By GILBERTO LOPES*
Considerations on the European Union and the war in Ukraine.
time of oblivion
“Has the time for oblivion arrived, with the anesthesia of our collective memory? In the 1970s, we heard the phrase: – Hitler? Haven't heard of it. Now we will have to hear the phrase: – War? I do not know what it is. "Between us, never again." Never again wars between European countries that bled each other for 70 years”, said the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, in 1993, 30 years ago, in his book The new European concert.
It was already clear at that time that these tragedies could not be explained only by the rise of fascism, but by the Manichean game of the great powers, by their refusal of true dialogue. He did not fail to notice that the construction of Europe was entering a zone of turbulence. “The two oil crises should have alerted us to the precarious nature of our prosperity,” he said. “Exhausted by fratricidal wars, deprived of their colonial empires, dependent – in terms of security – on the United States, suffocated by competition from new industrial powers, our countries were slipping dangerously towards decline…”.
“How can we preserve and extend this peace so dear to us?” asked Jacques Delors. “The era of confrontation and division in Europe has come to an end. We declare that from now on our relations will be based on respect and cooperation”, said the Heads of State or Government of the 35 States participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), meeting in Paris in November 1990. Era a time of profound changes and historic hopes... On July 16, 1990, the Soviet Union collapsed and, gathered in Stavropol, Mikhail Gorbachev created, with Helmut Kohl, the fabric of this new world, accepting the incorporation of a unified Germany into NATO.
The vocation of the European Community is to apply to other countries on the continent the method that has worked so well for it. “Are we ready to face these challenges? Do we have the means to succeed?” It's been nearly 30 years since Jacques Delors asked these questions. The Paris Charter, signed at the CSCE meeting, outlined the world they dreamed of forging: “a resolute commitment to democracy based on human rights and fundamental freedoms; prosperity through economic freedom and social justice; and equal security for all our countries”.
From gardens…
European Union High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell caused controversy when he addressed students at the European Diplomatic Academy in the Belgian city of Bruges on Oct. “Yes, Europe is a garden! We built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that humanity has ever managed to build. The three things together…”. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle can invade the garden. The gardeners must take care of it…”. Josep Borrell knows well: “the jungle has a great capacity for expansion and the wall will never be high enough to protect the garden”.
Luiza Bialasiewicz, professor of European governance at the University of Amsterdam, quoted by the Spanish daily El País, described the speech as a “direct copy of the worst neoconservative geopolitics of the early 2000s”. Bob Rae, Canadian Ambassador to the UN, commented: "What a terrible analogy." “Josep Borrell could not have said it better: the most prosperous system created in Europe was nourished by its roots in the colonies, which it oppressed without mercy. It was this logic of segregation and the philosophy of superiority that formed the basis of fascism and Nazism,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “It is very strange that a diplomat of this level offends so many people and so many countries in a single speech,” said Alex Lo, a columnist for the newspaper South China Morning Post, from Hong Kong.
For Josep Borrell, the difference between developed and undeveloped countries is not the economy, but the institutions. He said this in his speech in Bruges, in Leopold II's Belgium. “Here we have a neutral and independent judicial system. Here we have an income redistribution system. Here we have elections that give freedom to citizens. Here we have red lights directing traffic, people picking up garbage. We have these kinds of things that make life easy and safe.”
It is difficult to understand how Josep Borrell could remain in office after this speech, although he has defended himself against criticism by claiming that he was misunderstood and the president of the European Commission, the German Ursula von der Leyen, has reiterated her confidence in him. Europe is the center and end of universal history, GWF Hegel had said in 1807 in his phenomenology of the spirit. For the German sociologist Max Weber, capitalism was the realization of modernity. For Weber, his colleague Herbert Marcuse would say, there was a form of rationality that emerged in the West that helped to form capitalism and that will decide our foreseeable future.
As we see, the inheritance is ancient. When Hitler came to power, almost a century ago, the German philosopher Max Horkheimer - a leading figure of the Frankfurt School, which he was part of with Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollok, Franz Neumann and other important German Jewish intellectuals of his time – he said in a book of aphorisms entitled Twilight [ "dusk”]: “The imperialism of the great European states has nothing to envy of the Middle Ages with their bonfires. Its symbols are protected with more sophisticated devices and better equipped guards than the saints of the medieval Church”.
