Van der Pijl: Poland could be much stronger

We are glad that you have found time to come to Poland.

– Thank you for inviting me.

The first question, possibly rather obvious, but people who have not yet read your book, Polish readers, may wonder about methodology. Where did you find the facts, clues and sources to compose this book as well as the erstwhile ones?

– Well, you always gotta have a theoretical framework in which you interpret events. For me, at my phase of life, this is not a decision I make overnight, but alternatively 1 that gradually becomes part of a full way of looking at things. erstwhile the MH17 aircraft was shot down, the civilian war in Ukraine had lasted for six months. I had adequate experience to know that what was said to be done by the Russians was absolutely untrue and should be verified. Therefore, I utilized a strategy – there is no point in describing all the details – while the elements, specified as the issue of the formation of social classes, are always present in me. In this case, in particular, the discrimination between the liberal West, peculiarly the key Western countries, on the 1 hand, and BRICS, which in my eyes is an example of alleged "retirement" states, phenomena which date back to the 17th century erstwhile France resisted the UK. That shot truly helped me. This is 1 page – methodology and theoretical issue.

The second aspect is simply that in 2016 we had a referendum in the Netherlands on the association of Ukraine with the European Union, which was yet ignored, but I was active in a number of accompanying activities. besides in France. A group of journalists asked me if I could aid them research the degree of freedom of information movement, in the mode of access to public information. They wanted to see all the papers relating to this referendum. They were frequently smeared, so they could not be read, but even after the headlines it could be noted that our government was closely active in the preparation of the coup in Ukraine. Not as actively as the Americans and the British, but in a secondary role. I learned a lot from those documents. I besides had a Ukrainian doctorate who wrote a superb dissertation paper on the fight between the Doniecki clan and the djeepropetrovsk clan, the residual capitalist class in Ukraine, and this helped me realize the situation and this country and it made me curious. Of course, thirdly, the net is simply a library of everything that exists, and if you have a good nose, a sense of which sources you can trust, and erstwhile you exercise caution – this can let you to get an incredible amount of information.

Do you think it would be possible to compose a truly professional technological paper about the ongoing war?

- Yes, of course.

But there are different narratives...

– The full thought of narrative... I admire Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, who can be taught that it is impossible to get to the basics of a historical event without getting through the web of communicative first. I do not see a large problem in this, due to the fact that it is crucial to make its own perspective, which should not be based mainly on what people, politicians and the media say, but on what they actually do. And erstwhile we can figure out what they are doing, then we can go back to what they say, and here – with a small aid from Foucault – see what their words and viewpoint truly mean. In the light of this, the substance has become a small easier, thanks to the degree of lying to mainstream sources and politicians. erstwhile they were just twisting things slightly, it was hard to get around. But now, even the fact that it is raining today, is attributed to Putin. And we already know something's wrong.

Of course, we are talking about different aspects of investigation on different things. Our readers, our viewers are wondering what to do in a time of full manipulation that you just said. How to find the real fact, how to discover specified manipulation, how to analyse this fresh reality? They conclude that, above all, our main task should be to analyse the movements of real decision-making centres in the planet and their interests. But is it possible, for example, to have cognition of the existence of a deep state in the United States, as Peter Dale Scott puts it? Do you think it would be possible to do what he did, or Charles Wright Mills in the 1950s. in the United States and a precise indication of decision centres in the modern world?

– Peter Dale Scott, whom you rightly mentioned, actually wrote a series of books on this subject. 1 of the striking things in his work is the extraordinary item of documentation. It's truly amazing. Actually, I erstwhile spoke to James Galbraith, the boy of celebrated economist John Galbraith, and Jamie told me that he was asked by the University of California to check Peter Dale Scott's sources, and it took him almost as long as writing a book as there was so much, and he found not a single mistake in the given sources. This is the highest standard and 1 can only strive to accomplish it. I can't say I've reached that level of precision.

