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.

* * *

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.

ENLARGEMENT MASKS NATO'S FAILURE

It should be obvious by now that NATO cannot survive the Ukrainian episode in its current form. It is likely to be reorganised as a maritime alliance of Eurasian peripheric or littoral states and coordinated from Washington instead of Brussels.

* * *

The countdown has begun to the long-delayed dissolution of NATO, which should have taken place 20 years ago .

If it had folded at the right time in history, NATO would have remained in our collective memory as the only politico-military alliance that managed to maintain peace in Europe for 50 years.

Since 2000, however, when it fell into the hands of neoconservatives, NATO has turned into an offensive alliance, imitating the Delian league model of 2,500 years ago. The organization's relentless propaganda and its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have failed to impress Russia, which decided to end its expansion inbordering regions which were formerly part of the Soviet state, such as Georgia or Ukraine. China is not afraid of NATO either, although the leaders of the organization have recently announced that it will from now on involve itself in possible conflicts in the Indo-Pacific area.

Essentially an alliance whose core consists of US-led maritime and peripheral powers relative to  Eurasia, NATO has decided to hide its failure in Ukraine by expanding into Finland and Sweden. It should be noted that both these countries and member states such as Greece - whose existence the Americans have suddenly started to acknowledge in the last 2 years - are in turn situated in peripheral and coastal areas of Europe, on the Baltic Sea and the Ionian & Aegean seas respectively. (Toynbee considers them representatives of wilted civilizations).

After the dismantling of NATO in its current form, which after what happened in Ukraine is no longer hypothetical but more and more of a certainty, the Anglosphere will try to conclude substitution alliances - as Boris Johnson has already done recently - with other peripheral and/or coastal states of Eurasia, according to the "birds of a feather" principle.

Such an alliance policy direction was suggested by the geopolitician Spykman in 1938 and is called the "Rimland theory". One can only wish them well.

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.

NATO is the Delian League 2.0

 During the 19th century, the US elites' emulation of classical Athens' slave-owning democracy led to the American Civil War. In the 21st century, the imitation of Athens' military alliance by NATO is about to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. If things are to improve, Americans should overcome this propensity to emulate political and military models from 2500 years ago.

***

Between 479 and 431 BC, the Greek world was militarily and economically dominated by Athens, which during the wars with Persia formed an alliance of Greek city-states, becoming its leader for 50 years.

The members of the alliance were obliged to contribute money, ships or soldiers to the military operations decided by the Athenians. Athens' competitors in the Greek world were those who had joined the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. We can more easily understand the conflict between the two leagues if we make an analogy - quite common during the Cold War - with NATO, organized and led by the USA, and the Warsaw Pact, the organization led by Moscow.

Many scholars claim that the real purpose of the formation of the Delos League by the Athenians was in fact the defeat of Sparta and the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League. After 460 BC, Athens' efforts led to its transformation into an informal empire, undeclared as such, a situation comparable to the transformation of the United States into a global hegemon after 2000.

No historical analogy is perfect, but this one applies quite well to postwar American developments. Both Athens and the United States  created politico-military alliances after major conflicts - with Persia in the case of Athens, with Nazi Germany in the case of the United States - namely the League of Delos and NATO, and they maintained and expanded these even after the danger which led to their creation disappeared.

Both states had the same democratic organization of society, the same trade-based economic orientation, the same security needs (the safety of maritime trade routes). In both cases, we are dealing with two informal empires, to which those states who needed military protection joined voluntarily, not through Roman-type conquests. At least initially, the members of both alliances enjoyed economic and military advantages which flowed from them. To enforce compliance, Athens and the US in some cases placed military garrisons or bases in allied states whose allegiance was deemed problematic.

In both the Athenian and the American cases, the hegemon insisted on the adoption of democracy by all members of the alliance and on contributions in troops, ships or money (as now in Ukraine) to joint defense or expansion efforts. Over time, however, the leaders of the alliance became tyrannical, seriously violating the sovereignty or prosperity of member states, which generated centrifugal tendencies. 

The similarities do not end here. In the case of both Athens and the United States, we are dealing with two maritime superpowers, less capable of winning wars against continental states, as illustrated by the defeats of Athens in Egypt or Sicily and of those of the United States in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Both the Athenians and the Americans made a fatal error of over-extending the geographical reach and the membership of their alliances. (Incidentally, UK's Boris Johnson - a great admirer of Pericles - is also a staunch supporter of Nato's expansion in Ukraine.)

The use of the Athenian politico-military alliance model by the US began in full force after 2001, when the leadership of American foreign policy was monopolized by the neoconservatives, led by Blinken, Nuland&Kagan . The latter's father, Donald Kagan, was a history professor at Yale and the author of a 4-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. It seems, therefore, that the father's influence on his son was profound. American neoconservatives became fans of the Delos League model, as well as followers of the theories of the causes of war authored by Thucydides, whose writings were misinterpreted in such a way as to make a military confrontation with China and / or Russia appear inevitable.

Likewise, the Athenian model largely explains NATO's change of strategy after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Just as Athens actively contributed to the disbandment of the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and then expanded, the United States decided after 1997 to expand and include into NATO former members of the Warsaw Pact in Central and Eastern Europe. Instead of being abolished after 1989, NATO instead became an offensive alliance and an essential military tool in perpetuating American global hegemony.

Classical Athens had a competitor who was capable of defeating it: Sparta. Until recently the US had none. Since 2014, however, the United States has acquired its own "Sparta"...

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.