“The twilight of capitalism,” he added, “does not necessarily herald the night of humanity. The enemies of the Inquisition turned that twilight into the dawn of a new day.” Obviously something went wrong. Perhaps the key lies in what Jacques Delors dreamed of as the European Community's vocation at the time: applying the method that served him so well to other countries on the continent.
And zoos...
This report was written by the journalist of with the BBC London's Dalia Ventura: "The infamous story of the human zoos that remained open in Europe until 1958". “This is a vile story,” says Ventura. It must be read. It helps to understand many things. The article can be seen here.
Dalia Ventura does not omit a reference to Montezuma's zoo, which the Spanish chroniclers spoke of, "where buffoons and other palatial parasites lived". Then the story jumps forward 400 years. In the midst of the Italian Renaissance, Cardinal Hippolytus de Medici “boasted having, in addition to all kinds of exotic beasts, several 'savages' who spoke more than 20 languages, including Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans”. What began as a curiosity on the part of onlookers became macabre pseudoscience by the mid-XNUMXth century, as investigators sought physical evidence for their racial theory. Exotic human specimens were shipped to Paris, New York, London or Berlin, to the delight of the crowd.
The English court fell at the feet of the Polynesian “charming and cunning” Mai or Omai, presented by the naturalist Joseph Banks at the court of King George III. Better known is the story of the South African Saartjie Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”, exhibited at fairs in Europe, to the delight of spectators. Her great attraction was her huge buttocks, which one naturalist described as "baboon's buttocks". He died in 1815, but his brain, skeleton and sexual organs remained on display at the Museum of Man in Paris until 1974. In 2002, his remains were repatriated and interred in South Africa. “The climax of history comes with the imperialist apogee of the late 1877th and early 1912th centuries”, says Dalia Ventura. The idea was to show wild animals in their natural state. Between 30 and XNUMX, approximately XNUMX “ethnological exhibitions” were presented at the Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation in Paris.
Also 400 indigenous Javanese were exhibited at the 1889 World's Fair, which was visited by 28 million people. “They performed music so sophisticated that it left the young composer Claude Debussy speechless”. “That same year, with the permission of the Chilean government, 11 natives of the Selknam or Oma people, including an eight-year-old boy, were sent to Europe to be exhibited in human zoos.” If they survived the trip, according to Dalia Ventura, most of these South American “specimens” perished shortly after reaching their destinations.
In 1906, amateur anthropologist Madison Grant, a leading eugenicist and director of the Zoological Society of New York, exhibited the Congolese pygmy Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo along with monkeys and other animals. At Grant's request, the zoo director placed Ota Benga in a cage with an orangutan and tagged him "The Missing Link." “However, the Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and Paris (1907 and 1931) continued to show human beings in cages, often nude or half-naked. The one in 1931 had the participation of 34 million people in six months”.
In the summer of 1897, King Leopold II had imported 267 Congolese to Brussels to display in his colonial palace at Tervuren, east of Brussels. Owner of the Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908, the exploitation of the territory's natural resources made Leopold immensely rich, at the expense of half the Congolese population. The exploitation claimed the lives of eight to ten million people, according to various scholars.
For the 1958 Brussels International and Universal Exposition, a 200-day celebration of post-war social, cultural and technological advances, a “typical” village was created, where spectators observed the Congolese, often with derision. “If they didn't react, they threw coins or bananas through the bamboo fence, wrote a journalist at the time”, says Dalia Ventura.
The motivations for continuing to exhibit human beings for decades in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Milan, Warsaw and other places, with an emphasis on the "differences" between the "primitive" and the "civilized", were linked, according to scholars, to three phenomena : the construction of an imaginary other, the theorization of a hierarchy of races and the construction of colonial empires. “It is estimated that human zoos have been visited by around 1,4 billion people. And it is known that they played an important role in the development of modern racism”, concludes the journalist.
