Fools Russians Where Angels Fear to Tread

They are largely arguments of inertia. Yes, the way things were is likely to be the way things are and will be. And yet strange and new things happen all the time.

I find myself a begrudging admirer of the new prez. It’s kinda the reverse of Obama that way. I expected nothing, and am occasionally surprised.

Rooting out the corruption in the IC is a tall, tall order. Until that happens, they amount to the new fourth estate. There’s way too much power in far too few hands.

what is so wrong with old-school nationalism? the state of israel is showing the world the way.

The Trump thing is difficult to parse. Is it confusion, incompetence, application of chaos theory? On the surface, it doesn’t cohere.

It’s almost as if Lenin had decided to surround himself with a central committee full of Mensheviks, SRs, and the odd Tsarist. How the heck is this any way to run a revolution?

At any rate, I’ll be viewing sweeping assertion about the Trump Insurgency with a lot more incredulity – at least until we begin to see more pieces falling into place.

Who said anything about a “Clintonite party”? Clinton, either one, didn’t even get mentioned in my post. They’re both history. What’s this about a Clintonite party?

It is attempting to play the part of a rival global hegemon without actually being a hegemon.

Even by your standards that’s a singularly foolish misrepresentation of the facts.

it is still highly dependent on natural resource development and export

No it isn’t.

1: It’s generating enough internally to be able to manage quite nicely without export income.

2: It’s certainly generating enough not to have to worry about the income derived from exporting to NATO countries.

3: The money it makes from exporting to China is nice but it’s nice in the sense of being the icing and the cherry on the cake. See also point 1 above.

Ah yes, the notion that history has a direction rears its head. Were prior attempts at global organization practice runs for this late 20th century variant?

I’m not sure (but I’m open to contrary evidence) that Russia is really trying to play the role of global hegemon.

It is asserting its authority in its near-abroad, notably in Ukraine with considerable justification.
And Putin does seem to have some political traction across Europe. But that appears to be about it as far as it goes.

That aside, it’s certainly true that there’s an alarming “combination of Cold War-style intelligence community conservatism with popular social liberalism” that can’t lead anywhere good, especially if liberals use the accompanying new McCarthyism to plant themselves back in the Oval Office and Congress.

I suppose this must be the new calculus of the Deep State Democrats: Combine the usual identity politics with the new red-baiting to win elections, thus allowing them to disregard the progressive/populist wing of the party, such as it is. It’s scary, yes, but it’s also clarifying.

VietnamVet Thanks for the comment

EmilianoZ Yes I read those sites and would say I’m a member of the Cockburn & Glen Ford and others left.

There are few sites out there that give the Russian view something that we all should read to understand the Russian people.
Saker
Fort Ross, funny named after Fort Ross in Calif. It’s written in Russia.
RT News

@EZ

As far as I know the Clintonites created the alt-left brand as a derogatory slur of anyone even slightly to the left of their cult of personality. True Leftists don’t need to divide the left any more than it already is and the alt label just conflates you with the alt-right by design.

Some of the Berners tried to force Sanders to actually represent a left pole but he loved his Queen and her party more than the rabble who thought they were going somewhere with that sheepdog. It might be rash to draw conclusions about the now dispersed Berners because of the primary vote numbers. I think about half of these folks were just Clintonites on assignment to liven up the dead boring campaign. The way the majority of them scurried back to the Queens camp seems to support that conclusion.

Russia has a nominal GDP around 7% that of the US, roughly on par with that of Australia. You can look at it as in the lower range of mid-sized economies or the upper range of small economies. About 30% of its GDP is oil and gas exports. So no, Russia is in no sense a hegemon, and yes, it is heavily dependent on commodity exports which make it extraordinarily vulnerable both to sanctions and economic downturns.

In terms of its foreign policy, it was able to annex the Crimea because 90% of the population is Russian, it had a large naval base there, and Crimea is attached to the rest of the Ukraine by a narrow land bridge. Its involvement in Syria has been confined to fairly indiscriminate aerial bombardment from protected bases. As for the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, it is rather an example of Russian weakness. This was an industrial area, albeit with declining industries, with a Russian-speaking majority. While it was able to disrupt Ukrainian control, it was not able to establish any real control of its own over the area. Yet Donbasa is right on its doorstep, near the whole of its European armed forces. All Putin has accomplished there is to destroy a region of its neighbor, partially depopulate it as ethnic Russians move to Russia proper in the process changing the ethnic composition of the area, create an inveterately hostile neighbor in the Ukraine, stir up the Poles and the Baltics, and get them to invite the US and NATO to expand their bases eastward closer to Russia.

