A Review of Michela Fontana's Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court

Michela Fontana’s Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court presents the fascinating adventures of the eponymous Jesuit and his travels to China in 1582. The award winning book is a riveting account of this crucial period in history, the age of exploration made possible by the Portuguese and Spanish being the first to circumnavigate the entire globe. It was the former who established a settlement in the Chinese territory of Macao, and hence launched an important phase of extensive interactions with this ancient civilization, a country which, for many Europeans, was wrapped in mystery and intrigue, in part because by then most European intellectuals had either read, or were familiar with, Marco Polo’s account of the Middle Kingdom published over 3 centuries prior.

 

The Jesuits had a mission to spread the faith around the world, and their approach to accomplishing this was to transmit Western knowledge and science, which by then had significantly advanced as evidenced by many breakthrough inventions including microscopes, clocks, maps, and other instruments of measurement. It was partly for this reason that the Jesuit order stressed the importance of secular and scientific knowledge and education alongside theology. Membership required rigorous and extensive training and Jesuits, as a result, were composed only of the brightest and talented individuals. A small portion of Jesuits took on the arduous task of travelling to far away places in the Americas and Asia to carry out their mission, and here, too, only the extraordinary were selected. Travelling to Asia, for example, required six months by ship, and 25% of ships and their passengers were lost either to bad weather, pirates, or sickness. Moreover, they had to leave their relatively comfortable lives in Europe forever, and therefore had to abandon the attachments of friends and family to live in strange lands where they would be exposed to violence, pathogens, and other life threatening challenges. Consequently, many died relatively young, including the Jesuit who is the focus of this blogpost.

 

Thus, only the most talented, committed, and physically fit members were suitable for the mission to Asia, and Matteo Ricci fit this profile. Given his talents, he could have remained in Europe and prospered in any field (most likely in his case, academia), while enjoying the comforts of living in Rome, Milan, or Paris, but he decided to renounce this and take the risky voyage to China with the knowledge that he would never return. This in itself makes Ricci an extraordinary character, but his adventures in China were even more remarkable as they would end up changing the history of China, Europe, and their relations with each other. He not only successfully converted many Chinese, he also brought Western science and knowledge. Throughout, he mastered the language and developed a deep affection for China, which was reciprocated by the Chinese, who were very fond of Li Madou (Ricci’s Chinese name) and who continue to celebrate him in the present era. This blogpost will highlight Ricci’s adventures in the Middle Kingdom as recounted in Fontana’s superbly written text. Additionally, an effort will be made to relate Ricci’s story to the present state of China and its relations with the outside world.

 

The Silk Road

 

The geographical space we now call Europe had extensive trade ties with China during antiquity. Via the ancient Silk Road, elite Romans were able to purchase luxuries from the far East especially silk, porcelain, and tea, while the Chinese purchased horses, honey, and wine from the Romans. Given the distances, however, direct contact was rare or perhaps non-existent, as a round trip took 18 months, and it was middle men, usually Persian, Turkish or Arab traders, who transported the goods in both directions. Nonetheless, Rome and China were aware of each other, as evidenced by the names in their respective languages (“Sinae” and “Daqin”). This mainly economic interaction survived many upheavals, until it was permanently closed by the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453, giving them a monopoly on trade with China.

 

Marco Polo’s travels represent the next important phase in Europe’s relations with China. He travelled there with his father and brother in 1271 mainly looking for trading opportunities. At the time, China and large parts of Eurasia were ruled by the Mongol empire, and Marco Polo travelled to their territories and lived there for 24 years, and was even made an official by Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. When he returned to Italy, he recounted his story which was published in 1300 and which circulated widely, helping to fuel Europe’s enduring curiosity about China.

 

The Portuguese established a settlement in Macao in 1557 and from there helped to launch evangelization missions across Asia. China, for many, was the main prize, in part because of its size and in part because it by then had a very advanced civilization. Rome was recruiting members who could help to carry out this mission, and Matteo Ricci volunteered.

 

He arrived on 1582, and the first task was to study Mandarin. By then he already spoke Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Greek, but this did not prepare him for the difficulty of learning Chinese in part because it has a completely different writing system, and at the time, there was no pinyin—the phonetic spelling of Chinese using the Roman alphabet—to assist in the endeavour. Despite the difficulty, within a year he could speak without an interpretor, and after three years, his Chinese was sufficient to carry out his duties as a Jesuit priest—carry out the Catholic mass, evangelization, and communication, written and oral, with local parishioners and officials.

 

He would eventually master the language, such that he was able to write and publish widely read books entirely in Chinese, such as The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, that presented Christian thought and Western philosophy. He also translated important books to Chinese including Euclid’s The Elements, which introduced Western geometry.  These textual and literary accomplishments represent a major advance in China-Europe relations, in part because they greatly facilitated the transmission of knowledge. A mastery of language led to an in-depth knowledge of China, making Matteo Ricci history’s first Sinologist. And it is here where Fontana’s text really fires up the imagination, as Ricci’s observations allow us to better compare the similarities and differences between Europe’s and China’s respective civilizations.

 

One difficulty encountered by Ricci was convincing locals about the existence of the Christian diety, which was personal, monotheistic, generative, a perfectly loving and just lawgiver. Such a conception required several ontological assumptions which were absent in China’s civilization; if nature was characterized with decay and death, while God was not, the latter had to be in a sense separate from nature even though he created it. And the monotheistic element required the belief that all other deities were false. In the Chinese conception of the cosmos, there was no clear separation between nature and the spirit world. The various aspects of nature— the heavens, seasons, etc—were divine, and this conception influenced how society was organized. The emperor, for example, was also called the son of heaven and represented, among other things, the link between the people and the cosmos. Partly for this reason, one of his major duties was to calculate the major dates on the calendar.

 

In Europe at the time, ordinary people and the elite—i.e., the nobility and aristocracy—shared the same religion. In China, in contrast, the elite were mostly Confucian, which was more a philosophy about how to live and govern well than a religion. The masses, meanwhile, believed in various divinities, mainly Bhuddist but also Taoist. China, therefore, was polytheist, and different religions had co-existed for thousands of years. Existing religions erected statues of the various divinities and worshipped them. For Ricci, this was idolatrous, and convincing them of this, and that there existed a single invisible God who loved them, and with whom they would be reunited after death, represented a radical rupture from existing beliefs.

 

For Ricci as for other Catholics, Jesus was God incarnate, and the crucified Christ provided an image which helped to give flesh to the narrative about the relationship between humans and the divine. But for the Jesuits, it was science which provided the basis for the faith, as it revealed a universe governed by precise laws and regularities which implied a kind of intelligent law giver. Western science showed the law of cause and effect, and if such a pattern occurred chronologically, there needed to be a First Cause, given that it would be illogical to posit retrospectively an infinity of causes. Many elite Chinese were convinced by these explanations and converted, yet the pace of conversions was relatively slow compared to elsewhere in Asia, in part because of the incompatibility of some local practices.

 

For example,  polygamy was a common practice especially among the elite. Ricci discovered that many had concubines. When Ricci told them that such as practice was forbidden among Catholics, and that sexual relations were only permitted among married and monogamous couples, many balked about the necessity of denying themselves a custom that few every questioned. A Jesuit in the Ming Court tells the story of the scholar-bureacrat Li Zhizao, who had to grapple with this dilemma. Like other Chinese literati, he was fascinated by Ricci’s scientific knowledge, and especially by the predictive accuracy of his calculations which contrasted with the erroneous ones of locals; for Zhizao, this was proof that Ricci’s religion represented truth. But he had a mistress with whom he enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, and giving her up while committing exclusively to his wife and the mother his children seemed like an unreasonable sacrifice. Many other Chinese undoubtedly struggled to resolve the conundrum, and many likely were unwilling to convert precisely for this reason. A similar situation occurred half a century after Ricci’s travels at the highest level of the Chinese state. Emperor Zhu Youlang, whose mother and sister had converted to Christianity, refused to baptism because of the prohibition on polygamy.

