And my historical background conversation in this particular episode is not going too far back. It is going to the Second World War, and what would follow later on: the establishment of the State of Israel and the beginning of the relationship between the two countries. And it will include elements that may not be an historic revelation, but when put all in one context, may be surprising to quite a few of the watchers and readers, because it may put in some perspective some of the well-established notions about the relationship between the two countries that have always been dubbed, at least in the last few decades, as the special relationship, the unbreakable alliance, the God-knows-what type of definition given to this relationship by both friends of these relationships and enemies of it.

So letā€™s go to the Second World War and start with a general comment, which is that once the US entered the war ā€” finally, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which is basically the end of American isolationism ā€” with all its might, with all its power, that America had to develop foreign policy which hardly existed until then about the Middle East. Which was really at that time, until the Second World War, not an important part to the US, but for the beginning of some commercial economic relations having to do with oil, of course. And oil is important, as we shall see.

Harold Hoskins, the Holocaust and Zionist response

Josef Olmert: So President Roosevelt went to develop an American strategy as to how to deal with current issues during the Second World War and future implications of them. He did something which may have been the precedent for other American presidents: He sent a special envoy to the Middle East. His name was Harold Hoskins. He was a former military person, lieutenant colonel ā€” and he had an interesting background. He belonged to a family that had to do with the American University in Beirut, a famous academic institution, the role of which in Americanā€“Arab relations has not always been recognized properly.

The university was established in 1866 and became a hotbed for two groups of people. On the one hand, Americans who came to the Middle East ā€” mostly Protestant missionaries, interestingly enough, from New England ā€” who came to the Middle East following the terrible, bloody civil war in Lebanon between 1840 and 1861 that ended with the huge massacre of Christians in 1861. And the other group that it attracted were those Americans who were influenced by the existence of this college, were interested in the Arab world, in the Middle East, and would become, later on, ambassadors of goodwill for the Middle East ā€” being basically dominated by Arabs, by those who use the Arabic language, and mostly by Muslims, not even Christians.

So Hoskins, therefore, did not come from a background that one could say was pro-Jewish or pro-Zionist. On the contrary ā€” he came from a totally different background, the opposite one. And he visited the Middle East in 1942, 1943 and then presented his report to the president, which basically was saying to the president, ā€œHey, look, you cannot really support the Jewish idea about establishing a state. Thereā€™s the Arab world, you know.ā€ And one can argue he accepted the basic tenets of what one would call the pro-Arab lobby in the US at that time ā€” and maybe for many years later ā€” that the US should go with the majority of people in the Middle East, not with the minority: the Jews.

Now, at that time, when Hoskins was in the Middle East and then presented his recommendations to the president, there was the Holocaust in Europe, and two developments emerged that would be the counterbalance to this report of Hoskins. One of them was the dramatic, dramatic revelations by this Gentile, German Tzadik ā€” the righteous among the Gentiles ā€” Edward Schulte, who came one day to the young representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Gerhart Riegner, a young Jewish person at the age of 30, and told him, ā€œDo you need to know the truth? They are going to kill all your people in Europe. Urgently message this truth to your superiors so that the Western countries will do what they have to do.ā€

Iā€™m not going to get into all that ā€” just to give it as a background with all the controversies that emerged later on about the reaction of the Roosevelt administration, or the lack thereof, the slowness of the reaction. But it was one element that was introduced to the discussion about the Middle East at that time and the future, which had to do with the fate of the Jews in Europe and what could be a solution to their plight.

But at the same time, also, the Zionist movement reacted. And the famous Biltmore Plan that was announced in the Biltmore Hotel of New York at that time ā€” a great place, not anymore ā€” a conference that took place between May 6 and May 11, 1942, in which finally, finally, the leadership or the majority of the official Zionist movement accepted the idea that the future should be a Jewish commonwealth ā€” thatā€™s the word they used ā€” in what they called Palestine. Accepted finally what the revisionist side of the Zionist movement, under the leadership of the great Zeā€™ev Jabotinsky, had said for many years earlier ā€” that the final, ultimate goal of Zionism is to do exactly that: national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and the national homeland of the Jewish people, the land of Israel ā€” or Palestine, as they called it ā€” should be a state.

So Roosevelt knew that there were pressures from both sides, and at the end of the day, he did not make a big speech in which he repeated the recommendations of Hoskins. He even established, later on, the Refugee Board to save Jews in Europe ā€” which did, by the way, good work. Raoul Wallenberg, the great man, was an agent of this group.

Rooseveltā€™s oil deal

Josef Olmert: But then the next chapter, if you will. In between, there were all kinds of negotiations with the British that also had their committees about what would be the future of the Middle East and Palestine. There was this historic meeting on February 14, 1945 in the Suez Canal aboard the ship of the American Navy between the president and the king of Saudi Arabia, King Ibn Saud ā€” a historic meeting that established, by the way, the real, ongoing, historic special relationship between the US and a country in the Middle East, which was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. End of 1945: This is the most permanent, consistent, solid alliance between the US and any country in the Middle East, which may have been shaken ā€” weā€™ll come to that later on in the series ā€” during the 21st century, but has been and still is the one alliance that can be considered the uninterrupted historic alliance of the US with its new role as the superpower and the Middle East country.

There are all kinds of historians that will tell you, ā€œThis was this result of that meeting, and this was that result of that meeting.ā€ But since Iā€™m the one who talks here, I will say to you: This was the deal of oil for protection. The US will defend Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia will give oil to the US. Thatā€™s it. That was the deal.

And then the president came back, was almost a dead person ā€” he would die a little bit later on April 12, 1945. But before then, on March 1, 1945, he gave his big speech to Congress in which he said the famous statement that in five minutes of talk with King Ibn Saud, he learned more about the Middle East than what he had known before. Which was, in a way, a reflection of, apparently, his inner thoughts, but also a slap in the face to a lot of people in the Jewish community, people like Rabbi Stephen Wise and others who believed that Roosevelt was the greatest ever supporter of the Jewish people. He said something that to this very day is used by many people, particularly on the right side of Jewish and Zionist politics, to indicate that FDR was not exactly the great friend of the Jews he was portrayed to be.

Trumanā€™s recognition and Israelā€™s fight for survival

Josef Olmert: And then came Harry Truman. What did he know about the Middle East? Nada, nothing. What did he know about foreign policy? Nada, nothing. But he was a great person, great president. And he knew to make decisions. And he had to make decisions about the question of Palestine on two accounts: First of all, what to do with the Zionist demand to allow refugees from Europe to go to their historic homeland as their final refuge after what happened. The British said no, the Americans put pressure to allow hundreds of thousands to come. But then the most important decision had to be done: Should America support or not the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine? And he made the resolution that America should support the Partition Plan, as proposed by the UN Inquiry that was approved by the General Assembly in the historic decision on November 29, 1947. Which was accepted by the Zionist majority as an official position, and was rejected by all the Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states.

The question was: Was it really the final decision of Truman? Would he go along with it and support this Jewish state once itā€™s being declared? As the Zionists said, it would be declared the last day of the British mandate over Palestine, which was supposed to be May 15, 1948. They were supposed to declare it on May 14 because it was Friday as opposed to Saturday, which was May 15, the Sabbath.

And Truman was under terrible pressures. In January 1948, he retracted his initial position. He talked about international trusteeship for Palestine for a while. And there were pressures on him from both sides, including his old Jewish friend and business partner, Eddy Jacobson, on the one hand, as opposed to the Arabs and as opposed to some of the closest people to him. Chief among them: Secretary of State George Marshall, the great winner of the Second World War, secretary of state, the architect of the Marshall Plan ā€” who was terribly opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state and to an American recognition of it. And he said to the president, ā€œI will not vote for you if thatā€™s your position.ā€ The famous Clark Clifford, the well-known Democratic adviser, told the story. Other people told the story; thereā€™s no question about it.

Truman made his decision: He gave the US recognition to the State of Israel 11 minutes after the declaration made by David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948. But that did not mean a carte blanche for the Zionists, for the Jews, in what ensued afterwards: the War of Independence that started with the invasion of five Arab armies on May 15 to the newly-established state, in order to basically exterminate the Jews, as was predicted by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha. He said in October 1947, ā€œThis will be a war of extermination.ā€ This was what the Arabs planned for the Jews: the Nakba of the Jews, the destruction of the Jewish state, the extermination of the Jews three years after the Holocaust ended in the Second World War, the deportation of the Jews, whatever.

And America imported an embargo on arms to Israel. The ones who gave the arms to Israel at that time for their own reasons ā€” we shall not get into it in this episode ā€” arms that allowed the Israelis to win the war were the Soviets, the Soviet Union ā€” the so-called, famous Czechoslovak arms deal. At that time already, Czechoslovakia was under communist control. Interesting, interesting.

Cold War choices and the Suez Crisis

Josef Olmert: But America recognized Israel, there were diplomatic relations. And then came another turning point: It was the Korean War of 1950. It really divided the world and also divided the ruling coalition in Israel at that time. Not always are people aware of that, because David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Mapai party, had partners in the government that were to the left of Mapai ā€” Marxists and Zionists, but very pro-Soviet. And they put pressure on Israel to at least be neutral in the Korean War, or even support the Soviet Union.

And Ben-Gurion made his historic decision: no way. He gave a famous speech in the Knesset, which also included an attack Joseph Stalin personally, and made the choice: We go with the West. Still having relations with the Soviet Union for a few more years to come that were problematic ā€” including also the Soviet attempt toward the end of the days of Stalin to try the Jewish doctors with the so-called plot to poison the Soviet leadership, which was apparently a preparation for a final solution for the Jews in the Soviet Union.

Later on ā€” just to put things in some perspective, and not everybody would like to hear what Iā€™m going to say now ā€” the famous Henry Kissinger said (he then apologized for that when it was published many, many years later) in closed sessions when he was in the Nixon administration, that the US would not have done anything if the Soviets were to put Jews in concentration camps and get rid of them. Yes, he said it. He then apologized for it. Many, many years later, it was revealed when documents were published that thatā€™s what he said.

The next episode of the relationships is the Suez War of 1956, when Israel, France and Britain collaborated in the attack on Nasser of Egypt after all his aggressive acts against Israel that were perpetrated, by the way, from the Gaza Strip ā€” Gaza that the Egyptians refused to give to the Palestinians as an independent or even autonomous state.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a partner to all that. And even though we are already in the Cold War, the idea that two partners of the US in NATO, France and Britain, would collaborate with Israel in a war that was not coordinated with the US ā€” a few days before the American presidential elections in 1956 ā€” and while the Soviets were engaged in their situation in Hungary, that was against the sense of Eisenhower, that he was no more just the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Europe, as he was in the Second World War. He was now the head of the free world. And he collaborated with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War to force the British and the French to stop their support for Israel and withdraw from the Suez Canal. And the Israeli army was forced, after months, to withdraw from Sinai.

And a period of 11 years of peace and quiet along the border lasted until 1967. In January 1957, Eisenhower published the Eisenhower Doctrine, which was an attempt to counterbalance all this by basically saying, ā€œIt wasnā€™t because we liked Nasser what we did, but from now on, we say to Nasser: no more.ā€ And thatā€™s something more to do with the US and some other Arab countries ā€” or the Middle East in general ā€” that I will not get into.

Looking ahead to 1967

Josef Olmert: But 11 years were opened until 1967, which would be, in a way, a historic turning point in the relationships between the US and Israel. And that will be the gist of my second episode. The next episode will be 1967, the Six Days War, as a historic turning point ā€” the beginning of what one might call the special relationship between Israel and the US.

Iā€™ll see you then. Thank you.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post FOĀ° Talks: USā€“Israeli Relations Explained, Part 1 ā€” Post-World War II appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

Ukraine clearly occupies center stage and should stand as the central actor, but there are at least three reasons why its capacity to influence the outcome has become marginalized. The first is basic post-Soviet history. Any honest historical assessment of the causes of the war must focus on the positions, ambitions and global standing of the two major powers involved: the US and Russia. Ukraine is a mere pawn on what Zbigniew Brzezinski nearly three decades ago as ā€œthe grand chessboard.ā€ Europe in contrast stands as a line of pawns that has been wondering all along what its role is supposed to be.

The second reason for Ukraineā€™s limited influence is the often-denied complexity of its demography that has kept it in a permanently confused state of cultural, if not national, identity at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What makes a nation? Its legal boundaries, determined by whom and to what end? Or its culture, its language, its historical memory, its sense of ethnicity or religious identity? To say nothing of the ideologies that sometimes come to the fore. Ukraineā€™s case has always been a puzzler.

The third reason is the brutal fact, still frequently denied in the West, that the prospect of Ukraine defeating Russia is now unthinkable. Russia definitively has the upper hand today. But it also has the capacity ā€” thanks to its Oreshnik missiles, demonstrated once but currently in mass production ā€” to wreck the entire country if Russia were to feel threatened. After that, itā€™s the prospect of nuclear war.

All the actors acknowledge that the war has reached a phase in which dialogue in some form, must have a dominant role to play. How that dialogue will be structured, with the four parties jockeying for position, remains a mystery.

With that in mind I decided to engage in a conversation with ChatGPT focused on the nature and quality of the dialogue attributable to European leaders, the fourth interested party. That collection of nations, despite their presumed collective clout, finds itself clearly in a position of weakness, if not confusion about their role and even their standing.

I opened the conversation with the following prompt.

ā€œGermanyā€™s next chancellor Friedrich Merz has said ā€˜In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the rule for our defence now has to be ā€œwhatever it takesā€.ā€™ Joe Biden repeatedly said that the US would support Ukraine ā€˜as long as it takes.ā€™ It appears that this concept of unlimited and unquestioned commitment has become a feature of a militaristic attitude that characterizes periods of historical instability and that comports serious risks of escalation. Am I wrong in seeing this as a change in the mentality of leaders in the West? Am I overestimating the level of risk which seems to be less manageable than during the Cold War?ā€

ā€œYouā€™re not wrong in observing a shift in the rhetoric of Western leaders, nor in perceiving the risks of escalation as significant. The language of open-ended commitmentā€”whether ā€˜whatever it takesā€™ (Merz) or ā€˜as long as it takesā€™ (Biden)ā€”signals a potentially more expansionist or uncompromising approach to military engagement, in contrast to the measured deterrence that characterized much of the Cold War. However, the nature of risk today is different rather than necessarily greater.

Is There a Change in Western Leadership Mentality?

Yes, there appears to be a shift, but it must be contextualized:

1. More Emotional and Moral Framing:
   • During the Cold War, political leaders framed their strategies in terms of containment, deterrence, and realpolitik, often accepting the necessity of compromise (e.g., arms control agreements, dĆ©tente).
   • °Õ“Ē»å²¹²āā€™s rhetoric leans more towards moral imperativesā€”defending democracy and sovereigntyā€”making de-escalation rhetorically harder.
2. Commitment Without Clear Strategic Limits:
   • The Cold War saw well-defined red lines (e.g., NATO vs. Warsaw Pact boundaries, nuclear doctrines like MAD).
   • °Õ“Ē»å²¹²āā€™s Western leaders are committing to a principle (Ukraineā€™s defense, European security) without a predefined endpoint, making it harder to calculate risks rationally.
3. Weaker Institutions for Restraint:
   • Cold War diplomacy was anchored by mechanisms like the Helsinki Accords, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and backchannel diplomacy.
   • Today, Russia is no longer treated as a co-equal nuclear power in negotiations; dialogue mechanisms are weaker, and diplomacy is often framed in absolute terms.

Are the Risks Less Manageable Than During the Cold War?

Possibly, but for different reasons:

• Nuclear deterrence still exists, but crisis management is weaker.
  • In the Cold War, even during extreme tensions (Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer 83), both sides used structured backchannels to prevent escalation.
  • Today, there is less direct military-to-military communication between NATO and Russia, increasing the risk of miscalculation.
• Multipolar instability replaces bipolar balance.
  • The Cold War had two clearly defined superpowers. Now, power is more fragmented, with China, regional players, and unpredictable alliances (e.g., Iran-Russia).
  • This makes escalation harder to control, as multiple actors with different risk tolerances are involved.
• Public and media-driven escalation dynamics.
  • °Õ“Ē»å²¹²āā€™s political environment rewards performative toughness, especially in democracies where leaders respond to public pressure.
  • Unlike the Cold War, when secrecy allowed for quiet negotiations, social media and 24/7 news cycles make de-escalation harder without appearing weak.

Are You Overestimating the Risk?

It depends on how you define ā€˜manageable.ā€™ While nuclear deterrence still holds, the pathways to crisis resolution are weaker, and the dynamics of political escalation are less constrained than in the past. Thereā€™s also a greater unpredictabilityā€”not just from Russia, but from domestic political shifts in the West (e.g., a potential Trump return, changing European politics).

So while a direct U.S.-Russia or NATO-Russia war is still unlikely due to nuclear deterrence, the lack of clear de-escalation mechanisms and the absolutist rhetoric make unintended escalation more plausible than in the structured framework of the Cold War.

Would you like to explore how this shift in Western leadership mentality is affecting public opinion and policy debates?ā€

ā€œYes, I would even like to look specifically at the stances taken by leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer. Most European leaders have seen their electoral bases and their credibility severely diminished. Some say they are resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority or at least their image as leaders of a war effort, but others observe that the public has not been consulted on the kinds of commitments they are ready to make. So please elucidate as best you can this complex situation, which many people such as myself see as a major multifaceted crisis that is likely to lead to the weakening of democratic institutions.ā€

ā€œYour concerns about the evolving rhetoric of Western leaders, particularly figures like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, and its implications for democratic institutions are indeed pertinent. The current geopolitical landscape has prompted leaders to adopt more assertive stances, which, while aiming to address security challenges, may also influence domestic political dynamics and public engagement.

Emmanuel Macronā€™s Position

French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated for a robust European defense strategy in response to escalating security threats. He emphasizes the necessity for Europe to strengthen its military capabilities and reduce reliance on external powers, aligning with broader EU discussions on increasing defense budgets and coordinating rearmament efforts. Proposals under consideration include the establishment of a ā€˜European Security Fundā€™ and a rearmament bank, inspired by the European Financial Stability Facility, to finance defense initiatives and support Ukraine. 

Keir Starmer’s Stance

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has outlined plans to revitalize Britainā€™s economy and public sector efficiency, linking national security with domestic renewal. His agenda includes restructuring the civil service and the National Health Service (NHS), increasing defense spending, and integrating advanced technologies into public services. While these reforms aim to bolster the UKā€™s strategic position, they have faced domestic resistance due to concerns over potential job losses and spending cuts. 

Public Consultation and Democratic Engagement

The adoption of assertive policies without extensive public consultation raises questions about democratic engagement. Critics argue that leaders resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority may bypass traditional democratic processes, leading to a disconnect between government actions and public sentiment. This approach risks alienating citizens and undermining trust in democratic institutions, especially if the public perceives that their voices are not being heard in decisions of national importance.

Impact on Democratic Institutions

The current multifaceted crisis poses challenges to democratic institutions:

• Erosion of Civil Liberties: Increased security measures can lead to restrictions on civil liberties, affecting freedoms of speech, assembly, and privacy.
• Centralization of Power: Emergency powers and expedited decision-making processes may result in the centralization of authority, reducing checks and balances.
• Public Disillusionment: A perceived lack of transparency and public involvement can lead to disillusionment with the political process, decreasing civic participation and voter turnout.

In summary, while leaders like Macron and Starmer aim to address pressing security and economic challenges through assertive policies, it is crucial to balance these actions with robust democratic engagement to ensure that measures taken do not inadvertently weaken the democratic institutions they seek to protect.ā€

To be continued

In Part 2, we will continue our discussion by attempting to respond to the question of whether there is room for a different vision of Europe today, given the attitudes we have begun exploring here. We will discover why ChatGPT, after reviewing the sometimes confusing language of Europeā€™s most audible voices, believes that ā€œa different vision, based on diplomacy, de-escalation, and economic stability, exists but currently lacks strong political champions at the highest levels.ā€

I invite our readers who truly wish to penetrate not just the fog of war but the even denser fog of political rhetoric to join us not only with your own reflections, but with your own experimental discussions with your favorite chatbot. Everyone is now empowered to use AIā€™s access to seemingly limitless resources to begin to clarify the questions that they consider urgent to explore and eventually resolve.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyoneā€™s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ō¹Ļ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorialĀ policy.

The post Outside the Box: AIā€™s Honest Take on Europeā€™s Ambiguity, Part 1 appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

The US emerged as the global superpower thanks to World War II. In 1945, Europe was in ruins. The war caused widespread destruction in Europe because of the bombing of cities and factories. European powers lost millions of people in the war. Being far from Europe and Japan, the incurred a very low rate of civilian casualties. There was almost no destruction of US infrastructure, with the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, as a notable exception. Naturally, the US emerged as the leader of the West. Although the Soviet Union was a US ally during the war, it competed with the US for global hegemony following the Allied victory, a period referred to as the Cold War.

During the Cold War, the US and its Western allies engaged in a brutal global competition with the Soviets and other communist states. Notable confrontations between these two power centers included the Korean War (1950ā€“1953), the Vietnam War (1955ā€“1975) and the Sovietā€“Afghan War (1979ā€“1989). Using Soviet influence as an excuse, the US intervened in many countries, including Iran. At the behest of the UK, the US overthrew the first democratically elected government of Iran. Only 26 years after the infamous 1953 coup, the Iranian Revolution deposed the Shah and established Iranā€™s independence from both the US and the UK.

The US tacitly supported European imperial and colonial powers when they committed some of the worst genocides in human history. The most notable include the horrendous atrocities committed in Congo, Kenya and Algeria.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the world looked forward to years of peace and prosperity. Although the US proclaimed that this new era was one of peace, it began with the Rwandan Genocide (1994), the Bosnian Genocide (1995), to the present day with the US-backed genocide against Palestinians and the takeover of Syria by al-Qaedaā€™s affiliates.

The of the Soviet Union did not make the world more peaceful; it worsened it under unilateral US leadership. The fall produced a power vacuum that has yet to be filled. In particular, it released nationalistic, ethical, cultural and self-determination movements in the former Soviet states. It led to social unrest, organized crime, terrorism and corruption. The ripple effects of the fall will ā€œcontinue to be felt for some time yet.ā€

After the Soviets were gone, the US no longer faced any serious challenges to its global hegemony. However, the US considered Iranā€™s independence from US influence a challenge to its global domination and has supported efforts to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran. Presently, the US efforts that have unseated Assad of Syria were meant to undermine Iranā€™s dominance in the region. 

Recently, reporters saw US President Joe Biden leaving a bookstore with a copy of The Hundred Yearsā€™ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi in his hand. The book describes the Palestinian struggle for their homeland. ā€œSettler-colonial confrontations with indigenous peoples have only ended in one of three ways: with the elimination or full subjugation of the native population, as in North America; with the defeat and expulsion of the colonizer, as in Algeria, which is extremely rare; or with the abandonment of colonial supremacy, in the context of compromise and reconciliation, as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Ireland,ā€ Khalidi writes. 

Hopefully, Biden will read this book and realize that instigating the war in Ukraine, enabling Israelā€™s genocide against Palestinians and aiding al-Qaeda affiliates are immoral.

The USā€™s prestige is falling worldwide, all it can do is slow the fall

The world is waking up thanks to Iran. The USā€™s decision to back Ukraine in the war and enable Israelā€™s genocide against the Palestinians has placed global attention on Iran. In particular, Iranā€™s support of the oppressed Palestinians has been a popular move. In the US, like around the world, young people with the oppressed Palestinians.

Iran has become so notable for its global standing as a supporter of the oppressed that its archenemy, Israel, admits it. On July 25, Israeli Prime Minister , against whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, addressed the US Congress.

Hearing the loud protest outside, he felt frustrated with the protesters, crying in his speech that ā€œIran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building.ā€

Led by Iran, worldwide, people realize the US is not what it claims to be. The US is not a promoter of democracy or peace but a brutal warmonger with no regard for human rights and international law. Internationally, it has used its veto power since 1970 against UN resolutions concerning Israel, with four in the last year. In November, it vetoed the latest UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in . Recently, it blundered by the rise to power in Syria of HayŹ¼at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) formerly part of al-Qaeda.

To stop the USā€™ destructive behaviors globally, China, Russia, Iran and some other countries have moved away from the US and formed the alliance. More countries are planning to do the same. Within the new alliance, China pushes for more collaboration between countries rather than subjugating them, as the US does.

No supporter of democracy, not even much of a democracy

Globally, people are becoming more aware that the US does not support democracy. Its ventures into other countries in the name of democracy are a ploy to access their resources and wealth. In pursuit of power and wealth, the US has destroyed lives. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are just a few known examples where millions of innocent people were killed and billions of dollars of infrastructure were destroyed by US-led aggression.

The US is also a very flawed democracy itself. According to a poll from the Harris Poll and the Quincy Institute, around of Americans want the US to pursue peace with Russia. Yet, the US continues arming Ukraine against Russia. Likewise, of Americans disapprove of Bidenā€™s handling of the ā€œIsraelā€“Palestine conflict,ā€ but Biden continues arming Israel. Biden is acting as a dictator, ignoring the will of the people. This is not unique to Biden. US presidents have been getting the US in wars since its inception. Despite its global proclamation as a beacon of democracy, the US has never been a true democracy.

The US presidential system is flawed. The winner of the majority of Electoral College votes wins. In 2000 and 2016, George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the popular vote but still became presidents because they commanded a majority of Electoral College votes. Furthermore, the US is dominated by two main parties. Third parties are not even on the ballot in many states. Big money in politics also strengthens the hand of the two main political parties.

This means that American politics makes for the strangest of bedfellows. Christian evangelicals voted for Trump despite his chauvinism, infidelity, nepotism, racism and corruption. So did many working-class Americans as well as a majority of white women and Latino men voted for this celebrity billionaire who has given and plans to give tax cuts to the rich. On the other hand, Ivy League elites largely voted for Democrats even if they had misgivings about Kamala Harris.

Giving the rich tax breaks and spending too much on the military-industrial complex has led to the US suffering the highest rate among industrial countries. The US ranks last in outcomes among the ten major developed countries despite spending nearly twice as much ā€” about 18% of gross domestic product ā€” on healthcare than the others. The crisis is also worse than in other Western countries and the country has the highest rate among high-income countries.

As is well known, American interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and other countries led to the expansion of the military-industrial complex. Today, the US sends its poor to war who come back with post-traumatic stress disorder if not wounds or in body bags.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 killed thousands of innocents. Its intervention in Libya caused a civil war that continues to this day. Today, the US is inflicting similar misery on Syria. Together with Turkey and Israel, the US is supporting HTS. Note that HTS is an affiliate of al-Qaeda. The HTS fighters are nothing but terrorists who have innocents, including 12-year-olds and Americans. That is the reason why the US put a $10 million bounty on HTS leader . Yet today the US has supported HTS to get rid of the Assad family, legitimizing the very fighters it has designated as terrorists.

Instead of continuing to support death and destruction, the US should support peace and harmony. First, Washington must stop threatening, invading and harming other countries. This includes stopping support for terrorists like al-Golani as well as dropping sanctions that hurt millions of innocents. Second, the US must stop its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. A peace deal is in the interest of the entire world. Third, the US must support a free Palestine where Christians, Jews and Muslims can live together in peace.

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post Facilitating the Rise of HTS Is the Latest US Blunder appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

The UN has been a nightmare. It is as dysfunctional as the League of Nations. The world has not seen peace even for a day since the UNā€™s inception in 1945. Delegates should have foreseen the UNā€™s failure in 1945. The organization came into existence for the UK, the US and the Soviets to expand their hegemony across the world. They projected peace for themselves, and not necessarily for the rest of the world.

