Its ironic that the article talks about a breach of the Helsinki Accords.
Today, Finland would not be a credible broker of any peace and security agreements between global powers. Nor Stockholm. And the Palestinians would dismiss any idea of a new Oslo Accords when Israel is shadow member of the NATO and ultimately Norway is a US puppet on the side of the zionist agenda, despite any symbolic dissent.
The ceaseless expansion of NATO was one of the worst things the so-called west has done. And out of boundless greed for power and money. Neocolonialsm. .
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson has said that he and Colin Powell couldn't understand where the push for NATO expansion was coming from. They finally concluded it was money, because the committee established to look at the question was heavily weighted with representative of the Military Industrial Complex. Maybe that was so, but Jonathan Haslam in "Hubris" argues that the expansion policy was to ensure that the US remained "relevant" in Europe (i.e. could continue to influence and dominate).
What should not be left out of the discussion is the dismantlement of the regime of arms controls that made it possible to overcome the Cold War. The US cancelled the ABM treaty in 2002, the INF treaty in 2019 and the OpenSkies treaty in 2020. The only remaining treaty on the limitation of the strategic forces, the New START treaty, will expire in 2026, without either side making any attempt at negotiating a renewal. Following the cancellation of the INF treaty, the US announced its intention of stationing hypersonic intermediate range missiles in Germany, which can reach Moscow in a few minutes.
Aside from the Cuba crisis, we had at least 4 near encounters with nuclear war due to false alarms during the 20th century. With the introduction of new weapons systems, reduced prewarning times and a total lack of trust on both sides, the probability of nuclear war has increased to such a degree that it is bound to happen sooner or later.
What's even more worrying is that, in its attempt to impose a strategic defeat on Russia, Western propaganda has downplayed the danger of nuclear war, while some strategists even claim that the US could "win" a nuclear war.
What interests me, Glenn, is what happens after NATO... PESCO and the European Defence Union - initiatives which have been moving forward behind the scenes for decades..
Without discussion of these, the whole topic seems pretty fatuous - other than recognising NATO as being the force behind its own inevitable collapse..
While the British were part of the EU, they vetoed any European military cooperation outside of Nato. After Brexit, the EU launched a number of projects for military cooperation (such as PESCO), which immediately faced opposition from Washington. PESCO was to streamline military procurement by joint European procurement projects. I think the opposition from Washington was attenuated by promising the Americans that US contractors would be able to bid for PESCO projects, even though European manufacturers don't have equal access to US military procurement.
I've known about Bill Burns opposition to NATO expansion into Ukraine for a while. Providing a date for the "brightest of all redlines" quote would obviously aid understanding. This was 2008 while he was ambassador to Russia, rather than as CIA director (at present).
This is proof that Burns is capable of acknowledging the opposing point of view, which I'd like to think was a prerequisite for the post of CIA director, and also ambassador to Russia.
Without knowing much more about Burns than the above, he seems an impressive individual.
The same can be said about William Perry, me having had a quick scan through his career, assuming the Double Yoo Iki Paedia can be believed (let's assume in this instance it can be).
Neither of these men appear to be 'softies' or 'dovish'.
My interest (as a European) is in how people like Burns and Perry, who have risen to posts of CIA director and Secretary of State for Defence respectively, get overruled and by whom.
Who are the people Perry refers to as "the people I was arguing with". How do these nebulous "people I was arguing with" get to overrule the Secretary of State for Defence? Surely only the president carries the authority? Perhaps 'overrule' is the wrong word as there is no indication that they took decisions that were overruled. But their sage advice was ignored. By whom? In a true democracy, voters like me want names, transparency. We don't like our lives being placed at risk by "people I was arguing with". Who were/are they? I want to know exactly who is putting my life, and the lives of everyone else on the planet, at risk. Who were they? Names.
Perry apparently resigned due to the "constant strain of sending US military on life-threatening missions", appearing to lay the blame for this on the US Congress. It's a strange system, isn't it, Congress continuously sending men to war, at times against the wishes of the Secretary of State for Defence. Where is his authority? Where is the respect for his position? Where is the democracy? As a European, living in a country whose governments are elected and then governmental positions decided upon by the elected leader, I have been quite astonished to read about the horse-trading that goes on in the United States. Donald Trump wants so-and-so to do such and such a job, but then he gets his nominee thrown out by Congress or the Senate or whichever body approves or blocks such things. Incredible.
That's not to say that a more collegiate approach is necessarily and inherently a bad thing. However, almost everything I ever come across in relation to the US Congress is how they are in the hands of lobbyists rather than working for their electorates. If Congressmen/women can be and are bought, well you can yourself a democracy, but what you are is a lobbyocracy.
