Stephen Cohen is one of the few courageous voices that has
broken with academia and has dared to speak out against the Establishment's Anti-Russia
narrative. Castigated by some, called a stooge and Russian agent by others, he
has stood his ground. The lessons and realities of history are on his side and
there's a real comfort in that, especially in the face of storm and assault.
Those who study history with open eyes will know great sorrow and frustration.
They will often stand alone but having walked the paths of the past... they
need not fear the judgment and condemnation of others. They've seen it all
before.
Cohen has astutely attempted to boil down the context of the
conflict with Russia. He sets out various 'double-standards' that have driven
Russia to seemingly take an aggressive
posture... one deemed offensive and threatening by the West, but one that in reality is defensive, the bitter
fruit of many setbacks and from Moscow's perspective... an existential threat
of disintegration, partition and strife. What are these double standards?
1. Sphere of Security
In addition to what is mentioned by Cohen, an argument could
be made regarding the threat of political instability... the very thing the
West accuses Russia of doing.
The West sponsored the 2014 coup in the Ukraine and this was
subsequent to the machinations and tug-of-war in Kiev that had already been
underway for more than decade. Both camps have colluded with and sponsored
oligarchs leaving Ukraine a cauldron of corruption.
But as Poland and Hungary risk slipping away from the EU
orbit, there's the real possibility of future intervention... even on a
humanitarian or policing basis. While Poland is favourable to US missiles and
for historical reasons fears Russia (and Germany), Warsaw is increasingly at
odds with Brussels. The EU is already threatened by multiple fissures and a
rebel-state in its midst may eventually be reckoned to be an existential
threat.
Orban's Hungary is growing increasingly hostile to Brussels
and is starting to turn a more favourable eye toward Moscow. While this doesn't
mean that Orban wants to invite the Russians in, there's too much history for
that, he is nevertheless providing a pretense for NATO intervention.
2. Justification for Eastern European Military Build-up
Cohen correctly points out that the US-NATO alliance has an
equally dubious record when it comes to promises made. If the West has reason
to distrust Putin, he has no reason to trust any assurance or anything said to
him by NATO affiliated diplomats. It's yet another chapter in the
Latin-Byzantine saga of schism, betrayal and mistrust.
Personal relationships are built on trust but most
international relationships are built on the notion of mutual interests. Putin
attempted to establish this basis for a relationship with the Bush
administration. He assumed the US sought stability and sincerely wanted to
fight Islamic terrorism. Rebuffed by the United States, his nation betrayed and
moved against on multiple fronts, Putin has reacted... some might say with
restraint. Of course considering the West is making military moves on his
borders and manipulating politics at his front doorstep, he has reason to be
alarmed. Additionally he knows what many people in the world also know but the
American public is ignorant of... the US is not actually interested in fighting
terrorism. That's not what the War on Terror is all about. In fact the US has a
long track record of supporting and collaborating with Islamic terrorists and
after a brief interlude, Washington has reverted to its historical pattern.
3. The 2008 Georgian War
This conflict has already been forgotten by the bulk of the
Western public but obviously it strikes a raw nerve in the Caucasus and the
diplomatic community not only remembers it, they use false narratives to
bolster their arguments. Georgia under the now discredited Saakashvili was
backed by the United States and doing the bidding of certain figures connected
to the US Deep State. While the US supported Georgia, many were less than
pleased about how Saakashvili conducted himself.
And yet if he had won and driven Russia out of South Ossetia,
he would have been hailed as a hero and rewarded. His failure allowed certain
factions in the US to demand Tbilisi's entrance into NATO and perhaps even the
EU. Putin knew what the US was doing in the Caucasus and thus he was determined
to quickly defeat and humiliate Saakashvili, and he succeeded.
The Caucasus are a geopolitical mess, the legacy of the
Russian and Ottoman Empires. The situation was exacerbated by Stalin who in
response to Anglo-American schemes in Iran, carved up Azerbaijan, and during
World War II deported entire populations due to a fear they would ally with the
invading Germans. The legacy of this brutality lives on and unfortunately at
this point, there are no easy solutions. Western intervention and pot-stirring
will only make a bad situation much worse... something the US is quite keen to
do. The US has on again off again supported Chechen Salafi paramilitaries and terrorists
who when under pressure, retreat to Georgia and openly walk the streets of NATO
member Turkey. This is not a new development or some plot hatched by Erdogan.
