Office Hours 15-Sovereign Development vs. Imperialist War w/Bikrum Gill

Adnan Husain: Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Salaam, hello, peace to you all and welcome to Office Hours. This is the 15th edition of this mostly weekly Friday afternoon, early evening live stream. If you're on the Eastern time, if you're in West Asia, it's very late. We welcome everybody who stays up in Europe and West Asia to attend these, but it's wonderful to be back again and have the opportunity for continuing conversation and discussion about the important issues in our time and to have, as we usually do, though sometimes I go solo, maybe just talk about history or obscure medieval things. I haven't done that too often. Usually we have a really noted guest to lead us through An important discussion about their work and about their way of interpreting and understanding the world. And this week is no exception. Before I introduce our guest, I do want to say, in addition to welcoming you all, is just to say that as people are trickling in, don't forget to like this particular stream. And I'll note that there are now two streams on YouTube. So if it's appearing kind of in a funny format, vertical format, there is another there is a land there is a landscape version of this stream it's in landscape and in portrait so just go to my channel adnan hussein show while you're there you can subscribe if you haven't already and then you can find in the live section uh a different stream that will orient itself nicely on your on your screen so be aware of that there are two separate screens uh streams now Going on simultaneously. But of course, if you're on X, you can retweet this like, you know, don't be miserly, you know, share a good conversation and analysis. And I'm sure we're going to have a lot of that. The topic today. is sovereign development versus imperialist war. And to discuss this and some of his work is Bikram Gill, who is a professor at Virginia Tech and is a scholar of international political economy. His research is guided by third world Marxist political and methodological commitments. And he's concerned in particular with how the contradictions of capitalist imperialism bear upon the sovereign capacity of peoples in the global south. And you should know that he covers a wide range of topics within this kind of frame and approach that includes climate crisis, agriculture, development. attempts to derail development, sanctions, war, and also anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. And he's published pieces that I linked a few of them in the description to this video and sent them out on social media. If you have a chance, do check those out. They've come out in Politics, Globalizations, Ebb Magazine, Canadian Food Studies. I really love that you're publishing in... Also, the Vox Oma Collective that's doing really exciting and interesting things there. And of course, as a member of the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective, they have a blog and a whole series. And you are a member of that collective. Bikram, welcome. I'm so much looking forward to this. It's wonderful to meet you. And I'm sure my audience is very excited, too.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, thanks, Adnan. And yeah, likewise, I'm really excited to be here. And I've been really looking forward to connect with you at some point. So I'm glad we're able to have this discussion. And just please don't be too intimidated by my book collection.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, serious scholar, empty bookshelves. Well, you know, it's what you've read, not what you've got on the bookshelf. And also what you've written. And there's so many interesting things. I thought that might maybe just to start with a wide lens before we get into some of the specific topics and issues that are on everybody's mind and related to current developments and so forth. Just if we could talk a little bit about this concept of sovereign development, you know, in development studies and research. there was a, you know, kind of world system theory and dependency theory. And basically everybody was trying to figure out in scholarly circles in the social global sort of social sciences about how do you modernize, how do you develop? And there were all these like, orientalist and colonialist sort of paradigms that were applied to post-colonial nations, a whole system that entrapped them into the global capitalist system under empire.

Bikrum Gill: And so this kind of problem or question on society was of incredible importance Sorry, I don't know what happened. The sound is muffling. Oh, is it?

Adnan Husain: Now it's better. Okay, great. Okay, well, do let me know listeners also in the chat if like the sound goes off and so forth. But so like, how would you locate this kind of question of like, you know, what is sovereign development? And why is it so important? And what are some of its histories and trajectories before we get into a more contemporary analysis?

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for that question. I think that that is really at the center of a lot of my work. And I think so. I would start with, you know, those two concepts. Maybe we could break them down individually and then think about them together. So I think. The question of, let me start with sovereignty, right? So I think I locate as a scholar of international relations, that's how I approach sovereignty and development is maybe more within development studies compared to politics. So now sovereignty in that piece that I wrote, Orders of Sovereignty, you know, there I kind of present these two levels of sovereignty, right? Like you have an internal basis of sovereignty. So this is a very clearly delineated territory. Basically, there's a really material equation here. There's a quantitative basis to internal sovereignty. What is the force or the organized force that establishes a monopoly over force within a delineated territory? And that monopoly over force determines what are the authorities that can determine the utilization of resources, the utilization of labor, etc. But there is, and I want to emphasize this because I don't think I emphasize it enough in the article, there's a qualitative basis to sovereignty as well. There's a quantitative basis, but there's a qualitative. And the qualitative attaches to something I think we will discuss, which is the class basis of sovereign development. So qualitatively, you can think about there's a people and there's a territory. Qualitatively, what is the relationship between them? So if the basis of sovereignty internally is in a settler class or it's in a bourgeois class or it's in a different peasant class or an indigenous conception, what this broach is, what is the relationship between the people and the land? That's a qualitative component that grounds sovereignty. And I think if we get to a discussion of Palestine today, for example, you have two very different qualitative forms of sovereignty in contestation with one another. And that qualitative form of internal sovereignty combined with the quantitative question of the military force that is established over this, those are the ingredients for me of the internal basis. And there's an external component to sovereignty, which is how sovereigns recognize one another. And this is a key question of the priority in the article I talk about, the ordering between the external recognition of sovereignty and the internal basis of sovereignty. So how do sovereigns recognize one another? If there's a mismatch in the balance of force, you're not going to have mutual recognition. You will have... one sovereign essentially commanding or granting, if you grant sovereignty to a people, then you can impose conditions upon them. And that conditions can impact the qualitative basis of sovereignty. So, for example, the United States and Venezuela today, they can say we don't recognize sovereignty. Not just today, since the Bolivarian Revolution, we don't recognize as sovereign a state that is grounded in a relationship, a collective relationship to oil, to key resources. So state ownership is not recognizable as sovereign and a condition can be put that that must be held in the form of capitalist properties. I don't know if it's on my end.

Adnan Husain: I didn't hear what you said. That's okay.

Bikrum Gill: Please continue. There's the sovereign. This is the internal basis. It relates to the external basis. When there's not an even balance of force, this is going to relate to the question of development. When there's a mismatch there and your sovereignty is dependent upon an external recognition, then it can very often reorient that internal qualitative basis. So your resources and the mobilization of your resources and labor are oriented towards development outside of your territory, right? It's oriented towards wealth accumulation and economic development. of another territory or it may not even be a territory. It can be something like a capitalist class that might be territorial, but also beyond extraterritorial. Right. So I think that's maybe the question of sovereignty in a way, which is clearly in this discussion already attached to development. Now, let me just for a moment bracket and come to development and then we can think them together. Right. So Development, I would start with first. I don't, I think it's, there's, like you mentioned, there's a weighty, heavy history complicated around development. But I agree with Samir Amin and Amilcar Cabral and others that development is not an invention or a gift or a grant. that the post-colonial approaches sometimes emphasize that the North grants the South, right? That therefore must be rejected, which I see there's some value to this when one thinks about different forms of meaning making. But what does Amin, Asmir Amin will argue development is something the South imposes on the North at first. Maybe the North then tries to flip it into something else, but he's arguing that the social struggles of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism make a demand for development, Okay, so now what is development for me? I would start by saying, what is it that the demand is for? It's what Cabral will say. What matters is you meet the material needs of the people. So now we know the history of colonialism and imperialism foregrounds the question of development in a particular way, because the needs of the people are not met, not because the peoples of the south or the colonies were historically lagging behind, but because they were actively underdeveloped. Right. Their material needs were actively underdeveloped and they were actively oriented towards instead the development of the core. There's an active problem, not of rejecting a development, but a development that was denied, disrupted, truncated. This is the problem under development. This is how I understand it. Then there's another element of development. On the one hand, you want to meet material needs of the people. But to be truly sovereign requires a form of development because whether, now this is where I think I take from Fanon. Fanon is somebody who I don't think is celebrating the world he lives in, but realizing that in this world, you have to build power. And to build power, you have to build the productive forces of your country. You have to build a productive capacity. So this is the question of development. And we can see how these two concepts intersect. And what I would say sovereign development then means in your construction of industry or if you're an agricultural based country whatever it is are your resources and labor oriented towards elsewhere which would make you a dependent form of development right like are is your ability to mobilize your resources dependent let's say on the european countries or the north or whoever it might be who then impose conditions to reorient the flow of surplus towards their countries Or is it what Amin calls auto-centric? That's sovereign development, right? So that now sovereign development is often through the work of world system scholars and others associated sometimes mistakenly with this notion of delinking. Delinking is correct, but there's this idea delinking means withdrawing entirely. And that's not the point. The point is, like Kwame Nkrumah would say, reorienting. one's trade and investment relations so that the total surplus that is generated can be recycled back into the development of your resources and territory, like Cabral says, to meet the needs of the people, but also so you can build a productive power through which you can enforce greater sovereign control over your territory.

