Putin and the Rise of the Right

I recently read an article by Robert Kaplan on the shift to the right in Europe as reflected in the European Parliament elections. 

I won't go into full detail but essentially he was proposing that the fears and distaste for the Far Right/Totalitarian Regimes such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco had done much to discredit any attempts to emulate them in Europe, but that we were entering into a new phase in Europe which was no longer hampered by the horrors of WW II combined with the perception that the current political elites were failing their constituents.

From the end of World War II Western Europe was basically run by centrist governments, some left leaning and some right leaning but never venturing to far in either direction.

The politics of the centre led to the rise of the EU and its' evolution from a trade bloc towards a financial and political union.  Parallel to this development was the virtual collapse of the ethnocentric nationalist right wing parties as well as the far left "Stalinist" parties. 

Then the financial crisis hit.  And with it came the rise of populist parties promising a return to a past which was never as rosy as they portrayed and ignoring the fact that this nostalgia for the past was incompatible with the present and certainly not a viable vision of the future given the state of Europe today.

Despite that the ethnocentric nationalist propaganda found fertile ground amongst ethnically white populations which allowed themselves to be convinced that all their problems were caused by an influx of immigrants, primarily non-white, who were "taking our jobs, our social services, our health care and were responsible for all crime".

Add to that mix the increase in Muslim immigrants and suddenly you find that these right wing parties are bizarrely aligned to Russia in general and Putin specifically whom they perceive to be the protector of the ethnic Russians and even more importantly is aggressively anti-Muslim.

So a supposedly anti-fascist Mr Putin who conjured up a fascist West once again trying to oppress Holy Mother Russia as evidenced in the Ukraine finds himself being an icon for the truly fascist right wing parties of Western Europe.

In a similarly strange twist the fiercely anti-Gay Mr Putin has become an icon for the Gay community.

Politics does make for strange bedfellows.

Just Because it was Tony Blair Doesn't Mean it was All Bad

Although I am not a fan of Tony Blair  last week's speech was interesting despite the fact that he gave it.

In the speech, which you can read for yourself (see below), he essentially had his version of an Oriana Fallaci moment, although much more tempered and focused on Islamism as opposed to Islam.

He waves the banner against the forces of religious extremism and closed-mindedness asserting that the war is between belief and modernity.  He goes on to say that even if a political party campaigns on the basis of a dangerous corrosive political ideology but stops short of actively participating in acts of terrorism, if the political goal of that ideology is to gain power through manipulation of the political process and then transform a democracy into a dictatorship it must be stopped.

He highlights the danger that the very freedoms that our democracies represent are fertile ground for the seeds of our own destruction. We allow anti-democratic, anti-freedom of religion, closed-minded intolerant political parties to participate as if they were one side of a conventional political debate.

They are not.

Still, unfortunately, he goes on to group the "West" with Russia and China against the Islamist threat.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows but China is a dictatorship and Russia is a modern version of Czarist Russia.  Neither really promote the ideals of western liberal democracies.  The only thing binding us together is that they too are targets of Islamist extremists.

Reaching for straws are we now Tony?

http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/why-the-middle-east-matters-keynote-speech-by-tony-blair/

Conventional Warfare

I have read a number of articles recently about how the US Defence planners had presumed that with the fall of the Iron Curtain that there would no longer be a need for big "boots-on-the-ground" conventional wars and that the shift for ground troops would be to specialist units.

The same articles go on to criticise this approach suggesting that the defence planners had failed to recognise that the apparent demise of conventional wars, especially in the European arena, was the exception to the rule and that they should therefore have failed miserably in their roles as strategic thinkers.

Their analysis seems to forget Reagan's claim to have used the arms race, especially the "Star Wars" technology to demonstrate to the Soviets that they could not compete economically.  The American electorate was happy in the main to have a guns and butter policy because they were intricately intertwined.  The Russians couldn't compete on that basis thus forcing the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Or so the song goes.

What the planners actually failed to see is that the Cold War between the Soviets and the West was not really an ideological one although it was handy to present it in those terms and much more was a good old-fashioned geopolitical spat between two opposing imperialistic power centers.

