Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Never trust Russia

The Crimean War has lessons for today in dealing with another Oriental styled fascism.

by StFerdIII

In the 19th century before and after the Crimean war [1854-55] quite a few British politicians observed that Russia could be trusted less than the Arabs. Like the Arabs, the Russians were enigmatic, deceitful and unpredictable. As a popular song circa 1878 recorded, "We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do...We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too! We've fought the Bear before...and while we're Britons true...The Rooshuns shall not have Constantinople..." The song aptly sums up the fear of Russian expansionism. Fast forward to today and the same fears apply.

Back in the 19th century the Rooshuns were an obvious threat to British control of the Middle East. Allowing the legions of Tsarist Russia to control Constantinople, the Dardanelles and the eastern Mediterranean and influencing the entire Near East was viewed as a political-economic threat worthy of war. Hence the Franco-British support of Islamic Turkey against Russia in the Crimean war. This effort effectively saved the tottering Ottoman empire and kept Russian influence out of Greece and the Near East until after World War II.

But the Russians, stubborn, proud, mischievous and sure of themselves never relented from imperial ambition. Dictatorial, non-Western and tyrannical regimes have ruled Russia for 1000 years. In 1917 they invent a fantasy ideology, a brother to the future fascism of Hitler, and named it Communism. The only communal aspect of Russian fascism was its shared mass misery and colossal piles of dead. Post 1989 we now have Putinism – a dictatorship by a gang in the Kremlin modeled on the old Tsars employing modern technology and Soviet style propaganda and controlling all industry deemed to be pertinent to national power.

As British Prime Minister Palmerston remarked in the mid 19th century: "Peace is an Excellent Thing, and War is a great Misfortune. But there are many things more valuable than Peace, and many things much worse than war. The maintenance of the Ottoman Empire belongs to the First Class, the Occupation of Turkey by Russia belongs to the Second." Palmerston saw Russia for what it was – a grasping anti-Western oriental power.

In today’s terms we can substitute ‘Ottoman empire’ with Iraq and the Near East, and ‘Occupation of Turkey’ with Eastern Europe and Georgia. Anyone who believes that Russia is an ally of the West and shares anything in common with the West is a fool. Russian expansionism and Tsarist ambition, fuelled by high energy prices, is on the march.

Russian anti-Westernism flows from the 19th century into the present. The Russians were the allies of Hussein in Iraq supplying the murderous Sunni regime with weapons, military training and communications systems. In return the Russians received oil rights and influence within Iraqi political circles. The same program is now applied to Iran. Russian investments in Iranian oil, energy and infrastructure projects has been reciprocated with an undeclared alliance against Western interests in the Middle East and beyond.

Russia is also pro-Arab. Anti-Jew and Israeli pronouncements, from a country that has exported about 2 million Russians to Israel, have poured forth for 20 years. Russia like France, sees its power greatly enhanced if it can ally itself with the Arabs. How this sits with Iran is unclear. For centuries Persia has detested Arab culture and Greater Arabia viewing the Arabs as much of a threat as the Jews or Anglo-Saxons. But for now the Russians play both sides of the Muslim world.

Putin’s foreign policy is based on 2 concepts. First the Kremlin desires to shore up its domestic powers by vilifying the US and Western Europe and calling Russian attention to the so-called threats it faces in Eastern Europe, Georgia and Central Asia by US military encroachment and ‘imperialism’. Nothing gets the domestic polity more enthusiastic than lurid tales of American-Jew uni-polar power and their desire to eradicate good Mother Russia.

Second, Russia is too weak to counter act US influence in the above named spheres of interest so it allies with Arab and Muslim regimes. In so doing it naturally supports their jihad against US and Israeli interests and supports their efforts to destroy the nascent Iraqi democracy. Russian armaments for example are still being found in Iraq many of them used to attack US forces and the Russians are openly training Iranian army units.

Domestically the Kremlin now exerts Soviet control. A free press does not exist. The recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote critical reports on Russian abuses in the Chechnyan war, is the 16th such murder in the past year. Any reporter who opposes Putin will be killed. The Committee to Protect Journalists declares that Russia is the worst place in the world for a reporter. Worse even than Baghdad.

In 1999 the Russian state blew up 4 apartment buildings killing thousands of innocents. Litvinenko who was murdered recently in London, was one of many people who outlined how the FSB or KGB used explosive material held only by the Russian state to destroy civilians and prompt the second Chechen war, allowing Putin to rule with ‘popular support’. KGB agents were caught by locals and the police in Ryazan, when they tried unsuccessfully to destroy a 5th apartment block. They admitted they were KGB operatives. The Kremlin said it was a test on civilian ‘vigilance’ and awarded the apartment dwellers free TV sets as their prize for being alert. Not even Russians believe this story.

Russia interfered in the Ukrainian 2004 election. In 2005 and 2006 it cut off energy supplies to Eastern and Western Europe. It has disrupted fuel supplies to Georgia, and exploded 4 bombs in the Georgian capital as a warning against becoming too pro-Western. Russia openly talks of annexing Belarus [it unilaterally just took over its gas distribution network] as well as part of the Baltic and demands that part of Moldova remain under Russian control.

In its domestic energy market the Kremlin controls most firms and most of the Russian oil supply. It took over Yukos a Western styled firm with a leader that promoted open markets and liberal democracy, putting him and his deputies in jail or exile. The Kremlin has brazenly stolen foreign investments. Shell, BP and others have seen their billion dollar projects in Sakhalin and elsewhere nationalized by Russia under the aegis of environmental or security concerns.

Energy is used by Russia as a tool in foreign policy, and Russian threats have prompted even the mentally lazy and pro-Russian European elite to consider alternative energy supplies and distribution routes that avoid Russian territory. Now the Russians are discussing with the Arabs and others about setting up a giant energy cartel modeled on OPEC. Sounds market friendly doesn’t it?

Recently in Munich the Russian Tsar Putin viciously attacked the US in a speech that sounds eerily like a Communist threat dating from 1950. Maybe George Bush will reconsider his misty eyed romantic view of Putin. Putin stated that the US has, "an almost uncontained hyper-use of force" in international relations and a, "greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law." In this speech the above sentence was about the kindest used by Putin in his references to the US.

Such nonsense sounds pretty rich coming from a man and a regime engaged in the destruction of 15.000 Russian soldiers per year in Chechnya, not to mention the tens of thousands of civilian dead that the Russian military piles up annually. Then there are those little facts and claims that point to Russian security forces working with Islamic terrorists, receiving bribes, and letting Chechnyan rebels into southern Russia, where in Beslan in 2003, over 300 children were killed in a school hostage taking. No need to discuss these and other items I guess with the morally pure and internationally law abiding Russian state. Perhaps they can also explain their looting of Iraq during the Oil for Food scandal which directly contravened the agreements laid down by the corrupt UN.

Russia is not Western. Russia is oriental and it has never experienced the Western revolutions of the political-economy, the mind or the spirit. Until its system is radically reformed towards Western styled institutions; open markets; limits on government power; and a recognition that Islam and Greater Arabia pose more of a threat to the world than so called rogue US power, Russia cannot be trusted. No one should expect such reforms in Russia – ever.

The Russians lost the Cold War but they still think that they are superior. Therein lies the problem. Maybe Palmerston and the boys were on to something.