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. "  

George Kennan on Ukraine

Until a few days ago when the specialised American media, i.e. Foreign Affairs magazine, published George F. Kennan's views on Ukraine independence, I had been unaware of his views on the matter.

What is striking, however, is that my opinions on Ukraine and Kennan's own assessment are remarkably similar. Thus when two distant, unconnected specialists with a good working knowledge of Russia and Eastern Europe independently arrive at remarkably similar conclusions, there is a very good chance that such opinions are closer to the realities on the ground than current US policy on Ukraine.

Take Ukraine independence, for example. George Kennan believed that it was next to impossible to draw an ethnic division line between Russia and Ukraine, as their language and culture are very similar. For him, separating Ukraine from Russia was as outlandish as trying to separate the American Corn Belt from the rest of the United States.

Consequently, as early as 1948 he advised US policymakers against  supporting Ukrainian drives for independence. In case independence happened on its own, as it did, Kennan cautioned the US to refrain from actively supporting it, since Russia was never truly going to accept such a development. The two were so culturally similar and economically intertwined that an independent Ukraine - he warned- could only be sustained by force of arms.

To his mind, none of the current US policies towards Russia, which are meant to "weaken" it, would have made any sense whatsoever. He staunchly maintained that the West needed a strong and functional Russian state in the region for balance and security reasons.

Unfortunately, his visionary assessment of possible developments in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine independence and potential conflict with Russia, has been completely ignored by current US policymakers. The results of such ignorance speak for themselves.

In the US Russophobia Rules

 The leaders in Kiev have so far been able to milk the US and UK governments of hundreds of billions of dollars by simply taking advantage of the virulent russophobia that is deeply entrenched in the education of English-speaking elites.

***

In 2014 Paul Starobin, formerly Businessweek's Moscow bureau chief, wrote an article about the russophobia affecting elites in the Anglosphere. In it, Starobin traces the origins of the current russophobia displayed by American political and intellectual elites to the UK.

During most of its modern history, Russia was less developed than Europe when it came to standards of modernity. The country was relegated to the status of "other" by Victorian political and intellectual elites, during the competition between Britain and Russia for colonial expansion in Asia. Books like George Stoker's "With the Unspeakables", written in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, gave further impetus to anti-Russian feelings within Britain and its far-flung territories.

In his 1950 book "The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain", historian J.H. Gleason concluded that British antipathy towards Russia was the brainchild of the imperial-minded political elite in Britain, worried that Russia would advance beyond the Himalayas into India.

As it usually happens, British attitudes towards Russia crossed the Atlantic into the United States. One of the main American foes of Russia was President Theodore Roosevelt himself who, in 1905, portrayed Russians as "untrustworthy in every way" and - by contrast - the Japanese as a " wonderful and civilised people"...

It is thus unfortunate that, with the shining exception of George F. Kennan, the quasi-totality of 20th century American intellectual and political elites were badly affected by Russophobia.

Not even the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union brought much of a respite in anti-Russian phobia. 

As Starobin astutely observed, more than 150 years after the Crimean War, russophobia is still gravely affecting the minds of politicians involved in framing US foreign policy in the 21st century, from the late Senator John McCain who derided Russia as a "gas station masquerading as a country", to former Moscow bureau chief of The Economist Edward Lucas and many others. Anglosphere experts and politicians indulge in Russia-bashing in the Western media on a regular basis, with potentially dire consequences for their countries.  

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that English-speaking states are now almost totally devoid of policymakers able to negotiate a peace treaty with Russia.

In truth, when it comes to the aforementioned policymaking circles, russophobia has reached Freudian proportions. That acts as a paralysing factor which stymies meaningful political action and prevents the adoption of a set of adequate political solutions to the challenges posed by Russia internationally. Against this background, it is very hard - if not impossible - to foresee how future conflicts, including a nuclear one, with Russia could be indefinitely avoided.

The mammoth task of re-educating British and American elites could conceivably take between 25 to 50 years, and this only after russophobia is recognised as an intellectual pathology and dealt with accordingly. Alas, the leaders of the Anglosphere have allowed the problem to fester for so long that it now seems next to impossible to rectify matters before a catastrophe happens.

RUSSIA'S GEOPOLITICAL FUTURE

Although the Russians consider themselves European and have fought for 3 centuries to obtain a place in the European family of nations, their efforts have been in vain.

One of the consequences of the war in Ukraine is the loss of Moscow's pro-European illusions. As I wrote since 2014 in my essay, "The New Pivot of History", Russia's natural allies and most reliable partners are in Asia (China and India), not in Europe.

We can therefore speak from now on of Russia as an ASIAN military (and perhaps in the future also economic) power , one of the 3 great powers in the Indo-Pacific area, which are becoming more and more economically and strategically integrated and geostrategically opposed to the Western Euro-Atlantic bloc, headed by the USA.

Many American politicians and specialists try to accredit the idea of ​​a geostrategic symmetry between the situation in Ukraine and the existing one between China and Taiwan. In reality, the threat that Ukraine represents for Russia in case the former succeeds in joining the EU and NATO is incomparably greater than that represented by Taiwan for China. 

Unlike Russia, which has already been invaded by coalitions of western states twice in the last 200 years, China is not in danger of being attacked from the east, using Taiwan as a base to launch a potential invasion. In other words, although there is the possibility of a military conflict between China and Taiwan, catalyzed by the US and Japan, the confrontation cannot take on an existential character for Beijing, as is the case with the current military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.

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.