So now we have Putin's Russia which has not only happily used troops to quell problems deemed necessary for national security such as Chechnya, Georgia and Moldavia, but now perhaps even into the Ukraine. 

Strangely, the Baltics, the Poles and any other former Soviet satellites clamouring for NATO membership didn't buy into the end of conventional war in Europe mantra.

Perhaps it was another case of American hubris and a serious case of selective hearing.

I don't know why the US didn't pay attention to the signs that highlighted Russia's build-up of a conventional military and the accompanying willingness to use it.

So we are now left with the Ukranians having to use their own conventional forces to combat what is actually an attempt by (pro)Russian militants to secede from the Ukraine.

Would we have acted any differently if the south-west United States was suddenly filled with armed militias clamouring to become part of Mexico?

Why Is There No Outcry

A strange thing happened last week in the US.  The meaning of "the selling of the presidency" left Madison Avenue and wandered down to Wall Street.

In one of the most convoluted rationalisations I have every seen the inalienable rights granted to citizens i.e. humans under the Constitution have now been granted to artificial legal entities such as corporations and labour unions.

Then, to add insult to injury, through the writ of the court we witnessed the transubstantiation of money into speech thus legalising the buying of the presidency and every other political seat.

I understand without hesitation the thought process behind this.  I understand that if the inalienable rights granted to humans could be given to legal entities and if the concept of freedom of speech could be granted to money then it would open the floodgates for moneyed interests to buy every politician in the land-legally!

I can even understand that in a greedy masters of the universe euphoric sort of way one could imagine creating such absurd constructs.

But I also thought that even the most corrupt captains of industry would somewhere in their reptilian brains realise that it was totally immoral to legalise corruption and bribery.

I was wrong. 

It is devastating.  And yet I don't sense any real outcry. 

Has apathy reached such a point that people just watch their political process crash and burn?

It's Not A Question of Good or Evil

There are a number of commentators who wish to couch the conflict in the Ukraine in terms of good and evil.

I think this is a mistake.

I am not overly impressed with the "Good" credentials of either side.  Nor the intelligence levels of the John and Jane Doe's that are interviewed on the street.  We have all see enough of "spontaneous" crowd scenes which only occur when the camera's are rolling and interviews filled with soundbites from semi-literate demonstrators.

No, both sides are filled with much that is to be discredited.  Both sides have groups that are easily swayed by populist propaganda and both sides are capable of brutality.

But there is a difference.  There are Ukrainians in the Ukraine who don't want to be under the control of Putin's Russia.  The Russians demonstrating in the Ukraine are clamouring precisely for that state of affairs.

And it is the Ukraine.

Ideally I would like it if we could forget nationalistic rhetoric and were able to create a global society that would actually benefit the many rather than the global market which condemns the many to poverty and benefits the oligarchical few.

But I don't see that happening and certainly not in the near future.

So my solution is to offer those Russians currently living in the Ukraine who want to live under Putin's rule to go back to Russia, voluntarily, or, if they refuse, by decree. 

I would make the same offer in all the other borderlands with "restless" Russian minorities. 

And if Russia cuts oil and gas deliveries to the Ukraine.  I would make sure that the first to feel the pain be the restless Russian nationalists.

That might make me evil....

So What Happens if Putin Enters Eastern Ukraine

I will admit that I kept hoping that Putin would not sign the documents that ratified the transfer of the Crimea from the Ukraine to Russia.  Not because he is a nice guy.  No, but because I had hoped that he wanted to demonstrate his power, and then pull back from actually using it and thereby creating a form of gunboat diplomacy in the near-Russia periphery.

I was wrong.  Mr Putin really does want to recreate the Soviet Union.

This throws a new light on things.

In the first instance it raises the stakes exponentially.  For the moment it demonstrates that the decision to join NATO by the Baltics, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and  Roumania was the right decision even if some of the southern European members might be having second thoughts about their position within the EU.

For, if a NATO state is attacked by definition the rest of the NATO states must come to its defence.

The Ukraine is not a NATO state.  Nor is Georgia.

