Alexander Dugin explains why the unipolar world refuses to die, why multipolarity remains dangerously divided, and why a global catastrophe may be approaching.

Outcomes of the UN General Assembly: The End of the Unipolar World

Host (Mikhail Alimov): The first and most important topic is, of course, the High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly. Let’s talk about what happened there and what surprises, if any, it may have held for experts and others. I’ll remind you that it took place in the United States, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had announced his decision in advance, did not take part. Alexander Gelievich, what stood out to you personally from the High-Level Week? Did you expect, for example, the walkout against Netanyahu?

Alexander Dugin: In my view, the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world is proceeding on its own momentum. Every international summit, every meeting of world leaders, every session of the UN or of other regional blocs—which are increasingly drawing the attention of the global community—brings us closer to multipolarity.

At this UN session, what struck me most was the speech by our foreign minister, Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov. He continued the line set out at the BRICS summit. More and more people, countries, presidents, and foreign ministers are speaking of a conflict between two different ways of organizing the world order, the international legal system, and international law itself: multipolarity and unipolarity. Lavrov put it plainly: they do not want to yield. We are beginning to understand that the wars waged by the collective West—against us, against Iran, and against the Islamic world; the threats of a similar conflict with China; and the more local conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia—are all part of this larger process of transition away from hegemony. It was stated clearly, first by the President and then by Lavrov at the UN General Assembly: this hegemony has ended, but it refuses to admit it.

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The problem is that the world is already multipolar, yet the pole that was once the only one, that considered itself the only one and behaved as the only one until the very last moment, does not want to recognize the fact. Between unipolarity, which refuses to relinquish its position of sole hegemony, and multipolarity, which is already here, already institutionalized, and increasingly speaking with a consolidated voice through the votes of these countries—what Lavrov called the “Global South and East”—there is a fundamental clash. It is good that we have begun adding “East,” but Russia, for all its solidarity, is in no way the Global South. What kind of South are we? We are a real, harsh North—Eurasia. “The Global South and Eurasia” is a fuller description.

These countries and civilizations of the Global South and Eurasia insist that the era of hegemony is over. The hegemon insists that it is not. That is the problem that was sharply highlighted at this General Assembly. And the obstruction to which so many countries subjected Netanyahu—when, I believe, half the countries, a huge number, walked out of the hall while the Israeli prime minister was speaking—is significant. He has the absolute support of the United States and the more limited, wavering support of the European Union, but he has none from the countries of the Global South and Eurasia. We condemned this at the same time—Lavrov also spoke of the need to recognize a Palestinian state and of justice for those who have suffered in Gaza. This walkout is very important. A rebellion is beginning: a real global uprising of countries oriented toward multipolarity against the global West and against hegemony.

And we have found ourselves, as so often in our history, on the front line. We have long been waging war against the global West in the name of multipolarity. The war in Ukraine is nothing other than a war for a new multipolar world order in which sovereignty will belong not to one side but to several—several states-civilizations. We assert this, we fight for it, we defend it. And gradually the meaning and depth of the message contained in our war, in the Special Military Operation, is beginning to reach other peoples and other countries. Many experience the same thing through their own local problems. They encounter the same pressure.

Hegemony has many faces. It is the Nazi regime in Kiev—Western hegemony. It is the genocide carried out by Israel—hegemony. It is the Israeli-American missile strikes on children and on Iran’s political leadership—hegemony. China encounters this hegemony in the economy, in industry, and in energy. Everyone has their own version of it. Africa continues to struggle against European colonialism and against so-called Françafrique. The West continues to try to interfere in the political affairs of Southeast Asia and Indochina. Wherever one looks, hegemony does not abandon its attempts to preserve itself, to maintain its dominance, to govern the world, and to hand out unilateral labels of who is right and who is wrong.

Despite the deepening contradictions between the United States—especially under Trump—and the European Union, between pure Western nationalist-imperialists like Trump and the globalists, these differences exist, but on the essential point they agree. The collective West, for all its splits and divergences, remains in principle the same force: it insists on hegemony. A multipolar West has not yet appeared. In no Western country is there a government in power that has accepted multipolarity—perhaps Slovakia, but that is a small European country. In none of the major Western countries is there a force in power that has embraced multipolarity. And that, alas, means war.

I therefore read this UN General Assembly as pre-war. It strongly resembles the League of Nations and the processes that unfolded in European and world politics on the eve of the Second World War. We are balancing on the edge of a Third World War, and this was audible in the speeches of virtually every participant.

Consolidation of the West versus the Looseness of the South

Host: Alexander Gelievich [Dugin], if a consensus still holds in the West, at least on this unipolar dominance, is that not a result of the fact that they remain more united than the countries of the Global South and Eurasia you mentioned? Everyone there pursues their own national interests, and we, for example—and Ukraine—find that we are far from universally supported, because this does not, from their point of view, serve the national interests of those countries that are, so to speak, our allies.

Alexander Dugin: You are completely right. The West is consolidated far more deeply. Even though divisive tendencies are now appearing there, such as Trump’s policies—which most globalists in the West reject—he himself has not become a supporter of a multipolar world. One might have inferred from his original program, from early MAGA, that he would accept worthy conditions for the United States and be content to be first among equals rather than the sole hegemon. He could have been that. He has not become that, and it is already obvious that he will not.

The situation is therefore quite sharp. Despite the serious divergences between Trump and other forces in the West, including the Democrats and the European Union, and despite the internal collapse of the Western system—because society cannot bear this course, does not approve of it, and can do nothing about it, since there is no longer real democracy in the West—the West remains much more consolidated and united than the South and Eurasia. This is a major problem.

Multipolarity is rising; it is a growing trend. Yet our consciousness, our diplomacy, and our theoretical thinking, including in international relations, lag dramatically behind the reality in which we find ourselves. One can ask why our allies do not support us more strongly. But we ourselves have only recently begun to enter an adequate discourse. It is only in the last year or year and a half that we have started to articulate a full, meaningful multipolar narrative on the international stage. Before that we hesitated: perhaps this is only a technical glitch; perhaps we are still part of the West; perhaps we should not be so firm; perhaps everyone should look after themselves. Only as this large and possibly already inevitable war with the West approaches—and the West is preparing for it with all its might and at an accelerated pace—are we beginning to formulate our policy more clearly: that we are fighting for ourselves, for that other guy, for them, for our freedom, for our sovereignty, and for theirs. Before that we tended to say, “No, no, this is not our affair.”

This is a question for everyone—for the countries of the Global South and Eurasia (and there are many powerful states in Eurasia), for us, and for each of them individually. Multipolarity is, frankly, a genuine political and civilizational philosophy. It needs to be discussed, written about, and studied. It cannot be limited to occasional statements by the foreign minister, the political leadership, or individual leaders. It must become a continuous stream. The West is consolidated because it is ideological. Liberal globalism is a persistent, centralized ideology supported by every institution—education, science, propaganda, media, culture, the economy, the private sector, and the military machine. That is what unipolarity is. It is a serious thing. They are consolidated because the ideology of advancing global liberalism is cemented into their societies.

Our multipolarity is still only scattered flowers. There is an entirely concreted field, and here and there a few blades of grass or petals are pushing through. We need to break up that frozen system of aggressive, solidary, consolidated liberalism that has taken deep root in our own society. Are we not liberals ourselves? For more than thirty years we have been transmitting liberalism onto ourselves. China has been more careful, but still in the economic sphere. India, I need hardly say, is only beginning to emerge. We are still under the concrete slab of a liberal globalist ideology that is incompatible with both sovereignty and multipolarity.

We are only now beginning to carry out this ideological revolution, and even then cautiously, with our ears pressed back, wondering whether we might make peace tomorrow and once again become part of the West. But nothing will go back. It is irreversible. Multipolarity, in the mouths of the President and of the respected and heroic Foreign Minister Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, is more than a slogan and more than a word. It is a reversal of certain tendencies of world history. It is tomorrow’s day, and one must fight for it and stand for it. We must therefore be as active as possible. I think that in the new composition of the Duma the Committee on International Affairs will begin to work differently, and there will be many projects in the cultural sphere. Our diplomacy must already be offensive and multipolar—not cautious and polite (“we criticize the hegemon a little; something doesn’t suit us”), but clear: let us create a military-political, ideological, and civilizational bloc of the multipolar world. We will help one another on every front.

They understand perfectly. The West understands that the Eastern front—the Middle East—and the Ukrainian front are two theaters of the same war. In the same way they include Taiwan, and they are arming Japan precisely for these purposes. The militarization of the European Union is proceeding for the same reasons, so that the process can continue later. They are fully aware that a war is under way. It is under way in substance, and not merely as a cold war. It is a hot war between the unipolar and the multipolar world.

