Arguably, the nuttiest neoconservative idea – among a long list
of nutty ideas – has been to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia by weakening its
economy, isolating it from Europe, pushing NATO up to its borders, demonizing
its leadership, and sponsoring anti-government political activists inside
Russia to promote “regime change.”
This breathtakingly dangerous strategy has been formulated and
implemented with little serious debate inside the United States as the major
mainstream news media and the neocons’ liberal-interventionist sidekicks have
fallen in line much as they did during the run-up to the disastrous invasion of
Iraq in 2003.
Except with Russia, the risks are even greater – conceivably, a
nuclear war that could exterminate life on the planet. Yet, despite those
stakes, there has been a cavalier – even goofy – attitude in the U.S.
political/media mainstream about undertaking this new “regime change” project
aimed at Moscow.
There is also little appreciation of how lucky the world was when
the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 without some Russian extremists seizing
control of the nuclear codes and taking humanity to the brink of extinction.
Back then, there was a mix of luck and restrained leadership, especially
on the Soviet side.
Plus, there were at least verbal assurances from George H.W.
Bush’s administration that the Soviet retreat from East Germany and Eastern
Europe would not be exploited by NATO and that a new era of cooperation with
the West could follow the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Instead, the United States dispatched financial “experts” – many
from Harvard Business School – who arrived in Moscow with neoliberal plans for
“shock therapy” to “privatize” Russia’s resources, which turned
a handful of corrupt insiders into powerful billionaires, known as
“oligarchs,” and the “Harvard Boys” into well-rewarded consultants.
But the result for the average Russian was horrific as the
population experienced a drop in life expectancy unprecedented in a country not
at war. While a Russian could expect to live to be almost 70 in the mid-1980s,
that expectation had dropped to less than 65 by the mid-1990s.
The “Harvard Boys” were living the high-life with beautiful
women, caviar and champagne in the lavish enclaves of Moscow – as the
U.S.-favored President Boris Yeltsin drank himself into stupors – but there
were reports of starvation in villages in the Russian heartland and organized
crime murdered people on the street with near impunity.
Meanwhile, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush cast aside
any restraint regarding Russia’s national pride and historic fears by expanding
NATO across Eastern Europe, including the incorporation of former Soviet
republics.
In the 1990s, the “triumphalist” neocons formulated a doctrine
for permanent U.S. global dominance with their thinking reaching its
most belligerent form during George W. Bush’s presidency, which asserted the
virtually unlimited right for the United States to intervene militarily
anywhere in the world regardless of international law and treaties.
How Despair Led to Putin
Without recognizing the desperation and despair of the Russian
people during the Yeltsin era — and the soaring American arrogance in the
1990s — it is hard to comprehend the political rise and enduring
popularity of Vladimir Putin, who became president after Yeltsin abruptly
resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999. (In declining health, Yeltsin died on
April 23, 2007).
Putin, a former KGB officer with a strong devotion to his native
land, began to put Russia’s house back in order. Though he collaborated with
some oligarchs, he reined in others by putting them in jail for corruption or
forcing them into exile.
Putin cracked down on crime and terrorism, often
employing harsh means to restore order, including smashing Islamist rebels
seeking to take Chechnya out of the Russian Federation.
Gradually, Russia regained its economic footing and the
condition of the average Russian improved. By 2012, Russian life expectancy had
rebounded to more than 70 years. Putin also won praise from many Russians
for reestablishing the country’s national pride and reasserting its
position on the world stage.
Though a resurgent Russia created friction with the neocon
designs for permanent U.S. world domination, Putin represented a side of
Russian politics that favored cooperation with the West. He particularly hoped
that he could work closely with President Barack Obama, who likewise indicated
his desire to team up with Russia to make progress on thorny international
issues.
In 2012, Obama was overheard on an open mike telling Putin’s
close political ally, then-President Dmitri Medvedev, that “after my election,
I have more flexibility,” suggesting greater cooperation with Russia.
(Because of the Russian constitution barring someone from serving more than two
consecutive terms as president, Medvedev, who had been prime minister,
essentially swapped jobs with Putin for four years.)
Obama’s promise was not entirely an empty one. His relationship
with the Russian leadership warmed as the two powers confronted common concerns
over security issues, such as convincing Syria to surrender its
chemical-weapons arsenal in 2013 and persuading Iran to accept tight
limitations on its nuclear program in 2014.
In an extraordinary
op-ed in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2013, Putin described his
relationship with Obama as one of “growing trust” while disagreeing with the
notion of “American “exceptionalism.” In the key last section that he
supposedly wrote himself, Putin said:
“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is
marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to
the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on
American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes
America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves
as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small
countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still
finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all
different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that
God created us equal.”
