Life used to be simple. At least that is the nostalgic nonsense that fills the aging brain pans of those of us over the age of 55. Back in the Good Old days we had the clear enemy of international communism to battle. We used that bullshit bugaboo to justify wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, Central America, South America and Afghanistan. As long as we had the implacable foe of international communism poised to take over the world, intent on taking away our choices of ice cream and certain to demand that we worship the memory of Vladimir Lenin, we could justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on building a massive military and intelligence bureaucracy and equipping them with expensive machines of death and communication.
When the Soviet Union crumbled under the weight of its slavish devotion to Marxian utopian precepts we thought we witnessed the dawn of a new era. And we did. The only problem–we could not sustain our economy without coming up with a new enemy that would justify the continued spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on technologically sophisticated and grotesquely expense crap that, in the event of a real conventional war, would be impossible to replace in a timely manner and would bankrupt our nation.
We, the United States, drifted from 1992 until 11 September 2001 trying to identify the new enemy. During that 8 year hiatus U.S. defense spending ticked down, both as an absolute number and as a percentage of GDP. There were some isolated international terrorist attacks but nothing so extraordinary to rally the country. Instead, there were weak efforts to build worry about China and to promote missile defense as the latest, greatest technology needed to keep America safe.
The coordinated attacks on 9-11 in 2001 changed all of that and the spending binge was on. Very few challenged the conventional wisdom that more military spending would be an effective remedy for battling a motley collection of radical Islamists who did not have armor, artillery, armies, navies, ballistic missiles nor an air force. That uncomfortable fact did not slow us for a minute in throwing new billions at the military, the defense bureaucracy and the intelligence agencies.
And what did that spending spree earn us? Nothing. Instead of quelling terrorism, terrorism spread. Inspired in large measure by George W. Bush's ill-considered and feckless invasion of Iraq. We disarmed the minority Sunni Baathists, imprisoned and shamed thousands and then were surprised to learn that pissed off people have a tendency to fight back.
But that was not enough for us. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thought it a dandy idea to back the European play (a thinly veiled effort to gain control of Libyan oil) to oust Libya's quirky, crazy despot, Muammar Qaddafi. That turned out swell. Libya became a new site for civil war as tribes and religious minorities battled each other for control of Libya's oil and natural gas wealth. The United States, with the enthusiastic backing of the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, decided to light a fire in Syria and rid the world of a secular strong man in favor of an unwieldy collection of Sunni Islamic radicals. All of this in the name of trying to contain Iran whose power and influence in the region had grown because we, the United States, got rid of Tehran's nemesis, Saddam Hussein, and replaced him with semi-pliant Shia Iraqis who happened to have close ties with the mullahs and the IRGC in Iran.
Rather than accept blame for our own stupidity, we decided it better to finger Syria's Assad for that faux pas. We helped start and then sustain the secular war that began shredding Syria in 2010.
Before all of this got started, Bill Clinton reneged on promises to Russia to not expand NATO to Russia's western frontier. George W. Bush and Barack Obama continued that policy and spent more money on building up NATO and threatening Russia. Of course, when Russia pushed back against the U.S betrayal on NATO and refused to support U.S. military adventures in the Middle East, the American foreign and national security policy elite began beating the drum portraying Russia as a grave and growing threat.
And you know what the prescription for that is? More cow bell. I mean, more defense spending. Few of the so-called experts want to take the time to point out that Moscow spends 1/10th of what Washington does in building up military capabilities. Virtually no one in America is willing to acknowledge our responsibility for stirring up unrest in Ukraine or carrying out aggressive military exercises on the land and sea borders of Russia. And, instead of publicly welcoming Russia coming to the aid of Syria in fighting off the very kind of radical Islamists who attacked us on 9-11, we condemned them and then doubled down by arming those Islamic extremists.
Now we have Donald Trump and he is genuinely flummoxed. He does not know whether to wipe his nose or scratch his ass. His early attempts to talk sense about Russia earned him a public flogging by the Washington foreign policy establishment who not only accused him of surrendering to communism (ignoring the fact the communists in Russia were vanquished in 1991) but mounted a coordinated disinformation operation that insisted that Russia intervened in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump and that Trump and his team colluded with them in this effort. Not one shred of proof to support this nonsensical claim but the most of the elite and the punditry embraced it as truth and happily spread the lie over TV, the blogs and the archaic pages of major newspapers.
Trump continues to say in one breath that he is not interested in embroiling the United States in another foreign war and then, with a bellicosity that is borderline cartoonish, threatens North Korea and Iran with doom and destruction. As I noted in my previous piece on Iran, this kind of sword rattling makes no sense with respect to Iran. We are the ones who have been funding terrorists and destabilizing the Middle East, not the Iranians.
I am amused by Trump trying to take credit for the collapse of ISIS. It is cute. But the U.S. contribution to this effort pales in comparison to the resources and forces put to the effort by Russia. It is Russia, not Iran, that has led the way in bolstering Syria's ability to fighting the foreign-backed Islamists who were intent on unseating Assad.
Are we now ready to do the right thing in Syria and Iraq? I doubt it. The Neo-Con crowd have done a good job of persuading a lot of Americans that the Kurds are our natural allies. Now that the Iraqi Government, which we also claim to back, is pushing to re-take control of Kurdish controlled parts of Iraq, the chorus is singing with gusto the tune that we must come to their rescue. That means military intervention on our part. While Trump has pooh-poohed that suggestion so far, the chorus is adding a new phrase–i.e., "The Iranian backed regime in Iraq."
Yes sir. We have to fight those dastardly Iranians who are trying to crush the democratic aspirations of the Kurds. If that argument starts to resonate with Trump then his current refusal to get involved is likely to be reversed. Interesting times folks. Very interesting times.
Sad but true
Thank you for this excellent summary.
I wish to question one sentence, where you say:
“when Russia pushed back against the U.S betrayal on NATO and refused to support U.S. military adventures in the Middle East”
In fact Russia supplied extensive help to USA occupation of Afghanistan, allowing use of Russian train routes, and also air bases for supplies. Details here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_logistics_in_the_Afghan_War#Northern_Distribution_Network
Also worth noting that Russia did not veto UN Resolution 1973 (2011)- the Libya “no fly-zone resolution” – which resolution was greatly exceeded by USA/NATO under S/S Hillary Clinton and President Obama.
Of course your statement is true of many other circumstances where Russia did not help USA military adventures in mideast.
Outthere’ it is worth reading the transcript of Putin’s recent speech at the Valdai International Discussion Club.
He covered much of what you question.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55882
I have read the Reuters version and the actual speech
Great summary. It’s unfortunate that you skipped over Yugoslavia, though.
Well, that’s “the way of the homo sapiens” since times eternal…
http://www.unz.com/freed/the-military-instinct/
Generally speaking, I very much agree with Publius here. Just one minor point:
“The only problem–we could not sustain our economy without coming up with a new enemy that would justify the continued spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on technologically sophisticated and grotesquely expense crap that, in the event of a real conventional war, would be impossible to replace in a timely manner and would bankrupt our nation.”
Well, no, we don’t actually HAVE to spend all that money on arms in order to keep the economy going; we could just as well spend it on something else. Keynes used to joke that all you had to do to stimulate the economy was to pay people to dig ditches then fill them up again!
All of these bloated budgets, and all of our aggressive, “forward-leaning” (as Cheney would say) operations are in support of a desire for global-domination. (Call it the ‘new world order,’ or whatever you like.)
“comparison to the resources and forces put to the effort by Russia”
The resources – I read recently it’s still being funded out of the Red Army’s training budget in roubles.
The forces – less than a hundred aircraft at any time and a few thousand PMCs and advisers.
What should worry certain people is how efficient and effective it is – words which rarely go together.
There was a recent report that the average annual cost of a member of the Russian military was about $64,000 which is less than a tenth of what it costs to field a single member of the US military (alleged to be $2,100,000 per soldier in Afghanistan).
Re the US looking for enemies, here’s McMaster yesterday on North Korea:
““He’s not going to accept this regime threatening the United States with nuclear weapons,” McMaster said. “There are those who would say, well, why not accept and deter. Well, accept and deter is unacceptable.””
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/us-preparing-for-north-koreas-final-step/ar-AAtK9Xp?li=AA9SkIr&ocid=ientp
The reality is that McMaster and the US will have to accept again that countries it doesn’t like can have nuclear weapons (as it did previously for the Soviet Union and China, of course), and that it has no special god-given right to be secure unlike every other country in the world. If the US tries to enforce its imaginary right, then it will be directly responsible for all the hundreds of thousands and more of innocent deaths a war of aggression it initiates in Korea will cause.
Make no mistake, an attack on North Korea to enforce a non-existent self-invented unique right of the US to feel safe is still a war of aggression, no matter how many excuses the US tries to make for it.
Not “the exceptional nation”. Just another country, that happens to have been very powerful for a long time.
Few of the so-called experts want to take the time to point out that Moscow spends 1/10th of what Washington does in building up military capabilities.
What always surprises me is the difference between Russia (Warsaw Pact) and NATO equipment and infrastructure. We (the west) seem to need an awful lot of extra stuff. You can still see that in countries such as Poland which still have mixed WP and NATO bases (with regard to origins).
IMO it is also a mindset.
Why use a tractor to tow an aircraft when you can use a truck?
Why not build an engine that can use several (or all) kinds of fuel available? It will wear out the engine much faster, but in wartime that may not be an issue.
One of the main problems when ‘visiting’ Russian bases is/was that you could end up unintended in the middle because there were no fences (anymore). The locals (and military) are very fond of creating shorter routes (eg to pick mushrooms in the forest) and don’t value well-maintained fences that much.
Propornot has spoken:
PropOrNot ID Service @propornot: “You don’t need to know anything abt classified US anything, cuz if you knew, regimes at war w us.” https://www.rt.com/usa/407256-propornot-tweet-buzzfeed-foia-syria-rebels/
The citizenry is supposed to follow, no Qs asked.
All
I must say that this piece contains a massive flaw in that it dismisses the threat to the West and liberal values that was presented by the spread of Communism both before and after WW@. PT is not old enough to remember that threat as experienced by those who met the challenges it presented. In those countries where communism survives as the ruling principle tyranny is inflicted on the people whether or not economic development has occurred because of the abandonment of communist economic principles. Western Europe was save from this experience by the Marshall Plan and the NATO alliance. No amount of revisionist history can change that. pl
pl: Yes, that first paragraph grated on me quite a bit. I thought it got better rather quickly, though.
I was going to note that this article seems heavy on the economic determinism – albeit in a crony capitalist kind of way – and ignores ideology, but I think Col Lang just somewhat made that point in his comment to “All”.
One aspect of the Burns VN series that struck me was the persistent theme of the politicians keeping the war going (and even escalating) because they perceived that they would appear weak and if they withdrew troops and the North then prevailed. As loud as the anti-war crowd was, there was still a base that didn’t want America to “lose”. IMO, something similar is still operating in DC whether we are talking about jihadis or Russians. Actually, I think it is play even more generally. Americans, by and large, want a kick ass military. They want to be the biggest and baddest. No candidate for POTUS could be elected on a platform of cutting the military and becoming and isolationist non-military power in the world. This is something that is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. IMO, the American people are as much to blame for all the military spending and ambient bellicosity as are the pols and military industrial complex + the ideology of the foreign policy borg.
