I continue to focus much of my blogging energies on the Ukraine war. I am pleased that I am getting plenty of reads, and general agreement with my main thesis, that Russia is doing the right thing in Ukraine. That does not mean I think all light emanates from Russia.
The one thing which the present Russian government does very well is defense and foreign policy. That is fortunate, because Russia has some of the biggest defense and foreign problems of any country on earth. It is the object of intense hatred from the Atlantic ruling elite.
Russian diplomacy has done everything it could to try to mollify this antipathy. At the same time Russia has prepared its defense forces in case diplomacy proved insufficient. Late last year the Russian government made clear that it had finally given up on diplomacy.
The Russian foreign minister wondered aloud about the cause of the hostility to Russia which comes from western countries. He finds that it does not just come from an elite, but from large elements of their publics, who are easily agitated by anti Russian propaganda. He believes this means that the hate is very deep seated.
I can suggest a cause for this hatred. It seems to live within those European cultures with a tradition of empire. That is, most of them. However, it is strongest in the English speaking world. It seems to have got going sometime between the Napoleonic wars and the Crimean war, when the Rothschild family and its allies were consolidating finance capitalism over Europe.
The financialist elite is not a figment of some paranoid conspiracy nutter’s imaginations. They have been a huge force in history, with the goal of creating an empire based on control of banking and which stood above the most powerful nation states.
The aim was to command every square inch of earth’s surface. Basically, any country with its own independent banking system is their enemy and will be hounded relentlessly until it ‘gets the point’.
The same kind of xenophobic hatred is directed against any country which the Financialists think may become a rival to them. For some time Germany was enemy number one; that was what the first world war was about. Russia was on the allied side in that conflict because at the time it was cooperating with the western financial empire.
The next period when the Atlanticist empire briefly found Russia acceptable was when Boris Yeltsin was allowing them to loot Russia’s resources and reestablish a capitalist system there. The empire has gradually become enraged with Putin because he has gradually reestablished Russian autonomy.
The Atlanticists are now failing. Russian is not the main cause of their failure but it seems to have become a symbol to them. Russia has a clear military edge over the west in key areas and prevents them from acting with impunity.
The Russian economy is one of the more autarkic in the world and is largely immune to sanctions. Yet it is well integrated into the world’s economy, a major supplier of vital commodities. Thus, people find it a mystery why the Atlanticists try to attack Russia in ways that would harm western economies more than Russia’s.
It is a hard thing for people to grasp that the inner circle of the Atlanticist empire may see an interest in collapsing the economies of their core states. Their recent behavior seems to make this out; their insistence on ‘green’ policies, their sabotage of efforts to control the covid pandemic. It is unknowable what is going on in these people’s minds, but the clues, such as their obsession with biological warfare, are unsettling.
As for the anti-Russia xenophobia they have so effectively conjured in the minds of their captive public, it is not as deep rooted as the Russian government seems to have decided it is. People in the west have been bombarded for much of the past 150 years with negative ideas about Russia.
Yet these people have no real animosity toward Russian people. There is always a vague idea of something being wrong about the Russian government. The sitting head of state or the ruling party will be demonized. This is standard propaganda methodology.
There is no racist bigotry against Russians, as seems to exist in some countries bordering Russia, including the Galician part of Ukraine. Perhaps the Russian government assumes that kind of hate in western people living further away from Russia.
North American people in particular do not hate that way because we do not have that old world idea of nationalism. We are settler societies which do not see outsiders as a threat, as long as they look and act similar to us.
The present anger against Russia, with fools putting Ukraine flags on their twitter handles, is a propaganda construction. It is well known that you can get most people to believe almost anything as long as you can eliminate all context or alternate information. What I am about here is trying to provide some context and alternative, in my own small way.
I support what Russia is doing because I believe that fascistic regimes must not be tolerated. I hope Russia keeps going until the Nazis are fully cleaned out and a better government is established in Ukraine.
The Ideas of ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘international law’ are liberal twaddle. When the allied armies landed in Normandy in 1944, were they ‘invading’ Europe? When the Union armies marched into the south during the American civil war to free the slaves, were they ‘invading’ the south?
States are institutions created by people to serve their needs. They can be made and unmade as the effected populations decide. There is no sovereign authority which proclaims or enforces an ‘international law’, which is merely some people’s idea of how they would like things to be.
The Russian army and government is doing right in Ukraine, but that does not mean they are doing it perfectly. It does not mean that Russia is an ideal state. They have made some mistakes, which have to do with deficiencies in their own government.
There are indeed some serious flaws in the governance system presently in place in Russia. They are the result of history, of the way institutions have developed over the past century. Like most of the world’s countries, Russia is an oligarchy, not a democracy.
This oligarchy developed out of the collapse of the old Soviet Union. This came about due to the mismanagement of needed reforms by Gorbachev. The old communist apparatchiks looked for better leadership and realized too late they had followed a Trojan horse named Yeltsin. Opportunists around him overthrew the government and seized state assets for themselves.
They very brutally suppressed attempts to start an authentic democracy in Russia and imported the western model of sham democracy from the west. The problem was that after they had done that, they had no real idea of what to do next.
At the end of the Yeltsin interlude the people who had actually made things work in the old Soviet Union, the civil administrators, army officers, the state security officers, were still in position. They had had enough of the nonsense.
