Armenia: Geopolitical Correctness Redux
Armenia is a nation whose history spans three millennia. The Armenian people inhabited a vast region south of the Caucasus and north of the Fertile Crescent, and they even gained access to the sea, after resettling Cilicia on behalf of the Byzantine Empire. Centuries of persecution and ethnic cleansing have driven them back to the mountains of the Caucasus or deep into Western societies, in a prolific international diaspora.
After three thousand proud years however, Armenians are now confronted with the real risk of being driven into a Bantustan and eventually, into exile. The loss of Karabakh symbolizes more than a simple border dispute, it marks the end of regional Armenia and the beginning of an isolated ethnic state.
The current situation has come about as a consequence of Yerevan’s flirtatious romance with Atlanticism. After decades of Western NGO sponsoring in Armenia, part of the local elites have seemingly been persuaded that Armenia’s alliance with Russia is counter-productive. Consequently, the move away from Moscow has caused Turkey and Azerbaijan to have freedom of action against the Armenian enclave of Karabakh. Conversely, the loss of Karabakh along with the exodus of its Armenian inhabitants, while traumatic, has not caused a major backlash against Armenia’s pro-Western Pashinyan government.
In part, this is due to geopolitical correctness imbued by Armenia’s new ‘progressive’ partners in the West: since Karabakh was an illegal separatist region under International Law, its loss – while unfortunate – is ultimately well deserved. This ‘karma’ derives from the same progressive lens that famously informed Condoleezza Rice’s comments on Serbia’s ‘obsession’ with Kosovo: “1389! It’s time to move forward.” To the school of thought that advocates for ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan or ‘liberal democracy’ in Iraq, historical ties to territory must seem rather quaint and passé.
Yet, the revolutionary strain in Atlanticism is anything but new. Already during the Cold War, many of America’s allies were baffled by DC’s recurrent willingness to undermine its own allies when geopolitical correctness – properly influenced by soviet and Third-Worldist philosophies – was at stake. Western Europe’s colonial powers were often left out to dry when their legitimate territorial claims overseas were attacked by communist forces sponsored by totalitarian Moscow. Who doesn’t remember America’s subversive influence in French colonial Indochina, immortalized in The Quiet American? One of the main culprits of this ‘moral diplomacy’ was the Kennedy Administration and, indeed, it should come as no surprise that the old world’s historical nations are now to be sacrificed once again. After all, today’s neocons started out in the Democratic Party as young JFK supporters. North-American exceptionalism ‘modernised’ Western Europe during the 20th century and in the 21st century, it is the turn of Eastern Europe. It is immoral for the Dutch to retain the Dutch East Indies but not quite so for the Javanese oligarchy to occupy the West Papuans or oppress the East-Timorese. British rule in Africa is shameful but local post-independence discrimination of whites and minorities is part of the course. Portuguese rule in Africa is illegal but the ethnic cleansing of a million whites is A-OK.
The trend began dramatically with the Suez Crisis of 1956 where both superpowers united against London and Paris. Washington DC and Moscow, oh so fraternal revolutionary capitals, brought their might to bear on the reactionary Europeans and ushered the era of definitive old-world decline. Curtis Yarvin once referenced to me a long-lost Carnegie Endowment opinion piece arguing for the same type of puritan-Bolshevik alliance in assembling a military intervention against apartheid South Africa. Alas, the USSR would eventually collapse itself and the isolated African regime would succumb to external political pressure thereby invalidating the urgency of the supposed intervention, yet the ethos did not die there. The ‘rainbow nation’s’ whites were convinced to introduce affirmative action and apart from rampant corruption and violent crime, they are today targeted racially by the new geopolitically correct regime – Zimbabwe informs on what awaits them.
Perhaps the one place where self-hatred and suicidal policies never really took hold was Israel. Not only because the nation’s survival was literally at stake daily but also because the wave of conservative eastern European Jews post-89, helped to keep the Right in power. Yet here too pressure was exerted to get Tel Aviv to compromise with the defeated enemy. Several peace treaties and power sharing solutions were offered to the Palestinians and Gaza was actually evacuated of all of its Jewish settlements. For all the political capital spent by both Israelis and Westerners though, no Arab concession was ever had in return. After 10/7, Israel seems to actually be in the process of reverting its past concessions.
