Diplomacy & Crisis News

Sans doute trop confiant dans les forces du marché, le mensuel américain « Wired » vient de rater son introduction en Bourse. Cet échec relativise un peu le succès, jusque-là considérable, d'une publication destinée à célébrer Internet et chacune des conséquences de la révolution technologique. Presque (...) / États-Unis (affaires intérieures), Informatique, Libéralisme, Presse, Technologies de l'information - 1996/11

Clausewitz would have understood the weaponization of social media.

« Réconcilier l'économie et la société »... Ce principe inscrit au fronton de l'économie sociale revient à la mode. Avec l'échec du capitalisme financiarisé, l'esprit associatif, mutualiste et coopératif est de plus en plus fréquemment évoqué. / Banque, Capitalisme, Économie, Entreprise, Solidarité - (...) / Banque, Capitalisme, Économie, Entreprise, Solidarité - 2009/07

La « fièvre de la brique » espagnole s'est apaisée. Elle laisse derrière elle des villes fantômes, des forêts de grues immobilisées et des centaines de milliers de chômeurs. / Espagne, Banque, Finance, Logement, Travail, Chômage - 2009/07 / Espagne, Banque, Finance, Logement, Travail, Chômage - 2009/07

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro de printemps de Politique étrangère (n°3/2018). Amaël Cattaruzza propose une analyse de l’ouvrage d’Alexandra Novosseloff, Des ponts entre les hommes (CNRS Éditions, 2017, 312 pages).

« Si le mur unit rarement, le pont semble plus complexe, ambivalent, multiple. » De fait, nombreuses sont les situations géopolitiques où les ponts, loin de réunir, deviennent des lieux de filtrage, de contrôle des flux, d’exclusion et de division.

C’est autour de ce paradoxe que se construit cette étude, basée sur « neuf cas de ponts dans des zones de post-conflit ou de crise et franchissant des “frontières” ; certaines […] reconnues légalement, d’autres [étant] des limites administratives ou des lignes de cessez-le-feu qui aspirent à devenir des frontières ». Cette focale sur la figure du pont est l’occasion d’un voyage géopolitique à travers le monde.

Il commence dans les Balkans d’après-guerre, de Mostar à Mitrovica, où les ponts sont devenus malgré eux symboles de la séparation intercommunautaire. S’ensuivent des
« zooms » sur le fleuve Évros entre la Grèce et la Turquie, associé depuis plus d’une décennie à l’idée d’une Europe forteresse, sur le Jourdain, entre Jordanie et territoire palestiniens, sur le Dniestr entre Moldavie et Transnistrie, sur la rivière Ingouri entre Géorgie et Abkhazie, sur l’Amou-Daria entre Tadjikistan et Afghanistan, sur les ponts entre la Chine et la Corée du Nord, sur le Rio Grande entre États-Unis et Mexique, et enfin sur les ponts du fleuve Mano, entre Sierra Leone, Liberia et Côte d’Ivoire.

Plus qu’une simple étude thématique, ce livre est une invitation au départ, à mi-chemin entre écriture scientifique et récit de voyage. Chaque pont, rivière ou fleuve évoqué devient prétexte à un regard plus large sur l’histoire de sa région et son environnement géopolitique contemporain. Pour quelques chapitres, l’auteur a fait appel à des spécialistes régionaux, Renaud Dorlhiac (chapitre Balkans) et Katarina Mansson (chapitres Grèce/Turquie et Abkhazie). L’ensemble est magnifiquement illustré par les photographies de l’auteur. Ainsi la géopolitique régionale, sa géographie, son histoire, ses paysages prennent-ils vie à travers les images, les cartes et les textes, qui fourmillent d’informations et de témoignages sur la vie quotidienne des populations dans ces espaces de post-conflit marqués par les tensions et les antagonismes.

L’ambivalence des ponts, qui unissent autant qu’ils séparent, est en permanence interrogée dans cet ouvrage. Peut-être même, et ce sera la seule réserve à formuler, cette ambiguïté est-elle accentuée par les choix de l’auteur. De fait, les ponts étudiés sont toujours choisis dans une situation frontalière, dans des espaces marqués par des processus de rivalités géopolitiques, voire de réconciliation d’après-guerre. Ce travail apparaît comme une réflexion autour de ces contextes de post-conflit, de leurs répercussions politiques, sociales ou de leurs impacts sur le vécu des populations locales, plus que comme une véritable étude approfondie de la dimension géopolitique des ponts dans le monde. Plusieurs aspects auraient pu être traités et sont finalement absents, comme certaines prouesses techniques pour relier des îles ou désenclaver des régions. Néanmoins, l’angle d’analyse est expliqué et assumé par l’auteur dès l’introduction.

Des ponts entre les hommes est un bel et riche ouvrage, qui complète parfaitement les travaux antérieurs d’Alexandra Novosseloff sur les murs-frontières. Il fera le bonheur des amateurs de géopolitique, voyageurs et explorateurs dans l’âme.

Amaël Cattaruzza

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North Korea's nuclear arsenal may be more opportunity than threat. 

Industries manufacturières en difficulté, usines fermées par milliers, ouvriers migrants au chômage par dizaines de millions : les informations alarmistes sur la Chine arrivent jour après jour. A Chenghai (province du Guangdong), l'un des centres du jouet chinois, l'observation de la réalité permet (...) / Asie, Chine, Économie, Entreprise, Industrie, Travail - 2009/06

« Hélas ! nos citoyens enchaînés en ces lieux, servent à cimenter cet asile odieux ; ils dressent, d'une main dans les fers avilie, ce siège de l'orgueil et de la tyrannie. Mais, crois-moi, dans l'instant qu'ils verront leurs vengeurs, leurs mains vont se lever sur leurs persécuteurs. Eux-mêmes ils (...) / Afrique, Caraïbes, Europe, Inde, Colonialisme, Histoire, Idées, Impérialisme, Intellectuels, Amériques, Esclavage - 2008/04

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Some people think there’s a special place in hell for him.

Canada is the United States’ second largest trade partner after China. While issues exist, it is not a problematic partner. President Trump, however, has imposed economic sanctions on it, has threatened more sanctions, and singled it out for special condemnation in his rhetoric. A high point in the latter regard came when Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, claimed there was “a special place in hell” for people like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Navarro, of course, later apologized for this, presumably because it sounded so silly.

“National security” is the stated reason for these sanctions, as it is for sanctions the administration has imposed on other countries. The principal reason for invoking national security is that it permits the administration to bypass the World Trade Organization and its complex rules, procedures, and standards for fairness. (In the process, the administration threatens to undermine the trade system that the United States helped forge to strengthen global growth and stability, but that is a separate topic.) The administration faces no real need to justify that decision, and so it has made no real effort to do so. Could such an argument be made?

A National Security Argument for Not Relying on Allies

The national security reference has been met with considerable derision because allies, by definition, do not pose a threat, but that, in and of itself, is not really a complete answer. There can be valid reasons for not relying on allies for goods that would be required in times of war.

For argument’s sake, let’s say we rely on South Korea for a substantial portion of steel. Steel is something that we would need to produce airplanes, tanks, howitzers, cartridges, etc. in time of war. We would not expect South Korea to cut off our steel supply for malicious reasons, but:

• What if the war in question occurs in Korea? Then the supply would be cut off despite Seoul’s intentions.

• What if the war occurs between the United States and China, and China fills the Pacific Ocean with submarines capable of sinking ships arriving from South Korea? That would also be a substantial threat to supply.

