On the Prospect of World War Three. (Emmanuel Todd Tells Us it's Already Begun.)

As Emmanuel Todd has remarked in recent interviews he finds that his views are less and less welcome in his native France--such that those looking for his recent commentary (his occasional Marianne pieces apart) are more likely to find it in Japanese publications than anywhere else.

Last year this went a step further with Todd publishing a book in Japan that, so far as I know, is not available in any other language (French included), but the title of which has been translated into French as La Troisième Guerre Mondiale a Commencé--and in English may be read as The Third World War Has Begun.

Still, Todd recently spoke to the French newspaper Le Figaro about the book. Even a considerably longer interview than the one that paper published can give only so much of the argument of a whole book, but the essentials (once one gets beyond the causes of the conflict, in regard to Todd shares John Mearsheimer's position, actually citing Mearsheimer by name) may be summed up as follows:

The clash between Russia and Ukraine saw both states prove more resilient under duress than expected.

Ukraine proved surprisingly resilient in the face of military attack--mainly because of the stiffening effect of massive material support from NATO and its allies.

Meanwhile Russia has been more resilient than expected in the face of the Western sanctions applied against it--to the point that time and again the West has underestimated its ability to keep its artillerists in shells, and its air force in missiles. Significant to this underestimation has been the tendency to view the Russian economy as very small next to the economies of the U.S. and of NATO. However, Todd sees the Western economies as having hollowed out significantly in contrast with a Russia with more capacity than others realize as testified by its status as a key supplier of goods from wheat to nuclear reactors. Critical to this has been its having an extremely large corps of what we these days call "STEM graduates" for its size, providing it with exceptional industrial and military adaptability, the benefits of which have been evident in the country's making progress even in the years of sanctions preceding 2022.* (Indeed, Todd--first and foremost a demographer whose past work has relied heavily on data such as infant mortality, to the degree that it was central to his ultimately correct prediction about the Soviet collapse--points out that Russia now has a lower rate of infant mortality than the United States.) Todd also questions the image of Russia as "isolated," instead arguing for the country as possessing, besides the advantages of its economic importance, very considerable "soft power" resources, not least in the country appearing to be both an "anti-colonial" power and champion of cultural conservatism against a West militantly championing feminist/LGBTQ+ politics (Russia thus presentable as opposing both cultural and economic imperialism together).

The resulting resilience of both a NATO-backed Ukraine at one end, and a Russia Todd regards as (in contrast with the tendency of the press to downplay Chinese attachment to Russia) backed by China, has meant a conflict that is wide as well as protracted. Moreover, he sees neither side accepting defeat--in the case of the U.S. because its broader geopolitical position may be at stake, this in Todd's view being centered on a dominance of Western Europe and Japan, a key benefit of which has been America's capacity to run colossal trade deficits virtually without consequence for decades (and without which capacity the U.S. would be forced to retrench geopolitically). This would seem underlined by the dynamics within the NATO alliance itself, with a less hawkish France and German "sidelined" as strategically situated Poland has emerged as the key U.S. partner.

The result has been to make the conflict not potentially a world war, but already a world war.

Considering Todd's analysis I find myself looking at much that is familiar, not only from his earlier writing on the conflict but his work going back decades--for instance, to his 2003 book After the Empire. The vision of the "American empire" he presents in the interview is the same as what that earlier book offers, down to the hollowed-out American economy and trade deficit-dependent geopolitical position. Familiar from that book also is his expectation that Russia, the decline of which he argued then had already bottomed out, would play a critical part in undermining the U.S. position by linking up with another power center in the world (if Europe rather than China); his stress on U.S. disagreement with Germany and France; and his characterization of a political cleavage between Germany and closely associated but more "Russophobic" states, with Poland specifically cited. And at least methodologically familiar is his stress on family structures, values, educational levels, which is so critical to his reading of Russia's hard and soft power.

Indeed, so much is familiar that one may wonder if Todd has not adapted his old vision to new circumstances--the more in as key aspects of his thinking strike me as unpersuasive, especially when we get away from the clearer-cut facts (that Ukraine and Russia both proved more resilient than expected, etc.) toward the more interpretive portion of the discussion. Personally I have long thought that Todd sets too much store by relatively narrow aspects of family structure as a determinant of broad societal values, and by the role of values in international conflict as against hard material interest. The reality is that while Russia today claims the anti-colonial mantle, apparently with some resonance in many parts of the world (with, to show how far this seems to extend geographically, Haitians waving Russian flags in anti-government protests), and its cultural conservatism finds a response even in the U.S. (such that the media tells us of American conservatives converting to Russian Orthodoxy), I am not so sure how deep the significance of such things goes (a Russian government which never ceases to put down the Bolsheviks claiming their anti-colonial mantle is undeniably awkward), let alone that it will mean very much in the geopolitical arena even if it did, and none of this evidently causing Western governments significant inconvenience thus far (for instance, by way of right-wing politicians in the West obstructing support for Ukraine).

This matters all the more because I have my doubts regarding his reading of the material balance of power in the conflict. While Todd acknowledges that the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus amounts to about 3 percent that of the U.S. and its principal European and East Asian allies, he notes that much of the U.S. GDP (which accounts for by far the largest part of the West's combined resources), consists of a bloated health sector and dubious "services." This leaves much of it, in his words, "water vapor," implying a radically smaller distance between the real resources of the U.S. and its allies and Russia in this respect--which may be all the greater when one remembers how the "relocation" of so much production has called into question the capacity to mobilize industry for military purposes.

