Foreword

I had a great interest in British and European history and geopolitics long before I started lecturing on these subjects at the ESSEC Graduate School of Business in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. I suppose that I am probably one of the few Orthodox priests in the world who has also worked in lecturing in geopolitics and Western and Russian history. As such, I cannot help applying observations – and they are observations and not opinions – about the political world to Church life. Church life after all exists in the world shaped by politics, so the human side of Church life reflects politics, Cold War and post-Cold War. For example, the decentralisation or deglobalisation, now going on internationally, will be followed in Church life, though Church decentralisation originates from the model of the Holy Trinity, Unity in Diversity. But let us first look at the world and this process of momentous changes, which began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has now reached the highest political level in the USA.

Part One: The End of the Old World Order

The End of the Millennial Western Cycle

In the last millennium Western Europe gradually came to dominate the world, reaching an apogee in the British and French colonial empires of the nineteenth century, which controlled nearly half of the planet. (Indeed, quite anachronistically today, those two countries, which no longer have colonial empires, still have seats on the unrepresentative UN Security Council). Then, as a result of Western Europe’s twentieth-century suicidal wars, falsely dubbed ‘World Wars’, power passed to the USA and to the ‘Wild West’ in California. Now that the US has also failed to keep its supremacy because of its own countless lost wars, we are returning to the old multipolar, pre-Western Globalist world, a decentralised world, which is what the ever-expanding BRICS, founded in Ekaterinburg in Russia in 2009, is. BRICS exists because it is representative of the real world, unlike the unrepresentative UN Security Council. And BRICS has been hugely boosted by the rout of West in the Ukraine and now by Trump’s tariffs.

The Rout of the West in the Ukraine

The Collective West’s last attempt to cling to power was to try to hang on to its domination by fighting a proxy war in Europe itself, against Russia in the Ukraine. Once Russia had been ‘reduced to rubble’ by the West, as promised by the demented Biden in 2022, the plan was to destroy China. This is why the ‘West is Best’ Westerner, the discredited liar, Boris Johnson, rightly warned that if the West lost in the Ukraine, it would lose its ‘hegemony’, that is, its domination of the world. This is correct as the Western rout in the Ukraine is now obvious. The recent sight of ‘invincible’ German tanks burning in their scores in the south of Russia’s Kursk province, a repeat of the same German defeat there in 1943, tells us the outcome of that attempt. As a result of seeing this NATO defeat, the West has been divided and Trump’s bankrupted USA is walking away, recognising that that his resources are much too limited and the Ukraine lies in the Russian sphere of influence. The ball is in the court of ever-squabbling Western Europe.

The End of Western European Power

With the anti-diplomatic insults wielded by European politicians like Macron and Starmer against Trump (anti-diplomatic because diplomacy only exists where there is free speech, and there is no free speech in Western Europe today, which is why it now has no free trade), it is clear that Western Europe has little future. None of its war criminal leaders, guilty of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, has more than 25% of support from their electorates. Thus, Trump marks the end of the globalist and centralist EU and NATO as he marks the end of centralisation. The EU elite is opposed to such decentralisation because it benefited the most from centralising Globalism, unlike the 90% at the bottom of their societies. That is why, for example, Brexit was supported by the bottom half of society and is opposed by the UK Metropolitan elite of politicians and journalists, who hate economic nationalism in favour of their self-interest.

The End of the EU and the UK

The West is divided. Europe collapses. Leading an authoritarian regime, the unelected EU elite, like the anti-Brexit UK elite, is based on top-down centralisation. European centralisation (‘unity’), like Europe itself, is artificial and depends on a European Deep State, a Superstate, an authoritarian EU or ‘Frankish’ (in the UK, it is not Frankish but Norman) Dictatorship. Thus, the EU is run by autocrats and commissars like von der Leyen. They are opposed to democratic leaders like Georgescu and Le Pen, trying to imprison them, and also to states like Russia and China, where leaders, who govern in the national interest, are very popular. (The only exceptions to unpopularity in Europe are pro-Trump leaders like Orban and Fico). As they say, Western countries are governed by different Parties, but by the same Policy and therefore the Parties are called the ‘Uniparty’. On the other hand, countries like Russia and China are governed by One Party, which changes its Policies in the national interest.

Import Tariffs

The irrational, plutocratic, narcissistic and even megalomaniac import tariffs of President Trump exist because he is the only one who has the courage to try and wipe out the huge US deficit and debt of $36.7 trillion, accumulated since 1991. Though the tariffs are not the solution, they mark the end of Globalism and US domination of the world, known as ‘Unipolarity’. Unipolarity began in 1991 after the fall of Bipolarity and the fall of the Marxist Soviet Union and rule by only one Power, the USA. These tariffs are not new. They echo the attempt by Great Britain to keep its Empire through ‘Imperial Preference’. Although the decline of the British Empire can be dated to 1878, Imperial Preference, that is, British Protectionism, was systematically implemented only in the 1930s. It failed. The introduction of Protectionism, through import tariffs or other anti-free trade measures, is a survival method which comes at the end of empire, when a country is on the way out, as is the USA, despite Trump’s fantasies.

BRICS: Decentralisation Defeats Globalism

As we have said, in 1991 the world moved from Bipolarity to Unipolarity and so Western-controlled Globalism. Today we are rapidly moving back to Multipolarity, which historically speaking is Normality, for Bipolarity and Unipolarity are historically abnormal, as we can see in India before 1711, China before 1839 and Russia before 1917. And today’s Multipolarity is embodied in BRICS, the Alliance of equal and sovereign countries, the model for decentralisation and anti-imperialism. BRICS, with half the world’s population and GDP, already has many representatives from the whole Non-Western world and dozens of countries are waiting to join it, and is led precisely by three of the world’s four largest economies, China, India and Russia. Thus, China overtook the USA in 2020, even on corrupted PPP figures, in reality, probably in 2008. India is fast catching up. And, at No 4, sanctioned Russia, which two years ago overtook Germany and then Japan, already has the largest economy in Europe.