Adnan Husain: So, yeah, sorry, that was long. No, that was wonderful. I really enjoyed the way that you in an illuminating fashion, put together the concept of sovereignty and two faces of it, two facets of it with this whole question of development. And basically, you know, is there uneven exchange? Is this like orienting itself to, you know, exploitation by the West or is it deployed, you know, and arranged and that, you know, for the benefit of one's own people and meeting their material needs. And so that seems to get at this kind of, real issue about, um, you know, uh, delinking or not. So, uh, It's reorienting the nature of those relations. Right. So because it doesn't make sense to de-link. In fact, actually, it's a weapon. We'll get into this, I'm sure. But it's a weapon of, you know, imperialism, you know, sanctions as war by another means to de-link. Right. Economies, societies and peoples from access to trade, exchange, goods. you know, and so forth. So it's not just, you know, sovereignty isn't just being alone, you know, it's being, you know, in a position that allows you to engage with the world system in a way to meet your own needs and to reflect the aspirations and material well-being of your you know people rather than helping some vampiric you know class somewhere somewhere else right so maybe we'll get a chance to talk a little bit more about your analysis of sanctions um you know at some point when we move more to how this is all being derailed um But I did want to move to thinking a little bit more about sovereignty and the recognition of others. That was an interesting point. And of course, because in this article that you published on the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective blog, Orders of Sovereignty, you do talk about the question of Palestine in the UN Security Council, in the UNGA, and this kind of question of whether recognition, you know, by, which became the focus over the course of the summer, I'm sure this is what you were reacting to, is debunking the reorientation of the question of palestine i.e the genocide has to stop sanctions on you know uh selling and sending weapons and and so on has to you know be curtailed you know these this is what people were asking demand the siege has to be broken Right. And instead, a lot of, you know, global leaders of states, particularly in the West, reoriented this into a question of recognition of the state of Palestine officially in the UN, which, of course, already 140 some countries had done and hadn't prevented, you know, the genocide, you know, but it was reorienting it through the mechanisms of recognition, you know, from the external recognition. I think fallaciously, as you point out, and perhaps you want to elaborate a little bit on this particular case, without any of the internal mechanisms of sovereignty, you know? Yeah.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So I think that's, that is, before I cut into that, one thing you said that was really important that I didn't mention when I was answering the question is, you know, when you brought up sanctions, it's like sovereignty is, I really, I'm glad you mentioned this. One element is about the question of resource, your territory, your resources, how they're utilized, but a key component of sovereignty is the relations between countries, right? So like, do you have, and the flow of capital between countries, right? So like those relations are a key way to examine sovereignty. So like what the United States will often do is they'll say, we'll punish any country that trades with this country. So, you know, they're already trying to reshape the relations between states. Now on this question of the, you're right, this article did really take up the question of sovereignty in relation to Palestine. And the point that was trying to be made is that The celebration to recognize Palestine, this is an old game. You see the history of capitalist imperialism, this specific form of imperialism that's attached to capitalism, it will often, it can recognize colonized peoples to a limited extent as a people, as a culture, it can grant you recognition, but only if it is attached to an undermining of the real internal basis of sovereignty we just discussed. So look at this summer. Last year, there was a Beijing declaration in China where the Palestinian factions came together to emphasize national unity. That's not attached. It actually reinforces the internal basis of sovereignty. It's not attached to demilitarization of the resistance. The New York Declaration this summer says we will recognize a state of Palestine, but contingent upon the disarming of Hamas and contingent upon the state of Palestine being demilitarized. This is what it's essentially doing is returning Palestinians to the foundational condition of colonialism. The Balfour Declaration, Oslo, like these formulas again, where you have an armed Zionism and a disarmed Palestinians and a disorganized Palestinians who cannot reproduce their distinct qualitative relationship with the land. So they, you know, and I like to say this quote very often, Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian revolutionary, he put it very poetically that he, but I guess in a very haunting way that the Palestinians are forced to exist in a world that is not ours, he said, in a world that is not theirs. So they're essentially oriented towards servicing Zionism because they have been stripped of the material basis of sovereignty. And this is why he has this famous discussion of the sword in the neck, like what kind of, this is the conversation, right? So what we see happening this summer into the UN General Assembly debates, into the Security Council resolution that's happening right now, is a way in which it tries to reinforce Palestinian dependency. Your state will come, lay down your arms, but this is a formula for what we've seen only accelerated theft of Palestinian land. So the real question that even what happened this week poses for us is how is it that the United States is able to time and again generate a regional consensus of Arab and Islamic states of the Palestinian Authority to override this internal basis? So this is the question that stands before us today in many ways. But yeah, I think this is the thing you always have to watch out for, not just in Palestine. This is a rule of the imperialist world system, and they'll often trick us. They'll say, oh, look, this is sovereignty. We're recognizing it. Look at the conditions they attach to it. And you will find more space to celebrate the quasi-sovereigns of the Palestinian Authority and must always detach from those in Gaza who are actually building the real basis of sovereignty, right? So I think that's kind of the point I was trying to make. Yes.

Adnan Husain: Well, absolutely. And I just want to come back on the whole point of... Post-colonial recognition, this is something you already mentioned, Fanon, which he was very astute about this being a potential problem that the national liberation movement, establishing national culture wouldn't necessarily solve all of the problems if you maintain and are still in a subordinate position in the world system where you've been recognized. Now you have a comprador or a bourgeoisie. a native bourgeois class that is connected to and sees its future within preferential but subordinate relations within the imperial class of the former colonial world, that's not going to lead to genuine sovereignty or development. the meeting of human needs. And he was already calling out, you know, during his time and some of his shorter writings and towards that are collected, for example, from Al Mujahid, the, you know, FLN's organ, you know, that are in this nice translated collection toward the African revolution. about west africa you know france's response to the algerian war was okay we're not going to be able to hang on to and we can't indefinitely impose direct military rules so let's take a look at what we can do in west africa and create some kind of independent supposedly countries, but that they'll have to share a certain currency and we'll have all of these conditions and they'll be part of, you know, essentially what it was like the British version of a Commonwealth. We'll have like a French version of this and basically maintain the empire by, you know, offshoring some of the political, you know, trappings of sovereignty while maintaining sovereignty. control over those internal conditions. And so you get the external recognition. And we've seen that so often. I mean, you gave the Palestine case, but that is Oslo altogether. I mean, we've already seen it. This is why your question about how is it that it's possible to keep reproducing in slightly different languages at different iterations in history, the very same thing that already failed. We already know that the Oslo process was, as you put it, you know, a mechanism for the accelerated dispossession of Palestine, right? So So I think this is a really important point to recognize that that's got a long history itself. Yes. But I do want to come to the question that you posed here because that is what we're talking about this week, which is this UN security. So, you know, I mean – there were announcements of the New York Declaration over the summer, the UN General Assembly convened the Trump so-called, the so-called Trump so-called peace so-called plan, because like each of those, you know, Trump peace plan, each of them are very, you know, contested as like unreal, but whatever that move was sort of articulated this trajectory that you're talking about of hollowing out genuine conditions of sovereignty, making it conditional on demilitarization and so forth. But at the time that the ceasefire was sort of negotiated and then constantly undermined by Israeli and continuing of Israeli aggression, it didn't necessarily seem like it was likely or possible that some kind of UN-sponsored peacekeeping force would actually end up. And we still don't know if it ever really will, but we didn't expect it to. There would even be agreement that such a thing would pass through the Security Council. So I wanted you to kind of tell us how you're analyzing what happened, the kind of conditions of sovereignty that are being contested here. And let's try and think a little bit together. And maybe we'll have ideas coming from the chat as well of like, why is it that all of the Arab and Muslim – well, here's my – The compradors who have been placed in control over these lands and territories in post-colonial nations that are fragmented and fractured, you know, the whole region, you know, are totally dependent upon, you know, the U.S., the West, where they fear, you know, that they can't have other networks or positions in the geopolitical international system that would preserve and protect them. So, you know, they are following in line with this. I mean, there was less, it seems to me, less capable corralling of these groups under Biden, but Trump somehow seems to have been successful in convincing them. So that all needs to really be looked at carefully, I think, about exactly how and why. and just one last thing to put in the mix for you to respond to about this is because to me, it is like so utterly disappointing when we saw just two, three years ago, there were alternative pathways that were emerging out of, for example, China's brokering of a diplomatic relations between Saudi and Iran. The net effects of that being, you know, a kind of, Peace arrangement and final kind of agreement to end the horrible genocidal war in Yemen. Right. There were things that were starting to happen that, you know, indicated that there could be possibilities for greater regional peace. relationship and cooperation, and partly under the sponsorship of China, that would be very beneficial for the region. And all of those have been, it seems, shattered. During Biden, you had like MBS saying, oh, we don't need to care about the United States, let's join BRICS, let's do business with China. All of a sudden, that seems to have stopped. So we have to kind of take stock what such a short period of time has undermined these other trajectories.

Bikrum Gill: I'm supposed to be working on an article actually looking at this, and I'm not going to say for whom because just in the case I don't finish the article, but I hope I will. You know how it goes with deadlines. So, like, I think that, you know, this pattern you're identifying, and it's really interesting with the Trump administration, this has played out now at least three times. There's a Security Council resolution on Haiti, on Yemen, and on Gaza. Each three times, and I'll come to this, China and Russia... each time spoke very vociferously in opposition to each of the resolutions. But in each case, you had a similar pattern and we can unpack it. But I just want to put that one thing on the table first. In each case, the United States under Trump has demonstrated, I think you're exactly right, the capability to mobilize a diplomatic force. regional consensus in Latin America and the Caribbean and in West Asia. So even on Haiti, the United States was able to mobilize regional states, even those on the left, to align with its position on sending in a gang suppression force to Haiti. And this is a similar thing that's played out on the Yemen resolution and the resolution on Gaza. That's one thing I want to emphasize. I'm going to come to that. So the other point, though, I think that's really important, just to say up front, is there is not going to be, like when you're saying like it's hard to envision the stabilization force. I don't mean to be too dismissive or minimizing of this, but do we imagine Indonesian or Kazakh or whoever they're imagining stabilization force peacekeepers going and saying to Qasem or Soraya al-Quds, hey, can you please give us your weapons? And this is going to happen because I think what we, so that's like, I think something people have to keep in mind is that, This is a really intense, troubling, bleak moment in many ways. But in other ways, that internal basis of sovereignty persists in Gaza. It may be contained in that 48% on the other side of the so-called yellow line. But what we saw immediately after the ceasefire was the Palestinian resistance forces, was the Qassam brigades, was Hamas quickly reestablished themselves. Yeah. as that sovereign force. They were the ones who were disarming the collaborators. They were the ones who actually implemented a policy of disarmament. So they demonstrated that and that I don't think any of these states that are signing on to this. So that's an open question as to How that's going to play out. Now, the question I think that the United States was after in this resolution is something that I would call like a constitutionalization of their interests in the guise of international law, which is constantly, so they were not able. on the battlefield to attain their ultimate aims of disarming Palestinians, of returning them to a really total non-sovereign space. So they're attempting to do this by constitutionalizing and enshrining it in international law. Now, how were they able to do so? I think this is exactly the lines I've been thinking about it now. You actually had this framework that China had helped broker. They weren't the... sole author of this. There were regional forces that were trying to have a Saudi-Iran detente. But what we can trace is that, say, China has attempted to facilitate the integration of the Islamic Republic of Iran into the West Asian region. And when we see that, you can see that's a very different basis of regional integration than a Saudi Zionist normalization. So we can think about these two roads that have been on the table, right? And we can even think about Al-Aqsa flood or the Biden administration's attempt to respond to that China, Saudi, Iran detente. with an acceleration of the Saudi-Israeli normalization, which in some ways, that's not the sole motivation of Al-Aqsa flood, but there is a geopolitical component to Al-Aqsa flood that's intervening at that scale. So there is this thing that they're putting on the table, and that qualitative basis, we can think about that, is what is China saying to the Saudis? They're saying, The integration of Iran into the region can facilitate the entry of a form of investment capital that you can't get from the United States. Let's say investment in renewable energy. Let's say investment that will help you transition your economy. Qualitatively, we can bring this. What the United States can offer is a military architecture. They can offer you F-35s. They can offer you some type of AI future, but that's still attached to a military oil economy that it seems like they're trying to shift away from. so the the and you know i think this started to shake you're right with the with the emergence of the trump administration and in may of this year when he goes to the to the gulf and he meets the rulers there it was pretty surprising not surprising but there was some expectation that there may be an attachment of saudi arms deals with a ceasefire but that doesn't that doesn't happen right so it seemed and i myself was I'm not surprised, but yeah, I had to take stock of that. I remember thinking, okay, what happened to the Saudi-Iran-China trilateral framework? So the question to ask is, I think, what gives the United States this type of power that is both material and tangible, but there's something else happening. There's a way that the class forces in the region remain integrated into US capital circuits. So how has the United States been able to combine material power, leverage, but also something that I don't think the contending powers like China match, which is will. Now, this is a complicated question. I think, let's say, Russia is really bogged down in Ukraine. I know there's a lot of discussion that Russia is winning the Ukraine war, etc., but they've clearly exited West Asia in any substantive way, and they don't really have either the will or the capability or something when the United States says, if this doesn't pass, There will be war. Now, who is ready and willing to go to war? Who has demonstrated that capability? Very clearly, this has been the United States has been kind of no holds barred in a certain way and what they're kind of presenting in that sense. Right. So how is it that I think the question poses, how is the United States able in Latin America or in West Asia to construct this regional diplomatic consensus? And then. I think the debates around, say, China in particular, China and Russia, vociferously opposing all of these resolutions, Haiti, Yemen, Gaza, but not exercising their veto. Now, I think there can be definitely a strong criticism that is launched.