Dalia Ventura reminds us that ethnographic exhibitions “ceased to exist not because of an ethical reassessment, but because new forms of entertainment emerged and people simply stopped being interested. The last one to close was Belgium”. Then there were the gardens.
From zoos and gardens. the dawn of a new day.
For many years Western ideologues and politicians have been saying that there are no alternatives to democracy. They refer, of course, to the so-called “liberal model of democracy”, said Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech at the Valdai International Forum on 27 October. "Arrogantly," he asserted, "they reject other forms of government." A way of seeing things forged since colonial times, “as if everyone were second rate, while they are exceptional”. "It is global power that is in dispute with the so-called West." “But this game is certainly dangerous, bloody and, shall we say, dirty”, warned Vladimir Putin, as he denies sovereignty to other countries and peoples.
The West proclaims the universal value of its culture and worldview, and its policy is aimed at unconditionally imposing these values on all other members of the international community. The Nazis burned books, reminds Putin, but the “guardians of liberalism” now intend to banish Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky.
They promote trade wars, sanctions, color revolutions… One of them was that of Ukraine in 2014, which they supported with resources, the amount of which they made public. Or they assassinated the Iranian general, Qasen Soleimani. “What kind of world are we living in?” asks Vladimir Putin.
He did not speak about the Vietnam War, or the most recent invasion of Iraq, the two of whom are responsible for these are still very active in politics. One, a militant of English social democracy; the other, a Spaniard, spends his time making democratic recommendations in Latin America, accompanied by regional politicians comfortable in the company of this colleague.
You can say what you want about Vladimir Putin, about his policies or the way he governs. In my opinion, however, he is one of the political leaders with the greatest ability to argue about his worldview, with a historical background and a perspective for the future.
Valdai's speech abounds with references to these worlds. It is a crisis of the neoliberal model, of an international order in the North American style. "They have nothing to offer the world except the perpetuation of their rule." And that, added Putin, is no longer possible.
The collapse of the Soviet Union altered the balance of geopolitical forces. As victor, the West has set the rules. But today that absolute dominance is disappearing. We are at a decisive crossroads, probably the “most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, the most important decade since the end of the Second World War”, in Putin's opinion.
pathetic press
It is easy to condemn the war and the invasion of Ukraine; but it is also easy to see – if we look carefully – the creation of the conditions that made this war more possible and more likely every day. War is a tragedy, but I think it is essential to read Vladimir Putin's Valdai speech carefully. Try to understand. Listen to the opponent. Or the enemy. Vladimir Putin is careful with his handling of details and those who say he is lying have no choice but to give their own side of the story.
In my opinion, this is not what, for example, Anton Troianovski, head of the The New York Times in Moscow, in his article about Putin's speech. For Troianovski it is a speech that tries to divide the West, to gain political space while trying – often without success – to conserve the ground gained in Ukraine since the invasion of last February. But the speech, and the ensuing four-hour debate, is, in my view, much more than that, and Troianovski's impoverished vision deprives his readers of a fuller understanding of a complex international scene.
The Western mainstream press is pathetic. Not just coverage of the war in Ukraine. You must read the article by Chris Buckley, chief correspondent for the The New York Times in Beijing, which has covered the country and Communist Party events for 25 years: “'Uncle Xi' to exalted ruler: China's leader embodies his authoritarian era”, published last October 14th. How can you ask the American elite, who read the Times, to understand anything about a complex world explained by such “experts”?
Or the comments by Steve Rosenberg, the editor of with the BBC in Russia, for whom the key to Vladimir Putin's long reflection was the lack of “remorse in Putin's world”. And the with the BBC presents it as “analysis”! I find it unlikely that Rosenberg read all of Vladimir Putin's Valdai speech.
Militancy is repeated on Spanish television, on DW in Spanish… See the The Guardian British leaving journalism in the background to become part of the war in Ukraine made me suspend a modest monthly contribution, which I made for some years, to the newspaper. Then I went to read Vladimir Putin's extensive intervention in the Valdai forum, which can be found at Kremlin website, in English.
