The post-Cold War world order is "coming apart at the seams," with a limited number of countries no longer able to act according to their own interests while disregarding "international moral code and law," Russian analyst Timofei Bordachev wrote for Lenta.ru.
Bordachev, who heads the Center for European and International Studies at the HSE, called this the key trend that will shape the future world order. He also added that it has been exposed by the Syrian crisis.
The situation around the embattled Arab country "has clearly returned us to the era of great powers' rivalry," he said, adding that NATO members, Gulf monarchies, Russia, Iran and China have to a different extent been embroiled in this conflict.
These countries have split into camps, or, as Bordachev called them, "support teams." De jure Russia, China and Iran "are not fighting for Syria against the United States and their allies in Europe and the Gulf," he observed. "But a proxy war between them is ongoing."
The Syrian crisis probably offered a glimpse of what's to come in the fall of 2013 when Russia's vigorous diplomatic efforts prevented the US and its allies from launching a military campaign against Damascus. This, according to the analyst, was something that no one "could have possibly imagined after the end of the Cold War."
The second milestone took place a year ago when Russia became engaged in the Syrian conflict upon a formal request from Damascus. By that time the war had long since stopped being an internal Syrian matter since other nations, including the US and its allies, as well as non-state actors were directly or covertly involved in the fighting.
The outcome of the "multilevel standoff" in Syria has not been determined yet, but one key implication of the conflict has already become clear.
"A period when a small group of countries enjoyed the right to act based on its own interests while disregarding international moral code and law has ended. This is extremely important in terms of understanding what world awaits us in the future and what has to be done to make it if not safer, then less dangerous," the analyst said.
This is not to say that other countries will openly challenge the West or spark a conflict with the US and its partners. Bordachev ruled such a scenario out.
"A group of countries will not challenge the West … but they will simply act in the international arena as they see fit and do what corresponds to their national interests," he said. "This in and of itself has collided with the international order that took shape" following the end of the Cold War. "This is why the rule that 'only one can break the rules' will hardly be revived as a norm of international dialogue," he added.
What I find most surprising today is that the insiders and the elite have no idea what is percolating just beneath the surface. Okay, maybe their arrogance actually produces its own fog, so it should not come as a surprise that they are blinded. They do not look at the calendar, which, if one really looks, says "1788" on it. Something is close. Very close. Society is near the breaking point.
My own experience is that Hillary’s so-called Deplorables are actually the most reserved, most polite, and most honest demographic in the country. They are more informed, more self-reliant, and among other things, better armed. Regarding their arms, they are incredibly responsible, and not the source of the violence for which the implement, and not the person, is too often blamed. The Deplorables have the longest fuse. It is, however, a fuse.
Alt Left, on the other hand, are the Neo Fascists and Neo Neocons. It is Alt Left that thinks Free Speech means THEIR speech only. It is Alt Left that needs 'safe spaces' and wants to enforce thought crime.
It is Alt Left, and its media lapdog sites, that is heavily into censorship of ideas that diverge from their approved ideology. It is Alt Left that champions regime change and ratcheting up the rhetoric against Russia. It is Alt Left that believes it has an inherent right, even an obligation, to lie and obfuscate if it serves their greater purpose.
Perhaps most significant is that it is Alt Left who so quickly resorts to violence and vandalism when confronted with people and ideas with which it takes exception. Never has that been as clear as in this election cycle.
The Deplorables, however, are not possessed of infinite patience. Like a capacitor, there is a charge building, and at some point it will be released into the circuitry of society.
The media and other insiders believe themselves to be immune. That thought no doubt results from being immersed inside a cocoon where dissonant voices are not allowed. When the levee breaks, or the capacitor releases its charge, they are going to be gob smacked.
Precious few of them are anywhere near as immune as they believe themselves to be. Additionally, what they might think, or hope, is their support, their security, their safe space, doesn't really exist.
Most of society's guardians, whether they are law enforcement or military, are card-carrying members of the Deplorables.
France was similarly constructed in the late 1780s. The elite were isolated only in thought, not in reality. Their protection was of a Potemkin Village nature: not actually there, but merely a facade that gave them false comfort.
They paid dearly for their arrogance and ignorance.
History may not repeat, but it does rhyme. The calendar really does seem to say 1788, so 1789---and 1792--are not as far off as some would like to believe.
This is not a call to arms, but it is a call to reality. Ignore it at your own peril.
Some may see these words as a threat. They are not. They are, however, a warning, and a warning from someone who is a student of history.
Every society eventually reaches a breaking point. Ours is nearly there. Some of those who might feel threatened, the so-called elite and insiders, think that they can buy protection as easily as they can buy a Gulfstream. How naïve! Who are the private security contractors? Who are the various SOGs? Like law enforcement and the rest of the military, they are the Deplorables. The Deplorables will take your money, but you will not take their lives. Better said, they won’t give up their lives for you or your family. The security you believe you have purchased is an illusion. Make that delusion. Best to get that out front here and now.
Some who feel threatened, or nervous, might fall back on the tired adage of ‘We gave them (the Deplorables) everything; what do they think they will do without us?’ Well, the use of ‘we’ is arrogant, because those who have actually produced something of value are few and far between. Industrialists, for lack of a better term, are those who produced for society things of lasting value. There are few true industrialists today, and many who still remain have shipped their production overseas, jacking up the compensation of bonus-based execs, but contributing to the hollowing out of America. The true industrialists did produce the cars, trucks, machine tools, generators, servers and even computers. They produced lifesaving medicines and treatments. They made steel plants and built railroads.
They produced jobs. They even produced the guns that the Deplorables have by the hundreds of millions. The Deplorables recognize that entire contribution.
