(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
All famous people have a claim to fame, an event that made them famous. The French historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd became famous when he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union in 1976, at a time when the Soviet Union did not yet give the impression of being a giant with feet of clay. The success of the prediction has not left the French historian since.
In his latest book La Défaite de l'Occident, which was published at Gallimard earlier this year, Emmanuel Todd dares to make a new prophecy: the war in Ukraine, which the French researcher primarily sees as a proxy war between the West and Russia on Ukrainian soil, risks becoming the prelude to an inevitable decline for the West. A decline that a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Many of us are mentally stuck in 1989, trapped in the West's self-glorifying discourse, convinced that the West could easily impose its model on the rest of the world. But despite having a far higher GDP than Russia, the West has proven unable to inflict a decisive defeat on Russia, and they cannot produce enough munitions to continue supplying Ukraine. In light of the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, this issue should be very topical. But this has apparently not led to any change of strategy in Europe or the US. The Ukrainian crisis must be resolved by military means.
Ukraine and Russia
Todd builds on the historiographical school in Annals, which set the tone for the introduction of the term Wear, the study of objective and structural factors over a longer period of time – in contrast to an event-historical approach which emphasizes studying names, dates and events without necessarily placing them in a larger context. Todd thus relates it Russian-Ukrainian war, the triggering event for the West's (possible?) defeat, to a West that has seen its economic and industrial leadership thin – and that has largely shifted its industrial base. War led by industry and arms, not by money. Today, Russian universities train more engineers than the American ones, Todd points out.
The presence of a Russian-speaking and pro-Russian Ukraine was something concrete and real, not just an invention of the Kremlin.
The book's first chapters are devoted to Ukraine and Russia. Here, Todd goes into family and community structure, which is his special field, in an attempt to explain the reality in the two countries from an anthropological point of view. Those who are interested in Ukraine have probably read or heard about a Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine and a Russian-speaking Ukraine. In recent years, it has become common to say, first in Ukraine and then in the West, that the "myth of the two Ukraines" is really just one of countless lies from the lying Russian propaganda. But Todd shows, based on a credible historical reconstruction and the election results in Ukraine between 1991 and 2014, that the presence of a Russian-speaking and pro-Russian Ukraine was something concrete and real, not just an invention of the Kremlin. However, this Russian-speaking and pro-Russian Ukraine lost all political representation after the Maidan Revolution in 2014. The Russian-speaking Ukrainian middle class was thus largely forced to emigrate. The chapter on Russia however, aims to illustrate how and why the Russian economy has proved more resistant to Western sanctions than many expected.
Antirussisk paranoia
The bulk of the book, however, is, as the title suggests, centered around the analysis of the West's relative decline. The so-called 'decay literature', in which a number of Cassandra authors predict The Downfall of the West, is certainly not a new phenomenon, but in a certain sense a well-established literary genre, especially in France. Many, however, have often viewed this type of literature with great skepticism, a skepticism that belongs to those who have heard one prophecy after another over the years without seeing them come true.
But in contrast to much of the decline literature which emphasizes decline as a purely spiritual phenomenon, this book offers a quantitative visualization of the decline of the West and of the growing distrust of institutions in large parts of the population in Western societies, with symptoms such as the rise of populism and income inequality . The chapters deal with Great Britain and the USA, and a (short) chapter also goes into Scandinavian, who according to Todd has been overwhelmed by an acute form of antirussisk paranoia. This is undoubtedly an interesting phenomenon that has received little attention:
According to Todd, Scandinavia has been overwhelmed by an acute form of anti-Russian paranoia.
The Nordic countries, which have traditionally been peaceful and kept their word to avoid unnecessary conflicts, are now among the largest suppliers of arms to Ukraine – not only in relative GDP terms, but also in absolute terms. If you add up the military aid from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, it comes to 10 billion dollars and is as large as the military aid from Germany, which has now become one of the most ardent supporters of the Ukrainian war effort. In one of the last chapters, Todd also tries to show all the limitations of an indicator like GDP when it comes to quantifying the strength and thus the health of a nation and a society.
Controversial and unpleasant
Todd's book is doomed to be controversial and unpleasant. But it turns out to be important, and it is no coincidence that in France it quickly became a bestseller in political book sections. For Todd, the American-led West has entered religion's phase zero, the stage for the dissolution of Christian morality, for which the French researcher has a concrete date for – without intending to judge this – the introduction of 'same-sex marriage'. According to Todd, the West can no longer aspire to moral leadership in the world. Western democracy, which was seen as the basis of Western superiority, has now transformed into a "liberal oligarchy". Faced with the nihilism of Western values, the rest of the world has chosen not to follow the West in the confrontation with Russia. A development that could prove fatal for the West, the French historian believes.
Translated from English by the editor.
