Farabi International Award

“People who are struggling against the unipolar world led by the US empire together with the secondary allies such as European imperialist countries, need to decolonize science and technology”, emphasized Professor Ramon Grosfoguel, Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the winner of 13th Farabi International Award during “Russia-Ukraine War and the Future of the World’’ meeting.
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He spoke in the first meeting of the “Neo-World” series about the future of the world, culture, science, and technology which was held Wednesday, November 30 at the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies. Grosfoguel participated virtually at the meeting.
Dr. Foad Izadi, a Professor at the University of Tehran was the other speaker at the meeting, in which Dr. Mohammad Hosseini Moghadam, a faculty member of the ISCS was the academic secretary.
“I want to talk about the conditions of the historical processes that led to this war,” Grosfoguel said, answering a question about the “main factors that led to the war between Russia and Ukraine”.
He added: “we need to go back a little and talk about the decline of the U.S Empire. the U.S Empire is facing challenges; very strong challenges, military challenges, they have lost the wars in the Middle East; Commercial challenges, they're losing the commercial battle with China in Africa and lost already the battle; the commercial battle with China in Asia.”
“They face an economic decline because the U.S. in the last 50 -60 years has dedicated the resources for military Investments. The federal government U.S. has spent half or more than half of the federal budget on the defense department. The defense department is linked to the U.S. military-industrial complex; so, a lot of that money ends up in companies that live off corporate welfare. what I mean by ‘corporate welfare’ is welfare for the corporations instead of welfare for the people. So, what the U.S. government has been doing for decades is transferring taxpayers’ money to military companies that live off Wars. So, if there is no war, they invent a war. They need wars to make money”, he said.
Grosfoguel continued: “So this is one factor that can help us understand the decline of the U.S Empire. The debts created by this waste of money into wars and into the military-industrial complex from taxpayers’ money are leading the USA to become the number one country in the world with the largest deficit. The USA has above 30 trillion dollars in debts and the problem they're facing is that they've been living off creating all these debts by transferring resources to corporations, in this case, a military-industrial complex; also let big companies Banks, and Wall Street people to get breaks in taxes. So, we're having a situation now. Over at least 40 years of tax breaks to the rich and transferring resources from workers and middle classes to militarism, to the military-industrial complex, all these companies make money out of War. And so, this has led to a situation where now they are facing a big crisis. The crisis during years all these deficits were growing and the way they caught up with their debts was by selling U.S bonds. China was one of the main Partners. They’re purchasing billions of dollars in bonds from the USA. That's how they managed to deal with the deficit of the federal government. Now we're in a situation where because of the U.S aggressive policies towards China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and towards many other countries around the world, putting sanctions and anything if they don't like a government or they don't like whatever, they immediately put sanctions and start isolating this country from the International Financial markets and structures. So, creating very difficult situations for these countries and because of that now many countries are moving away from the US dollar.”
“Many countries are now beginning to trade internationally with other currencies. The U.S. back off from the gold standard in 1971 with the Nixon Administration and start printing paper money with no backup in gold, and the way they did it was by backing up the value of the dollar by making the dollar the main currency of international trade. The mechanism used by them was for the countries that trade with oil, to sell their oil in dollars. That's what is called ‘Petrodollars’ in the international markets, and they did an agreement with the Saudis in the early 70s to trade oil only in dollars. That's how the US managed to keep the dollar as a top currency in the world. But this is now declining very fast because the U.S. was able to deal with their debts and all of that, by selling bonds based on the issue or on the confidence that the dollar is a stable currency. So, many people invested in the bonds and that's how they managed to balance the deficits by creating more debts. But what happened now is that their debt is above 30 trillion dollars and now many countries around the world are moving away from the dollar because they can see the problem of printing money, for example, now China is moving away from purchasing bonds from the US. It’s on the contrary selling the bonds and trying to move away from this Bond structure of the US and moving fast into the gold standard; that is purchasing gold and backing up the Yuan with gold. Russia has been doing the same and also many other countries. They're purchasing gold and sustaining their currency in Gold while the US is just printing paper and that paper is now becoming the value because the more paper you print, the less value it has. And given the deficit they have, and that now a big power economy such as China is not purchasing bonds is putting now the USA into a tough position, because now they've been living off selling bonds to balance off the deficits but now if China or other countries stop buying bonds then we're talking about an economic catastrophe for the U.S Empire because then they won't be able to balance up the budget. Then if they cannot do that, there's going to be a big big crisis, a depression. probably worse than the 1930s of the last century. There's going to be a collapse in the markets and we're going to see difficult times for the US Empire.”
The UC Berkeley Professor added: “The U.S Empire is a declining Empire. I always compare a declining Empire with a tiger that is injured and is in a terminal death situation. the Tiger in that situation can become very dangerous because it can start doing moves in an unexpected way that could be dangerous for Humanity and so I am very concerned about the way the U.S Empire has been behaving in relation to the crisis because they're really doing crazy things and now let's talk about Ukraine.”
“In the context of decline, USA needs to recover markets, to recover its Power again, and to recover its power means recovering economically in other words scale, and one of the mechanisms they're trying to do now is use their military power to try to impose themselves and do geopolitical moves around the world that are very dangerous to recover markets that have been lost to other emerging powers such as China, Russia, and other countries. They have declared China as their ‘main enemy’ at the world scale and Russia as their ‘immediate enemy’. This is documented in the US administration’s documents.
