Meeting in Ukraine: Putin. Nietzsche. Biden. (Part II).
Neo-Conism and the Peripeteia of the Will-to-Power
(Part II of Two
IV
Now, if the summoning by History of Putin and Biden to meet in Ukraine would seem clear to the reader, the question to be answered would be— Why Nietzsche, too?
That question answers itself if we notice that in his observations on the political psychology of Western Europe which this writing piece takes from, Nietzsche concluded that, among the nations comprehended thereof, there existed what he termed an "order of rank" in their respective Will-to-Power. Subsequently, Nietzsche proposed that, as already intimated above, such order was to be determined according to how weak or strong a nation or State was when making difficult decisions, on setting ever higher tasks for itself, and when making painful sacrifices in the pursuit of its goals. To insist on this point: the order of rank of the Will was reflected in how resolute a nation or State showed itself to be in saying Yes or No when most appropriate, and to act accordingly. But Nietzsche went a bit deeper.
That is, in ranking the European nations one after another, he also identifies the main factors that intervened in the weakening or strengthening, and in the end, in facilitating or not the acquisition of the Will to resolutely say Yes or No, and do Yes and No. In that, culture, but more specifically, the place that culture and cultural developments occupy in a given social arrangement, plays a most important role. To make patent this point, here culture is being understood in the strictest term as the cultivated artistic and intellectual practices, coupled with the tendency to the cultivation of the tastes, attitudes, and the ethos of the artistic elites and "polite society," usually in detriment of the traditional ways and the autochthonous systems of values that usually goes along with that.
Thus, in the ranking order of the Will established by Nietzsche, the most "cultural" a nation or State is, the weaker and sicker, that is, the more indecisive, diffident, wobbling, and put "technically," nervous its Will-to-Power grows. But that is a necessary, logical consequence, and at the same time and effect, of the cultural "openness," that is, of the predisposition a society or nation exhibits for the systematic churning out of "diversities" which it must also systematically "include" in it, creating a circular societal practice which, in accordance with the circular logic it is predicated on, can never be brought to a closing.
Following such psychological benchmark, the France of Nietzsche's days was the weakest and sickest, on account of it being more culturally "advanced," by way of saying more "diverse" and "inclusive," or if you would allow it, more culturally, racially, and socially confounded. As such, it compared negatively to Germany in the Nietzschean order of rank of the Will. In turn, the latter compared negatively to Corsica and Spain, while these two nations/States compared positively to Italy— all of the above meanwhile comparing negatively to Russia. To leave no room for doubt on this point: Nietzsche is unhesitant in stating that in Russia the "strength to Will" had for long been "stored up and kept in reserve."
As it is well-known, the Western Europe Nietzsche is evaluating, France was held with good reason to be the paradigm of modern arts and culture, while Russia, who aspired to be like it, was for still better reasons deemed to be culturally "backwardly," qualifiable as such judgment might be. Admittedly, less modern; slower and only reluctantly willing and able to catch up with Western Europe; socially and culturally backwardly; politically "unenlightened" and, by the values of the day, "reactionary," Russia exuded vigor and virility to boot in all it did.
So that, without pushing the hypothesis too far, Nietzsche's philosophical assessment of the psychology of political Will in the Europe of his days allows us to see why it would have been conceivable by the delusory, Romantic German Spirit to first attack France, embodied in Bismarck, bringing about the "Great" First World War. But, by the same token, we can better understand why later in history, this time around embodied in Hitler, the German Spirit could have conceived of attacking Russia, bringing about the Second World War. It attacked France because it gathered, likely from the writing of Nietzsche, that France would have been weak-willed, it being so societally hybrid in the sense above. But then, later on in history it attacked Russia because it gathered that, contrary to France, Russia was strong-willed, for reasons opposite to the above.
In the first instance, the Romantic German Spirit sought to prove the strength of the fictitious “German Spirit” by exploiting the weakness of the French. But it later attacked Russia seeking to probe into itself; to measure its own strength. That is, Germany sought to probe into the strength of what it in the first place had wrongly conceived to be the Nietzschean conceptualization of "Will-to-Power." Such inference can be defended on the foreknowledge that Nietzsche's work was extensively handled and perused in intellectual circles closest to the Germanic centers of power, although not necessarily bona fides understood. These statements are of course truer of Hitler's intellectuals than intellectuals from any other previous eras in German history, including Bismarck’s.
V
Such peripeteia of the presumed German “Will” is to the essence of the Romantic, myth-making German Spirit. But then, the German Spirit is weak. It was precisely because Hitler understood this that he became the Führer, to seek about overcoming this weakness of the Germans. That was why in this capacity, he invaded Russia. Now I add: excluding Karl der Grosse and Frederick II for reason of their antiquity— the Prussian Frederick the Great, and closer to home, Bismarck, and most recently Helmut Kohl and Gerard Schroder are the exception, not the rule among Germans. But that is most true of Schroder: in recent German history he has been the only German of note willful enough to say No to the Americans. He opposed the invasion of Iraq by the latter. How rare this No is by a German! And yet, in being weak, the Romantic German Spirit has prospered supporting itself on the own weakness of the Americans, so apt that America is at disguising itself as strength, just because it can go around blowing up stuff in impunity…
Thus, looking at the Germany of today one gets to completely understand what the Germans have been lacking throughout most of their history. But then, Herr Scholz reaches the peak of what the Germans have been lacking most since Germany was unified by Bismarck. To the extent that he is still a man; to the extent to which he has not yet "transitioned" into a different creature, Herr Scholz has yet to muster any balls-fuel and dare to even ask the pertinent questions as to who might have been behind the escalatory sabotaging of the German economy. However, it is that weakness of Neo-Conist and therefore para-fascist America which Germans like Herr Scholz have been counting on, and which is currently getting revealed in all its worth by Russia in Ukraine, where History has summoned Biden, Nietzsche, and Putin.
It should be taken a as an apt psychological observation, by yours truly, that the surest measure of the powerlessness of the Will is that him whom evil is done onto, does not even dare to want to know who the evil-doer is. Whoever wishes to learn more about present-day Germany should take it from there.
Before all is said and done, though, the most intriguing question to be asked is: why in Ukraine?
For, isn't it is profoundly ironic that History should have summoned an époque-making philosophical thinker from the most illustrious Polish-Germanic stock (Nietzsche), the most lucid, circumspect, and iron-fisted leader of the present world (Putin), and someone who can only be best described as a "Joe Biden," to meet up in Ukraine? In Ukraine, of all possible places! To be sure, had Nietzsche have his way, such meeting would have taken place somewhere in the battlefields of France or Germany, or thereabout. If so, the historical timing of such meeting would have been closer to his very own days. It goes without saying: had History arranged it in Western Europe proper, then Biden, or for that matter, any other American president would have not been summoned there by History but as an observer; perhaps.
The significance of this allegory can be readily grasped if, again, one takes into account the background of Nietzsche's philosophical reflections on the psychology of Western European powers of his days. Very much as it is now, Europe was then already decaying and corroding inside out, from top to bottom and from down up. Such state of things expressed itself in the first place as the constant, periodic warring among the divided, virtually sectarian and even tribal Western Europe's nobilities. From the standpoint of a philosophy on power psychology that situation meant that Europe did not know, was not sure of what it wanted: did it want to grow weaker, or did it want to become stronger?
There was one, and only one way out of such perplexity. In yet another unexpected irony, what "that" was depended on Russia, somehow. Nietzsche gives us three hypothetical scenarios, which, if either one could have eventually materialized, it would have had the potential for dissolving the supposed "threat" that, strong-willed and resolute Russia was deemed to represent to its will-less western neighbors. A) Either Russia would have had to concentrate its attention, resources, and energy in some Asian conflicts not yet there in, say, Japan or India. As a result, its power would have been used up, and the Continent would have been spared; B) Some hugely internal political turmoil would have to arise inside Russia, maybe a civil war or a revolution, which would have ended with Russia territorially fragmented into small, non-threatening political pieces; or C) Russia would have to in good time follow the way of the West, and adopt its "parliamentary imbecility" (Liberalism), and the "obligation upon everybody to read the newspaper at breakfast," says Nietzsche, obviously sarcastically and dismissive of the presumably more civilized system of the West.
VI
But wait! There was still another avenue for Western Europe to find relief from the "threat" Russia represented in the apprehension of the former. You see, as he proudly declared himself to be, Nietzsche was a consummate "Good European." So that, it is in extreme paradoxical that he wished for nothing more than for the "threat" which the strong-willing Russian Empire was construed to present to Western Europe to go on increasing ever more, until it would have reached the point at which Western Europe would have no option than to react, and face it head-on. Such reaction, whatever the form it took, would have to, according to Nietzsche's wish, lead Western Europeans to acquiring a "single Will” of their own. Such Will would have presumably been the expression at the political level of a new dominating caste comprising all the European nobilities, to oppose it to Russia's. To be sure, Nietzsche was not forecasting the emergence of the current European Union; for he envisioned something even more European that such conglomeration of American vassal States.
Ah! To be effective in overcoming the “Russian threat” (by which Nietzsche seemed to have meant Western European fear of Russia), the Will to be harvested by the new caste in which the whole Western European nobilities would have been merged into each other, would have also needed to be a Will capable of setting objectives for the entire Continent "for a thousand years ahead," into the future. Nothing else would have done. For Nietzsche had concluded that great changes were looming in the distance, which were going to affect every corner of the world and, presumably unlike Russia, weak, sickly, and decadent Western Europe was ill-prepared to face those changes. Therefore: "The time for petty politics is past," he heralded, and continued to say that "the next century [the 20th] will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth— the compulsion to grand politics."
