‘Total War’ Led by the U.S. and Russia’s Predicament over How to Respond

If we are to understand the policy options being considered by Russian elites, including by the occupant of the Kremlin, we must understand in depth the contempt and derision with which they speak of the U.S. today in media directed at the home audience

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The coming Russia-Ukraine War: update and analysis

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

While the United States and a good many countries around the world this weekend have been reflecting on the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s move into the Oval Office, drawing up balance sheets of his promises and achievements, Russia has had a rather different issue on the front-burner: the coming war with Ukraine.

The situation in Donbass (South-Eastern Ukraine) has been an intermittent feature of Russia’s political talk shows for the past couple of years, along with the military campaign in Syria and more recently the stages in the preparation for presidential elections on 18 March.

To be sure, minds became focused on Donbass in the closing weeks of 2017 as military action on the front lines separating the forces of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk enjoying Russian support from Ukrainian militias and armed forces reached an intensity not seen for more than a year. This, despite the heralded exchange of military prisoners by both sides before New Year’s under talks supervised by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill.

Then, this past Thursday there came a wholly new development. Readers in the United States and Europe may be forgiven for knowing nothing about it as yet. Only the Russians have placed it under the microscope and have been seeking to give it meaning. I am speaking about a draft law passed that day by the Ukrainian Parliament (Supreme Rada) which the Russians believe amounts to a declaration of war.

As usual, the most comprehensive interpretation of this emotion-charged development has been delivered by the head of all Russian television and radio news services, Dmitri Kiselyov on his Sunday evening news wrap-up.

Dmitri Kiselyov, News of the Week, Sunday, 21 January 2018

According to Kiselyov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s signature, ends Kiev’s participation in the Minsk Accords and prepares for war. The mission in Donbass is no longer described as an “anti-terrorist operation.” The mission now is to send armed forces against “military formations of the Russian Federation” in Donbass. A military HQ is created to coordinate the military operation to be waged in Donbass. Whereas till now the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were under the Minsk Accords considered as negotiating parties, there are henceforth only “occupation administrations” of the Russian Federation on these territories. Russia is identified as an “aggressor.” Says Kiselyov, “This makes it all the more convenient for Ukraine to start a war.” In this way, Poroshenko has prepared the way not to pay the country’s foreign debts. In this way he has prepared to stay in power forever.

The report then switches over to the Vesti reporter on the ground in Donetsk. Local residents confirm that the law means war. They see the current moment on the front line as “calm before the storm.” Donetsk soldiers at their trenches say they are fully ready to engage with the enemy.

Kiselyov draws back a bit, wondering whether he is not overstating the dangers. Perhaps the draft law, which Poroshenko still has to sign, will not be implemented, like so much else passed by the Rada. But it is not the law itself that is the issue. It is the mood in favor of war in Kiev. The facts speak for themselves, he tells us: Poroshenko has done nothing to implement the Minsk Accords. Not one cease fire along the lines of contact has been observed. There are attacks and deaths every day. Only counter force has pushed back recent Ukrainian attempts to gain territory. Kiev has written off the population of the two republics. It has cut off all transport and telecoms links. It does not pay pensions and assistance to the needy. It closed the banking system and there are no commercial ties. Kiev does not recognize the population of Donbass. For Kiev the two provinces are merely territory to take back from the occupiers.

Other circumstantial evidence that war at this moment is in the interests of Kiev comes from the economic front. The EU has refused to extend 600 million euros of credits to Ukraine due to corruption. The IMF recently refused a tranche of $800 million over failure to introduce reforms. Meanwhile, in 2019 Ukraine has to start repaying earlier loans. This will come to 14 billion dollars a year, which amounts to one-half the state budget of Ukraine. Due to the dire economic conditions, Poroshenko, Grossman and all the other government officials in Kiev have become utterly unpopular, They have no chance of winning any elections.

Apart from Kiev, who else wants a big war in Ukraine? .For its part, Europe is fed up with Ukraine. Macron and Merkel no longer are keen to continue the Normandy format of negotiations.

However, the United States stands out as a backer of war. Washington has started delivering lethal weapons including the Javelin anti-tank missile system free of charge to Kiev. Trainers are now on location. The US has budgeted $350 million for the war in Ukraine.

And what does Russia say to all this. Per Kiselyov, for Russia, the best would be to stay with Minsk. But it seems there is no way back.

Analysis and Forecast

The Maidan demonstrations which culminated in the coup d’etat of 22 February 2014 in Kiev overthrowing the government of nominally pro-Russian Premier Yanukovich have been seen by some analysts as an operation of the Neocon dominated U.S. State Department under Barack Obama to take revenge for their humiliation a year earlier when Obama reneged on his declaration of “red lines” in Syria over chemical weapons attacks. To the surprise and dismay of the Deep State, Obama agreed to a Russian proposal that they oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical arsenal instead of ordering an air attack on Damascus with the objective of overthrowing the Syrian dictator.

Now that the United States has been again and still more decisively humiliated in Syria by the nearly complete military victory of Assad forces with substantial Russian air assistance, the Deep State once again is looking to Ukraine to wreak its vengeance on Russia.

It is clear that the Kremlin has very little to gain and a great deal to lose economically, diplomatically from a campaign now against Kiev. If successful, as likely would be the case given the vast disparity in military potential of the two sides, it could easily become a Pyrrhic victory. But notwithstanding Kiselyov’s calming words, it may well be that Moscow feels it has no choice. Kiev must be neutered now and very quickly, a new provisional government must be installed now and very quickly lest the United States and its NATO allies have the time to intervene militarily, creating the conditions for the outbreak of WWIII.

Watch this space in the coming days.