 

Another local characteristic Ricci had to contend with was the tendency of Chinese to consult astrologers and fortune tellers. For Catholics, this practice is forbidden in part because a core feature of the faith is that humans’ destiny is determined by the choices they make—their commitment to God, church, family, and virtuous living. Fortune tellers, for Ricci, denied the importance of human agency, and its popularity was the consequence of the fear of death which resulted from the absence of the concept of heaven; for the Chinese, death meant nothingness, and this motivated their desire to avoid it as long as possible. Fortune tellers, many Chinese believed, possessed knowledge that could help them in this regard, who in turn exploited this fear by charging fees for telling them what they wanted to hear. This tendency to be susceptible to quackery because of the wish to avoid death existed at the highest levels of society: emperors throughout China’s history, for example, paid handsome amounts of money to alchemists in their pursuit of elixirs of immortality. Ricci observed the huge market for these kinds of services and made great efforts to convince the Chinese that it was a complete waste of money, rooted in irrational fears. And he practiced what he preached, as he himself had no fear of death; this was another factor that greatly impressed locals and undoubtedly led to some conversions.

 

Ricci’s interactions with government officials allowed him to observe and understand the political system in China, and this too is a fascinating part of A Jesuit in the Ming Court. The most salient aspect he discovered was the influence of the Confucian governing philosophy, which emphasized the importance of virtue and merit as the basis of governing. This belief was manifest in the annual ritual of the imperial examinations, where Chinese across the country from all social classes competed to obtain high scores on exams which tested their knowledge of Confucius, plus poetry, history, and public administration. The best performers would be selected as government officials in the highest echelons of the administration, an outcome which promised status, income, and security. Competition was therefore fierce and students spent immense amounts of time, and families spent large amounts of money, to prepare for this exam which helped ensure that only the most talented governed the various parts of the country. This practice still exists 400 years later in the form of the gaokao, showing that, despite the many changes in regime during that period (monarchy, liberal republic, socialist republic, empire, nation, etc) there is a continuity which speaks to some enduring aspects of the civilization encountered by Ricci.

 

Another feature encountered by Ricci which has endured to the present is political centralization. The Europe that Ricci left had a fragmented political system governed by many different independent political entities, as after the collapse of Rome the continent remained mostly divided. China, comparable in size and even ethnic diversity, had unified under a single emperor in 221 BC, and when Ricci arrived, had a single emperor who ruled all its territories. From antiquity to the period of Ricci’s arrival, the state had collapsed at least 6 times, but seemed to have always reconstituted itself so that power once again became centralized in the capital. Of course, such a pattern is observable in the present era even though the reigning form of political organization—nation, republic, socialism—is very different from previous regimes. This too provides evidence of a kind of civilizational DNA which transcends history’s political upheavals.

 

The Europe that Ricci left behind was very violent, something recognized by Ricci himself. Street brawls were a common occurrence, many walked in public fully armed, and there were wars of conquest on the continent and beyond. Perhaps in part from the Roman legacy and from the medieval honour system, war and violence were important elements of politics and hence philosophy. In China, Ricci discovered the reigning philosophy—Confucianism—had little to say about military strategy or defense, and emphasized the importance of virtue, harmony, and stability. Public violence was rare, and locals were never armed. Although the Chinese had invented gun powder, they had little interest in wars of conquest or in colonization. Contemporary China, again, displays the same pattern. The last war fought by this great power was in 1979 against Vietnam, whereas its peers—for example the US and Russia—have in the past 40 years fought multiple wars. Moreover, the latter two countries are relatively violent, with high homicide rates, while in China murder is relatively rare, and in fact it is one of the most secure countries in the world.

 

This centralization of political power entailed a specific form of governing, derived from Confucianism, which emphasized the importance of social harmony. And it was this which provided the criteria for determining whether foreign ideas and activities were allowed to operate in the country. The Jesuits received permission to evangelize mainly because Chinese officials, including the emperor, were deeply impressed by their scientific knowledge, which, they correctly concluded, offered an opportunity for learning which could enrich and strengthen the empire. A Jesuit in the Ming Court recounts how some local officials deemed the religious aspect to be a threat to domestic stability, but when a decision on the question had to be made by the highest political authority in the capital, it was observed how the Catholic faith was conducive to harmony and stability. One reason is that Confucianism was wholly compatible with Catholicism, especially the emphasis on virtue, community service, and self improvement.

 

Since then, with some brief interruptions, Catholicism has been an officially recognized religion. There are now approximately 10 million Catholics in the country who can practice their faith without molestation. This reveals another enduring tendency in Chinese governance: religions require official permission to operate and this is granted only if they are deemed to be consistent with stability and harmony. Partly for this reason, many protestant sects—such as Christian Zionism, or the prosperity gospel, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few—would not be granted permission to operate as they all contain beliefs which are not religious as such.

 

The ultimate purpose of Ricci’s travels was to convert China to Catholicism. On this measure, he perhaps did not achieve his objectives, as during his 27 years of evangelization, Fontana calculates that maybe 2500 conversions occurred.  Nonetheless, Ricci and the Jesuits left an enduring legacy which remains to the present day. In China, he is referred to affectionately with his Chinese name, Li Madou, and is celebrated by the highest authorities, as is Marco Polo, with statues, monuments, and by being part of educational curriculum, such that most Chinese, even ordinary ones, are familiar with his story. His mastery of the language and even culture in some ways made him an honorary Chinese; in the words of Ricci’s contemporary Guo Qinluo, “Li Madou has lived in the Middle Kingdom for a long time. He is no longer a foreigner but Chinese, as he belongs to China”. One sees his legacy in the beautiful cathedral in Shanghai, built by French Jesuits between 1905-1910, and in the Jesuit library which preserves their texts and documents.

 

Ricci’s adventures also helped to fuel Europe’s enduring fascination with China and even the tendency of Sinophilia observable among some intellectuals. In the 400 years since, relations between China and Europe have been characterized with oscillations of opening and closing, cooperation and conflict. In the most recent phase of interaction, which can be dated from China’s opening in 1978 to the present, relations have flourished as measured by the amount of trade and travel between the two continents. Moreover, the opening of over 200 Confucian institutes across Europe highlights the two-way direction of cultural transmission which, despite some tensions and setbacks, continues to be highly enriching for both.

A Review of Kenneth Waltz's "Man, State, and War"

During the academic year 2024-2025, a colleague requested that I lead a seminar for PhD students, one that  would be organized around a key text considered to be a classic in the field. He sent me a list of potential books, and I selected Kenneth Waltz’s Man, State, and War. His works are required reading around the world for majors in international relations, and in my career as a teacher of the discipline I have assigned his works when discussing questions of war and peace, so that students may learn the particular answers provided by the school of thought commonly known as ‘realpolitik’ or simply ‘realism’. With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, the question of why wars occur has become pressing. Science, in my view, cannot provide a definitive answer, but theories which aim to explain war can help to sharpen our thinking, assist in considering plausible explanations, and establish the parameters of testing our arguments in the light of evidence in the form of observable events, facts, patterns, or tendencies.

Man, State, and War is very helpful for this endeavour. Unlike most scholarship, which usually and understandably interrogates narrow or niche nodes of inquiry, the text aims to answer one of the big questions of human affairs, which can be pithily summarized as “Why War”? Or, more specifically, why do wars persist throughout history despite very different epochs, cultures, economic and political structures? Man, State and War provides an answer which itself was not original but which—and here is the novelty and value of the text—is expressed in a very accessible form, in a way which provokes fruitful thought and generative discussion.

 The reason for the recurrence of war, argues Waltz, is that the overarching system of international relations is anarchical in the sense that there are no authorities above the state which can peacefully resolve conflict the way, say, a court or legislature can do domestically. Consequently, states must rely on themselves for dispute resolution, and in the absence of an overarching political or legal structure with legitimate coercive power, it is their strength—in the form of economic and military power—which will determine the outcome. The incentive for states, then, is to maximize power, and since all are behaving this way, there is a constant struggle for supremacy which often breaks out in war.

