"Will this world be okay?" - Welcome to a new decade full of dangers

The following was published on January 13 :

美国和英国开始对也门胡塞武装“安萨尔真主”目标进行打击。此外，美国已经要求伊朗释放他们扣押的商船。更多武装行动的可能性在增加。世界经济以海运为基础。海运以海事法为基础。"安萨尔-真主”宣布了一场几乎无限的海上战争，危及了世界经济，违反了海事法。从这个意义上说，一场惩罚性的远征是不可避免的。打击行动什么时候开始以及持续多久其实并不重要，这里的关键在于，以往被视为不可侵犯的、极少被破坏的规则的可持续性问题，这具有全球意义。胡塞武装领导人认为在如此重要的航线上海盗行为会肆无忌惮，这一点相当奇怪。更奇怪的是，伊朗没有向胡塞武装解释，长期扮演"血腥船长"的角色是充满危险的。尤其，中国也没有向伊朗转达其希望安抚合作伙伴的愿望。可能他们都希望利用也门来牵制美国？但坦率地说，无论是伊朗还是中国，都没有参与如此高水平博弈的经验，更不用说任何积极的经验了。

也门在许多方面都是一个值得关注的国家。一般来说这个国家被分为两个部分（东部的第三个沙漠部分由于人口极少，对国家的进程几乎没有实际影响），这是有历史原因的—— 也门北部是奥斯曼帝国的一部分，南部（又称亚丁保护国）是英国属地的一部分。也门作为单一国家的存在时间相对较短，这没有能在南北之间建立起稳定的联系。北也门主要是什叶派-扎伊迪派，南也门主要是逊尼派，在与苏联合作实现工业化之后，逊尼派和宗教认同在总体上更多地成为南也门人的文化传统。近40%的人口认为自己是东正教徒，但实际上只有2%-3% 的真正信教。这个状况跟俄罗斯相似。 总体而言南也门已经很接近一个古典城市文明，这在很大程度上得到了出生率的证明。而北方则是一个典型的传统文明，在社会分层方面具有强烈的部落主义倾向，出生率较高，并试图建立一个部落国家。事实上，安萨尔真主运动的目标就是效仿20世纪60年代初也门北部的国家形态，建立也门伊玛目教派。应该说，这在现代世界几乎是不现实的。20世纪有过许多建立纯部落国家的尝试都以失败告终：隆达部落首领莫伊兹·冲伯在前比属刚果领土上建立的加丹加只维持了三年，伊格博部落在尼日利亚领土上建立的比亚法拉共和国也只维持了三年，安哥拉卡宾达飞地的斗争和埃塞俄比亚奥罗莫部落建立部落国家的尝试都是徒劳无功的。时间就这样过去了。即使在也门北部也从未与部落联盟结盟的胡塞武装企图以武力建立他们自己的部落国家，是注定要失败的。国家不可能仅仅靠暴力来治理，而非暴力的方法在纯部落国家与其他部落成员的关系中肯定行不通。从这个意义上说，沙特的经验比较独特，拉希德部落酋长在第三次尝试中成功地建立了一个国家，但为此他们不得不与阿拉伯半岛主要领土上的所有其他主要部落酋长分享权力，这最终导致建立了一个畸形且笨重的国家机器，其中的平衡极具冲突性。沙特最终还是成功了，尽管花了近三百年。没有其他成功案例了，尤其是在现代。也门只能在南部建立一个稳定的国家形态，南部已经具备建国的先决条件，但在与北方的对抗中，南方在资源上处于劣势。因此，也门内战的任何一方都无法取得胜利，形成了僵持局面。没有任何一方的明确胜利内战就不会结束—— 妥协是不可能的。外部介入（就也门而言，沙特、阿联酋和伊朗形成了三方对抗的平衡）对延长冲突起到了一定作用，但主要原因是这场冲突不可能在内部解决。因此它将是非常非常漫长的。此外，关于伊朗可能关闭霍尔木兹海峡的传说是非常难以置信的。这甚至不是说伊朗是不是担心或者有多担心这种行动遭到军事回应。伊朗经济严重依赖石油出口。其依赖程度甚至远远超过俄罗斯。因此，关闭波斯湾的石油贸易将首先关闭伊朗自己的龙头。这将意味着伊朗整个经济的迅速崩溃，甚至会立刻产生连带效应。以伊朗目前的社会状况来说，崩溃有一触即发之势。此外，别忘了石油是伊斯兰革命卫队将军们的大生意。从真正意义上说，他们就是靠出口赚钱的，伊斯兰革命卫队实际上拥有伊朗所有的出口产业。当然，他们是意识形态的家伙（至少在口头上），但在个人钱包的问题上他们不允许任何妥协。总之，对切断海湾地区石油供应的担忧不是个问题。虽然各种表演都有可能出现，撕破衬衫大喊“别拦我！”或者随便喊什么都行，到处贴满圣战旗子，开着装有机关枪的小船到处乱窜，等等，搞全民运动，都不会在意料之外。

There have been reports that shipping companies are refusing to transport goods, including oil and gas, along the regular route from Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal due to attacks on merchant ships by Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Tensions are rising. The Red Sea is becoming a red button for a new war, this time involving not proxy armies but the armed forces of the main players.