Trump could jet into wherever, sit down with Putin, pull off the "deal of the century", which to my mind would be one that adds even five minutes back onto the Doomsday Clock. But then I read/hear that not a single congressman/woman or senator would ratify it domestically. What the hell kind of political system is that then? Certainly not one that represents its electorate.
The country is 'sovereign' (~an institutional psychopath). To hell with the people that live in it.
We must fight to keep Ukraine sovereign! Even if all the Ukrainian people get killed in the process. It must remain there, named, Ukraine-shaped, on Google maps. Slava Ukraine!
Madness.
I can see, doing some background reading on Perry, that he was heavily involved with the Budapest Memorandum, which the Alexs on The Duran regularly mention in relation to Ukraine complaining about having been forced to give up "their" (Soviet) nuclear weapons. The point, often unvoiced it seems, was surely that they were moved backwards (i.e. eastwards) into Russia as a threat reduction gesture (which Ukraine signed up to). Having negotiated a threat reduction, you don't then ruin it by advancing into the vacated zone, except that's exactly what NATO have done, to the eternal shame of those responsible for it.
The Blinken connection is tragic. Donald Blinken was present at the Budapest Memorandum signing, being ambassador to Hungary at the time, so officially represented his country at the threat reduction stage of the equation. A generation later, his son, Antony, is heavily (possibly primarily, given doubts over Biden's cognitive capacity) responsible for completely undoing all the good work of his father's generation by militarising Ukraine into invading Russian territory.
I have been saying the very same things - name the ‘people of the shadows’. It’s evident they’re there, as there have been others like them before, throughout history. Yet, to even say something like that will earn you the badge of a conspiracy theorist in polite society in the West. I am appalled by the lack of education and critical thinking facilities of the West and fear we are doomed.
The West created a trust with Russia and then “ others” took over the agenda and utterly abused it . It’s a common modus operandi for the West to indulge in it socially appears .
"The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies."
When your analysis begins with faulty axioms your conclusions are almost certain to be wrong.
There were two empires following the ineluctable pressure of Empire: continuous expansion, and thus forced into conflict over who would own the previously unconquered territories of central Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.
The Empire of the USSR utilised a psuedo-marxist rhetoric to justify its continuous expansion and the "necessity" to resist the evil capitalist exploiters of the West, while the USA utilised a psuedo-capitalist rhetoric of freedom, pornography and flying cars to justify its continuous expansion and the "necessity" to resist the evil godless communists.
Both these rhetorical devices were fake, merely figleaves to cover the naked ugly fruit of the raw pursuit of power, and to justify devoting enormous proportions of the respective budgets to weapons. In the choice between guns and butter, they both chose the guns.
The idea that the rulers of these Empires were "true believers" in their ideological figleaves is risible, contradicted emphatically by their own policy actions and lifestyles.
Just for God's sake stop making these silly excuses for them.
Nobody, least of all Glenn, is making any excuses for anybody. Nor are there any false axioms in the quote you have used.
Your only criticism seems to be that Glenn has failed to use the word 'empire'. While the USSR ended over 30 years ago. And yes, it was seeking export an ideology - just as the US (and before it the UK) has always done.
The idea of world revolution made the Soviet Union support socialist regimes worldwide. That can be seen as a driver for imperial expansion; however, I don't think it's quite the same as the Anglo-American drive for global hegemony.
The Soviets kept the territory conquered in 1945 primarily as a buffer against Western aggression. Immediately after the Soviets defeated Germany, the British planned Operation Unthinkable to attack the Soviets together with the Wehrmacht, and after Hiroshima, the Americans planned Operation Dropshot to destroy the Soviet Union with 300 nukes. The successors of these plans continue today. They also armed the remnants of the Ukrainian OUN and UPA to wage an underground war in the Soviet Union until the 1950s.
The Soviets wanted a buffer of neutral states to protect against attacks from the West. Stalin even offered to reunify Germany on condition that Germany would become neutral. The West didn't want neutrality and created Nato in 1949. The Warsaw pact was only established in 1955, when Germany joined Nato and any hope of neutrality had to be abandoned.
Marxist communist philosophy includes the idea of brotherhood - supporting people to gain self determination and freedom from oppression by capitalists. That’s about supporting parallel efforts across humanity, not about command and control aka empire.
On the other hand capitalism as practiced in the UK and US is not about enabling people to control their own lives. It’s about tearing down limits to exploitation and setting up vassal dependent units across the world to be exploited solely by the imperial centre.
To paint these as one and same is laughable.
Also, while I agree spelling is impotant for clarity, we should also remember that London, DC, Berlin, Paris etc are managed by a cadre of highly educated people who can indeed spell pseudo….or genocide….or….exploitation…..but good luck getting them to recognise these things when they don’t wish to admit what they, you and me, can all see clearly.
