The Forerunner

16/08/2025

Alexander Dugin argues that the meeting went splendidly and Russia and the United States must reach an understanding as superpowers.

Presidents Putin and Trump concluded their meeting in Anchorage. As expected, Alaska turned out to be only one stage along the long path of negotiations. Our enemies believed that today Russia could be pressured into accepting disadvantageous conditions. Nothing of the sort happened. And so, the philosopher Alexander Dugin, summing up the event, put it briefly: “The meeting went splendidly.”

It must be said that the discussion was conducted in a businesslike manner, though there were also some lively moments…

U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the red carpet at the airport. When Trump saw that Putin was almost at his side, he began applauding (amusingly, this moment was later cut from the official White House broadcast, though it will remain forever on hundreds of platforms as part of history).

The presidents greeted each other warmly, shook hands, and exchanged a few words without interpreters. Then, in fact, there was a tête-à-tête — on the way to the meeting venue, also with no extra ears listening in. Afterwards, a closed-door meeting in the “three-on-three” format began, with the participation, alongside Trump and Putin, of ministers and special representatives of Russia and the United States. The representatives of our two countries spoke for almost three hours.

After this closed session, a lunch had been planned. However, the schedule was changed. Journalists were urgently invited to a press conference, where Putin and Trump read out their statements.

Putin thanked his counterpart for the trusting tone of the conversation and emphasized that in order to resolve the Ukrainian problem, the root causes of the crisis must be eliminated. As for relations with the United States, there is much room for cooperation. Trump noted that on the main point regarding a resolution of the Ukrainian crisis no agreement had been reached. Yet joint work would continue.

By the way, Putin invited Trump to hold the next meeting in Moscow. The U.S. President did not rule out such a possibility. Thus, we may state that the talks proceeded as expected: Russia and the United States must reach an understanding as superpowers, since only this path guarantees peaceful coexistence for everyone, without exception.

The director of the Tsargrad Institute, Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, emphasized:

‘The meeting went splendidly. No ceasefire, no truce. A deal is not a deal until it is a deal,’ summed up Trump. All participants are assessing the extraordinary summit in Alaska as a total triumph.

It is hard to disagree with such an assessment. As for the rest — we will wait and see…

There is much room for cooperation.

12/08/2025

25/01/2025

Dalio – Part I: How the World Works – 4PT – Ray Dalio

A theme of Dalio’s book is the fact that all the obvious signs of the end of the Big Cycle are often missed by the people who live through it. This is simply because they were not alive at the beginning of the current cycle.

[T]he world order is now rapidly shifting in important ways that have never happened in our lifetimes but have happened many times before (23).

https://www.forerunner.com/4pt/ray-dalio-part-i-how-the-world-works-4pt

Central to Dalio’s thesis, as an committed evolutionist and a determinist, is that in general, human beings are progressing forward. Dalio cites the two most common indicators of well-being, life expectancy and global real GDP per capita (adjusted for inflation), as trending upward. Both of these trends progressed very gradually in history until the time of the 1500s and then accelerated sharply. This was brought about by a variety of factors including the Age of Exploration, the invention of the printing press during the Renaissance, increased education and knowledge, the scientific revolution during the Enlightenment, the Dutch invention of investment capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Both increased health and wealth hit an inflection point around 1870 and then began to soar in the 20th century.

However, this upward trend in health, wealth and power has within it booms and busts, times of peace as well as revolutions and wars, which cause a lot of miniature cycles. Rather than a steady upward trend in a straight line, society progresses upward along a diagonal spiral or what Dalio calls a corkscrew.
Dalio cites a number that is the single measure of wealth and power for each country that achieved world power status in the past 500 years in a series of charts showing the rise and fall of world powers.42 These 18 factors are given points and averaged to give a single measure. The 18 factors can be reduced to the following eight factors that are the most important.