The throat of international trade has become too narrow. If it is squeezed even a little, the entire world economy will immediately suffer the effect of suffocation.

Iran , and China and Russia behind it, seem to have found another pain point of the West and are now actively kneading it.

The time limit for doing nothing seems very limited.

Of course, the space for choosing possible actions is more limited.

There seem to be only two possibilities: Either the hastily assembled new coalition completely destroys the Yemeni regime through military means (unprecedented bombing or ground operations, one variant of which is special forces operations), or some new global compromise is reached between the parties - the United States, Europe, China, Russia and Iran. The latter is much, much less likely than the former, as you know.

What is being talked about now is not a simple mechanical expansion of the current crisis to a new region, but a qualitative change (or rather, a malignant change) of the crisis. And the participants have little time to make a rational decision. Unless the elders in Tehran suddenly revoke the pirate licenses of their proxies in Yemen, a sharp military escalation seems to be the preferred option. But this is something that no one in the world wants.

We've received a lot of comments in the last few days, even though we're still on vacation. Thanks to all the positive people! As you can all appreciate, this is a stressful situation.

This article will select 5 representative thoughts from all the comments we received, which can represent 5 aspects of observation on this situation. We think each aspect deserves more in-depth study. Looking forward to your wisdom.

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1. A new “balance of power”

It is now the fourth month of the "war" between Israel and Hamas. I believe that more people have realized that liberating the Palestinian people is not the main goal of the so-called " Black Sabbath " organizers.

The purpose is to provoke the Jewish state/or give it a "reason" to react extremely harshly, thereby leading to a possible "next step" - the intervention of "third parties".

But the final act in the Middle East drama will not be a direct conflict between the United States and Iran.

The creators of this conflict are not aiming for the end of the world. Their goal is not to destroy the world, but to dramatically change the global balance of power.

That is why it was not Iran itself or its Lebanese-Syrian proxies, but the Houthis that gradually moved from a secondary player to a primary one.

It is difficult for Yemeni Shia groups to cause any real damage to Israel, let alone provoke a nuclear escalation. But the Houthi blockade of the strait between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea is of great strategic significance from the perspective of world logistics, forcing the United States to take decisive action, thus triggering geopolitical and geo-economic "dynamics."

Especially since China is trying to seize the second place in the said sea corridor , having established a military base in Djibouti less than 10 years ago. It is "not accidental" that Chinese troops are stationed on the African side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, while the civil war launched by the Houthis is raging on the Eurasian side. Moreover, Iran, which supports Shiite militants in Yemen, and (later) Qatar itself are also major trading partners of China.

Washington has been preparing for this. As early as September 2023, the White House tried to combine the positions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on resolving the Yemen issue. There is also India 's G20 , which is very clear to control China . The importance of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea to India's trade with Europe has been known since at least the first century AD when Rome established the so-called "Spice Road".

So, now India's interests are a bit awkward, and the "window to Europe" may be slipping away from its hands... Or, "who" will do something?

2. The “enemy” has changed

If Desert Storm was rightly seen as a victory crucial to the formation of a unipolar world, the current campaign against the Houthis looks more like a stumble of senility.

This is not just because the operators of the "unipolar" system today are completely different from those of the past (in terms of everything including personality/style), but also because the opponent has changed.

The Economist has recently written about some aspects of the evolution of the "Global South", with the Houthis being one of these case studies.

The key issue here is that the current actions of the United States and Britain are unlikely to cause the same level of deadly damage to the Houthi armed forces as the Iraqi army suffered in 1991.

The fact that Yemeni territory has been in a state of humanitarian disaster has had little impact on the resilience of the Houthis. When people are used to poverty, and abject poverty for a long time, it is difficult to scare them with anything. They have been lying on the edge of the cliff for a long time, and they are familiar with the edge of the cliff. In fact, they have nothing to lose. By the way, this is completely different from the Iraqi society of the past, which was more Westernized and prosperous.

In addition, there are no large-scale troop concentrations or large military warehouses in Yemen. This means that there are no "important targets" for strikes, only sporadic unimportant targets, and striking each target is a difficult task. Moreover, the damage is not difficult to repair.

