Strategic
Culture
Foundation
ONLINE JOURNAL
Moscow’s
Problem: Dealing with Imbeciles and Vassals
Russia is in a dilemma. How can it work
through a peaceful settlement over the Ukraine conflict – and avoid a wider,
more terrible war – when it is having to communicate with imbeciles and
vassals? We are referring to the American and European leaders, respectively.
The problem of trying to have a
conversation with imbeciles is that they are simply incapable of understanding
anything outside of their obtuse reality. They suffer from cognitive dissonance
and are proud of it. In fact, the more cognitively dysfunctional, the more the
imbecile is celebrated as being strong. Imbeciles cannot be enlightened; their
ignorant and boorish way of looking at the world is impervious to any
different, even more correct perspective. Indeed, they have a visceral aversion
to correction, which only retrenches their imbecility all the more.
The problem in dealing with vassals is
that they are powerless to change course – even if they have a residual ability
to think independently and to recognise an alternative perspective as being
more correct, or at least reasonable.
Thus we have the dilemma facing Russia in
its dealings with Washington and its European allies over the Ukraine
conflict.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,
speaking in Munich last weekend, deplored the lack of European independence in
averting Washington’s systematic vandalism of the international order. Lavrov
was scoffed at for daring to speak the truth and more so because he used logic
and historical evidence to support his argument.
The imbecilic Americans substitute axioms
and accusations for rational dialogue. They are guided by their own
self-serving propaganda and are deluded by every word of it. And proud of it!
God bless America!
US President Barack Obama, who is supposed
to be one of the most thoughtful American politicians, evidently can’t think
beyond the uniform straitjacket narrative that posits, without a scintilla of
evidence, that the conflict in Ukraine as «all Russia’s fault».
Speaking with German Chancellor by his side
at the White House this week, Obama said that he was considering sending lethal
weapons to the Kiev regime «to help Ukraine bolster its defences in the face of
separatist aggression». Obama accused Russia of fuelling the conflict and of
trying to violate Ukraine’s territorial integrity «down the barrel of a
gun».
Reality check. Ethnic Russians are being
killed in their homes, basements, schools and streets, by the Western-backed
Kiev regime, which launched a gratuitous war on eastern Ukraine ten months ago,
resulting in over 5,500 dead and more than a million people displaced – and yet
Obama condemns the violence as «separatist aggression» and wants to send more
deadly weapons to the offenders.
From Obama on down the political ladder,
it only gets worse. The Vice President Joe Biden told the security conference
in Munich last weekend that «Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves»
and so the US should send military support to ward off «Russian
aggression».
So, Mr Biden, what about the right of ethnic
Russian Ukrainians defending themselves? Are they debarred from doing so? Are
they not Ukrainians? Or maybe because they are ethnic Russians that makes them
inferior in your view?
America’s top diplomat John Kerry, a
supposedly urbane, multilingual cosmopolitan, reiterates the same baseless,
brainless accusations against Russia, claiming the latter to be the «biggest
threat to Ukraine». Kerry also wants to send weapons to Ukraine to teach Russia
a lesson.
Ditto Ashton Carter, the incoming Defence
Secretary. Ditto Michel Flournoy, who is tipped to be Defence Secretary if
Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 presidency. Ditto Bobby Jindal who is a hot
contender for the Republican presidential candidacy. Ditto Republican foreign
policy chief Bob Corker. Ditto the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Martin Dempsey. Ditto the members of America’s foreign policy
establishment at the Brookings Institute and Atlantic Council. Ditto the
editorial boards of America’s top media corporations, including the New York
Times and Washington Post. All of them unblinkingly repeat the mantra that the
Ukraine conflict is due to Russian aggression and that arming the Kiev regime
is a swell idea for peace. All of them regurgitate a corny travesty of history
which paints Russian President Vladimir Putin as «a mid-20th Century dictator»
in the same «expansionist» vein as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. (Without a
whit of understanding that mid-20th Century fascism was fomented as a covert
policy of Western capitalist powers to attack the Soviet Union, and resulted in
30 million dead Russians. A policy that continues today in the form of US
support for the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev as a destabilising force towards
Russia.)
The scary thing about American imbeciles
is that they don’t have an inkling that they might be brainwashed. They are
Orwellian clones who believe that war is peace, slavery is freedom, and truth
is whatever you are told it is.
American politicians attending the Munich
Security Conference derided efforts by Germany’s Merkel and French President
Francois Hollande to engage Putin in political dialogue over the Ukraine crisis
as «bullshit».
