Translated by Oded Balaban (balaban@research.haifa.ac.il)
We will not return to Clausewitz's famous and hackneyed phrase. Just a few words to add that when he wrote “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” he did not mean, as has been commonly misunderstood, that war suppresses politics, but something different, namely, that politics continues to exist under the hegemony of war. That means that there is politics in war, that there is politics of war and that there is politics beyond war. 1
POLITICS AND WAR
There is politics in war because otherwise wars would have no end. Kant, in his Perpetual Peace, was the first to understand this. Knowing that wars seek to impose conditions on the enemy, he attached great importance to the so-called armistices, also called parliaments, as the spaces and places where enemies talk. From armistices arise the negotiations that will put an end to the war. Armistices, following Kant, would be the political gaps of war.
There is politics of war, because in war, war determines the sense and logic of politics. Particularly important is the politics of war when it is a matter of setting objectives and beginning to act, not only militarily but also politically, in accordance with them. Having set these objectives the war parties seek to make alliances between nations as well as to neutralize others. Governments at war know that the quantity and quality of allied governments, if not decisive, is very important.
There is politics beyond war, for in every war, it is vital to ensure the conditions for survival in the post-war period. In that sense, the war parties are not only trying to win the war but also to establish an order that allows them to exist in a non-hostile and non-dangerous environment. There is no point in winning a war if the victory does not rest on a stable national and international basis, that is to say, a post-military political order, both nationally and internationally. That was what Napoleon and Hitler did not think. Having achieved military victories, they did not create the bases to sustain them in time, neither inside nor outside their nations. Not so Stalin. Stalinist Russia's military victories were embedded within a political world order called the “communist world”.
Like Napoleon and Hitler, Stalin knew how and when to start a war, but he also knew how and when to end them. He proved it several times. Has Putin mastered that art? We don't know. Probably not. Putin, if we follow his statements, is dominated by
In the ensuing war, once Rome gained the upper hand, the Sabine women intervened and implored the two warring parties to reconcile.
[They] went boldly into the midst of the flying missiles with disheveled hair and rent garments. Running across the space between the two armies they tried to stop any further fighting and calm the excited passions by appealing to their fathers in the one army and their husbands in the other not to bring upon themselves a curse by staining their hands with the blood of a father-in-law or a son-in-law, nor upon their posterity the taint of parricide. “If,” they cried, “you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans.” (Livy: The Rape of the Sabines)
Recounted by Livy and Plutarch (Parallel Lives II, 15 and 19), it provided a subject for Renaissance and post Renaissance works of art that combined a suitably inspiring example of the hardihood and courage of ancient Romans with the opportunity to depict multiple figures, including heroically semi-nude figures, in intensely passionate struggle.
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meta-historical hallucinations. Stalin, on the other hand, did not even believe in communism. He only believed in power.
PUTIN'S HOUR
Also in the war on Ukraine these three dimensions of wartime politics continue to exist. Putin mapped out his objective. Even before the invasion, he made it clear at Putin’s famous meeting with Xi Jinping at the Beijing Olympic. On that occasion, both dictators signed a document according to which they pledged to create a new world order. However, each of them understood this new world order differently.
While for Jinping it should be economical, for Putin it should be geopolitical and military. That is why Jinping has refrained from applauding Putin's invasion of Ukraine. For the Chinese leader, the Ukrainian issue is exclusively Russian. But the important thing is that with this agreement, Putin designed before starting it, the objective of his war against Ukraine. Not so much against the enlargement of NATO, as imagined by the “appeasing” analysts, among others Kissinger himself, but to weaken militarily, politically and economically the West, especially the European one. The conquest of Ukraine, according to the project of a new world order, does not appear as an end in itself. It is, if you will, a starting point.
Putin decided to act when he believed that Western political forces were dispersed, when he realized that there would be periods of contraction in the world economy, when he understood that the effects of the pandemic were not only biological but also economic and social, when he realized that Europe's dependence on Russia's energy resources was irreversible, and when he realized that Europe's pro-Putinist parties, both right and left, had reached a high level of growth. Seen in this light, Putin has projected the war to Ukraine in two directions. One leads to the other. According to the first, the seizure of Ukraine would fulfill the dream of geopolitically reconstructing the former tsarist empire. The second aimed at introducing Europe into an “irregular and protracted war”.