This reality antedates his ascension to power and if anything his policy will
be to close these loopholes and for the present work with Russia... not against
it as the American Empire would insist.
4. Bombing Campaigns
The Syrian War has been a pack of lies since the very
beginning. Rather than revisit the whole narrative, Cohen simply points out the
hypocrisy in the media's coverage of the Russian bombing of Aleppo as opposed
to the US sponsored campaigns in Mosul and Raqqa. Apart from a handful of
reports and a moment or two of fleeting criticism, US brutality and civilian
casualties were simply glossed over. Meanwhile not only was the Russian
campaign spun to the extreme, the entire situation related to Aleppo has been
misrepresented. While RT is mercilessly attacked by the US State Department and
its Silicon Valley proxies, Western media continues to rely on dubious news
stories promoted by intelligence agency fronts... the UK based SOHR and the
White Helmets.
5. Hypocrisy with regard to Crimea
In addition to pointing out US and International hypocrisy
when it comes to other nations, Cohen could have pointed out the history of
Crimea, the reasons why (despite historical precedent) it was attached to
Ukraine during the Soviet era, the nature and composition of its population and
previous attempts at sundering its relationship with Ukraine. Additionally,
Crimea is a key strategic locale for the Russian navy which helps to explain
why Moscow was so desperate to keep Crimea in its orbit.
At this point the role of the Crimean Tatars is somewhat 'up
in the air'. At one time they would have been natural allies of Turkey where
most of them live and thus proxies for Western interests and even paramilitary
assault. And yet, Turkey under Erdogan is in the process of shifting gears and
moving away from NATO. Where does this leave Pan-Turkism in the larger Eurasian
game? It's hard to say. Pan-Turkism so long supported and utilised by the
United States seems to be in a state of flux. In the past it would have been
easy to believe that elements within the Turkish military could/would operate
outside the scope of Ankara and whatever its policy might be. These Deep State
elements would work with their NATO masters and yet Erdogan has largely purged
the state bureaucracy and at this point it's not clear what kind of resistance
and independence remains.
6. Media Manipulation and Right-wing politics
It's refreshing to hear someone challenging the 'Russia is
stoking the flames of American tension' narrative. Do people really think that
the various social tensions in the United States, the troubles over race and
the plight of the working class would just go away if it weren't for a
concentrated Russian media campaign? This has proven a rather convenient means
for the DNC to dismiss its own failures and betrayals with regard to its
traditional base. The Anti-Russia campaign (along with the equally McCarthyite
#MeToo witch-hunt) is being squeezed for all its worth. It's being used to
justify a foreign policy, censorship, a media crackdown and the growing powers
of a police state. Popular grievance is not only delegitimised, the voices are
being criminalised. It's quite remarkable, masterful even but the campaign is
entirely dependent on a subservient media and an ignorant, malleable populace.
If democracy is said to be fragile, the Establishment's
Anti-Russia campaign exposes how easily it can be manipulated and how
fraudulent the US system actually is. Is democracy in trouble in the United
States? It's in a state of crisis and actually has been for some time. The
cancer is metastasising and beginning to manifest itself across the societal
spectrum.
Additionally, while the growth of the Right in the United
States is being blamed on Moscow, the US continues its longstanding and
established policy of using Right-wing politics to enact is policies abroad.
This is true in Ukraine and once again it is both striking and telling how
Western media has failed to report on this story. The recent fascist parade in
Kiev which would have generated international headlines had it occurred in London,
Paris, Rome, Madrid, Washington or Berlin... was all but ignored by Western
media. If this doesn't prove media collaboration with Washington and NATO, I
don't know what does. This story alone (or rather lack of story) should send up
red flags regarding the trustworthiness of Western media.
While Trump's buffoonish denunciations of fake news mean
little and only muddy the waters, there is a real crisis of fake news and it's
nothing new. One might say it's gotten much worse in recent years but the
campaign would not be successful unless the general public had already been
conditioned over decades and even generations.