As far as NoKo goes, I will remain the sole voice of dissent, apparently, in this space. I do not believe we can accept or tolerate a nuclear armed NoKo. I do not believe that KJU can be trusted with such devastating power. Many want to attribute rational and benign motives to him. That is mere mind reading and bad mind reading at that. It is also colored by anti-American cynicism. Just b/c the US was dishonest about Iraq WMD and Saddam’s intentions, doesn’t mean they are also wrong about NoKo. Responsible countries do not threaten others with nuclear obliteration on an almost daily basis and they don’t shoot missiles over other countries’ territory. I don’t care that Trump also said this or that or made this or that threat. The US is a major world power that is integrally connected to all other developed nations. Despite rhetoric, the US isn’t going to deliberately start a nuclear conflagration. We have a proven track record in that regard. KJU is an isolated tin horn dictator and cult leader. Such people are known to commit to various suicide pact situations. Screw KJU. Too many past admins let him continue merrily down the road of nuclear armament. Some one has to stop the little monster. Trump has the balls to do it before it’s too late.
Sounds like Mr. Netanyahu is not happy with what took place in Kirkuk, johnny come latelies never would admit to strategic blunders they make. Too bad
“Netanyahu lobbies world powers to stem Iraqi Kurd setbacks
“https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-kurds-israel/netanyahu-lobbies-world-powers-to-stem-iraqi-kurd-setbacks-idUKKBN1CP18P
PT, I agree with all the history you revealed, but I can’t understand why you don’t use the same tone and respect for Iran as you have for Russia. With due respect Iran started fighting islamic extremist allies of US before US and Russia combined. Starting with Afghanistan. If you really mean to reveal real history and truth you should set aside personal dislikes and say it as it happened. George Ball and Zbig both US official are responsible for islamic extremism Iran ended up fighting and is fighting more seriously than US what these US officials planned 40 years ago. Iran started fighting american made ideology of islamic extremism before Russia or any of US allies. Back in 70’s when I was still in high school in Iran, we were hearing rumors in between Iranian intellectuals and older politicians that “Americans are trying to build a green belt( green being the color of islam) around the middle east to protect it against communism, after the brits had left in 1971. That green belt turned out to be the extremist sunni wahabi belt since it was financed with saudi petrodollar. Iranians are fighting that belt you made, more than you think or respect.
@ pl…
So the true countries to keep an eye on are China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba and the Norks?
The US toe to toe with China equals our economy collapsing – they win that one even if they suffer in tandem with us, because we have gutted our manufacturing sector. It is a lose-lose situation with our economies nearly symbiotic.
Vietnam is not an issue, nor is Laos or Cuba.
The leaves the DPRK, which would cost SK hundreds of thousands of deaths if that were touched off.
Containment is impossible with the internet and globally connected economies. We cannot afford that any longer and it doesn’t work – just as sanctions have failed to work on Russia and Iran.
I disagree, in that all of these countries, while communist, are trying to work within the world markets today – thus while their governments are communist, their economies are not. The old Soviet model is dead. The new China model is actually changing, as they are trying to attract foreign investment into their country – which is simply not what traditional communist countries do.
The modern communist state is forced to work within a global economic market and compete. The old communist models did not, instead turning into themselves and trying to do everything on their own, within their borders. Thus even in communist states, there is quite a lot of similarity to every other country. My last trip to Vietnam was in 2013, and it was nothing like it was in 1992 – much more open, no travel restrictions or phone restrictions and you could buy almost anything you wanted without government interference or censorship.
I was in China in 2014, and I couldn’t even go there when I was a young man – which is a huge difference. I went wherever I wanted to, and nobody was asking for my passport or my papers. I took taxis where I needed to go or the train, without anyone with me except my Canadian born travel buddy, who spoke Mandarin because his parents were immigrants. I flew across the country and did not have to show my passport other than to buy my ticket – that is more lax than the US!
The only country that even resembles the old communist countries is the DPRK – it seems to be the last bastion of full-bore, hardcore communism.
I am 62, so while I didn’t fight in Vietnam, I was around during the times you are reflecting on. I don’t think we are looking at the same type of regimes today, simply due to internet communications, cell phones and the globally interconnected economy.
The USA has the largest prison population on the planet – so while we do not have a hard tyrrany, we do have some internal problems with crying out to the rest of the world how “free” we are. Just the madness of traveling with the DHS rules makes us appear and feel much less free than many other parts of the world.
I do not want communism either, but those countries that have communist governments are not the same today as the the communist governments of my youth. I say this from going to many of these places myself, not from reading some book. If their people are ok enough with their own government not to throw off the yoke, then why do we need to assume we should?
Perhaps because Russia is strategically invulnerable to the United States and that makes all the difference in the world.
I always wonder if the U.S.’s opposition to other nations’ desire to have nuclear weapons is, in fact, because of its guilt over having finalized the development of nuclear weapons.
I know all the arguments about how those two bombs ended WWII and , thus, saved lives (except, of course those of the people who were killed by them).
But, really, I do wonder about this possibility of feeling some guilt–and the possibility that our hubris makes us believe we are the only ones who can have them and know when it would be “right” to use them.
Here’s a humorous thought experiment on a “what if Trump had been President instead of Reagan?” at:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-reagan-trump-u-s-s-r-winter-dream
Concluding para:
At that moment, by an oblique association, I imagined what it might have been like if, through some insane fluke of history, Trump, instead of Reagan, had been the American President back when I was a very young man in Leningrad. That, of course, was wild conjecture—a dystopian-slapstick kind of tale. For one thing, Trump most certainly would not have vowed to destroy us, the Soviet Union. Rather, he would repeatedly be calling Brezhnev and Andropov strong leaders and praising their intelligence and their brutal decisiveness in confronting the slightest manifestations of ideological dissent. At infrequent White House press conferences, he would be citing Brezhnev and Andropov’s ninety-nine-per-cent approval ratings among Soviet citizens. “You think we’re so innocent?” he would be saying sardonically, in retort to Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather. “You think we never invaded and occupied other countries, even bigger ones than Afghanistan, or downed some random passenger planes? You think we don’t have thousands of political prisoners in . . . what’s that word you just said, ‘gulag’? Give me a break, will ya? And listen, I think when Andropov calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment, O.K.?”
Re: evidence of Russian meddling. You probably lump together evidence, like Facebook’s admission of Russian ad buying, as a conspiracy of the Borg. After all, isn’t Silicon Valley a hotbed of liberalism? Yes, but you can’t use that to explain this away.
Fake accounts are a HUGE problem on tech platforms, independent of Russia. They significantly undermine the clarity of data, the value of ad buys (which constitute the revenue), and the integrity of the service being provided. Such things has led Chase, P&G, and others to significantly cut back on their spending on these platforms. Facebook and Google haven’t helped, because they are quite opaque about their data around their users and have been caught using funny math in their analytics, as well.
The fact that Google, Twitter, and Facebook have admitted Russian fake accounts and ad buys is significant. They had long denied such things, but the evidence was likely becoming overwhelming to the point that they’d perjure themselves if they withheld it any longer.
Not everything they do reflects their politics. This admission is not good for them in a business sense. As a result of it, there’s a bipartisan bill to regulate political activity on social networks, which is the obvious and expected result. It has long been the position of such networks that the free exchange of ideas—any ideas—is an undeniable force for good. This is actually a self-serving argument. The truth is they don’t like to admit that they are showing significant numbers of ads to bots and fake accounts. They don’t want the headache of determining who is in or out, or regulating ad buys. They don’t want to reveal what their numbers really look like. But now they’re going to get dragged into that stuff whether they like it or not. Russia is a nightmare scenario, because it calls them on their BS and can significantly shift public opinion against them.
Could this have affected the outcome of the election? No one can say that. Tying an ad or a tweet to a vote is impossible. But that’s maybe not the goal anyway.
And I wonder if all those young professors and their brainwashed students who so willingly followed Bernie and his idea of a socialist utopia really do understand the problems and the actual injustices that communism and socialism inflict upon the citizens. How could they understand since history is not taught much any more? (It is, after all, lies told by old dead white guys. Or so we are told.)
I am thankful that my great-grandparents and their children escaped Russia at the end of Czar Nicholas’ reign and just as the Bolsheviks were starting to come down from the cities into the farming communities of the Volga and of the steppes above the Black Sea that my ancestors had built up so that Russia was actually exporting lots of food. Those farmers were not wealthy, except by the standards of the miserable poor in the cities. They were the people who were called Kulaks. One of my great aunts, who didn’t get out, ended up living the rest of her life miserably in Siberia.
So, indeed, we do need to continue the fight against communism and socialism. But, perhaps the fight should be focused on the fight for the minds and hearts of our own young people.
“Rocket man” does seem to b much like the little spoiled bully who runs amok and then must be kicked out of the daycare center for hurting other children.
KJU is really frightening to me. I would simply like a well-executed plan to go in and take him out, along with, perhaps, some of his biggest toadies.
I fear zionism far more than communism, it is a far bigger threat to our planet.
quote
In the summer of 2004, a large collection of documents allegedly from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons research program was suddenly obtained by Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. Those documents became the sole alleged evidence that such a program existed. But this writer found more than one telltale sign of fraud in the papers, and a former senior German foreign office official told me on the record in March 2013 that the source who passed on the documents was a member of the Mujihadeen e-Khalq (MEK), the armed Iranian opposition group. The MEK has allegedly worked with Israel’s Mossad for some time.
Neither the Bush administration nor the Trump administration viewed the alleged danger of nuclear proliferation by Iran as the priority problem per se; it was rather an issue to be exploited to weaken the Islamic regime and ultimately achieve regime change. Hilary Mann Leverett, the NSC coordinator in the Persian Gulf from 2001-03, told this writer in a 2013 interview that Wurmser and other Cheney advisors were convinced that the student protests of 1999 indicated that Iranians were ready to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In his statement last week, Trump blamed Obama for having lifted nuclear sanctions on Iran “just before what would have been the total collapse of the Iranian regime.”
endquote
Trump Trashes Iran Deal to Satisfy Netanyahu
U.S-Iran policy is closer to Israel than it has been in years.
By Gareth Porter • October 20, 2017
Bacevich:
quote
To keep insisting upon America’s supposed indispensability—a loaded term that McCain pointedly inserted into his speech—is to become willfully blind to reality.
What makes the present age different? For starters, it’s a multipolar world. The whole post-Cold War conceit of America presiding over the planet as the sole superpower has turned out to be a cruel illusion. So too with the conviction, taken for granted in the wake of Operation Desert Storm back in 1991, that unassailable armed might constitutes America’s trump card.
The grotesque misuse of U.S. military power since then, and especially in the wake of 9/11, finds the United States today mired in multiple conflicts that with the passing of time have become ever more disconnected from any identifiable U.S. interests. Tell me again what those Green Berets were doing in Niger when they were recently ambushed and killed? What exactly is the rationale for the Pentagon conducting air strikes in tiny, pathetic Yemen? How is it that U.S. trained and equipped Iraqi forces are skirmishing with the U.S. trained and equipped Kurdish Peshmerga? By what measure, if any, can it be argued that U.S. military activities in the Persian Gulf for lo these many years have contributed to regional peace and stability? And in which decade of which century can we expect U.S. forces to complete their mission in Afghanistan?
