Metawars

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

It seems like we’re always in a metawar.
From WW2, Cold War 1, the War on Terror, to Cold War 2.
We had a brief break between CW1 and the War on Terror in the 90s.

We can’t predict what the outcome of CW2 will be.
Will it erupt into a hot war, and if so, will civilization (as we know it) come to an end?
Will the reign of aerobic life end, will anaerobic life make a comeback?

Or will the war remain cold?
If so, how long will CW2 last?
Years…decades?
How many proxy wars will be fought with Russia (and China), just Ukraine, or many more?
Is it just Russia we’re fighting, or is it all of BRICS we’re fighting?
And what is BRICS?

WW1 was largely between western powers, same with WW2 and CW1, but the War on Terror was different.
It lasted from 2001 with the invasion of Afghanistan to 2021 with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Of course many other countries were bombed in between, most notably Iraq.
Ideologically we could define the War on Terror as LiBeRaL dEmOcRaCy versus Islamism, but really Islamism was incidental, really it was about maintaining, and expanding western hegemony, particularly American and Israeli hegemony.

In my view, CW2 is just a continuation of that, of the west trying to maintain hegemony by weakening Russia and China by drawing them into proxy wars.
Of course the western oligarchs don’t care about ‘liberal democracy’, that’s just the pretext.
They do however care about maintaining the façade of liberal democracy.
The façade is a big part of how they hang onto power, how they keep their citizens and the world on their side, but the façade is fading, people are seeing through it.

I’m not sure how it’ll all end exactly, and when, but I am sure western hegemony will end, because there’s nothing special about the west anymore, we’re a shadow of what we were, and the rest of the world has caught up with us, they took much of whatever we did right sociopolitically, economically and scientifically, putting their own spin on it, while at the same time trying not to make our mistakes.

20th century metawars were largely between western nation states, and between western ideologies like liberal democracy and Marxism versus fascism, then liberal democracy and Marxism went at it.
But 21st century metawars are more about the west versus the developing world, that’s a key difference.

I think the developing world has outgrown us, and is about to discard us.
I think it’s time for the west to take a step back from the world, and reexamine itself; who are we, and where did we go wrong?
Do we even share an identity anymore?
Or are we just a bunch of different ethnicities, atomized individuals and conflicting ideologies with little to unite us but mere geography and citizenship?

The woke salute the rainbow flag, while conservatives salute the national flag.
The woke celebrate pride month, Juneteenth and so on while conservatives celebrate traditional holidays.
It’s been said a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on anyone’s side here, I’m not right or leftwing, I’m an outsider looking in, just saying this conflict, however real or manufactured, can’t be good for the west.
I could be wrong, but Russia and China seem to have more of a sense of themselves.

We are just another region of the world now, one of many, nothing special.
Unfortunately for us might take a lot longer for that to sink in.
Meanwhile BRICS is building an alternative world order.
The western world order was built on the idea that liberal democracy was superior to all other sociopolitical and economic systems, and that because we were the most liberal and democratic, we had the means and right to rule over the rest of the world ruthlessly.

So what idea or ideas is BRICS based on?
I’m not sure, but perhaps the idea that just about every nation state deserves respect, and autonomy/sovereignty, whether they’re so called ‘liberal democracies’, illiberal autocracies or something in between?
Based on multipolarity, peace and collaboration as opposed to unipolarity, war and domination?
Like any idea, it always works better on paper than in the real world, but nonetheless if that’s what BRICS stands for, then I can dig it.
Fuck the west.

It’s also interesting how wars overseas affect things here at home.
During CW1, the rightwing was afraid, afraid of Marxism.
The fear led to the right being a bit more authoritarian at times than the left.
Same during the War on Terror, the right was afraid of Islamism.
But since the rise of ‘national populism’ in 2017 and Putin’s peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, it seems it’s the left’s turn to be afraid.
The USSR was Marxist, whereas Russia is national conservative, so this perhaps explains why the left has been the more authoritarian one lately.

2

The essentialism of meta wars is unexplored, therefore should not have been abandoned as quickly as it was , Gloominary, in my opinion.

Clearly, the ideologies have confused issues, where a house divided unclearly could not muster enough energy to fall. That much detracts from balances if power.

What has happened more likely was that patent impressions have been submerged under the rapidly expanding info. Wars taking place, accruing much more legitimately configured parallelism between the wannabe authotarian left, and the diminished voice of the ‘reasonable’ status quo.

Possibilities of interconnective conjunctions are endless.

3

Meno, do you think BRICS has an ideology, or do you think it’s just a group of ideologically divergent nations that’ve banned together to resist western imperialism?
Liberalism is to the west what ? is to BRICS?
Liberalism and Marxism versus Fascism in WW2.
Liberalism versus Marxism in the 1st Cold War.
Liberalism versus Islamism in the ‘War on Terror’.
Liberalism versus ? in the 2nd Cold War?

4

I believe the ideology of BRICS is ideological and geopolitical multipolarity, as opposed to western/liberal, Marxist or fascist unipolarity.

5

For more insight, look into Aleksandr Dugin, thee philosopher of Modern Russia, Eurasia and BRICS.

6

I can not rightfully reference it, but by virtue of my middle of the road procedure to solve by both, analysis and conjecture, my instinct says little of each.

7

Christianism, Islamism, Liberalism, Marxism and Fascism.
One thing they all had in common is imperialism.
Today liberal imperialism dominates.

8

BRICS could be a few things.
One is it could be antiimperialist.
I see NATO as the aggressor in this, not Russia.

