Since 1945 the United States has been the world’s dominant power. Even during the Cold War its economy was far more advanced than, and more than twice as large as, that of the Soviet Union, while its military capability and technological sophistication were much superior. Following the Second World War, the US was the prime mover in the creation of a range of multinational and global institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and NATO, that were testament to its new-found global power and authority. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 greatly enhanced America’s pre-eminent position, eliminating its main adversary and resulting in the countries of the former Soviet bloc opening their markets and turning in many cases to the US for aid and support. Never before, not even in the heyday of the British Empire, had a nation’s power enjoyed such a wide reach. The dollar became the world’s preferred currency, with most trade being conducted in it and most reserves held in it. The US dominated all the key global institutions bar the UN, and enjoyed a military presence in every part of the world. Its global position seemed unassailable, and at the turn of the millennium terms like ‘hyperpower’ and ‘unipolarity’ were coined to describe what appeared to be a new and unique form of power.
The baton of pre-eminence, before being passed to the United States, had been held by Europe, especially the major European nations like Britain, France and Germany, and previously, to a much lesser extent, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. From the beginning of Britain’s Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century until the mid twentieth twentieth-century, Europe was to shape global history in a most profound manner. The engine of Europe’s dynamism was industrialization and its mode of expansion colonial conquest. Even as Europe’s position began to decline after the First World War, and precipitously after 1945, the fact that America, the new rising power, was a product of European civilization served as a source of empathy and affinity between the Old World and the New World, giving rise to ties which found expression in the idea of the West and which served to mitigate the effects of the latent imperial rivalry between Britain and the United States. For over two centuries the West, first in the form of Europe and subsequently the United States, has dominated the world.
We are now witnessing an historic change which, though still in its relative infancy, is destined to transform the world. The developed world — which for over a century has meant the West (a shifting idea over time, but basically the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand) plus Japan — is rapidly being overhauled in terms of economic size by the developing world. In 2001 the developed countries accounted for just over half the world’s GDP, compared with around 60 per cent in 1973, and by 2025 that figure is likely to be just above one-third. It will be a long time, of course, before most of the developing countries acquire the economic and technological sophistication of the developed, but because they collectively account for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population, and their economic growth rate in recent times, and especially since the Western financial crisis, has been rather greater than that of the developed world, their rise has already resulted in a major shift in the balance of global economic power. There is a battery of indices that illustrate this. After declining for over two decades, commodity prices began to increase around the turn of the century, driven by buoyant economic growth in the developing world, above all from China, until the onset of the global recession reversed this trend, which was resumed again a commanding resources which the major Western financial institutions palpably lacked. The sovereign wealth funds of Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Kuwait and South Korea pumped billions of dollars into US banks between mid-2007 and mid-2008. The meltdown of some of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions in September 2008 underlined the shift in economic power from the West, with some of the fallen giants seeking further support from sovereign wealth funds and the US government stepping in to save the mortgage titans Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, partly in order to reassure countries like China, which had invested huge sums of money in them: if China had started to withdraw these sums, it would have precipitated a collapse in the value of the dollar.
Developing countries’ share of world international reserves. Source: International Monetary Fund, data through 31 December 2009 Figure 3. The global shift in world manufacturing. The financial crisis graphically illustrated the disparity between an East Asia cash-rich from decades of surpluses and a United States cash-poor following many years of deficits. It has typically been described as a global financial crisis but this is a misnomer because it was overwhelmingly a Western financial crisis. While the United States, Japan, France, the UK and Italy (Germany being the nearest to an exception) have been hobbled by the financial crisis, with their banks remaining in an extremely fragile state, their economies mired in debt, GDP (in autumn 2010) still below pre-crisis levels, and their economies operating at up to 10 per cent below their past trends, China continued to grow very strongly, with its banks enjoying very healthy balance sheets. East Asia, apart from Japan, recovered very rapidly from the contraction in Western export markets, while India and Latin America also soon resumed their economic growth. If the developed economies told one story, the developing economies told a very different one.
Neem bijvoorbeeld Lithium of zeldzame metalen; zij zijn van vitaal belang voor onze groene en digitale overgang. Geen enkele windturbine, geen enkel zonnepaneel is mogelijk zonder deze grondstoffen. De vraag ernaar zal exponentieel stijgen. Zoveel is zeker… Het niet zo goede nieuws is: één land beheerst de wereldwijde markt. Dat is China,
en daarom ‘hangt Europa’s lot af van onze wereldwijde reikwijdte.' Daarom verklaarde zij verheugt dat 'De oorlog in Oekraïne het transatlantisch verbond sterker dan ooit [heeft] gemaakt.’ Uitgaande van de geschiedenis betekent dit dat de mensheid nu aan de vooravond staat van een reeks oorlogen, waarbij de politieke leiders zelfs een ‘nucleaire oorlog’ niet uitsluiten. Gezien het feit dat Europa afhankelijk is van grondstoffen en markten elders stelt Von der Leyen dat ‘wij onze bemoeienis in Centraal Azië moeten vergroten. Die regio is de toegangspoort tussen Europa, Rusland en China… Ik wil dat Europa een partner wordt voor veranderingen in Centraal Azië,’ Vooruitlopend op ‘de tectonische verschuiving,’ waarbij het Westen de hegemonie over grondstoffen en markten verliest, werd op donderdag 27 oktober 2022 bekend dat:
US ships 100 upgraded B61-12 nuclear bombs to EuropeThe nukes will replace old weapons in Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey in December.
The United States has accelerated the program for new B61-12 nuclear bombs for Europe. The upgraded and more accurate version of its nuclear air-dropped gravity bomb is expected to arrive in NATO bases in Europe in December, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable, the Belgian media Politico reported on Thursday.
The move, which involves replacing older weapons with the newer version at various storage facilities in Europe for potential use by U.S. and allied bombers and fighter jets, comes amid heightened tensions…
Deze reactie van het Pentagon is niet zo vreemd aangezien in historisch opzicht ‘The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do,’ zoals de invloedrijke neoconservatieve Amerikaanse politicoloog Samual Huntington stelde. De door het Westen met geweld afgedwongen ‘Wereld Orde’ is de afgelopen vijf eeuwen voor de overgrote meerderheid van de wereldbevolking een desastreuze kapitalistische wanorde geweest, verantwoordelijk voor de chaos van een parasitair systeem waarvan allereerst en vooral de witte elite profiteerde, en nog steeds profiteert, ten koste van vele miljoenen doden en ontelbare arme wereldbewoners, terwijl opnieuw de kloof tussen rijk en arm, nu ook in het Westen, almaar blijft toenemen. Die werkelijkheid wordt door de westerse opiniemakers verzwegen of verpakt in bloemrijke bewoordingen als het westers streven naar mensenrechten en democratie. Een fraai voorbeeld geeft de 81-jarige journalist Jan van der Putten in Argus, een tijdschriftje voor uitgeschreven mainstream-opiniemakers. Geheel in lijn met de propaganda van de voltallige westerse ‘corporate press’ roemt Van der Putten ‘de naoorlogse liberaal-democratische wereldorde’ van de VS als lichtend voorbeeld tegenover het ‘illiberale, autoritaire, tirannieke systeem’ van Rusland en China. Zijn simplistisch manicheïsme produceert zinnen als ‘Xi ging zich steeds agressiever gedragen,’ terwijl vanzelfsprekend het Westen zich voorbeeldig bleef gedragen. Maar op mijn voor de hand liggende vraag: ‘was dat de “orde” die Vietnam met napalm bestookte, die in Zuid-Amerika dictators aan de macht hielp, en in Chili de democratie om zeep hielp? Was het de 'orde' die illegaal Irak binnenviel, en Afghanistan, en in Syrië de olie van het land steelt, Libië in een slagveld veranderde van elkaar bestrijdende terroristische milities?’ gaf hij geen antwoord. Bovendien schreef Jan van der Putten zelf:
Op 1 juni 1978, de dag waarop het wk voetbal begon, sprak ik in Buenos Aires met de Moeders van de Plaza de Mayo over hun ontvoerde dierbaren. Hartverscheurend was vooral de iconisch geworden noodkreet van Marta Alconada, moeder van de eind 1976 ontvoerde activist Domingo Roque Alconada. Zij overleed in juni 2021. Dit interview met de Moeders wordt vaak gebruikt om de herinnering aan de staatsterreur levend te houden, o.a. in hoofdstuk 11 van de videoserie over de Argentijnse geschiedenis (1,6 miljoen views), de rap Madres van de zangeres Morena Quince, een video voor het Herdenkingsmuseum ESMA (het voormalige martelcentrum) en het Anne Frank Centrum in Buenos Aires en de Netflix-film The Two Popes (minuut 55). Grote fragmenten uit het oorspronkelijke interview zijn o.m. te zien in een video van Parque de la Memoria en een samenvatting (1,1 miljoen views).
De ‘staatsterreur’ in Zuid- en Midden-Amerika werd politiek en militair gesteund door het Witte Huis, het Pentagon en de CIA, die er nauwlettend op toezagen dat ‘de naoorlogse liberaal-democratische wereldorde’ allereerst en bovenal de belangen van de Amerikaanse elite diende. Dat is nog steeds het geval. Zodra de belangen van de rijke elite in het gedrang komen dan organiseert de ‘deep state’ via haar geheime diensten een ‘regime-change,’ zoals vanaf 1953 onder andere in Iran en Guatemala, in Kongo, Chili en Oekraïne, etcetera werd aangetoond, waarbij de CIA direct betrokken was bij het omver werpen van democratisch gekozen regeringen. Om dit ‘de liberaal-democratische wereldorde’ te kwalificeren, is ronduit een vileine leugen van een propagandist zonder enig zelfrespect. De Amerikaanse schrijfster Joan Didion wees erop dat:
people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character,’ oftewel ‘the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses,
om hieraan toe te voegen:
At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.
It is the phenomenon sometimes called ‘alienation from self.’ In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.
In haar essay ‘Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power’ — opnieuw gepubliceerd in haar verzamelbundel Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) — stelde zij dat ‘character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect spring.’ Een karakterloos leven zonder ‘zelfrespect,’ is volgens Didion:
counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth (luiheid. svh) or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
Het aanvaarden van verantwoordelijkheid voor wat men doet of schrijft, of juist niet doet of niet schrijft, het aanvaarden van verantwoordelijkheid voor ons handelen, is de basis van zelfrespect. Leven zonder verantwoordelijkheid, zonder een kern waar alles samenkomt en weer emaneert, toont een diep gebrek aan zelfrespect. Joan Didion:
At the mercy of those we can not but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the necessity of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.
Het is juist deze ‘vertwijfeling,’ dit gebrek aan moed, dit ontbreken van een eigen identiteit, dit verraad aan authenticiteit, die ik telkens weer aantref bij de mij bekende polder-opiniemakers als bijvoorbeeld Geert Mak, Hubert Smeets, Jan van der Putten, Bas Heijne, Ian Buruma, en nog een handjevol Nederlandse mainstream-journalisten, van wie het gebrek aan oprechtheid zo schaamteloos is. Diametraal hier tegenover staat Joan Didion die terecht door The New York Times Book Review als ‘a great American writer’ werd geprezen, met één van de ‘most recognizable — and brilliant — literary styles to emerge in America during the past four decades,’ een vrouw die het gebrek aan zelfrespect ‘de vervreemding van zichzelf’ noemde, aangezien ‘[w]ithout it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.’ De hoerigheid van de ‘corporate press’ manifesteert zich het duidelijkst in haar verlangen een zo groot mogelijk publiek te behagen. Maar, zoals Didion stelt:
The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara (in de klassieke film Gone with the Wind. svh), is something people with courage can do without.
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable (oneindige. svh) documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff (bederven. svh) this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves…
In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.
Die ‘bereidheid om de verantwoordelijkheid voor het eigen leven te accepteren’ is over het algemeen een gedateerde houding, zeker in Nederland, waar, zoals Huizinga opmerkte, de gezapige bevolking ‘tot grondtrek’ heeft ‘dat het onheroïsch is,’ waardoor ‘Hypocrisie en farizeïsme hier individu en gemeenschap [belagen]!' De corruptie is in Nederland als het ware genetisch opgeslagen, en vormt de basis van het poldermodel. Juist datgene wat Didion een groot auteur maakt, ontbreekt bij onze broodschrijvers die hun opdrachtgevers en hun publiek willen behagen. Zij wijst erop dat:
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give… no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us.
It is the phenomenon sometimes called ‘alienation from self.’ In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
Dit is tevens de voornaamste reden dat Jan van der Putten geen serieuze reactie kan geven op mijn kritiek, hoe graag hij het ook zou willen. Vooral dat maakt hem een gevaarlijke journalist. Het wemelt hier van dit soort gecorrumpeerde collega's.