You could see it very clearly during the Trump Administration and the Biden administration has continued with this policy until now. They haven't changed the doctrine developed during the Trump years. These were also said before by other Administrations. They lost the wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Syria, in Iraq even though they're still there. So, all these wars are waste of time and money for the USA right now and they are entering into big deficits. It's just developing more deficit for the US although the seven military companies are making a lot of money. that's what they did in Afghanistan for 20 years. They destroyed a country, killed many people, and then in the end they have to step out because they lost the war. They were beaten up by the Taliban and now they wasted their several trillion dollars and all that money went to those seven companies”, he said.
Grosfoguel added: “It's becoming a main problem in the U.S. People are starting to see this problem and there are reactions going on in the country. So, in this context, what the US is doing is in the Rand Corporation document of 2019 which is titled “Extending Russia”. That's a
very Central document to understand the strategy that the US is developing against Russia. What they're doing is the following: they've been provoking a war in Ukraine. They're being provoking Russia to intervene in Ukraine for a long time. This is not new. this is not something that happened this year when the Russian Federation decided to enter into Ukraine”
He explained: “So, first of all, let's begin with Russia. What the U.S. has been doing is surrounding Russia. The Russian Federation since the 1990s with military bases on the borders of the Russian Federation with Eastern European countries and with missiles in each of these bases pointing at Moscow. Put yourself in the shoes of the Russians. If you are in Moscow, you're in any place in Russia, you see NATO, which is the military branch of the U.S. Empire and expanding all over the border of the Russian Federation, putting and constructing their military bases with missiles, and nuclear missiles pointing at Moscow. That was since the 90s they've been doing this, even though the Cold War was over or was supposed to be over in 1991, and there were agreements both with Gorbachev and after that with Yeltsin that NATO will not expand into the borders of the Russian Federation but that's exactly what they did. They violated their promises and they kept expanding all over, surrounding the Russian Federation.”


“I just want to say that there is a history behind this. There was a coup d'etat in 2014 when the U.S. put militias in power in Ukraine and a provocation has been going on against Russia until today. The strategy of the USA is to provoke Russia to war in Ukraine, to justify sanctions, and to replace Russian companies that represent 40 percent of the European Union Imports. The imports of the European Union are international Imports; 40 percent are Russian companies. It's a lot of money there. So, they put sanctions, using this provocation against Russia in Ukraine, where Russia has no other choice than to intervene in Ukraine, to then take over the markets away from the Russian companies and replace them with American transnational corporations that are selling to the Europeans with monopoly prices. And by doing that they're on the one hand sanctioning Russia and trying to hit Russia economically and hitting China at the same time because the Silk Road passed through there to Europe, passed through the Russian Federation.
So, they're expelling China and Russia both out of the European market and now they're taking over the European market by displacing the companies of Russia in gas, oil, aluminum, and many other items, and so now, they're making a big money and forcing the European Union to put two percent of their national budget, each country, into purchasing military weapons from U.S military complex, from U.S military companies. So, the military companies are very happy and many companies in the US now are making a lot of money in Europe and selling a monopoly price to the Europeans where Europeans now are suffering hyperinflation. It’s said chess mate what the US did at the geopolitical global level. Without moving any soldiers, they just were able to isolate Russia. They're pushing out China from European markets and now they're recolonizing Europe. This is all planned and written in the Rand document, which I mentioned in 2019” the professor said.

Answering a question about “how this war can end”, Dr. Foad Izadi referred to the Rand Document which was mentioned by Grosfoguel, and said: “You need to look at the context in order to understand what is going on. the title of that 2019 Rand Corporation report, if I remember correctly, is “Overextending an Unbalancing Russia”. So, the idea of the report is talking about how to unbalance Russia, and when you read the report you remember Iran because a lot of tactics that it's proposed in that report are what the United States has been doing to Iran in the last 43 years.”
He continued: “ Now your question was the idea of how to end the war, as Dr. Ramon said it was the United States policies that started the war and Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the meeting that he had a couple of months ago with President Putin actually mentioned this fact that if Russia did not defend itself and did not take the measures that it took, the West would have started the war. And this is something that you will realize when you look at the context.”
“So the basic fact is that in order to answer that question we need to answer another question “whether the United States has achieved all its goals when they created the setup for the war in Ukraine?” and the answer is no. I remember I was in Doha for the Doha Forum in January and we had a senator from the United States talking about the idea of the Ukraine War ending properly, not just ending. They are not interested in ending the war but in ending it properly. And what that means is that all the political and economic reasons for starting the war should be realized before Americans would allow the Ukrainians to actually start serious negotiations. And if you have been following the recent developments you realize that it is the Ukrainian side that's refusing to talk and negotiate and the reason they refuse to talk and negotiate is that they don't have permission from the United States and as Professor Ramon correctly pointed out the government that is in Kyiv is a government that came out of the 2014 coup”, Izadi said.
He added: “As you remember in 2014, the United States did not have to engage in the policies that resulted in the coup, they could wait one year until 2015. And in 2015 they would have had an election in Ukraine. The presidential election was scheduled to take place in 2015. So why did they not wait for one more year if they wanted to overthrow, the government in Ukraine they could do it through normal political processes so why didn't they do it? the reason is that because of the large Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, whoever was  in power in Ukraine would be either fully in line with Russia, the bigger neighbor, or they would be sympathetic to Russia, and try to have good relations with Russia because in a normal democracy you could not win in Ukraine unless you had positive contacts with the very large Russian speaking population that was in the east of the country.”
