A snag in the Global North's global domination?

Much of the Western press and leadership are portraying the East-West conflict over Ukraine as a temporary issue that will be quickly remedied by regime change against what they see as problematic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin. In some ways, they are correct. 

Since the end of the original Cold War, the main tension in the world was emerging in the North-South relationship, not the East-West conflict, making the current geopolitical situation something of an anomaly. Except for direct contests over hegemony, the main struggle in the world has always been between the exploiter and exploited, or the ruler and the ruled.

War against the Global South

With wars mainly being "interventions" targeting Global South nations like Iraq and Libya, and the Global North having a distinct advantage, able to project the image of itself as a global policeman under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, for a time it seemed as if a simmering North-South conflict was becoming the accepted reality.

The alterations to the language of war in the 1990s and early 2000s to speak of humanitarian intervention, rogue states, terrorism and global policing showed a shift, conscious or otherwise, to waging wars on the economically undeveloped nations. Military technology and wargames changed to target lightly armed resistance groups, rather than peer opponents.

What is happening now, with the renewal of conflict between the West and Russia, is an unexpected hiccup in the dominance of the Global North and especially the Western powers. Russia had essentially been considered a solved problem and a defeated enemy for over thirty years, and the West had moved on to other targets. Russia refusing to be dead, and being capable of challenging the West again, is a potentially fatal impediment Western goals.

The wrong battle

For the West to now be bogged down in a contest with Russia essentially means that the Global North is unable to fight the battle it wanted to fight, namely a battle to maintain dominance over the Global South. The West is mainly responsible, failing to create Global North alliance structures that would include Russia and potentially even China in a world order that would see the North dominate the South.

The selfishness of, very probably, individual politicians and thought leaders in the United States and United Kingdom is most likely to blame for the failure of the Global North to form a united front against the Global South (a godsend for the peoples of the latter). It seems like the idea of having Russians and Chinese as part of the club was just unacceptable to English-speaking elites, who would prefer that the "civilised" world and its economically vital activity are only led by people who look and sound like them.

Russia and China are essentially too "developed" now to be considered an economic periphery that can be conquered or exploited by the West. Countries like India, Pakistan and Iran can also increasingly be considered "developed" and don't really fall into the "Third World" stereotype either, as they may have done in the past.

What next?

While there may be attempts by the East and West to use the Global South as a proxy battlefield again, like they did in the original Cold War, the degree of resistance there against all such interference will likely increase. The Global South was on the rise in its own right, with an increasing willingness of local regimes to defy any expression of global authority or global good, and instead take possession of their own resources. Leaders such as Chavez, Morales, Gaddafi and others were not anomalies but part of a trend that was sure to continue, and will continue.

Even if Western regimes are not impeded much, or Russia and China are quickly disposed of and the Global North falls under Anglo-Saxon authority, their attempts to police and control the Global South will still go severely awry. We will still see terrorism, devastating wars and refugee flows that, in addition to climate change, will complicate Western dominance. They will be unable to pacify the populations of the Global South, who will continue to elect leaders who defy foreign exploitation and dominance. As such, even the most optimistic forecast for the West is one of war, waste, misery and the defeat of global hegemony in the long term.

The thousand cuts to the globally dominant Western powers were already going to be a death sentence for it, even without the West encountering a resurgent Russia and having to fight an intra-North battle.

While the war in Ukraine may be sad for people with blonde hair and blue eyes, it offers much-deserved relief for some people of the Global South. Perhaps they may be spared, for a time, from being the focus of murderous rampages by the supposedly civilised West. The situation in Ethiopia seems to have calmed around the time the conflict grew in Ukraine. We should be mindful, however, that the Western-inflamed humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unabated. As the wars in Bosnia showed us, violence may briefly return to the Global North, but is almost continuously exported to the Global South.

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Why refuse nuclear energy in a climate emergency?

