Applied geopolitics and the battle for peace and the right to development: Palestine as the focal point of the global balance of power. By: Bruno Drweski

​In his recent book, La défaite de l'Occident (The Defeat of the West), Emmanuel Todd observes that the United States and its associates react to every international crisis only in violent ways, which enabled them to give Israel an unlimited license to kill on October 8, 2023. This "reaction" noted by Todd in fact goes much further than an expression of the nihilism of a civilization in perdition, even if it testifies to the moral decadence of Western elites who keep on imposing their rules on the entire planet. But the bellicose moods of our leaders are also the result of the ever-growing weight of the private military-industrial complex that has developed in Western countries at the expense of civilian production committed to the economic and social progress of their populations. The result has been the relocation of civilian industries to low-wage countries, and the transition in the Western bloc towards the domination of its financial sector over its industrial sector.

​The fight for peace and against the militarization of our societies is therefore not just a moral imperative, it complements the necessary struggle to defend existing civilian enterprises and promote a policy of re-industrialization of our countries. This can only be done within the framework of an economic policy planned by a state power under popular control, favoring socially profitable, productive, and creative investments at the expense of merchants of death. The fight against sending weapons to Ukraine or Israel, against military interventions and the dispatch of soldiers or mercenaries to Ukraine and Israel, against the bombing of Yemen or other countries targeted by NATO, against the presence of foreign troops in Europe and elsewhere, against sanctions and blockade policies, is also the fight for the reconstruction of our productive forces, for the development of scientific research and for social progress. Only then will we be able to defeat the forces that serve the murderous interests of the merchants of death running around the world to increase their profits. Profits from which wage-earners, workers, the precarious and the unemployed, receive fewer and fewer crumbs, as the rate of profit continues to fall.

Late globalized capitalism has reached the end of its road, since the whole world has been subjected to its rules and tariffs, and there are no longer any new markets to conquer. In reaction, local peoples and bourgeoisies have begun to promote development in the territories where they live, work, produce and create. This explains the emergence of counter-hegemonic powers such as China and Russia, and of ideologically very different states such as Cuba, Venezuela, (North) Korea, Nicaragua, Belarus, Iran, and Eritrea, all of which have chosen to oppose "capitalism without borders".

The fight for peace therefore aims to disarm powers that have failed to fulfill their commitments, such as those expressed in the preamble to the French constitution, which is supposed to institute a "social republic", and those contained in the United Nations Charter prohibiting the use of force outside the right of self-defense, a right that should be interpreted solely within the framework of the United Nations system.
 
Geopolitics as a method for analyzing international conflicts and social relations

Initially, geopolitics was a method of analysis developed mainly by researchers working for certain colonial powers. Its aim was to analyze, on the basis of geographical and territorial data, the fundamental interests of each state, which was supposed to be either opposed to or, on the contrary, a partner of other states. This method tended to determine, in an initially rather mechanical way, conflicts seen as almost "natural" and inevitable, with the aim of controlling a "vital space". In its most extreme form, this led to the justification of Nazism, which sought to conquer "the vital space necessary for the German people". After 1945, geopolitics was delegitimized as a bourgeois, imperialist science, before that is, relevant elements of this method were gradually rediscovered in the USSR of the 1970s, as well as in the USA, especially if made dynamic through a class analysis of each state's politics.

To use geopolitics dynamically, we must first determine the class basis of each state, in the knowledge that in our time, there is no such thing as a "chemically pure" system, since every state is confronted with trends either pushing it towards more capitalism and deregulated markets or, on the contrary, pushing it away from them to build alternative paths. It is in this context that the place occupied by each country in the era of globalization in the "international division of labor" combines with the territory it occupies and the economic potential this gives it. This explains why our era is one of a de facto Third World War between forces of unipolarity centralized around the USA, NATO and their allies, and counterforces of multipolarity. Today, however, this war is taking place in a "hybrid" form, with multiple "local" hot wars being waged by protagonists unable or unwilling to confront each other directly. This "pacifying" factor is all the more evident as the domination of the consumer society model and the triumphant individualism of neoliberalism have led a mass of people to reject the idea of risking their lives in the service of a higher cause.

The dominant Western powers are controlled by bourgeoisies who can set commodity prices ("terms of trade") and derive wealth from them. Depending on the balance of power between countries and social classes, this wealth can be used to distribute crumbs in order to corrupt at least some of the working classes who would have an objective interest in breaking away from the capitalism organized around Wall Street and the City of London.

In economically dominated countries, on the other hand, we have to deal with a comprador bourgeoisie that takes advantage of its role as local intermediary for foreign imperialist bourgeoisies. But there are also national bourgeoisies seeking to defend their national market, their territory, and to launch self-centered development policies to face up to the competitive pressures of those powers dominating the world market. In this context, wage-earners in dominated and overexploited countries, as well as those in "central" countries, act as a spur to greater independence for their national bourgeoisies and petty bourgeoisies. In this struggle, the popular forces and national bourgeoisies rely on the advantages of their national territory, in terms of resources and geostrategic position. Their aim is to conquer autonomous spaces that will enable them to launch policies of development, industrialization, and even socially progressive reforms. Geopolitics can therefore be a useful scientific method if it combines analysis of the territorial situation of each political entity, in terms of strategy, resources, historical links with its neighbors ("geo-economics" and "geo-culture"), etc., with analysis of the class base of each state formation. It is against this backdrop that, among the forty or so armed conflicts in the world, known or unknown, more or less active or "frozen", since October 2023, the conflict in Palestine has become the "central conflict" between the unipolar bloc and the "nebula" of countries and peoples manifesting counter-hegemonic tendencies. This conflict is a continuation of the wars and tensions we are witnessing in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, the African countries of the Sahel, Taiwan, and the Korean peninsula - in other words, all around the Eurasian core.
 
Geopolitics of Palestine

If we look at the map of Palestine and the Israeli entity that took total control of it between 1948 and 1967, the first thing that stands out is the fact that its borders were drawn during the Anglo-French Sykes/Picot agreements following the First World War in such a way as to encompass the entire southern desert (Negev or Naqab), This enabled the territory to extend all the way to the Red Sea, giving whoever controlled Palestine a "dagger" cutting through the Arab nation, the Islamic world and the Afro-Asian space ("Third World" or "Global South") in two. These two parts, located on either side of the Palestinian territory redesigned by the English colonist, can no longer communicate directly without passing through Palestinian ("Israeli") territory. As a result, every Arab, every Muslim and every anti-colonial activist in Africa or Asia sees his or her territorial, national, cultural, religious or anti-colonial solidarity space - and therefore both his or her imaginary and political space - blocked or at least hindered in their movements. This was the historical reality of the Crusader state in the Middle Ages and, geopolitically speaking, it is exactly the same position occupied by the Israeli entity (see the geostrategic context of Zionism from the development of English colonialism).

As a result, the Palestinian question has become the emblematic cause of all anti-colonial movements worldwide. Depending on their political and cultural sensitivities and class cleavages, each has been able to accentuate the anti-imperialist, nationalist, cultural or religious component of this state of affairs. So, in the geopolitics of Palestine, there is simultaneously an anti-Western geopolitical aspect, a social aspect aimed at promoting the struggle of the working classes against the bourgeoisie of the "collective West", and a symbolic and identity-related aspect that can take the form of Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, a more specific Palestinian nationalism or an Islam experienced as an element of affirmation in the face of the colonizer. For, as Thomas Sankara once said, "You don't read the Bible or the Koran in the same way if you're rich or poor, otherwise there would be two editions of the Bible and two editions of the Koran". This was amply demonstrated by the period that followed the dismantling of the socialist camp and the Soviet Union.
 
Palestine at the heart of the contemporary world's geopolitical contradictions

This central aspect of the Palestinian question, at once geopolitical, political and identity-related, explains why there is a particularly violent opposition between the Arab comprador bourgeoisies at the head of regimes that have little legitimacy and are therefore particularly authoritarian, and the "Arab street", the term used to designate the Arab masses, especially the Palestinians, including the Palestinian masses who have taken refuge in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Gulf states. This situation also explains why all the conflicts in Western Asia, Northern Africa and generally elsewhere in the world have a more or less direct link with the Palestinian question. This is very clearly seen in the Arab-Islamic cultural area, but it is also evident in sub-Saharan Africa, in socialist countries, in Latin America and among the various layers of marginalized populations in the West. The exceptional mobilization visible today and in the past among the Irish in support of Palestine therefore appears extremely symptomatic of the objective and subjective reasons mentioned above, in connection with the national liberation struggle of the Irish people, for Ireland was geopolitically confronted with British imperialism as it still is today within the framework of the unipolar world centered on the Anglo-Saxon powers.
 
Palestine and national liberation struggles

Palestinian geopolitics is marked by the attempt made by Zionists since the beginning of the colonization of Palestine to "de-territorialize" the indigenous people, replacing them with imported colonial settlers who are supposed to "territorialize" in their place. And today, all the world's conflicts around the issue of globalization actually raise the question of territory and its role in the politics of right to development in the face of policies pushing for relocation of production and promoting "supranational" strategic and economic choices. This explains why "Israel" has been and remains perceived by all Arab peoples as a "foreign body" prevenitng any possibility of regional integration and development. This situation also explains why, until the demise of the USSR, the Palestinians were generally able to rely on socialist, non-aligned, and decolonized countries. After the crisis and the end of this "bipolar" world, the Palestinians found themselves on their own in an environment where, quite naturally, the comprador bourgeoisies of the Gulf, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan tended to dominate the region. But more broadly, all the peoples of the world see the Palestinian cause as emblematic of their own relationship to the right to development, recognized in the 1970s by the UN, globalized capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. The Iranian revolution, the rise to power of the People's Republic of China and the return to world politics of a Russia where a national bourgeoisie has partly asserted itself in opposition to the "oligarchs" (making up in fact the local comprador bourgeoisie) have been the cause of the development of the Eurasian integration process, which has led to the formation of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

These organizations represent a counterweight that is helping to loosen the imperialist stranglehold on West Asia and Africa in particular. And as Euro-Atlantic imperialism has entered a deep crisis, particularly since 2008, fractions of the bourgeoisie in key countries such as the Gulf states, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Venezuela, etc. have been increasingly tempted to distance themselves from the unipolar center in favor of the "multipolar adventure". The latest episode is the accession of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to the BRICS. Against this backdrop of multiple global and social contradictions, we can see that, both objectively and indirectly, the process of asserting counter-powers around the world has given new impetus to the resistance of the Palestinian people as a consequence of the weakening of the Western pole. Today, the Palestinians, thanks to the military aspect of the action of October 7, 2023, and after the American-European defeats in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and at least in part in Ukraine, have been able to regain their central place on the dividing line between the "collective West" and the "global South", a new counter-hegemonic factor towards which the more independent "Eastern European countries" are also tending. For the first time since the 1970s, China has justified armed struggle as a legitimate and internationally recognized means of struggle for a colonized people.
 
The new stage in the struggle of peoples, countries and states towards sovereignty

The relocation and de-industrialization of countries in the NATO bloc centered on the USA, the Anglo-Saxon Five Eyes, the EU, and Japan, with Israel as their colonial outpost at the Afro-Asian crossroads, have reinforced the weight of the only non-relocated productive sector in these countries, the military-industrial complex. The emerging counter-hegemonic powers, for their part, are tempted to promote a more productive and therefore more peaceful economic development policy. This explains why Russia waited from 2014 to 2022 before reacting to NATO's eastward thrust threatening Ukraine, and why China and Iran favor diplomacy and economic ties over the use of force to alter the international balance of power. This is in line with the interests of the local national bourgeoisies, who are also organically reticent about any international tension that might push the popular masses to take direct control of the struggle for national sovereignty, and therefore for popular sovereignty and the democratization of social and economic relations, and political systems.

The difference between the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie in the countries of the Global South is clearly perceptible when we observe the fear of the people that plagues the comprador bourgeoisies, while national bourgeoisies seek to retain the support of its people and wishing to retain a monopoly on power; in other words, betrayal on the one hand, opportunism on the other. In a context where social tensions tend to explode all over the world due to the relative and often absolute impoverishment of the masses, Palestine, and Gaza in particular, is the world's "pressure cooker", bound to explode following attempts by Western powers and conservative Arab and African regimes to bury the Palestinian question by putting forward less burning issues. This is one of the reasons why the military leadership of Palestinian Hamas has decided to take a proactive response to the despair of the people of Gaza and Palestine, as well as of neighboring countries and those further afield who feel humiliated. Indeed, it had long been preparing for the coup de force of October 7, which, whatever one may think in the specifics, fundamentally altered the international balance of power.

This explains the extraordinary response to Gaza from people all over the world, including in Western countries. In the USA, for example, the mobilizations in support of the Palestinians represent the most massive demonstrations to have taken place in that country in the last two decades, to the point where 40% of Jews in the USA disassociate themselves from Israel and 30% of neo-evangelicals are now in favor of the Palestinians. This shows that prejudice aimed at essentializing one religious group, or another is counter-productive. In France, the Macron government's ban on demonstrations denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the repeated aggressions targeting Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank, are not evidence of power strength, but, on the contrary, of its weakness. France's conservative authorities have been forced to adopt a particularly authoritarian stance, in keeping with what happened during the Algerian war, and gradually with the mass movement of the Gilets jaunes, in order to avoid a possible "convergence of struggles" between "pro-Palestinians", working-class neighborhoods largely populated by people of immigrant origin, the movement for decent pensions, farmers, outlying towns, Gilets jaunes, trade unionists, community activists, radical political activists, Muslims, Marxists, working-class priests and so on.

For all progressives in France and elsewhere in the world, and regardless of what some may think of the Palestinian tool that is Hamas (supported by its secular or Marxist allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq), this tool has been able to take into account the local and global contradictions of the moment. This qualitative leap explains why no Palestinian organization, including even the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, felt able to criticize this action. While we must always avoid the fetishism that leads to the adulation of certain organizations or, on the contrary, the demonization of others, we must also be in a position to observe how they are capable or incapable of modifying the balance of power in the long term. Organizations are merely tools which, sometimes consciously, sometimes less consciously so, can from time to time trigger a new process of struggle, turning things on their head and leading to the delegitimization of a whole bloc of powers. This explains the immense joy of the "Arab street", and more broadly of working-class neighborhoods and strata the world over, at the sight of young Palestinians storming the latest Israeli tanks. At a time when, in Ukraine, tanks sent by Western powers are being destroyed. To make us forget these extraordinary Palestinian feats of arms, we have been told about the horrors committed by these new fedayeen, even since certain Israeli witnesses and certain investigations by rare Israeli media remaining free have begun to cast at least some doubt on those horror tales.

(see: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkHs7ZG7rFY/
https://www.chroniquepalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hamas_our_narrative.pdf).

All this reminds us of the article written by Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune describing the violence committed by the Indian Cipayan insurgents against British settlers responsible for prior, far more painful, violence and humiliations. So, even if the extreme pain we feel in the face of Gaza's martyrdom reminds us of other martyrdoms in history - the Paris Commune, the Warsaw Ghetto, the thousands Soviet, Yugoslav, Polish, Chinese, Greek, Algerian, Vietnamese, and Korean villages, etc. whose populations were exterminated to punish them for having given birth to rebels who might themselves have committed questionable or even reprehensible acts of violence, the essential historical fact is that the Palestinian question goes far beyond the question of Hamas alone, which is no more than a tool of the Palestinian people at a given moment in history. On the other hand, Hamas's action has put the Palestinian question back at the heart of the global contradiction, namely the pivotal issue in the balance of power between the imperialist pole and the various counter-hegemonic currents emerging around the world. This is what the peoples of the world have already remembered, and this is what world history will remember. (Note: For thoughts on the possible future of a reunited, multi-ethnic Palestine after the collapse of the "two-state solution", see my article in the 2020 Géostratégiques magazine.)

The current "hybrid world war" situation therefore demonstrates that geopolitics is a useful method of analysis, to be combined with the analysis of social and economic relations. At this stage in human history, it is becoming essential to make an intellectual effort to understand the world as a whole, and to link the tragedy being experienced by the Palestinians with that being experienced by Ukraine, Syria, and all other countries at war or under economic blockade, in the face of a dominant capitalist world whose rotten nature is becoming ever more apparent.

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Author

Bruno Drweski is an activist and a professor at the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations in Paris. He sits on the editorial board of 4 peer-reviewed journals and has published extensively (articles, chapters, and books) in history, political sociology, and geopolitics.

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