The Braindead American Foreign Policy Establishment
A source recently sent to me an article by a well-placed Russian foreign affairs expert with a note attached: “He thinks like you do.” Not entirely, but we share some of the same concerns.
“What Is To Be Done?,” by Sergei A. Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow ( https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/an-age-of-wars-what-is-to-be-done/ ) reflects my own views expressed on many occasions, such as that in the face of the Western world’s hostility, Russia should avoid continuing conflict by turning to the East to China and India and to the expansion of BRICS. Like myself Karaganov hopes to avoid the death of mankind in nuclear war. He writes off the pro-Western Atlanticist Integrationist Russian liberals who clinged too long to their fantasy of being an accepted part of the West. Likely, it was this delusional collection of Russian liberals who are responsible for the failures in judgment that Karaganov brings home to the Kremlin, the very same failures that I have pointed out. The last thing Russia needs is interdependence with the West.
Karaganov points out that Russia has Asian roots dating from the days of Mongol overlords that are as strong as Western roots and that it is China that is rising, not Europe and the US which he regards as essentially washed up politically, economically, morally, and spiritually.
Karaganov writes: “Europe―once a beacon of modernization for us and many other nations―is rapidly moving towards geopolitical nothingness and, hopefully I am wrong, towards moral and political decay. Its still-wealthy market is worth exploiting, but our main effort in relation to the old subcontinent should be morally and politically fencing ourselves off from it. Having first lost its soul―Christianity―it is now losing the fruit of the Enlightenment―rationalism. Besides, on orders from outside [Washington], the Eurobureaucracy is itself isolating Russia from Europe. We are grateful.”
“A break with Europe is an ordeal for many Russians. But we must go through it as quickly as possible. Naturally, fencing-off should not become a principle or be total. But any talk of recreating a European security system is a dangerous chimera. Systems of cooperation and security should be built within the framework of the continent of the future―Greater Eurasia―by inviting European countries that are interested and are of interest to us.”
The West, he writes, is the modern equivalent to Sodom and Gomorrah. “It would have been better to finish our Western, European odyssey a century earlier. There now remains little of use to be borrowed from the West, though plenty of rubbish seeps in from it. But, as we belatedly complete the journey, we will retain the great European culture that is now rejected by post-European fashion.” As the West has rejected itself, it is an evil and Russia should fence itself off from it. He answered my recent question by saying that the culture the West created and is now alienated from will be saved by Russia.
There are other points where we have the same judgment, such as the defeatist way Putin conducted the conflict with Ukraine and his acceptance of provocations that escalated Western participation in the conflict. The way Putin tries to make the West feel non-threatened even as the West threatens Russia feeds conflict. To continually express your willingness to negotiate with Washington which intends to destroy Russia and Putin personally is an extraordinary failure of judgment. The lack of realism smacks you in the face.
Karaganov writes that Russia should revise its approach to foreign policy from being defensive to offensive, and should cease its attempts to please and negotiate with the West. The Kremlin’s attempts “are not only immoral but also counterproductive” as they are unrealistic and produce more provocations.
Karaganov sees the West as I do, that it is sinking into moral debauchery and anti-humanism. He writes, “It is time to openly raise the banner of the defense of normal human values from the post-and even anti-human ones coming from the West.”
As I have explained, Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries dating back long before there was a Soviet Union. Ukraine is a brand new country torn out of Russia by Washington’s neoconservatives when the Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine was created by Washington as a weapon to be used against Russia. It is extraordinary that it took Russians so long to realize this. Russians must have been completely brainwashed by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Certainly the Atlanticist Integrationists were.
Karaganov escaped the brainwashing. He writes:
“Our only reasonable goal regarding Ukraine’s lands is quite obvious to me―the liberation, and reunification with Russia, of the entire South, East, and (probably) Dnieper Basin. Ukraine’s western regions will be the subject of future bargaining. The best solution would be creating a demilitarized buffer-state there with a formal neutral status (with Russian bases to guarantee neutrality)―a place to live for those residents of present-day Ukraine who do not want to be citizens of Russia and live by Russian laws. And to avoid provocations and uncontrolled migration, Russia should build a fence along its border with the buffer-state, like the one that Trump started on the border with Mexico.” Or the one that Israel has built in Palestine.
Karaganov writes that in Russia’s defense policy, the Kremlin expected too much from the West, expecting cooperation and good will. The Kremlin must have been uninformed of the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony, which declares Russia an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony that has to be removed. To deal with the West, Karaganov writes, Russia should use its vastly superior nuclear capability to intimidate the West.
“When preemptively (although belatedly) starting a military operation against the West [Ukraine limited military intervention] we, acting on old assumptions, did not expect the enemy to unleash a full war. So we did not use active nuclear deterrence intimidation tactics from the very outset. And we are still dragging our feet. By so doing we not only doom hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine (including losses from a plunging quality of life) and tens of thousands of our men to death, but we also do a disservice to the whole world. The aggressor, which is de facto the West, remains unpunished. This clears the way for further aggression.”
I am pleased to see my contention that Putin’s non-response to aggression is dooming the world to death, not because I want the deaths but because it verifies my belief that tolerating provocations does not lead to peace but to more provocations that will result in nuclear war. I remain convinced that Putin’s unwillingness to act is bringing nuclear Armageddon.