Adnan Husain: Can I ask you to pause right there? Because that's an important and excellent topic that I definitely want us to get into. So let's get that for a moment. But I want to do something that you just said before we lose some of that thread, which is I think there could also be a kind of counter analysis of Russia's involvement. Yes, they have abandoned, you know, and did abandon Russia. Syria. But there's also been evidence that they weren't as committed to know some aspects of what we would think of of syria in the axis of resistance like they had other concerns and considerations and we see that they're very involved right now in southern uh syria they seem to be cooperating with the idea of trying to connect um you know dara and uh you know those regions uh the golan that have been, you know, where Israeli occupation has been extended much further with, you know, through to the Kurdish regions in the north and the so-called David's Corridor. And there's, you know, there's evidence that they have been going along a track of, even before the Assad government fell, you know, of trying to encourage him to You know, maybe pull out of his Iran kind of connection and make peace with the get back into the Arab League, which ended up happening and, you know, make peace with the Gulf states and to seek kind of patronage there. So. What I would say is that they have not necessarily been as committed with their own kind of troops and that kind of thing as we've seen perhaps in the past. But they still also have their own orientation within it. And it's not one that is anti-Zionist in any way whatsoever. Yeah. So there's some complications, it seems to me, with thinking about this BRICS bloc and some of the affiliations and alliances. And of course, then we will come to China and we'll have to admit that China, while it did this, what I was very hopeful about when it brought together all the Palestine factions. And this is before October 7th that it put together the Palestine factions and then looked like it was going to push on. some kind of at least a two-state solution being materially realized, it was setting up the possibility to make a diplomatic offensive of some kind on that score, and that it was interested in West Asian affairs, and as you put it, the integration of Iran into the rest of the region more fully. So, you know, that seems to be we're on a surprising to me, you know, well, it's not surprising, but like, you know, disappointing. But you can only have be disappointed if you have hopes. And those are, you know, in geopolitics, very unreasonable, perhaps. But, you know, I guess, you know, the fact that they're still a very big trading partner for Israel, you know, nothing about that. So, yeah. I don't know if you wanted to react to the Russia kind of question is that it doesn't always make sense to group them exactly the same and to think about them as some anti-US bloc. I mean, when it comes to the question of the state of Israel and Zionism and their own envisioning of what's possible in the region, like they want to just have some relationship and some access to these Gulf states as well. So that's one component. And then we can talk more fully about China.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So, OK, I mean, and I can speak more to China than Russia, but I would just say I agree with you that it's not necessarily helpful to conflate Russia and China into a singular interest. But the the question of like, I think there's how how I would encourage people to approach it, how I like to approach it is like. You know, suppose like for China or Russia, they're caught up within a very a series of contradictions. You know, like you exist in a world system that you cannot escape. So you need to try to assess things as far as possible in a totality. Now, that might seem very complex, but to simplify it to one sense, like a question that I'll often ask is if you were to, for example, remove China from the region. Who does it benefit more? Who does it harm more? Right. So I like I would continue to maintain. And I don't think these are ethical and moral questions because a lot of people are posing this term in terms of ethics and morals, which I think is an important basis. But if we were to stay on a materialist plane, I think for both China, maybe less so Russia, but especially China, it is in its interest. I think I don't think they're just doing things there. Like people saying this week, China is concerned about its interests. In fact, The integration of Iran into the regions in China's interests, you know, to actually to contest U.S. power in West Asia is in China's interests. Right. And I think it's the same with Russia. So to approach it on a totality to a whole of system question of what's happening. So like, yeah, in Russia's relationship, I think. Say when Libya happens, the war in Libya happens, I think the Russians and the Chinese are still at a point where they think they can work with the West and then they feel very betrayed. And then I think Russia makes a decision in 2014 that the external recognition question from the West, that is something they must abandon. And it's just a question of force, whether in Ukraine or Syria. I think they make the decision about 10 or 11 years ago. But I think, you know, they are not I don't know, like the questions you're saying in Syria today and the moves they're making. I think this is in some ways reflective of a recognition, maybe on the part of the Russians. Right. Who actually holds power and leverage regionally versus them really holding a line in Ukraine and maybe giving more ground in West Asia. So I think, yeah, it's important to be mindful of of the counter tendencies of the Russians, of their of the relationship they have with Zionism. But I think. you know, Russia's relationship with Iran and China, I think that that's a very highly valued relationship that they would have. So I don't think there's, but I can say more on China. I think I have, there's more I can elaborate on that if you want to do that now or later on.

Adnan Husain: Well, okay. It's a big topic and it's an important one and it has really been roiling, you know, people's online.

Bikrum Gill: I've noticed, I've noticed.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, tanky split happening, you know.

Bikrum Gill: Okay, you said it.

Adnan Husain: You know, so we should we should, you know, possibly get to that. But I guess just, you know, a little bit more on this earlier diplomatic kind of environment. One is when you're trying to think about what is it that the U.S. has been able to do and trying to wrestle with. Well, you know, you know how to analyze its success in putting together. such a coalition to agree basically against international law. Like, I mean, you know, nobody obviously cares about international law, but it's a very obvious, you know, UN security council problem that for the first time ever, it is not affirmed, you know, Palestinians, you know, right to self-determination, you know, a whole host of things is really quite extraordinary to be able to get all of these Arab league and IOC, you know, You know, Islamic organization, you know, I forget what the what it stands for. But at any rate, the the bankrupt, you know, kind of coalition of states of Islamic Muslim states, you know, that actually, interestingly, in its history was started essentially as a response to. You know, attacks in East Jerusalem, you know, post 67 that they then said, well, I guess we better do something for the sake of Palestine. So let's bring all these. And now it's it's it's it's a completely whistling, you know, either ineffective or a whistling organization in affirming the Trump plan. Right. So that's, you know, what's happening. You know, right now. But what it points out. So what I wanted to say is that there seems to be some kind of diplomatic and I don't know, ideological or disinformation. You know how to put one's finger on it. There's something that the U.S. is much better at. And the Western coalition is much better at doing, particularly through the organs that it has created, like the UN. It's able to manage this organization as the platform through which these geopolitical and diplomatic relations is conducted. They have a way of being able to accomplish things through it that even other countries very important members of the Security Council with a permanent vote are less capable. And it's partly media, partly this, you know, kind of like familiarity with the organs of the institution, having so many people who are in high positions or have controlled it for so long as an expression of neocolonial, you know, global order. So there's something going on there. But the second thing is just that this has to be emphasized here at the outset is that You know, Trump himself even admitted that we have to do this ceasefire and we have to do this whole plan because, you know, I mean, Israel wasn't able to do it.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah.

Adnan Husain: Right. You know, Israel wasn't able to do it. So now we're having to. you know, kind of rearrange. And it means maybe US troops will have to be involved because it was said, we're not expecting, you know, effectiveness from, you know, contributing forces from other parts of the Muslim world or global South to come in and actually demilitarize. That's not, you know, realistic and not going to happen. And as one person who, you know, put in a comment here, P underscore pod, would you all want to talk about reported new U.S. military-based development beside Gaza other than the Zionist entity as a whole and in Syria? And it seems that, you know, the United States is having to put actual infrastructure, materiel, and military because otherwise it's not going to happen. So that's a realization that also – Makes even more confounding how it is that Arab and Muslim nations seeing the weakness of the United States, seeing the fact that after two years of unremitting war and genocide, you know, Israel basically needs to be bailed out. You know, why are they like how how and why they could participate in that is a real kind of question before we move to the big topic of China.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I think, well, that touches on something that maybe we were we briefly mentioned before. And, you know, before moving to the big question of China or the interrelationship of this discussion with that one, the question of, you know, like say something like the Arab states, but let's say the Palestinian Authority. Right. So I think the real this is a real question. that you're posing. And I think some of the debates in the tanky split, or however you want to say it, have missed the target in a way. Because I think that there's a criticism that can be made, or like a critical analysis, say, vis-a-vis China. But it's less about the veto or the abstention. It's more about the way you put it here. How and why have they not been able to effectively build a regional consensus? That's the real question to get to. And when we get to China, we can think about those contradictions that China is caught within. That makes it very difficult for maybe some legitimate reasons, maybe not. But the United States is able to build a regional consensus because they have this thing we call China. client states and how they, and we can see when we get to China, they don't actively build client states in the same way and maybe for a reason that we would agree with, right? But so you build client states in a way that takes us back again to kind of Fannie and Fanon, right? Through compradore classes, through integrating, and we see this very clearly in the Gulf, the integration of Gulf capital with imperialist capital, Now, I think there's an open question that, you know, if we go to Hegel, we don't have to answer this stuff in real time. You know, it's only in reflection. Now, how is it that the United States has been able in this moment to peel away? I see this comment, the UN doesn't build consensus, it imposes submission. But I think that, you know, the question of the bombing of Qatar. in September is an interesting one to pose in relation to that. Because you bomb Qatar and it's almost like you're a protection racket. Like Qatar is bombed and then you're like, hey, we can protect you from that bombing. Just there's conditions that are associated with it. But I think maybe one target, the target of analysis right now may be Why does this not bring the Palestinian Authority to a legitimation crisis at this moment? How can this orient our attention to the West Bank in a very particular way? So we have that internal basis of sovereignty in Gaza, but in the West Bank, there's this external relationship that overwhelms questions of Palestinian sovereignty. So how is it that the Palestinian Authority maintains rule in the West Bank? Because when we get to the discussion on China, again, I'm not trying to like sidestep criticism of China here, but there's this question of China, are they supposed to impose a line in the name of the Palestinian people like basically doing what the United States might do elsewhere, the people versus the regime type of framework. Right. But I think it poses this question really profoundly of how does the Palestinian Authority maintain itself and how does it not give rise to something that would overturn the PAUS relationship? And a similar question with the Gulf states or the Arab states more generally. is that it really broaches this question of the absence of internal basis of sovereignty in the region, except for Ansar Allah. I guess Lebanon is a little more complicated, but except for the question, and I think this is why Ansar Allah has been attacked militarily and economically relentlessly, is it poses this question of who can issue a sovereign command from the region? to a country like a China or whatever. Like now, Hamas does issue this type of sovereign command this week, but Hamas doesn't exist in the United Nations. Now, of course, we can say the United Nations is not a legitimate body, but this discussion is happening in the United Nations. So I think it poses this question of the internal basis of sovereignty in a particularly urgent way. And why China can't do it, because because I'll leave it to you. But when we shift to the discussion on China, it's because China doesn't cultivate, I don't think, an interventionist politics in the same way. And that leaves it at a constant disadvantage, I think, in this kind of question of diplomatic consensus building.