The birth of a new world
“We try to build relationships with the most important countries in the West and with NATO. What did we get as an answer?” asked Vladimir Putin. "To be brief, we received a 'no' in every possible area of cooperation."
Vladimir Putin insisted on the idea that you cannot unite humanity by giving orders, saying “do as I do”, “be as I am”. It is necessary to listen to everyone's opinion, to respect the identity of each society, of each nation. He cited various cooperation organizations as examples, such as the Eurasian Economic Union – made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia –, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – made up of eight member states and four observers – and the ambitious Chinese project of the Belt and Road.
In such a cooperation scheme, Europe would be the western end of Eurasia. But that was not how this integration took place. On the contrary, confronted by Russia, which has become its enemy, today's Europe has consolidated its role as NATO's extreme east.
Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, published an article last October reviewing the scenario that culminated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Long before the invasion of Ukraine, since 2014, thanks to Ukrainian Security Assistance Initiative Department of Defense, the United States provided training and equipment to the Ukrainian army. The amount of this assistance exceeded 19 billion dollars, most of which – 17,6 billion – provided after the Russian invasion. Today there is talk of 60 billion dollars. To give a dimension of these numbers, Vijay Prashad compares them with the 3,12 billion dollars of the UN budget for 2022.
Vijay Prashad insists the West must stop blocking talks between Ukraine and Russia. He reminds us that, in 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed reviewing Europe's relations with Russia, stating that pulling Russia out of Europe “would be a profound strategic mistake”.
By 2020, it was clear to Emmanuel Macron that the negotiations were no longer just about the Minsk Accords, signed in 2015 by Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, to establish safe zones on the Ukrainian-Russian border. It was more than that. It was about creating a “new security architecture” that would not isolate Russia from Europe. All these initiatives were rejected by Washington.
In February 2021, Emmanuel Macron developed this idea in a long speech at a conference in Atlantic Council. "NATO's eastward expansion will not enhance Europe's security," he said.
On December 7, 2021, Biden and Putin held a telephone meeting. The Russian president again demanded guarantees that NATO would not continue to expand eastwards, nor to deploy offensive weapons systems in countries neighboring Russia. “Washington has not given such guarantees,” says Vijay Prashad. The US objective was to impose severe and sustainable economic sanctions to render the Russian economy unviable and to intensify its military support for Ukraine so that Ukraine could win the war. On October 15, Washington announced a new arms package and military assistance to Ukraine worth $725 million, including more ammunition for its HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems).
Robert A. Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of a book on the characteristics of air warfare, believes that bombing civilian areas in Ukraine will not weaken Volodymyr Zelensky's government. It's just that air power has only proven to be effective when it is capable of destroying military targets. Pape believes that this is not the case in this war and that Vladimir Putin has only two options: accept a new iron curtain that separates Russia from Europe "or continue fighting until the end, with the risk of losing part of Russia". Is this intended to increase the security of Europe (and the world)?
These days, analyzes by North American academics on the international scene are multiplying. Among them is G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar from Kyung Hee University in Seoul. In his long article – “power endures” –, published in the November/December issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs, states that the international order led by the United States “is not in decline”. Its more than six thousand words are nothing more than arguments to support its conclusion, without the words “Latin America” appearing even once. He takes it for granted that we are the feet on which American power stands. It is the only one of the great powers that was born in the New World. The others, like China or Russia, are surrounded by rowdy neighbors, fighting for hegemonic spaces. Not the United States. From the beginning, far from its main rivals, it enjoyed its backyard, a hemisphere without rivals.
For G. John Ikenberry, the narrative that the United States is losing its role as a dominant power ignores the deep circumstances that continue to make the country a dominant presence in organizing the political world in the XNUMXst century. His role would not be based on brute force alone, or on his past imperial behavior, but on his ideas, institutions and values. Regardless of whether or not your assessments are correct (I think there is a lot of wishful thinking), authors such as G. John Ikenberry leave out an important factor in their analysis: economics.