Thus spoke Nietzsche. In the heels of Nietzsche speaking so, Germany launched two world wars, no doubt out of a voluntarist misreading and misapplication of his psychological insightfulness and farseeing political philosophy.
Of course, History has of its own accord demonstrated that such conclusion could have only been arrived at if, as already noticed, the logic of psychological inversion was allowed to prevail. According to this logic, whoever knows himself to be weak necessarily feels "threatened" by whomever he perceives as being stronger. (In parenthesis and in passing, one must here call attention to how, whoever has ever listened to any of his speeches or read anything by Hitler, for example, Mein Kampf, should find familiar the two Nietzsche quotations in the paragraphs above. If so, that is because, as it seems transparent at least to your writer here, it was from the misreading and misapplication of the handful of Nietzsche's hypotheses in reference that Hitlerism derived its whole program and raison de vivre concerning what it would be needed to be done onto Russia, to get done away with it for good.
Which is to say that the origin of German Fascismus and its strategical program are in ova contained in points A, B, and C above. Thus, the Nietzsche’s hypothesis above is what in time came to be the ideological content and the geopolitical foundation for the neo-fascist American importation now known as "Neo-cons."
(Nonetheless, it must be clarified also in parenthesis and in passing, that contrariwise to what could be misconstrued from the references above, Nietzsche was not anti-Russian. In true, a more pro-Russian mind than his cannot be found among the most consequential modern Western philosophers before or after him. For Nietzsche considered, and so he wrote, that solely on the account of its superior Will-to-Power, Russia was the model for what Europe should have aspired to be. Alas! The author of The Twilight of the Idols contends that Russia was the only European nation still extant on whose Will a new Roman Empire could be built!)
I would suggest the above is even more the case today, when everything "Western" is failing.
Now, wrong that he was on positing a hypothetical "Russian threat" that of course never materialized, I offer an apology on Nietzsche's behalf simply because, in an era of empires and imperial conquests as the Nineteenth Century was... Western Europe getting conquered by Russia would have sat quite well with the Zeitgeist: it was natural to have expected it. However, and perplexingly to boot, here Russia left Western Europe down, again.
That is, the Russian Empire never allowed its Will to increase and to store up to the degree of becoming for Western Europe the kind of "threat" that according to Nietzsche's penetrating insights could have had stimulated the West in acquiring a "Nietzschean Will." That History had to summon Biden to a meeting with Nietzsche and Putin in Ukraine is then the direct consequence of the "failure" of the Russian Empire to invade, say, Paris or Berlin— when it was still around. Quelle ironie! Comme ils sont decadents, les europeennes!
Thus, as it is worth insisting on, Western Europe has remained weak-willed, ill-willed, and nervous up and through the days in which Herr Scholz moved in to the Bundestag.
Since, as a whole, the Western Europeans have never had a Will strong enough to say No to America however much saying Yes would bring them down; and since the Germans brought but ruins on them all two times over— our witless, Will-less Western Europeans have clamored for, allowed, and facilitated the US of A to substitute for a new caste to emerge from among the European nobility, as Nietzsche would have wanted it. As a consequence, a unified center of power never attained among them whose commitment before History would have been the preservation of a strong, self-reliant, indomitable and independent Western Europe at whatever the cost. Which is what Russia has always striven to remain, whether as an Empire, or whether as a Federation.
As for the Western Europeans, one would be exceedingly correct to posit that instead of acquiring a Will-to-Power "of their own," or what is the same, a "Nietzschean Will," they were themselves acquired by a power which, in the hands of Neo-Conism (the American version of Nazism), rules supreme über (Sie) Alles. That is the power whose wishes the European Continent has committed itself to making come true in Ukraine. It is becoming ever clearer, however, that their efforts will in the end be proven by Russia to have been all to no avail: Neo-Conist Biden is to be crushed in Ukraine by the Russian Will: only Putin and Nietzsche will come out smiling from their summoning there by History. And, thus shall Russia have demonstrated its superior Will, as Nietzsche once observed.
For, you see, from Bismarck to Hitler to Biden, "Will-to-Power" has been catastrophically mistaken with accumulation and possession of overwhelming militaristic power. What a disgrace it is then that the West never learned to read correctly the most consequential among their own philosophers. Schopenhauer, who taught Nietzsche the concept of the irreducibility of the Will, also taught his readers that the function of the Intelligence is to justify and to correct the actions of the Will. Clearly, that also suggests that the "Will-to-Power" must always willingly submit itself to the power of the Intelligence. It looks like these precious pearls of Western philosophical wisdom have always been instinctively understood in Russia.
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Bibliographical Note:
—Friedrick Nietzsche:
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
The Twilight of the Idols (1889)
Untimely Meditations (1873)
—Michael Sturmer:
The German Empire (2000)
—Adam Zamoyski:
Poland: A History (2009)
—Nicholas V. Riasanovsky:
A History of Russia (1963)