The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. I call this tendency the "Seneca Effect."

Monday, March 21, 2022

Ukraine: a Glimpse of the New Eurasian Empire


 

      Empires are alive, they move, they grow, they feel, they die. They have a soul that sometimes can be glimpsed, as in this unbelievable scene from "Dragon Blade" (2015). A silly movie but, at some points, it has a force, a presence, -- yes, a soul -- that grips you. The encounter of two great Empires, the Roman and the Chinese, is told as if it were the meeting of two persons, who are diffident at first, then they discover that they like and respect each other. Empires are part of the human adventure, part of the human ways, of what humans are. And nowadays, perhaps, we are beginning to see the birth of something that never existed before: the first true Eurasian Empire. 



Eurasia is a gigantic landmass, the largest continent, the most populated one. So huge it is, that over thousands of years of history, it was never completely conquered and turned into a single empire. The two greatest empires of antiquity that arose on the opposite side of Eurasia, the Roman Empire and the Chinese Empire, never came directly in contact with each other.

Then, at some moment during the 2nd century BC, or maybe even earlier, the many local commercial roads that crisscrossed Eurasia became connected, forming a network that crossed the whole continent. It was the Silk Road, an offspring of the domestication of the camel, a new transportation technology that replaced the more expensive wheeled vehicles. 

Vaster than empires and more slow, the Silk Road was to bring enormous changes. The Romans and the Chinese started trading with each other. Silk moved from East to West and, gold moved from West to East. In the long run, the Romans were ruined by their passion for luxury items coming from Asia. Their gold went to China and the empire collapsed with the depletion of their gold mines in Spain. 

In time, the Europeans learned how to make silk in their lands, but the Silk Road continued to exist. During the 13th century, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo traveled all the way to China by camel, following overland routes. At about the same time, the Mongol armies swept over Eurasia from their base in the very center of the continent. Their empire was the largest ever seen in history. But they could not expand it all the way to the limits of the Eurasian continent. In the East, they were stopped by the divine wind (the Kamikaze) in Japan. In the South-West, they were stopped by the Mamluk warriors in the Middle East. In Western in Europe, the shores of the Atlantic Ocean were too far even for the nimble Mongol horsemen. 

Empires come and go. After that the Mongols were gone, it was the turn of the empire of the man of iron, Timur, also known as Tamerlane. He couldn't conquer the whole Eurasia, either. Timur was the last of the great nomadic conquerors, made obsolete by the development of gunpowder and firearms.

During the 19th century, the coal-based West European states tried more than once to expand into Eurasia. Their armies never managed to do more than march into the East-European plains, to be destroyed there. It was the destiny of Napoleon's Grande Armée in 1812, then of the Germans in two successive, ill-fated attempts. At the same time, the "Great Game" ("bolshoya igra") was being played: The land-based Russian Empire and the seafaring British Empire battled each other for the control of Eurasia, later with Britain replaced by the US. These two Empires never fought each other directly, except for a brief episode during the Crimean War (1853-1856). Neither could occupy Eurasia, and they jockeyed at the edges of the respective borders. Afghanistan was a watershed where one or the other empire tried to establish a foothold. Neither succeeded. The latest attempt by the US empire ignominiously crumbled in 2020.

While all this was happening, China remained the largest Eurasian state, sometimes conquered, sometimes conquering. At the time of admiral Zheng He, in the early 1400s, China tried for the first time to expand beyond its borders. Zheng He's fleet sailed all over the Indian Ocean, reaching Africa and establishing a Chinese influence in the area. Eventually, China abandoned its seafaring power: it remained a land-based power. 

The late 19th and the early 20th centuries were a disastrous period for China, besieged and attacked from all directions. But, with the end of World War 2, China started to rebuild its economy. By the 21st century, China was poised to become the world's #1 economic power, and that had strategic implications. At present, the Chinese seem to have decided that they don't want to challenge the U.S. maritime power directly. Instead, for the first time after the reign of Genghis Khan, the prospect of a land-based Eurasian Empire is becoming a real possibility. 

What would make the new continental empire possible is the "Belt and Road Initiative", proposed by the Chinese government. It is a "Silk Road 2.0," that would link the Eastern shores of Eurasia with Western Europe and Africa by means of high-speed trains. It includes a maritime network of lanes that follows and expands on where the old Zheng He fleet had sailed. A gigantic project on a timescale of decades, perhaps centuries. The Chinese do think long-term. 