The three leaders are proposing to follow
up lengthy discussions held in Moscow last weekend with a further meeting in
Minsk, the Belarus capital, this week. It’s far from certain that Putin, Merkel
and Hollande can achieve a breakthrough to get the Kiev regime to sit down and
talk with the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The uncouth Americans
are certainly trying their best to scupper dialogue before it is even given a
chance to progress.
In contrast to the gung-ho Americans,
there is a new consensus among the Europeans that pouring more weapons into
Ukraine is no solution, indeed is to be avoided, and that the separatists have
reasonable grounds for political autonomy deserving a respectful hearing.
The Europeans, at least publicly, may
still adopt the hoary narrative that Russia is destabilising Ukraine covertly
with its troops or military support for the separatists. Moscow flatly denies
those claims. But at least the Europeans seem to have enough intellectual
subtlety to realise that maximalist finger-pointing against Putin is
counterproductive and that there might be more than one side to the
story.
To her credit, Angela Merkel has stood
firm in her opposition to American calls for increasing military involvement in
Ukraine. While in Washington this week, she categorically ruled out supporting
the idea of sending more weapons into Ukraine. Merkel’s opposition to US proposals
has been denounced by leading Republican Senators as «appeasement» of Putin,
with asinine analogies to Chamberlain and Hitler at the 1938 Munich
conference.
Dealing with American imbeciles is thus
impossible. They inhabit a different mental world from most other people. Their
world is formed by ahistorical propaganda and a boorish attitude that makes
dialogue, reciprocation, or socratic elucidation a dim prospect. Their
arrogance and ignorant conceit are obstacles to genuine communication and understanding.
It’s all Putin’s fault; it’s all due to those morose Russian hordes; it’s the
evil Soviet empire making a comeback. A US-backed regime-change illegal
operation in Kiev against an elected government? A US-backed regime waging war
on ethnic Russian people in eastern Ukraine? Are you nuts, you
Putin-pussy-apologist?
How can you deal with such people? You
can’t.
However, the additional problem is that
the Europeans are not free to really act on their incipient independent
thoughts. It is clear that Merkel and Hollande, and many other European
leaders, realise that US plans to flood Ukraine with even more lethal weapons
is a woeful idea that potentially could spark World War III. It is clear that
many Europeans think US-led sanctions against Russia are not only
counterproductive, but actually an unreasonable, hostile policy that is hurting
European workers, farmers and economies as much as it is Russia’s.
The problematic fact is that European
states are vassals of America. They are not free to act out of line from
Washington’s dictate, no matter how ludicrous is the latter. Germany is
considered the powerhouse of Europe and the fourth largest economy in the
world. Yet, as German political analyst Christof Lehmann reminds us, Germany
has never had genuine political independence since the end of the Second World
War. It does not have a constitution befitting a modern state, and it continues
to be occupied by military forces belonging to the «victorious» American and
British allies. «Germany is a de facto colony of the US», says Lehmann. «At any
time, under the postwar basic law, American troops can take over the government
of Germany, which technically and legally is an occupied state, a vassal
state».
The American NSA spying on Chancellor
Merkel revealed in 2013 by Edward Snowden is a case in point. More telling is
how Merkel did not respond to that gross infringement of German «sovereignty»
with the political force that that American violation merited. She meekly
accepted the intrusion as a condition of American postwar hegemony.
Lehmann points out how any past moves by
Germany to create an independent foreign policy, and one in particular that
involves rapprochement with Russia, have been serially vetoed by the US and its
British ally. «We saw that under Chancellors Willy Brandt and Gerhard
Schroeder, their efforts at adopting a more friendly relation with Russia were
sabotaged at every step by Washington and London», says Lehmann.
That is why Merkel deserves much credit
for making her bold stand this week against American militarism in Ukraine. Her
dissent is highly significant of a potential cleavage in US-European relations.
What she is doing is challenging a fundamental red line in Washington: namely,
that European states, and Germany especially, cannot, must not, dare to
question American hegemony and its longterm policy of hostility towards Russia.
Merkel and Hollande may be finally getting
the message from the millions of ordinary EU citizens who deeply object to
American warmongering towards Russia at Europe’s expense. But given the
tradition of European vassalage to the imbecilic Americans, the chances of a
positive breakthrough for peaceful relations remain elusive. European
leadership is still a captive of Washington’s clutches. But the disgusted European
masses might just be forcing a break in the imbecilic bonds.
