18

The West vs. Russia: Towards the end of a Pax Americana?

by Prof. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

unnamed

A peaceful dissolution of the USSR according to the agreement between Mikhail Gorbachow and Ronald Reagan in 1988 in Reykjavik brought a new dimension of a global geopolitics in which up to 2008 Russia, as a legal successor state of the USSR, was playing an inferior role in global politics when an American Neocon concept of Pax Americana became the fundamental framework in international relations. Therefore, for instance, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia capitulated in 1995 to the American design regarding a final outcome of the USA/EU policy of the destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in November 1995 (the Dayton Agreeement) followed by even worse political capitulation in the case of Washington’s Kosovo policy that became ultimatelly implemented in June 1999 (the Kumanovo Agreement). Russia became in the 1990s totally geopolitically humiliated by the USA and its West European clients to such extent that we can call a period of Boris Yeltsin’s servile policy toward the West as a Dark Time of the history of Russian international relations when the main losers became the Serbs who were, and still are, extremely demonized by the Western mass-media and academic institutions.[1]
An ideological-political background of Boris Yeltsin’s foreign policy of Russia was the Atlanticism – an orientation in the forieign policy that stresses as the fundamental need to cooperate (at any price) with the West especially in the area of the politics and economy. In the other words, the integration with the West and its economic-political standards became, for Boris Yeltsin’s Russia governed by the Russian Liberals, an order of the day. This trend in Russia’s foreign policy in the 1990s had its roots in the 19th century geopolitical and cultural orientation of the Russian society by the so-called Russian “Westerners” who became the opponents to the Russian “Slavenophiles” for whom the ultimate aim of the Russian foreign policy was to create a Pan-Slavonic Commonwealth with the leadership of Russia.

The actual outcome of the Russian Liberals, “in the years following Yeltsin’s election were catastrophic as, for instance, Russia’s industrial production dropped by nearly 40%, over 80% of Russians experienced a reduction in their living standards, health care disintegrated, life expectancy fell along with the birth rate, and morale overall collapsed”[2]. However, the political influence of the Russian Liberals became drastically weakened by Vladimir Putin’s taking power in Russia from 2000 onward and especially from 2004. A new global course of Russia’s foreign policy after 2004 became directed toward a creation of a multipolar world but not unipolar Pax Americana one as the American Neocons wanted. Therefore, the Caucasus, Ukraine and Syria became currently directly exposed to the Russian-American geopolitical struggle while Kosovo is up to now still left to the exclusive US sphere of interest. Nevertheless, it can be expected in the nearest future that post-Yeltsin’s Russia will take decisive geopolitical steps with regard to Kosovo as from the year of 2000 the Russian exterior policy is constantly becoming more and more imbued with the neo-Slavophile geopolitical orientation advocated by Aleksandar Solzhenitsyn (1918−2008) as a part of a more global Euroasian geopolitical course of the post-Yeltsin’s Russian Federation supported by many Russian Slavophile intelectuals like a philosopher Aleksandar Dugin.

I. L. Solonevich, probably, gave one of the best explanations of Russia’s geopolitical situation and peculiarity in comparison to those of the USA and the UK focusing his research on the comparative analysis of geography, climate and levels of individual freedoms between these countries:

The American liberties, as well as American wealth are determined by American geography. Our [Russia’s] freedom and our wealth are determined by Russian geography. Thus, we’ll never have the same freedoms as the British and Americans have, because their security is guaranteed by the seas and oceans, but ours could only be guaranteed by military conscription.”[3]

A Hegemonic Stability Theory is an academic foundation of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana

A Hegemonic Stability Theory is an academic foundation of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana

Semuel P. Huntington was a quite clear and correct in his opinion that the foundation of every civilization is based on religion.[4] Huntington’s warnings about the future development of the global politics that can take a form of direct clash of different cultures (in fact, separate and antagonistic civilizations) is unfortunately already on the agenda of international relations. Here we came to the crux of the metter in regard to the Western relations with Russia from both historical and contemporary perspectives: the Western civilization, as based on the Western type of Christianity (the Roman Catholicism and all Protestant denominations) has traditional animosity and hostility toward all nations and states of the East Christian (Orthodox) confession.
As Russia was and is the biggest and most powerful Christian Orthodox country, the Euroasian geopolitical conflicts between the West and Russia started from the time when the Roman Catholic common state of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania launched its confessional-civilizational imperialistic wars against the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the very end of the 14th century; i.e., when (in 1385) Poland and Lithuania became united as a personal union of two sovereign states. The present-day territories of Ukraine (which at that time did not exist under this name) and Byelorus (White Russia) became the first victims of Vatican policy to proselytize the Eastern Slavs. Therefore, the biggest part of present-day Ukraine became occupied and annexed by Lithuania till 1569[5] and, after the Lublin Union in 1569, by Poland.
In the period from 1522 to 1569 East Slavs comprised 63% of the total population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[6] From the Russian perspective, an agressive Vatican policy of reconversion of the Christian Orthodox population, and their denationalization, could be prevented only by a military counter-attacks to liberate the occupied territories. However, when it happened from the mid-17th century ’til the end of the 18th century a huge number of the former Christian Orthodox population had already become the Roman Catholics and the Uniates and lost their original national identity.
A conversion to the Roman Catholicism and making a Union with the Vatican on the territories occupied by the Polish-Lithuanian common state until the end of the 18th century divided the Russian national body into two parts: the Christian Orthodox, who remained Russians, and the pro-Western oriented converts who basically lost their initial ethnonational identity. This is especially true in Ukraine – a country with the biggest number of the Uniates in the world due to the Brest Union in 1596 with Vatican. The Uniate Church in (West) Ukraine openly collaborated with the Nazi regime during the WWII and for that reason it was banned, after the war, until 1989. Nevertheless, it was exactly the Uniate Church in Ukraine that propagated an ideology that the “Ukrainians” were not (Little) Russians but a separate nation without any ethnolinguistic and confessional connection with Russians. Therefore, it was opened a way to successful Ukrainization of the Little Russians, Ruthenians and Carpatho-Russians during the Soviet rule. After the dissolution of the USSR, the Ukrainians became an instrument of the realization of the Western anti-Russian geopolitical interests in the East Europe.[7]
The unscrupulous Jesuits became the fundamental West European anti-Russian and anti-Christian Orthodox hawks to propagate an idea that a Christian Orthodox Russia does not belong to “real” (Western) Europe. Due to Vatican propaganda activity, the West gradually became antagonistic to Russia and her culture was seen as a disgusting and inferior, i.e. barbaric as a continuation of the Byzantine Christian Orthodox civilization. Unfortunately, such a negative attitude toward Russia and the East Christianity is accepted by a contemporary US-led West for whom Russophobia became an ideological foundation for its geopolitical projects and ambitions.[8] Therefore, all real or potential Russian supporters became geopolitical enemies of a Pax Americana, like the Serbs, Armenians, Greeks, Byelorussians, etc.
A new moment in the West-Russia geopolitical struggles started when Protestant Sweden became directly involved in the Western confessional-imperialistic wars against Russia in 1700 (the Great Northern War of 1700−1721) which Sweden lost after the Battle of Poltava in 1709 when Russia finally became a member of the concert of the Great European Powers[9]. A century later, it was Napoleonic France who took a role in the historical process of “Eurocivilizing” of “schismatic” Russia in 1812. That also finished the West European fiasco[10], similar to a Pan-Germanic warmongerns during both world wars. However, after 1945 up to the present, the “civilizational” role of the Westernization of Russia is assumed by NATO and the EU. The West, immediately after the collapse of the USSR, by imposing its client satelite Boris Yeltsin as a President of Russia, achieved an enormous geopolitical achievement around Russia especially on the territories of the ex-Soviet Union and the Balkans.
Nevertheless, the West started to experience a Russian geopolitical blowback from 2001 onward when the Yeltsin’s era pro-Western political clients were gradually removed from the decision-making positions in Russia’s governmental structures. What the new Russian political establishment correctly understood is that a Westernization policy of Russia is nothing else but just an ideological mask for economic-political transformation of the country into the colony of the Western imperialistic gangsters led by the US Neocon administration[11], alongside the task of the US/EU to externalize their own values and norms permanently. This “externalization policy” is grounded on the thesis of The End of History by Francis Fukuyama.[12]

