This current situation never needed to come to pass. The hubristic West wanted to break up Russia and steal their resources, and this still seems to be the case if you listen to the witterings of idiots like Emmanuel Macron and David Cameron.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union agreements were made that were never adhered to, quite the reverse in fact. If these agreements had been honoured we would not be in this situation.
The Russians have reacted to a situation forced on them by the arrogant West who had no intention of negotiating ANYTHING with the 'gas station masquerading as a country' and casually lied as part of this process. The Russians had imagined that they were dealing with statesmen with a sense of integrity and trusted their words. Their actions have however convicted them as rank opportunists and Russia has noted this fact and has decided to set out their own facts and let the West deal with them in their own manner.
The reason the West fear Russia is because they have tried to swindle them and failed miserably and the consequences for this deception are now impending.
They could have tried to treat Russia as a normal country but couldn't resist putting in the boot. So here we are. It will be ugly for the 'not agreement capable' West as they are no longer in charge of their own destiny and have mightily annoyed those who are.
This U.S. resident strongly supports the cut and run option. Not just from Europe, but too, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
It is glaringly obvious that our Military Industrial Complex has designed weapons systems for the showroom floor, not battle. It is past time to break with the gravitational pull of sunk costs and severely reduce defense spending. It is time to focus on territorial defense only.
The U.S. has far too many domestic problems that our foreign policy has exacerbated by directing resources offshore. In fact, one of our chief unsolved problems is shared globally: the continued evolution and spread of COVID. When you add on climate change, aquifer depletion and the whims of the billionaires that misrule us, something has to give.
My sincere wish is that the billionaires get shuttled to an island paradise and we start making goods for ourselves again. Imagine, the U.S. producing vitamin C!
Thank you. Ultimately, the US always runs. We British often do too. Islands (which the US is too really) can do that.
Your comments on “Fear” remind me of a conversation yesterday. Someone I know professionally in the UK has been particularly anti Russian with respect to recent events. I knew he was half German but yesterday I got to understand the drivers. His grandparents came from Silesia and lost pretty much everything they had at the end of WW2 when the Soviets (always called Russians in this discussion) came. My sense was that the family had estates there. They also had to flee and people they knew who made the wrong choices died. His comments on the Red Army were deeply insulting and emotional. Various relatives also were killed fighting on the Eastern Front. We can debate who did what to whom first but it is irrelevant: he has a lot of inbuilt fear and hatred of Russia. It’s even understandable on his terms, which is not the same thing as “right” or “appropriate” of course. We discussed the fact too (which few English people know) that Germany lost 10% of her population in WW2 and that in the Anglosphere we got off very lightly really. These emotions are very hard to deal with though and they are very much part of the equation driving current policy. One only has to look at the family backgrounds of various current US and European decision makers to see that this is plausible.
It would be good if we could all be rational and get over these emotions that stoke conflict. But I fear we will never get to that!
Outstanding essay. One of the reasons I like to follow and read your work is because I am not a native english speaker. Naturally, I look for many good writers as possible to improve my english by reading rather than studying grammar, since I don't have the time. Here in substack I've found a few good ones. I must say I enjoy your clear, simple and yet sharp style of writing, with a twist of wit here and there among the paragraphs. This one essay though is your best I've read so far.
It felt as I was reading something wrote by Adam Curtis (another english 'essayist' that I admired) for one of his documentaries in both style and substance, but also because the ideas explored here are very sound, yet they seem to pass under the radar of all sorts of analysts in both mainstream and independent media when they try to dissect a larger political event and its players in all its many decisions and repercussions.
Irrationality in politics play a profound role that is often overlooked by people that tend to rationalize it and thus reduce Politics into an equation of opportunities and interests. Fear and Inertia must be the strongest components in several foreign offices across the world I guess, much more than even short-term profits or long-term objectives. Even for politicians themselves politics as a practical activity has a much larger degree of contingency than they want (or are prepared) to acknowledge since the illusion of their control over things and peoples is a factor of total importance for their perceived success.
I am nobody, just an everyday dude found of following geopolitics, but most people I assume, no matter who they are, or where they live, if nonetheless they're paying attention with open eyes to what is taking place around the world right now, they must share this feeling that inexplicable forces and complex systems are colliding and pushing Humanity into a decisive crossroads unlike anything that happened in the past. And they also must have realized by now that the ideas of control their politicians are selling to them is a fiction.