Despite a recent U-turn, Germany's Green Party long opposed nuclear energy, holding this view even though nuclear power plants do not contribute to climate change. In the UK, the Scottish National Party (SNP) continues to reject nuclear energy.

There is a climate emergency, we are told. That means that we must radically change course immediately, or it will be too late.

Competing with other nations is hard to balance with saving the climate

The creation of an absolutely eco-friendly future, living fully in adherence to the philosophy of the environmentalists, is not something we actually have time for if we are in an emergency due to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming specifically. The idea of a grand new war of waste and economic competition by Western regimes and their ideological structures, against Russia and China, is not compatible with addressing a climate emergency.

In 2018, the United Nations was saying we have only until 2030 to avert an actual climate disaster (an event that will put serious strain on our countries, such as unprecedented refugees and threatening food shortages). The idea that the West can focus on eliminating energy dependence on Russia and economic reliance on China (that means accommodating an explosion of dirty industry and energy to accomplish such goals and waging conflicts throughout the world), and at the same time avert a climate disaster, is folly. Food shortages alone will be completely unmanageable, when added to the potential loss of a third of the world's wheat supply due to conflict in Ukraine.

If the West is going green, it is not going to defeat Russia or China in time to make the switch. At this point, hegemony really is incompatible with survival. Once a climate disaster really starts to have serious consequences, it is clear where all the world's refugees will be heading (the European Union and the United States). It would be game over for the Western side in this "Cold War" at that moment, as the West will be swamped by these refugees and unable to even feed them, perhaps being forced to beg for food aid from those we labelled as enemies.

Is it a lie?

Many reading the above would probably like to interject by saying that the barrage of contradicting statements (there is this climate emergency, yet we must wage this war of waste, and yet also we can scrap nuclear power stations even though they are not adding to that emergency and in fact mitigate it), means a major lie is being told somewhere. Many conspiracy theorists will probably reject the idea that there is a climate emergency at all, because of so many contradictions.

The consensus of the world's governments and the international panels of experts compels us to accept the reality of a climate emergency, whereas only a few would have us adopt declarations that conflict with this reality. Clearly, political partisans are interfering with a united response to the emergency, dependent as they are on having something to debate about.

The position of the German Greens up until their U-turn was absurd. They agreed with the idea of a climate emergency, yet they wanted to sabotage the response to it by trying to hobble our efforts to stop it, by condemning nuclear energy. They likely agree that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a dirty and polluting process, yet they want to buy the resulting American LNG so that they can avoid gas supplies from Russia. So, what looks like a commitment to save the Earth quickly crumbles in the halls of power, replaced with familiar and ugly realpolitik.

Is the SNP's continued rejection of nuclear energy in the UK more acceptable than some, because the SNP desires independence for Scotland and Scotland likely has enough energy sources to support its small population without any nuclear plants? Yes, but someone who is truly concerned about a global warming emergency, believing we only have eight years left to solve it, would likely still want to generate nuclear energy and sell it to their neighbours, to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

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Why low-emission cars and not more radical change?

Reducing carbon emissions to net zero is partly to be accomplished by swapping diesel and petrol-consuming cars for electric cars by 2030 in the UK. However, this may still cater more to the interests of companies and consumers than the planet.

The moral and political dubiousness of seeking cheap lithium supplies and other essential minerals for producing electric cars is clear in the way it encourages exploitation and meddling in nations such as Bolivia. Moralising about clean energy has potential implications for future conflicts in that it can provide casus belli for such conflicts to be initiated against less fortunate and more polluting countries.

Such excuse-seeking for conflicts would fit with how richer countries maintain their riches at the expense of others, finding all kinds of grievances against their economic underlings that are merely contrived propaganda based on the sensibilities of their privileged population.

Other interests at work

What happens all too often is little more than "greenwashing". Corporations try to tag along with the nobler of government agendas, in hope of getting favour and continuing to accumulate capital. They may buy influence with politicians, who in turn try to square a circle by fitting greedy corporate interests with ecological responsibility.