During the Cold war, the United States was complicit with the erosion of European colonial power and inherited a Third-World either aligned with the USSR or anti-Western in the Non-Aligned Movement. In Eastern Europe one can observe the same trend of autistic moralism actually proving to be counter-productive in the long term. In Ukraine, two goals became incompatible: on one hand Russia felt the need to salvage the deterrent value of it’s A-235 missile defence system deployed around Moscow, and on the other, US led NATO refused to forego its ‘Open Door Policy’. If Ukraine decided to join NATO, Russia’s missile defences around its heartland would be rendered considerably deficient overnight. In contrast, if NATO abdicated from its Open Door Policy, it could no longer pretend to hold moral/normative authority, as it would no longer be an alliance for ‘good’ but merely an alliance. Practically a failed state, Ukraine was convinced to throw in its lot with the ‘good guys’ and not only did it sacrifice an entire generation of men, it is now risking its very existence in a war against a bigger, more numerous, wealthier and more technologically advanced foe.
Armenian leaders have been persuaded that retreat is the way forward and that the current and future world order will henceforth be moral and just – if only they concede this one last moral sacrifice. It is possible that their north-American and Brussels intermediaries actually believe what they’re selling to the Yerevan establishment. Saakashvilli too pinned his hopes on being on the ‘right side of History’ in his foolish attempt to reassert Georgia’s formal borders, back in 2008. Nevertheless, History is not at an end and no moral doctrine survives the test of amoral facts on the ground: Russia remains the regional arbiter while Baku and Ankara will never have Hayastan’s best interests at heart. To have assumed different was both the fault of the obtuse exceptionalists in the West as well as that of the gullible Armenians in the Caucasus, uninterested in empirically learning from recent – and, indeed, adjacent – History.
Just as the tragedy of the West is self-inflicted, Armenia will not have anyone else to blame but itself, either.
Regime Endurance War
In the 1960s, the babyboomers came of age and rebelled radically against post war conservatism. They fought for counter-culture and to this day seek to ‘smash the patriarchy’ by destroying the traditional patriarchal society. In time, the same generation that despised traditionalism and looked with envy to the maoist or korean models in the streets of 1968 Paris, this generation came to power.
With Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Cohn-Bendit and Henry-Lévy firmly in power, the revolution finally started against traditional values, this time not led by the streets but rather by governments. Top-down, the revolution gradually eroded old family and social values and gradually installed progressive totalitarianism. Schools became marxist indoctrination camps, the free media was corrupted into propaganda tools, unregulated media was censored, sovereign debts exploded, internationalist wars were declared and pursued across the planet, colonial territories were abandoned, resource rich assets were overlooked. The elites carrying out the revolution were rewarded with cushy fat cat jobs in QuaNGOs or international institutions – bodies that were expanded and now represent more normative authority than nation states. How does this connect to Ukraine?
The truth is that no Western state has anything to gain by helping Ukraine which is a territory bereft of any major resources, nor has Ukraine ever belonged to the sphere of influence of any major Western power. If Ukraine were to win the war, what would the West get? The altanticists have run Kiev over the past 8 years but have very little to show for their efforts. Victoria Nuland admitted the US had spent billions in Ukraine prior to 2014. Now an additional 100 billion have gone in. What is the ROI on those amounts? Are Ukraine’s cereals and gas transit fees supposed to compensate for all of that? How many centuries would that take?
Demagogic democratic politicians don’t even have an incentive to spend political capital on a war which from the onset is stacked against Ukraine and in favour of Russia; not to mention they would never risk their own troops against Putin’s army. Mere jingoism doesn’t cut it as motivation since Ukraine was always expected to lose the war and propping her up with funding was unsustainable for economies which are already bankrupt. Thus, going jingoistic over a loosing bet makes no sense either. The truth is that if the socialist propaganda media had chosen to cover the war the way they covered Yemen or Karabakh, there would not have been ukrainian flags or solidarity concerts throughout the Atlantic world; no one would have batted an eye for an exotic conflict that only experts in elite think-tanks bother writing essays about.
This is a regime endurance war since the purpose of the war is one of regime survival. The negative consequences of a ukrainian defeat are not reflected on Western national interests or domestic party politics. The negative consequences are reflected instead on progressivist totalitarian elites and the system they have built since 1968. If Ukraine is defeated, that will mean that progressivist organisations which have been sacralised since 1989, are useless. NATO, the EU, the Soros modeled NGO networks, ‘International Law’, all of it will have been symbolically defeated by a regressive traditional patriarchy. The ‘green’ economy minded, diversity and equity driven system will have competed and been found wanting facing a simple capitalist conservative nationalist regional power. The fear that emanates from Brussels is one of facade colapse. This loss of face will completely undermine the narrative of inevitable scientific linear evolution towards the progressive utopia. Without that utopia, the critics of the structures which enrich the atlanticist transnational elites will find fertile ground to argue against the progressivist establishment and defund the cosmopolistan.
