Putin the Great and the rebirth of Russia

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." - Lenin

When the Soviet Union was officially dissolved in 1991, Margaret Thatcher declared "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot." For a time this victory cry appeared to be a statement of the obvious: The Warsaw Pact fell apart and its non-Russian members lined up to join NATO, East Germany merged with the West, formerly "socialist" East Europeans voted in militantly capitalist leaders (many of them businessmen with US ties), and even the last-ditch attempt to hold the Soviet republics together, the CIS, began to disintegrate.

CIA-engineered "colored revolutions" swept through the former socialist world, starting in Serbia and continuing through Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgzstan. The ring of NATO bases tightened around Russia, while Russia itself collapsed under the rampant corruption, looting, and the dismantling of social services sponsored by US-backed tyrant Boris Yeltsin, the sleazy drunkard whose tanks shelled the Russian parliament. Russians died like flies from hunger and disease (the increased mortality under Yeltsin was on the scale of a major war), their children begged and sold drugs, highly-educated Russians debased themselves by turning to crime and prostitution to survive, and Russian men and women with PhD's were forced to work as janitors and nannies in Turkey and Iran.

Yet today, 15 years later, Thatcher's gloating victory proclamation seems as premature as Bush's "Mission Accomplished" of May 2003, and has all the potential of turning out to be just as pyrrhic. The Western media wurlitzer is blaring round-the-clock about "the return of dictatorship" in Russia these days (although they don't use the C-word yet) since Putin effectively undercut the attempts of pro-western zionist oligarchs to buy their way into power, while the FSB cut short the recent highly entertaining machinations by British "intelligence" to control Russian NGO's with an electronic rock.

Today it is not the "loser" of the Cold War that is bogged down in the Afghan quagmire but the so-called "winners," who have to deal with the Iraqi quagmire as well, not to mention Iran's nukes for which they allowed their Pakistani jihadi protégés to sell the critical technology to the ayatollahs.

The "winner's" woes don't stop there. Russia, which was supposedly "bankrupted" by the cold war, looks on with amusement at the basket-case US economy on the verge of financial collapse, the government of the so-called superpower unable to provide even disaster relief to its citizens, who were left to die as the whole world watched during the hurricane season.

Since Sputnik and Gagarin, Russia is still the world leader in space

Russia continues to perform solidly and reliably in space despite the dire financial straits that its aerospace sector was forced to navigate while the "superpower's" NASA staggers through one humiliating disaster after another. Today, Russia not only keeps the International Space Station running, of which it built the major part, with its fully automated Progress cargo ships and its Soyuz spacecraft, but it ferries most of the world's satellites into orbit. Its launchers are now part of the European space program and starting in 2007 they will take off from France's Kourou launch site as well as from Baikonour space center. ESA is not only using Russian launchers and Soyuz craft for its missions, it is planning to participate in the Kliper reusable maneuverable reentry vehicle as well (when it finds the money).

Russian arms provide security in the era of U.S. unilateralism

Civilian aerospace is not the only area where Russia performs its technological and scientific magic. In the post-9-11 world where countries feel increasingly threatened by US unilateralism and disregard for international law, high-grade Russian military hardware provides affordable and reliable security. Russia is today the world's second largest arms exporter despite fact that it still has only a fraction of the development and manufacturing capital available to its rivals. Exports have increased 15-fold between 2002 and 2005.

President Putin has said that he sees Russian arms sales not primarily as a source of income but as a way of spreaading Russian influence. Indeed, major arms sales in today's world are intricate politico-economic deals, requiring a minimum level of confidence between the buyer and the seller in each others' political intentions. Countries who fall out of favor with their suppliers, like Iran after the fall of the Shah, or Venezuela today, find themselves unable to procure spare parts or upgrades for their complex weapons systems. Putin's Russia with its non-confrontational international relations based on respect for the law and national sovereignty, is seen as a more reliable arms supplier than the US.

There is probably no greater indicator of this than that Russia and China are now each others' main arms trading partners, as well as being strategic allies, after having lived for decades with their nuclear missiles pointed at each other. Equally if not more surprising is the fact that Russia has become Israel's second biggest partner in military technology, and among the clients of Russo-Israeli military products is none other than NATO member and long-time fatihful US ally Turkey, which has canceled an order for 142 Bell-Textron attack helicopters in order to consider the Kamov-Israeli Aircraft Industry KA-50, one of the best attack choppers in the world ( the best being the KA-52).

Unlike the US, which sells offensive weapons to notoriously aggressive states like Israel and Pakistan and has just opened the gates for nuclear proliferators by rewarding India for ignoring the nuclear noproliferation treaty while simultaneously preparing to bomb Iran for attempting to violate it, Putin's Russia has been careful not to deliver any weapons systems that are liable to upset the arms balance in a given area. Iran and Syria have both been promised short-range air defense systems, but their requests for offensive missiles and long-range air defense systems that can be used offensively have been denied.

