The Pilgrim Underground: Some Comments on the Ukraine Invasion and the Motivations of Putin and the Western Leaders Who Oppose Him

25 February 2022

Some Comments on the Ukraine Invasion and the Motivations of Putin and the Western Leaders Who Oppose Him

An old friend (from my shameful Air Force days) shared a link with me:

https://unherd.com/2022/02/putins-spiritual-destiny/

It's a problematic article on many levels and in terms of theology it's highly dubious. But it touches on a lot of things I've been writing about on these sites for the past twelve years.

I wrote to my friend the following (slightly edited) as a response:

Well, Imperial Russia dressed up some of its ambitions vis-à-vis the Ottomans in the same garb of defending Orthodox Christendom. I don't really buy it. It's an old trick. Gustavus Adolphus played the same game when he intervened in the Thirty Years War. Sure he wanted to help Lutherans but his real goals were oriented toward the Swedish Empire - as his collaboration with Cardinal Richelieu demonstrates. Russia has its geopolitical and security goals. They can dress it up however they want. This is also part of the old Latin-Greek, Catholic-Orthodox divide going back to the Dark Ages. There's no doubt that some Russians look at the West and say 'look at what their hubris and scholasticism has brought them to – sodomy'. They have a point but unfortunately they feel in vindicates them in their fight which is increasingly becoming abusive and violent.

I think post-Soviet Russia has looked for some kind of anchoring, some kind of mandate. It's like China keeping up the Mao picture in Tiananmen Square even though post-1976 the CCP has repudiated everything he stood for. There's been a Russian Orthodox revival to be sure but it's pretty hollow and as Christendom is a sham (if not a conceptual heresy) there's a real danger that such thinking can go off the rails. It always has. There have been many examples equating Russian nationalism with Russian Orthodoxy - the endemic disease of ethnic Christianity. The linked article uncritically cites some of them. And now the Ukrainians play the same game. And their nationalism has an even darker aspect (connected to fascism) even as their nation only officially came into existence in 1990 with lines drawn by Stalin and Khrushchev. I'm pretty cynical about it all.

I would agree with those that would place the blame for the Ukraine mess at Washington's door. Washington has been gunning for this for a long time. Putin (to my surprise) fell for the trap and yet this was his last chance to stop NATO's advance which would certainly include Ukraine in the near future - the ultimate target being Russia itself. Georgia will probably be the next flash point. His actions are logical, and contrary to Western media he hasn't re-written Ukraine's history, the country's contrived nature and its fascist past. In fact Western and American outrage is laughable as all he's doing is what the US has done repeatedly for decades. It's not a 'WWII style invasion' it's a US-style invasion. The US has overthrown governments, invaded, conquered, and parceled countries, stolen resources, assassinated leaders, tortured, and killed with abandon - laying waste to entire regions.

Just like we were stooges for NATO in the 1990's as it looked for a new mandate and tried to eliminate any resistance in post-1989 Europe, its post-9/11 mandate was in doubt with the end of the Afghanistan War. Trump had all but wrecked the alliance and now Biden has accomplished a major goal of the US Establishment - NATO (a primary mechanism of US imperialism) has a new lease on life and a new mandate, and the forces in Europe that were looking to break away from American hegemony have been forced back into line. To the delight of Wall Street, Nordstream 2 is dead and even Scholz, the SPD Chancellor of Germany (which under previous SPD chancellors like Willie Brandt and Gerhard Schroder had resisted the American posture toward Moscow) had to bow to the inevitable. It's pretty stunning. Let's just say the talk of an EU army which was meant to replace NATO is all but dead - at least for the foreseeable future.

The real challenge for NATO in this is going to be Erdogan. There was talk of getting Ankara to shut the Bosphorus - no pressure there eh? The West is going to put it to him - are you with us or Putin? Given that the plot to assassinate him and overthrow his government in 2016 was tied to Incirlik Airbase and that his chief enemy is living in the Poconos - NATO may soon find itself in another crisis. The Greeks will be delighted I'm sure. But I digress.