 One reason for the argument’s importance is that it challenges other explanations, such as a corrupted human nature or the notion of “bad” states, which most believed before Waltz’s text and perhaps still do. In part because of the way the argument is presented, and in part because it challenges widely held views on the reasons for war, the text has become a classic, meaning it has value that transcends the period in which it was written (mid-1950s), and had a significant influence on later writers in a way that makes it required reading for understanding the history of thought.

 The first time I read parts of the text was during my MA and PhD studies between 2007-2013, and I closely re-read the text in its entirety in the Spring of 2025 to help ensure fruitful discussions during the seminar. Re-reading the text after so many years and the accumulation of knowledge and experience allowed, I think, for a more in-depth interpretation of Man, State, and War. This blogpost will present my analysis of the text’s main contributions to our understanding of war and peace, while making connections to the wars currently raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

 Commonly held—and wrong—explanations for war

 Most people most of the time perhaps do not theorize the question of war for any number of reasons. One may be that for some, war is a just a part of human affairs, similar to other social practises, and hence there is little need for explanation anymore than we need to explain why, for example, we eat, sleep, poop, marry, and reproduce. Others take this supposed natural tendency as their starting point in attempting to explain war, and in fact classical thinkers have linked war to features of human nature which predispose man to violence. Man, State and War cites thinkers as diverse as Confucius, Saint Augustine, and Niebuhr who observe some intrinsic defects, moral or cognitive, which prevent groups from peacefully and rationally resolving their differences. For Christian thinkers, this was ultimately the result of man’s original sin, which came from Adam’s disobedience and desire to become a god himself. More secular thinkers writing in the 20th century, such as Henry Morgenthau, discarded the religious content but maintained the form of a defective human nature which he called animus dominandi, or the desire/wilfulness to dominate.

 The chief critique of this argument in Man, State and War is that human nature is too imprecise a variable. Human nature is related to everything, including, importantly, peace, and so if it is the cause of war, it must also be the cause of the absence of war. Intellectually this does not take us very far, because over-explanations by definition are hard to test or refute. If we want to explain why, for example, WW1 occurred, and we posit human nature as the explanation, and can say the same for why the war ended, we are not in fact providing an explanation for the war that can be challenged with other arguments (such as German militarism, or British and French colonial supremacy, etc).

 Another widely held explanation is that it is the character of the state which generates war. This explanation is indissoluble from the modern state system which emerged in the 17th century, and the birth of two ideologies—liberalism and socialism—in the 18th and 19th centuries. The latter ideologies not only provided ideals around which states and societies should be organized, they also attempted to explain many social institutions, including war. For liberals, the main cause of war was non-liberal states, by which they meant monarchy, mercantilist, or other political forms which did operate on the basis of their understanding of liberal democracy, which includes enshrining the right to property, and votes in multiparty elections. Most people most of the time want to better their economic condition, and it is they who mostly pay the price of war; it follows that if citizens have a say, they will vote against war. Ergo, wars occur because small unrepresentative political authorities such as monarchies want to gain glory or territory. It follows that if all countries became liberal democracies, war would disappear from human affairs.

 Waltz also shows how implausible this. To say that war would disappear if all countries were liberal democracies is tantamount to say we would stop fighting if we all agreed on the fundamentals of life; in this sense, in form it is little different from saying war would end if we were all Muslims, Christians, or Bhuddists. This may or may not be true, but it is trivial, speculative, utopian, and hence does not conform to the rigours of scientific investigation. Moreover, the core belief that liberal democracies are more peaceful than monarchies does not stand up to scrutiny. Man, State, and War cites England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688, which many liberals see as a key historical turning point. Waltz shows how England subsequently became more entangled in the affairs of other nations and hence more prone to war. The reason is that a change in the regime led to a change in the nature of warfare. Under monarchy, wars were fought mainly by mercenaries and for limited objectives; consequently the damage was often minimal. Liberal states, in contrast, justify war on the basis of ideals, and in this sense was similar to a religious crusade. Wars become, as a consequence, more frequent and destructive.

 The ideological elements of socialism—critical of private property and markets—differ significantly from liberalism, but for our purposes they have more in common than they like to admit. Both are products of the 18th and 19th centuries, are utopian, and teological. Both also derive from their ideology explanations of war, and blame small coteries of unrepresentative elites who act on the basis of selfish or narrow interests. While for liberals it is monarchies or authoritarians, for socialists it private capital who profit from war and are able to use their influence to capture the state apparatus. If capitalism is the cause of war, the solution is for all countries to adopt socialism. Here we encounter the same trivial observation made by liberals, mainly, if we were all the same, we would not fight. Waltz also cites evidence from WW1 to show the failure of this theory’s predictions. As war fever was heating up, socialists across Europe shared the above-mentioned explanation. Representatives of workers, who were the majority, were determined to not participate unless the war was “defensive”. As fighting became inevitable, workers and socialists almost invariably sided with their nations rather than with workers in neighbouring countries, and when fighting began, almost all of them contributed to their nation’s efforts on the ground that it was “defensive”. Thus, when push came to shove, loyalty to the nation trumped any socialist convictions about the reasons for the war.

 The reason both of the main explanations mentioned above—human nature, and the structure of the state—fail, says Waltz, is that they do not take into account the structure of the international system. To help readers understand on a deep level how this system works, Man, State and War relies especially on the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and particularly the stag hunt parable. Imagine 5 starving men go hunting for a stag, and that success requires their combined efforts. During the hunt, one man sees a rabbit, if he kills and eats it he will satisfy his own hunger and improve chances of survival, but this will undermine the interests of the group. If he refuses because of an ironclad commitment to the group, he risks missing this opportunity and starving to death. Which option does he take? According to the parable, taking the former option places him in a state of war with his fellows, and this will occur frequently. In a state of anarchy, there is no system to punish that individual for betraying the interests of the group.

 The point of the intellectual exercise is to highlight several features of anarchy. One is that self-interest will trump the collective interest especially when valuable resources are in play. Second is that under anarchy one cannot rely on others because the threat of defection is very high. Third, self-reliance creates competition for scarce resources, and when inevitable disputes occur, they are resolved through force not law or morality. Fourth, if power determines outcomes, intentions or the character of states does not matter. Rather, coercive power—economic and military capability—is determinative. Consequently, states may feel threatened by the relative not absolute capabilities of their rivals. From this emerges the balance of power, a feature that is structural and cannot be wished away.

 From this perspective, wars occur relatively frequently because there is nothing to stop them. The immediate causes are usually the kinds of common disputes which arise because men want things, not because they are devils, but it is anarchy which ultimately turns these disputes into war. For Waltz, this explanation is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral, similar to a fact of nature. Does this mean that the utopian desire for eternal peace is a pipe dream? Most likely war can never be abolished, but its outbreak can be mitigated via a judicious adjustment of the balance of power. According to the theory presented in Man, State, and War, a major cause of the outbreak of war is the security dilemma, which occurs when one state threatens others because of its asymmetric capabilities. Excessively powerful states feel less obliged to avoid war because weaker states cannot retaliate in a way that imposes severe costs. At the same time, if states increase their relative power too rapidly, weaker states may be inclined to strike before it is too late, leading to the outbreak of war. In contrast, a stable balance of power creates mutual deterrence, whereby states know that they will pay a high price if they attack, making them more reluctant to fight and more likely to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the dispute. In latter works, Waltz uses this framework to explain why the Cold War did not break out in direct fighting between the USA and the USSR: they were relatively militarily balanced, especially because of the possession of nuclear weapons, and this imposed restraint and hence peace.

 This places a responsibility on all states to maintain a relatively stable and equal balance of power, despite the inevitable inequalities among them. Powerful states must avoid provoking their rivals by engaging in action which makes their capabilities overwhelmingly preponderate and therefore threatening. Weaker states, meanwhile, must also resist the temptation to surpass other states in terms of coercive power. Achieving this when only conventional military forces are involved is very hard in part because of the high degree of uncertainty, but nuclear weapons can alter calculations in a way conducive to peace, as they are relatively equal in their destructive capacity, and leave little room for uncertainty. Consequently, states which possess them have a de facto equality of power. For this reason, many realists have defended the counter-intuitive position that allowing states to develop these weapons is conducive to peace not war.

