Alexandre Adler: “The term” corona “appears in a CIA report from 2005”
Public Sénat offers you the look, the analysis, the perspective of great experts on a crisis that has already entered history. Today, the gaze of … Alexandre Adler, journalist, historian, specialist in geopolitical issues.
MARCH 24, 2020 – By Rebecca Fitoussi:
In 2005, Alexandre Adler prefaced for Robert Laffont editions “The new CIA report – How will the world be tomorrow”, the result of two years of work by several dozen experts assessing the situation of the planet over the next fifteen years (2005-2020). Experts predicted this Covid-19 crisis with startling precision. Alexandre Adler returns to this report and projects himself into the post-crisis period. According to him, this epidemic will be a turning point for the future of the world and heralds profound transformations.
Could you first recontextualize the publication of this report which announced a global epidemic and the way in which you were brought to comment on it?
Yes, I owe some explanations to our readers on this CIA report which gives me a bit of a prophet status. [laughs] First, I remind you that the CIA reports were regular, they used to talk about the geopolitical situation there with questions like “Will Russia stay in a semi-democracy or will will she experience an authoritarian episode? Or other questions like “is China a threat?” Questions for which I had some competence. Robert Laffont editions then asked me to write introductions where I took a stand on what the CIA was saying. It interested a lot of people, it was a very clever idea from the CIA. Instead of sending this kind of report to a few handpicked personalities, the idea was to address public opinion and take it to witness, to put itself at the service of the public.
What did this report predict? What was the scenario?
I had forgotten it myself, but the term “corona” appears in this text written in 2005. “Corona” is a coded term which was used by epidemiologists in America to name what they considered to be the ultimate pandemic. From pandemic to pandemic, we were going to have a pandemic that would truly spread to the whole Earth. Why ? Well, because globalization had reached a very advanced stage. The CIA was warning, and I tend to agree. I was quite critical, not of globalization which I saw as an inevitable phenomenon and which had many very positive elements, but it also had negative elements. For example, and this was what the CIA was already aware of, the fact that the United States, for reasons of short-term costs, had completely made itself available to China, which produced practically all the products. pharmaceuticals that America needed. The country had practically drawn a line under its pharmaceutical industry, which it made make abroad. The CIA said in this report that it was not very wise. In my comments at the time, I agreed with this because I knew that France was tempted to do it too. Unfortunately, she did. It was necessary to maintain a certain number of strategic productions and necessary stocks on the spot.
In this report, the details on the virus, on its mode of spread, are striking … “appearance of a new virulent human respiratory disease, extremely contagious”, “travelers with little or no symptoms” who “could carry the virus on other continents ”. How was it possible?
Because it had happened before. This brings us back to the books of Tom Clancy, who also wrote from CIA expertise. He was frighteningly telling of an Ebola epidemic. And indeed, at the time, Ebola was not under control at all. In the meantime, the Pasteur Institutes and their equivalents have found the Ebola vaccine, which is almost a miracle. We no longer have Ebola, but we have this disease which is both frightening because we have not yet found the vaccine but much less dangerous in terms of mortality.
At the time of this report, what were the international reactions? Was it taken seriously by the authorities of the various countries?
There was no reaction! Any ! Because it was one report among others. And certainly not in France. Nothing special has been done and this is true of all European countries. It was everyone for himself and everyone was completely carefree. There was a feeling, as always when you go forward, where you think it happens only to others.
In this report, the envisaged continuation is cold in the back. He mentions new cases of coronavirus which appear in waves, very regularly and which would end up killing millions of people … How much credit can we give to this theory?
I think the CIA wanted to cause an emotional shock to its readers. Telling them, if you do nothing, these dramas will come and will not come once but repeatedly. It is perfectly possible, except that now that we have known this period of global pandemic with the first world economic situation which affects the whole of the Earth, that can change the situation. It’s still amazing to think that we’re all arrested at the same time, in the same place. And here I think of the words of my master Louis Althusser (editor’s note: philosopher) who had read this in Hegel, the German philosopher: “Humanity always advances, but always by its negativity. That is to say, it is always through a negative phenomenon that otherwise overwhelmingly positive phenomena occur, such as the fact that humanity is One and that now we are all in the same boat. Well to get there, we went through this pandemic.