• What if ships are simply not available in adequate supply when they are most needed? During World War II, the United States rationed sugar, among other items. This curtailment of the civilian sugar supply did not occur because it was a vital war material needed for troops in combat. Just the opposite. It was curtailed because it was a low priority. While some sugar from cane growers in places like Louisiana and Florida and from sugar beet growers mostly in midwestern and western states was available, other normal supplies from places like Hawaii, Cuba, and Brazil required ships for transport and the ships were being commandeered for convoy duty (where, in many cases, they were sunk by submarines). Steel today would be a much higher priority than sugar was then, but keep in mind as well that the number of U.S.-flagged ships is infinitely smaller now than it was in the 1940s and there would be competing claims on them.

Yes, a national security argument can be made for avoiding reliance on overseas allies for the supply of vital war materials. To be sure, this would not be not without costs and could be considered misguided in terms of value trade-offs. Despite what Trump thinks, trade policy and treaties do not affect trade deficits as much as this country’s high spending rate, its low saving rate, its ability to attract foreign capital, and the role of the dollar as an international currency do. The anticipated increases in the budget deficit resulting from recent tax cuts and spending hikes will likely lead to worsened—not improved—trade deficits regardless of Trump actions on trade. Moreover, trade barriers worsen competitiveness, favor producers over consumers, and create jobs in some sectors of the economy only by destroying them in other sectors. Still, an argument could be made on the basis of national security if that is your priority.

But Canada?

Yet none of the national security argument applies to Canada, our Number 1 supplier of foreign steel! Canada is no more inaccessible than Minnesota or Upstate New York. Supply routes from Canada are no more vulnerable to disruption than any route within the United States. Canadians are highly unlikely to cut off supplies for malicious reasons—as long as we do not keep kicking them in the shins for no good reason. Overall, the administration’s reliance on national security to justify its trade policy is specious, but with regard to Canada it is downright absurd.

The post Trade, National Security, and Canada appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Both Russia and China view weakening Western democracy as a means of enhancing their own standing.

Trump is putting the global nonproliferation regime at risk.

https://www.quiz-maker.com/Q3YKNB2

The post Monday Quiz! appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

L'Adriatique existe-t-elle ? L'ancien golfe de Venise a mauvaise presse. Polluée, soumise à un tourisme de masse prédateur, cette mer semi-fermée constitue l'une des frontières majeures de l'Europe. Autrefois ligne de démarcation entre l'Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN) et les pays (...) / Albanie, Italie, Monténégro, Écologie, Immigrés, Logement, Mer, Migrations, Tourisme, Croatie, Slovénie, Frontières - 2004/07 L'empire s'embourbe

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro de printemps de Politique étrangère (n°3/2018). Luc-Yaovi Kouassi propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Jean-François Bayart, Violence et religion en Afrique (Karthala, 2018, 170 pages).

Dans ses deux derniers ouvrages, Jean-François Bayart met en cause ce qui est en passe de devenir un poncif : les crises les plus violentes en Afrique proviendraient du religieux. Il est vrai que la contestation sociale adopte volontiers une formulation religieuse, et qu’il y a, depuis les années 1980, une recrudescence des fondamentalismes pentecôtistes et salafistes sur le continent. Il serait cependant très réducteur d’appréhender Boko Haram principalement à l’aune du Coran.

Avec une réflexion théorique assumée, Violence et religion en Afrique constitue une boîte à outils d’analyse des rapports complexes qu’entretient la violence avec la religion. Le propos s’appuie sur certains des plus solides travaux empiriques africanistes de ces dernières années. On y trouve ainsi des références à l’œuvre de Marie Miran-Guyon sur la dimension mystique des conflits en Côte d’Ivoire, ou de Louisa Lombard sur la guerre civile centrafricaine.

L’ouvrage met en garde contre toute une série d’écueils qui guette celui qui s’intéresse au phénomène religieux. Il faut tout d’abord penser le fait religieux – phénomène culturel – « sans être culturaliste ». Celui-ci est en effet hétérogène, bien souvent polysémique politiquement et dépendant des situations historiques où il s’inscrit, et porté par des hommes et des femmes en perpétuel mouvement dans un espace social propre. Parallèlement, il convient de prendre acte des « logiques intrinsèques de la foi », en reconnaissant un espace de transcendance et de spiritualité « pur », qu’il serait vain de réduire à des intérêts matériels. L’auteur prévient également la tentation d’associer la religion à la tradition. La religion forme un creuset de transformation sociale et de « réinvention de la tradition ».

En somme, le fait religieux ne peut se comprendre que « comme une manifestation parmi d’autres de l’historicité des sociétés africaines », indissociable du triple phénomène de diffusion de l’État-nation, d’extension du marché et de cristallisation des identités ethniques qu’a connu le continent.

À partir de l’analyse de Boko Haram, parangon s’il en est d’un mouvement religieux violent, Bayart illustre ce que peut apporter sa perspective. Il démontre avec justesse la relation contingente entre violence et religion, en même temps que sa dimension avant tout politique. Boko Haram se révèle l’expression islamique d’un phénomène sociopolitique singulier : celui d’un mouvement terroriste qui procède entre autres d’une lutte des classes propre aux États du nord du Nigeria (sarakuna vs. talakawa), et d’une marginalité vis-à-vis des centres de pouvoir et de richesse. L’usage de la violence et le recours à un vocabulaire religieux deviennent alors des instruments de conquête matérielle, mais aussi d’une dignité longtemps déniée. Loin d’être le produit d’un islam désincarné, Boko Haram s’inscrit dans un certain « terroir historique », lui-même ancré dans la mondialisation, dont témoignent ses échanges avec les centres théologiques d’Arabie. On suit ainsi avec intérêt cet exemple, bien qu’il puisse se révéler très dense pour les lecteurs non arabisants ou totalement étrangers au cas nord-nigérian.

Court et direct, Violence et religion en Afrique constitue une réflexion incontournable pour quiconque s’intéresse au fait religieux. Bien qu’essentiellement axé sur l’Afrique de l’Ouest et le Sahel, l’ouvrage s’avérera sans doute fécond pour les spécialistes d’autres terrains, du fait des enjeux qu’il soulève.

Luc-Yaovi Kouassi

> > S’abonner à Politique étrangère < <

After watching politicians of nearly every mainstream party be caught in corruption scandals, Brazilian voters are willing to rebel against a dysfunctional system.

Les lendemains de grève sont souvent amers et démobilisateurs. Les travailleurs sans papiers qui avaient combattu avec audace pour leur régularisation en 2008 n'y ont pas échappé. Certains sont restés proches des syndicats, d'autres s'en sont éloignés. Leurs trajectoires, très diverses, montrent le (...) / France, Mouvement de contestation, Droit, Syndicalisme, Travail, Entreprise, Immigrés, Migrations - 2018/10

People walk past a statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin during celebration of his 145th birthday at the Lenin Hut Museum at Razliv lake, outside St.Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, April 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. By Charles Clover. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.

 

The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia. By Mark Bassin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

 

Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship. Edited by Marlene Laruelle. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.

 

Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. By Anton Shekhovtsov. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017.

 

“The ideas of [Lev] Gumilev are today capturing the masses.”

