Before I get into Card’s works, first I want to say that despite his personal beliefs, I do feel that people can change or make mistakes. Simply because Card was scrutinized for his personal beliefs and comments (which I don’t endorse), I think we would be doing ourselves a disservice by not objectively analyzing his works to find clues about his predictions on geopolitics. Below, I will provide quotes from Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon. It will astound you the foresight that Card had in 1997 and 2000 relating to geopolitics considering these books were published before the onset of the War on Terrorism, the spy-state, and Russia’s unveiling of their recent ambitious geopolitical moves. Card’s stories are also…pretty good as far as an exploration of the human condition, family, friendships, etc. Though science-fiction probably gets the association of being a very male space with the negative connotation of fantasizing or projecting power-fantasy, I can assure you, that’s not true, and also that Card’s series has a diverse cast, and also one of the strongest female characters in a series I’ve read in Petra Arkanian. Though, there’s always room for criticism. If you ever see the Ender’s Game film, I can assure you that the book is better and the film’s writers (not the actors) ruined the possibility of a more expanded universe which parallels certain aspects of our real-world. Hollywood politics? Further, we have to realize that science-fiction often takes real world issues and simply speculates on their outcomes, particularly involving emerging technology. We can in many ways learn from certain science-fiction works.

It seems like old news now…

First off, I don’t hate Russia. I don’t hate the Russian people. I don’t want bad relations with Russia, but find it unfortunate that the current regime decided to protect its sovereignty with such a bipolar ideology which brings back sentiments of fascism. Why? Really? The Cold War ended when I was two years old. I’m one of those “older” Millennials born before the Berlin Wall fell. I lived in Germany as a kid as well, being an Army Brat, and there was such optimism in the air. The German people were the loving, accepting, anti-war, and curious about the world, and here I am, just a small American kid witnessing the joy. Eastern Europe was excited too. I’m in in my thirties now, but I first saw Putin on TV when I was in the seventh grade… He’s still in power.

I think Russia has a rich culture, history, literary tradition, cinema pioneering tradition, vast wilderness, etc. So, it is not the Russian people that I am concerned with, since they like all people are just under their respective governments, but rather the strategies and maneuvering of the current political regime. There’s been a re-branding process from that old autocratic Communism that build off of older Monarchist serfdom, with what’s now effectively fascism. Sure, oligarchs might own NBA or Premier League soccer teams. Their maybe be glistening futuristic skylines with GAP, Versace, and BMW dealerships. Yet, there is a type of fascism there, appearing as a democracy, but still retaining the underlying psychological underpinnings of Soviet control. It seems Putin remodeled Russia with traditionalist Orthodoxy as a type of marketing attempt to appeal to the fears of segments of the Western and American conservative constituency – a base with a sense of losing a sense of national identity in the face of what they see as the “failures of globalism and Western liberalism, i.e., free-markets and human rights for all”. A rabid Trump supporter or Meme artist would simply utter, “Muh, Russia”, yet, I’m sorry, politics or the games of Team Red or Team Blue, don’t mean much to me on this matter.

It was not far after the election of Donald Trump and then the eventual unveiling of the Russia-gate situation, that I was sitting on my couch after work, and something odd hit me. Russia; Putin’s annexation of Crimea; the expansionist and quasi-Occultism to Aleksandr Dugin’s Eurasianism ideology of his New Bolshevik Party… Chinese and Russian ties regarding the Belt-and-Road Imitative, also known as the New Silk Road Project. Trump… MAGA… Israel with Netanyahu… Is this out of a science-fiction book? I know it sounds strange.

But, imagine yourself at home, watching TV, and you’re hearing the Russia-gate case unfold. If you’ve read Card’s works, and remember them, then a sudden shock might have hit you.

I will get to the point. A character in Ender’s Shadow, named Bean, is a boy with genetically modified intelligence and an IQ which surpasses that of the series’ hero, Ender Wiggins. A street urchin forced to eek out a meager living on the chaotic streets of a dystopian Rotterdam, Netherlands (which in real-life is the end location of the developing Belt-and-Road initiative – strange how Card predicted this), the boy after surviving a Lord of The Flies situation between bands of roaming and abandoned street children, is taken in by a Catholic Nun who is working for the International Fleet (think the United Nations). Her job is to find special children able to be sent to Battle School, a school which trains young children in adult war-games in order to become future commanders of Earth’s next fight with an alien nemesis (you can disregard the science fiction background). Bean while at Battle School, leaning about geopolitics, assesses the world’s political situation for the reader.

While Bean reads, on page 400, it is said, “When the Buggers showed up, China had just emerge as the dominant world power, economically and militarily, having finally reunited itself as a democracy. The North Americans and Europeans played at being China’s “big brothers”, but the economic balance had finally shifted.” (Card, 1999). Further, on page 400, Card (1999) states, “What Bean saw as the driving force of history, however, was the resurgent Russian Empire. Where the Chinese simply took for granted that they were and should be the center of the universe, the Russians, led by a series of ambitious demagogues and authoritarian generals, felt that history had cheated them out of their rightful place, it was Russia that forced the creation of the New Warsaw Pact, bringing its effective borders back to the peak of Soviet power – and beyond, for this time Greece was its ally, and an intimated Turkey was neutralized. Europe was on the verge of being neutralized, the Russian dream of hegemony from the Pacific to the Atlantic at last within reach.” Before I go on, in other posts, I will tie these quotes to the geopolitical analysis provided by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book titled, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. However, I am not endorsing Mr. Brzezinski but will reference his book to find similarities between the books I’m referencing in this post.

How does this relate to Aleksandr Dugin’s Eurasianism strategy? The shortest way to describe it is that he wants to Russia to expand back to its Soviet territorial heights, but Dugin mixes a combination of esoteric thought and geopolitical maneuvering often through an ideological analysis of the “fallen” West. More on his Fourth Politics strategy to come later, but really, it sounds like he removed Lenin-Trotsky (on the surface at least) and inserted Blavatsky. I mean there’s no real surprise that the Nazis tried to find their “origins” in areas which were rich in resources and strategically beneficial. The Occult ideology serves as a type of “wall paper” for Putin’s, not necessarily the Russian people’s, ambitions.

From these quotes from Ender’s Shadow, it does sound very familiar to what is going on now in the real-world under Trump’s foreign policy, which on the surface feeds into a sense of right-wing isolationism, or even to liberal pacifism, or pacifism regardless of political affiliation (not all Republicans are warhawks), but in another light it seems as if Trump is purposely antagonizing the balance-of-power for reasons unknown. A very clever for “every action is an equal reaction” approach by Trump. For example, by challenging NATO members to meet their minimum contribution requirements, if they do meet these it raises his political perception among his base, but if nations refuse to, or simply can’t pay, it hurts the alliance as a whole. We have to remember, that many of these NATO countries suffered through a Eurozone economic crisis while also providing military support to US coalition forces, and, took on the humanist task of permitting refugees from Middle East instability. By withdrawing from a leadership positions and shaming the credibility of US foreign policy it creates an opportunistic void in which a hungry Putin regime can fill. From Trump’s public shaming and attempted embarrassment of foreign leaders in NATO, i.e., our allies; to his sanctions on NATO-member, Turkey, which will only push the Turks closer to Russia, which was the case in the Cold War as the Turks played both sides, and this provides the Russians will Black Sea access to to the Mediterranean, and pulling troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, it seems as if Trump is going down the list of every move to tilt the balance-of-power to Russia. But why? Why would Trump create an opportunity for another superpower to make grand acquisitions on the “Grand Chessboard”?

Things teetering conspiracy comes to mind, yet, not really if we understand the complex historical events which lead to events such as World War II. It is known public record that many in the United States and British establishment helped fund our enemies in their infancy, or led policies of appeasement such as that of Neville Chamberlain regarding Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. In theory, these moves by the US and UK elite to throw secretive financial support to people such as Hitler, or to earlier movements such as the Bolsheviks before WWI, helped to create the justification for eventual Allied intervention. By Trump pulling out of the Middle East, challenging NATO, and presenting the most favorable policy to the Israel state in modern times despite human rights concerns of the Palestinians, it seems as if Trump is a type of “Chaos Agent”, but whose allegiance once you go down this hole is hard to discern. Is he actively while passively assisting Russia on its “Third Rome” dreams by permitting the Russian Government to take the spiritual baton as champion of the Holy Land away from the “fallen West”?

Is Trump on the surface combating Chinese intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices, yet, behind the scenes supporting China by proxy of his appeasement of Russia, in which these two powers are actively engaged in the emerging “Eurasian Superhighway” of the Belt & Road Initiative? Is Trump simply laying the dynamite of the “grand showdown” between powers, which on the surface will seem ideological or a clash of civilizations, but really be a way to usher in a world of less nations, a new monetary system, and larger power-blocs that rise from the ashes of chaos like the symbolism found in the ancient Phoenix symbol? It sounds odd, but if you were tell a farmer in 1902, that the United States would be the sole Western superpower, with dollar hegemony, a permanent place in European politics, and overseeing an international body called the United Nations, that farmer would call you crazy. The truth of the matter, regardless of outcome, is that new systems come, and with the Cold War over, and the United States taking the burden as “problem child” in a world of global mitigation and anti-terror operations, we live in a time where new powers will rise, thus current political & economic realities will change.