In Yemen, another model of this very new war psychology has actually been demonstrated, that is, on the one hand, a society accustomed to living comfortably, trying to hurt the enemy with so-called "surgical strikes", and on the other hand, a society with nothing, can only use small and cheap means of war. The same is true in Gaza , where tens of thousands of scattered soldiers face hundreds of thousands of well-trained and overwhelming professional troops.

So far, only Israel has most unscrupulously practiced the "methods" to combat this war psychology - genocide , total occupation and control. Re-enacting medieval colonial madness . But the results (at least for now) are well known.

This is a clash of two mindsets: one is "there is gain and loss", the other is to fight tooth and nail, even to the point of cheapening one's life. The resulting stalemate cannot be resolved by any of the most old methods.

Three - Formation

Regarding the US-UK air strikes on Yemen, the unbalanced response of EU countries to the incident may be another part worthy of attention.

Of course, all major European countries have clearly condemned the actions of the Houthis, who have used Iranian-supplied missiles and drones to attack commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea since late November, severely hampering free navigation in this vital waterway, through which 12% of world trade passes.

Merchant ships from more than 50 countries were affected, and more than 2,000 ships changed their normal routes.

However, after the United States and Britain launched missiles against dozens of targets in Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, on the evening of January 12, the United States' European NATO allies did not express unanimous agreement. This was mainly due to differences within the EU over the evaluation of Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip, with the Houthi armed forces describing their actions in the Red Sea as a "response to the US-Israel invasion of Palestine." In addition, some EU countries also hope to avoid further deterioration of relations with Iran, fearing an escalation of conflicts in the Middle East.

The EU’s foreign policy department was conspicuous by its lack of immediate comment on the airstrikes against the Houthis, with the head of Europe’s foreign policy department Josep Borrell issuing a statement on behalf of the bloc a day later, in which he made no mention of the US and UK military action.

Borrell simply pointed out that the UN Security Council resolution adopted on January 10 stipulates that countries have the right to protect their ships from attacks in accordance with international law, and called on the Houthi armed forces to exercise restraint and immediately stop attacking ships.

Among the 10 countries that signed a joint statement supporting the actions of Washington and London, only three were EU countries: the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

According to U.S. officials, the Netherlands provided some logistical and intelligence support for the operation, and The Hague apparently took such action because Dutch commercial ports, including Rotterdam, Europe's largest, were particularly hard hit by the Red Sea paralysis.

Acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: "The actions of the United States and the United Kingdom are based on the right of self-defense, aimed at protecting freedom of navigation and focused on de-escalating the situation."

"The Red Sea is the most important waterway between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. Safe passage through the Red Sea is therefore closely linked to the interests of the Netherlands," the Dutch foreign and defense ministers said in a letter to parliament.

"We will not hesitate to stand up to protect the free flow of lives and goods in the Red Sea," Germany's Defense Ministry said on Friday. The ministry is currently discussing what Germany's contribution to the coalition might be if the fierce confrontation with the Houthis continues.

But France and Italy, which have their own warships in the Red Sea, have shied away from collective action.

Rear Admiral Emmanuel Schallers, commander of Paris' forces in the region, said his mission included protecting all ships coming from France or linked to French interests, but did not include strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels.

A French government source told U.S. reporters that, among other reasons, Paris is concerned that joining the U.S.-led coalition would cause it to lose leverage to ease tensions between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel.

In addition, Macron does not want to be deeply involved in the confrontation between the United States and Iran.

The report also said that Italy refused to participate in the attack on the Houthi armed forces despite Washington's request because Italy was worried about the outbreak of new military conflicts in the region and preferred to pursue a "appeasement" policy there.

Finally, Spain’s leftist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has been the most critical of European leaders of Israel’s actions in Gaza, sought to distance himself from the United States’ hardline approach to resolving the Red Sea shipping issue.

This is the current formation. But it can be changed to a certain extent.

4- Why do humans kill each other?

As armed conflicts continue to escalate around the world — including news of military strikes by the United States and Britain on Yemen amid years of invasion — it’s important to discuss the origins of war.

Rudolf Locke once strongly criticized some Marxists for trying to reduce war to the material interests of the bourgeoisie . After all, although war industries bring huge profits to the economy (including capitalist economies), war is often a sensitive blow. It is even more obvious that war existed long before the emergence of capitalism.

Anarchists themselves claim that capitalism is only a partial manifestation of hierarchy. So it pays to delve into history .

For some time, anthropology has been dominated by the idea that pre-state societies are supposed to have higher levels of violence (researchers Lawrence Keeley and Steven Pinker), which in many ways continues Hobbes's concept of "war of all against all". Keeley even argues that, in percentage terms, the Second World War was "far less deadly" than previous wars. This interpretation of events still exists today on one of the most famous world statistics websites, "Out world in data".