 During the seminar, students and I discussed some of the problems with this explanation. Regarding the Cold War, it was rightly pointed out that, although there was no direct conflict between the USA and the USSR, they fought indirectly—in Korea or Vietnam—which led to millions of deaths. Thus, rather than preventing war, relative parity between the two superpowers only served to redirect it in other directions, and in ways that were very destructive for other countries. Moreover, the emphasis on power inequalities in the context of an anarchical system does not explain why, for example, two unequal states like the US and Canada, or China and Singapore, can have very peaceful relations.

 We can now attempt to see the practical and contemporary value of the arguments presented in Man, State, and War via a consideration of two conflicts raging at the time of writing, in Ukraine and Middle East. Regarding the former, realists almost universally blame Western countries, and in particular their attempt to expand NATO, on the grounds that it destabilized the balance of power. NATO is a military organization controlled by the US, and members states have offensive military hardware controlled by the Washington on their territories. American statesmen such as George F. Kennan knew that this would antagonize Russia, for this reason Secretary of State James Baker assured Russian leaders that NATO would not expand. This promise was not kept, triggering hostilities. Those who blame Putin or Russian imperialism are relying, consciously or not, on the “bad states” argument presented above, which assumes, of course, that the US and its European partners are “good” states. They neglect to consider that if, for example, Mexico were to join a military bloc controlled by Beijing, military action from Washington would be inevitable. The solution, then, is for Western countries to renounce their goal of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US has already done this, and major European countries will eventually have to accept the same terms.

 The war between Israel and Iran is perhaps more complicated. The former launched the war to prevent the latter from obtaining a nuclear weapon, yet from the perspective of Waltz’s arguments, had Iran possessed such a weapon, the war would not have happened. Many Israelis and their backers say a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat, but the text under discussion leads to other conclusions, namely, that it would be conducive to peace because of the effects of deterrence. A nuclear Iran could not use the weapon against Israel because it knows that Israel’s counter-attack with nuclear weapons would destroy Iran. Many Israelis might reply that the logic of deterrence doesn’t work because Iran led by suicidal Islamists. This is said despite the fact that Iran has all the trappings of a modern state—clearly defined territories, citizens and responsibilities towards them and towards its neighbours. Therefore, Iran, like all other states, would not risk its own survival. It follows that the logic of deterrence would be just as effective between Israel and Iran as, say, between the nuclear armed Pakistan and India. In the latter case, you also have one side with an Islamic government, but there is no evidence that this has altered its calculations on the potential use of nuclear weapons. In fact, a case can be made that, although fighting has broken out between India and Pakistan, it has always almost always quickly resolved in part because both sides want to avoid the existential risk of nuclear confrontation.

A Review of Virgil's The Aeneid

It took me around a year to get through Virgil’s timeless classic The Aeneid, not because of its length or difficulty, but rather because of the manner in which it was read. A hard copy lay beside my bed throughout this period, as one of my habits is to read a physical book—not a kindle or other electronic device—before going to sleep. And given that by the time I lay down in bed in the evening I am very tired, there are limits to how much I can read under those circumstances. Often, in fact, I am too tired to read at all and upon laying down immediately fall asleep, leaving the text untouched for days. The main reason is that during the day I am very busy with other activities, and when I am not working, I take the opportunity to study Chinese, which is quite time consuming. For that reason, this past year I have had little time for pleasure reading or for writing blogposts. 

This way of reading a book—slowly and over a lengthy period of time—will perhaps limit the depth of appraisal, as identifying connections between its different parts—usually necessary to capture the book’s overarching message or impact—becomes tenuous or difficult as memories of earlier passages fade even while reading progresses. Nonetheless, I was able to absorb enough to develop a lasting impression which will be the focus of this blogpost. The key elements worth noting are the aesthetic quality of the text, which is emotionally intense and musical, and the content of the story which is reminder of the wide civilizational gap which separates us from the ancients. To demonstrate the latter, it would be useful to compare the worldview presented in The Aeneid with contemporary Western sensibilities which have been strongly influenced by Christianity; this religion, in the history of Western civilization, represented a major rupture in terms of how the cosmos, humans’ place in it, and the society of our fellows, were understood. The Aeneid is a stark reminder of that fact.  

The version I read tells the story in verse, and each line is structured to give a rhythmic quality to the text. Often, a paragraph begins with a line composed of one word which appears not at the beginning, or left side of the paragraph, but at the right-end (see below for examples), forcing the reader to read one word then pause before proceeding. The effect is that of anticipation of an impending movement or motion which transports or nudges the reader to the subsequent scenes. Unlike in Dante’s Divine Comedy—a text which was strongly influenced by Virgil’s masterpiece—the lines in The Aeneid do not rhyme, but this does not detract from their musical like quality. After the first and usually very brief sentence, each line of each paragraph has a similar length, producing symmetrical pauses as the reading proceeds, contributing to the text’s musicality. Unlike us moderns, the ancients read out loud, and I did the same for large sections of the book, and discovered that this greatly adds to the sense that The Aeneid is a song as much as a poem. 

At the same time, one’s voice when reading aloud is influenced by the emotionally intense language, and this too enriches the experience. The emotional intensity of some parts of the story convey hope and despair, triumph and loss, or pleasure and suffering. Scenes depicting war and those depicting romance, not surprisingly, leave the most lasting impression in this regard. In the second chapter, the final hours of Troy, we read about the death of Priam, king of Troy and father of Aeneas, at the hands of Neoptolemus son of Achilles, who 

…drags the old man,
straight to the alter, quaking, slithering on through
slicks of his son’s blood, and twisting Priam’s hair
a flash of steel—he buries it hilt-deep in the king’s flank
Such was the fate of Priam…
with Troy blazing before his eyes
the monarch who once had ruled in all his glory
the many lands of Asia, Asia’s many tribes
The head wrenched from the shoulders.
A corpse without a name.

The final chapter, “The Sword Decides All,” recounts the battles which occurred after the Trojans landed on Italian soil and were resisted by the local Latins. These encounters would determine the fate of Aeneas’s enterprise and the subsequent history of the peninsula. Here the reader also encounters gripping scenes of fighting between the Trojans and the natives of Italian soil:

As the Latin columns charge them
charging them come Agyllines and Trojans streaming up
with Arcadian ranks decked out in blazoned gear and
one lust drives them all: to let the sword decide.

“War lust” appears frequently in the text, highlighting how the ancients entangled sexual drives with violence and face to face combat. Both are a form of intimacy in that the parties,’ often sweaty, bodies clash and contract, pounding and penetrating, with a power dynamic akin to a contest of wills which will leave only one with achieving their objective, or that makes one the supplicant and the other with the power to refuse or walk away. The Italian language has preserved this close connection between lust and violence, as the word “conquistare,” or conquer, is synonymous with successful seduction, and is still used to convey that meaning in everyday conversation. 

The same chapter culminates with the final battle between Aeneas and Turnus, the latter a leader of Latins, which would determine the Trojans’ founding of the settlement—Rome—which eventually would become the Roman empire. The fighting lasts for several pages, and Turnus is gravely injured and losing his strength:

                                                           Just as in dreams
when the nightly spell of sleep falls heavy on our eyes
and we seem entranced by longing to keep on racing on
no use, in the midst of one last burst of speed
we sink down, consumed, our tongue won’t work
and tried and true, the power that filled our body
fails—we strain but the voice and words won’t follow.
So with Turnus.

Turnus is prostrate on the ground but not yet completely defeated. While facing his opponent Aeneas, he says:

I deserve it all. No mercy please.
Seize your moment now…

Aeneas, ferocious in armor, stood there, still, 

shifting his gaze, and held his sword-arm back…

Aeneas seems reluctant to strike the final blow, but fate had other ideas. Aeneas’s comrade, the young Pallas, who had been injured by Turnus earlier in the battle, appears and reminds Aeneas of the terrible losses and sacrifices incurred during combat with the Latins. He plants:

his iron sword hilt-deep in his enemy’s heart.
Turnus’ limbs went limp in the chill of death.
His life breath fled with a groan of outrage
down to the shades below.

