Of Pierrick Tillet

Source: counterinformation
I feel a little reassured because nothing happened. If you followed the Anglo-American press, something I do every morning, you were in an anti-Russian escalation. In fact what happened after the events in England, which resulted in the speech, it was a sort of growing Russophobia that was absolutely mysterious and deserves analysis. And the latest diplomatic development was that the Americans and Trump tweeted threatening a massive attack, ecc. And the Russians who said: Listen well, if so, we will use our anti-aircraft defense and this system that scares everyone, the S400 system which appears to be the best surface-to-air defense system in the world.
At that point there was simply the possibility of a bigger war and some sort of showdown, the cards revealed at the end of a poker game, since it is actually unknown what the Russians are capable of. The S400 may be able to destroy everything that flies in the air and in ten minutes there would be the end of the American empire. Or there would have been a failure of the S400s and the US would have gone on the rampage again.
Well, we shot firecrackers, we negotiated with the Russians. There had been an anti-Russian dynamic that was building and, in the end, the Americans, the British and French struck where the Russians authorized them to strike. So we are back to nothing. At the current state of information, I feel quite reassured.
Russia on a military level is a balancing force against the United States
I speak from a point of view that is a priori very favorable to the Anglo-American world. I'm French but, since France is trapped in a euro that it does not control and its action no longer counts for much, this doesn't matter that much. So what worries me currently, when you read the Western press, is that, for me, It's a crazy print. That is, the vision of the world in which the citizens of the Western world maintain themselves, the vision of a superpower Russia, threatening, sprawling, totalitarian, ecc., it is actually a hallucinatory vision.
Emmanuel Todd
Russia has a regime that I call authoritarian democracy. Putin is elected. There is a certain type of control of the press organs, but the Russians are informed. Everyone agrees that Russians are supportive of Putin's policies. Russia is a country that has little more than 140 millions of inhabitants, that is, ten times less than the so-called Western world. It is a country that has just found a certain type of stability and social security. The suicide rate is falling. The murder rate is falling. A certain kind of social trust has been re-established in Russia. The real reason for Putin's popularity is simply that after the crisis of the exit from communism, Russians feel better. They have a future. Fertility is slightly on the rise, even if it has dropped a bit. E, It is true, this country has returned to parity in terms of military technologies. There is no doubt that they have had a technological comeback. And indeed, Russia appears to be the only military force in the world capable of coping, be a balancing force, against the United States.
If we think in terms of balance of power, if we respect the Constitution of the United States, we have to say that it's better this way anyway! Because the idea that only one country in the world is able to do what it wants, it's not a good concept from a liberal point of view. Even if we don't like Russia, the existence of a center of stability that has no real capacity for expansion – it is too small in terms of population – we should take it as good news.
Well, in the West, Russia, not just Putin, he's a monster, furthermore framed with respect to anthropological and family criteria that should have nothing to do with geopolitics, like the statute of homosexuals or something else like that. There is an extremely negative view of Russia. All Russian interventions, everything the Russians say is considered the word of Satan, lies, ecc.
The absolutely incredible fibrillation of the great Western democracies
And then we act like we're normal. But the truth is that the most Western world, the three original Western democracies – France, England and the United States, that is, the nations that built democracy – can be considered to be in an absolutely incredible state of fibrillation. It is a world in crisis. […] The truth is that in these three democracies we find ourselves in a situation of instability and schizophrenia.
[…] I read Putin's texts, or Lavrov (1), or whether it is the contacts I was able to have recently at the Russian embassy, the intellectual level of Russian diplomats and Russian leaders is much higher than that of Westerners. You cannot understand the situation if you do not see this asymmetry. Meaning what, an interview with Lavrov or a discussion with Orlov, Russian ambassador to Paris, they are much superior people to those of the Quai d'Orsay. They have a vision of history, a vision of the world, a vision of Russia, a vision of the balance of forces, a vision of self-control that they call professionalism.
[…] If you stop reading Le Monde and believing what's inside, you tell yourself: bene, where is rationality, where is the intelligence, where is the self-control? This is what is important.

• Emmanuel Todd – historian, sociologist, French anthropologist. Ricercatore presso the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) of Paris. He wrote numerous essays, including The Final Collapse (1976), in which he predicted the end of the Soviet Union, and After the Empire (2003), in which he prophesies the "decomposition of the American system" and the rebirth of Europe.
• Latest works: After the Empire, Ed. Net. The Meeting of Civilizations, Ed. Marco Tropea.
• Source: Yetiblog.org
  Translation: Simonetta Lambertini – Invictapalestina.org