Alexander Dugin speaking on the Ukraine conflict
Today, Alexander Dugin shared this video via his Telegram channel (2022-03-05).
I’ve decided to share this video because currently there is much censorship (“to protect freedom”) and in order to end the human catastrophe currently unfolding in Ukraine, it is essential to understand all parties involved, both ourselves and the antagonist. I have added a short summary and also a short analysis / discussion (both written by me) [below, under the video].
Alexander Dugin speaking on the Ukraine conflict
Summary
In this video, Dugin touches on a few subjects, summarized by the geopolitical idea of land power (Russia) vs. sea power (the West). First he talks about the existence of two “languages” (worldviews) and most people only speak one language, so we don’t understand each other. He dwells a bit on that, but then comes the interesting stuff. Land power is more about tradition, while sea power is postmodern and much about technology. (Compare Sparta vs. Athens.) The conflict between the West and Russia is not about ideology, not about race and not about religion; Dugin emphasizes the geopolitical view. He also mentions “The Grand Chessboard” by Brzezinski.
On this chessboard, the globalist West plays alone, says Dugin. The West doesn’t recognize the other players; Dugin refers to Belgrade, Syria, the Arab world, Afghanistan… When US president Trump tried to recognize other civilizations, he was blamed and demonized for not playing alone. However one cannot play alone; we are witnessing the end of the idea of a unipolar world. Huntington was right, Fukuyama was not.
The current events in Ukraine were started at Maidan square, which elicited a response by Putin. Currently, China has its own position. So we have a three-color world (the West, Russia, China). This is open for more. Europe can become independent from the Anglosaxon world. Also India and the Islamic world have opportunity. A bipolar world is not likely; Russia is not powerful enough. So a multipolar world is emerging. Each civilization (as defined by Huntington) wants a right to existence.
Discussion
In 2017, I wrote a book review on Huntington’s book (in Dutch). Dugin is right to mention him. In my book review, some years back, I already noted this interesting passage:
the civilizational fault line that divides Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine […] While a statist approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war, a civilizational approach minimizes that and instead highlights the possibility of Ukraine splitting in half, a separation which cultural factors would lead one to predict might be more violent than that of Czechoslovakia but far less bloody than that of Yugoslavia. Samuel P. Huntington (1996), in: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (page 37).
Very clearly Dugin is not taking into account ethics and morality; his description is according to the “realist” school of international relations. For many people, especially in my home country (The Netherlands), who are more used to a idealistic and moralizing style of communications, it might be hard to understand why such a “cold” geopolitical analysis has merit. One problem with a more emotional analysis is that it can bring about even more division, especially when the parties involved speak different languages (have different systems of ethics, different viewpoints and so on). So this geopolitical “realist” view can bring us together on a more abstract level. Many academics, also in the West, did point out that the NATO advancement to the east would probably result in an Ukrainian war. Now that we got there, it might, just might be an idea to listen to some possible solutions from the same school.
That is not to say that we have to take Dugin’s recommendations for granted. E.g., Huntington hinted that Ukraine could be split in half — allowing Russia to control the whole of Ukraine is maybe not needed. But we must be sensitive to the security requirements of Russia if we want to build a stable multipolar world order.
Although the geopolitical / realist school of thought has little attention to ethics and is more about civilizations (in which each civilization has one or a few core countries and exists of multiple nations) we still can try to maintain a minimum set of global ethical values. Refugees should primarily stay within their civilizational blocks. Wars should be minimized. Nobody has a need for unnecessary human suffering.
Read more on this topic in my weblog, in Dutch:
Comments
✉ nick canning op 2022-04-04
The analysis is pure imperialism, the chess game or great game analysis comes from The age of empire before the first world war. Dugin wants to reestablish a Russian Empire but we now live in a post colonial world where the Empires have fallen. There is not an American empire as he seems to think. Ukraine is an old Russian colony which wants its freedom it no longer wants to be ruled from Moscow as they are making their views heard loud and clear with their blood, just as the old colonies of the British Empire made their claims to independence.
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