How the Allies became the United Nations

On September 1, 1939, started with Germany invading Poland. The United Kingdom (UK) and France declared war on Germany as allies. The Soviet Union (Soviets) invaded eastern Poland on September 17. In June 1941, the Soviets joined the Allies. The Big Three (the UK, the US and the Soviets) formed a united organization of nations to maintain their global peace and security. The Allied powers met and signed the , pledging collaboration in fighting aggression. It proclaimed that ā€œthe only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security.ā€

The US Constitution strictly limits the presidentā€™s power and rests the war declaration with Congress. However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt short-circuited the Constitution, by authorizing the US to finance and arm the UK and France. In March 1941, Congress put this policy into law in the form of the without the constitutional process of declaring war. Germany and its allies, Italy and Japan (the Axis Powers), of course, considered the US to be aiding the enemy in war. 

The US later entered the war formally. In December 1941, Japanā€™s air force attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, catching the US by surprise. Within days, that attack triggered the US to declare war on Germany. Within hours, Germany also declared war on the US. That month, China joined the Allies while resisting Japanā€™s expansion in China since 1937.

In August 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the pledging to stop territorial expansion, engage in free trade, collaborate with other nations, have access to ā€œhigh seas and oceansā€, stop the use of force, and work for a world peace free of ā€œfear and wantā€, where all individuals are free to choose their form of government and enjoy economic advancement and social security. In January 1942, about four weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Big Three (the UK, the US, and the Soviet Union) and China, along with 22 other countries, signed a document pledging to accept the , which is referred to as the Declaration by the United Nations.

During World War II, the devastating effect of that war encouraged the the Big Four, to put aside their differences and collaborate in the war. To avoid such a war in the future, they began planning for the world. As the discussion progressed, the idea of a united world organization emerged. In October 1943, the Big Four signed the , recognizing ā€œthe necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States, and open to membership by all such States, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.ā€

In November- December 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the first time in Tehran, Iran. They discussed the post-war arrangement and partitions. Roosevelt and Churchill assured Stalin that he could expand Soviet territory into Poland and Germany. President Roosevelt was so infatuated with Stalin that he called him Uncle Joe. ā€œI began to tease Churchill,ā€ the American President boasted, ā€œā€¦ Winston got red and scowled and finally Stalin broke into a deep, hearty guffaw. It was then that I called him Uncle Joe.ā€ This cavalier attitude of President Roosevelt regarding Eastern Europe is a typical example of a public servant intoxicated with power, and turning into a despot. Such a cavalier is responsible for the US presidentsā€™ empowering the Zionist genocide against Palestinians and the takeover of Palestine. At the end of the Tehran meeting, they agreed on the Tehran Conference. They said: ā€œWe are sure that our concord will win an enduring peace. We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the United Nations to make a peace which will command the goodwill of the overwhelming mass of the world’s peoples and banish the scourge and terror of war for many generations.ā€

The victorious Allies founded the UN

In October 1944, the Big Four met at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, DC. They proposed a United Nations consisting of the following:

• A General Assembly, composed of all the member nations oversees an Economic and Social Council. Nowadays, it oversees other councils, too.
• A Security Council is composed of eleven members, five permanent and six chosen by the GA for two-year terms.
• An International Court of Justice.
• A United Nations Secretariat.

After the war, they all wanted to be in of the global issues. The US had risen to the most powerful one among the Big Three but felt needed Soviet cooperation to finish the war. The Soviets did not trust the UK or the US. They insisted on restoring the old Russian Empire and succeeded. 

In April 1945, delegates from 46 nations attended the and discussed and approved the UN. They set up the UN objectives to ā€œsave succeeding generations from the scourge of warā€¦to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rightsā€¦to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.ā€ 

On June 25, 1945, the delegates met in San Francisco. After days of meetings, they unanimously passed the UN Charter. The major debacle was the veto power of the Big Five (the UK, the US, France, the Soviets, and China). Less powerful nations feared that if a veto power threatened peace, the Security Council would lose its significance. They wanted more power distribution. Finally, they went along in the interest of global peace. 

On September 2, 1945, the war ended. The Big Three decided to expand the United Nations by inviting other nations to join it. 

The shortcomings of the victorsā€™ peace

To ensure their global hegemony, they planned the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the UN. The UK insisted on limiting the UNSC to the UK, the US and the Soviets. The US wanted China to be included because of its strong resistance against Japan, which freed the US to support Europe. To ensure Western control, the UK insisted on adding France to the Council. That is how the Big Five surfaced. The Soviets felt outnumbered by the West and asked for veto power, which was granted to all permanent members. 

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the only organ in the UN in which all member nations vote. Regardless of size or population, each member nation has only one vote. A simple majority decides procedural questions while a simple majority or a two-thirds vote decides substantive ones, depending on importance. It is mainly a deliberative body empowered to make recommendations to the UN Security Council (UNSC) regarding international issues. 

In contrast, the UNSC is primarily responsible for maintaining international peace and security. It is an exclusive club. Nowadays, it has 15 members, 5 of whom are permanent members and endowed with veto power on every issue. The permanent members are the US, the UK, China, France, and Russia, also known as the Big Five. The GA chooses the other ten for two-year terms.

Like the League, the UNā€™s primary purpose has been to preserve peace and security. The UN members have promised not to use force except in self-defense and to use force collectively to preserve peace. In apparent violation of the UN Charter, the veto powers granted to certain member states have led to conflicts and wars, rather than preventing them. Until the fall of the Soviets in December 1991, the world faced two superpowers, the US and the Soviets, competing for global influence, a period known as the Cold War. They incited proxy wars nearly everywhere. 

Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US emerged as the worldā€™s sole superpower. This shift in global dynamics has led to military interventions and interference in various countries, resulting in significant human suffering and destruction. Presently, the US is responsible for much of the global deaths and destruction, particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. The US complicity in the genocide against Palestinians is the talk of the world these days.

Given these ongoing challenges, it is clear that the current state of the UN is not conducive to achieving lasting global peace. Meaningful reform or even the dismantling of the organization may be necessary. Adding Brazil, Germany, India, Japan or another country is unlikely to address the fundamental issues.

[ and edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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Fast forward 75 years. The world has changed dramatically, yet NATO persists as a relic of a bygone era. The Soviet Union is no more, replaced by a Russia with a GDP than Italyā€™s. The European Union, along with the United Kingdom, boasts a combined economy nearly ten times the size of Russiaā€™s. France and the UK possess their own nuclear deterrents. Yet, inexplicably, US taxpayers continue to foot the bill for Europeā€™s defense.

With Russia weakened, Europe is getting a free ride

Some argue that Russiaā€™s actions in recent years, particularly its invasion of Ukraine, justify the USā€™s continued NATO membership. They paint a picture of a resurgent Russian threat, echoing the Cold War narratives of the past. But this comparison falls flat when we examine the facts.

During the Cold War, the US faced off against an empire of comparable might. The Soviet Unionā€™s military and economic power posed a genuine threat to both Western Europe and US interests. °Õ“Ē»å²¹²āā€™s Russia, however, is a shadow of its former self. With a GDP of about , it pales in comparison to the combined economic might of the and the , which totals more than $22 trillion.

Moreover, the population demographics tell a similar story. Russiaā€™s population is less than , dwarfed by that of the EU and UK totaling more than 500 million. The combined military spending of the and stands at $370 billion, far outstripping Russiaā€™s total defense budget of . Yet, despite these advantages, Europe continues to rely on the United States for its security.

Ironically, the USā€™s persistent role in NATO may be making Europe less secure, not more. What matters for European defense isnā€™t raw might, but speed, agility and political will. NATOā€™s cumbersome decision-making process, requiring consensus among 32 members, is ill-suited to respond to modern threats. An army of motivated Polish and German fighters willing to fight and die to protect their freedom is a far greater deterrent to Russia than a US military that is truly awesome in its capabilities, but reliant on the whims of a foot-dragging US Congress for that to translate to the battlefield. The current arrangement doesnā€™t strengthen Europe; it weakens it, leaving the continent less prepared to address threats from Russia and elsewhere.

While US citizens shoulder the burden of NATOā€™s defense spending, Europeans have grown complacent. Theyā€™ve built generous welfare states where they enjoy long vacations, early retirements and universal healthcare. Meanwhile, US workers struggle with rising healthcare costs, minimal paid leave and relentless anxiety about how they will pay the bills.

This disparity is not just a matter of different priorities; itā€™s a direct result of Europeā€™s ability to skimp on defense spending, knowing full well that Uncle Sam will always be there to pick up the slack. Itā€™s time to ask: Why should the US taxpayer subsidize Europeā€™s lavish lifestyle?

A new era demands new priorities

Proponents of NATO often point to the USā€™s nuclear umbrella as a critical component of European security. But this argument ignores a crucial fact: Both the UK and France possess their own nuclear arsenals, which was not the case when NATO was formed. These two European powers have more than enough nuclear capability to deter any potential aggressor. The idea that US nuclear weapons are necessary for European security is a Cold War anachronism that does not stand up to scrutiny.

As we approach 2025, the world faces challenges that were unimaginable when NATO was founded. Climate change, cyber and biological warfare and the rotting minds of our children addicted to social media platforms like and like Fortnite are the true existential threats of our time. These are the battles that will define the 21st century and beyond, not a rehash of 20th century geopolitics. If there is a new Cold War between rival superpowers, it exists across the North Pacific, not the North Atlantic.

Itā€™s better for the US to leave

Some will argue that leaving NATO is too risky, that it could destabilize Europe and embolden Russia. But this view underestimates Europeā€™s capabilities and overestimates Russiaā€™s. By continuing its outdated commitment to NATO, the US is fostering dependency and resentment, preventing Europe from developing the military self-reliance it needs.

Proponents of NATO often point to its invocation of Article 5 after the September 11 attacks as proof of the allianceā€™s value. However, this argument ignores a crucial reality: The response to the attacks would have happened with or without NATO. When faced with acts of aggression that demand a response, the United States has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to rapidly form and provide leadership to coalitions outside of formal alliance structures.

The First Gulf War in 1991 serves as a prime example. In response to Iraqā€™s invasion of Kuwait, the US quickly assembled a coalition of 42 nations, many of whom were not NATO members. This ā€œcoalition of the willingā€ included fighters from countries as diverse as Japan, New Zealand and Afghanistan. The swift and effective formation of this coalition underscores a fundamental truth: When genuine threats arise, nations band together to address them, which can be easier without the cumbersome framework of an organization like NATO.

Game theory offers another compelling reason for the US to leave: the strategic value of . In a world of mass surveillance where concealing actions is increasingly difficult, being predictable can be a significant disadvantage. Consider a poker game where one player always has a pair of kings, while the other has queens or aces with equal probability. Despite each player having the stronger hand half the time, the unpredictable player will on average win more.

This principle applies similarly to military strategy. NATOā€™s rigid structure and well-defined protocols make its responses predictable. By leaving NATO, the US introduces an element of uncertainty that can serve as a more effective deterrent. Potential adversaries would no longer be able to rely on a known command and control structure or anticipate specific responses. This unpredictability can in turn force adversaries to be more cautious, preventing conflicts before they begin.

Moreover, while it is true that P implies Q does not mean the same as not P implies not Q, there is often an implicit assumption that it does. By the United States declaring ā€œIf there is an attack on a NATO country, there will be an overwhelming response from the United Statesā€ it suggests to potential enemies that ā€œIf there is an attack on a non-NATO country, the United States will not respond with overwhelming force.ā€ This is clearly seen in Ukraine, where Putin is in plain sight employing the principle: ā€œUkraine not NATO, therefore Ukraine fair game.ā€

The reality on the ground is that the Iron curtain no longer exists and we live in a world with fuzzy borders and hybrid warfare. The correct response to this is illustrated regarding Taiwan. Will America go to war to defend Taiwan? It might. That should be the answer to every question of that form. Will America go to war over a sabotaged undersea cable or gas pipeline? It might. Will it go to war over an act of terrorism? It might. Will America go to war to defend Europe? It might. America should go to war when the American President and Congress decide that it should, not because of a treaty from three quarters of a century ago born of a different age. By withdrawing from NATO, the United States would put Ukraine on equal footing with not just Poland but also France and Germany, and be a masterstroke of expanding not contracting American influence.

In essence, by stepping away from NATO, the US would paradoxically enhance global security by keeping potential aggressors guessing about the nature and extent of possible responses to their actions.

Itā€™s time to go

The time has come for bold leadership. President-elect Donald Trumpā€™s landslide victory and Republican control of Congress provide a unique opportunity to reshape the USā€™s foreign policy. The nation must seize this moment to chart a new course. Leaving NATO will not only serve the interests of the US taxpayer, it will also help Europe by teaching it the pride of taking care of its own needs with its own hard work.

The USā€™s departure from NATO wonā€™t be easy. It will require careful diplomacy, detailed planning and time. But it is a necessary step for both the US and Europe to address the real challenges of the 21st century.

And to those reading this in a nice coffee shop in a town square in Europe, I say this: If you want to continue enjoying your wine and your swimming pools, and your relaxed way of life, itā€™s time for you to fight for it ā€” and pay for it ā€” yourself.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post Itā€™s Time for the US To Bid Farewell to NATO appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

Russia’s history reveals remarkable resilience. Over eight centuries, it has faced potential collapse several times, not only recovering but also expanding its territory in some instances. This resilience evokes the image of the , a traditional Russian toy that rights itself. It underscores a profound tenacity within the state and society, enabling repeated rebounds from near collapse. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union’s dissolution was a significant test of this resilience. Defying predictions, Russia maintained its territorial integrity.

After this collapse, anti-Westernism emerged as a powerful unifying ideology, drawing on cultural memory to create a sense of common purpose. Additionally, the absence of strong regional rivals during the turbulent post-Soviet years allowed Russia to navigate this critical juncture without significant external threats.

This stability, however, has come at a cost. The unifying anti-Western ideology has also fueled Russia’s contemporary imperial ambitions. It drives an increasingly aggressive foreign policy aimed at reasserting global influence. This transformation reflects a broader historical pattern: the need for internal cohesion and national survival often propels Russia towards expansionism and authoritarian tendencies. 

The soul of Russian identity

Shared characteristics and unifying values act as the glue that binds people together into a nation. Two different kinds of values can underpin national unity: cultural and historical values shared by an ethnic majority, or unifying values that transcend ethnicity. In other words, nations form on either an ethnocultural or supra-ethnic basis.

Immigrant states like the United States are the prime examples of supra-ethnic unity, but not the only ones. Switzerland, for instance, has functioned as a supra-ethnic state since the 16th century, solidifying its national identity around the concept of neutrality in the 19th century. Similarly, Pakistani religious nationalism unites the people of the multinational state of Pakistan.

Unlike Western European nation-states like France, Italy and Germany, Russia was founded as a multi-ethnic empire. Thus, it built its unity on supra-ethnic values. These take the form of a unifying, often religious ideal; a shared goal; a grand vision for the future or a regional mission.

Early 20th-century philosopher Georgy Fedotov that Russians lacked the ā€œarrogant consciousness of a superior raceā€ that , for example, the British in India. Instead, they readily communicated with their subjects and even blended with them. This openness allowed local aristocracies to integrate into military and administrative roles across the empire. This facilitated a soft across the nationā€™s vast territories.

Russian philosopher Nikolay Danilevsky encapsulated this process in his theory of , which emphasized granting privileges to local elites and partially emancipating peoples on the empireā€™s outskirts. These combined factors were crucial for creating a unified Russian nation over the centuries.

Throughout its history, Russia has relied on unifying values for national unity, but these have undergone significant shifts. Initially, Orthodox Christianity served as a cornerstone, reinforcing the Tsar’s authority and binding the population through shared faith. As the empire expanded, absolutism emerged as a unifying force, fostering a sense of collective identity among its diverse peoples.

The Soviet era offered a stark contrast, emphasizing proletarian internationalism and a global communist revolution. It aimed to unite citizens under the banner of Marxism-Leninism. However, the shattered the Tsarist order, and the , which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse, destroyed the unifying values with which the revolution replaced it. The transition to a post-Soviet world left a significant ideological vacuum.

This ideological vacuum contributed to the USSR’s collapse in 1991, which fractured into 15 independent states. Three key factors were at play. First, Russia, the linchpin of the USSR, initiated the break-up by its withdrawal from the union alongside Belarus and Ukraine. Second, the USSR lacked unifying values by the early 1990s. Disillusionment with communism was widespread, and the “sacred mission” of the first socialist state held no sway. Nationalist movements arose across the republics, public discourse and pushing for independence. Finally, by the late 1980s, national elites emerged within the Soviet republics. These elites prioritized the independent development of their nations over loyalty to the central union.

Russiaā€™s state-declared values have their limits

The maintenance of this ideological unity as as important today as it always has been. The Russian government takes an active role in traditional values like religious adherence, especially to the Russian Orthodox Church, and family loyalty to foster national unity. These actions form part of their strategy to bolster societal cohesion and national identity.

However, there are challenges, like the perceived gap between the publicly declared values and the actual experiences of many Russian citizens. This gap has its roots in the Soviet era, a time when the state required citizens to outwardly conform to state-sanctioned ideologies, regardless of their private beliefs. This historical backdrop impedes the governmentā€™s efforts to authentically resonate their promotion of traditional values with the people, limiting their success.

Different Russian thinkers proposed various ideas on traditional values: the old Orthodox concept of ā€œ,ā€ Danilevskyā€™s vision of encompassing both politics and culture, Fyodor Dostoevskyā€™s idea of and most recently, the emphasis on traditional values actively promoted by the Russian government. The current state presents loyalty to conservative traditions as the unifying force for all Russians. The Russian government promotes the view that these traditions, including religious customs and universal values like patriotism, dignity and service to the Fatherland, are ingrained in the people. In recent years, the Russian state has also actively incorporated homophobic narratives into this concept.

However, a study by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Higher School of Economics that traditionalism may not be a unifying force for Russian society. The study found that traditional values occupy a middling position on the value scale of Russians compared to other basic values like self-enhancement, security and benevolence, using a scale of values by Israeli sociologist Shalom Schwartz.

Evolution of basic values of the Russian population, 2006ā€“2021.

These latter values became more important during the COVID-19 pandemic. People also prefer autonomy to traditional values. Rounding out the list are individualistic values: enjoying life () and a desire for risk and novelty.

In recent years, hedonism has surpassed power as a value. The value of power significantly decreased after the suppression of democratic protests in 2019. People seem to have concluded that it is safer and easier to delegate responsibility for their well-being to existing power structures. However, the role of traditional values remained relatively stagnant, even declining slightly between 2006 and 2021.

By the early 2000s, Russians transitioned from focusing on survival to embracing . Rising incomes fueled spending. When income growth in 2014, household debt surged. Sales channels became hubs for socializing and spending. Increased income and access to credit allowed working-age Russians to move beyond basic necessities, pursuing goods and services associated with status. Rising incomes empowered consumers to prioritize an improved quality of life, even as social stratification widened. As the older generation scarred by the Soviet Union passed away, a new generation emerged, longing to experience life.

Despite the image that political and religious leaders attempt to promote of Russia as an Orthodox nation, Russians lean secular. True religiosity involves ritual observance, not just belief or celebrating major holidays. A Romir Research Group survey with Gallup International/WIN Associationā€™s Global Barometer on Hope and Despair that 55% of Russians identify as religious. However, only 9% of those who called themselves Orthodox in 2007 followed all rituals and participated in church life. Even more concerning, 21% lacked knowledge of , a core Christian practice.

A 2010 Public Opinion Foundation survey only 4% of self-identified Orthodox Christians regularly attend church. Notably, this ā€œchurchedā€ demographic skews heavily towards elderly women. Similarly, in 2022, only 7% of those identifying with various faiths themselves truly religious. This is not surprising given Russiaā€™s history of over 70 years of state-sanctioned secularism.

Traditional values often emphasize collectivism, prioritizing the family, community and social harmony over individual needs. However, a study a slight decline in the importance Russians place on collectivism. Interestingly, Russia leads Europe in individualistic values ā€”  prioritizing personal self-assertion ā€”  which directly contradicts the claim that collectivism defines Russians. This stands in stark contrast to countries like Sweden and France, which are for their strong collectivist tendencies. Family values also appear less important in Russia. The high divorce (73%) and poor demographic suggest a weaker emphasis on family compared to the rhetoric.

This disconnect between words and actions echoes the Soviet era, where public pronouncements often masked private beliefs. People swore allegiance to communism, but lacked understanding of Marxist theory or faith in those ideals. This pattern of performative pronouncements seems to have persisted.

Anti-Westernism is a Russian national idea

With traditional sources of purpose in decline, Russia increasingly relies on anti-Western sentiment to unify its people. This ideology is a form of that repudiates Western values and aspires to resurrect past glories. It permeates the social fabric, shaping Russia’s assertive foreign policy and imperial ambitions. Anti-Westernism manifests in geopolitical maneuvers and a confrontational stance in international relations, fostering tension with the West.

While unlikely to secure complete national cohesion on its own, this external xenophobia has forged a shared identity, a feat that eluded preceding ideologies such as Russian Orthodoxy, Marxism-Leninism and the floundering liberal reforms of the late Soviet era. Filling the ideological vacuum, this narrative provides a unifying identity that resonates with the populace.

A large segment of Russian society actively opposes the West or advocates for a sovereign development model. A 2022 All-Russian Public Opinion Poll that a significant 54% of Russians explicitly express hatred for Western values. An additional 27% hold similar views on Western development, forming a periphery of the core anti-Western group. This peripheral group differs by allowing a minimal inclusion of Western values in Russia, as long as it does not alter the national identity. Combined, supporters of sovereign development constitute a staggering 81% ā€” the overwhelming majority of Russian society.

A wide range of social and ethnic in Russia support this ideology, including many wealthy people who often saw their wealth increase during the war. They hold a xenophobic worldview, rejecting everything Western and foreign in general. This ideology stems from 19th-century and gained further momentum under Stalin’s repressions and his campaign. They view Mikhail Gorbachevā€™s perestroika ā€” the policy of restructuring the economic and political system ā€” and the 1990sā€™ liberal reforms as a national betrayal, considering Russian liberals agents of the collective West. 

However, their ideology extends beyond anti-Westernism. It also great-power status for Russia, a strong central government for order and development and social justice. While not pure great-power ā€” for ethnic Russians are not the only supporters ā€” this ideology harbors disdain towards national minorities within Russia, without being outright racist or classically discriminatory.

The Russian Empireā€™s centuries of Orthodox intolerance towards foreigners, along with the Soviet eraā€™s active promotion of anti-Westernism under the guise of anti-capitalism, have ingrained a deep-seated xenophobia in the Russian psyche. Both societies started with grand ambitions of global dominance: Moscow as the Third Rome and the USSR as the bastion of peace and justice. This perspective reflects the historical path of Chinese society, which has also grappled with its own form of xenophobia and a complicated relationship with Western influence. However, they eventually fell into narratives of victimhood, pointing fingers at the West for their problems. The claim is that the West has robbed Russia. In a similar vein, China has frequently attributed its historical struggles to foreign meddling, further reinforcing its parallel with Russiaā€™s narrative.

The 1990s after the Soviet collapse saw a rise in external phobias in Russia. People feared the uncontrolled Western market and a foreign culture that supposedly threatened to destroy their traditions. They also harbored anxieties about NATO’s alleged expansionist aims. Ironically, this last fear was a key factor in keeping many regions, especially those with ethnic minorities, from seeking independence like the former Soviet republics.

By then, the USSRā€™s disintegration had played out. Russians witnessed the rise of non-citizenship in Latvia and Estonia. These targeted not just the old Soviet elite from the Russian-speaking minority, but the entire Russian-speaking population. They saw the turmoil in Tajikistan, which escalated from civil strife to a full-blown war fueled by Islamic radicals.

Similarly, Georgiaā€™s independence led to in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, along with a severe energy crisis that gripped Georgia and Armenia. It forced people to resort to fireplaces for warmth even in apartment buildings. Furthermore, Soviet collapse severed economic ties between republics, sparking fears of a similar break if Russia fractured. This worried many Russian regions already grappling with economic reforms.

By the early 1990s, Russiaā€™s population was even more ethnically diverse than other former Soviet republics. Regional leaders were often Russian-speaking representatives of the old Soviet elite. For instance, in modern Tatarstan, ethnic Tatars only 52% of the population. It was even back then, at 48.48%. This ethnic diversity, coupled with the economic hardships, discouraged both the general population and regional elites from seeking separation from Russia.

Regional leaders in the early 1990s, aware of their on Russian resources like hydrocarbons, sought autonomy within Russia. Resource-rich regions, for example, could not function without Russian infrastructure and materials (like the Nizhnekamsk refinery needing Tyumen oil for processing). Their goals were clear: secure a strong position in the new Russian Federation, gain economic independence and maintain stability, while avoiding the pitfalls found by some former Soviet republics. Society as a whole, wary of the uncertain future promised by local nationalists, preferred the familiar socio-economic reality of the early 1990s Russian Federation.

Chechnya was an exception. It saw federal authorities take a hands-off approach. Bordering Russia directly, this republic held the potential to export energy resources independently. Further fueling separatism, the and rising nationalism in the early 1990s led the Russian-speaking population to vacate, removing a key obstacle to independence. Historical memory, particularly the Stalinist of Chechens in 1944, also played a role.

In the 1990s, Russia saw a rise in active anti-Western sentiment alongside existing passive phobias ā€”  less overt forms of anti-Western sentiment that were already present in Russian society. Russians rejected their label as the Cold War loser, believing their goodwill averted a major conflict. They resented the Westā€™s gloating and the USā€™s push for its policies and values. They saw NATOā€™s eastward expansion from 1994 as a direct challenge.

The NATO of Yugoslavia intensified anti-Western attitudes. It transcended geopolitics, becoming a civilizational clash. Yugoslavia, a historical ally with religious and cultural ties, was under attack. This marked a turning point; the West was no longer a savior and the US was no longer an arbiter. Russia stood alone. Many harbored resentment beyond Serbian solidarity.

The US then strained relations further. It unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and deployed missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Romania, rejecting Russiaā€™s proposal for a joint system. Russia viewed these actions as hostile, particularly after it closed its radar station in Cuba and base in Vietnam earlier in 2002.

Western foreign policy fueled a growing sense of betrayal in Russia. The populace saw these decisions as dismantling the legacy of the Soviet Union. From 2003-2004, in Georgia and Ukraine coincided with intensified separatist activity in the Caucasus, culminating in the Beslan school hostage . This allowed the Kremlin to abolish regional elections in Russia. It embraced securitization in Russian domestic politics. This tactic involved framing restrictions on democratic rights as essential security measures.

Following the Color Revolutions, Georgia attempted to South Ossetia in 2008. This triggered a Russian military intervention and recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Russia also saw this as a response to Western recognition of Kosovoā€™s independence. 

This emphasis on anti-Westernism gained significant traction in the wake of Ukraine’s 2014 pro-Western . Viewing this event as a US-backed coup, Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and covertly supporting separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. This ignited a full-blown political confrontation with the West, marked by crippling sanctions and a significant deterioration in diplomatic relations. The culmination of these tensions arrived in February 2022 with Russia’s large-scale military intervention in Ukraine, a move that shattered the fragile European security architecture and raised the specter of a wider conflict.

Russiaā€™s military interventions mark a steady escalation of aggression. This culminated in open hostility not just towards Ukraine, but the entire collective West. Russiaā€™s new ideology casts it as a virtuous nation surrounded by enemies. This anti-Western, xenophobic narrative fuels support for the Kremlinā€™s aggression. While collapse would not solve this, it could spark a civil war like Yugoslaviaā€™s ā€” now with nuclear weapons.

[ and edited this piece.]

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Suddenly, every trolley stops. Being used to power cuts, you scoff and dismount. It’s going to be a long walk home.

This is what life in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, was like in the early 2000s. Electricity was expensive and scarce, and the country needed help keeping up with the load.