The goal of continuing to have a transport system dependent on mass personal ownership of cars or something like cars at all may be something deserving of criticism. Cars are inevitably a lucrative industry, so neither governments nor businesses want to lose that industry. The car industry wants more cars out there than people. Given this motive, it cannot be ruled out that the environment will still be damaged by waste and the devastation of mineral-rich nations, and this is because the Western consumer's privileged expectations and preference to have a car at all is still being taken into account.

What is the alternative?

Governments rarely take the initiative to devise great changes to transport as they did in the past (railways only became universal and spread across the territory of a country at the command of the state). They could take the responsibility for actually devising changes to transport again, although only a panel of experts could suggest anything specific.

While it is hard to think of an alternative to a car or something like a car that would satisfy consumers, the government could always enact policies that will decrease the number of cars on the road drastically and perhaps end car ownership, so that cars are only ever at the needed number. This way, the number of electric cars eventually operated would be minuscule, which would have less of an impact. If cars were AI-driven in the future, they would not need to be owned (Great Reset alert!) and could simply be available based on some kind of subscription, being called to pick people up.

Whatever else happens, car manufacturers will always favour there being more cars, not fewer, and that is where there will remain something of a clash between greenwashed greed and eco-friendly policy.

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Will Green ideology inspire the next crusades?

Environmentalism is set to replace the discredited ideas of missionary democracy and militant Christianity as the basis of the next crusades, massacres and wars conducted by the West.

In fact, Russia's UN delegation recently saw through this Grim Reaper's first disguise attempt and sniped it at the UN.

Although it has built up a gentle liberal reputation in recent decades, Europe's history is filled with colonialist patronisation, conquest and bloodlust against its own economic periphery and less developed countries. This is likely to return, under new ideological guises, as it did before.

Utopias and messianic violence

It is not unheard of for pacifistic and revolutionary ideas, like those of Green parties, to be hijacked by militarists and employed to develop messianic reasoning for organised violence. Although this will come to the disgust of many Greens, who are resolutely against war and waste, it is already happening in Germany.

In Germany, the Greens are ascending as some of the biggest zealots of confrontation with Russia. They have even compromised their own core values for this, favouring the environmentally harmful liquefied natural gas (LNG) derived from fracking in the US and transported in polluting ships as an alternative to cheap natural gas from Russia.

In time, Green ideology's youth and optimism will fade. As environmentalist activists' faces wither with time, their beliefs will similarly degrade into a familiar foolish crusade against some countries, increasing war and waste across the world.

America to be discredited as Europe takes over

Next in line to the throne of the liberal order, which has conducted the deadliest crusades of this century, is the European Union. It has often championed the protection of the environment, making this the perfect ideology for it to cite when employing force and seeking mastery over others.

The United States, in comparison with Europe, is losing credibility and many are turning away from its ideals, including itself. Its focus on China, in addition to its own internal divides, are likely to take it out of the game in Europe at some point in the future.

France can already sense the decay of the American military mandate in Europe, and is seeking a more powerful unified EU military instead. President Macron has referred to the US-led NATO alliance as "braindead", and has been hesitant to support it in the confrontations with Moscow.

From the Cross to the Climate

Crusades need justifications. They need images to inspire zealots to take up arms and make sacrifices. Sometimes, these images are even fact-based, such as the oppression of the proletariat or the pollution of the atmosphere, but they are wrongly used to justify atrocities.

There is valid reason to fear that the fact-based plea to stop manmade climate change will eventually morph into a new urgent justification to bomb poorer countries and change regimes. Certainly, many of the likely candidates to be bombed again, from the familiar Iraq to Iran, rely on selling fossil fuels.

Despite their current desire to be friendly, Europeans conducted the worst massacres in history. It is when given a sense of irrefutable righteousness that these crusaders and Teutonic Knights take up the sword. There is ample reason to suspect Europe will take this dark path again, under a new pretext.

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