For my part I certainly do not disagree about the ways in which calculations of GDP can be misleading (indeed, the deficiencies of GDP calculations and the hollowing out of the U.S. economy have both been longtime research subjects for me)--and I accordingly made a point of considering manufacturing output when I took up the issue of the NATO-Russian balance some time ago. Specifically I crunched the United Nations-supplied numbers regarding manufacturing output ("value added"), and the shares of medium and high-tech manufacturing and that telling category, machinery and transport equipment, in that total; while looking at the production and consumption of such key inputs as steel, machine tools and semiconductors. However, in spite of the very real trend of deindustrialization of the U.S., which has seen the country's per capita manufacturing output fall by a fifth altogether since the 1970s and much more in certain key lines like primary metals, autos, machinery, etc. (offset, in the main, by the shale boom and the world's biggest defense budget), the U.S. still out-produces Russia at least 10-to-1 in manufacturing overall, and about 20-to-1 in the medium and high-tech manufacturing category, specifically including the critical area of "machinery and transport equipment." The disproportion becomes more than twice that when one counts in the rest of North America and Western Europe (and worse still for Russia in areas like machine tools, and microchips, where NATO may enjoy an advantage not of one but two orders of magnitude).

The result is that these numbers could be way off, and still leave NATO with a vast advantage over Russia in the military-industrial arena (even before, again, one counts in allied states like Japan or South Korea). Moreover, even granting Russia's educational system and labor force punching "above their weight class" in the engineering realm it is difficult to picture it compensating wholly for the lacks in its industrial system relative to others in the face of sanctions, even with the help of a China which, if supportive of Russia, and unlikely to sit idly by in the event of the Russian state's coherence, or even the stability of the regime, being endangered, has shown little sign of throwing its weight behind Russia the way that NATO has behind Ukraine thus far.

Equally, if overestimating Russian strength Todd would seem to be (again, granting the reality of many of the weaknesses to which he points) underestimating that of NATO. Again, there is no question of the U.S.' "consequence-free" running of massive merchandise trade deficits year in, year out, and the reality that there must be limits to it. Yet Todd has in the past underestimated how long this can go on (certainly, to go by his 2003 book, giving no expectation that it could still be ongoing in 2023), in part because he seems fuzzy on how this works. It is not a matter of "tribute" such as Todd describes, but of the legacies of the U.S.' past far more overwhelming strength, and the weaknesses of the neoliberal order today that make "least-worst" options different from what one might expect. While it is far from making things right by itself (indeed, it is a longtime cause of significant, worsening problems), it matters that this has been an age of "creditist" expansion of the monetary supply--enabling governments and countries to run once unthinkable imbalances. It matters that those countries that are manufacturing-oriented prefer their currencies undervalued for the sake of their exports, giving them reason to not want to see the U.S. dollar devalued (the more in as it has been such a critical market for the biggest manufacturer of all, China). It matters that the U.S. has Wall Street. It matters that the dollar continues to lack a proper rival, as the floundering of the European project (in which one must remember that Todd was once a great believer) shows--and that in an uncertain world where really profitable investment opportunities are few foreign investors are desirous of U.S. dollars, and U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds, giving them yet more reason to not want to see the dollar devalued. It matters that, as was demonstrated not so long ago when the financial crisis of 2007 hit, there was simply no substitute for the bailout powers of the U.S. Federal Reserve--around which, it might be added, European elites rallied and can still be expected to rally in time of crisis to go by their past and present conduct. (Indeed, it is relevant that Britain, with a much smaller and much less secure but not wholly dissimilar base of financial power--and which certainly cannot be described as exacting "tribute"--has likewise run chronic trade deficits through the same period without the trouble one would ordinarily expect, in its way displaying the existence of the pattern described above.) Admittedly where all this is concerned the trend appears untoward--given the turmoil in the Treasury market in March 2020, and the Reserve's shifting in reverse in regard to the policies propping up the system (the need for which is, again, no testament to the health of the neoliberal order without which it is unthinkable). Yet Todd's error, hugely significant in itself, would easily translate to his underestimating the capacity of the U.S. to keep running such deficits.

However, these faults in Todd's analysis pale next to an issue he scarcely discusses at all. Save for Todd's reference to Russian nuclear superiority being an accomplished fact on the basis of (apparently) nothing more than the Russian government's claims to have fielded working hypersonic missiles he does not acknowledge the reality that this is an escalating military confrontation between nuclear powers--and indeed he seems to slight the nuclear danger when he remarks in rather casual fashion that Russia has "five years in which to win the war, or lose it, a normal duration for a world war." That the nuclear element exists automatically makes it not a "normal" world war (if indeed there is such a thing!), and the fact, with all the dangers attending it, should be foremost in the minds of everyone whenever thinking about this conflict, whether or not one, like him, regards it as having already crossed the line into the territory of World War Three.

* Todd notes both that Russian wheat production (once an object of sneering in the West) has surged in the post-Soviet period, from 40 to 90 million tons since 1980 (in contrast with the much less impressive trend in the case of the U.S.), and that Russia has become the world's leading exporter of nuclear reactors. Where the labor force is concerned Todd points out that Russia, in spite of having a population less than half the size of the U.S., has 30 percent more engineering graduates than the United States--and this on the basis of its own citizenry rather than foreign students (Todd making much of the proportion of American engineering students coming from India and especially a China he sees as an American rival).