Neutrality Studies. (Bi)Weekly Recap #7

September 4 - 20

Hola!

We had two busy weeks as our big neutrality conference in Kyoto is coming closer and closer. From October 23-25 we are going to welcome 50 researchers to present their work and discuss all things neutral. If all goes well, the panels will be viewable online, too. We are working on the tech for that. But let’s get to the recap of the past two weeks. I had a lot of interesting guests.

Discussing Kursk with E. Bistoletti

First off was a talk in which actually I was the interviewee. Ezequiel Bistoletti from the Spanish-language channel “Demoliendo Mitos de la Politica‬ (Demolishing Political Myths) asked me a lot of interesting questions and we got to talk about the madness in Europe, the Ukraine war, and what the Kursk Invasion could mean for the development of the escalation spiral between the West and Russia.

Ruling Eurasia

Next up was a talk with Indian Professor Anuradha Chenoy, about US regime change operations in South Asia (Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and recently, Bangladesh). We were trying to connect the dots and draw parallels to the regime change operations in Eastern Europe, especially the color revolutions from a few years ago.

War with China, really?

While NATO has been demilitarised in the Ukraine Proxy-War and the US is already bogged down in yet another theatre of war in West Asia, the neocons won't give up on their biggest obsession; the great Showdown-War with China. Of course, this will be yet another proxy-war. After all, the Empire has learned to devastate not only its enemies but also its allies—binding them economically to the US mother-land for yet another couple of decades through debt traps and US corporate ownership. But what exactly is Beijing's approach in all of this? China isn't sitting back and relaxing while the US preps its Asia War. In this episode I'm talking to two great Sinologists: Professor Dr.Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, from the University of Vienna and Professor Warwick Powell of Queensland University. Together we explore how Beijing is approaching the new multipolarity and the relentless provocations from across the Pacific.

Western Election Meddling in Georgia

As part of a series on Georgia, I invited Professor Glenn Diesen and Lasha Kasradze back to the channel to discuss the latest shenanigans from the global war-party. Neocons and their media are trying their utmost to sell the same old narrative about a "Putin-friendly" Georgian government that is "autocratic" and wants to destroy democracy. The West, they yell from the newspaper pages, needs to support "indigenous democratic forces" to fight against the evil Putin puppets in Tbilisi. The narrative is so dumb and so wrong but it's also hyper-resistent, even to well established contemporary and historical facts documented by the West itself. Here three examples from Politico, the Washington Post, and a piece about former US Ambassador Volker and what he said in Tibilisi. The upcoming Georgian elections on October 26 are going to be one big test but even if the neocon candidates should lose, it is already clear that the West will continue to spin its narrative and prepares to undermine such a result—if they don't intervene beforehand actively to saw violence before.

What Really Happened on the Maidan

This was one of the highlights of the last weeks. A talk (in two parts) with Professor Ivan Katchanovski (together with Lasha Kasradze, because again in the context of Georgia), about his new book on the Maidan Massacre. Professor Katchanovski, who is a Ukrainian-Canadian academic at the University of Ottawa established once and for all what really happened on those dramatic days that became the beginning of the Ukraine War. The shots on the police and the protesters were all fired from Pro-Maidan positions. Professor Katchanovski’s book can be read here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0

Arnaud Bertrand on Neutrality Studies

It was a great pleasure to talk to one of Twitter’s data-driven truth tellers. Arnaud Bertrand came online to talk about all things China (part 1) and then the (sorry) state of politics in Europe (part 2). His analysis and insights were brilliant, just as his tweets are. Highly recommended! https://x.com/rnaudbertrand?s=21

Austria in the Ukraine War

Can a neutral country, in good conscience, support sanctions? This is something I discussed with the Austrian intellectual, Prof. Dr. Heinrich Wohlmeyer. And he found strong words: Sanctions are economic warfare! Neutral countries should in no way participate in sanctions against any third state, no matter who is calling for them.

Gabrielle Krone-Schmalz

This was not an interview of mine, but I would still like to recommend it to everyone. Gabrielle Krone-Schmalz is a fantastic German IR analyst who gave the below talk a few weeks ago in an event organised by the “Nachdenkseiten”, one of Germany’s last big independent news portals that really cares about peace and reconciliation and actively fights against the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream. We translated Mrs. Krone-Schmalz’s talk into English.

Belle-Epoquism

We ended the two weeks with a powerful talk on a highly useful concept: Belle-Epoquism. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes—as they say. And the "Belle Epoque" might be back again with all of its less than "belle" implications, at least that is the argument of my guests, Dennis Riches and Johan Eddebo in a recent essay that explains why some of the social tendencies we see today are so reminiscent of the attitudes of the late 19th century.

That’s it for the last two weeks. Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Pascal