You mentioned a deep state, which is actually part of Deep Politics, a word from Peter Dale Scott. Deep state was originally spoken of in Turkey. Deep policies is simply a kind of methodological starting point. You must be aware that outside the organization state – a country that is regularly renewed and legitimized through elections, as well as through official, legal procedures – there are underground structures that are constantly involved, both in ordinary, regular events and, of course, in spectacular actions. Then we always mention the Kennedy assassination, the 1963 assassination. The same is actual of MH17 or 9/11. This does not mean that specified events are necessarily arranged radically differently from our observations, but we must be aware that this hidden structure never sleeps. She's always involved, and erstwhile the critical minute comes, she's immediately activated. Therefore, analyzing the past of shooting down MH17 was a truly breathtaking challenge. My book is not devoted solely to this disaster; it actually treats the crash of this plane as a prism, through which 1 can look at the full evolution of Russia and Ukraine after 1991, but besides at the start between liberal, western speculative capitalism and the evolving BRICS. All these things go hand in hand; even if Europe needs to be supplied by various pipelines. All this stuff is connected to the shooting down of that plane. Thanks to the publisher of the first version of the book in England, the issue of disaster was included in the subtitle. The publisher wanted the book to sale better.

It's not an adventure book. It is besides crucial that erstwhile you go into the hidden aspects of major events, it is essential to stay skeptical and realize and tell your readers where your cognition ends and where speculation begins. Hegel claimed speculation was the highest form of thinking. reasoning about what already exists is simple. But reasoning about what you gotta make is more difficult. It must be noted that you're speculating. If you're doing this on a reliable basis, this speculation could be valuable.

This is what makes your book different from alleged academic literature on Ukraine or Russia. We have more and more technological papers and publications by politicised scientists, who are alternatively weak publicists alternatively than scholars. I think it's a problem, including in the academic community. But I besides wanted to ask you about another case. You have immense theoretical backgrounds, you are the creator of the Amsterdam School, which is based on your theoretical perception and your own proprietary methodology. My question is about definition. How, in short, would you specify the thought of contender state or contender block?

– Basically, after England in the 17th century civilian War established a certain balance between state power and the autonomy of the dominant capitalist class (or class that became capitalist – historically more complicated), France, which had to defy Britain internationally, in North America and even in India – had at the time a much larger population, besides had to centralize all power in Paris, more precisely in Versailles, to guarantee that it would not be dominated by liberal British competition, at that time being in alliance with the Netherlands. This is how a tradition arose in France, while in the UK the capitalist class, the ruling class – including the aristocracy that adapted to capitalist practices – could be left to itself in the sphere of organizing social life, exploiting its own population with the support of a very strong state. There was no another country where so many people were hanged for insignificant violations, as in England. French painters even traveled to Britain to immortalize it. It was a strong state supporting a self-government, aristocratic bourgeoisie. In France everything had to be organized by the state – cultural life, economical life, social organisations, urban planning – everything came out of Paris. This direction continued after the revolution and Napoleon. another countries that entered the phase later besides adopted a model of the rival state.

Prussia and Germany, erstwhile they united the north of German-speaking territories, Japan after the Meiji Revolution and then, of course, the russian Union as an utmost example of a rival state. It was not Lenin, due to the fact that Lenin wanted the planet revolution, but Stalin – he created the russian Contender state. His fall in 1991 was not the end of the Russian revolution, but the defeat of the rival state. Today, this short-sighted, aggressive policy of the liberal West (which, by the way, is becoming little liberal) forces economical liberalisation of the remainder of the world. The BRICS countries, or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are transforming into a soft form of contender state. The rival state sometimes has a capitalist economy, sometimes, as in the russian Union, is anti-capitalist.

What another countries can be considered specified a consensus state?

– This is simply a certain continuum, besides the most utmost form would be North Korea at the moment? But of course it no longer has any historical importance on a global scale. There are countries like Iran, Turkey, immense Latin American countries that show elements of rillization in specified a way that, for example, the largest corporations there gotta work very closely with the state to withstand the competitive pressures of immense Western corporations.