President Vladimir Putin, at Astana, in June 2004[1]

 

Cas Mudde recently observed that “[p]opulist radical right parties are the most studied party family in political science.”[2] While the interest of social researchers for ultra-nationalist political groups and networks – not only parties – in the West has indeed risen markedly during the last quarter of century, this cannot be said, to the same degree, about the East-Central European and especially post-Soviet far right. There exists, to be sure, a certain body of scholarly literature on these objects now too.[3] Yet, many details and circumstances of the emergence and development of relevant extremely right-wing groupings in such countries as Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Romania as well as especially Serbia and Ukraine still remain to be explored, contextualized, and interpreted.[4]  This is in spite of the fact that some of these parties were temporarily included in their countries’ coalition governments.[5]

With regard to the largest post-Soviet country, the situation is somewhat better, but essentially similar. Whereas Russian contemporary ultra-nationalism was an understudied field in the 1990s, there is today a formidable circle of Russian and Western researchers studying the various permutations of Russia’s extreme right.[6] But even this growing community’s rising output is so far insufficiently differentiated, voluminous and balanced to cover the whole variety of radically anti-Western tendencies in Russian politics, intellectual life, mass media, youth culture, and society at large. Worse, Russian right-wing extremism studies has, during the last 25 years, been dominated by non-tenured researchers[7] – above all, Marlene Laruelle, Aleksandr Verkhovskii and the late Vladimir Pribylovskii – who managed to produce the sub-discipline’s seminal texts while being busy with raising the funds to do so.[8] Various donors, among them the Norway Research Council at Oslo or Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs at New York, have recently provided grants to more deeply investigate Russia’s escalating nationalism. A number of tenured and non-tenured scholars across the world have decided to devote parts of their time to following the Russian extreme right. Yet, there appears to be no major political science chair or think-tank program – apart from Verkhovskii’s small SOVA monitoring center in Moscow[9] – that has post-Soviet Russian ultra-nationalism among its main designated research fields.[10]

As the four studies under review here illustrate,[11] the institutional under-development of Russian right-wing extremism studies is unfortunate. Certain Manichean ideas, informal extremist networks and industrious agents of the radical right – among them those calling themselves “Eurasianists” including, for instance, Vladimir Putin’s (b. 1952) official advisor Sergei Glaz’ev (b. 1961)[12] – have infiltrated Russian mainstream politics, ministerial bureaucracy, foreign affairs, higher education, Orthodox churches, think-tanks, mass media, (un)civil society and cultural diplomacy.[13] In view of Russia’s role in world politics, nuclear arsenal, military adventurism, challenging geography and declining economy, the political and social impact of the post-Soviet far right should thus be of concern to the West (and other world regions). Yet, the sub-field has so far – to significant degree – been driven by publications emerging from short-term grants, hobby research, and side jobs of academics and journalists also concerned with other duties than investigating the Russian far right. The condition of the sub-discipline Post-Soviet Russian Right-Wing Extremism Studies (postsowjetische russlandbezogene Rechtsextremismusforschung) is better than it was twenty years ago, when its state of play was reviewed, for the first time in English.[14] Yet, it is still not adequate to the increasingly broad variety, growing political impact, and rising international interconnectedness of its objects.

To be sure, the nature of the “Putin System” can still not be informatively classified as “fascist,” as some observers – with typically over-stretched concepts of generic fascism – have suggested.[15] While being nationalistic, anti-liberal and leader-oriented, the current Russian regime lacks a sufficiently palingenetic drive towards a political, cultural and anthropological revolution to be meaningfully equated to Mussolini’s or Hitler’s reigns.[16] So far, Putin’s rule remains similar to that of other so-called “oligarchic” (and not ideocratic) orders of most post-Soviet countries. In political science terms, this means that, while Russia’s current regime has become less hybrid and more authoritarian, its functioning remains determined by patron-client relationships, machine politics, nepotistic dynasties, clan-like networks and informal exchanges rather than ideological prescriptions. The main purpose of its patronalistic or neopatrimonial mechanisms is rent-extraction, preservation of power as well as privileges, and sometimes plain theft instead of pursuing transcendental goals.[17] However, to the degree that Putin’s government is, because of various economic factors, losing its earlier performance-based legitimacy, it is increasingly turning to charismatic and ideological forms of self-legitimation. At this point, Russia’s rich tradition of illiberal nationalist thought enters the stage.[18] Although it plays, so far, an instrumental rather fundamental role for the “Putin System,” elements of right radical rhetoric – i.e. conspiracy theories, leader-cult, anti-Americanism, messianism, nativism, irredentism, clericalism, homophobia, fortress-mentality, law-and-order slogans etc. – have become part and parcel of Russian official statements, foreign policies and public discourse.[19] Arguably, they are starting to assume a life of their own.

Two particularly intriguing bodies of thought within the larger assembly of modern Russian anti-Western ideas are classical Eurasianism, as developed in the 1920s and 1930s,[20] and post-Soviet so-called “neo-Eurasianism.” In fact, the latter is, to some degree, a misnomer. It contains some theoretical similarities with, and partly constitutes a functional equivalent to, classical Eurasianism. Yet, post-Soviet neo-Eurasianism, partly inspired by Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), and principally shaped by Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962), is not a continuation or elaboration, but rather a reformulation and sometimes falsification of older Eurasianist outlooks.[21] Both classical and neo-Eurasianism build upon 19th-century Russian anti-Westernism including the Slavophiles of the 1840s-1850s, Nikolai Danilevskii (1822-1885) and Konstantin Leont’ev (1831-1891). Yet, their main inspirations, geographic foci and eventual aims differ. Classical Eurasianism was a sophisticated ideological, cultural and theoretic construct developed by some of the most remarkable Russian émigré  scholars after the October Revolution, among them, Nikolai Trubetskoi (1890-1938), Petr Savitskii (1895-1968), Lev Karsavin (1882-1952), Roman Iakobson (1896-1982), Georgii Vernadskii (1887-1973), Georgii Florovskii (1883-1979), and Petr Suvchinskii (1892-1985).[22] Based on a variety of academic approaches and considerable empirical research, the Eurasianists believed that they had located a third continent between Europe and Asia that is neither European nor Asian. They were actively seeking and thought to have found various historical, geographical, linguistic and other characteristics of the territory of the Tsarist and Soviet empires that led them to allege the existence of a separate Eurasian civilization different from – what they saw as – the “Romano-Germanic” culture of Central and Western Europe. Eurasian civilization is illiberal, non-democratic and anti-individualistic, the Eurasianists asserted; it should thus be kept separate from both European civilization and supposedly universal-humanistic ideas. With such a vision, classical Eurasianism was remarkably similar to the concurrently emerging so-called Conservative Revolution of the Weimar Republic.[23]

 

While Duginite neo-Eurasianism is also outspokenly ideocratic and particularistic, it has far less academic clout than classical Eurasianism, is heavily conspirological, and often simply plagiarizes ideas from international anti-Western thought.[24] Rather than developing classical Eurasianism, neo-Eurasianism is a hybrid, drawing primarily on 19th and early 20th century mystical geopolitics, the German Conservative Revolution, European National-Bolshevism, British Satanism, the French New Right, Italian neo-Fascism, Integral Traditionalism, and some other non-Russian radical intellectual as well as political movements.[25] To readers of Western anti-liberal thought, Dugin’s basic idea may thus sound familiar: World history’s basic conflict is that between collectivistic and traditionalist Eurasian land-powers (tellurocracies), on the one hand, and individualistic and liberal Atlantic sea-powers (thalassocracies), on the other. The hidden war of their contemporary leaders – Russia vs. America – is currently entering its Endkampf (final battle) and will involve a Russian domestic as well as the world’s geopolitical revolution. In Dugin’s fluctuating outlook (recently re-labelled, by him, as “the fourth political theory”[26]), the extension of “Eurasia” is less clear than in classical Eurasianism, and may also embrace other territories than the former Tsarist/Soviet empire, including continental Central and Western Europe, various Asian countries, or even entirely different parts of the world, if they decide to adhere to tellurocratic and traditional values. Both the largely Western sources of neo-Eurasianism and its geographic flexibility became major reasons that Dugin and his various organizations were well-positioned to participate not only in interconnecting the EU’s and Russia’s radically nationalist scenes, but also in linking some representatives of Putin’s regime to the Western far right.