Izadi continued: “And the Americans realized that they cannot win through the normal Democratic process. They could not install a western-oriented government if we had democracy in Ukraine. So, they realized the only way they could achieve their goals in Ukraine was to actually orchestrate a coup. I was in Romania about three months ago and it was very interesting for me that the former Romanian foreign minister after finishing his tenure as the foreign minister, became Romania's representative in the EU Parliament. And it was in 2014 when the disturbances in Ukraine started, he was actually leading a delegation to investigate what was going on in Ukraine and he was presenting at the conference I attended that initially the demonstrations in the Ukrainian capital were peaceful demonstrations and they were dying down.”
He added: “As you remember in 2013 there were two economic packages available to the Ukrainian government, one was given by the Russians and the other one was given by the EU. And the Russian package was much more attractive so the Ukrainian government at that time basically went with the Russian proposal because any independent government would do what is best for the country and the Russian proposal was a better package. and of course, the Europeans and the United States had been working in Ukraine in terms of trying to basically orchestrate the color Revolution dating back many years and so they had NGOs, contacts, and people who were ready to basically work with the West and try to start a color Revolution process. So those organizations and individuals got active they started the demonstrations but the demonstrations were peaceful until one day, and you remember the news at that time, you had Western media outlets and other outlets talking about people getting killed in the Maidan, the main Square in Kyiv.”
“So it was a sudden shift from a peaceful demonstration to people getting killed.
 and this former Romanian foreign minister was saying that when they investigated the killings they found out -this is a report they produce for the EU Parliament- that the people who were killed in the Maidan were shot by snipers who were placed in the buildings surrounding the Maidan and when they looked at and investigated that who were those people who were engaging in shooting citizens, they realized they were not Ukrainians, they were foreign mercenaries trained in Poland by the United States”, he continued.
Izadi said: “So, what happened in 2015 was an orchestrated bloodshed. they orchestrated a scene to make peaceful demonstrations turn into bloody demonstrations and then they blame the government for the killings the end result of that project was that many people got killed by these snipers that were trained by the United States in Poland and then that started the coup you needed to have people getting killed to start the coup.”
“This was about five months ago when I was in Romania listening to this former foreign minister. and then you know what's happening in Iran in the last three months so you see a lot of common tactics of trying to create deaths we had in cities, Izeh for example. But the snipers came and shooting on ordinary citizens and then blamed the government for the people who have been killed. So, you see some of the tactics are quite similar and when the United States go to this much difficulty of this organizing a coup and then not allowing the Ukrainian government that came after the coup to have any sort of settlement with the Russian government.”, he said.
Izadi added: “We had the ‘Minsk I’ and ‘Minsk II’ agreements, every time you had the Russian president, the German Chancellor, the French President, and the Ukrainian president agreeing on a peace settlement, the Ukrainians would not do their part and this resulted in basically not reaching any sort of Peace settlement from 2014 until February of 2022. During these eight years, 14000 people had been killed in eastern Ukraine, based on a UN report, and 80 percent of these people were Russian speakers. So, before the War of February 2022, there was a civil war going on in eastern Ukraine, of course, the Western news outlets totally ignored the Civil War and the killings because they didn’t want to admit that the Ukraine government is actually killing its own citizens. So overall, I think the more we go forward we realize the true intentions of the US government and it is the US government that will decide when the war will end and they will decide when they think they have achieved their goals or when they think that they're paying a price that's more than what they have.”
“The U.S. cannot compete internationally in the economic markets. they have lost the technological battle they have lost it because they have spent waste trillions of dollars on Warfare. So, while in the last 50 years the US was investing money into warfare, the other countries were spending their money on improving technology. Today the U.S. cannot compete with China, and cannot even compete with Russia. They cannot compete with many emerging economic powers in the world. So we're moving into a multi-polar world. this is why the U.S. is moving away from the unipolar world of the USA and so this is why the USA is doing these dirty wars because they cannot compete economically in the markets, they have to recover markets by doing international coup d'etat. and that's what happening in Ukraine. it's an international coup of the USA in order to displace Russia and China from European markets and in order for American companies to recolonize Europe”, Grosfoguel explained in an answer to a question about the chance of Russia winning this war and can Russian defeat means strengthening American unilateralism in the world?
He continued: “That's what they've done. They recolonize Europe. Europe is now subordinated like a colonial protectorate of the USA. they have subordinated themselves to the military instructions of Washington through NATO. They have no sovereignty vis-a-vis the USA and not only that; now a lot of the European companies and industries are closing down because they cannot survive with American monopoly prices in oil and gas. this is what's going on it's an international coup d'etat by the USA because they cannot compete with the regular loss of the market so they are using dirty tactics in order to recover markets and that's what they've done in Europe with the war in Ukraine.”
Grosfoguel said: “We need to be very clear: now the war in Ukraine is the war between the new multipolar world and the unipolar world, the USA. this is a very important question because it's about the future of the world that is being fought in Ukraine right now. If the U.S. wins this war, we're talking about the strengthening of the unipolar world of the USA that does not respect the sovereignty, does not respect countries, other cultures, and people. They are imposing their will by using piracy. this is the term we have to use: ‘international piracy’. they violate their own rules in terms of markets, institutions, and laws, such as United Nations laws, such as any law they violated and are doing piracy.”
“What they're doing to Russia now they have done to Iran for 43 years, they have done to Venezuela in the last three years, and they've done this to Cuba for 60 something years and they've been doing this for a long time with many other countries and now we're facing a situation that is dangerous for the World At Large. because the new multipolar world of China, Russia, Iran, India, and many other countries are joining, is respecting sovereignty, respecting the people's cultures around the world, and is in a sense applying the rules of the market and Commercial trade in the world in a respectful way. the USA is just using piracy because they cannot use the laws and the practices of the world trade, and commercial trade because they have lost the battle. so that's why they're now using piracy to impose themselves all over the world”, he explained.