So to recap, the Crimea was a gimme. Putin’s Syrian adventure is really very limited in nature. And his Donbass involvement has pretty much blown up in his face. Indeed it can be argued that Putin’s ongoing involvement there is more about keeping a flow of Russian refugees from turning into a flood.

Putin is a dictator, a thug, and a murderer. I have no sympathy for him. But aside from its arsenal of nuclear weapons, and let’s be real clear, nuclear weapons are essentially defensive in nature, a deterrent against invasion, Russia presents no threat to the US or NATO. At most Russia and Putin can rise to the level of an irritation as in Syria, but again Syria is not and never was a major US interest. And elsewhere, we are talking at most a minor irritation.

So when I see the current Russia hysteria, I look at who is generating it for whose benefit. My conclusion is that, all in all, I think our politics have jumped the shark. If you saw or read the transcript of Trump’s latest news conference, you know what I mean. At the same time, the Democrats, neocons, and intelligence community drumming up Russia as the next Great Satan to somehow discredit Trump is equally ludicrous. It’s like taking your car to a garage to get it worked on. One group of mechanics says, “No problem,” then starts up chainsaws and approaches your car. Another group says, “We got this,” and grab sledge hammers and baseball bats. Just so, we the people want our country fixed while our political classes, no matter how they divide themselves up want to wreck it. I expect something similar is happening in Europe as well.

I don’t think Australia is a good fit to compare with Russia economically although their GDP’s are close. Australia produced that GDP number from about 25 million people while Russia requires 140 million people to reach that output a huge productivity and lifestyle difference.

A more realistic comparison would be with Mexico which produces nearly the same GDP with 110 million people.

I’m probably more of a Russophile than most simply because the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation have been an interest of mine since I discovered the anti-Soviet propaganda we were being fed in the 1950s was mostly lies and falsehoods whipped up by our government so as to ensure that we young ones would never fall into the error of Soviet communism.

Accusations against Putin as a “thug” and “murderer” are rarely balanced with the fact that he is widely admired in the RF and some of the Soviet Union’s former republics as both a political and economic master player. He and his government brought the Russian people back from the brink of utter catastrophe to a level of security and prosperity and well being they hadn’t seen since Soviet times.

While he’s called a rightist and a fascist and worse, Putin appears to be an odd combination of a technocrat, a czarist and a Soviet leader. He is versed in statecraft and he does it very well. He seems to be very detail-oriented, knowledgeable, and a strategic thinker, and he generally acts benign toward the Russian people. Opposition is allowed but is strictly controlled, and at least from appearances, that’s the way the Russian people want it. Serious opposition could destabilize the State, and Russia would be right back where it was under Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys. They don’t want to go back to that, despite the pressure from the neoLibCons in the West.

The Russians are well aware of the fact that the US was actively trying to undermine and subvert the Soviet Union, and it’s been doing the same with the Russian Federation. Putin has used those facts to inspire patriotic fervor focused on protecting the Motherland and on his own person as The Protector of the State and the Constitution. I expect him to be granted sainthood by the Russian Orthodox Church to boot.

Putin seems to enjoy czarist trappings. He makes full use of the Kremlin palaces, for example, and he he seems to relish immersing himself in the splendor of gold and crystal and overwrought design available to him from the days of the Czar. Trump’s fetish for gold and crystal and overwrought design seems tacky by comparison.

The symbols of czarist rule have been revived in Putin’s Russia, but many of the symbols of Soviet rule have been preserved. Lenin’s tomb is still on Red Square, covered up for Victory Day parades — parades which celebrate Soviet troops and the Soviet victory over the Nazis — but otherwise it is still a major tourist attraction in Moscow.

The anti-Russian/anti-Putin hysteria being whipped up in the West is truly bizarre, or it would be if it weren’t for the fact that the destruction of the Russian Federation has been a neoLibCon goal for many years as part and parcel of the hegemonic project that continues no matter who is in the White House or governs Europe or Britain. According to that project, Russia must be destroyed. And then China. Trump only seems to want to reverse the order of destruction.

