I found this rather interesting — so the Soviet Union “occupied” countries [in Eastern Europe, I suppose], but Western Europeans……well, they were free….
“Western Europeans, with a devastated continent, exhausted by one war, and in a state of terminal fear about another one, looked uneasily to the East, where the Soviet Union had installed Communist governments in the countries it had occupied, and had blockaded the western portion of Berlin. Although they did not fear military attack as such, national leaders were extremely worried about the intimidatory effect of massive Soviet forces a few hundred kilometres away. ”
It seems the western European countries had to accept American hegemony, but they were great powers (with colonies of their own), so they had a better negotiating position vis-a-vis US than eastern Europe did vis-a-vis USSR.
Yes. Whitewashing of any malignant role played by the 'west' is a general feature of these essays.
Typical quote:
"For the West, the UN was a minor issue, a place where they suffered endless criticism by the Third World, only occasionally useful for low-level peacekeeping and mediation, and frequently criticised as a waste of time and money."
You would think from this that, for example, the role of the UN in helping the US with regard to the instigation and furtherance of the Korean war was both minimal and unique. This is of course not so, and the main purpose of the UN, the IMF, the World Bank etc. was/is to facilitate US political, financial and military dominance. (Similarly the OPCW, given a glancing and anodyne mention in the article, is an essential US tool for the demonisation of suitable candidates, most recently, Syria. But not as far as you would ever be able to tell by reading Aurelian).
I find these essays to be wonderful recapitulations of events taking place in my childhood and adolescence. There seems to be one constant invariant from my long ago youth and today: growth is good!
The organization that can lead decoupling will be the one saving our species by stopping the extermination of many other species. I have profound doubts that such a grouping can exist.
I think you have missed the reason behind the European Union. It was the control of Uranium supplies from the Belgian Congo and developing nuclear technology including bombs. Just check the early documents.
You can't blame NATO on USSR. Cold war plans started even before WW-2 ended. You can see Churchill plan to attack USSR in 1945. US planes skirting USSR boundaries in 1948 etc.,
"Thus, during the whole of the Cold War there was no more reliable NATO ally than Germany, and the after-effects of that policy are still visible today."
I recall that the West German Bundestag stood on its hind legs when the US wanted to stage Pershing missiles in Germany., and the US proceeded to remind the Germans of their place.
Anyway, BRICs will have to develop a decisionmaking mechanism and and enforcement mechanism. Otherwise, it will remain the diplomatic equivalent of a dorm room bull session.
as one Spanish diplomat said to me after the end of the Cold War, “we joined NATO after the years of isolation under Franco, just as we joined the EEC, to show we’d turned a page. We joined everything.”In reality, this diplomat was not telling the truth. The matter was not so frivolous. Spain had remained neutral under Franco and wanted to maintain this independence even by developing nuclear weapons (the Islero project). This orientation was maintained even after Franco's death until the arrival of the socialists with Felipe Gonzalez as prime minister in 1982. Felipe Gonzalez and the Monarchy in the person of the then King Juan Carlos I were supported by the United States if they abandoned this neutrality, included Spain in NATO and abandoned the nuclear project that was being developed in the Spanish Sahara. In reality it was a betrayal of a large part of the Spanish people (not to mention the Sahrawis who have been subjected to and invaded by Morocco until today) since Felipe Gonzalez ran for election with the programme of NOT joining NATO but once in government he put his position as Prime Minister and his withdrawal from it at the disposal of the Socialist Party if the referendum on Spain's entry into NATO in 1986 came out against integration.
I found this rather interesting — so the Soviet Union “occupied” countries [in Eastern Europe, I suppose], but Western Europeans……well, they were free….
“Western Europeans, with a devastated continent, exhausted by one war, and in a state of terminal fear about another one, looked uneasily to the East, where the Soviet Union had installed Communist governments in the countries it had occupied, and had blockaded the western portion of Berlin. Although they did not fear military attack as such, national leaders were extremely worried about the intimidatory effect of massive Soviet forces a few hundred kilometres away. ”
It seems the western European countries had to accept American hegemony, but they were great powers (with colonies of their own), so they had a better negotiating position vis-a-vis US than eastern Europe did vis-a-vis USSR.
It is now coming to the fore how much negotiating power they had.
Yes. Whitewashing of any malignant role played by the 'west' is a general feature of these essays.
Typical quote:
"For the West, the UN was a minor issue, a place where they suffered endless criticism by the Third World, only occasionally useful for low-level peacekeeping and mediation, and frequently criticised as a waste of time and money."
You would think from this that, for example, the role of the UN in helping the US with regard to the instigation and furtherance of the Korean war was both minimal and unique. This is of course not so, and the main purpose of the UN, the IMF, the World Bank etc. was/is to facilitate US political, financial and military dominance. (Similarly the OPCW, given a glancing and anodyne mention in the article, is an essential US tool for the demonisation of suitable candidates, most recently, Syria. But not as far as you would ever be able to tell by reading Aurelian).
I find these essays to be wonderful recapitulations of events taking place in my childhood and adolescence. There seems to be one constant invariant from my long ago youth and today: growth is good!
The organization that can lead decoupling will be the one saving our species by stopping the extermination of many other species. I have profound doubts that such a grouping can exist.
I think you have missed the reason behind the European Union. It was the control of Uranium supplies from the Belgian Congo and developing nuclear technology including bombs. Just check the early documents.
You can't blame NATO on USSR. Cold war plans started even before WW-2 ended. You can see Churchill plan to attack USSR in 1945. US planes skirting USSR boundaries in 1948 etc.,
"Thus, during the whole of the Cold War there was no more reliable NATO ally than Germany, and the after-effects of that policy are still visible today."
I recall that the West German Bundestag stood on its hind legs when the US wanted to stage Pershing missiles in Germany., and the US proceeded to remind the Germans of their place.
Anyway, BRICs will have to develop a decisionmaking mechanism and and enforcement mechanism. Otherwise, it will remain the diplomatic equivalent of a dorm room bull session.
as one Spanish diplomat said to me after the end of the Cold War, “we joined NATO after the years of isolation under Franco, just as we joined the EEC, to show we’d turned a page. We joined everything.”In reality, this diplomat was not telling the truth. The matter was not so frivolous. Spain had remained neutral under Franco and wanted to maintain this independence even by developing nuclear weapons (the Islero project). This orientation was maintained even after Franco's death until the arrival of the socialists with Felipe Gonzalez as prime minister in 1982. Felipe Gonzalez and the Monarchy in the person of the then King Juan Carlos I were supported by the United States if they abandoned this neutrality, included Spain in NATO and abandoned the nuclear project that was being developed in the Spanish Sahara. In reality it was a betrayal of a large part of the Spanish people (not to mention the Sahrawis who have been subjected to and invaded by Morocco until today) since Felipe Gonzalez ran for election with the programme of NOT joining NATO but once in government he put his position as Prime Minister and his withdrawal from it at the disposal of the Socialist Party if the referendum on Spain's entry into NATO in 1986 came out against integration.
The italian translation, here:
"Diversamente da come si è fatto.
I BRICS e il funzionamento delle istituzioni internazionali."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2024/11/diversamente-da-come-si-e-fatto-i-brics.html
So what should be surprising is why there aren't more groups like this, organically springing up. Maybe there will be soon.