http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=424
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?cat=4
www.trifkovic.mysite.com
Putin Versus the Kremlin on the Potomac
by Srdja Trifkovic
Vladimir Putins United Russia party scored an overwhelming victory in the
countrys parliamentary elections last Sunday, winning almost two-thirds of the
vote and 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma. The election was widely seen as a
referendum on the past seven years of Putins leadership, and he scored a
resounding victory. He will step down as Russias president next spring
confident that he will continue to be the key player in the countryin whatever
formal guisefor many years to come. Barring an act of God, four years from now
hell be back for two more terms as president.
Putin is the most popular leader in Russian history, with a personal approval
rating in excess of 80 percent. He can afford to mock the orchestrated
Russophobic hate-fest that is raging in the Western media and the political
class. He ridiculed George W. Bush for trying to cast doubt on the regularity
of Russias elections while failing to take note of far worse abuses by the
pro-Western, reformist Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia.
The State Department bureaucracys impotent sneers notwithstanding, Putin was
justified in limiting the number of foreign observers of the election. How many
Russian monitors are on hand to check pregnant chards in Florida and dead souls
on electoral rolls in Chicago? Russia is neither a banana republic nor a
Western colonyto the everlasting chagrin of Messrs Soros, Brzezinski and their
ilkand the very notion of monitors was presumptuous. In any event, the
presence of Western observers guarantees nothing: they were curiously loath to
take note of rampant irregularities under Boris Yeltsin. Washington did not
mind the pliant drunkards illegal dissolution of the Congress of Peoples
Deputies in 1993 and his use of tanks and artillery against legally elected
representatives.
Putin is hated by the Western, and especially American, elite class. He is not
loathed because he is not a Western-style democrat: far more obvious failures
of such American friends and allies as General Musharraf, President Mubarak,
or Prime Minister Erdogan (let alone King Abdullah), are tolerated and politely
glossed over. Putin is hated, in general, because he does not subscribe to the
Weltanschauung of the Western elite class, and in particular because, under his
guidance, Russia has ceased to be up for grabs . . . like it was in the
dreadful decade of the 1990s. As Mike Whitney notes, Freud might call it
petroleum envy, but its deeper than that:
Putin has charted a course for social change that conflicts with basic tenets
of neo-liberalism, which are the principles which govern US foreign policy. He
is not a member of the corporate-banking brotherhood which believes the wealth
of the world should be divided among themselves regardless of the suffering or
destruction it may cause. Putins primary focus is Russia; Russias welfare,
Russias sovereignty and Russias place in the world. He is not a globalist.
That is why the Bush administration has encircled Russia with military bases,
toppled neighboring regimes with its color-coded revolutions . . . organized by
US NGOs and intelligence services, intervened in Russian elections, and
threatened to deploy an (allegedly defensive) nuclear weapons system in Eastern
Europe.
Since Russia is seen as a potential rival to American imperial ambitions, she
must be contained or subverted. And the mainstream media, unsurprisingly,
performed on cue: Putin is easily the most popular leader of a major country in
todays world, but the MSM treat him like a tyrannical dictator. At the same
time the media lovingly devote endless column-inches and air time to a former
chess player, Gary Kasparov, who is as representative of the Russian people
today as Angela Davis had been of the American people during the late Cold War.
Viewed in light of U.S.-Russian relations over the past decade and a half, the
U.S. posture on such issues as Kosovo, antiballistic missiles, oil pipelines
and drilling rights, further NATO expansion, the breakaway enclaves, Central
Asia, the Ukraine, Georgia, human-rights violations and backtracking on
democracy, etc. reveals a stunning reversal of the two countries geopolitical
and ideological roles.
The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any
given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three
generations later with Afghanistan. Some of its aggressive actions and hostile
impulses could be explained in light of traditional Russian motives, such as
the need for security; at root, however, there was always an ideology unlimited
in ambition and global in scope.