Each of the four studies reviewed here breaks new ground in one way or another, and will become basic reading for those interested in the post-Soviet Russian extreme right. While they sometimes contain flaws in terms of conceptualization, terminology and composition, all of them are rich on empirical detail, do close process-tracing, and conduct pertinent comparisons. They complement well some older important monographs and collected volumes on post-Soviet Russian ultra-nationalism by, for instance, in chronological order, Wayne Allensworth, Peter Duncan, Stephen Shenfield, Viacheslav Likhachev, Vadim Rossman, Vladimir Shnirel’man, Thomas Parland, Anastasia Mitrofanova, Marlene Laruelle, Alexander Höllwerth, Stefan Wiederkehr, Verkhovskii, and Galina Kozhevnikova et al.[27]

Charles Clover, formerly Financial Times correspondent at Moscow, has produced, with his Black Wind, White Snow, a very readable descriptive survey of classical and neo-Eurasianism. His study combines results of several years of archival research, participant observation and in-depth interviews in Russia with an enviable literary talent. Clover’s gripping story of the zigzags in the development of Russian Eurasianism reads often like a novel. Based on a broad variety of primary sources (manuscripts, letter, conversations), he tells numerous revealing episodes and empirical details not yet outlined in the scholarly literature. Clover brilliantly sketches the transmutation of Eurasianism from an obscure intellectual movement among Russian emigres in interwar Europe into a major paradigm of post-Soviet international relations, intellectual discourse and political interpretation, as expressed in the name of the recently established “Eurasian Economic Union.”[28] This book is, perhaps, unique to the discipline in that it manages to be a well-written general overview of, and excellent introduction to, Eurasianism, yet also constitutes – because of the various fascinating short stories it contains – profitable reading for the specialist.

Such an outstanding text could have been brought though to its readership in a less confusing set-up. Its publication with a top university press suggests that it is an academic study – which it is not. It may have been more effective and reached a wider readership as a paperback with a major commercial publisher. Also, the book’s subtitle does not reveal the text’s focus on classical and neo-Eurasianism. Instead, it suggests that it deals with some “new” Russian nationalism while it is, in fact, about a familiar variety of the old imperial Russian tradition. “New nationalism” has been a phrase recently used, within the scholarly community, to designate non- or, at least, less expansionist Russian far right trends that are more ethnocentric, introverted, exclusive as well as partly racist – and thus often, at least, implicitly anti-Eurasian.[29] Still, Clover’s investigation stands out, because of its comprehensiveness and insights, as a major publishing event in contemporary Russian area studies.

The same can be said, for different reasons, about Mark Bassin’s in-depth exploration of The Gumilev Mystique. Whereas Clover sheds novel light on some already researched episodes in contemporary Russian nationalism, Bassin opens an entirely new chapter in the study of the Russian far right, with his magisterial monograph on one of the insufficiently appreciated, yet important trends in the post-Soviet history of social thought and public discourse. His book is not the first academic text on its topic,[30] but it provides the first comprehensive account of the intellectual biography, social impact, international reception and political significance of the controversial historian and self-ascribed “Eurasianist” Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), son to the famous Russian poets Nikolai Gumilev (1886-1921) and Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). Filling a glaring gap in post-Stalinist Russian area studies, Bassin has written the definitive investigation into one of the most prolific and consequential Soviet writers on pre-modern Russian as well as Central Asian history, and Russia’s major theorist of ethnogenesis.

The classical Eurasianists referred, in the rationalization of their political theory, to social, cultural and geographical research. In contrast, Gumilev boldly mixes in his writings arguments from the humanities with questionable insights from the natural sciences, above all biology. Gumilev’s often fancy ideas and novitistic (or pseudo-innovative) concepts about the natural character of ethnoses (or ethnic groups) had and have considerable influence on the worldview of late and post-Soviet students, intellectuals and researchers, especially in such disciplines as history, anthropology, geography and international relations. His voluminous writings have contributed to the emergence of such specifically Russian social science sub-disciplines as political anthropology, civilizational studies, ethno-politology, geopolitics, and culturology.[31] After the break-up of the USSR, Gumilev’s influence has been rising constantly in spite of his fantastic assertions about the course and laws of human history.

Gumilev presents world history as a cyclical process of the birth, rise, fall and disappearance of ethnoses. Being naturally secluded groups, ethnoses enter alliances with similar other ethnic groups and form larger unions called “super-ethnoses.” At the same time, according to Gumilev, ethnoses are in constant danger of becoming “chimeras,” if they are infiltrated, subverted and eventually destroyed by alien, parasitic groups – not the least, by Jews. Most infamously, Gumilev has speculated, in pseudo-scientific fashion, about the role of cosmic energy or solar emissions (as well as resulting micro-mutations in human beings!) in the outbreak of – what he calls – “passionarity,” within ethnic groups under such impact from outer space. Passionarnost’ is, perhaps, Gumilev’s most popular ear worm frequently used in post-Soviet intellectual discourse nowadays. It means something like certain human beings’ heightened ability to absorb energy and their resulting drive towards transformative action undertaken by the passionarii (“passionarians”), on behalf of their native communities.

Bassin not only deals extensively and brilliantly with Gumilev’s quixotic theories, but outlines also the various confrontations, adaptations, interpretations and utilizations they have encountered in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, in- and, sometimes also, outside Russia. He deals especially revealingly with Gumilev’s various quarrels with Soviet social scientists and Russian ultra-nationalists. While both were initially rather skeptical, these two groups eventually adopted large parts of the Gumilevian conceptual framework, with this or that caveat.

Both Clover’s and Bassin’s revelations about Gumilev’s connections to the late and post-Soviet Russian elite, like the indirect link to the temporary “prime-minister” of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic Aleksandr Borodai (b. 1972), are especially fascinating.[32] Like Clover, Bassin points out the important role of Gumilev’s friendship to the last speaker of the Soviet parliament and August 1991 putsch supporter Anatolii Luk’ianov (b. 1930).[33] On the other hand, Bassin does not mention, also like Clover, the writings, role and impact of the political theorist Aleksandr Panarin (1940-2003). A once prominent professor at Moscow State University’s Faculty of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Social and Philosophical Studies of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Philosophy, Panarin was one of the few Russian experts on the French New Right, helped making, in the late 1990s, both classical and neo-Eurasianism acceptable within Russian academia, and, towards the end of this life, joined Dugin’s abortive Eurasia Party.[34]

A more general omission in Bassin’s otherwise comprehensive and flawless survey concerns Gumilev’s role in, and impact on, the post-Soviet history and social studies teaching of teenagers and students on the secondary, under-graduate and post-graduate levels. At several points, Bassin indirectly mentions the issue, for instance in connection with the new Eurasian University named after Lev Gumilev in Astana, or when pointing out that one of Gumilev’s major books – Ot Rusi k Rossii (From the Rus to Russia) – was recommended by the Ministry of Education as a text for the high school curriculum of the Russian Federation (p. 222). Yet, he does not treat Gumilev’s pedagogic influence as deeply as, for instance, the debates around Gumilev among Soviet academics. That is unfortunate for two reasons. First, the use of certain books and articles by Gumilev in universities and even high schools is presumably one of the main reasons for the surprising respect that the anti-Western, often amateurish and sometimes anti-Semitic texts of Gumilev enjoy among the Russian public. Gumilev’s high visibility and social rank distinguish him from, for instance, the also anti-Semitic writer and renowned mathematician Igor Shafarevich (b. 1923).[35] Second, there exists already a nascent sub-direction, within Russian nationalism studies, that focuses on the social impact of anti-Western and extremely right-wing ideas via post-Soviet higher education.[36] It would have been intriguing to see what relative role Gumilev’s writings play in social science and humanities curricula of various secondary and tertiary education institutions in Russia and other countries.[37]

The increasing relevance of the latter is illustrated by Vadim Rossman’s informative paper “Moscow State University’s Department of Sociology and the Climate of Opinion in Post-Soviet Russia” in Laruelle’s original collective volume Eurasianism and the European Far Right. Rossman deals here above all with Aleksandr Dugin’s activities at Russia’s most prestigious higher education institution – the capital’s Lomonosov University. Like almost all contributions to Laruelle’s new paper collection, Rossman’s detailed chapter deals with a hitherto largely neglected, yet important new topic in post-Soviet studies.