Daniel McCarthy wrote in 2018: “(…) elite centre-left opponents. They see Russia as a symbol of hopes destroyed, of a post-Cold War order aborted by the rise of an authoritarianism that defies the logic of the end of history. Putin’s Russia is hated in ways that the fundamentalist Saudi Arabia is not because Russia is moving backwards. Liberalism’s [Progressivism’s] ideological victories are supposed to be permanent, and its entire mythology collapses if time’s advance is no longer synonymous with progress“.
As the war effort is led by universalist neolibs/neocons, and these subscribe to the domino theory, no one conflict can be lost to an ideological oponent, even if such oponent is not universalist himself. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was criticised by the progressivist technocracy but they understood that Kiev would be far more vital to their interests than the backwards Asian deserts. Since the establishment is currently a revisionist one, any defeat to an inferior orthodox is seen as a mortal danger for the maintenance of the ‘achievements’ thus far attained. One can only hope.
One Chechnya Does Not a Donbass Make
During the 1990s, Moscow came close to being sanctioned by the West for its military operations in Chechnya and ever since the beginning of Russia’s military operations against Ukraine in 2022, some have suggested that Ukraine’s industrial heartland resembles the case of the Caucasus separatists. After all, if Russia can crush an insurgency, why does it reject Ukraine’s right to do the same?
Indeed, Chechnya was the main source of friction between Kremlin’s diplomats and their western counterparts due, allegedly, to human rights violations. Moscow was determined to fight the separatists as best it could because the breakup of the USSR was not meant to be an open invitation to secession. The administrative borders of the soviet republics were legally codified and were transformed into sovereign borderlines with any minor disputes being ‘frozen’ by Moscow peacekeepers. To have allowed the Chechen precedent would have opened the Pandora’s Box of Russian minorities across Russia’s frontiers – not to mention that the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic which was short lived, was characterised by internal tribal conflict, islamic radicalisation and, eventually, border disputes with Russia proper.
Sadly, the Kremlin had only the soviet created army as an instrument with which to solve the problem. The Russian army of the 90s was an army mired by corruption, it was cash strapped, one whose morale was in the doldrums after Afghanistan and finally an army whose tactical doctrine was based on numerical advantage. An army built on mass conscription and equipped to fight in the westphalian plains against a technologically advanced foe, was wholly inadequate to combat radicalised insurgents in the Caucasus. As a consequence, the soviet army fared badly and was initially bruised, being subsequently forced to resort to mass artillery devastation in order to dislodge the rebels from urban areas. Adding to this the corruption of high officials, long-established soviet totalitarian methods and the inexperience of the common soldier, and the effect on human rights was brutal.
In some ways, the Russian army which fought in Georgia against the Saakashvili government, was still an unprofessional army and bled in order to dominate the smaller Georgian force. Nevertheless, after the consistent investment throughout the past two decades as well as the Serdyukov reorganisation, the Russian army is today a more professional army than even its western counterparts. It is more well equipped and it is well trained, benefiting in addition from deployments to theatres such as Syria. In spite of this, both via ignorance and propaganda, many still imagine the Russian military to be the struggling conscript force of the 90s.
Georgia’s regime was not a reasonable one since it expected to be able to win a war against Russia with western help, during all time high oil prices. Yet, the Georgian state did not suffer Russian agression against its territorial integrity until it chose to unfreeze the conflict by killing Russian soldiers. The Russian army could have moved to conquer additional territory, take the Georgian capital and change the government but it was content to ensure that the secessionist territories were made safe, and withdrew. Ukraine is different.
The main problem with Ukraine is its danger for Russian strategic doctrine as well as its revisionist revolutionary regime. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow was clear in demanding neutrality from Ukraine and Belarus in exchange for a consented independence. Kiev and Minsk were simply too close to Moscow and too integrated into Russian defence structures, to possibly integrate security arrangements other than Russian ones. It might not be the ideal solution but it was certainly a perfectly palatable one, especially considering that neither Ukraine nor Belarus had ever existed as sovereign states. Alas, Kiev’s actions have finally broken the fiction and not only will Ukraine cease to exist in its original 1991 form but Belarus too, will be further incorporated into Russia.