I’m all for Senator McCain laying into President Trump. But let’s be honest about what’s going on here. On the one side, there’s the guy who manifestly knows nothing. On the other, there’s the guy who quite clearly has learned nothing.
Yet strip away the rhetoric and what we have are dueling forms of ignorance, with each party imprisoned by his own illusions. Trump thinks that having run the Trump Organization he can run the world. McCain thinks that running the world is what God or Providence summons the mystical enterprise known as America to do.
That pretty much describes the present-day debate over basic national security policy: It’s egomania pitted against platitudes, individual vainglory versus vainglory on a national scale. Neither side has much regard for evidence.
Trump blasphemes. McCain hews to the Old Time Religion. Is there no third way?
endquote
more here:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iran-deal-netanyahu-israel-donald-trumps-likudist-campaign-against-iran/
Well, initially, Iran did not fight very well in Syria and was unable to turn the tide. That required the professionalism of the Russian military.
In the process, the SAA has become probably the most professional army in the middle east (not including those that are not middle eastern – aka the US and Russia)while the Israeli’s have gotten fat and lazy) – Hezbollah being the main competition.
What I would be most interested in is whether there has been a significant improvement in the Iranian Army’s (IRGC) professionalism thanks to the participation in the R+6. I suspect it has.
The discussion at SST of the irregular Russian volunteers in Eastern Ukraine in opposition to the Ukrainian military, was extremely educational in the field of Military Science – something NOT acquired by purchasing expensive tools – aka Saudi Arabia – or being stood up by a foreign gov’t (aka Iraqi Army).
May I tell you a little story about my personal relationships with communists?
I never met one, through school, college, or graduate school.
Then in 1964 I was in Bogota, which is right on the equator but at 8661 ft altitude, so it gets cold. So I went to a steam bath in an old hotel to warm up a couple times each week, and there I met my first communist. He (in pretty good english) explained to me many world events, such as the USA coup in Guatemala in 1954. I had never heard of such a thing, so of course I denied it, and did not believe it. Turns out he was right.
And then I was in Brazil in 1964, as guest of the student leaders of that nation, who then held considerable power in the way universities were run. And then they were disappeared by the new military government that USA had trained/facilitated/helped to take over the government.
Kooshy
It looks like his Zionist friend (excuse my unladylike language), the Franco-Algerian $**t disturber BHL is doing the work for him – check how many articles he has been writing lately from NYC to Europe to TelAviv as well as his twitter a/c.
Today the French Govt called on Irak central govt to show restraint wrt the KRG/KPD Pesh. Wonder what Fallon will say tonight after Bibi’s visit (after taking credit for the “defeat” of ISIS in Raqqa).
Now, supposedly they have 73 members in that global coalition fighting ISIS ( when only the US and France did the heavy lifting in Raqqa) and BHL and NeoCon central from inside the beltway are equating Iran with either ISIS or AQ.
I/we should be more clear and honest with history. It is the Sunni wehabi islam extremism that the AMERICAN policies since late 60s with the Arab client’ petrodollar gifted the world. Early on Iran was cut up in that, because she had an anti hegemony Shia revival revolution Washington didn’t like and still doesn’t, she is a majority Shia country that no wahabi would like.
“Responsible countries do not threaten others with nuclear obliteration on an almost daily basis and they don’t shoot missiles over other countries’ territory. I don’t care that Trump also said this or that or made this or that threat.”
Does this bring you to the conclusion that the USA are an irresponsible country, too? Or do you not care whether your views are consistent or not in that regard?
kooshy,
Now we are fighting the crazies in Niger.
Colonel Lang, due to your wide experience and sterling career I submit the following with some trepidation. But I have to ask, need one excuse Stalin’s totalitarian state (and its ambitions for expansion) in order to criticize the fervor of U.S. response, its drumbeat of threat inflation,* assault on civil liberties at home (McCarthy era), and other practices brought about by a near-hysterical fear of Marxism in any form?
Every president from Truman on was persuaded, often against their instincts,** to sign off on operations earlier presidents would never have seriously considered, their core reason being a visceral, unquestioned assumption that, when it comes to anticommunism, anything and everything is justifiable on its face.
I do not propose that the US should have capitulated to communist aggression, but hold that the fear embedded in our policy-makers drove them to practices (support for dictators and overthrows of elected governments) utterly inimical to democratic principles, and ended up costing this country the moral authority we have always striven to claim.
* Typified by the “domino theory,” whose sway sucked us into myriad morally questionable interventions.
** Though JFK, e.g., did resist his generals’ clamor to widen and further support the Bay of Pigs invasion, he did eventually succumb to their insistence that, at a minimum, a quantum increase in the number of American advisors in Vietnam was called for.
Nobody wants to take credit away from heroic SAA and Russian political and military support. But it is unfair, Borgish, dishonest and not factual to wash away Iran’ and rest of Shia stand up to Taliban, ISIS and AQ, Al N, Sunni salafi terrorism, all three fully founded by closest US allies, without US opposition to them. Early on Iran and SAA were fighting entire Western and Arab countries military, financial, political support for the terrorist in Syria, that is the truth, it is not about how you fight is about who you are fighting.
Richard,
I knew some anti-American cynic was going to say exactly what you did. I already addressed your anticipated comment in my own.
@Outthere,
Is the link wrt Bacevich’s quote right?
outthere,
US troops are in Niger advising and assisting in the eradication of jihadists, AFAIK. Personally, I don’t find that to be a “grotesque” misuse of US military power. In fact, it seems to be a very reasonable use of capabilities and assets.
The problem is when US military power is used to create jihadi strongholds, as in Libya and Syria/Northern Iraq. This is at cross purposes to what the policy and mission should be.
MP
All I said was that the communist threat after WW2 was not a trivial matter and that Europe would have become a communist continent one way or another if it had not been for the Marshall Plan and the NATO Alliance. As for our adventures in the 3rd World many of them were simply busy work driven by the visions of people like JFK and in a few cases we actually backed what IMO was the wrong side. pl
outthere
That’s easy to say in 2017 with the USSR gone. To say that you met some nice communists is just preachy self-righteous BS. So did I but I recruited a lot of them to spy on their communist brethren. pl
Like, after you have the huge guilty feeling you keep adding and keeping the weapons you used to kill with. One wonders if the VEGAS massacrer was feeling guilty to keep and buy all that weapons. Great explanation next time someone questions what is the need for all that nukes we will say because we feel guilty using them.
And you know what the prescription for that is? More cow bell.
Ahh, the times when SNL was half-decent and, sometimes, really funny. Excellent piece except for one thing: direct monetary comparison of Russia’s and US military expenditures is incorrect. Russia gets a lot more of a proverbial bang for a proverbial buck (or Ruble) than the US. The systems are simply rigged differently.
Western Europe was save from this experience by the Marshall Plan
That is undeniable. However, once one could see what Nazis and Axis did to the USSR, one would have to really try hard to find serious justifications for Soviet advance into Europe beyond the Eastern Germany. Support for the International Communist Movement was there, that is a given, but militarily there was very little with the exception of run of the mill contingency planning in terms of military action. In the end Operation Unthinkable was not exactly Soviet plan–to the contrary. Plus Stalin “read” Churchill extremely well from the get go.
That guy the French philosopher, Bernard is just a average French charlatan and a whore, nothing worthy of mentioning. He can’t add value to any thought or discussions, about f he is the hope Kurds, Israelies and French have I sincerely feel sorry for the mountain sheep herding Kurds.
“Some one has to stop the little monster. Trump has the balls to do it before it’s too late.”
Especially when it’s a “feel good” thing to do that has zero cost for the average American and produces lots of interesting TV footage of bombs blowing up, buildings destroyed and dead North Koreans. It’s a great vicarious thrill for the folks, it’s great for ratings as well and makes an example of the little creep to keep other nations in their place lest they get the same treatment.
American casualties in Korea? You can assuage your guilt easily by saying “thank you for your service” the next time you see someone in uniform.
SmoothieX12
so, there was no threat of a Soviet advance into Europe. The Americans made it all up? The MIC? What a crock. pl
Here is an interesting development. Russia’s Rosneft to take control of Iraqi Kurdish pipeline amid crisis:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1CP16L
so, there was no threat of a Soviet advance into Europe. The Americans made it all up?
Kennan didn’t see a real military threat. He later stressed that. Ideological? Absolutely. What was the point of Soviet Union which just lost 27 million people and 70% of country utterly destroyed advancing into Western Europe? By early 1946 USSR was pretty much tied up in the Eastern Europe, much of which was also destroyed.
SmoothieX12
I see. 1946 was the magic year for you. What about the rest of the Cold War? You sound like a graduate student. pl
Sid Finster
Yeah? So what? Arnold Deutsch was a communist through and through and one of the best intelligence officers who ever lived. People are not all one thing or all another. Is that news? pl
Walrus,
If you’re addressing me personally w/ your guilt assuaging BS comment then you assume some personal things quite incorrectly to the point of being a rotten thing to say.
And how will you assuage your guilt when a nuclear armed, and thus emboldened, KJU attacks the South; gambling that his threats to launch a nuclear attack on Japan or the US, should there be a move to intervene, will work? Maybe he’ll target Australia. Or when KJU passes nuclear tech to some terrorist group? Because people like you guessed wrong about his intentions?
I see. 1946 was the magic year for you. What about the rest of the Cold War? You sound like a graduate student. pl
Actually, I do have a graduate degree plus I also held Osoboi Vazhnosti (Special Significance–equivalent of Code Word? I am not sure) clearance and was privy, as were many my class-mates, to both strategic, doctrinal and operational documents throughout 1980s-early 1990s. USSR was afraid of the war, it also had pretty well-known contingency planning for advancing into Western Europe in case of war breaking out, but USSR wouldn’t have started it on purpose–it is a cultural thing. This was across the board–from conventional to nuclear weapons. I know extremely well the spirit of those Armed Forces and the country–I was a teenager in 1970s. 1946 is not my magic year, my grandfathers, however, who never returned from the fronts are. I doubt that nation which lost 27 million and literally had to rebuild itself from ground up doesn’t have the right to look at the outside world with a little bit of apprehension.
Col. Lang is correct about the major threats the world faced from communism but we need to get clear about the circumstances surrounding that threat so that we avoid fighting the wrong enemy. We need to separate theory and implementation.
Commmmunism as academic theory is a scientific/economic construct was touted as a model to produce a better standard of living for humanity by addressing the more obvious flaws in the capitalistic model prevailing at the time which produced grinding poverty for many. The theory was seen by at least two generations (probably more) of highly intelligent and well educated people in the West as being an attractive new way forward to improve the human condition.
The glaring flaw in Communism is not that it is “tyranny” or “takes peoples property” or other claptrap but that it failed to acknowledge the role that price signals play in the fast and efficient allocation of scarce resources, replacing that process with an inefficient, inflexible, slow cumbersome bureaucratic system of artificial pricing in a command economy that not only doesn’t work very well but is an invitation to corruption.
We are stupid to congratulate ourselves for “winning’ against Communism. The reality was that our free market economies simply out produced it to the point where the fiction of “soviet man” having a better standard of living then us became simply unsustainable. TTG might like to comment on the difference between East and West Berlin before the wall came down for example. The Trabant vs. the Mercedes.