Perhaps the most gripping part of the text recounts the love affair between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage, in the chapter “The Tragic Queen of Carthage.” In the previous chapter readers see their budding love developing during a banquet she made for the Trojans, whom, as fate would have it, while sailing from Troy to Italy, had shipwrecked on North African soil. The opening verses of the chapter set the stage for the drama which was about to come:

                                              The Queen
consumed by the fire buried in her heart.
The man’s courage, the sheer pride of his line
they all come pressing home to her, over and over.
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling—
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.

Their love is consummated only because of the gods’ machinations, especially Juno who of course unbeknownst to the poor Dido, have more venal motives, namely to prevent Aeneas from fulfilling his destiny to found the Roman empire. If Aeneas developed a romantic attachment, thought Juno, he would remain in Carthage with his lover. One day, Aeneas and Dido are out hunting, and the Juno triggers a thunderstorm that forces them to find shelter in a cave, where alone and in close quarters, the natural next step could occur:

The skies have begun to rumble, peals of thunder first
and the storm breaking next, a cloudburst pelting hail…
primordial Earth and Juno, Queen of marriage
give the signal and lightening torches flair
and the high sky bears witness to the wedding
nymphs on the mountaintops wail out the wedding hymn. 
This was the first day of her death, the first of her grief.

Aeneas is genuinely in love with Dido, but he was destined against his will to sail to Italy and found the new colony which would become Rome, meaning he could not remain in Carthage. Dido, of course, enflamed by her love, could not accept this course of action, and is maddened by her grief:

in the midst of outbursts, desperate, flinging herself
from the light of day, sweeping out of his sight
leaving him numb with doubt, with much to fear…

                                                 Love, you tyrant!
To what extremes won’t you compel our hearts?
Again she resorts to tears, driven to move the man
or try, with prayers—a suppliant kneeling, humbling
her pride to passion.

At this point in the text hope is not completely lost, as Aeneas is deeply torn by destiny and love pulling him apart. Although readers know the outcome, Virgil gives readers the impression that Aeneas may change his mind, as he wrestles with the dilemma, but in the end he must sacrifice pleasure and desire for the greater good of self-sacrifice and glory, a recurring motif in Roman history and mythology, which would be reproduced in a different form with Aeneas’s descendants, and first kings of Rome, the twin brothers Romulus and Remo; the former murdered the latter because of a sacrilegious violation of the new city’s religious traditions which threatened to undermine the entire project. 

When Dido finally realizes her appeals are to no avail, she is outraged and wants vengeance. Virgil presents readers with what perhaps is the most memorable section of The Aeneid, in the verse which foretells the Punic wars, the existential conflict between Carthage and Rome which lasted 146 years and which almost relegated the Roman experiment to the dustbin of history:

This is my prayer, my final cry—I pour it out
with my own lifeblood. And you, my Tyrians
harry with hatred all his line, his race to come:
make that offering to my ashes, send it down below.
No love between our peoples, ever, no pacts of peace!
Come rising up from my bones, you avenger still unknown,
to stalk those Trojan settlers, hunt with fire and iron
now or in time to come, whenever the power is yours.
Shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword
against sword—this is my curse—war between all

our peoples, all their children, endless war!

Civilizational divide

The Aeneid is also a window into how the ancients thought about their place in the cosmos. It is worth remembering that the text was not considered, as it is today, simply a novel or poem to be approached as an abstract work of art. Rather, it was popularly read by masses and elites, and as recounted by the historian Mary Beard, it was a cultural reference point among the different classes of the empire, and perceived as an accurate account of Rome’s founding. In that sense, its status was closer to the Bible or the Koran rather than a simple piece of literature. The gods’ machinations in the lives of protagonists were not, as might be understood today, entirely a product Virgil’s expansive imagination. Rather, it reflected how people believed the gods actually behaved and interfered in human affairs.  And from this starting point we can assess the wide civilizational gap which separates the ancients from their descendants in the medieval, modern, and post-modern periods. 

The first thing to note is that Aeneas was the son the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince Anchises, in the sense of being conceived via carnal, physical intercourse between a goddess and a mortal. The gods, thus, sired warlike offspring, strong and dominating alpha males who conquer entire countries, slaughtering and looting in their quests for glory, all of course, with the favour and assistance of divine forbearers. Aeneas, of course, is not unique in this regard; different gods produce different offspring, but they almost always form the ruling class, the nobility, who can count on the gods’ favourable interference in their attempts to conquer, kill, enslave, rule. 

Compare this with the Christian understanding of the relationship between God and man. First is that Mary is impregnated, not by an act of coitus, but rather by the Holy Spirit, that mysterious substance which is part of the trinity and therefore God; this perhaps helped to preserve her purity as a woman married to Joseph. Second is that the offspring is not a conqueror or a dominant and attractive alpha male, but rather an ordinary looking, perhaps even emaciated, humble and non-violent peacemaker. Third is that he is born among a subject peoples, as the Jews were under the Roman empire, and teaches that doing God’s will on earth entails helping the lowly—sick, poor, weak. 

The Christian understanding of God and man would have sounded bizarre to the ancients for the simple reason that this conception of the divine was utterly alien to them. And their different understandings of the divine helps account for their different norms, morals, legal systems, and how society was organized. Among the ancients, the divine favours strong, the beautiful, and brave warriors, and it logically follows that the gods, too, had these attributes. If so, and if they were the highest possible authority, earthly relations had to be organized around these same principles. In contrast, a son of God who is born among subject peoples, and teaches humility, charity, and service rather than glory and domination, implies that this divine would favour the weak not the strong. If so, society could not for long be organized in the manner of ancient times; rules, norms, and laws would eventually reflect the new belief system to the extent that it was believed by legislators and lawmakers. And for this reason there arose belief systems which raised the status of the lowly, such as human equality and human rights, which would have been inconceivable among the ancient Romans precisely because it was incommensurable with their metaphysical beliefs. 

During antiquity, there was no single religious truth or holy text. Different peoples had different gods, and connected to them via sacred objects and shrines. A common practice in ancient Rome was to discern the will of gods by examining the flights of birds, or the entrails of slaughtered animals, and one of the functions of priests was to accurately interpret these. In contrast, in the Christian era, priests were learned scholars who studied the classics of ancient Greece and Rome and who attempted to discern God’s will via a philosophical exegesis of texts, or what would later be called theology. This move away from studying God’s will in nature towards doing the same in texts, and the need for a specialized scholarly class to accomplish such an endeavour, led to the establishment of the first universities in Europe which would later become the secular institutions that they are today.

The will of the gods was omnipresent in nature and The Aeneid reveals this in how the ancients anthropomorphized the heavens, seasons, and weather, which were often capitalized to convey willfulness or agency:

                                                                                By now
dank Night had nearly reached her turning-point in the sky
and stretched on the hard thwarts beneath their oars
the crews gave way to a deep, quiet rest, when down
from the starts the God of Sleep came gliding gently
cleaving the dark mists and scattering shadows.

For Christians, in contrast, God was and is a supreme lawgiver who created a mechanistic universe which operates according to lawlike regularity. This gives the sense that for the ancients, nature or natural forces were enchanting and magical, while Christians believe that God may intervene but in the form of miracles or rare events which are in a sense unnatural (hence the term supernatural). The ancients lacked this conceptual separation between the divine and nature, and this too was reflected in their institutions. The emperor, for example, also had the title of pontifex, which translates to bridge, meant here as a function which connects the people and the divine. And in fact some emperors were considered in the literal sense to have divine ancestry and therefore worthy of being worshipped as gods. In the Christian era, of course, these roles were completely institutionally separate; the pope was God’s representative on earth, while the prince, king, or emperor was a lawmaker, and both were mere mortals. It is this institutional separation which made possible the secular societies which would subsequently emerge and which characterize the modern period.  