* * * *

Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, Does the United States Have a Future? was published on 12 October 2017. Both paperback and e-book versions are available for purchase on http://www.amazon.com and all affiliated Amazon websites worldwide. See the recent professional review http://theduran.com/does-the-united-states-have-a-future-a-new-book-by-gilbert-doctorow-review/ For a video of the book presentation made at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on 7 December 2017 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciW4yod8upg

Once Catholic Belgium heads for cultural self-destruction

A people without a past is a people without a future

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Celebrating Russian Christmas in Brussels. High Politics and High Society Meet in the Grand Dining Room

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

I will be very discreet in this essay and name no names, not even the venue of our gathering last night. There was no imposition of Chatham House Rules by the President of the club where it took place, but there is no point in ruffling feathers when what counts here is the overall ambiance, plus the bits and pieces of anonymous chit-chat, not the identity of the individuals who spoke freely and in confidence.

Suffice it to say that this was a gala, black-tie dinner in honor of Russian Christmas, which under the Julian Calendar observed by the Orthodox Church, fell this past Sunday on 7 January. It was held in the most prestigious gentlemen’s club of French-speaking Belgium.

The club has the word “Royal” in the middle of its name, and it should come as no surprise that more than a sprinkling of the 162 participants who were seated at the tables are members of Belgian nobility, the diplomatic service (retired) and others close to the monarchy. The rest are business people and patented members of local high society.

This being a Russia-themed event, there were a certain number of sons and daughters of the illustrious Russian noble families who settled in Belgium after the Revolution of 1917. Indeed, the entire undertaking was initiated by a representative of the most illustrious of these princely families. However, most participants were purely Belgian and with no particular experience of Russia other than, possibly as tourists over the years. They came to have a good time, to enjoy an unusual cuisine for a house that is otherwise very French and to hear 19^th century Russian romances performed by a group of Kuban Cossacks who had great skills in a capella singing and produced extraordinary effects from tiny and from oversized balalaikas.

Why take your time with this unremarkable event populated by the well-to-do in their dinner jackets and long gowns? Because what was said about relations with Russia in the lounges before and after, at the tables during dinner by those with whom I came into contact, and by the body language of most everyone else in the room contradicts entirely what one might have expected in attitudes towards Russia given the fraught state-to-state relations between the EU and the big neighbor to the East.

To be specific, my well-educated and successful Belgian interlocutors from last night’s soirée associate Russia with the best of European culture, whether music, literature or the performing arts. They see it as a dynamic country immensely rich in natural resources from which they do not want to be cut off. They view it as another European power having a long common history with their own. They accept that Russia may have a less than perfect democratic government, but they know only too well how imperfect democracy is in their own country, where there is an hereditary caste of ministers and government leaders rife with nepotism and hubris, kept in power by the fragmentation of the electorate among too many parties that the very progressive proportional representation system encourages. Like many other Continental countries, Belgian cabinets are the product of unprincipled coalitions distributing and redistributing ministerial portfolios to their own convenience to patch together majorities of deputies without regard to competence or the expressed will of the electorate. Why then throw stones at the Putin regime?

They view with disdain and embarrassment the vassalage of their political elites before the United States, the sacrifice of national interest and the people’s welfare to keep the Americans happy. And they view NATO not as a common defense but as a mechanism by which the United States maintains the upper hand on the Continent and bullies their government officials.

I remind the reader that this is not my interpretation of how things should be seen by the Belgians. It is the Belgians themselves speaking confidentially.

I saw hints of such views in the past especially before and immediately after George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq but never in people of such high social standing and expressed in such explicit terms. If I had to find a reason for this, it would surely be the Trump factor: the rolling back of the ideological camouflage of democracy promotion and its replacement by the language of raw power that Trump and his administration project unashamedly under the slogan of America First. Trump has freed minds here in Belgium from their earlier reserve in speaking about the United States.

The only question now is when finally one or another Belgian political party will understand that there is a potential groundswell of support among elites with money and social influence, not just among the hoi polloi if they call for a new foreign policy based on co-existence with Russia.

To properly understand what I have just witnessed, I must go back in time to the 1980s when I first came into contact with Belgium’s high society thanks to a club that I will name here: the Harvard Club of Belgium. Though most of the Club members back then were unremarkable lawyers and accountants who had some Harvard schooling, there were ties to an older generation then in their 60s who had been sent by their parents to Harvard and other prestige universities in the United States in the years immediately following the end of WWII to go and understand how the new ruler of the world operated, to go and make friends who might well be useful later in life. Indeed, they came home to Belgium and made fabulous careers in business, in government, in the European Institutions which the country hosted. One of the most successful among them who gave generously of his time to the Harvard Club and helped organize very special events exclusively for Club members was Count Etienne (Stevie) Davignon. These representatives of the elites were pro-American to a man.

The change from then to what I saw last night is unmistakable and suggestive of important things to come in trans-Atlantic relations, possibly also in relations with Russia.

As I have recently become aware, among the several possible scenarios which the Kremlin envisions for the evolution of international relations is wooing Europe away from the embrace of Washington, so as to form a third force in the world alongside and separate from China and the United States: a Russian-European alliance. When I first heard about this, it seemed to me to be pure illusion. However, in light of the views I heard last night, I see some merit to this ambition.

* * * *

Over the past several years, I have rocked back and forth on the issue of which side of the Atlantic would be first to reject U.S. global hegemony, end sanctions on Russia and usher in a new world order that is inclusive and shares out seats at the board of directors in a more rational fashion than today.

I initially put my money on Europe, because the voting arithmetic here on Russia-bashing resolutions that are also an indicator of adherence to US dictates, were far more favorable to change than in the USA. Fully one-third of the 751 legislators in the European Parliament abstain or vote against such measures. That compares to the less than one percent who stand up to the thundering stampede of the Russia-bashers in the U.S. Congress.