As for Russia, the revolution was a natural result of centuries of bitter repression and poverty inflicted by an uber rich aristocracy on the Russian people. The aristocracy got what it deserved. The problems of the aftermath are the same as Iraq and Afghanistan. The removal of an elite creates a vacuum – which is soon filled by thugs, crooks, conmen, warring gangs and thieves which is exactly what Russia experienced. Couple that with a desire to mimic the industrial economies of the West as quickly as possible and a flawed economic theory and a few personal vendettas and you have the terror and purges, the gulags the corruption and murder that characterised the USSR.
Luckily for the Chinese Communists, they saw what happened to the USSR, made the correct deductions about command economies and very quickly and deftly started loosening controls to introduce market forces and price signals into their economy. They dodged a bullet.
The lesson of the Russian experience, in my opinion, is not to create conditions where a corrupt oligarchy can seize power and repress the rest of the population. Theories about “isms” are nothing but justifications for the bad behaviour that all of us are capable of.
“The resources – I read recently it’s still being funded out of the Red Army’s training budget in roubles.”
“Red Army”?
” need one excuse Stalin’s totalitarian state (and its ambitions for expansion) “
“Need to expansion”? What are you talking about?
works for me
anyone else having trouble?
“When the Soviet Union crumbled under the weight of its slavish devotion to Marxian utopian precepts”
Wrong on so many level. The collapse of the Soviet Union was brought by abandonment of these principles as exemplified by Gorba-fool and his Camarilla.
Lyttenburgh
Ah. I have met many ex-communists like you. Marxism-Leninism was never given a fair trial, right? But you were always secretly a Christian. pl
“Those farmers were not wealthy, except by the standards of the miserable poor in the cities. They were the people who were called Kulaks.”
And my ancestors did not run away. They remained here, in Russia. They were not farmers, which in itself what makes you a kulak, because in normal circumstances you did not own the land – the obschina (“mir”) of all peasants did. My ancestors served in ComBeds during the Civil War, plus they were wtih Siberian Partisans figiting against Whites.
USSR was exporting grain even without kulaks. Name me one reason why I should symphasize with your family’s plight?
“I see. 1946 was the magic year for you. What about the rest of the Cold War? You sound like a graduate student”
With all due respect Sir (and given the unprecedented opening of the archives that happened during Perestroika and 1990s), but NO ONE can provide any proof of Stalin’s (or anyone’s else) aggressive plans of European conquest.
Walrus
Actually, the economic condition of the Russian lower classes had greatly improved in the twenty years before the revolution. There had been a great expansion of the russian economy and everyone benefited. The Tsar’s government fell not because the Tsar was an inbred fathead. No, it fell because the Tsar’s government was stupid enough to go to war against the Central Powers and then demonstrate an inability to win or even hold its own. we have forgotten that the Germans sent Lenin and the Bolsheviks into Russia at a key moment of Menshevik failure. You actually believe that ideology means nothing? I am amazed. You didn’t fight the same Vietnamese communists that I did as well as communists across the world who were solely motivated by ideology. pl
“Ah. I have met many ex-communists like you. Marxism-Leninism was never given a fair trial, right? But you were always secretly a Christian. pl”
Sir, I’m too young to be “ex”-communist. I was but a child when the USSR fell. My experience comes from what happened next.
Lyttenburgh
Ah, but things would have been better in the USSR right? pl
“No, it fell because the Tsra;s government was stupid enough to go to war against the Central Powers and hen demonstrate an inability to win or even hold its own. we have forgotten that the Germans sent Lenin and the Bolsheviks into Russia at a key moment of menshevik failure. “
1) Who toppled the Czar in February 1917? Bolsheviks or Russian elite, allied with liberals?
2) Kaiser Willie “sent” Lenin? Really? This long disproved argument?
Lyttenburgh
“Kaiser Willie “sent” Lenin? Really? This long disproved argument?” It is not disproved. The German Army General Staff sent the Bolsheviks into Russia in a sealed train for the purpose of getting Russia to withdraw from the war, and it worked. the Bolsheviks ended the war and surrendered large parts of Russian and the Ukraine to Germany. you don’t know that? pl
“Ah, but things would have been better in the USSR right? pl”
“Better” is a relative term. Things would be different. As a historian I despise “would be” pondering on the alt-hist scenarios, which serve only to validate already constructed “bright/bleak” future or present of the one, who engages in that.
I know for certain that without collapse of the USSR there won’t be millions of “natural” dead every year of the “Democratic 90s”. There won’t be pillaging and plundering of the country via so-called “privatization”. There will be no ethnic conflicts still simmering all across the former USSR. That’s the only thing I know for certain. There will be something else – I don’t know what.
I’m completely devoid of the (ir)rational hatred to the USSR. It didn’t wrong me, my family or ancestors. In 1917 my ancestors were peasants in Ural village. Thanks to the USSR they joined the ranks of intelligentsia. They were Soviet people. How can I hate them?
Lyttenburgh
We Americans are not responsible for the inability of you Russians to manage the post Soviet 90s. pl
“It is not disproved. The German Army General Staff sent the Bolsheviks into Russia ina sealed train for the purpose of getting Russia to withdraw from the war”
Actually it is disproved – many times over. Lenin rode from Switzerland, not Germany – that’s for one. Besides him there were many other political émigrés sitting in the same string (there was more than one) of the sealed train-cars – that’s two. There is no evidence that there existed some “contract” between Lenin and Germans – that’s three. Bolshevik’s government ceded to the German Empire territories already captured by Germans (and A-H), or those they had no means of controlling anyway (Ukraine).
Why not discuss the foreign influence behind the February Revolution instead? Or was it good, kosher influence and good, kosher money?
“We Americans are not responsible for the inability of you Russians to manage the post Soviet 90s. pl”
That would be 100% true, if you, Americans, also did not take part in the aforementioned privatization, fully endorsed and approved by the “Chicago boys” serving under Yeltsin. And that’s not mentioning the complete capitulation of Russian foreign policy to the US, exploited without any restrain or regret, as well as the direct involvement of the US citizens in Russian elections of 1996. Just off the top of my head.
smoothiex12
So the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG) was there for defensive purposes as were the forces in Poland and the resto of the Warsaw Pact. Well, if that is true i can only thank you for several delightful Christmases at Garmisch and Berchtesgaden. I was privy to NATO war plans and they were entirely defensive. We expected to be overrun by the WP within a few days and for the war to then go nuclear. You are a Russian government official or were? pl
Lyttenburgh
Come on! Man up and take responsibility for your own mess. pl
I get your point.
Lyttenburgh
Ah! The Jews did it! I see.pl
I sent three kids to Japan on separate exchanges. The Japanese organization called LABO (don’t know if they still exist) sent their kids here, usually to farm communities because they worked with the 4H organizations to find exchange families.
Our kids always ended up in Japan during the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. They were pointedly questioned about that, so we tried to prepare them and talk to them about how they might answer.
On the other hand, when asked, the Japanese kids always explained that they came to America to learn from the people who had beat them.
I guess I am the one who feels guilty about our development of the bomb. I read Hersey’s book when I was about 15. I recently watched a very good documentary about the immediate effects of the bomb and the long-term studies involving victims.
I can’t help but feel a bit guilty–maybe because I know we are all fallen creatures.
On another note, I have suffered from severe myopia my entire life and am now legally blind. For that reason, I never wanted a weapon in the vicinity of my own hands. I couldn’t possibly have any assurance I would be aiming the darned thing in the right direction.
But I do admire those people who are able to defend themselves and their families.
Eric,
oh yes, you pointed out what makes the USA different: “The US is a major world power that is integrally connected to all other developed nations.”
So being a major world power is what justifies threatening other countries and not acting according to the standards that the US sets for everybody else? And you call me cynical…
Yes Col. Lang, there is nothing particularly vile in Communism – the principle. I’m quite sure that the NV you encountered were prepared to fight and die for it. A leading Communist in Australia admitted in an interview many years ago that if they ever got into power that they planned for re-education camps, trials, etc.
As for Russia, reform was too little, too late, as well as the suicidal involvement in WW1 you mentioned.
What I am trying to say is that in todays world, we are not very far from people being prepared to fight for other “isms” but the danger is not the “ism” it is our implementation of it that kills people. Look how perverted feminism and humanitarianism has become – the whole ‘responsibility to protect” killing machine, etc.
“Ah! The Jews did it! I see.pl”
Where did I said “Jews”? I said “liberals” and I meant it. I could also add “monarchists”, “clergy”, “royalty”, and “military” due to the fact virtually all top military commanders urged Nicholas II to sign abdication (thus violating their own oath to him as their Liege and Emperor). Why strawmmaning here?
“Come on! Man up and take responsibility for your own mess. pl “
Excellent advise. Who should take responsibility for American’s meddling in 1990s Russia? Oh, and Brzezinski’s writings and project of how to dismember Russia – should we pretend it never existed?
That was not my intent, i.e., to portray The Soviet Union as a non-threat or a manufactured illusion. It was real. The broader point I was trying to make, and obviously failed, was to point out that we used the threat of Communism to justify actions in other parts of the world, such as Vietnam, where international communism per se was not the primary cause of the underlying conflict.
I agree that there was genuine belief in the ideology of international communism. Similar in some fashion to those who today espouse the Caliphate. But, just as there is no consensus among the modern Islamists as to what qualifies as the authentic Caliphate, there was no monolithic international communist threat. The communism was interlaced with the nationalist ambitions of the Chinese, Russians, etc.
Kooshy,
I agree completely that Iran played a critical part initially in slowing the steady loss of Syria, which in Iran’s absence, would have been much faster, possibly collapsing before Russia was able to ramp up its involvement. But the trajectory was not even towards parity in Syria but towards a power vacuum and jihadist state.
In the past, Iran has relied on superior numbers in its military strategy, similar to that of Russia in the past. I would be surprised if after the experience in Syria, that is still true.
However, although I have read much on the performance of the SAA, and some on the performance of Hezbollah, I have seen little analysis on the performance of Iran (I admit to not having specifically searched, but I think it is being ignored by the media’s).
Contrast China’s Belt and Road strategy of desperately seeking new friends. Xi Jinping Thought vs. The Great Leap Backward – no contest.
The ones who did not leave were put into service of the factory farms and the communal farms later–both miserable failures. Remember the Holdomor famine and the famine before that.
But my family left before that. My great uncle was taken by the Czar’s army in the middle of the night to fight during the Czar’s stupid war with Japan. He spent a year in a Japanese prisoner of war camp before Teddy Roosevelt brokered the truce. My great-grandfather sold all his families belongings to come to America and work their way up in this system. Families coming over later told horror stories of the Bolsheviks coming int he middle of the night to the apartments and homes of those working the factory farms and the communal farms and brutally killing anyone they suspected of talking against communism.
We were brought to Russia to escape the many wars in Europe by Katherine the Great and later her grandson. She needed people to farm, as Russians were terrible farmers. She needed food for her people. They lived during the early years in dugouts–as there were no trees to build houses–and endured Mongol raiders and dug up the root entangled ground, taking many years to turn that area into rich farm land. The agreement had been no service in the military but mandatory farming. So excuse me for thinking they were their farms. I guess they were state farms all along, though the communists certainly found ways to destroy them and cause two great famines in doing so.
