Pienso en general, pero también en España. El 90% de la producción anglosajona sobre Rusia y China, trátese de publicística, academia o labor de “expertos”, es muy poco independiente. Y esa es la fuente en la que beben nuestros editores y periodistas en España. Dentro de ellos hay un sector que son verdaderos pajes y asistentes a sueldo de la OTAN y sus Ong’s. Tenemos periodistas que han participado en campañas directamente pagadas y orquestadas por los gobiernos atlantistas y expertos que, por ejemplo, han cobrado de George Soros por confeccionar listas de periodistas “pro rusos” durante la crisis de Ucrania. Esto son cosas sabidas y publicadas, pero, naturalmente hay mucho más en la sombra.

It has long been obvious that the US (correctly) regards China as the real long-term threat to its global hegemony. Meanwhile, Russia is a mere nuisance, a “dying bear” that is ever approaching collapse, in the wake of which Moscow will have no choice but to sign up to America’s China containment project. (Sure, this sounds like a crazy ideological narrative, and it is – but the US policy of alienating Russia and drawing it into a quasi-alliance with China is even crazier – just ask Kissinger). But like it or not, this really is how the American elites think, and it can’t be denied that there is a certain logic to it. In this context, withdrawal from the INF Treaty – with Russia’s alleged violations as pretext – is just the logical next step to the military component of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”, one that the US is entirely happy to continue and follow through with. It really is as banal as that.

The Trump administration has released its missile defense review – a strategic document setting the stage for an expansion of how the U.S. protects its territory, allies and military forces from cruise, ballistic and hypersonic threats. The document’s consequences will range far past just “defence”, however. As the Nobel Prize-winning game theorist Thomas Schelling once warned, all those decades ago during the cold war, the importance of “feedback” in military planning cannot be overstated. For every action taken by the United States, its adversaries will react. This has been and remains true of missile defence.

The Trump administration’s January 23 recognition of Venezuela’s National Assembly leader, Juan Guaidó, as the president of Venezuela, in opposition to the “de facto” and “de jure” president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, threatens an avalanche of nations recognizing leaders of various political factions in countries around the world as legitimate governments. In reaction to Trump’s move, Maduro severed diplomatic relations with Washington and ordered all US embassy personnel in Caracas to leave the country within 72-hours. Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly declared a caretaker government as a rival to the Maduro government with Guaidó as the interim president.

Some readers might recall how Alexander Solzhenitsyn repeatedly declared in the 1980s that he was sure that the Soviet regime would collapse and that he would return to Russia. He was, of course, vitriolically ridiculed by all the “specialists” and “experts”. After all, why would anybody want to listen to some weird Russian exile with politically suspicious ideas (there were rumors of “monarchism” and “anti-Semitism”) when the Soviet Union was an immense superpower, armed to the teeth with weapons, with an immense security service, with political allies and supporters worldwide? Not only that, but all the “respectable” specialists and experts were unanimous that, while the Soviet regime had various problems, it was very far from collapse.

Two recent reports from the United States strongly suggest the United States is planning a major war with Russia and China, but are far from certain that they could in fact succeed in such a war. The reports also provide insights into how the United States will meet the budgetary demands of such war preparations, but almost zero appreciation of the social and human costs of such policies. The first of these reports is entitled “Providing for the Common Defence” (November 2018). The second report is issued by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) and is entitled: National Security: Long Range Emerging Threats Facing the United States as Identified by Federal Agencies (December 2018.)

The greatest difference between the last Cold War and today is the absence of an ideology to propagate. It appears that China intends to raise the degree of freedom for action by increasing its economic and political clout with the aim of building a new order, but we do not see any norms and values that will provide the foundation for a new world order for other countries to follow. Under President Donald J. Trump, the U.S. is pursuing an America-first policy, stressing its own national interests and criticizing its allies, even as it tries to assemble a coalition to put pressure on China. Today, the U.S. faces its own serious internal divisions and is not what it used to be as a beacon of freedom and democracy or as a leader of a Western bloc with a vision for a new world order. This new Cold War, if that is what it is, involves an even more complicated structure of conflict and cooperation, division and unity than the last one. We have entered an age of extreme uncertainty.

El año 2008, de su lado, es el momento en que la profunda crisis financiera de Estados Unidos hace que China le pierda el temor a ese país. Visualizando dicha crisis como expresión de las profundas contradicciones y debilidades estadounidenses y como el inicio de su inevitable declive económico e internacional, China responde con asertividad. Esconder las propias intenciones perdía ya mucho de su sentido ante un contendor en abierta decadencia. La lectura dada por China a los hechos del 2008, indudablemente prematura, la empujó a quitarse la máscara en relación a sus ambiciones geopolíticas en la región Asia-Pacífico y de cara a su rivalidad estratégica con Estados Unidos. Para Washington, ello representó una toma de conciencia con respecto a la actitud que había estado gestándose desde 1989.

The Modern World, the Modernity is more and more reluctant in the effort to make the World present. So it is relaxing and here begins Post-Modernity. The Post-Modernity is the refuse to try to make the World as something present, refuse to bi-in-the World. German philosopher Eugen Fink has dedicated to the problem of World very important philosophical phenomenological works. According to him the World can not be equated with the sum of the world things. It is something more than them because it is the Whole. The intuition of the Whole is the existential effort creating the World as a Whole. So only human beings know the World precisely because only human beings create it by the fact of being human.

El comienzo del siglo XXI no ha sido tan color de rosa como fue descrito por los futurólogos y planificado por los políticos: una crisis financiera mundial, los problemas dentro de la zona euro, el “pantano” para las tropas estadounidenses en Irak y Afganistán, los conflictos armados en Europa Central, Norte de África y el Medio Oriente, una serie de revoluciones de color en el espacio post-soviético, y disturbios en las capitales de Europa Occidental. Se diría que con la tecnología moderna, la herencia histórica y el acuerdo convencional sobre los derechos humanos, Europa ya ha definido su futuro y, si no está siguiendo lo planificado, por lo menos está manteniendo las políticas regulatorias en el ámbito de su competencia. Sin embargo, los desarrollos actuales indican que todo resultó ser más complicado. El mundo ha entrado en una zona de turbulencia geopolítica, con procesos en varios niveles, nuevos retos y respuestas asimétricas.