After a scholarly work on the past of Russia and its perspective with the war in Ukraine, Jean-François COLOSSIMO tells the story of the ancient empires of the 19th century, Tsarist, Ottoman, Persian, Ging, Mughal which seemed to have disappeared forever. In reality, “they had only hibernated, they reappeared, radically transformed”; and this is the thesis of the book that explains how this reappearance took place, the consequences for the West (the enemy) and the measures that the West should consider to protect itself against this “surge of hatred”
“War is declared”: this is the title of the first chapter, which describes how “the domestication of the masses inside necessarily corresponds to the domination of the peoples outside. Whoever says empire means exponential seizures and embezzlements, unlimited enlargement and enslavement in order to sanctify war.
The following chapters explain, according to the author’s usual methodology, historical reviews of empires explaining the present, their unsuccessful Europeanization from the 18th century, their artificial westernization in the 19th century, their crazy totalitarian modernization in the 20th century, their cultural self-destruction.
The book ends with a long development on “The Great Rearmament” through a recourse “to the old religious beliefs” to revitalize the oppressive and repressive “imperial” systems. After World War II, the old world became bipolar between the communist East and the capitalist West.
On the one hand, the establishment of the new world requires the creation of a rational cult, where the human is completely detached from the divine. On the other hand, the restoration of the old world requires the creation of a streamlined cult where the human bends completely to the divine.
The United States is subject to types of patterns similar to those of empires. America is its own religion. The founding narrative of the United States is that of a supernatural election to happiness. Oppositions, contrary to the initial analysis, are frontal.
When quickly, writes the author, “the West became the imperial nickname of Washington,” the “opprobrium” that could only be thrown on the United States is in fact on the West, which has become “world enemy No. 1.”
What is the situation of France? That of a great loneliness! Alone as a priority target for authoritarian empires to denigrate it in the eyes of “this fiction of the global South.” Alone, but also the only country in the European Union to hold the bomb. It must therefore rearm its power, redeploy its influence by “demonstrating that it has always been more than the West.
Finally, the author defends the thesis that the real battle to be fought is not against de-westernization, but for de-globalization.
Where we recognize that geopolitics meets the new economic expectations of the West.
Basically, as General de Gaulle said: France’s policy is not made on the stock market. A statement that Jean François COLOSSIMO invited us to meditate on again!
Review written by Dominique CHESNEAU