Indeed. But nowhere did I try or intend to paint them as the same. Personally, I'm happy I was born in the West - that was surely a lot more fun than living behind the Iron Curtain, for example.
My point was, and is, that both the USSR and the USA were empires during the Cold War (the USA still is imho) and the strongest imperative in any empire is the perpetuation (which in turn demands expansion, for reasons we can explore later if necessary) of the empire, and thus of the ruling elite which governs it.
These elites rarely if ever tell their own people the truth about why they're doing what they're doing, let alone their enemies nor the rest of the "international community", the "non-aligned nations" or whoever is remaining outside of their imperial rule at the time. The rare occasion when they do are either inconsequenctial ("oftentimes to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence") or purely tactical exigencies which tomorrow will be memory-holed and repudiated ("we have always been at war with east asia").
Their motives are always presented as altruistic, self-sacrificing, noble ideals whereas their behaviour both corporate and personal always belies these claims.
This (the existence of empire, its' inherent nature and thus strongest internal imperatives, and the deceits these produce in turn) are my central points and the lack of consideration of them leads to my very mild criticism of Mr Diesen's analyses.
This does not ignore the concomittant fact that many of the people inside the empire really ARE "true believers" in the propaganda rhetoric of the imperial elite, and genuinely believe that the empire's policies are constructed in service to those ideals. One sees this in other contexts, too. For example, the UN is run by a highly deceitful elite set of functionaries whose behaviour is in dramatic contrast to the stated aims and ideals of the organisation, but 99% of the people I've met and/or read that have worked in the UN were incredibly idealistic people who got into it thinking that it really does exist to serve and propagate those ideals. Most of them left having a markedly different impression from sometimes decades on the inside of that organisation. One sees it in the jingoist aspects of MAGA and USA! USA! chanting, too. The greatest country ever, indeed.
I'm emphatically not here to criticise Russia or the USSR (I play no favourites in spite of what others here have said about me) but to point out that giving either of them the benefit of the doubt (I don't think there is any really but to each his own) isn't helping us to understand the dynamics of the current western imperial attacks on Russia, their true motivations, nor what their ruling elite understand or misunderstand about Russia.
You did pain them the same before. And you did it here again.
The Soviets did not set out to control an empire. Germany which controlled Europe invaded them and the Soviets beat them all the way back.
Post war the Americans, which occupied most of Germany and had huge armies and base there still even today, began empire building and began hostilities via the Soviets, who were forced to hold ground and set up a buffer zone. Thats it.
The recent publication of Soviet pre-war buildups strongly suggest that the USSR was indeed planning to invade Germany. part of the reason why Operation Barbarossa was rushed was that the German high command had concluded exactly that.
Again, I didn't say they were identical, except in the manner in which all empires share some common features (if they didn't then at least one them would not be an empire).
But to argue that the Soviets didn't "set out to control an empire" and to argue that they were or were not an empire, are two different arguments.
The 'recent publication of Soviet pre-war buildups' might strongly suggest the USSR was planning to invade Germany to you.
To others it might strongly suggest that USSR understood exactly where the Nazis were planning to attack.
And as the Germans realised that more time would only mean a greater USSR build-up, Barbarossa kicked off. But let's make no mistake. The Nazis had already amassed a huge force
Finally, in this long-lasting Great Game, Halford Mackinder's analysis of the vulnerability of the Land Power to attacks along its huge borders by the Sea Power ensured that the Land Power would constantly have to keep control of countries contiguous with them.
This had the permanent and very unfortunate effect of always enabling the Sea Power to accuse it of expansion and empire building - thus handing the Sea Power a propaganda advantage.
And little has changed. Russia is still in this position.
No, the export of the ideology was the pretext for the imperial expansion, not the driver behind it. It's not about using the word; it's about understanding the concept and all that it necessarily entails.
Presenting the propaganda of the empire as if it is/was the reality IS making excuses for them.
If spelling mistakes is all you got, then you got nothin.
'....the pretext for the imperial expansion, not the driver behind it'
Well this is an opinion too. While the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. I'd like to see evidence to support your opinion when talking about the USSR. Evidence that isn't simply the warped perspective of Western historians - especially Anglophones. Frankly this opinion simply isn't universally valid. Certainly not at all times and in all cases.
And I am in no way trying to whitewash the repressive nature of Bolshevism, Stalin's murderous regime nor the stifling gerontocracy of the late Soviet era.
But it's de rigueur this days to consider all Soviet agenda as deceptive, cynical and manipulative. That it never really sought to better the condition of humanity at all. Even when the fig leaf hiding US aggressive expansion has always been infinitely smaller.
I see no attempt to present propaganda from Glenn. And Putin's attempts at trying to restructure a European security architecture were consistent and well-known.
I got more than spelling, but little of much value.
I also see no attempt to present propaganda by Mr Diesen. I wouldn't be a subscriber if I did.