“I don't think Russia is going to lose this war. Russia is too powerful. I don't think that Ukraine even with all the help that European, NATO, and the U.S. are passing on to them, has a chance to win the war. What the U.S. is trying to do in this overextending Russia is something similar to what they did in the area with the Soviet Union. They tried to overextend the Soviet Union with Star Wars and force Russia to invest a lot of money into Star Wars. At that time, they didn't have the resources so the Soviet Union imploded with the war in Afghanistan and with this Star War competition with the US during the Reagan Administration. Now they're trying to do something similar. What they expect is for Russia to become implode like what happened with the Soviet Union but that's not going to happen.” Grosfoguel added.
He said: “The world today is very different. There are economic powers today that are stronger than the USA such as China; many emerging economic powers in the world are now challenging the USA at all levels so the war has changed. They cannot do what they did in the 80s to the Soviet Union. This is not going to happen again. The Russians are now, despite sanctions, doing very well. They're surviving these sanctions. Now the USA is the one losing the battle and this is the point that is dangerous. If the USA sees itself losing, what I'm very concerned about is, what they're going to do next because they've been talking even about using nuclear weapons and that's crazy talk. If you remember 62, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev were both nervous about the situation. They came out with a solution because they knew the consequences.”
“But now we have a crazy Administration in Washington that is playing with fire and playing and even you see people in the USA, politicians, and many people using the term ‘nuclear war, ‘to nuke Russia. These people are not concerned or nervous about it. They just talk about it you know in a very straightforward way as if this is just something that is not going to affect anybody except Russia. This is crazy.”, he said.
Grosfoguel continued: “Russia is a superpower with nuclear weapons even as much or more than what the U.S. has, and this could turn into a crazy situation for the world at large. So, we are in a thunderstorm. I don't think Russia will lose this War. I think in the long run the U.S and NATO are going to lose this war and in the meantime what the US is trying to do, as I said, and has been doing very successfully, is to recolonize economically a European union and bring other companies there to make money and displace the competition and they do it through dirty tactics, not through fair competition in the international market. They're violating their own rules about international trade to achieve their goals. This is very dangerous”.
“As Dr. Ramon said, we are moving towards the multipolar system, and based on what I am reading in literature, this idea of a multi-polar system is becoming a consensus among the people, the scholars who are working in this area and beyond. So, beyond the academic literature even in think tanks and even in material that is produced by the U.S intelligence Community the idea of this multilateral world is very much present.” Izadi said, answering a question about “could Russia-Ukraine war start a new world system based on multilateralism?”
He continued: “I have a document which is produced by the National Intelligence Council, which is one of 17 organizations that make up the U.S intelligence Community. and they study international trends. This report is titled: ‘Global Trends 2030, Alternative Worlds’. I have selected a sentence here that basically shows even the U.S intelligence Community realizes that the United States is a power in decline and they realize that we are moving towards a multi-polar world.”, Izadi said.
He added: “This is the overview of the document. it's about 160 pages and the sentence is quite clear, there will not be any hegemonic power in 2030 based on the analysis they have. They say they worked very hard to reach these conclusions, traveled to many countries, and talked to a lot of scholars. This is work that has taken a couple of years to produce. This is not a light project. This sentence is quite interesting: ‘There will not be a hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world.’”
“This is the type of thing that you see in other documents. For example, another document is from the British Ministry of Defense under the title of ‘Global Strategic Trends, the Future Starts Today'. So, they are also looking at different trends. This part of this document is interesting because they actually reach a similar conclusion about the fact that we are moving towards multi-polarity. The American version is multi-polar. This is multipolarity. This is the sentence: ‘Major Powers are the main international actors who form blocks with other geographically close or large-minded States. While states within a block cooperate under the leadership of major power, the blocks compete for power and influence.’
This idea of a network of actors and the power is shared between a variety of states and non-state actors. They continue with these ideas, so the conclusion that I think we can safely make is that the United States is losing its standing internationally for many different reasons that we don't have time to cover today maybe, but there's a consensus that we are moving towards a multi-polar world and the idea of working together with like-minded countries to create networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world becomes important. so that's the basic idea.”
“I think that if the U.S. will take a more realistic stand, they could be able to survive like any other country in the world. The problem they have is that
they don't want (to accept) all of that is written in those documents. but in fact, what they're doing is something different. what they're doing is more reflecting the ‘Overextending Russia’ document. What they're really doing is trying to contain the rise of the multi-polar world by using dirty tactics I have already explained.” Grosfoguel said, answering the question “Can the end of American unilateralism means the break of United the state of America?”
He continued: “They're trying to use their military power or geopolitical dirty tactics in order to recover their status or try to break away from their declining power situation and try to recover markets, recover their power. That's not going to work. All the analyses made by many academics and analysts about the future of the world economy and of the world at large, they all coincide from right to left that the US is declining and the rising power is China, and China is going to displace the USA economically at the world scale.”
“There's a multipolar world emerging and the U.S. is just trying to contain that and that's crazy and dangerous. It could become the end of the USA in the sense that if they fail to recover their power, most probably one thing that could happen is something that has been said by many people from right to left, which is the probability of a civil war inside the USA. If that happens, we're going to see the end of the USA as we know it, because it's going to be an implosion like it happened with the Soviet Union in the 80s. The USA is in a big big crisis the people in the USA are suffering and now you have the emergence of extreme right groups in the USA that were empowered during the Trump Administration.”, Grosfoguel said.