…that the philosophy of economic and political liberalism has triumphed throughout the world, ending the contest between market democracies and centrally planned governance…“ [13]

Therefore, after the formal ending of the Cold War in 1989, the fundamental Western global geopolitical project is The West and The Rest, according to which the rest of the world is obliged to accept all fundamental Western values and norms according to the Hegemonic Stability Theory of a unipolar system of world security.[14] Nevertheless, behind such doctrinal unilateralism as a project of the US hegemony in global governance in the new century clearly stands the unipolar hegemonic concept of a Pax Americana, but with Russia and China as the crucial opponents to it.
According to the Hegemonic Stability Theory, a global peace can occur only when one hegemonic centre of power (state) will acquire enough power to deter all other expansionist and imperialistic ambitions and intentions. The theory is based on a presumption that the concentration of (hyper) power will reduce the chances of a classical world war (but not local confrontations) as it allows a single hyperpower to maintain peace and manage the system of international relations between the states.[15] Examples of ex-Pax Romana and Pax-Britanica clearly offered support by the American hegemons for imperialistic idea that (the US-led) unipolarity will bring global peace and, henceforth, inspired the viewpoint that the world in a post-Cold War era under a Pax Americana will be stable and prosperous as long as the US global dominance prevails. Therefore, a hegemony, according to this viewpoint, is a necessary precondition for economic order and free trade in global dimension suggesting that the existence of a predominant hyper power state willing and able to use its economic and military power to promote global stability is both divine and rational orders of the day. As a tool to achieve this goal the hegemon has to use a coercive diplomacy based on the ultimatum demand that puts a time limit for the target to comply, and a threat of punishment for resistance as, for example, was the case in January 1999 during the “negotiations” on Kosovo’s status between the US diplomacy and Yugoslavia’s Government in Rambouillet (France).
However, in contrast to both the Hegemonic Stability Theory and the Bipolar Stability Theory, a post-Yeltsin Russian political establishment advocates that a multipolar system of international relations is the least war prone in comparison with all other proposed systems. This Multipolar Stability Theory is based on the concept that a polarized global politics does not concentrate power, as it is supported by the unipolar system, and does not divide the globe into two antagonistic superpower blocs, as in a bipolar system, which promote a constant struggle for global dominance (for example, during the Cold War). The multipolarity theory perceives polarized international relations as a stable system because it encompass a larger number of autonomous and sovereign actors in global politics, as well as giving rise to more political alliances. This theory is, in essence, presenting a peace-through model of pacifying international relations as it is fundamentaly based on counter-balancing relations between the states on the global arena. In such a system, an aggression policy is less likely to occur, as it is prevented by the multiple power centres.[16]

Russia of Vladimir Putin became a cardinal oponent to the US post-Cold War imperialism

Russia of Vladimir Putin became a cardinal oponent to the US post-Cold War imperialism