Adnan Husain: I think you're right. And I like that analysis a lot. And I think those are the key issues. We should go ahead and just directly talk about that. The way it's been framed by a lot of people is, as you're pointing out, more in this moral kind of position. And a lot of people had expectations, as P underscore pod also says, like we want China to be faithful to a counter systemic front that recognizes how bogus the UN is at this point. But that's not where things are at in China and beyond. You know, they don't have the investments in China. the way that they relate in the region, geopolitically, economically, and so forth, to have that kind of dependency, to have classes that then would kind of be allied in a very direct way when it comes to these sorts of questions in the UN, as bogus as it may be. And the other point that Benji also put in, Benji, shout out, you're going on their show.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, yeah, what's up, Benji?

Adnan Husain: on resistance is fertile. You know, the UN has proved for the past few years it's utterly useless. And now we're all getting our knickers in a twist over a vote in the UNSC when the US said these are now non-binding. I mean, you know, I mean, I guess the point here is, is that sovereignty is sovereignty. It's not just that there are internal, as you're pointing out, they can't just at the level of the UN pass something and expect that this is what's going to happen because the real basis of sovereignty within Gaza is sovereignty. you know, the resistance factions and what they, you know, are continuing to be willing to do to extend their resistance against any imperialist occupation sort of force. And this isn't going to change a lot in that internal kind of analysis. But, you know, I guess it's an open question of whether it changes anything entirely. That's materially significant in the external environment of what states can do that might want to impose sanctions or might want to, you know, put restrictions on certain aspects of trade. Or if ever we would see a society in the West that actually imposes you know, demonstrated enough resistance and solidarity to pressure its political elite to make a change on some aspect or component of their support for the genocide in Gaza. Would this framework now be unhelpful, you know, in undermining the international kind of solidarity components? That's, it seems to me, the only potential possibility. genuine uh question that the u.n vote really um poses like you know not for for you know hamas and sarai you know islamic jihad in gaza they reject it and there's nothing anyone can really do other than put troops on the ground and attempt to fight it out But there is this other sphere where the support and significance of international solidarity efforts or other states taking certain kinds of actions may be somewhat curtailed or constrained in under these terms.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's correct. And I think there is a relationship between building an internal basis of sovereignty and the external question. So like, for example, if we were to take China and we analyze it at that level of totality, like I mentioned before. So it is clear that China from the 80s onwards entered into a contradictory path of building sovereign development, understanding the need to rapidly develop the productive forces. You know, they shift from an emphasis on the relations of production to the forces of production. Understanding like, okay, we need productive capacity, otherwise we are going to remain dependent or weak in relation to US imperialism. That strategy, you know, it pays off over a long period of time. China does eventually start to appropriate more world surpluses. They recycle it into the global south, as we know. And it engages in relations with the Zionist entity for the reason, right, that they don't have access to US military technology. Now, I'm not trying to excuse this. I'm just saying like their approach. But China then does recycle military technology to the Islamic Republic. And that military technology does find its way to Hezbollah and the resistance more generally. And the whole way that China is able to help countries withstand sanctions will have an impact on the development of this internal basis. China's not driving it, right? It's Palestinians who will liberate Palestine. It's the people of the region. But Fanon called this the changing of the international context. It can't matter. Right. So I think that's been a key component of thinking about the relationship between the two. Now, the question of I think what what happens this week in relation to like what the significance of it is. is their policy has long been, and this is a big contradiction, and maybe I see people in the chat saying, why are we even talking about the UNSC? But I think there's been a way in which say China will say, the United States acts as an arbitrary power. There's no consistency in the way it applies principles of sovereignty, how it applies principles of international law. So China tries to demonstrate and tries to work in a way they're not gonna arbitrarily say, We don't recognize the Syrian state. We're doing this in service of the Syrian people. Right. So they're always trying. But that puts you in a bind because China in the 1970s and 80s, they abandoned Now, they were not like an interventionist power like the U.S., but they had this export of revolution, a people's war. Globally, they abandoned this. So now they're not engaged in cultivating internal networks in these states in the same way. They actually will work with whoever is there. This becomes their conscious explicit strategy because they're trying to focus on accelerating their productive forces development. But now people can have a legitimate critique of this in terms of the impact it has on affected people. But it's clear that this has now potentially at times a negative impact on China itself. So this is where I would say I would disagree even that China's interests are in working with the U.S. and West Asia. The China needs the U.S. to be defeated in West Asia, in fact. Right. Like because the United States gambit. with Al-Aqsa flood, the United States' relationship with Zionism is about reimposing its control over the energy resources that go in and out of the region because they will never ever, the game is over. China has won the economic game. They will never outcompete China economically. So all they can do is impose a currency power, which is attached to oil power, and they've doubled down on oil and gas as China's shifting to renewables. So this West Asian program is core to the containment of China. So that's all I would say is in relation to these debates. But like I think the significance should be that it demonstrates, like we mentioned before, it should demonstrate the illegitimacy of the client states and the PA. And I think that's where a lot of the discussion needs to be.

Adnan Husain: Absolutely. I mean, this is what is such a big concern is that over the course of these two years, even more clear than it was for the last 30 or 40, that these client regimes have been enemies of their own people. I mean, you know, this is like the basics is just that these are, you know, highly, you know, corrupt and repressive regimes whose sole function is in the post-colonial order was uphold some kind of neocolonialism. You know, they were put in place by the British principally, you know, especially the Gulf states and so on. I mean, their legitimacy has been an open kind of question for anybody who's watching, you know, in the region. But OK, the last two years made it very clear that they were collaborating with the destruction of the people of Palestine. They impeded any of the solidarity activities that were taking place on other members of the axis of resistance. And of course, the big contrast here, a lot of people like to sectarianize this as, oh, it's Shia militias and Iran, whereas all these Sunnis have know um abandoned uh support for for for palestine and you know and so on that is really not what it's about to my mind what it has to do is that it just i mean i don't know if there's another question to be asked about why it is that in certain areas where i would say there was greatest underdevelopment greatest oppression were in these kind of Shia communities that were marginalized and oppressed. And they then created the conditions of resistance, first to gain sovereignty for themselves, you know, and then they have expressed solidarity for Palestine. So, you know, Iran is the only country in the entire region that is in some ways sovereign which is why it has all of these sanctions on it right so yemen again they fought years and years against all of these you know uh zionist u.s uh imperialist supporting comprador you know, client states and fought them to a standstill. So they're now in a position to be able to express people's solidarity. They wouldn't. It's not because they're Shia or not. In fact, their whole coalition is multi. I mean, we had a great discussion with Issa Blumi, you know, the history of Ansar Allah and resistance, basically. And it is a cross-confessional, cross-sectarian conversation. kind of grouping. But this is the whole point, is that there is a clear contrast between those sub-state militias, like liberated spaces, and the one state in the region that has had sovereignty in terms of their alignment now vis-a-vis Palestine. And the rest of the peoples of this entire region are living under oppressive subordinate client regimes. So the question, really, I think you're absolutely right. The real question is, when is there going to be decisive popular action against these regimes? And perhaps that's part of the reason why they all were able to be corralled. I mean, I know that Benji said the U.S. doesn't create a consensus. It just threatens us. And that's absolutely true. But I think one of the things that enabled this is that these countries' leaders are more afraid of their own people, right? You know, so that's what they're, they needed a way to repackage that they are part of some kind of peace solution, right? you know, in the same way that Oslo was supposed to kind of defang Palestinian resistance is this is almost prophylactic for trying to say, hey, look, we're trying to do something for Palestine, you know, and we've worked out some kind of a plan and there's going to be reconstruction. Maybe we'll make some money out of it, too. You know, like so this is kind of the game that they're playing. And the question is, is how long will it be possible to keep those balls in the air where there is genuine popular resistance broadly in the region? This is, to me, really the big question.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, I think I know it is. It is the it is the core question, I think, of the region and of the world system as a whole. Right. Like we can identify this pattern you have identified. And the work that I've done on sanctions and even in my book, like, you know, like you can look at these sorts of pairings, like you say, Iran, right, like how it is sanctioned. But, you know, I mentioned this very often. You can look in Southern Africa. Why is Zimbabwe sanctioned and not South Africa?

Adnan Husain: Yeah.

Bikrum Gill: What is the difference there? Why is Venezuela sanctioned and not Brazil? Why was China encircled and not India in 1949? What is the difference in terms of the rule that's always existed for imperialism since the 16th century till today? As you can be granted a form of recognition so long as you don't challenge imperialism at its structural foundations, militarily or economically. The moment you do that, you invite this sort of either. imperialist war, which can escalate up to and including a genocidal war or economic sanctions. So that's the question that's kind of on the table. Now, the question for us, I think, in addition, I think you laid out very well the popular forces in the region. Now, there is an international context here. So what does it mean that even in the core here, you know, as we were all variously involved in different attempts to contest, you know, US imperialism and the genocide, what remains the case is the delegitimization and the criminalization of the Palestinian resistance is still something that we can grapple with here. It has still not even been overcome, right? So like a popular revolution in the region, but what does it mean when we see even Zoran Mamdani after he's getting elected, in the road to getting elected, continuing to reinforce not just a narrative, but a set of political commitments that might allow for a recognition of Palestine, but on terms that deny Palestinian sovereignty. And so like this question of, I think then it goes back to what maybe Benji was saying in the chat, but it's like this question, what contains our tongues in this way? What prevents us from actively working to decriminalize Palestinian resistance? If one is to say that Hamas is the credible sovereign power, Going back to the mid 2000s when it's elected, now them being listed as a terrorist organization and how that might impose certain costs on us in the court and elsewhere and how you can even discuss these questions. Well, that's a broader than principle of the world system, right? But then what underlies it is a force question. Those are the questions we must open up. Right. Like I think and I do think I do think in the long, medium and long run, we are seeing a tendency towards them not being able to hold this ground as much as there's been a recouping maybe this year of U.S. power. projection of U.S. power. It is still the case that they, I don't think they will be, they will not be able to eliminate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. They try to eliminate Ansarullah, even Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic. So, you know, there's kind of a holding pattern right now. There is a rearmament happening right now. There is expectation and a preparation of a war to come right now. And I think you're right. The diplomatic moves are maybe also a sign of weakness. You can go back to war, you can create much damage, but that's also going to be undermining your own military reproduction capacity over a period of time.

