US IS PLAYING WITH ( NUCLEAR) FIRE

 

The US and NATO are fighting the wrong war in Ukraine. WWII nostalgia is evident in the preference of the CIA and Ukrainian services for clandestine operations, for sabotage missions inside Russia and for assassinating Vladimir Putin.  Unfortunately for the American strategists, Russia is not Nazi Germany, Putin is not Hitler and such tactics have the potential to ignite a nuclear war. Two things are clear, however : Putin is not bluffing and the Russian elite is very angry with the US and NATO.

 Stephen Bryen has recently published an article in Asia Times ,  describing how Western spy agencies led by the CIA,  present in large numbers in Ukraine, are hoping to provoke  regime change in Moscow by assassinating Vladimir Putin and other Russian political and military leaders.

According to Bryen ,  NATO cannot start a fully fledged conventional war with Russia due to the fact that after 2 years of war in Ukraine, the allies have emptied their weapons and ammunition depots. This , however, is no excuse for resorting to acts of state terrorism such as the assassination of leaders of the Russian military , a practice that will not solve the conflict, but make it exponentially worse. 

In doing this, the US's  international reputation as a superpower is reduced to that of the Islamic terrorist networks it fought with for the last two decades. In other words, the terrorist actions of American agencies may find a positive echo in the West, but not outside of it. The situation is not much different indeed from the actions of Islamic terrorist organizations  like Al Qaeda or ISIS,  which are appreciated only in the Islamic world, not outside of it.

If the CIA wants to have as dubious a reputation as Islamic terrorist networks, that's their business. For those in the know, however, the fact that the US and its allies resort to such terrorist actions is a clear indication - as in the case of Islamic terrorism - of their inability to wage a conventional war with Russia, having to resort to  asymmetric war strategies. To be sure, this is a sign of the alliance's weakness, not of its strength .

" Americans are impatient by nature. We want quick solutions, even to complex problems. That makes killing a foreign leader seem like a good way to end a war. Every time we have tried it, though, we’ve failed — whether or not the target falls. Morality and legality aside, it doesn’t work. Castro thrived on his ability to survive American plots. In the Congo, almost everything that has happened since Lumumba’s murder has been awful."  (  Stephen Kinder, Politico, 2022 )

 Theoretically speaking, the purpose of any foreign intelligence service is to protect abroad the interests of the state that finances it. It isn't to help launch missiles aimed at Putin's office or to attack his car, as it already happened in 2018 . Such reckless actions reminiscent of WWII - which did not work then and will not work now- have the potential to endanger the lives of millions. It is not clear how the CIA will be able to protect the inhabitants of New York or Washington from a nuclear attack by the Russians, in case the assassination of Russian leaders is successful. What will happen this time around to the buildings of the Pentagon, the White House or the financial center of New York if or when the Russians retaliate ? 

These  are questions that  should be answered by those responsible in an inquiry into the CIA's operations in Ukraine, which should be initiated by the US Congress. Anything less could lead to a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions in history .

The Avoidable War

It's not that the US lacks competent experts. It's the fact that nobody in Washington heeds their advice.

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The war in Ukraine is still raging 16 months after its start. Sadly, a totally neglected aspect of the conflict is being deliberately brushed aside by mainstream American politicians and military brass alike.

I am referring to the fact that for the United States this was very clearly an avoidable war. It took Russia 8 years and two abortive Minsk agreements to decide to put a military stop to NATO's designs in Ukraine, which were perceived by Moscow as an imminent threat to its security. During all this time no major American diplomatic initiative took place to lessen the tensions in the region and to avoid the outbreak of a war. This, to be sure, is a first in the diplomatic relations between the US and Russia.

Connected to all this is the fact that for almost a decade the bureaucrats in charge of framing American foreign policy have ignored their own experts' warnings about the high probability of an outbreak of hostilities with Moscow. 

Thus, James W Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department during the Obama administration, explains in a recent article how the current impasse was reached:

 "For years, the U.S. national security establishment was warned by voices from the right, left, and center that America needed to change its policy toward Russia. It was warned that Russia could not be defeated in their near abroad. It was warned that Kiev—by launching an “anti-terrorist” campaign against its Russian speaking citizens—was recklessly antagonizing Russia. It was warned that making a semi-deity out of a corrupt tool of Ukrainian oligarchs was an obvious mistake. It was warned against conflating the interests of ethno-nationalist far-right factions in Kiev and Lviv (and their allies in Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius) with U.S. national interests. It was warned to take President Putin’s numerous protestations against NATO expansion seriously. Yet America’s bipartisan ruling elite decided to ignore these warnings, and the results speak for themselves."

This geopolitical entanglement in Europe is not only unnecessary for the US, but it has the potential, if unchecked in a timely fashion, to lead to an all-out nuclear war between America and Russia. 

The wisdom of reversing course in Ukraine and starting peace negotiations with Russia is clear for all to see. Alas, to date no one can claim that the current US administration has the required statecraft skills and political wisdom to come up with a negotiated solution.

The Weaponisation of the International Criminal Court

When it comes to crimes against humanity in Ukraine, one should start looking for culprits in one's own backyard.

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As American readers might recall, Daniel Ellsberg had been a leading military expert working for Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara during the Vietnam war. He became famous after leaking to the press secret DOD memos which proved to the public the fact that four US presidents lied regarding the extent of the US military involvement in Vietnam.

Ellsberg has recently commented on the war in Ukraine, accusing British prime minister Boris Johnson and US State Department officials of crimes against humanity there:

[Ellsberg] added that the alleged decision of Boris Johnson and other Western leaders to dissuade Volodymyr Zelenskyy from signing a peace deal in April 2022 was a 'crime against humanity':

"Zelenskyy and Putin essentially had an agreement, were very close to an agreement, returning to a prewar status quo in Crimea and the Donbas, in relation to Nato and everything else, but the US and the British, Boris Johnson, went over and said, 'We are not ready for that. We want the war to continue. We will not accept a negotiation.' I would say that was a crime against humanity. And I say that, with all seriousness, the idea that we needed to see people killed on both sides in order, quote, 'to weaken the Russians', not for the benefit of the Ukrainians, but for an overall geopolitical strategy, was wicked."

The weaponisation of the ICC in The Hague in order to serve the US's hegemonic geopolitical objectives makes a mockery of the Court's latest ruling targeting Vladimir Putin. 

As the Ellsberg interview demonstrates, the originators of crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine could be found much closer to home, working for administrations of countries claiming to be global champions of democracy.

POLAND, THE USA'S TROJAN HORSE IN EUROPE

 The Polish premier attended an economic forum in Bucharest last week and proposed to Bucharest an economic and military alliance between Poland, Romania and Ukraine which is both anti-West and anti-East. Curiously, the project has many similarities with the political philosophy espoused in the inter-war period by the fascist Iron Guard in Romania. 

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 After the refusal of Germany and France to participate in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US decided to split the EU in two: "old Europe", who wishes to avoid American military adventures and wants strategic autonomy, and "new Europe", made up of new NATO members such as Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and maybe Bulgaria.

Already in 2008, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Poland and Romania seconded the US proposal to include Georgia and Ukraine in the alliance. France and Germany opposed it, in the name of preserving the strategic balance in Europe. A few months after the summit in the summer of 2008, Georgia attacked Russian troops in Ossetia and Abkhazia, which led to war with Russia.

Now the Polish prime minister, who attended an economic summit in Bucharest last week, has launched the project of forming a "strategic triangle " between Poland, Romania and Ukraine, which would represent an economic counterweight directed against EU companies supported by Brussels, as well as a military one, directed against Russia.

It is obvious to me that this absurd project is also inspired by Americans, the "divide and conquer" strategy being obvious. The Polish Prime Minister hopes that this alliance, which would have 100 million members, will be able to economically counterbalance  230 million Western Europeans and, militarily, 180 million Russians.