Education
Competitiveness
Innovation and technology
Economic output
Share of world trade
Military strength
Financial center strength
Reserve currency status

These factors begin with strong education and result in dominant reserve currency status. A world power begins with a highly educated and hard working population. It invests in innovation and technology. It acquires the most powerful military, the richest economy, and control over the world’s reserve currency. However, as a nation moves toward “hard power,” it tends to let the “soft power” that produced this top position lag behind the other newly emerging powers. So the Big Cycle begins with one world power that rises to the top, declines, and ends by being replaced with a new world power and new world order.

According to Dalio, during the end of the Old Order, and the beginning of the New Order most or all of the following things happened:

Debt restructuring and debt crisis
Internal revolution (peaceful or violent) that leads to large transfers of wealth from the “haves” to the “have-nots”
External war
Big currency breakdown
New domestic and world order

These major tectonic shifts in world economic and military geopolitics take up to 20 years to ramp up, resulting in “more extended periods of peace and prosperity in which smart people work harmoniously together and no country wants to fight the world power because it’s too strong”(55). These peaceful periods last on average 40 to 80 years, although variations can be longer or shorter and crises can occur in between. For example, from 1921 to 1944 (23 years) the US survived a Great Depression and a World War to emerge as the undisputed world power. The US grew in power and wealth from 1944 to 2008 (a period of 64 years). Then the US entered a crisis period with all the classic end of empire markers. If the pattern holds, we should see a new order in place by 2028.

In the next section of “Part 1: How the World Works,” Dalio outlines his theory of determinism or what he calls the determinants of the Big Cycle. Although Dalio is a secularist and is not religious, it does not mean that he does not recognize a spiritual dimension of human beings that is hard to quantify. Culture is a major determinant and is shaped by people as diverse as “Jesus, Confucius, Mohammed, Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Nanak, Plato, Socrates, Marx, and many others.”

Approaches to life are captured in many works including “the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the Talmud, the Quran, the I Ching, the Four Books and Five Classics, the Analects, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutras, _Meditations, Republic, Metaphysics, The Wealth of Nations_, and _Das Kapital_” (74).

From this, we can see that Dalio is deeply affected by both religion and philosophy, but is something of a universalist. He often speaks about how he has practiced a form of Transcendental Meditation since he was in college. This openness to spirituality has taught him that everything is interconnected. Everything moves from the internal to the external, from the individual to the entire universe, and vice versa. This means that the number of factors that determine our world are so complex that no one can predict the future for sure, but there are still some principles that will show us why nations succeed and fail. Obviously, as an evangelical Protestant, I reject pure determinism and universalism. However, I am also persuaded of the words of Jesus concerning people who are not His disciples, yet provide an example of how to handle money.

For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon,[43] that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home (Luke 16:8-9).

Ray Dalio, as the most successful hedge fund manager in history, has something to teach Christians. In the following pages, I list some financial principles that stood out to me as profound and true.
_________________
42. Instead of using Portugal and Spain in his study, Dalio uses the Chinese Dynasties of the last 1000 years as a view of wealth and power in the East that show the same pattern of rise and fall. The difference is that the Chinese as a large civilization state have been able to reset their economy and power within their own Great Space, while Europeans have traded centers of power between nation-states that occupied smaller areas of geography until the United States came along.
43. Aramaic for “wealth.”

https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Political-Theory-Biblical-Perspective/dp/B0DJJYTF18

A Christian civilization is emerging from under the chaos that has been strewn throughout the wreckage of Modern culture. As dawn breaks through the darkness, many will be awakened to a new understanding of the fulfillment of the Law through love and grace. Many will comprehend, as if for the fir...

26/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbeG3mJpZjU

Russia-Ukraine Conflict Was Provoked
In the early days of the Russian-Ukraine war of 2022, the legacy media made it obligatory to include in any news presentation, the phrases, Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full scale invasion of Ukraine, which was always described as a sovereign democratic nation.

