On April 4-5, 2023, the Moscow Economic Forum took place. The main task of the forum was to unite society and form a development program, to promote the implementation of this program based on the experts of the Forum.
One of the speakers of the forum was Dr. Aymeric Chauprade, political scientist, professor, associate professor of geopolitics at universities and military academies in France, Switzerland, Morocco and Tunisia. Mr. Chauprade is the author of many fundamental works on geopolitics, such as «Geopolitics: constants and variability in history», «Encyclopedia of geopolitics: countries, concepts, authors», «Chronicle of the struggle of civilizations». Doctor Chauprade is an active social and political figure, from 2014 to 2019 he was a member of the European Parliament.
You can find Dr. Aymeric Chauprade' CV below.
Dr. Chauprade has kindly provided his speech, presented in frames of the Forum session Changing World Order: Sovereignty of Civilizations and the Formation of a New Balance of Power
"Dear President, distinguished colleagues and guests,
In my first speech, I analysed how we were moving away from American globalism and into a multipolar world.
It is clear that Russia, through its efforts to defend its sovereignty and interests, is one of the key powers that is in the process of defeating American globalism.
The American plan was to turn Russia over to its side with a government subservient to Washington in order to set it against China. This plan has failed and has even led to the opposite effect. The destabilisation of Ukraine by NATO led to a Russian military operation in return, which led to a rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing.
Since the Russian intervention we have seen several important developments in international relations.
From the beginning of the conflict, the West (i.e. the US-EU duo led by Washington) has tried to do what it always does: to form a kind of international community against a country designated as an enemy of international law or human rights. Very strong pressure has been put on many countries in the world, in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to condemn Russia.
Compared to the past, this policy has failed. It is true that many countries joined in the Western condemnation, for fear of economic and financial retaliation, but less than usual and, above all, many countries preferred to adopt a cautious posture of neutrality.
I am thinking of Morocco, which is close to the United States, but which did not join the UN vote of condemnation. In Africa, a movement of opinion both on social networks and through the voices of governments has asserted itself: the idea that this war does not concern Africans, and that Europeans and Americans would not involve Africans in a rivalry with Russia.
On the contrary, several African countries in West and Central Africa are emancipating themselves from France in particular and are now drawing closer to Russia, and the Gulf States, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have also clearly shown that they want to maintain good relations with Russia. And of course in Asia we find the same logic, with China, with India, with Indonesia. Only Japan does not seem to be able to break away from American domination and assert an independent foreign policy on the international scene.
Turkey, a member of NATO, also shows its desire to maintain its ties with Russia, and is particularly wary of the West's tendency to interfere in the field of democracy and human rights.
Alongside this phenomenon, another phenomenon has asserted itself. For years the Western policy of sanctions has been aimed at sending the signal that a country cannot live normally if it is punished by the West. This policy was applied early on to Cuba, it has long been applied to Iran now. Neither regime has fallen, they have managed to organise themselves and survive.
But above all, it is the myth of isolation that has collapsed in the case of Russia. It is now clear that being cut off from the West does not mean being isolated from the world. It is true that financial globalisation is still closely linked to the main American and European financial centres, but the centre of gravity of the world economy is no longer the transatlantic world; today it is the Asia-Pacific region.
Russia, the largest country in the world, whose geography is not European but Eurasian, which has considerable oil, gas and mineral resources, which is a major centre of scientific creativity, which has become largely self-sufficient in terms of agriculture and which, because of the climate changes underway, will undoubtedly see its useful agricultural territory become gigantic, this Russia will therefore become a food reservoir for the world. It has considerable assets to offer to Asia in particular, but also to Africa and Latin America.
Everyone knows that some of the oil that arrives in Russia has previously passed through Asia. No one is fooled by the economic intermediation strategies that have been developed by India and the Middle East.
So Russia is not isolated economically any more than it is politically, and in reality the West has less and less means to isolate countries simply because the world economy is de-dollarising. The trend towards de-dollarisation is a long-standing one. It began in 1990 and Saddam Hussein already wanted to get out of the oil/dollar link. We know that Gaddafi also wanted to do this. Their desire cost them dearly. But things have changed since then. More and more countries no longer want to use the dollar as an intermediary. Russia, China and India are working together directly with their currencies. Just recently, on March 28, 2023, we learned that a country like Kenya has made an agreement with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to buy its oil in Kenyan shillings.
There are countries that bet on Bitcoin as a future international currency, those that want to assert their national currency, but all have one and the same objective: to get out of the dollar as a reserve and exchange currency. The reality is that without this status of reference currency, the American Empire is bankrupt. This means that it is getting closer to bankruptcy and that it is all the more tempted to reset the world economy based on general chaos.
Finally, the third failure of the Western isolation strategy is ideological. Decades of American-European wars of interference against Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Iran, Syria and Venezuela have led to a majority rejection of Western ideology among a very large part of the world's population. Go around the world and count who likes American foreign policy. In the Muslim world, in Latin America, in Africa, in China, in France and in many European countries?
Yes, of course you will find many pro-Americans in Poland or in the Baltic States, but elsewhere the situation is very different, so this rejection is as true outside the West as it is within the West. In France, as in many European countries, the so-called populist movements, whether on the left or the right, are movements that reject the globalist ideology and rightly see it as a mask for American imperialism and the interests of Western financial oligarchies. So this rejection is very deep. Of course the Western mainstream media tries to hide this rejection, but the rejection is there.
The people of Europe, and the French people in particular, are worn down by those governments that have impoverished the people by subjecting them to US globalist policy. The European political regimes are in deep crisis and this crisis is not a mere protest against reforms. It is a regime crisis.
All the foundations of globalist politics are therefore tired today: the ability to isolate and punish economically, the ability to produce reference standards, the ability to keep countries in single alliances.
One event that struck me recently was the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement. It really illustrates the trend towards multipolarity. A country that historically was an ally of Washington and a relay of American policy in the Middle East has broken the taboo by getting closer to a country under American embargo and strongly targeted by the Israelis: Iran. For decades these two countries have supported two violently antagonistic versions of Islam: Shiism versus Wahhabi Sunnism. And now realpolitik is bringing them together. Similarly, Saudi Arabia talks positively to Russia and China and refuses to be locked into American policy.
For me, the American globalist system is in its last phase of life. With it the UN system, which no longer has any credibility or effectiveness. Before solid and credible multilateral dialogue mechanisms can be rebuilt, we will go through a period of strong and assertive sovereignty, a multipolarity whose political balances will be based on balances of power. Either the United States accepts this multipolarity and the fact that powers such as China, India and Russia will want to secure their regional environment and will refuse hostile alliances on their doorstep, or we will go to war - a scenario that no one should want.
As a researcher specialising in international issues, I hope to be able to reflect with Russian, Indian, Chinese, African and Latin American colleagues on how to support a peaceful transition to a multipolar world based on the balance of civilisations. This is a major challenge and it is world peace that is at stake".
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