A. Severin, former Romanian foreign minister, reached similar conclusions: "This is how the war started by the USA in Ukraine is directed not only against Russia, but also against the EU (German Europe), as well as the attempts to form, within the EU or across the borders of the EU, in association with actors from its eastern neighborhood, dissident groups, fundamentally German-sceptic, all of which have as a driving force Poland, with its aspiration to the status of the first European power. Such attempts, of American inspiration and vigorous Polish support, are the Bucharest Format 9 (nine states from the east of the EU, strategic partners of the USA), the Three Seas Initiative (Baltic, Black and Adriatic) and, now, the "Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian confederal strategic triangle".

The Romanian Prime Minister, General Ciuca, did not object to his Polish guest's project. Ciuca fought in Iraq in 2004, and is therefore a man the American hegemonists view as safe. However, in the alliance of this Latin country of 20 million inhabitants with two Slavic states counting together 80 million inhabitants, Romania would be the disadvantaged partner.

Furthermore, as a Latin state, Romania's place is next to France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, not next to Poland and Ukraine. In other words, alongside the states of western Europe, not its neighbours from the north or east.

Do the Americans and the British REALLY understand the nature of the Ukraine war ?

Western war propaganda has all but obscured the nature of the conflict in Ukraine. To better understand it, two recent analogies could help Americans and the British avoid the traps used by the Ukraine war spin doctors to pull the wool over their eyes.

The analogies of TG Carpenter from TAC and that of Anatol Lieven between the war waged by Russia in Ukraine and the American civil war or the potential secession of Scotland are both pertinent.

For Americans, TG Carpenter's analogy between the American civil war and the one in Ukraine is the most appropriate. Both the civil war and the one in Ukraine have in common their fratricidal character. Neither Russia today nor the USA in the 1860s can be classed as great military powers. What they have in common is their solid industrial base and human resources, superior to those of the enemy.

Anatol Lieven's analogy between Ukraine and Scotland is more relevant for European politicians and the public from the EU states, but especially from Great Britain, whose meddling in the conflict is incomprehensible, considering Scotland's own challenge :

" In the centuries since Russia captured Kiev from Poland in the 1660s and Peter the Great defeated the Swedes and their Ukrainian Cossack allies at Poltava in 1709, Ukraine has been in one way or another under Russian rule. As Scots from the British Empire, ambitious Ukrainians entered the Russian and Soviet bureaucracies and armies, and Ukrainian writers and filmmakers worked in Russian." (A.Lieven, Time )

In the case of the American civil war, England and France avoided intervening militarily on the side of the southerners, but they helped with weapons  and credits, in a manner similar to the financial and military equipments support offered by NATO to Ukraine today. Both the USA in the 1860s and Russia blocked the ports of their enemies. European powers did not intervene militarily in support of the Confederates because " The Confederate states were incapable of winning enough consecutive victories to convince European governments that they could sustain independence." ( US Office of the Hisorian, State Department ) Sounds familiar ? It should ...

The fact that the USA is fully involved today in the Russian-Ukrainian war is due to a totally erroneous understanding of the American national interest on the part of the current officials in Washington. In reality, the strategic and military interests of the USA are not and have not been harmed in any way by the war in Ukraine:

Who Are Ukraine's 'Palestinians' ?

 Last year in April I stumbled upon a project by Zelensky called the "Big Israel" which went largely overlooked by Western media until last week. A few days before the one-year anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, National Interest published an article by Leon Hadar about this outlandish project for post-war Ukraine.

Zelensky's " Big Israel" project advocates emulating Israel and building Ukraine up as a militarised nation, continuously at war with its internal and external enemies, i.e. mainly its Russophone citizens and Russia. Hadar considers that Zelensky's project has merit and he explains why:

'But the notion that Ukraine will try to be “like Israel” may not sound so farfetched. For instance, like the Jewish State, Ukraine enjoys wide public support among Americans and their representatives on Capitol Hill, who believe that the Ukrainians, like the Israelis, are “like them,” while the Russians, like the Arabs, are the detested “other.”

And, indeed, like in the case of Israel, Ukraine’s efforts to position itself as a natural ally of Washington, in both interests and values, has been accepted as a diplomatic axiom by powerful American foreign policy forces. Both Republican neoconservatives as well as many “conservative nationalists” on the political Right, and by liberal internationalists who dominate the thinking among Democrats, including the one currently occupying the White House, have come on board.'

One does not have to be an expert in international relations to realise how absurd and illogical such a project is. It is, however, revealing for the thinking that dominates  Kiev"s current political elite. For them, Western Ukrainians have much  in common with the Jews of Israel, whereas the Russophones from the Donbas region are viewed as Ukraine's equivalent of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and Ramallah.

The division of Ukraine along ethnic lines was envisaged first during the 1990s by Samuel Huntington, a valued National Interest contributor and leading national security expert. In truth, since Kiev refused the Minsk agreements, there just aren't any other solutions than the separation of the Donbas region inhabited by Russophones from the rest of Ukraine. 

This separation should not necessarily have caused a war, if the civilised parting of Czechia from Slovakia was any guide. Unfortunately, the Kiev regime knowingly preferred to emulate Yugoslavia's example in dealing with its internal ethnic strife. Worse still, it chose to involve the United States, which obviously saw an opportunity to advance their hegemonic agenda against Russia.

The project shows Zelensky and the other ministers or advisors of Jewish descent from his cabinet are trying to position Ukraine as America's 52nd state, immediately behind Israel. By putting an equal sign between Russia and the Arab countries in the Middle East and by forcing the Russophones of Ukraine to accept Kiev's rule, Zelensky hopes to position Ukraine geopolitically as the US's main outpost against its foe Russia in Europe.

The Jewish minority in today's Ukraine is minuscule. This large country cannot become a Jewish ethnic state in Europe, like Israel is in the Middle East. Indeed, Europe as a whole is unlikely to be fertile ground for the creation of such a huge US military outpost - potentially nuclearly armed - in its midst. Nor is Russia, with its old military tradition and its nuclear arms, willing to play the role of the Arabs for the US and Ukrainian military establishments. 

Although so far Zelensky's lobbying in Washington has proved lucrative, with the $130 billion already received, Ukraine is simply too big and situated in the wrong geopolitical region to be endlessly supported financially by the United States, as is the case with Israel. Last but not least, the Russophones from Donbas have demonstrated since 2014 that they resolutely reject the part of "European Palestinians" in this tragedy, directed by Zelensky on behalf of the Kiev regime.

AN EPISODE OF COLLECTIVE MADNESS

 For a number of years now, especially since 2014, I have been trying hard to understand the rationale behind Western officials' actions in Ukraine and NATO expansion. 

Alas, despite all my efforts, I haven't been able to find any logical argument in favour of the US and EU's presence in Ukraine or for the rabid Russophobia fanned by their media. 

A few weeks ago, however, I finally realised that I was approaching the whole thing the wrong way. 

What makes Western officials act the way they do is not based on sound strategy or reason, but it is instead the expression of an acute form of collective madness. 

This is best encapsulated in an ancient dictum, which I would like to quote below:

"Quos Deus vult perdere Prius Dementat"

JFKennedy would have certainly agreed with my harsh assessment of today's Washington political elite's actions . In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis from 1962, this is what he had to say about the conduct of relations between nuclear powers :

 "Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world. "  

UKRAINE IS A GEOPOLITICAL BLACK HOLE

 The readers of my blog can be forgiven if they are still under the illusion that what the world is doing in Ukraine is safeguarding the independence of a newly-minted country against the aggression of Russia. On a superficial level this seems indeed to be the case.