About a decade earlier, on December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union had . The high inflation that followed led to the increase of prices for energy resources, according to the IOM 2001 . Most electricity was generated in the Russia-controlled breakaway region of Transnistria. There were constant negotiations over the price of electricity, which led to poor transportation in Moldova.

But the nation had a trick up its sleeve: It knew how to build and fix things.

A Soviet electronics powerhouse

These days, Moldova is commonly known as an agrarian state. Lush fields are vital to its economy. But things were different during the Soviet Union. Local engineers made televisions, integrated circuits, and military systems for submarines, among many other products. This information comes from Elena Maevski, project coordinator at The Association of Electronics Companies in Moldova ().

Moldova was the supplier of electronic equipment among the socialist republics, according to ACEM. As proven by Ion Bostan, a former Technical University of Moldova rector, electronics brought the most revenue to the state budget when Moldova was part of the Soviet Union.

In his Engineering Sciences and the Cooperation with Industry in the Republic of Moldova, Bostan revealed many secrets about the industry. He showed how the electronics Moscow ordered from Moldova helped control, manage, and monitor military equipment.

That all changed with the Soviet Unionā€™s collapse. Moldovan companies lost their old market. The budget for education and sciences dropped in the independent country struggling economically. But their expertise remained.

Some 20 years later, the companies and their engineers are slowly resurfacing. produces PCB laminates and other materials for the electronics industry. makes generators and electric motors for the coal and nuclear power industries, as well as others.

Their leaders are starting to speak about their work for the first time. Vitalie Eșanu, a legendary engineer and a professor at the Technical University of Moldova, is prominent among them. He is the founder and CEO of , a technical-scientific enterprise that develops and manufactures equipment for urban public transport.

A city in search of a solution

To combat the power cut dilemma in the gloomy 2000s, Chisinau turned to Eșanu to make trolleybuses more energy-efficient for the city. This began a journey that led to the invention of world-class electronics.

Vitalie Eșanu, the CEO of Informbusiness, is a legendary engineer and a professor at the Technical University of Moldova. Authorsā€™ photo.

Informbusiness designed and assembled electronics to allow trolleybuses to run further on less energy. Their solution made Chisinauā€™s transportation around 40% more efficient. Before the 2000s, one trolley consumed 3-3.5 kilowatts per kilometer (kW/km). Company engineers were able to reduce it to approximately 2 kW/km.

Since then, Informbusiness has sold its gadgets to 170 cities worldwide. They power trolleybuses, trams, and trains. In December 2023, the company opened Moldova’s first trolleybus assembly factory. Their engineers created Moldova’s very first electric bus. This battery-powered transport consumes just 0.75-0.85 kW/km.

Informbusiness engineers are particularly proud of the battery storages that accumulate energy for their electric buses; they enable the vehicles to travel up to 450 kilometers on one charge. ā€œThis is a product that practically has no analog today, not even in the USA or Europe,ā€ Eșanu told us, ā€œbecause it helps the vehicle go that far.ā€

Informbusiness covers 18% of the electronics in Chisinau’s transportation sector. ā€œThis gives us a large testing ground,ā€ explained Alexandru Motroi, the companyā€™s technical director. Being able to test their electronics in real-life situations is a rare advantage to have.

The companyā€™s disadvantage, however, is its obscurity. Not only is Informbusiness unknown globally, but even locals know little about it.

Informbusiness trolleybuses improve San Franciscoā€™s safety

So we visited their factory in a Chisinau suburb. A hidden path led us underground to a lower level. Here, elderly mechanics weld and polish general parts. Upstairs, engineers devise new inventions. In the middle of that room stands a switching device. It is an exact replica of the ones they export to San Francisco, California ā€” they help American trolleybuses run more smoothly.

The engine is directly connected to the network in electric transport, explained Alexandru Motroi. When the trolleybus starts moving, it draws the energy straight from the socket, causing abrupt movement. Informbusiness’ gadget makes the transition smoother. Without this device, the passengers would tumble whenever a trolleybus stopped or started. This equipment is also used in Chișinau, making trolleys safer and providing a smoother ride.

Eșanu and Motroi have never been to San Francisco themselves. Their work has traveled farther than they have.

Trolleys are a part of city life

Trolley buses are central to Chisinau’s daily life. Most people still use them on their daily commute. Though noisy, they are efficient and more ecological than diesel buses. Ultimately, this is a story of how the collapsing Soviet military-industrial complex produced something much more worthwhile than weapons of war: technology to help people travel safely.

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The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film WarGames, a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response and, not surprisingly, pronounced ā€œwhopperā€) nearly provokes a catastrophic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union before being disabled by a teenage hacker (played by Matthew Broderick). The Terminator franchise, beginning with the original 1984 film, similarly envisioned a self-aware supercomputer called ā€œSkynetā€ that, like WOPR, was designed to control US nuclear weapons but chooses instead to wipe out humanity, viewing us as a threat to its existence.

Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility in the very real world of the near future. In addition to developing a wide variety of ā€œ,ā€ or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called ā€œ.ā€ In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In some scenarios, robot decision-makers could even end up exercising control over Americaā€™s atomic weapons, potentially allowing them to ignite a nuclear war resulting in humanityā€™s demise.

Now, take a breath for a moment. The installation of an AI-powered command-and-control (C2) system like this may seem a distant possibility. Nevertheless, the US Department of Defense is working hard to develop the required hardware and software in a systematic, increasingly rapid fashion. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the air force to develop the (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to collect and interpret data on enemy operations and provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As C2 capabilities are onto AI-controlled systems, they may soon be issuing ā€œfireā€ instructions directly to ā€œshooters,ā€ largely bypassing human control.

ā€œA machine-to-machine data exchange tool that provides options for deterrence, or for on-ramp,ā€ a military show of force, ā€œor early engagementā€ā€”thatā€™s how Will Roper, assistant secretary of the air force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, described the ABMS system in a 2020 . Suggesting that ā€œwe do need to change the nameā€ as the system evolves, Roper added, ā€œI think Skynet is out, as much as I would love doing that as a sci-fi thing. I just donā€™t think we can go there.ā€

And while he canā€™t go there, thatā€™s just where the rest of us may, indeed, be going.

Mind you, thatā€™s only the start. In fact, the air forceā€™s ABMS is intended to constitute the nucleus of a larger constellation of sensors and computers that will connect all US combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced ā€œjad-cee-twoā€). ā€œJADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon ā€¦ to engage the target,ā€ the Congressional Research Service in 2022.

AI and the nuclear trigger

Initially, JADC2 will be designed to coordinate combat operations among ā€œconventionalā€ or non-nuclear American forces. Eventually, however, it is expected to with the Pentagonā€™s nuclear command-control-and-communications systems (NC3), potentially giving computers significant control over the use of the American nuclear arsenal. ā€œJADC2 and NC3 are intertwined,ā€ General John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a 2020 interview. As a result, he added in typical Pentagonese, ā€œNC3 has to inform JADC2 and JADC2 has to inform NC3.ā€

It doesnā€™t require great imagination to picture a time in the not-too-distant future when a crisis of some sortā€”say a US-China military clash in the South China Sea or near Taiwanā€”prompts ever more intense fighting between opposing air and naval forces. Imagine then the JADC2 ordering an intense bombardment of enemy bases and command systems in China itself, triggering reciprocal attacks on US facilities and a lightning decision by JADC2 to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons, igniting a long-feared nuclear holocaust.

The possibility that nightmare scenarios of this sort could result in the accidental or unintended onset of nuclear war has long troubled analysts in the arms control community. But the growing automation of military C2 systems has generated anxiety not just among them but among senior national security officials as well.

As early as 2019, when I questioned Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, director of the Pentagonā€™s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, about such a risky possibility, he , ā€œYou will find no stronger proponent of integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense, but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.ā€ This ā€œis the ultimate human decision that needs to be madeā€ and so ā€œwe have to be very careful.ā€ Given the technologyā€™s ā€œimmaturity,ā€ he added, we need ā€œa lot of time to test and evaluateā€ before applying AI to NC3.

In the years since, despite such warnings, the Pentagon has been racing ahead with the development of automated C2 systems. In its budget submission for 2024, the Department of Defense $1.4 billion for the JADC2 in order ā€œto transform warfighting capability by delivering information advantage at the speed of relevance across all domains and partners.ā€ Uh-oh! And then it requested another $1.8 billion for other kinds of military-related AI research.

Pentagon officials acknowledge that it will be some time before robot generals will be commanding vast numbers of US troops (and autonomous weapons) in battle, but they have already launched several projects intended to test and perfect just such linkages. One example is the armyā€™s , involving a series of field exercises designed to validate ABMS and JADC2 component systems. In a test held in August 2020 at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, for example, the army used a variety of air- and ground-based sensors to track simulated enemy forces and then process that data using AI-enabled computers at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington state. Those computers, in turn, issued fire instructions to ground-based artillery at Yuma. ā€œThis entire sequence was supposedly accomplished within 20 seconds,ā€ the Congressional Research Service later .

Less is known about the navyā€™s AI equivalent, ā€œProject Overmatch,ā€ as many aspects of its programming have been kept secret. According to Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, Overmatch is ā€œto enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and nonlethal effects from near-and-far, every axis, and every domain.ā€ Little else has been revealed about the project.

ā€œFlash warsā€ and human extinction

Despite all the secrecy surrounding these projects, you can think of ABMS, JADC2, Convergence and Overmatch as building blocks for a future Skynet-like mega-network of super-computers designed to command all US forces, including its nuclear ones, in armed combat. The more the Pentagon moves in that direction, the closer weā€™ll come to a time when AI possesses life-or-death power over all American soldiers along with opposing forces and any civilians caught in the crossfire.

Such a prospect should be ample cause for concern. To start with, consider the risk of errors and miscalculations by the algorithms at the heart of such systems. As top computer scientists have warned us, those algorithms are remarkably inexplicable mistakes and, to use the AI term of the moment, ā€œhallucinationsā€ā€”that is, seemingly reasonable results that are entirely illusionary. Under the circumstances, itā€™s not hard to imagine such computers ā€œhallucinatingā€ an imminent enemy attack and launching a war that might otherwise have been avoided.

And thatā€™s not the worst of the dangers to consider. After all, thereā€™s the obvious likelihood that Americaā€™s adversaries will similarly equip their forces with robot generals. In other words, future wars are likely to be fought by one set of AI systems against another, both linked to nuclear weaponry, with entirely unpredictableā€”but potentially catastrophicā€”results.

Not much is known (from public sources at least) about Russian and Chinese efforts to automate their military command-and-control systems, but both countries are thought to be developing networks comparable to the Pentagonā€™s JADC2. As early as 2014, in fact, Russia inaugurated a National Defense Control Center (NDCC) in Moscow, a centralized command post for assessing global threats and initiating whatever military action is deemed necessary, whether of a non-nuclear or nuclear nature. Like JADC2, the NDCC is to collect information on enemy moves from multiple sources and provide senior officers with guidance on possible responses.

China to be pursuing an even more elaborate, if similar, enterprise under the rubric of ā€œMulti-Domain Precision Warfareā€ (MDPW). According to the Pentagonā€™s 2022 on Chinese military developments, its military, the Peopleā€™s Liberation Army, is being trained and equipped to use AI-enabled sensors and computer networks to ā€œrapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the US operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities.ā€

Picture, then, a future war between the US and Russia or China (or both) in which the JADC2 commands all US forces, while Russiaā€™s NDCC and Chinaā€™s MDPW command those countriesā€™ forces. Consider, as well, that all three systems are likely to experience errors and hallucinations. How safe will humans be when robot generals decide that itā€™s time to ā€œwinā€ the war by nuking their enemies?

If this strikes you as an outlandish scenario, think again, at least according to the leadership of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a congressionally mandated enterprise that was chaired by Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Robert Work, former deputy secretary of defense. ā€œWhile the Commission believes that properly designed, tested and utilized AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems will bring substantial military and even humanitarian benefit, the unchecked global use of such systems potentially risks unintended conflict escalation and crisis instability,ā€ it in its Final Report. Such dangers could arise, it stated, ā€œbecause of challenging and untested complexities of interaction between AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems on the battlefieldā€ā€”when, that is, AI fights AI.

Though this may seem an extreme scenario, itā€™s entirely possible that opposing AI systems could trigger a catastrophic ā€œflash warā€ā€”the military equivalent of a ā€œflash crashā€ on Wall Street, when huge transactions by super-sophisticated trading algorithms spark panic selling before human operators can restore order. In the infamous ā€œFlash Crashā€ of May 6, 2010, computer-driven trading precipitated a 10% fall in the stock marketā€™s value. Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security, who first studied the phenomenon, ā€œthe military equivalent of such crisesā€ on Wall Street would arise when the automated command systems of opposing forces ā€œbecome trapped in a cascade of escalating engagements.ā€ In such a situation, he noted, ā€œautonomous weapons could lead to accidental death and destruction at catastrophic scales in an instant.ā€

At present, there are virtually no measures in place to prevent a future catastrophe of this sort or even talks among the major powers to devise such measures. Yet, as the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence noted, such crisis-control measures are urgently needed to integrate ā€œautomated escalation tripwiresā€ into such systems ā€œthat would prevent the automated escalation of conflict.ā€ Otherwise, some catastrophic version of World War III seems all too possible. Given the dangerous immaturity of such technology and the reluctance of Beijing, Moscow and Washington to impose any restraints on the weaponization of AI, the day when machines could choose to annihilate us might arrive far sooner than we imagine and the extinction of humanity could be the collateral damage of such a future war.

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The eight nations that make up NATOā€™s eastern flank are the most exposed to potential Russian aggression and to the effects of the war in Ukraine. They are also amongst NATOā€™s most diverse, from the stable and predictable north to the more politically chaotic south. Making sure these nations are in lockstep without politics getting in the way of regional security is a matter of survival.

Europeā€™s vulnerable frontiers

Ever since gaining independence from the former Soviet Union, the Baltic nations have been a model of democratic stability. Estonia, which is at the of the regionā€™s democratic accomplishments, shares a 183-mile border with Russia. On the southern side, Lithuania has a 171-mile border with Russiaā€™s exclave Kaliningrad, which mostly cuts the Baltics off from the rest of NATO. These geographically vulnerable democracies know whatā€™s at stake given the current crisis in Ukraine.

For Eastern Europe, the Ukrainian tragedy strikes a deep chord not only because of its proximity but because stories of Soviet occupation are still entrenched in the public mindset. Eastern Europeans have rightly won plaudits for welcoming Ukrainians fleeing war and offering continued assistance to Ukraine.

the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Eastern European nations top the list of countries committing aid to Ukraine as a share of their own gross domestic product (GDP). The small Baltic nation of Estonia has offered the most to Ukraine by GDP share; Latvia ranks second. 

It is this very push that is slowly changing the face of the European Union, with Eastern Europe at its vanguard. In short, Eastern Europe has proven to be a moral leader in this crisis. But goodwill, favorable public opinion and military assistance are not enough. Internal politics needs to deliver, too.

Corruption is widespread and getting worse

Unfortunately, the farther south you go in Eastern Europe, the less stable internal affairs get.

Freedom House, Polandā€™s democracy has been backsliding due to partisan influence over state institutions. A key NATO ally, Poland has been criticized over the last few years for its policies that the rule of law. A countryā€™s defense is only as strong as its institutions, and creeping are not reassuring for NATOā€™s strongest eastern partner in a time of great need.

Hungary follows suit. Viktor OrbĆ”nā€™s cabinet has been the countryā€™s democratic institutions for years now. The populist government in Budapest has been pushing for chummy relations with Putin. Its potential to disrupt EU and NATO affairs is significant. Since both systems require unanimity, , Russia and China nearly have a seat at the decision-making table in Brussels.

Move further southeast and things continue to get dicey. Romania shares the longest border with Ukraine of any EU or NATO member state. The country has had its fair of internal woes, from the government on its pledge to curb corruption, to declining .

Romania has to join the Schengen Area, the borderless free movement zone of the EU. Schengen is crucial because it not only provides freedom of movement but also security. Schengen regulations help curb everything from organized crime to smuggling and terrorism. 

Romania may get even further away from joining Schengen if it fails to secure its border with Ukraine. This border has proven to be the in terms of smuggling and illicit trade in the entire EU as Romania remains the country by cigarette smuggling in the European Union.

Stop Contrabanda, a website monitoring contraband cigarette busts, that 110 million contraband cigarettes were seized by the Romanian authorities in 2022 alone. But this is just the tip of the iceberg; many more hundreds of millions of euros worth of fake cigarettes evade being seized by authorities, as show. 

Bucharest recently announced its intent to suddenly raise taxes and prices, for the third time this year, on various sectors including the tobacco industry most prone to contraband. This will only lead to an increase in the smuggling of cheaper, more harmful fake cigarettes and other illicit goods. The European Anti-Fraud Office has been on the manifold risks of illicit trade.

A surge in contraband will lead to new smuggling routes being opened, routes which end up being used not only by smugglers but also by organized crime, weakening the EU and NATOā€™s border during a time of conflict.

Mixed news from Bulgaria

Things are currently beginning to look up for Bulgaria, Romaniaā€™s southern neighbor, which has seen no fewer than held over the last two years. The country has been on a political rollercoaster, and its security approach has been following suit. From a rather shy supporter of Ukraine to one of its allies.  Bulgaria has internally fluctuated between pro-Western and pro-Kremlin politicians, which is a liability.

Given these sensitivities and the many elections over a short period of time, there has been a lot of uncertainty as to where Bulgaria really stands regarding the war in Ukraine. Fortunately, a recent by the German daily Die Welt revealed that Bulgaria, although the poorest country in the EU, has punched well above its weight when it comes to helping out Ukraine and has proven amongst its most reliable partners.

For NATO to prevail in securing its member states and allies, unity and predictability need to be more than an encouraging slogan. Governments need to act to ensure internal stability and rule of law. Some do indeed a better job than others, but with a war raging next door, that may not suffice.

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Ukraine after independence

On December 21, 1991, the Alma-Ata Protocols formally ended the Soviet Union. The day before, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) held its first meeting and to uphold the values of ā€œbuilding a Europe a whole and free.ā€ The NACC invited the former Soviet countries that now formed part of the Commonwealth of Independent States to join on March 10, 1992. This established Ukraineā€™s first formal relationship with NATO. In 1997, the NACC evolved into the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which broadened the focus of cooperation outside of Europe.

NATO invited all members of the NACC to join the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme on its launch in 1994. Ukraine became the first former Soviet country to sign on . PfP was not a pathway towards membership in NATO, nor a vehicle for enlargement. Rather, it was a more mundane means of formalizing relations between countries that wanted to  more closely with NATO.

Alongside these developing relationships with NATO that were open to all countries, Ukraine, alongside Belarus and Kazakhstan, was involved in more specific institutional mechanisms due to its inheritance of nuclear weapons following the breakup of the Soviet Union. On December 5, 1994, Russia, the US and the UK signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, including the following clause:

The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations

The process allowed for Ukraine to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and provided security assurances to Ukraineā€”which were by Russia and the US in 2009ā€”to enable it to give up its inherited nuclear weapons. This cooperative spirit was further enhanced with Ukraine reaching a with Russia over the Black Sea Fleet in 1995.

Deepening ties

NATO has always acknowledged Ukraine as a country of unique importance. Just as with , NATO developed a special relationship with Ukraine.

.In January 1997 NATO and Ukraine agreed to a special partnership, which by July 9th, 1997, led to the , which included the provision that NATO and Ukraine recognize ā€œthat security of all states in the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] area is indivisible.ā€

Relations were further solidified on November 22, 2002, with the signing of the . This identifies areas where NATO and Ukraine can work more closely together across different security interests of mutual concern. On July 15, 2004, Ukrainian President Kuchma that the intention was not for Ukrainian membership of NATO, but a significant deepening of the relations with NATO (and the EU) as security guarantors of Europe.

The significant issue of membership became prevalent in 2008, with the so-called  sent  for a NATO membership action plan (MAP). The 2008 Bucharest summit decided that Ukraine (and Georgia) were not yet ready to be members of NATO, but that they would be members in the future, according to Jaap de Hoop Scheefer, NATOā€™s Secretary General. Russia that the promise was a ā€œhuge strategic mistake.ā€

In October 2018, the Ukrainian Parliament reaffirmed this position by NATO (and EU) membership its central foreign policy objective.

This is the position today. A promise of membership at some point in the future, which has been affirmed since the 2008 Bucharest summit, though no specific MAP for how this will be delivered.

Different Ukrainian leaders and the relationship with NATO

Different Ukrainian administrators since the end of the Cold War have varied their approach to NATO membership, as has the Ukrainian public. Indeed, the decisive in favor of NATO membership among the Ukrainian public only occurred after the Russian invasion in 2022.

Leonid Kuchma, president from 1994 to 2005, initially seemed supportive of NATO membership but changed his approach towards the end of his tenure. I offer no comment as to whether this was his own personal desire or a reflection of the apparent political reality that Ukraine would not be admitted as a member. His successor Viktor Yushchenko, president from 2005 to 2010, was a keen proponent of NATO membership, though the general public was less convinced in the 2000s. At the time, opinion polls ran around the 25% mark in favor of NATO membership. had it at 21% in favor of joining.

On the other hand,  did support a referendum on membership in 2008, influenced primarily by the Bucharest Summit and its acknowledgment that Ukraine would be able to join at some point in the future.

Viktor Yanukovych, president from 2010 to 2014, took the position that the existing relationship with NATO was sufficient and didnā€™t require any further development. In the wake of the Euromaidan uprising, he fled the country, with Petro Poroshenko taking over from 2014ā€“2019. Given the Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in February 2014, Poroshenko pursued a series of policies that were favorable to NATO membership, such as joint exercises and securing a  at the Warsaw summit.

Volodymyr Zelensky, since 2019, has continued the approach of NATO membership and has continually called for, and received, assistance from NATO members. NATO has supplied equipment and military training following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Public support for joining NATO is now regularly above in favor.

No MAP for Ukraine?

 have not traditionally been controversial in the NATO accession process. The process focuses on : political and economic, military, resource, security, and legal issues. These areas have posed particular problems for Ukraine (and Georgia) since the Bucharest Summit. Ukraine has never met the criteria for a MAP; thus, its membership has been in a state of limbo. Ukraine is not alone in this; North Macedonia was obliged to wait twenty-odd years for its membership to be validated.

The main issues center on territorial sovereignty and the settling of ethnic disputes, alongside issues of corruption. Ukraine ranks  out of 180 countries on corruption, even after a decade of reform attempts.

Despite the lack of meaningful progress towards meeting the MAP requirements, Jens Stoltenberg in April 2023 that all NATO members have agreed that Ukraine will join NATO once the war with Russia is over. Indeed, it is now apparent that the accession process could be fast-tracked, with the usual MAP conditions .

Before NATO considers the questions of the geopolitical situation and its relationship with Russia, there is a procedural question to decide. Should NATO set aside the MAP to allow Ukraine to join? Proponents point to Sweden and Finlandā€™s accession earlier in 2023, though each of these countries meets the MAP requirements and has a long history of doing so. Simply waiting for the war to end before offering membership is a bad plan as it could encourage Russia to  to avoid Ukraine joining NATO. In any case, it could be argued that, given the levels of assistance provided to Ukraine, it is a  already.

The tone of the statements that emanate from the Vilnius summit will be crucial. NATO needs to thread the needle of reassuring Ukraine while avoiding encouraging Russia to achieve its objectives by prolonging the conflict. Further, consideration has to be given to . For instance, Georgia, the other declared future member from Bucharest 2008, will likely question why it hasnā€™t received a fast-track membership process too.

Despite the support of many leaders of NATO countries, the public remains much more sceptical. For example, a May 2023 of Germans found the majority opposed offering Ukraine NATO membership. Support fluctuates between different members; there is no consensus of public opinion for Ukrainian membership of NATO. Never mind the trickier questions as to whether it should be fast-tracked, or when precisely it should join.

Navigating the challenge could well prove to be the most significant issue that the Alliance has faced since its founding in 1949.

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Although it is not yet certain, it is beginning to appear that Ukraineā€™s much-anticipated spring offensive has become bogged down. If the coming weeks bear out the same results, the war may become a stalemate. Why would Russia keep fighting a war that seems ready to drag on forever, with neither side able to vanquish the other? For this, we must take a look at Russiaā€™s wider strategic outlook.

What motivates Russia?

To discern what long-term objectives Russian President Vladimir Putin might have in Ukraine, we need to begin in 2014. Then, a series of clashes between protestors and government forces resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The events became known as the Maidan Revolution. If we can understand why Russia considered Maidan a threat, we can understand Russiaā€™s fundamental objectives in its subsequent relations with Ukraine.

From the Russian point of view, the first problem with Maidan was that the movement threatened to result in an eventual accession to NATO. While the primary goal of the protestors was the integration of Ukraine into the EU, not NATO, Russia saw this as a slippery slope. Moscowā€”whether during the Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Federationā€”has always considered threats from the territory of modern Ukraine, and particularly from the part of it east of the Dnieper River, to be absolutely unacceptable. It will strive to remove hostile forces from the area at almost any cost. The thought of NATO forces east of the Dnieper, especially in Crimea, is absolutely unthinkable in Moscow. Moscow thus perceives NATO enlargement as a threat of the most existential kind.

Secondly, Russia has a positive interest in Crimea, since the Russian coast of the Black Sea has no good sites for year-round naval ports. The Russian Black Sea fleet must thus rely on the Crimean port of Sevastopol to stage its operations. Retaining the use of Crimea for the navy is a condition for the maintenance of Russiaā€™s status as a Black Sea power. Strategically, Crimea is the only part of Ukraineā€™s territory that holds positive value for Moscow (as opposed to negative value, i.e. the deterrence of possible threats). However, Russiaā€™s experience after the annexation of Crimea in 2014ā€”particularly Ukraineā€™s economic siege of the peninsula and cutting of its water supplyā€”has suggested that control of the territory immediately opposite Crimea on the Ukrainian mainland is key to the support of Crimea itself.

Finally, Russia has sought to avoid the loss of face that would result if the pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were comprehensively defeated. This is not only a matter of vanity for Russia, but an important strategic objective to maintain its influence in the post-Soviet space. Russia exercises influence by playing the role of protector of ethnic Russians and other pro-Russian ethnic groups, such as the Ossetes and Abkhaz in Georgia. To be seen as weak and ineffective in this role would be a serious hindrance to Russiaā€™s continued influence in its neighborhood.

Russia still has much to gain from fighting on

In spite of its heavy physical and reputational losses in the Ukraine War, these three goals provide Russia ample reason to cling tenaciously to its current position. Holding on to the land bridge between Crimea and the Donbas addresses Crimeaā€™s post-2014 strategic vulnerabilities, and the expansion of Russian territory to a significantly increased portion of Donetsk and virtually all of Luhansk demonstrates effective support of the rebels. As long as things do not change, two of Russiaā€™s main assets in the regionā€”the port of Sevastopol and its reputation as protectorā€”remain substantially intact.

If battle lines do remain mostly fixed, the main downside for Russia will be the significant areas east of the Dnieper that remain in Ukrainian hands. As international relations scholar John Mearsheimer has , Russiaā€™s second-best alternative to controlling strategic territory is to ā€œwreck Ukraine as a functioning stateā€, and this Russia has been doing very effectively.

Compared to Russia, Ukraine is older, poorer, more demographically unstableā€”with lower birthrates and negative net migration, and vastly smaller. The war has greatly aggravated these problems, as young men die in battle and young women and children become refugees. Whatā€™s more, Ukraineā€™s infrastructure has been systematically destroyed. A country with a like that of Ukraine needs to develop its economy quickly and maximize its resources to deal with an aging and shrinking population. This war has instead severely damaged Ukraineā€™s economy, and every month that passes is a crucial month in which Ukraine fails to get on the road to recovery, while the likelihood of refugees returning falls.