Apart from Ukrainian territory being too close to Russia for Russian anti-missile defences to be as effective, Ukraine has since 2014 transformed into a radical revisionist regime, and one antagonistic to Russia, at that. Kiev persecuted and purged the pro-Russian opposition, it forced the ukrainian language on its russophone citizens, began to revise topography (moving even to attempt to rename Russia as ‘Muskovy’ internationally), it chose to excise the Russian Orthodox Church out of Ukraine and established security pacts with anti-Russian states such as Poland, trying its best to adhere to NATO. At the height of the war with Russia, Kiev proscribed Russian literature and music, moving to either destroy Russian books or reclassify its artists as Ukrainian, as well as inviting jihadist chechens to integrate its military ranks and recognising Chechen independence – this to not mention all the human rights abuses and persecutions carried out by its nazi faction since 2014.
When Russia decided to crush the Chechen rebellion, Moscow was not seeking to prevent Chechens from being muslim, it was not attempting the rename the topography and its goal was not to erase Chechen history. In fact, by severing the ties between Grozny and the Arab sultanates, the Russian State may very well have salvaged Chechen heritage from Salafi fundamentalists.Then and now, Moscow acts as a conservative power seeking only to reestablish the status quo. Had the Salafi Chechens won independence, they would not have stopped at Chechnya and Ingushetia but would have, eventually, engulfed the entire Caucasus in war. Similarly, the cost of a Ukrainian victory in the Donbass would be a defeated Russia being surrounded by a reinvigorated NATO which would, in time, lead to world war. Russia’s goal of reestablishing Ukraine’s neutrality is in fact an attempt at preserving the buffer between Moscow and the Atlanticists – a policy prescription sure to preserve stability for the benefit of both parties.
Conversely, if the Minsk Agreements failed and the independence of the Donbass became inevitable, it was by no means a likelihood that other Ukrainian regions would follow – especially considering the regime’s heavy handed policies enforced by its nazi groups – but the opposite was true of Chechnya. Minsk itself is evidence that Moscow sought a negotiated settlement for the conflict whereas the Chechen rebels did not and neither did Kiev, ultimately. Moscow offered Ukraine a way out of the secessionist conflict but no one ever extended the same courtesy to Moscow, even when Moscow lost de facto control of the Caucasus republic.
Crimea and Kosovo are also precedents worthy of mention. Russia only moved to capture Crimea and aid Donbass separatists after the revolutionary regime itself chose to mobilise the military against the pro-Russian easterners. Months earlier, when the pro-Atlanticists had taken over police stations and army depots in the West, the Yanukovych government had faced such actions with complacency. As for the Maidan shootings, it is well established that both sides fired their weapons …whereas only one side counted nazis in its midst… In short, the Kremlin merely reacted to gradual western escalations, it did not initiate them. Kosovo is an additional example of an escalation on the part of the West; one which Russia fully retaliated against with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In part, the annexation of Crimea, Donetsk, Lughansk, Zaporozhia and Kherson, takes place precisely because Moscow does not wish to stretch its support for separatism and because the West – in its hypocrisy – would never consent to recognise their independence, anyway. Russia does not pursue revisionist policies but it does take full advantage when the West opens precedents.
Similarly, Russia’s goals in Ukraine have consistently been modest and conservative. Putin has acted so as to salvage the status quo ante of 2013, not to redraw the map of Europe. This, however, is very much not the objective of the western Atlanticists who have moved to overthrow regime after regime in eastern Europe, who have politicised the state bureaucracies of the West with equally ideological agendas and plan the dissolution of Russia at this very moment. It was the West that prevented the Kiev regime from negotiating peace with Russia at the outset of the conflict and it was Moscow that made sure to always recognise Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine and negotiated with his government from day 1. As much as it pains the West, the neocon project of a League of Democracies under US tutelage is as much an extremist folly as the Caucasus Emirate.
All these points are not to obviate from pointing out that Russia is a much larger wealthier more advanced power than Ukraine and that Kiev should have studied Thucydides: “to succeed best one must not yield to one’s equals, [one must] keep terms with one’s superiors and be moderate towards one’s inferiors”. To provoke Russia is a mistake, to provoke it while inferior is terrible judgement but to do so while Russia is at its financial and military height, can only be interpreted as a death wish.
The analogy between Chechnya and the Donbass ends at them being anti-separatist campaigns. The legal, political and strategic differences are too many and too wide for the argument to hold any basis.
