Many in Pakistan may not have heard the name of Professor Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian ideologue, prolific writer, political commentator and proponent of Eurasian renaissance as an alternative model for International Power structure. While our mainstream media relies on a small international radar to propagate stereotyped world view through the lens of western thought, it is important that we discuss other ideas and proponents of the alternative international system.
Dugin has been labeled by the western media as an anarchist, doomsday soothsayer, fascist and neo Nazi. Unfortunately, there has been very less counter debate on the persona of Alexander Dugin who happens to be a trend-setter in Russian political thought. He has maintained a respectable position in Russian hierarchy and happens to be an informal advisor to President Putin. Interestingly Aleksandr Dugin is quite popular in the US as well, especially his projection about President elect Trump to rise to ultimate power in the United States.
With Russio-Pakistan relations warming up and realignment of power in our part of the world, it becomes imperative to peep into Russian thoughts on geopolitics and discuss the movers and shakers of the contemporary cabal of Russian political thought. Aleksandr Dugin tops the list of this Russian cabal and it could be a good start point to understand the Russian mind.
Dugin’s views on international political system stem from six major hypotheses:
One; the current world is unipolar with the global West in its centre and with the United States as its core. This kind of the unipolarity has geopolitical and ideological sides. Geopolitically it is the strategic dominance of the earth by North-American hyperpower and the effort of Washington to organise the balance of forces on the planet in such a manner to be able to rule the whole world in accordance with its own national (imperialistic) interests. It is bad because it deprives other states and nations of their real sovereignty.
Two; the US has established global dictatorship ,with de-facto power to decide who is right and who is wrong and who should be punished . There is need for global community to fight against it. The American hegemony needs to be checked and rolled back, and, at one point it will be.
Three; the end of capitalism. The development of capitalism has reached its natural limit. There is only one path left to the world economic system — to collapse in upon itself. Based on a progressive increase of purely financial institutions, first banks, and then more complex and sophisticated stock structures, the system of modern capitalism has become completely divorced from reality, from the balance of supply and demand, from the production and consumption ratio, from connection with a real life.
Four; Liberalism is the international swamp and is a dying ideology, the world needs a Nuremberg Trial for Liberalism, the last totalitarian political ideology of modernity. This swamp is a special post-modernist culture. It is based on the decomposition of any entity through digitalization, obligatory schizomorphism, and so on. To drain it signifies restoring the Apollonian unity of art. Art should return to holism, let us close this page of history.
Five; Eurasianism. The time has come for a vision of world history based on geopolitics and the virility of diverse civilizations. Russia’s special place amongst the global elite, her unique culture of accommodation and her unwavering sovereignty can resist globalisation.
Six; the days of uni-polarity are gone. The world at large should accept multi-polarity. The international system can only be stabilised by a multipolar world, which recognises all cultures and philosophies and accommodates sensitivities of smaller and medium sized states.
Dugin’s projections about the rise of alternative power blocks and the increasing role of Russia in the global arena have proven right. President Putin’s ability to restore semblance of stability in Syrian conflict, initiative to help solve the Afghanistan imbroglio and partner with China to develop a parallel power system in Eurasia are some of the trends that Dugin has been propagating for so long in the past decade. Dugin is also a proponent of the idea of Big Spaces: the globe is divided into strategic zones and spaces. Pakistan and West Asia falls within the Pan-Eurasian Zone and fits the Russian design of an alternate future.
Dugin also projected a Turkik-Slav alliance, where two great people of old Russian and Turkish empires could join hands to check the menace of global instability. It may be interesting to note that Turco-Russia relations are becoming confortable and strategic in nature and the dream of Eurasian renaissance could become a reality in future.
Those who projected the isolation of Pakistan may be frustrated in Dugin’s world, Pakistan-China-Russia have recently held parlays in Moscow to address daunting challenges in the region; it may not be farfetched to say that the corridors of economic development like CPEC may become the corridors of peace for the entire Eurasia.
With Trump assuming power in US, the future of a multipolar world would depend upon a contest between the contemporary traditionalist imperialist block hiding behind the façade of liberalism and the proponents of Dugin’s world. Let’s wait for the inauguration of Donald Trump.