Defeat of the west? Emmanuel todd and the russo-ukrainian war | thearticle

Emmanuel Todd, now 72, is one of the few who predicted the end of the Soviet Union. In _La chute finale: Essai sur la decomposition de la sphere soviétique_ (1976)[1] he analysed infant

mortality, suicide rates, economic productivity and other indicators, and concluded that the USSR’s long stagnation would soon culminate in collapse. Now, in _LA DÉFAITE DE L’OCCIDENT_

(Gallimard, 384 pp, published in January 2024), Todd applies the same forensic data analysis to Russia, Ukraine and the West. He concludes that Russia will succeed in its war aims and that

the West is heading for defeat — less due to the war than as a result of its own “self-destruction”. In France Todd’s book has received the media attention befitting a celebrity: long

interviews on highbrow TV discussion programmes achieving hundreds of thousands of views. Though _Le Monde_ dismissed him as “a prophet with closed eyes” who is “not the first to spread

Kremlin propaganda in France”, Todd is adamant that he is no Putinophile. His is the analysis of a _longue durée_ historian, who considers long-term trends with ideological detachment. Why

did Vladimir Putin choose February 2022 to launch his “special military operation”? Todd gives two answers. Firstly, Russia was ready. Since the 2014 sanctions in response to the Russian

annexation of Crimea, Russia had been building up its military capability (including hypersonic missiles for which Nato has no match) and future-proofing its economy, developing the capacity

for “great technical, economic and social flexibility: an adversary to be taken seriously”. Secondly, based on birth rates and mobilisation cohorts, Todd concludes that Putin saw a

five-year opening in which to defeat Ukraine and push back Nato. By 2027 the cohort of men eligible for military service will be too small. Russia invading Europe after conquering Ukraine is

the stuff of “fantasy and propaganda”, Todd maintains. “The truth is that Russia, with a shrinking population and a territory of 17 million square kilometers, far from wanting to conquer

new territories, wonders above all how she will continue to occupy those she already possesses.” Demographic factors also impact Russia’s conduct of the war, Todd suggests. Initially a mere

120,000 Russian troops were deployed in Ukraine, a country of 600,000 km2. (Compare this with the USSR’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia: 128,000 km2, 500,000 troops.) Contrary to the

narrative favoured by many Western commentators, Russia’s current military strategy is not to hurl millions into the Stalingrad meat grinder. This war is being prosecuted slowly and

methodically, to minimise losses. Todd points to the important role played in the conflict’s early stages by Chechen regiments and the Wagner militia, and to the mobilisations: partial,

gradual, sparingly implemented. “Russia’s priority is not to conquer a maximum of territory but to lose a minimum of men.” Putin’s continued popularity at home does not surprise Todd.

Drawing on rates of suicide and alcohol-related deaths, Todd demonstrates the social stabilisation of the Putin era. A particularly significant indicator is infant mortality: 19 per thousand

in 2000, 4.4 per thousand in 2020 – below the American rate of 5.4. And for most Russian citizens the standard of living has never been higher. In Todd’s view the notion that Russia will be

defeated by economic war is a delusion spread by the lawyers and accountants who have taken over Western policy-making and planning. Sanctions rely on global cooperation. But many

countries, indifferent to this Russia-NATO confrontation and resenting the war’s costs imposed on them, do not want to play along, and assist in flows of essential equipment to Russia and

hydrocarbons from it. And the Russian economy has rebounded, despite (or because of?) the sanctions. Take wheat production: 37 million tonnes in 2012, 80 in 2020. (America’s fell from 65

million tonnes in 1980 to 47 in 2022.) If Russia and Belarus — whose combined GDP is 3.3% of the West’s (US, Canada, EU, UK, Japan, Korea) — can out-produce the West in arms production, then

the whole notion of GDP must be up for reconsideration. The more significant consequence is that Ukraine is losing the war, due to shortages in weapons supply. As for Ukraine, few

anticipated that a “failed state” beset by corruption and in the grip of oligarchs would put up such a fight. “What nobody could have predicted is that it would find in the war a reason for

existing, a justification for its own existence.” Todd presents a Ukraine irretrievably divided, with the Southern and Eastern regions having opted out of the Ukrainian national project long

ago. The 2010 Presidential elections, he says, show this division with an “almost disconcerting simplicity”. Votes for the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych were 90.44%, 88.96% and 78.24% in

Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea, but only 8.60%, 7.92% and 7.02% in the Western provinces of Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. For Todd the May 2014 Presidential elections — resulting in Petro

Poroshenko’s election — were a turning point. In Donetsk turnout was a mere 15%; in Lugansk, 25%.[2] “These elections mark the moment when the [Russophone] regions disappeared from the

Ukrainian political system.” This was “the end of a Ukrainian democracy, which in fact had never functioned” and “the true birth of the Ukrainian nation, through the alliance of the

ultra-nationalism of the West and the anarcho-militarism of the Centre, against the Russophile part of the country.” In the lead-up to February 2022, Russia made three demands on Ukraine:

permanent retention of Crimea, protection for the Russian-speaking (or, as Todd puts it, Russian) populations of the Donbas, and neutrality. “A Ukrainian nation sure of its existence and of

its destiny in Western Europe would have accepted these conditions”, Todd maintains; “it would even have got rid of the Donbas.” Recalling the amicable break-up of Czechoslovakia, Todd notes

that this smaller polity could then have focussed on building itself as a truly Ukrainian nation-state, recognised by all. Ukraine’s determination to reconquer the Donbas and reclaim Crimea

is “a suicidal project”, Todd claims. It is trying “to maintain its sovereignty over the populations of another nation – a nation far more powerful than it is”. He continues: “The suicidal

lack of realism in Kiev’s strategy suggests – paradoxically – a pathological Ukrainian attachment to Russia: a need for conflict which reveals an inability to separate from it.” As for the

West, Todd presents it as narcissistic and hubristically out of touch with the “Rest of the World”. Its “ideological solitude and ignorance of its own isolation” are the result of two

decades of American-led globalisation and aggressive foreign policy. Backed up by an analysis of typical family structures and cultural and religious allegiances, Todd is not surprised that

much of the Rest of the World is rooting for Russia, in its defiance of unipolar America-dominated hegemony and the “liberal international order”. Russia is not the principal geopolitical

problem, Todd suggests. “Too vast for a shrinking population, she would be incapable of taking control of the planet and has no desire whatsoever to do so […] Rather, it is a Western – and

more specifically American – crisis, a terminal crisis, which is putting the planet’s equilibrium into peril.” With President Macron now proposing to take the lead on European military

support for Ukraine, Emmanuel Todd seems at odds with the French establishment. And there is much in his book to challenge the dominant narratives in our own politics and media. _Marc

Polonsky is a retired partner of an international law firm. His practice focussed on investment in the Russian hydrocarbons and infrastructure sectors. All translations from the French are

his._ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we

need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation._ [1] Published in English as _The Final Fall: an Essay on the Disintegration of the

Soviet Sphere_ (1979) [2] As the French academic Anna Colin Lebedev has pointed out, these low turnout rates will surely have been affected by the high-intensity armed conflict in the Donbas

at that time.