2022: The Year Of Russia?

Here in the US the news continues to be dominated by the Prog Left’s ongoing effort to bend America and Americans to its will: top down central governance by the Left elite, canceling of all dissenters, sexual deviance the norm for all—starting virtually from the womb. Few Americans—with the notable exception of Joe Manchin—have been paying attention to the reemergence of Russia as a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. No longer a ‘failed nation’ to be pushed around with impunity, as the Clinton/Bush/Obama Neocon policy would have had us believe. Russia’s Putin has made his view—a largely reasonable one—perfectly clear. He has defined a red line: No offensive weapons are to be stationed by the US in nations so close to Russia as to be able to strike at the heart of the Russian nation within minutes. Russia’s geopolitical security concerns as a nation must be respected, as also Russia’s status as a major power. No doubt the details are negotiable, but Putin has stated the situation Russia finds itself in in stark terms: Russia has been backed into a corner, the US is placing missiles “on Russia’s front porch.”

It’s not a question of Russia claiming parity with the US in all respects. It’s that Russia believes its arms developments—notably in the field of hypersonic weapons—enables Russia to assert its national interest when its very sovereignty is threatened, when push comes to shove. Putin knows that the US’s ambition is to force Russia to knuckle under to the Great Reset—sexual deviancy and all. Putin has made that point clear as well: Russia will remain devoted to normal human nature.

Most Americans have remained focused on internal affairs—we are separated from the rest of the world by thousands of miles of water on both East and West. Few Americans can appreciate the apprehension that arrogant Neocon hegemonist strategy has engendered among Russian strategists over the decades since the demise of the Soviet Union. And now, just as Russia has regained its strategic footing, the DC Establishment has seen fit to oust an intelligent, strategically oriented president and install a non-entity who will continue past Russia policies. Look for a steady stream of foreign policy setbacks, avoidable but now highly likely due to the shortsightedness of our bought and paid for ruling elite.

Correspondent George, who supplies me with a constant stream of Russia related materials. Among them are two articles that I recommend to all readers, because Russia is not going to buckle this time around. Conservatives need to get past the hysterical rhetoric and evaluate Russia policy from a sound geopolitical point of view. These articles are good places to start.

The first, which appeared at The Hill on December 26th makes just one point—but that one point calls into question the very basis for most of our policy over the last several decades:

Reports of Russia's decline are greatly exaggerated

Russia, says the author, is a Great Power—America needs to deal with that reality:

Tales of Russia’s demise have circulated with remarkable consistency since the fall of the Soviet Union on Dec. 25 exactly three decades ago. Having fallen from its superpower pedestal, the Soviet Union’s successor state was routinely characterized as a “declining power,” a “has-been power” and a “downshift power.”

In recent years, the more dire prophesies of Russian collapse that circulated in the 1990s having gone unfulfilled, such characterizations have given way to a recognition that Russia is in fact a “persistent power.” Fundamentally, though, nothing has changed. Whether rebranded as a mere “nuisance power” or as a perpetually “disruptive” power, Russia is viewed now as it has been since it emerged out of the wreckage of the Soviet Union in December 1991 — as a broken, if sometimes petulant, vestige of a once-mighty superpower. 

But as the crisis in Ukraine has once again demonstrated, such characterizations are grossly misleading. Indeed, they couldn’t be more wrong. Russia is not the geopolitical basket-case it was in the immediate post-Soviet era. Nor is it the bit player on the world stage it is often portrayed as in the Western press. In fact, quite the opposite: Viewed dispassionately and in the cold light of Realpolitik, Russia is unambiguously a “great power” — a country possessing both substantial instruments of national power and the will to use these instruments to influence political outcomes around the world. And any American grand strategy worthy of the name will have to take that undeniable fact into account. 

When it comes to possessing a substantial and varied instrument of power, there can be little doubt that Russia meets the “great power” standard.

…

Simply put, acknowledging Russia’s great power status is to recognize that the factory settings of international relations have kicked in once again. We have been blinded to the fact that multipolarity is the default configuration of power in the international order by three-quarters of a century, first of bipolarity during the Cold War, then of unipolarity in the post-Cold War era and now of the illusion of a second Cold War with China. But, as an honest appraisal of Russian power clearly indicates, this is neither a bipolar nor a unipolar moment. It is an era of multipolar great power competition. To delude ourselves that it is something else – Cold War II or some similar mis-analogy in which the U.S. is the “sole remaining superpower” – is to fundamentally misunderstand the geopolitical environment we find ourselves in today.

Importantly, the author recognizes that Russia’s status as a Great Power is not one dimensional, based solely on a new weapons technology:

Similarly, there can be little doubt that Moscow is able to field the “soft” and “sharp” power capabilities of a great power. Regarding the former – which in Russia’s case refers to the country’s ability to “wage friendship” – Russia has developed a formidable arsenal of tools for generating good will and attracting political support. These include Russian media (including the RT and Sputnik networks), Russian cultural centers, the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian universities and research centers. ...