He added: “They're now very well organized and there is a white supremacy militia so you could see scenarios in the USA of having states declaring independence from the federal government of the USA because they don't want to pay the debt. That's a scenario or you could see easily other states such as California that with a republican presidency and administration, might consider moving away. There's a movement in California that is calling for independence from the U.S. government and that happened during the Trump years. Now that Biden is back in power that kind of wants put on the side because as you know California is Democrat but if they see for example a republican Administration coming back again and doing crazy stuff against them, they will most probably consider independence.”
He added: “All these scenarios could happen. In Michigan Militias or Dakota South, all these white supremacy militias might consider taking over and calling for independency from the federal government and not paying the trillionaire debt of the USA.  That could end up in a civil war very easily. If that happens, that's the end not only of the U.S. Empire but the end of the USA as we know it. Because then we're going to see the fragmentation of that state and if that happened, the multipolar world will come with a force because they won't have any challenge. because the moment the USA put its energy and focus into an internal civil war, they will have to back off from the international arena. and in doing that the then multipolar world will come with a force with no Challenge and no obstacles.”
Grosfoguel said: “So, I think that the USA is in a very dangerous situation and is playing with fire. Even Henry Kissinger, one of the most conservative thinkers, right-wing thinkers, a guy who's responsible for genocide in the Vietnam war, in Cambodia, in Laos, in all these places, is calling attention to the Biden administration and the craziness they're doing. like “Hey! you're playing with fire! be careful!”. I mean he wrote a book about China in which he's basically saying we need to accept the rise of China and just try to become partners and even though we will be a secondary power. Let's acknowledge it like the UK. The British did it with the Americans. When the British declined, they just put themselves on the shoulders of the Americans and try to survive and extend their privilege in the world economy by becoming a strong partner of the USA, recognizing they were not anymore the number one. Now they're a secondary power but they extend their economic privilege by associating with the new rising power in the USA.”
“That's what Kissinger is recommending to do for the US with China but that's not what the republican, nor democrats, are doing. The powers that are in the USA right now, are playing with fire. there's no difference between Republicans and democrats. They're both doing the same thing. They're trying to impede the rise of China. They're trying to impede their decline. They're trying to in a crazy way and dirty tactics. And that's only going to lead to a very fast and rapid decline of the U.S. Empire. They're going to accelerate their own decline by doing these crazy things. We're going to see a big collapse of the U.S Empire, not in the night 2030s but we're going to see it in this decade, in the next years we're going to live the collapse of the U.S Empire. This is going to happen in our lifetime.”, he emphasized.
Izadi was asked “If multilateralism replaces unilateralism, which country or countries will be the main actor or actors in the future of the world? and what principle will this country replace the previous principle?  And can we expect new changes in the United Nations and Security Council?”, and he answered: “Since World War II until about 10 years ago or so, the world economy was becoming integrated and closer as we progress in the last 70, 80 years under WTO regulations and the policies of the major economies. In the last several years as we are moving towards the multi-polar world, countries like China are realizing what the United States is doing: they want to unbalance Russia, to unbalance China. They have been trying to unbalance Iran for the last 40 years. So as more countries realize this fact, they will try to separate themselves from the pressures of the United States, such as weaponizing dollar, sanctioning, causing difficulties for ordinary citizens in these countries.”
He added: “As Dr. Ramon said, they are trying to move away from them because they realize what the US is doing to the Dollar in terms of advancing its foreign policy goals. There are countries like Russia and China, which are creating banking messaging systems that are going to compete with SWIFT for example. They are using local currencies for trade between countries. They are trying to become less dependent on the West as they progress. And the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States are competing on which one is more anti-China and more anti-Russia, especially China. So, the Western economy is moving away and separating from the rest of the world or the rest of the world is separating itself from the Western economy. As this happens in that multi-polar world, you have a number of western governments in Europe, not all European countries but some European countries, that accept to be led by the United States.”
Izadi said: “So, you're going to have this block and then you're going to have these non-western countries that are not going to accept American lead when it comes to international relations. These non-western countries include China, Russia, and Iran. Even some U.S. allies like Brazil did not vote yes when the United States wanted to take a vote at the United Nations against Russia. Mexico has a long border with the United States and they did not vote Yes. India did not vote yes. Of course, Iran and China did not vote Yes. So that is going to be one block and then you're going to have a number of blocks in the non-western countries. and this is actually good news for people in the South, the global South, and people in countries like Iran that have been under a lot of pressure in the last 40 years. because when you had the unipolar system with the American leadership, they faced a lot of difficulties. As we move towards a multi-polar world we are going to see more opportunities for countries like Iran.”
“Now let me share another page of the documents that we looked at earlier. this is the same ‘Global Trends 2030’ of the National Intelligence Council, an American intelligence community organization. This is quite interesting and is about the future of economic power. A sentence in this document says: “The economies of other non-Western states such as Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Africa, Mexico, Turkey, and others that are middle tier today could rise by 2030.”, so, Iran and a number of other the states that are mentioned here are the second-tier countries obviously, and the idea of their economies rising is especially interesting for Iran because Iran has been under a lot of economic pressure.”, Izadi said.
He continued: “The idea of Iran advancing at the same time that they are experiencing sanctions in this American intelligence Community document, is interesting. The sentence continues “Individually, most of these countries will remain, second-order players, because China and India are so large. However, as a collective group, they will begin to suppress Europe, Japan, and Russia in terms of global Power by 2030”. This is interesting if they work by themselves, they are going to be second-tier even in 2030 but if they work together then can interestingly suppress Europe and this is one of the points that Professor Ramon had about how could they suppress Europe because Europe is becoming weak or in his terminology, they are becoming colonized again by the United States and that makes them weak. So, countries that are not necessarily in line with those ideas are going to actually advance.”