Laruelle contextualizes her collected volume’s purpose in an introductory essay called “Dangerous Liaisons: Eurasianism, the European Far Right, and Putin’s Russia.” The book’s empirical part starts with Anton Shekhovtsov’s outline of the beginnings of Dugin’s relationship to the West European New Right in 1989-1994 and ends with Shekhovtsov’s report on Western far right election observation missions in the service of the Kremlin. Jean-Ives Camus illustrates Dugin’s close relationship to France. Giovanni Savino revealingly surveys Dugin’s various connections in Italy. Nicolas Lebourg outlines the “difficult establishment of neo-Eurasianism in Spain.” Vügar İmanbeyli sketches the fascinating rise and temporary fall of Dugin’s networks in Turkey. Umut Korkut and Emel Akçali provide glimpses into Hungary’s flirtation with Eurasianism. Sofia Tipaldou details the Greek Golden Dawn’s transnational links.

Laruelle’s edited volume is best read in combination with Anton Shekhovtsov’s forthcoming study Russia and the Western Far Right.[38] This voluminous monograph deals not only with post-Soviet affairs, but also the Soviet period – namely the 1920s and 1950s when the Kremlin already had some secret contacts with West European right-wing extremists. While Laruelle’s volume details primarily connections between Russia’s extremely anti-Western Eurasianists and the Western far right, the principal focus of Shekhovtsov’s volume is the paradoxical collaboration of the Soviet and Putin regimes with various Western ultra-nationalists, and especially, during the last years, with those in Austria, Italy and France. While Moscow was after World War II and today still is loudly “anti-fascist,” it has – in a variety of situations – not hesitated to contact, support and utilize extremely right-wing extremists for various foreign and domestic purposes. Recently, this has included employing far-right commentators for propaganda and disinformation purposes in Kremlin-controlled mass media, or engaging Western fringe politicians as guests to manipulated elections in the role of foreign observers who legitimize, for Russia’s domestic audience, engineered polls, including pseudo-referenda, with affirmative public statements.

Shekhovtsov underlines the motivational ambivalence of the intensifying collaboration of the Kremlin with the Western far right – a dualism that reflects the Janus-like character of Putin’s cynical and postmodern, yet also sometimes fanatical and archaic regime. On the one hand, Moscow behaves pragmatically when, in its capacity as a kleptocracy, it tries to establish as many as possible links to influential Western mainstream politicians and businesspeople, without regard to their political views or ideologies. The Kremlin only turns to various radicals in the West to the degree that it cannot build close relationships within the establishment in the respective countries, and when it can instead get access – sometimes via middlemen like Dugin – to alternative political circles. Moscow then also supports these often populist and nationalist forces as its allies and as troublemakers in the EU and Atlantic alliance.

On the other hand, however, Moscow’s growing international isolation and intensifying contacts with the far right, within and outside Russia, are also ideologically driven, and feed back into the self-definition of the regime. As an autocracy in need of  consolidation, Putin’s regime is being naturally drawn – both domestically and internationally – to groups whose ideologies support illiberal policies and undemocratic practices. The far right groups, in turn, profit from public alignment to the world’s territorially largest country and a nuclear superpower. The result have been, as Shekhovtsov outlines, constantly deepening relationships between Russian officials and Western far right activists since the mid-2000s.

One reason that Russian society, in spite of its deep-seated anti-fascism, accepts the growing interpenetration between the far right and Russian government is the spread, authority and discourse of neo-Eurasianism. Some elements of this pan-national, yet also ethno-centrist ideology of radical anti-Westernism – above all, its Russian exceptionalism and geopolitical Manicheanism – have made deep inroads into Russian intellectual life, higher education and mass media, over the last 25 years, i.e. already before Putin came to power in summer 1999.[39] The idea that Russia is a civilization that is not only separate, but also opposed to the West has today approached something close to cultural hegemony in Russian society. Dugin – who entered Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list in 2014[40] – has played his role in that war for the minds of the Russians.[41] Yet his impact is, as Shekhovtsov indicated elsewhere,[42] sometimes overestimated, while that of Gumilev is, as Clover’s and Bassin’s studies illustrate, not sufficiently appreciated, in the West.

To be sure, Gumilev died shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Union whereas Dugin then only began his political career by way of making far right acquaintances in the West, and impressing his Russian fellow ultra-nationalists with ideas and concepts borrowed from abroad. Although Dugin is today a member of Russia’s establishment, he remains nevertheless an odd figure, because of, among other eccentric announcements, the explicitly pro-Nazi positions he voiced in the 1990s, when still being part of, and mainly addressing, Russia’s lunatic fringe.[43] In contrast, Gumilev’s post-mortem acclaim and the enormous print-runs of his books developed against the background of his broad acceptance as one of Russia’s major historic thinkers of the 20th century. Moreover, as Bassin notes, “[c]ontemporary theoreticians of the European New Right such as [two of Dugin’s major interlocutors in the West] Alain de Benoist [b. 1943] and Robert Steuker [b. 1956] are well aware of Gumilev’s ethnos theory and clearly appreciate its resonance with their own views […].” (p. 313)

 

Clover’s and Bassin’s deep explorations of Eurasianism, Gumilev and neo-Eurasianism highlight some of the historical-ideational background of the Putin regime’s turn to the right after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004.[44] Laruelle’s and Shekhovtov’s volumes detail various expressions, mechanisms and implications of this momentous shift. These four books illustrate that – at least, in the context of research into Russian intellectual life, party politics, public discourse and foreign policy – investigations into contemporary far right ideas and actors are not any longer a niche activity within political science. Rather, Russian right-wing extremism has become a topic central to the study of post-Soviet domestic politics, international relations, and security affairs.

 

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Leonid Luks and Jeffrey C. Isaac provided useful feedback on a draft of this article. It was first published in Perspectives on Politics.

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[1] Rossiiskaia gazeta, 18 June 2014, https://rg.ru/2004/06/18/astana-anons.html (accessed December 7th, 2016).

[2] Mudde 2016.

[3] E.g.: Mudde 2005; Minkenberg 2010, 2015.

[4] Umland 2015.

[5] Minkenberg 2017.

[6] Umland 2009d.

[7] Some of the main tenured scholars in the field were or are John B. Dunlop (Hoover Institution), Alexander Yanov (City University of New York), Valerii Solovei (MGIMO), Pal Kolsto (University of Oslo), Peter J.S. Duncan (University College London), Stephen Hanson (College of William & Mary), Veljko Vujačić (European University of St. Petersburg) and Mark Bassin (Södertörn University at Stockholm).

[8] See, among other publications: Lariuel’ 2004, 2007a, 2007b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d, 2015; Laruelle 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016a, 2016b; Kozhevnikova, Shekhovtsov & Verkhovskii 2009; Mikhailovskaia, Pribylovskii & Verkhovskii 1998, 1999; Papp, Pribylovskii & Verkhovskii 1996; Pribylovskii & Verkhovskii 1995 & 1997; Verkhovskii 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2014; Verkhovsky 2000, 2002; Pribylovskii 1995a, 1995b, 1995c; Likhachev & Pribylovskii 2005.

[9] Arnold 2010; Umland 2012.