Reflections on Progress in Learning Chinese

In this blogpost I will recount my latest achievement in my quest to master the Chinese language. Some background information will be helpful. For foreigners studying Chinese, there is an elaborate system characterized by 9 levels which go by the name of “HSK”; for example, HSK1 is absolute beginner, while HSK9 is the most advanced, and HSK4 to HSK5 are lower to upper intermediate. To better understand what this means concretely, at the beginner level one can express simple words and perhaps basic sentences (“I like,” “I want,” “I will,” etc), at the intermediate one can engage in conversation about daily life and even about more complex subjects related to culture, history, and economics, while at the most advanced level, one has the capacity to produce a scholarly work in standard Chinese.

I recently completed HSK 4 and began HSK 5, which squarely places me in the intermediate stage. I can now easily converse in Chinese if the topic is work, leisure, hobbies, food, family, friends, travel, in sum, the stuff of everyday life. I can also now have conversations about more complex themes such as the state of the economy, war and peace, religion and spirituality, although here, I sometimes lack the vocabulary to fully express my thoughts. But, importantly, when I stumble because I hear something unfamiliar or am unable to form the proper sentence, I can easily say in Chinese what exactly is unclear and difficult while asking the interlocuter to explain in a different way. This usually does the trick to keep the conversation flowing in Chinese.

I am now experiencing the fruits of this progress. A few weeks ago, for example, I needed to change my cell phone data plan, which was unsuitable for my needs. This required going to the mobile phone store and explain that the current plan is insufficient, and that I require a new one at a reasonable price. I did this entirely in Chinese; the conversation on this topic lasted about 20 minutes, and only a few times the saleswoman’s words were unclear.  Another example: recently as I was on the high-speed train, I happened to sit down beside an attractive woman, and given that I am single, I was inclined to speak with her, which I did. We ended up conversing—mostly in Chinese, as she spoke a little bit of English—for almost 1 hour, and even exchanged contact information. Although in the end it did not lead to anything other than this impromptu introduction and a few text messages, it was the first time that I connected with a complete stranger of the opposite sex almost completely in Chinese. 

I can now also watch and understand Chinese news, especially on topics I am familiar with, such as the US-China relations, or the war in Ukraine. This has led to the discovery that Chinese political commentary is actually quite nuanced and diverse, and often more neutral and hence objective than that found on many Western channels. This may be a big surprise to Westerners who likely have an image of the country’s political communication as stifled, top down and homogenous. 

I have been studying the language for just over two years now, and at this pace, I should reach HSK6—which is the beginning of advanced—in 1 year or 18 months. The sense of accomplishment is profound in part because of the difficulty of learning the language, especially the writing system. I have memorized hundreds of characters, a drop in the bucket considering there are over 50 thousand, but enough to read and write simple sentences. 

As ever, such an extraordinary experience has sparked reflections about the nature of life, and especially the weird process by which something that, at one time is fantastical or imbued with awe and amazement, becomes part of daily reality and banal. I can still remember the first time visiting the country in early 2023. I was on a plane from Vienna to Shanghai, and almost all the passengers were Chinese. Of course, I could not understand a word they were saying despite my attempts to discern meaning from other cues, such as body language and facial expression. The befuddlement continued the subsequent weeks, as I struggled to communicate with locals I interacted with, for example at the hotel, in the taxi, or the supermarket. By then, I had started learning Chinese on the language learning app Pimsleur, and knew some basic sentences, but I naively believed that this, plus being fully immersed, would allow me to quickly pick up the meanings of words and sentences, as occurred when I was a beginner in French and Spanish.

Learning Chinese is a whole different experience. My knowledge of Italian plus shared cultural reference points allowed me to learn the former two languages relatively quickly; in both French and Spanish I became proficient, or advanced, after 2 years. Not so with Chinese, in part because of the wide gap which separates it with European languages. This renders the learning of the language very difficult and slow for Westerners, which is one reason why so many abandon the enterprise. Of course, this was not an option for me, as despite the difficulty, the more I learned, the more fascinated I became with it, and the more I was driven to proceed. And so I continued my learning schedule of two private, 1 hour lessons, plus 4 or 5 language practices, per week with conversation exchange partners.

Two years ago, the thought of being able to converse in Chinese, know enough characters to read and type simple sentences, and use the language in regular interaction with locals, was alien and fantastical. As ever, the mind tends to exaggerate the unknown, fill it with wonder and amazement, similar to the feeling one has about important life moments not yet experienced—travelling, making love, completing a PhD, owning a house. Then these things occur, and often become banal, just part of ordinary existence. Learning Chinese has been a bit like that. At moments I have a sense of amazement from the knowledge of this language, but for the most part, it has become rather normalized, like other parts of my routine. This tendency of the brain to refashion experiences from extraordinary to banal perhaps is an evolutionary adaption to help us move on to learn and discover new things. 

It also reveals how the drive to succeed at an endeavour can produce a deep sense of accomplishment and yet it also leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction. Given that I am at the inter-mediate phase, I am still not completely satisfied, and this frustration is one of the reasons I am motivated to learn more and reach an advanced level. Of course, other factors are driving me to continue, including the fascination with Mandarin, which, like other languages or other social phenomenon, is the product of thousands of years of evolution and reflects a unique people, culture, and history characterized with distinctive characteristics, quirks, patterns, and anomalies. It opens a window into this ancient civilization, which for some reason developed a language that, unlike European tongues, conveys meaning with tone and context rather, or more than, with pronunciation and vocabulary. This in itself evokes wonder and deepens my drive to continue learning.   

Mandarin is my fifth language, and the others are English, Italian, French, and Spanish. When adding the numbers of people who speech each language (respectively, 1.3 billion, 1.35 billion, 63 million, 321 million, 595 million) the total is around 3.7 billion people, which means I can now communicated with just under 50% of people around the world. 

A Review of Emmanuel Todd's "La Défaite de l'Occident"

It is always refreshing to read the work of Emmanual Todd, as he is one of the few Western intellectuals to challenge beliefs which, from time to time, tend to be shared by journalists, politicians, and other members of the commentariat (and the group from which they mostly derive, namely, upper class professionals). The first time I was exposed to his ideas was in 2008, during my PhD, in a course on the subject of the rise and fall of empires, including the American one. Todd famously predicted the collapse the USSR in the early 80s, while most others at the time predicted stability, and he did this on the basis of demographic and cultural variables that were elsewhere ignored; most of his contemporaries tended to look at indices of hard power like territory, military, and economy, which, when adding the motivations of USSR’s rulers, pointed to continuity. In this example, his training in anthropology plus his analytical ability proved to be an asset, allowing him to see what most others did not. 

This tendency among Western commentators, especially in Anglo countries, to mostly sing from the same tune on the subject of geopolitical questions (it sometimes seems as if they are taking their cue from the editorial positions of the Economist, of which I have been a faithful reader for almost 20 years) is observable in the conflict which has destabilized Europe, the war in Ukraine.  In the book I will review in this blogpost, La Défaite de l'Occident (The Defeat of the West), Todd provides an alternative perspective to the mainstream one and in so doing encourages readers to question their beliefs and even revise them.

An Inconoclast

The standard view of the war in Ukraine is that it started on Feburary 24, 2022, and that one man, Vladimir Putin, is largely responsbile. His motivations, it has been stated at one time or another, range from covid-induced craziness, to the imperialist attempt to re-establish a Russian empire as the loss of the USSR was never psychologically come to terms with. Whatever the motivation, Putin and his generals are presented as acting on the basis of pure malice, ignorance, or irationality, while Ukraine and its Western backers are the voices of reason, justice, and morality. This narrative is given more layers of meaning by depicting the conflict as one between “democracy” and “authoritarianism”, which presumes that Ukraine and its Western backers are paragons of democratic rule, while Putin and his henchmen are dictators afraid that democracy in Ukraine will set an example which will lead to more demands for democracy in Russia. Questioning this framework leads to one getting labeled as a “Putin puppet” or some other designation which not so subtly implies that, in polite discourse, only one interpretation is acceptable, and that those who criticize it are either ignorant or victims of Russian propaganda.