At first, the United States tried to appease and accommodate the Soviets
(1943-1946), then moved to containment in 1947, and spent the next four decades
building and maintaining essentially defensive mechanismssuch as NATOdesigned
to prevent any major change in the global balance. By the late 70s, the system
appeared to be faltering, especially in the Third World. And, as we know from
his Diaries, only three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan
was far from certain that Moscows expansionist days were over.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to
articulate her goals and define her policies in terms of national interests:
peace and prosperity at home, stable domestic institutions, secure borders,
friendly neighbors. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having normal
relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the
other, gave way to naive attempts by Boris Yeltsins foreign minister Andrei
Kozyrev to forge a partnership with the United States.
By contrast, the early 1990s witnessed the beginning of Americas strident
attempt to assert her status as the only global hyperpower. This ambition was
inherently inimical to post-Soviet stabilization and kept Washington from
entertaining the suggestion that Russia might, in fact, have legitimate
interests in her own post-Soviet backyard. The justification for the project
was as ideological, and the implications were as revolutionary, as anything
concocted by Zinoviev or Trotsky in their heyday.
In essence, the United States adopted her own dual-track approach. When Mikhail
Gorbachevs agreement was needed for German reunification, President George
H.W. Bush gave a firm and public promise that NATO wound not move eastward.
Within years, however, Bill Clinton expanded NATO to include all the former
Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe. In The Russia Hand, Strobe Talbott
chillingly summarized how Washington took advantage of Russias weakness. On a
visit to Moscow in 1996, Clinton even wondered if he had gone too far,
confiding to Talbot, We keep telling Ol Boris, Okay, now heres what youve
got to do nextheres some more [sh-t] for your face. Another round of NATO
expansion came under Bush II, when three former Soviet Baltic republics were
admitted. The process is far from over: last April Mr. Bush signed the
Orwellian-sounding NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, which extends U.S.
military assistance to such
aspiring NATO members as Georgia and the Ukraine.
The rationale for NATOs continued existence after the disappearance of the
Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union was found in the revolutionary
concept of humanitarian intervention used against the Serbs in 1999 and in
the self-awarded mandate to conduct out-of-area operations. In practice this
means that NATO is the means of tightening a hostile noose around Russia.
Further expansion, according to Zbigniew Brzezinskian atavistic Russophobe par
excellenceis mandatory, historically mandatory, geopolitically desirable.
In the wake of September 11, President Bush talked Russia into sanctioning the
U.S. militarys presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, but then, in the
name of the War on Terror, tried to make that presence permanent. The
following year, President Bush unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty. His goal
was to push forward elements of the U.S. antiballistic missile system closer to
Russias borders. His claim that radar stations in Poland or Bohemia will help
save the West from ICBMs coming from Iran is ludicrous.
The collapse of Russias state institutions and social infrastructure under
Yeltsin, accompanied by a hyperinflation that reduced the middle class and
pensioners to penury, was a trauma of incomparably greater magnitude than the
Great Depression. Yet its architectsAnatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris
Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkovwere hailed in Washington as pro-Western reformers,
and their political factions and media outlets were duly supported by the U.S.
taxpayers, by way of a network of quasi-NGOs, just as the terminally unpopular
Kasparov is supported by the same cabal today.
The wholesale robbery of Russian resources by the Moscow oligarchs and the fire
sale of drilling concessions to the oligarchs Western cohorts became a
contentious issue in U.S.-Russian relations only a decade later, with the
arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Those spewing furious allegations of Putins
revenge and heavy-handedness against the Yukos boss disregarded the fact
that, quite apart from his political ambitions, Khodorkovsky was guilty of
fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale.
Although there was not an iota of evidence that Anna Politkovskaya, a
little-known and largely irrelevant pro-Western journalist, was killed on
Putins orders, the U.S. media immediately jumped to that conclusion when she
was shot in November 2006. By contrast, when a nationalist opposition leader
was gunned down last May in pro-Western NATO candidate Georgiathe fiefdom of
Mr. Bushs good friend Mikhail Saakashvilithe event was ignored here and
barely mentioned in Europe. When Mr. Saakashvili subsequently deployed
baton-wielding riot police against his detractors, the ugly spectacle was
glossed over or ignored.