@V. Arnold

I have no specific knowledge of Putin’s murderous thuggishness, but the truth is, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. Just as the US government engages in murderous thuggishness as its routine and bloody practice. But what goes on in Russia, and how its government governs is their business, not mine. The majority of the Russian people seem to be more than satisfied. And it really is up to them to decide. Those who buy into the Russia=Putin=evil canard uncritically are victims of propaganda. I think both Hugh and Ian have better understanding than that, but they don’t always say so.

As for the hysteria over “Russian hacking” and “election interference” I’ve said all along, “So?”

Whether they did or didn’t should make no difference at all. If our elections were not as screwed up as they are, outside interference from any source wouldn’t be an issue. It’s only an issue for two reasons: 1) our elections are bad jokes; 2) it’s propaganda to deflect from the bullshit and to generate hatred of the Other.

Well, I don’t buy it.



@ Hugh

Lame response; you still blame Russia for the Maidan and Nuland’s U.S. sponsored coup in Ukraine.
Your mis-reporting the facts on the ground further demean your standing.
Character attacks are the last resort of scoundrels, which your fast becoming…
Frankly, you’ve just burned the last bridge of your credibility.
Pathetic, just pathetic…

@ Peter

No, Russia doesn’t need foreign investment. It needs to raise taxes, starting by ditching the flat tax and implementing a progressive income tax.

@VA

I’ve read Putin’s speeches in the last few years and he and or his speechwriters have done a good job of stating their case. His criticisms of the US have been effective if easy shots to take. I’m not sure that effective speeches equal statesmanship and no one seems to be calling on him to play that role. He and his regime were adept at outmaneuvering the US/Europe in Crimea and manipulation the US in Syria which shows they are clever.

One thing that is consistent in his speeches is his stated desire for Russia to partner with the US/Europe and together embrace the New World Order without some of the extremes displayed by the US. This approach sounds moderate and farsighted but Putin’s actions in Syria show he can be just as extreme as the US when Russia’s remaining imperial interests are threatened.

Same old, same old….

“Vice President Mike Pence has met with the president of Ukraine and assured him of U.S. support. Pence’s office says he “underscored U.S. support” for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and underlined that the U.S. does not recognize “Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation” of Crimea.”

“Vice President Mike Pence is reaffirming the U.S. commitment to the security of the Baltic states in a meeting with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

Tick, tick, tick…..

@ montanamaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqVB3qY3Qwo

this doc should be used w/subtitles on and the volume down. Russian-over English dub is maddening.

@ britzklieg this is James DiEugenio’s ‘A Documentary You’ll Likely Never See’, february 13, 2017, consortium news. i confess that some of this information was new to me, but far easier to read than watching the video. i had to chuckle at thierry meysann, in his homge to herr trump, noting that as a foil to the corrupt poroshenko, “he met with and his pumping for (banderist) yulia tymoshenko to replace him!” eventually, yats and nuland weren’t able to control their neonazis, lol.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/13/a-documentary-youll-likely-never-see/

@ lisa with regard to The Bear, after reading some of mad dog mattis’s and tillerson’s comments from both brussels and munich last week, i wonder if his cabinet hasn’t been assimilated by the borg.

@Mandos

You’ve now repeated your aspersion about Russia’s supposed relaxation of domestic violence law without supporting evidence. NC ran an article by John Helmer which goes into great detail on this subject. In the article Helmer explained the Russian public’s widespread opposition to domestic violence and simultaneous support for the change to the law:

A Moscow social policy analyst commented: “The reason there is so much public support for a fine for this offence has nothing to do with the Church; nothing to do with Mizulina. Foreign critics have missed the point. Russians understand their police very well. They know that if there’s no money incentive, there is no enforcement. That’s why first-offence beatings aren’t followed up, but traffic violations are. If the local militia can see their chance to collect money from complaints, they will do it with alacrity. Every Russian understands this. Foreigners don’t.”

Your post ignores the fact that Western media have a vested interest in drumming up hatred among the cultural left against Russia. This means all reporting about supposedly dastardly Russian actions are subject to spin and nonsense. Yet you seem not to have taken this into account and parrot the mainstream canard about Putin’s supposed support for domestic violence. You may not agree with Putin or the Russian public on this subject, but to say they support wife beaters is nonsense — directly equivalent to the media hysteria against Iraq during the run up to the second Gulf War.

@WD

We can’t totally reject the Borg’s attitude about Putin’s Russia because much of their bile filled attacks are based on fact but certainly not all of them. What’s important is how Trump plans to ‘deal’ with Russia knowing they are no more innocent than we are. What we are seeing now is the peak of this hostility and rhetoric from both sides and actual negotiations and friendlier dealing can walk back that hostility leading to some agreements.

I see that Pepe is still selling his Chinese silkoil dreams for fun and profit along with the benevolent not belligerent China delivering trainloads of consumer junk to Chinese run strip malls along their foreign development projects. I read that these Chinese investment funds can be used much like the IMF and WB are used but wise people tell us that won’t happen.

The huge planned development dollar numbers Pepe mentions sound impressive but I saw another Chinese announcement that may be telling. China has canceled construction plans for some 80 coal fired power plants some already under construction apparently because they won’t be needed. Projected growth in demand for electric power doesn’t exist as their economy and growth slows. The Chinese government counteracted some of the effects of low growth by pumping huge amounts of investment into large public construction including cities for millions that sit empty but that kind of bubble can’t be maintained.

nihil obstet
February 19, 2017

Yes, Russia gets far more bang (literally) for the buck in its production.
Though the west (U.S.) was shocked by Russia’s advanced weaponry, as demonstrated in Syria, they are loathe to admit it.
Threads like this one, bring out the Russophobes in full force. It’s an example of the effectiveness
of 70+ years of U.S. propaganda on the evil Russian people. Pay close attention to the adjectives used to describe all facets of the Russian federation and people.
Almost no one has a clue as to the character of Russian people and unlike Usians they have character.
Also laughable are the comments re: Russian behavior in Syria, WTF?
Russia is there at the invitation of Assad (yeah the butcher of Syria) while the U.S. slinks in the Syrian netherlands giving support to ISIS, Al-Nusra, and Al-Qieda.
The duplicity and downright betrayal of the U.S. is so hypocritical as to be laughable if not so tragic. Butchers of the western hemisphere have no legitimate standing, IMO…
So, keep on, keeping on, in demonizing Russia and its people.

And I might add, it is so obvious that each of you is absolutely right and noble, and those who disagree with you are cretins and the spawn of the devil that you don’t really need to burden my reading time by pointing it out at any length. I don’t think it’s just a style preference, but a feeling that the comment section gets less useful and informative when such obvious truths become the central topic.

But it’s so amusing to watch. 😛

@VA

Russia has gone a bit neoliberal with austerity cutbacks and public private partnerships. They have their wages under control down to a salary of $433 per month average.

Because it’s a family business Putin’s son-in-law is c0llecting the new trucking tax that the truckers were complaining about a few months ago, but they have no debts.

Oh, and austerity is not, in and of itself neo-liberal.
In the past when I’ve been in heavy debt; I’ve had to cut back on spending. Once out of debt, I may choose to keep an austere lifestyle and save my money for security in the future. I am no neo-liberal.
Nabulina is a very savvy finance minister who has cut inflation from over 10% to slightly over 5% in a very successful financial policy. She could hardly be termed as neo-liberal.
The dollar amount you mention has no context without housing, food, and utility costs.
Another tell is the strength of the Ruble; it went from the 80’s to now, about 63 to the dollar.
the key to this game is, once again, Mackinder, Spykman, and Mahan’s Heartland/Rimland theories, which every one here chooses to ignore; at there own peril I might add…

reslez: Yves Smith right in her preamble reveals a certain degree of shallowness and refusal to engage with the underlying approach of modern identity politics that is hard to take anything she writes or promotes on the topic seriously, I’m afraid.

I looked through the rest of the article, and it does not seem to contradict what I said: the Russian legislature passed a bill in response to pressure from forces that support a certain form of social conservatism. I said nothing about whether or not the Russian public supports that philosophy — merely, that these forces are in ascendency in Russian politics. This is a very common situation alas; Russia is not alone in having a legislature that is significantly more conservative than the public.