I merely think he's missed a trick and reflexive fanbois defenses of his writing are of no value to him or anyone else in increasing our collective understanding.
Value is entirely subjective, so I cannot answer for your preferences.
For example, if we believe that there is only one god and that this one god is our god, we motivate our societies to spread the belief in our god to the entire planet, by force if need be.
The same applies to "universal human rights", which Western societies want to spread to the entire planet, again by force if need be.
You have conceived of this concept, ie. the use of ideology as pretext for imperial expansion. The concept has merits, as in the cases above, but when you doctrinally defend it in all and every situation, you set it up as a universal truth, which reveals your own imperial mindset.
Marxism is also an ideology that could be used for imperial conquest. The question is whether or not it was used in that way in each and every case. The answer is quite clearly no. The Brezhnev Doctrine provided that the Soviets should help communist regimes to defend against hostile US regime-change operations. It was not to topple capitalist governments in Soviet regime-change operations.
Having defeated the Nazis, the Soviets even allowed the UK/US to topple the communists in Greece by force and prevent a communist government by Gladio stay-behind operations in Italy, because the Soviets respected the engagements they had made in Yalta.
Not all universalist concepts demand the simultaneous commitment to spread them by force.
It is the USA that promulgated the doctrine of peace through superior firepower, not the Christ of the New Testament who is also called the Prince of Peace.
Again, I did not say that the concept is true in every circumstance, I said it is a feature of every Empire. If you would care to offer a counter-example I'm more than willing to concede the point and adjust my own thinking.
The Soviets were far more afraid of US/NATO attacks than the reverse, in spite of western propaganda constantly frightening us with the reds under the bed scaremongering, 4 minute warnings, hiding under the schooldesk drills, etc.
And with good reason; the US remains the only government to have nuked another in anger, and they did it precisely to send a message to the USSR, the PRC, and anyone else who would dare to oppose them:
"We will nuke you at any time and for any reason, or for no reason."
The Soviets believed them because it had already been demonstrated. There was no direct military objective in nuking Japan, only imperial political objectives and possibly some scientific, technological, and biological curiosity.
The Soviets' prudent caution when it came to areas of conflict with the USA is not evidence that they were more moral or idealistic than their imperial rivals. It simply indicates they had a firm grasp of the realities of their situation.
The issue was: was the Soviet Union imperialist because of its universalist Marxist ideology?
The Soviet Union was interested in security (just like Russia today). The Soviet Union (Russia) had/has the longest land border that is hard to defend because of few obstacles to keep out invaders.
That's in contrast with Island nations like GB, or the US, which is protected by two Oceans and weak countries in the North and South. Like pirates, the US/UK can safely attack countries around the world without fear of retaliation
Russia, on the other hand, suffered invasions all through its history (the Vikings, the Germanic knights, the Mongols, the Swedes, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the French, the British, the Ottoman empire, etc.).
Imperialism aims to conquer resources. Russia has more resources than it needs. What Russia wants is security, not imperial conquest. The same applied to the Soviet Union.
To my eyes that's a naive perspective. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong (I'm hardly the measure of such things) but it just doesn't compute for me. I'll happily concede that, to the degree it is true at all, it was far more true of the USSR than it was of the USA at the time.
I do not think modern Russia is an empire. I'm fairly sure that Putin's experience of the USSR and his observations of the current trajectory of the USA and compared to say, China for example, has convinced him that empire is a dangerous game that cannot ever be won, only held for a while until its own inherent self-contradictions destroy it.
This is how it happened indeed. At the point we are now, Russia won't trust the US so quick anymore, and this makes negotiations extremely difficult. Do not be wondered when Russia want to set the borders from NATO back to 1991. Personally i think that the only solution is to end NATO so west Europe will be forced to work on friendship. War with Russia is for sure not going to work, Russia is already prepared and ready to react on a attack from NATO, so chances in that field are gone.
Pan-European Security implies a common ruleset abided by everybody. There is no room for hegemony. Therefore it cannot possibly work. If Mr. Putin is still aiming for this goal, he would be wise to spend his time planning against the next OTAN assault.
I believe so but of course Russia would soon threaten US dominance in NATO, not to mention its very reason for existence. I think Putin was trolling them.
Also, let's remember Lord Ismay's famous quote:
"NATO's purpose is to keep the Russians out, the US in, and the Germans down" - true to this very day, apparently.
Its ironic that the article talks about a breach of the Helsinki Accords.
Today, Finland would not be a credible broker of any peace and security agreements between global powers. Nor Stockholm. And the Palestinians would dismiss any idea of a new Oslo Accords when Israel is shadow member of the NATO and ultimately Norway is a US puppet on the side of the zionist agenda, despite any symbolic dissent.