New Europe’s Own Cuba
Russia’s assault on Ukraine was planned so as to drive Kiev to sue for peace and relinquish its claims to Crimea and the Donbass but the universalist West’s decision to weaponise Ukraine into an anti-russian proxy crusade, ruined the plan.
Moscow has, now for months, opted instead for an attrition model aimed at avoiding russian casualties and material destruction. However, as the Kremlin builds up its forces in Kherson, in preparation for an offensive, the endgame grows nearer.
The seats of globalist revolution in Washington and Brussels having decided to take charge of revolutionary Ukraine more directly, may soon find themselves with a politically defeated country along with a financially and militarily collapsed one. In this case, NATO may decide to salvage the reputation of the regime it has glorified by imposing a partition which would see Galicia detached from the rest of the former SSR, as a salvaged and ‘free’ West Ukraine.
This territory would likely serve as a showcase of the advantages of the atlanticist model of ‘sexual tolerance’, ‘shared sovereignty’, ‘multi-cultural society’ and ‘smart power’ diplomacy focusing on ‘moral interests’. This would entail joining the EU and NATO formally as a path for military reform and development funding. As Europe’s local ‘lighthouse of liberty’ (à la Israel and Taiwan), the purpose of Lviv would be to serve as a military platform for intelligence gathering in eastern Europe and ideologically appeal to the oppressed masses of the tyrannical russophile regimes in Belarus and Ukraine proper.
At this point, the similarities with the III Reich mount as well: a recently established state attempting a top down artificial ethnic homogenisation, led by an artist politician, supported by most of continental Europe, obsessed with wunderwaffen as a means to win a war against an older larger conservative empire, mildly enamored with a vaguely defined pagan origin, sexualising its population under the guise of a modernist ‘new man’ ideology, forced to retreat to a catholic mountainous bastion and relying on complicit foreign powers for the escape of much of its morally tainted and illegally enriched leadership.
Nevertheless, this atlanticist Cuba would be a source of potentially severe dysfunction: polish troops would most certainly dominate the allied contingent mobilised to West Ukraine and the regime’s political debt to Warsaw would clash with the heretofore project of ethnic exclusivity for Ukrainians, orthodox refugees would meet similar intolerance from the catholic and protestant minorities of the west, the G7’s financial resources would be scarce in a post-war world mired in economic depression, the progressive ethos would do little to seduce the traditionalist eastern populations and would find it much harder to ingratiate itself to the more intolerant and rural denizens of West Ukraine than it did those of the greater Kiev.
New Europe’s Cuba might turn instead into a segregated Northern Ireland living in civil strife, under constant martial law and undergoing draconian economic austerity. Conversely, Russia will have just reacquired the most industrialised littoral half of Ukraine, already prepared for infrastructural interdependence with Mother Russia.
Winter is coming for New Europe but in the East, there is a Russian Spring on the horizon.
The only other possible example of a ruinous proxy war where the patrons of the war effort end up worse than their intended target is perhaps the USSR’s and Cuba’s participation in the Angolan Bush War. South Africa did suffer regime change but it was brought about more through Western sanctions and moral pressure than by socialist military harassment and ideological condemnation. Namibia remained within Pretoria’s sphere of influence and while the MPLA would eventually win the Angolan Civil War, it would do so without Moscow’s help. Indeed, the USSR spent money it could ill afford to waste and would eventually undergo regime change due to economic crisis. The fall of the USSR hurt Cuba politically and financially with Havana going on to see much of its population starve and go into exile. The Castros would not only waste funds but would also leave the conflict militarily defeated by the smaller more nimble apartheid military prowess.
The atlanticists seem bent on following the cuban precedent.
Atlanticist Limited Sovereignty
One might call it ironic that those who shouted ‘sovereignty’ at the outset of the invasion of Ukraine now take coy pride in militarily destroying the energy infrastruture of the continent’s chief ally. It is not irony that is at work here however, it is hypocrisy.
The United States, after years of blackmail and interference in the domestic affairs of Germany, just targeted its pipeline infrastructure, causing potentially tens if not hundreds of billions in damages, setting off an environmental catastrophe and in the process contributing to future hyperinflation.
This in a sea in which the USA has no territorial claims, where no americans live and where US economic interests are scarce. Washington DC might claim that the attack benefited America’s gas industry but by that standard would Russia be permited to cause trouble in the Middle East or actually bomb pipelines in the Gulf in order to promote its own oil? Most certainly, not. The US also made sure to not claim the act which in turn makes it sheer piracy.
