Jean-Baptiste Noé has a doctorate in history and editor-in-chief of the review Conflits. Last published work:
Shadows of the earth.
Geopolitical Chronicles
(2020).
FIGAROVOX.
- What event in the world has marked you the most this year and why?
Jean-Baptiste NOÉ.
- Of course, the coronavirus epidemic was the highlight of 2020. But to evoke an important event about which little has been said, I will mention the recovery of bitcoin, whose price reached its all-time high, approaching 30 000 dollars.
After his crash in January 2018, many thought he was dead.
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This cryptocurrency has, however, shown its capacity for recovery and survival.
However, what is being played around bitcoin and cryptocurrencies could lead to major geopolitical changes in the years to come.
Until now, money has been a state monopoly.
Along with cryptocurrencies, they escape governments and central banks to become privatized currencies.
However, whoever controls money controls trade, law and therefore the city.
If digital private currencies were to prevail and become real and reliable alternatives to state currencies, the end of public policies based on debt and monetary manipulation, and also the end of the dollar privilege which grants States United a legal preeminence.
The awakening of bitcoin is one more step towards the emergence of Asia
In this new digital world that is emerging, Asia has a head start, whether in the mastery of techniques (bitcoin is very popular in South Korea and Japan), superconductors and innovations.
The awakening of bitcoin is one more step towards the emergence of Asia.
Bitcoin is also a symbol of the tension currently at play in the world between states and civil society.
Administrations have had great difficulty responding to crises and adapting, while civil society has been much more responsive and mobile.
We have seen it on the question of masks as on the question of treatments.
Supermarkets have been better able to supply masks than the French State, and civil society, doctors and engineers have been able to find remedies and develop innovations which have made it possible in a few weeks to respond to the emergence of 'a new virus and then to develop vaccines.
This growing tension between administrations and civil societies is one of the causes of the crisis of democracy.
We read in the last issue of Conflits that the eastern Mediterranean has become "
the sea of all dangers
".
Is Europe threatened?
Why, then, is she so timid in the face of the Turkish threat?
Europe is too often confused with the European Union, which are nevertheless very different entities.
What is happening in the eastern Mediterranean is major.
Gas fields with colossal capacities are being exploited, in particular thanks to ENI (Italy) and Total (France).
It is therefore an essential energy issue for the countries of Europe.
But two member countries of the European Union, Greece and Cyprus, are threatened by Turkey, in particular for questions of sharing maritime borders.
Only France reacted, sending a squad to conduct joint maritime maneuvers with its allies.
The Mediterranean is also the sea of transit for migrants and terrorists, a pivotal space towards Libya, Syria and the greater Middle East.
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"It has now been demonstrated that we can leave the European Union in a friendly manner"
And yet the EU does not intervene.
This shows that diplomacy and international relations remain the prerogative of states and that states in Europe have different interests and unequal military capabilities.
Which is also a very good thing.
States still have room for maneuver, which it is up to them to use.
Ditto in Nagorno-Karabakh, or facing the Azeris supported by the Turks, the Europeans did not shine by their eagerness to get involved ...
Yet that was the role of France, which is co-chair of the Minsk group, along with Russia and the United States.
Only Moscow got involved in this affair to put an end to the conflict and find an honorable way out for Armenia.
If that hadn't been the case, the human damage would have been much worse.
That said, nothing is settled in this area and hostilities could quite resume in the spring.
The problem of Europe is identity.
The Europeans and the French refuse to define who they are and in doing so, not having the capacity to be clearly defined, they cannot take political action.
This lack of response to what the European identity is is felt as well in the management of the epidemic, the question of integration or terrorism.
We thus come to say of the United Kingdom which is leaving the European Union that it is leaving Europe, an absurd thing.
The first border to be drawn is first of all the one which defines and delimits our culture and our civilization, that is to say what we are
We have the same problem in Afghanistan and Libya.
We have been there for 20 years for the first, ten years for the second, with no way out.
Until we have defined a “
desired end state
” we will not be able to carry out clear military and political action.
But for that we must first define what others are and what we are ourselves.
The identity crisis first affects Europeans, and because we are unable to define ourselves we are unable to define and delimit others either.
Our problem is intellectual and moral, before being political or economic.
There has been a lot of talk about the border this year.
The first border to be drawn is first of all that which defines and delimits our culture and our civilization, that is to say what we are.
A little further to the East, China faces growing disapproval (fueled this year by doubts about its transparency in communication around the epidemic, by its criticized repression of protests in Hong Kong and revelations about the fate of the Uyghurs).