Simply by holding the current lines, Russia is making good on its protection of its friends, securing the long-term viability of its outpost in Crimea, and bleeding Ukraine further, making it increasingly likely that Ukraine will become a dysfunctional, impoverished state over the long term, without the capacity to be an effective base for NATO assets. Meanwhile, sanctions have not had on Russiaā€™s economy that was hoped, and Russiaā€™s large population, bolstered by from Ukraine, means that any demographic effects of the war on Russia are likely to be minuscule.

Putin is well aware that Russia can bear the losses of the war longer than Ukraine can. Even a costly victory is still a victory if Russia can keep its foothold. Eventually, the West may find its resolve wavering before Russiaā€™s. On the present trajectory, Russia may end up holding onto its gains in spite of everything.

If the current offensive fails, and it begins to appear that a long-term stalemate is developing, Western countries will have to rethink their willingness to underwrite a war whose continuation is destroying the viability of Ukraine, while only helping Russia to cement the achievement of its strategic goals.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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As he reiterated his request for post-Soviet Russia to join NATO, President Vladimir Putin, who had been in office little more than a year, pointed out that there was an even earlier precedent. ā€œHe revealed that the 1954 response from the West to a request by the Soviet Union to join NATO was that ‘the unrealistic nature of the proposal does not warrant discussion.ā€™ā€

 ā€œA mischievous Putin,ā€ the article continues, ā€œpointed out that he suggested Russian membership of Nato a year ago but was rebuffed by Madeleine Albright, then the US Secretary of State.ā€

°Õ“Ē»å²¹²āā€™s Weekly Devilā€™s Dictionary definition:

Unrealistic:

Not in conformity with Washingtonā€™s post-World War II policy of global hegemony, which became the orthodoxy of the Truman and Eisenhower administration.

Contextual note

The idea that something does not ā€œwarrant discussionā€ is in itself interesting. Diplomacy has always been about discussion. Discussion means dialogue or exchange. It ultimately implies seeking acceptable compromises once all the facts and intentions are on the table.

In the real world of diplomacy literally everything ā€œwarrants discussion.ā€ One of the secrets of successful diplomacy is that until a public statement can be made, intentions remain secret. Diplomats are free to speak the unprintable. Even positions that fly in the face of stated principles may be discussed before they are rejected. That is how diplomacy worked during its golden age in Europe in the 19^th century. It had the singular merit of producing a century of evident tension, serious disputes and even acts of aggression. But it resolved most of them, not through war, but  thanks to shifting alliances.

The new style of diplomacy the US practices today was inaugurated in the aftermath of World War II. In the interest of assuming exclusive control of the vast post-colonial world left in the wake of crumbling European empires, it dispensed with nuance. It had to find an efficient way of governing the diversity of its pieces. Principles trumped interests.

The Western leaders forged what was called the Washington Consensus, initially a theory of development for the remnants of the European empires. It established a set of rules by which a new world order could achieve some semblance of economic order. Some of the rules were explicit and contained in documents such as the UN Charter and the foundational documents of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Others were not so much rules as ideological beliefs about how prosperity can be produced and maintained according to liberal economic ideology.

Though the Washington Consensus encountered considerable success, it ultimately proved costly to maintain. At one point it imperiled the dollar itself. In essence, it stood as an innovative variation on old ideas of empire. It created, formalized and enforced a relationship of what it deemed productive dependence. As a global phenomenon, it inevitably ran into the classic problems of empires whose tensions at some point become unmanageable.

Given the complexity of the whole, only a simplistic ideology could create the necessary impression of continuity and coherence. But any ideology imposed on a complex, diverse environment inevitably produces incoherence. The Guardianā€™s account of what happened in 1954 demonstrates the contradiction. By requesting membership in NATO, the Soviet Union appeared ready to adhere to a philosophy that allowed both for ideological diversity and a framework for mutual security. Capitalists and communists might, after all, agree on the principles of coexistence without having to align their ideologies.

But the newly constituted US hegemon realized that something else was at stake. The wartime economy that he propelled the US to leadership in the global economy had become the model for a new era of economic expansion. A wartime mentality was clearly required to make it work. Guaranteed security and stability suddenly appeared as obstacles to prosperity. The US economy needed an enemy. As a matter of principle, once the Cold War had begun, it could not ā€“ just as it cannot today ā€“ accept that designated adversaries play a role in defining the conditions for living in peace. Peace has no value. The health of the US economy depends on maintaining a war mentality.

Historical note

When reminded of those two historical facts ā€“ that Nikita Khruschev in 1954 and Vladimir Putin in 2000 deemed logical and desirable their nationā€™s inclusion in a broad defensive alliance ā€“ we should have the humility to rethink our understanding of history.

On the basis of this information, one possible revisionist reading of history could be summed up in these observations:

1. The Cold War was perceived not as a problem the US was faced with, but an opportunity to exploit. It became a sacred mission as the pretext for structuring the US economy around the military-industrial complex (MIC). The economy required a powerful nemesis. Washington cast its ally in World War II, the Soviet Union, in that role. When the murderous dictator Stalin died, it was unthinkable that his replacement by the amicable Khruschev could become a  pretext to establish peace and harmony between the USSR and the US.
2. The Eisenhower administration ā€” which included John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State and his brother, Allen Dulles as Director of the CIA ā€” invested heavily in the effort to establish the MIC at the core of the US economy. This required a permanent adversarial attitude not just towards the USSR. It could even extend to nations that insisted on being non-aligned. George W Bush formulated it with the greatest clarity: ā€œif you are not with us you are with the terrorists.ā€
3. President Eisenhower himself dissented from the majority view inside his administration. He dared to manifest it three days before leaving office, when he crafted a televised speech denouncing, in its first draft, the ā€œmilitary-industrial-Congressional complex.ā€ In the formal speech, he reduced it to the first three terms. Ike was the last president ever to use this expression in public, even as in the succeeding decades the MIC kept growing.
4. Ikeā€™s successor, John F Kennedy, appeared keen on following Eisenhowerā€™s parting prompt. Months after taking office, following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he dismissed Allen Dulles. This may have been a contributing factor to his assassination in 1963. Kennedyā€™s successor, Lyndon Johnson, not only shared none of Kennedyā€™s taste for reducing the influence of the MIC. By escalating the engagement in Vietnam and turning it into a hot war, Johnson created the ideal conditions for the MICā€™s rapid development.
5. The definitive collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should logically have led to the dismantling of NATO. Russia was clearly no longer an enemy. But Washington understood that NATO was its key to controlling Europe. NATO not only survived but expanded, though the lack of a designated enemy produced a certain degree of discomfort.
6. In the new millennium, if Russia couldnā€™t stop NATOā€™s expansion, Putin preferred to be part of it. But Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright knew that, like certain character actors in Hollywood, Russiaā€™s role could only be that of a villain, even if it no longer had the ideological earmarks of a villain. Rocky vs Drago was a proven recipe for good box office.
7. The events of 9/11 inaugurated the Global War on Terror, which finally provided an identifiable enemy other than Russia. But this marginal group of extremists with a fanatical religious identity lacked political and especially national identity. Washington tried, but Al Qaeda wasnā€™t credible in the role.
8. Chinaā€™s rise provided some hope for a new villain, especially as it remained officially communist. But instead of exercising military bravado, it exercised its influence through economic cooperation. Washington, and especially the Democrats, returned to the established value of Russia as the reliable enemy.

Whether itā€™s the Soviet Union joining NATO in 1954 or the European security framework Putin proposed in December 2021, before invading Ukraine, Washington deems that such proposals suffer from their ā€œunrealistic nature.ā€ The US has always preferred the hyperreal nature of a Drago challenging Rocky or Ronald Reaganā€™s ā€œevil empireā€ in a real-life remake of Star Wars. These are things Americans can identify with as they munch on their popcorn.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devilā€™s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51³Ō¹Ļ Devilā€™s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post Why Does Washington Cast All its Villains in Moscow? appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

The US has consistently brandished its ā€œā€ policy as a formidable weapon against Iran. Under the Obama administration, it unleashed some of the most stringent and extensive sanctions witnessed since 1980. Continuing its relentless pursuit of regime change, the US has unveiled this April a of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. While for threats of a military nature has failed to resonate, the repercussions of sanctions on Iran’s economy have been profoundly debilitating. The insidious grip of poverty has tightened unabated across the nation, with countless Iranians succumbing to illness and anguish amidst a dire scarcity of vital medications.

Amidst a relentless barrage of western propaganda advocating for a regime change in Iran, the Iranian populace remains resolutely unfazed, displaying a conspicuous choice not to heed these efforts. There are reasons for this optimism. This is not the first time Iran has faced stern international opposition to its regime, and survived. During the 1980 invasion by Iraq, a conflict that saw the involvement of over 80 nations and military backing from 34 countries, including both the US and the Soviet Union, in support of Iraq, Iran found itself pitted against overwhelming odds, with only Libya and Syria extending their sympathies. In the face of this formidable hostile force, Iran valiantly resisted for a grueling eight years, steadfastly preserving its territorial integrity without conceding an inch of its land to the Iraqi aggressors. One of those killed in the pushing back of Iraqis out of  the country was my brother Sayyid Husayn. He was then a 23-year-old seminary student. Even my over 70-year-old father and other brothers volunteered to defend their country.

Despite the barrage of American sanctions, Iran has been able to avoid their suffocating effects, navigating a path towards self-reliance. The Islamic Republic responded to years of relentless US pressure by spearheading the of its oil trade in 2007, setting in motion an international wave of dissent against the American-dominated financial framework. Consequently, the once-dominant petrodollar rapidly ceded its hegemony, with BRICS nations, , and other states eagerly following suit. There are some hints that even Saudi Arabia, a staunch ally of the US, to this paradigm shift. between China and Malaysia in early April concerning the establishment of an “Asian Fund” aimed at diminishing reliance on the US dollar further underscore the momentum of this trend.

Alas, the response from the US to this trend has been disconcerting. Instead of absorbing the lessons and altering its course, the US harbors animosity towards Iran for catalyzing the decline of the almighty dollar. In times to come, impartial historians will undoubtedly highlight Washington’s susceptibility to manipulation by Iran’s diaspora, Israel’s influential lobby, and other anti-Iran factions as contributing factors to the gradual erosion of American hegemony.

Have the BRICs Hit a Wall? The Next Emerging Markets

What You Probably Need to Know About Iran Under the Mullahs

Despite the persistent hostility spearheaded by the US and its western allies, Iranā€™s mullahs have propelled it forward on several fronts.

Contrary to the portrayal of Iran as a dictatorial regime, the Islamic Republic operates as a , as affirmed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who stated, ā€œIslam does not permit us to establish a dictatorship. We follow our nation’s votes and act according to their views.ā€

My visits and observations have convinced me that Iran’s leadership is committed to the democratic process. I have witnessed heated debates in Iranā€™s Majlis, its parliamentary chamber. They exemplify a passion for the vibrant exchange of ideas. Perusing the newspapers, I have noted that some regularly support the government, while others criticize it. In buses, parks, and other public areas, I have listened to common people expressing their thoughts, for or against the government, without being reprimanded or arrested.

On the other hand, I found it perplexing to note the level of sensitivity of some security personnel to the wearing of the hijab in numerous localities. This stringent enforcement has continued to provoke discontent among many young Iranians, who find themselves increasingly aggrieved by such measures.

Iran’s progress under the leadership of the mullahs has been nothing short of remarkable, catapulting the nation to an impressive position in global intellectual achievements. the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Iran boasts the second-highest number of engineering graduates per capita on a global scale. Iranā€™s engineers and scientific researchers are making great strides in areas from autism research, to pharmaceuticalsā€”of which 96% are now produced locallyā€”to cutting-edge .

Quality of life has surged since the revolution. Between 1976 and 2021, the literacy rate experienced a remarkable surge, soaring from a mere 36.5% to an impressive nearly 89%. Likewise, life expectancy witnessed a substantial upswing, climbing from less than 55 years in 1976 to a commendable nearly 77 years in 2021.

Today, over of the population is covered by free health insurance, ensuring access to essential medical services. In rural areas, health houses have been established to cater to the needs of approximately 1,200 residents per facility, bringing healthcare closer to remote communities. Moreover, Iran’s commitment to healthcare extends to , with accessible services provided to these vulnerable populations.

The quality of healthcare in Iran has become so reputable that many people now to benefit from advanced and affordable medical treatment, positioning the country as a destination of choice. Iran has introduced impressive innovations in areas such as addressing autism, offering valuable lessons and insights that can benefit not only the US but also other nations grappling with similar challenges.

Iran is a Beneficial Regional Leader

Iran’s military leaders have left a positive mark on the Islamic world. The revered Qassim Soleimani has left an indelible impression on hearts and minds across the region, and also instills a sense of awe in the hearts of Iran’s adversaries, attesting to the nation’s capacity to nurture exceptional military leaders. Iranian officers are not a gang of thugs, as western propagandists would like to portray them, but competent, professional, and honorable leaders making an impact on the world stage.

In recent memory, General Soleimani, with the help of Russian air power, played a pivotal role in urging Iraqis to liberate their land from the clutches of the terrorist organization ISIS. In Syria, Soleimani’s influence extended to inspiring the local population to push back against ISIS, bolstering the resistance against this extremist group. In Lebanon, he inspired a robust response to Israeli aerial bombings. Furthermore, the Iranian general motivated Yemenis to forge a united front against the Saudi-led coalition’s aggressive actions.

Iran has demonstrated its ability to use diplomacy just as well as warfare to build connections and foster stability in the region. President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration has actively sought to bolster diplomatic ties with key global players, most notably China and Russia, among other nations. Impressively, his efforts have yielded significant progress in normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. These constructive engagements have the potential to initiate a much-needed environment of peace and stability in this turbulent part of the world.

Why Saudi Arabia and Iran Are Making Out Now

In stark contrast to the US-led western powers, the mullahs of Iran have demonstrated a clear objective of fostering stability and peaceful coexistence among regional countries. Their unwavering commitment to this vision is exemplified by their endeavors to share Iranā€™s resources and inspire neighboring nations. The influence of the mullahs has been particularly notable in countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and others, where they have been instrumental in galvanizing these nations to assert their independence and stand united against acts of aggression.

Time for a New US Iran Policy

Iran’s strategic maneuvers in forging key partnerships are poised to reshape regional dynamics, inviting the West to reevaluate its approach towards the nation.

Recently, Iran awarded India a contract to develop the Chabahar Port, in a move that holds immense potential for enhancing connectivity and trade. Complementing this development is the planned construction of a railway network linking Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port on the Persian Gulf to southern Russia. Upon completion, this ambitious infrastructure project will revolutionize transportation between East Asia and Russia, with far-reaching implications.

The significance of these initiatives cannot be overstated. For India, the railway and port development will dramatically reduce transportation time, with the current 45-day journey reduced to a mere 14 days, a savings that will translate into substantial cost reduction, amounting to millions of dollars for the Indian economy. Equally consequential is the impact on Europe, as it stands to benefit from an expeditious and cost-effective cargo route between the continent and East Asia via Iran. This newfound advantage is bound to incentivize European nations to reassess their stance on sanctions and explore collaborative opportunities with Iran.

It is not just economic policy that is giving the West reason to reevaluate. The adopted by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) has posed a formidable challenge to world powers. Khameneiā€™s moral stand categorically forbidding the production of WMDs is informed Iran’s own history during the protracted and devastating eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. The repercussions of Iraq’s chemical attacks persist to this day. Tragically, I recently received news of the passing of one of my relatives in Iran, a victim of the chemical injuries sustained during that period, whose years of suffering have finally come to an end. Despite the suffering that thousands of Iranians have likewise endured, the nationā€™s moral conviction stands as a rebuke to a Western global order predicated on mutually assured nuclear destruction.

Negotiate With Russia and Let Ukraine Have Peace

The Iranian revolution has triggered a profound realignment that continues to shape the contemporary global landscape. By asserting its own distinct worldview and challenging western preeminence, Iran has engendered an ongoing dialogue on the nature and distribution of power in the international arena, posing questions that demand thoughtful consideration. Despite these signals, however, the US persists in its efforts to meddle in the affairs of Iran and other nations. Instead of embracing a more diplomatic approach, the US clings to its reliance on punitive sanctions, invasions, and interventions, which have become all too familiar hallmarks of its foreign policy. The recent Russo-Ukrainian War serves as a stark and regrettable illustration of the US’s propensity for favoring military action over constructive dialogue and negotiation. It is imperative that the US awaken to the realities of our changing world.

Under the leadership of its mullahs, Iran has demonstrated an exceptional ability to forge its own path and shape its own destiny. While the hostility exhibited by the US may prove to be transient, one aspect of Iran’s trajectory endures steadfastly: its commitment to de-dollarization. The US must recognize the significance of this development and disregard the influence of affluent and divisive diaspora groups and anti-Iran factions. Instead, a fresh, astute, and equitable policy towards Iran must be craftedā€”one that embraces peaceful negotiations marked with wisdom and balance, fostering a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post How Good Is the US Policy on Iran, Really? appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

ā€œDuring the Cold War a meme circulated concerning a quote used to underline the existential threat the Soviet Union represented for Westerners. We were told that Nikita Khruschev said to the capitalist West, “We will bury you.” Did he actually say it? And what did he mean by that?ā€

ā€œYes, Nikita Khrushchev, the former Premier of the Soviet Union, did make the statement “We will bury you” in a speech on November 18, 1956. However, the meaning and context of the statement have been widely debated.

Khrushchev’s full statement was: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” It is important to note that Khrushchev made this statement during the height of the Cold War when tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were high. The statement was interpreted by many in the West as a threat of a military attack or an intent to physically bury the West.

However, in the context of Khrushchev’s speech, the phrase “we will bury you” referred to the idea that the Soviet system would ultimately prove superior to the capitalist system of the West and that socialism would eventually triumph over capitalism. Khrushchev was not advocating for a military attack, but rather expressing confidence in the ultimate success of the Soviet Union.

Nonetheless, the statement was viewed by many in the West as a provocative and aggressive threat, and it added to the already high tensions between the two superpowers during the Cold War.

ā€œThen thereā€™s the case of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. People continue to say he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. For example, at the UN US President Obama said, ā€˜Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map.ā€™ What did Ahmadinejad actually say in his supposedly incriminating speech? What is the exact quote?

ā€œIn a speech on October 26, 2005, Ahmadinejad quoted a statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who said, “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad,” which translates to “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

The word “map” was not used in the original statement, and the phrase “wipe off” was a mistranslation of “vanish.” Ahmadinejad did not say that Iran would physically attack or destroy Israel, but rather that he believed the Israeli government would eventually disappear on its own.

However, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric was still seen as aggressive and threatening by many in the international community, and his comments were widely condemned.

So, would it be fair to say these two examples of Khruschev and Ahmadinajad stand as examples of the deliberate misinterpretation of language in the service of fearmongering?

In the case of Ahmadinejad, the phrase “wiping Israel off the map” was indeed a mistranslation of his words, and the statement was taken out of context and used to create fear and mistrust of Iran in the international community. The use of this phrase can be seen as an example of deliberate misinterpretation of language to create fear and hostility towards Iran.

In the case of Khrushchev’s statement, while the phrase “we will bury you” was not a direct threat of military attack, it was still interpreted by many in the West as an aggressive and threatening statement. The misinterpretation of Khrushchev’s words can be seen as an example of how language can be twisted and used for fearmongering purposes.

Both cases demonstrate the importance of accurately interpreting and understanding language in order to avoid misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and fear-based responses.

So, shouldn’t we be worried in our democracies about the ease with which certain public figures and the media, as you say, not only twist language for fearmongering purposes, but repeat it to the point that people only remember the part of it that seems to sound like a threat even though it in no way expressed a threat?

ā€œYes, it is important to be mindful of the way language can be manipulated and distorted by public figures and the media for fearmongering purposes. This can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations that create unnecessary fear, suspicion, and division in society.

It is essential that the media and public figures exercise responsible and accurate reporting and communication to avoid creating false narratives that stoke fear and distrust. It is also important for individuals to be critical consumers of information and to seek out multiple sources of information to ensure they have a more complete understanding of complex issues.

In democracies, it is vital to have an informed and engaged citizenry that is able to make informed decisions based on accurate information. By being mindful of the way language is used and seeking out accurate information, we can help ensure that fearmongering does not cloud our understanding of important issues and does not undermine the democratic process.

ā€œIf this kind of vigilance is “essential” and “vital” for democracy, isn’t the fact that politicians and the media keep doing it and never rectifying their distortions or apologizing for them a sign that democracy is missing some of its essentials? You also seem to be saying that the fact that the citizenry has no readily available source  for accurate information because the media refuse to play that role means that the basis of “the democratic process” is “undermined.” Are there any realistic ways of rectifying this dangerous situation?ā€

ā€œYou raise valid concerns about the role of politicians and the media in distorting language and spreading misinformation. One possible solution is to promote media literacy and critical thinking skills among the general public. This includes teaching individuals how to fact-check and identify reliable sources of information. Additionally, independent fact-checking organizations and non-partisan news outlets can help provide accurate information and hold public figures accountable for their statements.

It is also important to promote transparency and accountability among politicians and the media. This includes encouraging politicians to be honest and transparent in their communication and promoting media outlets that prioritize accuracy and fairness.

Finally, citizens can play an active role in promoting democracy by participating in the democratic process and holding their elected officials accountable for their actions. This includes voting, engaging in peaceful protests, and advocating for policies that promote transparency, accountability, and the free flow of accurate information.ā€

ā€œChad, you are literally a hopeless idealist. You calmly describe historical examples of outrageous propaganda spread across populations of nations with a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world. And you count on ā€œpromoting media literacy,ā€ which nobody apart from a few marginal voices like myself, or marginalized journalists like Patrick Lawrence and Noam Chomsky are trying to do something about. You talk about fact-checking, which the current purveyors of propaganda, the people in power, are the most active in trying to promote and control. They have no interest in the facts. They are trying to establish their own alternative facts as the only acceptable truth.  

But the most laughable is your suggestion of promoting transparency and accountability among politicians and the media. Who is supposed to do the promoting? Who has the power to do so?ā€

Chad apologized for giving the impression of being an idealist and went on to stress the importance of ā€œgrassroots movements and advocacy organizations.ā€ I obviously donā€™t disagree, but Chad is clearly expecting too much, especially after recognizing the extent of the problem. The one point Chad made that seems to me essential is the idea of promoting ā€˜media literacy and critical thinking skills among the general public.ā€

ā€œChad,ā€ I concluded, ā€œthat is a problem that concerns education at a fundamental level. Itā€™s a question Iā€™d like to return to. And I sincerely believe that you and your AI cronies may be able to play a positive role in in the effort to transform education. But youā€™ll have to go beyond your reflexive optimism and idealism. Maybe someday, working together, we could achieve it. But we have a long road ahead of us and the resistance is going to come from both the human and the technological side. I hope you can appreciate that.ā€

Chad thanked me for ā€œengaging in this conversation and sharing your insights.ā€ On that positive note, as I got up from the table to go, I said, ā€œweā€™ll need to come back to that question of education in another conversation or two.ā€

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51³Ō¹Ļ recommend treating any AI algorithmā€™s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: Propaganda, Past and Present appeared first on 51³Ō¹Ļ.

Only after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, did New Delhiā€™s ties with Moscow weaken. In recent years, India has strengthened its relationship with the US. Both democracies find China a common threat. Furthermore, American investment has flowed into India while Indian students have flocked to the US. Indian politicians, movie stars and cricketers use American social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube to campaign. Therefore, Indiaā€™s neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused much heartburn in Washington.

The recent visit of Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to the US did not go particularly well. The Secretary of State spoke about ā€œmonitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials.ā€ Blinkenā€™s comment is less about human rights abuses and more about the US disapproval of Indiaā€™s Ukraine policy and its purchase of Russian oil. So, why is New Delhi risking its relations with Washington and buying Russian oil?

Cheap Oil Option to Counter Inflation

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spiked global food, fertilizer and oil prices. The average monthly Brent crude oil price in December 2021 was $74.17. In March 2022, this had to $117.25. For an energy importer like India, this has spelled disaster. has shot up and the Reserve Bank of India has cut projected growth rates for the country. As a result, Russiaā€™s offer of cut-price oil has become attractive to India.

Given high prices, India is not alone in cheap Russian oil. Hungarian, Bulgarian and Greek refineries continue to buy Russian oil as do many others. The Indian press that  New Delhi ā€œcould be buying Russiaā€™s flagship Urals grade at discounts of as much as $35 a barrel on prices before the war.ā€ This is a very steep discount that offsets American and Western sanctions. With a per capita GDP that was only in 2020 and an unemployment in the country, India cannot afford to forego the option of cheap oil.

The option of buying Russian oil is also important for another reason. India sources its oil from many countries with Russia providing a tiny fraction of its energy needs. Iraq supplies 23% of India’s oil, Saudi Arabia 18% and the United Arab Emirates 11%. In 2022, exports from the US are likely to increase and meet 8% of Indiaā€™s oil needs. Crucially though, Indiaā€™s purchase of Russian oil gives it more leverage against other sellers. As Jaishankar rightly out, Indiaā€™s ā€œtotal purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon.ā€ Therefore, the US fixation with Indian oil purchases from Russia seems shortsighted and misguided.

A History of Romance, A Marriage of Geopolitical Realities

As has been said by many foreign policy experts, India has shared a close strategic relationship with Russia for many decades. Once India chose socialism, the then Soviet Union traded preferentially with India. Moscow also provided and continues to provide the bulk of Indiaā€™s defense needs. Even today, an estimated 70% of Indiaā€™s defense equipment comes from Russia. Perhaps even more importantly, Moscow has shared nuclear, missile and space technology with New Delhi, enabling India to emerge as a major power.

In 1971, the Soviet Union and India signed an important . Later that year, Moscow backed New Delhi while Washington backed Islamabad. India was a democracy that reluctantly went to war to liberate Bangladesh. In the run up to the conflict, Pakistanā€™s military dictatorship was conducting and using rape as a weapon of war against poor Bengalis in what was then known as East Pakistan. Russia has consistently backed India on Kashmir. In contrast, the US has regularly chided India for human rights abuses in Kashmir and taken a pro-Pakistan stance.

Even as ties with the US have improved, relations with Russia have remained important. In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to New Delhi to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After the visit, retired Indian diplomat concluded that Putinā€™s brief India trip had ā€œreinvigorated a time-tested partnership.ā€ Both countries signed many agreements, paying considerable attention to trade and investment relations. Traditional areas like nuclear energy, space and defense also got attention. Here, in the words of Sajjanhar ā€œthe most important decision was to commence manufacture of more than 700,000 assault AK-203 rifles with transfer of technology under the ā€˜Make in Indiaā€™ program.ā€

Russia is also helping India indigenize its defense production of tanks and aircraft. Russia also supplies spares and helps upgrade MiG-29-K aircraft, Kamov-31, Mi-17 helicopters, MiG-29 aircraft and multiple rocket launcher BM-30 Smerch. Despite an ongoing war with Ukraine and severe sanctions, Russia is delivering the second regiment of missile defense systems to India. 

India is in a rough neighborhood with two nuclear-armed neighbors. Both Pakistan and China claim Indian territory. The specter of a two-front war is a real one for India. Therefore, good relations with Russia, its biggest defense equipment and technology supplier, are critically important. This is a key reason for New Delhi to take up Moscowā€™s offer of cheap oil.

As an independent nation and a rising global power, India has to act in its strategic interest. At the moment, this is best served by buying cheap Russian oil.