Putin is a criminal, a wicked man, and a persecutor of non-Orthodox Christians and his invasion has to be condemned - and woe to the American Right and the Christians who don't condemn it. And yet he didn't start it, and he's done nothing any different from what nations like the USA have done. Is he going to install a puppet regime? Probably. And that's to replace the puppet regime installed by the US-backed coup in 2014. And that was just the latest round. This game in Kiev has been happening since the early 2000's when Putin arrived on the scene and started to resist American domination and its drive to swallow first the former Warsaw Pact nations and then (which is where things are at in 2022) start on the former Soviet entities. But Ukraine is not Turkmenistan, Moldova, or Georgia. Ukraine is where Russia began. Rus did not begin in Moscow or St. Petersburg. It was born in Kyiv.

I realize to equate Moscow's actions with Washington is a heresy as it casts these questions in terms of moral equivalence. As such it is a denial of American Exceptionalism - which in Evangelical circles is yet another product of the hypocritical and consequentialist ethics of Christendom applied. As I'm sure you know the concept in Evangelical Christian-Right circles is slightly different than what's found in garden variety or mainstream American political theory. The Evangelical version embraces the secular version of the theory but adds a Christian gloss and metanarrative - heretical notions which tinker with Biblical concepts like covenant and Kingdom not to mention being completely subversive to New Testament ethics.

It's a clash of gangsters, mafia dons, imperial criminals or in Biblical terms - beasts. It is an hour of lies from all sides. It's too bad and all the more as I see ministries like Come Over and Help (and others) get caught up in this filth and have clearly sided with the Western imperialist narrative.

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Further the GOP claims that this wouldn't have happened if Biden had not showed weakness with regard to Afghanistan are false. In fact the opposite is true and I contend this shift in American strategic planning also played a part in why Putin was making his move at this time.

Afghanistan was ended because the war had been lost as had all its momentum. It was dragging down the US military machine and its strategic plans. The US shifted doctrine at the end of the Obama period. The War on Terror came to a quiet and functional end. This is not to say that it won't be dusted off on occasion when it's convenient. But strategically it was over and to re-cast the larger Eurasian project and quest for unipolarity, the Pentagon marked a shift to Great Powers Conflict – the US projects aimed at Russia and China. It also marked a reversion to America's historical norm of collaborating with Salafist fighters – the US has and will be employing them as proxies in its wars against Moscow and Beijing.

Afghanistan was ended so that the Russian campaign could begin. The trap was laid and Putin has walked into it though he certainly won't be dispensed with easily. There is considerable volatility involved in the US strategy. It's a risk though a calculated one. The sanctions could backfire as some have pointed out. This may mark the moment that China, Russia, and other nations begin to break with the dollar. Then you'll see a real war. Biden hopes a war will unite the fragmented American public. It might. Or it might amplify the tensions and further break and fragment US society. In other words it could backfire. At this point it's a proxy war for the US and NATO but it's likely to intensify.

Putin's current aggression in Ukraine shows his determination. Kyiv seems destined to fall and the government will likely be replaced. The question is this – what will he do in places like Lviv and Ivano-Frankovsk? These cities are in the western Ukraine, the areas that historically were tied to Poland and the Habsburg realm. Putin will have no support there and Russia can't really make much of a claim. If he occupies this region, his strategic and historically rooted aggression (for now his pre-emptive attack must be viewed as such), will be transformed into naked aggression.*

The US pull out from Afghanistan sent a signal to both Moscow and Beijing – get ready. And within a short time the US began to move – and so did Putin.

Trump boasted that the invasion wouldn't have happened under his watch. It's true. It might not have but it has nothing to do with his buffoonish and blustering attempts to project his personal power. It was due to the fact that NATO was nearly in shambles and such a resistance would have collapsed and the alliance would have likely fragmented. It's likely that Putin wouldn't have calculated that he needed to attack Ukraine. The threat would have slowly diminished.