7. Election Meddling
As Cohen rightly points out, despite all the bluster and
deliberately confused reporting on the various scandals... some of which are
real, there still has (as of this date) been no demonstrable proof of direct
Russian meddling in the election or even a grand conspiracy between Moscow, the
Trump Campaign and Wikileaks. There's smoke but the claims of fire are thus far
based on badly reasoned and faulty assumptions. It reminds one of some of the
absurd scientific declarations about the conditions on discovered planets light
years away. They make declarations about the climate of the planet and the
possibility of water being present. But when you examine the claims you'll find
the arguments are built on speculative theories which themselves are based on
rather dubious speculative theories. By the time you're done, you're left
wondering if they know anything more than that a star shimmered for a moment. It's
a tiny hook upon which they hang an anvil. Such is the Russian narrative.
There's actually a tremendous story here and Putin is certainly
no angel and yet for the sake of truth one almost has to defend him in order to
get back to neutral ground.
Did the Soviet Union meddle in elections? Most certainly. Has
Russia meddled in Caucasian and Central Asian politics? Again, there is little
doubt. Is it plausible that Russia would meddle in Eastern European politics?
It is plausible but in that case it would only be because the US has already
meddled in the politics of all these regions and in Russia's own political
process. The US has a virtual multi-billion dollar archipelago of organisations
involved in political manipulation. Some are directly connected to the US government,
others are through proxies connected to the Deep State. I won't even pretend
all these organisations act in concert. The fact that the US is the major
purveyor of political manipulation in the world does not preclude the question
of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and yet the dubious
and nebulous evidence, the patently manipulative media campaign and the way in
which the narrative is being worked by the Establishment gives any thinking
person serious cause to doubt and question the 'official story'.
The fact that such doubts seem to aid or vindicate the Trump
faction just adds to the frustration and the seeming Catch-22 aspect of this
debate. The public (aided by a deceitful media) seems stuck in a binary false dilemma/mode
of thought with regard to political questions. Everything is zero-sum, either
points scored for the GOP or the DNC. At this point anyone who is reasonably
educated, moral and at all contemplative has moved beyond this false system and
its bogus narratives regarding politics and American culture.
Democracy cannot function when the truth is declared to be
treasonous. By definition the political system has become a lie. The same is
true when it comes to the media. News, always subject to bias and interests
crosses the line and becomes propaganda. Or another alternative, and one
possible (if inevitable) in profit-based news systems, propaganda is blended
with entertainment... the latter generating both profits and generating
distraction.
I hate to sound like Trump but if the evil politicos are to
be denounced and decried it must be understood that the entirety of their
schemes and projects depend on a compliant and prostituted media. These people
bear a tremendous amount of the blame. They have paved the road and made a
smooth path for those who would rule the world and must engage in evil deeds to
do so. It's no wonder the various faces so familiar to the public, the hosts of
the shows, the anchors and in-house experts... are all millionaires. They all
are part of the Establishment class and have a vested interest in its success
and perpetuation.
As the second article points out, they are leading the world
to the brink. The system is in crisis and at this point it would seem they are
willing to go to war in order to preserve the system they hold so dear. The
situation all but changes by the day. Trump seems
to counter the anti-Russia campaign but at the same time his administration has
in many ways ramped up and escalated the tension with Moscow. Sometimes
uncertainty is the most dangerous condition of all.
But one thing is clear, the Anti-Russia campaign has little
if nothing to do with actual concerns for American security. The campaigners
have more than once shown their hand and without meaning to they have revealed
that they're not actually worried about Trump collaborating with Moscow. It's a
game... but a very dangerous one.
See also:
I remember a scene in the film 'The Good Shepherd', when they shoot up a captured Soviet spy with sodium pentothol. He begins to laugh hysterically, saying the USSR is painted-over rust, and the US knows it. It's clear the USSR had dominion in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but such controlled dated back to the Czars. In many ways, the global communist threat was a fiction that helped to pull together a global foreign policy, tying states together as a grand conspiracy that were nothing of the sort. All the lies to forge a global hegemony that can pretend to be anything but. Sort of makes you miss old-fashioned Roman imperialism, when the state was a god, the emperor was worshiped, and foreign policy seemed straightforward enough. There was no need to concoct a grand conspiracy of German barbarians and Persians threatening the little republic on the Tiber.
ReplyDeleteA good summary thus far..... though the narrative changes by the day.
ReplyDeletehttps://fair.org/home/the-utility-of-the-russiagate-conspiracy/