Adnan Husain: Yes, yes. No, I love the very interesting remarks. We should probably deal with China before we come then to... We've been talking about components of imperialist war, but that's something we should also talk a little bit more about sanctions, other components of why and how they derail. But let's first talk a little bit more directly about China, because as you said, there was a lot of like moralistic kind of outrage, people feeling that perhaps they're just willing to... sacrifice the Palestinian cause and question. It doesn't matter very much to them. And so it's okay, which I think occludes all of what we would consider the anti-imperialist analysis about the significance of the Palestinian resistance. Yes. National liberation struggle. So that doesn't make a lot of sense to me to like go in that direction. You know, but others, I'm not sure I like a lot of the defenses either. A lot of the defenses have been, oh, well, you know, if the Arab and Muslims, which we were just sort of talking about the reasons why that would become very difficult to see them, you know, kind of take a more open stance, you know, that, well, if they if they're not going to do it, well, it's not business. It's not China's business to like go save you from, you know, you know and i think there's a need for a much broader yes sober analysis of these conditions and the real you know the real status of the world system right now and and and and some of this depends on your interesting and important point about the nature of chinese involvement and investment has created different kinds of sovereign you know because it helps and assists sovereignty It is not necessarily meant to fulfill Chinese objectives about, you know, its potential position in the world system. And I would sort of argue and I was kind of concerned about the loss of Syria as if you do this and if you allow Iran to be, you know, attacked. This is actually dangerous for the Chinese. I agree completely with you that it's actually in China's interest to integrate Iran as an important and powerful player and bring up the region of West Asia to resist more effectively and better the ravages of imperialism. So how do you try and think about it?

Bikrum Gill: Yes. Yeah. So I think, yes, I agree with you. The point and I want to say the point is not to like excuse China. Right. But the point is, like if we can have a sober reading of this, you know, the point is to think about. And again, I will return like when we in the Ace Collective, if we make it to a discussion of Ace and Ace Collective, we have a principle. What brings us together is that U.S. imperialism is the primary contradiction. So what is the primary question? Like, you know, and for me, like I come to this through the Marxist tradition, somebody like Antonio Gramsci, who will say in each conjunctural moment, there are many questions, but we want to think about the primary question that bears upon other questions. So this moment, it seems to me the primary question is the one that we posed earlier is how is it that the U.S. is able to mobilize this diplomatic consensus? And then the question asked of China is why is it not able to contest at that level? Because the veto question is almost secondary to that. So now, and I will say, and I hope I can come back to it, but I will say it is more than time, though, I think, to push China however we can. I know we're not citizens of China or whatever, but it is time to raise questions more openly, maybe aggressively is not the right word, on BDS in relation to China. I think that's a question that should not be deferred. It should be highlighted and raised, again, in a sober sense that reads that in relation to the totality of China's presence, Right. Not just OK, this this then defines China in and of itself as a whole. But this part can should be critiqued. And then I think, yeah, like China's its its its interests are in, like I was saying before, in establishing a different order in West Asia. But it's what China has not done. My criticism of China would be this. Right. Like the Beijing declaration. China does not put teeth behind China. its initiatives. So you can what is the leverage you're bringing to bear? Because the Beijing declaration is really important as a framework. You know, I think it's really important for people to revisit the Beijing declaration from last summer because what's essentially doing the project of colonialism and imperialism is balkanization. Let's just be quite frank about that. Right. Like on any scale, it wants to unify. You go to the 19th century, you know, unify Europe and the Congress of Vienna, partition Africa, partition Asia, partition China. It's always the formula they want to have. So balkanization is something. Well, you know, I keep reading the comments, so I keep losing my train of thought. Where was I going with this? It was a very important point I was making. So the Chinese, they don't put leverage behind their initiative. So the Beijing declaration, for example, is so important because it's promoting Palestinian national unification. So, you know, the West Bank, Gaza, this is a fragmentation of the Palestinian national body. And, you know, Hamas, to its credit, like Al-Aqsa flood, one aim you could see was to unify. over the factions because they're asking for the release of Marwan Barghouti. They're trying to, in their actions, say this is not just about Gaza and the blockade. This is about Al-Aqsa. This is about the accelerated colonization of the West Bank in 2022, 2023. So there's an imperative of unifying Palestine. The Beijing Declaration creates space for all factions to come together. Now, what China doesn't do though is it never applies leverage to advance these initiatives. And the United States will apply leverage. Like we can see in the war with Iran, now China is not inactive there, but they have a long run strategy that the United States will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, right? Like what are the contradictions of the United States? Well, you have a massive capitalist class that will not reinvest profits in a way that will actually make it economically competitive as an economy. They'd rather send their profits into stock buybacks. Right. So, like, you know, there's a whole set of contradictory relations that I think China is assuming may lead to the eventual weakening of U.S. power and the containment of the U.S. Right. But they don't bring direct leverage to bear. This is this is one thing I would say, whether in terms of the relationships between states, whether in terms of advancing the Beijing declaration, what one form of leverage may be is to more acutely bring pressure to bear on Israel, on the Zionist entity. That's a clear form of leverage that you could exercise. or in other forms. So I just think there's been a hesitancy to exercise leverage on the part of, and I think that's something that explains what's happening here. But I would still say though, then that's a limitation. So it's not simply about, this is the responsibility of Muslims alone, right? I think like I would agree with Ali Abunima who recently said, this is an international issue, right? This is, and Palestine is actually, at the heart, it really truly is the beating heart of anti-imperialism today. I wouldn't say it's the only, it's not the only struggle, but in many ways, its location in West Asia makes it pivotal. And it cannot be the case that Palestinians pay this cost, this horrific cost, an unbearable cost. Right. And that others are not asked to also carry some form, because if it's the case that the destruction of Iran will open up the road to a deeper attack on China and if West Asia is a key front right now in that battle and the Palestinians are paying for this to the degree and and people in the region more generally have been subjected to the most intense degree of military intervention over the past century. So that question then I think then it's not enough to say, okay, where is the popular? That's a question we shouldn't sidestep. But then I think this question of what is the leverage that a China can impose? And that question needs to be put on the table as well. But I don't think it can be the question either, right? If that makes sense.

Adnan Husain: Right, yeah. It's not about the savior simply because it is the most economically powerful nation that it then has to... act as the insurgent of the world, the way the US is the hegemon and the policeman of the world. And so China has to be insurgent of the world. Yeah, that's an unrealistic demand and doesn't quite make sense. But I think there is a kind of question because I agree with you, and this is something I've said, is that I think it's very dangerous for China to allow subversion of any of the sovereign resistance movements in West Asia. I was deeply concerned about what Syria could portend, and we've been seeing devastating consequences and effects, both for the people of Syria, but also for the larger anti-imperialist struggle in the region. And likewise, the attack on China, if Iran is not aggressively rearmed and supported, it is opening, as you say, the pathway to more direct confrontation on China without having any of the strategic depth of course you would say maybe it doesn't need any it's such a massive power but this is part of its strategic depth and also let's remember that right now it has this wonderful relationship with russia that has not always been the case and things can change in there and i really am concerned with right wing orientations that see and neorealists who see the opportunity and possibility for recruiting you know in the future uh you know russia back into some kind of euro euro eurasian kind of alliance we don't know what's going to be the the future there have been these concerns and rivalries so that as a source for certain kinds of energy and other mineral resources and so on for the short term period you know for the next 10 15 years even as china ramps up its green energy technology it still needs you know access to oil and the closest oil is in the persian gulf it is iran and these you know gulf monarchies they are still the biggest trading partner for all of these monarch you know gulf statelets petro monarchies because There's still the need for that as a source, a strategic source of energy. If you let this go completely to Western imperialist control, you will be cutting off the sources for your own sovereign development, quite a part economically. And then, of course, there is also the military sort of question. So that's one concern that I have with... You know, so it's for me, it's not just the moral, hey, although I do feel that way. Of course, I do wish I do wish there was a poll like there has been in other times that was outwardly anti-imperialist and knew how to kind of prosecute that.

Bikrum Gill: If Ansar Allah had more resources.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, if Ansar Allah was sitting on, you know, this would be a very different and, you know, I would dare I say it, a better, freer, liberated world. But yeah. You know, so, of course, I want that. But I'm thinking even in terms of China's geostrategic, you know, interest for the future. It doesn't bode well to let, you know, West Asia be sacrificed, you know.

Bikrum Gill: So I would just say on that, and I think the Chinese are very aware of this, right? Like, because this is a pattern we've seen historically, right? And and by the way, you know, you let me know about time because I'm really enjoying the discussion. So I'm like, I'm not even paying attention to the time. So you can.