The ceaseless expansion of NATO was one of the worst things the so-called west has done. And out of boundless greed for power and money. Neocolonialsm. .
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson has said that he and Colin Powell couldn't understand where the push for NATO expansion was coming from. They finally concluded it was money, because the committee established to look at the question was heavily weighted with representative of the Military Industrial Complex. Maybe that was so, but Jonathan Haslam in "Hubris" argues that the expansion policy was to ensure that the US remained "relevant" in Europe (i.e. could continue to influence and dominate).
Atlantic Council
Excellent summary!
What should not be left out of the discussion is the dismantlement of the regime of arms controls that made it possible to overcome the Cold War. The US cancelled the ABM treaty in 2002, the INF treaty in 2019 and the OpenSkies treaty in 2020. The only remaining treaty on the limitation of the strategic forces, the New START treaty, will expire in 2026, without either side making any attempt at negotiating a renewal. Following the cancellation of the INF treaty, the US announced its intention of stationing hypersonic intermediate range missiles in Germany, which can reach Moscow in a few minutes.
Aside from the Cuba crisis, we had at least 4 near encounters with nuclear war due to false alarms during the 20th century. With the introduction of new weapons systems, reduced prewarning times and a total lack of trust on both sides, the probability of nuclear war has increased to such a degree that it is bound to happen sooner or later.
What's even more worrying is that, in its attempt to impose a strategic defeat on Russia, Western propaganda has downplayed the danger of nuclear war, while some strategists even claim that the US could "win" a nuclear war.
What interests me, Glenn, is what happens after NATO... PESCO and the European Defence Union - initiatives which have been moving forward behind the scenes for decades..
Without discussion of these, the whole topic seems pretty fatuous - other than recognising NATO as being the force behind its own inevitable collapse..
While the British were part of the EU, they vetoed any European military cooperation outside of Nato. After Brexit, the EU launched a number of projects for military cooperation (such as PESCO), which immediately faced opposition from Washington. PESCO was to streamline military procurement by joint European procurement projects. I think the opposition from Washington was attenuated by promising the Americans that US contractors would be able to bid for PESCO projects, even though European manufacturers don't have equal access to US military procurement.
I've known about Bill Burns opposition to NATO expansion into Ukraine for a while. Providing a date for the "brightest of all redlines" quote would obviously aid understanding. This was 2008 while he was ambassador to Russia, rather than as CIA director (at present).
This is proof that Burns is capable of acknowledging the opposing point of view, which I'd like to think was a prerequisite for the post of CIA director, and also ambassador to Russia.
Without knowing much more about Burns than the above, he seems an impressive individual.
The same can be said about William Perry, me having had a quick scan through his career, assuming the Double Yoo Iki Paedia can be believed (let's assume in this instance it can be).
Neither of these men appear to be 'softies' or 'dovish'.
My interest (as a European) is in how people like Burns and Perry, who have risen to posts of CIA director and Secretary of State for Defence respectively, get overruled and by whom.
Who are the people Perry refers to as "the people I was arguing with". How do these nebulous "people I was arguing with" get to overrule the Secretary of State for Defence? Surely only the president carries the authority? Perhaps 'overrule' is the wrong word as there is no indication that they took decisions that were overruled. But their sage advice was ignored. By whom? In a true democracy, voters like me want names, transparency. We don't like our lives being placed at risk by "people I was arguing with". Who were/are they? I want to know exactly who is putting my life, and the lives of everyone else on the planet, at risk. Who were they? Names.
Perry apparently resigned due to the "constant strain of sending US military on life-threatening missions", appearing to lay the blame for this on the US Congress. It's a strange system, isn't it, Congress continuously sending men to war, at times against the wishes of the Secretary of State for Defence. Where is his authority? Where is the respect for his position? Where is the democracy? As a European, living in a country whose governments are elected and then governmental positions decided upon by the elected leader, I have been quite astonished to read about the horse-trading that goes on in the United States. Donald Trump wants so-and-so to do such and such a job, but then he gets his nominee thrown out by Congress or the Senate or whichever body approves or blocks such things. Incredible.
That's not to say that a more collegiate approach is necessarily and inherently a bad thing. However, almost everything I ever come across in relation to the US Congress is how they are in the hands of lobbyists rather than working for their electorates. If Congressmen/women can be and are bought, well you can yourself a democracy, but what you are is a lobbyocracy.
Trump could jet into wherever, sit down with Putin, pull off the "deal of the century", which to my mind would be one that adds even five minutes back onto the Doomsday Clock. But then I read/hear that not a single congressman/woman or senator would ratify it domestically. What the hell kind of political system is that then? Certainly not one that represents its electorate.
The country is 'sovereign' (~an institutional psychopath). To hell with the people that live in it.