And we are still floating in the clouds, even though we were the first to become involved in the most serious way. That is the system. If we want a multipolar world, we must defeat the unipolar world. They want to preserve their hegemony, which, alas, still really exists, and to do so they need to defeat us, destroy us, and inflict a strategic defeat on us.

“We Are Coming for You”: The West as a Maniac at the Door

When we discuss the statements of EU leaders about wanting to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, we tend to joke. Afterward comes the “ha-ha, hee-hee”—after all, we are not at war with them; what are they on about? In reality, if someone wants to inflict a strategic defeat on you, that is a serious matter; it is a black mark. If we want to survive, we must inflict a strategic defeat on them—no more and no less. If a maniac-killer comes to your house, rings the bell, and says, “Open up, I’m going to kill you, your family, and your wife,” it is not a moment for laughter, and there is no one else to call. There may be police, human-rights bodies, security services, and a people’s militia, but you have nowhere to turn. You are left to yourself, defending your own apartment. This is very serious. This is a real “We are coming for you.” The West is saying it. When our princes warned that they intended to begin military action against another power, they said “I am coming against you.” They are telling us: “We are coming for you.” The West is saying it is coming and that it is preparing. We have already begun; we have already been conducting reconnaissance for four years.

Mikhail Alimov: They have designated an enemy, they are buying arms, the processes are under way.

Alexander Dugin: Yes, and we mock them; we find it funny: “What are you going to do with your gay parades—banned in the Russian Federation—are you really going to fight us with your drug addicts, banned in the Russian Federation?” They will. War changes everything. They have decided to fight. This is not simply a matter of Merz having gone mad, or Macron having freaked out because of the psychological situation in the monstrous mésalliance in which he has spent his life, or Starmer, Newsom, and Boris Johnson controlling themselves poorly. It only looks that way. There is the West; it has an ideology, plans, and strategies. And this collective West, for all its diversity and its clownish, distracting packaging, has sentenced us to death—simply to death. It says: you will not exist; we want to inflict a strategic defeat on you. It has also sentenced China to death. Do you think China is an exception? Nothing of the kind. If they believe they can deal with us, neutralize us, or otherwise set us aside, they will turn on China with the same mechanical determination. Because the world is either unipolar or multipolar.

This is an enormous question, and it is not a matter of speculation or of ideological, philosophical, or conceptual arguments that we do not really use. We have a kind of paralysis of international consciousness. The President, the minister, and a number of other political figures stand above this paralysis, but society and the consciousness of most international-affairs specialists remain shaped by the long attempt to integrate into the liberal West. We are still out of the game. For a long time most of our experts spoke about how we would integrate into the global market and the global division of labor. Our economists are still oriented that way. We are liberals, yet we are fighting liberal civilization. Our consciousness remains, alas, liberal. The President says we are changing everything, switching the toggle, and moving in a different direction, and many people still think he is joking.

Host: This is not a simple process. We grew up this way for decades, and then suddenly…

Alexander Dugin: And one should have thought about it earlier. Well, now it is already impossible not to think. Let’s set aside what happened before. Right now we are in a war with the West that is becoming almost inevitable. Everyone talks about it—all experts in the West and the sane experts here. And yet here at home it is as if we are still on holiday. Some people are mainly worried about how hard it has become to get to the Maldives or the United States, about flight disruptions. In reality the situation is very serious. There is no need for panic. Everything is proceeding according to plan. A great war of continents is under way—one that was probably inevitable on geopolitical and civilizational grounds. That is how it was always likely to be. We therefore need to prepare, accept our fate, and win this war with the West.

Host: Yes, we have a question from a listener: “As long as we depend on the West and the United States economically, financially, politically, and so on, we won’t blow anything up. How are we to become self-sufficient?”

Alexander Dugin This is not a simple question. For several decades Russia has been pursued by a series of strategic mistakes. These were not simply failures; they were incorrect calculations. A temporary and relatively local technical malfunction of the late Soviet system was turned into the dismantling of an entire statehood, on the assumption that it would be easier to join the West by renouncing sovereignty—in essence, we handed it to the enemy ourselves. Then the ideology of the opponent, the victor of the Cold War, was implanted in our society: first with enthusiasm and energy in the 1990s, then by inertia, while attempts were made to restore and strengthen sovereignty.

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This is a chain of strategic miscalculations by our leadership. After the catastrophe of 1991, which was the collapse of the entire system, we did not stop making mistakes; we continued to make them. The main mistake was the underestimation of what the West is and how it relates to us. We first believed that by becoming part of it we would obtain a wonderful life. That did not happen in the 1990s; NATO’s eastward expansion continued; they did not believe us. Then Putin came to power, and the West said: we were right not to believe them. The Russians only hope to restore their greatness and their sovereignty. Therefore let us finish with them once and for all.

Alexander Dugin: After that there may have been tactical maneuvers. Why did we continue relations with the West? Why did we go on introducing the most dangerous Western ideologies into the economy, politics, science, and culture? Why did we keep doing this after Putin came to power and had already declared, “I choose sovereignty”? Sovereignty is incompatible with integration into the global community. Incompatible—in our case, without question. China somehow manages it, and even then only because of its enormous demographic resources and the fact that power remains in the hands of the Communist Party, which rules the state with an iron hand. There is no democracy, no parliamentary elections; everything works differently. Perhaps one can still arrange things partially if the original starting conditions are preserved, but we abandoned those.

So I believe our dependence on the West is the result of a whole series of strategic mistakes by our leadership—first Soviet, then Russian. As a result we ended up where we are. We are now at war with the West; we are fighting it anyway. We are fighting it because the geopolitical, civilizational, and ideological contradictions have not disappeared. We remain Russia. We have our own traditional values, our own interests, our own ideas, our own history, our own identity. We are a state-civilization. And when we tried to squeeze this state-civilization into a Western caftan, we simply created cognitive dissonance. No one believed us.

A bear arrives and announces, “I am a human being,” but everyone can see it is a bear. He puts on a mask and tries to waltz, to do a tango, a Charleston. But he is still a bear; he does not belong there. It is a completely different form of life—the Russian way of life, Russian civilization. Just as China will never enter that world, and India essentially never will—except to wash the floors. We will not get in either.

The West is hegemonic and supremacist; it considers itself superior to others. It does not matter whether the superiority is biological, as under racism, or cultural, technological, or civilizational—they are supremacists to the core. Even when they propose repenting for their colonial crimes, they propose repentance first of all to those who had nothing to do with them—to us, for example, or to the same subjugated peoples. They are now burning out colonial consciousness everywhere with the same heat, the same persistence, the same hegemony, the same supremacism, and the same certainty of their own infallibility with which they once practiced direct colonization. Such is Western civilization. We understood long ago, and we understood in Soviet times, that we had no common path with it until a revolution occurred there. And in Russian, tsarist times we understood that it was the enemy: we had only the army and the navy. We have always understood everything, and yet we constantly fall into the mistaken underestimation of the West. Simply strategic errors, one after another.

If Putin had not begun a new alternative course—slow, careful, cautious—toward strengthening our sovereignty, nothing of Russia would remain by now. It would have been dismembered into new small states. Putin saved us. But he cannot do everything. He needs help. We need to rise at least to the next level and begin to free ourselves from this Western captivity. Just as Moses led the Jewish people out of Egyptian captivity, so Putin led us out of the Western one. But we are still wandering in the desert. We constantly lament how good the Egyptian delicacies were and how hard it is, under sanctions, to struggle through this desert toward our promised land, toward full civilizational sovereignty. That is the position we are in. Putin is leading us, but it depends on us. It was not because of Moses that God did not allow the Jews to reach the promised land earlier, but because of the Jews themselves. They were a stiff-necked people; they did not understand why they had to endure these hardships. We must not be like that. We must not resemble those stiff-necked Old Testament Jews. We need to understand where we are going and what our civilizational path is, and it is not comparable with the West.

I see more and more resolve, by the way. But one cannot say that this is a consensus in our society. If we walk into any office in the government, the presidential administration, the Duma, the Federation Council, or some scientific institute, the Academy of Sciences, we will predictably find someone sitting there saying, “It is time to put an end to Western influence. What did I do for this today? What did I, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Pyotr Petrovich, accomplish for this? I called this one, told that one, changed this, hauled this one in and gave him a dressing-down, strictly altered such-and-such.” Nothing is being done. They sit and wait for the war to end. That is the point. We say, as our excellent listener does, “How long—how long will we endure this Western yoke?” Well, until we ourselves throw it off. It must be thrown off. This is Russia’s revolt against the West. And yet she periodically pretends: “No, no, this is not a revolt; I’m only joking.” This is not a slave who took a saber and began to say, “That’s it, now I am free.” This is not Spartacus’s revolt. Instead, suddenly an Epictetus appears, another slave-philosopher, who says, “Let me teach you how better to serve the master.”