A year into the sanctions, by the summer of 2015, it appeared that Europe might indeed crack. There were voices among politicians in Italy in France, in the Czech Republic, in Greece and elsewhere who spoke publicly against the herd instinct for survival and blind obedience to Washington. They pointed to the zero effectiveness of sanctions in changing Russian behavior, and to the serious economic harm they were doing to EU countries. But the six-monthly votes in the EU on sanctions renewal came and went repeatedly without any breaking of the ranks. Whether thanks to high-powered visits to Europe by Joe Biden or to the effective threats of Angela Merkel, all the ducks lined up one way when it came time to be counted. Accordingly, I gave up hope that Europeans would find their backbone and free themselves from their American overlords.

Then along came Trump in 2016 and it seemed that the United States would be the first to turn away from the path of ever escalating confrontation with Russia. Embedded in his electoral platform was the notion that there is nothing wrong with having good relations with Putin. However, this new start did not get very far. Within months of Trump’s inauguration, General Flynn, one of his most resolute supporters on this issue was forced out of office, the jackals were nipping at Trump’s heels over allegations of collusion with the Russians, and he made no further efforts to turn around the ship of state, while his assistants loudly continued all the verbal assaults on Russia with which the Obama administration closed its tenure.

Now as he enters his second year in office, there are no signs that this particular promise to his electorate can be fulfilled. It appears unlikely that the United States will be a first mover.

Let us hope, based on last night’s sampling of Belgian high society, that Europe may yet come to the rescue of itself and of mankind by repudiating the American global hegemony and recognizing Washington as just one more global competitor that happens to fight dirty.

Time will tell…

* * * *

Patriarch Kirill’s interview with Dmitri Kiselyov, 7 Jan 2018: Further thoughts

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

I prepared my essay on the Christmas Day interview of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in great haste, to be sure that this “scoop” would be mine. As it turns out, I need not have rushed, since the topic was subsequently left untouched by all other political analysts having an interest in Russia both in country and abroad. And while I remain persuaded that the remarks on Russia’s uniqueness by the Patriarch are of great importance to all those following the trajectory of the country’s rise on the world stage, with the benefit of time for reflection, I am not surprised they have been overlooked.

In fact the vast majority of my confrères write almost exclusively about the headline issues like the candidates for Russia’s 18 March presidential election or about the Russia-Gate controversy, that is to say they focus on the same issues that are covered by The New York Times or the Washington Post, even if their political positions are 180 degrees at variance with those of this mainstream press. I offer that as an observation of the real situation, not necessarily as a criticism, for there are among them many who will justify skipping an item like the views of the Russian Patriarch as an exercise in intellectual history that is marginal to real world events. Their mind-set is as cynical as Stalin’s, encapsulated in the riposte attributed to him: “And how many divisions does the Pope have?”

Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church is not a subject that attracts much interest among our secularist journalists and readership on both sides of the ideological divide over President Trump. Those who have looked to find influences on Russian state policy and on Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin have looked in entirely other directions. I think for example of the long fascination of so many of our pundits and even area specialists with the exotic Eurasianist theories, and of one of its most colorful exponents, professor Alexander Dugin. Until he was fired from Moscow State University, and even after that there were those who found his very existence congenial, because his quackery and seeming closeness to power could be presented as a modern day Rasputin in the Kremlin.

By contrast, the leading Orthodox clergy who are close to Putin and the Kremlin are world class theologians and diplomats, charismatic television personalities, composers of widely respected religious music, and persons of much higher intellectual merit than your average journalist or pundit. Kirill is first among them. Hence, the disinterest of our media. As for our specialist community, I imagine they will eventually get around to Kirill and he will yet be the subject of a doctoral dissertation or two, if only for his leadership of the traditionalist alliance with the Catholic Church against global liberalism.

Then there is another prejudice working against any suggestion that the Orthodox Church might be influencing state policy, and not just be an instrument used by an authoritarian state to consolidate its shaky power. The possibility that the Church might have its own power base in the population making it an ally rather than a servant of the state is not something that Russia’s detractors care to entertain.

No sooner had I published my essay on Kirill’s interview last Sunday than I realized I had only scratched the surface. Most of my article was a summary and/or my own verbatim translation of the Patriarch’s statements that I construe as constituting a new Russian messianism. The analysis portion of the essay missed some obvious and essential points. I became even more aware of how much there remained to say about the interview when, a few hours later, the Moscow Patriarchate put up on the web its official Russian language transcript of the interview. Reading it through, I found in the late portions of the interview, which I had not had time to transcribe myself from the youtube video, there are some further connections between the Patriarch’s views and ongoing Russian foreign policy in the Middle East.

For all of these reasons, I return to the interview here with the following further thoughts.

* * * *

First and most pressing, we have to consider closely the three historical examples that Kirill cited to demonstrate how Russians have very often put the inner voice of conscience, that is, moral values, alongside and even above pragmatism in foreign affairs. These examples were protection of Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land which got Nicholas I’s Russia embroiled in the Crimean War, the Russian campaigns in the Balkans in the 1870s under Alexander II on behalf of their Orthodox Slavic brethren and against their Ottoman oppressors, and Nicholas II’s decisions in favor of the Orthodox Serbs in 1914 that took Russia into World War I.

It is stunning that Kirill has chosen precisely these examples, because each of them was a disaster for the Russian state, none greater than the final one, which brought down the dynasty, with all the horrors that followed.

It is noteworthy that in at least the last two examples society imposed the course taken by the State, that is to say there were essentially bottom-up social movements that forced the hand of the Government, a scenario that runs directly counter to the commonly held notions of how Autocracy was supposed to work. But this is a cavil which does not contradict the Patriarch’s overarching idea that men can be motivated to fight and die for causes that speak to their heart, and not in defense of geopolitical objectives. That has validity across many countries and continents. In the United States, it was a key point raised by Henry Kissinger in his 1994 work Diplomacy, when he explained why the Realist Theodore Roosevelt was unable to take the United States into WWI, though he very much wanted to do so, whereas his successor, the Idealist Woodrow Wilson was able to thanks to his call “to make the world safe for democracy.”