But a transport infrastructure is not enough to create an empire: energy is needed to make it function. Up to now, the booming Chinese economy has been functioning mainly on coal, but the Chinese seem to understand that they can't continue for long with that. They are diversifying, expanding their nuclear and renewables industry, at present the largest in the world. Nevertheless, becoming independent of fossil fuels will still take decades. That is pushing China to collaborate with Russia, which can provide oil and gas for the transition phase, as well as mineral resources, food, and timber. 

What we are seeing in the world right now is a transient phase of the slow development of an integrated Eurasian Economy. The war in Ukraine is having the effect of decoupling the Central Eurasian economy from the Western economy. It may be seen as part of a strategic design to control the Eurasian resources. No matter who started the war, nor how it will end, the Russian resources that once went to Europe will soon go south, to China. Western Europe will be demoted to a coastal appendage of the Western Maritime Empire, expendable as needed. 

It is curious how Western Europe not only accepted to be cut off from the Russian resources they desperately need, but enthusiastically acted for that purpose. The Chinese may have put to work a precept from Sun Tzu that goes as, "the opportunity to beat your enemy is provided by the enemy himself." One of the (many) problems Westerners have is that they can't control their own propaganda, and, in this case, they have directed it against themselves. We cannot say whether the Chinese gave a push in that direction, or just exploited a trend. In any case, it happened.  Western Europe has locked itself out of Central Eurasia while thinking they were locking the Eurasians in. 

At present, the Chinese are working on new financial instruments to decouple the Eurasian financial system from the dominance of the US dollar, and to access the Middle Eastern and African resources directly. India has good reasons to join this effort, just as Iran and many other Asian and African countries do. With this tool, the Chinese can build a Central Asian block of enormous economic power, while Western Europe has been pushed into irrelevance. At least, that gives Europeans a chance to put into practice their idea of the "EnergieWende" -- the transition to renewable energy. So far, it was mostly smoke and mirrors, but now they'll have to work on it for real. They will find that it won't be as easy as it was proposed, especially if they have to do it while their economies are collapsing. But, after all, problems are always opportunities, at least if you can solve them. 

The war in Ukraine may die out in the coming weeks, or it may expand, but that matters little. It is just a brief flare in a story that unfolds on a timescale of decades and centuries. The Russian philosopher Alexandr Dugin has been promoting for some time the concept of "Eurasianism" as a new unifying approach to governing Eurasia. In the West, Dugin's ideas are not popular in the mainstream debate. But, if they exist, it means that there exists a current of thought that examines this subject on the basis of the concept that one day Eurasia will exist as a coordinated political entity. 

Will the Eurasian Empire be a good thing or a bad thing? We cannot say: empires are not bad and are not good. They are. And they will be. 



35 comments:

  1. Average intelligence in the West has been declining for more than a century, while the arrogance of its rulers has been steadily increasing..So much for empire..But it will be interesting to see whether the China/Russia axis will be able to create workable alternative energy, since uranium is far from being abundant.The West has developed nothing of value.My opinion based on physics is that no such thing will occur, and after Russia's abundant energy resources are exhausted, it will be back to the era of warlords...

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    1. You never know: problems are always opportunities. Big problems are big opportunities. And enormous problems are enormous problems.

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    2. Russia has enormous potential to develop hydroelectric power.
      According to the International Hydroelectric Power Association.
      "Russia ranks second in the world for undeveloped hydropower resources, with economic potential reaching 852 TWh, and only 20 per cent of it currently utilised."

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    3. Enormous problems are both opportunities and problems, and Russia has Enormous potential. Fossil Fuels, Grain, and forests second only to the Amazon. .