These phrases are notable because – as you can see by the linked Google searches above – these exact strings of words appeared in hundreds of articles as if coordinated or demanded by some higher authority. These are the obligatory phrases used even until today. Repetition is a subtle form of brainwashing. Something that is universally repeated thousands of times and not challenged soon becomes part of the accepted media narrative.

Is Ukraine free and democratic?
The latter phrase, which always insists that Ukraine is a “sovereign democracy” or a sometimes a “free democracy” is an enigma because up until the conflict with Russia, Ukraine was often characterized as one of the most corrupt nations in Europe, run by oligarchs who funneled billions of dollars of graft back and forth between Western billionaires and politicians.

In 2015, The Guardian called Ukraine the most corrupt nation in Europe. According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed. Yes, the ninth-most corrupt even ahead of Russia, which fared better than even Canada and the UK in the survey.

The Hunter Biden Burisma scandal and the millions of dollars donated to the Clinton Foundation from Ukrainian oligarchs are well-known questionable dealings, but are just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely this will ever be investigated thoroughly because both Republicans and Democrats have used their offices to be in all sorts of international money making schemes for decades.

Further, most in the West don’t realize that Ukraine’s governors of the 24 oblasts (regions) are appointed by Kiev. The regions are not federalized like in the United States and most Western countries. The anti-Russian government has banned 11 oppositions parties and all opposition media. The Russian language is to a great degree suppressed. Instruction in public and private schools must be in Ukraunian, even in Russian speaking regions. Russian authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Pushkin are banned from being taught in Ukrainian schools. Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich are banned from the national theater. The government even banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for having ties to the Moscow patriarch. This makes it highly unlikely that a forced military conquest of Donbas will ever result in a peaceful reintegration. The population of the two Donbas oblasts has shown in several polls since 2014 that the majority wanted either special staus, autonomy, independence, or secession and accession to Russia.

Putin’s “unprovoked full scale invasion” of Ukraine?
The most common piece of media propaganda insists that the current military conflict in Ukraine was completely “unprovoked.” This is disingenuous unless it fully examines the decade-old conflict in the Donbas funded by the US and NATO since 2014. Contributing to this media hypocrisy are its numerous stories chronicling overtures to Ukraine from the West since 2008 that it must become part of NATO and host missile systems pointed at Russia — even including nuclear weapons.

Also damning to the “unprovoked” claim is the large cache of legacy media articles from 2014 and 2015 that show some sympathy or are at least neutral in covering the plight of Russian separatists in Donbas. There was also critical yet fair coverage of the secession referendums. It was reported that Putin continually refused both of these region’s appeals to join Russia.

There are numerous articles from this time giving evidence that the conflict could have been provoked by a party other than Russia or Putin. See one such fair and neutral article as an example, Rebels appeal to join Russia after east Ukraine referendum, which gives us evidence of a mass amnesia in the legacy media about the more complex causes of the conflict.

I must give one caveat here that causation does not automatically imply justification. That is, we can be against this war and want it to come to a speedy end without justifying the invasion. However, we are insisting that the lion’s share of the blame for provoking the war is due to US/NATO policy of encroaching on the Russian Federation’s borders.

The following analysis is from a contributor who has compiled a good analysis taking these provocations into account.

U.S. and NATO Interference Instigated the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
By Andy Hauter

A fair analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict must consider how U.S. and NATO interference has instigated the conflict and rejected viable paths to peace, raising serious questions about the moral legitimacy of their involvement.

Whatever you might think about the actions of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin, you have to look at the Ukraine conflict from a biblically moral perspective.

Russia’s attempts at peaceful negotiations deserve more credit than given in Western narratives. This context is critical to a fair assessment of Russia’s actions, especially in light of the violations of the Minsk Agreements and the rejection of peace talks by Ukraine, often under the influence of Western powers.