We must fight to keep Ukraine sovereign! Even if all the Ukrainian people get killed in the process. It must remain there, named, Ukraine-shaped, on Google maps. Slava Ukraine!
Madness.
I can see, doing some background reading on Perry, that he was heavily involved with the Budapest Memorandum, which the Alexs on The Duran regularly mention in relation to Ukraine complaining about having been forced to give up "their" (Soviet) nuclear weapons. The point, often unvoiced it seems, was surely that they were moved backwards (i.e. eastwards) into Russia as a threat reduction gesture (which Ukraine signed up to). Having negotiated a threat reduction, you don't then ruin it by advancing into the vacated zone, except that's exactly what NATO have done, to the eternal shame of those responsible for it.
The Blinken connection is tragic. Donald Blinken was present at the Budapest Memorandum signing, being ambassador to Hungary at the time, so officially represented his country at the threat reduction stage of the equation. A generation later, his son, Antony, is heavily (possibly primarily, given doubts over Biden's cognitive capacity) responsible for completely undoing all the good work of his father's generation by militarising Ukraine into invading Russian territory.
Talk about shitting on your father's legacy...
I have been saying the very same things - name the ‘people of the shadows’. It’s evident they’re there, as there have been others like them before, throughout history. Yet, to even say something like that will earn you the badge of a conspiracy theorist in polite society in the West. I am appalled by the lack of education and critical thinking facilities of the West and fear we are doomed.
The West didn't mean well.
A superb and timely review of such pertinent history, Glenn. Thank you so much for your steady logic and forthright human reasoning.
Thank you, Glen. This is a great analysis.
The West created a trust with Russia and then “ others” took over the agenda and utterly abused it . It’s a common modus operandi for the West to indulge in it socially appears .
You can spell that Doomsday for violent fools.
"The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies."
When your analysis begins with faulty axioms your conclusions are almost certain to be wrong.
There were two empires following the ineluctable pressure of Empire: continuous expansion, and thus forced into conflict over who would own the previously unconquered territories of central Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.
The Empire of the USSR utilised a psuedo-marxist rhetoric to justify its continuous expansion and the "necessity" to resist the evil capitalist exploiters of the West, while the USA utilised a psuedo-capitalist rhetoric of freedom, pornography and flying cars to justify its continuous expansion and the "necessity" to resist the evil godless communists.
Both these rhetorical devices were fake, merely figleaves to cover the naked ugly fruit of the raw pursuit of power, and to justify devoting enormous proportions of the respective budgets to weapons. In the choice between guns and butter, they both chose the guns.
The idea that the rulers of these Empires were "true believers" in their ideological figleaves is risible, contradicted emphatically by their own policy actions and lifestyles.
Just for God's sake stop making these silly excuses for them.
Nobody, least of all Glenn, is making any excuses for anybody. Nor are there any false axioms in the quote you have used.
Your only criticism seems to be that Glenn has failed to use the word 'empire'. While the USSR ended over 30 years ago. And yes, it was seeking export an ideology - just as the US (and before it the UK) has always done.
PS learn to spell pseudo..
The idea of world revolution made the Soviet Union support socialist regimes worldwide. That can be seen as a driver for imperial expansion; however, I don't think it's quite the same as the Anglo-American drive for global hegemony.
The Soviets kept the territory conquered in 1945 primarily as a buffer against Western aggression. Immediately after the Soviets defeated Germany, the British planned Operation Unthinkable to attack the Soviets together with the Wehrmacht, and after Hiroshima, the Americans planned Operation Dropshot to destroy the Soviet Union with 300 nukes. The successors of these plans continue today. They also armed the remnants of the Ukrainian OUN and UPA to wage an underground war in the Soviet Union until the 1950s.
The Soviets wanted a buffer of neutral states to protect against attacks from the West. Stalin even offered to reunify Germany on condition that Germany would become neutral. The West didn't want neutrality and created Nato in 1949. The Warsaw pact was only established in 1955, when Germany joined Nato and any hope of neutrality had to be abandoned.
Marxist communist philosophy includes the idea of brotherhood - supporting people to gain self determination and freedom from oppression by capitalists. That’s about supporting parallel efforts across humanity, not about command and control aka empire.
On the other hand capitalism as practiced in the UK and US is not about enabling people to control their own lives. It’s about tearing down limits to exploitation and setting up vassal dependent units across the world to be exploited solely by the imperial centre.
To paint these as one and same is laughable.
Also, while I agree spelling is impotant for clarity, we should also remember that London, DC, Berlin, Paris etc are managed by a cadre of highly educated people who can indeed spell pseudo….or genocide….or….exploitation…..but good luck getting them to recognise these things when they don’t wish to admit what they, you and me, can all see clearly.
So let’s not go there.