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  2. Malone uses as an example, the release of equine encephalitis as a virus that could disable the brains of an entire population without even killing them.
    Yes, this is an enormous problem that must be resolved before whatever is left of the world gets to peace. Christine

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    1. Sorry, I didn't push "publish" on the main body of my comment yesterday, which preceded the above.Can't reproduce exactly, but https://rokfin.com/stream/15934/Scott-Ritter-Discusses-BioLabs-in-Ukraine-US-Russophobia-and-More

      ....at about 27 min in, he discusses the Ukraine biolabs and the info for sending avian flu, via wild birds, into Russia to target Russian Slavic DNA. This is the most exact description I have heard of this and Ritter is totally credible (credentials noted in the video, including his Georgian wife). Later that day, I read a statement by a Russian military bioweapons expert that one of the biolabs in the Ukraine was working on a virus to kill fertility in Russian Slavic women with their DNA. Malone, in one of his long interviews with a Russian reporter on his farm, told her that the mRNA could target a specific DNA and "China knows they have a Pfizer problem." Personally, I do not see how this can be stopped given the Western reach of this research and what we now know, without annihilating the entire Western World...maybe by EMP, not nucs. The WEF/Davos/EU/US empire is vicious and intends to win and will do anything...as we have already seen to gain totalitarian control of the world. Their actions indicate they intend genocide for Russians and Chinese, one way or another. The WEF timeline to take total control is 10 years...by 2030 and we are now moving along, with them having won control of all "leaders" and everything in the Western world...

      Re the comment above about Russia reverting to warlordism, the bigger issue for Russia, if it comes out of this war intact, is intermarriage with the Chinese...of which I saw much evidence as I traveled the TransSiberian from (Harbin first) Vladivostok to Moscow and down to Kiev. Maybe this is ok...and Russian culture can still be preserved, but I think the Russians now have a far more liberal/free society than the Chinese...maybe that will change too. Things do. The Chinese are not stagnant. Christine


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    2. From a link on naked capitalism this a.m....my point in spades: Nina 🐙 Byzantina
      @NinaByzantina
      ·
      Mar 20
      Ukrainian TV: "I gave instructions to my doctors. I have always been a great humanist & said that as soon as a person is injured, he is no longer an enemy, but a patient. But now, there's a very strict order to castrate all [Russian] men, b/c they are cockroaches, not people..."
      Quote Tweet
      Анатолий Шарий
      @anatoliisharii
      · Mar 20
      Ничего необычного. Просто эфир украинского телеканала
      Christine

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    3. Very nice. Think that long ago there were Barbarians in the world. Now we are civilized.......

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    4. I hope that no one actually believes there is any truth to either the anonymous posts...particularly the "I gave instructions to my doctors'''" one.
      This is just like the 2014 Russian propaganda of the little boy being crucified by the Ukraine "fascists".
      Do people actually believ this stuff???

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    5. Correct. This post should be verified, as always. But Barbarians reign anyway!

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  3. Spot on Pyrrhus. The Limits to growth are far more apparent than in Mongol times.

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  4. Huxley and Orwel's predictions have been made when the crude oil age was just starting.

    The world today is indeed swimming in Syringes and CCTVs.

    However, predictions made at the looming end of the oil age nowadays - will not necessarily become reality - ever - and thank god they won't...


    In the Middle East, the media strongly pushes these days that Islamic Brigades and Fighters - of all sorts - are fighting on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

    This is clearly a choreography - more than anything genuine.

    Will those brigades be given soon the role of controlling the little remaining oil in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf - depopulating as much as possible of those nations, in the process?

    Maybe yes, or likely yes - but that would be another choreography - rather than history-in-the-making...

    History-in-the-making - from now on - is when events start occurring - not because oil is burned outside or inside the event - for the event - but rather when oil is out of the picture - entirely....

    When that starts to happen naturally - no oil-run human system will be enough to stop it...

    Physics, from now on, is on the side of historic events that are non oil-run...

    History in the making - unstoppable and oil-free...


    Cannot wait to see that happens...

    "Energy, like time, flows from past to future", though...

    Wailing.

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  5. The world's center of gravity has shifted to China, but it faces enormous problems. I do not deny that considerable efforts are being made by some of the elites who have found that the Chinese capitalist model is the most suitable to serve their interests. This does not say anything about whether their ambition has a chance to succeed. China has moved away from its traditional philosophy, which has enabled it to survive all catastrophes for centuries. I am not sure that the Western spirit of predation that has taken hold of its leaders is capable of offering centuries of stability.
    However, I appreciate the irony of seeing European propaganda deliberately sabotaging our own civilization. Perhaps it is a just return after centuries of plundering the resources of our colonies.
    For the record, the French were the first Westerners to transfer technology to China when Berliet built truck factories in the 1960s, at a time when no one imagined that China would ever develop. Deng Xiaoping, who himself had worked in French factories in his youth, remembered this when he visited France in 1975.
    This story took another turn when the Berliet daughter married a Mérieux and Mérieux, who had become a close friend of Xi Jinping, continued to trade with China in the medical field until the Wuhan laboratory was built. A strange and fascinating story.
    https://chinacarhistory.com/2018/08/18/the-amazing-story-of-paul-berliet-and-china/
    https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/2014/03/24/biomerieux-et-la-chine-une-longue-tradition-d-echanges-441659.html