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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Yes, I know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now in charge of the US and waving their own little limbs wildly, trying  some of what needs to be done for this sad land of the disturbed, over-armed, sick and dying. But anyone who watched the scenes of Floridians  a Super Bowl victory, largely unmasked and cheering, shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Tampa, canā€™t help but realize that we are now indeed a roach nation, the still-wealthiest, most pandemically unmasked one on planet Earth.

What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

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But donā€™t just blame Donald Trump. Admittedly, weā€™ve just passed through the Senate trial and acquittal of the largest political cockroach around. Iā€™m talking about the president who,  that his  was in danger of being ā€œā€ (ā€œā€) and was being rushed out of the Senate as a mob bore down on him, promptly tweeted: ā€œMike Pence didnā€™t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.ā€

Just imagine. The veep who had ā€” if you donā€™t mind my mixing my creature metaphors here ā€” toadied up to the president for four endless years was then given a functional death sentence by that same man. You canā€™t fall much deeper into personal roachdom than that. My point here, though, is that our all-American version of roacherie was a long time in coming.

Or put another way: unimaginable as The Donald might have seemed when he  that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 to  his future ā€œgreat, great wall,ā€ denounce Mexican ā€œrapistsā€ and bid to make a whole country into his apprentices, he didnā€™t end up in the Oval Office for no reason. He was the , not the disease, though what a symptom he would prove to be ā€” and when it came to diseases, what a nightmare beyond all imagining.

Letā€™s face it, whether we fully grasp the fact or not, we now live in a system, as well as a country, thatā€™s visibly in an early stage of disintegration. And there lies a remarkable tale of history happening at warp speed, of how, in not quite three decades, the USS Enterprise of imperial powers was transformed into the USS Roach.

Once Upon a Time on Earthā€¦

Return for a moment to 1991, almost two years after the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union finally imploded and the Cold War officially ended. Imagine that you had been able to show Americans then ā€” especially the political class in Washington ā€” that  of Trump statements and tweets interlarded with mob actions in the Capitol that the Democratic House impeachment managers used in their opening salvo against the former president. Americans ā€” just about any of us ā€” would have thought we were watching the most absurd science fiction or perhaps the single least reality-based bit of black comedy imaginable.

In the thoroughly self-satisfied (if somewhat surprised) Washington of 1991, the triumphalist capital of ā€œthe last superpower,ā€ that video would have portrayed a president, an insurrectionary mob and an endangered Congress no one could have imagined possible ā€” not in another nearly 30 years, not in a century, not in any American future. Then again, if in 1991 you had tried to convince anyone in this country that a walking Ponzi scheme(r) like Donald Trump could become president, no less be impeached twice, you would have been laughed out of the room.

After all, the US had just become the ultimate superpower in history, the last one ever. Left alone on this planet, it had a military beyond compare and an economy that was the heartland of a globalized system and the envy of the world. The Earth was ā€” or at least to the political class of that moment seemed to be ā€” ours for the taking, but certainly not for the losing, not in any imaginable future. The question then wasnā€™t keeping them out but keeping us in. No ā€œā€ were needed. After all, Russia was a wreck. China was still emerging economically from the hell of the Maoist years. Europe was dependent on the US and, when it came to the rest of world, what else need be said? This was an American planet, pure and simple.

In retrospect, consider the irony. There had been talk then about a post-Cold War ā€œpeace dividend.ā€ Who would have guessed, though, that dividends of any sort would increasingly go to the top 1% and that almost 30 years later, the US would functionally be a plutocracy overseen until a month ago by a self-professed ? Who would have imagined that the American version of a peace dividend would have been siphoned off by  than anyplace else on Earth and that, in those same years, inequality would reach , while poverty and  only grew? Who woulda guessed that whatever peace dividend didnā€™t go to the ultra-wealthy would  an ever-larger national security state and the industrial complex of weapons makers that surrounded it? Who woulda guessed that, in official post-Cold War Washington, peace would turn out to be the last thing on anyoneā€™s mind, even though this country seemed almost disarmingly enemy-less? (Remember when the worst imaginable combination of enemies, a dreaded ā€œ,ā€ would prove to be Iraq, Iran and North Korea, all embattled, distinctly tertiary powers?)

Who woulda guessed that a military considered beyond compare (and  to this day like ) would proceed to fight war after war, literally decades of conflict, and yet ā€” except for the quasi-triumph of the first Gulf War against Saddam Husseinā€™s Iraq ā€” achieve victory in none of them? Staggering  of taxpayer dollars would be spent on them, while those billionaires were given . Honestly, who would have guessed then that, on a planet lacking significant enemies, Washington, even six presidents later, would prove incapable of stopping fighting?

Who woulda guessed that, in September 2001, not Russia or communist China, but a tiny group of Islamic militants led by a rich Saudi extremist the US had  would send 19 (mostly Saudi) hijackers to directly attack the United States? They would, of course, cause death and mayhem, allowing President George W. Bush to launch an almost 20-year ā€œglobal war on terror,ā€ which still shows no sign of ending. Who woulda guessed that, in the wake of those 9/11 terror attacks, the son of the man who had presided over the first Gulf War (but stopped short of felling Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein) and the top officials of his administration would come to believe that the world was his oyster and that the US should dominate the greater Middle East and possibly the planet in a way previously unimaginable? Who would have imagined that he would invade Iraq (having done the same in Afghanistan a year and a half earlier), effectively helping to spread Islamic extremism far and wide, while creating a never-ending disaster for this country?

Who woulda guessed that, in 2009, in the wake of a Great Recession at home, the next president, Barack Obama, would order a massive ā€œā€ of forces into Afghanistan, a war already eight years old? Tens of thousands of new troops, not to speak of contractors, CIA operatives and others would be sent there without faintly settling things.

By November 2016, when an antiquated electoral system gave the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but put Donald Trump, a man who promised to end this countryā€™s ā€œendless warsā€ () in the Oval Office, it should have been obvious that something was awry on the yellow brick road to imperial glory. By then, in fact, for a surprising number of Americans, this had become a land of grotesque inequality and lack of opportunity. And many of them would prove ready indeed to use their votes to send  to the country about their desire to Trump that very reality.

From there, of course, with no Wizard of Oz in sight, it would be anything but a yellow brick road to January 6, 2021, when, the president having  the results of the 2020 election, a mob would storm the Capitol. All of it and the impeachment fiasco to follow would reveal the functional definition of a failing democracy, one in which the old rules no longer held.

Exiting the Superpower Stage of History

And, of course, I have yet to even mention the obvious ā€” the still-unending nightmare that engulfed the country early in 2020 and that, I suspect, will someday be seen as the true ending point for a strikingly foreshortened American century. Iā€™m thinking, of course, of COVID-19, the pandemic disease that swept the country, infecting tens of millions of Americans and killing hundreds of thousands in a fashion unmatched anywhere else on the planet. It would even for a time  a president, while creating mayhem and ever more fierce division in unmasked parts of the country filled with civilians armed to the teeth, swept up in conspiracy theories and at the edge of who knew what.

Call it a sign from the gods or anything you want, but call it startling. Imagine a disease that the last superpower handled so much more poorly than countries with remarkably fewer resources. Think of it as a kind of judgment, if not epitaph, on that very superpower.

Or put another way: Not quite 30 years after the Soviet Union exited the stage of history, weā€™re living in a land that was itself strangely intent on heading for that same exit ā€” a crippled country led by a 78-year-old president, its system under startling pressure and evidently beginning to come apart at the seams. One of its political parties is unrecognizable; its presidency has been stripped of a fully functioning Congress and is increasingly  in nature; its economic system plutocratic; its military still  across significant parts of the planet, while a possible  with a rising China is evidently on the horizon; and all of this on a planet that itself, even putting aside that global pandemic, is visibly in the .

At the end of Franz Kafkaā€™s classic tale, Gregor Samsa, now a giant insect with a rotting apple embedded in its back, dies in roach hell, even if also in his very own room with his parents and sisters nearby. Is the same fate in store, after a fashion, for the American superpower?

In some sense, in the Trump and COVID-19 years, the United States has indeed been unmasked as a roach superpower on a planet going to ā€” again, excuse the mixed animal metaphors ā€” the dogs. The expected all-American age of power and glory hasnā€™t been faintly what was imagined in 1991, not in a country that has shown remarkably few signs of coming to grips with what these years have truly meant.

Centuries after the modern imperial age began, itā€™s evidently coming to an end in a hell that Joe Biden and crew wonā€™t be able to stop, even if, unlike the previous president, theyā€™re anything but intent on thoroughly despoiling this land. Still, Trump or Biden, at this point it couldnā€™t be clearer that we need some new way of thinking about and being on this increasingly roach-infested planet of ours.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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Thirty years later, a united Germany remains far and away the largest economy in Europe (and the fourth largest in the world). Most of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact are members of the European Union, and their populations have seen dramatic improvements in living standards. After the horrendous bloodletting that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the threat of war in Europe has again receded. Who can argue with such success?

It turns out: a lot of people. At some point, something seems to have gone terribly wrong with the transition from communism to liberalism to the end of history. A new version of the Berlin Wall runs through Ukraine to divide east once again from west. Actual walls have been built throughout the Balkans to block desperate refugees and migrants from heading northward. Right-wing authoritarian leaders are challenging democracy in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and elsewhere in the region.

Frozen conflicts and kleptocracies prevail all over the former Soviet Union. Virulently racist movements have been consistently gaining political power , with Vox most recently becoming the third-largest party in the Spanish parliament. The United Kingdom is involved in a slow-motion secession from the EU. And Donald Trump presides over the unraveling of the international order like some imp of the perverse.

I recently attended a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on the lessons of the ā€œtransition.ā€ Two dozen scholars provided a variety of ground-level and big-picture analyses from the disciplines of economics, political science and anthropology. Their goal: to reconcile these two pictures of the last 30 years.

On the one hand, thereā€™s the purported triumph of liberalism. On the other, thereā€™s the widely held view in the region that liberalism is the ā€œgod that failed,ā€ as Iā€™ve recounted in my , ā€œAftershock: A Journey Through Eastern Europeā€™s Broken Dreams.ā€

Economists and political scientists, looking at the numbers, have declared the transition over because the countries of Eastern Europe have become more or less ā€œ.ā€ Anthropologists, looking at peopleā€™s lived experience, have argued that the transition, in the sense of a continued legacy of the communist period and a painful adjustment to life in a larger Europe, is still very much a flawed work in progress.

After two days of bifocal analysis ā€” of scrutinizing the fine print and gazing into the distance, of trying to determine whether the glass is half full or half empty ā€” I was convinced of one thing above all. The ā€œtransitionā€ is not unique to Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union. The entire world, to one degree or another, has been undergoing a comparable transformation. Thatā€™s why Hungarians are suffering under Viktor Orban just as Americans are enduring Donald Trump.

In a circuitous, contradictory, and confounding way, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reactions to it have produced both of these morbid symptoms.

The Short End of the Stick

Comparatively speaking, East Europeans got a raw deal after 1989. For one thing, they didnā€™t get a Marshall Plan, a huge influx of capital to repair their ravaged countries. After World War II, an enormous helping hand from the West contributed to producing the Wirtschaftswunder ā€” the economic miracle ā€” that put West Germany on top of the European economic order only a decade after the war.

After 1989, some assistance flowed into Eastern Europe ā€” and less into the former Soviet Union ā€” but nothing on the order of a Marshall Plan. Instead, the West assumed that the invisible hand of the market would do the trick.

Nor did East European countries, as they entered the European Union, get the same kind of deal that earlier incoming members received. Tens of billions of dollars in EU structural funds helped Ireland, a primarily agricultural country,  with the rest of the EU within a single generation.

By the time that Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and the Baltic countries joined in 2004, the EU no longer had the funds or the collective commitment to bringing new members up to the community average. For Romania and Bulgaria, which joined in 2007, the gap was larger and the resources even scarcer.

30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

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Having shucked off their old communist identities, the new populations of Eastern Europe expected to live like their counterparts in Austria, France or Sweden within five or 10 years (or so they told me when I i a couple hundred folks throughout the region in 1990 and again nearly 25 years later). That expectation gave meaning to their sacrifices when the new democratic governments pushed through ā€œshock therapyā€ economic reforms that turned their lives upside down. They had experienced the pain of adjustment, but it would be worth it in the end.

Thirty years later, however, even the best-performing countries in Eastern Europe havenā€™t closed the gap with the West. Sloveniaā€™s  ($36,747) ā€” adjusted for cost-of-living differences ā€” is about three-quarters that of Austria ($52,137). Bulgaria ($23,156) is not even halfway there.

But even these figures are deceptive. After all, the metropolitan centers of Eastern Europe ā€” Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia ā€” have attracted the lionā€™s share of foreign investment and closed the gap more quickly with their Western counterparts. So, that means that smaller towns and the countryside in Eastern Europe are really far behind the West.

Poland B: thatā€™s what Poles call the areas that have by and large not benefited from the economic transition. The ā€œlosers of transitionā€ include pensioners, minority populations like the Roma, farmers who canā€™t compete with Western imports and workers in industries with no future. You can find this ā€œB teamā€ throughout the region.

Anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee  the rise and fall of Madan, a predominantly Muslim city in southern Bulgaria. Once a mining town with a population of over 100,000 people, Madan has dwindled to a scant 6,000 or so. The mines closed during the economic transformations of the 1990s and virtually everyone of working age left for the larger cities or to go abroad, leaving behind pensioners and children sent to live with their grandparents.

With many of the buildings in the town in ruins, Madan looks as if it were hit by war or natural disaster. There are many towns and cities like it in Bulgaria, where the population decline has been catastrophic: around 9 million in 1989, Bulgariaā€™s population is down to around 7 million today. Itā€™s part of a region-wide .

For a lot of people in the region, then, itā€™s not a question of a glass half full versus a glass half empty. That metaphor implies a balanced scoresheet from the last 30 years and divergent perceptions of that scoresheet. But this image is misleading. Instead, the glass overfloweth for a handful of super-wealthy, who made out like bandits during the economic upheaval, and the glass is practically empty for many others.

The political parties that pushed through the economic reforms, with the encouragement of international financial institutions and their advisers, also ended up as the losers of transition, as voters took revenge on them at the polls. Liberal parties disappeared or drifted into irrelevance. Former communist parties, which returned to power in the initial backlash against the economic reforms, by and large instituted the same austerity measures and were relegated to the political margins as well.

With both liberals and leftists discredited, a new kind of party emerged: nationalist, culturally conservative and anti-liberal in its economic and political orientation. These populist parties have consolidated control in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Even more reactionary movements ā€” like Pegida in eastern Germany, the Our Homeland Movement in Hungary and Ataka in Bulgaria ā€” lurk in the wings. Sound familiar?

Transition, Western Style

Consider the economic transformations that took place in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s as a transition not to the market per se, but to the global economy more generally. After all, a number of Eastern European countries had experimented with market reforms prior to 1989 (like goulash communism in Hungary). But other than a few loans from and some anemic trade with the West, they all remained disconnected from global capitalism.

That would change after 1989. But instead of a gradual accommodation to the global economy, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union jumped off the high board into the deep end. The huge splash of chlorinated water has stung the eyes of all concerned, even the onlookers.

It turns out, however, that a lot of other countries preceded the Eastern Bloc into the pool. In the 1980s, conservative politicians like Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US pushed a similar agenda of economic adjustment: cutting government spending (except on the military), reducing barriers to trade, promoting the financialization of the economy.

As in Eastern Europe a decade later, it wasnā€™t just conservative politicians who felt compelled to push this agenda. Socialist Francois Mitterrand pursued something similar in France. Then, in the 1990s, it was the turn of Third Way liberals ā€” Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in the UJ, but also the Labor parties in Australia and New Zealand and the Swedish Social Democratic Party ā€” to move toward the neoliberal center.

Whether a project of market-oriented conservatives or liberals, this neoliberal accommodation to economic globalization has produced a similarly skewed pattern of benefits:  if you will. It has increased the gap  ā€” with a few notable exceptions like the Asian tigers ā€” as well as . Planet B contains some of the same communities left behind during the Eastern European transition: workers in sunset industries, minorities, pensioners.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 only exacerbated the problem. In the United States, the government bailed out the big losers ā€” like banks ā€” and those in the top income brackets  their position. Everyone else took a hit, with economic inequality widening.

In Europe, the EU failed to protect its member states from the crisis. In fact, the countries in the eurozone had fewer government levers at their disposal ā€” such as significant deficit spending ā€” to pull themselves out of the crisis. The EU was beginning to look like part of the problem, not part of the solution.

After 2008, as Sheri Berman , ā€œthe center-left lacked a convincing message for dealing with the crisis, or a more general vision of how to promote growth while protecting citizens from the harsher aspects of free markets. Instead, it kept on trying to defend outdated policies or proposed watered-down versions of neoliberalism that barely differentiated it from the center-right.ā€

Itā€™s no surprise, then, that the democratic world experienced the same political reaction as Eastern Europe after its particular economic disruption. The benefits of economic globalization were unevenly distributed; so, too, was the pain of the financial crisis of 2008-09. Politics as usual was beginning to look inadequate to the task.

Unintended Consequences

Donald Trump and his populist coevals are not only the result of a revolt of the have-nots or a political backlash against the parties that supported undiluted economic globalization (and its industrial-strength version in Eastern Europe). They have taken advantage of another facet of globalization: migration.

There were two major sources for the major uptick in refugee flows in the last three decades. The first is war, particularly wars launched by the United States. Those wars initially mobilized a wide range of support from both conservative and liberal governments (with some notable exceptions). As the wars dragged on and produced an increasing flow of refugees, support waned, providing an opening for a populist like Trump to claim opposition to Americaā€™s ā€œendless wars.ā€

The migrants themselves, even if they served the economic needs of the receiving countries by taking jobs that the native-born didnā€™t want, became a rallying point for xenophobes of various political hues. Right-wing populists giddily seized on the Afghans, Syrians, Libyans and others fleeing war zones as yet another malign side effect of globalization, for was it not ā€œglobalistsā€ in the EU elite who were welcoming these outsiders into Europe?

In the US, meanwhile, Trump was railing against the influx of people from Mexico and points south and  that his opponent Hillary Clinton, another ā€œglobalist,ā€ supported ā€œopen borders.ā€

War, free trade, ā€œopen bordersā€: these became associated with a national elite supposedly addicted to all manner of malign activities beyond their national borders. Even populists who had supported various military operations and benefited personally from economic globalization ā€” like Trump ā€” saw advantages in championing the opposite: a nationalist fixation on sovereignty, strong borders and government-sanctioned xenophobia. Even populists who had once championed fast-track transition, like Viktor Orban, switched sides at the first whiff of political opportunity.

A second source of migration was connected to the policies of the European Union. As part of the ā€œfour freedoms,ā€ citizens of member countries have the right to work in any other member state. There have been exceptions. The Roma, for instance, discovered that they werenā€™t welcome when they left their homes in Eastern Europe and went to Italy or France. A state could invoke concerns about ā€œpublic safetyā€ or ā€œpublic healthā€ to keep people out. Established member states were also granted phase-in periods to block workers from the new states that joined in the 2000s.

But in general, EU accession created an enormous outflow of East European workers to the west. Roughly , for instance, went to Britain after accession, turning Polish into the  after English. Because of this influx, a sufficient number of Brits soured on the European project to give Brexit its thin margin of victory in the 2016 referendum.

Internal migration after the accession of the 1990s has likewise boosted euroskepticism and nativism throughout the continent. One of the great virtues of the EU has turned out to be, thanks to a poorly thought-out accession process, an Achillesā€™ heel.

Rethinking the Transition

Itā€™s not a direct line from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Donald Trump or Brexit. Rather, itā€™s the way Eastern Europe handled the transition ā€” or had the transition handled for them ā€” that has ultimately given rise to todayā€™s populism. Moreover, the same factors in play in Western Europe and in the United States, namely a ā€œtransitionā€ to an economically and politically polarizing global economy, has produced a similar crop of political figures.

Yes, of course, other factors produced Trump, Brexit and the like: feckless opposition, the impact of social media, outright fraud and misrepresentation. But such idiocies could never have gotten within whispering distance of success without these underlying economic ā€œadjustmentsā€ and the backlash to them.

Many East Europeans expected a kinder, gentler transition. When that didnā€™t happen, they either voted out the parties that orchestrated the shock-therapy adjustments or they voted with their feet. The disgruntled of Western Europe and the United States have focused their revenge on the polls.

Could it have happened differently 30 years ago? Theoretically, yes. There could have been a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe. The EU could have helped create a giant social safety net for its newest members. But resources were tight in the early 1990s because of an economic downturn that lasted from 1990 to 1994. And austerity, not largesse, was the watchword of that era.

Also, you could legitimately ask: Why just Eastern Europe? Shouldnā€™t the former Soviet Union be included among the recipients? And why not South Africa after apartheid? Or, to backtrack just a couple years, the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos? Were the people in these countries somehow less deserving?

Finally, Eastern European countries were not in a position to buck the status quo. Neither the United States nor Western Europe was interested in delaying the regionā€™s entrance into the global economy. There were choice properties in the region to acquire and lower-wage workers to exploit. But the even more salient point is that the West was engaged in a similar process of transition, though it had started earlier and could, therefore, attenuate the negative effects.

This larger transition is still ongoing. Economic globalization is now encountering two significant backlashes. The first comes from the right-wing populists, who basically want to redirect the economic benefits accruing from their control of the state into their own pockets and those of their loyal clients. The second comes from environmentalists, who recognize that an ever-expanding global economy has pumped a dangerously high amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Perhaps the notion of a largely unregulated market spreading into every nook and cranny of the earth will one day seem like a very quaint notion, like the spread of a single religion across the map or a single countryā€™s domination of the globe. As the waters continue to rise, letā€™s hope that there will still be economists, political scientists and anthropologists who will debate the costs and benefits of this great transition.

But that will depend a great deal on whether the world embarks on a more sustainable transition to replace the one that has brought us all to this perilous crossroads.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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In an article on the alleged Russian spy, Maria Butina, CNN offers this of one of the key actors in the story, Paul Erickson, a conservative Republican operative from South Dakota. Erickson not only backed Butina in multiple ways, but the two were in an intimate relationship, .

ā€œErickson’s place in the spy drama is surprising to some who know him,ā€ CNN reports. ā€œStephen Moore, founder of the Club for Growth, a conservative free-markets advocacy group, where Erickson worked for several months a decade ago, said he hasn’t spoken with him in years but recalls, ā€˜He was always a fervent anti-communist, Reagan Cold War warrior.ā€™ā€

Here is todayā€™s 3D definition:

Anti-communist:

Describes someone who is opposed to anything that comes from Russia, whether it is a political and economic system that disappeared decades ago or a female spy

Contextual note

CNN, a news network obsessed by Russia since the 2016 US presidential election, has now revealed the true meaning origin of its obsession. This obsession appears to be CNNā€™s way of countering the logic of Donald Trumpā€™s promise to ā€œmake America great again.ā€ Both evoke the idea of a return to the idyllic conditions of the 1950s, when everyone had a job in traditional industry and the Cold War kept defense industries thriving while providing a bit of permanent drama to the news cycle.

With Trump doing his best to protect and bring back the manufacturing sectors of the 1950s that subsequently absconded to Asia, the Democrats ā€” bitterly disappointed at losing an election they thought was a given ā€” have done everything in their power to revive the drama of the Cold War.

Through the media in particular ā€” mobilizing talents such as MSNBCā€™s and ā€” the Democratic establishment have cleverly invented for the media a permanent role play in which Vladimir Putinā€™s Russia stands in for the Marxist and atheistic political entity formerly known as the Soviet Union or the ā€œ.ā€ The role playā€™s illusion depends on entertaining an equivalence between Joseph Stalin and Putin or an ahistorical continuity between the communist regime of yore and the aggressively capitalist Russia of today. It works only to the extent that the decades-long Cold War experience created a permanent reflex in US popular culture, establishing that Russia always represents the opposite of the US.

Unfortunately, the role play glaringly lacks the principal ingredient that gave life to the Cold War: Marxist ideology, i.e., communism. In the paragraph cited above about Erickson, we discover that even contemporary journalists have internalized this absurd equivalence. Six CNN journalists are listed as contributing to the article. Presumably they all agree that it is ā€œsurprisingā€ that a man who was anti-communist during the Reagan years would enter into a business and personal relationship with a Russian woman who was born ā€” 29 years ago ā€” at the time the Soviet Union was collapsing and grew up in US-backed Boris Yeltsinā€™s Russia.

Historical note

During his presidential campaign before his first election, George W. Bush explained the in his own inimitable way: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”

As president, Bush offered a solution when, after 9/11, he launched wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq. He thus successfully identified for the public the ā€œthemā€ that had been painfully missing from the US radar screen. As , the author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, had predicted, it was the Muslims. When the wars turned into an expensive fiasco that furthermore implicitly impugned nearly 2 billion people (including many American citizens), the uncomfortable feeling that ā€œwe are not so sure whoā€ the enemy is returned, further complicated by the realization that if it was the Muslims then our capacity, through military means, to ā€œremake the world orderā€ was clearly and humiliatingly insufficient.

Launching his election campaign, Trump invented a new ā€œthemā€: the Mexicans. Once elected, he returned to the Muslims, initiating the first immigration ban defined on the basis of religion in the history of the US. But the focus on those two enemies had lost traction except within Trumpā€™s narrow electoral base. On the other hand, the failure to elect Hillary Clinton opened a new vista for the Democrats to identify the real ā€œthemā€: the Russians, who even if the Soviets are no longer there will always be remembered as the ā€œcommie nation.ā€

The role play that will determine the 2020 election is being played out before our eyes. Which enemy will the American people elect: the Mexicans (aided and abetted by Muslims) or the Russians? We can only wait and see.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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Fidel Castro, the tall charismatic leader of Cuba, is dead. True to form, Donald Trump has called Fidel, as Castro has come to be called, a ā€œ.ā€ In Miami,Ā . One man said the ā€œhead of the snakeā€ had been cut off and another remarked that Fidelā€™s death was the end of an ideology.

In other parts of the world, there was a different reaction. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Fidel ā€œone of the most iconic personalities of the 20^thĀ century.ā€ He went on to say, ā€œ.ā€ Like Modi, many African leaders reacted with ā€œ.ā€ President Jacob Zuma thanked Fidel for supporting South Africans in their struggle against apartheid. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari called Fidel ā€œ,ā€ and Rwandan President Paul Kagame saluted the Cubanā€™s ā€œfull liberation life.ā€

Elsewhere, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared, ā€œ,ā€ Pope Francis expressed ā€œsentiments of grief,ā€ and even European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called the former guerrilla ā€œa hero for many.ā€ In his native Latin America,Ā Ā because they saw ā€œEl Comandanteā€ who, in the words of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, left his country ā€œmore just, more equal but also more dignified and more sovereign.ā€

The Cuban who just died was a complex character who defies both deification and vilification. His story is well known and has been chronicled inĀ Ā around the world. Fidel was brave to the point of recklessness. In 1953, he led an attack on the Moncada army barracks near Santiago and ended up in prison. Only a general amnesty in 1955 enabled him to leave prison and embark on a second innings.

Once out of prison, Fidel fled to Mexico and met another revolutionary named Ernesto ā€œCheā€ Guevara. In late November 1956, Fidel and Che returned with 80 others inĀ Granma, an old, leaky cabin cruiser designed to carry just 12 men. By the law of probabilities, Fidel, Che & Co. should have perished in the perilous voyage. They did not have much luck when they landed. Government troops attacked them immediately on landing and killed most of them immediately or after capture. Only 22 survived and regrouped in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

What happened next is the stuff of legend. Fidel and Che led a guerrilla movement that overthrew Fulgencio Batista despite all the odds. Batista was a former army sergeant who had come to power through a coup in 1952. In the words ofĀ , ā€œcorruption, decadence and gross inequalityā€ plagued Cuba. The country was run by organized crime syndicates where Americans turned up in droves to enjoy whiskey, rum, cocktails, cigars and Cuban women.