In Shadow of the Hegemon by Card (2000) it is said, “Over a million Indians made it out of India before the Chinese sealed the borders. Out of a population of a billion and a half, that was far too few. At least ten times that million were transported over the next year, from India to the cold lands of Manchuria and the high deserts of Sinkiang” (p. 427). “As if this vast redrawing of the world’s map were no enough, Russia announced that it had joined China as its ally, and that it considered the nations of eastern Europe that were not loyal members of the New Warsaw Pact to the provinces in rebellion. Without firing a single shot, Russia was able, simply by promising not to be as dreadful as overlord as China, to rewrite the Warsaw Pact until it was more or less the constitution of an empire that included all of Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy in the South, and east of Sweden and Norway in the North” (p. 427-8). “The weary nations of western Europe were quick to “welcome” the “discipline” that Russia would bring to Europe, and Russia was immediately given full membership in the European Community. Because Russia now controlled the votes of more than half the members of that community, it would require constant tug of war to keep some semblance of independence, and rather than play that game, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal left the European Community. But even they took great pains to assure the Russian bear that this was purely over economic issues and they really welcome the renewed Russian interest in the West.” (p. 428). “In the Pacific, Japan, with its dominant fleet, could afford to stand firm; the other island nations that faced China across various not-so-wide bodies of water had no such luxury” (p. 428).

My last quote from Shadow of the Hegemon by Card (2000), deals interestingly with Muslim nations and how Muslim nations might be unrealized allies to the West and USA. “Indeed, the only force that stood firm against China and Russia while facing them across heavy defended borders were the Muslim nations. Iran generously forgot how threateningly Pakistani troops had loomed along their border in the month before India’s fall, and Arabs joined with Turks in Muslim solidarity against any Russian encroachment across the Caucus or into the vast steppes of central Asia. No one seriously thought that Muslim military might could stand for long against a serious attack from China, and Russia was only scarcely less dangerous, but the Muslims laid aside their grievances, trusted in Allah, and kept their borders bristling with the warning that this nettle would be hard to grasp” (p. 428-9). I find this last quote interesting, not I’m not advocating for Iran, per se, but it would present a different approach to US foreign policy if the Americans and Iranians were on good terms, particularly with a Sino-Russian alliance as a possibility. However, the United States commitment to Israel, especially against its enemies such as Hezbollah, and the history of strained US-Iranian relations regarding regime changes, oil nationalization and the rise of the Ayatollah, has hurt this possibility, though the possibility of peace is always possible.

This all sounds strange, but bare in mind that contradictions avail themselves while these real-world happenings unfold themselves. For example, Erik Prince, the “former” leader of Blackwater Private Military Group and a noted Zionist was noted in mainstream publications for working with the Chinese-based Frontier Service Group on the bold infrastructure project, a project which has included human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur population of the ancient Western Chinese deserts (a region full of Indo-European undertones which meshes well with the Manifest Destiny in Dugin’s Eurasianism ideology. Think about the Nazis searching for their “origins” in the Far East). From a peaceful standpoint, particularly for a war-weary United States and Europe, it seems good on the surface, but this view doesn’t take into account the other factors relating to our changing world. These factors include the fact that Russia is close with Israel; Russia has ties to China, and all three nations have ties to the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative, i.e., New Silk Road Project.

In this next section before I go on, I assure you that I am not antisemitic. I don’t think the “Jews run everything”. From an American perspective, especially one birthed within the twentieth-century, the American Jewish community is an important cultural asset, which was contributed to the arts, entertainment, Civil Rights, technology, medicine, and politics. I grew up with a fond appreciation and Americana relating to Jewish America. I find Holocaust denial repulsive. Most are just like everyone else just trying to live their lives.