Offending the Neocons
Though Putin may have thought he was simply contributing to a
worthy international debate in the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of
Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal,” his objection to
“American exceptionalism” represented fighting words to America’s neocons.
Instead of engaging in mushy multilateral diplomacy,
muscular neocons saw America as above the law and lusted for bombing
campaigns against Syria and Iran – with the goal of notching two more “regime
change” solutions on their belts.
Thus, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist
fellow-travelers came to see Putin as a major and unwelcome obstacle to their
dreams of permanent U.S. dominance over the planet, which they would promote
through what amounted to permanent warfare. (The main distinction between
neocons and liberal interventionists is that the former cites “democracy
promotion” as its rationale and the latter justifies war under the mantle of “humanitarianism.”)
Barely two weeks after Putin’s op-ed in the Times, a prominent
neocon, Carl Gershman, the longtime president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy,
issued what amounted to a rejoinder in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2013.
Gershman’s op-ed made clear that U.S. policy should take aim at
Ukraine, a historically and strategically sensitive country on Russia’s
doorstep where the Russian nation made a stand against the Tatars in the 1600s
and where the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, the devastating 1941
invasion which killed some 4 million Soviet soldiers and led to some 26 million
Soviet dead total.
In the Post, Gershman wrote that “Ukraine is the biggest prize,” but
made clear that Putin was the ultimate target: “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe
will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin
represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the
losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
To advance this cause, NED alone was funding scores of projects
that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ukrainian political activists
and media outlets, creating what amounted to a shadow political structure that
could help stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired,
i.e., when elected President Viktor Yanukovych balked at a European economic
plan that included cuts in pensions and heat subsidies as demanded by the
International Monetary Fund.
When Yanukovych sought more time to negotiate a less onerous
deal, U.S.-backed protests swept into Kiev’s Maidan square. Though representing
genuine sentiment among many western Ukrainians for increased ties to Europe,
neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist street fighters gained control of the uprising
and began firebombing police.
Despite the mounting violence, the protests were cheered on by
neocon Sen. John McCain, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and Assistant Secretary
of State for Europe Victoria Nuland, the wife of neocon stalwart Robert Kagan,
a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which was a major
promoter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In a speech to Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013,
Nuland reminded them that the United States had invested $5 billion in their
“European aspirations.” By early February 2014, in an intercepted
phone call, she was discussing with Pyatt who should lead a new
government – “Yats is the guy,” she declared referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Nuland and Pyatt continued the conversation with exchanges about how to “glue
this thing” or “midwife this thing,” respectively.
A Western-backed Putsch
The violence worsened on Feb. 20, 2014, when mysterious snipers
opened fire on police and demonstrators sparking clashes that killed scores,
including police officers and protesters. Though later evidence suggested that
the shootings were a provocation by the neo-Nazis, the immediate reaction in
the mainstream Western media was to blame Yanukovych.
Though Yanukovych agreed to a compromise on Feb. 21 that would
reduce his powers and speed up new elections so he could be voted out of
office, he was still painted as a tyrannical villain. As neo-Nazi and other
rightists chased him and his government from power on Feb. 22, the West hailed
the unconstitutional putsch as “legitimate” and a victory for “democracy.”
The coup, however, prompted resistance from ethnic Russian areas
of Ukraine, particularly in the east and south. With the aid of Russian troops
who were stationed at the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, the Crimeans held a
referendum and voted by 96 percent to leave Ukraine and rejoin the Russian
Federation, a move accepted by Putin and the Kremlin.
the Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of the basing
agreement and the referendum, though hastily organized, clearly represented the
overwhelming will of the Crimean people, a judgment corroborated by a variety of
subsequent polls.
Ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine also rose up against the new
regime in Kiev, prompting more accusations in the West about “Russian
aggression.” Anyone who raised the possibility that these areas, Yanukovych’s
political strongholds, might simply be rejecting what they saw as an illegal
political coup in Kiev was dismissed as a “Putin apologist” or a “Moscow
stooge.”
While Official Washington and its mainstream media rallied the
world in outrage against Putin and Russia, the new authorities in Kiev slipped
Nuland’s choice, Yatsenyuk, into the post of prime minister where he pushed
through the onerous IMF “reforms,” making the already hard lives of Ukrainians
even harder. (The unpopular Yatsenyuk eventually resigned his position.)
Despite the obvious risks of supporting a putsch on Russia’s
border, the neocons achieved their political goal of driving a huge wedge
between Putin and Obama, whose quiet cooperation had been so troublesome for
the neocon plan for violent “regime change” in Syria and Iran.