Mark Zuckerberg, however, is not Henry Ford. Jack Dorsey is not Andrew Carnegie. Mark Benioff is not John Rockefeller. Lloyd Blankfein is not John Pierpont Morgan. (Elon Musk might turn out to be someone of significance, if he is allowed to fail and is forgiven for it. Time will tell.) The old Robber Barons, despite their faults, did produce things of lasting value.
What did these new ‘titans of industry’ give us? Facebook? Snapchat?
Twitter? They gave us banality and pabulum. Some embraced it, despite its triteness, perhaps because all other meaning had already been lost, like America’s exported jobs. These new titans, Neo Titans, did little more than help dumb down society. They made America less productive, less curious, more pedestrian. Maybe they think they gave us the internet, but credit for that goes to DARPA, which is to say the military, which is to say the Deplorables. The Neo Titans gave America nothing, at least nothing positive. Social networking? Gaming? Selfies?
The Deplorables can live without the silly oxymoron called social networking, which, as anyone who looks at it objectively knows, is anything but social. We don’t care what two thousand of our fake friends had for breakfast, or what Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks of the latest Presidential debate. He probably thinks we do. After all, he has ‘Twitter Followers’, whom he assumes live and die by his every Tweet. We can live without that. I wonder if his ego can? He, and those of his ilk, are merely Kim Kardashians without knowing it. They are the talentless dishing out white bread to the emotionally and spiritually starved.
Some might think this is all Trump’s fault. Again, that shows a degree of ignorance and naïveté which characterizes the elite. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. He might even be a salve, as the changes he could bring might defuse some of the current anger.
On the other hand, Hillary is a lit match in a room of dynamite. She, like many of the self-important, thinks her very existence is a favor to the rest of us. She epitomizes the absolute worst of what America has become. Above the law, wealthy not through accomplishment, but through influence peddling only, and a bull in a china shop in terms of her effect on both the country and the world---and I apologize to bulls for that analogy. The world is more unstable because of her.
America is less safe because of her. Russia and the US---the two largest nuclear powers---are more at odds because of her. With her in power, we will reach the breaking point at home and internationally, perhaps leading to ‘accidental’ nuclear war, as the heightened rhetoric impacts clear thinking. Society is more stratified because of her. Race relations have deteriorated because of her (and Obama).
There are few current ills in society and in geopolitics that cannot be laid at her feet, at least to some extent. The Great Deceiver to many, who exhibits an astonishing aversion to truth telling, is enough to make even an agnostic wonder if the anti-Christ hasn’t finally arrived for its three and a half years of rule.
A recently hacked email of John Podesta finds him saying “she (Hillary) has begun to hate everyday Americans”. No doubt the same feelings were voiced by Nicolas Ceaucescu. It turned out the feeling was mutual.
Elect Hillary, and continue with business as usual, and it is likely this warning will become an epitaph for the America we know. Society may collapse regardless, because the rot is already very great, but she will hasten the day of reckoning.
The Deplorables have already considered what is coming. They are as prepared as they can be. Years of decline have enabled many to build their survival skills, to make due with less, to build real communities where one man can trust another, to discover what is truly important and what can and should be salvaged from this society.
Outside of that demographic, however, people are stark naked. They are vulnerable in ways they simply cannot imagine. They are unprepared and unskilled for what will matter most. They are cannon fodder living on borrowed time.
History is full of examples of this sort of collapse. We humans have always rolled along a sine wave of progress and decline, of civility and social unrest. We think we have outgrown the sort of mayhem with which the history books are full, but that thought stems from recency bias. Most of history---the vast majority---is not peaceful.
Societies are not, on average, stable and safe. Thomas Hobbes knew that quite well, as evidenced in his most famous quote. Humanity is likely on the verge of returning to the mean, and the mean is exactly that: mean. In case some have forgotten their Hobbes: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Have a nice day.
A terrifying Russian television broadcast explicitly told civilians to find out where their nearest bomb shelter is and repeatedly asked viewers if they were ready for nuclear war.
One apocalyptic broadcast told viewers on Moscow's state-owned TV channel NTV: "If it should one day happen, every one of you should know where the nearest bomb shelter is. It’s best to find out now."
The enraged host, Evgeny Kiselyov, blasted America's "impudent behaviour" and spent two hours warning that a conflict could take "nuclear dimensions".
Aggressive posturing from Russia in recent weeks has seen the state force 40 million of its citizens to take part in a massive defence drill to prepare them for a nuclear holocaust.
Russia’s military announced it would run the country-wide drill in preparation of a large-scale war.
The governor of St Petersburg clarified what bread rations people could expect should Russia come under attack – 300 grams for 20 days.
The Kremlin also ordered nuclear capable missiles to be rolled into a base in mainland Europe, on an enclave near Poland called Kaliningrad.
It comes as Russia vowed to shoot down any American fighter planes that attack President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria.
Verbal jousting between the US, Britain and Russia over the issue of the ongoing bombardment of civilians in Syria are reaching a peak, with the very real possibility of genuine armed conflict between the nations taking place over the city of Aleppo.
But one expert believes Putin's latest ramping-up of tensions is simply a tactic to prevent the US from interfering in Syria and to put the incoming American President on the back foot when they take office next year.
Aleksander Baunov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said the civil defence drills and the heated programming on television were a ploy to deter the US from interfering with Russia’s military campaign in Syria or responding too strongly to suspected Russian efforts to interfere with the US elections.
He said: "They want to touch bottom and then to try to go up.
“Any responsible politician…if you are responsible and experienced, it cannot start with further downgrading already bad relations if they are already at bottom.”
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