Biden on the contrary has reunified NATO, forcing even the doubters to acquiesce. While Macron and Scholz are sophisticated enough to see what's happening and how they're being manipulated, they cannot publically and politically attempt to take a nuanced stance. And so they've been forced to go along with it.

Boris Johnson for his part has become fanatical for three reasons. He's trying to deflect from his own struggles and scandals. Second, since the UK is not longer part of the EU it's trying to carve out a place in NATO vis-à-vis Europe and as such the UK Establishment is keen to wed itself closely to the United States, especially now that Trump is out of office. And third, Johnson suffers from delusions of grandeur and sees himself as a second Winston Churchill. This assumes the Western aggrandising narrative regarding Churchill is true, which is certainly open to question. But for Johnson, this Ukraine Moment is it might be called, represents the culmination of his term in office and his hopes for a legacy. A clown, consummate scammer, reckless and therefore somewhat dangerous, one hopes these events will lead to his downfall.

In the meantime the lies multiply and at times it's ridiculous. If China overthrew the government in Mexico City and was trying to station arms in the country and bring Mexico into an anti-American military alliance, the US wouldn't have it for even a minute. And if China accused the United States of trying to have a 'sphere of influence', the charge would be dismissed as ridiculous. And yet we're seeing the same right now but you can't say so because of American Exceptionalism. To challenge this doctrine or its assumptions is to become a pariah, a social heretic.

EC President Ursula von der Leyen can decry the fact that Russia is trying to challenge the 'rules based order' established by the West. This is coupled with calls to unite against Russia and to take punitive action. What about the fact that the US regularly violates the same rules based order?

No, you're not allowed to say that. American Exceptionalism includes a license to engage in rank hypocrisy, to conquer and carve up countries, and to commit murder with impunity. How is that a rules based order?

The fact that European leaders allow their very language and even expressed thought to be manipulated to this level is very telling. It demonstrates their subservience.

Every American president has been guilty of murder, sometimes mass murder. Putin is also a murderer and he certainly is today. It is the faux-morality of the West that it often the most offensive. It makes the Slavic-Orthodox world's blood come to a boil. All of these men (and the women who act like men) are monsters in charge of monstrous regimes. Quit trying to pretend there are good guys or world leaders that have moral standing. Christians at least ought to understand the forces at work behind the scenes in the spiritual dimension.

Eating my lunch I nearly choked on my food and I burst out laughing as even FIFA is issuing statements and condemning the invasion! Every sporting event in Russia is being canceled or moved. Did they do that when the US invaded Iraq? or Libya? Or killed millions in Indochina?

I must say I was surprised we were allowed to watch the FIFA statements as actual live video and not still shots. It was very generous of them to make the concession. We all know how upright FIFA is, real moral leaders, that lot.

I then further tormented myself by watching some clips from the 2022 CPAC conference in Florida. Having lost my appetite, I turned it off and decided to go for a walk.

Truly Satan is the father of lies and he is the god of this world.

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*Like many modern countries born of the world wars and the break-up of empires, Ukraine is a contrived country of at least two or perhaps three socio-cultural entities. Never existing as an independent state before the fall of the Soviet Union, the socialist republic was created almost ad hoc with lines drawn on the basis of World War I and World War II realities. Crimea was added in the 1950's for other reasons – most likely bureaucratic convenience or Khrushchev's sentimentality. But it was a-historical. As said, the western part of the nation is rooted in the Catholic West. The Ukrainians themselves are an offshoot of the Russians and occupy (loosely speaking) the west and centre while the east of the country is solidly Russian. But the lines are fluid as there are Russians in the centre and Kyiv is historically Russian but there are certainly Ukrainians all throughout the southern reaches of Russia and in neighbouring Belarus – where the identity also blurs. Like the Russians themselves, the Ukrainians are a composite people coming from various East Slavic and other backgrounds.

The Pilgrim Underground

25 February 2022

Some Comments on the Ukraine Invasion and the Motivations of Putin and the Western Leaders Who Oppose Him

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