The Minsk Agreements, negotiated in 2014 and 2015, were designed to de-escalate the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The agreements included commitments from all sides:

Ceasefire: Immediate cessation of hostilities.
Withdrawal: Removal of heavy weapons from the frontlines.
Autonomy for Donbas: Granting the Donetsk and Lugansk regions special status within Ukraine.
Political Reforms: Constitutional changes in Ukraine to enshrine greater autonomy for these regions.
Violations of the Minsk Agreements

While Russia, Ukraine, and the separatists all bear some responsibility for violations, evidence suggests that:

Ukraine: Consistently delayed implementing the political reforms required by the agreements, particularly regarding autonomy for Donbas. Western leaders have admitted that the agreements were largely a stalling tactic to buy Ukraine time to strengthen its military.
NATO Nations: Rather than pressuring Ukraine to comply with Minsk, NATO countries, particularly the U.S. and Britain, supported Ukraine’s military buildup and defensive operations, undermining the agreements.
Russia, for its part, consistently cited Ukraine’s non-compliance and Western interference as evidence that peaceful resolutions were being sabotaged.

The Istanbul Peace Talks in Turkey (March 2022)

In the early stages of the 2022 conflict, Russia and Ukraine engaged in peace talks in Turkey, facilitated by President Erdogan. Reports indicate that:

Russia presented terms for peace, including Ukrainian neutrality (no NATO membership) and recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, but the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics would remain as part of Ukraine with special status as autonomous regions.
Ukraine initially showed interest in negotiating, particularly around the issue of neutrality.
However, these talks fell apart, due to Western meddling:

Britain: Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev and strongly discouraged Ukraine from accepting the terms, urging continued resistance.
The United States: Provided massive military and financial aid to Ukraine, signaling its intent to prolong the conflict rather than support a negotiated settlement.
This rejection of peace talks underscores the extent to which the U.S. and its allies have prioritized their geopolitical goals over a peaceful resolution, effectively discouraging Ukraine from pursuing negotiations that would have definitely prevented the devastation that has occurred.

Russia’s willingness to engage in negotiations, both through the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul peace talks, demonstrates that it was pursuing just diplomatic avenues:

Minsk Agreements: Russia’s role in the agreements shows an effort to resolve the Donbas conflict peacefully.
Istanbul Talks: Russia came to the table with specific demands, which indicated a clear interest in avoiding military conflict and Ukraine was close and willing to agree until the West interfered.
When considering just war theory, last resort is a critical criterion:

Russia’s Attempts at Peace: Both the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul talks suggest that Russia sought non-military solutions before escalating its military campaign. These efforts bolster Russia’s claim that it acted as a last resort after diplomacy failed.
Western Sabotage: The role of NATO nations in undermining these agreements shifts some moral responsibility for the continuation of the conflict onto the U.S. and its allies.
This does not mean Russia’s actions are above criticism – but Russia in general does not target civilians and genuinely wants Ukrainians to be restored. However, the repeated dismissal of diplomatic solutions by Ukraine and its Western backers must be acknowledged as the most significant factor in the war.

Russia’s attempts at peaceful resolution, including the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul talks, show a willingness to negotiate that is overlooked in Western narratives. These efforts, undermined by NATO nations and Ukraine’s intransigence, suggest that Russia’s military actions is more defensible under just war principles.

For a balanced view on this topic, a highly detailed article examines the failures of the Minsk Agreements and lays blame fairly on both sides.

Through the Ashes of the Minsk Agreements
See also an article from 2014 that explains how the two Donbas regions held separate secession referendums and later appealed continually to Moscow to join the Russian Federation, but Putin always refused.

Rebels appeal to join Russia after east Ukraine referendum

See the article: https://www.forerunner.com/blog/russia-ukraine-conflict-was-provokedRussia-Ukraine Conflict Was ProvokedIn the early days of the Russian-Ukr...

26/11/2024

https://www.forerunner.com/blog/russia-ukraine-conflict-was-provoked

Conflict Was Provoked

In the early days of the Russian-Ukraine war of 2022, the legacy media made it obligatory to include in any news presentation, the phrases, Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full scale invasion of Ukraine, which was always described as a sovereign democratic nation.

