Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The New Cold War

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Anyone who deludes themselves that it hasn’t restarted, and it isn’t ideological, needs to read this:

Mr. Prokhanov, who speaks in rich, metaphorical Russian and has the slightly disheveled look of a beat poet, contrasted the present government with that of Boris Yeltsin, the president in the 1990s. “In Yeltsin’s time I was seen as a monster by the regime, a character out of hell,” he said. “I was under threat of arrest, and now I am regularly invited to Kremlin events.”

Though he said he had met the president only a handful of times, “The intelligence officers around him pay much more attention to ideology, and for them it is clear that ideological war is an important instrument.”

If Mr. Putin himself decided to make an ideological change, Mr. Prokhanov said, it was in December 2011, when tens of thousands of urban liberals, angry over ballot-stuffing and falsification in parliamentary elections, massed on a city square, Bolotnaya, chanting, “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia Without Putin.”

“During the time of Bolotnaya, he experienced fear,” Mr. Prokhanov said. “He felt that the whole class which he had created had betrayed him, cheated him, and he had a desire to replace one class with another. From the moment you got back from that march, we started a change of the Russian elite.”

Another person who has been swept into the mainstream is one of Mr. Prokhanov’s former protégés, Aleksandr G. Dugin, who, in the late 1990s, called for “the blinding dawn of a new Russian Revolution, fascism — borderless as our lands, and red as our blood.”

Virulently anti-American, Mr. Dugin has urged a “conservative revolution” that combines left-wing economics and right-wing cultural traditionalism. In a 1997 book, he introduced the idea of building a Eurasian empire “constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy,” which he identified as Atlanticism, liberal values, and geopolitical control by the United States.

“Left-wing economics and right-wing cultural traditionalism.” Gee, where have we heard of things like that before?

And note that classical liberalism aka libertarianism and individualism, which the modern left calls “right wing,” bears no resemblance to any of this.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“Putin is no Hitler, but Hitler would recognize his moves“:

Adolf wanted to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. Putin is attempting to rip up the post-Cold War settlement in Europe and Central Asia. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia is much weaker than its opponents, so it can’t achieve its goal through a direct military challenge against its primary enemies. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia must be clever until it grows strong, and it must play on its enemies’ hesitations, divisions and weaknesses until and unless it is ready to take them on head to head.

“Keep them guessing” is rule number one. Nobody was better than Hitler at playing with his enemies’ minds. For every warlike speech, there was an invitation to a peace conference. For every uncompromising demand, there was a promise of lasting tranquillity once that last little troublesome problem had been negotiated safely away. He was so successful at it (and Stalin, too was good at this game) in part because his opponents so desperately wanted peace. French politicians like Leon Blum and British leaders like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were as hungry for peace (it was the Depression after all, and both countries had suffered immensely in World War One) as Barack Obama and Francois Hollande are today. Commendably and properly, they wanted to fix their domestic economies, create a more just society at home, repair their infrastructure and cut their defense budgets. They were not in the mood for trouble overseas, and so a cold blooded con man found them to be easy marks.

I think if you look up “easy marks” in the dictionary, you’ll see pictures of Obama and Kerry.

7 thoughts on “The New Cold War”

  1. Russia’s GDP has been growing since Putin got into power. Oil and gas can fund a lot of things. It is hardly surprising that someone decided to reunite the broken up pieces of the Russian Empire.

    Still for me Russia has all the shades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For all the growth they have had the US still out grew them in that period. China has outstripped their growth and has a larger GDP than they do. While China is still lagging them in some segments of military R&D they have surpassed them in other segments. Regardless of any cultural affinities they may have their main opponent is China not the US. The question is if they realize that and care about it.

    I hope this provides the final impetus for the EU to get rid of its addiction to Russian natural gas but I would not bet on it.

  2. The annoying thing is that it wouldn’t even be that hard to erode Putin’s power substantially. So much of that power is dependent on his image, and it would be so very easy to reveal him as the tyrant he truly is and to continue to remind everyone of the fact at every opportunity. But our politicians are so unintelligent, so unsophisticated, so unsubtle, so witless and feckless that they are utterly incapable of doing anything of the sort. Instead they are outsmarted by Putin at every turn.

    Obama’s foreign policy acumen is a joke while John Kerry’s is so disastrously bad it doesn’t even merit humor as a defense mechanism. Who would have thought that it was possible to have a Sec. State even more monstrously incompetent than Hillary, but somehow Kerry has shown the way.

  3. “But our politicians are so unintelligent, so unsophisticated, so unsubtle, so witless and feckless that they are utterly incapable of doing anything of the sort. Instead they are outsmarted by Putin at every turn.”

    I’m not sure they are out-smarted s much as they are blinded by their quaint 21st century notions while they live in a 19th century world.

    It’s like a maze and our guys are blind and Putin can see.

  4. Oh my….who could have guessed?

    Latvia: the sound of Russia is never far away
    The tiny Baltic State of Latvia fears that after Crimea, they may be next to receive Russian ‘protection’

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/latvia/10701326/Latvia-the-sound-of-Russia-is-never-far-away.html

    ” Last weekend, as pro-Russian forces were surrounding Crimea, Moscow’s ambassador to the Latvian caused further unease by saying that the Kremlin was planning to offer passports and pensions to ethnic Russians in Latvia to “save them from poverty”.

    Indeed, such are the jitters in the three Baltic republics that last weekend, President Barack Obama sent six US fighter jets to join Nato patrols over the Baltics as a sign of reassurance.
    ……………………..
    All the same, he says, if Mr Putin is to be deterred from stirring trouble in the Baltics, it will take more than the odd club owner to take a firm stance. The West, he argues, is currently far too timid on the question of sanctions against Mr Putin’s regime because of fears about upsetting trade relations.

    “As long as your Mr Cameron and Germany’s Mrs Merkel continue to sleep with big business, it is completely possible that trouble will come to Latvia too. Putin’s regime uses Stalin’s methods, but it also like the comforts of the West, and that is where you can act.” “

    1. I do not see it happening. The only countries in the EU with the military backbone to resist somewhat to Russia are the UK and France. Both have been in an economic downturn and have been downsizing their militaries. Both have relations with Russia. The UK financial system rides on a lot of Russian money and France has military hardware contracts with Russia like the sale of the Mistral carriers. Germany is a big importer of Russian natural gas and does not want to do economic sanctions.

      This is not going to end well. Putin is going to assume he has latitude to annex more territories after he annexes Ukraine. Analogies to the Sudetenland invasion are not farfetched. Part of the reason why Hitler managed to invade France was because he had the Czech production infrastructure at his disposal. Ukraine has a lot of military industrial production. Gas turbines, rockets, tanks, ships, etc. If Russia manages to annex Ukraine they will gain a lot of military production overnight.

  5. I think this appearance on Ukraine’s Got Talent might explain Putin’s actions in the Crimea and Ukraine. Holy smokes. If the IOC ever makes pole dancing an Olympic event, the US doesn’t have a prayer. It’s like you’ve been watching kids play around on boards at the park and then seeing what Shaun White or Tony Hawk are doing with the same simple piece of equipment.

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