For a while now I've been thinking politics in a modern liberal democracy has become a theater in the exact moment in which real power pass from the politicians to those of the donor class, the bankers, criminal kingpins and talking suits from the FIRE sector. Politicians are now actors, puppets and celebrities doing a role for their audiences, us their voters, in which their role is to look as if they have control of events, or at least act as they understand and influence the world, but they know as much about it as an actual actor playing a doctor in a TV series knows how to conduct a surgery.
The point is there is still a reality beyond the stage of Parliaments and the lights of Corporate Media out there, and I only can wonder how the children running the show will react when that same reality reveals its grim face.
I'd like to propose that one problem that is peculiar to today's Europe, or with modern day Liberals in general, is that their fear of "the other" is not accompanied by a sense of "self."
Tribal fears are, more typically, accompanied by a sense of tribe on both sides. We are tribe X. "The other guys" are tribe Y. Those Y guys are up to no good. We X people must do something. But as you have long noted, universalizing ideologies are built on suppressing the sense of tribes, at least as far as "we" are concerned. So the fear that the Y are up to no good does not lead to we X ought to do something collectively--except in a highly abstract and "bureaucratic" sense, because there is no X that people feel emotionally attached to and constitute a natural group capable of collective action. And, as Mancur Olson noted, collective action is a difficult and even an irrational thing, unless aided by an irrational ingredient--like a sense of tribal identity: you can't get much of a (successful) collective action on abstract and bureaucratic basis.
So the Western elites are falling into a paradox: there might be much fear, but it's not forcing them to get their act together because they lack a focal point to gather around. So they are thrashing about confusedly as singletons.
"I’ve never been able to see the practical basis on which such an order could be constructed, and I’ve never come across any proposition that looked as though it might work." Not One Step Eastward for Nato and Not One Step Westward for Russia couldn't work? (Steps to incorporate Central Asia into their sphere could be tolerated). Everyone keeps their mitts off Eastern Europe, everyone has their buffer. Why couldn't that work?
Europes in low level civil wars already. With migrants committing most crimes. With farmers that cant grow, with workers unable to retire on crap pension, and with libertarians tired of tyranny. I don't see how it doesnt go full blown dystopia and blood in the streets after Russia and Africa cut them off which is happening as the Global 85% play amongst themselves. The tracks and pipes are being redirected as we speak because Russia is done with Europe. Russia is rich and proud and doesnt need anything from Europe if they have China. Many upper middle class Germans and others have moved to Russia seeing writing on the wall.
Good essay and many thanks for writing it. It highlights the human factor in international relations, at a visceral level. As someone who considers themself a realist it is an [unwelcome] reminder that emotional responses still have priority over critical thinking. I have been perplexed as to why "The West" has consistently underestimated Russia and failed to understand its concerns - still worse its capabilities. This emotional view helps in that process. Some would call the West's approach racism. Whatever. It does strike me though that if you "feel" you have an implacable foe, then it would be best to deal with that in rational rather than emotional terms. I guess our "sound bite and focus group" orientated leaders [of rather limited intellectual sttretch] find that a little too challenging. Why let facts get in the way of prejudice?
Three key words that need to be delved upon: intentions, capabilities, and US.
USSR/Russia/China/Iran had actual reasons to be afraid and to develop capabilities to defend itself, because the west always wanted to make it change/submit (see all the US military bases surrounding Russia/China/Iran, which mostly speak of intentions rather than of capabilities). After the death of Trotsky, that was obviously not the case for USSR/Russia.
EU Liberal Universalism and US "containment" and hegemonic doctrines, spelled out in countles strategic doctrine papers spek plenty of clear intention. (In War on the Rocks, in an article there concerning freedom of navigation, a US Admiral spelled it out the US Navy's role is not to protect freedom of navigation and secure shipping lanes, but to cut access to enemy states; as such, the reading of "containment" becomes clear, being the first step in "take over").
The Oligarchic systems of the west want to take over or at minimum extract in their parasitic way part of the wealth of Russia and China. The hit on Russia between 1990 and 2000 was like the first heroin injection, with Wall Street riding the dragon. They are looking for that ever since.
The capabilities are totally different now. China is overproducing the west in everything. Even Russia does that by itself on many areas. Thus only "asymetric" attempts (lies, vacuous ideology, and terrorism) are left for US/West combine.