Izadi said: “The paragraph continues “our modeling shows, for example, that this group of rapidly developing middle tier countries, the Goldman Sachs Next Eleven (N-11) will collectively overtake EU-27 in global Power by 2030”. Of course, you know Goldman Sachs is a major financial institution company in the United States and they have a list of this N-11, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran is again here, Mexico Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam. This is a little different but Iran is actually on both lists.”
He continued: “So if these 11 countries work with each other, we actually can be a bigger power than EU-27. So, when we look at this type of text, we realize that the world is changing because when you look at the world economy, maybe 70 or 80 years ago you had the British first, then the French, and then the Germans. Now you have the Americans, Chinese and then as we go forward, you're going to see some of these other countries if they work together, actually, they are going to move up in those types of rankings. So, because of these facts, we are happy to say that we are moving towards a better world. And we need good professors like Professor Ramon to lead us in strategies that we need to adopt to make sure that this transition is going to be a smooth transition.”
Grosfoguel was asked that “according to the current and emerging trends and events in the new world, what changes would the culture and science experience?”, and he answered: “We need to decolonize science and technology. I mean this is a challenge we have. ‘We’, are the people who are struggling against this unipolar world led by the US empire together with the secondary allies such as European imperialist countries. I think that we need to decolonize science because right now we have a science that has been instrumental in the killing of humanity. Medieval Europe, was very obscurantist because they were under the rule of Christendom. I'm not talking about Christianity; I'm talking about Christendom. When they use Christianity as a power structure and they distort the messages of the theology and distorted theology for the benefit of the rich people and powerful people that are Christendom, that's not Christianity.”
He added: “So when they were in the civilization of Christendom, they had to take a lot of the scientific knowledge from Islamic civilization because Islamic civilization was advanced in science and technology. And when they took a lot of the knowledges from Islamic civilization, because they have Islamic civilization on their borders, they appropriated these scientific and technological advances without the ethics of the spirituality of Islam. That means they appropriated these knowledges. I call it ‘epistemic extractivism’, because when you read History of Science, they all begin to talk as if all these discoveries in science and technology were made by white men in Europe. History of Science is full of white supremacy garbage.”
“We need to decolonize the History of Science. I'll just give you one example: Copernicus. Copernicus is supposedly the guy who discovered that the Earth is going around the Sun and is not the center of the universe. All of this was developed by the school of Damascus at astronomical School of Damascus 300 years before Copernicus. Copernicus took this knowledge from the school of Damascus and then when he wrote his text, he made mathematical mistakes that were not in the original discoveries of the school of astronomical School of Damascus. Then it passed on to history as Copernicus discovered these things and the school of Damascus is buried in history.”, he explained.
Grosfoguel added: “We need to decolonize science. What happened then was that they were appropriating these knowledges and taking away the spirituality of the Islamic Sciences. What I mean by this is that they were in a very obscurantist period in Europe. They couldn't do science because they would paralyze scientists. Because then, they would say “they're playing with evil forces”. Because they saw nature as something of evil, of Satan, of something negative. So, anybody who was working scientifically with science was suspicious of being evil, with being with evil forces and they will burn them alive. So, when they start coming into scientific developments, they have to throw away the spirituality. and now we have science without spirituality. They appropriate science from Islamic civilization but throw away the spirituality. What does that mean? Now you have a science without spirituality; a science without spirituality is a science without ethics, a science without ethics is a science where everything goes, a science where everything goes is an idolatry science, and a science that is idolatry is a science destructive of life because everything could be justified in the name of science with no limits.
It becomes the new religion, science. And so, in the modern world, we have a science destructive of life because all it takes is for a scientist to say this is my discovery, and this is what we should do and everybody follows even though that could destroy the planet, that could destroy the life in the planet. And what we have in the modern world is a science destructive of life. So, we need to decolonize that and begin to have an Ethics in scientific production, where it put limits to science to protect life on planet Earth. This is what I call a science for life, not a science for death.”
“And that's the challenge we have in the global South against this Eurocentric sciences that are just destroying life on planet Earth. This is one of the main challenges we have. In terms of technology, we need to decolonize from Cartesian dualism. Cartesian dualism is the stupid idea that human life is ontologically separated, dualistically separated from other forms of life. So, they split nature from human life and start developing because every technology has a cosmology. There's no technology without cosmology this is a myth that technology is neutral. That's not true. Technology is always produced from within a cosmology, so you, cosmologist Cartesian dualism, you're going to destroy life on planet Earth because you have this stupid idea that you can develop technology, and could destroy anything around you. You don't have any limit because you have thought that human life is insulated from other forms of life, so you could destroy anything around you and it doesn't affect human life.”, he said.
The Berkeley University Professor also said: “This is the stupid idea they have and they've been for 400 years in the west and in the world at large. Because of the colonization of the west through all the cultures, we're being used in technology based on dualistic Cartesian cosmology destructing of life. because we have a technology that has their rationality of the destruction of life. In contrast, in all the civilizations before the Europeans, before this modern European-Center world that we have today, all the civilizations have a huge holistic understanding between the human life and other forms of life.”