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  6. Clearly we Europeans are at risk of becoming irrelevent. What makes it worse is our high energy lifestyle that uses a disproportionate share of the worlds resources. Most people consider this lifestyle to be a birthright and will become very anrgy as it becomes increasingly clear it cannot be maintained.

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  7. May I call your attention to a recent thread of 3 posts in blog peakoilbarrel.com entitled "Collapse: A Decadal Scenario". It is an informed speculation on the way the Seneca effect may concretely play out globally in the near future, and it is worth being brought and discussed in this blog, since the audiences are disjunct.

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    1. Thanks. Interesting story. Looks a little my own musings on the matter, here: https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-next-ten-billion-years.html

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  8. And, from Paul Craig Roberts this a.m....written 5 years ago: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/11/01/washingtons-barbarity-reaches-new-heights/

    https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/11/03/collection-russian-dna-us/

    Washing has targeted Russians for annihilation. If the Russians ever understand this, watch for incoming missiles.

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    1. This is one of those scary stories that might be false or might be true, but they are scary in any case.

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    2. Either way, disinformation or not, these stories are effective in destroying trust and spreading fast. That's why they get coverage IMHO.

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    3. I am 99.9% certain that the collection of DNA samples was either NOT for the purpose of assessing the feasibility of population-tailored biological or chemical weapons, or that such assessment turned out negative. For the 2nd option to be the case, two requisites need to be present: 1) a deeply ignorant political or military leader that ordered the survey and assessment, and 2) a deeply dishonest scientist that, in order to get funding for other projects or just for living, did not teach said leader that it was a waste of time.

      There is no Russian-unique genome (or any x-unique genome, with x a clearly delimited population) that allows the creation of a taylor-made bio- or chemical weapon that will affect ONLY that population. One for the russians would most certainly kill at least all slavic people and most ashkenazi jews, and perhaps all indoeuropeans.

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    4. I think you are right, anonymous. I don't see how a virus could be targeted to hit a population so mixed and so varied as the Russians. Yet, some strange things are ongoing in Ukraine and elsewhere. There may well be something we are missing

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  9. Indeed, the West is in decline. Relative to world GDP, the peak was around 1900, see e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/1_AD_to_2003_AD_Historical_Trends_in_global_distribution_of_GDP_China_India_Western_Europe_USA_Middle_East.png



    Western Europe is a small peninsula, jotting out into the Atlantic. We have a lot of energy-expensive infrastructure and a lot of people who are used to an energy-expensive life style. As Stephen says, a "birthright".

    Population will decline and life on the edge of Empire might be preferrable to being close to the new centers. In most of classic empires, peasants in the core usually were more heavily taxed than in the periphery.

    We are in for a rough ride down the Seneca cliff, probably a decade or two before our friends in the East. Let them too enjoy a moment of exuberance!

    Peace,
    Goran

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    1. I wouldn't worry about it too much: climate change will render Asian aspirations for dominance just one more techno-triumphant fantasy. Dust bowl China and Dust bowl India may have too many problems to cause others any.

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  10. I fear that we have reached a point where for the first time in history, our governments have an incentive to reduce their own citizenry. In the past, each able bodied citizen was a source of muscle power and production. I read somewhere that fossil fuels provide a subsidy equivalent to 500 slaves for every westerner. Now that energy supply is not increasing and we have entered a zero sum game at best, the "elite" have an incentive to reduce the number of westerners, freeing up 500 slaves for each one removed. Each of us consumes more than we produce, by orders of magnitude.

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    1. I was thinking along the same lines. Once we accepted to be called "consumers" and not anymore "citizens," we sealed our doom. There is not so much left to consume, and so we will be consumed ourselves

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    2. Ouch. The only things we really track are things we consume or will soon consume . We are all being tracked electronically. And this thread is already very dark.