These phrases are notable because – as you can see by the linked Google searches above – these exact strings of words appeared in hundreds of articles as if coordinated or demanded by some higher authority. These are the obligatory phrases used even until today. Repetition is a subtle form of brainwashing. Something that is universally repeated thousands of times and not challenged soon becomes part of the accepted media narrative.

Is Ukraine free and democratic?

The latter phrase, which always insists that Ukraine is a “sovereign democracy” or a sometimes a “free democracy” is an enigma because up until the conflict with Russia, Ukraine was often characterized as one of the most corrupt nations in Europe, run by oligarchs who funneled billions of dollars of graft back and forth between Western billionaires and politicians.

In 2015, The Guardian called Ukraine the most corrupt nation in Europe. According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed. Yes, the ninth-most corrupt even ahead of Russia, which fared better than even Canada and the UK in the survey.

The Hunter Biden Burisma scandal and the millions of dollars donated to the Clinton Foundation from Ukrainian oligarchs are well-known questionable dealings, but are just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely this will ever be investigated thoroughly because both Republicans and Democrats have used their offices to be in all sorts of international money making schemes for decades.

Further, most in the West don’t realize that Ukraine’s governors of the 24 oblasts (regions) are appointed by Kiev. The regions are not federalized like in the United States and most Western countries. The anti-Russian government has banned 11 oppositions parties and all opposition media. The Russian language is to a great degree suppressed. Instruction in public and private schools must be in Ukraunian, even in Russian speaking regions. Russian authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Pushkin are banned from being taught in Ukrainian schools. Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich are banned from the national theater. The government even banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for having ties to the Moscow patriarch. This makes it highly unlikely that a forced military conquest of Donbas will ever result in a peaceful reintegration. The population of the two Donbas oblasts has shown in several polls since 2014 that the majority wanted either special staus, autonomy, independence, or secession and accession to Russia.

Putin’s “unprovoked full scale invasion” of Ukraine?
The most common piece of media propaganda insists that the current military conflict in Ukraine was completely “unprovoked.” This is disingenuous unless it fully examines the decade-old conflict in the Donbas funded by the US and NATO since 2014. Contributing to this media hypocrisy are its numerous stories chronicling overtures to Ukraine from the West since 2008 that it must become part of NATO and host missile systems pointed at Russia — even including nuclear weapons.

Also damning to the “unprovoked” claim is the large cache of legacy media articles from 2014 and 2015 that show some sympathy or are at least neutral in covering the plight of Russian separatists in Donbas. There was also critical yet fair coverage of the secession referendums. It was reported that Putin continually refused both of these region’s appeals to join Russia.

There are numerous articles from this time giving evidence that the conflict could have been provoked by a party other than Russia or Putin. See one such fair and neutral article as an example, Rebels appeal to join Russia after east Ukraine referendum, which gives us evidence of a mass amnesia in the legacy media about the more complex causes of the conflict.

I must give one caveat here that causation does not automatically imply justification. That is, we can be against this war and want it to come to a speedy end without justifying the invasion. However, we are insisting that the lion’s share of the blame for provoking the war is due to US/NATO policy of encroaching on the Russian Federation’s borders.

The following analysis is from a contributor who has compiled a good analysis taking these provocations into account.

U.S. and NATO Interference Instigated the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
By Andy Hauter

A fair analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict must consider how U.S. and NATO interference has instigated the conflict and rejected viable paths to peace, raising serious questions about the moral legitimacy of their involvement.

Whatever you might think about the actions of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin, you have to look at the Ukraine conflict from a biblically moral perspective.

Russia’s attempts at peaceful negotiations deserve more credit than given in Western narratives. This context is critical to a fair assessment of Russia’s actions, especially in light of the violations of the Minsk Agreements and the rejection of peace talks by Ukraine, often under the influence of Western powers.