Perhaps Russia only took back what they hold to have been rightfully theirs.  But, as I have discussed previously, it is a dangerous precedent both for those countries on the Russian periphery, but also perhaps for ethnic groups within the Russian mainland such as Chechnya.

But for Russia to make a military move into the Ukraine is a step which cannot be allowed to happen without a response far beyond the sanctions put in place as "punishment" for devouring  the Crimea.

I don't want war.  The West doesn't want war.  But is Putin willing to risk war?  I don't know.  I especially don't know as currently I don't believe he thinks a military move into the eastern Ukraine will be met with a military response, so he quite possibly doesn't even perceive such a move as even a potential declaration of war.

So what to do.

I believe the West needs to call his bluff.  It has to say that a military move into the Ukraine would constitute a declaration of war.

This is not something the West wants-and I would hope neither does Putin.

It would force both sides to sit down and pursue a diplomatic solution which would probably be some sort of a "Finlandisation" of the Ukraine i.e. a neutrality which required any foreign policy moves by the Ukrainians to be sanctioned by the Russians.

It is not clear to me that the Ukrainians would agree to such a solution.  It might require massive pressure from the West to make them acquiesce along the lines that if they don't then they will be left to take on Russia on their own...

This is what Russia really wants.  Control over the Ukraine.

Great Power Realpolitik is full of examples of small countries being sacrificed for what is considered the greater good which in this case is a non-military solution.

I can't help but think that if the West allows Putin to annex the Ukraine, under the threat of a loaded gun, that he will continue until the West says stop.

It is an incredibly depressing thought that on the 100th anniversary of WWI,  the 75th anniversary of the start of WWII, despite the end of the Cold War and the supposed new paradigm of peace, that the Russians, whom I hold at least partially responsible for WWI, and who were joint aggressors in 1939, should once again be the sable rattlers for another European war.

Is it the Spring of 1912, the Fall of 1914, or September 1938?

The first Balkan War of 1912 was started by the Russian sponsored Balkan League which was formed to eject the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans.

The Fall of 1914 is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, the blame for which could be aimed at the Russians for their then support of the Serbians in their efforts to escape the clutches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Given that the Russians lost and with it the Czar disappeared most commentators forget about the battles in the East and focus on the Germans as the guilty ones in World War I- but that is a different post.

Or, with the advantage of hindsight, are we bending over backwards to ensure 'peace in our time' although in this case not as a result of German but rather Russian geopolitical imperatives.

The truth is I don't know.

But I do know that we are in a much more dangerous position than many people appreciate.

On the subject of history the Crimea has been part of Russia since Catherine the Great.  It remained so more or less until Khrushchev-himself a Ukrainian-decided to give it to the Ukraine.

So much for history.

If we go back further than Catherine then the Crimea belonged to numerous peoples-as did almost every other piece of land on earth.  The problem with going back in history is that empires rise and fall.  Sometimes of their own volition, and sometimes through invasion.

This time around there are a lot of voices suggesting that the Crimea, with its majority of ethnic Russians should be allowed to go "back" to Russia.

I even understand that thought.

But to allow the Russians of the Crimea to vote to return to Russia would suggest that wherever there are ethnic minorities, who are however majorities in their ethnic enclaves, they should be allowed to vote to become part of their "parent" countries.

I am not sure that this is a good precedent.

It is true that the lines of nation-states have been drawn somewhat arbitrarily reflecting either the status quo-or a desire to change the status quo-depending on the time and the situation and so there are many borderlands of countries that today look out of place.

Whatever changes are made could look equally out of place tomorrow.

To start allowing these kind of votes will open up fissures between peoples that have actually often enough lived happily together until it was brought to their attention that maybe they shouldn't really get along with one another.

Every group has its own geopolitical hang-ups.  There is always a border which can not be defended; there is always a lack of natural resources, of fertile land.  Essentially every group wants to be in charge of its own destiny-even when that destiny is fraught with danger.

This is the seed of nationalism.  Today it is often a response to globalism.  The benefits of globalism are often positive on a macro level, and equally often negative on a micro level.  This is compounded by the fact that the weak are generally at the mercy of the strong, regardless of how the strong present their case.

So back to my question.

What are the Russians really up to?