by Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts:
A source recently sent to me an article by a well-placed Russian foreign affairs expert with a note attached: “He thinks like you do.” Not entirely, but we share some of the same concerns.
“What Is To Be Done?,” by Sergei A. Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow ( https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/an-age-of-wars-what-is-to-be-done/ ) reflects my own views expressed on many occasions, such as that in the face of the Western world’s hostility, Russia should avoid continuing conflict by turning to the East to China and India and to the expansion of BRICS. Like myself Karaganov hopes to avoid the death of mankind in nuclear war. He writes off the pro-Western Atlanticist Integrationist Russian liberals who clinged too long to their fantasy of being an accepted part of the West. Likely, it was this delusional collection of Russian liberals who are responsible for the failures in judgment that Karaganov brings home to the Kremlin, the very same failures that I have pointed out. The last thing Russia needs is interdependence with the West.
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Karaganov points out that Russia has Asian roots dating from the days of Mongol overlords that are as strong as Western roots and that it is China that is rising, not Europe and the US which he regards as essentially washed up politically, economically, morally, and spiritually.
Karaganov writes: “Europe―once a beacon of modernization for us and many other nations―is rapidly moving towards geopolitical nothingness and, hopefully I am wrong, towards moral and political decay. Its still-wealthy market is worth exploiting, but our main effort in relation to the old subcontinent should be morally and politically fencing ourselves off from it. Having first lost its soul―Christianity―it is now losing the fruit of the Enlightenment―rationalism. Besides, on orders from outside [Washington], the Eurobureaucracy is itself isolating Russia from Europe. We are grateful.”
“A break with Europe is an ordeal for many Russians. But we must go through it as quickly as possible. Naturally, fencing-off should not become a principle or be total. But any talk of recreating a European security system is a dangerous chimera. Systems of cooperation and security should be built within the framework of the continent of the future―Greater Eurasia―by inviting European countries that are interested and are of interest to us.”
The West, he writes, is the modern equivalent to Sodom and Gomorrah. “It would have been better to finish our Western, European odyssey a century earlier. There now remains little of use to be borrowed from the West, though plenty of rubbish seeps in from it. But, as we belatedly complete the journey, we will retain the great European culture that is now rejected by post-European fashion.” As the West has rejected itself, it is an evil and Russia should fence itself off from it. He answered my recent question by saying that the culture the West created and is now alienated from will be saved by Russia.
There are other points where we have the same judgment, such as the defeatist way Putin conducted the conflict with Ukraine and his acceptance of provocations that escalated Western participation in the conflict. The way Putin tries to make the West feel non-threatened even as the West threatens Russia feeds conflict. To continually express your willingness to negotiate with Washington which intends to destroy Russia and Putin personally is an extraordinary failure of judgment. The lack of realism smacks you in the face.
Karaganov writes that Russia should revise its approach to foreign policy from being defensive to offensive, and should cease its attempts to please and negotiate with the West. The Kremlin’s attempts “are not only immoral but also counterproductive” as they are unrealistic and produce more provocations.
Karaganov sees the West as I do, that it is sinking into moral debauchery and anti-humanism. He writes, “It is time to openly raise the banner of the defense of normal human values from the post-and even anti-human ones coming from the West.”
As I have explained, Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries dating back long before there was a Soviet Union. Ukraine is a brand new country torn out of Russia by Washington’s neoconservatives when the Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine was created by Washington as a weapon to be used against Russia. It is extraordinary that it took Russians so long to realize this. Russians must have been completely brainwashed by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Certainly the Atlanticist Integrationists were.
Karaganov escaped the brainwashing. He writes:
“Our only reasonable goal regarding Ukraine’s lands is quite obvious to me―the liberation, and reunification with Russia, of the entire South, East, and (probably) Dnieper Basin. Ukraine’s western regions will be the subject of future bargaining. The best solution would be creating a demilitarized buffer-state there with a formal neutral status (with Russian bases to guarantee neutrality)―a place to live for those residents of present-day Ukraine who do not want to be citizens of Russia and live by Russian laws. And to avoid provocations and uncontrolled migration, Russia should build a fence along its border with the buffer-state, like the one that Trump started on the border with Mexico.” Or the one that Israel has built in Palestine.
Karaganov writes that in Russia’s defense policy, the Kremlin expected too much from the West, expecting cooperation and good will. The Kremlin must have been uninformed of the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony, which declares Russia an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony that has to be removed. To deal with the West, Karaganov writes, Russia should use its vastly superior nuclear capability to intimidate the West.
“When preemptively (although belatedly) starting a military operation against the West [Ukraine limited military intervention] we, acting on old assumptions, did not expect the enemy to unleash a full war. So we did not use active nuclear deterrence intimidation tactics from the very outset. And we are still dragging our feet. By so doing we not only doom hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine (including losses from a plunging quality of life) and tens of thousands of our men to death, but we also do a disservice to the whole world. The aggressor, which is de facto the West, remains unpunished. This clears the way for further aggression.”
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