Part Two: The New World Order

The USA versus BRICS

Today, the USA elite has isolated itself through imposing its bullying tariffs and united the world against it. All Afro-Eurasia’s 128 nations are uniting against it, despite resistance from the isolated, discredited and tariffed EU, former US allies, but now isolated from Russia, China and the USA. Thanks to the tariffs, the former enemies, China, Japan and South Korea, have met together. South-East Asia is drawing towards China. China is meeting Pakistan and Afghanistan. India is meeting Bangladesh. China and India are meeting together in friendship. Russia is meeting African countries. Powerful Indonesia has joined BRICS. Few of these countries need the USA, especially a USA which imposes tariffs on their goods. They not only can, but now have to, trade with one another. Even Western Europe and Anglosphere Oceania will be thrown into the embrace of China and, in the case of suicidal and much-weakened Western Europe, ironically, also into the embrace of the Russia that it once hated. How?

The Anglosphere

The US appear to be abandoning Africa and Western Europe with its EU and NATO, which Trump hates, but it is laying claim to Latin America, together with Greenland and Canada. In the Americas it is very doubtful if the USA can lay hold of Latin America or anything outside Northern America, that is, outside Greenland and Canada. It could, if it wished, probably and logically lay hold of the whole of the rest of the Anglosphere, the UK, Ireland (once both are divorced from the EU) and also Oceania, though with new elites. As for the rest of Western Europe, the suicidal old Western European elite must also be replaced, once the people have grasped that elite’s defeat in the Ukraine. This will mean the appearance of a new political governing class, drawn from the people, one which will respect others because it respects the people. It will mean introducing a democratic system, for the first time and respecting others, including Russia, which answers our question as to how Western Europe can embrace Russia.

England Versus Britain

Norman-founded Britain caused nearly a thousand years of continual violence, invading 171 of the world’s 193 countries, mainly since the seventeenth century, at war all the time, like the USA since 1941. But the Norman regime’s first victims were always the English, followed by the other native peoples of these Isles. Despite them and despite perceptions, parts of England still survive among the people, in the countryside, market towns and hidden places. True, films exist comparing the best of other countries with the worst of British England. This is as absurd as comparing the worst of others with the best of English England. True, the worst does exist. In Britain political instability has become the norm, with one minority authoritarian government after another, there is mass illegal immigration, caused by the Globalist elite, money is given to corrupt Kiev, parts of the health service are in a disastrous state, while potholed roads and litter-strewn pavements make parts of the country look rundown and third world.

Pessimism and Optimism

Thus, there are indeed good reasons for pessimism. And yet, England has been under threat since 1066, but we the English ‘plebs’ are still here, still alive, as are the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh. The day of liberation of all of us and of our lands from the oppression of the British Norman elite is at last dawning. We all await liberation and the overthrow of British oppressors. A new political elite in the UK will also mean the end of pedophilia, which pollutes its politicians, economists, media like the BBC, the bishops and clergy of its strange Establishment Religion, founded by the sadistic maniac and thief, Henry VIII, and for centuries its queer German Royal Family. The fall of that perverted elite will be the end of the Norman Empire, whose first pervert was William Rufus. And he was only the first, which culminated in Victorian times, with Victoria’s children, and the stream of twentieth-century royal perverts, from the Duke of Kent, who died while crashing a plane in 1942, to the rotted Battenbergs.

Part Three: The Church

The Decentralisation of the Church and Communion with the Church

In May 1983, I asked Fr, now St, Sophrony (Sakharov) why heresy and schism are dangerous. He replied that danger comes from them because they are based on a lack of love. I learned from this that if you see a bishop consciously, self-justifyingly, and publicly falling into schism, and even condemning other Orthodox peoples in order to justify schism, you must leave him as soon as possible, unless you want to take part in his spiritual suicide, caused by his hatred of others and their views. In 2021 our alarm bells rang, when schism, falling out of communion after we had worked so hard and for so many decades to regain it, was implemented. We could not take part in it. So we all left. We do not regret obeying our conscience, indeed, we thank God that we escaped from that sin of hatred of others, which even the blood of martyrs cannot wash away. To fall into schism and so to fall out of communion with the Church is to be dreaded. Communion is the sign that we belong to the Church. And we do.

Communion and Decentralisation: Unity in Diversity

Schism is caused by excommunicating yourself from the Church because you are trying to enforce a politically-inspired, Papist centralisation. This can be seen very clearly in the present shameful schism between two of the most important Local Orthodox Churches, Moscow and Constantinople, which is a purely political combat about centralising power and gaining money. In the Church, unlike in the secular world in recent centuries, we have not Excommunion and Centralisation, but Communion and Decentralisation. If we have in our hearts and minds, as we should as Orthodox Christians, the Holy Trinity, Three in One, Unity in Diversity, there is no contradiction between Communion and Decentralisation. Like the Holy Trinity, Three in One, Communion and Decentralisation describe relations of Love. It is time for Moscow and Constantinople to respect other nationalities and other lands, decentralising without losing Communion, the sign that we belong to the Church. And we do.

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Chisinau, Moldova.

Feast of the Archangel Gabriel, 26 March/8 April 2025