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    3. For some time, I've felt that the plan has been to use each financial crash to throw more people from the middle class lifeboat, to preserve the lifestyle for a reduced set of people. The problem is that everything in the real economy has thin profit margins, and throwing the marginal consumer out of the lifeboat also throws out the marginal producer. Eventually you end up with one monopoly producer in each sector.

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    4. Ugo, your comment about consumers as opposed to citizens. We in NZ went neolib in 1984 and our public service got corporatised. Language is significant, the government departments got renamed, several times. None bore much resemblance to the original. Dept Social Welfare became Work and Income, the subtle name change implied income was linked to work, not to the social integrity and welfare of the citizen. In dealing with government departments a citizen became a "client", the public servant no longer served the public but "case managed". The net effect has been to invert the relationship, as you mention our role is as consumers of decreased levels of service in which we are managed but not served by corporate overseers. Thus is our society and freedom diminished.

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    5. We are in a world in which everything is measured in terms of money. For instance, a tree has zero value unless it is cut and turned into timber. Now, how much is a human being worth? I am afraid that most of us have a negative value. We cost money to the state, providing little or nothing in return. The consequences, according to standard economic theory are obvious.

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    6. Good point.
      Accepting the role of "consumer" is maybe the most telling part of today's identity wars, and one that is not much noticed. I think it is part of a larger corporatist tendency since the 1970s, when more and more of society is marketized, and those who are not in the elite are expected to play the main roles of "(temporary) employee" and "consumer". The upper middle "Managerial Class" are exempt from hard work and gain most privileges.

      We got a glimpse of the reality behind this charade when the covid restrictions exposed who is really "essential worker" and who is not...
      (Some people are not valued at zero. But Udo is right that the money valuation of people is tragic and it puts our wise elders at negative value. I valued my grandparents a lot, especially after they finished their "productive careers".)

      I suspect that the Managerial Class is blind to their own arrogance and will keep continue the deficit spending, money printing and giving their children aristocratic careers until someone else replace them. I have little faith in learning as long as the pain is on someone else.

      Peace,
      Goran

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    7. Goran, Versailles and cake come to mind.

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  11. I heard that Italy plans to replace Russian gas with US LNG in the next three years. Good luck with that! It seems to me that this is classic example of solving the problem with more complexity, higher expenses and higher price, when all that is really needed is reduction in complexity and expenses. Italy has 60 million people. There must be somebody to tell the political class that proposed solution is a non-solution. Italians will pay higher energy price, the competitive advantages of the economy will be lost and hence there will be lower income because the Italian products will have to compete with Chinese. It seems to me that only US will profit in two ways: a) selling high price LNG to Europe, and b) replacing European productive capacity with US produced goods and selling it to Western Europeans. How long this rotten solution can last? Are Western Europeans really such suckers?

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    1. The only explanation I can think of is that watching TV damages people's brains.

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  12. Das Ende des Ölzeitalters hat zwei Phasen: eine zivile und eine militärische.
    Nun hat der westliche Block festgestellt, dass ihm die zentrale Ressource schneller ausgeht als dem östlichen Block. Was kann er tun?
    Er kann das Ende der zivilen Versorgung zeitlich beschleunigen, um so genug Ressourcen für die Kontrolle des Events und anschließender Sicherung des Machterhalts zu haben.
    Er muß nur so lange durchhalten bis auch dem Osten das Öl ausgeht.
    Das größte Risiko dabei stellt die eigene Bevölkerung dar.
    Und nein, nicht das Fernsehen ist schuld, sondern die Transatlantiker.

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  13. 1. empires in the middle of the map never last long because they’re squeezed from all sides

    2. ***there used to be a theory that whoever controls the eurasian heartland controls the world. but what seems more realistic is whoever controls north america controls the world. a continental sized power with the most secure borders ever can therefore spend all its efforts exporting power for global control. a super british empire. the US is the universal empire of The West and is only just getting started

    3. orthodox civilization is literally demographically disappearing. and china and all sinic nations are rapidly having population decline.

    4. europe has lots of fossil fuels but they stopped extraction ~10y ago due to environmental regulations. plus they have nuclear. autarky is returning rapidly with deglobalization. being resource reliant on russia was always a bad thing

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