Their ultimate fear is not that they will be taken over necessarily, especially from a security perspective: Russia/China have never, ever expressed such intentions. But that the hope to take over Russia/China is becoming an ever distant dream.
I do not take the ululations of the broader population and punditry and mass media of the west as the actual representation of the big decision-makers there.
The west is a filthy spectacle of unpunished crime over the centuries. It gets its power from a neverending stock of working slaves, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, violence, lies and treachery. The west leaders are criminals because nobody can climb the social hyerarchy ladder in the west if not a criminal. The west has covered itself with shinning clothes of splendor to hide its unbearable pestilence. The west is an abomination.
I guess if Russia end's up in such a powerful, uncontested position towards the Europe, it's goal could well be to radically change it's inner structure so it stops being an enemy for a long while.
Instead of a Europe with it's heart at France, Germany and England, why not place the Slavic countries in a position of leadership?
I absolutely agree that the failure of redefining the US/European relationship with Russia in the 90’s was an historic mistake. I also agree that the US in particular lacked the ability to even reimagine it much less actualize something different. Perhaps a second H.W. Bush admin could have been a bit better. As bad as was in many ways, he was at least a realist.
From an historical perspective Clinton has to be considered an abject failure. His handling of Russia, NAFTA and MFN status for China really set the stage the US’s current position. And he did it all for the venal reasons: the potential for all of those things to make him money. (Note he was the first modern president to use the office to get really rich after his term.) another president might not have done enough differently to make a difference, but the fact remains that Clinton did it, not a different president.
Am I naive to think that there is light at the end of the tunnel? I already fear that the policies of the PMC could lead to a continent wide replay of the Yugoslav Wars. But if the PMC is humiliated and their total incompetence is exposed, would this allow a new political class to arise from the proverbial ashes?
Before February, 2022, the West did have a genuine fear of resurgent Russian military power.
However, Russian indecision and dithering in prosecuting the war in Ukraine (they can't even bring themselves to call it a "war") has led the West to lose all such fear of Russia.
This current situation never needed to come to pass. The hubristic West wanted to break up Russia and steal their resources, and this still seems to be the case if you listen to the witterings of idiots like Emmanuel Macron and David Cameron.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union agreements were made that were never adhered to, quite the reverse in fact. If these agreements had been honoured we would not be in this situation.
The Russians have reacted to a situation forced on them by the arrogant West who had no intention of negotiating ANYTHING with the 'gas station masquerading as a country' and casually lied as part of this process. The Russians had imagined that they were dealing with statesmen with a sense of integrity and trusted their words. Their actions have however convicted them as rank opportunists and Russia has noted this fact and has decided to set out their own facts and let the West deal with them in their own manner.
The reason the West fear Russia is because they have tried to swindle them and failed miserably and the consequences for this deception are now impending.
They could have tried to treat Russia as a normal country but couldn't resist putting in the boot. So here we are. It will be ugly for the 'not agreement capable' West as they are no longer in charge of their own destiny and have mightily annoyed those who are.
This U.S. resident strongly supports the cut and run option. Not just from Europe, but too, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
It is glaringly obvious that our Military Industrial Complex has designed weapons systems for the showroom floor, not battle. It is past time to break with the gravitational pull of sunk costs and severely reduce defense spending. It is time to focus on territorial defense only.
The U.S. has far too many domestic problems that our foreign policy has exacerbated by directing resources offshore. In fact, one of our chief unsolved problems is shared globally: the continued evolution and spread of COVID. When you add on climate change, aquifer depletion and the whims of the billionaires that misrule us, something has to give.
My sincere wish is that the billionaires get shuttled to an island paradise and we start making goods for ourselves again. Imagine, the U.S. producing vitamin C!
Thank you. Ultimately, the US always runs. We British often do too. Islands (which the US is too really) can do that.