Indeed. But nowhere did I try or intend to paint them as the same. Personally, I'm happy I was born in the West - that was surely a lot more fun than living behind the Iron Curtain, for example.
My point was, and is, that both the USSR and the USA were empires during the Cold War (the USA still is imho) and the strongest imperative in any empire is the perpetuation (which in turn demands expansion, for reasons we can explore later if necessary) of the empire, and thus of the ruling elite which governs it.
These elites rarely if ever tell their own people the truth about why they're doing what they're doing, let alone their enemies nor the rest of the "international community", the "non-aligned nations" or whoever is remaining outside of their imperial rule at the time. The rare occasion when they do are either inconsequenctial ("oftentimes to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence") or purely tactical exigencies which tomorrow will be memory-holed and repudiated ("we have always been at war with east asia").
Their motives are always presented as altruistic, self-sacrificing, noble ideals whereas their behaviour both corporate and personal always belies these claims.
This (the existence of empire, its' inherent nature and thus strongest internal imperatives, and the deceits these produce in turn) are my central points and the lack of consideration of them leads to my very mild criticism of Mr Diesen's analyses.
This does not ignore the concomittant fact that many of the people inside the empire really ARE "true believers" in the propaganda rhetoric of the imperial elite, and genuinely believe that the empire's policies are constructed in service to those ideals. One sees this in other contexts, too. For example, the UN is run by a highly deceitful elite set of functionaries whose behaviour is in dramatic contrast to the stated aims and ideals of the organisation, but 99% of the people I've met and/or read that have worked in the UN were incredibly idealistic people who got into it thinking that it really does exist to serve and propagate those ideals. Most of them left having a markedly different impression from sometimes decades on the inside of that organisation. One sees it in the jingoist aspects of MAGA and USA! USA! chanting, too. The greatest country ever, indeed.
I'm emphatically not here to criticise Russia or the USSR (I play no favourites in spite of what others here have said about me) but to point out that giving either of them the benefit of the doubt (I don't think there is any really but to each his own) isn't helping us to understand the dynamics of the current western imperial attacks on Russia, their true motivations, nor what their ruling elite understand or misunderstand about Russia.
You did pain them the same before. And you did it here again.
The Soviets did not set out to control an empire. Germany which controlled Europe invaded them and the Soviets beat them all the way back.
Post war the Americans, which occupied most of Germany and had huge armies and base there still even today, began empire building and began hostilities via the Soviets, who were forced to hold ground and set up a buffer zone. Thats it.
Don’t “BS “both sides”.
The recent publication of Soviet pre-war buildups strongly suggest that the USSR was indeed planning to invade Germany. part of the reason why Operation Barbarossa was rushed was that the German high command had concluded exactly that.
Again, I didn't say they were identical, except in the manner in which all empires share some common features (if they didn't then at least one them would not be an empire).
But to argue that the Soviets didn't "set out to control an empire" and to argue that they were or were not an empire, are two different arguments.
The 'recent publication of Soviet pre-war buildups' might strongly suggest the USSR was planning to invade Germany to you.
To others it might strongly suggest that USSR understood exactly where the Nazis were planning to attack.
And as the Germans realised that more time would only mean a greater USSR build-up, Barbarossa kicked off. But let's make no mistake. The Nazis had already amassed a huge force
Finally, in this long-lasting Great Game, Halford Mackinder's analysis of the vulnerability of the Land Power to attacks along its huge borders by the Sea Power ensured that the Land Power would constantly have to keep control of countries contiguous with them.
This had the permanent and very unfortunate effect of always enabling the Sea Power to accuse it of expansion and empire building - thus handing the Sea Power a propaganda advantage.
And little has changed. Russia is still in this position.
You're entitled to your opinion.
No, the export of the ideology was the pretext for the imperial expansion, not the driver behind it. It's not about using the word; it's about understanding the concept and all that it necessarily entails.
Presenting the propaganda of the empire as if it is/was the reality IS making excuses for them.
If spelling mistakes is all you got, then you got nothin.
'....the pretext for the imperial expansion, not the driver behind it'
Well this is an opinion too. While the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. I'd like to see evidence to support your opinion when talking about the USSR. Evidence that isn't simply the warped perspective of Western historians - especially Anglophones. Frankly this opinion simply isn't universally valid. Certainly not at all times and in all cases.
And I am in no way trying to whitewash the repressive nature of Bolshevism, Stalin's murderous regime nor the stifling gerontocracy of the late Soviet era.
But it's de rigueur this days to consider all Soviet agenda as deceptive, cynical and manipulative. That it never really sought to better the condition of humanity at all. Even when the fig leaf hiding US aggressive expansion has always been infinitely smaller.
I see no attempt to present propaganda from Glenn. And Putin's attempts at trying to restructure a European security architecture were consistent and well-known.
I got more than spelling, but little of much value.