[10] For a while, the Chair for Central and East European Contemporary History of the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Bavaria focused, under Professor Leonid Luks, on the study of, and publishing about, Russian radical right-wing tendencies. During the last years, it produced, among other publications of such kind, eleven special issues of the Russian-language journal Forum for Contemporary East European History and Culture, on pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet anti-Westernism (Antizapadnye… 2009-2015). Yet, this Eichstaett Chair was closed in summer 2014.

[11] Important recent monographs or collected volumes not included in this review are, in alphabetical order: Arnold 2016; Bassin et al. 2015; Bassin & Suslov 2016; Blakkisrud & Kolsto 2016; Brown & Sheiko 2014; Griffiths 2017; Kriza 2014; Ostbo 2015; Suslov 2016; Verkhovskii 2014; and Zakharov 2015.

[12] Aslund 2013. Some recently leaked telephone conversation records demonstrate that Glaz’ev played a central role in organizing secessionist unrest in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, as well as in preparing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in February-March 2014. See Umland 2016. Glaz’ev is linked to Russia’s extreme right via – among other connections – the Izborsk Club of rabidly anti-Western intellectuals. See Laruelle 2016b.

[13] Various illustrations may be found in the above and below listed texts, and in, among others: Arnold & Romanova 2013; Gorenburg, Pain & Umland 2012a, 2012b; Hagemeister 2004; Mathyl 2000, 2011; Mey 2004; Moroz 2005; Rogachevskii 2004; Stepanov 2011; Torbakov 2015; Umland 2002a, 2002b, 2006, 2008, 2009b.

[14] Umland 1997. See also Umland 2002b.

[15] E.g. Motyl 2016. For a critique of Motyl’s earlier similar statements, see, among others, Umland 2009d, 2015.

[16] On how to define and interpret fascism, see the extensive discussion by various comparativists and further references in: Griffin et al. 2006.

[17] Dawisha 2014; Hale 2015; Gel’man 2016.

[18] See, for instance, on Putin’s rediscovery of the Russian proto-fascist émigré thinker Ivan Il’in (1883-1954): Barbashin & Thoburn 2015; Snyder 2016.

[19] E.g. Eltchaninoff 2016.

[20] Bassin et al. 2015; Lariul’ 2004; Laruelle 2008a; Liuks 2009a; Schlacks & Vinkovetsky 1996; Shnirel’man 1996; Wiederkehr 2007.

[21] Viderker 2010.

[22] Some of them, to be sure, after participating in its formulation, later retracted from Eurasianism – perhaps, most explicitly so Georgii Florovskii in his 1928 essay “The Eurasian Seduction” in Sovremennye zapiski 34: 312-346. I am grateful to Leonid Luks for pointing this out to me.

[23] Baissvenger 2009; Liuks 2009b; Luks 1986. Although both intellectual movements were developing at the same time in inter-war continental Europe, there was only little interaction between them.

[24] Among the early treatments of Dugin in Western languages were: Allensworth 1998; Hielscher 1992, 1993a, 1993b; Laqueur 1993; Mathyl 1997/1998; Tsygankov 1998; Umland 1995; Yanov 1995.

[25] Griffin et al. 2006; Höllwerth 2007, 2010; Ingram 2001; Lariul’ 2009c; Laruelle 2006, 2008a, 2015; Luks 2000, 2002, 2004; Sedgwick 2004; Senderov 2009a, 2009b; Shekhovtsov 2009a, 2009b; Shekhovtsov & Umland 2009; Sokolov 2010a, 2010b; Umland 2004, 2009a, 2009e, 2014; Vafin 2010.

[26] Cucută 2015.

[27] In order of their publication: Allensworth 1998; Duncan 2000; Shenfield 2001; Likhachev 2002; Rossman 2002; Shnirel’man 2004; Parland 2005; Mitrofanova 2005; Laruelle 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009c, 2012; Höllwerth 2007; Wiederkehr 2007; Verkhovskii 2005, 2006, 2007, 2014; Kozhevnikova et al. 2009.

[28] On the distinction between Dugin’s and Putin’s Eurasianisms, see Umland 2014.

[29] Laruelle 2010; Blakkisrud & Kolsto 2016.

[30] E.g.: Ignatow 2002; Kochanek 1998; Lariul’ 2009b; Naarden 1996; Shnirel’man 2009; Shnirelman & Panarin 2001; Viderker 2012.

[31] Scherrer 2002.

[32] On the context of Borodai’s activities in Eastern Ukraine, see Mitrokhin 2015; Laruelle 2016a.

[33] On the context of Gumilev’s friendship with Luk’ianov, see O’Connor 2006.

[34] Lariul’ 2009d; Ostbo 2015, 112; Peunova 2009; Tsygankov 2013.

[35] On Shafarevich, see Dunlop 1994; Znamenski 1996; Horvath 1998; Berglund 2002.

[36] E.g.: Tsygankov 1998; Scherrer 2002; Müller 2008; Sokolov 2010; Miuller & Trotsuk 2011; Sainakov & Iablokov 2011; Umland 2011; Mäkinen 2014.

[37] Clover deals in his book with Dugin’s lectures at the Russian General Staff Academy already in the 1990s, i.e. before Dugin entered Russia’s political establishment and “systemic radical right.” On the distinction between the systemic and non-systemic radical right under Putin, see Arnold & Umland 2017.

[38] Published within the “Fascism & the Far Right” book series edited by Nigel Copsey and Graham Macklin. See also Khokk 2015 and Polyakova et al. 2016.

[39] Dunlop 2010; Höllwerth 2010; Laruelle 2004, 2009b; Mathyl 2002, 2003; Mitrofanova 2005, 2009; Pakhlevsa 2011a, 2011b; Parland 2005; Shekhovtsov 2009a, 2014; Stepanov 2009; Umland 2002a, 2009c, 2010;

[40] Above-mentioned Aleksandr Borodai – a disciple of Gumilev – also made it, along with Putin, into this list’s Agitators section. See “A World Disrupted: The Leading Global Thinkers of 2014.” Foreign Policy. http://globalthinkers.foreignpolicy.com/ (accessed December 7th, 2016).

[41] Yanov 1995.

[42] Shekhovtsov 2014.

[43] Umland 2006, 2009e. See also Khel’vert 2013.

[44] Horvath 2012.

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Créée en 1936, Politique étrangère est la plus ancienne revue française dans le domaine des relations internationales. Chaque vendredi, découvrez « l’archive de la semaine ».

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L’article « La signification économique de l’Anschluss » a été écrit par Henry Laufenburger (1897-1965), économiste français et spécialiste des sciences financières et de l’Allemagne, dans le numéro 3/1938 de Politique étrangère.

On a beaucoup insisté sur le côté politique de l’annexion de l’Autriche. Sans doute l’opération était nécessaire pour maintenir ou pour augmenter le prestige national-socialiste à l’intérieur du Reich; sans doute aussi le moment choisi pour réaliser une opération à laquelle tout le monde s’attendait à terme depuis des années a été des plus favorables. Mais l’Anschluss n’aurait pas pu se réaliser avec cette facilité malgré tout étonnante, si au point de vue économique il n’avait pas été à la fois mûr et nécessaire pour le Reich.

L’événement du 11 mars signifie tout d’abord un pas nouveau fait vers la constitution d’empires économiques. Quand on emploie ce terme, l’on songe généralement à l’expansion coloniale comme, après l’Angleterre et la France, l’Italie vient de la concevoir. Mais n’oublions pas qu’il y a eu en 1918 destruction d’un empire économique en pleine Europe. L’Autriche-Hongrie constituait, en effet, une autarcie naturelle dotée des principales ressources agricoles, industrielles et financières. Depuis vingt ans, on discute sur la viabilité des morceaux de cet empire qui avait été aussi hétérogène au point de vue politique qu’homogène au point de vue économique.

Comment, a-t-on dit, l’Autriche avec ses 6 millions d’habitants ne vivrait-elle pas au même titre que la Belgique qui en compte autant ? La situation n’est pas comparable. Notre voisine du Nord dispose d’une économie organisée depuis un siècle sur des bases très solides dont le libre-échange agricole relatif d’une part, la force de production industrielle d’autre part, étaient les pivots. L’économie belge disposant d’un important marché intérieur et aussi — ne l’oublions pas — d’un empire colonial, ne dépendait jamais autant que l’Autriche de la capacité et de la volonté d’absorption des marchés extérieurs.

L’Autriche au contraire ne comprenait plus en 1919 que des tronçons : ateliers textiles dont le complément se trouvait en Tchécoslovaquie ; économie laitière dont les débouchés étaient coupés par quatre frontières nouvelles ; métallurgie et mécanique trop lourdes pour un marché rétréci ; cœur financier (représenté par les banques de l’ancien Empire) auquel manquait désormais la circulation du sang. Et surtout, l’Autriche n’a jamais eu un marché intérieur suffisant ; en dehors de Vienne et des bassins industriels plutôt clairsemés, nous rencontrons une population paysanne et montagnarde qui consomme peu. Or, toute économie qui, faute de débouchés intérieurs suffisants, doit s’appuyer sur les marchés extérieurs, est essentiellement vulnérable. L’Autriche, en particulier, a dû payer cet appui par 1.977 millions de schillings d’emprunts extérieurs dont les Allemands semblent hésiter à assurer désormais le service. D’où deux solutions : soit la reconstitution d’une économie danubienne, soit l’Anschluss.

Voilà pour l’Autriche et voici maintenant pour l’Allemagne. Le national-socialisme a construit un vaste édifice autarcique dont les succédanés sont les pièces maîtresses. Or l’ersatz repose essentiellement sur deux matières : le charbon et le bois d’où sortent l’essence, le caoutchouc et le textile synthétique. L’Allemagne manque de bois. Il faut en plus équiper les industries appelées à fabriquer le succédané, et, à cet effet, le pays autarcique a besoin de fer : l’Allemagne n’extrayait des mines de son ancien territoire que 9 millions de tonnes de minerai pauvre ; elle se procurait deux fois autant par l’importation.

Il nous semble donc que le deuxième plan quadriennal auquel le Maréchal Goering a attaché son nom, manquait de deux pieds essentiels : le bois et le fer. L’Autriche les fournit après coup. Mais en même temps elle permet, par l’élargissement de l’économie allemande, d’atténuer la pression autarcique qui pesait sur elle. L’Allemagne a grandi, elle s’est constitué l’ersatz d’un Empire. Bien plus, l’Autriche lui permet d’élargir ses contacts avec le commerce extérieur, surtout dans la direction du Donauraum, de l’espace danubien.

Si donc l’autarcie produit l’effet d’une chaîne, l’Autriche n’a-t-elle pas permis à l’Allemagne de l’élargir et d’en éviter la rupture ? Voilà en quoi consiste à notre avis l’essentiel de l’apport autrichien au Reich, en face duquel l’apport inverse est plutôt maigre.

L’apport de l’Autriche

Laissant de côté, dans cette étude, « l’Anschluss » au commerce extérieur que l’Autriche permet au Reich d’approfondir, envisageons d’abord la valeur qu’a pour celui-ci le bois d’une part, le minerai de fer et l’électricité d’autre part.

Les réserves forestières de l’Autriche sont considérables. La superficie couverte de bois est de 3.137.110 hectares, soit 37,4 % de la superficie totale et 42 % de celle qui est pratiquement exploitée. Dans l’exportation européenne, l’Autriche figurait au troisième rang, derrière la Finlande et la Suède. Les forêts appartiennent pour 14,6 % à la fédération, pour 18 % aux communes et pour 67,4 % à des particuliers. La consommation autrichienne de bois a été de 6,75 millions de mètres cubes en 1937 ; les exportations ont atteint plus de 3 millions de mètres cubes de bois, participant à l’ensemble de l’exportation européenne de bois tendre jusqu’à concurrence de 8 % contre 4,9 à la Tchécoslovaquie, 3,9 à la Roumanie, 6,8 à la Pologne. Il va de soi que désormais la plus grande partie de l’excédent de bois autrichien sera absorbée par l’Allemagne qui importa en tout, en 1937, plus de 6.900.000 mètres cubes dont 822.000 seulement en provenance d’Autriche. Après l’Allemagne, les meilleurs clients étaient l’Italie, la Hongrie et la Suisse. La première va désormais se tourner vers la Yougoslavie et ce sera là une étape du partage des zones d’influence entre Hitler et Mussolini. Le bois autrichien permettra à l’Allemagne de pousser sa production de Zellwolle qui atteint déjà 140.000 tonnes, mais qui doit être doublée. Or jusqu’ici la substitution n’avait atteint que le premier degré : l’Allemagne a bien pu diminuer ses importations de coton et de laine, mais elle a accru celles de la pâte de bois et du bois tout court. L’Autriche, qui ne dispose jusqu’ici que d’une seule usine de rayonne à Saint-Poelten, aura sa part des fabriques de laine de cellulose.

Le minerai de Styrie rendra à l’Allemagne des services pour le moins aussi précieux. Sans doute, en apparence, l’apport est maigre. Les réserves de l’Erzherg contiennent, dit-on, 350 millions de tonnes contre, 3,7 milliards pour l’Allemagne, frontières anciennes. Seulement il y a une nuance d’ordre qualitatif. Le minerai allemand est pauvre, il titre de 28 à 33 % ; le minerai styrien est riche, non seulement en fer dont il titre 45 %, mais aussi en manganèse (3 %), si précieux pour la métallurgie. En 1937, l’extraction atteignait à peine 1,8 millions de tonnes, mais il sera facile de la pousser à 4 millions, ce qui vaut deux tiers de la production allemande de minerai pauvre de 9 millions de tonnes. Et du coup, le mariage du coke et du minerai est préparé. Il n’a jamais pu se contracter entre la Lorraine et la Westphalie, non seulement à cause de la frontière, mais aussi par suite du défaut d’une communication fluviale de « porte à porte ».

D’ici quelques années, le canal Rhin-Mein-Danube sera achevé et l’échange du combustible avec le minerai sera fait dans les conditions les plus économiques. Dès maintenant, une usine majestueuse se dressera sur cette voie d’eau. Les Hermann-Goering-Werke qui ont un pied en Allemagne, dans le Salzgittergebiet, sous forme d’une aciérie à un million de tonnes, viennent de poser l’autre à Linz, au confluent de l’Enns qui la mettra en communication fluviale avec la Styrie (mines de fer), et du Danube bientôt relié au Rhin. Et voilà sauvée l’entreprise d’intérêt public qui, avant 1′ Anschluss, s’était engagée dans une impasse ! On ne savait pas si en Allemagne on trouverait assez de minerai ; on savait par contre que l’exploitation coûterait en toute hypothèse très cher, qu’il ne suffirait pas de creuser des puits mais qu’il fallait construire en plus des hauts fourneaux sur le carreau de la mine, puisque le minerai pauvre ne supporte pas le transport ; il fallait prévoir aussi des lignes de chemin de fer pour rendre accessibles au marché les usines situées dans une région éloignée des grandes artères.