No strength to bury your daughter
A quick glance at the current world reveals the dimension of crisis and uncertainty, although, for G. John Ikenberry, nothing casts doubt on the ideas, institutions or values of American society. However, since the 2008 financial crisis, symptoms of a deeper problem have multiplied. Economist Nouriel Roubini, in an interview with with the BBC on October 25, he highlighted his concern about the increase in the world's public and private debt. “In the 1970s, the ratio of private and public debt to GDP was around 100% and now, in advanced economies, it is 420% and rising.”
Last September, the US Treasury Department expressed its concern about an increase in public debt from 5,1 trillion dollars to more than 23 trillion dollars between 2007 and 2022. “The word 'crisis' is not hyperbole,” he said. the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion Robert Burgess. Liquidity is rapidly evaporating. Volatility increases. Even demand at US government debt auctions is becoming a concern. Conditions are so worrisome that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took the unusual step of expressing concern about a possible collapse in trading, noting that her department is "concerned about the loss of adequate liquidity" in the US government bond market. "Of what the Fed and the Treasury Department should be most concerned about is deteriorating demand at auctions on US debt," said Robert Burgess. Low demand also means that the government must pay more to obtain resources. “Make no mistake,” he added, “if the Treasury market stops, the global economy and financial system will have much bigger problems than high inflation.” The picture extends, with its nuances, to much of the West. The US bond market sets the tone for debt markets around the world and recent weeks' troubles in the UK have exposed the liquidity crisis in most major sovereign debt markets. trains the Ukrainian military and accuses it of having led and coordinated the attack on the Nord Stream submarine gas pipelines in September, the English press announces that millions of people have to skip meals as the crisis caused by the rising cost of living deepens. More people - including children - are going hungry today than there were during the first few weeks after the Covid-19 closures, the official said. The Guardian.The Bank of England warned on November 3 that the United Kingdom will face a “very challenging” scenario, with inflation not seen in the last 40 years and an increase in unemployment from 3,5% today to almost 6,5% in the next three years. While not the deepest recession in its history, it will be the longest since records began in the 1920s, the bank said. to avoid a permanent and strategic link between Europe and Russia. “The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines sums up this dynamic in a nutshell. For nearly a decade, a constant demand from the United States was that Germany reject its reliance on Russian energy. Such demands have been answered by Gerhard Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders,” said University of Missouri professor Michael Hudson in an article published in Brave New Europe [the article, on Germany's position in the new American global order, can be seen here].
In his opinion, the country that will suffer the most collateral damage from this global rift will be Germany. Perhaps this partly explains Chancellor Olaf Scholz's brief visit to Beijing in early November. But Germany will not be the only country to suffer these consequences. Protests multiply in Prague, Rome, Paris...
In August, Macron delivered his autumn speech, announcing “the end of abundance” and reiterating that “we live in a moment of great upheaval”. Two months later, Thierry Pech, director general of the Paris-based Terra Nova think tank, commented that, for Macron, “the succession of crises we are experiencing – climate crisis, war in Ukraine, record inflation, high interest rates … – is not the result of an obscure coincidence of misfortunes”, but the sign of a great change. “It is likely that the European consumer will experience difficulties that they usually don't remember: shortages, shortages, energy rationing, double-digit inflation and… fear”. The end of the obvious, says Thierry Pech.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wades through these troubled waters. On 27 October he met with Macron in Paris. The low media profile of the meeting made evident “the delicate moment in Franco-German relations, in part a consequence of the geostrategic shock of the war in Ukraine”, said Eusebio Val, correspondent for the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia in Paris. “The shock provoked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its severe economic effects have brought to light fundamental differences and priorities that seem difficult to reconcile”.
In the field of defense, there have been noises in Franco-German cooperation for years, he recalled, noting that Berlin wants a European anti-missile defense shield – with the participation of the United States and Israel – while Paris is planning an alternative, in alliance with Italy. “There are several points of friction,” added the deputy director of the newspaper La Vanguard, Enric Juliana (in my opinion, one of the best political analysts in Spain), commenting on the meeting. And he made a list: “Germany's refusal to limit the price of gas in Europe for fear of shortages; the generous German idea to protect its industry, a air bag that other European countries cannot afford; French reluctance in the face of German plans to promote gas pipelines to southern Europe and northern Africa in search of safer energy; the European anti-missile shield made public by Germany, without the participation of France, a project in which Spain stayed on the sidelines while negotiating the energy interconnection with the French (we are talking about the military industry)”.