Yet, it is my personal belief that the Israeli government under Netanyahu did most of the hacking to the US political system, even if it were just social media campaigns to support Trump, though China and Russia also participated for their own personal interests. It’s the game. The Israelis were spared the US media backlash, because the US media has historically kept internal Israeli politics out of the American frame of sight, despite the loyalty to Israel through movements such as Christian Evangelicalism. The US seems to value this relationship based on cultural and political bonds, yet, Israel as a sovereign state committed to self-determination, continuity of its borders, and expansion of its borders to the Biblical Kingdom of David. The Israelis, or rather elements of the Israeli state, seem to be looking more Eastward for future prospects. We have to realize that many Israelis and US Jews are of Eastern European descent, largely from areas such as the old Pale Settlements in modern day Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic Region, and Russia. With Israel strategically located closer to Russia, it seems the “Defenders of the Holy Land” is a card that factions of the Israeli Knesset are willing to pull from the USA and bestow upon the Orthodox Imperium of the Russia sphere. We also have to realize that Putin is close with the Chabad community, and in it could be argued that the Russian mob, is in effect also, or partially connected to the Jewish mob based out of Russia.

Further, Israel’s future economic ties with China are invaluable. The little-known Russia state of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, that was founded by Joseph Stalin in Russia’s far-east is strategically located next to a corridor of the Belt and Road Initiative. There’s money to be made in expanded international commerce between West and East. If Israel, China, and Russia were to unite, it would be a strong military pact of nuclear powers encircling the resource rich and black-market crucial areas of Eurasia. Russia was singled out as the more politically viable option, because A) The United States values the Israel relationship for both cultural and strategic reasons, B) China posses the most military and economic risks to the United States, and C) Russia wants to restore itself to a major world-player and has “stunted” on the US and West.

Wherever the Americans are, the Russians are right behind to provide an alternate public statement, insinuating constant US aggression. From the late GW Bush Era through the Obama Era, the Russian government has been unfolding a type of strategic multi-platformed chess strategy. I mean Putin is into Judo and the martial arts. Knocking you off course and using your momentum against you. Letting you overexert and exhaust your resources, just to kick you down, and stand over you, with a smug smirk. We’ve seen the Georgian-Russian conflict regarding South Ossetia; the annexation of Crimea; the Sochi Winter Olympics as a showcase of Putin’s New Russia; the shutting off of gas pipelines to Europe; the spreading of Soft-Power such as purchases of Western real-estate, sport teams, and even, good ole Pabst Blue Ribbon. We’ve also seen the establishment of more pipelines with Germany and Turkey, but also propaganda campaigns ranging from giving Eric Snowden safe-haven as the NSA was blasted for the collection of meta-data,

Then we have the online “Chaos Magick” campaign which has seen parts of the Alternative Conservative movement become…compromised. By Chaos Magick, I don’t mean the Occult, though Dugin is inspired by the Occult, but I mean postmodern warfare: meme campaigns, anti-West conspiracy theories, bloggers, YouTubers, etc. From a youth perspective, there’s an easy gateway even in black and death metal circles, since the paganism and atheistic undertones feeds back into a type of Blood-and-Soil politics. I’m not calling out these genres, because honestly, I enjoy some metal music, and not all, or most of it is racist.

Anyways, pundits such as Lauren Southern, formerly of Rebel Media, went to Russia to interview Dugin. RedIce’s founder, Henrik Palmgren’s wife, Laura Lokteff, is of Russian descent. Richard Spencer’s wife, Nina Kouprianova, is of Russian descent, though their marriage ended, which is public record. Even Jay Dyer, whom one could call a conspiracy theorist, though I enjoy some of his works and to his credit, he is only reading the books of others (though we all have our own bias and spin), actually converted to Orthodoxy and has appeared on RedIceTV. In Mr. Dyer’s in-depth analysis of geopolitical history, I do notice that when he projects forward it’s arguably pro-Russian. I’m not sure what to make of the guy. It is not a crime to be these things at all, yet, he converted to Orthodoxy (which is not a crime), but never shows both sides of the larger debate and keeps the focus on the “degenerate West”, but rarely presents an objective Russian analysis. I repeat, I have no issue with Russia. I’m not insinuating that Russian people are inherently bigoted, but there is a specific movement within the United States with certain links to Russia.

Yet, to end this, The “Deep State” in my personable view was disappointed at Israeli hacks, but valuing that Israeli relationship it was easier to call out the Russian hacks, since, well, Russia poses a military risk, whereas Israel is still a partner, though it’s free to court new suitors. Yet, by calling out the Russian hacks and beginning an investigation, the general public would eventually come to the Israel sources, without the US government having to make an official statement.

Citations

Card, O. S. (2000). Shadow of the Hegemon. New York: Tor.

Card, O. S. (1999). Enders Shadow. New York: Tor.