But in reality, as critics have pointed out, these claims are made without substantiation or even pedantic (for example, exaggerating events like the Crow Creek Massacre during the Columbus era).

Modern anthropologists have found that organized warfare did not occur in human society until about 12,000 years ago. Before that, even if there were conflicts, they could only be called "wars" in a broad sense, because they were more like small-scale conflicts between bonobos (our closest relatives) or modern street fights. Systematic raids appeared in 10,000 BC, initially mainly related to fear of resource scarcity .

But starting in the 3rd century BC, the organization and number of wars increased and reached a whole new level. All of this is directly related to the emergence and strengthening of the hierarchy of human society.

Biology shows that different social animals have different social structure patterns: the more intense the intraspecific competition, the more likely it is that the society is based on the dominance of a leader species, such as mandrills; the more intraspecific competition is reduced through mutual cooperation and assistance (as Kropotkin said), the more equal order can be seen, such as hairy spider monkeys.

On the other hand, before the Neolithic Revolution, humans were primarily egalitarian animals. Pre-state social structure models can be divided into two types: one is a headless society with no hierarchy and official leaders at all, and the other is a chieftainship society with varying degrees of power and centralization .

Both patterns existed before and after the Neolithic Revolution, but the first pattern was dominant before the revolution, while the second pattern gradually became dominant after the revolution.

Headless societies exist either as group or tribal societies, as in the vast majority of hunter-gatherers, or as village democracies in many agricultural cultures, such as the Igbo-Nong people of eastern Nigeria, where discussion and consensus are practiced in communal councils rather than hierarchical bureaucratic systems, and they therefore exhibit less militancy.

In contrast, in chiefdoms, communities and councils increasingly played a consultative rather than a decision-making role, and such societies became more militarized. When clan greats or elders were given the power to command the labor of others , wars of conquest emerged, such as certain military alliances. Subordination of neighboring groups allowed chiefs to collect tribute and slaves . On the other hand, the emergence of the state enabled rulers to mobilize large populations to participate in the invasion campaigns of the colonial state .

Five- "Will this world ever be okay?"

Everyone understands that we are no longer talking about "private violence" in one place, but about the dynamics that the whole world is starting, preparing to start again. Naturally, the question arises - where to go? Is this a completely new dynamic, unprecedented? I dare say that we are facing only a repetition of the old times; but the part that requires you and me to participate must absolutely be unprecedented, precisely because the old methods have proven to have failed .

From a layman's perspective, almost everything that is going on in this world is unusual, between Palestinians and Israelis , between Russians and Ukrainians , the Houthis blockading the Red Sea , the Chinese threatening to blockade the Yellow Sea... However, from a historical perspective, this is the normal state of the world, exactly the same as it has been for thousands of years. Although the intensity of violence in the world has been relatively low and the number of wars has been limited in the past 40 years, this is precisely an unusual period in the history of the earth, caused by the coincidence of various unique circumstances.

There are three main circumstances: a catastrophe that killed about 50 million people, the emergence and spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the gap left in world time and space by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was the last one that became the fuse of the current era. In the West, especially in Europe, the dominant idea is to establish a very close and "easy to achieve" (just make people believe it is easy to achieve) fair world order, without violence and inequality , all minorities can be satisfied, all the weak are protected and resettled, and all the strong hide in the corner and slap themselves in the face. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, a generation and a half of people appeared in European politics one after another, who grew up under the guidance of this idea and quickly became trend-setters.

The historical optimism of these generations of idealists was paid for in advance by their ancestors who died in World War II, and Gorbachev helped to allay fears of a new global war. Their efforts created a semblance of "normalcy" for the unique state of humanity between 1985 and 2020. To their credit, they have seriously advanced Western society on the path of humanization, and they will be credited for it in the future. But the reality they created, dazed by success, is far from ideal. For this, everyone , including them, will soon pay a heavy price.

Now the world is returning to its usual parameters . In this sense, nothing supernatural is happening. Yet, that generation of idealists was not prepared for this “return.” They had no tools in their arsenal to deal with the problems of the real world to everyone’s satisfaction, and they were not prepared to borrow anything from the generation before them.

This creates a dangerous vacuum. It could lead to a real collapse . So, can generational change change anything? Assuming it can, it means that in no less than 10-15 years, a new generation of realists will replace the current idealists. The former will build a more strictly militarized world, with more emphasis on force, more authoritarianism, and fewer ideals. That is, a big step backwards . Then, it is possible/likely, there will be a rapid forward movement.

If you can’t wait any longer, and can’t wait for a dozen or twenty years (like me), then you can transform into a “realist” and “jump over” this stage. This is what some people who are struggling today are really committed to.

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Thanks again for all the positive thoughts! Our year end gift is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/shui-shuo-jian-95542126

Starting from 2024, IYP hopes to find a new start with you.

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