This new policy of international relations adopted by Moscow after 2000 is based on a principle of a globe without hegemonic leadership – a policy which started to be implemented at the time when the global power of the US as a post Cold War hegemon was declining because it makes costly global commitments in excess of its ability to fulfill them, followed by the immense US trade deficit. The US share of global gross production is in a process of constant delcline since the end of the WWII. Another serious symptom of the US erosion in international politics is that the US share of global financial reserves drastically declined, especially in comparison to the Russian and Chinese share. The US is today the largest world debtor, indeed the largest debtor to ever exist in history (19.5 $ trillion or 108 percent of the GDP). Mainly, but not exclusively, due to huge military spending, alongside tax cuts that reduced the US federal revenue.
The US administration covers it’s increasing deficit (in 2004, for instance, it was $650 billion) by borrowing from private investors (most from abroad) and foreign central banks (most importantly of China and Japan). Therefore, such US financial dependence on the foreigners to provide the funds needed to pay the interest on the American public debt leaves the USA extremely vulnerable, but especially if China and/or Japan were to decide to stop buying US bonds, or sell them. Subsequently, the world’s strongest military power is at the same time and the greatest global debtor with China and Japan being direct financial collaborators (or, shall we say, the quislings) of the US hegemonic leadership policy of a Pax Americana after 1989.
It is beyond doubt that the US foreign policy post=1989 is still unrealistically following the French concept of raison d’état that indicates the Realist justification for policies pursued by state autority, but in the American eyes, first and formost of these justifications or criteria is the US global hegemony as the best guarantee for the national security, followed by all other interests and associated goals. Therefore, the US foreign policy is based on a realpolitik concept, that is a German term referring to the state foreign policy ordered or motivated by power politics: the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must. However, the US is becoming weaker and weaker and Russia and China are increasingly becoming stronger and stronger.
Finally, it seams to be true that such a reality in contemporary global politics and international relations is properly understood and recognized by a newly elected US President Donald Trump. If he is going not to be just another Trojan Horse of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana, there are real opportunities to get rid of US imperialism in the near future, and to establish international relations on more democratic foundation.

    Endnotes:

  • 1. As a very example of such moral, cultural and civilizational demonization of the Serbs by the Western academic writings is [John Hagan, Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in The Hague Tribunal, Chicago−London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003].
  • 2. John Baylis, Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Second edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 124.
  • 3. Irina Isakova, Russian Governance in the Twenty-First Century: Geo-strategy, Geopolitics and Governance, London−New York: Frank Cass, 2005, 12.
  • 4. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, London: The Free Press, 2002.
  • 5. On the Lithuanian occupation period of the present-day Ukraine, see: [Alfredas Bumblauskas, Genutė Kirkienė, Feliksas Šabuldo (sudarytojai), Ukraina: Lietuvos epocha, 1320−1569, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2010].
  • 6. Ignas Kapleris, Antanas Meištas, Istorijos egzamino gidas. Nauja programa nuo A iki Ž, Vilnius: Leidykla “Briedas”, 2013, 123.
  • 7. About this issue, see more in [Зоран Милошевић, Од Малоруса до Украјинаца, Источно Сарајево: Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства, 2008].
  • 8. Срђан Перишић, Нова геополитика Русије, Београд: Медија центар „Одбрана“, 2015, 42−46.
  • 9. David Kirbz, Šiaurės Europa ankstyvaisiais naujaisiais amžiais: Baltijos šalys 1492−1772 metais, Vilnius: Atviros Lietuvos knyga, 2000, 333−363; Peter Englund, The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire, London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2003.
  • 10. On Napoleon’s military campaign on Russia in 1812 and its fiasco, see [Paul Britten Austin, The Great Retreat Told by the Survivors, London−Mechanicsburg, PA: Greenhill Books, 1996; Adam Zamoyski, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow, New York: Harper Press, 2005].
  • 11. The US-led NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 is only one example of a gangster’s policy of a violation of the international law and the law on war when the civilian objects became legitimate military targets. Therefore, the attack on Serbia’s television station in downtown of Belgrade on April 23rd, 1999 attracted criticism by many human rights activists as it was apparently selected for bombing as “media responsible for broadcasting propaganda“ [The Independent, April 1st, 2003]. By the same gansters the same bombing policy was repeated in 2003 in Iraq when the main television station in Baghdad was hit by cruise missiles in March 2003 followed next day by destruction of the state radio and television station in Basra [A. P. V. Rogers, Law on the Battlefield, Second edition, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, 82−83]. According to the international law expert Richard Falk, the 2003 Iraq War was a “crime against Peace of the sort punished at the Nuremberg trials” [Richard Falk, Frontline, India, No. 8, April 12−25th, 2003].
  • 12. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
  • 13. Charles W. Kegley, Jr., Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, Tenth edition, USA: Thomson−Wadsworth, 2006, 588; Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, Ramesh Thakur (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 54−55.
  • 14. David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, Andrew Wedeman (eds.), American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World, New York−London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006, 31−50.
  • 15. William C. Wohlforth, „The Stability of a Unipolar World“, International Security, No. 24, 1999, 5−41.
  • 16. Charles W. Kegley, Jr., Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, Tenth edition, USA: Thomson−Wadsworth, 2006, 524.

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Seraskier
Seraskier
Feb 12, 2017 12:51 AM

The illustration accompanying the article was clearly drawn last week at the Latvian-Russian border. Keen-eyed observers will have noticed Boris Bozo Johnson representing Britain. Jens WW3 Stoltenberg has disappeared – as he usually does once he’s delivered the cannon-fodder to the battlefield. Federica Mogherini has similarly retired to a tent behind the lines to quaff endless champagne with Drunky Juncky.
Plus ca change, plus ce sonts les memes cons.

Schlüter
Schlüter
Dec 26, 2016 4:44 PM
louisproyect
louisproyect
Dec 3, 2016 2:19 PM

“If he is going not to be just another Trojan Horse of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana, there are real opportunities to get rid of US imperialism in the near future, and to establish international relations on more democratic foundation.”
Get rid of US imperialism? I am afraid the professor has a rather poor grasp of what that might mean since the only way to get rid of US imperialism is to get rid of US capitalism. I suppose that he has never read Lenin, nor have the folks who crosspost such silly analyses.

BigB
BigB
Dec 2, 2016 4:32 PM

Trump is shaping up to be not so much “another Trojan Horse of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana” – as “another Trojan Horse of Goldman Sachs” – which may amount to much the same thing.
His only recent appointee who is not a Goldman Sachs billionaire (Bannon, Mnuchin, Cohn) – is an ex-Rothschild employee (Wilbur Ross) who thinks the uber-capitalist 1% are getting a ‘bad press.’
On the military side – his National Security Adviser (Mike Flynn) thinks “Islam is a cancer” – and his pick for Secretary of Offense is ‘Mad Dog’ Matthis – who thinks killing is a “hell of a hoot”; wants a war with Iran and has said “Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-01/trump-picks-retired-marine-general-mad-dog-mattis-secretary-defense
Whilst I share the sentiment of the author of this informative article – I am unfortunately less hopeful that the end to US imperialism is nigh. It may be about to ‘evolve’ into a new ‘multipartner’ phase – but with supranational cooperation between the oligarchs and oligopolies of international power – a superpact of US/Russian/Chinese influence – that would not bode well for more democratic international relations. Or democracy at all. Anywhere.
I cannot pretend to know what the Deep State had planned for a $Hillary presidency – but it appears that they have switched sides quickly.
In planning for the future – Trump is being guided not so much to ‘drain the swamp’ as ‘feed the alligators.’

bevin
bevin
Dec 2, 2016 1:35 AM

There is a real irony in this study of the relations between Russia and the US Empire.
As the author explains the advances made by the US, towards unipolar ‘hegemony’ were possible in large part because the introduction of capitalist relations into the Soviet Union tore the country (‘nation’/ ‘community’) apart. That was the story of the Yeltsin period- the USSR was being ripped to pieces by greedy interests intent on securing their personal and corporate fortunes. The richest country in the world was reduced to impotence and beggary within a few years. And, while this was happening, the US Empire was doing whatever it wanted.
And that is where the irony begins because the truth is that, having the sudden power to do whatever it chose, the US had no idea what to do: the Yugoslav break up was largely in the imagined interests of reactionary Germans. And its beneficiaries were emigre fascist elements (who inherited all over eastern Europe, because they were the only people with any programmes, albeit idiotic ones, to implement) wahhabist gangsters (as in Bosnia and Kossovo) and other very marginal parties.
There are those who will tell us that Kossovo was a great strategic victory for the US which came out of it with a bright shining new military base. But the truth is that all the US gained from Kossovo-and later from Georgia and Ukraine- was the temporary satisfaction of poking a stick in Russia’s eye and long term problems which it is only beginning to understand.
The reality is that the social crisis that devastated Russia under Yeltsin is a permanent feature of the US Empire in which the things that tore the Soviet Community apart are engrained deeply into society. Which is why the US government was unable to achieve hegemony when there was nothing on earth to prevent it from doing so. It is ruled by people who are exactly like the Russian oligarchy: they just want to get rich.
Even the vast Pentagon budgets are only marginally connected to military power, their primary purpose is to drain wealth from the American people. In the same way the enormous prison complex and the associated apparatuses of law ‘n’ order, from the Police to the Court system, have the sole purpose of clamping down on dissent in a society in which the rich get richer and the poor are descending into famines of various kinds.
At the very nub of these questions is the social question.
The US is falling into pieces-Identity Politics counts the pieces- all that its rulers are interested in is keeping power, protecting their wealth and privileges. They have neither the heart, energy or imagination to take over the world. They are becoming more and more isolated within their own country. They know that social convulsions are coming, are overdue. They realise the significance of the speed with which the incohate, juvenile ‘Occupy’ movements spread only a few years ago. Any serious challenge to their position would be an existential threat.
As to Russia and China and Eurasia generally the only thing that can prevent their reforming the world order is the tendency (which is within every one of these nations) to mimic the United States, to smash up their own polities,/communities/nations by going to war against their own people, the peasants, workers and the poor. If they can resist the temptation to descend into the anarchy of callous cash nexus relations between men and control the predatory appetites of the powerful, the future is assured and the planet may survive.
But under capitalism- whose very basis is the war of all against all- there is no future. Not even for the capitalists.

Kathleen Lowrey
Kathleen Lowrey
Dec 2, 2016 7:08 PM
Reply to  bevin

A much better analysis below the line than the one above it, which, while interesting, seems premised on the idea that “Westerners” in general have it in for Eastern Orthodoxy, which wouldn’t stand up well to a man on the street survey about what the theological underpinnings of any form of Christianity actually are (forget the finer points of Eastern Orthodoxy; most people don’t even know what Calvinism is).
Bevin’s simple point seems to me a much better explanation than any totalizing conspiracy theory reaching back to the end of the 14th century and invoking the very dubious argumentation of Huntington about the “clash of civilizations”:
“all that its rulers are interested in is keeping power, protecting their wealth and privileges. They have neither the heart, energy or imagination to take over the world.”

Jen
Jen
Dec 2, 2016 9:33 PM

Seconded.
In most cases where religion appears to be a major cause for conflict, it turns out to be a convenient excuse, a shield to hide behind, another divide-and-rule strategy.

Peter
Peter
Dec 3, 2016 11:59 AM
Reply to  Jen

Religion is a powerful war-propaganda tool because people have such deep feelings about it: they’re convinced their beliefs are absolutely right, universal truths which are literally a matter of life and death. Die for your beliefs = kill for your beliefs. Martyrs are the most highly admired people in the monotheistic religions, and fighting to ‘defend our values’ is perceived as the noblest possible pursuit. Cf. all those mealy-mouthed incantations of ‘ultimate sacrifice’, ‘civilisation’, ‘call of duty’, ‘gave their lives so we can be free’, ‘heroes’ and so on at every war memorial ceremony. Doesn’t it just bring tears to your eyes? Don’t you just want to be like them and go out and kill the evil enemy because it’s the right thing to do?
You don’t have to go back 400 years either (though the collective memories of many societies often do, simply needing some banal little incident to poke the embers back into flames, as in Yugoslavia, India, Myanmar, wherever). The Cold War was allegedly based on defending ‘our’ spiritual values against atheistic communism. Remember how the reactionary Catholic Solidarnosc movement was praised to the skies in Western media? Many young Muslims are similarly motivated by their ‘spiritual values’ to join the war in Syria, but for some reason this isn’t being praised to the skies in the same media. I can only assume that there must be spiritual values that are ‘right’ and others that are ‘wrong’, the difficulty lying in telling the difference. That must be why we brow-furrowed masses need the wisdom of the mainstream media to guide us.
US fundamentalist Christians support Zionist Israel, and it suits the Israeli government to support them back, perhaps a little more cynically. They harp on about our common ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage needing to resist ‘barbaric’, fanatical Islam while turning a blind eye to the fact that Christianity has historically been the worst ideology to persecute the Jews, who on the contrary lived fairly harmoniously in Muslim societies before the brilliant idea of creating a Jewish state unfortunately came to fruition. It isn’t convenient to remind anyone about that at the moment, however, as the anti-Islamic line is proving very effective in keeping Western (Christian) public opinion on the right side of the battle lines.
The Orthodox-Catholic-Protestant confrontation is just a variation on the same old tune. Mix in the Sunni-Shia-Jewish bits and you have the cacophonic ending to ‘A Day in the Life’.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Dec 2, 2016 12:14 AM

I think people must distinguish between the dates of a sovereign state and the wealth of private actors in that sovereign state, which increase in parallel to state indebtedness. US private interests are as powerful as ever, courtesy of aggressive tax avoidance, use of tax havens with non transparent banking systems and enormous fuelling of the US Private banking system through rampant laundering of illegal drug money.
After all, POTUS is a puppet for those private interests and if they say ‘let sovereign debt run rampant’, US will do as he is told.

ex-sarajlija
ex-sarajlija
Dec 1, 2016 9:17 PM

“when the main losers became the Serbs who were …”
Why are you Serbs are always complaining, and blaming others for destruction of Yugoslavia which was just another colour genocidal revolution initiated by US/UK puppet (Serbian “Dear leader”) Milošević, and carried out by Serbian military, and paramilitary? You (and rest of us from YU) have only yourself to blame for blindly following your “Dear leader” Milošević into the trap set by the “Democratic” West!

Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Dec 2, 2016 6:13 AM
Reply to  ex-sarajlija

Milosevic was Montenegrin not Serbs as it was Karadzic as well. Yugoslavia was destroyed by Nazi-Fascist leadership of Tudjman Ustashi Croatia and Al-Queda-Mujahedin Juhad Bosnian government of Alija Izetbegovic – an author of racist Islamic Declaration based on political fundamentalism of militant Islam. The purpose of destruction of Yugoslavia (that was anti-Serb political construction governed by non-Serbs) was to continue genocide on Serbs from the WWII committed by Croats and Bosniaks.

Arhikles Salvador
Arhikles Salvador
Dec 2, 2016 8:45 AM

You are right about Jihad Bosnian government during the war. The point is that even after 1995 Federation of Bosnia is in fact Al-Nusra Front in Europe. Read this article:
http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=127:an-outlook-of-radical-islamism-in-bosnia&Itemid=487

Arhikles Salvador
Arhikles Salvador
Dec 2, 2016 8:48 AM
Reply to  ex-sarajlija

As I can understand, You prefer that the Serbs will support Franio Tudman or Alia Izetbegovich as their “Dear President?”

Dominic Pukallus
Dominic Pukallus
Dec 1, 2016 8:17 PM

It seems we live in the sphere of the Ultima Ratio Regum http://imgur.com/oC31K

Eurasia News Online
Eurasia News Online
Dec 1, 2016 5:49 PM

If only Eastern Orthodox Slavs learn one thing – the “west” sees our mercy as our weakness. Maybe things would be different if Paris was burned down just as Moscow was. Or if East Germany was “civilised” in the same way as North America and Australia. Western hatred towards Eastern Orthodox Slavs is a constant – regardless of them showing mercy after every counter-offensive in history. One thing we can learn from history of Anglo-Saxon domination is – genocide pays. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong on that.

jimsresearchnotes
jimsresearchnotes
Dec 1, 2016 3:35 PM

Reblogged this on EU: Ramshackle Empire and commented:
This is an excellent overview of the geopolitical situation in the current Cold War.

Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Dec 1, 2016 4:03 PM

Thanks a lot!

adambaumsocal
adambaumsocal
Dec 1, 2016 3:21 PM

#IstandWithRussia