As we see later in the interview, there is a direct connection between the examples which Kirill took from the pre-revolutionary Russian past and his vision of present day issues amounting to the Cross for Russia to bear. The commonality is Russia’s role as protector of Orthodoxy in the East, that is in the Holy Sites of Palestine and in the cradle of Orthodox Christianity, what is now Syria and Iraq.

Half-way through the Christmas Day interview, Kirill delivers a fascinating account of the issues and of his personal involvement, as well as how they were brought to the attention of Vladimir Putin well before Russia intervened in Syria.

Vladimir Putin has consistently presented the need to strike at the Islamic State in Syria and deal a death blow to radical Islam before it could move on Russia. Patriarch Kirill took the same line in the past and most particularly in his January 2016 interview with Dmitri Kiselev. However, he tells us here that Russia’s military intervention in Syria also had as motivation to save what was left of the Christian community in Syria.

As we read these lines, we must bear in mind the long ties between Russia and this part of the world, something that is hardly ever evoked in Western media coverage of the war in Syria. As I noted in my report last year on the Mariinsky Orchestra concert in liberated Palmyra, St. Petersburg intellectual society had a self-image as a twin city of Syrian Palmyra throughout the 19^th century for reasons going back to their own Catherine the Great and a female ruler of ancient Palmyra. Oriental studies and themes for the arts may have been widespread in 19^th century Europe, particularly France with its proximity to North Africa which it was then colonizing, but Russia was physically closer to the Christian East and Russian society directed its gaze there. The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society was founded in the last quarter of the century to assist the substantial flows of pilgrims and scholars. These ties that bind must not be ignored.

Patriarch Kirill:

“Already in 2014, it was clear that conflicts on the territory of Syria were being incited by radical forces which, if they came to power, would begin by liquidating the Christian presence in this country. That is precisely why the Christians actively supported Assad and his government, – because in the country a certain balance of forces was secured and that is very important. People felt they were being protected. In 2014, notwithstanding warnings about the danger, I nonetheless decided to travel to Syria. I was in Damascus and led a church service there, and I saw what enthusiasm there was among the people. In conversations both with Muslims and with Christians, meeting with politicians, I understood that if the Islamic radicals come to power in Syria, the first ones who would suffer would be the Christians. As already happened in Iraq, where 85% of the Christians were either killed or driven out of the country. I visited Iraq still under the regime of Hussein, including in the northern regions, in Mosul. I visited the ancient Christian monasteries. I saw the piety of the people and was overjoyed that in Muslim surroundings the Christian churches existed in peace. Now practically nothing of this remains – the monasteries have been destroyed, the churches were blown up. The same could happen in Syria. Therefore the participation of Russia was connected not only with solving questions about which I do not have full competence and about which I do not consider it possible to speak, relating to the stabilization of the situation, and not to allow…..military threats, not to allow power to be seized by the terrorists. There was a very important idea – to defend the Christian minority. Back in 2013, when Moscow was celebrating the 1025^th anniversary of the Christian baptism of Rus’, the heads of the Orthodox Churches arrived. When they met with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, one of the strongest messages concerned precisely the request that Russia take part in the defense of Christians in the Near East. And I am happy that this happened. Thanks to the participation of Russia a genocide of Christians was averted.

“Now there arises the question of restoring peace in this country, justice, security, solving a huge number of economic issues. And, what is especially close to us, – the restoration of churches, monasteries, monuments, including Muslim and ancient monuments. Our Church is participating in rendering humanitarian assistance. We are working both in our own name, and in addition we have a bilateral agreement with the Catholic Church to jointly provide humanitarian assistance. In other words, we are acting in various areas, – I hope they will make their contribution to real assistance to those who are still suffering in Syria.”

* * * *

For the complete transcription (in Russian) of the interview, see http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5095439.html

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The New Russian “Messianism” Defined: Patriarch Kirill’s Christmas Day Interview

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

In what has now become a tradition dating back several years, the head of Russian state television and radio news services, Dmitri Kiselyov interviewed the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill for a broadcast to the nation and the world released yesterday on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January.

A two minute segment from this interview, in which the Patriarch defined what I call a new Russian-Slavic messianism, was featured on the Sunday evening Vesti news program, the most watched news program of the week. This official picking of the raisin from the cake can leave no doubt that the Kremlin endorses the concept, though what we have here are parallel state and religious forces operating from equal positions of strength in complementary ways, and not religious subordination to state direction, as will surely be the interpretation of Putin’s detractors.

Over the years, these Kiselyov Christmas interviews with the Patriarch have touched upon various topical questions of Church dogma, relations between the Church and society, and relations with other faiths, including, for example: the Patriarch’s strong condemnation of rampant secularism in the West amounting to persecution of Christian believers in many European countries, or his condemnation of revolutions of all stripes for unleashing human passions that make it impossible to resolve the social and political problems that revolutionaries say justify their actions. These are strong words from a powerful thinker and pastor, who otherwise has been very active mobilizing a coalition with the Roman Catholic Church and other traditionalists against the forces of liberalism across the globe.

Less commonly, the Patriarch has spoken out about contemporary issues of state. When Russia became fully engaged in the Syrian civil war and took resolute military action against the Islamic State, Kirill responded to the question on people’s minds during the Christmas season and explained that the Russian intervention in Syria was a “just” war waged for defensive reasons.

Yesterday’s interview was also exceptional in the same way. The Patriarch’s remarks were programmatic, not ad hoc, and were meant to address an issue of national importance.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia as the legal successor state has been trying to find a new identity for itself. The national anthem, the national flag and other symbols of the nation have been reinvented, but still there has been a void at the center that love of country or patriotism alone cannot fill. Patriarch Kirill’s prepared remarks for the interview must be seen as a new and serious attempt to provide the missing content which he borrows from the pre-revolutionary Russian past.