He added: “Independently of the differences in the cosmology of all these civilizations, they all understood a holistic idea that human life is dependent on all the life that's around you. And if you destroy everything around you, you destroy yourself. So, the only way for life to survive is to have a developed technology that takes care of the reproduction of life, not of the destruction of life; because otherwise you're destroying your own self and that was common sense in all the civilizations before. Now we have a civilization. That’s why I don't talk about this idea of the Anthropocene. I talk about “Westerncene”, because it's Western Civilization that is at the center of the destruction of life on planet Earth for the past 400 years. and before that, human beings were being on planet Earth for thousands of years and haven't destroyed life on planet Earth. All the other civilizations have respect for the surrounding ecology and life on the planet. Now with this civilization, we need to decolonize ourselves from this false idea that technology is neutral and from that Cartesian dualistic Paradigm that you could develop any technology without taking into consideration the reproduction of life, and just build a technology that could destroy anything as long as it serves the purpose of you, and what you want.”

The Professor continued: “We need to train the scientists in schools about this question so that when they develop new technologies in the future, they take into consideration the respect for the surrounding ecology and life that are around us. This is one of the main challenges we face: Moving from a science of death of western civilization into a science of life that is the science that was produced by the people of the world and by all civilizations before this destructive western civilization that is putting not only human life but all forms of life at stake.
At the end of the meeting, Dr. Izadi answering a question about American tactics towards Iran and the possibility of the US decline explained: “There are three countries in the world that have the power to increase the speed of American decline. and these three countries are Iran, China, and Russia. Among these three countries, Iran has been advocating the culture of resistance for the last 43 years and in more recent years we have Russia and China joining this culture of resistance. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government tried hard to be part of Western Europe and be like any other Western-oriented country. It was the United States that did not accept that idea and started fighting with Russia. China similarly moved away from some of the basic principles of communism. Chinese economy became very much a capitalist economy. But nowadays they realize that the process that was taken after the normalization of U.S-China relations cannot continue because of the hostilities they're facing from the United States. So, Russia is saying no to the United States, China is saying no to the United States, and Iran has been saying no to the United States for the last 40 years, sooner than these other two countries. So, that is why you see a lot of hostilities.”
He continued: “I need to admit this that although the United States is declining in terms of economic power, political power, soft power, and the power of creating institutions; they are not declining in propaganda power. The United States is actually doing quite well when it comes to propaganda and they use this power to influence public opinion internationally. They use this power to influence public opinion in these three countries. The excuse they had with Iran was with regard to hijab, in China the ladies don't have the culture of the religion of hijab so what did they have been doing in China in the last few days? The covid policies of the Chinese government.”
Izadi added: “So, you have some fire in some Cities, China is a very populated country. 1.34 billion people live there. In a country with over a billion people, you are going to have fires every night almost. So, blaming the deaths of those fires on the Chinese government and trying to create riots in China using propaganda or what they have been doing in Russia in terms of similar tactics. I think one of the reasons Russia started saying no to the United States was that they realized that this idea of hybrid warfare is very much part of American policy towards Russia. And the example that Dr. Ramon had with regard to the 2019 Rand Corporation report is an indication of that. So, it is understandable why the United States is so hostile to these countries because these are not taking dictates from the United States.”
“The United States itself, here I differ a little bit from Dr. Ramon, there have been separatist groups trying to separate California or Texas or other states but they have not been very strong. So, I think that is not going to happen in the near future or in the medium term. The idea of decline as we talked about, is almost accepted by everybody but there is a difference between collapse and decline. Collapse is what happened to the Soviet Union. That there are some indications of collapse. There are some indications that collapse is not. but the fact that the US is declining is not a small factor.” He said.
Izadi continued: “When you look at the world history in the 16th century you had the Portuguese becoming a superpower. They took over a large portion of South America. They even came to Iran and took over some areas of Iran. There are remains of castles of Portuguese in southern Iran. They declined. You had the Spanish in the 17th century becoming a superpower. They declined. You had the French become a superpower in the 18th century. They declined. You had the British becoming a superpower in the 19th century. They declined. And then you have the United States becoming a superpower in the 20th century and they are declining as we speak. And the previous governments that were superpowers at that period have become more or less normal countries. So, they are not engaging in this type of aggressive behavior. Portugal and Spain are not causing
the type of problems they used to cause at the time that they were superpowers. And the result is that the sooner United States becomes a normal country, then a lot of difficulties that exist in the world will go away. So, the future of the United States, I think, is going to be something like Brazil. Brazil is a large country, has a large population and a lot of resources but is not have the final say in international relations as we speak. Although it's a large country it doesn't have the power that the United States once had and in the next number of decades, I think, the United States will follow that path. So, the U.S. basically will not be what the U.S. is today, because of the mistakes they have made and because of the crimes that the U.S. government has committed. I believe the people in the United States are the first victims of the U.S. government policies. For example, in Puerto Rico, the island of Puerto Rico has been suffering from U.S colonialism for many, many years and the indigenous people in the United States, the minorities, the Hispanic minorities, the black minorities, and sooner or later this type of crimes are going to result in a change. And as you know in the United States, we are also looking at a demographic change. So based on U.S Census Bureau data by 2045 the majority of White people are going to be a minority and so the minorities are going to become a majority. 2045 is just 23 years from now it's not very far away. And that is why the scholarship that Dr. Ramon is producing is going to be important. Because this minority is going to need knowledge for the time that they become a majority. And producing that knowledge is going to be more important.”