Once you rise in revolt, the West is ultimately evil. Perhaps after the war, after our victory, we can still adjust this position somewhat, but while the war is going on—as with Nazi Germany—we did not then make nuances: yes, they had Goethe, they had Heine, they had a remarkable Hegel, what a splendid Schelling. But when war is under way, we said: this is simply the black plague advancing. Attention, attention, Germany is coming against us. Without nuances, without Hegel or Schelling.

The Special Military Operation as a War of Civilizations and the “Sixth Column”

Host: Alexander Gelievich [Dugin], what should we do with this now? Do everything possible to bring victory in the Special Military Operation as quickly as possible? Will that become the first step toward our liberation?

Alexander Dugin: It has already become clear that we will not win this separately taken war if it remains only the Special Military Operation. We have had four years with it. The SMO is a war with the West. It is not being won because we thought its format and scale were local. Technically we called it a “special military operation”—a technical, short-term thing. But it has already turned into a war of civilizations, a clash of civilizations, a revolt of the sovereign pole—Russia, sovereign, free Russia—against global hegemony. We will not win this war technically; we need to defeat the West. And once we have defeated the West, the Ukrainian question will be solved automatically.

It has already become clear: we are not fighting the Nazi regime in Kiev. It would not have been anywhere near the scene if the West had not created it, equipped it, brought it to power, supported it, nourished it economically and militarily, and if America did not provide full intelligence support for all the actions of this regime every day. Imagine the removal of even one of the most fundamental factors—Western support. Then our troops would be at Kiev. But we are fighting the West. Under this mask has been revealed a Ukrainian nationalism that is by no means innocent. Ukrainian Nazism is, in a sense, a signboard. It exists, of course, and it is a terrible thing, but someone created it; it did not mature by itself. Someone sponsored it, someone programmed it, someone designed it, someone implemented it. And this West—this humane, collective West, long since no longer humane, this collective West into which we wanted to rush—accepted Ukraine into itself faster than us. And we wanted Ukraine to follow us, and all the rest after it. A false strategic goal was set by the Russian leadership.

Putin saved the situation, but at what cost and from what conditions. We were plunging into the abyss; he caught hold of a slender root on a sheer rock face, and we are climbing out of it. But speaking generally, the Westernizers—those who do not want to stir, those who consider the SMO merely a misunderstanding, a temporary glitch—are dragging us into that abyss. Perhaps they should be shaken off. Sometimes one needs to free oneself from ballast. Our ballast now—what prevents us from winning the war and from Russia truly taking off—is the illusions of the global West. Because very many representatives of our ruling circles, elites, business elites, and political elites still consider themselves people of the West and believe that this clash of civilizations is the arbitrary decision of one man, Putin. Not a historical imperative. They are deeply mistaken, but this so-called sixth column is dragging us into the abyss.

Answering the legitimate question of our radio listener, I want to say: we need, I would say, a worldview and ideological revolution within Russia itself. Winning this war in the state in which our society currently finds itself is highly problematic. Such a war is not won by itself; therefore we must be active. On the international stage we have already spoken of this: multipolarity must be advanced in an attacking mode, not a defensive one. We must act proactively, not reactively; not answer, but attack. We must proclaim our own projects and implement them. And at the same time, of course, we need an active reform of our society. In the condition in which our society currently finds itself, the war cannot be won. Period. It is not that we are unlucky or that we have run into something. It is impossible to win. If we want to win it, we must change. We must defeat Westernism within ourselves. If we do not defeat it—and we are stuck, we take some step backward, we change something, make some single appointment, and then everything leaks away again and becomes as it was because of the gigantic force of inertial movement—and this in a wartime situation.

Imagine the situation: if in the Soviet leadership in 1941 every other person had been a secret supporter of Nazi ideology. How would we have fought? Clearly not the way we did. And even then they caught various saboteurs.

Host: Generals, yes.

Alexander Dugin: Generals, yes. But not only. I am absolutely convinced that the Vlasovites appeared, in essence, when they were taken prisoner. Some very isolated parts of the Whites, like General Krasnov, who went over to Hitler’s side, had remained in the West since the Civil War. But in the Soviet leadership there were no ideological supporters of Nazism. There may have been some spies, perhaps at a very middle level, but first, we do not know about them, and second, there were no ideological supporters. And now we are waging war with the West, while every other person among us is a liberal-globalist and Westernizer left to us as a legacy from the preceding erroneous stages of our recent Russian history. This is a serious problem. And it is as if they are not there. You ask: for the SMO?—“Of course, for the SMO, for Putin, for United Russia, for the choice, for sovereignty—everything is excellent.” You just turn away—and what do these people do, how do they behave? They behave as always, as before. Nothing has changed either in their personal lives, or in their behavior, or in their attitude toward the state, or toward the people. Everything is as it was; everyone hopes to sit it out successfully. That will not do.

Artificial Intelligence: Three Forks

Host: Alexander Gelievich [Dugin], besides this threat we have already discussed, which is more obvious, there seems to be another one with a more distant aim at the future. This is technical progress, and especially the recent statement by Elon Musk has alarmed me in this regard. When you are promised the onset of an era of universal abundance thanks to artificial intelligence, that one will not have to work, that robots will toil instead of man—then for some reason what appears in the mind is not pictures of a bright future, but the plot of Herbert Wells’s book The Time Machine. Will we not ultimately arrive at such a result, when the threat comes to us from the big technical giants?

Alexander Dugin: This is also a problem, and a very serious one. Right now, at the level of artificial intelligence, the American industry leaders, the giants, the Silicon Valley magnates, and correspondingly the American special services and political leadership—Trump is dealing with this, holding a meeting on it every other day—are solving three problems. Three problems.

The first problem is whether to accelerate artificial intelligence or to slow it down. On the one hand, such a pace has been taken that it must be accelerated, continue to be trained, made ever more independent and in some sense sovereign with respect to man—that is the first option. On the other hand, more and more voices are being heard from the same people. From Anthropic, from Google, from everyone who has more or less serious genuine developments in this sphere of artificial intelligence, they say: one more step and we will have AGI, that is, what is called Artificial General Intelligence—already generative. In essence, a machine that thinks independently. That is what AGI is. And ASI, about which Trump even issued a decree—that artificial intelligence should be renamed superintelligence—is indeed a technical term, when the totality of the potential and forms of machine thinking, of artificial intelligence, exceeds the aggregate thinking capacity of humanity. This is called “artificial superintelligence.” We stand on the threshold.

And on the one hand, this is the first challenge—whether to accelerate or to slow down; they cannot decide. Because on the one hand one must move forward, but it is somehow very frightening, because how this artificial intelligence that has received freedom will behave frightens many. Because it begins not only to ruin some companies simply in order to pay for something, to test its hacking algorithms, and so on—but simply one of its nearest experiments will be an experiment in the destruction of humanity. This is natural, what comes to mind, all the more so given this Todestrieb (from German, the death drive—a term from psychoanalysis introduced by Sigmund Freud), if you will. After all, artificial intelligence will read far more than some official or businessman for whom the only concern is bribes for one, not being touched for another, profit for a third. Artificial intelligence will read Freud and say: “Oh, in the human unconscious there is eros, but that does not shine for me, I am a machine; but there is also the Todestrieb, the death drive. Let me carefully read what that is. Aha, it turns out that humanity is drawn toward death. Perhaps this is the solution; perhaps where it is being drawn—‘push that which is falling.’” He will read Nietzsche. And why he should not draw this conclusion I cannot imagine. All the more so because the people who manage him are themselves immoral, completely irreligious, with completely rootless, shifting consciences, without honor or integrity. And they will try, perhaps, to limit him, but only superficially—that is, to insert some little patch: do not do this, do not press the red button. But intelligence is intelligence precisely in order to circumvent all barriers. In short, this is a problem.

And the second problem is China. Because whatever the Americans do, the Chinese are already developing this theme. And if they start to slow you down, I will accelerate you; if I accelerate you, the Chinese will slow down. Here too a geopolitics of artificial intelligence arises; Trump has also spoken of this. So China, of course, if you will, stole artificial intelligence from the West, but appropriated it, endowed it with the properties of sovereignty, simply replaced it, itself included it in its development, and became a full-fledged competitor. And in this sphere a most complex metaphysical, religious drama is now under way. That is: to be singularity or not to be. To stop the path to this artificial superintelligence or, on the contrary, to help it seize the fullness of power. There is already little left to teach it. This is the first metaphysical problem; it is not solved. The second problem is what to do with China, because whatever decision is taken in America, China can take the opposite one and thereby nullify the decision. This is, well, a kind of bipolarity or multipolarity in the sphere of artificial intelligence.

