Arnon Grunberg

Case

Asymmetries

On the left – Wolfgang Streeck in New Left Review:

‘As we live through these monstrous weeks, we understand better than ever what Gramsci must have meant by an interregnum: a situation ‘in which the old is dying and the new cannot be born’, one in which ‘a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’, like powerful countries turning their future over to the uncertainties of a battlefield clouded in the fog of war.
Nobody knows at the time of writing how the war over Ukraine will end, and after what amount of bloodshed. What we can try to speculate about at this point is what the reasons may have been – and human actors have reasons, however crankish they may seem to others – for the uncompromising brinkmanship on the part of both the US and Russia. What a scene: escalating confrontation, rapidly dwindling possibilities for either side to save face short of total victory, ending with Russia’s murderous assault on a neighbouring country with which it once shared a common state.
Here we find remarkable parallels, as well as the obvious asymmetries, since both Russia and the United States have long been facing the creeping decay of both their national social order and international position, apparently making them feel that they must halt it now or else it will continue forever. In the Russian case, what one sees is a regime both statist and oligarchic, confronting growing unrest among its citizens, rich in oil and corruption, unable to improve the lives of its ordinary people while its oligarchs are getting immeasurably rich, a regime increasingly turning towards the use of a heavy dictatorial hand against any organized protests. To sit more comfortably than one can on bayonets requires stability derived from economic prosperity and social progress, in turn dependent on global demand for the oil and gas Russia has to sell. For this, however, it needs access to financial markets and advanced technology, which the US had for some time begun to deny.’

(…)

‘The American political establishment, led by the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, began to treat Russia as a rogue state, much like that other country that had extricated itself from American control, Iran. Where in the past there had been a Red under every American bed, now the self-invited guest was a Russian – a distinction that many Americans had never really learned to make in the first place. Even Trump’s election in 2016 was attributed by the losing party to covert Russian machinations, which politically killed Trump’s initial attempts to seek some sort of accommodation with Russia. (Remember his innocent question about why NATO still existed, three decades after the end of Communism?) By the end of his term, in order to mend fences with the American deep state and the voters, he had returned to the tried-and-tested anti-Russian stance.’

(…)

‘The implication for von der Leyen and her crowd is to confirm their subordinate status. EU extension to Ukraine and the West Balkans, even to Georgia and Armenia, is considered by the US as ultimately for Washington to decide. France in particular may still object to further enlargement, but how long it can hold out, especially if Germany can be made to pick up the bill, is anybody’s guess. (Though formal EU accession procedures for Ukraine have not been started, von der Leyen has announced: ‘We want them in.’) Moreover, Poland being strictly anti-Russian and pro-NATO, it will now be hard to punish it by cuts in EU economic support for what the European Court sees as deficiencies in its ‘rule of law’. The same holds for Hungary, whose wayward leader, Orbán, has turned increasingly anti-Russian. With the American return, the power to discipline EU member states has migrated from Brussels to Washington D.C.’

(…)

‘Would an alliance between China and Russia be an unintended result of American incompetence, or on the contrary, an intended result of American global strategy? If Moscow were to team up with Beijing, there would be no prospect anymore for a Russian-European settlement à la française. Western Europe, in whatever political form, would more than ever function as the transatlantic wing of the United States in a new cold or, perhaps, hot war between the two global power blocs, the one declining, hoping to reverse the tide, the other hoping to rise.’

(…)

‘So the winner is… the United States? The longer the war drags on, due to the successful resistance of Ukrainian citizens and their army, the more it will be noticed that the leader of ‘the West’, who spoke for ‘Europe’ as the war built up, is not intervening militarily on behalf of Ukraine. The US has given itself a special leave of absence, as Biden made clear from the start. Looking at its record, this is nothing new: when their mission gets unmanageable, they withdraw to their distant island. Nevertheless, as Germans look on, wondering where the US is, they may start to feel some doubt about the American commitment to come to their nuclear defence. That commitment, after all, underlies German membership in NATO, German adherence to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and the housing of 30,000 or so American troops on German soil.
In this context the special budget of €100 billion, announced a few days into the war by the Scholz government and devoted to fulfilling the promise, going back to 2001, to spend 2 percent of Germany’s GDP on arms, looks like a ritual sacrifice to appease an angry God who one fears might abandon his less-than-true believers. Nobody thinks that had Germany actually lived up to the 2 percent NATO demand, Russia would have been deterred from invading Ukraine, or that Germany would have been able and willing to come to its aid. In any case it will take years for the new hardware, of course the latest on offer, to be made available to the troops. It will also be hardware of exactly the sort that the US, France and the UK already have in abundance.
Moreover, the entire German military is under the command of NATO, meaning the Pentagon, so the new arms will add to NATO’s, not Germany’s firepower. Technologically, they will be designed for deployment around the globe, on ‘missions’ like Afghanistan – or, most likely, in the environs of China, to assist the US in its emerging confrontation in the South China Sea. There was no debate at all in the Bundestag on exactly what new ‘capabilities’ would be needed, or what they will be used for. As in the past, under Merkel, this was left to ‘the allies’ to determine. One item could be the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), beloved by the French, which combines fighter bombers, drones and satellites for worldwide operations. There is scant hope that there will at some point be a strategic debate in Germany on what it means to defend your own territory, rather than attack the territory of others. Can the Ukrainian experience help start this discussion? Unlikely.’

Read the article here.

The least one can say is that Streeck is a contrarian.
I don’t buy his argument that the US pushed Russia into war by bringing the NATO closer and closer to Russia. But indeed, this might be the reason Putin is going to war, or at least one of the reasons.

The take that Germany is spending 100 billion euros extra on its military to appease an angry God is in contrast with all the analyses that the US is getting weaker and weaker. Would German appease a slowly dying God? Or is the empire not slowly dying?

Interesting enough in Streeck’s narrative, Trump is almost preferable to Biden and Biden’s son, Hunter, made once again a cameo.

Also, I’m not sure of China is teaming up with Russa yet. How happy China is with this war is unclear.

Anyone who believes that the American empire is preferable to the Chinese empire will sigh with relief after reading Streeck.

What is the new that cannot be born yet in this narrative? China? Teaming up with Europe?

After 9/11 the West was obsessed with the Islam.

February 24, 2022, appeared to have put an end to this obsession for the time being.
It’s not the Muslim anymore, it’s old-fashioned Russia that is threatening the West and its freedom and democracy.

I disagree on many aspects with Streeck, but at least he is doing more than just providing us with slick propaganda.

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