The prolongation of the war revealed to the tyrant other possibilities. One of the most attractive was the visualization of the economic apocalypse of Europe with the consequent social unrest provoked by the miseries caused by any war, a fact that would lead, especially in southern Europe, to the rise of neo-fascist parties. In France, Le Pen remains a power alternative. VOX is growing and growing in Spain. In Italy, putifascism is already at the gates of government. The Meloni-Salvini
Berlusconi trio is advancing at a winning pace. According to some observers, we are
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witnessing the rebirth of Fascist Italy, but under the conditions existing in the 21st century.
Well, these examples show that the war is not only taking place in the cities of Ukraine but also, in a parallel way and in a political format, within the European nations themselves. The new world order, according to Putin, is political rather than economic, and involves the destruction of the European democratic order. For Putin, war is not the continuation of politics by other means but the use of politics as a function of war.
THE RUSSIAN DICTATOR'S CALCULATIONS
Surely Putin has already made happy calculations: if Italy falls under his sway - an acquisition without military cost - the new Italian government would then join forces with Hungary and probably Serbia, thus accelerating the decomposition of the EU. But Putin does not stop there. His world order is not only aimed at Europe, but also at other latitudes.
First of all, it is essential for Putin to secure the support of the Caucasus and Central Asian nations, whether by economic means, by political adherence, or simply by brute force. Then he will try to create, parallel to the war on Ukraine, an anti democratic bloc integrating Erdogan's Turkey and the Iran of the Ayatollahs. The meeting of the three anti-democracies in Tehran had no other objective. Erdogan is a key player in the formation of this axis.
An indispensable member of NATO, Erdogan has two possibilities: either he becomes the mediator between Russia and Western Europe, or he becomes a subordinate member of the alliance of the three autocracies. Erdogan's decision will have to take shape at the bi-lateral meeting he will hold with Putin on August 5, in Sochi.
Although Erdogan is not a loyal NATO lover, Putin will have to offer a lot to win him over. All the more so as Turkey is going through a deep economic crisis and has a growing political opposition. Erdogan will most likely keep Turkey in a favorable position towards Putin, but always playing with the possibility of its reintegration into Europe, to which he would also pay dearly for his loyalty. Everything depends - and this is the crucial point - on whether Europe manages to resist the disintegrating forces that are harassing it from within and without. And here lies the great enigma: will Europe resist?
EUROPE ON THE DEFENSIVE
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Already the use of the verb “resist” indicates that Europe is in a defensive position. Let's say it more clearly: extremely defensive. On the other hand, the political contingents that Putin is trying to command are on the offensive at the military, economic and political levels. At this point we have to be realistic: just as democracy, after the communist collapse, the end of the dictatorships in Southern Europe and even the decline of the South American military dictatorships, was in expansion at the end of the 20th century (a democratic wave, in Samuel Huntington's terminology), today it is in a period of contraction. That means: if the European and world democratic space is to be defended, it depends on military but also political factors. Not only Putin, but also the Western democracies will have to activate the political fronts of the war.
In these conditions, Western politicians are obliged to act — I don't know if they have realized it — in a defensive way. They should at least know it: all the initiatives implemented since the invasion of Ukraine by European governments have been reactive. Putin's Russia has taken the initiative. For the time being, the countries of Europe will have to resist three onslaughts: Russia's onslaught in Ukraine, the economic slowdown, and the growth of pro-fascist parties in their own political hinterlands.
Defending Ukraine will be critical. Ukraine is the second floor of Putin's entire global project. European governments hope that economic sanctions and the maintenance of resistance in Ukraine will ever diminish the offensive force of the Russian empire. But that will only be possible if the military aid to Ukraine manages to be maintained at least at the same pace and intensity with which it has been done so far. This is very difficult. The cost of doing without Russian energy will be immense.
To counteract the coming economic and energy disasters, different governments (especially Germany's) will be forced to temporarily reinstall disused atomic reactors, return to the discarded coal and use the resource of inventiveness (extracting gas from wheat, for example). To put it in unpronounceable words for politicians: a war economy will have to be established.
So far, Putin was not counting on this, the spirit of cooperation between the various European governments has remained unchanged. But that is not irreversible either. From a political point of view we are already seeing defections on the road leading towards the construction of a united Europe. No doubt some nations will give in to Russian pressure. We have to take it for granted. Uniting 27 nations around a single goal is not easy.
