Tuesday, May 15, 2007

At least the Russians get one thing right

Groveling, whining and apologizing to the Muslims is not how confident empires act.

by StFerdIII

For all the problems and foibles of the Russian state, you have to give the Russians credit for one thing. They don’t fool around. Enrage the Kremlin, the Russian elite, or tamper with Russian self interest and you will be dead quicker than a bottle of vodka is emptied in the vicinity of the average Russian male. There is no ambiguity with Russia. This is an important and signal theme that the West needs to promote. Radical Islam needs to learn such a message.

Throughout their history the Russians have demonstrated a Roman-styled ruthlessness that has served them well in foreign affairs. Once the Moscovy regime threw off the Mongol yoke in the late 14th century, the scene was set for the creation of an empire stretching from Eastern Europe to the Pacific down to the Black Sea and to the borders of Persia. The Russians did not create such an empire with diplomatic bafflegab, self-effacement, or through reminding themselves how guilty, stupid or unworthy they were. They conquered, warred, dominated and made no apologies for establishing history’s largest ever land empire.

The mercilessness of the Russian state is legendary. The Moscovy empire was certainly not preordained by fate to rise to imperial splendor and dominate two continents. The Russian empire was carved out by a singularity of purpose; a vision of Moscow as the Third Rome; and by a need to acquire large tracts of land and control key river based trade routes. The agricultural economy of pre-modern Russia dictated that land meant power. Overlordship of the 6 main rivers that dominate Eurasia, meant riches in trade and an accumulation of higher tax revenue.

Economic incentives nicely met with security imperatives. Eur-Asia west of the Urals is a flat plain intersected by major rivers running north-south. It is reasonably easy to invade especially with a mounted army, and this area is open to invasion and domination from all points on the compass. The only way to secure an empire west of the Urals is to expand southwards to the Black Sea, the Balkans, and to the Caucasus and beyond, and north to the Baltic and Arctic oceans.

Once the Urals were secured in the West, the drive to the Pacific and the destruction of Mongol-Muslim regimes in order to secure economic advantage and forever eliminate the eastern threat became easily comprehended state goals. As food supply improved, and agriculture gradually produced an economic surplus, the Russian population grew rapidly and by the time of Peter the Great in the early 18th century comprised 100 millions, easily the largest population in Europe. The exportation of this labor surplus to conquer Asiatic lands was rendered easy with this excessive amount of manpower.

The most important event in Russian history was of course the Mongol occupation lasting almost 300 years from the 13th to the 15th centuries. The Mongols effectively blocked off Russia from Western influence and forced the Russians to orient themselves eastwards. The cultural-political implications of this are still felt today.

Strong man rule [to free the Russians from the Mongol influence] informs Russian military and political history. Examples include Alexander Nevsky who saved Novgorod and Moscovy from the Teutonic Knights in the 1240s; Ivan the III who expanded the Russian state in the 14th century to the detriment of the Mongols; and Ivan the Terrible who established the largest empire in Europe in the 15th century by attacking and destroying Muslim-Tartar power in the Volga river and beyond. These men were military-political leaders who dominated their eras and established wide ranging and deeply personal empirical rule.

The need to secure Moscovy and Russian interests from the Muslim, the Tartar and the Mongol became the overriding political-military objective of the nascent Russian state. It still informs Russian policy setting today. The Russians as they swept across Eur-Asia from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great, never apologized to the Muslims or the Mongols for their acts of war, violence and colonization. They never engaged in weeping self-abasement or morbid psycho-analysis as they conquered the world’s largest land based empire. They simply did it.

Russian imperialism until the time of the pagan-fascist Lenin was beneficial. It established a Christian state in the heart of Asia. It reformed pagan, pre-modern and decidedly vicious states, satrapies, and anti-modern regimes. Education, trade, transport and industry were improved. The bonds across 7 time zones were solidified with engineering marvels including the world’s longest railway. Culture and society improved. Even today the Islamic former Soviet republics in central Asia covet Russian education, language and culture. It was a marked improvement on the pre-Russian era.

Today the Russians for all their devious, oriental inspired trickery command respect. Mess with the Kremlin and your head will be on a silver platter. The Muslims know this. After 500 years of Russian warring, the Islam cult knows the Russians mean business. They might attack Russian targets in Chechnya or in Beslan [with the connivance it appears of Russian state security], but they know that Russian revenge will be swift, vicious and none too concerned about accuracy, human rights, or due legal processes.

With the West the Muslims know it is different. The West appears weak. The Muslims have been attacking Western targets in the modern era since 1969. The Western reaction is limited, weak and riven by rancorous discourse and endless diplomatic-legal processes. This supine reaction is further riddled by self-hatred, apologia and rationales about how terrible the modern and Western worlds are. The Muslims who view the entire history of man as a struggle between Islam and everything else, understand the West a lot better than the West understands the motivations behind Islam.

In the Muslim mind this conflict for world domination with the Western-Christian civilisation helps explain the widespread support in Arab-Islamic countries first for Hitler’s Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies for the Muslims. The fact that the Russians were the rules of 25 million Muslims was a secondary issue. The reality that the Russians are ruthless in the pursuit of their national interests and would not tolerate Muslim aggression was and is a prime consideration.

As professor Bernard Lewis, author of many good books on Islam recently wrote; ‘More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences -- both for Islam and for America -- will be deep, wide and lasting.’

He is right.

The Russians in their history got one big idea right. When creating a superior civilization you don’t grovel, apologize, whine, self-flagellate or engage in self-castration. When you attack Russian interests you pay a high price. The West needs to give the Arab-Islamic bloc the same message. Attack us, scream about a world wide caliphate, blow up our people and assets and revenge will be ours. Actions need to be backed up confident words, expressing our resolve to conquer our enemies. The West is superior in every respect to Islam. We need to start acting like we know it.