However, Europe continues to pave the new Silk Road ...
A soft disapproval all the same.
The complaints of the European Union are especially heard with regard to Poland, Russia and Hungary.
It cannot be said that the repressions in Hong Kong have aroused popular passion, nor that the plight of the Uyghurs reaches the noise level of the Rohingya.
Humanitarian emotion remains very selective.
China has strength and power on its side.
When it comes to human rights, we only attack the weak.
However, we must reflect on the rest.
If Beijing annexed Taiwan, an objective still claimed by the communist regime, what will we do?
The stake is much more important than the arpents of sands of Mali.
Are we going to stand alongside South Korea and Japan, are we ready, intellectually and materially, to conduct a military operation?
Now is the time to ask the question and define our course of action in the China Sea.
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France is the victim of geopolitical glaucoma, its field of vision constantly shrinking.
Beyond West Africa and the Sahel, few things seem to interest him.
Yet we are a power in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and we have important interests in Asia.
It is time to open the field of vision and to take an interest in the whole world.
What project do we have for New Caledonia, for Reunion, for the Caribbean?
These are French lands and seas which unfortunately escape our field of reflection.
In the United States, Joe Biden does not seem willing to fundamentally change the geopolitical line drawn by his predecessor (with the notable exception of the Paris Agreements).
Did everything have to change for nothing to change?
The President of the United States has much less power than the French President, especially in matters of foreign policy where the Senate has a say.
There will probably be a great deal of continuity in the two policies, which the coming years will confirm or not.
Major international organizations have been severely criticized since the start of the epidemic for their powerlessness.
Is this trial justified?
Will they come out of this crisis weakened?
What is the real influence of international institutions since their establishment at the end of World War II?
It is the states that make international policy and international institutions have been useful only to the extent that they have served the policy of the West, under the guise of multilateralism.
The United Nations and its satellites have never resolved major conflicts.
The tiller of diplomacy is and remains in the hands of States
The novelty is that this time the WHO served the interests of China, notably by suppressing the Wuhan pneumonia alerts, which were first issued by Taiwan.
One may wonder if these institutions are anything other than "
gimmicks
" to use General de Gaulle's phrase, which provide career plans to senior international civil servants.
The United Nations and its satellites have never resolved major conflicts.
The tiller of diplomacy is and remains in the hands of states.
It is also the whole model of deregulatory globalization and the intensification of international trade that is in crisis.
Even the countries most reluctant to control their borders have closed them again for a while.
Will the volume of international trade, under the double effect of environmentalist concerns and the consequences of the Covid, drop over the next few years or decades?
Each has analyzed the covid crisis in the light of their reading grids.
For the opponents of globalization, it is it responsible and the epidemic the proof that it is necessary to regulate and close borders.
For supporters of globalization, it was this which made it possible to resolve the epidemic, in particular by promoting international scientific cooperation, which led to the improvement of care and the introduction of vaccines.
In this debate, therefore, we have not made much progress.
What has been called the closing of the borders was above all a political communication to give the illusion that the governments had some control over the situation.
Nowhere did this stop the virus from passing.
On the other hand, we came close to the food disaster in Southeast Asia.
With Vietnam being the region's main supplier of rice, the closure of ports and communication lines has raised fears of food shortages in many countries.
Vietnam had to reopen its supplies.
The same goes for us: Africa is dependent on Russian and French cereals.
If the boats do not enter the ports of Alexandria, Algiers or Dakar, it is famine that threatens the continent.
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I am not one of those who applaud the decline in international trade.
Many French companies, large and small, make a living from globalization and many of our jobs depend on it.
Much of our craftsmanship lives on purchases made in Japan or the United States.
If there are negative aspects, let us also see the positive aspects in order to be able to take a fair look at world trade.
Finally, what would be your dearest wish for the coming year?
That we rediscover the sense of beauty and aesthetics.
After a year of epidemic and stagnation, we still have to endure ignoble yellow plots in Paris and a crèche of insignificant ugliness on the Place Saint-Pierre.
We have the right to authentic art, to beautiful plastic works in the streets and musical works on the radios.
Art should unite the French population, rather than endlessly seeking to shock and divide
Architecture should also regain a sense of beauty.
Art is the beginning of politics and it is also what defines us.
Art should unite the French population, rather than endlessly seeking to shock and divide.
Since some are thinking about an interior redevelopment of Notre-Dame de Paris, why wouldn't they call on genuine artists capable of creating beautiful and desirable works?
France has no shortage of them and it would be a great opportunity to create a new style that would be admired in the centuries to come.