Transcript of Dmitri Kiselyov interview with Patriarch Kirill, Russian Christmas, 7 January 2018

Kiselyov opens with the remark that the world seems to be going mad. Against this background of uncertainty, he says there is the view that Russia will live so long as it retains its special distinguishing traits (своебразие). Kiselyov asks to what extent this is the case and, if so, what this uniqueness consists of.

Kirill: Each person has his own distinguishing traits. No two people are alike. And so it is for countries. Russia’s special nature was formed under the influence of various factors – its size, climate, etc. I think the distinguishing feature is that Russia is a country which pays heed to the inner voice of conscience [совестливость]even if this has at times created problems for the country. I will give some outstanding examples of when conscience takes the upper hand over pragmatism: Let’s take the Crimean War and the defense of Christianity in the Holy Land under Nicholas I. Some viewers will say it was a geopolitical program. No, geopolitical ideas did not inspire people to defend the holy places and to defend Orthodoxy on the territory. Or the Balkan Wars under Alexander II. Thousands upon thousands of simple Russian men went to fight for the Slavs. And alongside them went some not so simple men – generals, members of the tsarist family. Was that just pragmatism? Would anyone go to die for pragmatism? Never in your life. This movement to face danger came from people listening to their conscience. And then there was Nicholas II before the First World War. To defend the Serbian brothers. Again, someone could say it was pragmatism. But would people really have gone off to fight if it were only in the name of pragmatism? This element of heeding one’s conscience clearly shows itself in the history of Russia.

Kiselyov: Many consider that Russia is trying to play a disproportionate role in the world. And there may even be some risks in this for our country. Can we bear this Cross?

Kirill: You have no right to refuse the Cross. That is what the Orthodox Church teaches us. If Russia takes this Cross upon itself, then God will give it the strength to bear it. The most important thing is what we were just talking about, that the moral dimension in politics never be swallowed up by what are truly and exclusively pragmatic objectives that are remote from morality. If we, in our politics, in our lives, in our societal structures will strive for justice to triumph, for the moral feelings of people to be assuaged, then undoubtedly we will have to bear a Cross in some way. Without going into details, without a doubt there are people in this world who will not be in agreement with our position. Such people already exist. But I want to say once again, if God imposes a Cross, then he gives one the strength to bear it. And the very fact of bearing this Cross has enormous significance for the entire world, for the whole community of mankind. And however they may try to present our policies, including foreign policy, in a different light, they will be attractive for people so long as they preserve the moral dimension.

As the next question and as a follow-up to the anxiety people are feeling in this world going mad, Kiselyov asks the Patriarch to expand on his recent invocation of the Apocalypse.

Kirill: TheApocalypse is the end of history. Under what conditions can there be an end? If human society loses its vitality – if it exhausts its resource to continue existing. That happens if evil achieves total domination. If evil drives away good from human society, then the end will come. Why do we have to talk about this today? Because we are now living through a special period in history. Never before did human society put good and evil on the same plane. There were attempts to justify evil, but never to say that good and evil are relative rather than absolute truths. Under these conditions, how can the Church avoid sending up an alarm? How can it avoid warning that we are on a very dangerous path? If the Church will not say this, then who will?

Analysis

Patriarch Kirill built his career in the Church in two domains: pastoral work and diplomatic service. His epochal meeting with Pope Francis in Havana in February 2016, the first meeting ever of a Russian Orthodox patriarch and a Roman Catholic pope, was entirely in keeping with his long-standing experience on the world stage in defense of the conservative, traditional Christian values that he constantly promotes. He is not a believer in Ecumenism, but in strategic alliances for the benefit of core values.

Kirill came from a Church family, entered the seminary and took his vows in the 1970s, a dark and oppressive period for the Church. He emerged from the experience of poverty and close dependence on the generosity of his parishioners to survive as a resilient and powerful spiritual figure. His closeness to Vladimr Putin is a credit to Putin, not the other way around. For all of these reasons, Kirill’s remarks about Russia’s uniqueness and its mission in the world to uphold justice and assuage the consciences of the faithful must be seen as potentially very influential.

In his remarks cited above, we witness the rebirth of Russian messianism, something which was transmogrified under Communism to leadership of the worldwide revolution and has now returned to its pre-Revolutionary shape with emphasis on “bearing the Cross” of leading the struggle for justice and truth in the world.

It would be inappropriate to highlight the re-emergence of Russian messianism as a factor on the global landscape without putting this phenomenon in a broader context of national self-definition. In the immediate neighborhood of Russia, you have Poland, which from the 17^th century to this day has seen itself as the bulwark of Christian European civilization against the barbaric Asiatic hordes to the East, whether they be Russian Orthodox or Islamic Turks and Mongols. Moving to the West, Europe’s leading imperial countries France and Britain invented the “White Man’s Burden,” another term for “bearing the Cross,” and to this day both countries punch above their weight as promoters of secular liberalism and “universal values.” Then, of course, there is the United States, which has for more than a century led the fight to “make the world safe for democracy.” These are all forms of messianism.

However, this short list of countries with messianic ambitions is exhaustive. The vast majority of nations are content to look after their own interests and make no claims to some unique role in service of humanity. The bystanders include the two most populous nations on earth, China and India, which alone account for one third of humankind.

These are important considerations when we note that it has been precisely Vladimir Putin’s Russia which has taken on openly and publicly the role of challenger to America’s global hegemony. The daring and the mission did not come from nowhere, nor would they cease if this one man were removed from the equation. For these reasons, I remind our foreign policy establishment that knowledge of history is inescapable to understand the balance of forces in the world and to master diplomacy. Looking at GDP or demographic trends is utterly inadequate to understand who is who in this world.