“Objective disagreements and nervousness arising from the war in Ukraine. France is once again a social powder keg and Germany has decided that the top priority is protecting its industry. France continues to rely on its powerful nuclear plant; Germany doesn't know what the winter of 2024 will be like. Everyone would like to end the war and nobody knows how”, said Enric Juliana.
Val mentioned Israel, at a time when a new government has just been formed in that country, closer and closer to a racist Nazi version, far removed from all recognized international norms on the Palestinian conflict, which could play an increasingly destabilizing role in the international scene. Unlike Ukraine, the European Union (EU) has been much less assertive in the Gaza conflict, as two journalists from the newspaper El País pointed to Borrell in an interview in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. “Resolving the situation of people trapped in this open-air prison that is Gaza is not in the hands of the European Union. It is a scandalous situation, a shame, but it is not in our hands to resolve it. The international community should look for a solution for people huddled together, without electricity, almost without drinking water”, replied the head of European Union diplomacy. “We are often criticized for having double standards,” lamented Borrell. “But international politics is largely about managing double standards. We do not handle all issues with the same criteria. There is no solution to the Middle East conflict without a very strong commitment on the part of the United States. And, after so many unsuccessful attempts in the past, there is no way out at this point. But none of this is any consolation for the people who live there”.
One in four UK households with children experienced food insecurity in the past month, the report said. The Guardian in October. A pittance compared to what Indian journalist Swaminathan Natarajan of BBC World Service reported on October 16. “Rats, Bones and Mud: The Hunger Foods Desperate People Eat to Survive,” he titled his article. “For the past two years, Lindinalva Maria da Silva Nascimento, a 63-year-old retired grandmother from São Paulo, Brazil, has been eating bones and skin discarded by local butchers,” he says.
Near Chennai, in southern India, Rani, a 49-year-old woman, tells him that she “has eaten mice since childhood and I have never had any health problems. I feed my two-year-old granddaughter mice. We're used to it." It is, apparently, a field vole, very different from those we can find in our cities.
The UN said Somalia was facing catastrophic famine amid armed conflict and the country's worst drought in 40 years, which has displaced more than a million people. Sharifo Hassan Ali, 40 years old and mother of seven, is one of those displaced. “During the trip, we ate only once a day. When there was not much food, we fed the children and starved.”
More and more children are dying in Somalia amid this drought. Government officials say an even bigger catastrophe could occur in a matter of days, or weeks, unless more help arrives. “I saw my daughter (Farhir, three years old) die in front of me and there was nothing I could do,” Fatuma Omar told Andrew Harding, also from the with the BBC, from Baidoa, Somalia. Fatuma walked for at least 15 days with her nine children from a village called Buulo Ciir to reach Baidoa. “I carried her in my arms for ten days. We had to leave it on the side of the road. I didn't have the strength to bury her. We could hear the hyenas approaching.”
Three days earlier, Washington announced an additional $725 million in military aid for Ukraine. Europe needs 60 million immigrants to survive, according to UN demographic studies and international research groups. “It will not be enough to raise the retirement age, bring more women into the workforce, or raise the birth rate. Nor will it be enough to further robotize the economy.” "Only immigration can correct this imbalance, and immigration from African origins will be the most natural way to provide the workforce needed to maintain growth." "Western antagonism against the East was promoted by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today's Cold War is a crusade against the economies that threaten America's dominance of the world," said Michael Hudson. “This global rift promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a dollarized, unipolar, US-centric economy or a multipolar, multicurrency, heartland-centered Eurasian world with mixed public/private economies. ”, he added.
In Michael Hudson's opinion, the conflict in Ukraine will not end until an alternative is found to the current set of international institutions centered on the United States. It seems clear to me that the current international order has become unsustainable. I think Michael Hudson is right.
*Gilberto Lopes is a journalist, PhD in Society and Cultural Studies from the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). author of Political crisis of the modern world (Uruk).
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves