Xi imperator

L'actualité commande de célébrer la victoire démocratique de Vladimir Poutine, du moins dans les cercles russo-béats où les agents d'influence du Kremlin vont casser des verres ce soir. Et pourtant il n'y a pas de nouvelle donne. Le monde n'est en rien changé à compter de lundi matin. La Russie est en conflit avec le monde libre et libéré, elle menace tous ses voisins sauf la Biélorussie pour le moment, elle n'a reçu le soutien de personne dans son bras de fer avec la Grande Bretagne ; si Theresa May porte l'affaire au Conseil de Sécurité, on verra ce qu'en dit la Chine. L'encombrant partenaire du nord est pour elle une sorte de Congo belge doté de missiles intercontinentaux, incapable de convertir son économie de rentes minières en économie industrielle. Or le différend séculaire sino-russe existe sur l'Amour et la steppe, comme nous le rappelle le site de la République de Chine dédié aux frontières perdues (clic).

Laissons le Kremlin à ses mensonges, à ses dénégations puériles et allons voir la Chine depuis West Point, car l'altération de la constitution chinoise fait que le président est désormais empereur en république, et les meilleurs esprits de la diplomatie se projettent vers des lendemains qui pourraient chanter faux, ou pas, ou justes ! C'est à Pékin que se situe la centrale d'énergie de demain, pas à Moscou.

Kevin Rudd fut premier ministre de sa Très Gracieuse Majesté en Australie en 2013. Il parle couramment le mandarin et connaît bien le président chinois. Il a donné une "lecture" aux cadets de West-Point le 5 mars dernier qui mérite notre attention et celle du distingué lectorat de Royal-Artillerie. La voici in extenso (telle que diffusée par Bill Bishop sur Sinocism):

UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S RISE UNDER XI JINPING
THE HONOURABLE KEVIN RUDD
26TH PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
PRESIDENT OF THE ASIA SOCIETY POLICY INSTITUTE
ADDRESS TO CADETS
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT
MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018

Next week marks the 216th anniversary of the founding of the West Point Military Academy. Its founding came less than 20 years after the defeat of the British at Yorktown in 1781. It followed the decision by President Thomas Jefferson to establish the United States Military Academy just after his inauguration in 1801. Indeed the United States continental army first occupied this place on 27 January 1778, barely two years into the Revolutionary War, when things were not proceeding all that well against the British in that great conflagration. So you have been here at West Point since virtually the first birth-pangs of this great Republic.

Over the span of history, this nation has grown from thirteen fissiparous colonies to become the most powerful nation on earth. And while the challenges have been many, you have preserved the flame of liberal democracy throughout the nation’s rise.

Kevin Rudd

When this nation was being born, China was at its height. In 1799, the Qianlong Emperor died, having reigned for over 60 years. His grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor, had reigned for 61 years until 1722. Between both their reigns, the territorial expanse of the Chinese Empire virtually doubled, occupying some 10 per cent of the world’s land area, 30 percent of the world’s population, and 32 percent of the world’s economy.

Although the United States sought to establish consular relations with China in 1784, this was rebuffed by Qianlong’s court, delaying the establishment of diplomatic relations until 1844 with the Treat of Wangxia. By this stage, China had already suffered its first major defeat at the hands of the British during the First Opium War. The second defeat would follow less than 20 years later at the hands of the British and the French. And so began China’s “Century of National Humiliation” until the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949.

As for Australia, proudly an ally of the United States since we first fought together in the trenches in 1918, our short history, at least as a settler society, has been considerably more recent than either China or the US—although our indigenous peoples, Aboriginal Australians, are the oldest continuing cultures on earth, going back 60,000 years. Because Washington’s continental army prevailed at Yorktown in 1781, not only did Britain lose these colonies, it also lost its convict dumping ground at Savannah Georgia. Back in the British Admiralty, after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, they dusted off the navigation charts of James Cook taken some 13 years before, and in 1788 established a convict colony and the first European settlement in what we now call Sydney, Australia.

China, because of its proximity and size, has loomed large in the Australian national imagination ever since. Just as it now looms large in the global imagination. Not least because China’s new leadership, under Xi Jinping, as of the very day he first came to power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party five years ago, claimed that China’s national mission was now one of “national renaissance” (guojia fuxing).

Xi Jinping, in rallying his party to a future vision for his country, looks deeply to China’s history as a source of national inspiration. China’s national pride at the historical achievements of the great dynasties of the Qing, Ming, Song, Tang, and the Han is palpable. The Chinese political leadership harness their national past selectively, always carefully using rose-coloured glasses, omitting those chapters which may be more problematic for China’s current national narrative. But then again, China’s leaders are no more guilty of this than other countries.

Nonetheless, for those who are professionally charged with interpreting China’s future, as you are in this great military academy, it means that we must also take time to understand China’s past. To understand how China perceives the world around it. And to understand how it now perceives its own national destiny in the turbulent world of the 21st century.

It is one of the reasons why after more than 40 years of studying Chinese language, history, politics, economics, and culture, I have embarked on a fresh research project at Oxford University, seeking to define Xi Jinping’s worldview. This is not a static process. This is a dynamic process. China is as much deeply marked by its past, as it is being reshaped by the unprecedented torrent of economic, social, cultural, and technological forces that are washing over its future.

Over the last 40 years I have engaged China as a student, bureaucrat, diplomat, member of parliament, foreign minister, and prime minister. And now as the President of an American think tank, part of a venerable institution, the Asia Society, which has been engaging China since the earliest days of the People’s Republic in 1956. Understanding China is a lifelong journey.

For those of you who would become the next generation of American military leaders, it must be your lifelong journey as well. I argue that there will be no more important part of your professional skill-craft than to understand how Chinese leaders think, how they perceive the world, and how the world should most productively engage them. That applies also to your country’s future political leadership, corporate leadership, and every branch of its military. So I encourage you in your mission.


DEFINING XI JINPING’S CHINA

Xi’s Political Authority

The beginning of wisdom in understanding China’s view of the world is to understand China’s view of the future of its own country—its politics, its economics, its society. Xi Jinping lies at the apex of the Chinese political system. But his influence now permeates every level. Five years ago, I wrote that Xi would be China’s most powerful leader since Deng. I was wrong. He’s now China’s most powerful leader since Mao. We see this at multiple levels. The anti-corruption campaign he’s wielded across the Party has not only helped him “clean up” the country’s almost industrial levels of corruption. It has also afforded the additional benefit of “cleaning up” all of Xi Jinping’s political opponents on the way through. It’s a formidable list:

Bo Xilai, Politburo member and Party Secretary of Chongqing;

Zhou Yongkang, Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the internal security apparatus;

Xu Caihou, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission;

Guo Boxiong, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission;

Ling Jihua, former Chief of the General Office of the CPC and Chief of Staff to Hu Jintao;

Sun Zhengcai, Politburo member and another Party Secretary from Chongqing;

And just prior to the 19th Party Congress, General Fang Fenghui, Chief of the Joint Staffs, and General Zhang Yang, Director of the PLA Political Work Department, who recently committed suicide.

None of this is for the faint-hearted. It says much about the inherent nature of a Chinese political system which has rarely managed leadership transitions smoothly. But it also points to the political skill-craft of Xi Jinping himself.

Xi Jinping is no political neophyte. He has grown up in Chinese party politics as conducted at the highest levels. Through his father, Xi Zhongxun, he has been on both the winning side and the losing side of the many bloody battles that have been fought within the Chinese Communist Party since the days of the Cultural Revolution half a century ago.

There is little that Xi Jinping hasn’t seen with his own eyes on the deepest internal workings of the Party. He has been through a “masterclass” of not only how to survive it, but also on how to prevail within it. For these reasons, he has proven himself to be the most formidable politician of his age. He has succeeded in pre-empting, outflanking, outmanoeuvring, and then removing each of his political adversaries. The polite term for this is power consolidation. In that, he has certainly succeeded.

The external manifestations of this are seen in the decision, now endorsed by the 19th Party Congress and the 13th National People’s Congress, to formally enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought” as part of the Chinese constitution. For Xi Jinping’s predecessors, Deng, Jiang and Hu, this privilege was only accorded them after they had formally left the political stage. In Xi Jinping’s case, it occurs near the beginning of what is likely to be a long political career.

A further manifestation of Xi Jinping’s extraordinary political power has been the concentration of the policy machinery of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi now chairs six top-level “leading small groups” as well as a number of central committees and commissions covering every major area of policy.

A third expression of Xi’s power has been the selection of candidates for the seven-man Standing Committee of the Politburo, the 20-person wider Politburo, and the 209-member Central Committee. There’s been some debate among China analysts as to the degree to which these ranks are now filled with Xi loyalists. My argument is simple: it is a much more accommodating and comfortable set of appointments from Xi Jinping’s personal perspective than what he inherited from the 18th Party Congress.

VP Wang Qishan avec Xi

Furthermore, his ability to prevail on critical personnel selection is underlined by the impending appointment of his close friend and colleague Wang Qishan as Chinese Vice President. Wang Qishan himself has passed the retirement age, but this has proven to be no obstacle to retaining him as an ex-officio member of the politburo standing committee, as reflected in the footage carried yesterday by the Chinese media of the opening sessions of the National People’s Congress. And it is Wang Qishan who will be entrusted by Xi with working-level responsibility for the vast complexity that is now the US-China relationship.

A fifth manifestation of Xi Jinping’s accumulation of unchallenged personal power has been the decision to remove the provision of the 1982 Chinese State Constitution, which imposed a limit of two five-year terms on those appointed to the Chinese presidency. Xi Jinping is now 64 years old. He will be 69 by the expiration of his second term as President, General Secretary of the Party, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Given his own family’s longevity (his father lived to 88, and his mother is still alive at 91), as well as the general longevity of China’s most senior political leaders, it is prudent for us to assume that Xi Jinping, in one form or another, will remain China’s paramount leader through the 2020’s and into the following decade.

He therefore begins to loom large as a dominant figure not just in Chinese history, but in world history, in the twenty-first century. It will be on his watch that China finally becomes the largest economy in the world, or is at least returned to that status, which it last held during the Qing dynasty.

Finally, there is the personality of Xi Jinping himself as a source of political authority. For those who have met him and had conversations with him, he has a strong intellect, a deep sense of his country’s and the world’s history, and a deeply defined world view of where he wants to lead his country. Xi Jinping is no accidental president. It’s as if he has been planning for this all his life.

It has been a lifetime’s accumulation of the intellectual software, combined with the political hardware of raw politics, which form the essential qualities of high political leadership in countries such as China. For the rest of the world, Xi Jinping represents a formidable partner, competitor or adversary, depending on the paths that are chosen in the future.

There are those within the Chinese political system who have opposed this large-scale accumulation of personal power in the hands of Xi Jinping alone, mindful of the lessons from Mao. In particular, the decision to alter the term-limits concerning the Chinese presidency has been of great symbolic significance within the Chinese domestic debate. State censorship was immediately applied to any discussion of the subject across China’s often unruly social media. The People’s Daily, in a surprisingly defensive editorial last week, was at pains to point out that the changes to term limits for the Chinese presidency simply brought China’s state constitution into line with the Party constitution, which imposed no term limits on the positions of General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Even more defensively, the People’s Daily was at equal pains to point out that these constitutional changes did not signify “leadership for life”.

For Xi’s continuing opponents within the system, what we might describe as “a silent minority”, this has created a central, symbolic target for any resentments they may hold against Xi Jinping’s leadership. It would be deeply analytically flawed to conclude that these individuals have any real prospect of pushing back against the Xi Jinping political juggernaut in the foreseeable future. But what these constitutional changes have done is to make Xi potentially vulnerable to any single, large-scale adverse event in the future. If you have become, in effect, “Chairman of Everything”, then it is easy for your political opponents to hold you responsible for anything and everything that could go wrong, whether you happen to be responsible for it or not.

This could include any profound miscalculation, or unintended consequence, arising from contingencies on the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Chinese debt crisis, or large-scale social disruption arising from unmanageable air pollution or a collapse in employment through a loss of competitiveness, large-scale automation or artificial intelligence.

However, militating against any of the above, and the “tipping points” which each could represent, is Xi Jinping’s seemingly absolute command of the security and intelligence apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party and the state. Xi Jinping loyalists have been placed in command of all sensitive positions across the security establishment. The People’s Armed Police have now been placed firmly under party control rather than under the control of the state. And then there is the new technological sophistication of the domestic security apparatus right across the country—an apparatus which now employs more people than the PLA.

We should never forget that the Chinese Communist Party is a revolutionary party which makes no bones about the fact that it obtained power through the barrel of a gun, and will sustain power through the barrel of a gun if necessary. We should not have any dewy-eyed sentimentality about any of this. It’s a simple fact that this is what the Chinese system is like.

Xi Jinping’s View of the Party

Apart from the sheer construction of personal power within the Chinese political system, how does Xi Jinping see the future evolution of China’s political structure? Here again, we’ve reached something of a tipping point in the evolution of Chinese politics since the return of Deng Xiaoping at the 3rd Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in November 1978.

Xi Jinping

There has been a tacit assumption, at least across much of the collective West over the last 40 years, that China, step-by-step, was embracing the global liberal capitalist project. Certainly, there was a view that Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening” would liberalise the Chinese economy with a greater role for market principles and a lesser role for the Chinese state in the economy.

A parallel assumption has been that over time, this would produce liberal democratic forces across the country which would gradually reduce the authoritarian powers of the Chinese Communist Party, create a greater plurality of political voices within the country, and in time involve something not dissimilar to a Singaporean-style “guided democracy”, albeit it on a grand scale. Despite the global wake-up call that was Tiananmen in 1989, by and large this continued to be the underlying view across the West, always misguided in my view, that China, through many twists and turns, was still broadly on track to create a more liberal political system, if not to create any form of classical Western liberal democracy.

Many scholars failed to pay attention to the internal debates within the Party in the late 1990s, where internal consideration was indeed given to the long-term transformation of the Communist Party into a Western-style social democratic party as part of a more pluralist political system. The Chinese were mindful of what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They also saw the political transformations that unfolded across Eastern and Central Europe. Study groups were commissioned. Intense discussions held. They even included certain trusted foreigners at the time. I remember participating in some of them myself. Just as I remember my Chinese colleagues telling me in 2001-2 that China had concluded this debate, there would be no systemic change, and China would continue to be a one-party state. It would certainly be a less authoritarian state than the sort of totalitarianism we had seen during the rule of Mao Zedong. But the revolutionary party would remain.

The reasons were simple. The Party’s own institutional interests are in its long-term survival: after all, they had won the revolution, so in their own Leninist worldview, why on earth should they voluntarily yield power to others? But there was a second view as well. They also believed that China could never become a global great power in the absence of the Party’s strong central leadership. And that in the absence of such leadership, China would simply dissipate into the divided bickering camps that had often plagued the country throughout its history. The Communist Party would continue, therefore, as an unapologetically Leninist party for the future.

To be fair to Xi Jinping, it should be noted for the historical record that these internal debates were concluded a decade before Xi’s rise to power. The rise of Xi Jinping should not be interpreted simplistically as the sudden triumph of authoritarianism over democracy for the future of China’s domestic political system. That debate was already over. Rather it should be seen as a definition of the particular form of authoritarianism that China’s new leadership now seeks to entrench.

I see this emerging political system as having three defining characteristics. First, the unapologetic assertion of the power, prestige and prerogatives of the Party apparatus over the administrative machinery of the state. In previous decades, the role of the Party apparatus had shrunk to a more narrowly defined, ideological role. The powers of detailed policy decision-making had gradually migrated to the institutions of the state council. This indeed had been a signature reform under Premier Zhu Rongji.

That is no longer the case. Xi Jinping has realised that if you remove the Party as an institution from continued structural relevance to the country’s real policy decision-making process, the party over time would literally fade away. As a person who believes deeply not just in the Party’s history, but also the Party’s future, Xi has not been prepared to stand idly by while that happened. Xi has now intervened decisively to reverse this trend.

A second defining feature of this “new authoritarian” period is the role of political ideology over pragmatic policy. For the previous forty years, we’ve been told that China’s governing ideology was “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. As the decades rolled by, at least in the economy, there was much less “socialism” than there were “Chinese characteristics”. In this sense, “Chinese characteristics” became the accepted domestic political euphemism for good old capitalism.

Few people seemed to have understood that a core part of Xi Jinping’s intellectual make-up is that he is a Marxist dialectician. This derives from the Hegelian principles of “thesis, antithesis and synthesis”. Or in Chinese Maoist terms: “Contradictions among the people”. This forms a deep part of Xi Jinping’s intellectual software. Indeed the importance which Xi attaches to this as an intellectual methodology led him to conduct two formal Politburo study sessions on both “historical materialism” and “dialectical materialism” in 2013 and 2015 respectively. As a dialectician, Xi Jinping is acutely conscious of the new social, economic and political forces being created by China’s “neo-liberal” economic transformation. He would also understand intuitively the challenges which these new forces would, over time, represent to the Party’s continuing Leninist hold on power.

Both he and the rest of the central leadership have read development economics. They are not deaf and dumb. They know what the international literature says: that demands for political liberalisation almost universally arise once per capita income passes a certain threshold. They are therefore deeply aware of the profound “contradiction” which exists between China’s national development priority of escaping the “middle income trap” on the one hand, and unleashing parallel demands for political liberalisation once incomes continue to rise on the other.

Xi Jinping’s response to this dilemma has been a reassertion of ideology. This has meant a reassertion of Marxist-Leninist ideology. And a new prominence accorded to ideological education across the entire Chinese system. But it’s more sophisticated than a simple unidimensional ideological response. At least since the 2008 Olympics, which pre-dated Xi’s ascendency, Chinese nationalism has also become a parallel mainstay in China’s broader ideological formation. This has continued and expanded under Xi Jinping. And it has been augmented by an infinitely more sophisticated propaganda apparatus across the country, which now fuses the imagery of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese nation into a combined Chinese contemporary political consciousness.

On top of this, we’ve also seen a rehabilitation of Chinese Confucianism as part of the restoration of Chinese historical narratives about, and the continuing resonance of, China’s “unique” national political forms. According to the official line, this historical, authoritarian, hierarchical continuity is what has differentiated China from the rest of the world. This Chinese “neo-Confucianism” is regarded by the party as a comfortable historical accompaniment to the current imperatives for a strong, modern Chinese state, necessary to manage the complex processes of the “Great Chinese Renaissance” of the future.

The short-hand form of the political narrative is simple: China’s historical greatness, across its dynastic histories, lay in a strong, authoritarian hierarchical Confucian state. By corollary, China’s historical greatness has never been a product of Western liberal democracy. By further corollary, China’s future national greatness will lie not in any adaptation of Western political forms, but instead through the modern adaptation of its own indigenous political legacy in the form of a Confucian, communist state.

Xi Jinping’s View of the Economy

A third characteristic of China’s “new authoritarianism”, although less clear than the first and second, is what is now emerging in the future direction of China’s economic program. We are all familiar with Deng Xiaoping’s famous axiom that “it doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice”. Just as we are familiar with his other exhortation, “it is indeed glorious to be rich”. These were followed by later exhortations by China’s apparatchik class to leave government service (xiahai) and go out into the world (zouchuqu). These simple axioms, as opposed to complex statements of ideology, provided the underlying guidance for the subsequent two generations of Chinese entrepreneurs, both at home and abroad.

In policy terms, China’s first phase of economic reform (1978-2012) was characterised by small-scale, local family enterprises, involved in light industry; low-wage, labour-intensive manufacturing for export; combined with high-level state investment in public infrastructure, including telecommunications, broadband, road, rail, port, power generation, transmission and distribution.

In early 2013, at the 3rd plenum of the 18th Central Committee, Xi Jinping released a new blueprint for the second phase of China’s economic reform program, or what was ominously called “The Decision”, or more elegantly China’s “New Economic Model”. Its defining characteristics were a new emphasis on the domestic consumption market rather than exports as the principal driver of future economic growth; the explosion of China’s private sector at the expense of the overall market share of China’s state owned enterprises, which were to be constrained to certain, critical strategic industry sectors; the flourishing of the services sector, particularly through the agency of digital commerce; “leapfrogging” the West in critical new technology sectors, including biotechnology, and artificial intelligence; and all within the new framework of environmentally sustainable development, particularly air pollution and climate change.

It’s important to track over the last five years what progress and regress has occurred across the 60 specific reform measures articulated in the decision of March 2013. The core organising principle across the reform program was that “the market would play the decisive role” across China’s economic system. The Asia Society Policy Institute, of which I am President, in collaboration with the Rhodium Group, has been producing over the last six months the “China Economic Dashboard”, which looks in detail at the ten core barometers of economic change. What we have concluded is that China has made progress in two of these. First, in innovation policy, where China has made measurable strides, both in policy direction but more critically, in defiance of the usual skepticism about China’s capacity to innovate, in actual economic performance.

Second, we also measured progress in Chinese environmental reforms, in particular the reduction in the PMI measures of air pollution across China’s major cities over the last two years. However, in five of ten areas, we’ve seen China at best marking time: investment, trade, finance, SOE and land reform. And finally, in fiscal policy, competition policy and labour reform, we see evidence of China sliding backwards against the reform direction it set for itself five years ago. Each of these are the subject of considerable debate across the Chinese economic analytical community, particularly given the perennial problems we all face with data. Nonetheless, only the bravest official commentators in China could now point to 2013-18 as a path-breaking period of economic reform. It has at best been slow.

This brings into sharp relief the content of the government work report on the economy delivered at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March 2018. Once again, precisely five years down the track from the original documents, the analytical community will pore over the entrails to analyse whether the spirit of market-based reforms continues to flourish for the future. Or whether it has begun to fade amidst a more general Chinese political and ideological redirection to the left. Or just as problematically, for economic reform to die at the implementation level because of confusing political and policy signals from the centre, meaning that it is much safer to just keep your head down. Or because there are limited local incentives, either personal or institutional, to actively prosecute reform which inevitably generates local conflict with deeply entrenched vested interests. Or, more likely, an unholy cocktail of the above, collectively reinforcing a natural predisposition towards bureaucratic inertia.

Certainly those at the centre of China’s economic reform team, including Wang Qishan, Liu He and Wang Yang, understand the absolute imperatives of implementing this next round of economic reform. They know from bitter experience that to stand still is in fact to go backwards. And they understand in particular that the only source of employment growth in China’s economy over the last five years has come from the private sector, not SOEs, as China each year is required to absorb 20 million new workers into its labour force.

Nonetheless, there have been worrying signs. First, the role of Party secretaries within private firms now seems to have been enhanced. Second, there is now an open debate in China as to whether the state should acquire equity within China’s most successful private firms in order to secure broad representation and greater political influence over these companies’ future direction. And third, in the wake of the anti-corruption campaign and other compliance irregularities, we now see a number of prominent Chinese private firms in real political difficulty, and in one case, Anbang, the temporary “assumption of state control” of the company’s assets after its Chairman and CEO was taken into custody.

Compounding all of the above is still a continuing lack of truly independent commercial courts and arbitration mechanisms. The complication this creates is whether this leads over time to a private capital strike, or a flight of private capital of the type we have seen over the last several years, resulting in a re-imposition of formal capital controls by the state.

So on the future direction of China’s economy, the jury is still out. Have we also reached a new “tipping point”, as we appear to have done in Chinese politics? Or will this be a more sophisticated Chinese play, consistent with one of the deeper aphorisms of Chinese politics, that “in order to go right on the economy, you must go left on politics” in order to sustain to internal “balance” of the system? The next 12 months with China’s new economic team will be critical.


CHINA’S “WORLDVIEW” UNDER XI JINPING

Seven Core Priorities

There is always a danger facing foreign policy and security policy specialists when they seek to understand and define the capabilities, strategy and worldview of other states. There is always a temptation, given the analytical disciplines we represent, to see these “external” manifestations of state behaviour in the international realm as independent phenomena. The reality is that any country’s worldview is as much the product of its domestic politics, economics, culture and historiography, as it is the product of the number of guns, tanks and bullets held by ourselves, and by those around us.

That’s why I’ve sought to emphasise in this presentation so far the domestic drivers that underpin China’s emerging worldview. It’s important to bear in mind that those who ultimately shape Chinese strategy, like American strategy, are those who are equally engaged in the domestic affairs of their nations. There is no longer a clinical distinction between the foreign and domestic, the international and the national. Therefore understanding the domestic imperatives of China’s leadership is the beginning of wisdom in understanding the emerging patterns of China’s foreign and security policy behaviour.

The Party

China’s emerging worldview, in my own estimation, is best understood as a set of seven concentric circles. The first concentric circle is the Chinese Communist Party itself and its overriding interest to remain in power. This Leninist reality should never be forgotten. It is radically different from the worldview of Western political parties, who while always determined to remain in electoral power while they possibly can, also understand there is a natural ebb and flow in our national political discourse, intermediated by the electoral process.

National Unity

The second concentric circle, in terms of the core interests of the Chinese leadership, is the unity of the motherland. This may seem a hackneyed phrase in the West. But it remains of vital concern in Beijing, both as a question of national security on the one hand, and a question of enduring political legitimacy on the other. From Beijing’s perspective, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan represent a core set of security interests. Each within itself represents a confluence of external and internal security factors. Tibet is a central factor in Chinese perceptions of its strategic relationship with India. Xinjiang represents China’s gateway to what it perceives to be an increasingly hostile Islamic world, reinforced by concerns about its own, home-grown Islamic separatist movement. Inner Mongolia, despite the resolution of the common border with Russia decades ago, represents a continuing source of strategic anxiety between China and Russia. Taiwan, long seen as an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific, represents in the Chinese strategic mind a grand blocking device against China’s national aspirations for a more controlled, and therefore more secure maritime frontier, as well as an impediment to the ultimate political holy grail of national re-unification. These “internal” security challenges will always remain China’s core security challenges, apart, of course, from the security of the Party itself.

The Economy and Environmental Sustainability

The third in this series of concentric circles is the economy, together with its strategic counterfoil, environmental sustainability. I’ve already referred at some length to the current dilemmas in Chinese economic policy. Parallel dilemmas also confront the leadership over the litany of stories which permeate its own media on water, land and air pollution, and the inadequacy of food quality standards. The tragedy of China’s rapid economic development over the first 35 years was the relegation of the environment. Indeed, the systematic treatment of the environment as simply an “economic externality” to the Chinese development process led to wholesale environmental destruction. China is now paying the price.

Of course, these are not just domestic concerns for the Chinese people themselves. The quantum of China’s greenhouse gas emissions is of fundamental relevance to the future of global climate security and therefore of the planet itself. Indeed, if China fails to deliver on its future commitments on GHG reductions, as America and my own country Australia are now failing to do, by the time you students of the academy are taking your grandchildren to school during the last quarter of this century, the climate will represent the single greatest security threat to us all. But within the framework of China’s current and emerging worldview, both a strong economy and clean environment represent core determinants of the Party’s future political legitimacy.

These existential questions, therefore, of clean water, useable land, uncontaminated fish stocks, clean air to breathe as well as continued jobs growth, increased living standards, and all within the constraints of an ageing population, represent the daunting, day-to-day challenges of China’s Communist Party leadership.

China’s Neighbouring States - Securing China’s Continental Periphery across Eurasia

The fourth in this widening series concentric circles relates to China’s fourteen neighbouring states. Neighbouring states occupy a particular place in China’s strategic memory. Historically, they’ve been the avenue through which China’s national security has been threatened, resulting in successive foreign invasions. From the Mongols in the North in the 12th century, to the Manchurians in the North East in the mid-17th century, to the British, French, the Western imperial powers including the United States, and then the absolute brutality of the Japanese occupation from the East.

In Chinese traditional strategic thought, this has entrenched a deeply defensive view of how to maintain China’s national security. But Chinese historiography also teaches that purely defensive measures have not always succeeded. The failure of the Great Wall of China to provide security from foreign invasion is a classic case in point.

For these reasons, modern Chinese strategic thinking has explored different approaches. First and foremost, through political and economic diplomacy, China wishes to secure positive, accommodating, and wherever possible compliant relationships with all its neighbouring states.

But beyond that, China is also in search of its own form of strategic depth. We see this in China’s political, economic and military diplomacy across its vast continental flank from Northeast, through Central to Southeast Asia. We see this thinking alive in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. We see it alive in the Conference on International Confidence Building in Asia (CICA). We see it also with the Continental Silk Road, and the Maritime Silk Road initiative which charts its course across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and now the Mediterranean. And beyond that we see the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. The strategic imperative is clear: to consolidate China’s relationships with its neighbouring states. And by and large, this means enhancing its strategic position across the Eurasian continent, thereby consolidating China’s continental periphery.

China’s Maritime Periphery - East Asia and the West Pacific

The fifth concentric circle, or arguably its co-equal fourth, lies on China’s maritime periphery, across East Asia and the West Pacific. Unlike its continental periphery, China sees its maritime periphery as deeply hostile. It sees its traditional territorial claims in the East and South China Seas as under threat, and now routinely refers to these as China’s “core national interests”, placing them in a similar category to Taiwan. China also sees the region as strategically allied against it—with a ring of US allies from South Korea to Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines and onto Australia. Beyond this ring of US allies, the Chinese are fundamentally fixated on the formidable array of US military assets deployed by US Pacific Command across the entire region.

PM Li Keqiang

China’s strategy in response to this is clear. It seeks to fracture US alliances and has said as much repeatedly in its declaratory statements. Its position is that these alliances are relics of the Cold War. China’s deepest strategic concern about the peaceful reunification of North Korea lies in potentially having a unified Korean Peninsula, as a US ally, positioned on its immediate land border. China’s deeper response to its strategic circumstances is to enhance the capability of its navy and air force. Under Xi Jinping, the change in China’s military organisation, doctrine and force structure has been profound. The army continues to shrink. The navy and air force continue to expand.

Chinese naval and air capabilities now extend to reclaimed islands in the South China Sea. China’s naval and air expansion has also been enhanced by the rapid development of its land-based missile force targeted at both Taiwan and wider US naval operations in the Western Pacific. The strategic rationale is clear: a strategy of air-sea denial against US forces seeking to sustain large-scale US military operations in support of Taiwan, its partners in the South China Sea, and ultimately in the East China Sea as well. China’s overall political-military strategy is clear: to cause sufficient doubt in the minds of PACOM, and therefore any future US administration as to the “winnability” of any armed conflict against Chinese forces within the first island chain. And that includes American doubts over its ability to defend Taiwan.

The softer edge of China’s strategy in East Asia and the Western Pacific is economic engagement through trade, investment, capital flows and development aid. China’s strategy in this region, as in elsewhere in the world, is to turn itself into the indispensable economic power. In many countries and regions in the world, it has made great progress on this score. This, in many respects, is a simple projection of the scale of the Chinese economy as economic growth continues and China remains on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest economy over the course of the next decade.

The bottom line is this: in both reality and in perception, China has already become a more important economic partner than the United States to practically every country in wider East Asia. We all know where the wider strategic logic takes us. From economic power proceeds political power; from political power proceeds foreign policy power; and from foreign policy power proceeds strategic power. That is China’s strategy.

China and the Developing World

The sixth in my attempted visual image of China’s order of strategic priorities is China’s particular relationship with the developing world. This has long historical roots going back to Mao and Zhou Enlai’s role in the non-aligned movement. It applies particularly in Africa. But we also see it in countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. China’s relationship with the developing world has long been seen as a pillar in the prosecution of its global interests and values. In the current period this has continued with large-scale public and private Chinese trade and investment across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Across Africa, China has laid out large slabs of the continent’s emerging infrastructure. Each of these projects is generating its own local controversies. But the remarkable thing about China’s strategy is its persistence and its ability to adapt and adjust over time. Multiple field studies have now been conducted by Western academics on Chinese investment projects in the developing world. Some have not been good. But what is remarkable is how many positive stories are also emerging, on balance. So when China looks for local voices to support its interests, either in the United Nations or across the labyrinth of the global multilateral system, its ability to pull in political and diplomat support is unprecedented.

China and the Global Rules-based Order

The seventh and final concentric circle concerns the future of the global rules-based order itself. The United States, combined with its allies, as the victors of the Second World War, constructed the underlying architecture of the post-war, liberal international rules-based order. We saw this at Bretton Woods in 1944, the emergence of the IMF, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, later the WTO. We saw it in 1945 with the UN Charter. We saw it in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The United States also sought to defend the order it had created with a global network of alliances: NATO in Europe, and bilateral security alliances across East Asia. Across all this, even during the Cold War, the United States remained the dominant superpower. Dominant politically, economically, and militarily. Now we find ourselves in a period of great change and challenge.

Our Western political systems are under challenge in terms of their own domestic legitimacy. China will soon replace the United States as the world’s largest economy. China will begin to challenge US regional but not global military dominance. China is also creating its own new multilateral institutions outside the UN framework, such as the AIIB. China also continues to expand its strategic and economic reach across Europe and Asia. And Xi Jinping has made plain he does not see China’s role as simply replicating the current US-led liberal international order for the future.

China has consistently said that this was an order created by the Western, victorious, and by-and-large colonial powers after the Second World War. But China leaves open what future changes it may make to the international rules-based system in the future. The desirability of having a form of rules-based system, rather than simple chaos, lies deep within Chinese political consciousness. Chaos is utterly alien to China’s preferred political approach. But it is important to remember that “order”, the alternative to “chaos”, will not necessarily be an American order, or for that matter a liberal international order of America’s making, where Chinese co-leadership of that order may now be expected or desired.

China’s expectation of the future of the order will be one which is more suited to China’s own national interests and values. This means China will want to change things. At this stage, it is not clear how much China wants to change things. And whether the rest of the international community will agree. This will have implications, for example, for the current international order on human rights, anchored in the three current international treaties and the human rights council in Geneva. It will also have implications for the future international economic order, including the WTO, particularly in the aftermath of any unfolding trade war with the United States. As for the future international security order, we now find ourselves in completely uncertain terrain for reasons increasingly shaped by the future contours of both American and Chinese domestic politics.

There is much public debate about Thucydides’ Trap on the probability of conflict between China and the United States. Just as there is now debate about the Kindleberger Trap, drawn from the experience of the 1920s and 1930’s, when we saw the emergence of strategic vacuum through the global retrenchment of the United Kingdom and an unwillingness of the United States to fill that vacuum in the provision of global public goods. The result was global anarchy of a different sort. My deepest belief is that we must avoid both these traps. Our deepest wisdom must be harnessed in defining another path.


CONCLUSION

There are many reasons to study China. It is an extraordinary civilisation in its own right. It contains deep wisdom, generated over more than 4000 years of recorded history. China’s aesthetic tradition is also rich beyond all measure. It is easy to become lost in the world of Sinology. But the rise of China demands of us all a New Sinology for the 21st century.

One which is familiar with the Chinese tradition. One which is clear in its analysis of contemporary Chinese politics, economics, society and China’s unfolding role in the region and the world. As well as a New Sinology which is capable of synthesising the above.

We will need a generation of leaders who understand this integrated Chinese reality, in order to make sense of and engage with the China of the future. With our eyes wide open. And with our minds wide open as well. Open to new challenges. Open to new threats. Open to new possibilities. Open to new areas of cooperation and collaboration.

And above all, open to finding creative paths about how we preserve peace, preserve stability, avoid conflict and the scourge of war between these two great nations, while preserving the universal values, anchored in our international covenants, for which we all still stand.

Maître Sun Tzou

Voilà ! C'est un peu long mais il y a tout pour pas un sou ! Je ne critiquerais qu'une seule hypothèse, à ce jour d'ailleurs invérifiée, que le progrès économique et la modernisation rapide du pays induiront fatalement l'ouverture démocratique. Certes on peut arguer que sans elle l'innovation pourrait ralentir, soit par le caporalisme borné des structures de recherche, soit par la fuite des cerveaux créatifs agacés des entraves "patriotiques" et des passe-droits des nomenclatouristes.

Il est clairement dit par le pouvoir que la Chine de demain sera ce que le Parti communiste chinois en fera. Sa direction pèse déjà jusque dans les détails comme on le perçoit depuis le raidissement du 19è Congrès et le flicage généralisée renforcé d'une surveillance électronique de tout le monde en ville. Wang Qishan, le stratège anti-corruption, est nommé vice-président, ce qui récompense son système de détection quantique des anomaliens, permettant de fondre sur le déviant avant même qu'il ait compris. La Stasi en avait rêvé. C'est exposé dans un billet de 2014 (clic).

Je ne trahis aucun secret en dévoilant que le Département d'Etat américain (surtout depuis l'arrivée de Mike Pompeo) n'envisage aucune embellie démocratique même à longue échéance. Au moins y a-t-il un point fixe sur la carte diplomatique du monde ! Un gros point.


Il n'en demeure pas moins que la solution des énormes problèmes chinois, monstrueux crédits intérieurs insolvables, écologie quasiment détruite par endroit, impatience parfois violente des laissés-pour-compte des provinces défavorisées (on brûle aussi des voitures de police comme en France), effervescence d'une jeunesse éveillée par ses voyages à l'étranger qui s'accommode mal des vertus proclamées du parti unique, détournement des crédits budgétaires essentiels vers le réarmement et l'expansion économique à l'étranger (Routes de la soie) etc... problèmes nombreux qui ne verront pas de solutions dans une démocratie libérale d'un milliard trois cents millions de gens inéduqués au régime de Westminster ! Il y faudra de la poigne et des chaînes de commandement intelligentes et douées, ne reculant pas devant la régulation à l'ancienne où nécessaire. L'affaire Bo Xilai avait dévoilé la modernisation en marche de la Révolution culturelle mais il ne pouvait y avoir deux empereurs. Le plus fort a détruit l'autre qui a pris perpétuité dans une prison d'élite ! Son épouse aussi, et ses fils devraient suivre si l'un d'eux, l'aîné, n'est pas déjà en cage.

Pour terminer ce long article (il n'y a pas de limites quand on parle de la Chine), je me fais le parallèle avec l'empire des Hohenzollern à la charnière du XXè siecle qui dominait tous ses voisins de la tête et des épaules par sa technique et sa puissance industrielle, mais qui par orgueil dériva vers une puissance thalassocratique pour défier l'empire britannique au faîte de sa gloire jusqu'en Australie, s'engageant dans une lutte planétaire qui finit par la ruiner alors que, pénard sur ses terres, il aurait commandé au monde !

Brèves du jeudi

Calliope

Quand on n'a rien à dire mais qu'on veut faire vivre le blogue, on passe normalement la parole à plus intelligent que soi (ça se trouve), à défaut au moment, on parle à bâtons rompus avec son lectorat fidèle. C'est ce que ce jeudi m'inspire.

Les 150 ans de la naissance de Charles Maurras dont la roycosphère va parler cette année 2018 devrait être l'occasion d'une rétrospective poétique, tout à fait déliée de la physique sociale et du journalisme de combat que le Martégal a mené jusqu'à la fin. Et pour bien séparer les domaines, il serait juste que ce ne soit pas ses héritiers politiques qui s'y collent. A y bien regarder, les Capitales qu'il avait lui-même composées et qui avaient paru chez Flammarion en 1954, étaient aux deux-tiers consacrées à l'art poétique. Quatre vers avant le cul-de-lampe :

Tu ne comprendras rien au songe de la Vie
Tant que tu méconnais quel miracle d'amour
A conduit, par degrés, d'aube en aube ravie,
Son obscure dyade à l'unité du jour.

Mike Pompeo

L'autre sujet d'intérêt est le remaniement ministériel à la Maison Blanche qui ressemble de plus en plus à la cour du roi Pétaud. Le locataire, menacé de rupture par une actrice du Hard qui s'est rendu compte que cent trente mille dollars de confidentialité étaient peanuts comparés au tirage d'un livre de confidences d'alcôve, bouleverse son environnement géopolitique au bénéfice de la simplification des exposés qu'il endure chaque jour ouvrable.  
Rex Tillerson, ancien patron d'Exxon quand même, était trop "dans les détails" et "négociait", alors qu'il faut taper dur. Les échos revenus du Département d'Etat signalent un intense soulagement du titulaire - même si débarqué comme un malpropre - à rompre avec le Débile des greens. Tillerson attendra-t-il trois ans pour écrire ses mémoires à moins qu'il ne tourne définitivement la page de son stage en politique ? Il faut avouer qu'avec la moitié de la famille Trump mouillée dans les affaires russes ce n'est pas tous les jours dimanche pour la diplomatie. Fait étonnant, la page Secretary Of State du Département d'Etat n'est toujours pas mise à jour à la date de ce matin 15 mars 10h GMT. Pompeo fait l'unanimité.

Moteur LEAP de CFM-Safran

Le troisième et dernier point du jour convoque la presse ricanante sur le voyage en Inde du président Macron et de Madame. Treize milliards d'euros de contrats (surtrout les moteurs d'avions franco-américains LEAP) et l'intention exprimée d'entrer en négociation pour du solaire et des centrales EPR semblent peu de choses pour les critiques en continu de la politique Macron. Les plus acharnés embauchent la personnalité du président et celle de son épouse dans le tir aux pigeons tant ils sont décontenancés que cette attelage réussisse où d'autres échouèrent. Que les Macrons posent en amoureux au Taj Mahal ne me gêne pas. Je pense aux emplois chez Safran qui vient de perdre un contrat Dassault.
Plus généralement, je "jugerai" Macron sur deux résultats concrets : la baisse sensible du chômage et la baisse mesurable de la dépense publique, quels que soient les moyens d'y atteindre. Le reste est l'écume des jours qui nourrit la chronique.

On ne peut clore ce billet sans évoquer Patrick de Villenoisy pour lequel Royal-Artillerie avait fait campagne lors de la pré-campagne présidentielle de 2012. Il s'est tué sur la route lundi dernier vers Nogent-sur-Seine ; il avait 66 ans. Condoléances sincères à sa famille et à ses proches de l'Alliance royale dont il fut l'un des fondateurs avec Yves-Marie Adeline. Dix articles sont libellés de son nom sur ce blogue (voir le nuage en pied de page).

RN - Rassemblement National

Le nouveau nom du parti lepéniste est bien trouvé*. Assez banal pour ne pas braquer l'électeur, assez disant pour obtenir la confirmation des militants. Restera aux cadres communicants du parti de ne pas populariser l'acronyme RN qui reviendrait à la situation antérieure, FN... F'haine etc...

(*) sauf si en Justice il s'avérait que la marque est déjà déposée avec une antériorité certaine.

Si le conditionnement convient, reste à l'emplir. Depuis ce matin, la référence dictée par la nomenklatura frontiste est Donald Trump. Tant Jean Messiha chez Pascal Prod que Sébastien Chenu chez Bourdin (un réel plaisir de voir Bourdin hors de lui quand le député lui résiste) ont célébré la victoire populaire du magnat Newyorkais un peu ballot, reconverti en Tea Partisan cheveux au vent. Sauf que l'expérience américaine n'est pas répétible en France, comme nous l'avons déjà dit dans un billet récent, à moins de faire surgir des profondeurs du génie français le leader charismatique indiscuté qui emportera toutes les réticences. Je ne le vois pas au moment mais nous en avons pleins les cimetières.

Juste une remarque sur cette brève de comptoir : si le "programme" du Rassemblement National est décalqué sur celui de Trump, programme fondé par Steve Bannon dont la culture maurrassienne n'a pas survécu aux "dix-huit-trous", c'est indiscutablement Marion Maréchal-Le Pen qui devrait avoir le rôle, car elle est la plus proche de la dialectique conservatrice d'un Ted Cruz, par exemple, même s'il y a des nuances chez elle dans les détails, malheureusement aussi des simplifications hâtives quand la problématique se complexifie.

Avec ou sans Marion, c'est le vrai défi lancé au nouveau parti : sortir de l'approche binaire et entrer dans les complications.

Steve Bannon

En vue du 16è congrès du Front national

Le Pen II

Dans six jours se tiendra à Lille le XVIè congrès du Front national sous le régime de la démocratie d'opinion, les adhérents à jour de cotisation ayant reçu un questionnaire en quatre-vingt points pour éclairer le Bureau politique sur ce qu'il doit "penser"! Vingt-sept mille auraient déjà répondu. Mais la grosse affaire qui mettra tout le reste dans l'ombre est le changement de nom du parti. Ignorant la maxime de la cavalerie (à faire une connerie, faites-la vite !) l'état-major frontiste va diluer cette transition dans le temps par un vote postal qui devrait donner son résultat bien après le congrès, ouvrant ainsi une période de sarcasmes médiatiques contre les nationalistes.
Deux absences à prévoir à Lille : le fondateur, Jean-Marie Le Pen semble fatigué de ces joutes familiales, et la refondatrice, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen qui ne peut devenir le recours qu'après le retrait de sa tante, agrippée à un truc qui la dépasse. Les défis complexes exigent des solutions complexes et jusqu'ici tant Marine Le Pen que son défunt féal Philippot n'ont joué que sur deux trous de la flûte, frexit et nouveau franc.

Du discours de Marion Maréchal-Le Pen au Gaylord Convention Center de National Harbor (clic) je ne retrancherais rien si quelqu'un cherchait mon approbation. Il faut dire aussi qu'il est assez simpliste et adapté à son auditoire "chapeaux pointus et croix en feu" ! Mais comparer la France et les Etats-Unis est une figure de style pour cueillir des applaudissements dans ce genre d'enceintes, parce qu'il n'y a rien à comparer sauf ? la prétention à l'universalité de chaque modèle, respectivement, droits de l'homme chez nous, american way of life chez eux.

Si les Etats-Unis peuvent agiter un certain unilatéralisme - mais le maurrassien Steve Bannon n'a pu tenir son créneau au rempart de l'Union - l'état de la France lui interdit d'y penser même en songe. Nous allons parler de ça pour alimenter peut-être des débats de faisabilité qui interviendront à Lille dimanche prochain puisque le débriefing de la campagne présidentielle tourne autour de la question des possibles.

S'il existe des pays souverains, il n'existe plus de pays indépendant. Même le royaume érémitique de Corée du Nord peut mourir du tarissement de ses dépendances. Vouloir revenir à l'Europe des nations du traité de Westphalie est une chose (à bien périmétrer quand même) ; déclarer son indépendance de toute alliance, attache, supranationalité en est une autre.

Le Pen III

Il est toujours possible de retrouver plus d'indépendance dans le concert des nations - la Grande-Bretagne s'essaie à le prouver - mais il est un présupposé incontournable : la santé économique et financière pour se délivrer des agences de notation, des enceintes internationales de pouvoir et des fonds de pensions américains. La sagesse des nations, invoquée à droite quand ça nous arrange, a souvent les bons réflexes. Prenons l'exemple des GIPSIes : parmi les peuples des cinq nations gitanes qui ont été mises sous tutelle du FMI après le krach Lehman Brothers (Grèce, Italie, Portugal, Espagne, Irlande), il ne s'en est trouvé aucun pour réclamer l'abandon de la monnaie commune, encore moins le départ de l'Union européenne. Ils n'avaient aucune confiance dans les capacités de leur pays à survivre seul, et sans doute moins encore dans leurs dirigeants présents ou attendus.
Les cinq pays avaient leur pronostic vital engagé et l'opinion générale prévalut chez eux que c'était le plus mauvais moment pour renverser les alliances. La France de 2018 est dans ce cas, après deux quinquennats dispendieux, plombée par des déficits structurels (les pires) qui semblent impossibles à résorber sur une seule génération. Sans parler de la dette écrasante dont le service à petit prix dévore chaque année l'équivalent du budget de l'Education nationale. On n'ose pas imaginer une hausse des taux d'emprunt sur le marché des dettes ; un pour cent seulement et c'est le budget de la Justice qui est avalé par les gnomes de Zurich ! Donc messieurs du Front, réparez le pays avant de le détacher.

Si la France retrouvait un jour les instruments de sa souveraineté, cela signalerait aux générations futures qu'elle a guéri, et sans doute aussi qu'elle a éradiqué sa classe politique de pourrisseurs. Le chemin sera long car, si le pays est malade dans ses systèmes économiques et sociaux, il l'est d'abord dans les mentalités. C'est l'avachissement mental et moral qui doit être combattu en priorité car il détermine à lui-seul les capacités de redressement. Nul à droite ne veut prendre en compte la veulerie qui plombe tous les programmes de redressement puisque le logiciel nationaliste est construit par et pour un peuple de souche hors du commun, premier au monde, vaillant et résilient, mais affadi par le métissage et la captation de ses intérêts par les métèques. En réalité ce peuple n'a pas fait mieux que ses voisins à l'époque moderne et on lui raconte des histoires.

Bref, quand les comptes seront rétablis pour montrer aux autres que nous savons aussi faire ce qu'ils ont réussi avant nous, viendra le jour de se poser la question de rétablir notre souveraineté. Pas avant, et en sachant que le meilleur aboutissement d'une souveraineté formelle est dans l'optimisation des dépendances stratégiques. Si un parti parvenu au pouvoir aujourd'hui s'avisait de rétablir sa souveraineté formelle par décret, il se syrizerait dans le mois-même de la décision.

Le temps de la "France seule" est terminé depuis cent ans, 1917 exactement ! La "France avec" a succédé à la "France seule". "Avec" veut dire réfléchir sur nous en pensant aux autres, nos voisins et partenaires, à leurs réactions, aux interactions quand nous phosphorons sur notre avenir. C'est ce qu'a apporté la communauté européenne au début, une approche collaborative. Les institutions ont dérivé depuis lors vers une fédération à l'américaine dont on aperçoit les limites maintenant, les intérêts nationaux ne convergent plus, qui pis est, les soucis et les peurs géostratégiques divergent. L'Europe centrale marquée par quarante-cinq ans d'occupation soviétique a son agenda propre, les Baltes et les Scandinaves sont sur le qui-vive à cause de l'irrédentisme russe, les Balkans font du lard et ne servent à rien. Le projet européen est stoppé sur son erre !

Le Pen Ier

Profitons-en ! Cette nation a besoin d'un projet. Que voulons-nous de nous ? Que voulons-nous des autres ? Nos atouts présents et futurs, nos libertés de base, les contraintes que nous acceptons, nos refus irréfragables. Quand le projet sera prêt, il faudra diriger les hommes dans les domaines essentiels à son accomplissement. Qu'on ne mélange pas tout, à ce stade, il n'est pas l'heure d'ouvrir les questions sociétales qui viendront plus tard, ou jamais si l'Etat se retire dans son périmètre régalien. Justement, il faudra redéfinir l'Etat et son champ d'exercice, le domaine public structurant hors-Etat (éducation, transports), les domaines économiques prépondérants, le champ des libertés basses, in fine la respiration générale de la société. Une fois apaisée, nous laisserons évoluer ses mœurs. Je doute que le Front national nouveau soit capable intellectuellement de construire pareil projet.
A défaut de capacités ad hoc, ce n'est pas prêcher pour ma paroisse que de proposer la remise des clés du domaine régalien à un monarque qui réglera tout ça en ses conseils, à l'abri du désordre démocratique. Tout le reste sera abandonné au génie natif de ce peuple créatif et intelligent en diable, qui, si mal gouverné, survit par la débrouille et le marché noir quand on l'y pousse. "L'autorité en haut, les libertés en bas".

Pour retrouver la latitude nécessaire au déroulement du projet, il nous faudra réorganiser nos dépendances européennes et revoir les applications du principe d'attribution/subsidiarité depuis l'intérieur du Leviathan, et pour ce faire, se renforcer dans les instances communautaires. La Grande Bretagne a décidé de faire l'inverse jusqu'à se rendre compte qu'il était impossible de réorganiser ses dépendances de l'extérieur. Le Brexit la met au pied d'un mur lisse ! Soyons plus malins.

Reste pour un autre article la question brûlante de la mutation du peuple en peuples, la cohue démographique en Europe, le communautarisme, l'érosion des valeurs anciennes. C'est un autre sujet... un préalable indépendant du sujet traité aujourd'hui. Il faut prendre à bras-le-corps la question migratoire à l'aune de nos intérêts et cesser de se la jouer recteur universel des droits de l'homme sans devoirs. Ce sont les vieilles terres d'empire, habituées au malaxage des peuples, qui vont nous ouvrir les yeux en bloquant la dérive immigrationniste à Bruxelles même. La revanche de Charles-Quint ?

Postscriptum : Pour préparer le XVIè Congrès on peut aussi lire le long article de James Traub dans Foreign Policy (clic) sur la démocratie illibérale.

SNCF, le "statut" n'est pas le pire !

On voit des gens s'époumoner à dénoncer le statut extravagant des cheminots sans peser sur la contradiction majeure de ce dispositif qui fait bénéficier les rond.e.s de cuirs des avantages légitimes accordés jadis aux dompteurs de la Bête Humaine. La secrétaire de pool ou de direction qui part à 53 ans dans une compagnie financée par l'impôt vole quelqu'un. Le fond du problème SNCF n'est quand même pas là. Il est bien plus gros qu'annoncé, bien plus difficile à résoudre, quasiment hors de portée de la classe politique en cour : il n'y a jamais eu après-guerre de plan global de transports qui n'ait conclu à l'avantage des camionneurs, lesquels ont vite compris leur force jusqu'à bloquer les routes pour revendiquer d'autres acquis sociaux.
De quoi s'agit-il ?

D'optimiser les flux de marchandises et denrées sur les fuseaux de fret en site propre et de réserver l'éclatement final, comme le groupement d'amont, à la route. C'est le schéma intelligent mais bizarrement mollement promu par les écologistes. Ne remontons pas à l'Ancien Régime, mais observons le présent (sans trop entrer dans les chiffres) et imaginons le futur.

La France dispose d'un réseau ferroviaire développé, ainsi que de canaux et voies fluviales reliés à des ports. L'un et les autres sont sous-exploités en fret, même s'il n'en fut pas toujours le cas, avant que le camion ne soit capable de parcourir de longues distances. On n'a pas à répéter combien de cargaisons-camions contient un train de marchandises ; mais je peux dire à ceux qui découvrent le sujet qu'une seule barge de la Seine peut porter jusqu'à quatre-vingt-dix conteneurs qui seront quatre-vingt-dix camions de moins sur l'autoroute A13 (soit une théorie de sept kilomètres de long, sans comparer la quantité de gasoil brûlé).

- les voies d'eau actives sont en rouge et le Danube balkanique en noir -

Les fuseaux de transports de masse ne sont pas faits pour livrer le client dans sa cour. Mais les sociétés de camionnage local l'ont fait et le referont. Le train de fret descendait (ou montait) de nuit et à 6 heures on dépotait sur le quai de la halle aux colis (le SERNAM) où les camions venaient charger. On voit encore partout ces postes-fret à quai haut, abandonnés dans les gares de voyageurs. Au Fenwick d'aujourd'hui ça irait bien plus vite pour transborder des palettes. Combien coûterait globalement le transport des flux de marchandises et denrées en site propre ? Moins cher s'il fait masse.

Est-ce faisable tout simplement ? Pas avec la SNCF d'aujourd'hui ! Ses cadres rêvent de mettre des avions sur le rail et le fret ne leur apportera aucune gloire. Pourtant des trains-blocs circulent en France à la satisfaction de tous, par exemple le Perpignan-Rungis qui livre six cents tonnes de fruits et légumes chaque matin au Marché d'intérêt national, mais en parallèle on laisse monter deux-cent-cinquante camions frigo chaque jour sur Paris. Idiot ! On a vu aussi des trains-blocs de conteneurs Lyon-Rotterdam. On sait faire, "on" n'a pas envie de faire ; dans les bureaux climatisés on fait... carrière ! Ce n'est pas le roulant ou l'agent de triage de la SNCF qu'il faut dénoncer mais son état-major gommeux d'X-Ponts, X-Mines.

Les gens du Plan Quinquennal ont appliqué au plus grand pays d'Europe occidentale et donc à celui où les distances étaient les plus longues, les recettes qu'utilisaient les pays moitié moins grands et qui trafiquaient en tous sens dans des zones industrielles denses comme la Rhur, le triangle Hanovre-Hambourg-Brême, le bloc Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield ou le Sud des Galles.

La métropolisation inéluctable du territoire français va remettre à la mode les barreaux de fret qui seront un bon moyen de "domestiquer" les flux si l'on ne veut pas être bouffés par la route et les particules fines. Quant au transit international, il faut avoir le courage de mettre les camions étrangers sur le rail comme le font les républiques alpines qui en eurent un jour assez de refaire leurs routes endommagées par des Bulgares.

Bien sûr, tout ceci convoque des financements puisqu'il faudra réhabiliter les postes-chargement-fer dans les métropoles d'éclatement, refaire certains embranchements, acheter de la traction (qui ne tombe pas en panne) et former du personnel motivé par le fret. Ailleurs, finir le canal Seine-nord et le Rhône-Rhin pour créer un hinterland à Marseille-Fos. Si nous n'y arrivons pas, je suggère de donner le projet aux Chinois qui en trois coups de queuillère à pot monteront les infrastructures et amèneront les trains dans le cadre des Routes nouvelles de la Soie. Il faut y être allé voir pour bien comprendre notre décadence.

Sur ce, je ne vous raconte pas comment fonctionne le lobbying des camionneurs, ni l'avalanche d'obstacles de toutes provenances qui a bloqué les trains de bitume de Petit-Couronne à Irun pour desservir l'Espagne... il y a vingt ans.

Parkland never again ?

Pistolet des Ateliers Nationaux de France ca. 1790 - shooté par Rama — CC BY-SA 2.0-fr

Tout le monde entend parler du Second amendement de la Constitution des Etats-Unis d'Amérique sans l'avoir lu, et pourtant il ne s'agit que d'une phrase, la voici :

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Il y a quatre mots dans ce texte qui est parfaitement clair, et pourtant l'esprit chicanier américain est parvenu à créer une jurisprudence. On s'en imprégnera en lisant l'article ad hoc chez Cornell en cliquant ici.

1) Militia : la sûreté publique peut être confiée à une milice ; ce qui est une excellente garantie de bon emploi, la hiérarchie surveillant ses effectifs dans les règles d'usage ;
2) State : C'est une affaire sérieuse qui concerne la sécurité de l'État, du comté, de la ville ;
3) People : Ce sont les civils par opposition aux soldats ;
4) Arms : A l'époque de sa rédaction (1791) les constitutionnalistes connaissaient les fusils à poudre noire rechargeable par le canon. Le texte dit aussi que les miliciens conservent l'arme chez eux et sont autorisés à sortir avec elle. Leurs enfants ne vont pas en cours avec un soufflant.

D'interprétations en exégèses savantes, on se retrouve en 2018, pour les meilleurs bénéfices du Rifle Business, avec un gamin perturbé de 19 ans qui achète librement des armes et va défourailler dans son ancien lycée avec un fusil automatique AR-15 faisant dix-sept morts !

Nous n'entrerons pas dans la dispute américaine entre le gros business et la corruption institutionnelle des parlementaires qualifiée de lobbying¹, ce sont leurs problèmes, ce sont leurs morts ! Mais nous ne nous privons pas de dire à nos lecteurs américains que dans cette affaire après bien d'autres (je pense au carnage de Colombine en 1999) l'American Way of Life en a pris un sacré coup.
L'insécurité réelle dans nos pays européens doit être combattue en rehaussant les capacités de police en voirie et en adoptant des lois plus dures contre la violence, avec des peines planchers interdisant la "compréhension" dans l'intime conviction des juges. Sans doute pas en ouvrant un rayon d'armement chez Lidl !

Note (1): On peut fouiller OpenSecrets.org par exemple pour 2017

Le mouvement lycéen Never Again qui grandit aux Etats-Unis a tout mon soutien, ce qui ne l'aidera pas beaucoup, mais par principe, nous devons dénoncer en mémoire des victimes l'usurpation constitutionnelle de la National Rifle Association. Les gros sponsors qui la fuient ont anticipé une issue défavorable à leurs intérêts ; et l'intérêt c'est important aux States. Peut-être que finalement, en tapant au portefeuille, les gosses viendront à bout des gros cons !

Postscriptum
Royal-Artillerie parlait déjà du Second Amendement au moment de la tuerie de Newton en décembre 2012 : De la milice et des armes à feu.

Nature et paysans

« Le paysan [...] n'est plus l'artisan universel qu'il était autrefois ; il renonce à façonner ses outils, il les achète, ainsi que ses vêtements, les meubles, les semences, toutes sortes d'ingrédients. La machine remplace l'outil. L'agriculture devient en partie une industrie détachée de la nature, imposée à la nature comme les autres industries. Dès lors, étant perdu, comment le paysan pourrait-il sauver l'homme de la ville ? » (Drieu La Rochelle dans ses "Notes pour comprendre le siècle" (1940).

La nature reconquiert ses droits, et si elle avait une âme comme le veulent les romantiques, on dirait qu'elle se venge. La surexploitation des sols par le sous-solage et la chimie les stérilise ; dans l'esprit des exploitants, ils deviennent de simples supports de culture auxquels il faut apporter tous les nutriments pour produire et même l'eau. Le ciel est presque un handicap puisqu'il est devenu une variable imprévisible du résultat futur. Des cultures entières en Espagne ou aux Pays-Bas sont entrées sous serres sur des milliers d'hectares, la Frise n'a pas osé la banane mais ça viendra.

Nous sommes quand même arrivés au bout du modèle productiviste, tout nous le montre, et les paysans broyés par la "machine" et ses chiffres, se tuent. Il y a d'autres modèles d'agriculture, des modèles responsables, pérennes, mais qui heurtent les intérêts des puissances établies sur les terres et les filières, sans parler des producteurs d'intrants et des semenciers. Rien ne prouve qu'une alternative écologique soit capable de se substituer au productivisme pour nourrir les villes mais les rares occasions d'essayer un nouveau modèle doivent être saisies afin de le faire avancer, de le faire mûrir. Notre-Dame des Landes est une occasion. Elle a ceci de particulier que le gel des terres les a préservées du Génie Rural de Loire-Atlantique et du fameux remembrement destructeur des haies, des mares et des rus. Le bocage ancien est généralement intact.

Cliché Loïc Venance/AFP

La ZAD n'est pas encore évacuée que la FNSEA hurle, le Conseil départemental hurle. Toute expérience est niée. Ce bocage méprisé que l'on voulait bétonner jadis pour en tirer quelque chose, voilà qu'il devient intéressant. Les responsables locaux veulent démembrer les mille six cents hectares de l'aéroport pour les remettre en circuit dans la SAFER sous la patte de la Chambre d'agriculture (FNSEA). Le Conseil départemental (PS), humilié par la décision d'abandon de l'aéroport de Pharaon, veut récupérer les neuf cents hectares dont il était propriétaire auparavant, mais pour en faire quoi ? Il n'a pas vocation à cultiver. Peut-être une base de loisirs humides avec un lac en ciment ? D'autres propriétaires expropriés dans les règles veulent maintenant revenir sur leurs terres. Dans l'expérience ? Le préfet de Nantes doit établir les règles de revitalisation de l'espace sous la pression des élus locaux, mais c'est Matignon qui va impulser le cadre. Attendons.

La Confédération paysanne a de bonnes idées qui ont été testées au Larzac. De jeunes artisans se sont formés sur la ZAD aux métiers de la ruralité, qui veulent continuer sur toute la zone de chalandise du projet. Les apports extérieurs, anarchistes pour la plupart, ne resteront pas au sein de communautés paysannes qui ne demandent qu'à s'organiser. Il faut demain laisser un peu de temps à la décantation, procéder à l'amalgame des propositions nouvelles, favoriser les conditions de démarrage pour ensuite laisser faire. Si d'aventure il fallait durant des années accompagner financièrement le projet pour le viabiliser, on devrait considérer qu'il a échoué. Mais d'ici là, tentons le coup ! Restera à peaufiner des modes alternatifs de distribution bi-passant les trois ou quatre centrales d'achats qui font la loi et les prix en pesant sur la qualité. C'est un autre sujet dans lequel on parlera des lanternes.

JO de Pyeongchang, chapeau Séoul !

Célébrons la clôture des Jeux olympiques d'hiver en Corée du Sud magnifiquement organisés et qui nous ont fait croire à quinze jours de paix dans la péninsule. La détente était à l'agenda du tyran qui suit soigneusement le plan de dissuasion stratégique de son père et de son grand-père, mais des fois le temps échappe au décideur et la main passe... Acceptons-en l'augure !

La chanteuse la plus connue de K-pop CL a performé de manière percutante pour la cérémonie, mais la bande son télé était si mauvaise que nous vous proposons la version studio de sa maison de disques. Si vous entendez parler du "quartier Saint-Lazare" dans la chanson, sachez que vous êtes mauvais en coréen. Succès phénoménal, ce qui peut surprendre ou nous faire comprendre que les Coréens sont d'un autre monde, clinquant et compliqué à la fois, trop compliqué déjà pour le locataire de la Maison blanche qui profite de l'ambiance pour durcir les représailles économiques américaines.