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For the 2 minute segment in the Vesti broadcast see the posting on youtube.com starting at minute 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fmEtAhnt3g

For the full 36 minute interview see: http://e-news.pro/mnenie-i-analitika/207870-rozhdestvenskoe-intervyu-svyateyshego-patriarha-kirilla-07012018.html

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Rex Tillerson in “The New York Times”: Pride and Prejudice

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

Before entering my harsh words about of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s op-ed essay “I am proud of American diplomacy” published in the The New York Times on 29 December, I owe it to readers to acknowledge that from the moment Tillerson was nominated for the post, I was an enthusiastic supporter, seeing in him one of the very few candidates for high office placed before the Senate by Donald Trump who appeared to have the intellectual, psychological and experiential preparation to take office fully prepared for his mission.

Bearing in mind Donald Trump’s heavy emphasis on foreign policy during his campaign and his brave denunciation of the regime change and democracy promotion policies that had gotten the United States into a never-ending string of foreign military adventures from the mid 1990s, there was good reason to hope that Tillerson’s mission would be to change policy direction from the path of war to a path of accommodation with the world at large and to cut his department’s headcount in keeping with the more modest ambitions of the new foreign policy. Cutting personnel would have two elements: delayering those specialized units that had special responsibility for democracy promotion and humanitarian actions and winnowing out the ideological zealots who had infiltrated all of the State Department under the direction of Dick Cheney in the period following 9/11.

At the start of his confirmation hearings in the Senate, Rex Tillerson read from a prepared speech in which he made reference to the formative elements in his education, his later career in business and his charitable work with Boy Scouts of America. Foremost among these was the guiding principle of seeking the truth and following it wherever it would lead him. Against the background of a President renowned for contempt for facts, this seemed to be a powerful and very relevant plus in favor of the incoming Secretary of State.

For most of the past nine months, Tillerson’s work at State was in the shadows. He avoided the press. We heard only about his disputes with his boss in connection with what he felt was inappropriate meddling by Trump’s relatives and associates in selection of his subordinates. Then we heard Tillerson’s remark that Trump is a “moron” after they had a falling out in a cabinet meeting at which Trump reportedly asked what is the value of our nuclear arsenal if we never use it. We heard about large scale retirements of senior staff in policy making at State’s seventh floor, and about the dozens of unfilled ambassadorial posts. In sum, what we heard about Tillerson seemed to confirm that he was meeting our expectations from his swearing in.

However, from the very start we were perplexed at the sharp contradictions between what seemed to be the reasonable tone of Tillerson and the verbal excesses of our U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who continued directly the anti-Russian invective that was the trademark of her predecessor under President Obama, Samantha Power. Then there were the contradictions between Tillerson’s initiatives, as for example, his suggestion of opening talks with North Korea without preconditions and the brutal dismissal of such notions by Trump. The result was a vision of the administration as uncoordinated, even chaotic.

To be sure, there were also worrying signs of inconsistencies within Tillerson’s own scope of action and speech that we preferred to ignore. The first jolt came in the context of Trump’s cruise missile attack on the Sheirat air base in Syria on 7 April. Within hours of the event, there was Tillerson repeating the entirely unproven allegation of a Syrian government chemical attack on civilians in Idlib province that cried out for such a riposte from America. There was Tillerson turning a deaf ear to Russian calls for a full and impartial investigation of the incident. One could conclude that Tillerson’s search for truth to guide policy had died early in his tenure.

Then in the autumn, we heard from Tillerson that the United States will never acknowledge Crimea as part of the Russian Federation, and that sanctions against Russia will stay in place so long as there is no full implementation of the Minsk Accords, which means forever.

Now, with his new essay in The New York Times, Rex Tillerson has shown us that there are no contradictions, that he has become a mouthpiece of Trump and of the aggressive, shall we say obnoxious America Firsters, who have been standing on the front of the stage ever since Trump took office. What seemed like impartiality at his swearing in was nothing more than an empty head, which has since taking office been steadily filled with the vicious prejudices of the staff he was supposed to turn around or dismiss.

Fine comb reading of the op-ed

From start to finish, Tillerson’s op-ed piece repeats allegations as facts, repeats and builds on outright lies fabricated in Washington, and makes false claims about the achievements of US foreign policy on his watch.

His opening claim that the United States State Department has made encouraging progress “in pushing for global peace and stability” would be laughable if it were not tragic, given the tensions that the country has stoked in Syria, in Ukraine, in North Korea by the intemperate language and deeds of his President and colleagues, now of Tillerson himself.

With respect to North Korea, the most dangerous issue currently facing U.S. foreign policy, Tillerson points to the success of his department in achieving imposition of ever tougher sanctions with the unanimous agreement of the UN Security Council. He ignores the military provocation posed by U.S. joint exercises and dispatch of a nuclear armed naval force to Korean waters, all of which arguably made the missile and nuclear tests of Pyongyang more brazen than ever.

Tillerson claims success in relations with China by defending U.S. interests against that country’s unfair trading practices and “troubling military activities in the South China Sea and elsewhere.” However, that is a totally empty boast.

Equally empty and still more offensive to an informed audience is his claim that by its delegation of authority to American military commanders in the field, the Trump administration has led its Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS to victory, having recaptured “virtually all of previously held Islamic State territory in Iraq and Syria.” Not a word here about the Russians and their vastly more effective leadership within the Syrian military theater acting together with the army of Bashar Assad, the Iranians and Hezbollah, in cooperation with Iraq and Turkey. To add insult to injury, Tillerson claims that his diplomats “were following up with humanitarian aid and assistance.” This is a claim without any demonstrated substance, whereas the Russian assistance in food, mine-clearing and restarting infrastructure is shown daily on television.

Tillerson’s remarks about Russia make one wonder aloud where are his brains. He says “we have no illusions about the regime we are dealing with.” This is a page straight out of Samantha Power’s playbook. What follows is the familiar Washington litany. Russia is “resurgent,” it has “invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine.” For good measure, Russia has “undermined the sovereignty of Western nations,” a reference to “meddling in our election and others.” And once again, “there cannot be business as usual with Russia” till the Minsk agreements are strictly adhered to.