Your comments on “Fear” remind me of a conversation yesterday. Someone I know professionally in the UK has been particularly anti Russian with respect to recent events. I knew he was half German but yesterday I got to understand the drivers. His grandparents came from Silesia and lost pretty much everything they had at the end of WW2 when the Soviets (always called Russians in this discussion) came. My sense was that the family had estates there. They also had to flee and people they knew who made the wrong choices died. His comments on the Red Army were deeply insulting and emotional. Various relatives also were killed fighting on the Eastern Front. We can debate who did what to whom first but it is irrelevant: he has a lot of inbuilt fear and hatred of Russia. It’s even understandable on his terms, which is not the same thing as “right” or “appropriate” of course. We discussed the fact too (which few English people know) that Germany lost 10% of her population in WW2 and that in the Anglosphere we got off very lightly really. These emotions are very hard to deal with though and they are very much part of the equation driving current policy. One only has to look at the family backgrounds of various current US and European decision makers to see that this is plausible.
It would be good if we could all be rational and get over these emotions that stoke conflict. But I fear we will never get to that!
Outstanding essay. One of the reasons I like to follow and read your work is because I am not a native english speaker. Naturally, I look for many good writers as possible to improve my english by reading rather than studying grammar, since I don't have the time. Here in substack I've found a few good ones. I must say I enjoy your clear, simple and yet sharp style of writing, with a twist of wit here and there among the paragraphs. This one essay though is your best I've read so far.
It felt as I was reading something wrote by Adam Curtis (another english 'essayist' that I admired) for one of his documentaries in both style and substance, but also because the ideas explored here are very sound, yet they seem to pass under the radar of all sorts of analysts in both mainstream and independent media when they try to dissect a larger political event and its players in all its many decisions and repercussions.
Irrationality in politics play a profound role that is often overlooked by people that tend to rationalize it and thus reduce Politics into an equation of opportunities and interests. Fear and Inertia must be the strongest components in several foreign offices across the world I guess, much more than even short-term profits or long-term objectives. Even for politicians themselves politics as a practical activity has a much larger degree of contingency than they want (or are prepared) to acknowledge since the illusion of their control over things and peoples is a factor of total importance for their perceived success.
I am nobody, just an everyday dude found of following geopolitics, but most people I assume, no matter who they are, or where they live, if nonetheless they're paying attention with open eyes to what is taking place around the world right now, they must share this feeling that inexplicable forces and complex systems are colliding and pushing Humanity into a decisive crossroads unlike anything that happened in the past. And they also must have realized by now that the ideas of control their politicians are selling to them is a fiction.
For a while now I've been thinking politics in a modern liberal democracy has become a theater in the exact moment in which real power pass from the politicians to those of the donor class, the bankers, criminal kingpins and talking suits from the FIRE sector. Politicians are now actors, puppets and celebrities doing a role for their audiences, us their voters, in which their role is to look as if they have control of events, or at least act as they understand and influence the world, but they know as much about it as an actual actor playing a doctor in a TV series knows how to conduct a surgery.
The point is there is still a reality beyond the stage of Parliaments and the lights of Corporate Media out there, and I only can wonder how the children running the show will react when that same reality reveals its grim face.
I'd like to propose that one problem that is peculiar to today's Europe, or with modern day Liberals in general, is that their fear of "the other" is not accompanied by a sense of "self."
Tribal fears are, more typically, accompanied by a sense of tribe on both sides. We are tribe X. "The other guys" are tribe Y. Those Y guys are up to no good. We X people must do something. But as you have long noted, universalizing ideologies are built on suppressing the sense of tribes, at least as far as "we" are concerned. So the fear that the Y are up to no good does not lead to we X ought to do something collectively--except in a highly abstract and "bureaucratic" sense, because there is no X that people feel emotionally attached to and constitute a natural group capable of collective action. And, as Mancur Olson noted, collective action is a difficult and even an irrational thing, unless aided by an irrational ingredient--like a sense of tribal identity: you can't get much of a (successful) collective action on abstract and bureaucratic basis.
So the Western elites are falling into a paradox: there might be much fear, but it's not forcing them to get their act together because they lack a focal point to gather around. So they are thrashing about confusedly as singletons.
"I’ve never been able to see the practical basis on which such an order could be constructed, and I’ve never come across any proposition that looked as though it might work." Not One Step Eastward for Nato and Not One Step Westward for Russia couldn't work? (Steps to incorporate Central Asia into their sphere could be tolerated). Everyone keeps their mitts off Eastern Europe, everyone has their buffer. Why couldn't that work?