I also see no attempt to present propaganda by Mr Diesen. I wouldn't be a subscriber if I did.
I merely think he's missed a trick and reflexive fanbois defenses of his writing are of no value to him or anyone else in increasing our collective understanding.
Value is entirely subjective, so I cannot answer for your preferences.
Imperialism is about universalisms.
For example, if we believe that there is only one god and that this one god is our god, we motivate our societies to spread the belief in our god to the entire planet, by force if need be.
The same applies to "universal human rights", which Western societies want to spread to the entire planet, again by force if need be.
You have conceived of this concept, ie. the use of ideology as pretext for imperial expansion. The concept has merits, as in the cases above, but when you doctrinally defend it in all and every situation, you set it up as a universal truth, which reveals your own imperial mindset.
Marxism is also an ideology that could be used for imperial conquest. The question is whether or not it was used in that way in each and every case. The answer is quite clearly no. The Brezhnev Doctrine provided that the Soviets should help communist regimes to defend against hostile US regime-change operations. It was not to topple capitalist governments in Soviet regime-change operations.
Having defeated the Nazis, the Soviets even allowed the UK/US to topple the communists in Greece by force and prevent a communist government by Gladio stay-behind operations in Italy, because the Soviets respected the engagements they had made in Yalta.
Not all universalist concepts demand the simultaneous commitment to spread them by force.
It is the USA that promulgated the doctrine of peace through superior firepower, not the Christ of the New Testament who is also called the Prince of Peace.
Again, I did not say that the concept is true in every circumstance, I said it is a feature of every Empire. If you would care to offer a counter-example I'm more than willing to concede the point and adjust my own thinking.
The Soviets were far more afraid of US/NATO attacks than the reverse, in spite of western propaganda constantly frightening us with the reds under the bed scaremongering, 4 minute warnings, hiding under the schooldesk drills, etc.
And with good reason; the US remains the only government to have nuked another in anger, and they did it precisely to send a message to the USSR, the PRC, and anyone else who would dare to oppose them:
"We will nuke you at any time and for any reason, or for no reason."
The Soviets believed them because it had already been demonstrated. There was no direct military objective in nuking Japan, only imperial political objectives and possibly some scientific, technological, and biological curiosity.
The Soviets' prudent caution when it came to areas of conflict with the USA is not evidence that they were more moral or idealistic than their imperial rivals. It simply indicates they had a firm grasp of the realities of their situation.
The issue was: was the Soviet Union imperialist because of its universalist Marxist ideology?
The Soviet Union was interested in security (just like Russia today). The Soviet Union (Russia) had/has the longest land border that is hard to defend because of few obstacles to keep out invaders.
That's in contrast with Island nations like GB, or the US, which is protected by two Oceans and weak countries in the North and South. Like pirates, the US/UK can safely attack countries around the world without fear of retaliation
Russia, on the other hand, suffered invasions all through its history (the Vikings, the Germanic knights, the Mongols, the Swedes, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the French, the British, the Ottoman empire, etc.).
Imperialism aims to conquer resources. Russia has more resources than it needs. What Russia wants is security, not imperial conquest. The same applied to the Soviet Union.
To my eyes that's a naive perspective. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong (I'm hardly the measure of such things) but it just doesn't compute for me. I'll happily concede that, to the degree it is true at all, it was far more true of the USSR than it was of the USA at the time.
I do not think modern Russia is an empire. I'm fairly sure that Putin's experience of the USSR and his observations of the current trajectory of the USA and compared to say, China for example, has convinced him that empire is a dangerous game that cannot ever be won, only held for a while until its own inherent self-contradictions destroy it.
It's always a mix of true belief and cynicism, within groups and even with individual persons. Even nihilists worship idols.
Indeed.
This is how it happened indeed. At the point we are now, Russia won't trust the US so quick anymore, and this makes negotiations extremely difficult. Do not be wondered when Russia want to set the borders from NATO back to 1991. Personally i think that the only solution is to end NATO so west Europe will be forced to work on friendship. War with Russia is for sure not going to work, Russia is already prepared and ready to react on a attack from NATO, so chances in that field are gone.
Pan-European Security implies a common ruleset abided by everybody. There is no room for hegemony. Therefore it cannot possibly work. If Mr. Putin is still aiming for this goal, he would be wise to spend his time planning against the next OTAN assault.
Excellent summary of what went wrong, thanks a lot
Did Putin really, like Gorbachev, want Russia to be a absorbed into the US-controlled Nato alliance and thus become a subservient member?
I believe so but of course Russia would soon threaten US dominance in NATO, not to mention its very reason for existence. I think Putin was trolling them.
Also, let's remember Lord Ismay's famous quote:
"NATO's purpose is to keep the Russians out, the US in, and the Germans down" - true to this very day, apparently.