Adnan Husain: We're good for a little while. I do have to while you now take up your response and your remarks, grab my power cord. Speaking of energy resources. So I have.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, do your thing. And like, I mean, we're both coming out of a three hour faculty meeting. So we got that energy we're coming with. But like, yeah, no, go get your core. I've been in that situation before as well. So I think the Chinese are very aware of it. And there's a historic pattern that you're identifying here because, you know, the United States has already done this before. And I've mentioned this elsewhere that like we have to remember that the United States is already outcompeted by the 1970s. There's this question of a long crisis that of profitability the U.S. finds itself within that it has, you know, it lost the game to Japanese and German companies. capital in some ways by the 70s. And this is where the Yom Kippur War was a really interesting, it was an important moment, almost 50 years to the day of Al-Aqsa flood. But it's through the Yom Kippur War that the United States establishes military projection power through Zionism, which they're able to establish a relationship between the oil and dollar, which then gives them a power, a That forces the Germans and Japanese basically to hold U.S. dollars as a reserve currency. Right. And, you know, eventually the U.S. is going to use this financial power against the global south. It's going to use this link up between oil and dollar between with the petrodollar to exercise a global power. And, you know, like the and to exercise even a currency power vis-a-vis Japan, the way they forced Japan in the 1980s to adjust currency. the question of... Yeah, I agree with whoever said that comment, by the way, whatever. Like, that's... I think that's the point. But, like, you can... So this has happened. And, you know, the Chinese, in, like, 2010, after the financial crisis, they refused... to adjust their currency according to the dictates of the Obama administration. And they explicitly cite Japan's subjugation to U.S. power in the Plaza Accords in 1987. So you can see the way the United States is, again, trying to restore that basis. And I mentioned this recently as well. The U.S. aversion to climate science is about, I think, an aversion to climate science, but it's also about the way in which the oil economy grounds U.S. power. And China's construction of an alternative, they've been pushing renewables for 20 years, although it's accelerated in the last five to seven years. China's investment into renewables is about believing in climate science, but it's also about understanding that the control of energy has been a key component of world power in the modern era. And even the way the United States exercise power over its European vessels, it's about controlling oil flows into and out of Europe. So I think that that's very clearly understood by the Chinese. And I think that the invasion of Iraq, I agree with Giovanni Arrighi, that this was about China. I think in many ways, a lot of these wars are targeting China. containing China to what they thought China was going to be when they admitted China to the World Trade Organization, a site of cheap labor, of cheap goods, but that wasn't, they missed out on actually the structural fundamentals of China, right? So it is the case that it is in China's interest actually to prevent the consolidated, and you know, China has tried to do this by working with those client regimes, So how do we convince the Saudi or the Gulf elite that it is in their interest to work with us? You know, and this is like an approach in IR, but also in the work of Arigi, this hegemony theory is you build hegemony by convincing other states that they share your interests. But I think you said something very interesting that Arigi also talks about is that the capitalist form doesn't try to convince a state as a black box, but the capitalist classes in those states, that your common interest in suppressing your subjects is, lives with us, right? Like, so the way in which, what can Trump offer bin Salman, you know, or what can be offered in terms of a common interest, that qualitative sovereignty of a ruling class lording over their subjects in a particular way? I think that's something that they've done, but I think, yeah, this is a question that's going to confront China today. Right. And I think, you know, we can talk about it. We wouldn't have time. But, you know, the Venezuela conflict, I think, has a very similar set of questions right now around this. Right. So but I think they're aware. But it seems like they were kind of boxed in a little bit at this moment.

Adnan Husain: Yes, yes. I mean, you know, that's itself a very interesting question. I had this theory that then Tariq Ali ended up writing a book, you know, that really, you know, substantiated it, which was that, you know, the pink tide, the first kind of wave of the pink tide was as a result of U.S. empire being kind of, you know, occupied and drained with the iraq and west asia had wars in afghanistan and iraq taking place and that this actually created some space where populist forces you know were able to you know roll back some of us imperial uh control in in the region and that of course you know those were then you know, subverted because there was a period where it could re kind of pose. What was interesting right at this moment is if the US actually does get involved in very substantial military invasion, occupation, or some very substantial attempt at regime change that occupies quite a lot of resources, diplomatic attention, and also has to deal with like the pushback that will come, you know, in the region at the same time that is trying to undergird this crumbling, you know, you know, role in West Asia that is sort of cobbled together because of the particularities of this moment. You know, that's a kind of interesting question or conundrum, you know, and problems like whether it will hasten, you know, the collapse of the whole by this imperial overextension, because I think we've seen in many ways that, you know, resistance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, you know, you know, just the last 20, 30 years since the, well, 20 plus years since the global war on terror, you know, that in fact, actually that has opened up space of resistance elsewhere in the kind of global, you know, in the global system. And that's what we're kind of wondering now, is this going to be an opportunity actually, you know, I mean, I'm not saying, Hey, yes, I want the U S to go in and, and, try and do some terrible crimes, war crimes, and so on in Venezuela. They can, but that's what I, if they attempt to, it could be very, very devastating for them. And, you know, resistance and possibilities around the world, you know, to seize this opportunity. And so that brings me to the other half. Like we've talked a lot about sovereign development and we've been talking about imperialist war, but really to talk about why imperialist war, right? We think of imperialism as subordinating others. It's basically undermining the sovereignty of others geopolitically, economically, and so forth in order to perpetuate the benefits and the gains for a particular class, leaders of the empire. But why particularly imperialist war? And is that a strength or a weakness when it actually has to engage in war? I mean, it seems to me when it was able... and much more able to deploy the sanctions regime to suffocate people through its control over the financial system. But with the weakening, you might say, of like the U.S. as the reserve currency and the rise of other alternative networks of trade that are a little less, you know, prone to being derailed simply by U.S. I mean, I did read this interesting report Arnaud Bertrand wrote about this, one of the ICC judges from France, basically his life has ended because he can't do anything. But that's because Western Europe is completely within the network of the empire. So it's very easy to put any sanctions and everything's closed down. But Iran is producing all kinds of missiles, is doing all kinds of things because it is forging different kind of networks to evade these sanctions, right? So that seems to me, if you are really strong, you don't actually have to engage in imperialist war. You can do it through other means and mechanisms. What's your analysis about the importance of imperialist war in the system?

Bikrum Gill: So I think in my view, you're right. So this is a really important discussion because capitalism is often understood in a narrow Western form of Marxism. Capitalism is understood as operating not necessarily by extra economic force, but by economic, the dull compulsion of economic relations. Right. But I think like just as Marx talked about primitive accumulation as being the foundation of capitalism on force, you know, capitalism is a global system from its origins and war is core to the emergence and reproduction of capitalism. You know, in two registers, I will say, one register is it creates the conditions for the denial of sovereignty. It creates the conditions for this value transfer. But another one, and I don't mean to keep picking on Benji, I just saw this point he made, is that war becomes a site of accumulation itself. And that becomes a contradiction because your military industrial complex will actually not be a rational war machine, but war will become a zone of profits when profits have a crisis elsewhere. So there is something really foundational about war to imperialism of the capitalist sort that I want to unpack. I'm gonna come back to this, but just before I forget, and I apologize to you Adnan and your readers for being a bit maybe all over the place here, but I just don't wanna forget that what we were just talking about sovereign development and anti-imperialism today in this question of the region, one thing we didn't emphasize is actually the Saudi Iran detente, the key ingredient was Ansar Allah. You know, like what drove them to the Chinese was that the Americans could only say because they couldn't defeat Ansar Allah. So they could only the only thing they would say is we'll give you more weapons. And the Saudis would say, well, we keep bombing them, but they keep standing up. Like what Trump said in May. Wow, these guys are tough. They're brave, you know, because they threw everything at Ansar Allah. And the Chinese said, basically, we have a different framework, not a war on terror framework, but a global development initiative. So integrating Iran into the region. a certain kind of investment capital, this can enable a certain type of stability that you're not going to get from them, right? So I think even today, just to go to what you're saying, a force like Ansar Allah will continue to hold the keys of what is to come. So the United States can threaten or whatever, but we can't lose sight of the structuring power that has been built by the Ansar Allah challenge to the basis of imperialist war, right? So now to get to this question of imperialism, what I would say is number one, imperialist war, because imperialism, what is it? It is about a empire or a political entity denying sovereignty. to either a single state or a series of states. And I've said this before many times, we can't understand the condition we're in without understanding the distinction between colonialism and imperialism. So, you know, colonialism, you can think about, again, Zionism is the colonial question, America as the imperial question, right? So imperialism is built on the denial of sovereignty systematically, not on a one-to-one basis. But capitalist imperialism is not about a denial of sovereignty over territory. Capitalist imperialism is about denying sovereignty to where you started us off at nun over the flows between territories. You know, they can allow you to be under capitalism. You can be a sovereign. So, you know, the Chinese empire in the 19th century is never totally colonized or subjugated, but it's effectively reduced to a country that has no sovereignty over the flow of capital into and out of China.

Adnan Husain: Just like Iran in the early 20th century.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, exactly. Just like Iran. So now this is something that why this matters is if we go to it provisions. capitalism with a price setting power over the peripheries. If you control the port of Hong Kong, you have a price setting power now. We can't get into it in details, but this price setting power is what will provision the stability of the capital labor contradiction in the core, because this is what allows you to contain inflation. This is what allows you to both generate profits and suppress wages and allow your workers to purchase goods and act as consumers. You need a price setting power over the peripheries, right? And now this is established through military violence in the first and last instance. But war returns time and again under capitalist imperialism. So what I would say is the military question then generates the condition for the economic power of imperialism under capitalism. So the economic power is a power through which the imperialist appropriates the entirety of the surplus. So how does China transform from the wealthiest to the poorest country in a matter of 110 years? So you have a total bleeding of the surplus to the imperialist core. Now, this generates... it's what Samir Amin calls the economic leg. I laugh because I just can't, I always come to this, but I think it's really clarifying. So this generates the economic base of imperialism. Now, as an anti-imperialist question then, You're not looking to return to kind of funny. It's a mistake to say I will get freedom by begging those who hold military and economic power. Please recognize me. You know, please, please. Like the like the the elite in the West Bank today or whatever. Please grant us something. It's a challenge imperialism on both of those legs, on both of those bases, military and economic. The history of anti-imperialism is, and this is really important when we come to Fanon, there's a military challenge, and I think you just laid this out, that you can overcome the military basis. Now, the rule of imperialism, though, is when a people start to challenge that military basis, they challenge the right of the colonizer. to exercise economic power in their territory, or they challenge that military basis, international law has always actually held that those people can be subject to genocidal violence. You know, and that's the way it's operated. You can recognize, Hufio, I'm saying his name wrong because I butcher French, whatever the Cote d'Ivoire leader was, Hufio Bionni, I'm sorry. You know what I'm talking about.

Adnan Husain: Like, Fanon makes fun of him in Wretched, right?