Karaganov points out that Putin is deviating from Russian military practice:
“It is Russian tradition to deliver a crushing defeat to European invaders and then agree on a new order” devised by the Russians.
At for the mistakenly conducted war in Ukraine, “The Special Military Operation must be continued until victory. Our enemies must know that if they do not retreat, the legendary Russian patience will run dry, and the death of each Russian soldier will be paid for with thousands of lives on the other side.”
Where Karaganov and I part company is with his belief that constraint on wars lies in most countries having nuclear deterrents. His argument is rational. He writes that if an aggressor faces nuclear retaliation, the aggressor is unlikely to aggress. The problem with his argument is that there are psychopaths ruling countries, and psychopaths are unconcerned about populations. He himself admits this fact.
Karaganov and I are in agreement that a more aggressive posture by Russia would cause the West to rethink its aggression and, thereby, reduce the likelihood of nuclear war. Karaganov writes:
“By intensifying nuclear deterrence, we will not only sober up the aggressors, but also perform an invaluable service to all humanity. There is currently no other protection from a series of wars and a major thermonuclear conflict. Nuclear deterrence needs to be activated.”
Here Karaganov spells out the likely fate of Europe and the US, impotent peoples devoid of any influence over “their” governments:
“Russia’s policy should be based on the assumption that NATO is a hostile bloc that has proven its aggressiveness with its previous policy and which is de facto waging a war against Russia. Therefore, any nuclear strikes on NATO, including preemptive ones, are morally and politically justified. This applies primarily to countries that provide the most active support to the Kiev junta. The old and especially new members of the alliance must understand that their security has cardinally weakened since joining the bloc, and that their ruling comprador elites have put them on the edge of life and death. I have repeatedly written that if Russia delivers a preemptive retribution strike on any NATO country, the U.S. will not respond unless the White House and Pentagon are populated by madmen who hate their country and are ready to destroy Washington, Houston, Chicago, or Los Angeles for the sake of Poznan, Frankfurt, Bucharest, or Helsinki.’
“From my point of view, Russian nuclear policy and the threat of retaliation should also deter the West from the massive use of biological or cyber weapons against Russia or its allies. The arms race in this field, conducted by the U.S. and some of its allies, must be stopped.”
The targets for being wiped from the face of the earth are not limited to Europe.
“It also appears necessary to alter (to some extent, publicly) the list of targets for nuclear retaliatory strikes. We need to think hard about who, exactly, we intend to deter.
“The Americans [Washington] ‘in defense of democracy’ and for the sake of their imperial ambitions have killed millions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Iraq, committed monstrous acts of aggression against Yugoslavia and Libya, and against all warnings deliberately cast hundreds of thousands—maybe even millions—of Ukrainians into the fire of war, there is no guarantee that the threat of retaliation, even against cities, is a sufficient deterrent for the globalist oligarchy. Simply put, they do not care even about their own citizens, and will not be frightened by casualties among them.”
As the ruling Western elites have zero concern for their people, attacks against America should be directed against the utterly corrupt ruling elites, “the globalist oligarchy”:
“Maybe it would be worth designating this oligarchy’s gathering-places as targets for the first wave, or even for preemptive retribution strikes.”
“God struck Sodom and Gomorrah—mired in abomination and debauchery—with a rain of fire,” so why shouldn’t Russia give God a hand and strike the West with the same rain of fire. This is Karaganov’s question. “The modern equivalent: a limited nuclear strike on Europe. Another hint from The Old Testament: to cleanse the world, God unleashed the Great Flood. Our Poseidon nuclear torpedoes can trigger similar floods by tsunamis. Today, most brazenly aggressive states are coastal. The globalist oligarchy and the deep state should not hope to escape as Noah and his pious family did.”
Karaganov writes that “Russia finally stopped dragging itself after the West” and has wakened to her Western enemy.
“Greater reliance on nuclear deterrence is necessary to cool the European ‘leaders’ who have lost their mind, speak of an inevitable clash between Russia and NATO, and urge their armed forces to prepare for it. These babblers and their listeners need to be reminded that, in the event of war between Russia and NATO in Europe, little will be left of many European alliance-members after even the first few days of the conflict.”
The West Karaganov writes is a moral and spiritual threat as well as a military threat:
“The continuous spread of digital technologies . . . are not only promoting but imposing anti-human or post-human ideologies, values, and patterns of behavior that reject the natural foundations of human morality and almost all basic human values.”
“We can already see that European elites have lost almost completely the ability to think strategically, and there are practically none left in the traditional meritocratic sense. We are witnessing an intellectual decline of the ruling elite in the United States, a country with enormous military, including nuclear, capabilities.”
The question Karaganov leaves us with is: Can the rising new world restrain the declining old world of debauchery, sin, and all forms of evil before the evil that reigns in the West destroys the world? Can Putin and Xi see reality before it is too late?
It is clear that Russian strategic thinkers have been radicalized by what they experienced as treachery and betrayal by the West. The neoconservatives pursuit of US hegemony at all cost has created an enemy whose trust in the West is exhausted. This, as I have repeatedly said, is a far more dangerous situation than existed during the 20th Century Cold War. The realization of this danger continues to escape Western decision-makers.