Putin's Russia is welcome everywhere: Who's the evil empire now?

Even more astonishing than the emergence of Russia as a potential major arms supplier to NATO's second largest member military, that of Turkey, is the unprecedented military/strategic closeness between the two historical enemies, as demonstrated by the first-ever friendship visit by the Russian Black Sea fleet to Istanbul a few days ago, in preparation for joint maneuvers.

A major reason for the sea-change in the traditionally pro-US Turkish military was of course the detention of its special forces in northern Iraq by the US military on direct orders from ziocon lunatic Paul Wolfowitz, who had so lost his sense of reality that he thought he could "punish" a NATO ally by taking military action against it troops - all because the Turkish parliament refused to allow US troops to use Turkish soil to stage their illegal invasion of Iraq. Putin saw his chance to improve relations with Turkey and made several gestures, such as exchanging intelligence about the Kurdish PKK terrorists and remaining neutral on the Cyprus issue. This prompted the Turkish prime minister, despite being an Islamist with a natural affinity for the Chechen separatists, to express interest in joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose aim is to keep the U.S. out of Central Asia - alarmed Western commentators are calling it "the NATO of the East." Best of all, the Turkish PM apparently liked Putin so much that he invited Russia to join the Islamic Conference as an observer. Russia's Sergei Ivanov went so far as speaking of "strategic partnership."

Putin's ouvertures to Teheran, formerly a sworn enemy of Russia, were even more brilliant and astounding. He didn't sell the ayatollahs anything that they could use either to make nukes (the Bushehr power station is just window-dressing to make their enrichment plants look innocent) or to threaten their neighbors, or even to seriously deter an attack by the US and/or Israel. His conciliatory efforts during the whole crisis were appreciated by everyone. Yet, when the bombs stop falling and the dust finally settles, Putin willl be the only winner, since Iran will coming knocking at his door to rebuild its military and infrastructure, a realtionship that could very well result in a visit by the Russian fleet to Iranian ports, and why not, to a permanent Russian presence on the Straits of Hormuz - for the first time in history.

As a familiar face at the Islamic Conference, Russia could rightly hope that its military presence would not be objectionable to Iran's neighbors.

Uri Avnery has more to say on Russia's brilliant moves in the Middle East:

Uri Avnery,"And the Great Game goes on"

The surprises don't stop there. Putin's masterful chess play has produced such unthinkable results as Sino-Soviet military exercises on a grand scale (whereas the expression "Sino-Soviet" was only used to describe border clashes or the threat of nuclear armageddon in the very recent past), the first-every joint military exercises with the Indian navy (on top of a heft military shopping list), and the Russia-ASEAN summit, to which the US was emphatically not invited, the ziocon lunatic John Bolton having caused more than enough trouble in the region.

Oil and gas diplomacy vs gunboat diplomacy

Russia's hydrocarbon exports now exceed Saudi Arabia's but unlike the bedouin oil sheiks, Russia knows how to use its resources to its political advantage. Not by engaging in futile and self-defeating oil embargos, but by throwing the energy-hungry a lifeline, and by using the same lifeline to hang its enemies, as it has done the russophobic Orange crooks in Ukraine.

Here is an example:

David Wall, "Keeping Everyone Happy: Putin raises Stakes in Asia," Japan Times, Feb 2, 2005

Where the lunatic John Bolton spent his time rattling sabres at China, backing North Korea into a corner where it turned into a dangerous loose cannon, and unwittingly forcing Japan to remilitarize and prepare to go nuclear (something that the US has been trying to prevent since 1945), Putin has used Japan's money to solve Japan's energy problem as well as those of North Korea and China, and make a bundle in the process.

With its former territory Ukraine, which contains so much of Russia's energy, defense, and industrial assets, in the hands of CIA-backed russophobes, Putin has again performed pipeline magic by sealing a deal with Germany for an undersea Baltic pipeline that bypasses russophobic Ukraine and Poland, and another one with Turkey, which will make Turkey the energy hub it has sought to become ever since the construction of the ill-fated and vastly expensive Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline began. Putin has turned the tables on his enemies and delighted his clients once again. The US plans to colonize Central Asia and exploit its hydrocarbons by bypassing both Russia and Iran have been sidelined, with all the bold and enticing - for the Central Asian producers - energy moves coming from Russia and its state-controlled energy monopolies.

The "Grand chessboard:" Putin proves that chess is a Russian game

"The Grand Chessboard" is the name of a much-quoted book by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the russophobic Polish aristocrat who, in accordance with his "arc of crisis" thesis of using fundamentalist Islam to defeat Communism, engineered the Islamic fundamentalist Jihad in Afghanistan, assisted the rise to power of Khomeini in Iran, as well as provoked the catholic worker rebellion in Poland (all those Gdansk shipyard workers are jobless now). Brzezinski, as Carter's national security advisor, Council of Foreign Relations member, Trilateral Commission heavyweight, and Brookings Institute alumnus, was the architect of a grand US plan to conquer Central Asia and thereby to control all the surrounding countries, from Russia to the Middle East to the Far East.

