Absolutely masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France's opposition to the Iraq war and who, IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades.
This is so important, so incredibly well argued, that I decided to translate it in full:
"Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question.
There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community.
[Presenter: What is Occidentalism?]
Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage.
This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America. The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza.
Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them.
[Presenter: Do you believe that the Westerners are currently guilty of hubris?]
Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers.
[Presenter: What is the historical drama? I mean, we're talking about the tragedy of October 7th first and foremost, right?]
Of course, there are these horrors happening, but the way to respond to them is crucial. Are we going to kill the future by finding the wrong answers...
[Presenter: Kill the future?]
Kill the future, yes! Why?
[Presenter: But who is killing whom?]
You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it. Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue... The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today. This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble.
Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey.
[Presenter: Precisely, these are extremely harsh statements...]
Extremely worrying. Why? Because if the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian issue, hasn't been brought to the forefront, hasn't been put on stage [for a while], and if most of the youth today in Europe have often never even heard of it, it remains for the Arab peoples the mother of all battles. All the progress made towards an attempt to stabilize the Middle East, where one could believe...
[Presenter: Yes, but whose fault is it? I have a hard time following you, is it Hamas's fault?]
But Ms. Malherbe, I am trained as a diplomat. The question of fault will be addressed by historians and philosophers.
[Presenter: But you can't remain neutral, it's difficult, it's complicated, isn't it?]
I am not neutral, I am in action. I am simply telling you that every day that passes, we can ensure that this horrific cycle stops... that's why I speak of a trap and that's why it's so important to know what response we are going to give. We stand alone before history today. And we do not treat this new world the way we currently do, knowing that today we are no longer in a position of strength, we are not able to manage on our own, as the world's policemen.
[Presenter: So what do we do?]
Exactly, what should we do? This is where it is essential not to cut off anyone on the international stage.
[Presenter: Including the Russians?]
Everyone.
[Presenter: Everyone? Should we ask the Russians for help?]
I'm not saying we should ask the Russians for help. I'm saying: if the Russians can contribute by calming some factions in this region, then it will be a step in the right direction.
[Presenter: How can we proportionally respond to barbarism? It's no longer army against army.]
But listen, Appolline de Malherbe, the civilian populations that are dying in Gaza, don't they exist? So because horror was committed on one side, horror must be committed on the other?
[Presenter: Do we indeed need to equate the two?]
No, it's you who are doing that. I'm not saying I equate the faults. I try to take into account what a large part of humanity thinks. There is certainly a realistic objective to pursue, which is to eradicate the Hamas leaders who committed this horror. And not to confuse the Palestinians with Hamas, that's a realistic goal.
The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.
[Presenter: But when Emmanuel Macron talks about an international coalition…]
Yes, and what was the response?
[Presenter: None.]
Exactly. We need a political perspective, and this is challenging because the two-state solution has been removed from the Israeli political and diplomatic program. Israel needs to understand that for a country with a territory of 20,000 square kilometers, a population of 9 million inhabitants, facing 1.5 billion people... Peoples have never forgotten that the Palestinian cause and the injustice done to the Palestinians was a significant source of mobilization. We must consider this situation, and I believe it is essential to help Israel, to guide... some say impose, but I think it's better to convince, to move in this direction. The challenge is that there is no interlocutor today, neither on the Israeli side nor the Palestinian side. We need to bring out interlocutors.
[Presenter: It's not for us to choose who will be the leaders of Palestine.]
The Israeli policy over recent years did not necessarily want to cultivate a Palestinian leadership... Many are in prison, and Israel's interest - because I repeat: it was not in their program or in Israel's interest at the time, or so they thought - was instead to divide the Palestinians and ensure that the Palestinian question fades. This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle.
[Presenter: The "eye for an eye, tooth for tooth".]
Yes. That's why the political response must be defended by us. Israel has a right to self-defense, but this right cannot be indiscriminate vengeance. And there cannot be collective responsibility of the Palestinian people for the actions of a terrorist minority from Hamas.
When you get into this cycle of finding faults, one side's memories clash with the other's. Some will juxtapose Israel's memories with the memories of the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe, which is a disaster that the Palestinians still experience every day. So you can't break these cycles. We must have the strength, of course, to understand and denounce what happened, and from this standpoint, there's no doubt about our position. But we must also have the courage, and that's what diplomacy is... diplomacy is about being able to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the cunning of history; when you're at the bottom, something can happen that gives hope. After the 1973 war, who would have thought that before the end of the decade, Egypt would sign a peace treaty with Israel?
The debate shouldn't be about rhetoric or word choice. The debate today is about action; we must act. And when you think about action, there are two options. Either it's war, war, war. Or it's about trying to move towards peace, and I'll say it again, it's in Israel's interest. It's in Israel's interest!"
This is so profoundly true and everyone needs to understand that. This is a 2011 video of James Peck, Professor of History at NYU, author of "Ideal Illusions, How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights" and one of the keenest observers of China in the U.S.
He explains that actually, when it comes to "human rights" in China, Western backing of the various individuals and movements is "a serious mistake".
For instance he makes the stunning claim that before the 1989 Tiananmen events he went to "a soirée" at the American embassy and "it was filled with the people who later became very prominent in Tiananmen." He remarks that the way to understand this is to "imagine a comparable contrast in this country where Americans were busily associating with people in a foreign embassy" and then attempting a revolution...
I have zero doubt in my mind that if China or Russia made interference efforts in the US similar to those the US makes in their countries, the US would undoubtedly become an incredibly more dystopian surveillance and security state than it is today, and much more "authoritarian" than China or Russia have ever been.
In way, this is what the PRC has always been telling the world: "no foreign interference". But we've always doubled down in this profound mistake, which in the end helps absolutely no-one.
We always comes back to the all-important golden rule: "Do not do unto others what you wouldn't like done unto you".
He also had a fantastic response to a halfwit question about human rights in China: "you are speaking in a country [the US] that has the largest prison population in the planet, bigger than China's [...] You sometimes say 'we should follow the American model'. What's the American model? Well, find a continent that only has Indians on it that you can get rid of, develop it, become incredibly wealthy, not have foreign powers on your borders and... have the American model!"
Lastly, and I couldn't agree with this more, he explains it is a "profound misunderstanding" to believe China's market reforms "were possible without the revolution" (i.e. the Mao era).
He also explains that the Western version of recent Chinese totally miss the context in 1949 when "the US [was] on Taiwan, blockading all the major cities on China that were the treaty ports and you have a 100 million people in those ports whose trade had once been with the external world and no longer can China develop in that road. It's gonna have to figure out how to develop, because of that hostility, I think significantly, a kind of revolution that turns deeply inward."
I get asked this all the time, so I am reposting my famous thread of all the top strategic thinkers - from Kissinger to Chomsky - who warned for years that war was coming if we pursued NATO expansion, yet had their advice ignored (which begs the question: why?).
The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia".
Then there's Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️ He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that it therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation". He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NATO".
The more I think about it, the more the I realize how huge this news actually is, how big a win it is for China, and how big a loss for the US.
In one simple move, China basically proved that the enormous years-long efforts the US put to destroy both Huawei and the Chinese semiconductor industry have been defeated.
In typical Chinese fashion - words are cheap in China, you prove yourself with deeds - they didn't make any announcements about it. Huawei didn't even communicate on the product launch, the phone just showed up in their store. And that was coincidentally on exactly the same day as the visit of US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who had vowed to "slow China's innovation rate". Talk about symbolism!
People had to look inside the phone to find out it is equipped with Huawei’s in-house Kirin 9000s processor, which is apparently made by Chinese semiconductor firm SMIC using a 2nd generation 7nm-class fabrication process. Less than one year ago, when the US introduced its sweeping set of sanctions against the Chinese semiconductors industry, "experts" vowed it would kill the industry or at least freeze its technological progress at the 28 nm chips China were at back then. Fast forward to now: China can evidently mass-produce 2nd generation 7nm chips entirely indigenously. The iPhone 14 Pro has 4nm chips so China is now almost on par, maybe just 1 or 2 years behind but catching up at an insane speed.
So what has the US managed to do? They've transformed Huawei into an incredibly more resilient company and have made China build an entirely indigenous semiconductors ecosystem, which wasn't the case at all before the sanctions, and which I am sure will prove to be a formidable competitor to other semiconductor companies out there.
Because other countries have been paying attention here. They now know that it's super dangerous to source semiconductors with Western firms as the US won't hesitate to weaponize the industry for geopolitical ends. So they'll turn to Chinese firms...
What about Huawei's new phone? You can absolutely bet Huawei will end up eating a significant market share from Apple - as was the case before the sanctions. Especially in China where patriotic Chinese will undoubtedly rush to buy the phone, now a symbol of China's technological might.
So it's lose, lose, lose for the US. Much more loss than if they hadn't done any of their aggressive actions against Huawei or China's chip sector.
Which again goes to show just how utterly pointless this new "cold war" is. Had the US decided to remain in engagement mode instead of "extreme competition" mode (as they call it), they'd have been much better off.
In a word: hubris.
And this 👇 Of course. For many Western chip-related firms China was 40-50% of their revenue. Let me tell you: their future market share in China isn't looking too good for them right now, and that's the understatement of the century...
And of course I couldn't possibly tweet on this topic and not remind people of this classic "China watcher" take from last October when the US chip sanctions were announced.
Works for the Rhodium group, "an independent research provider combining economic data and policy insight to analyze global trends." He certainly nailed that trend 😂
Ask yourself why they want to forbid you to travel to Xinjiang...
Because it destroys the narrative - it has to becomes "what you're seeing isn't real" - as argued in this article: "[you] only [see] a Uyghur identity permitted by the Chinese state" 🤦 theguardian.com/world/2023/aug…
It's also incredibly insulting: you're apparently way too stupid to be trusted with your own eyes...
And ironically Orwellian: 'The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'
You are correct, no restriction. All you need is a standard Chinese tourist visa.
I’ve seen this article 👇 on “The Qing Conception of Strategic Space” authored by historian James Millward make the rounds on China Twitter so I decided to take a look. Link here:
And boy oh boy, what an insane piece of historical revisionism!
One of craziest claims, central to the author’s thesis, is that “since the 19th century, Han settlers, with state backing, have colonized as much territory as Europeans did in forming the United States, often displacing native peoples in much the same way as white Americans did.”
First of all… WUT? A mere cursory understanding of 19th century Chinese history would tell you that far from gaining territory, Qing China LOST a lot of territory during the 19th century - the height of the “century of humiliation” - to Western colonial powers and Japan.
Funnily enough, top US elites get it too. Ask key US politicians and business leaders and you'll find a very significant proportion of their grandkids study mandarin, like both Biden and Trump's granddaughters.
They know what's up, but the common folks shouldn't...