The successful neocon play in Ukraine also preempted possible
U.S.-Russian cooperation in trying to impose an Israeli-Palestinian peace
agreement that would have established a Palestinian state and would have
stymied Israel’s plans for gobbling up
Palestinian territory by expanding Jewish settlements
and creating an apartheid-style future for the indigenous Arabs, confining
them to a few cantons surrounded by de facto Israeli territory.
Obama’s timid failure to explain and defend his productive
collaboration with Putin enabled the neocons to achieve another goal of making
Putin an untouchable, a demonized foreign leader routinely mocked and smeared
by the mainstream Western news media. Along with Putin’s demonization, the
neocons have sparked a new Cold War that will not only extend today’s
“permanent warfare” indefinitely but dramatically increase its budgetary costs
with massive new investments in strategic weapons.
Upping the Nuclear Ante
By targeting Putin and Russia, the neocons have upped the
ante when it comes to their “regime change” agenda. No longer satisfied with
inflicting “regime change” in countries deemed hostile to Israel – Iraq, Syria,
Libya, Iran, etc. – the neocons have raised their sights on Russia.
In that devil-may-care approach, the neocons are joined by
prominent “liberal interventionists,” such as billionaire currency speculator
George Soros, who pulls the strings of many “liberal” organizations that he
bankrolls.
In February 2015, Soros laid out his “Russia-regime-change”
vision in the liberal New York Review of Books with an alarmist call for Europe
“to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia” – despite the
fact that it has been NATO encroaching on Russia’s borders, not the other way
around.
But Soros’s hysteria amounted to a clarion call to his many
dependents among supposedly independent “non-governmental organizations” to
take up the goal of destabilizing Russia and driving Putin from office. As a
currency speculator, Soros recognizes the value of inflicting economic pain as
well as military punishment on a target country.
“The financial crisis in Russia and the body bags [of supposedly
Russian soldiers] from Ukraine have made President Putin politically
vulnerable,” Soros wrote, urging Europe to keep up the economic pressure on Russia
while working to transform Ukraine into an economic/political success story,
saying:
“…if Europe rose to the challenge and helped Ukraine not only to
defend itself but to become a land of promise, Putin could not blame Russia’s
troubles on the Western powers. He would be clearly responsible and he would
either have to change course or try to stay in power by brutal repression,
cowing people into submission. If he fell from power, an economic and political
reformer would be likely to succeed him.”
But Soros recognized the other possibility: that a
Western-driven destabilization of Russia and a failed state in Ukraine could
either bolster Putin or lead to his replacement by an extreme Russian
nationalist, someone far-harder-line than Putin.
With Ukraine’s continued failure, Soros wrote, “President Putin
could convincingly argue that Russia’s problems are due to the hostility of the
Western powers. Even if he fell from power, an even more hardline leader like
Igor Sechin or a nationalist demagogue would succeed him.”
Yet, Soros fails to appreciate how dangerous his
schemes could be to make Russia’s economy scream so loudly that Putin
would be swept aside by some political upheaval. As Soros suggests, the Russian
people could turn to an extreme nationalist, not to some pliable
Western-approved politician.
Protecting Mother Russia
Especially after suffering the depravations of the Yeltsin
years, the Russian people might favor an extremist who would take a tough
stance against the West and might see brandishing the nuclear arsenal as the
only way to protect Mother Russia.
Still, Official Washington
can’t get enough of demonizing Putin. A year ago, Obama’s White House –
presumably to show how much the President disdains Putin, too – made fun of how
Putin sits with his legs apart.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest cited a photo of the Russian
president sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “President
Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and
unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular
image,” Earnest said, while ignoring the fact that Netanyahu
was sitting with his legs wide apart, too.
Amid this anything-goes Putin-bashing, The New York Times, The
Washington Post and now Hillary Clinton’s campaign have escalated their
anti-Putin rhetoric, especially since Republican presidential nominee
Donald Trump has offered some praise of Putin as a “strong” leader.
Despite the barrage of cheap insults emanating from U.S.
political and media circles, Putin has remained remarkably cool-headed,
refusing the react in kind. Oddly, as much as the American political/media
establishment treats Putin as a madman, Official Washington actually counts on
his even-temper to avoid a genuine existential crisis for the world.
If Putin were what the U.S. mainstream media and politicians
describe – a dangerous lunatic – the endless baiting of Putin would be even
more irresponsible. Yet, even with many people privately realizing that Putin
is a much more calculating leader than their negative propaganda makes him out
to be, there still could be a limit to Putin’s patience.
Or the neocons and liberal hawks might succeed in provoking a
violent uprising in Moscow that ousts Putin. However, if that were to happen,
the odds – as even Soros acknowledges – might favor a Russian nationalist
coming out on top and thus in control of the nuclear codes.
In many ways, it’s not Putin who should worry Americans but the
guy that might follow Putin.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the
Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can
buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).