Is there any peculiar size that a country should gotta become specified a contender state?

– No, Cuba is besides a competitive state in this sense, but it was never economically independent. She always had to trust on someone. Even now it is about the generosity of China and Russia.

Would it be possible for Belarus to appear on this list?

– You know more about Belarus than I do, but now, after these 3 days in Poland, I realize – after proceeding any fresh information – that Belarus has retained any solutions from the times of the russian Union. Of course, Belarus is an extension of the larger Russian economy. I think that Orban in Hungary is besides implementing any aspects of the Contender state model within the European Union, if the EU grants include the economical gains of Orban and his oligarchical friends in Hungary. Poland could be much stronger, it could besides reap its own benefits, after implementing aspects of the competitive model.

Yes, on condition that we conduct a sovereign policy...

– Of course, the first condition is to regain sovereignty.

I would besides like to ask about your reflections on geopolitics. On the 1 hand, in my opinion, you reinterpreted geopolitics as such, because, for example, you utilized the conventional concept of Heartland to describe something that has no geographical dimension. I believe Heartland is, in your opinion, specified an axis of Wall Street – City.

– Of course, Heartland is simply a word utilized only metaphorically. Mackinder formulated a thesis on the Eurasian Heartland between 1900 and 1910. He was a geographer, but I think from a political economical point of view, Heartland is the place where crucial dominant structures emerge. The characteristics of the structure of each peculiar global configuration that we see have roots in this 1 area. I'd say that's Heartland. Heartland is besides a word for many another geographical and political structures.

One more question about the future of global governance. We know that he is transforming now: the Russians and the Chinese officially claim that their goal is to make a fresh multipolar planet order. On the another hand, for example, John Mearsheimer late wrote that the best and most unchangeable order would be a bipolar arrangement, claiming that this is simply a kind of balance between 2 forces and giving an example of the period of the Cold War of the russian Union and the United States. Of course, there are those who think that Anglo-Saxon hegemony is possible, and the single-polar planet can survive. Do you think that after this war... I don't want to ask you for detailed forecasts, but just to ask you, which of these 3 planet orders do you think is going to take place in the coming years?

– Zbigniew Brzeziński wrote in his last book "Second Chance" that people should not think that after the times of American hegemony, there will be Chinese or any another hegemony. He stated that erstwhile America and Germany fell apart, there would be chaos – that was his forecast. I'm afraid it's not wrong, but that you can't put labels on, that something is bad or good, circumstantial planet order. This is secondary, although I very much respect his comments on the current situation, but geopolitics cannot be analysed exclusively in terms of flat states. It must be seen that in these countries the process of social class formation and economical transformation takes place all the time – these are forces that affect stableness or deficiency of it. If there is no strong economy at the center of all this, the structure that is controlled by it from there will besides not be stable. I would start by analyzing the capitalist crisis; how the Western elite, for example, are trying to establish a fresh monetary strategy with a digital currency. any effects will radiate into the geopolitical field, but geopolitics itself is not specified an apparent tool to realize planet politics. planet politics is simply a global political economy.

But you're not negating the notion of geopolitics as such?

– No, it was a concept that was completely discredited after planet War II due to the fact that it was a Nazi explanation of global relations.

- Haushofer?

Yes, Haushofera, Schmitta.

– Thank you for talking to me.

Matthew Piskorski spoke

Prof. Kees van der Pijl (born 1947 in Dordrecht) is simply a Dutch political scientist and student in global relations (University of Amsterdam, University of Sussex), known for his analysis of the global ruling class, explanation of models of global relations, structure of the planet economy; author of dozens of books and articles. In Polish his book Tragedy of Ukraine was published. From Malaysian Boeing to the war he presented during his fresh stay in Poland, co-organized by the Polish thought Clubs.

All recordings of this conversation will be released on YouTube channel Against Censur.

Think Poland, No. 27-27 (2-9.07.2023)