Finally, Russia exercises soft power by actively promoting the idea that there are viable alternatives to “degenerate” Western liberal democracy …

This point about “soft power” is very important. It comes at a time when more than a few nations are seeking a counter balance to the bully boy tactics that America has become used to employing. The US is increasingly seen as an unstable and unreliable partner. Indications of this shift in attitudes are becoming all too visible, as witness India negotiating a major arms and energy deal with Russia, and the UAE preferring to deal with France for warplanes, rather than sacrifice its sovereignty to the US (that’s the UAE view of what the deal would have involved). We’ll be seeing more of this, given the feckless character of the Zhou regime.

The second article is by a very experienced former diplomat and strategic thinker, Jack Matlock. Matlock speaks with quite a bit of authority on Russian strategic matters, having been  U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union and a confidant of both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Now 92 years old, Matlock is distressed at the ham handed policies with regard to Russia that the US has pursued since the Bush-Cheney years. His concerns are heightened by the current US brinkmanship with regard to Ukraine:

Ukraine: Tragedy of a Nation Divided

Matlock’s fundamental criticism is twofold: The US shows little to no understanding of itself and its own true interests, and just as little understanding of the realities of Ukrainian history and culture. Ukraine—he says, in effect—is a geographical reality that has been cobbled together without regard for the differing historical and cultural realities that have shaped its different regions.

Matlock begins by making a fundamental point: the crisis in Ukraine is not simply a crisis between Ukraine and Russia, but is very much a crisis within Ukraine itself. It would be analogous to trying to cobble together the United States from scratch today, but with the Blue and Red states forming separate linguistic, historic, and cultural blocs.

Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised the specter of possible conflict between nuclear armed powers. Furthermore, in denying that Russia has a “right” to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere.

Ukraine, as a nation, he continues, is a work in progress. That work has been hampered by very basic missteps that have thrown up grave obstacles to the attempt to forge a true Ukrainian nation.

The fact is, Ukraine is a state but not yet a nation. In the thirty years of its independence, it has not yet found a leader who can unite its citizens in a shared concept of Ukrainian identity. Yes, Russia has interfered, but it is not Russian interference that created Ukrainian disunity but rather the haphazard way the country was assembled from parts that were not always mutually compatible.

The territory of the Ukrainian state claimed by the government in Kyiv was assembled, not by Ukrainians themselves but by outsiders, and took its present form following the end of World War II. To think of it as a traditional or primordial whole is absurd.

... the Crimea had been considered an integral part of Russia since Catherine II “the Great” conquered it in the 18th century.

The basic problem which has led to the Ukrainian civil war and the detachment of Crimea is a wrongheaded constitution, one ill-suited to the needs of the reality that is Ukraine:

From its inception as an internationally recognized independent state, Ukraine has been deeply divided along linguistic and cultural lines. Nevertheless, it has maintained a unitary central government rather than a federal one that would permit a degree of local autonomy. The constitution gave the elected president the power to appoint the chief executives in the provinces (oblasti) rather than having them subject to election in each province—as is the case, for example—in the United States.

Into this complex, perhaps intractable, situation, the US has blundered. The Neocon policy makers have shown not only no understanding for Russia’s strategic position, but no sense of how US actions in Ukraine are viewed around the world (I have omitted Matlock’s summary of the US-EU involvement in the violent coup against Ukraine’s elected government). That’s wrong in any situation, but when dealing with a legitimate Great Power—one with highly advanced nuclear weapons—this refusal to see your own reality as well as the reality of the other side could lead to tragic consequences.

Russia is extremely sensitive about foreign military activity adjacent to its borders, as any other country would be and the United States always has been. It has signaled repeatedly that it will stop at nothing to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine. Nevertheless, eventual Ukrainian membership in NATO has been an avowed objective of U.S. and NATO policy since the Bush-Cheney administration. This makes absolutely no sense. It is also dangerous to confront a nuclear-armed power with military threats on its border.

When I hear comments now such as, “Russia has no right to claim a ‘sphere of influence,’” I am puzzled. It is not a question of legal “rights” but of probable consequences. It is as if someone announces, “We never passed a law of gravity so we can ignore it.” No one is saying that Ukraine does not have a “right” to apply for NATO membership. Of course it does. The question is whether the members of the alliance would serve their own interest if they agreed. In fact they would assume a very dangerous liability.

In this final excerpt Matlock alludes briefly to the difficulty that always comes up when dealing with Progs and Neocons. They may invoke reality, but it’s only as a talking point. They deal with the real world as if it were composed of abstract concepts, rather than historical and cultural realities. It’s similar to the heads we win tails you lose approach they adopt in domestic affairs.

Ultimately, all these legal arguments and appeals to abstract concepts are beside the point. So far as Ukraine is concerned, it can never be a united, prosperous country unless it has reasonably close and civil relations with Russia. That means, inter alia, giving its Russian speaking citizens equal rights to their language and culture. That is a fact determined by geography and history. Ukraine’s friends in Europe and North America should help them understand that rather than pursuing what could easily turn out to be a suicidal course.

The important thing to remember, however, is that none of this is happening in a vacuum. Just as our missteps in Afghanistan have had major negative consequences, so to continued missteps in relations with Russia will lead to a further deterioration of America’s strategic position in the world. Watch all this closely in 2022, because matters appear to be coming to a head.