While never missing an opportunity to hector Russia on democracy and criticize
her human-rights record, the United States has been notably silent on the
discriminatory treatment of large Russian minorities in the former Soviet
republics. In Latvia and Estonia, the Russians are subjected to arguably the
worst treatment of any minority group by a member of the European Union or
(with the exception of Turkey) of NATO. The demonstrations in Estonia against
the governments provocative removal of a Russian World War II memorial from
Tallinn were but a symptom of a deeper malaise. Latvia and Estonia have been
allowed by the West flagrantly to break promises made to their Russian citizens
before independence.
Absurdly yet persistently Washington continues to view Russia as a temporary
state with limited sovereignty even within her post-Soviet borders. Chechnya is
the obvious example: The White House routinely condemned Russian violations
while demanding dialogue and studiously refrained from designating the
Chechen child-slayers as terrorists; but no other aspect of Russias domestic
policies, from education (ethnocentric) and immigration (restrictive) to
homosexual rights (appalling) and jurisprudence (corrupt), has escaped
scathing criticism. On the eve of his G-8 meeting with Putin last May, Mr. Bush
declared that reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been
derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development. The theme
was subsequently developed into a veritable Agitprop ritual that starts on NPR
in the morning and ends on Fox News in the evening.
Both sides of the American duopoly agree that a democratic Russia is by
definition the one completely subservient, domestically as well as externally,
to U.S. demands. George Soros warns that a strong central government in Russia
cannot be democratic by definition and further says that Russias general
public must accept the ideology of an open society. The neocons agree. Of
course, democracy thus defined has more to do with ones status in the
ideological pecking order than with the expressed will of ones
electoratewhich meshes nicely with the Leninist dictum that the moral value of
any action is determined by its contribution to the march of history. To wit,
Putins approval rating of 80 percent is the proof of his populist
demagoguery.
On current form things will remain the same, or become worse, whoever comes to
the White House in January 2009. All leading candidates advocate firmness of
some kind or another with Moscow. Theres nothing to choose between Rudy
Giuliani and the insane John McCain, whod try to force Putin to surrender to
Chechen jihadists by threatening U.S. sanctions. Richard Holbrooke, the
Democrats perennial Secretary of State-designate, wants a firm response to a
series of Russian challenges to the stability of Europe, such as the refusal
to accept Kosovos independence. He decries Putins increasingly
authoritarian, often brutal, policies and cautions that, until President Bush
weighs in strongly with Putin (as President Bill Clinton did a decade ago with
Boris Yeltsin), there is a serious risk Moscow will not get the message.
Moscow does get the message all right. It has countered American scheming in
the Caspian region with the summit in Tehran last October that drastically
reduced Bushs ability to wage a new war. Russia is developing a new gas
alliance with Central Asian producers. It has successfully tested a new nuclear
missile. It will veto Kosovos illegal and illegitimate independence, today and
alwaysand the responsibility for any violent fallout will be with those who
had promised the Albanians that which is not theirs to give.
On current form Russia will be developing gigantic new oil fields in the Arctic
when Americans start paying ten dollarsthe equivalent of three or four
Eurosper gallon at the pump. And, in the end, Russia will survive, says
Anthony T. Salvia, a former senior official in the Reagan administration. This
former proud Cold Warrior now sees that Russia has no choice but to stand up to
America:
Sooner or later, U.S. foreign policy will collide with realityit may already
have done so in Iraqand Washington, shorn of its ideological blinkers, will
finally embrace the foreign policy imperative of the 21st century: Solidarity
and strategic cooperation between the United States, Europe and Russia on the
basis of their shared Christian moral, intellectual and cultural traditions.
This is the way forward in the face of profound challenges from a rising China
and resurgent Islam.
Or, as Ive been saying ever since September 11, its time for a true Northern
Alliance that can defeat the menace of global jihad once and for all. But
before that becomes possible well need a revolution to sweep away the Comrades
from the Kremlin on the Potomac.
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