When they got to America, most worked alongside Mexican migrant workers in the fields and living in farm-owned shacks. They saved and eventually worked their way up to owning their own farms here, mostly farms that American farmers had foreclosed on.
I was not asking for sympathy. I was simply making a point about the failure of socialism and communism.
Dear Colonel,
I think Russia did (in the only sense that mattes) take responsibility as the Chicago Boys were kicked out, and Russia resumed improving both its industry, its standard of living, and its technology, in part by largely reversed the theft of the oligarchs. During the same period, they also revamped completely their military structure. In fact a number of studies have suggested that for some economies, sanctions actually strengthen them.
Unfortunately, this allowed the Chicago boys to focus their attention on destroying the US, which they are very sadly doing quite effectively.
I am a former Soviet officer, however of no special talents or achievement. Per GSVG (GSFG)–it was there to respond. Soviet Union had no plans of “capturing” Western Europe deliberately and unprovoked, Soviet Navy had no plans to dominate the Oceans–it was classic Sea Denial force. It is really difficult to convey the whole mindset of people–political top to the very bottom–after what Soviet Union survived in WW II.
Truth to be told, already in Stalin’s post-WW II USSR 6% of national GDP was produced in artels and cooperatives, and I am not talking only about shoes and fur coats, first Soviet mass TV sets and radios in late 1940s–early 1950s were produced namely there. Stalin is on record with his 1950: “We need new theory”.
Richard,
Yes. Sometimes being a major world power does justify threatening other countries that aren’t acting according to US standards.
People like you enjoy a quality of life that is unprecedented in human history and all you can do is nit pick and criticize and act holier than thou b/c things are perfect according to your ideals, which are mere indulgences of a pampered existence. You want to formulate some kind of moral equivalence between KJU’s dictatorship and the USA.
You enjoy better health, more comfort, more safety, more personal freedom, more justice, more opportunity to self actualize and a better station in life than would have been available to you at any other time or place. Why? Because societies that were developing in that direction were willing to go to war to fight the barbarians and other oppressors.
Because those evolving societies were willing to fight oppressive ones wherever they attempted to impose their darkness on others, the trend, world over, is to the aforementioned higher quality of life.
In modern times the fight is sometimes with the military and more often with business connections. Some oppressive regimes – like say China – were able to be swayed to a brighter day, albeit slowly – because we opened communication and trade. Capitalism has begun to replace communism. China necessarily began to open up. Not a shot was fired (well, except in Korea).That’s the best way. However, some societies of oppression are so entrenched in whatever ideology ails them that they won’t allow inroads to be made. Jihadistan comes to mind. NoKo is another. Historically, Nazi Germany, is a good example. We didn’t have the right to impose our standards on Nazis or imperial Japan? We didn’t have the right to impose our standards on the Soviets when they threatened Europe? Do you realize how silly that sounds?
You don’t like US standards? Really? Maybe you should go live in NoKo, or jihadistand for a few years. If you’re even still alive, it would be nice if you’d come back and share your wonderful experience. You don’t want to do that? Then why should anyone have to live under those conditions? Why should countries or groups with those standards be able to impose their darkness on countries that are emerging into the better way – and who are our partners?
I disagree with PT’s thesis because it only looks at the costs and the screw-ups. It fails to assess the benefits and things that were done right.
yes, people in charge are, surprise, people. They are corruptible. Some are corrupted by purely by money, some by the need for attention, some by sloth, some by the need to belong to a group, some by personal experiences that cause them to lose objectivity. Usually a combination of all of the above and more. Sometimes people are not corrupted, but simply make mistakes w/o the benefit of having a crystal ball. Lots of reasons. Welcome to the world of human endeavor. Yet, despite all of that, the trend has been extremely positive. And the trend has been moved forward by military might by business and by a superior ideology.
And yes, we should criticize when mistakes are made. The problem is that too many people just hate the system that gives to them b/c they’re spoiled brats.
“Need to expansion”
I am at a loss as to why the sentence as I wrote it (not as you did) is confusing, and invite anyone here with advanced skills in English to parse why it might indeed be.
North Korea is not going to attack anyone unless it fears an immediate attack from the US. To be explicit, NK will not attack Japan, it will not attack the US and it is very unlikely to attack South Korea, not having done so seriously for the past 64 years.
North Korea is ENTIRELY concerned with its own independent internal regime and preserving it from outside threat. The ONLY outside threat is the US.
North Korea has repeatedly stated that it would negotiate the end of its nuclear weapons program if – and only if – the US would stop threatening it, sanctioning it and stop treating it as “a little monster”, as you put it.
The US has cordial relations with all sorts of “little monsters” and has for decades if not a hundred years. One more won’t change anything.
I just posted elsewhere (if the Colonel will graciously post it) a link to an article written by Scott Humor over at The Saker which establishes that the alleged “Kremlin trolls” were FSB and former FSB officials who were being PAID BY THE CIA and have been arrested as CIA spies by Russia.
In short, the entire “Russian propaganda” story that the social media companies and the mainstream media has been babbling about has mostly evaporated and appears to be nothing more than another CIA disinformation operation.
Which is pretty much what Sy Hersh said in his notorious audio recording.
As for North Korea, I suggest reading this piece by an Iranian Press TV reporter who spent time in South Korea during the 2013 crisis. He points out, from a leftist view, five points which people really should know about the Koreas.
Reporting from Korea during the 2013 ‘crisis’: 5 key facts the West ignores
http://thesaker.is/reporting-from-korea-during-the-2013-crisis-5-key-facts-the-west-ignores/
One point I found very interesting is that North Korea is a staggeringly rich country – some 6 to 10 trillion dollars – which is unexploited due to the economic problems and sanctions. One very good reason for the US and SK to want to “re-unify” it.
A recent “National Security Summit” was held by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy aka FDD featuring Pompeo and McMaster. I have been watching these treacherous slimeballs gently and skillfully grooming Trump since the election/transition. Their issue is Iran writ large w/emphasis on ridding the region of Shia mlitias, especially Hezbollah. In other words, catspaws for the current Israeli government’s security,
This article gives a good picture of the unmasking of Pompeo and McMaster’s real positions on issues of Iran et al…no more illusions of wiser heads remotely steering the ship of fools in the WH toward FP sanity:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-hawks-den-mcmaster-pompeo-given-heros-welcome-22827?page=show
Note: Video and transcripts of the “conversations” available @ defenddemocrcy.org
“FDD’s National Security Summit”
ISL
Iran did play an absolutely crucial role in helping to defeat Syria’s enemies. And Iran did that in Syria’s darkest times, and with that I mean mid 2012 to the end of 2013. Eg, when Syria’s government presence in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, was limited to some islands in a sea of green, Iranian troops cleared the southern plank of Aleppo, thereby connecting West-Aleppo with forces at Aleppo airport, to which the SAA Tiger forces later built a connection from Salamiyah via Ithriya.
In a similar way Iranian forces – together with Hezbollah and Iraqi forces organized by Iran – where at the same time crucial in defending the shrine of Sayyida Zainab south of Damascus, and then enlarging the cleared circles around it, clearing all the way to the airport and further, thereby securing the heart of the capital from the most dangerous side, the south, and also securing that the south of Syria was not cut off from Damascus.
So, Iranian axis of resistance volunteers on the ground were absolutely crucial in helping Syria in the most difficult hours to save the Syrian capital and Syria’s biggest city, long before Russia entered the battle, and Iran was very successful doing this, and Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian army and the Syrian people know it very well.
Yes, I recall that Harvard paid a $31 Million judgment to USA government because its participation in fraud and conspiracy in Russia. Too many facts to restate here, and yes Larry Summers was there.
Details here:
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b150nqqs1wz840/how-harvard-lost-russia?ArticleId=1020662&single=true
Isms?
A balanced society is like a balanced diet. US ideology is capitalism. From different quarters there often screams of communism/socialism if the US government looks like doing anything for the people. At some point, US will collapse under the weight of its ideology just as surely as the USSR did.
China have done the smart thing and moved to a balanced diet.
The Bolsheviks were ruthless idealists in pursuit of the fulfillment of a utopian society. And they accomplished much, just like the communists in China. Their programme of agrarian reform and industrialization was widely popular. And their Revolution-from-Above was reminiscent of the Tsars attempt at Europeanizatiin of Russia.
The aristocrats largely survived by fleeing abroad; the managerial and professional classed were the ones that were decimated first. Next were the turn of the Kulaks; defined as any one who had ever hired a farm hand to assist him in his work.
You cannot be serious. Labor productivity was very low in USSR, there was major issues of work force motivation as well as morale at all levels. I do not fault the Central Planners, I fault the leaders for refusing to level with the people of the Soviet Union after the Red Tsar’s death.
They were like us, nobodies who were earning a living and only wished to be left alone in tranquility and peace to enjoy the simple pleasures of their lives. They deservef better than being liquidated, dispaced, and otherwise uprooted.
Re: Lenin and sealed train
I thought Germany allowed Lenin to cross Germany in sealed train from Switzerland to Sweden (by ferry), thence to Finland.
And that Germany did this because Germans thought Lenin would make trouble in Russia. Germany was at war with Russia.
Agree?
I agree, Russia demonstrated that one needs very good weapons, among other things, to prevail in war. Russia also demonstrated the fundamental incapacity of Iran to field good weapons: thermobaric rockets, helicopter gunships, heavy mobile artillery….
New Theory?
They only needed to bring back NEP but that would not have done since it meant ceding power to the individuals.
I think that was also Krensky’s fatal mistake of not suing for peace immediately after assuming power.
Walrus and Pat.
You may be interested in the newly declassified docs relating to the mass extermination of communists, leftists and innocents in Indonesia 1965 and how it related to broader US policy of the day.
This doc is a stirring endorsement of the war in Vietnam and encourages the US to maximise it’s military power there, including nuclear.
‘In this letter to former USAID administrator Edwin Fox, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara (former finance minister and prime minister of the PRRI government during Indonesia’s civil war from 1958-1961) offers a full throated defense of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The then-imprisoned Sjafruddin, a member of the Moslem Masjumi party, argues that the United States “is following the only right path which leads … to a necessary containment of aggressive Communism” in the region. Sjafruddin’s enthusiastic support for the Vietnam War was extraordinary given the widespread opposition to U.S. foreign policy in the region even among anti-Communist Indonesian military leaders, many of whom deeply sympathized with the Vietnamese fighting the United States.’
http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=4107012-Document-02-Copy-of-Letter-from-Sjafruddin
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2017-10-17/indonesia-mass-murder-1965-us-embassy-files
Communism, 1965 and the role played by Islam in the killings are a potent political discourse right now in Indonesia. It is difficult to believe the timing of this release was not intended to influence events.
Separately, the disclosure of the identity of an American now Australian academic as a source is precisely the sort of thing Assange stands accused of having done. It goes without saying that this sort of recklessness will only make it more difficult for the US to find future sources, knowing their identities may one day be exposed.
Ah.
We are of the same age.
My heart goes out to you and your Brethren…
(Tho of tender age and struggling to understand the predicaments post-Cold War, the stories I’ve read back then filled me with horror.)
Walrus,
“I’m quite sure that the NV you encountered were prepared to fight and die for it.”
If I may, I disagree with you and the Colonel. Most of the North Vietnameses are not communists, and don’t care for the ideology. They were fighting for Vietnam independence. What they say every day is not what they actually believe (Orwell 1984).
