless actions to continue. The fact is that censorship does not apply to the South: news of criminal behaviour causes growing dismay and disapproval even where “soft power” remains effective.
Of course, the killings in Gaza, the impeding of the flow of aid, the carpet-bombing, the supplying of weapons are obfuscated in the West by hordes of porn-journalists (and porn-newspaper editors) [a better translation could be presstitutes], but the news arrives in real time in the South and all these barbarities backfire on the West itself, consolidating the objective three.
The Middle Kingdom does not intervene directly because it takes time and an escalation of conflicts would be in favour of the West. Then, an escalation would cause greater damage and, reluctantly, “weak pawns” on the chessboard are sacrificed and left to their sad fate.
The fourth condition is described by current events. The war in Ukraine, called a special military operation by the Russians, has de-Nazification, de-militarisation and neutralisation as its declared aims, but it is not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire West. The Russians focus on the destruction of the war apparatus and infrastructure. The more weapons the West sends to Ukraine, the more the West de-militarises. In the beginning, leftover stock was sent and this was not relevant, but now the sending of sophisticated things and their systematic destruction has important consequences for achieving the goal. The strategy is to empty the arsenals of very expensive weapons and ammunition that are fired, possibly sold on the black market, wasted or destroyed with much cheaper weapons. Contrast economic power with galloping de-dollarisation.
Note that the evolution of current wars takes into account the first three conditions, particularly the first and third.
For the first, time is needed and for the third, also. It takes time for the group of hegemons to show their outlawed nature. Countering military power is important, but eroding military resources and capabilities is much more useful. Showing the outlaw nature, as already mentioned, is done by the West itself: carrying out attacks, bombing civilians, murdering children in cold blood and “justifying” all these barbarities, as the wretched rulers of Europe and the EU do, are suicidal “moves” that favour point three. Having re-elected Ursula and having Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] in charge are positions on the chessboard that guarantee checkmate.
The key factor, however, is time. The economic and social growth of Africa and South America is fast but not immediate. Various organisations (notably the BRICS) favour cooperation between the South and the Middle Kingdom, but having time is strategic. The more time passes, the more they de-dollarise. The more time passes, the more nations join the BRICS. The more time passes, the more the horror at Netanyahu's deliberate massacre of hundreds of thousands of Gaza civilians and his invitation to address Congress for a bombastic speech interrupted by fifty-eight standing ovations, make clear and consolidate the collective disdain.
The more time passes, the more it becomes clear that NATO is not a defensive organisation, and that the Constitution is being violated in Italy. The more time passes, the more the citizens of the vassal countries realise the aggressive nature of the west. Bloody provocations, such as murders of Palestinian personalities on Iranian territory or invasions on Russian territory are met with careful calculation, as in a chess game the desperate move of a player with no way out is assessed.
The future will be as the Middle Kingdom has long predicted. A clear and final separation from the West, which, deprived of resources and cheap labour, will decline inexorably. Perhaps, some peripheral realities will be able to “save themselves”.
In Italy, for example, as Putin also said, there are “respectable” people and that is a good sign. However, having a head of government who changes her dress and hairstyle every morning and fidgets as if our country had any relevance is not a possible boundary condition. Those in charge (politicians and porn-journalists) may continue to dull the TV addicts a little, but they do not realise that these holidays of theirs in the Apulian sea and, if it goes well, the next ones will be a memory of times gone by.