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However, and in spite of everything, the international bloc of the united democracies, even if it is still in decline, will continue to exist. From this perspective, Putin, if he does not want to embark on an eternal war, must at some point recognize his own limits, as Stalin once recognized them when he agreed to end the hot war and insert the USSR into the framework of a cold war.
We do not know whether Putin will accept to coexist in a system of peaceful relations with nations he has declared enemies. He will probably extend the conflict until the next US elections. An eventual Trump triumph could lead to the coronation of his historic project. But that is not very clear either. Undoubtedly, a Trump triumph would lead to a weakening of NATO, but at the same time to an intensification of the conflicts between the US and China in the face of which Putin, if he does not take positions in favor of one or the other, could be caught between the two. But let's leave it at that. No one has written the future and the present is, in itself, highly worrying. Let us remain for now with only a general formulation: The war, whether total in Ukraine, whether partial between Russia and the West, and already possible between the East and the West, will determine the course of new international configurations.
THE THREE ELEMENTS OF WORLD POWER
Returning to the subject that gave impetus to the present article, we could affirm that the Putin project aimed at changing the world order may take place, but it will certainly not result in the same order that Putin imagines. Nor will Russia occupy the guiding role predestined by the Russian dictator.
World power, that is what Putin surely seems not to have understood, contains three elements: that of domination, that of supremacy and that of hegemony. They are not synonymous. The first element, that of domination, is military. Thanks to that element Russia is powerful. The second element, that of supremacy, is instrumental (economic, scientific and technological), and here Russia is far behind China, the USA, and even Europe. The third element is hegemonic. We could also call it “power of attraction”. This element is the power that influences and attracts the inhabitants of other countries to imitate or desire the ways of life of the Western world. Here Putin's Russia, like Jinping's China, has nothing to offer. The West, or rather all the democratic nations, will probably have to give way to the two powers, but for the time being it is the only geo-political unit that can keep the three constituent elements of world power in a position of equilibrium. The West, although weakened militarily and economically, will continue to be a politically hegemonic force.
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To put it more succinctly: the magnetic attraction exerted by the West stems from an invention that is neither military nor scientific: it is a political invention. Claude Lefort called it “the democratic invention”.2 An invention that has managed to dismantle the best armed powers on earth, one that defeated the most closed totalitarianisms, one that led to the collapse of the communist tyrannies of the recent past without firing a single shot. China and Russia can imitate all the technological inventions, or develop the most sophisticated forms of production and destruction they want. But the one invention they will not be able to imitate is that of democracy. If they do, they will end up denying themselves.
Democracy is not only a form of government, it is also a way of life. By way of example: it may be possible for Italy to abandon for a period the spaces of democracy if it falls under the domination of the putifascist parties. But in its way of life it will continue to be democratic. The virus of democracy, when it incubates, does not abandon its nations. Already the USA managed to free itself once from Trump and Trumpism. Trump can come back, sure, but also the USA can get rid of him a second time. Democracy is not a static condition. It comes and goes, advances and retreats.
Today democracies are in a defensive phase. The world is living under an anti democratic wave, and on the crest of the wave, Putin's Russia is sailing. The Ukrainians are at the forefront of the resistance. But that resistance exists far beyond Ukraine. According to conditions imposed by Putin himself, this struggle, which in Ukraine is military, takes on political forms elsewhere in Europe. Until recently, for example, elections were only national events. In today's Europe they have become political battles where democrats defend positions against the advance of the putifascists and their friends, be they from the right or the left. Politics today is a part of war.
Putin, like the fascists and communists of yesterday, has learned to manipulate what they believe are the weaknesses of the democratic order. They know that a democracy, precisely because it is a democracy, is obliged to incorporate into its political systems the enemies of democracy. Hence, democracy has become a daily plebiscite that defines its being or not being.
The democracy of our time is and must be existential. Will Western politicians know this? Here I have my doubts. Long years of freedom and prosperity have convinced many that democracy is only a place of agreements, compromises and business, and not a stage where the human drama is decided every day. This explains
2 Lefort, Claude. 1981. L 'invention démocratique, París, Fayard, 1981.
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why a democratic mystique has not yet appeared in Europe. But there are also no rulers to explain to the people that the hardships demanded by the war in Ukraine are not only related to Ukraine, but are part of the struggle for the preservation of “our democracy”. A democracy that, being threatened, it is necessary to defend. To remain what we are.
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