In fact, we should look at Ukraine as the ultimate - man-made - geopolitical black hole. 

Such a place sucks up the resources of neighbouring countries, human or material, leading to their economic and even physical destruction. This black hole has a sick form of nationalism at its centre of gravity, which is aggressive, domineering and intolerant with other ethnic groups happening to live within the same borders. 

The Ukrainian black hole has a history of 31 years and it started after the implosion of the USSR with Kiev's refusal to allow ethnic groups at its fringes to revert to the countries they were severed from, by Stalin or his successors.

The saga continued with the involvement in the region of the US, which since 2008 started sponsoring Kiev's intolerant nationalism in earnest, with a view to weakening, destroying or partitioning its old (new) foe, Russia. 

By 2014, all the essential elements that led to the creation of the Ukrainian black hole were in place, culminating with the Maidan coup against the Yanukovich government.

Gradually, the new geopolitical black hole, an initial creation of western services, went from bad to worse. From 2014 to 2022, the US, EU and Russia all fought a losing battle to use and control the political centre of this black hole. The Russians lost first, hence the Ukrainian intervention and their annexation of Donbas. This however does not mean that the Americans or the EU won, and this is why:

The peculiarity of a geopolitical black hole is that it eventually becomes uncontrollable. Its political leaders develop an agenda of their own and bleed their sponsors dry, financially, militarily or economically. Thus, it is enough to consider the 60+ billion dollars spent only by the US so far this year, or the economic disaster currently affecting Europe from London to Berlin, to grasp the danger of the existence on the edges of the continent of the Ukrainian geopolitical black hole.

Like Serbia before it, Ukraine will not ultimately end up in control of the territories - inherited from the USSR - it now claims as its own. We now know that the Serbian black hole was also a man-made one, having been the creation of a freemasonry bent on destroying the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires. The Serbs ended up controlling parts of the former Austro-Hungarian territories like Croatia and Slovenia, but they lost it all some decades later. An identical fate is in store for Kiev's ultranationalist regime, although I suspect its territorial losses are coming much sooner, if the Russian annexation is any guide.

The task of politicians everywhere is to resist being sucked into the Ukrainian black hole - an occurrence that would have disastrous consequences for world peace. 

The Kiev regime has no intention to run a normal country. It refuses to correct the errors of its ways and negotiate an end to the conflict. This attitude, however, is in perfect accordance with the essential characteristics of a geopolitical black hole, whose gravitational pull towards generalised conflict is very hard, if not impossible, to resist.

Has the US Turned into USSR II ?

 As it often happens, a state entity fighting an enemy for too long runs the risk of ending up just like it. In my professional view as an historian, this seems to be more and more the case of the United States, especially after the implosion of its Cold War archenemy, the USSR. This unfortunate tendency is clearly visible with regards to Ukraine. 

Initially created as a republic by the bolsheviks, Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 with the ideological help of Orest Subtelny, a Ukrainian-American historian. 

At that time, Ukraine automatically incorporated into its national territory large areas belonging to Hungary, Romania, Poland and Russia. During the second world war these areas and their populations had been forcibly severed from the states to which they belonged by Stalin, who until 1941 acted as Hitler's ally. Large territories like Crimea  which was Russian or Bugeac which was Moldavian , were also arbitrarily gifted to the Soviet republic of Ukraine during the fifties by subsequent Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who happened to be Ukrainian by birth.

After the disappearance of the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires, a host of new nations appeared in Central Europe and the Balkans, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Romania doubled its territory through the addition of former Austro-Hungarian (Transylvania, Bucovina) or Russian provinces (Moldova), overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Romanians.

In a bizarre twist of events, however, the implosion of the Soviet Union was not followed in Eastern Europe by a reallocation of territory according to the ethnicity of inhabitants, with a few exceptions. Instead, an ultranationalist Ukraine replaced the Soviet Union in the region, steadfastly refusing since 1991 to allow territories like for example Transcarpathia or northern Bucovina to be reunited with Hungary or Romania, originally dispossessed by Stalin. The fact has created continuous ethnic tensions between Kiev and the Russians, Romanians and Hungarians forced to live under a new, Soviet-style yoke, that of the current Ukrainian regime. The presence of the 14th Russian army in Tiraspol also ensured that Moldova would not be reunited with Romania, as it was the case before 1940.

Romania's case is probably the most dramatic of all. Thus, if in 1918 after the Versailles Peace Treaty its total territory was 296,000 square kilometres, this was diminished by Stalin to 237,000 sq.km. - a situation kept unchanged even after the fall of communism and of the USSR. In Ukraine, Romania has close to one million inhabitants living in Bucovina and Hertza. After 1991 the Romanian parliament timidly tried to ask Ukraine to revoke the territorial theft perpetrated by Stalin, to no avail. In fact, independent Ukraine decided to keep all its neighbours' territories which had been gifted to it by the communist dictators, and even victimised the hapless ethnic minorities unfortunate enough to find themselves within its borders.

As the sole superpower left after 1991, the United States chose to endorse the theft of territories perpetrated by the Soviet communists, together with the Nazis, against the nations of Central and Eastern Europe mentioned above. In principle, the inviolability of borders is guaranteed by international law. However, the State Department should not pretend - in Ukraine's case - as if its current borders are its natural established borders. Almost all of Ukraine's neighbours have legitimate, long-standing territorial claims against it. In overlooking these facts, the State Department is enforcing in that region the policies of the defunct Soviet Union, to the detriment of its own NATO members. 

This anomaly was highlighted on Wednesday by former Romanian foreign minister, the philosopher Andrei Marga, who is a sincere and committed supporter of democracy. Marga also has a preference for monarchy as a form of government. Now, everyone could agree that being a promoter of democracy and being sympathetic to monarchism does not make Marga a supporter of Vladimir Putin, who is staunchly opposed to both. Still, that is exactly the accusation levelled at the Romanian philosopher in the wake of his declaration. 

The State Department and the US polity should be well advised to think twice before unleashing the media dogs against a well-meaning and highly informed Romanian opinion leader. After all, Marga has done more for the promotion of democracy in Eastern Europe than many American intellectuals I am aware of. Assisting Ukraine to hang on to territories which do not rightfully belong to it is morally wrong and geopolitically dangerous, as current events amply demonstrate.

To be sure, Mr. Marga is neither pro-Russian nor anti-American. This episode can better be understood in all its complexity by comparing two American Democrat presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Joe Biden, who both left their mark on the history of Central and Eastern European nations.

Woodrow Wilson led the United States at the start of American hegemony in world affairs. Joe Biden today presides over the demise of American unipolarity, but without displaying the traditional Anglo-Saxon skill and restraint exercised by Great Britain, for example, when it lost its global pre-eminence. 

Thus, if one hundred years ago President Wilson enforced the principle of peoples' self-determination, the current US president inveighs against the right of the Russian population from Donbass to hold referenda concerning their future, among other things. In so doing, he forces the US to go against its own principles in the conduct of international affairs, and to act more as a de facto heir of the defunct USSR, "prison of nations and ethnic groups". 

It should come as no surprise, for example, that Soviet-born and educated communist nostalgics are not only welcome in the USA these days, but even proposed by the current Administration for positions of great trust within key federal institutions.

Subtelny's Imaginary Ukraine

 Orest Subtelny's efforts to present Ukrainian history as separate from Russia's were, sadly,  an exercise in futility.

Back in the 1970's, the West was mired in stagflation. By the end of the decade, however, a new Polish pope arrived in the Vatican and Margaret Thatcher took over as prime minister in the United Kingdom. To reverse the economic decline, a new doctrine - neoliberalism - was adopted, first in the countries of the Anglosphere and in subsequent years all over the Western world. The main tenet of the new economic philosophy consisted in the wholesale privatisation of state-owned enterprises, a measure deemed to make them leaner and more profitable. 