La Défaite de l'Occident provides readers with a very different interpretation in part because Todd focuses on different variables. As in his other work, and reflective of his training and expertise, he looks at culture, religion, family structure, demographics, and sociological indicators, and how they help to explain foreign policy decisions in general and the NATO-Ukraine conflict in particular. The theoretical assumption is that the key to understanding international behaviour is to look at domestic society and politics. This is a theory of international relations which obliges us to examine a longer span of history rather than the last few years or decades. Accordingly, before examining Todd’s analysis of the war, it is essential to present his ideas on the fundamental changes in the West and especially the US, and how they relate to decisions and patterns vis-à-vis the conflict.

Rise and Decline 

Todd begins with the development of modern nation-states and looks at the role of Christianity in their formation. The Protestant reformation was crucial in this regard as it led to the publication and distribution of the bible in the vernacular languages (previously it was published only in Latin, the language spoken by the elite), as believers were obliged to establish a personal relationship with God via the written word, and not, as in Catholic countries, through the inter-mediary of the church hierarchy. This led to widespread literarcy and to the standardization of distinct languages in Protestant countries, mostly in Northern Europe. A consequence was the development of a shared value system, rooted in Protestantism, between masses and elites which would form the basis of national consciousness. Thus it was religion, and not the ideals of the French revolution, which led to the political form which we call the nation-state which would eventually become the dominant political unit in the international system. 

Protestantism was different from Catholicism in other respects. The latter’s concept of original sin implied that all were equal, while Protestant sects such as calvinism believed that some were favoured and selected by God (the doctrine of predestination), which introduced into Christianity ideas about divinely sanctioned natural hierarchy. In one of Emmanual Todd’s more original and controversial statements, he argues that this helps to explain the fact that some of the worst forms of racism occurred in Protestant countries. Nazism in Germany grew mostly out of the Protestant not Catholic parts of the country; the US abolished slavery relatively late and afterwards institutionalized segregation; Canada, the US, Sweden, and not Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain, implemented eugenics, that abonimable state-sanctioned policy of sterilization of so-called inferiors.

Leaving aside this dark aspect in Protestant countries, across the Western world religion would eventually provide a glue which binded governors and the governed; a shared language and moral framework also established the conditions for community ties and civic associations. Democracy understood as multiparty elections and the rule of law functioned with a relatively high degree of stability and legitimacy when shared values among various social classes anchored in national conscioussness were present.

Family structure worked in combination with culture and religion to produce a relatively stable social order in which democracy could function, but here too there were differences among Western countries. The nuclear family which reigned supreme in Protestant countries had hierarchical elements which reinforced the ideas of superiority and inferiority inherited from their religion. On the other hand, there were liberal elements in the realm of gender relations, namely, the social of status of both mother and father could be transmitted to the children; this, says Todd, helps explain why Protestant countries were also among the first to advance the feminist cause.  

From my reading of La Défaite de l'Occident, to understand contemporary international relations and especially Western and non-Western relations, we need to explore how the relatively stable system mentioned above began to weaken, and especially the breakdown of shared values which binded elites and masses. One must begin by pointing out that the frailing of Western institutions, such as the nation and the state, is not the discourse of obscure Russian or Chinese propoganists. It is well outlined in the work of serious Western scholars including Colin Crouch, Christopher Lasch, Michael Lind, David Goodhart, and Christophe Guilley. This crisis has been especially evident since the 2010s, as populism grew and produced several major changes in Western history, including the Brexit referendum and the Trump phenomenon, which demonstrate that millions of citizens reject their country’s system and are willing to vote for anti-establishment parties. This is evidence of a lack of legitimacy, without which political regimes, democratic or other, cannot be stable. Political polarization is another key feature of contemporary Western democracies, whereby there has been a centrifugal proliferation of many parties with supporters who view compatriots from other parties as evil or corrupt rather than, as would be the case in an ideal civic system, as possessing different views derived from reason and potentially adjustible via civil debate and discourse. Even the US, where two major parties remain, has seen a splintering into different political families which in many ways are incompatible although they sometimes campaign under the same party banner (MAGA and mainstream Republicans are the most visible examples of this trend). 

Todd’s contribution to this well-known centrifugal tendency is to connect it to the decline of religion, while introducing a distinct vocabulary to help readers grasp his reasoning. Religion went through three phases in the West and particularly Protestant countries such as the US: 1) active, 2) zombie, 3) nihilism. In the first, religion provided the shared value system mentioned above which, most importantly, bound the governed and governors and ensured a high degree of stability and legitimacy. In the zombie state, most people no longer go to mass, but they continue to engage in the religious ceremonies which mark life’s three major stages: birth, marriage, and death. Their subjective worlds are now more influenced by secular ideologies or hedonist considerations such as consumerism than by religion. In the zombie state, all religious practices and beliefs have fell by the wayside even though the legacy of religion is still visible in the names of streets, public holidays, art and architecture. 

The decline of religion in the second and third phases does not lead to the secular humanist ideal of reason, rather than superstition, being the main guide to belief. Rather, new political ideologies reign supreme and provide moral frameworks, the basis of social action and determine the formation of networks and relationships among key actors. One ideology that Todd focuses on, as it is relevant to the understanding the decline (and, as per the title, the defeat) of the West is neoliberalism, which placed market relations above all other criteria in guiding political action. Privileging economic growth and free trade contributed to, among other things, the increasing financialization of the economy, whereby capital less and less was allocated to manufacturing which was central to the creation of a middle class; rather, more capital went to stocks, bonds, and especially property, all of which was made possible by easy access to credit and high levels of debt. This helped to generate inequality as some sectors, especially banking, accounting, and law, benefited far more than others. 

In La Défaite de l'Occident, Todd reminds readers that, although this trend is visible across the West, it reached extreme proportions in the US because of the status of the dollar as the international reserve currency, which increases demand for US securities, lowering interest rates and allowing both the American federal government and US consumers to increase debt-based consumption. At the same time, it articifically inflates the value of the dollar and in so doing punishes US manufacturers while favouring imports. Another consequence is that fewer citizens study engineering, as it is more profitable and status enhancing to study business, finance, or law. Todd presents data which illustrates how China and Russia produce far more engineers than the US, and that this helps to explain why their production prowess in either natural resources or manufacturing compared to rivals, a fact not unrelated to the events in Ukraine (more on this below). 

To these trends Todd adds the indicators of health such as obesity and chronic disease, which have reached unprecedented levels in the US, and have led to a health sector which consumes 18.8% of GDP (in 2022). The opoid epidemic is more evidence of fraying social ties, as are mass shootings and gun violence. The US is the only Western country where life expectancy has decreased, which is attributable to the higher death rates of middle-aged white men in deindustrialized cities and towns. 

For Todd, it is no coincidence that these trends coincide with with the zombie and nihilist stages of religion, which led to, among other things, extreme atomisation, or the break down of community and civic ties and the rupture between masses and elites. Numerous opinion polls attest the fact that politicians and journalists are the least trusted actors, Todd reminds readers. They are percieved as selfish, dishonest, and corrupt in part because of the breakdown of social ties, the increase in inequality, the rise of social problems are the direct consequence of decisions taken by powerful people who have more in common with powerful people in other countries than they do with their lower-class compatriots. 

These observations lead Todd to question that concept which has been central to the neoliberal era, GDP. Movements in this indicator are almost daily deployed in the media as a measure of success or failure of government policy, or to compare the performance of countries and then to distill conclusions about their relative strength or weakness. In particular, the US’s ranking on GDP, both aggregate and per capita, is often cited to illustrate its status as top dog in the system. La Défaite de l'Occident shows that when we take into account that much economic activity, such as finance, often reflects parasitic ponzi schemes, or pharmaceuticals, which is indicative of widespread chronic disease and hence weakness and decline, GDP begins to lose its force as an accurate indicator of national strength. He further shows that if we measure GDP in terms of actual material production which contributes to national strength by substracting the mentioned economic activities, US GDP per capita in 2022 drops from $76 000 to $39 520 (below we will see the importance of this when we connect it to Todd’s analysis of the war in Ukraine). 