Grosfoguel also explained that “the scenario of a Civil War in the United States is something that many people are calling attention to. This is not just me. This is from right to left in the USA. There is a concern that this might turn out to be a reality. The polarization the USA is Big. Everybody has weapons. It's not a country with people without weapon, everybody has weapons and there are militias organized across the country already that are ready to go into Warfare. When I say California, I was not saying that California is going to become independent. I'm saying I don't know what will trigger the civil war. I'm just talking about scenarios, of possibilities. I'm not saying this is going to happen like this. What I'm saying is that there is a concern, not by me by many analysts in the USA today that are saying that based on the trends moving forward in the USA, there might be a civil war in the USA. and you could see the symptoms of this in the 6th January assault of U.S Congress led by Donald Trump and white supremacist groups. And there were people killed there. َAnd basically the white supremacists are organized also among the police, and so they have like a green light to enter the Congress. I mean they were not stopped by the police. The police collaborated with them to take over the Congress. So, the police is infiltrated by these white supremacist groups all over the country. I mean I'm saying this is a scenario, a possible scenario and we might see the collapse of the USA in at the end of this decade, not next decade. Because this is a serious discussion in the US today. People are very concerned about this. Because of the polarization going on in this country together with economic crisis. We need to understand that U.S people are suffering from hyperinflation and corporate welfare.”
He continued: “They're taking taxpayer's money for their own businesses and leaving people's welfare out of the window. So, the problem with this is that in an economic crisis, the white working classes are very attracted to extreme right rhetoric, racists, and all of this. So, they are suffering but instead of sharing their discontent against Pentagon which is taking away all the taxpayer’s money, or against Wall Street which is stealing away their money, or against the US government which is doing crazy stuff around the world that is affecting their life with the war and so on, people are reacting and the problem is that they are taking more extreme right positions. This can turn into a civil war because demographically as Dr. Izadi, said there's a turnaround of the demography. And they're also telling the white groups that the problem is the Latinos, the blacks, not the system. So, they channel their discontent against these other groups and you could see easily and you saw that during the years of Trump. When you have these white supremacy groups going around the country, you have all this “Black Lives Matter” movement and the repression over that movement by the Trump Administration.” Grosfoguel added: “And so on, anything could trigger a civil war in the USA because everybody has weapons. So, this is my concern. What I'm trying to say is that there is a scenario. We know the international scenario very well about the decline of the U.S. Empire. We know very well the emergence of the multipolar world. We know what they're doing in Ukraine and what is their agenda, what the U.S. is trying to achieve. What people don't know well is what is happening domestically inside the Empire and I invite you to study that because that's a variable that could come in and turn around everything we are predicting about the international arena in an unexpected way. There is a potential for Civil War there. If that happens internationally the whole thing will turn around. I would say in a more positive way. I'm not deciding on a civil war anywhere in the world, not even in the US. I lived in the USA. I don't want a civil war. But if this happens, the reality, whether you like it or not, is that the USA will have to back off from the international Arena, from their piracy and imperialist policy, and turn their attention to the Civil War. And that will create a very good scenario for the multi-polar world.”
“Then in terms of the decolonization of knowledge, Science and University; this is a central issue for countries that have done anti-imperialist revolutions. you have
inherited an educational structural system from the old regime that was in the hands of the U.S. Empire, in the hands of the West with curriculum and universities that were mostly based on western-centric knowledges. And the problem with that is that instead of the new revolutions creating new curriculums to decolonize knowledge and to decolonize the universities, just leave the universities as they are, such as the Cuban revolution, the Venezuelan revolution, and many revolutions around the world that left the universities as they were.
They don't change the curriculum. They don't decolonize the university knowledge production and then when you open your eyes you are producing a lot of technology, technological people with technological knowledge, scientific knowledge but in the subjectivity, they're colonized by the west. and so, they benefit from the Revolution by having to access to degrees in universities and so on. When they get the degrees, there's no shift in their mindset.  What they're learning in the university is not helping them to move away from Western Centric, Eurocentric colonial knowledge production. That's not only in the social science and Humanities but also in the traditional national science programs because we need to decolonize knowledge.”, he said.
Grosfoguel added: “One of the priorities of president Madura of Venezuela is to decolonize science. The minister of Science in Venezuela today is going to decolonize Science and Technology because it has political consequences if you don't do that. Because you're doing a revolution with a right-wing epistemology and you cannot move forward in the revolution with a right-wing history of science, or knowledge about science, technology, and whatever. Because those people you are forming in your university will be your own enemies. You're just producing people who will turn against you. This is crazy and this is why the president of Venezuela has called attention to decolonizing education, technology, science, and the forms inherited from the old regime because if you don't do that you just choose you don't fit.  The issue of decolonizing the university, social science, humanities, natural science programs, and departments is a strategic issue for any revolution in the world today.
Answering another question of the audience about the Russia-Ukraine war and a possible solution that could save Russia face and at the same time not cause further destruction of Ukraine, Grosfoguel said: I think that the Russians have been very careful so far in how they are developing this work. They haven't used their best military technology there. They haven't used it because they don't want to create a situation as the U.S. does in Iraq or in other places where they kill innocent people and call it collateral damage. Russians have been very careful not to do that and we need to acknowledge that. They haven't used their best weapon. They are very strategic about what to target. They're targeting mostly military bases and military radar systems, communicational systems. lately because of the nature of the war, they've been targeting some of the electrical power and things like that that affect their military movements and mobility that also is affecting some of the civil population of course.”

He said at the end: “But we need to acknowledge that they've been very careful. I don't know how far they can go with this or how far they're going to continue doing that. I hope they continue doing that but I think that there's no way Ukraine can sustain itself in the face of Russian intervention. There's no way Russia will win in the long run this war. and I think the West is going just to try to extend it as long as they can in order to as they say overextend Russia and try to implode Russia as they did with the Soviet Union in the 80s. But that's not going to happen because they will have changed for good compared to the 80s.”