The rest of the article is in “the Cossacks work for the Czar” territory and whoever that guy is, from the text he is either a victim of or deliberately feeding the strange hero worship of Putin that you see around these parts. Nothing about Russia’s problems is Putin’s fault, he’s only ever portrayed badly by the nasty “Clintonite” imperialists, etc, etc. No one said that the USA didn’t have a hypocritical establishment; but the idea that Putin is not part and parcel of the same power structure that passed Mizulina’s bill is difficult to sustain unless you subscribe to that very shallow demonology.

@ Peter: i’m not understanding your first paragraph at all, but at to pepe: yes: he knows how to read maps as well as halford mackinder did (see V arnold). you may have read that about chinese investment funds, but that ignores the asian infrastructure investment bank and brics bank’s lower interest rates with no built-in neoliberal austerity resets as w/ the IMF and world bank (see greece, italy, and others). or at least that’s the way they were set up.

for some, not all economics and global influence are zero sum, and cooperation is better than abject competition. i’ll have to leave your chinese junk/strip malls alone for now, as i don’t want to go back and see exactly what you’d said. except to say that products made in the developing world and china aren’t always junk, and are sadly all some of can afford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History

but you made cancelling coal power plants ound like a bad thing, lol! but srsly, having read that china’s been leading the globe in renewables, i did a bit of poking around and found at reuters: “China’s energy regulator has ordered 11 provinces to stop more than 100 coal-fired power projects, with a combined installed capacity of more than 100 gigawatts, its latest dramatic step to curb the use of fossil fuels in the world’s top energy market.

Putting the power projects on hold is a major step towards the government’s effort to produce power from renewable sources such as solar and wind, and wean the country off coal, which accounts for the majority of the nation’s power supply. China’s annual demand growth for power will slow to 3-4 percent, according to Wood Mackenzie, down from double-digit growth in recent years as energy intensive industries like glass and metals contract.”

http://in.reuters.com/article/china-coal-idINKBN1511A2

da wiki’s ‘renewable energy in china’ entry says:

“China’s renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity. In 2015 China became the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. China also led the world in the production and use of wind power and smart grid technologies, generating almost as much water, wind, and solar energy as all of France and Germany’s power plants combined. Whilst China has the world’s largest installations of solar and wind power its energy needs are so great that in 2013 renewables provided just a little over 20% of its power generation, with most of the remainder provided by traditional coal power facilities.”

@WD

China is also converting to natural gas power generation and that with the solar/wind will help them to reduce their choking air pollution problems. I don’t think they have solar panels that work at night or wild generators that work without wind so they need the gas fired plants to generate the about half of each day that solar doesn’t produce. The big natural gas pipeline deals with Russia seem stalled or cancelled with the Chinese securing better prices elsewhere thanks to fracking.

The cancelled coal power plants were needed for increasing growth that is now not expected to occur and much of the big plans for their investments were to be financed by that growth. The silk road is sold as a shared development plan but in reality it is a protected conduit to feed resources, oil and minerals back to the mainland and with reduced growth those demands will fall.

The Chinese are hard bargaining capitalists as their recent oil/trade deal with Iran shows. The Iranians needed to sell large amounts of their stored sanctioned oil and the Chinese were willing to buy but only if Iran opened it’s consumer markets. The first mile long silk road train to arrive in Tehran was stuffed with cheap consumer goods that when in the marketplace will destroy the local small business production just as their shiploads of cheap shoes sent to Africa destroyed local shoe production there. These are the same Chinese who some people believe will act like altruists when one of their client states can’t make its development loan payment.

@RKKA

Putin has to be very selective about who he has had killed at home so he doesn’t upset that delicate death/birth ratio. He seems quite comfortable even proud of the deaths he has perpetrated in Syria where he can group the women and children in with the terrorists.

Russia’s population today is very close to what it was one hundred years ago which shows something continues to be very strange in their society.

Rkka
February 21, 2017

Nice posts. As should be obvious by now, Peter’s bias is Russophobic and worse; mis-informed along that very bias line.
I gave up answering.
Cheers

Again Putin is smart and a much better global chess player then other world leaders. Honestly like I said before I would love to be partners with Russia. But Putin seems to be angling for a long game here that does not bode well for Europe, and in the future us as well. I agree most of the negatives in DC are just old cold war ideas starting back up, but there are legitimate concerns with giving in to much to Putins plans.