As well, the new oligarchs resented being treated as upstarts by the old oligarchs in the west. They also knew that the basis of their new wealth would be destroyed if there was a new and better organized revolt against the neoliberalism imposed on Russia by western advisors.
Putin came into power as a compromise between these forces. He was and is an oligarch himself; he made a lot of money by dishonest means during the Yeltsin period. But he is ex KGB and had strong connections with those demanding that a functional government be reestablished in Russia.
For a quarter century Putin has maintained a balance. He has protected the interests of the Russian oligarchs but he has also protected the basic interests of the Russian state. He and even most of his fellow oligarchs have gradually become disgusted with the western oligarchs. They have wanted to be accepted on their own terms.
Under Putin Russia has recovered somewhat. The military has become highly effective. Corruption has been curbed. Government systems have been modernized.
However, the economic management of the Putin regime has been abysmal. Russia’s economy has grown slowly and despite the government rather than because of it. The problem is that Putin and his government are locked into the neoliberal nonsense.
Like neoliberals in the west, they believe that economic growth will happen when Russians are ready to work cheap enough. Meanwhile, the oligarch’s political power has been curbed but they continue to take money out of the country that could go to building it up. Some economic planning and direction is provided by the defense and public infrastructure administrations.
The economic sanctions leveled at Russia have created short term dislocation but have usually helped the economy in the long run. This is especially so in the agriculture sector. Russia now feeds itself and has become a major food exporter. The government cannot be credited for this.
Putin and his people have been very good at neutralizing their opposition. They avoid aggressive suppression but work to disorganize it. For example, Putin hates communists, but he tolerates them in the Duma. He created a second communist party to diffuse support for them.
Nonetheless, Putin is getting old. He remains superficially popular in Russia, partly due to the ‘rally around the leader’ effect of the Ukraine war. But Russians are starting to demand a better run and more equitable society. They want the oligarchs to be made to invest their money in Russia to increase employment and material prosperity.
This should not cheer the Atlanticists, because whoever comes after Old Vlad will be a much more formidable opponent that he has been.
The left wing ‘Eurasian Sovereigntists’ are on the rise in Russia. These are the people who believe they can deliver better government services, faster economic growth in order to pay for it, and a stronger defense of Russian sovereignty within the frame of the Eurasianist concept. They like the way China does things.
These people see a conflict growing between Eurasia and the Atlanticists. The Eurasian landmass, including Russia, China, and India, needs to be economically integrated using China’s ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure programs. It can thus resist the aggressions of the Atlanticists, the modern manifestation of the old sea trade empires based around the North Atlantic.
The Atlanticists are walling Russia off from Western Europe, so Russia is now walling itself off and trading with China and India. Due to the crazy response of the west to Russia’s assertions of autonomy, most Eurasian countries are starting to see this as the better option.
The Putin government is finally seeing the impossibility of getting along with the west and turning east. The obstacle to this has been the oligarchs, who want good relations with the west because that is where they park their money. But they are now less powerful.
The Putin government remains hostile to the ideas of democracy and socialism. This is the cause of the two big mistakes they have made in Ukraine.
The first was to fail to support the Donbass rebellion during 2014, providing the rebel militias the support they needed. The idea was that the rebellion should be reined in and brought back under control of the Russia leaning Ukraine oligarchs who had set up in Donbass.
Also, Donbass was supposed to go back into Ukraine so as to exert a moderating influence on the Galicians of eastern Ukraine. Subsequent events showed the foolishness of that idea.
We come to 2022 and the Russian military has had to carry out operations to prevent Donbass from being overwhelmed by a Ukronazi offensive. They seemed to have assumed that the imposed local governments in South Ukraine would surrender and take orders.
The Nazis have had time to thoroughly dig in and to place their fanatics throughout government in the south. Some of these ran away from the Russian army. Others have gone underground and continue to intimidate the local population, obstruct relief efforts, and attack Russian supply lines.
The Russians have now realized they must bring in their own National Guard troops to secure their rear and set up provisional governments in the south. Their campaign is now going much better.
Yet there still seems to be friction between the governments of the Donbass republics and the Russian government. The people of South Ukraine want to set up their own governments and decide their own direction without interference from the ‘sock puppets’ of oligarchs and Russian security services.
I must conclude with the strongest example of the inadequacy of the style of government which has prevailed in Russia in this century. That is, the complete inability to manage the great pandemic. They have been worse at it than the worst of the Atlantic countries.
Many countries have demonstrated that the Covid19 disease need not be difficult to manage. It is a matter of applying epidemiology principles known for generations; many pioneered in Russia. Covid19 will be as devastating to Russia as any sanctions the west can come up with.
There is speculation of who will replace Putin. The right question is, what will likely replace his government? The answer is, the Eurasianists.
Who will replace Putin in his office? He is increasingly unlikely to seek or gain another term. This Sergey Glaziev is often mentioned. He has had an interesting career; an advisor, then opponent, of Yeltsin; an opponent, then an advisor and opponent again to Putin. He has been an economics professor, member of the Duma, and currently works for the Eurasian Economic Commission.
All in all, Mother Russia’s star is still rising. She is coping with her challenges. Her best days are ahead of her. Pozzhe.