Moving forward to the 80's, the problem was that of finding new markets for the consumer goods that Western industries still produced in abundance. The natural choice was Central and Eastern Europe which, however, was still part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Taking advantage of a leadership vacuum until the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm in Moscow, the Vatican and the CIA fatally undermined the communist regime in Poland. The new Soviet leadership was caught - by the events which continued to unfold in Central Europe - in the middle of a series of economic and political reforms that ultimately failed. Accordingly, Gorbachev agreed to end the USSR's domination of Central and Eastern Europe, which culminated in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While Western politicians were cultivating Gorbachev and his wife assiduously, behind closed doors the British and American services were busy plotting the demise of the USSR. Thus, in 1988 two books were published practically simultaneously, authored by Jacques Rupnik, a Czech, and a Ukrainian-American historian, Orest Subtelny. 

Rupnik's book, The Other Europe, was aiming to sell in the West the necessity of doing away with the Iron Curtain, and the acceptance of Soviet satellite countries from Central and Eastern Europe as full members in the European family of nations.

Subtelny's book, Ukraine: A History, was published in an effort to offer Ukrainians - who never had a history separate from that of the Russian or Soviet states - a history of their own. The objective was clearly geopolitical.The book was aimed squarely at Moscow's leadership over the Ukrainian territory.

For British and American intelligence officials, Ukraine was considered "the linchpin of the Soviet Union", which would collapse without it. This is the reason why Subtelny's history book was the main propaganda tool in these efforts, although from a scientific point of view its value is highly questionable. Indeed, no other nation in Europe was born only on the basis of two disparate events, a brief independence spell in 1919 and the Stalin-engineered Holodomor (the famine that affected Ukraine between 1932-1933). The book was nevertheless hailed as the best history of Ukraine and was published in Ukrainian as early as 1990, before the country declared independence from the USSR (August 24, 1991).

For the neutral historian, the difficulty of presenting Ukrainian history as separate from that of Russia is simply enormous. For centuries, Ukraine was part of the Russian state and later of the Soviet Union. Ukrainians were not in any way disadvantaged by their association with the Russian state, on the contrary. Quite a few Ukrainians achieved positions of great responsibility within Russia and subsequently in the Soviet Union, one of their own, Nikita Khrushchev, becoming head of state. A history like Subtelny's, therefore, could only artificially claim that Ukrainians developed a separate national consciousness and that they would be better off founding a state of their own, to be integrated within the West. 

And herein lies the key as to why Subtelny's book was commissioned, written and aggressively promoted in the first place. The 130 million inhabitants of Central and Eastern European countries, former Soviet satellites, had become attractive enough for Western economic interests, but the addition of another 44 million Ukrainians and a very large territory would be even better. At any rate, for those involved in the planning, if this artificial nationhood were to take off, and it would then lead to the dissolution of the USSR, so much the better.

In later years, Subtelny himself became very unhappy with the nation-building efforts his history book helped ignite in Ukraine. He died in 2016, disillusioned with the way things turned out in the end. His is a cautionary tale for all other historians eager for recognition who agree to participate in secret service-sponsored nation-building efforts in foreign lands, allowing for their considerable skill and scholarship to be misused in this way.

Operation BARBAROSSA II

 The second Barbarossa operation against Russia in Ukraine is again led by Catholics. Unlike the original invasion of the Soviet Union from 1941, Russia is not facing a huge allied army, as the US and UK are maritime powers. Traditionally, such countries resort to sanctions and finance others to do the fighting and dying for them, but the outcome is essentially the same from the intended victims' point of view. The novelty of the plan is to make Russia appear as the aggressor and to set up the Jews of Washington and Kiev as scapegoats when it will all unravel.

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When Hitler decided to invade the USSR in 1941 he called his invasion "Operation Barbarossa". His selection of the name of Frederick I - a known Catholic emperor and crusader from the 12th century, also known as Barbarossa - was indicative of the true Catholic nature of Hitler's invasion. 

Like his imperial predecessor, Hitler fancied himself as a Catholic crusader, in a fight against the godless Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union. He enlisted as allies the fascist Italian regime, Hungary and Romania and convinced Finland to join the invasion. The Western Ukrainians and the Balts also joined in, thinking the days of the Soviet Union were numbered and that the Russians could not resist an invasion force of some 4.5 million soldiers. 

The moral crusading has been picked up once again today by two of the most prominent countries of the Western alliance, led by 2 Catholics: US President Joe Biden and British prime minister Boris Johnson. Their crusade, which started by stealth in 2014 in Ukraine, is against the emergence of Russian nationalism, which threatens the global elites of the West. Being at the helm of maritime countries, the two leaders are waging war by proxy, by using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder and a Jewish president, Zelensky, as their point man. We can safely call this new Catholic conflict with Russia "Operation Barbarossa II", since the ultimate aim of the war in Ukraine is the same as Hitler's in 1941: Russia's defeat.

The Ukrainians, while they believe they are fighting for and animated by their own distinctive nationalism, are only being celebrated in the West as foot soldiers for globalism. "( Christopher Roach, The Chronicles Magazine) )

" One reason Zelensky has become so popular in the West is because he serves the globalist agenda. Zelensky is Jewish—a small ethnic and religious minority in Ukraine—and doesn’t even speak Ukrainian fluently. But Zelensky’s outsider background makes him a symbol for the deracinated, multicultural Ukraine of the future that Europe would prefer. All across the transformed Europe of the future, blood ties to the land and the preferences of the people will count for very little. "

The two Catholic leaders mentioned above have apparently learned from Hitler's errors and they are trying hard to avoid them this time around. While most of us know that the Catholic Church is not about God or preserving the Christian faith, but about world domination, we are able to grasp why a far-removed country like the United States under this particular president is now financing a war on Russia's doorstep (a Protestant US President would never have contemplated such actions). Indeed, for the first time in its long history, the global aims of the Catholic Church and those of the American state, not to mention those of the world's global corporations, happen to coincide. 

The US president tries to justify his involvement in the Ukraine conflict by portraying it as a crusade on behalf of democracy and a fight against autocracy. However as a Catholic he is a member of a church that is traditionally deeply anti-democratic. The Catholic Church has supported almost all dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, from Italian fascism and Spanish francoism to the fascist and military dictatorships of Latin America. Accordingly, a Catholic US president is the least qualified person to organise a crusade for democracy anywhere in the world, let alone in Eastern Europe.

Today's Western crusaders have enlisted the forces of Ukrainian ultranationalists and neo-Nazis and have even cooked up a method of hiding this fact by promoting as president and prime minister members of the Ukrainian Jewish community. This was deemed as the perfect cover for the largely fascist nature of the military and financial support extended by the West to Ukraine. Again, the usual allies are present, with Finland and Sweden anxious to join in as well.

Like operation Barbarossa I, operation Barbarossa II is doomed to fail. When that happens it will eventually take down its promoters and backers with it. Our collective concern should now be, however, to minimise the human casualties on both sides and to try to prevent any type of revenge actions, or even a second Holocaust.

A Blatant Case of Groupthink

 

"Participants in those critical decisions, Janis found, had failed to consider the full range of alternatives or consult experts who could offer different perspectives. They rejected outside information and opinion unless it supported their preferred policy. And the harsher the preferred policy -- the more likely it was to involve moral dilemma -- the more zealously members clung to their consensus " (Kathrin Lassila,Yale University)

 * * *

Nato's latest folly is its readiness to accept 2 new members, Finland and Sweden, from northern Europe. In today's world, it appears American neoconservatives cannot accept the institution of neutrality when it comes to fighting countries like Russia or China. All westernised countries have to line up behind the US, as Nato's leader, and share into its outlandish plans.