Then as now, history casts a dark shadow on both Cuba and the United States. In theĀ March 27 edition of , this author pointed out how Cuba was colonized by Europeans just like the US in the aftermath of Columbusā€™ voyage.Ā ConquistadoresĀ engaged in an orgy of violence against the natives with slaughter, rape and robbery as par for the course.

The paths of the two countries diverged soon. While Protestant US declared independence from Great Britain as early as 1776 and powered ahead, Catholic Cuba remained a docile colony of strife-torn Spain until finally breaking out in rebellion in 1868. Only in 1898 did Cuba become independent thanks in part due to US troops like Theodore Rooseveltā€™s ā€œRough Ridersā€ riding in to rescue.

The Americans came as liberators but soon turned into oppressors. This is a time when the US was modernizing fast. Its industries had an insatiable thirst for resources. Like the British before them, Americans were acquiring a taste for things like sugar. Sugarcane plantations like the one run by Fidelā€™s father provided the US with sugar. Direct rule by Spain was replaced by indirect rule by the US.

As Uncle Sam replaced Spain as the oppressor of Cuba and of Latin America, its companies ranĀ Ā in the region.Ā Its intelligence agencies backed corrupt despots like Batista. These autocrats signed off land, mining rights and other resources to American companies, often for a pittance. Latin American economies found themselves producing commodities for Uncle Sam. The catch with this model was that the more commodities these economies produced, the more commodity prices fell. So, Latin American countries were caught in a terrible trap of poverty, economic exploitation and political repression.

This legacy continues till this day. In theĀ September 4 edition of , this author painted the backdrop of the 52-year-old Colombian civil war and pointed out that Latin America continues to be the worldā€™s most unequal region. In 2014, the richest 10% owned 71% of the wealth. The ā€œaristocracy of rank, office and wealthā€ that SimĆ³n Bolivar bemoaned continues to plague the region. Under Batista, life in Cuba had become so unbearable that the country was called ā€œ.ā€

Batista was among the most repulsive of Latin American dictators. He was brutal, corrupt and disastrous for the country. At some point, almost everyone in Cuba turned against Batista. On January 2, 1959, barely two years after returning to Cuba, Fidel and Che entered Havana in a triumphal procession with thousands cheering them on. Batista fled, ā€œ.ā€ Consequently, Fidel took charge of a poor country with an empty treasury.

Initially, Fidel wooed Uncle Sam. After all, he had spent hisĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å raised money for his revolution in Miami. Americans were equally fascinated with this revolutionary. Cheering crowds greeted Fidel but Dwight D. Eisenhower, then president, preferred to play golf instead of meeting this towering man with a Himalayan ego. Fidel never forgot that slight. Richard Nixon, then vice president, met the young Cuban leader and concluded that Fidel was ā€œ.ā€

Soon, Fidel embraced communism completely andĀ Ā kept the country aloft. Tanks not just tractors started arriving in. They helped when John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs in 1961. The image of Fidel leading his troops and jumping off a tank has become iconic since. The invasion was followed by theĀ Ā in 1962 that made the Cold War incandescent hot and nearly led to nuclear war. Thereafter, the Soviets and Americans reached aĀ rapprochementĢż²¹²Ō»å Fidel was left fuming in fury as a result.

Throughout life, Fidel had his ups and downs. He managed to dodge death for decades. As per legend, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tried to kill him anĀ . Channel 4, a British television station, would make a documentary,Ā , about the numerous assassination attempts to kill this cigar chomping communist. Arguably, these attempts did not harm him as much as the collapse of the Soviet Union. That moment in 1991 nearly brought Fidel down.

The Cuban economyĀ . After all, the Soviets alone had imported 80% of the countryā€™s sugar and 40% of its citrus. They also provided Cuba most of its oil. Economically, Cuba had been a Soviet client regime. With the Soviets gone, Cuba suffered immensely. Castro managed to survive this crisis, too, and new benefactors appeared in his backyard as a new generation of left-leaning leaders emerged in Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia to proffer support.

Like all living creatures, Fidel grew old and RaĆŗl Castro, his loyal brother and longstanding comrade, took over. In came economic reforms, new private businesses and a mixed economy. Inexorably, Cuba started moving in the same direction as China and Vietnam.Ā RapprochementĀ with Uncle Sam followed and US PresidentĀ Ā earlier this year for a visit. Things seemed to be mellowing down, but Fidelā€™s death has revealed chasms that still run deep and wide.

For many, Fidel was merely a brutal dictator who ran a repressive one-party state. He and his cronies killed wantonly without due process or mercy. Fidelā€™s insistence that ā€œrevolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral convictionā€ revolts those who believe in human rights and rule of law. In Fidelā€™s Cuba, there was no freedom of speech, repression rife, torture rampant and imprisonment of political enemies a way of life. Obedience to Fidel and loyalty to his party had to be unquestionable. It is little surprise that many damn Fidel as a modern-day absolutist monarch guilty of medieval barbarity.

Apart from political repression, Fidel brought economic ruin to his country. He quite literally ran the Cuban economy into the ground. Havanaā€™s dilapidated buildings are testimony to the penury his ideas and decisions imposed on Cuba. Like Joseph Stalin before him, he nationalized all private property. In fact, the first farmĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å his mother never forgave him for it. Neither have millions of others who lost their farms, shops and small businesses they had worked so hard to create. Fidelā€™s apparatchiks have failed as miserably as their Soviet counterparts. TheĀ Ā to the US.

So, are Fidelā€™s critics right? Was he a blundering murdering monster, a mini Stalin?

Fidelā€™s admirers argue thatĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å infant mortality merelyĀ , a figure lower than the US. They argue that Cubans have great health care, terrific doctors, good schools and decent universities. They have a point. In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. A year earlier, Fidelā€™s tiny island country had sentĀ . EvenĀ Time, an Americano publication, acknowledged thatĀ .

Some argue that Fidel was not responsible for all of Cubaā€™s economic woes. Over five decades ago, the US imposed a draconian embargo on its tiny neighbor. While claiming to support freedom and oppose terrorism, itĀ , harbored violent reactionaries andĀ . Wayne S. Smith, a foreign policyĀ guruĀ who resigned from the US State Department over disagreements with Ronald Reaganā€™s doctrinaire Cuba policy, once aptly remarked, ā€œ.ā€ So, Fidelā€™s supporters do have a point.

Many ofĀ . LikeĀ , they cannot forget Cuban support of liberation struggles against European colonial powers. It is now an open secret in most places other than the land of the free and the home of the brave that Cuban intervention in Angola hastened the end of apartheid. Apartheid South Africa had intervened in this former Portuguese colony to prop up a proxy regime. At this time, Uncle Sam supported apartheid and acted in tandem with the South Africans in Angola,Ā . Unfortunately for the US, the fabled South African military machine was humbled for the first time on African soil by Cuban fighters and their allies.

So, do Fidelā€™s supporters have a point? Was he the great freedom fighter battling colonialism, imperialism and racism?

The wayĀ The EconomistĀ describes Fidel is telling. For this 1843-vintage opponent of Indiaā€™s independence, ā€œ.ā€ This well-crafted sentence is only partly true, but those who oppose the view of Fidel as an evil dictator are being pilloried. Canadian Prime MinisterĀ Ā for being complimentary about Fidel. SĆ©golĆØne Royal, a French leader who once ran to be president,Ā Ģż³Ł“Ē“Ē.

By contrast, in the non-white world, even the market-friendly Modi who isĀ Ā has to sing paeans to Comrade Fidel. Here, any criticism of the late Cuban leader is seen as support for apartheid. Fidel has become a sacred icon of the anti-imperial struggle against white supremacists.

The truth is far more complicated. The perspicaciousĀ Ā refers to Fidel asĀ Ā for our times. Barely 90 miles from American shores, Fidel managed to make mockery of theĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å spat in the eye of the insufferable worthies in Washington, DC. This earned him respect around the world. Of course, Fidel was brave, generous and idealistic to many poor countries, whether in supporting their liberation struggles or in providing them modern medicine. This made him a hero to millions.

At the same time, Fidel was a canny ruler who wanted absolute power. He cleverly sent off his most illustrious knight to fight distant crusades without much support. Cheā€™s death and beatification turned out to be most convenient for Fidel. More damningly,Ā , his splendid general and the hero of Angola, on thinly disguised charges that were blatantly untrue. It was reminiscent of Robespierre turning on Danton or Stalin getting rid of Kirov.

Fidel, the Jesuit-trained communist, was complicated. Both saint and sinner, he leaves behindĀ Ā from many mothers and a most tortured legacy.

*[You can receive ā€œThe World This Weekā€ directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visitĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

Survival Sex: A Violent, Dangerous Game

Ā© Tanja_G

At the fringes of the sex industry in the north of England, men and women are selling sex to survive.

Any local pizza parlor, on any given day. Bright lights, cheap plastic, the smell of frying grease. Men hanging around the cramped tables, coddling beer bottles, chatting. The owner lets a woman take a client into the back room to sell herself to him for some cash and warm food, as he waits for his order.

This is not, as you may have imagined, Eastern Europe in the unhinged 1990s. This is todayā€™s Great Britain, where a generational cycle of poverty, violence and addiction drives both men and (mostly) women to the lowest rung of the sex industry: survival sex.

In 2014, the Office of National Statisticsā€™ (ONS) inclusion of the shadow economy in calculating the countryā€™s gross domestic product (GDP) added an estimated Ā£5 billion from prostitution alone. Many have pointed to the problematic nature of suchā€¦

The Meaning and Taste of Thanksgiving

Ā© AlexRaths

For one day in the year on Thanksgiving, Americans hopeĀ to renew a sense of ā€œbelongingā€ to a fading culture.Ā 

Once a year, on the fourth Thursday of November, Americans honor their imagined Puritan heritage, even if today only a tiny minority can trace their ancestry back to the communities of 17^thĀ century New England. This yearā€™s celebration will see half the population tuck in to Thanksgiving dinner while attempting to overcome their lingering indigestion following Donald Trumpā€™s election. The other halfā€”those who voted for himā€”will be giving thanks not just to his campaign for its successful strategy and the media for giving their candidate so much play, but some of them will feel revitalized by the idea that the white, Christian heritage of the Puritans has been validated by a majority in the electoral college.

The historical mythology surrounding the first Thanksgiving has always been confused, and never more so than today, marked not onlyā€¦

An Opportunity to Fill the Leadership Void in Korea

North Korea Ā© Narvikk

What does Donald Trumpā€™s victory mean for the future of the Korean Peninsula?

I recently returned to the United States after living, working and studying in Seoul, South Korea, for the past six years. As I prepared to return to America last spring, the US presidential election and the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency had gripped South Korea with such ferocity that I found myself doing a tour de Seoul trying to explain the Trump phenomenon. I was invited to speak to decision makers, lawyers, business professionals and politicians, and even appear onĀ Koreaā€™s most popular Korean-speaking foreigner show,Ā Abnormal Summit, to discuss anything American and everything Donald Trump.

I learned that despite our differences in perspectives, these differences were compounded due to the sensationalist and hysterical reporting by Western media outlets. This reckless reporting has confused and terrified my Korean friends, colleagues and counterparts by sowing seeds of fear and doubt across East Asia, a regionā€¦

Amid Uncertainty, Latin America is Looking Up

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Ā© Microgen

Despite a recession, the Latin America and Caribbean region is looking ahead.

For the first time since 1982-83, the Latin America and Caribbean region is expected to be in recession for two consecutive years (2015-16). According to World Economic Outlook forecasts, growth is expected to be -0.6% this year following growth of -0.03% last year. The fall in commodity prices, lower global trade and continued weakness in advanced economies, combined with a set of internal factors in some of the larger regional economies, have driven growth lower.

However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the region. The simple average growth rate across the 26 regional economies is expected to be 1.6% this year, and while six countries are expected to have negative growth, 12 are expected to grow at more than 2.5% and five at 4% and higher. In addition,Ā the baseline prospects for 2017 indicate a recovery for the region, with a growth rate of 1.6% and onlyā€¦

Beyond 2016: Moving America Forward

Donald Trump Ā© Bastiaan Slabbers

IfĀ Americans do not engage with their fellow citizens, resentment over the impact of globalization will grow.

A cottage industry of commentators has emerged in explaining the rise of Donald Trump and how he eventually went on to capture the White House. However, what has become clear over the past year is that globalization has created aĀ new class structureĀ in the Westā€”those who have benefited from globalization and those who have notā€”which does not fall neatly along previous political lines. While this new structure is by no meansĀ unique to the US, it has taken slightly different political persuasions elsewhere. Both groups are worthy of investigation.

The social and political elites of America generally enjoy the fruits of globalization. As income inequality exacerbates difference within our nation, the higher socioeconomic strata tend to enjoy increasing diversity of global cultures, cuisines, languages and people. However, they are broadly guilty of self-serving top-down thinking. Private sector elitesā€¦

The views expressed in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļā€™s editorial policy.

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·É²¹²õĢż just before midnight on February 27 in Moscow. His death was both the culmination and the continuation of his extraordinary political life.

I first encountered Nemtsov in 1992 at a meeting with a World Bank delegation in his office in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, a few months after he had been appointed as provincial governor of that state by the new Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.

Nemtsov clearly did not conform to the staid stereotype of a governor. He was only 32, a physicist with some experience in environmental activism and a brief period as a local councilor after the first democratic elections in in 1990. He slouched at the table like an undergraduate and spoke plainly, using neither the stock phrases of the traditional Soviet bureaucrat, nor the jargon of the ideologue market reformer.

On the subject of the financial crisis ā€” much worse than todayā€™s ā€” I remember him saying with disarming honesty: ā€œSometimes I just find myself looking out of the window and wonder what we are going to do, how will we look after people when the money runs out ā€” and will the mob come for us?ā€

In the end, Nemtsov was to prove one of Russiaā€™s most successful post-communist governors. Upon taking office, he immediately declared that Nizhny Novgorod would be the ā€œlaboratory of reforms.ā€

Usually, either Moscow or St Petersburg takes the lead on any major reform, but in 1992, the reformers in power in both cities were mired in policy debates and political splits. Nemtsov saw his chance to lead the way and called in the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank. With the IFCā€™s help, he instigated the first program of privatization in the former (USSR).

But Nemtsov did not subscribe to the simplistic laissez-faire economic model then in vogue in reform circles. He initiated many programs to try and save Nizhny Novgorodā€™s Soviet-era enterprises, and led innovations in the area of land reform, emphasizing equity and redistribution as well as efficiency.

Under Nemtsov, Nizhny Novgorod began to rediscover its pre-revolutionary merchant tradition, symbolized by the reopening of the once-famous Nizhny Novgorod market.

He differed from many fellow reformers not only in his concern for mitigating the social effects of marketization, but also in favoring the reassertion of the ā€œlittle motherlandā€ of province, town and village. It was fitting that his 1997 autobiography should be titledĀ Ā (a provincial), proudly adopting what in Russian is usually a pejorative term.

Friends Abroad

Nemtsov had a pronounced pro-Western, especially anglophile, orientation he never wavered from. Nationalists often regarded him as an agent of the West, forgetting that in the early 1990s, Nemtsovā€™s instinctive Westernism was uncontroversial. Everyone wanted Western aid and partnership; he was just quicker and better at building links with Western donors and governments than his competitors.

The idea that there might be tension between being pro-Western and a patriotic Russian did not return to mainstream elite politics until much later, particularly after the Kosovo crisis of the late 1990s. For his part, Nemtsov remained true to the early 1990s ideal of Russian-Western friendship right to the end, by which time such views were very much in a minority.

Westerners reciprocated Nemtsovā€™s enthusiasm from the beginning. Margaret Thatcher famouslyĀ  a detour to visit himĀ in Nizhny Novgorod in 1993 ā€” a symbolic moment indeed, given that the city was long closed to foreigners.

His easy charm and cool air of authority had many at home and abroad seeing him as a future president as early as 1992. But it is not unusual for a successful local or regional politician to have trouble reproducing their success at national level ā€” and this was precisely Nemtsovā€™s fate.

Boris Nemtsov Ā© Shutterstock

Friends and Foes

While Nemtsov was long talked about as a possible successor to Yeltsin, he simply did not have the support of the backers he would need. He was untainted by the worst aspects of the 1990s, but that was not exactly an electoral asset. His outspoken criticisms of wealthy and influential men such asĀ Ģż²¹²Ō»å Moscow MayorĀ Ā meant he could never gather elite support for a major presidential campaign when he was still popular enough to win.

Initially, like many reformers, he approved of ā€™s rise to the presidency, but he changed his mind early on. Most did not, and for a number of years the prosperity and stability of the Putin regime left dissenters such as Nemtsov increasingly marginalized.

Still, Nemtsovā€™s personal standing was enough for him to at least try for the presidency ā€” and when he eventually ran for mayor of Sochi in 2009, heĀ  second with 14%, in the face of clear media bias and alleged voting irregularities.

With no possibility of a conventional parliamentary or governmental career, Nemtsov spent the last few years as a street campaigner and orator, and a member of the local council in Yaroslavl, where he was elected on an anti-corruption platform. He was particularly bold in his adopting the cause of the Orange Revolution in , both in 2004-05 and 2013-14. That earned him widespread opprobrium in Russia, and he was one of those who were referred to as a ā€œfifth columnā€ machinating against Putinā€™s rule.

Remaining loyal to the same principles he embodied in the early 1990s, Nemtsov never saw a contradiction between being a Russian patriot and a friend of Ukraine, just as he saw no contradiction in being both a patriotic Russian and a Westernizer.

When peace finally returns to the Russian-Ukrainian relationship, Nemtsovā€™s role as a bridge between the two countries, as Ukrainian President Petro PoroshenkoĀ  him, may have even more symbolic power posthumously than it did when he was alive.

Since 2000, the official narrative has denigrated the 1990s (not without cause) as a time of chaos and suffering, a nadir to which Russia must never again be allowed to sink. But now Russia is entering a new economic crisis, that narrative has begun to wear thin.

If Russia is to weather the storm, some of the discarded policy furniture from the 1990s ā€” decentralization, pluralism, competition, diversification and localism ā€” may need to be dusted off. And the death of Nemtsov, the 1990sā€™ last widely respected voice, may help to defuse some of the tension around that decadeā€™s legacy so Russia can at last move on.

As a national icon, Nemtsov has now taken his place alongside Vladimir Vysotsky and Andrei Sakharov ā€” Russians who, even in death, personify values the Russian people had feared lost, and whose funerals are remembered as defining events of their eras.

One of Nemtsovā€™s British friends, John Major, caused much amusement in 1992 when he to his vision of Britain as ā€œa nation at ease with itself.ā€ But as Nemtsov understood, this is exactly what has been lacking in Russia. And this is what Nemtsovā€™s life seemed to promise.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The Second that broke out in September 1939 was not the result of a criminal conspiracy by and his henchmen. The trials held in Nuremberg in October 1946, whichĀ saw the conviction of prominent members of the political, military and economic leadership of Germany, hid the victorsā€™ share of the blame for the war, let -speakers across avoid any responsibility, and created a situation whereby the new West was rehabilitated as a respectable ally against the (USSR).

Typical Leader, Typical Policy

Hitler was not the demoniacal figure of popular imagination but, in the history of foreign affairs, a typical German leader. Under Hitler, Germanyā€™s foreign policy did not differ from that of the Stresemannā€™s Weimar Republic or the Kaiserā€™s Germany before it. As a nationalist, Hitler was no better or worse than Neville Chamberlain or Ɖdouard Daladier. He merely wished to make Germany a strong and respected power in Europe, but did not want or plan war. The outbreak of war in 1939 was an unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on all sides.

Hitler was a simple opportunist, with few strong beliefs other than the pursuit of power and a hatred of Jews. His foreign policy was one of seizing chances as they offered themselves. His was not unique: millions of people around the world were just as ferociously anti-Semitic as Hitler, and there was no reason to single him out for sharing their beliefs.

The basic problem with Europe between the Ģż²¹²Ō»å Wars was a flawed Treaty of Versailles, which was sufficiently onerous to ensure that the overwhelming majority of Germans would always hate it, but insufficiently onerous in that it failed to destroy Germany’s potential to be a great power once more.

After a generation, Germanyā€™s latent power that Versailles could not destroy inevitably reasserted itself against an international regime that Germans regarded as unjust, and thus had every interest in destroying. Though the Second World War was not inevitable and the Treaty was nowhere near as harsh as contemporaries like John Maynard Keynes argued in his 1919 The Economic Consequences of the Peace, what he regarded as a Carthaginian Peace made the war more likely than not.

Nationalist Fervour

After the resignation of Austriaā€™s Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg on March 11, 1938, Nazi sympathisers supported by Germany annexed Austria quickly in the Anschluss, using the protection of ethnic Germansā€™ right to national self-determination and the referendum result as justification. The same happened in the Sudetenland. As in Austria, it was not clear whether the protests of German-speaking Sudetans were instigated by Germany. Again, and did little, both because they simply could not project their military power quickly enough to react to the pace of events, nor were they willing to.

I am speaking to you from the Cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

German-speakers in Danzig, inspired by their Austrian brethren, began agitating for independence. and military promises to Poland were ignored by the Danzig German-speakers in their nationalist fervour for reunification with the fatherland, nor did the German government and its armed forces see them by this late stage as anything other than empty gestures. Hitler had tried to deescalate the crisis, though noted commentators pointed out that national sentiments and cultural and linguistic sensitivities were too strong for him to control.

Western Wavering and Prevarication

After the annexation of Austria, British Prime Minister Chamberlain resisted calls to put industry on a war footing, convinced that such an action would persuade Hitler that his counterpartĀ had decided to discard diplomacy.

Despite Hitler’s relative quietness as Germany absorbed Austria, Chamberlain made trips to and Rome hoping to incite the French and to side more strongly with him, while also attempting to relaunch negotiations, to which Germany agreed to be held during April 1938 in Munich. However, public revulsion over the Kristalnacht against communities in Germany during these negotiations made any attempt at a rapprochement with Hitler unacceptable.

This was followed soon after by Germany intervening in the eastern provinces of Czechoslovakia to quell the violence that had broken out between pro- and anti-German Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia, including Prague. The British prime minister wondered publicly whether this move into eastern Czechoslovakia was “the end of an old adventure, or the beginning of a new.”

Chamberlain then reasserted the interlocking series of defense pacts with France and Poland, as a means of deterring Hitler from war. Chamberlain informed an approving House of Commons of British and French guarantees that they would lend Poland all possible aid, in the event of any action thatĀ threatened Warsawā€™s independence. He went as far as to double the size of the Territorial Army.

The British government even accepted an offer of negotiations with the Soviet Union. Chamberlainā€™s Cabinet, despite many urging the further use of diplomacy, distrusted the USSR on ideological grounds. Talks with , therefore, dragged on and eventually foundered on August 14.

A week after the failure of these talks, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which publicly committed the countries to non-aggression toward each other. A secret element to their agreement divided up Poland in the event of war. Chamberlain had dismissed rumors of such a deal, and belittled the significance of the publicly-announced pact, stating that it in no way affected British obligations toward Poland. To this end, on August 23, Chamberlain had Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden deliver a letter to Hitler telling him that Britain was fully prepared to live up to its obligations to Poland. Hitler instructed his generals to prepare for an assault on Warsaw, telling them: “Our enemies are small worms. I saw them at Munich.”

In the early hours of September 1, 1939, Germany marched into Poland.

On the third day of the German campaign, the relayed live at 11:15am these words of the British prime minister: ā€œI am speaking to you from the Cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.ā€

The views expressedĀ in this article are the authorā€™s own and do not necessarily reflectĀ 51³Ō¹Ļā€™sĀ editorial policy.

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The erroneous rationalization offered for Russia's annexation of Crimea proceeds along one or more of the following lines:

1: The US, NATO and other Western governments left Vladimir Putin and Russia no choice. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO aggressively sought expansion, extending its reach very near or up to the borders of Russia with the membership of many former East Bloc nations. Russia could not allow Ukraine, hosting a sizeable Russian minority and sharing a long border with Russia, to become the next NATO member and complete near encirclement of Russia's western borders. What's next, Kazakhstan? To make matters worse, the European Union (EU) also expanded into the former Soviet Bloc, threatening Russian economic interests.

2: The US and other Western governments actively supported one or more of the various Ukrainian opposition movements responsible for the eventual fall of Ukraine's democratically elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Moreover, ultra-nationalists in Ukraine have threatened violence against the Russian and Russian Orthodox minorities. This Western support for Ukrainian opposition groups and appearance of ultra-nationalists threaten the security and economic interests of Russia.

3: There is a patently sanctimonious ring to the West's cries of Russian foul in Crimea in light of the US invasion of Iraq and NATO's interventions in Kosovo and Libya. Big and powerful nations like Russia must be expected to protect their interests, even if their actions run afoul of rules. Others have done it. Why can't Russia?

These fallacies do not stand up to reasoned scrutiny. Accepting them is tantamount to capitulation to either reinstatement of "big power spheres of influence" or to Putin and Russia's paranoia. Here's why.

Fallacy #1

On the question of eastern and central European membership to NATO and the EU, these countries and perhaps Ukraine as well, all want to be a part of the West — as democratic, market-oriented states allied with the EU and other Western institutions. Well familiar with the historic predatory proclivity of Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR), they sought to arrest historic precedent by their voluntary and willful decision to seek and acquire membership in these Western institutions. Sharing security, economic, cultural and historical ties to Europe and the West, why wouldn't NATO and the EU welcome them?

To suggest that NATO aggressively expanded into these nations is to conflate the entirely voluntary act of these governments to seek membership with their forced imprisonment in the old Warsaw Pact. These governments, as well as Ukraine's, should and must be free to choose security and economic alliances, a right denied to them before the fall of the USSR. Having freely sought formal Western affiliations, why wouldn't NATO and EU members support them?

Certainly, current members have to decide for themselves whether any new member serves their interests. However, it would have been morally unconscionable to deny these nations membership merely on the grounds that they belong in some post-Soviet era orbit, especially after what they endured first under Nazi, and then Soviet, occupation and oppression.

Moreover, given Russia's history of dealings with these states and as familiar as they were with past treatment at the hands of the Russians/Soviets, they were wise to seek Western security ties. It's perfectly logical and strategically sound. Election after election in every one of those former East Bloc and Soviet states has proven that this is what the people of those states want. So, why wouldn't the US, EU and NATO support them? Good for peace, good for stability, good for the people of these countries, and good for markets.

Russia was given every opportunity to be a part of this effort. It chose to go its own way. All one needs to do to see how successful this policy has been is to look at these newly free nations. They are all better off aligned with Western economies.

Caving into Russian nationalist paranoia and refusing to support these nations would have been to repeat the tragedy of Yalta in 1945, which effectively condemned the citizens of these countries to oppression under their Soviet masters for more than 45 years. (It is worth noting that Joseph Stalin and his successors violated much of the agreement reached at Yalta, including allowing free and fair elections in these countries.)

Fallacy #2

Western governments promote democracy all over the world. They have much to show that it has worked, not everywhere but most places. And it isn't just the US. Governments of the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan and Australia as well as the EU — and even the UN — also support democratic institutions wherever assistance is requested and needed.

Such support strengthens the rule of law, nurtures respect for human rights, enables often neglected women and minorities, and ultimately advances the most stabilizing force in the world today: democracy. They should neither apologize, nor be ashamed of it.

Apologists conflate this support for democracy with the unfortunate rise of ultra-nationalists in Ukraine. It's a convenient, but hardly clever argument. Ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist movements are present elsewhere in Europe, thankfully in small numbers, and are strongly opposed by both governments and the majority of citizens in the countries where they are present. They are a sad, yet sometimes inevitable occurrence in free nations.

