30 Comments
Nov 9Liked by Glenn Diesen

A very positive reply by Putin - very encouraging, inspiring even. I continue to be amazed at the difference in class between Putin and our European “Comprador” politicians.

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Nov 9Liked by Glenn Diesen

A bold genius move from Glenn Diesen to start communication with the leadership of Russia when his attempts didn’t work in his own country, Norway, and either in European countries. That should tell us how lost in US hegemony The Europeans really are.

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Professor Glenn Diesen is a beacon, a clarion call in Norway. Sadly his talent is wasted in the mediocracy among Horwegian 'leaders' who are just lame poodles, US vassals. And the situation is even worse in the rest of Europe!

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WOW - standing in front of one of the most powerful and intelligent leaders in history. What a rush. Good job Glenn. Putin gave his usual coherent answer, unlike the warmongering imbeciles in the West! Go BRICS! Bless Putin!

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Nov 9Liked by Glenn Diesen

Diesen skall bli vår statsminister!

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We (the West) now needs "adults in the room" more than ever. In my opinion you are one of them.

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Nov 9Liked by Glenn Diesen

Very interesting, thank you.

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Excellent questions followed by very good answers. Found it extremely uplifting, thanks for posting. It seems to me that whenever Putin speaks I get an outstanding European History lesson. I

recall Kohl and De Gaulle very well.

The Old Man.

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Russia is a people of peace, unlike the warring American et al elites that need to come down to earth

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Very cool. Both of you.

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Outstanding, Glenn! What a privilege to be in the midst of history in the making. Congratulations and thanks for your courage and public engagement over the years on the issue of the relations and conflict between the West and Russia.

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What is the relationship between global multipolarity, international markets, and national democracy?

The concept of multipolarity is opposed to the historical unipolarity of the United States since 1945 and especially since 1989. Both Russia and China today are the products of that American unipolarity. Chinese development only happened as part of its market integration with the USA. Putin's defection from the West only happened because Russia was not integrated into the unipolar order along with China.

In both China and the USA, unipolar integration required the sacrifice of democracy. China joined the unipolar order after the suppression of Tiananmen Square and its neoliberalization under Deng. The USA integrated China economically by sacrificing its own democracy to a neoliberal uniparty, and abandoning its domestic working class for cheaper labor in China. Russia retreated into its own Eurasian oligarchy after its neoliberal privatization in the 1990s.

So now we have three great powers in the USA, China, Russia that are functionally the same type of globalist uniparty autocracies driven by privatized/financialized international markets and suppression of national democratic politics. This is the context in which multipolarity is supposedly occurring.

But can we have geopolitical multipolarity without national democracy and international free markets? It seems to me that multipolarity is an illiberal project that will only serve to enhance the autocracies of the great powers. If multipolarity is a movement for a sort of global democracy, I think that is a threat not only to American unipolarity but also to Chinese autocracy and Russian oligarchy.

In other words, without a corresponding reform of the international economic market order and national democracy, then geopolitical multipolarity in effect will be more like a Eurasian version of the absolutist Concert of Europe rather than a democratically reimagined United Nations.

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US policy has subsidized Chinese industrialization to the tune of half a trillion dollars a year for nearly 30 years.

Until that changes the USA and China are locked in a mutual death grip neither can afford to hold or to let go.

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Actually, they subsidised the potential for profiteering.

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Yes. These are not mutually exclusive descriptions, merely differences in focus.

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On Tiananmen Square:

https://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-square-1989-revisited/

https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/

This stuff is available to all, yet the myths persist.

Also: Culture makes a difference. It seems rather ethnocentric to assume that other organisations in other cultures function the same way as western doctrine would predict.

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Bra jobbat Glenn! All ära till dig. Fortsätt det goda arbete du gör.

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Congratulations prof Glenn for speaking there. My impression is that Putin was slightly uncomfortable answering, being a realist, because the idealisation of multipolarity is mostly a subject for philosophical discussion, although a very hot and interesting topic.

I may be a bit pessimistic, but it seems to me that:

1) conflicts derive from a struggle between unipolarity and national sovereignty. Multipolarity is not a cohesive force able to oppose unipolarity.

2) Multipolarity appears to be largely a myth, although an interesting theory for academic circles. In reality being part of BRICs does not automatically mean being multipolar. For example, the interesting theories of Alexander Dugin are disconnected from the essence of BRICs or real politics.

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Why should Alexander Dugin's theories be connected to BRICS?

BRICS has embarked upon a path towards multipolarity. Individual states are not multipolar.

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Dugin's theories are about multipolarity.

BRICS is about multilateralism, but not really about multipolarity.

A state that rejects western hegemony endorses multipolarity.

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Thanks, yes, I can see that. I always considered him a thinker taking a position against the current Western ideological bias towards individualism, as in "Ethnosociology". The logical consequence would be, on a broader level, a multipolar approach to the interaction of states.

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Polarities

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Excellent dialogue! We are on the cusp of great potential to eliminate Blocs once & for all. The NATO-UK-USA alliance has defeated itself with its wars & bankrupt economic policies. It is truly time for the West to join wtih the BRICS+ nations to create a future for All on this planet.

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