Stefan Heidenreich on Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:10:59 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Germany's geopolitics


Hi  Pit,
with the thread firmly back in the closet, I thought to give a second look at your text. Let me try to better point out the Schmittian fallcy: it looks at the situation assuming the wrong actors, as in realist 'nations'. Parts of the world operate indeed 'post-westphalian' - but not necessarily in the sense of Bratton. Rather, think of 'rules-based'-tyranny.

In this environment, vasall states are not supposed to run their own geopolitics. They're not even allowed to make a distinction of friend and enemy of their own. That is why, in Germany, one is supposed to look the other way when 'friends' destroy critical infrastructure.

For now, all that is left are clandestine interests and political double-speak. As in Scholz purportedly flying to China, Brazil, and India, just to get slapped in the face. Or Merkel lying about MinskII to save her ass.

So, the big question is: which interests will emerge once that war is over / lost. And who of the relevant actors will be able to make the next steps. A Schmittian view will not be of much help in that situation, because it hides networks of interests behind binary destinctions. You'd need a Bayesian, not a binary decision tree.

When it comes to the result, I'm with you on this point:
So transatlanticism needs to be balanced with tianxia - especially to
enable the shared green transition and to give the global south a more
confident and dynamic position, not just as a lithium resource.
A "prussian" and European version of tianxia would be the political economy of Friedrich List, or the MMT forerunners Knapp and Stützel, not to speak of the unnamable ...

the Silk Road and big infrastructure projects, the Kantian
Konfuzianism of "under one sky", need to be repositioned against the
ever-fading American dream.
No. Not against. That's exactly the Schmittian trap. Once Washington succeeds to liberate itself from the Neocon-cabal that has taken over the uni-party, one should rebuild relations across the Atlantic, as much as across Europe and Asia. That is the 'geopolitics'-background from which I tend to read the recent travels of Scholz, assuming the widely communicated slaps in the face were just double-speak messaging to the overlord. But maybe I'm too optimistic.

S

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