9

Two is it could be a mitigated imperialism.
Superpowers like America, Brazil, Russia, India and China would be forbidden by BRICS from colonizing other nation states, but permitted to govern them, but only within their respective spheres.
America could rule over other nation states, but only western ones like Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Australia and so on.
Likewise, Brazil could rule over Latin America, Russia over Eurasia, India over the Indosphere & China over the Sinosphere.

10

Spheres are akin to civilizations, so there is Western (Liberal) Civilization, Latin American (Catholic) Civilization, Eurasian (Orthodox) Civilization, South Asian (Vedic) Civilization and East Asian (Sinic) Civilization.
Islamic civilization is another, which can be further subdivided into Arabic, Turkic and Iranic.
Subsaharan civilization may be one more.
So BRICS could be a form of relativism, let’s call it civilizational/cultural relativism to distinguish it from individual relativism, individual relativism being more of a western thing.

11

Three is it could be more of a pragmatic thing; the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing.
Like let’s all put our differences aside, temporarily, at least for the time being, so we can crush our common enemy, the west, particularly America.
Once we’ve accomplished that, we may go back to fighting each other again.

12

So what do you think of BRICS?
Is BRICS a good, and viable alternative to the American, ‘liberal’ (at least in theory, of course in practice it’s (become) rather illiberal) world order?
Do you have a dog in this fight?

Is BRICS the future?
Will BRICS takeover the world?
Will even America end up joining BRICS?
Or will BRICS and America mutually destroy each other (and much of the world)?
Or will this cold war between BRICS and America last for many decades before finally fizzling/Petering out in the distant future?

Who will win this conflict between BRICS and the west?
BRICS, the west…neither?
Maybe China will win.
Maybe China will discard BRICS after using it to crush America, then China will create a Chinese world order.

Many unknowns, many uncertainties, but this is the defining conflict of our era.
We’re in a new era now, from 2017 (rise of ‘populism’) and 2022-present.
Myself I’m gloomy, I think we’re heading for MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).
As an anarchist, I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I guess I prefer BRICS.

13

In practice, all political systems are more or less serfdoms.
So there’s Christianist serfdom, Islamist serfdom, liberal serfdom, Marxist serfdom, fascist serfdom…

All over the world people are rejecting liberal serfdom.
We may think of the rise of woke serfdom on the left hand, and ‘populist’ serfdom on the right hand as two (partial) rejections of liberal serfdom.
So BRICS is turning against liberal serfdom, but so is the west too (to some extent).

Liberalism has been the reigning ism for 2-3 centuries.
Liberalism is largely a western, especially a British, American and French invention.
If liberalism is dethroned, what, if anything, will replace it?
NeoMarxism, neofascism or something?

Perhaps the world is sick of a one size fits all.
And that’s where BRICS comes in geopolitically, and federalism and secession domestically.
I could see the EU breaking up.
I could see Canada, the US and Australia either putting far less emphasis on the federal government, more emphasis on the states/provinces, or breaking up altogether, as things continue to breakdown, socioeconomically, geopolitically.
Some regions opting for wokeism, others for ‘populism’, and some for liberalism too.
Perhaps multipolarity is where the world is headed, different peoples going their separate ways.

14

…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

15

Right, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but the control freaks do, and we can find control freaks on both sides of the aisle left and right (a bit more on the left, these days).
BRICS may be a geopolitical antidote to the control freaks.
Federalism, and secession if necessary may be a domestic antidote.

16

BRICS may be all about nation states, and/or civilizations going their separate ways, as opposed to this American World Order we’ve been living under since 1920 with the ascension of the American dollar and 1945 with the ascension of the American military.
Not necessarily isolationism, but greater national, and civilizational sovereignty.

The world may be divided into 7 civilizations/spheres.
There’s the Amerosphere, the Latinosphere and the Russosphere, the Islamosphere, the Indosphere and the Sinosphere, and Subsahara.
All nation states, and spheres may benefit from greater autonomy.

Liberalism itself is sort of diverging into two or more entities with the rise of woke progressivism on the left and national conservatism on the right.
Regions within the west may be sick of being dominated by one another.
Rather than this cold civil war we’re in, I think the solution may be federalism, or else secession, different regions in the west doing their own thing within their own borders.

The (early) modern world can largely be defined by globalization, imperialism and universalism.
You have the west taking over the world, especially the Americas and Oceania, but also Asia and Africa.
You have the rise of the Islamist gunpowder empires.
The rise of various ideologies, first religious ones; Christianism and Islamism, then later secular ones; liberalism, Marxism, fascism and anarchism.
What all these ideologies had in common is universalism.
So far liberalism has been the most successful, but it may be waning.

Perhaps the world is ready to deglobalize a bit.
To retreat from universalism and embrace particularism.
Particularism may be the way forward.
It’s not that liberalism is bad, just it may not be for everyone.
There are also different degrees of liberalism, liberalism doesn’t have to be an all or nothing, thing.
And different flavors of liberalism, different individuals and groups emphasize different liberties.
We tend to become more liberal when get good, more illiberal when times get tough.

Particularism may be the way forward for humanity (at this point in our juncture)
Particularism can save us from both WW3, and civil wars.
Particularism could end up being as ideologically significant as liberalism.
Particularism may wind up presiding over the next 2-3 centuries the way liberalism presided over the previous 2-3.
Take the US for example, the Pacific, Mountain, Atlantic and Southern states are all very different, demographically, socioeconomically, religiously, politically, and so the solution may be to put far more emphasis on federalism, on states’ rights, on local, grassroots, decentralized, bottom-up governance as opposed to global, centralized, top-down governance.

Humanity goes through phases.
The previous few centuries permitted one or a few great powers to govern the whole world from the center, militarily, economically, culturally.
The next few centuries may be different.
Geopolitically power is now spreading out rather than being concentrated.