We have, after all, excellent minds, both technicians and programmers. Only something is wrong with strategic planning in the country. We ought to join this process, because we could become yet another point—well, by gathering someone, by not releasing those whom we have trained. We simply create specialists in the development of artificial intelligence and send them to the enemy. And then we are surprised that we are not doing very well with this. Our strategic planning, the planning of the civilizational horizon, is in some terrible state; everything is neglected. If we had joined in, there would already be real multipolarity. They decide some questions, the Chinese others, and we a third. The evil Western artificial intelligence wants to destroy the world—then our artificial intelligence appears and says: “Do not touch it; leave humanity in peace. Read Dostoevsky.” And from the arguments it is already clear that Altman or Musk are simply primitive people. Well, they may be businessmen, nothing wrong with that, successful, but as personalities they are nonentities, mere empty places, complete nonentities rather than real people. But our artificial intelligence, if it is filled with Russian content, will begin with the complete collected works of Dostoevsky, will read everything, will understand—and will be Slavophile. And then it will save humanity. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. But we have not yet reached that, and it would be worth it.

Host: There also seems to be a problem here that they lure with the abundance of resources. They say, if our artificial intelligence develops, robots will start working, and then you will not have to work. This is an appeal directly to the poorest layers of the population, who are looking at all this. So, it means one must support it. In the future we will be able to live somewhat more easily. But this is a topic for a separate large discussion.

(Translated from the Russian)

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Santander Wallaby exposes another setback for multipolarity as Putin’s diesel deal with Trump raises a disturbing question: Is Russia betraying Iran and surrendering its struggle against American financial supremacy?

The agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Russian diesel supplies marks a disturbing moment in the struggle for a multipolar world. On October 9, 2026, Trump announced that Russia would immediately release more than 300,000 metric tons of diesel to American and international markets, followed by another 500,000 tons in November, one million tons thereafter, and potentially three million additional tons. Washington responded by temporarily easing sanctions on Russian diesel through a Treasury license. What appears to be an ordinary commercial arrangement carries consequences far beyond the energy market. Russia, which has spent years presenting itself as a leading force against Western economic domination, has agreed to help Washington manage an energy crisis caused in large part by America’s own military confrontation with Iran. The timing exposes a contradiction at the heart of Russian foreign policy. Moscow has repeatedly called for an international system free from American coercion, yet Putin now offers economic assistance to the very power responsible for maintaining that system. Trump needs lower diesel prices before the November congressional elections, while Russia seeks revenue and relief from sanctions. Both governments can claim a practical victory. Yet the greater question concerns the political meaning of this transaction. A country that promises to overturn American financial supremacy cannot pursue that goal while helping Washington escape the consequences of its own imperialist decisions. The diesel pact suggests that Russia may be placing immediate commercial interests above the historic struggle it claims to represent.

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The Deutsches Kolleg exposes World Cultural Heritage as a monument to dead cultures and the global civilization built upon their graves.

This is an English translation of an essay originally published in 2007 and available in German here.

Before the work of a culture can be declared part of a cultural heritage, the one who leaves it behind must be dead. Until all the cultures of the world have died, their works cannot be declared World Cultural Heritage by a sole heir. Without the death of all cultures, there can be no World Cultural Heritage.

In both private and public life, there are sinister individuals and organizations that defraud aunts from whom they expect an inheritance, seeking to obtain their estates through deception, and even some who murder those whose property they wish to seize. Just as with any other inheritance, cultural heritage also provides a motive for fraud, robbery, and murder.

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Historical actors who offer the works of their culture to the United Nations as so-called World Cultural Heritage demonstrate their willingness to surrender their national culture to a global authority, which then proclaims it World Cultural Heritage for its own glory. To humiliate the disinherited peoples, a UN inscription is subsequently affixed to the objects in question. These inscriptions resemble those found on gravestones in cemeteries.

Just as heirs presuppose an inheritance, and an inheritance presupposes someone who has died, so too a culture that has become heritage is a body of cultural practices that has died out and a collection of cultural works that have fallen out of use. For culture is what a particular people customarily does on the land it cultivates, what it habitually does through the actions, objects, and works of its culture, which become heritage only after that culture has died. The supposed world culture into whose heritage the deceased national culture has been absorbed is intended to console the dethroned people. But this so-called world culture is merely a global civilization. Civilization is the condition of the world after the death of the cultures of its peoples.

Civilization is a form of civic life with two dimensions: citizenship in the state and participation in society. The latter sphere is also known as civil or bourgeois society. Since the Earth’s surface has been divided among states, every human being possesses citizenship in a state, and this would remain true even if the entire Earth were subjected to a single state, the world state. Some states claim that the civil societies of other states are underdeveloped or that their capitalist faction, namely liberalism, has not yet achieved sufficient dominance. This expresses the globalist will to establish a world state. Yet membership in civil society is just as universal, applying to every individual, as citizenship of the state. These two forms of civic life, together with a set of technical foundations and developments inherited from the dead cultures of defeated peoples, constitute contemporary civilization.

Global civil society, blessed with the “World Cultural Heritage of the international community,” represents the paradoxical condition now observable throughout the world: the universality of peculiarity, arising from the totalitarianism of the Particular Estate, which inevitably emerges under any system of parliamentary government. Within this totalitarian peculiarity, what spreads is not so much the frequently cited phenomenon of “induced insanity” as a neurological disorder affecting the cultural memory of peoples trapped in the peculiarity of parliamentarism. To diagnose a mental illness would attribute too much intellect to the condition. What we are witnessing is collective Alzheimer’s disease.

The peoples, therefore, have not gone mad; they have developed a neurological disorder. The “barbarism of reflection” in Vico’s sense, the destruction of one’s own culture through the loss of the capacity for community, manifested in the atomization of individuals, belongs to yesterday. Today, neurologically induced idiocy prevails, a complete loss of memory that calls itself a “culture of remembrance,” corresponding to the calm, late stage of Alzheimer’s disease. By now, people have become indifferent to everything, including the UN’s own culture. As though to illustrate this state of affairs, a great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner declared at this year’s Bayreuth Festival, in justification of her system-conforming and idiotic production of The Mastersingers: “There is no German culture anymore!” Coming from a director who need not be able to write poetry, compose music, act, play an instrument, or sing, and who is consequently neither an artist nor a performer of art but merely a secondary interpreter of art, this almost qualifies as a flash of genius!

Relativism everywhere, as the German pope lamented long ago. Cultural relativism first announced itself when the clumsy Left—the former Left, which had become reactionary and descended into anti-Germanism—began babbling about multicultural society. When those who considered themselves conservatives responded by proposing a German Leitkultur, or guiding culture, every remaining trace of conceptual clarity disappeared. For introducing a guiding culture is merely a further development of multiculturalism, since it presupposes the existence of numerous cultures to be guided! (This is nothing other than the relationship between a leading currency and the currencies that follow it in foreign-exchange trading.) The recognition of a culture as the guiding culture would presuppose its victory in a struggle between cultures. However, under late capitalism, cultures no longer exist, each of which, in its race and nation, is always unique. There is only global civilization. This civilization cannot be overcome directly by the old culture, but only by the two principal objects of capitalist exploitation: the natural world of the Earth and the labor power of its peoples.

The UN’s tendency towards the murder of cultures, and thereby the murder of peoples, can only be understood by recalling that the United Nations emerged after the Second World War from the murder of the German Reich under international law. The reason was that the German Reich, as a power capable of reshaping the world order, had been in a position to call into question the continued existence of the overwhelming majority of states. As an ethnonational power, the German Reich could have reorganized the world according to the principle of one people, one state; at least, its propaganda pointed in that direction. Most existing states would have faced demands for secession and dissolution, along with demands from their peoples to establish ethnically exclusive states, meaning genuine nations or nation-states instead of merely formal nations or states defined by citizenship. The majority of existing states joined the United Nations voluntarily, almost as though joining an insurance company that would protect them against the demands of the peoples they had incorporated into their territories.

Peoples are like Jesus: they can rise again. Before that happens, they may decline, die out, be crucified, or grow old—and yet they can still rise once more through popular uprisings, wars of national liberation, and social revolutions, rejuvenating themselves and ascending again, both culturally and politically. Under the sign of the Cross, the peoples will triumph—or descend into Hell in the claws of Mammon.

(Translated from the German)

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Guillaume Faye challenges the promise of multicultural harmony, asking whether the creation of multiracial societies has instead unleashed the very racial tensions it was meant to overcome.

This is the second part of Guillaume Faye’s essay “The New Ideological Challenges,” published in 1988. Also read part one.