I am anti-communist. But “know thy enenmy”…
TonyL
I talked to a great many NVA prisoners. Communism and nationalism were inextricably linked in their mnds. pl
Lyttenburgh
“Kosher” doesn’t mean Jews to you? pl
As for Russia, the revolution was a natural result of centuries of bitter repression and poverty inflicted by an uber rich aristocracy on the Russian people. The aristocracy got what it deserved.
that might be a slightly too superficial approach. OK, maybe I have too many questions concerning Lenin. …
But my approach, while obviously I am not invited, might be too. One aspect of the difference between West and East Germany always felt significant for me.
“Berlin, Capital of the GDR, is the Capital of the GDR”? Let’s start here.
A good friend told me this slogan. Apparently, he was as amused about it, when he told it to me. He lived in West Berlin a lot longer then I did. As member of the larger “collective Berlin left scene”, unsurprisingly a lot more Western “informal GDR” members surface in his earlier scene.
The friend, who I figure must have been someone that repeated the statement over and over again, was a member of the Socialist Unity Party West Berlin. Thus part of the more officially related parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Unity_Party_of_West_Berlin
SEW and DKP, the German Communist Party, together ran the bookshop European Books in Berlin. These bookshops probably were in every university city all over Germany. I remember the one in Berlin and the Freiburg well.
Nutshell: as a student in the West I could buy every book printed in the GDR and still in print. … The books were cheap. I bought my first grammar of English there.
While I was easy to buy these books for me in the West, the people in the country producing them had huge problems to get hold of the book they wanted. That was controlled too. The West brought foreign currency, one’s own people obviously couldn’t.
A former GDR “insider” post 1989 told me, he had every book printed in the GDR he wanted kept for him below the counter to be picked up at his convenience. …
At the same time, it must have been close to impossible for the average citizen to get hold of the book he might have wanted. Apparently even what people could read was controlled by the state. And you could see it, if you entered a bookshop in East Berlin. Or books offered in any other spot for larger Western secular pilgrimage.
There was this book catalogue in the West versus the limited choices available for the people living in the country. And yes, this still stands for me as a pretty significant symbol.
******
More generally: I personally felt the West’s clashing marketing slogans cum colored wilderness and the anti-aesthetic of ads everywhere–vaguely having “price” as one of the tools in marketing tool set in mind here–compared to that East Berlin surely was a culture shock. Obviously no marketing, but pretty visibly political slogans everywhere. …
But maybe more significant. On the average, people seemed to be guarded, afraid of strangers, at least if they didn’t had their own desires. Like getting their own share of foreign exchange? The only way to buy in the official East German Intershop chain, by the way.
Bandolero.
I agree with much of what you wrote but it’s was not Iranian forces.It was most of the times Hezbollah and Iranian volunteers under command of Iranian advisors.
ISL. Babak
The main effort from Iran was as soon as 2012 to organize, train and equip NDF akin IRCG. It was not very successful indeed at the beginning but now NDF is a very useful force as a security network and along with SAA on the front lines. Iran strategy was to prevent to be seen as a Shiite force in an obvious manner because that could reinforce the sectarian aspect of the war. Discretion was the main objective.So no need for Iran to field good weapons: thermobaric rockets, helicopter gunships, heavy mobile artillery….
Zukov would disagree, accumulate and deploy overwhelming force; which Iranians did not have; which could have ended the war sooner.
I agree with you.
sorry, Pat.
Thanks for this link. I hope the Western analysts are taking Valdai ’17 more seriously than they did Valdai ’14 or Munich 2007. Could save a lot of trouble. Whether this is a stage managed event or not I wouldn’t know, but there’s a lot more crammed into this transcript you have linked to, particularly into the discussion, then into an entire year’s worth of our own Western PR. This is the least veiled warning I have seen from the Russian side, all the more significant in that it’s phrased innocuously:-
“Vladimir Putin: Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it. It is therefore necessary to put this behind us, turn the page and move on, building our relations on the basis of mutual respect and treating each other as equal partners of equal value.”
One hopes too that more people in the West than just the analysts might be reading this:-
“As a senior president, if you were asked to give advice to Mr Donald Trump on how to be a good president, how make a positive contribution to this transition world, what would you say to him? Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: I am sorry, but I consider the question inappropriate. Mr Trump was elected by the American people. And for this reason alone he should be treated with respect even if you disagree with a position of his.
He is being disrespected in the country. This is a deplorable, negative aspect of the American political system. You can argue but you cannot show disrespect. Not just for him personally but for the people who have voted for him. This is the first thing.
Secondly, as I already said, I believe the President of the United States needs no advice because to be elected, even without extensive government experience, you have to have talent and go through this crucible. He did just that. And he won. He won fairly.”
I don’t know about you, but one of the things I really like about Putin and Trump, and something else that marks them out from the plastic garbage masquerading as politicians that we usually see on our screens, is that neither of them is afraid to face the world without a teleprompter. Not exactly timid, either of them.
I was a junior officer waiting for the « Red » on our eastern border.
Spent 8 years there.
Then I have a debate with my godfather, a well know French general.
He said : « Son what are you doing there ? »
« Well, defending France against the Red ! »
He laughed
« They will never come ! »
« Sorry ? »
« They will never come, they have absolutely no interest to conquer Europe, it’s better for us to spy on us and steal technologies, and even cheaper ! »
« And take a look at a map, USSR , it’s 22 millions km², mineral and oil reserves for the 800 years to come. Why would they want to conquer Germany or France ? They have already said that they will never fight again on their own soil and set up in central Europa a military glacis 800 km deep. »
That is a defensive move, not offensive.
« You want to fight the Commies ? Ask to be sent back to Africa to counter their destabilization ops ! »
Three months later I was in Chad.
( I do declare that it’s was not the official doctrine, but widespread among officers in private meeting )
Babak: I wish I was as sure that Bolsheviks were Utopians versus the larger Russian Dystopia expressed by Russian writers in the larger relevant time frame, lets say from the late 19 century to the early 20th?
I find it very, very hard to believe the Bolsheviks were Utopianists. What’s your take on the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks outside your larger theoretical human culture framwork, or theses that is?
One more thing concerning constant search for the enemies.
In socialist societies, people understand that they, in fact, do not live a perfect life. This leads to the prevalence of the Positive Mythology – the belief in the coming of communism as a pinnacle of all human development. In the societies dominated by liberalism and market capitalism there is already reigning a belief that the people there live in the best of the possible worlds, so there is absolutely no need to make any but cosmetic changes from time to time. Naturally, these societies inevitably produce large number of the people who are left behind and can not benefit from this “best of the world”. If their number reaches the critical mass and there will be forces at hand to utilize them, then the society will descend into fascism. Here, people in principle agree that the capitalist society is the best of the possible worlds – but they have to resort to the Negative Mythology, as a way to fingerpoint the Enemy To Blame For Everything Bad and explain why this best of the worlds is so bad (now).
The hilarity (pun untended) of the present situation in the US is that the whole society freely accepts the Negative Mythology, while, technically, not being fascist. It’s Negative Mythology and witchfinding as a preventative measure to safeguard the Best of the Possible Worlds. This, plus a hefty gesheft for the real bread winner in the house – the MIC.
Colonel,
Might I put forward my own view on the Cold War?
That the peoples of Western Europe believed they were protecting themselves against a Communist takeover in the post-war period is indisputable. Millions of people feared a Communist takeover in the form either of military conquest, or in the form of externally encouraged political revolution.
That was the reality they lived in. I know that because it is the reality I lived in later and up until the 90’s. This was not war hysteria, or foolish militarism. For us it was unavoidable reality.
In that reality, although mistakes were inevitably made and attitudes inevitably hardened, the defensive measures taken by the Western European countries were correct and justifiable. There was a threat. It had to be prepared for. It is historically inaccurate to see Western European history in that period in any other perspective.
Now, with the luxury of hindsight, we may examine that Cold War reality we lived in. We may possibly discover that the Russians were as scared of us as we were of them. We may also discover that, like us, the Russians differed amongst themselves as to what they wanted or were scared of – it is a mistake to see an entire political class as a monolithic bloc, either side of the fence, and it’s entirely possible that some wanted conflict while others didn’t. We may also discover – I am thinking of Churchill’s Fulton Missouri speech – that sometimes some of our own leaders had other motives than the purely defensive when they outlined the threat to us. All that is entirely possible.
We may also discover, as I believe to be the case, that the Cold War had some highly undesirable side-effects. I believe that high British military expenditure in that period, in contrast to lower Continental expenditure, placed us at a significant trading disadvantage, though some of that expenditure must be allocated to our then “East of Suez” post imperial commitments rather than to NATO expenditure directly.
I also believe that our gut fear of the “Red Threat” led to savagely repressive measures in the early years of the Thatcher administration that broke with the more usual English tradition of consensus politics. The Cold War didn’t do us a lot of good, and I think many Americans, looking back on the period, don’t think it did them a lot of good either.
But all that hindsight is entirely irrelevant. We may only ask the questions that were asked at the time. Was there a threat? Yes. We’d have been fools not to recognise it and guard against it. Should we have acted otherwise? No. I do not believe there can be any other answer.
I hope you will not object to a postscript. I believe the position is different now. I do not see a Russian threat today, not as we saw one during the Cold War, and if one develops it will be entirely of our own making.
Mensheviks and SRs feared the inevitable dictatorship that was required to govern a revolutionary Russia in which the old order had collapsed and armed men were everywhere.
Lenin welcomed it since it provided the instrumentality for realizing the dreams of a Mr. Karl Marx of London.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first supreme commander of NATO, wrote in 1950 that, “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defence purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed”.
Richardstevenhack,
Maybe this article will be helpful. It’s more of a summary, but there are links that contain more detail. Sometimes it’s good to read what actual experts say as opposed to just making stuff up that makes you feel good (and that allows you to have fun bashing Trump/America in the process).
https://qz.com/1068894/what-north-korea-wants/
North Korea’s (really KJU’s) likely long term goal is re-unification of North and South Korea. yes. the short term goal is probably defensive in nature. But the short term goal supports the long term goal. KJU likely sees a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to foreign intervention. He likely believes it will isolate South Korea. He would then likely chip away at South Korea politically and militarily as opposed to jumping off a massive attack. Once the South Korean populace has been sufficiently prepped politically, then the military invasion and coup would be launched.
South Korea and Japan, recognizing this long term goal would probably seek to become nuclear powers themselves. Then you have more yet more nations, hostile to each other, armed with nukes. That is not good for anyone or any cause.
There is no easy answer here, but to off hand dismiss the problem that a nuclear NoKo presents is to be an ostrich.
They only needed to bring back NEP
Wrong. A popular meme, myth about NEP without demonstrating what it degenerated into. Today even Russian “liberals” do not use it. Russian/Soviet economic problems lay much deeper than mere economic theory–the root of those problems is in Russian peasant commune of XIX-early XX century. Even Constitutional Democrat and fanatical anti-communist Pavel Miulykov (a Foreign Minister in Temporary Government) left a 1910 startling evidence of the REAL situation in Russia. If you have time you may want to browse it:
https://archive.org/details/russiaitscrisis00miliuoft
Miylukov, later, in 1935 was repeated verbatim by Stalin. No NEP could have saved USSR.