Finally, the decline of religion and its replacement with neoliberalism leads to a new clerisy with a self-ordained mission to spread liberalism around the world, through force if necessary. This pattern has occurred across the West but again, it has taken extreme proportions in the US in part because of its imperial status. During much of the 20th century, American foreign policy was led by a WASP elite imbued with Protestant values anchored in a widely shared national consciousness. According to Todd, they were more likely to understand or recongize cultural or civilizational differences which made the Western model inapt for Eastern societies, including Russia’s. It was replaced by a foreign policy elite imbued with the ideology known as neoconservatism, which is a bit of a misnomer, as it aimed to promote liberal democratic revolutions around the world utilizing various methods to enact regime change. A network of bureacrats, politicians, journalists, and academics replaced the WASP elite to make neoconservatism the dominant foreign policy paradigm, a fact recognized by the Obama administration’s designation of this network as the “blob”, which highlights how they form a kind of homogenous and invasive agent which can spread its tentacles in the aparatus of state and society. 

This “blob” is at least partly responsible for the many policy fiascos which have destablished and damaged many countries, including the invasion of Iraq, the intervention in Syria, the overthrow of Ghaddafi, and, most importantly for the present work, the war in Ukraine. For the present purposes, what matters is that it is an indicator of Western and especially US decline. We can now connect the disparate but connected themes above to the main case study.  

The war in Ukraine

The mainstream interpretation of the war—the one challenged by Todd—is that it was an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign democratic country by an authoritarian one which aims to re-establish a lost empire. When we take into acount the critiques above, a very different interpretation emerges. First, in a West and especially the US characterized with crises of representation, polarization, rising inequality, atomization, and the severed bond between the governors and the governed, it becomes misleading to characterize them as “democratic” in the ideal or unqualified sense. Todd goes farther and labels them as liberal oligarchies, as majority rule becomes untenable when there is a centrifugal splintering, polarization, and rupture in the ties that binded most citizens to their rulers. If the majority does not rule, decisions still have to be made, and these decisions often come from powerful minorities such as lobbies or the “blob” which have captured society’s commanding heights. Meanwhile, he doesn’t deny Russia’s authoritarian character, but reminds readers that opposition to Putin mostly comes from upper-class Russians in European and cosmopolitan cities like Moscow and St Petersburg; lower class citizens who live in rural areas or the periphery form the majority, and they continue to support Putin. From this strictly numerical perspective, it could be argued that Putin enjoys more popular support than most Western leaders, many of whom are utterly detested by the majority of their compatriots especially the lower class ones (Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron are the most flagrant examples of this trend). It follows that, rather than the conflict being one of democracy versus authoritarian, it is more accurate to frame it as Western liberal oligarchy pitted against Russia’s majoritarian/illiberal authoritarianism. 

The democracy vs authoritarian interpretation simplifies and obscures in other ways. Ukraine is actually divided along ethnic lines, and Todd presents a map to highlight this. In an election on 2010, the pro-Russia candidate of Viktor Ianoukovytch received between 60% and 90% amount of votes from the Russian speaking regions in the South East. They were allowed to protect their language, but Kiev passed a law which aimed to impose Ukrainian language on these regions. This delicate ethnic balance, plus the historical importance to Russia, was one reason why strict neutrality was one of the conditions of independence and enshrined in the constitution; in 2014, this was removed and replaced with the aim of joining Western institutions including NATO.  These complex ethnic, historical, and political dynamics are either ignored or minimized in most Western commentary, in part because of the democracy vs authoritarian frame leads to a binary reductionism (not coincidently, many Western commentators made the same mistake in their interpretations of ethnically diverse Iraq, Syria, and Libya).

As mentioned, Todd observes that Western states and especially the Anglo-Protestant ones have entered into the nihilist phase, and one characteristic of nihilism is to deny objective reality. To illustrate this gap with reality, he cites many of the utterly failed predictions and claims made about the war. Examples include Bruno Le Maire saying that Western sanctions would make the Russian economy collapse, or Macron’s well-intensioned but naïve statement that the West should avoid “humiliating” Russia (Russia could, if it wanted, with its hypersonic missiles, destroy France instantly). In the summer of 2023, moreover, Western citizens were led to believe that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would turn the tide, in part because the country was amply supplied by Western technology, money, and arms. One reason for this mismatch between interpretation and reality, we learn from La Défaite de l'Occident, is that Western leaders believed that since together they had the highest GDPs, they were more powerful. North American and European GDP combined is more than 20 times greater than Russia’s; this is similar to comparing the GDP say, of Germany and tiny Malta. And yet Russia is prevailing on the battlefield. Why? In part because a portion of Western GDP is fictional and not related to material production, especially the essential hardware during times of war: artillery, rockets, missiles, transport vehicles, equipment. Russia also possesess the natural resources, such as agricultural products, minerals, and oil, which it turns out have added value during times of conflict; food inflation skyrocketed in Western countries, during 2023, in part because their markets were now closed to essential primary goods produced by Russia. Countries which continued normal trade with Russia, such as India or China, enjoyed stable prices. It is this which helps to explain why, in the past two years, Russia’s economic growth has exceeded Germany’s, France’s, and Italy’s, according the IMF. It also highlights how highly financialized economies may produce many rich people but they do not necessarily add to national strength which is tested during times of war. 

Perhaps the most revealing denial of reality comes to the surface when we examine that the European and North American interpretation of the war is not shared by the rest of the world and especially the global South. China, India, and most of Asia, as well as Africa and South America, interpret Western leaders similar to how many ordinary and lower class Westerners do: as selfish, corrupt, and dishonest. They therefore are highly cynical about the moralizing of Western elites, especially when many of these same elites are responsible for the destabilizing and destructive interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Moreover, they reject the social model propounded by the West of hyper-individualism, hedonism, and materialism, which, they conclude, leads to the breakdown of society. Rather, they want the good parts of modernity like technological development and economic growth while preserving their society’s cosmology (or metaphysical/spiritual values) and traditions which bind citizens of different social classes in general and masses and elites in particular. Given this interpretation of the West, the world outside Europe and North America (that is the vast majority of the planet) is more likely to interpet the conflict as being the result of Western arrogance which provoked Russia. And as many of them have been victims of Western arrogance, either in the form of colonialism or more recent interventions, they are cheering for Russia even though in public they speak with pious platitudes about the need for peace and diplomacy.  

The tendency to deny reality leads to other observable patterns, such as Western leaders telling their citizens that the objective of support for Ukraine, including potentially sending troops, is “Ukraine’s victory” or Russia’s “strategic defeat”. Apart from the impossibility of defining these goals, it obscures the real stakes and relative positions of the beliigerents and, in so doing, is not helpful for ending the war. We know from various sources, including the letter Putin sent to Washington before the invasion, plus the negotiations which occurred two months after, that Moscow’s main demands are the preservation of Crimea to protect its naval base in Sevastepol and access to the black sea; the protection and autonomy of Russian minorities in the South East; and the permenant status of neutrality of Ukraine. Negotiations in Turkey in 2023 also highlighed that Russia would accept Ukraine joining the EU, but not NATO, as it is a military organization. If Western leaders genuinely believe that none of these demands are acceptable, and that only complete withdrawal from Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, while allowing Ukraine to join NATO, can end the war, they should be explicit about the price they are willing to pay for this. Judging by their actions, they are unwilling to sacrifice their own citizens’ lives, nor are they willing to risk nuclear war. If this is the case, then those objectives are unachievable and only a negotiated compromise can end the conflict. 

Such a compromise, along the lines under negotiation in 2023, is the most likely outcome. The tragedy is that it could have been achieved earlier, before hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure destroyed. The West’s and especially the US’s inability to see its own weaknesses, its tendency to simplify or to deny reality, the rise of inequality and the rupture of masses and elites which has effectively replaced majority rule with powerful minorities like neoconservatives, all contributed to this state of affairs, and all can be traced to the zombie and nihilistic phases of Western culture. This is the most important lesson of La Défaite de l'Occident.