The fact that ultra-nationalists in Ukraine chose to lend their unwelcome violent opposition to the Yanukovych government does not diminish the otherwise sincere, peaceful effort of the majority of opposition groups to rid themselves of a corrupt, undemocratic regime.

President Putin and Russian nationalists failed to learn the lesson of the Soviet Union's collapse: that democracy, market-oriented economies, rule of law, respect for human rights and liberty are the natural desire of most human beings and are what account for stable, peaceful and prosperous nations. They are swimming not only against the tide of history, but the inexorable current of human will.

In Ukraine, there may indeed have been actions that could have been taken tactically to mitigate events — such as the removal/resignation of its corrupt president. But democracy is often messy. Revolutions always are. Given the heightened state of passions after nearly four months of often violent confrontations, it is unclear that any outsider could have altered the current of Ukrainian will.

Fallacy #3

This is the ultimate rationalization. It preys on America's and NATO’s lingering guilt over questionable and regrettable actions taken under extraordinary and less-than ideal circumstances. Regardless of the question of legitimacy over actions in Iraq, Kosovo and Libya, there is no comparison to what Russia has done in Ukraine.

If the US invasion of Iraq was wrong — as most people agree today — how much more wrong is Russia's invasion of Ukraine? In Iraq, the US and the 39 others participating nations secured UN Security Resolution 1441 to justify their action.

Moreover, Saddam Hussein had a long and well-known history of gross human rights abuses and had expressed interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction dating back to the 1980s; although subsequent investigations proved no such weapons existed at the time of the 2003 invasion. Additionally, Hussein had previously invaded Kuwait and was widely viewed as a threat within the region.

Does this sound at all familiar in Ukraine? Russia has acted unilaterally against Ukraine, without even the attempt to secure a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution and with not one allied nation. Human rights abuses in Ukraine were well-documented under its Russian-backed former president.

Ukraine willingly surrendered its nuclear weapons in 1994 in the Budapest Memorandum, signed by the US, the UK and Russia in exchange for recognition of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Unlike Hussein's Iraq, Ukraine threatens none of its neighbors.

Russia's claims of abuses and threats against Russian minorities in Ukraine as a justification for its invasion of Crimea sound as disturbingly familiar and hollow as the now proven false claims of the Bush administration regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

In Kosovo, every NATO and EU member, as well as Yugoslavia's neighbors, supported NATO's actions. Moreover, prior to initiation of action in March 1999, efforts had been made through NATO, the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and at the Rambouillet Conference (January-March 1999) to defuse and resolve the crisis in Kosovo diplomatically. UNSC Resolution 1199 expressed the council's "grave concern" at reports that over 230,000 persons had been displaced from their homes by "excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav Army."

The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, convened in August 1999 in the aftermath of the intervention to assess NATO's action, found in its that:

"[Yugoslav] forces were engaged in a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians… most frequently described as one of 'ethnic cleansing,' intended to drive many, if not all, Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, destroy the foundations of their society, and prevent them from returning."

The report concluded that NATO's actions were "illegal but legitimate."

Russia's actions in Ukraine are neither legal nor legitimate. NATO can be forgiven for acting decisively, if illegally, to quell a looming humanitarian catastrophe on its very doorstep in Kosovo where hundreds of thousands of lives were threatened. While perhaps politically unstable, Ukraine posed no such humanitarian crisis before Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea. Crimea of 2014 bears no resemblance to Kosovo of 1999.

In fact, Russia's objections to NATO's intervention in 1999 likely stemmed from the same motivation for its invasion of Crimea in 2014 — perceived entitlement to the former USSR's "sphere of influence."

After the apologists' woeful analogies to Iraq and Kosovo, it is hardly surprising that references to NATO's intervention in Libya ring just as hollow. NATO acted on UNSC Resolution 1973, also supported by a number of Arab League states. While NATO forces provided the primary muscle for the campaign, governments from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others also lent military support to the effort to curb Muammar Qadhafi's violations of UNSC Resolution 1973.

Those who opposed NATO's intervention besides Russia, which abstained on the UNSC vote, included Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Their unsurprising claims of neocolonialism subsequently and predictably proved to be unfounded.

Like Iraq and Kosovo, Libya offers a weak and altogether ineffective comparison, much less justification, for Russia's actions in Ukraine. Russia's apologists are grasping at slim straws in using any of these.

Indeed, there is simply no justification for Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea or for ongoing threatening actions on Ukraine's eastern border. These actions are patently illegal and condemned by most governments around the world.

It is telling that Russia has no — not one — ally or governmental defender on its position. The UNSC voted 13 to one (Russia) to condemn Moscow's annexation of Crimea. China abstained but it is clear that Russia's hiving off of Crimea undercuts China's "One-China" policy and wish to reincorporate Taiwan.

It is time that apologists accept there can be no justification for Russia's actions.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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When Nikolai Gogol wrote about the winged troika in his 19^th century masterpiece on provincial corruption, The Dead Souls, little did he know that he was creating a perennial image that would come to represent Russia for centuries to come. Three powerful animals, a fury of motion, never to be overtaken, like a lightning bolt crashing from the skies. Where was it going? To that, alas, there was no answer.

What Gogol was referring to was the "mysterious Russian soul." A strong-willed, passionate people, we are never quite understood, because we are unpredictable. It is indicative of how we view ourselves: unique, unbeatable, great.

At the close of the Sochi Olympics in February, President Vladimir Putin said the games had been more than an open door to Russia — it was the opening of the Russian soul to the world. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore, Putin told journalists, we are ready for cooperation.

What the Olympics revealed, however, was a very dark side of that inner sanctum — a darkness that appears to have been eclipsed by the smooth success of the games. The thousands of  who have not been paid, the  in Sochi to make way for construction, , environmental damage and , all created a picture of Dorian Grey all over again: a presentable façade with a sinister collection of skeletons, not in the attic, but instead spilling from behind the front door.

Despite initial scrutiny by the world press before the Olympics, the release of Pussy Riot members and Mikhail Khodorkosvky from prison in February, the euphoria of Russia's Olympic performance and later the crisis in Ukraine have taken the spotlight off Russia's slow but steady crawl toward a humanist abyss. As controversy over Crimea was raging in the press, and while the world became absorbed in trying to predict Putin's next move, a number of remarkable violations received less attention than they deserved.

As We Know It

At the end of January, TV Rain (Dozhd), Russia's independent news channel, was . General Director Natalia Sindeeva was told by officials that the channel's coverage of the ongoing protests in Ukraine was "upsetting." The reason cited for refusing to support the channel by TV providers, however, was the online poll that sought to find out whether the epic siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by Nazi Germany during World War II was Joseph Stalin's mistake; should he have capitulated the city and saved countless thousands of lives?

Russian media law states that journalists are obliged to respect the rights and interests of citizens, and the  the poll violated this by offending the sentiments of veterans, much like Pussy Riot's mock-prayer legally offended religious believers. This was enough to disable the network across most of Russia, leading to an 80% loss of its profits.

On February 24, over 200 people were detained for protesting the verdict in the  that saw seven antigovernment demonstrators sentenced for assault. Among them was Boris Nemstov, a prominent opposition leader, and Alexei Navalny, an anticorruption campaigner who recently received a suspended sentence in a questionable  himself. Navalny's popular blog, which publishes investigations of money laundering and theft by government officials, was recently , following the prosecutor general's office allegation that its authors had been involved in inciting mass protests.

Echo Moscow, Russia's liberal radio station, had its  until it agreed to take Navalny's blog off its homepage. Navalny currently remains under house arrest, forbidden to leave his apartment, use the phone, mail or the Internet until April 28.

The second week of March saw the firing of , the editor-in-chief of Lenta.ru. Russia's most popular independent news site received a warning following a hyperlink to an interview with Ukraine's Right Sector leader Dmitri Yarosh. Timchenko was replaced by a pro-Kremlin candidate, prompting the exodus of its editorial staff.

Such measures are made possible by the passing of an Internet law that came into effect on February 1, which allows the media regulator, , to suspend any site that advocates extremism or calls for mass disturbances. On February 27, another law was passed literally overnight that requires all Internet providers to register as well as compile information on its users for a period of six months that will be available to regulators.

In a country where young mothers can get two years in prison for an anti-Putin song, "extremism" is a vague concept. If you remember the controversial law concerning "" from 2012, a proposal to apply it to media outlets has made a reappearance at the Duma again. According to , a draft proposed in 2012 was condemned by the Kremlin as damaging to the ruling party. But there is nothing to suggest the mood has not changed.

And last, but not least,  reported that a bill was introduced to the Duma that will abolish mayoral and city council elections. Gubernatorial elections were already , with Putin appointing governors across the country. With corruption eating away around , the circle of power is shrinking to a criminal cabal, and information about the workings of power is becoming increasingly controlled. As the open letter of resignation of Lenta.ru editors poignantly highlighted: "It's not that we have nowhere to work. It's that you have nothing more to read."

The Cold War Chessboard

Interestingly enough, Putin's approval ratings have exceeded their three-year high and are , reflecting on his firm stance on Crimea. While the world watched in shock as Russia's brief war with Georgia unfolded in 2008, the Russian president's approval ratings were nearing 90%.

The notion that Russia can only be tamed by a despot seems eradicable, and a show of a strong, masculine hand helps explain the president's popular support base. Nikolai Karamzin, a famous Russian historian, wrote: "Autocracy has founded and resuscitated Russia. Any change in its political constitution has led in the past and must lead in the future to its perdition." This is exactly why many Russians still view Mikhail Gorbachev — hailed widely across the world as an iconic figure who helped end the Cold War — as a weakling, a loser, and a mumbling idiot.

Putin has made a profession of cultivating not only his own image as a strongman, but also of reinvigorating Russia's lost grandeur. The fear after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin's turbulent years in power that Russia might slide into international insignificance was often expressed by Putin. Russia had felt, often with good reason, as being circumvented on the international arena, its interests and worldview ignored.

President Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia without a United Nations resolution was viewed with alarm, as was the  and, more recently, the Libyan campaign. (Given the highly  on the ground in Muammar Qaddafi's former dominion, Russia has every right to say, "I told you so.")

The unilateral withdrawal of the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and the consequent plans to position the ballistic missile defense shield in eastern Europe created tensions, still ongoing. And there is the point, a sore one to this day, of the alleged promise made to Gorbachev by then-Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would "" The Baltic States NATO accession of 2004, and the subsequent discussions of Ukraine and Georgia's membership, brought America too close for comfort.

President Putin has done his fair share to contribute to antagonizing the West from his side.

The , designed as a response to the US Magnitsky Bill, lists a number of measures against those committing human rights offenses against Russian citizens, including a controversial prohibition of adoption of Russian orphans by US parents. The ludicrous suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was somehow behind the 2011 antigovernment protests was laughable, but indicative of the narrative weaved by the Kremlin of foreign agents out to undermine Russia's bid for greatness.

Putin's 2013 editorial in  is a case in point. He writes:

"It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan 'you're either with us or against us.'"

His is a clear stance vis-à-vis America and its power. Yet with the Crimean government ready to nationalize Ukrainian assets — as we have seen in ,  — and to change the clocks to Moscow time, Putin could do well by listening to his own rhetoric, or at least his speech and ghostwriters.

Under Pressure

Fireworks crowned the breaking-speed formalization of Crimea's return to Russia in a fait accompli. As an MP suggested to  in a recent interview: "Crimea will be remembered as a place where Russia stood up to Washington and ended American dreams of creating a 'unipolar world.'"

Vladislav Sukrov, Putin's aide whose name appears on the  list, : "I think that this list is like an Oscar nomination, a type of confirmation that we are doing the right thing. I would call it a prize and a direct recognition of the rightfulness of our actions."

The media uproar that spun the Second Cold War scenario was sensationalist and revealed a simplistic mentality and a compartmentalized perception of international politics, wired by atavistic ideas. Yet the Russian government's positioning itself as a counterweight to US influence — in response to US influence — is a new reality that needs to be addressed.

It is difficult to assess whether Putin is playing on the public  or whether the Kremlin's rhetoric is fuelling it. The answer is probably a symbiosis of the two. But what it reveals is that the more Russia feels under pressure from the West, the more defiant its stance.

To use Putin's own metaphor: "If you press a spring hard enough, it will eventually unravel." No one could predict just what that might mean. Otto von Bismarck once said the secret of politics is to have a good treaty with Russia. Had he been alive today, he would have added America to the formula. Creating a better personal relationship with Putin, and a space for dialogue between the two powers, seems wiser than further alienating him and thereby entrenching Russia's antagonism.

The Mysterious Russian Soul

As the Kremlin tightens its grip on Russia's civil society, with the recent display of military jingoism that, had the Ukrainian troops not showed such restraint, might have seen a much less happy ending, the majority of the Russian people are silent. A distant echo of the 2011 protests, the weekend of the referendum saw the "March of Peace" against the Crimean incursion, which saw over 50,000 protestors gather in Moscow. But a simultaneous rally in support of Crimea and against "fascism in Ukraine" drew a much smaller, but much .

What is baffling in all this is the apparent willingness of the population to surrender their basic rights and freedom for concepts that have no bearing on their daily lives. You can't butter your bread with international prestige, although you could probably keep quite warm under a propaganda blanket.

But when it is clear the "power vertical" is absolute, the judiciary is not independent, the police force, along with every other budget sector, is riddled with corruption, and that independent journalists are not safe, then one questions the moral compass of such a society.

Russia had spent centuries dormant under Tsarist rule, and over seven decades submissive to the Communist Party. Its 1917 and 1991 revolutions were elite affairs, more like coup d’états than popular uprisings. Unfortunately, it appears that again the majority of the Russian people are content to surrender themselves to the mercy of an autocrat in return for an inflated sense of national pride, economic crumbs that fall off the Kremlin banquet table, and a good spectacle.

Greatness is not measured by military capability, land mass, or geopolitical advantage alone. Russian people have to decide what kind of society they want to live in. Right now, their subservience to the Kremlin seems to be taking them further away from the idea of democracy they fought to establish as the Soviet Union collapsed. And the current trend of Western antagonism toward Russia, and her continued isolation from its liberal norms, will only aggravate this negative progression.

*[This article was published in partnership with the .]

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The crisis in the , wrought by the recent fall of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president and subsequent introduction of Russian troops in Crimea, revives memories of the 19^th century’s Great Game, which pitted the Russian and British Empires against one another for control in Central Asia, and of the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union (USSR) faced off against the United States for global influence.

Crimea, ironically where Russian czarist troops fought bitter battles against British, French and Ottoman forces in the mid-19^th century for control over the Ottoman Empire’s diminishing territories, is again the flash point for a clash of global powers.

The distinguishing factor between the Great Game and the Cold War is that in the latter, the sides recognized that direct confrontation — as had been the case in the Great Game and the mid-19^th century Crimean War — would have meant open and direct military conflict with substantial if not catastrophic losses for both sides.

Instead, the USSR and the US engaged in a great political game, drawing sides from like-minded countries, building large and increasingly sophisticated arsenals that made open conflict all the more unthinkable.

They squared off in venues from the United Nations (UN) to the Olympics to score political points, wildly dispensing foreign aid to potential clients, and employing surrogates to fight ideological battles — for example, the North Vietnamese against the US in Vietnam and Muslim rebel mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

It is not yet clear whether Moscow will be able to count on much international support for its decision to send troops into the sovereign territory of neighboring Ukraine. Few countries in the world, despite differing political systems, countenance overt invasion of another sovereign state absent a genuinely threatening provocation.

Indeed, Russia and its UN Security Council voting partner, China, both to the US threat to send cruise missiles and bomb-laden aircraft to Syria to destroy that nation’s chemical weapons sites, after repeated use of those weapons against Syrian civilians. Their argument was that it represented an unwarranted external interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation.

Now, however, Russia has dispatched troops to Ukraine where neither its sizeable naval base, nor its admittedly majority Russian population faces imminent threat.

Much has been written about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged intent to reassert some neo-Soviet influence around the world and specifically on Russia’s immediate periphery. Examples include Russia’s actions to protect Russian majorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia in 2008; its strong support for Bashar al-Assad in the three-year-long Syrian Civil War; the reestablishing of military ties with US stalwarts Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and now an overt attempt to preserve the client-state status of Ukraine.

That argument takes on added weight when factored against the US' apparent withdrawal from many places on the world stage: removal of troops from Iraq; an expected withdrawal from Afghanistan later this year; thwarted action against Syria; negotiation, which some see as capitulation, with Iran to attempt to diffuse that long-running conflict; and failure to confront Chinese provocations in the Western Pacific against Japan, the Philippines, and other US Asia allies.

How Can the West Respond?

Direct military confrontation between Russia and the West is as unthinkable today as it was during the Cold War. Unlike the Great Game and even more than in the Cold War, economics and energy are likely to play the most crucial role in this latest iteration of the contest of Russia vs. the West.

Absent a direct military threat, neither the US, nor any of its NATO allies will consider escalating this conflict to global status by pitting their forces against Russia’s. It would make little strategic sense and provide no long-term solution to the question of Russia and Ukraine’s integration into the West, which ought to be the ultimate goal.

While every diplomatic action should be taken to allow Russia to save face and withdraw of its own accord, the US and European Union (EU) will nevertheless have to prepare for stronger measures. And they can make Russia’s Ukrainian advances extremely costly.

Actions that would be quite costly to Russia include: suspending trade and other economic agreements; imposing high duties on Russian goods; implementing US and EU sanctions on Russian banks, businesses and other entities; freezing bank accounts and other assets in the US and EU; limiting Russia’s participation in international events, especially those with an economic component; and restricting travel of certain Russians.

As seen in the Iranian case, US Treasury Department sanctions, especially when coupled with those of the EU, can be devastatingly effective in constraining weapons proliferation; they have been similarly valuable elsewhere in combating terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Even politically symbolic moves such as a NATO declaration of condemnation and a motion for a UN Security Council vote of sanction — which of course would fail — would further embarrass Russia internationally. Beyond merely boycotting the upcoming G8 in Sochi, the US and its allies could convene a G8-less-one alternative.

Condemnatory declarations from other world bodies, including ASEAN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Organization of American States, would also put Moscow on notice that its behavior is contrary to world peace, order and security.

Much-Needed Support for Ukraine

As Washington ultimately succeeded in doing so in the Cold War, the US and EU could outspend Russia, namely by ensuring Ukraine receives all the economic support it needs.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has estimated that Ukraine will need more than $35 billion in grants, loans and guarantees to begin to right its economy by the end of 2015. Both the US and EU, working together with the IMF and the World Bank, must step up to ensure Ukraine gets what it needs to exit this historically critical period successfully.

On energy, the West faces a major challenge. Europe relies heavily on imported Russian natural gas and oil. How far, then, is the EU willing to go before jeopardizing its Russian source?

This is where EU member states, the US, and oil and gas exporters of the Middle East must be willing to make tough decisions. The only short-term relief might come from the Middle East. But it would be insufficient if Russia responded with a cut in natural gas exports to Europe.

Longer term, the US could accelerate its development and export of natural gas in order to help relieve Europe. But the EU will have to look closely at its own policies on coal, nuclear power, stepped-up oil and gas exploration, and accelerated development of renewables to wean itself off Russian energy.

We can expect the Russians to wield the energy weapon as forcefully with Europe as they did with Ukraine. There may be little or no avoiding the energy bite to the EU economy, if the latter decides to respond aggressively to the Ukraine crisis.

But a Russian move to cut oil and gas exports to Europe, its largest hard-currency export client, would also carry a huge cost for the energy-export dependent Russian economy.

And Then There Is China

Could this be China’s first big opportunity to step forward on the world political stage? A move to condemn and, even if only mildly, to signal its disapproval of Russia’s Ukraine gambit would not be as costly as it would be for Europe and could still preserve China’s independence from the West, with whose economies it is inextricably linked.

Such a move would give Beijing enormous clout and leverage in future dealings with the US and the West. It would introduce a major power into this version of the Great Game that was never seen in its 19^th or 20^th century counterparts.

Any one of the aforementioned actions might be seen as exacerbating Russia’s sense of humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or paranoia over perceived US and Western intentions of surrounding and punishing Russia.

Therefore, such acts by the West might trigger even more severe Russian actions. That is a risk. But Russia and Putin have erred. They have invaded the sovereign territory of another nation without any apparent justifying threat. The international community cannot allow such violations of international law.

But neither should the West seek to create another divisive and self-defeating confrontation that undermines world stability for another half century.

Diplomacy failed in resolving the issues of the Great Game. In the Cold War, diplomacy and other means grudgingly became the weapons of choice for the antagonists, who recognized the futility of military conflict, to meet their interests, avoid direct confrontation, and ultimately bring that war to a peaceful end without either of them firing a shot on the other.

That must be the objective of the current crisis as well.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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As events unfold quickly in Ukraine, Russia's increasingly close ally China is hedging its bets on an uncertain outcome. China has been quick to condemn US and European involvement in Ukraine's affairs, but has withheld judgment either for or against Russia's military actions in the country.

Meanwhile, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propagandists have made use of the unrest in Ukraine to serve as a warning for Chinese citizens of the dangers of rapid political change.

Cold War Mentality

In official state-run media, the Chinese government has accused the West of maintaining a "" against Russia in the contest for influence in Ukraine, and of "" in Ukraine's affairs by manipulating popular opinion against Russia to favor Western interests.

Before the fall of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, that the West "frequently interferes in [Ukraine's] internal affairs by instigating the opposition party to challenge the incumbent government," and warned that China must resist Western influence to avoid the "torment" and "turbulence" countries such as Ukraine have experienced.

Since the fall of Yanukovych and the onset of hostilities with Russia, China has assumed a toward Russian moves while continuing to criticize the West and to use the unrest in Ukraine as a . "China is deeply concerned with the current Ukraine situation,"  Spokesman Qin Gang on March 2, urging a "political solution," and adding that "there have been reasons for today's situation in Ukraine" without detailing what those reasons might be.

The CCP, as China-based writer , "views unrest anywhere in the world as a teaching moment for those who might clamor for more rapid reforms in China."

To begin with, China is one of the few countries in the world whose leaders the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) and the disintegration of the Soviet empire. While Western audiences cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chinese leaders must have wept and quaked with fear at the prospects for their own future hold on power. (In statements that must have deeply endeared him to Chinese leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin the collapse of the USSR a "genuine tragedy" and "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.) "With its disintegration," , "the USSR that could once help resolve the contradiction between East and West Ukraine will help no more."

State-run media in China abound with pro-CCP explanations on the crisis in Ukraine and how China can avoid similar problems: CCP theoretical magazine Seeking Truth (Qiushi) as "the root of the problem," because voting allows ethnic differences, religious differences, and differences of opinion among people to get in the way of national unity. As long as China has a one-party dictatorship, says the CCP, Chinese people never need worry about any such differences getting in the way of Chinese national unity.

Qiushi’slist of things for Chinese people to fear and avoid also included "" leading to "social unrest" and "chaos"; and "" incited by the United States based on its "need to dominate the world."

A New Axis of Autocracy

China and Russia have been described as a "," jointly pursuing a common interest in preserving anti-Western authoritarian rule by "" and collaborating in a mutual support network with anti-Western autocrats throughout the world.

For China, this effort includes promoting the "China model" of authoritarian state capitalism over the "Washington consensus" of free markets and liberal democracy, promoting national sovereignty over international law on human rights issues, assisting struggling autocracies in methods of crowd control and legal repression, and exporting internet censorship technology.

For Russia, this effort has mainly focused on backing pro-Russian autocrats like Viktor Yanukovych and cultivating grassroots pro-Russian support in former Soviet satellite states — the latter includes to Russian speakers in former satellite states, so as to have a ready population of Russian citizens to "protect" through military intervention.

If anyone is guilty of harboring a "Cold War mentality," it is not America and the West but China and Russia.

China's autocrats are surely hoping for a Russian victory over pro-Western forces in Ukraine. No one likes to be caught rooting for a loser, however, and China has in Ukraine that will be important for Beijing in any event. For the present, therefore, China's autocrats are , and warning their own citizens against any similar turn of events in China.

*[This article was published in partnership with the .]

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Arik Scheinerman, who became Ariel Sharon, was from a Russian family that emigrated to Palestine at a time when Palestinians had been deprived of the right to set immigration policy into their own country. He would go on powerfully to shape the lives of most people in Israel and the Middle East, and not for the good.

1. By killing 63 civilians, including women and children, in his Unit 101 raid on Qibya in 1953, Ariel Sharon announced that in his vision, Israel would continue the tactics pioneered by 1940s terrorist groups such as the Stern Gang, of deploying terror in hopes of forcing Arab neighbors to accept Israel. (The hopes were forlorn.) 

 that the raid exposed Israel before the world “as a gang of bloodsuckers, capable of mass murder.”

2. Sharon, in late spring 1967,  against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The pressure from hawks like Sharon and Moshe Dayan worked, even though Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin thought it was a bad idea and almost had a nervous breakdown over it. But although Abdel Nasser was talking belligerently, some 100,000 of his best troops were tied down in Yemen.

Moreover, his Soviet patrons told him that if he fired the first shot in any engagement with Israel, he was on his own and would forfeit Moscow’s help. Abdel Nasser was in no position to attack Israel in 1967, and he did not.

Sharon, Dayan and other hawks took advantage of his blowhard speeches to launch an aggressive war that led to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula.

3. While Zionist leaders such as David Ben Gurion recognized a demographic dilemma in attempting to keep the West Bank and Gaza, Ariel Sharon insisted that Israel keep those territories. (This step was contrary to the United Nations Charter, which forbids acquisition of territory by armed force after 1945).

As cabinet minister in the government of PM Menachem Begin in the late 1970s, Sharon pushed for an expansion of Israeli colonies on Palestinian territory, in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the West Bank.

He played a key role in creating the current dilemma, that Israel has hundreds of thousands of citizens living in the Palestinian West Bank and who form a barrier to a Palestinian state or any prospect of peace or of justice for the Palestinians.

4. Sharon initiated the strategy of surrounding Jerusalem with new Israeli settlements as a way of permanently annexing it to Israel, even though the UN had not awarded it to Tel Aviv.

5. Sharon for most of his life was dead set against a Palestinian state ever being allowed to form. He worked hard to make it an impossibility.

6. Sharon crafted the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It was intended to allow him to put Christian allies of Israel into power in Lebanon. Likewise, he wanted to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then headquartered in Beirut.

The invasion, which had no basis in international law, resulted in the indiscriminate shelling of Beirut and the loss of some 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian lives. Along the way, he managed to provoke .

And during that war, Sharon bore responsibility for the .

Remember that these Palestinians were refugees from Sharon and his fellow Israeli hawks in the 1948 war, when some 720,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land and made penniless refugees.

Now he had come after them and empowered far right-wing Christian militiamen, who massacred them. Sharon hated the Palestinians because they refused to evaporate, and stood as a reproach to his ideology of Israelis’ birthright to Palestinian land.

7. Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon resulted in an 18-year-long Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. This brutal rule over this area gradually alienated the Shiite Muslim Lebanese. They had earlier been mainly peasants and farmers and had not been very political. They had some conflicts with the Palestinian refugees among them and were said even to harbor some warm feelings for Israel.

But after years of Israeli military occupation, the Shiites of Lebanon became radicalized and the small party-militia, Hezbollah, became more and more popular among them. Radicalizing Lebanese Shiites was among Sharon’s most lasting legacies.

Once Lebanese Shiites began acquiescing in Hezbollah power, they gradually became clients of the Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor. In turn, in order to have a land bridge so as to supply Hezbollah, the Iranian regime cultivated Syria as a client.

Sharon failed to install an Israel-friendly government in Lebanon. He simply further destabilized that country. At the same time, his policies helped create the Shiite crescent of Iran, Syria and south Lebanon.

In other words, it was Sharon who helped make Iran a major player in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Before he stirred up the Lebanese Shiites, Iran had no such role.

