'We can see Satan’s hold on the West when the only leader determined to preserve human existence is demonized. '
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: The Soviet Union collapsed when Soviet President Gorbachev was placed under house arrest by hardline elements in the Politburo who were alarmed by the rapidity with which Gorbachev was establishing friendly and open relations with the West.
For the hardline American neoconservatives, the Soviet Collapse removed the constraint on American unilateralism. The neoconservatives quickly seized the initiative and with the Wolfowitz Doctrine declared US hegemony and stated that the principal goal of US foreign policy was to prevent the rise of any power that could serve as a constraint on Washington’s hegemony. This policy resulted in the hopes of Reagan and Gorbachev and the trust Gorbachev had placed in Washington being frustrated. Washington’s pledge not to move NATO one inch to the East was disavowed, and more hostile steps followed.
The first attack on Russia was a year later in 2008 when Washington sent a US supplied and trained Georgian army into disputed South Ossetia, resulting in the deaths of Russian peace-keepers and many civilians. Putin, caught off guard, returned from the Beijing Olympics, and the Russian army quickly defeated the US trained Georgian forces. Putin is often accused of intending to rebuild the Soviet Empire, but he had in his hands Georgia, historically a part of the Soviet Union and previously of Russia. Instead of reincorporating Georgia back into Russia, he turned them loose to be again subjected to Washington’s plots against Russia.
Having failed in Georgia, Washington turned its attention to Ukraine, another former province of the Soviet Union and previously of Russia for centuries. As Victoria Nuland boasted at a televised conference, Washington spent $5 billion organizing NGOs, students, and purchasing Ukrainian politicians in support of a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian government and install a neo-nazi regime hostile to Russia.
For unknown reasons except perhaps surprise–Putin was at the Sochi Olympics–Putin did nothing to prevent Washington’s coup. For eight years Putin relied on the Minsk Agreement, which the West used to deceive him, while Washington built up a Ukrainian army capable of overthrowing the Donbas republics that broke away and resisted Ukraine’s persecution and murder of the Russian population.
When Putin and Lavrov’s efforts during December 2021 and February 2022 to achieve a mutual defense agreement with the US and NATO were cold-shouldered by Washington, NATO, and the EU, Putin had no choice but to intervene in order to protect the Donbas, a former Russian province attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders, from massacre, as the Israelis are doing in Gaza and the West Bank.
The West disingenuously called Putin’s “limited military operation” confined to Donbas an “invasion of Ukraine.” It was no such thing. The fact that it was not an invasion and conquest of Ukraine was Putin’s mistake.
It is the limited nature of Putin’s intervention that is the cause of the possible explosion of the conflict into a nuclear war.
Putin, being a mid-20th century American liberal, had trusted diplomatic relations and good will between nations and did not understand that the West was at war with Russia. He and his Foreign Minister kept stressing their “American partners” and belief in negotiations, while the West organized its attacks on Russia.
These attacks now include attacks deep into Russia far removed from the battle front. Russia has suffered many attacks from low-flying drones that evade air defense systems. As I write, Nato Secretary Stoltenberg and the UK prime minister are urging the Biden regime to give approval to US/NATO firing long range missiles into Russia. Putin has said that this is the final red line that will force him to acknowledge that Russia is at war with the West.
NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg says the West does not need to pay attention to Putin’s threat, because “There have been many red lines declared by Putin before, and he has not escalated.”
We have reached the point that I said we would each. Putin by his failure to act in response to aggression now has his back to the wall. He has three choices: He can surrender. He can end the Ukraine conflict with force, which puts the West on notice that the West is at risk if the conflict continues, or he can continue to ignore reality, thereby leaving the initiative in the West’s hands where it has been throughout the conflict.
We are faced with Putin’s mettle. Is he a warrior or an out-of-date American liberal?
I agree that this question is unfair. Putin is the only statesman the world has at this crucial time when the world’s continued existence is in question. Putin has accepted insult after insult, provocation on top of provocation in order to avoid a war that means death for humanity.
No one gives Putin credit for this.
Stoltenberg, a nonentity, mocks Putin. Biden, a nonentity, insults him. Zelensky, a nonentity, vows to defeat him.