Bikrum Gill: In those essays, yeah. So there's a way in which you can recognize that sort of figure as a sovereign, but not anybody. Anybody who challenges that can be subject to eliminationist violence. Now, the relationship between the two is when you have a successful military overturning, right? So this is why the essay that you linked to two logics of war. Like I want people, I just wanted people to remember, yeah, this, so let's say not a conflict, not a war. So there is a genocidal war that needs to be named, but there's another war. It's an anti-imperialist war of necessity, seeking to restore the internal basis of sovereignty. But the history of imperialism is it'll move between, like you said, economic and military, economic and military. So when you overturn through armed struggle, you come to independence. Fanon will say, the colonizer says to you really quick, okay, if you want your independence, take it and starve. Thank you. You want your independence, take it and starve. Which means they impose a capital strike through sanctions on a country that achieves that internal basis of sovereignty because now the reality of the history of colonization is you are dependent. Like, you know, Fanon even says, we have the land, but we don't have the means now to mobilize the land because all of the surplus got concentrated in the core. So they can impose a capital strike, which is why the class basis matters, because you can overcome that dependency in a limited extent through something like a peasant-centered national development program that can generate small-scale surpluses. But imperialism switches between economic Violence and military violence. So when it gets contained militarily, it'll seek to impose sanctions. But when sanctions don't hit, I think this is the point that you're setting. When sanctions don't hit, like in Venezuela, this year, Venezuela starts to reemerge as an oil exporting country in a small measure. So now sanctions aren't biting in the way you might want in the sense you want Venezuelan oil integrated into the U.S. order. So is this a point where you switch back to military power? Now, economic sanctions don't work on China in the same way. Is this why you try to militarize the South China Sea? But this is where anti-imperialism also has to walk on both legs. China might provision the economic basis for countries to withstand sanctions. But then if the United States adopts a military strategy, then can we see the importance in the relationship of military based resistance in West Asia or even the Ukraine war or elsewhere to a maintenance of the economic leg that China has advanced? So the imperialist war is a foundation to that price-setting power. It will be renewed when it's threatened. And I think war is the threat that hangs over a people. Endless war, eliminationist war. if you dare question the basis of the denial of sovereignty. If you relent on that question, like the West Bank or like India under Gandhiism, or even when South Africa relents on land redistribution after the end of apartheid, if you constitutionalize that power, you can be granted an external sovereignty, but you're not really sovereign. You are dependent. You might even get the World Cup. But if you violate that, you can be subject to endless war. right you can be subject to even elimination and this is where i think we often fail as the left and the core as we'll fall into these frameworks so it's not like syria doesn't have contradictions but why is syria sanctioned and targeted like let's honestly ask that question time and again why is syria targeted in the way it is and bahrain is not in 2011 2012 why right both countries have uh quote unquote uprisings associated with the arab spring or uprisings however you want to name it but why does syria get targeted in this way which are the countries that are targeted? It's those that actually violate that rule of imperialism on military and economic grounds.

Adnan Husain: Yes, yes, really wonderful. I mean, and that even flows. I mean, we are getting to maybe the end of our time, though I've been enjoying this so much. And we definitely will have to have you come back as a regular participant in office hours every once in a while to continue these conversations. But you had another article that we linked that I think relates to the point you were coming upon, which is something for the anti-war, for the, you know, kind of left in the imperial core to really work through its contradictions. in terms of, for example, how it has thought about Iran, right? So in this, the second sacred defense, solidarity, sovereignty, and the politics of anti-war, I think you were elaborating exactly the point you had just come upon about some of the problems for uh you know for the western left for people in solidarity even people who are avowedly pro-palestine in exactly the same way that they slipped up in their analysis of what you know the syrian uh you know uh overthrow of uh the assad government of syria would mean, what it signified from an anti-imperialist analysis is that likewise, and this we've seen actually, I think in some ways, Israel exploit exactly a kind of canny, it's not the only factor that is motivating when and how they make these attempts on Lebanon, on Sarawak or on Iran, but in particular, It seems to me is that it's a very helpful distraction for fracturing the global solidarity movement, particularly in the West, when they attack a sovereign state like Iran, as opposed to, you know, the victims of civilians. And we can all have our narratives that, well, they bombed hospitals. They you know, but it's OK to attack Iran, you know, because they are an aggressive, you know, nation state and somehow then the left doesn't apply the same sort of anti-imperialist analysis to them. So I'm wondering if you wanted to kind of further and give people a sense of what you're trying to kind of get at in this artist and Vox Oma.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, thank you. And I think there's a way in which like it introduces a third leg of imperialism and anti-imperialism, an ideological leg. So there's a way these are all implicated within one another, the economic, the military, the ideological. So what brought me to write this piece, I actually had written it as a thread first on Twitter. on Twitter and like incidentally, you know, I've been off Twitter and I realized it's actually a much more effective medium of communication than writing articles because I'm like, nobody actually reads articles when you write them, but everybody will read like a thread. But I wrote it initially as a thread and then I turned it into this article. But what I had noticed was there was this distinction being made between, We oppose war. We oppose the Iranian regime, but we support the people of Iran. And there's this people regime distinction that I pointed to earlier that is constantly mobilized. And it's not like it's not important. The concept of the people, though, is a fraught concept. It's a fraught category and has a really complicated history. So, of course, for liberation movements, it's important the way that people are mobilized. But we also have to recognize from the 19th century, there's a genealogy of the people of the category of the people that's mobilized by the colonizer and the imperialist. So when the British colonized Sri Lanka, you know, for example, they'll do it in the name of the people against a tyrannical king and they'll end up. disarticulating longstanding patterns of authority and governance that are not as neat and tidy as people versus regime. So I just saw even the left reproducing this distinction. And why to me that was problematic is because Iran is not being targeted because the imperialists want to target the Iranian people. If they're targeted very specifically because the specific structure of power, the qualitative form of sovereignty that has been raised up through the Islamic Republic. Now, that doesn't mean like we were talking about China and the Security Council resolution, that that's the only question. There are many questions, but what's the primary question that bears upon other questions? Even in Iran, Iran has never, like Cuba, like other countries, they've never been granted policy space because immediately they're subject to endless war and sanctions because they dare challenge imperialism at its foundations. So this is the primary question with Iran. Right. So it's not a question of an abstract general category of the people, because this is something that doesn't exist. People are concrete. They exist concretely in relation to concrete structures of power. So that was one motivation. And I think the before I kind of get into the argument I construct, the point that you make around ideology is very important. Because what the imperialists have been wagering on for four decades, five decades almost, and especially in the last 20 years, is to reorient the primary question away from Zionism and towards Shia, what Tony Blair calls the Shia crescent. You know, what should bring states together in the region is not... Zionism as the primary destabilizing force, but the Islamic Republic as the destabilizing force. And this is in everybody's interest, I'll try to say. And the project before Al-Aqsa flood in September 2023, and the genocider in chief, Netanyahu, he's there giving the celebratory speech saying the Arabs are with us now. The primary enemy is Iran. So there is this component that's military, economic, and ideological. And it can extend... to the Hezbollah defeat of Israel in 2000 and 2006, but it can also extend to the Iranian revolution because the Iranian revolution is shot fired against U.S. military supremacy, but also that oil dollar relationship. The 1979 revolution really challenges all of that. So since then, there's this gambit to shift the primary question to either Iran, authoritarianism, or even the Shia-Sunni split. This is something that I think is fueling the way the West intervenes into the Arab Spring, the way they try to target Syria in a particular way with Iran behind them. They try to say the problem is this Shia crescent. But the point I was just trying to drive home is, sure, there are contradictions. Not everybody's going to be happy with any state formation. Iran has class contradictions that have emerged because of the program of development has emerged in relation to sanctions, so forth. But the primary question is it's being attacked. We should have clarity as to why it's being attacked. It's being attacked because it is, to use the language you use, a key source of strategic depth for the region. It is not controlling proxies. It is an axis that moves in relation to one another but Iran is a key source that helped in the diffusion of knowledge and capabilities, right? And they're trying to get to that. There should be absolute clarity on that point. And I would just say briefly, This is also why we need to actually re-engage the DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, because the DPRK is a state that historically served also as a bedrock of strategic depth, because the Iranian weapons production capabilities come from DPRK. So similar thing, why is DPRK subject to endless war, to sanctions? It's not because America has any interest in the internal character of the North Korean state, but again, we should be really humble in the West to understand that that is also a state that has been besieged for decades, that was subject to genocidal war, that continues to be subject to genocidal sanctions. So similar, I think North Korea and Iran are on the axis of evil under George Bush for a particular reason. And I think that's a point that the left often is easily confused on. So again, to come to the ace question, what brings us together as a collective is to come to these primary questions. So then what is our... Maybe duty is too strong of a word, right? But what should we be oriented on? Well, how do we... work to problematize the sanctions regime, right? Like if it is our states that are inflicting these sanctions, then okay, well, we are here. What is the political project? What is an anti-sanctions project that can address imperialism at its foundational level? So I was trying to get to that point because I was concerned about this people versus regime distinction that was being reproduced by the quote unquote, some elements of the anti-imperialist left.

Adnan Husain: yes yes uh wonderful and i think in terms of the sanctions politics of trying to end sanctions regimes um people who are interested we did on guerrilla history a i don't know if it was 10 part series uh on saying the book sanctions as war uh that had different chapters and we had people come and discuss, and we dealt with Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Venezuela. It's very important both to understand the particular cases and why, as you're pointing out, some countries are subject to these sanctions and others are not. and also to see it as a systemic kind of response and as a mechanism of war by other than direct military means. And very often, in much the same way, people versus the regime, people think that, oh, well, you can impose sanctions, and that's somehow better than intervention or war. You're just targeting some officials and um you know this is you know a more peaceful kind of mechanism of trying to pressure uh regimes and governments and so on that are resistant to u.s and western uh hegemony and um I think your work and what you've been discussing and publishing really helps people think through a lot of these issues. And so I've really enjoyed and enormously benefited from this conversation.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, me as well.

Adnan Husain: Yeah. And so the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective, it has a blog that I've mentioned, and it's a group of, I don't know, 30 or so, maybe something like that of people who – are contributors to this project. It's a great resource because they talk, they have different expertise and people have different emphases. But you can find out about their work and short pieces. You know, they're very fruitful, instructive and timely. So this is part of building just like Sovereign Media, which was another interesting new development of trying to put high quality uh you know anti-imperialist analysis of what's happening in the world and hopefully also you find office hours and our upcoming struggle session live stream on sunday november 23rd at 3 p.m uh contributing to that as well in a different format and we'll be having a great discussion with nerdeen kiswani my co-host from guerrilla history henry hakamaki uh Mehmet Ali Arslan, who has a podcast in Swedish and English, who's on Twitter a lot and is a great, you know, activist, pro-Palestine and anti-imperialist activist. And I think I'm forgetting somebody else who's coming. But at any rate, it's going to be a great panel. And we encourage you to come and join and be part of the discussion just like today. And I have to say the discussion, you know, Bikram, you were getting distracted because there are a lot of interesting comments being posted, not just by Benji Schoendorf. a lot of great insights and we get a preview perhaps of what his discussion with you will be like the kind of points that he was raising you know in the chat but so many others and returner you know people who are returning to the chat it's great to see this community being formed and developed and for collective education and hopefully also action. So Chidimacha and Marger X Esquerdista 2806 and Danny Ferguson, who's come many times, Alexander Luchta, Ware Pilgrim. Verena Frazier, many others. I can't mention you all, but I recognize, I read them, and I appreciate you coming to this discussion. And I think you've learned, you've benefited a lot. Bikram, really, I have to thank you so much. And I hope we'll have you back on very soon. Is there any place people, you said you're not on Twitter that much. I am.