This time around the issue is not the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and not even the present war effort in Ukraine. The obsession of the neocons is bringing down the current regime in Russia. This is why another round of Nato expansion is underway, not because it makes any strategic sense whatsoever. It is hoped that by expanding Nato to Sweden and Finland and by encircling Russia completely, the Russian people could be persuaded to oust Vladimir Putin and cease their resistance to American global hegemonism. This, to be sure, is not a military objective but a highly political one. Using Nato to achieve this goal only illustrates how toxic this alliance has become for the world as a whole.

Nato and G7's latest decisions concerning the war in Ukraine clearly indicate that Western decision-making is afflicted by groupthink. Groupthink has been known to lead to serious and sometimes catastrophic policy errors. Given the current strategic situation, trying to use Ukrainians to push back the Russian army and to regain lost territories like Crimea and Donbas is not only unreasonable, but also extremely dangerous from a military point of view. In the groupthink dynamic afflicting western policymaking, especially at Nato level, it's the American neoconservatives imposing the decisions, with all other western political and military leaders having to comply, however dangerous the outcome might be. 

In fact, promoting the fall of the current Kremlin government - taking into account the unresolved situation in Ukraine - would most probably bring to power a military regime in Russia. Such a change would not in any way favour the western alliance, I would say quite on the contrary. In that case, the war in Ukraine could only intensify and there would be a clear danger that the conflict would expand into neighbouring countries currently assisting Kiev with weapons and humanitarian aid. In other words, when it comes to regime change in Moscow, western leaders will be well advised to be careful what they wish for. Their decisions might have exactly the opposite result to what they intended, that is bringing Russia to its knees.

This is not to say that Vladimir Putin cannot do more to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. As no one in the West or in Ukraine has the slightest interest in restoring peace, the ranks of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine should probably be beefed up to the level required in order to bring the military conflict to a successful conclusion. This, in my view, is unavoidable, however regrettable it might be for Russians, Ukrainians and their families.

What Inspired America's "Drang nach Osten" Drive

 Democracy promotion is used by the current US government to hide the crypto-Nazi nature of its policies in Eastern Europe. This policy is actually emulating Athens' Delian League democracy promotion drive within allied city-states from the V-th century BC. In Ukraine, the US is unfortunately protecting a repressive regime with ultranationalists and neo-Nazis calling the shots.

* * *

Arnold Toynbee was right when he argued that civilisations are not destroyed by external forces, but disappear from history by committing suicide. Five hundred years since its emergence, this is exactly the stage that Western civilisation is going through right now.

It is interesting to note that both the rise and fall of this civilisation have been determined by Catholic leaders: the papacy and the kings of Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century; respectively, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Boris Johnson today.

It is difficult for many to understand what has happened to the US and UK-led West. Why on earth has it come into conflict with Russia? The misunderstanding is justified. Its latest policy towards Russia is not rational, but pure suicide. To quote a famous American general, the Ukraine conflict is "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy".

We can begin by recalling that the fundamental characteristic of the Western civilisation has been expansionism, either regional or global. Anyone who opposes such expansionism - economic, military, religious, or political - automatically becomes the sworn enemy of the West's leaders of the moment, whether we are talking here about the Spaniards, the French, the English, the Germans or about Americans today.

The French and Germans had mostly continental expansionist ambitions ("Drang nach Osten" was the official policy of the Third Reich and targeted Russian territories). The Spanish and Portuguese took over specific regions in the New World, Africa or Asia. The British colonised North America, but also Australia and New Zealand, and conquered India. All these past expansionist expeditions were supported in one way or another by the Catholic Church, which exponentially increased its fortunes and the number of believers.

In our own century however, US expansionism has global ambitions, although outside of the Western Hemisphere it has managed to impose itself only to a limited extent economically, but not from a military or political point of view, despite NATO's large membership. Americans have always been expansionists, their geopolitical thinking being dominated by what historians call the "frontier mentality." They managed to impose themselves on the entire North American continent and in Latin America in the 19th century, but the 20th century was not as favorable for them. In Europe, American expansionism was limited by the Soviets to the west and parts of the continent's centre. In Asia, the United States was stopped by China in its expansion into the Korean Peninsula and by Vietnam or Afghanistan in Southeast or Central Asia. 

The disintegration of the USSR and especially the separation of Ukraine and Georgia, unfortunately gave American neoconservatives the false impression that they could revive - in new forms - Nazi Germany's expansionist policy to the East, this time with them in control. This mega-error is now on the verge of destroying the entire Western civilisation, annexed as it is via NATO to the American locomotive. This despite many American political leaders realising that the era of Western expansionism is over and that its current chances of success are zero.

However, as America and Britain are now led by the abovementioned Catholic leaders, the Western alliance is making full use of age-old Catholic statecraft tools. To illustrate this, think of the massive use of private military contractors who currently fight to implement the US's global agenda, just as Spanish royalty used the conquistadores in the territories of the New World. This transfer of knowhow from the 15th century to the 21st cannot be but Catholic-inspired. These days, the American version of the conquistadores are the bosses of American PMC's, such as Blackwater or Titan, active in all theatres of operations, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Ukraine. This industry is now worth  240 billion dollars. The PMC's largely escape the control of US military authorities, being in the employ of the State Department or the CIA . People like Erik Prince, for example, are the modern-day incarnations of Pizarro or Cortes.

It is a tragic development that the West's current leaders prefer civilisational suicide - because that is what is going to happen if the US continues to fight Russia in Ukraine - instead of pursuing a rational policy of retreat to the Americas and of renouncing global ambitions. However, humanity as a whole may ultimately benefit from the downfall of Western civilisation, as ordinary citizens are fed up with the tragedies caused by the successive imperialisms of the West.

THE TRUTH ABOUT UKRAINIAN NAZIS AND ZELENSKY

 We should not be surprised at the great tolerance shown by American and British political leaders towards Ukrainian neo-Nazis. In fact, both fascism and Nazism are political ideologies belonging to Central European Catholics :

"worth noting, however, that most people who wore the uniform of the Wehrmacht were documented members of one church or another, and had “Gott Mit Uns” (“God With Us”) embossed on their buckles. Nor should we forget that the Vatican signed treaties with both Nazi Germany and the Italian National Fascist Party; and while Hitler may have been influenced by Nietzsche, his name does not appear once in Mein Kampf. Hitler did, however, include the following: “And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.” Underscoring all of this is the religious conceit of totalitarianism: that the will of one man, the source of all power and authority, must be worshiped and adhered to as it pervades the whole structure of society." (Jared Marcel Pollen)

 Until recently, states such as the US and the UK have been led almost exclusively by Protestant or neo-Protestant political leaders, who are well-known opponents of fascism. Moreover, with the exception of neoconservatives, Jews in the Anglo-Saxon world support either left-wing or conservative, mainstream parties.

 Unfortunately for all of us, however, in recent years the political leadership in America and England has been taken over by leaders who are Catholic, and they have no qualms about cooperating with neo-Nazi political forces, such as those in Kiev. This is why the denazification process pursued by Vladimir Putin is felt by them as a personal insult.

* * *

In the 2019 election campaign, Zelensky had promised that if he is elected president, he will make peace in the Donbas and implement the Minsk II agreement.

He quickly changed tack after the head of a neo-Nazi party threatened him that if he negotiated with the Russians, he would be hanged from a tree on Kiev's main street. Zelensky promoted this person adviser to the defense minister and has adapted to working with the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. He has even handed out decorations to some of them in parliament.

The Western media and decisionmakers are aware of the real situation, but are actively hiding it from the public by repeating the fact that Zelensky being Jewish, he cannot possibly be associated with neo-Nazis . The trick has worked for the time being, although most Western journalists know that the oligarch Kolomoisky, another Jew, was the financier of both Zelensky and the Azov battalion. Zelensky therefore cynically uses the suffering of his own family during the Holocaust, and his ethnic background, to hide from the world the fact that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis have significant political weight in Ukraine.

