Re: <nettime> Germany's geopolitics

[Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>]

Tentative Annihilationism

As written before, the main global conflict today is between the US
and China, and the bridging role of Europe, and within the "dynamo" of
Germany and France, would be to take a more decisive stance towards
China (and thus towards the BRICS and the Global South), of course
without leaving NATO or breaking ties with the US, these transitions
need to be peaceful, non-violent and not just based on apocalyptic
deterrence.

If the future world markets were reduced to those "friendly" countries
that supported the sanctions against Russia, the German export model
would be doomed and would lose its capacity to facilitate a green
transition.

Ukraine has become a pledge for the unhealthy expansion of Western
democracy (including NATO and the EU) to effectively distract Europe
from finding a better geopolitical position in a post-neoliberal,
post-globalised, new multipolar world order. The current expansion is
not organic and too homogeneous, as the US capitalist (Wallstreet)
system, as the main motor of the externalized costs of climate crisis,
isn't sustainable enough to run a planetary order.

It is clear that China is no longer just an extended workbench, but a
partner in science and technology that is at least as relevant as the
US. after the Trump experience and the flawed democracy of Russiagate
vs. MAGA, the risks of China's autocracy should not be underestimated
either. it should not need any more shock doctrines to complete the
"Zeitenwende" that could be provided by the unfolding of Russia's
attack on Ukraine to an open endedness.

China will be needed again to put a decisive pressure on Russia. The
goal is not merely territorial as it iseems, but to pressure the west
to renegotiate its hegemonial claims, and open up to a less
hirarchical more multilateral planetary order, not at last to
coordinate climate change processes, and facilitate legitimate
institutions, this time without a complete capitulation and the
annihilation of millions.

It is clear that new forms of semi-war economy and top-down Keynesian
planning are emerging to emulate the ability to organise rapid
technological/industrial transformation, as in China. It is not the
end of capitalism, but a fundamental change in its oligarchic
superstructure, the ideology of the invisible hand, the Washington
Consensus.

The Schmittian Grossraum is in a perspective of interlocking
worst-case scenarios, of reterritorialisation along telluric
identitarianism, of digging into polarised camps and deciding the fate
of countries, disregarding their autonomy, drawing borders and trade
flows from the point of view of a handful of superpowers. i am not an
advocate of this, but neither am  an advocate of green neoliberalism
and the moral superiority narratives of the german greens.

What is needed are new types of assemblies that will facilitate the
green transition in record time, which at first has to be a
technological project, and from there is engineered by social,
cultural, political, economic processes. the planetary organisation
that will facilitate this is most likely not simply following the USA
as the internal systemic contradictions are obviously too great.
Specific geographical inequalities, which today translate into
climatic dependencies and weather catastrophes, are more likely to be
redressed when the financial mechanisms of the IMF/World Bank are
likely to be replaced by a network of recalibrated CBDCs.

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.  So
the Silk Road and big infrastructure projects, the Kantian
Konfuzianism of "under one sky", need to be repositioned against the
ever-fading American dream.

This is not in the tradition of anti-Americanism, but of American
romanticism, which is quite common in post-war Germany and which,
strangely enough, goes down well with the more patriotic Americans and
their view of Biden's latest expansionist adventures. There is a long
list of filmmakers, intellectual gadflies and musicians who are
defined by a deep and complex relationship with the American way.
nettime itself can be seen as a form of transatlantic enterprise, but
more along the lines of discussions about the thing nyc and "goofy
leftists sniping at wired". even the ARPANET protocol was a
combination of pragmatic US-engineering (tcp/ip) and visionary
Euro-abstration. (OSI/CYCLADES)

With the rise of psychological hybrid warfare, psy-ops such as blaming
COVID-19 on China while concealing the own role in gain-of-function
research at the WIV. We're being prepared for war with China in a late
stage simulacrum of supposed supremacy. It may take another rupture to
escape this reality tunnel, or it may be possible with an
international extra-parliamentary and intersectional peace movement,
perhaps to the sound of Korean pop with synthetic voices co-composed
by AI.
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