I disagree, small production in cities and in cointry-side could have alleviated chronic shortages of foodstuffs and consimer goods. It could have relieved the Central Planners from micromanagement of the economy, all the while creating new taxanle income sources.
Do you think that USSR could have survived if there were no WWII?
Again, the war in Syria was and is a war of attrition( like the rest of wars imposed on Iran in last 40 years), its not about how you fight this kind of wars is mostly about who you are fighting. Iranians are the ones who convinced the Russians to enter the war in 2015 ( 3 years in the war) on side of Syria which tilted the balance in favor of Syria, like introducing a new superior weapon, that is the art of doing this kind of wars. Just like what just happened in Kirkuk. All it matters now is that Iranians from day one were instrumental on side of the winters the Syrian Arab Republic against the terrorist. That fact can’t be ignored and taken away by dislike of Iranian system.
“The ones who did not leave were put into service of the factory farms and the communal farms later–both miserable failures.”
How they were “miserable failures”? Honest day work in the field is now “miserable failures”?
“Remember the Holdomor famine and the famine before that.”
What about them? Also – are you aware that kulaks bear much responsibility for those, with them hiding the grain and butchering the cattle?
“But my family left before that. My great uncle was taken by the Czar’s army in the middle of the night to fight during the Czar’s stupid war with Japan.”
I understand the importance of the family mythology, but this could not be possibly true. No one was really “taken in the middle of the night”. Russian Empire had a universal system of recruit draft.
“He spent a year in a Japanese prisoner of war camp before Teddy Roosevelt brokered the truce.”
What – all by himself? With no input from Sergey Witte?
“Families coming over later told horror stories of the Bolsheviks coming int he middle of the night to the apartments and homes of those working the factory farms and the communal farms and brutally killing anyone they suspected of talking against communism.”
Sooooo… anecdotal evidence? Which – I remind you – is not truth. Just scary stories.
“We were brought to Russia to escape the many wars in Europe by Katherine the Great and later her grandson. She needed people to farm, as Russians were terrible farmers.”
The last thing is outstanding, rrrrracially superior arrogance, coming from an ethnic German. Woe to us, how did we manage to live without you! /s
“They lived during the early years in dugouts–as there were no trees to build houses–and endured Mongol raiders”
Mongol raiders? Mongol… raiders? In late 18 c. Russia?
[…]
Pray, tell me more! Your account is already so entertaining! Like a fantasy novel.
“So excuse me for thinking they were their farms.”
Not anymore after 1917 and the abolition of the capitalist rights on the private property on the land – for everybody. Yeah – the law. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it less obligatory.
“I was simply making a point about the failure of socialism and communism.”
This “failures” put the man in space first. Boom!
“They were like us, nobodies who were earning a living and only wished to be left alone in tranquility and peace to enjoy the simple pleasures of their lives. They deservef better than being liquidated, dispaced, and otherwise uprooted.”
“Deserved”? According to whom and what laws? Fact is – kulaks were persecuted in accordance to the law. End of the story, no need to play the victim card. ? I’ve wrote an extensive essay on the issue: https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/kulax-heroes-or-villains/
Lyttenburgh
If you you look at the category of posts you will see that I hsve admonished you all to understand that SST is a place for civil discussion. It is not an arena. It is also not an academic forum. Richard Sale does not nee to “prove” anything to you about this contemplation expressed as an essay. pl
“Iran strategy was to prevent to be seen as a Shiite force in an obvious manner because that could reinforce the sectarian aspect of the war.”
Absolutely correct, this was the case and still is in Iraq, and Syria.
Then the Law was at fault. I will paraphrase:
“Those Christians refused to bow and worship the god-emperor of the People and Senate of Rome and they were summarily dealtt with per Roman Law.”
In what way did the “Soviets threaten Europe”?
If you were assigned to the assault troops for invading Japan, you might have thanked God for the atom bomb.
“The aristocrats largely survived by fleeing abroad; the managerial and professional classed were the ones that were decimated first. Next were the turn of the Kulaks; defined as any one who had ever hired a farm hand to assist him in his work.”
1) Not all the nobles fled abroad. Quite a lot of them remained and were not even repressed.
2) You say it yourself – kulaks used hired labour, which was illegal in the USSR.
” Labor productivity was very low in USSR, there was major issues of work force motivation as well as morale at all levels. “
That’s why the USSR was the second economy in the world?
“I thought Germany allowed Lenin to cross Germany in sealed train from Switzerland to Sweden (by ferry), thence to Finland.”
They allowed entire chain of the sealed traincars to cross their border. There were other people onboard – including members of the Jewish “Bund”. So what?
“And that Germany did this because Germans thought Lenin would make trouble in Russia. Germany was at war with Russia.
Agree?”
Can you provide the material evidence that this was exactly what Germany “thought”? Othervise – that’s merely a speculation.
“”Kosher” doesn’t mean Jews to you? pl”
We live in the world of cross-cultural pollination, when the Americans call their high-tier specialists in the government “czars”. So – no.
” It is also not an academic forum. Richard Sale does not nee to “prove” anything to you about this contemplation expressed as an essay. pl “
Soooo… an author published in SST can make any kind of claim but no one from us, the commenting masses, can ask for a verification?
[…]
Like – the publishing author is infallable like a Pope?
Lyttenburgh
I am the judge of whether or not your comments or harassment of authors are appropriate. Take it or leave it. pl
Lyttrnburgh
IMO you are lying. I suspect that you and the other Russians here have more in common than nationality. pl
The law in question was applied retroactively. And then the state confiscated all the property – house, barn, cattle, sewing machine, and gave those to the Muszik/Gypsy. Next, the fellow and his family were uprooted, at the point of a gun, and sent elsewhere. This was in itself a form of collective punishment against the entire familu.
Thanks for the very interesting link. For those of you who just watched Putin I would also recommend Jack Ma’s comments on the coming role of big data analytics and the need to start revising our educational systems to cope with its effects. The Luddites can not stop what is beginning to happen and we need to begin to prepare.
I’ve read many “actual experts” who say exactly the same thing I say: that Kim is rational, he is not going to attack anyone, and his nuclear delivery capability is minimal if it exists at all (albeit presumably it will get better over time.)
If you were to spend time in South Korea, you’d find that while South Koreans would like to re-unify for the family reuniting benefits, they mostly couldn’t care less about North Korea. And North Korea, as I’ve pointed out, has made no significant moves against South Korea for sixty-four years.
Exactly what good would NK nukes be to re-unification? NK is not going to nuke South Korea. And while Kim might think nukes are a deterrent, they aren’t and he is likely to be shown that if Trump attacks.
Even under the worst negotiations, the US will require the North to sign a non-aggression treaty which means the US will attack if the North unilaterally attacks any of the US allies, including Japan and South Korea. Which means the same situation as has existed for the last sixty-four years will remain the status quo indefinitely. There will be no invasion.
What exactly does “chipping away” mean if they haven’t done it in sixty-four years? It’s ludicrous.
You are the one with fantasies based on someone’s mind-reading the North’s intentions.
“”Those Christians refused to bow and worship the god-emperor of the People and Senate of Rome and they were summarily dealtt with per Roman Law.””
Christians were beholden to the Universal, God-Given truth. Can you say the same thing about kulaks?
Also – have you read my essay?
“The law in question was applied retroactively. And then the state confiscated all the property – house, barn, cattle, sewing machine, and gave those to the Muszik/Gypsy.”
To… Gysphy? Gave it all to… Gypshy? Also what to you understand by the “Muzhik” category? That’s the second time I see you using it.
The law was not used “retroactively”. See above my link to the essay on de-kulakization.
“Next, the fellow and his family were uprooted, at the point of a gun, and sent elsewhere. “
There were categories of kulaks who were sentenced that – not everyone. I see nothing “horrible” in that. At all.
“This was in itself a form of collective punishment against the entire familu.”
Question – did the entire family benefited from this particular kulak (we are talking about 1/2 20 c. village dwellers here) illegal activties? Yes or No?
So, as you admit, there was no Law in USSR, only the Yasa of the Red Tsar. Romanovs were superoir in that regard, they did not send entire extended familied to Siberia.
Putin compares actions/policies of USA since 1990 with those of USSR after 1917.
quote
Today, as we turn to the lessons of a century ago, namely, the Russian Revolution of 1917, we see how ambiguous its results were, how closely the negative and, we must acknowledge, the positive consequences of those events are intertwined. Let us ask ourselves: was it not possible to follow an evolutionary path rather than go through a revolution? Could we not have evolved by way of gradual and consistent forward movement rather than at a cost of destroying our statehood and the ruthless fracturing of millions of human lives.
. . .
Following the radical changes that took place in our country and globally at the turn of the 1990s, a really unique chance arose to open a truly new chapter in history. I mean the period after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Unfortunately, after dividing up the geopolitical heritage of the Soviet Union, our Western partners became convinced of the justness of their cause and declared themselves the victors of the Cold War, as I just mentioned, and started openly interfering in the affairs of sovereign states, and exporting democracy just like the Soviet leadership had tried to export the socialist revolution to the rest of the world in its time.
We were confronted with the redistribution of spheres of influence and NATO expansion. Overconfidence invariably leads to mistakes. The outcome was unfortunate. Two and a half decades gone to waste, a lot of missed opportunities, and a heavy burden of mutual distrust. The global imbalance has only intensified as a result.
We do hear declarations about being committed to resolving global issues, but, in fact, what we see is more and more examples of selfishness. All the international institutions designed to harmonise interests and formulate a joint agenda are being eroded, and basic multilateral international treaties and critically important bilateral agreements are being devalued.
endquote
Putin goes on the discuss USA failures to act in accordance with agreements with Russia concerning nuclear energy.
quote
In the 2000s our cooperation with the United States entered a new stage of truly equitable partnership. It was marked by the singing of a number of strategic treaties and agreements on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which is known in the US as the 123 Agreement. But to all intents and purposes, the US side unilaterally halted work within its framework in 2014.
The situation around the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) of August 20 (signed in Moscow) and September 1 (in Washington) is perplexing and alarming. In accordance with the protocol to this agreement, the sides were supposed to take reciprocal steps to irreversibly convert weapons-grade plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and burn it in nuclear plants, so that it could not be used for military purposes. Any changes in this method were only allowed by consent of the sides. This is written in the agreement and protocols to it.
What did Russia do? We developed this fuel, built a plant for mass production and, as we pledged in the agreement, built a BN-800 plant that allowed us to safely burn this fuel. I would like to emphasise that Russia fulfilled all of its commitments.
What did our American partners do? They started building a plant on the Savannah River Site. Its initial price tag was $4.86 billon but they spent almost $8 billion, brought construction to 70 percent and then froze the project. But, to our knowledge, the budget request for 2018 includes $270 million for the closure and mothballing of this facility. As usual, a question arises: where is the money? Probably stolen. Or they miscalculated something when planning its construction. Such things happen. They happen here all too often. But we are not interested in this, this is not our business. We are interested in what happens with uranium and plutonium. What about the disposal of plutonium? Dilution and geological storage of the plutonium is suggested. But this completely contradicts the spirit and letter of the agreement, and, most important, does not guarantee that the dilution is not reconverted into weapons-grade plutonium. All this is very unfortunate and bewildering.