In the attached article , Maurice Richards, a senior US police officer, also blames the fact that the CIA has been cultivating America's relationship with the Ukrainian Nazis for 75 years, despite the past and present horrors they have wrought. More recently, in the training camps run by the neo-Nazis, young people are being indoctrinated to kill Russians.

Welcome to Europe's "Big Israel" !

updated: April 21, 2022

Before writing this post, I have waited for more than a week to see how the piece of news I am about to share with you is reported in the mainstream Western media. But, surprise: it wasn't. 

Zelensky's plans for Ukraine after the war are extremely significant for Russia and the EU alike, and as such they more than deserved to be brought to the attention of the Western public. After all, the EU and American citizens are regularly being called upon to finance Ukraine's war effort and to put up with the almost 5 million refugees in need of their help. As it happened, however, this piece of news got published only in the main Arab media, followed by the Jewish press from Israel or the US. 

Here goes. Commenting on Ukraine's future after the war, Zelensky intimated that the country is going to be remade - from a securitary point of view - in Israel's image. As he puts it, Ukraine is not going to be liberal as the rest of Europe, nor an authoritarian country like Russia. Instead, the "New Israel", as Zelensky calls it, is going to be a state in which armed military personnel patrol the streets, the restaurants, the supermarkets, cinemas and so on, in a constant state of alert. Zelensky does not want to sacrifice territory for peace and, given his future plans for Ukraine, one can now understand why: the "New Israel" would need its own version of the Gaza strip - the Donbas region - and its own Palestinians (the Russophones) to provoke, boss around and eventually kill when they rebel. 

At this point in time, Zelensky is not mentioning the possibility that his new state would acquire nuclear weapons, but the fact is implied in the comparison made with the state of Israel. What we are given to read between the lines is the fact that his new Ukrainian state will be at odds with both its eastern neighbour Russia and, ultimately, with the European Union, whose liberal values he says he has to reject. We can also safely assume that such a state will exponentially increase instability in Eastern Europe and beyond, and that it will be in a permanent state of war with one or more of its neighbours (especially with Russia), like Israel has been for most of its existence as a state. Apparently, American experts working for the Atlantic Council are even willing to offer a "road map" to make such a project come to fruition.

What is really hard to gauge at this time is how the Ukrainian elites react to such a mad project. However, taking into consideration the big number of ultra-nationalists and outright neo-Nazi organisations in the country, I am inclined to believe that the New Israel project could find favour with them, as long as the US - like in Israel's case - undertakes to finance Ukraine's ongoing military expenditures. 

In case Zelensky succeeds in getting his project off the ground, Ukraine is not likely to end up like a Big Israel, however it may very well become an European version of Pakistan. Such an outcome would follow the law of unintended consequences and this does not bode well for Russia or for Ukraine's neighbours. In fact, in such a case, Moldova could easily become a version of Kashmir. Its possible invasion by Ukraine cannot be altogether ruled out, the presence of the Russian 14th army in Transnistria being an excellent justification for overrunning this militarily weak country. Like Pakistan,  Ukraine would also stand a very good chance of becoming a permanent haven for extremist organisations worldwide, further contributing to destabilising EU member states. It follows that European countries trying to assist Ukraine in its war efforts have to date made all the wrong choices in this conflict. The only beneficiary of such a development would of course be the US, bent as it still is on global hegemony.

The "New Israel" project proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that all those European powers assisting the Kiev regime with money and weapons are therefore ignorant of the consequences, and that they are helping build a type of state in Ukraine that nobody in their right mind would be able to tolerate, least of all the Russians.

It is high time, therefore, to seriously think whether Europe and, indeed, the world can really sustain the existence of Ukraine as a political entity. In my opinion as an historian, I think that the Ukrainians have proven over the last 30 years that regardless of what other gifts they might be endowed with individually, collectively they cannot be entrusted to have and run their own state without posing huge risks to European and world peace. Accordingly, Western politicians should take a hard and serious look at the "New Israel" project, because with it Ukraine's nation-building process has come full circle and it is not at all what anyone expected.

 

The West's Last Crusade

 The  possible disappearance of Ukraine from the political map of Europe is the least of the problems facing the international community of states. We are all at a make-or-break junction in world history and not only Russia, but also the 'West and the rest' have to take a stand and help out to bring about a fairer, multilateral world order. Anything less could mark the end of civilisation itself.

Before tackling the West's last crusade happening under our own eyes, I feel we should appreciate Vladimir Putin for trying to reverse western expansionism in his neighbourhood and for pointing the conflict back to the ones responsible for promoting it for ages. 

The fact that we are all only a few steps away from all-out war against Russia as well as from nuclear catastrophe is by no means accidental. As matters now stand, the United States is led by a Catholic president and its House of Representatives by a Catholic speaker. We all know that Catholics have been Russian Orthodoxy's implacable foes for centuries. In fact, as Natalia Narochnitskaia explains in one of her papers "it is ridiculous to explain 600 years of unprovoked expansion to the Western fringes of Russian Orthodox lands by the 'divisions of Poland' and 'czarism' [...] It was the West using the spear of east European Catholics that was consistently moving eastward from the 10th to the mid-20th century. The territory of Russia was consistently pushed further away from the cradle of the Russian statehood."

As the balance of power in Europe shifted in the 18th century in favour of Russia and older powers like Poland, Sweden and Turkey declined, the importance of the Russians increased manifolds. Unfortunately, "civilised" Europe found it very hard to accept such geopolitical shifts ever since, and insisted on labelling Russians as "barbarians", just as Zelensky and president Biden do now. 

Nor was the strategy of alleviating east-west tensions by involving Russia in various European coalitions successful in the longer term. As the same Natalia Narochnitskaia points out, "a larger part cannot be integrated by a smaller one, which goes a long way towards explaining the centuries old rejection by the West of Orthodox Russia.[...] Russia is the vehicle of Byzantine legacy the West hates so much". 

Most of today's American political leaders have been influenced in their views of Russia by Zbigniew Brzezinski's depiction of Orthodox Slavs as culturally inferior to other ethnic groups in the world. In the current environment, this enables Zelensky and Ukrainian ultranationalists to reject peaceful compromise with Russians and advocate their indiscriminate killing by the local population instead. 

NATO's relentless eastwards expansion to the borders of Russia, therefore, fits a centuries-old tradition. This latest crusade is now led by a small number of Slavic nations that have joined the alliance in 1997, aided and abetted by an American Catholic president who is catastrophically ill-prepared for the job. Since 2014 as vice-president, Joe Biden has been in direct control of the upheaval in Ukraine and the subsequent takeover of the Kiev government by Ukrainian ultranationalists, most of whom are Catholic themselves. The conflict in Ukraine has however been presented to a hapless Western public as a fight for democracy against autocracy. It is hoped, in the view of American planners, that such a false narrative might eventually convince misguided Europeans or even Americans to fight the Russians directly in Ukraine in the near future. 

The expansion of the West using Europe's crusading Catholic Slav nations, like Poland, is not the sole explanation for Nato's expansionism in the last 20 years. The other ingredient contributing to today's explosive situation is the US military-industrial complex (MIC), a traditional major provider of American jobs. The expansion of Nato has been instrumental in assisting US industries working for the complex to sell military hardware to its new member countries, which have become its captive customers. 

To date, only president Obama has tried to reduce the size of his country's MIC and to cut defence budgets. He is also credited with starting a series of brainstorming sessions among the military with the objective of finding downsizing solutions. Soon after he left office, however, president Trump allocated more money to the military and, using the current tensions in Ukraine, president Biden increased the US defence budget yet again.