How do you find the organization of the world facing this crisis? Many states have closed their borders … Economies are closing in on themselves … Is it time to fall back? Does this crisis sound the death knell for globalization?
Not at all ! People see how serious the downturn, which is essential now to prevent the epidemic, is serious for societies and economies. People are certainly preserved from the worst plagues, but they are poor! They are impoverished as we are today in the whole of the French economy by these measures of “containment” (note: containment) which are necessary. All the companies that go bankrupt or all those that have appalling debts can see it today. So we understand how protectionism, short circuits, etc. These are especially short brains, short circuits!
All the French political class, up to the highest level of the State, announces us an After … Different on an ideological, economic, social level … Do you believe in a revolution? A turning point? Do you think that is possible?
Yes I believe it. We are on an upward slope. I feel it. During the war, we saw so many French people and good people who without a watchword from resistance organizations, still barely developed, had the right gestures. Hiding Jews, hiding resistance fighters, hiding the supplies that the Germans shamelessly plundered … All these are gestures of survival of society which made another society in 1945. We had a much more fraternal society and a lot more courageous in which young people have replaced too old people and who have breathed what has been called “The Thirty Glorious”. This kind of phenomenon, we have already known it. And dramatically, since this was an unprecedented tragedy. You can imagine the shock that was 1940, for a France that still thought of itself as a great world power. And overnight, this fall! Then this ascent with General de Gaulle. There is no De Gaulle in France today even if I find that our President Macron is coping with great courage and a lot of composure in a very difficult situation. And the polls prove it. The French say to themselves: “Fortunately, he’s still there! ” A number of quarrels are dying out and they will never come back. This period of deep bitterness that you see around the world is being overcome.
What could be the political and geopolitical consequences of this global crisis? Can you imagine the rise of populist leaders? Totalitarian states? To whom, to what people will they want to turn?
They are going to turn to rational politicians who have not told anything, who have not sunk into hysteria, who are not rolled on the floor in front of the public. They will turn to politicians, who, while being reasonable people, are also people who know how to show authority. Authority is not dictatorship and it is exactly what we want today. We have clearly seen in the United States how Franklin Roosevelt – whose reactions were not all very good and who was not an exemplary man – maintained the United States in a democracy where the elections were held, where the freedom of expression was not stifled when he fought the most important war in American history and won it. This example, which is also that of Winston Churchill in Britain, is proof that democracies are capable in exceptional circumstances of making sacrifices and of manifesting some form of authority without sacrificing fundamental freedoms. We are in a pluralistic world, a world which is not yet united by a single and generalized democracy, but which is going in the right direction, it is obvious!
You do not see in this Covd-19 crisis a risk of geopolitical destabilization and that of a multiplication of armed conflicts?
No, on the contrary, I see the opposite. I see for example that faced with the difficulty that the Middle East is going through, we have a cooperation, obviously forced and obviously grumbling, but which is born today the Israelis and the Palestinians for example, because they are exactly in the same boat , that the disease is the same. There are as many Israelis traveling in the United States or India or elsewhere as there are Palestinians who are in contact with Lebanese, and with Syrians or Iranians, but the result is the same, the disease is all over Israel, and Israel is in containment like everyone else, and they are trying to find a way of national unity and a compromise.
In the light of what you know, of what you observe, and to end this interview as we started it, that is to say on foresight: how do you imagine the world in 2040?
I think that by 2040, we are going towards enormous transformations. Hitler who was very superstitious believed in the Reich for a thousand years, because a certain number of seers had told him that after this great ordeal which is war, he would lead a millennial world and it would be the great epoch of Germany . In fact Germany has exploded as a result of its follies and we have not had this millennial world. But at the same time, what is true is that in the aftermath of these terrible trials that we face, something else was brewing. And that “something else” is there now. We are in a world that is going to be free from hydrocarbons, that is going to find ways to produce much more cleanly, that understands that nature does not belong to us … In short! We are in a world which is taking cognizance of a certain number of our follies and our great madness, we have known it for a long time, it is Promethean madness: the one which gave fire to Men, it is good ! Even giving us the atom was not bad! But with very great dangers! These dangers, we are finally aware of, this is what is happening on a global scale.
Published on: 03/24/2020 at 09:12 – Updated on: 03/04/2020 at 16:24
Main photo credits: JEAN-PIERRE MULLER / AFP
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English translation – LOUSAVOR AVEDIS:
