IS RUSSIA INDEED IMPORTANT?

…Like Richard Wagner’s Grundthemen, sometimes loudly trumpeted, and sometimes barely audible, in a faint whisper, but always there, like a steady thread, throughout the endless musical drama, so am I determined to keep my own leitmotifs thundering and echoing over and over again, through the vast expanse of my mammoth work.

One of such major leitmotifs is my stubborn insistence on the crucial importance of Russia. It opened with the first entry of this section, and here it is again, because of, among other things, its enormous significance for the United States foreign policy development, and then, of course, generally, for the future of the world. So, is Russia indeed important?!

Thirty years ago this question didn’t have to be asked at all. Twenty years ago it was off the charts for quite the opposite reason. Asking it today should not sound as shocking as it did only a short while ago, yet there is a reluctance to ask it anyway, for the reason revealed throughout my book, which is that the obvious and only possible answer does not seem to fit the crooked agendas and false ideologies of certain major players in the game of global politics.

Meantime, for several decades now, I have been desperately trying not just to voice my correct answer, but also to reintroduce the big question itself, making my key point as to why it is so terribly important to have it asked, in the first place.

My latest and probably last public attempt to raise this question and also to answer it in a public setting was made on December 6, 2006, at the meeting of the Global Security Seminar at the UCLA, in which I was the speaker. Preceding my appearance, I had prepared a summary of what I was going to say in the longer and the shorter versions, which I forwarded to the organizers of the seminar, and which they included in their promotion of the event.

Here is the longer version of my summary of that lecture:

“The title of Alexander’s seminar will be Russia: The Misplaced Key To A Stable World.

A strong critic of Washington’s policy toward post-Soviet Russia, he focuses on the following points:

--Despite her historical calamity of the 1990’s, Russia has never ceased to be a military superpower. She is also an energy, space and science superpower. Her overall global political influence has actually increased now that the outdated Communist slogans have been discarded in favor of the infinitely more effective new century banner of global anti-Americanism.

--Even in the coldest days of the cold war Russia used to maintain a considerable reservoir of good will for her main adversary, which no longer exists, having been consistently diminished by Washington, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia’s current policy toward the United States is, naturally, motivated by her national interest, yet it is undoubtedly biased by a deep personal resentment toward Washington.

--Russia’s disingenuous promotion of global multi-polarity in the face of Washington’s unrealistic and self-defeating claim of remaining the ‘sole’ superpower, has the aim of diminishing the American power around the world and increasing the role of such international alliances and organizations, where the leadership of the United States is either questioned or non-existent. Russia’s overall strategic posture of today promises a far more aggressive pursuit of Moscow’s strategic objectives than it was thought advisable during the Cold War. The American position in the world is persistently undermined by the Russian strategic alliance with China, her growing influence in Europe, Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East, with some crucial victories being scored in America’s traditional spheres of influence, most spectacularly, in her own backyard all the way from Mexico down to Argentina and Chile.
--The so-called Post-Soviet Space is a chimera of Washington’s foreign policy, which Alexander intends to demonstrate convincingly. (Curiously, he is an honorary citizen of both Ukraine and Georgia and knows all the major forces at play there and elsewhere better than most.)
--The so-called New Europe is no stanch ally of the United States either. Squeezed between Russia and Old Europe, the New Europeans will probably try to play the United States for as long as they can, but then the chicken will have to come home to roost, as soon as a terribly overextended and overtaxed Washington will default on its promises, which have been much easier to make than to keep.
--Inside Russia herself, Washington’s expensive bet on a tiny bunch of Russian liberals, heavily infiltrated by the FSB and having no support whatsoever from a hostile Russian public is doomed to fail. Mistakenly, Washington had misjudged the paper power of the post-Soviet billionaires, oblivious of the classic dictum, derived from a poem by Pushkin, which the Russians love to quote:

All is mine, said the Gold, All is mine, said the Sword.

I’ll buy all, said the Gold, I’ll take all, said the Sword.

However, Washington’s protégés in Moscow at no time had any kind of “sword” in their possession…
What is Alexander’s solution to the Russian problem of the new post-Soviet world order? It is simple: start taking Russia seriously again, stop patronizing Mr. Putin, but treat him with respect, as a worthy adversary, and as an equal. While actual political concessions to Moscow would be counterproductive, pretending that Washington can solve any global problems without giving Russia her due, is a recipe for failure.”

Anybody who after listening to me was still unconvinced that Russia was indeed important, was either not paying attention at all, or was so much sucked into his crooked bias that there was nothing else for me there to improve on my argument that would have made them more receptive. But I wasn’t talking for the benefit of such incorrigibles anyway. I was rather doing it for myself, but I should long have realized that mine was a voice of one crying in the wilderness, and found a different means of delivering my message…

Luckily, I have found it in my present work.