For American citizens, the US is a safe and secure country defended by its geographical position in between two oceans. The average American finds it hard to understand why the US should pay for Europe's defence via Nato, or why it should take on the obligation to fight on behalf of any Nato member that might come under attack, for reasons that have nothing to do with the interests of the United States. Still, by continually depicting Russia as a menace to American democracy or as the barbaric aggressor of innocent, democratic Ukrainians, the Catholic lobby in the US and Europe - which also includes the Vatican - has succeeded in preparing the Western population psychologically for war with Russia.

Problem is, Catholic pundits and political leaders are acting like a dangerous bunch of idiots. Russia is not only a huge and militarily powerful country, but it is also the main nuclear power in the world today. Short of eradicating it from the map, the US has no other solution but to reach an acceptable compromise with this former foe and learn to live with it peacefully. This, of course, involves first and foremost giving up Catholic-inspired crusades against this country.

As FDR advised during the forties, the US and Russia should try to become in some ways more like each other. For its part, Russia did try to become more like the United States, in adopting a market economy. It is now up to the United States to ditch liberal democracy in favour of electoral democracy and to start accepting the fact that Orthodox Christians around the world are in no way inferior to Catholic Christians.

On a wider, Western scale, the Catholic faith should finally be reformed in ways that would prevent it from interfering in international relations between states the way that the Church has in the past, and still does today. In order to defang it, it would be a good idea for the Italian state to abolish Vatican statehood, transform the Vatican into a national museum with the proceeds going to the Church's many victims, and give it 44 hectares to move its headquarters somewhere else in Italy, away from Rome itself. This way the Catholic Church would become like any other Christian denomination and hopefully act accordingly.  

We have to keep in mind that all modern day political leaders who have organised crusades against Russia were Catholics, from Napoleon, Hitler and Mussolini, to Joe Biden and Boris Johnson today. The current arrangement with the Italian state which recognized in 1929 the sovereignty of the Holy See within the Vatican was a major error. As Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church has thrived for centuries by giving religious backing to all European powers in their quest of empire-building, from the Spanish and the Portuguese in the New World to the Austrians and French within Europe. In truth, the Catholic Church has been responsible for keeping the flame of imperialism and crusades alive for most of its existence, all while benefitting handsomely from the leaders and countries it supported in their quests. By revoking the Lateran Treaty from 1929 and by moving the Catholic Church head office outside Rome and getting this church out of international politics, the Italian state would make a huge contribution to world peace.

As matters now stand, the Catholic Church has a big share of responsibility in fuelling American hegemonism around the world and trying to cash in on it. I advocate this course of action not out of hate for Catholics, but in the interest of avoiding a devastating nuclear war, which Catholic crusaders are unfortunately ill-equipped to prevent.

The Language of Losers

Political losers can easily be recognised by their propensity to level against their opponents the most far-fetched accusations.

 Up until now, one could rarely see in international politics leaders who debase themselves by calling their opponents names. But this is exactly what is happening lately, starting with Joe Biden's almost daily slur offensive against Vladimir Putin, and on to Zelensky in Kiev who calls the Russian soldiers "animals" in order to rob them of their humanity.

The most outlandish accusation Biden has levelled against Putin so far was to brand him a "war criminal", for the excesses attributed to the Russian army in the field, as if the Russian president personally instructed the soldiers to attack and kill civilians in Ukraine. 

To be sure, I have never heard anyone call George W. Bush a war criminal for the excesses made by the US army in Fallujah or Abu Ghraib, for example. Moreover, the United States refuses to be a member of the International Criminal Court and its military has quite a reputation of engaging in summary executions in all the wars it initiated or participated in, or in rapes even in peacetime.

The real butcher in Ukraine is actually Zelensky. From the outset he called on Ukrainian civilians to carry arms, produce Molotov cocktails and attack Russian troops and tanks. He encouraged women to bake and serve poisoned cakes to Russian soldiers. In so doing, Zelensky has transformed Ukrainian civilians into combatants. As such, he made them legitimate targets of the Russian army. How can any leader sacrifice his country's population this way ? In fact, Zelensky has armed the whole population because from day one he had the intention to provoke a high number of civilian casualties, in order to turn around and accuse the Russian army of war crimes. For Zelensky, the events unfolding in his country are everybody else's fault but his own or his team's. 

What we are dealing with here are two losers who cannot accept that their plans to bring Russia to its knees have backfired. One can recognise losers in domestic or international politics fairly easily. They usually launch outlandish accusations against their opponents and try to make public opinion believe that their targets are psychopaths, or war criminals and the like. Actually, all politicians resorting to such personal attacks have lost or are about to lose the allegiance or respect of their own electorates. Their handling of disputes, both in domestic and in international politics, is usually disastrous and leads to serious trouble for their own country or their allies.

The test of true leadership, however, also means having the guts to assume one's own shortcomings and errors and not blame these on one's opponents. 

Russia's Bismarckian War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is in many ways puzzling, not only for the average European but also for seasoned historians who have failed so far to recognise or admit to its nature. This is so because, living as we are in a post-Cold War world and with a distant Atlantic power acting as the military leader in Western Europe, the actual nature of this war has largely been hidden from sight. 

As we all know, there are many types of wars. Hegemonic wars, like the ones France and Germany fought during the 19th and 20th centuries; straight wars of conquest involving the acquisition of real estate at the expense of one's neighbour, which was the main type of war during the Middle Ages; wars of extermination, such as the ones fought by the Americans against the indigenous Indians, or by the Spanish against the Incas; there are also civil wars, which are wars within the boundaries of one country which can provoke significant loss of human life, as it happened during the war of secession in the US during the 1860s. In Europe, we also experienced the ravages and devastation provoked by religious wars, which afflicted the continent for 30 years and ended with the Peace of Westphalia. Finally, there are small-scale wars such as border wars, which mainly involve countries in Asia and which do not represent a major threat for international peace.

The war in Ukraine is exceedingly rare and we can call it a Bismarckian-type war. Such a war takes place within a group of countries that do not only neighbour each other but also share the same culture or language and are part of the same ethnic group. The Germans experienced such a war between Prussia and Austria in 1866. 

A strongly militaristic Prussian state, built around Berlin, wanted to eliminate a second pole of power within the German world, Catholic Austria, which was dividing the German world and was making it impossible for them to unite into a more powerful political unit. This situation led to the " German war of brothers", or Deutscher Bruderkrieg.

The political leader at the time was the well-known Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. He spilled German blood during his war against Austria, but succeeded in his drive to unite most Germans around Prussia and remained to this day one of the greatest political figures in German and European history. (His legacy in international affairs was the advice - unfortunately not followed by his successors - that in order to have peace in Europe, a "good treaty with Russia" was paramount).

Like today, Bismarck's war was fought after the European continent experienced a long period of peace which followed the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. The similarities do not end here. Prussia, like Russia, was no fan of liberal democracies, but rather an authoritarian state managed with an iron fist by its emperor and its chancellor. Like Russia in the nineties, Prussia had been  affected by the 1848 revolutionary wave in Europe - similar to the 1989 revolutionary wave - which sought to bring to power liberal-minded governments on the whole continent and generally democratise European political life. 

The Slav world also oscillates between two religious poles and two nations that would like to be considered as leaders. One is Russia, a militaristic Slavic "Prussia", which has weathered many national crises and defeated two major enemies in modern times (the French and the Germans). 