As for Syria, Tillerson has flip-flopped to where we were before he ever took office: the Geneva talks on the country’s future must “produce a Syria that is free of Bashar al-Assad and his family.” In the context of the Sochi talks soon to begin under patronage of Iran, Turkey and Russia at which all minorities and stakeholders in the future Syrian constitution are represented, Tillerson’s remarks are absurd.

Tillerson also puts the full weight of his office behind the Iran-bashing policies of his boss. He is busy building alliances in the region against Iran and planning to “punish Iran for its violations of…commitments.”

Finally, the Secretary of State mentions the restructuring of his department which he has overseen this past year. The objective, he tells us is “streamlining our human resources and information technology systems…., better aligning personnel and resources with America’s strategic priorities.” To anyone with an ear attuned to corporate double-talk, this utterly false description of the HR wreckage in his department will sound very familiar.

The only consolation in the entire op-ed is Tillerson’s optimism “about the power of diplomacy to resolve conflicts and advance American interests.” What grounds he has for such optimism in the context of the deceipt and lies that riddle his presentation are a mystery to me.

How could this be? Tillerson does not need the State Department post to cap his career, which already had so many laurels from his chairmanship of Exxon. No, something else is operative, and I venture it is the same as what explains the inconsistent and frequently changing policy positions of his boss: namely that in his own way, Tillerson is also a “moron.”

Let me be very explicit here. IQ is not the issue. There are very few folks who will perform poorly on intelligence tests among Trump and his administration. But stupidity is as stupidity does. And the reason for the commonality, say, between Trump and Tillerson, is that both have come to office with empty heads. Devoid of the facts and education essential to independently and competently make sense of their surroundings and of all incoming data so as to formulate and implement appropriate strategies.

This conclusion may be counter-intuitive when we are speaking of captains of industry. However, I am not speculating, I am speaking from my personal experience working for and with Vice Presidents, International and other members of the board of major US, UK and Canadian multinational corporations.

I have rubbed shoulders with my share of highly paid and widely respected business leaders, who left me astonished at their low intellectual merits, disregard for factual briefings prepared by their assistants and reliance on “gut instinct” to take major decisions on investments, joint ventures and other business initiatives. How then do you explain the undisputed success of American big business in terms of profitability, investor confidence and entrepreneurial dynamism?

The answer is simple: brute force. Market dominance allows the number one, maybe also the number two player in any given market to absorb very big losses from bad business decisions, recoup the losses from the revenue flow of their main clientele, and tweak the failing initiatives until they pay off, which they often will, again due to market dominance.

These are the lessons which Messrs. Trump and Tillerson and others in the Trump Administration have brought with them to high office. It is what feeds the animal spirits of America First. It is behind the Realist School thinking of the new National Security Strategy which Trump rolled out in December. Put in simpler language: under Trump U.S. foreign policy comes down to “might makes right.” Forget facts. Forget all the claptrap about human rights and democracy promotion. We stand for “might makes right.” That, and a good dose of raw selfishness.

Here Trump, the real estate developer and Tillerson, the boss of the country’s largest oil company are indistinguishable.

None of this makes for “Soft Power.” And it is no surprise that the concept of ‘soft power’ is OUT in this administration. It is the new passé.

It is unclear whether the “might makes right” foreign policy will be more or less prone to armed aggression abroad than was Humanitarian Interventionism or Neocon prodding of History’s eventual course towards global and universal democracy. But it is clear that the new transparency in US foreign policy will upset a great many allies, for whom there is no longer a fig leaf to justify knee-jerk agreement with every demand coming from Washington. That was perfectly clear in yesterday’s statements by EU chief diplomat Frederica Mogherini during her visit to Cuba that the EU will ignore what Washington says and continue its policy of no-sanctions and growing rapprochement with Havana in pursuit of Europe’s commercial interests. We saw the same in the recent UN General Assembly vote on the resolution against Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, when the United States found itself isolated, abandoned by nearly all friends, allies and vassals. The “i” was dotted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his press conference yesterday with Emmanuel Macron. With reference to the UN General Assembly vote, Erdogan explained that while some countries may believe that “might makes right,” they are sadly mistaken. It is the other way around, he insisted. Only the truly hard of hearing in Washington will miss this cue.

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Herman Gref in “The Financial Times”: a grave warning that merits our full attention

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

In this holiday vacation period between Christmas and New Year’s, a time when we tend to put the cares of daily life aside, the Financial Times has published an interview with Herman Gref, chairman of Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, that contains a clear warning of dire developments in the New Year should the United States push its economic sanctions to the limit, as may well occur given other very troubling items in the news with respect to Ukraine. See https://www.ft.com/content/9c25c852-e400-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da

It bears mention that Herman Gref is a highly intelligent, capable and widely respected Russian statesman and business leader. He is a key exponent of Liberal economics and democratization of state governance within Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Gref is by nature reserved, not at all an alarmist.

The detonator of dire developments to which he alluded is the threat by some politicians on Capitol Hill to extend the economic sanctions against Russia to a cut-off of access to SWIFT, which is a vital component of the global infrastructure for interbank settlements. This threat has been in the air ever since the initial imposition of sanctions on Russia in 2014 following its annexation of the Crimea and intervention in the Ukrainian insurgency of Donbas.

Said Gref, termination of access to SWIFT would elicit Russian strong countermeasures against the United States. Whereas till now only Europe has paid a price for the sanctions and the United States got off scot free, in any new Russian response the United States will feel the pain. The result would be a confrontation that would “make the Cold War look like child’s play.”

This warning comes in the wake of very troubling signs that the Ukrainian conflict, which is the cause or pretext for U.S.-led sanctions against Russia, is spinning out of control. Russian television reportage in recent weeks speaks of a major intensification of shelling by Ukrainian forces directed against civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk provinces, reaching a level not seen for more than a year. Russia is in the meantime withdrawing its officers-observers from the Donbas, and this is remarked with alarm by Poland and other countries participating in the OSCE force. They believe Russian withdrawal jeopardizes the security of their personnel on the ground in the region. It also may be a prelude to larger Russian intervention in the conflict. And also in the meantime, the United States and Canada have authorized the shipment of lethal weapons to Ukraine, which crosses the “red lines” that Russia spelled out clearly.