The Minsk Agreements, negotiated in 2014 and 2015, were designed to de-escalate the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The agreements included commitments from all sides:

Ceasefire: Immediate cessation of hostilities.
Withdrawal: Removal of heavy weapons from the frontlines.
Autonomy for Donbas: Granting the Donetsk and Lugansk regions special status within Ukraine.
Political Reforms: Constitutional changes in Ukraine to enshrine greater autonomy for these regions.
Violations of the Minsk Agreements

While Russia, Ukraine, and the separatists all bear some responsibility for violations, evidence suggests that:

Ukraine: Consistently delayed implementing the political reforms required by the agreements, particularly regarding autonomy for Donbas. Western leaders have admitted that the agreements were largely a stalling tactic to buy Ukraine time to strengthen its military.
NATO Nations: Rather than pressuring Ukraine to comply with Minsk, NATO countries, particularly the U.S. and Britain, supported Ukraine’s military buildup and defensive operations, undermining the agreements.
Russia, for its part, consistently cited Ukraine’s non-compliance and Western interference as evidence that peaceful resolutions were being sabotaged.

The Istanbul Peace Talks in Turkey (March 2022)

In the early stages of the 2022 conflict, Russia and Ukraine engaged in peace talks in Turkey, facilitated by President Erdogan. Reports indicate that:

Russia presented terms for peace, including Ukrainian neutrality (no NATO membership) and recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, but the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics would remain as part of Ukraine with special status as autonomous regions.
Ukraine initially showed interest in negotiating, particularly around the issue of neutrality.
However, these talks fell apart, due to Western meddling:

Britain: Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev and strongly discouraged Ukraine from accepting the terms, urging continued resistance.
The United States: Provided massive military and financial aid to Ukraine, signaling its intent to prolong the conflict rather than support a negotiated settlement.
This rejection of peace talks underscores the extent to which the U.S. and its allies have prioritized their geopolitical goals over a peaceful resolution, effectively discouraging Ukraine from pursuing negotiations that would have definitely prevented the devastation that has occurred.

Russia’s willingness to engage in negotiations, both through the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul peace talks, demonstrates that it was pursuing just diplomatic avenues:

Minsk Agreements: Russia’s role in the agreements shows an effort to resolve the Donbas conflict peacefully.
Istanbul Talks: Russia came to the table with specific demands, which indicated a clear interest in avoiding military conflict and Ukraine was close and willing to agree until the West interfered.
When considering just war theory, last resort is a critical criterion:

Russia’s Attempts at Peace: Both the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul talks suggest that Russia sought non-military solutions before escalating its military campaign. These efforts bolster Russia’s claim that it acted as a last resort after diplomacy failed.
Western Sabotage: The role of NATO nations in undermining these agreements shifts some moral responsibility for the continuation of the conflict onto the U.S. and its allies.
This does not mean Russia’s actions are above criticism – but Russia in general does not target civilians and genuinely wants Ukrainians to be restored. However, the repeated dismissal of diplomatic solutions by Ukraine and its Western backers must be acknowledged as the most significant factor in the war.

Russia’s attempts at peaceful resolution, including the Minsk Agreements and the Istanbul talks, show a willingness to negotiate that is overlooked in Western narratives. These efforts, undermined by NATO nations and Ukraine’s intransigence, suggest that Russia’s military actions is more defensible under just war principles.

For a balanced view on this topic, a highly detailed article examines the failures of the Minsk Agreements and lays blame fairly on both sides.

Through the Ashes of the Minsk Agreements
See also an article from 2014 that explains how the two Donbas regions held separate secession referendums and later appealed continually to Moscow to join the Russian Federation, but Putin always refused.

Rebels appeal to join Russia after east Ukraine referendumRussia-Ukraine

Russia-Ukraine Conflict Was Provoked Russia-Ukraine Conflict Was Provoked Click play to connect to youtube In the early days of the Russian-Ukraine war of 2022, the legacy media made it obligatory to include in any news presentation, the phrases, Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full scale invasion of ...