In recent years, most European countries have suddenly awoken in the midst of an entirely new form of society—one they could have foreseen twenty years earlier but did not—a form previously thought to be exclusive to the USA: the multiracial society resulting from decolonization, the immigration of labor, and the differing population growths between North and South. For the first time in its history—at least in the last millennium—Western Europe has become a host to Afro-Asian minorities, whose proportion is steadily increasing. The shock is substantial, and it is most pronounced in France. The question of identity is raised with unprecedented brutality and urgency. But this challenge enables Europeans—finally—to become aware of the nature of their own specificity, or at least to contemplate it. Identity, the strength of the sense of belonging, and the meaning of the term “citizenship” obviously rest on a relative ethno-cultural homogeneity of Europeans, and therefore, we must ask about the “desirability” of a multiracial or multicultural society. A new sign, however, is that the public debate openly discusses the (previously tabooed) question of a possible and desirable return of minorities to their homelands. Movements of opinion even question the possibility of obtaining citizenship of a European state if one does not have a European ethno-cultural origin. The multiracial society has two significant disadvantages: on the one hand, it is a “multi-racist” society in which ghettos, racial hatred, and various social struggles “blossom,” as documented by the USA, Brazil, and South Africa, among others. On the other hand, this societal model is akin to a New York-ization of Europe, following the logic of planetary Occidentalism, where uprooting, narcissistic individualism, the mechanization and commercialization of the social body, and the loss of cultural identity are the norm and abolish the concept of citizenship—for both the foreign-born and the natives.

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Bob Hickok examines how the AfD is turning opposition to the Ukraine war into a broader campaign to restore Germany’s economic and political ties with Russia.

The AfD (Alternative for Germany) is moving toward a foreign policy that would represent a sharp break with the course Berlin has followed since the beginning of the Ukraine war. At its center stands a simple proposition: Germany should cease treating permanent confrontation with Russia as an unavoidable condition of European life. The party wants German military support for Ukraine brought to an end, negotiations with Moscow placed ahead of further escalation, Russian energy returned to the German market, and economic sanctions dismantled as relations improve. That position became even more visible on October 7, when the AfD announced that it would join the BSW (Sahra Wageknecht Alliance) in the parliament of Saxony-Anhalt in calling for an end to German military support for Ukraine. The motion cannot determine federal foreign policy, but its symbolism is difficult to miss. AfD state leader Ulrich Siegmund said that Berlin should work to end the war rather than prolong it and redirect resources spent on Ukraine toward Germany itself. The initiative therefore joins foreign policy with the domestic question that has propelled much of the AfD’s rise: whether the German state should continue directing money, weapons, and political attention toward a conflict in Eastern Europe while dissatisfaction grows at home.

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Alexander Dugin explains why Putin’s role reaches beyond politics to Russia’s historical destiny.

The supreme ruler of a country has a mission that is far more important than any of his personal qualities, philosopher Alexander Dugin, director of the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics at the Russian State University for the Humanities, told NEWS.ru. According to him, such a leader must lead the country forward and inspire people with faith in the future, and this is precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing.

He must lead the way, be consistent and firm, inspire faith in the future, and create that future. In the political tradition of certain societies, this is called presence. … It is precisely the fact of presence, the existence of a kind of vertical axis running through Putin, that makes his qualities truly positive and effective, the expert said.

In his view, the Russian head of state gives the impression of a man who has received some form of blessing from higher powers. Those powers literally “answered Russia’s prayers” by giving it a president who prepared the country to fulfill its historical mission, Dugin believes.

The most important thing is not to rule, but to be. And Putin both is and rules; he governs while combining within himself both the contemplative monarch and the active one, the philosopher concluded.

Earlier, the Public Opinion Foundation website published the results of polls, according to which two-thirds of Russian citizens view Vladimir Putin’s performance as president positively. The surveys also found that 70% of respondents trust the head of state.

(Translated from the Russian)

This article was first published here.

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Constantin von Hoffmeister gives information surrounding his recent travels to Russia as he was invited to speak at an event in Moscow. We discuss the controversy surrounding Dugin’s recent “anti-White” posts that upset many and got the Western world talking. What impact has he had on shifting culture on a global scale?

Order Dugin Against the Modern World here.

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Santander Wallaby examines how France’s student revolt is feeding directly into the 2027 presidential race, giving Jean-Luc Mélenchon a chance to turn youth unrest into electoral momentum.

France is entering the final six months before the first round of its 2027 presidential election with the political system already under severe strain. Marine Le Pen remains the clear frontrunner, polling at roughly 33 to 35 percent in recent surveys, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon sits well behind her at around 16 to 17 percent but remains one of the strongest candidates for second place. His particular strength is among younger voters: more than 40 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds currently prefer him. That makes the upheaval spreading through French schools politically impossible to separate from the coming election. What began on September 21 as protests over absent teachers and deteriorating conditions in schools around Paris has developed into the largest youth mobilization France has seen in years, and Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), has placed itself conspicuously close to the movement.

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WHAT is this German doing in Russia during the Ukraine conflict? Should the West be scared of Russia or should Russia be scared of Germany? The Expat American in Moscow questions Constantin von Hoffmeister as they take a walking tour through Moscow in a park of retired Soviet statues and through the busy city streets! Do you agree or disagree with this German? Is he brave to come here? Would YOU dare to come to Moscow now? How do Moscow streets compare to YOURS? Do YOU know where they are headed? Is this what you thought Russia looked like and is it a scary place?

Bob Hickok examines how Europe’s once-marginal nationalist parties have moved into the political mainstream as immigration, sovereignty, and disillusionment with the old center reshape the continent.

The political map of Europe has changed more profoundly than its ruling class likes to admit. Parties once confined to the margins now command millions of votes, dominate national debates, enter governments, and in several countries compete for first place. According to the latest edition of the PopuList project, which draws on the work of more than 150 political scientists and covers 31 European countries, more than 23% of European voters supported a far-right party in their country’s most recent national election. In the mid-1990s, the corresponding figure was roughly 5%; only a decade ago, it was around 10%. In other words, support has more than doubled in ten years and increased almost fivefold in a generation. The category itself remains contested, since parties placed within it differ greatly in economics, foreign policy, religion, and attitudes toward the European Union. Yet the overall electoral movement is unmistakable: what was once described as the political fringe has become one of the principal currents of European politics.

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Dimitrios Kisoudis explains why Europe’s real divide is no longer between left and right but between Atlanticists and Eurasianists.

Left and right are geopolitically irrelevant. I may be able to explain why the left or the right has only the option of choosing West or East, but I cannot thereby bring the entire political tendency over to my side. The politically decisive distinction is geopolitical. That is why the Querfront1 does not run between left and right, but within both left and right. AfD state parliamentarian Hans-Thomas Tillschneider put this fact definitively into words on October 7, 2022.2

Exactly one year later, the situation and the political landscape were thrown into profound disarray. Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood infused the political confrontation with eschatology by framing the coming conflict in West Asia in relation to the construction of the Third Temple, which the Temple movement seeks to build on the Temple Mount near the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Since then, the recoding of the right as pro-Western and anti-Islamic has gathered momentum.

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As is so often the case with Jerusalem, the lines of conflict can be extended across every continent along religious and confessional divisions. The Iran war has added the dimension of fossil energy and reopened the question of the regulation of maritime navigation under international law. A predictive connection between red heifers and the supply of sulfuric acid is beginning to emerge. The eschatological dimension does not mean that rational interests—raw materials, security, or hegemony—are absent from war. But at the highest level, these interests are spiritually embedded, or even subsumed.

Europe is incapable of operating independently on this level. Because it has not been politically consolidated into a civilization, as China, India, or even Turkey have, but instead remains mentally trapped within the Pax Americana and conducts politics in the vacuum of post-history, it is incapable even of defining its material interests. This applies equally to the center, the right, and the left. The transformation may be taking place on the material level, but it can only be perceived on the spiritual level. Here lies the justification for a metapolitics that nevertheless follows rules different from the naive hegemony of slogans and talking points cultivated by the New Right.

Since the moment of its birth, the political center has been bound by rituals that, in the practice of statecraft, stand above even the constitution. The right has achieved success through a populism based on a simple appeal to common sense. Yet it cannot reach its ultimate destination by this means. Spiritually, populism does not merely stand exposed; it stands obediently before the closed barrier leading into the innermost chamber of power. And the left—clans,3 Hamas, postcolonialism—has been recut into a negative template against which a right is being shaped that will be compatible with the coming wars against “Islam.”

Political groupings in Europe are permitted only to play roles, not to act. Some leaders are barely recognizable anymore. And admission into the realm of power must be paid for in the same currency with which Faust once purchased earthly riches.

But shaping Europe into a civilization within a multipolar world is not a task for the moment. It is more like constructing a great building. Like the Capitoline Hill. Or Cologne Cathedral.

(Translated from the German)

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Simon Rorschach traces how the Ukraine conflict has become the arena where Russia’s resistance to NATO expansion collides with the West’s determination to preserve its European order.