Bikrum Gill: I'm on to it. I just haven't been on as much as because, you know, I'll share in the near future. Hopefully, I've been going through kind of major change. So I will hopefully have more to share on that recently. But yeah, I've been consumed by some... But I think I'm still there. So hopefully I'll be reengaging. But I think Pen Is My Machete, our blog, is a place to direct people to find my work. And I think, you know, I am working on a piece on sanctions for hopefully I'll get it done soon for a special issue in Middle East Critique. Um, so yeah, that's, that's probably the best place to find. We just started a, Oh, I should mention actually Sina would have got really upset with me. He would have really came at me with my lack of marketing skills, but we've actually started a podcast, uh, through the collective. So we have a blog pen is my machete and we also have a newsletter. People should check out and subscribe to the newsletter. It will give a kind of a weekly account of the activities of our members and what we're producing, uh, in more real time. Uh, And then we've just started a podcast called the, it's just the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective podcast. I think you can find it wherever, wherever you find podcasts, I guess, and you can find it on YouTube. So yeah, that's what I would say. And like, yeah, I do want to say, that I really appreciated the chat. It was very vibrant and there's a really strong community with office hours. I didn't mean to get distracted, but it was just a really good discussion that was happening. So kudos to everybody in the chat and to you Adnan for kind of cultivating the space. And yeah, you know, like I hope everybody appreciates that we came out of a three hour faculty meeting and we went straight into office hours and that's a tough thing to have office hours after a faculty meeting. But we did it.

Adnan Husain: You know, like it deadens the mind. This was a great kind of cleanser for the soul, the mind, the spirit, you know, the resistance spirit to be able to kind of end the week. way you want to actually thinking about what's going on in the world and how how change might happen and i have to say that i managed somehow despite you know you're talking about essentially military keynesianism and you know uh humanitarian intervention discourse in colonialist you know rationales i i somehow managed not to bring up the crusades in this discussion oh bring us I'm so fascinated by that part of your research we'll do that we'll talk about kind of maybe next time we should talk because we were you did allude to since the 16th century like you know this kind of imperialist war and you were careful we're about to do another two hours right now I'm sure I will stop us, but I'm saying maybe we should talk about the kind of history of colonial kind of imperial formations and how that is relevant for analyzing today. Because I think when you do deeper histories, you often think, well, that's just very far away. So, you know, maybe there's some analogies, but it's not that relevant to, you know, 18th and 19th century or early 20th century. And, you know, I would say that there's a reason for us to have these Absolutely. Or historical discussions.

Bikrum Gill: Can I quickly just say one thing on this point? It's like, number one, I want to shout out my good friend Zaheer Kolia. I want you two to meet, actually. He's at Toronto Metropolitan University. He's writing a very similar book, actually, to your project. Okay, great, great. But on the question of the Crusades, it's really interesting. I don't know if you've come across Jarus Banerjee's work. He has this essay, Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism. It's really fascinating because I think there's a category error sometimes that Marxists will make where they confuse markets with capitalism. So there's a way in which the history of commerce and markets is not reducible to the history of capitalism. But he, in this essay, charts out how the Portuguese appropriate the concept, and I'm not going to pretend to say the word in Arabic, that becomes capital. But commerce operates under a very different authority in the Islamic Mediterranean. But there's a way in which the Crusades are a site of primitive accumulation. Yes. Material way, right? Like the Italian city-states that Origi will say is the ground zero, where are they getting their capital? But then also, in my book, I talk about capitalism as also being premised on appropriation and erasure. of a knowledge practice intersection. And so what is the way in which the Crusades also facilitate a form of European appropriation of Islamic commercial forms? Now, it doesn't stay the same because it's mobilized into a very different authority structure. Prophet becomes God, you know, like something else happens. But so, I mean, I've been really curious about your work and yeah, I would love to come on and I'm not an expert on that, but maybe I can ask you the questions next time.

Adnan Husain: Well, okay, maybe for the... Or you can come on to ACE. Yeah, you can come on to ACE and we can do maybe even some kind of collaboration there. But I do want to get the reference for the Banerjee article and you have a friend to be in touch. So this is great to expand the... kind of network of trying to increase the historical depth because they do look different when you reframe it. Like when you have an idea that capitalism started in Birmingham because of the mills in like the late 18th and early 19th century, you're going to frame your sense of what's important in a particular way. And if you open up the geographies and the temporalities to be able to capture what's actually changing when and how, and how that interacts with other things, you might frame it in a slightly different way. And it's not that this is wrong to do it one way or the other. But if you don't have a kind of fuller picture, you miss then when you're analyzing what's happening in your own world now, because you haven't been thinking in this more kind of comprehensive way. And I just find that, you know, this, this could be helpful. And for me, it's even, I can't think through all of these things myself. What I need is to bring where I have thought carefully and, and done certain kind of research to bear in dynamic and dialectical discussion with others who have expertise on some of these more modern or, you know, geographies that I haven't. Yes. So that we can build a, a stronger analysis. Yeah.

Bikrum Gill: I think, I think, you know, on that point of none, like the, um, there's a way in which if we think about capitalism world systemically, so the contradiction is not capital labor necessarily, that's core contradiction, but there's this core periphery contradiction. And our core periphery emerges at the site of your research here, right? Because it's a way in which Europe is emerging out of a backwardness in relation to either a Eurasia, Afro-Asia, however you want to frame it. And so then this question becomes, it builds its wealth upon the appropriation, not simply of land, but the accumulated wealth of the Song Dynasty or the Abbasid Caliphate or however you want to understand it. And so the project in today, it's not simply, there is a socialist basis, we can argue technically. But restoration is maybe a strong word here, but there's a way in which these long-standing patterns and grooves of a multipolar world, and I don't mean that in a fetishistic sense, just in the sense that there was not an equivalent of a European imperialist hegemony, as Janet Aboulougode has shown in her work, right? So this question of even understanding China today or even understanding Southeast Asia and trade networks today requires understanding how European imperialism built itself upon pre-existing trade networks, pre-existing, I think, forms of world commerce that maybe have not been entirely rendered into the dustbin of history, that they continue to be a basis for what is to come. Yeah.

Adnan Husain: Well, that's absolutely right. I was actually supposed to write an essay and I'm late on it and now I've missed there. But it'll be part of this book that I'm working on. But I think it's actually worth doing it as a separate piece. I wanted to do something because it is like the whatever the 30th or some anniversary this year was the anniversary of... beyond european hegemony the book you just referred to uh by janet abu and you know uh she was pretty prescient about certain things because she mentioned that this wasn't uh you know a period where there wasn't a kind of unipolar sort of world it was you know before um europe becomes the you know the west becomes a unipolar you know hegemon dominating through colonialism and imperialism and so it is useful and interesting she could already see that maybe you know the world system was changing with yes you know like late 80s you know when she's writing and thinking about this is that you know we're gonna be in a phase where there won't be the same kind of architecture of the cold war, you know, world system, but also really recognizing that whatever kind of supposed unipolarity, I think she already understood that whatever supposed unipolarity was going to come with the, you know, uh, dismantling, um, maybe self dismantling, if you want to put it that way of, you know, the, the communist block is that, um, it wasn't really going to be a unipolar moment for very long. I mean, that's not, you know, so at any rate, but I was going to write something about basically how I think she put her finger on something very important, but didn't really elaborate. She has a small line in there where she says, you know, that you know, the crusades were really important in some kind of transition and, The way she framed it was much more in that kind of classic narrative of like it opened up markets. It opened up taste to like, you know, trade and interest in these luxury items of the East and spice and and so on. And I don't think that's actually the most important. Of course, that's part of what they appropriate. Yes. Of course, the Venetians appropriate when they make Murano glass, they take its Mamluk glass, but they just, you know, kind of stole it and then, you know, developed it in a different direction. But what's important is actually the relation. So Europe gets integrated because of, you know, this opening up. But what's significant for me is it's the terms and conditions under which it tries to integrate is war. Yeah. Not like let's just trade and get the benefits of like, you know, engaging with you. It's like, let's dominate, take over and erase your, you know, kind of.

Bikrum Gill: So, you know, you should write this, you know, a book that I think you would find very helpful conceptually here is Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas. He has this really important take that I find, you know, the postmodern turn that had happened was like this rejection of reason and rationality. It's like this is a Western imposition. And DeSalle makes this point that actually, you know, the point that you make, he's like, they reject actually rational intercourse between nations. So when they're talking to indigenous peoples in the Americas, they don't seek to conduct commerce or trade internationally. What we reason is we'd have a reasonable discussion and come to an understanding that might be like a higher rationality through discourse. But they choose violence and they choose to construct treaties or exchange upon violence. And then the other flip side of that is I don't know if you've read Marietegui, the Peruvian Marxist. He has this book called Seven Essays, and he has one called The Indian Question. He essentially is like coming to Marx's discussion in terms of how you're saying this integration through war. So you don't like transform these countries into capitalist countries. You formally subsume their systems. But now they become subject, an appendage through war to your system. But Maria Teghi then says communism in Peru, for example, will be an ink in communism. uh thinking about this question of historical difference right that there is a relevance to the way in which the social forms that had existed that were integrated into european uh capitalism through war uh they can become the basis of uh what is to come afterwards right so i think like that's the the but i yeah i hope you write that i really but i i saw somebody say yeah it was probably our guy benji again that podcasts are good for ideas but less for writing

Adnan Husain: That's right. I know. I know. What I need to do is word to text and at least have a draft to work with. That's probably what I should do on some of these occasions. But actually, there are a few references I want to like, hopefully afterwards, if you'd be kind enough, if you can remember to send me, I'll remind you. But if you can remember some of these references, because I really would like to do that. But anyway, that's the basis for, you know, maybe a couple of future conversations on... know one thing or another here so you've been so generous uh bikram with your time well i think we've demonstrated that neither of us have a very rich friday night social life we're just chilling out that's what's been exposed is i really don't have anything better to do this is the highlight of my week coming in likewise the guest and uh you know all of this chat and and and so on so yeah We'll keep it going. We hope to have it again next week. And please do check out the live streams, folks, and share this one because the stuff Bikram was talking about, you're not going to hear a lot of places. Make sure people who need to know, your friends, your comrades, family, your enemies, they need to know too.

Bikrum Gill: 100 is 100.

Adnan Husain: So at any rate, until next time, everybody, peace with justice and solidarity to you all.

Bikrum Gill: All right.

Adnan Husain: Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Okay.