Aucun de ces problèmes ne se posera à Linz. Pour financer la première étape de la nouvelle aciérie, les Hermann-Goering-Werke viennent de porter leur capital à 400 millions de marks divisés en actions ordinaires à plein vote réservées au Reich (265 millions de marks) et en actions sans droits de vote (135 millions) attribuées de préférence aux métallurgistes, qui emploient du minerai de fer allemand et qui prennent une part importante à sa prospection. […]

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Imran Khan, elected on his good looks and apparent disagreement with the status quo, was going to bring with him sweeping change, transforming the country into what he called “Naya Pakistan,” or “New Pakistan”. His two-decade-long journey to the premier house in Pakistan has not gone unnoticed. After losing the last national elections in 2013, he becried the rigged elections until a week before the current elections. His party sued everyone imaginable, held long drawn-out demonstrations that drained the country, both economically and emotionally..

This election cycle was different. While foreign media covered his ties with the Pakistan Army, media in Pakistan was banned from covering anything that hinted towards these ties, or spoke against Khan’s policies (and used the Fake News Trumpism). While he famously has appealed to the youth of Pakistan based on his previous life as a playboy turned cricket superstar, he has also appeased the militant-right and joined forces with them to establish his government. An example of his washy manifesto are the blasphemy laws, a topic of controvery in Pakistan any given day of the week, but something that is played on most during election cycles. Khan has famously backed the laws, which have been used as a tool to further opress minorities, especially Christians and Ahmedis.

Ahmedis are a minority in Pakistan, whom the government had declared “non-Muslim” in 1974. Since, their community has silently served in the Pakistani army without the hope of promotion or overt praise, they have built our economy without the appreciation that should come with it and have won Pakistan its only Nobel Prize in physics, without as much as a nod. Yet, they continued to live in the land that is their home, and continue to serve selflessly. One such individual is Dr. Atif R. Mian, an economist and professor at Princeton University. He was recently asked to serve on an economic advisory council for Khan, which he gracefully accepted. The right wing extremist factions within Pakistan immediately criticized Khan for appointing a “non-Muslim” and wanted him removed. To their credit, Khan and his party stuck with their decision – for a whole two days.

Dr. Mian has since been “asked” to remove himself from the council, which he has done. Khan and his government have given no further explanation for their action. His avid supporters believe this would not be a battle worth fighting, as religious extremists had threatened violence. In his inaugural address, Khan made a strong statement about Pakistan being the country of the poor and the weak and that he would stand with them. He mentioned the women, children and minorities that needed specific protection and opportunities, and that his government would provide those. Yet, two days into a decision that would prove beneficial for the country, the govenrment has given into the threats of out-lawed factions, sending a clear signal as to who is in charge.

While his govenrment may be on a path to planting ten billion trees, it has already established a rule by terrorists. What’s so naya about this Pakistan?

 

The post “New Pakistan” – what’s the truth? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Le 25 septembre dernier, Paul Sugy, journaliste au Figaro, a interviewé Christophe Bouillaud, auteur de l’article « Des néo-nationalistes au pouvoir à Rome ? », publié dans le numéro d’automne de Politique étrangère (n° 3/2018). Découvrez ici son interview, dans laquelle il revient sur l’improbable alliance entre le M5S et la Ligue, sur fond d’aspiration populaire au dégagisme eurosceptique.

Dans un article de la revue «Politique étrangère» de l’IFRI, vous écrivez que le seul lien entre la Ligue du Nord et le M5S est qu’ils sont qualifiés de «populistes». Mais ce mot a-t-il encore un sens, en Italie?

Christophe BOUILLAUD – Tout dépend évidemment de ce que l’on met sous cette étiquette, généralement infamante, de « populiste ». En Italie, c’est depuis le début des années 1990 que toutes les forces politiques émergentes sans exception sont qualifiées par celles qui sont déjà en place et par leurs soutiens dans les lieux de savoir et les médias de
« populistes ». Être populiste, c’est avoir du succès électoral quand vous semblez venir de nulle part. Cela a été dit en son temps de la Ligue du Nord d’Umberto Bossi, mais bien sûr aussi de Forza Italia (FI) de Silvio Berlusconi, ou même d’un petit parti de centre-gauche, la Rete, mené à l’assaut de la Démocratie-Chrétienne (DC) par l’ancien maire de Palerme en dissidence avec cette dernière, Leoluca Orlando.

Cette délégitimation de tous les entrants par les partis en place a très vite été retournée par les partis ainsi mis en cause comme une preuve de leur caractère novateur et populaire, comme fut le premier à le faire U. Bossi dès 1991, qui accepta ce qualificatif, déformé linguistiquement par ses soins, pour s’en vanter.

À ce jeu de la stigmatisation par le terme de populisme et du retournement du stigmate par ceux qui sont ainsi désignés, assez classique par ailleurs dans la politique européenne contemporaine, il faut ajouter le fait, que, depuis la crise économique de 2007-2008 et plus encore depuis l’épisode du gouvernement Monti en 2011-2012, tous les acteurs politiques ont adopté en Italie un discours et une pratique très hostiles aux dirigeants en place, y compris au sein même des partis les plus établis, y compris donc contre leur propre camp. Le feu ami est devenu au moins aussi dangereux pour un politicien établi que le feu ennemi. Il faut ainsi rappeler que toute l’ascension de Matteo Renzi dans le cadre du Parti démocrate (PD), parti qui se trouve être le principal héritier du Parti communiste italien (PCI, 1922-1990) et de la gauche de la Démocratie-Chrétienne (DC, 1943-1993), jusqu’à en devenir le chef en 2013, puis dans la foulée Président du Conseil en 2014, repose sur ce qu’on appellerait en France le « dégagisme ». Cela vaut aussi au sein de la Ligue du Nord, où Matteo Salvini a de fait profité en 2013 de l’éviction de la génération Bossi par la magistrature pour s’imposer sans partage. Il fait de même en 2016-2018 au sein de l’alliance des droites, où il cherche d’évidence à envoyer S. Berlusconi vers une retraite politique définitive. Ces dernières années, tous les nouveaux leaders à la tête d’anciens partis ou tous les nouveaux partis comme bien sûr le M5S de Beppe Grillo prétendent en effet « Sortir les sortants » sans autre forme de procès. Le passé est nécessairement un passif.

De fait, cette stratégie « dégagiste » connaît un grand succès auprès des électeurs italiens, presque unanimement insatisfaits de la situation économique et sociale de l’Italie. Personne ne veut plus défendre le statu quo et surtout personne n’ose plus se vanter du statu quo. Il faut bien se rappeler aussi que, depuis 1994, l’Italie n’a connu que des élections d’alternance. Le pouvoir perd toujours les élections suivantes. En conséquence, tous les partis, quand ils ont du succès, finissent par se ressembler dans leur stratégie politique : ils annoncent du neuf par le fait même d’avoir une nouvelle tête de gondole, un nouveau chef, ils prétendent représenter le peuple contre les élites, et ils annoncent des lendemains qui chantent. En dehors de cette formule d’un parti personnalisé à l’extrême autour d’un leader qui promet la lune avec peu d’efforts, rien ne marche plus électoralement pour rassembler de nombreux électeurs. Cela correspond largement à l’écroulement aux élections du 4 mars 2018 de tous les centres pro-européens, voulant maintenir le statu quo.

Par ailleurs, ce « dégagisme », ou dit plus classiquement cette demande de changement, ne va pas dans des directions idéologiquement similaires. La Ligue et le M5S ne viennent pas du même univers de significations. En Italie, comme ailleurs en Europe et dans le monde, l’étiquette de populisme ne correspond pas aux mêmes aspirations idéologiques.

Comment expliquez-vous que 68 % des Italiens soient satisfaits de la formation du gouvernement de coalition? C’est largement plus que les résultats électoraux cumulés de ces deux partis…

Oui, c’est vrai, le gouvernement Conte bénéficie actuellement d’un état de grâce. […]

Lisez la suite de l’interview ici.