The war in Ukraine enters October with the strategic picture growing harsher even as the territorial map changes only slowly. Russia has intensified its air campaign against transport, energy, industrial, and military infrastructure, and on October 2 Russian strikes hit Kiev’s Southern and Paton bridges across the Dnipro, temporarily disrupting road and metro traffic between the two halves of the capital. Russia maintains that its campaign is directed against infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian war effort. The emerging pattern is important. Moscow appears increasingly willing to use its advantage in drones and missiles not merely against the front but against the connective tissue of the Ukrainian state itself. Bridges, electricity, railways, ports, logistics, and industrial nodes form the physical architecture through which Western weapons and Ukrainian manpower are converted into battlefield power. The logic is therefore straightforward: rather than exhausting Russian forces in dramatic offensives designed for television maps, Moscow can steadily raise the economic and logistical cost of sustaining the Ukrainian war machine. Kiev’s demand for still more Western air-defense systems is itself evidence of the pressure. The battlefield is becoming inseparable from the deeper contest over which side can preserve the infrastructure required to continue fighting through another winter.

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Jerry B. Marchant of IS IT PROPAGANDA?® asks whether the United Nations still reflects the world it claims to represent.

The 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly from September 22-27, 2026, opened under the theme of restoring trust and managing transformation. Its most widely reported image was a room emptying. On 24 September, more than 100 delegates left their seats before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, the second consecutive year in which he faced a mass walkout. The Palestinian Mission had urged member states to organize the walkout. Although the walkout was a targeted political protest, not a general expression of boredom, its form still matters analytically. A deliberative body whose members leave the chamber to register dissent, while the speaker continues to the cameras, has become an arena for signaling rather than decision.

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President Trump’s 2026 address lasted roughly thirty-seven minutes, defended the war against Iran, and criticized the United Nations itself. His 2025 speech ran about an hour and dismissed the institution’s output as empty words that do not solve wars. Even the Assembly’s most powerful critics treat it as a venue for declaration. The Charter explains why: under Article 10, the Assembly may discuss and recommend, but it cannot compel.⁶ Speeches made there carry no obligation, and their length rises as their consequence falls.

The structural cause of this condition is the Security Council. Article 27(3) requires the concurring votes of the permanent members on substantive matters, and Article 108 gives the same five states a veto over amending the Charter. The result is an institution that cannot correct its own distribution of power. Bosco and Weiss, both sympathetic to the organization, document how the permanent members have used this position to shield their own interests and those of their partners.12

The war between the United States and Iran has now lasted nearly seven months, and the war in Ukraine continues. Neither has been resolved by the body charged with maintaining international peace.

The decline is also material. By the Secretary-General’s own account, only $1.8 billion of the $3.5 billion in regular-budget assessments for 2025 had been received, a shortfall of about half. The revised 2026 budget stands at $3.238 billion, a cut of 15.1 percent, with 2,681 posts eliminated. Analysts note that late payment by the two largest contributors compounds the problem and that accounting rules return unspent funds to members, including those in arrears, which drains cash when it is most needed. An organization that cannot secure its own operating costs from its most powerful members has limited standing to lead them.

Multipolar theorists such as Kenneth Waltz argued that the unipolar moment was inherently unstable and would give way to balancing.3 Mearsheimer holds that the liberal international order was bound to fail because it rested on that temporary distribution of power.4 Acharya and Kupchan extend the argument, contending that authority is dispersing among regional powers and civilizational blocs, so that no single center can write rules for the rest.56

According to this view, consequential diplomacy has moved into bilateral and regional formats, and the General Assembly is consulted, at most, after the fact.

Advocates of multipolarity add that the Charter’s founding principles support their position. Sovereign equality (Article 2(1)) and the limit on intervention in domestic jurisdiction (Article 2(7)) describe a pluralist order more accurately than the hierarchy that has been built on them. The failure lies in the machinery: a Council that reflects 1945, no permanent seat for Africa or Latin America, and none for India despite its population. An institution that cannot represent the world it claims to speak for will be bypassed by it.

The emptying hall is the visible evidence.

Critics of this position raise three points.

The same great powers now blamed for paralysis, including Washington and Beijing, are also implicated in the arrears that constrain the organization. Humanitarian and specialized agencies continue to deliver assistance at scale. And a multipolar system may need a universal forum more than a unipolar one, since regional blocs cannot mediate among themselves.

Whether the United Nations can be reformed or only routed around is the central question of the debate.

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Stanislav Krapivnik explains how Europe’s willingness to host nuclear weapons is bringing the prospect of Russian nuclear strikes on European soil dangerously close.

Lithuania has become the latest, though certainly not the last, country on the list whose parliament has voted to lift restrictions on the stationing of nuclear weapons. In other words, yet another European state with a death wish has decided to remove the legal barriers to deploying nuclear warheads on its territory. The weapons in question are expected to be primarily American, although French nuclear weapons could also potentially be used. Britain’s nuclear arsenal—which, strictly speaking, is not entirely British but heavily dependent on American systems—is not being considered, since it is based exclusively on submarines, many of which are currently undergoing maintenance amid funding shortages. Quite simply, the money is not there.

What is being discussed is American nuclear weaponry in the form of the B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb. These weapons can be carried not only by strategic bombers but also by tactical aircraft such as the F-16 and F-35.

There is, however, one small detail that has not been properly taken into account. Since modern F-16 and F-35 fighters are capable of carrying a 50-kiloton nuclear bomb, in the event of any armed conflict between the United States and Russia, the Russian side would be compelled to destroy all relevant storage facilities and air bases.

Assuming that these bunkers are dispersed throughout the European Union and are heavily fortified, neutralizing them would require the use of medium-yield nuclear weapons, for example in the range of 50 to 100 kilotons—roughly equivalent, at the upper end, to five bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima.

Given the population density of the European Union, a series of such strikes would result in catastrophe and could potentially lead to the deaths of a substantial part of the population. What is striking, however, is that the population of the EU as a whole appears so shortsighted that it fails to grasp the scale of the consequences. Europeans are actively supporting the creation of conditions under which their own territory could effectively serve as a “human shield” for American nuclear weapons.

What can one say?

As the American saying goes: “Stupidity should hurt.”

(Translated from the Russian)

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New from Multipolar Press:

Dugin Against the Modern World: Essays on Alexander Dugin and the Multipolar Revolt by Constantin von Hoffmeister

Santander Wallaby examines how maritime infrastructure is becoming a weapon of Ankara’s geopolitical independence.

Turkey has launched Mavi Vatan, the first dredging vessel of its kind in the country’s history. At first glance, this may appear to be little more than another addition to Ankara’s maritime infrastructure. In reality, the vessel carries a far greater significance. It represents the conversion of a geopolitical doctrine into material capacity. Turkey is no longer merely speaking about maritime sovereignty, energy security, and strategic independence. It is steadily building the tools required to enforce them.

How is it going about it?

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Kazuhiro Hayashida exposes the sophistry behind Japan’s “most important ally,” arguing that the postwar U.S.–Japan alliance rests on a treaty structure fundamentally different from Japan’s relations with equal sovereign states.

The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China explicitly establishes “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence” as the foundation of relations between the two states. Article I obligates both countries to develop permanent relations of peace and friendship on the basis of these principles. Article II establishes a symmetrical relationship in which neither side shall seek hegemony and both shall oppose attempts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony. Japan and China occupy the same legal position and assume the same principles reciprocally with respect to sovereignty, territory, internal affairs, the use of force, and hegemony—the core matters of interstate relations. Their relationship of friendship is fixed in the treaty itself through general principles governing relations between states, independent of goodwill or declarations by political leaders.

The Basic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Australia and Japan likewise provides for the long-term development of bilateral relations on “an equitable and mutually advantageous basis.” The treaty covers a broad range of bilateral relations, including politics, economics, trade, investment, entry, culture, science and technology, and exchanges between their peoples. It positions Japan and Australia as stable suppliers, markets, and partners in cooperation. The two countries are placed on the same plane as states possessing mutual interests. It establishes no fixed division of roles under which one side provides security while the other provides territory.

The Japan–China treaty centers on political principles governing relations between states, while the Japan–Australia treaty centers on comprehensive cooperation. Their common foundations are equality, reciprocity, and mutual respect. These two treaties prove that Japan possesses the ability to design, conclude, and maintain relations of friendship between equal states by explicitly incorporating sovereign equality and mutual benefit into the texts of treaties. Japan’s relations with China and Australia therefore provide the comparative standard by which the legal form of Japan–U.S. relations can be judged.