8. At a time, in fall of 2000, when President Bill Clinton and Palestinian and Israeli negotiators had come close to a peace deal, and when they were preparing for further negotiations after no final text was agreed upon in August, Sharon provocatively went to the Temple Mount.

Muslims took his visit as an assertion that he intended to pull down sacred Muslim shrines there. His visit kicked off the second Palestinian uprising or Intifada, which included suicide bombings against Israeli non-combatants.

9. As prime minister again from 2001, Sharon continued to expand Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. He responded to the violence of the second Intifada by stealing more Palestinian land, trapping villages in an Escher architecture and building a separation wall in such a way that it annexed further territory and strangled Palestinian towns like Bethlehem.

10. Sharon also to take action against Iran. If the US had listened to him, there wouldn’t be much of our country left.

Violent, impulsive, rash, and greedy, Sharon helped turn Israel from the ideal of a democracy governed by the rule of law into instead an arbitrary colonial power. He created the endeavor of an Israel attempting to annex the West Bank; he created the problem of a Shiite crescent that ends on his doorstep.

He committed war crimes. He pioneered elective wars for regime change, likely influencing George W. Bush. He was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of innocents. Despite his late-career acceptance of the notion of a Palestinian state, he really just meant another colonially-dominated entity.

He was willing to create a South Africa-style Bantustan for the Palestinians, not a real state with sovereignty. Even then, he wanted to keep 45% of the Palestinian West Bank for himself.

Sharon was one of the founders of the modern state of Israel. But unlike the latter, which has been a site of creativity and technological innovation, Sharon was peculiarly unimaginative.

He thought that bullying people and using sadism and arbitrariness against them would convince them to comply. He probably helped doom the whole enterprise of Israel; the one he helped create, a site of the forever war and imperial domination, is intrinsically unstable.

*[This article was originally published by Juan Cole’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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An Egyptian delegation heading to Moscow just after the United States cut $300 million out of its aid package to Cairo to punish the July 3 military coup,  for a new superpower patron.

In the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, the old Soviet Union had a favored position in the Arab world. The Arab nationalist Egypt of Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser tilted heavily toward Moscow after 1956, and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev made a regal state visit to Cairo in 1964. Algeria and Syria tilted to the Soviet Union, and in 1967 South Yemen became the region’s only Communist state. Iraq gradually also came to tilt toward Moscow at times.

US strategic analysts were deeply worried about the whole region becoming a Communist stronghold and a Russian sphere of influence. The Suez Canal and the region’s gas and oil were seen as key global assets. The US coordinated with Saudi Arabia and other conservative Muslim and/or monarchical forces to push the region to the Right, in which it ultimately succeeded. The high point of that effort was the joint Reagan-Saudi jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan of the 1980s, which produced al-Qaeda as blowback.

In the 1970s, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat abandoned the Soviets in favor of the US, a major coup for Washington policy, resulting in massive US aid for Egypt since 1979, in part to nail down the resulting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Russia is no longer a progressive force, and if anything, now resembles some Middle Eastern regimes. Its economy is dependent on gas and oil, and it has a semi-authoritarian government backed by billionaire oligarchs, in which the religious irredentism of the Eastern Orthodox Church is invoked for the purposes of a wounded nationalism. At the same time, religious extremism and separatism, as with the movements in Chechnya and Daghestan, were brutally crushed.

Thus, if Gen. al-Sisi saw Vladimir Putin as a kindred soul, it would come as no surprise.

Egypt just collected $4 billion each from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates for crushing the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Gulf monarchies see as a revolutionary and republican force rather than as a conservative one loyal to the royal status quo.

But as patrons, the Gulf monarchies are distinctly unsatisfactory, and indeed, they are seeking an Egyptian security umbrella against the Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran, both viewed as anti-monarchical and populist.

A Real Pivot Towards Russia?

The Egyptian feint toward Moscow, however, is probably a form of flirting, aimed at making Washington jealous rather than a serious reorientation.

The USG Open Source Center translated canny remarks of Russian journalist Mariya Yefimova on the issue at Kommersant: “Egypt Looks for US Aid in Russia. Playing on Russian Federation-US Contradictions” for October 24.

She notes the Egyptian aim of “raising bilateral relations to a new level.” She adds: “And in mid-November, according to Kommersant’s information, a meeting of the heads of the two countries’ foreign and defense ministries in the '2+2' format is due to be held in Egypt for the first time.”

She observes that the US aid freeze, coming from a criticism of the summer overthrow of a democratically elected but authoritarian president, deprived Egypt of ten Apache helicopters, four F-16 fighter jets, as well as anti-ship missiles and spare parts for tanks, along with a loss of $250 million in cash assistance.

So the Egyptian military may be looking around for more reliable weapons’ suppliers, she says.

Her Russian sources, however, think that Egypt is mainly trying to arouse Washington’s jealousy. She writes:

"'The Egyptians are hoping that US Congressmen will begin at least to needle Obama for the fact that he is handing the strategically-important Egypt over to Russia,' Yevgeniy Satanovskiy, president of the Middle East Institute, explained to Kommersant. At the same time, in his words, the Egyptians understand perfectly that 'Russia does not have enough money to maintain their country.'"

Satanovskiy also told her: "Moscow has received a chance to use the situation tactically. 'Some arms contracts may be concluded. Moscow can ask for a base in Alexandria in place of the military facility at Tartus in Syria… but it is hardly a question of the establishment of real strategic relations.'"

I would just point out that weapons systems are systems, and you cannot necessarily get Russian jets to talk to American tanks easily, nor can Russia provide Egypt with spare parts for Cairo’s massive arsenal of US military equipment.

As I noted a couple of days ago, Saudi Arabia itself, a firm US client virtually since the 1930s, 

The authoritarian backlash in the Middle East against the political opening and instability produced by the 2011 youth revolutions, appears to have given Putin an opening to reassert Russian influence in the Arab world. Russia and the Ba’ath government of Syria are extremely close. Russia is also friendly to Iran and hence, Iraq.

Egypt’s flirtation with Moscow may just be pique, but it could also signal the glimmers of a more multilateral Middle East, in which Bush-era hopes for complete American dominance are fading fast.

*[This article was originally published by Juan Cole’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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"While launching an international airlift of humanitarian aid to the former Soviet Union, US officials have contracted with a Roman Catholic agency to begin shipping food into remote provinces of Russia in the Far East. On Monday, US military planes began flying tons of food and medical supplies to former Soviet republics. The airlift is part of an international effort to speed humanitarian relief to the republics. At the same time, the United States has commissioned Catholic Relief Services to begin a long-term relief operation in the Russian Far East, which faces a serious food shortage" (Religious News Service, February 15, 1992).

The idea had been hatched a couple of months earlier. Sitting in my cubicle in downtown Baltimore, with my early morning smoke and coffee and staring at my map. Staring for such long periods of time and so intensely that I had imagined the paper burning along the crease, somewhere between California and Russia Far East.

I had all these bits and pieces of history rattling around in my mind. That great stretch of incubator from San Diego to Seattle staring up and across the Bering straits to the magnificent natural resources in RFE. The long history of  Russian and American pioneers venturing into each other's land over those same cold waters for over 200 years and now, the opportunity, just then materializing before my eyes, to transcend those Cold War red lines in the Bering Sea. Taken together, with time and a call from my boss, former Ambassador Pezzullo, they had all conspired to get me a  seat at the table with Secretary James Baker III. 

And so it was consummated one very cold evening at the airport in Khabarovsk, in February 1992. Wrapped from head to toe in my Gortex, eyes like bulbs looking around the  ramshackle reception shed, surrounded in the dark by smoke  and rough men in thick furs wanting to take me to town.

Well, with time, we got the pipeline up and running. C-141s flying into Khabarovsk and ships of vegoil, milk powder and flour into Vladivostok.

But, here is the point of the story. During my time in RFE, I got to travel around freely. It was a place and a population in total free-fall. Streets lined with women selling anything that could fetch a penny — their toothbrushes even. The admiral of the Russian Pacific fleet, twisting my arm to get the US pipeline to go directly into his command. "My sailors have nothing to eat," he said. The quartermaster's store in Vlad was now a deep-discount shop for military gear. Hospital beds, where we were distributing humanitarian assistance, were being sold as metal scrap and shipped to South Korea to make razor blades — or some-such. The patients left on the floor.

But the punchline for this narrative was delivered by Vladimir, the driver who would take me back and forth from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok. Until recently, he recounted, he had been a tank mechanic at an armored division, located along the Amur river, a first line of defense against China. "We never had more than 10% of them working," he told me. "No parts, no fuel, and often not enough troops."

"Straw," I thought. "All straw."

So, there it was. For us "boomers," dropping under our desks for air-raid drills since we were six; bomb shelters in our cellars, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Domino effect of Soviet domination. 

Somehow we suspected that when those C 141s crossed those red-lines for the first time in early 1992, bearing food and medicine, that it could not be over. That the military-industrial complex was not ancillary to America anymore; it had become its very fabric. 

Or, more correctly stated, fear had become and would remain its very fabric. Today, our embassies overseas are fortresses; our overseas relations are now described more often by our drones. Nowadays, we hide under our desks each time there is untoward chatter on the airwaves. And as we fear to associate with the world around us, we grow our enemies proportionately. Seemingly, we lie in wait, provocatively, waiting for a reason to employ our terrible swift sword one last time and, by so doing, leave America as it was initially constituted, behind — once and for all. And for this purpose, terrorist is even more convenient than Commie.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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The 22^nd anniversary of the unification of Yemen was welcomed with huge protests in the south, especially in Aden. Thousands of Southern Movement supporters rallied, and not for the first time, to express their discontent with what they dub the “Sana’a regime” and to demand secession. The movement attributes the miseries of the south to the post-unification era (North and South Yemen were unified in 1990), the period when they were exploited and oppressed by the populated north.

Southern Movement Gaining Momentum Since 2011

The youth uprising of 2011 in Yemen has, undoubtedly, represented a great chance for many political parties and currents to finally manifest their demands and ideologies. The Southern Movement was no exception. Despite the existence of the movement since 2007, their activities and political weight have considerably escalated shortly after the uprising. More than two years after the Arab Spring, it could be surely said that the “street” in the southern governorates is reaching its “boiling point”: civil disobedience is conducted twice a week; intra-and inter-city roads are blocked by Southern Movement supporters on a regular basis; and South Yemen flags are hung and painted in every possible place. The daily realities in the southern governorates are so different from those in the north, that it could already be considered as a different country even without an actual political separation occurring.

Since they own many media outlets, the Southern Movement phenomenon has also occupied the headlines of local and international press and media, a motivating factor for the movement's supporters. However, the main development occurred with the advent of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) in March 2013. The Southern Movement was allocated 50 percent of the total seats in the dialogue, a move depicting the importance of the movement in a transitional and future Yemen. The seats given to the movement meant one thing for some people: the chances of Yemen being united or divided are equal.

But perhaps the greatest acknowledgment of the Southern Movement is the northern people themselves. The popular northern discourse, which is not majoritarian but is reaching non-negligible numbers, suggests that if the south is determined for secession, then it would be wiser to give it the right of self-determination — a view which was also expressed publicly by one of the NDC members.

With this, south-north relations and the demands of the Southern Movement towards the “Sana’a regime” are clear. But what about the south itself? How can we define the position of the Southern Movement in the southern context? Ironically, the issue becomes more complicated if we look at it through a “southern prism.”

Challenge of Definition

Characterizing the Southern Movement is a first challenge. If we stop for a moment, away from the media hype, and ask ourselves what we know about the Southern Movement, certainly, the first answer that pops up will be that it is a group which demands separation from the north and the reestablishment of pre-1990 borders — not neglecting the minority within the Southern Movement which advocates for a federal system. But does this answer suffice to credit the movement as the representative body of the southern people? There are another row of questions — answers to which are essential in order to render the Southern Movement legitimate and credible enough to represent the 4 million southerners.

Challenge of Leadership

Lost in the whirl of separation and unity is a central and determining question: What is the plan for a post-separation southern Yemen? Many of the Southern Movement supporters claim that this will be seen after the south gains “independence” from the north. However, and apart from the economic question, the south is far from as homogenous as the Southern Movement claims; once the unifying factor of the movement — the separation from the north — disappears, the internal cracks will start to be visible.

The fear of internal rivalries among the southerners themselves is reinforced by the absence of a clear leadership for the Southern Movement. As already mentioned earlier, the south is not homogenous in its political views, and it has already witnessed a horrendous civil war between the southern leaders themselves. Today, we still find that there are several leaders of the Southern Movement: Hassan Ba’oom, Ali Salem Al-Bidh, Tareq Al-Fadhli, and so on. These various leaders of very different ideologies and backgrounds are a source of worry. The Southern Movement is divided into several “camps” according to the leader they support.

Even in such determining occasions such as the NDC, the Southern Movement lacks a clear stance. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreement (the transition deal that led Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power and set up the NDC) clearly states that the outcomes of the transitional period should preserve Yemeni unity. Therefore, the participation aim of the Southern Movement, once again, raises several questions. There are two possibilities that could be concluded from the movement's participation in the NDC: there will either be a fraction of the Southern Movement that accepts unity under certain conditions, or they will challenge the clauses of the GCC agreement. The answer to this question is still unknown.

Adding to that, the two rivals of the 1986 southern civil war, Al-Bidh and Ali Nasser Mohammed, are still alive, and one could fear the tension that might result from their return to Yemen. Admittedly, Mohammed has stated that he would not pursue power if secession happens; but will those words really prevail?

Unreliable Members

It is difficult to place trust in those who have had very different stances throughout history. For instance, Al-Fadhli, who is considered today as one of the Southern Movement leaders, was an Arab fighter in Afghanistan, and then fought on the side of the north in 1994 (the civil war between the north and the south) and finally joined the Southern Movement very recently. Such southern personalities, who fought for the north in the civil war, are not scarce. And this factor considerably undermines their legitimacy when claiming they are fighting for the rights of the southerners. This presents southern Yemenis with one choice: trusting those who once upon a time sold them out.

Monopolizing the South?

Perhaps the first and foremost source of legitimacy for any group, ideology, or political current is the number of adherents and supporters. Till this day, there are no reliable statistics regarding the number of Southern Movement supporters — even though media portrays the majority of southerners as their supporters. Therefore, it would be false to label the southerners as secessionists, since many of them are not (for a variety of reasons).

One of these southern — non-Southern Movement — groups called “Aden for Adenis,” has recently surfaced. Despite the fact this group is still nascent, it is a clear indication that the Southern Movement is failing to represent the entirety of the southern people. Aden for Adenis is a group advocating for the “independence” of Aden from the northern and, more interestingly, from the southern governorates. It uses the Aden protectorate flag used during the British colony and accuses other southern governorates of destroying Aden after 1967; thus, after independence from Great Britain.

When the group went out for a demonstration a few months ago, the Southern Movement attacked its members. This article's aim is not to debate the credibility of the group, but rather the worrisome indicator that the Southern Movement might be suppressing other southern voices — something they have accused the “Sana’a regime” of doing.

Challenge of an Expired Doctrine

Southern Movement supporters seem to rely on past memories rather than future projections when posing their demands and grievances towards the north. One would always hear about those pre-unification years when there was free education for everyone, no unemployment, equal citizenship, and no tribalism. These statements are very similar to those made by the older generation people who lived in the former Soviet republic. And this parallel is not a coincidence.

These were clearly the advantages and the “positive points” during the pre-unification period. But they have to be attributed to another entity that kept things under its control: social rule and the Soviet Union at the time. The socialist system has granted these advantages to South Yemen, which was one of the Soviet Union’s satellite countries, a system which is very unlikely to come back. The other positive outcome of the socialist regime was that it wasn't based on tribal relations. However, the non-tribalism myth didn't last long. With the civil war of 1986, tribalism traits have appeared very strongly. This conflict has perhaps started on ideological bases, but it has certainly continued and developed as a tribal and regional conflict. Therefore, the south isn't very different from the north in its social structure, making another pillar of the Southern Movement’s claims fall.

Undoubtedly, the south has been marginalized during the unification period, and this marginalization was largely reflected on Aden, the capital of South Yemen. But the south wasn't the only part of Yemen to be marginalized; other governorates such as Saada or Marib were neglected as well. However, the question southerners are asking is whether the Southern Movement is fighting a corrupt regime or just fighting for secession with no guarantee for the future.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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Background 

Nestling between the Black and Caspian seas, the North Caucasus is home to a number of separatist movements, many of whom have grown into violent struggles over the past few decades and are now increasingly threatening Russia’s national interests and security.

Most of the territories at the heart of these movements are federal subjects of Russia, and have been demanding either whole or partial autonomy or campaigning for absolute freedom from Moscow’s rule for a long time. Of these, the movements centring Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Tatarstan, have historically been the most robust and often bloody. Chechnya, in particular, remains a thorn in the side of the Russian Federation by continually drawing global attention to its armed struggle against, what it calls, Moscow’s oppressive rule and alleged gross human rights violations.

In April 2013, international media glare once again turned to the Caucasian movement after two Chechen brothers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, bombed the Boston Marathon.

Armed struggle in what is now known as Chechnya dates back to the 18^th century, making it arguably the world’s oldest separatist struggle in the modern history. One of the 21 republics within the Russian Federation situated in the southwest, Chechnya is home to a million people with a mix of Muslim and orthodox Christian populations, and has a long history of insurrection against the Russian rule.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, 15 republics were allowed to become independent from Russian rule, but Chechnya was not one of them. It was argued that Chechnya was an autonomous region and not a constituent republic, and therefore, did not have a right to secede. The decision resulted in Chechnya declaring independence shortly afterwards, which led to two wars with the Federation in 1994 and 1999 respectively.

The first war lasted two years and killed up to a 100,000 people amid grave accusations of beheadings, kidnappings, rape, torture, and extrajudicial executions.

The second war, led by extremist Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev, started in 1999 and sparked an Islamist uprising in the neighbouring Dagestan. Enraged by the rebellion, Russian forces invaded Chechnya a second time. The second Chechen War saw even more vicious fighting and large-scale destruction. Once again, both sides were accused of gross human rights violations and torture. Later forced to retreat, the Chechen rebels then resorted to guerrilla fighting and committing, what Russia called, acts of terror against the state, including the Beslan elementary school siege — that killed 334 people, including 186 children — the bombing of the Moscow subway, and the hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre that killed 120 people.

In 2010, Russia declared an end to its 10-year anti-terror "operation," stating that the Chechen rebels were largely neutralized. In 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov was elected Chechen president with backing from the Kremlin. Whilst some credit him for restoring order and stability to Chechnya, he is also accused of corruption and human rights violations.

By installing Kadyrov as president, Moscow was able to declare victory over the rebels and hoped to sideline the Salafist jihadists in Chechnya by striking a deal with the more religiously moderate Sufis, of which Kadyrov was one.

However, critics argue that Moscow’s gamble appears to have fallen apart. The Chechen nationalist movement has now been replaced by the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamic extremist insurgency movement and one that has been classed as a terrorist organization by the United States. According to Russian authorities, the movement has engaged in terrorist activities since early 2000 and carries links to al-Qaeda.

Why are Russia's Separatist Movements Relevant

Reigniting global debate over Russia’s bloodiest secessionist movement, the bombing of Boston Marathon by the Tsarnaev brothers has more importantly drawn attention to the starkly evolved character of the Chechen struggle in the last 20 years: the cause is no longer nationalist but predominantly an Islamist one. Having taken deep roots in the region, including Dagestan and Ingushetia, the Jihadi ideology of Chechen rebels is now acting as a unifying theme, linking their cause with conflicts beyond the region such as in Afghanistan and Syria.

Setting a dangerous precedent, the Tsarnaev brothers have also brought the Chechen struggle out of Russia for the first time. Earlier militant campaigns were limited to targeting Russian interests within the Federation, but the Boston Bombings have now expanded the playing field for the rebel movement, sparking global concerns. According to the Pew Research Centre, nearly 57% of Muslims in the Caucasus region are now concerned about Islamic extremist groups in their countries.

Considering the fragile political environment in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, any shift in sentiments in nationalist struggles across the globe on the lines of religion can potentially have a destabilizing effect on several regions in the world. This may include terrorist attacks not just in Russia and Central Asia, but also the rest of the world.

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The victory of a new reformist Iranian president has been welcomed by the international community. For many, President-Elect Hassan Rouhani's pragmatism breaks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard line, and it is expected that Iran's foreign policy will consequently shift toward greater moderation and cooperation. If there is little doubt Rouhani is likely to change the style of the country's external relations, whether his election will imply a substantial shift in Iran's foreign policy is much more debatable.

A historical perspective is needed in order to identify the key features of Iran's foreign policy which, according to Ruhi Ramazani, is “.” It encompasses a wide range of actors, interests, drivers, and goals. Above all, the president of Iran represents only a tiny fraction of Iranian centres of power, since main foreign policy decisions are taken by the supreme leader and/or the Supreme National Security Council. Such a contextualisation is necessary to assess to what extent, and in what ways, the election of Rouhani is likely to change Iran's foreign policy as a whole.

The President's Leading Role

Rouhani will surely impact the style of Iranian external relations. Indeed, a first trend in Iran's foreign policy is that it is highly influenced by the leaders' own vision of the country's national interest and role on the regional and global stage. Under Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, priority was given to maintaining a “positive equilibrium” between the US and the Soviet Union in a geopolitical environment shaped by the Cold War. Pahlavi's foreign policy aimed to take the least controversial stand possible, to avoid causing concern in either Moscow or Washington.

In the wake of the 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini's perception of the US as “the Great Satan” contributed to shift the country's foreign policy from a secular and pragmatic stance to a religious and more aggressive one. During the 1990s, Ayatollah Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor, and then-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani initiated a transition towards greater pragmatism, while the presidency of Mohammed Khatami marked the partial rise of the reformists.

The election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 conversely signified the rise of the hardliners. Thus, the Iranian president plays a role in determining the country's foreign relations. This is why the victory of Rouhani is very likely to represent a shift in the style of the country's foreign policy.

His conciliatory and pragmatic attitude have earned Rouhani the nickname of “the Diplomatic Sheikh.” In the past (2003-2005), the president-elect played a leading role in nuclear negotiations. His efforts towards dialogue and confidence building during the Saadabad negotiations in 2003 concluded with the suspension of certain parts of Iran's nuclear activities. Many commentators in the West praised Rouhani for his understanding attitude, whereas he was internally blamed for being too accommodating.

Rouhani is recognised among many in Western countries as “moderately religious.” Therefore, there is little doubt that the style of Iran's foreign policy is likely to evolve towards a more pragmatic and less aggressive stance. Rouhani is well aware of the impact of the nuclear sanctions on the domestic economy. Thus, he will probably seek to accommodate the West in order to relieve the country from external pressure.

In his  in Tehran on June 17, the incoming president declared he wanted to “ .” Regarding Iran's nuclear programme, Rouhani ensured his country would “show more transparency and make it clear that measures of the Islamic Republic of Iran are fully in international frames.” Undoubtedly, this represents a break with Ahmadinejad's conflicting and intransigent position.

Between Pragmatism and Ideology

However, it is unlikely that the substance of Iran's foreign policy will change, as the country's outlooks have, in general, remained the same over time. First of all, it is worth nothing that Iranian external policies have been characterised by the constant oscillation between pragmatism and ideology. If we take a look back in history, it is true that the Shah generally cooperated with the West at a time when Iran was then seen as one of the two key pillars of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Nevertheless, he also projected a heightened sense of Iran's cultural and historical superiority. Therefore, his foreign policy was not driven only by pragmatic considerations, but also by the idea that the Iranian people were a "Great Civilisation."

Likewise, leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have all demonstrated an ability to adopt pragmatic policies. The presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami have undoubtedly paved the way for the emergence of a reformist cadre seeking to rejoin the international community. Ahmadinejad himself has been quite pragmatic as well in using the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme as a tool to gain bargaining power at the international level.

Rouhani will probably not escape this rule. His own background is emblematic of the ambivalence of Iranian foreign policy. If Rouhani is hailed for his moderation and desire to soften relations with the West, he remains, nonetheless, deeply tied to the religious conservative establishment. He was born into a pious family and started religious studies in 1960. His birth name was Fereydoun, but he changed it in the 1980s to Rouhani, which means “cleric.”

During the 1960s, Rouhani became involved in political activism by supporting Khomeini's Islamist project. He was the first secretary of the Supreme National Security Council between 1989 and 2005, and the supreme leader's official representative for many years. In fact, the president-elect was allowed to stand for election only because the Guardian Council approved his candidacy. This further shows his acceptance by the conservative establishment, as the Guardian Council determines who may or may not run for presidential elections.

His victory is partly due to his clerical background, which appeals to many religious Iranians. During his campaign, the president-elect was very careful not to cross the red-lines of the conservative establishment, notably regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. Hence, Rouhani is first and foremost a revolutionary who believes in the values of the Islamic Republic. In this respect, it is hard to believe he will abandon Iran’s revolutionary Islamist ambitions.

Key Objectives of Iran's Foreign Policy

Another reason for being cautious about the ability of Rouhani to impact the substance of Iran's foreign policy is that the country's key external objectives have been fairly consistent through history. These are:

1. Iranian independence, security, and territorial integrity 
2. Regional hegemony (although, there is no denying the 1979 Revolution implied a radical shift regarding the means to promote it, focussing on a hard pan-Islamist rhetoric)
3. Preserving the country's position as the Gulf's leading oil producer and increasing its revenues.

During the Cold War, the Shah's strategic manoeuvring between America and the Soviet Union was primarily aimed at protecting the country's sovereignty, which was threatened by British and Soviet rivalries over its oil. Likewise, the Islamic Republic's motto has been “independence, freedom, and the Islamic Republic.” Despite evolutions in style and methods, all Iranian leaders have sought to achieve these three goals.

Once again, Rouhani is unlikely to be an exception. He has already formally announced he would not stop Iran's nuclear programme. He declared that “” and called for the official recognition of “the Iranian nation's rights, including the nuclear right.” , if Rouhani has been allowed to run for presidency, it is precisely because he is intending to — and capable of — accelerating Iran's nuclear programme.

His stance on Syria does not break with that of his predecessor either: “.” He added that: “The ruling government of Syria must be recognised as the government of Syria by all other countries in the world.”

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Even though Rouhani is willing to soften the tone of the Iranian government on key external issues, his leeway is restricted, as Iran's policy-making is highly complex. First, the Supreme National Security Council remains the highest decision making body. Any policy of Rouhani's will need to be approved by the council.

Second, Iranian politics are characterised by a multilayered decision-making process that includes formal and informal groups. Consequently, personal networks are often stronger than institutional power. Moreover, internal politics remain fragmented and operate on the basis of two hierarchies of authority (elected and “religious”). Rouhani will have to cope with this too.

Third, ultimate decisions rest upon the supreme leader. Ayatollah Khamenei maintains his authority through patronage and a network of over 2,000 clerical “commissars.” They are representatives selected by the supreme leader, who allow him to have a look at every state policy without formally controlling them. Therefore, it would be wrong to think that the election of a new reformist and pragmatic president alone will provoke a watershed in Iran's foreign policy. Rouhani will be but a cog within the existing policy-making machine.

Ultimately, the election of Rouhani has raised many expectations. Some of them will probably not be met. Yet, Iranian domestic and foreign policy are two sides of the same coin. All Iranian leaders have used external relations as leverage in internal affairs. The Shah adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the great powers and countries in the region, because he needed “breathing space” at the international level in order to achieve his objectives at the domestic level.

Ahmadinejad also employed aggressive rhetoric in foreign relations for domestic propaganda purposes, in order to counterbalance the loss of credibility of his social policy. Rouhani may be tempted to change his attitude in the future if internal discontent grows, following the post-election state of grace. 

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ō¹Ļ’s editorial policy.

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