Next. Russia ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty more than 17 years ago. The USA has not done so yet.
endquote
more here, including re chemical weapons
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55882
Thank you, I meant no offence
I would agree with Putin that political arrangements have suppleness to address changing social conditions – in principle. The Roman Republic need not have endured 3 civil wars before the Roman Revolution, the Monarchy in Iran could have endured if the Shah had more political sense, the Tsar could still been there had he not endorsed Stolypyn ‘s murder.
I quibble with Putin in that Western Fortress won the Cold War since the other side, USSR, ceased to exist.
I also disagree with Putin in as much as he wishes for a common European home with the Post-post-post Carolingian Empire. Like Turkey, she does not belong there. It is more profitable to go on one’s own way.
Putin seems to agree with you.
quote
Vladimir Putin: You know, indeed, you are right; we had more differences and disagreements in Soviet times. However, do you know what else was in even greater supply? Respect.
I can hardly imagine Soviet flags being torn down from Soviet diplomatic missions when the Soviet Union was around. However, you did this. That is not the only sign of disrespect. It shows itself not in such demonstrative actions, but in some substantive matters as well.
. . .
We used to be more respectful of each other’s interests. Clearly, respect must be backed up by economic and military power. This is clear. We ourselves are largely to blame for putting ourselves in such a position. In the humiliating situation, as in the 1990s, when we allowed you to access our nuclear facilities expecting you to reciprocate. However, you did not, and expecting you to was probably stupid on the part of those who did so back in the new Russia.
Nonetheless, I would like to end my remarks on a positive note. I believe that much in resolving the issues of interest to you and us depends on working together. This should help us stay focused on the thought that our prospects are good.
. . .
What political mistakes, in your opinion, has Russia made in its relations with the West over the past 15 years and what needs to be done, what conclusions need to be drawn for the future of these relations?
Vladimir Putin: Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it. It is therefore necessary to put this behind us, turn the page and move on, building our relations on the basis of mutual respect and treating each other as equal partners of equal value.
Publius
The perception among US political leaders that the communists had an expansionist mindset and posed an existential threat was real post-war. Stalin built the Iron Curtain as the Soviet Union enforced it’s will in Eastern Europe, while Mao defeated CKS in China. US covert and overt foreign policy actions to counter the communists should be considered in light of these perceptions.
Hindsight is 20/20. So, in retrospect we probably should not have intervened initially to support French colonialism in Indochina. The Marshall Plan and NATO on the other hand were a very successful policy as Western European standard of living soared relative to the Soviet bloc as the US security treaty provided a significant guarantee of safety and secure borders.
There are many on the left who wax nostalgically about their “socialist paradise” and how the Soviet experiment would have worked if only. I have never ever seen any of them point out one successful Marxist-Lenninist paradise where the average person’s standard of living exceeded that of a similar person in a capitalist system. Deng Xiao Ping recognized this flaw and opened up China’s economy to a market based system while still retaining absolute political control. We have seen the result.
Publius you say, “The only problem–we could not sustain our economy without coming up with a new enemy that would justify the continued spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on technologically sophisticated and grotesquely expense crap…“. This sounds like what a neo-keynesian would say. Like Krugman’s war with aliens. The fact is that current spending has been driven by debt at all levels from consumers to corporations to local, state and federal government which are at unprecedented levels. While defense and intelligence budgets are large nothing compares to expenditures for healthcare which represent a third of the federal governments spending. And while left & right argue about coverage and who pays or how large government subsidy should be, the reality is that costs of health care in the US astronomical relative to other western countries. As this article notes health care costs in the US are rather staggering:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/16/16357790/health-care-prices-problem
Having said that US foreign policy in the Middle East has no bearing to US national interests. It would seem that the enemies of the US are effectively running our ME policy as it so destructive to our interests and standing. At this point there does not seem to be any way out as most Americans buy into American Exceptionalism.
LeaNder – you are describing the world familiar to us from Das Leben der Anderen, Goodbye Lenin, or maybe even from the novels of the DDR period Christa Wolf. Stasi-world, we might call it. In your opinion, was there another world in the old DDR? The world lived in by the Ossis I sometimes meet, who seem to have lived away from all the repression and who lived in a world of security and neighbourliness, a world they very much regret having lost?
But whether the Ostalgie of those friends of mine is justified or not it must surely be the case that the Cold War was very real, would you not agree? The peoples of Western Europe, on both sides of the channel, might have known little of the Gulags but they knew of the repression in Eastern Europe. We could scarcely not have known of the latter. Even Brecht, the ultimate limousine socialist and living there in privilege, saw enough of the early repression in the DDR to make his famous remark about the Communist government needing to elect a new people because the existing people didn’t seem to appreciate it. After that Eastern Europe seemed to be a succession of popular uprisings brutally suppressed. Even the English Communists had a hard time holding to the party line after Hungary. That awareness of what it was like over there carried on right up until living memory – I don’t think there can have been anyone for whom Honecker in 1989 was a fallen hero or a symbol of a better way of life. My view, as I have expressed it in my comment below, is that the mass of Western Europeans simply didn’t want to live like that and supported the military arrangements undertaken to make sure they didn’t.
It was particularly the case in Southern Europe, but even to some extent I believe in the North, that a danger equal to the military danger existed from within. If the Communist model as it was seen in practice in Eastern Europe was rubbish, so too was the capitalist model. That capitalist model tended, as it now tends even more, to move inevitably away from a pure “Adam Smith” free market towards monopoly capitalism and then on to crony capitalism. Hayek’s road to serfdom turns out to have a neo-liberal lane. Plenty saw the dangers of that, and instead of looking to make the free market model work better could see as the only alternative the adoption of the command economy model that was wrecking the Communist world. And many didn’t even know that that command economy model was an economic wrecking ball: in 1956 Harold Wilson, a future Prime Minister, was saying that “in the next generation Russia’s industrial challenge may well dominate the world’s economic scene”. He was an clever man well versed in Western economic theory and yet he and many others thought Communist economics worked! Add to that the love affair of the Fabian Left with Communist prescriptions – a love affair stretching from the early Bolshevik Terror to Mao’s Cultural Revolution and one that resolutely glossed over the deaths and the violence, and add to that the fact that the working class radical movements had long been captured by Command Economy thinking. Add to that one further undeniable fact. The Soviets practised the whole range of destabilisation techniques that we in the West are now so familiar with. There’s nothing the EU or NATO didn’t do in the Ukraine that the Soviets didn’t do on an immensely greater scale; and I suspect nothing we did in Syria that the Soviets wouldn’t have done without turning a hair. And in with all of that was the fact that the Communist message had a morally superior content. The slogans sounded good. The majority of ordinary people in Western Europe were well aware that if they fell for that enticing Communist message the Communist nightmare would inevitably follow. They saw those of their fellows who were enticing them with that message as the enemy within, and in plain terms that’s exactly what they were.
So it was a time of great danger, both in military terms and in terms of internal subversion. What Communism means to us has changed since those days. In the West those of us who still hear its call have gone Gramsci and substituted the long march through the institutions for the summons to the barricades. In Russia itself, I sense that for those looking back on the old days the stress is more on traditional communal values, fairness, and national survival. Fair enough, but don’t lets imagine that in those post-war years in Western Europe the Communist nightmare wasn’t there in full view; and let’s acknowledge that, for all the mistakes that were made, it was a nightmare we did well to avoid.
All this means little to us now. I will confess it means little to me – the lesson I draw from it all is that if a country allows a crony class to utterly dominate its politics that country’s done for, no matter what enticing message the cronies have on their banners. The governments we saw in Soviet Russia, the US Government now, Western European governments now, are for me all apples from the same barrel. Not a lot of government of the people by the people to be seen in any of them, though I don’t think it was foolish to see Trump 2016 as a break in that pattern. But that’s my take now. The take adopted by the peoples of post-war Western Europe was a different take and, realistically, it was the only take that could ensure their survival.
Is it possible to reach across the channel, and across the prog/deplorable divide that separates us with similar inevitability, and ask you – is that, in your view, the German take as well. After all it was Germany, not us, that was the cockpit of that great struggle. Do you see the Cold War like that too?
arger Russian Dystopia expressed by Russian writers in the larger relevant time frame, lets say from the late 19 century to the early 20th?
Most classic Russian literature of the period was about peasant commune and social and politcal derivative from it state of the affairs. From Nekrasov to Turgenev to even Chekhov. It was, to a large, extent a “pomechichya” (land owner) literature.
Just one question, English Outsider. How would communism (as a reigning ideology) harm you in person?
Quasi-female version of Eliot Higgins has joined Atlantic Council in making sloppy blasts against everything Russian: http://theduran.com/max-keiser-destroys-soros-funded-think-tank-that-published-list-of-rt-guests-calling-them-kremlin-useful-idiots/
Another member of Atlantic Council, Mr. Dm. Alperovitch of CrowdStrike fame, has been caught by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) on unprofessional and treasonous behavior: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
I think Communism as it was experienced in Eastern Europe in the 1950’s would have been harmful in the extreme in Western Europe had it been imposed on Western Europe at that time.
But you ask, how would it be harmful to me as a reigning ideology now? That’s an awkward question because I know of no societies where Communism operates and only a few where it’s claimed it operates. It’s therefore not possible to say I’d like or I wouldn’t like to live like that because I can only guess what the “that” is we’re talking about.
But I suspect that a full command economy or fully centrally planned economy would be harmful for these reasons. It doesn’t work well as a means of distributing goods and services. A degree of compulsion is necessary to get people to accept the resultant dysfunction. That means that the dissident or the non-conforming is persecuted. There’d also be more bureaucrats around than would be quite agreeable.
Spiritually it would be stifling. Maybe like working in one of those Progressive American universities where you have to watch your step before saying anything. Or perhaps like working for the European Commission. Enforced conformity is a bad way to live even for conformists.
That’s my image of Communism. You could fairly point out that Western crony capitalism has similar and in many respects worse defects. I’d agree, but would argue that the remedy is to reform what we have rather than attempting to change to an unsatisfactory alternative.
Postscript – I see “outhere” below gives a Putin quote that is very much to the point:
” Let us ask ourselves: was it not possible to follow an evolutionary path rather than go through a revolution? Could we not have evolved by way of gradual and consistent forward movement rather than at a cost of destroying our statehood and the ruthless fracturing of millions of human lives.”
That’s the justification for the English Constitutional Tradition in a nutshell. Pity it takes a foreigner to remind us of it.
In another context it’s also the strongest argument for Trump. He doesn’t seem to be much liked in the States at the moment. Nor in Europe – I’ve just read a gutter press attack on him in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that it was surprising to see in a quality newspaper. They’re still asking us to give credence to the Steele dossier even though by now surely everyone must know it’s manufactured. As for the BBC, they just ask us to take for granted as a fact that needs no proof that the American President’s a rogue. All very reassuring because if the crony media in Europe is still going for him hammer and tongs it must mean that the swamp hasn’t subdued him entirely.
But all that aside, Trump is still the only Western statesman offering a chance of evolving a solution rather than sitting around waiting for the collapse. It seems to be a slim chance – if the Beltway put a tenth of the effort into making the current Presidency work that it puts into scuppering it it’d look more hopeful – but however slim it’s better than nothing. The argument for evolution rather than revolution is as strong as it ever was.