So how is the Great Game going? The central piece, Afghanistan, is a hopeless quagmire for its occupiers, despite the fact that the jihadis who are fighting them receive no sponsorship from any foreign power, no $60 billion CIA funds, no Stinger missiles, no air cover from the Pakistani air force, nothing but the opium money from the narco-warlords that the U.S. reinstalled in their feudal domains.

The supporting pieces in Russia's Central Asian "near abroad" like Khazakstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, have joined the Shanghai Cooperation Council after briefly flirting with the U.S. and NATO. Uzbekistan actually withdrew from GUUAM, the NATO-aligned anti-Russian alliance grouping it with Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, whose name has now been truncated to GUAM. Kyrgyzstan was the scene of a "tulip revolution," where 2000 kung-fu fighters headed by strongman
Bayaman Erkinbayev toppled the pro-Russian government, an event heralded in the Western wurlitzer press as a "people revolution." Next door in Uzbekistan, an attempted coup engineered by a US-sponsored leader of the IMU Islamic terrorist organization was foiled, leading to widespread condemnations in the Western media. After the dust had settled, the US was kicked out of Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan and the new Kyrgyz leader, while at first demanding that the US do the same there, settled for increasing the rent for the base 100 times and inviting the Russians to set up an even bigger base 30 kilometers away.

Russia's "near abroad:" More near than abroad now

So what about the main trouble-makers installed by the US on Russia's doorstep - what it calls its "near abroad?" I'm talking of course about Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, Poland.

Despite all the hypocritical outcries of the "American Committee for Peace in Chenchnya," composed of the same ziocons who campaigned for the illegal invasion of Iraq, and who sponsor and fund the wahhabi terrorists of the Caucasus, Putin's policies of installing a friendly Chechen regime and forming Chechen forces to penetrate and dismantle the terrorist networks are bearing fruit. These day the only big news to come out of the region is about Russian anti-terrorist operations and the consolidation of the Russian-friendly Chechnyan leadership.

The "new, improved, democratic and liberal" Georgia of the US-educated brash "Rose revolutionary" Shaakashvili who gate-crashed the parliament in 2004 has settled down into a pattern of poverty, corruption, mafia shootouts, and a dictatorship with a distinctly fascist coloration (as reported by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group). Russia's main concern is to prevent Shaakashvili from starting a war, which he increasingly seeks in order to get the NATO backing and the state of emergency that he sees as his regime's only hope of survival.

Ukaine's "Orange revolutionaries" have of course become a joke for Russians and a huge embarrassment for their Western backers. Not only has Yushchenko managed to bring Ukraine's booming economy, which was growing at 12 percent and the stock market at 200 percent under his "corrupt" predecessor Viktor Yanukovych, to a shuddering halt, but his coalition and his "Orange" ideals have evaporated into thin air. His main ally the $11-billion gas oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko has jumped ship over a falling-out of thieves over the renationalization of a huge steel complex, which she wanted to hog for herself. Feeling isolated without the backing of Tymoshenko's fortune, her UNA-UNSO neonazi shock troops, her private army of former Spetznaz commandos, and the politicians eating at her trough, Yushchenko capitulated to Yanukovych and appointed a pro-Russian prime minister as well as pledging to halt his discriminatory and antagonistic policies against Russian-speaking East Ukrainians.

Having stolen and sold over 8 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas stored in Ukraine's Soviet-built storage tanks, the orange crooks were finally confronted with Gazprom's bill, which they are of course unable to pay, the economy being the shambles that it is, or rather that they have turned it into. The bill will come due in the parliamentary elections this month, where pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych's party is the favorite. The "Orange" nightmare of Ukraine is almost over.

Conclusion: Russia has fought another Stalingrad and won.

Putin's greatness is that he snatched the success that Russia enjoys today from the jaws of total collapse, to which the corrupt Yeltsin, puppet of the US/zionist-backed oligarchs, had brought Russia. $300 billion disappeared from Russian wealth into foreign bank accounts, principally those of the oligarchs whose "rights" the hypocritical West is defending today. The amount of Russian intellectual property - technology, defense secrets, art, etc. - plundered during the Yeltsin era is incalculable. What Putin and his small team of patriots from St. Petersburg have done by stopping and defeating the billionaire oligarchs, and then turning the country back to its path of greatness, is nothing short of the miracle of the Red Army's victory over the Nazi juggernaut.

The resurgence of a powerful Russia, its economy growing at 8-9% a year, its strategic command over Eurasian energy resources and routes unassailable, its military and political alliances widening daily, and its own economy and politics impregnable to US and NATO meddling, is becoming a growing support for peaceful nations at danger of being targeted by US or zionist unilateralism, as well as for all those who wish to see a multipolar world without US hegemony.

Back To Top

Task Force Urges Bush To Be Tougher With Russia

The Washington Post

Mon Mar 6

0