Europes in low level civil wars already. With migrants committing most crimes. With farmers that cant grow, with workers unable to retire on crap pension, and with libertarians tired of tyranny. I don't see how it doesnt go full blown dystopia and blood in the streets after Russia and Africa cut them off which is happening as the Global 85% play amongst themselves. The tracks and pipes are being redirected as we speak because Russia is done with Europe. Russia is rich and proud and doesnt need anything from Europe if they have China. Many upper middle class Germans and others have moved to Russia seeing writing on the wall.
Good essay and many thanks for writing it. It highlights the human factor in international relations, at a visceral level. As someone who considers themself a realist it is an [unwelcome] reminder that emotional responses still have priority over critical thinking. I have been perplexed as to why "The West" has consistently underestimated Russia and failed to understand its concerns - still worse its capabilities. This emotional view helps in that process. Some would call the West's approach racism. Whatever. It does strike me though that if you "feel" you have an implacable foe, then it would be best to deal with that in rational rather than emotional terms. I guess our "sound bite and focus group" orientated leaders [of rather limited intellectual sttretch] find that a little too challenging. Why let facts get in the way of prejudice?
Three key words that need to be delved upon: intentions, capabilities, and US.
USSR/Russia/China/Iran had actual reasons to be afraid and to develop capabilities to defend itself, because the west always wanted to make it change/submit (see all the US military bases surrounding Russia/China/Iran, which mostly speak of intentions rather than of capabilities). After the death of Trotsky, that was obviously not the case for USSR/Russia.
EU Liberal Universalism and US "containment" and hegemonic doctrines, spelled out in countles strategic doctrine papers spek plenty of clear intention. (In War on the Rocks, in an article there concerning freedom of navigation, a US Admiral spelled it out the US Navy's role is not to protect freedom of navigation and secure shipping lanes, but to cut access to enemy states; as such, the reading of "containment" becomes clear, being the first step in "take over").
The Oligarchic systems of the west want to take over or at minimum extract in their parasitic way part of the wealth of Russia and China. The hit on Russia between 1990 and 2000 was like the first heroin injection, with Wall Street riding the dragon. They are looking for that ever since.
The capabilities are totally different now. China is overproducing the west in everything. Even Russia does that by itself on many areas. Thus only "asymetric" attempts (lies, vacuous ideology, and terrorism) are left for US/West combine.
Their ultimate fear is not that they will be taken over necessarily, especially from a security perspective: Russia/China have never, ever expressed such intentions. But that the hope to take over Russia/China is becoming an ever distant dream.
I do not take the ululations of the broader population and punditry and mass media of the west as the actual representation of the big decision-makers there.
The west is a filthy spectacle of unpunished crime over the centuries. It gets its power from a neverending stock of working slaves, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, violence, lies and treachery. The west leaders are criminals because nobody can climb the social hyerarchy ladder in the west if not a criminal. The west has covered itself with shinning clothes of splendor to hide its unbearable pestilence. The west is an abomination.
I guess if Russia end's up in such a powerful, uncontested position towards the Europe, it's goal could well be to radically change it's inner structure so it stops being an enemy for a long while.
Instead of a Europe with it's heart at France, Germany and England, why not place the Slavic countries in a position of leadership?
Masks don’t block transmission of viruses. Otherwise A+
I absolutely agree that the failure of redefining the US/European relationship with Russia in the 90’s was an historic mistake. I also agree that the US in particular lacked the ability to even reimagine it much less actualize something different. Perhaps a second H.W. Bush admin could have been a bit better. As bad as was in many ways, he was at least a realist.
From an historical perspective Clinton has to be considered an abject failure. His handling of Russia, NAFTA and MFN status for China really set the stage the US’s current position. And he did it all for the venal reasons: the potential for all of those things to make him money. (Note he was the first modern president to use the office to get really rich after his term.) another president might not have done enough differently to make a difference, but the fact remains that Clinton did it, not a different president.
Am I naive to think that there is light at the end of the tunnel? I already fear that the policies of the PMC could lead to a continent wide replay of the Yugoslav Wars. But if the PMC is humiliated and their total incompetence is exposed, would this allow a new political class to arise from the proverbial ashes?
Excellent - " All we have to fear is fear itself " - FDR.
A very different and much simpler explanation:
Before February, 2022, the West did have a genuine fear of resurgent Russian military power.
However, Russian indecision and dithering in prosecuting the war in Ukraine (they can't even bring themselves to call it a "war") has led the West to lose all such fear of Russia.