We can see Satan’s hold on the West when the only leader determined to preserve human existence is demonized.
Despite his honorable characteristics, Putin is failing because he cannot recognize the extreme evil that confronts him and the country he represents.
As England’s ambassador Craig Murray has reported, the Western world is criminalizing free speech. Washington’s investigations of Scott Ritter, Dimitri Simes, and others indicate that those who talk with Russians are being criminalized for aiding and abetting Russian disinformation, which is being equated with espionage. How can the dangerous situation be resolved when talk is prevented?
America The Unready
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Andrei Martyanov, an emigre from Russia, writes books about military strategy and America’s lack of one. He does his best to make us aware that if we are to find ourselves at war with Russia, we need better strategic thinking than we have. His latest book, America’s Final War, published by Clarity Press, tells us that the West is unprepared for the conflict the West is fomenting with Russia.
Martyanov is contemptuous of American military thinking and the American echo chamber that passes for thought. Consequently, the establishment will ignore him and continue on its mistaken path.
Martyanov uses Washington’s response to Russia’s Special Military Operation in Donbas to illustrate his point. Much of the book is his defense of his view of the conflict. Martyanov was the leading dissident to the view of Western pundits that Russia would be defeated and Ukraine would be victorious.
The West’s propagandistic response to the conflict contributed to the West’s misunderstanding. Believing its own misrepresentation of the conflict, the West continued to convince itself that just a little more Western intervention would turn the tide. Add this weapons system. Then this one. Then F-15s, and at the present time the Western idiots are deciding whether the US and NATO will launch long-range missiles into Russia from Ukraine.
Such a desperate measure, which Putin said would mean the US and NATO are at war with Russia, is a powerful indication that Ukraine is defeated, just as Martyanov said would be the case.
Martyanov is protective of Putin. I think because Putin did not invade Ukraine and immediately overthrow the neo-Nazi Regime Washington has established there. Instead he limited Russian arms to clearing Ukrainian forces out of Donbas, a former Russian territory that Soviet leaders attached to Ukraine. Putin has accepted numerous insults and provocations without expanding the war beyond his Special Military Operation. It is Putin, not the West, who has resisted the expansion of a limited conflict into a wider war. I join Martyanov in admiring Putin for his concern with the life of humanity.
Where I depart from Martyanov and Putin is that I regard Russia’s victory in Ukraine as tactical, not strategic. It is in strategy that Martyanov sees Russia’s advantage. Putin’s strategy was to avoid wider war by limiting the conflict to clearing Donbas, a Russian area of Ukraine, of Ukraine forces that were killing Russian people.
I appreciate the good will in Putin’s decision, but he misread his adversary, and his decision was a strategic error of potentially immense consequences.
To keep the US/NATO from becoming ever more involved in the conflict and, thus, ever widening the conflict, Putin needed to quickly prevail. He could not do this without attacking Kiev, preventing the government from continuing the fight, and sealing Ukraine’s borders with the West. Thus, Putin’s Special Military Operation guaranteed increasing Western involvement, more casualties, and a wider war which, if Washington joins the European and British decision to fire missiles into Russia, brings us World War III.
This is a total failure of strategic thinking on Russia’s part.
How do we explain this?
I think that Martyanov is correct that Russia has a war strategy whereas the West has bluster and delusion. But why didn’t strategy come into play in Ukraine? How did Putin convince himself that he was going to keep Ukraine out of NATO simply by evicting Ukrainian forces from Donbas?
One possible answer is that Putin did not realize who the enemy was. It was not the puppet in Kiev. The enemy was in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris. Did Putin only see the enemy in Donbas? Did he not know that he was at war with the US and NATO?
The neoconservative doctrine that the principle goal of US foreign policy is the prevention of the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism is perhaps too absurd for the Russians to take seriously. This policy declaration is known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It has been in effect since 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, which removed constraint on US unilateralism.
In public statements Putin shows awareness that Washington expects Russia, China, and Iran to accommodate themselves to Washington’s “rules based order.” Washington’s rules, of course. This is not subject to discussion and negotiation. It is a requirement. Not realizing the implications of this requirement is the mistake of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments.
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