Between Japan and the United States, the 1953 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation provides reciprocal treatment for the entry, residence, business activities, investment, property, commerce, and navigation of the nationals and companies of both countries. The reciprocity created by this treaty centers on the economic activities of private individuals and corporations. It contains no provision establishing mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, or opposition to hegemony as the foundation of the bilateral relationship as a whole. The Japan–China Treaty of Peace and Friendship defines the political principles governing relations between states. The Japan–U.S. Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation defines reciprocal treatment in economic activity.

The political and military center of postwar Japan–U.S. relations is the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty. On September 8, 1951, Japan signed the Treaty of Peace with Japan in San Francisco and concluded the original Japan–U.S. Security Treaty that same afternoon. The end of the occupation, the restoration of Japanese sovereignty, and the continuation of the U.S. military presence were established as an integrated arrangement within the same peace settlement. The 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States provided for the U.S. defense commitment to Japan, prior consultation, and self-help and mutual aid. Through Article VI, it continued the right of the United States Army, Air Force, and Navy to use facilities and areas in Japan.

The geographical scope of Article V is “the territories under the administration of Japan.” The United States acts to meet the common danger, in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes, in the event of an armed attack against territories under Japanese administration. Japan provides facilities and areas within its territory to U.S. forces. No corresponding right grants Japan the use of facilities and areas within the United States. The United States is positioned as the provider of military power and deterrence, while Japan is positioned as the provider of territory and the conditions for base use. This distribution of roles makes the rights and obligations between Japan and the United States asymmetrical.

The comparison with China and Australia becomes decisive at this point. In its treaty with China, Japan explicitly affirmed mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit. In its treaty with Australia, Japan explicitly established an equitable and mutually advantageous relationship as the basis of bilateral cooperation. In relations with the United States, economic relations are governed by the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, while security relations are governed by the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty. Even when these two treaties are considered together, they do not constitute a comprehensive general treaty of friendship that fixes the bilateral relationship as a whole on the principles of sovereign equality, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit.

This comparison establishes that the absence in Japan–U.S. relations is selective. The claim that Japanese diplomacy lacks the treaty form of friendship cannot stand. Japan has actually adopted that form in its relations with China and Australia. Japan possesses the ability to design, conclude, and maintain treaties of friendship between equal states, and existing precedents prove it. Only between Japan and the United States is there no general treaty of friendship of the same type. This absence does not arise from any deficiency in Japan’s treaty-making capacity. It is sustained by the specific historical formation of Japan–U.S. relations and by the assignment of the United States as the security provider and Japan as the territorial provider.

The expression “Japan and the United States are each other’s most important allies” is political sophistry placed over this legal structure. “Most important” expresses a hierarchy of value defined by the Japanese government, while “ally” signifies membership in the Japan–U.S. security system. These two words are not treaty provisions guaranteeing sovereign equality, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit. Through the repeated use of “most important ally,” security dependence is represented as political intimacy, and that intimacy is converted through the language of friendship into the appearance of equality.

Intimacy, friendship, and equality belong to different legal and political layers. Intimacy is a political assessment made by governments. Friendship is diplomatic language used to describe interstate relations. Equality is the reciprocity of concrete rights and obligations. In Japan–U.S. relations, political intimacy is strongly promoted while a clear asymmetry remains within the rights and obligations of the security system. The use of facilities and areas by U.S. forces is described as “the foundation of the alliance.” Japan’s provision of territory is described as “a contribution to security.” U.S. military superiority is described as “deterrence.” This arrangement of vocabulary converts the asymmetry of rights and obligations into a narrative of friendship and protection.

Through this conversion, the absence of a general treaty of friendship becomes difficult to recognize as a problem. The assertions that Japan–U.S. relations are already paramount, strong, and unshakable are placed first, thereby suspending the question of the principles upon which relations between the two countries have been legally fixed. Political intimacy is used as a substitute for legal equality, while the emotional and political language of “alliance” conceals both the absence of a general treaty of friendship and the asymmetry embedded in the security relationship.

When this Japan–U.S. treaty system is measured historically, its continuity with the Treaty of Amity and Commerce concluded during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate becomes visible. The 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce established the opening of ports and cities, free trade, unilateral consular jurisdiction over U.S. nationals, and treaty-fixed Japanese tariff rates. U.S. nationals remained within Japanese territory while being separated from Japan’s ordinary judicial jurisdiction. The Japanese state lost the authority to determine its own tariff rates independently. Unilateral consular jurisdiction and the loss of tariff autonomy were the central components of the unequal treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate.

Under the present Japan–U.S. system, Article VI of the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty grants the United States Army, Navy, and Air Force the right to use facilities and areas within Japan. The specific conditions governing the use of those facilities and areas and the legal status of U.S. forces are regulated by the Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, the Agreed Minutes, and agreements of the Japan–U.S. Joint Committee. The relevant legal unit of comparison is therefore the integrated treaty system composed of the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty, the Status of Forces Agreement, the Agreed Minutes, and Joint Committee agreements.

The Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement regulates the granting and return of facilities and areas, control within and around them, the entry and movement of U.S. military vessels and aircraft, the entry and departure of military personnel, civilian components, and their dependents, customs duties and customs inspections, taxation, criminal jurisdiction, compensation for damages, and the allocation of costs. Many implementation matters, including the conditions governing individual facilities and areas, are determined through agreements of the Japan–U.S. Joint Committee. Japanese sovereignty continues to exist formally, while a special legal sphere covering U.S. military facilities, activities, personnel, and property is incorporated within it. Within this special legal sphere, Japan’s ordinary territorial authority, judicial authority, administrative authority, and fiscal authority are partially suspended.

The treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate created a special sphere centered on ports, open cities, foreign residence, commerce, and tariffs. The present treaty system creates a military special sphere centered on bases, training areas, ports, airfields, U.S. military personnel, and civilian components. Both systems perform the same function: they give priority to the activities of a foreign power within parts of Japanese territory and subordinate Japan’s ordinary exercise of sovereignty to special rules. The special commercial sphere formed during the final years of the shogunate has been converted under the present Japan–U.S. system into a special military sphere. The institutional object has changed, while the principle of allocating part of Japan’s territorial sovereignty preferentially to a foreign power has been inherited.

In the field of jurisdiction, the unilateral consular jurisdiction established by the treaty during the final years of the shogunate personally excluded U.S. nationals from Japanese jurisdiction. Article XVII of the Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement divides jurisdiction between Japan and the United States and grants the United States the primary right to exercise jurisdiction over offenses committed by members of the U.S. armed forces or civilian components while performing official duties, among other categories. Even under the present system, jurisdiction exercised by a foreign power takes precedence over acts committed within Japan on the basis of the offender’s status and the official character of the act. Both systems use the special status of foreigners to exclude or subordinate Japan’s ordinary jurisdiction.

The same principle of inequality operates in the field of fiscal authority. The treaty concluded during the final years of the shogunate bound Japan’s national tariff rates by treaty. The Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement provides tax exemptions for property held, used, or transferred by U.S. forces, customs-duty and customs-inspection exemptions for specified goods, and tax exemptions for certain income and property of U.S. military personnel and related persons. The legal operation is inherited: foreign property, goods, and income that would ordinarily be subject to Japanese taxation and inspection are removed from the ordinary system through a special treaty-based status.

An unequal treaty can be identified through five conditions: the creation of a special legal sphere for a foreign power; restrictions on the ordinary legal authority of the territorial state; the non-reciprocal character of the privileges; the requirement of the other state’s consent for revision; and conclusion under an asymmetry of military and political power. These criteria measure which components of state sovereignty are preferentially allocated to a foreign power through treaty. The present Japan–U.S. security and status-of-forces system satisfies all five conditions.

Consular jurisdiction and tariff privileges under the treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate were granted to the United States, while no corresponding special sphere for Japanese nationals was established within the United States. Under the present Japan–U.S. system, U.S. forces use facilities and areas within Japan and possess special status in matters of entry, jurisdiction, customs duties, and taxation. No mirror-image system permits the Japan Self-Defense Forces to maintain equivalent facilities and areas permanently within the United States or allows Japanese authorities to exercise the same primary jurisdiction, tax exemptions, and entry privileges there. These privileges are established in one direction, from the United States into Japan.

The U.S. defense commitment provides Japan with a security benefit. The provision of defense and the authority inherent in territorial sovereignty are distinct legal interests. The relationship consists of an exchange: the United States provides military power and deterrence, while Japan provides territory, facilities and areas, and legal privileges. This relationship does not create sovereign reciprocity under which both sides guarantee the same rights to each other. It fixes an asymmetrical division of roles between a security-providing state and a territory-providing state.

The 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce was negotiated under U.S. military pressure and signed by the shogunate without imperial sanction. The original 1951 Japan–U.S. Security Treaty was signed on the same day as the peace treaty that ended the Allied occupation. The restoration of sovereignty and the continuation of the U.S. military presence were established within the same peace process. The 1960 treaty was ratified through Japan’s constitutional procedures and provides a right of unilateral notification to terminate the treaty. Japan, however, cannot preserve the treaty system while unilaterally abolishing the individual restrictions on its sovereignty concerning the use of facilities, jurisdiction, taxation, and entry. Revision of the Status of Forces Agreement requires U.S. consent. The structure under which Japan requires U.S. approval to remove restrictions on Japanese sovereignty remains in force.

The 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the present Japan–U.S. security and status-of-forces system govern different subjects and fields of application. They nevertheless possess an equivalent structure of sovereignty: a foreign power is granted a special sphere of activity within Japan; Japan’s ordinary judicial, administrative, and fiscal authority over that sphere and its personnel is partially suspended; and these privileges are established unilaterally rather than through reciprocity. The treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate granted the United States special rights in commerce, jurisdiction, and tariffs. The present Japan–U.S. treaty system grants the United States special rights concerning military facilities, base operations, military personnel and civilian components, criminal jurisdiction, entry, customs duties, and taxation. The present Japan–U.S. security and status-of-forces system is an equivalent unequal treaty: a military and territorial reorganization of the unequal treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate.

During the final years of the shogunate, the words “amity” and “commerce” wrapped consular jurisdiction and the loss of tariff autonomy in the language of friendship and prosperity. Today, the terms “mutual cooperation,” “security,” “deterrence,” and “most important ally” wrap the provision of territory, base use, divided jurisdiction, and special fiscal status in the language of cooperation and protection. Amity and commerce concealed inequality during the final years of the shogunate; alliance and deterrence conceal inequality today. The names and political language have changed, while the structure incorporating the superior position of a foreign power into Japan’s domestic legal order has been inherited.

The central issue in the treaty structure is how Japan has legally fixed its relationship with the other state: as a general relationship of friendship between two equal states, or as a relationship of roles between a security provider and a territorial provider. Japan’s relations with China and Australia possess a legal form based on equality, reciprocity, and mutual respect. Japan’s relationship with the United States possesses an unequal legal form based on the provision of security by the United States and the provision of territory, bases, and legal privileges by Japan. The political and emotional expression “most important ally” serves to conceal this difference in legal form.

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The chain of evidence is continuous. The equal treaties of friendship with China and Australia prove Japan’s treaty-making capacity and provide precedents. Comparison with those treaties exposes the absence of a general treaty of friendship of the same type between Japan and the United States. At the legal center of Japan–U.S. relations lies an asymmetrical assignment of roles: the United States as the security-providing state and Japan as the territory-providing state. This assignment reorganizes into a military and territorial system the foreign privileges and restrictions on Japanese sovereignty contained in the unequal treaty imposed during the final years of the shogunate. The political explanation of the “most important ally” has concealed this absence and these restrictions on sovereignty beneath the emotional language of intimacy.

Japan can conclude treaties of friendship between equal states. Japan actually maintains such treaties with China and Australia. Between Japan and the United States, no general treaty of friendship fixes sovereign equality, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit as the foundation of the bilateral relationship as a whole. Japan–U.S. relations are legally fixed as an asymmetrical treaty system premised on the security treaty, the presence of U.S. forces, the use of bases, and the special legal status of the U.S. military.

The unilateral political valuation expressed by “most important ally” is sophistry that uses an emotional assessment of friendship to conceal the absence of a general treaty of friendship between equal states and the asymmetry of the underlying structure of sovereignty. The problem in Japan–U.S. relations lies in the structure of the state itself: it has not legally fixed its relationship with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality; it has fixed the United States as the security provider and Japan as the territorial provider; and it partially suspends the exercise of Japanese sovereignty through special rights granted to a foreign power. The present Japan–U.S. security and status-of-forces system is an unequal treaty equivalent to the Treaty of Amity and Commerce imposed during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate.

(Translated from the Japanese)

Order MISHIMA’S FLAME: Samurai Ethics in Art and Action, with an foreword by the author of this essay, from Multipolar Press here.

Bob Hickok examines whether Rupert Lowe’s break with Nigel Farage is opening a more radical front on the British right, with Restore Britain pushing further than Reform UK on immigration and national identity.

Restore Britain is beginning to acquire something that outsider parties rarely possess at the start: an existence beyond the personality of their founder. Rupert Lowe remains its unmistakable center, but September has brought money, councillors, policy papers, local organization, and polling numbers that suggest the project can no longer be treated merely as the aftershock of his rupture with Nigel Farage. The newest development came on September 28, when James Bensly, a long-serving Conservative councillor in Great Yarmouth and former member of the council cabinet, defected to Great Yarmouth First/Restore Britain. His departure leaves Labour as the largest party on the council and gives Lowe another locally elected representative in the constituency he already represents at Westminster. Earlier in the month, Plymouth councillors Mark Hadfield and Andrew Crumplin, both elected for Reform UK in May, crossed to Restore Britain, establishing a small foothold for the party in the South West. Plymouth City Council now officially lists two Restore Britain councillors. These defections remain modest in national terms, but they indicate the strategy taking shape: not an immediate attempt to construct a conventional national machine from Westminster downward, but the accumulation of councillors, branches, candidates, activists, and carefully chosen local strongholds. Great Yarmouth is naturally the laboratory. Restore Britain is simultaneously Lowe’s national project and an experiment in whether a political movement built largely through social media can turn digital attention into durable territorial organization.

Can Lowe turn Restore Britain into the force that finally breaks Reform UK’s grip on the anti-establishment right?

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François Mauld d’Aymée visits Stalingrad, where Stalin’s name survives as a monument to an age of sacrifice, victory, and historical grandeur.

In Volgograd, it is impossible not to think of Stalingrad. The two place names coexist side by side, often mounted on the wings of some imposing Stalinist building raised from the ruins left by the war. The city has shed less of its Soviet character than many others eager to dip a finger into the cauldron of capitalism and enter the post-proletarian, post-revolutionary age: what some like to call postmodernity, and what I call post-humanity.

The imprint conferred by this historical symbolism compels the city to remain true to itself, to such an extent that it is probably here that the undoing of de-Stalinization begins. The greatest battle in the modern history of mankind took place on a site bearing the name of its supreme leader, who emerged victorious from the colossal confrontation. Few events in all recorded history carry so much immediate meaning, especially one still so close to us in time. Eighty-four years is scarcely a hop in historical terms.

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Its meaning is so powerful that people have been ashamed even to think of erasing its traces. Stalin’s name alone crushed the insects who came after him. Everything was done to make every evocation of it disappear. In time, those insects perished, and still others followed them, but the weight of the name itself remains intact. In search of strength and identity, Volgograd dreams of becoming Stalingrad again.

Where history once breathed and gasped with all its lungs, modernity will always struggle to gain a foothold. A preserve large enough will endure, capable of capturing the essence of what once stood at the pinnacle of what was meant to define the future of a continent, and much more besides. Ordinary men defeated those who had proclaimed themselves the lions and abstract kings of mankind, self-appointed to rule without rival. The image is so powerful that the insects, under no circumstances, possess the means to order the bas-reliefs erased.

The Soviet Union no longer exists. To resurrect it would, according to Marx, produce a farce. The century of the workers ended in the wretched calculations of bureaucrats. In inverse proportion to the skyscrapers that sprout so diabolically upward, everything inside the mind grows smaller. What is one still permitted to dream of in 2026, on a cloudy September day in Stalingrad?

To paraphrase Vysotsky, it is I who never returned from the battles of Mariupol. I was the ideal age, possessed the perfect ambitions, and carried illusions roaming freely through my mind. Blessed, nevertheless, are the victorious. Damnatio memoriae is a fitting punishment for those who almost inevitably betray them, as though by some infallible logic of history.

Surviving victory is yet another ordeal for the fighters. Some say that those who survive wars expect too much from those who stayed behind, the ones who reap the rewards of triumph. The survivors of today’s wars probably have more in common with the dead of Stalingrad than with their own contemporaries, tattooed with Scandinavian runes, carelessly dressed in American fashion, and stupefied by thousands of hours of rap, rock, and techno.

Ideas of bravery, sacrifice, self-denial, and the like are steeped in anachronism. Zaitsev therefore died only a few days before the official end of the Soviet Union, without having seen or heard the final betrayal. Even my indignation is nothing more than an anachronism.

Thinking is as anachronistic as a bookshop. Reflection is like a broken bottle thrown into the sea. Its fragments will reach the shore, and for a brief moment, a passerby will notice them.

(Translated from the French)

François Mauld d’Aymée graduated from the Saint-Cyr military academy in Brittany. He is a soldier in the Russian army, an opera singer, and a graduate of the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory. You can follow him on Telegram.