Since
the beginning of the war against Syria in 2011, Russia has been supporting this
nation against what it considers to be an exterior aggression. While the
Western Press explains this behaviour as a case of solidarity between
dictatorships, Thierry Meyssan brings to light its real historical motives. He
notes that the victory, which also belongs to Moscow, opens a new period for
Orthodox culture in Europe.
In order to build a modern
Russia, Tsarina Catherine II decided to make its capital, Saint Petersburg, the
world’s leading cultural centre. She rooted her country in its basic cultural
foundations of Orthodox Christianity, developed the use of the French language,
and invited the greatest European intellectuals and artists to her court,
whether they were Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, even Muslim.
Aware that the retreat of
Christianity in the Middle East before the intolerance of the Ottoman Empire
threatened a cultural loss for Orthodoxy, and therefore Russia, she entered
into war with the Sultan.
This dream was thwarted by
the French and British during the Crimean war (1853) and even more so by the
Bolsheviks, who rejected the place of Orthodoxy in Russia. In 1918, they played
the game of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on behalf of arms dealer Alexandre Parvus,
Lenin’s sponsor.
The dream of Catherine the
Great had to wait until 2017 to begin to be realised. President Putin also
annexed Crimea and delivered Syria, not from the Ottoman Empire, but from the
jihadists, supervised by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Russia became the protecting power of all populations, whatever their religion,
from the banks of the Nile to the Alborz mountains.
The summit at Sochi highlights
the role of Russia in the Greater Middle East. It is now the protecting power
of Iran, Syria and Turkey – the last two states changed their allegiance from
Washington in 1991 to Moscow in 2017.
The awakening of the Orthodox
culture will have important consequences in Europe. The continent is
historically divided into a Catholic and Protestant zone to the West, and an
Orthodox zone to the East. We talk and bargain with God in the West, we submit
to his Greatness and we adore Him in the East. Family structures are less
egalitarian in the West and more egalitarian in the East. Since the 11th
century, this cultural difference splits Europe. During the Cold War, the «
Iron Curtain » did not respect this division, since Orthodox Greece had been
attached to NATO, and Catholic Poland had been incorporated into the Warsaw
Pact. Today, the extension of the European Union is aimed in priority at
imposing the Western European model on the countries of Orthodox culture.
Already, we can predict the dissolution of the European Union and the triumph
of the cultural model opened in Saint Petersburg.
The Christians of the Orient
have never felt themselves to be concerned by these intra-European cultural
differences, but the Europeans have always considered them to be either
Catholic or Orthodox. From 1848, France had imagined the displacement of the
Catholics and the Maronites from Syria to Algeria, and the extermination of the
Orthodox populations. Paris thought it could use these Christian Arabs,
faithful to Rome, to keep an eye on the Algerian Muslims. Failing that, it
ended up by using the local Jews (the Crémieux Decree) and entrusting them with
the mission (1870). More recently, during the wars against Iraq and Syria,
Western Europeans welcomed many Oriental Christians, who were in reality
exclusively Catholics, never Orthodox.
For Syria, the work of
President Putin is the occasion to return to its own foundations after the
experience with the jihadists, who seek to impose their unique cultural model
on everyone – Syria is only great when it takes care of all its populations
without exception. In the beginning, Vladimir Putin thought he could organise a
« Congress of the Syrian Peoples » in Sochi. He finally recognised that in
Syria, contrary to Russia, no community owns its own territory, they all live
mingled together in their unique, shared homeland. It will therefore be a «
Congress for a Syrian dialogue ».
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The
articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is
cited, their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial
purposes (license CC BY-NC-ND).
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