The new and provocative military support by the United States for the regime in Kiev may well be part of a greater plan by the Deep State in Washington to completely neutralize the foreign policy initiatives of Donald Trump in favor of accommodation with Moscow. If there is an escalation of fighting in the southeast of Ukraine and Russia steps up its assistance to the insurgents, the arguments will be in place to implement the most drastic economic measures against Russia and expel it from the global financial system, leading to the scenario cited by Gref.

For those who are not familiar with the details of world banking, SWIFT is a private company based in Brussels, Belgium. Any order to deny Russia access to its infrastructure would have to come from the federal Belgian government, which is otherwise very busy these days planning the visit to Moscow at the end of January by Prime Minister Charles Michel.

In a speech last week to the 130 plus ambassadors from Belgium posted around the world, Prime Minister Michel called for a new and broader dialogue with Russia even as we have differences over Ukraine and other issues and even as sanctions remain in place. His mission to Moscow will surely have on the agenda the ongoing construction of an LNG terminal at the Flemish port of Zeebrugge implementing agreements between the Russian gas exporter Novatek and the Belgian gas distributor Fluxys. This enormous project would position Belgium as a major hub for distribution of Liquefied Natural Gas coming from the newly operational Russian field in Yamal, north of Siberia, a hub having pan-European importance. It would also position Belgium as a major competitor to Poland, which not long ago opened its own LNG terminal to receive American shale gas, also with aspirations to achieve pan-European scale.

Any US-led intensification of sanctions against Russia, and in particular any cut-off of Russia’s access to SWIFT will necessarily kill the Belgian gas project and cause grave harm to the local economy in Flanders. In this connection, it has to be stated that the power behind the coalition government of Mr. Michel is precisely the Flemish nationalist NV-A party. All of this means that here in Belgium a constitutional crisis would likely follow.

For all of these reasons, 2018 will be a year for vigilance and attention to detail in a world that is very troubled and moving towards disorder.

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Joe Biden in “Foreign Affairs” magazine: master of lies and deception

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

It is a rare event that Foreign Affairs magazine turns over 14 pages of its “prime real estate” to a politician for a fiercely partisan programmatic statement. But that is precisely what has happened in the January-February 2018 print edition with publication of Joe Biden’s co-authored article entitled “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin. Defending Democracy Against its Enemies.”

As we know, Biden held back and did not challenge Hillary in the 2016 primaries for personal reasons relating to the recent death of his son. But as we also know, the chair of the Democratic National Committee was nonetheless considering tapping Biden to take over the party’s nomination in case Clinton crashed and burned amidst investigations into her email scandals and other alleged wrongdoing.

Biden was Mr. Clean. Now he is considered by some as the frontrunner among senior Democratic leaders for the 2020 presidential race. Almost the only mark against him is his advanced age. Thus, it should come as no surprise that he claimed and received the FA real estate.

What he has done with it is in a way instructive. By this awful confection of lies and inventions, Joe Biden provides a valuable reminder of the disaster we narrowly averted by not electing Hillary Clinton on November 8, 2016.

In this essay, Biden has taken the whole Clinton fantasy of “we wuz robbed” to explain away her electoral loss and her scapegoating the Russians, has made it his own and is using it as a platform to gain support and visibility among the Democratic party faithful.

While repeating several times in this article the soothing words that we must remain in dialogue with the Russians whatever our differences to avoid misunderstandings that could lead to war, he paints the Kremlin as a cesspool of corruption, organized crime, kleptocracy, authoritarianism. The country and its president are plain evil, intent on damaging Western democracies and raising international tensions by aggressive behavior so as to keep their own populace down and thereby consolidate their fragile hold on power.

I will not attempt to rebut Biden’s cocksure but deeply ignorant statements about how Russia is despicable and, as the title tells us, an “enemy.” Every sentence is an unsupported allegation that is used by Biden as a building brick in an edifice that is self-reinforcing but has no reality outside his say-so.

During his eight years as Barack Obama’s Vice President and handler, Biden traveled widely as emissary of the imperial presidency. He was particularly active on the borderlands of Russia. When he was not advising one or another local president or prime minister to step down so as to make way for Washington’s latest favored son, he was encouraging illusions of American hard power support for anti-Russian actions including accession to NATO. In this way he personally contributed greatly to the confrontation we now have with Moscow. But about this past we read nothing in his essay. One might imagine reading Biden that the evil and aggressive Putin regime arrived in power fully-grown.

Biden likes to talk about his own education, about the university education and professional choices of his children. He enjoys speaking on campus and likes to claim that he has a special affinity for college students and they for him. This is the context in which I heard him this past May, when he was the choice of the graduating class of Harvard to be their Speaker, whereas Mark Zuckerberg, who spoke the next day, had been the choice of the university administration. And yet, there is in Biden’s article sound reason to believe that he despises the principles of free intellectual enquiry that constitute the foundation of education.

A lengthy section of his article in FA deals with alleged Russian subversion of American democracy through use of disinformation, through illicit campaign financing and lobbying, through corrupt practices financed by money laundering, through abuse of the social networks, through cyber crime. Where there is subversion, there are dupes and agents. This is the set-up for McCarthyism that the Democratic Party is presently instrumentalizing for its partisan purposes while, by that very act, attacking the democracy and freedom of speech it says it is defending.

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U.S. National Security Strategy, 2017: Response to Questions and Criticisms from Readers

The NSS is a major milestone, and a standard against which all of Washington’s actions now can be measured

Continue reading “U.S. National Security Strategy, 2017: Response to Questions and Criticisms from Readers” →