The second is - since the election of Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy - Poland. Its contribution to bringing about the fall of communism during the eighties, the implosion of the USSR, and its accession to NATO have rather adversely affected the minds of Polish politicians. Their hope is that by initially building Ukraine up as a client-state which is to be ultimately led by the Catholic element in that country, they would in time be able to challenge Russia together, for the leadership position of the Slav world. This is the main reason why Poland, which is militarily weak, is the most strident advocate of NATO intervention on behalf of Ukraine. But not being able to fight the Russians by themselves, the Polish leaders believe they have the cunning to push the Alliance to fight the war with Russia for them.

Russia felt that its primacy within the Slav world was being challenged by the Poles, who enlisted not only Ukraine's help but that of the Czechs and Slovaks as well, and in the end was forced to initiate a Bismarckian-type war in order to quell such plans. The Russians correctly assumed that such inter-Slav rivalries were a godsend to the advancement of Washington's unilateralist agenda, and to the final triumph -via Russia's defeat- of the neocon unipolar world project with America on top.

The only major difference now compared to Bismarck's times, therefore, lies in the existence of an extra-European superpower, the US, who has tried hard over the last twenty years to remain the sole leader in world affairs after the disappearance of the bipolar world. Still, it would be hard to believe that Americans would risk an all-out nuclear war with Russia, which is one of the champions of a multipolar world, in order to enforce their claim. For all practical purposes, by assisting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, the US and the EU are playing the role France played in 1866 in supporting Austria diplomatically. That, to be sure, will not make Ukraine win this or any other war against Russia.

 

A Manifesto to the Ukrainian People

 The horrendous suffering in Ukraine prompts me to speak to you from my heart, as a concerned neighbour, but also as a Romanian-born historian, fully aware that your country is the scene of a tragic confrontation with your much larger neighbour Russia. 

When you started your nation-building process back in 1991, your leaders could have taken a close look at the way the Romanians built their state 163 years ago. Unlike Ukraine, Romanians had lived under Ottoman rule and started their unification process in 1859, in a much more agitated international environment than that of the 1990's. The leaders who built the nucleus of contemporary Romania were, however, learned, skillful and dedicated to the task of building a united and independent state. The state-building process was completed in 1918 at the end of the first world war, when Romanians living under Austro-Hungarian and under Russian rule were united in a single state for the first time in their history. 

Alas, 22 years later Romania was forced to give up Moldova and northern Bucovina to the Soviet Union and northwest Transylvania to Hungary, following the conclusion of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. 

After the 1946 Peace Congress in Paris, Romania recovered its lost territories in Transylvania, but not Moldova and northern Bucovina, which continued to be incorporated into the USSR. 

With very few exceptions, the Romanian nation-building process, which took some 60 years to achieve, was guided by outstanding and committed political leaders who tried to limit loss of life on the battlegrounds of Europe to a minimum. When Romania, like Ukraine today, faced a similar kind of predicament in 1940, it was enough for Stalin to send an ultimatum to the Romanian government and the politicians of the time gave in to his demands. I can assure you that they did not do that out of cowardice, but simply because the Romanian army was no match for the Soviet army. Romanians have always believed that dying for a cause is commendable, but also that sacrificing one's life stupidly is a mistake. You might be told by your leaders that you are braver or smarter in battle than the Romanians, but this is just not the case.

Nowadays, Romania is - as you know- a stable country in southeastern Europe and a member of both NATO and the EU. This was made possible by the fact that Romanians are part of the larger, Latin group of countries, like France, Spain and Italy, but also because Romania does not have a common border with Russia, having allowed Moldova to become an independent republic which acts as a buffer state between Russia and Romania. For Romania that has meant a loss of some 34,000 square km and a population of 3 million people, 20% of whom are Russian speakers.

Sadly, I think Ukraine's misfortune lies in the fact that it has not been blessed with competent and selfless political leaders. Your leaders should have been able to select the best possible administrative formula to run the country so that it behaves as a non-threatening neighbour to Russia. Although the key to Ukraine's independence would have been its strict adherence to a neutral status, like Moldova's, after 2014 and the Maidan upheaval Ukraine's leaders preferred to seek an alliance with the United States, a distant superpower from some 8,000 km away. To make matters worse, various Kiev governments refused to offer the inhabitants of the Donbas the autonomy they were asking for, choosing to fight and kill some 14,000 of them over the last 8 years. 

The situation worsened after the election of Zelensky in 2019. The changes that were made to the Ukrainian constitution enshrined as national objectives the country's adherence to NATO and the EU. Moreover, the new national security doctrine of Ukraine, adopted at the same time, stipulates that the country must try to recover Crimea from Russia and annihilate the armed resistance of the people in the Donbas. 

This explosive mix of mistakes prompted the Russian army to mobilise for almost a year on Ukraine's border starting with 2021. The Kremlin's hope was that the Zelensky government and its American backers will agree to scrap the NATO membership provision in the Ukrainian constitution and that they will apply the Minsk II agreement. 

Time and again, however, the diplomatic negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US have led nowhere. Both the US and the Ukrainian governments proved intractable during negotiations and refused to even acknowledge Russia's security concerns at its western border with Ukraine. Ultimately, Russia was left with no alternative but to invade Ukraine, which is - I am convinced - the last thing it wanted to do. 

Even now, with the Russian army in the country and 4 million Ukrainian refugees at the borders, the Zelensky government refuses all meaningful talk or compromise to end the conflict. The heroic resistance of Ukrainians is instead being used by Zelensky in order to become what Andriy Yermak said recently in London: "a leader of the free world". This objective, to be sure, shows that Zelensky's oversized ego is impairing his judgement and that he is not sound of mind.

I wish to remind you that Zelensky is but a TV actor and Andriy Yermak a film producer and that their lack of experience in government means that they do not realise how destructive it is for Ukraine to fight Russia. As you have probably noticed, however, the leaders of the 30 countries that compose NATO do realise it, and that is why they will not indulge Kiev's requests for a no-fly zone or additional tanks and heavy military hardware. These leaders are both experienced and protective of their populations, unlike Zelensky, Yermak & co. 

Unhappy with this, Zelensky is now actively trying to undermine their leadership by addressing the Western public directly by videolink in the street, "instructing" citizens to pressure their governments to give him what he wants. This, to be sure, is an unheard-of attempt to undermine the governments of nations which provide humanitarian help for Ukraine and shelter for its refugees.(The only other known example of this was when Stalin mobilised Western factory workers during the Great Depression against their bosses and political leaders, but in more subtle ways)

As a concerned neighbour, I find this behaviour to border on madness. It is now up to you, the Ukrainian people, to individually and collectively try to get Ukraine out of this mess. For a month now, you have proven your valour on the battlefield. It is now time to stop the destruction and the deaths by putting your weapons down. Unlike the Ukrainian army, I am sure that the Russian soldiers won't shoot you in the kneecaps or resort to castration if you do. 

For the time being, Ukraine is used by the US and the UK as a pawn against Russia. Both the American and the British leaders are trying to deflect the anger of their citizens from scandals at home, by focusing their attention on the tragedy in Ukraine. They also supply more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine in order to prolong the war. As one American politician put it, the US is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, if necessary. Now, you would agree with me that this geopolitical battle between nuclear powers has nothing to do with the Ukrainians, and no Ukrainian should have to die for it either.

The Zelensky government's advertised plans to "defeat Russia" and make Ukraine the arbiter of a new security architecture in Europe are both unrealistic and outlandish, and no Ukrainian soldier or civilian should lose their life over them, simply because that will not happen. 

My advice to you is to cut your losses short and refuse to play in Zelensky's latest film "How I Became Leader of the World". From my part I can assure you that a majority of Western politicians are quite fed up with Zelensky's antics, even if they humor him because they feel a lot of compassion for the ordinary Ukrainian people.

From where I stand, the way your leaders went about building the Ukrainian state was wrong and led to catastrophic consequences not only for you, but for our entire region and for Europe as a whole. Please stop and rethink it all, taking into account the interests of your neighbours as well.