The attack is reminiscent of the USSR’s 1945 policy of looting all the industrial infrastructure in its path all the way to Berlin. It is not that Moscow was necessarily against its satellites having industry, it was just that the HQ of the world revolution took precedence… Ukraine’s government being a puppet regime was tacitly understood to be a characteristic of an uncivilised battleground but Germany is not only a member of both the sacred EU and NATO but it is also the americans’ most important ally in mainland Europe. By bombing it the US has made NATO into a full Delian League – to ‘keep Germany down’, indeed…
Both the US and the EU have helped exacerbate financial mismanagement and are responsible for the economic crisis. Quantitative easing, indebtedness, ‘green’ policies which disencourage investment in traditional energy sources, the voluntary importing of masses of millions of illegal 3rd world immigrants, cultural marxist policies and narratives which lead to marriage and family breakdown and, in turn, depress birthrates, etc
Nordstream 1 and 2 Bornholm section was over navigated by an LHD group of the US Navy in late September with an underwater operations unit on board, no less. In a sane, logical world, the german chancellor – whichever party he was from – would have expelled the US ambassador, publicly indicted the american government and demanded an apology along with reparations. Evidently, Berlin is no longer independent but additionally, the damage to the international reputation of the US – especially in the public opinions of Europe – would have been so great that it would have endangered the very legitimacy of NATO. At the very least, the russian government would have demanded the permanent removal of the US Navy from the Baltic as a precondition for the repair of the pipeline.
Alas, the West, much like the Socialist Bloc before it, does not live in sanity. As the Valery Legasov character so eloquently put it in the Chernobyl accident series, “when the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is, still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid“.
The escape forward reflex and the manichean fanaticism of the current western elites have, at this point, all but guaranteed that when the collapse comes it will not be a selective one. It will not be one or another institution which will be affected, it will be all of them. When NATO finally crumbles, it will bring the EU down alongside it and vice-versa. The ECB, IMF, World Bank will follow suit. Russia and China will surely position themselves to quickly replace them.
Given that the atlanticists are willing to use hard methods with their client states as well as with their own populations, America’s allies should prepare for DC to begin demanding harsh punishment of dissent of their own populations. The January 6th persecution of conservatives and all those who dispute the 2020 election results, Canada’s crushing of the truckers protest, France’s mistreatment of the yellow vests or the Netherlands methods towards the farmers, all indicate that free speech has its days numbered in the West.
There Will Be Finlandisation
The collective West has acted autistically since the end of the Cold War, a problem russian and third world officials have complained about for decades. The perspective of the ‘leaders of the free world’ has been one of an end of History which leaves the North Sea individualism heirs as the frontrunners of the global moral race.
This translates into the followers of Fukuyama ignoring, dismissing or undervaluing the views and concerns of those they deem morally unworthy and overestimate the importance of their own initiatives and views.
This was evident in the run up to the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and Libya, for instance. NATO became an aggressive power, clearly without ever anticipating that one day the humanitarian justification and the ignoring of the UNSC, might be used against its interests. The R2P doctrine was well and good but only in the hands of the anglophone centred circle. Kosovo’s independence can be recognised but if Russia recognises other separatist regions, that is ‘revanchism’. The UK can conduct counter-insurgency campaigns in Ulster or Malaysia but Chechnya does not qualify.
The subversion of Ukraine by the atlanticist nomenklatura has contaminated Kiev and much of eastern Europe with this very same perspective. When the Euromaidanistas started cheering the occupation of police stations and army depots by the revolutionary crowd, they had no answer to what they thought the opposition to them might feel entitled to do once the precedent was set. Time and again, autistic policy and action are undertaken with complete disregard for the views of the other parties.
Russia being closer to the West, it had to endure the double standards sooner and is also turning the tables on the West earlier than the rest of the world. Nevertheless, judging by the hissy fit the West is throwing, it seems it has not yet learned its lesson and is on the process of damaging its relations with much of the rest of the world as well.
The USA unilaterally decided to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. It was also the West that refused to dismantle NATO, following the collapse of the Warsaw Treaty along with the USSR. Worse still, Brussels went ahead with five successive expansions against Russian objections and all the way to the borders of the Russian Federation. NATO has countered that it has not any significant forces closer to Russia’s borders but this is disingenuous. NATO has indeed mobilised often to the Baltic Air Police mission, it has installed surveillance facilities on the borders with Russia, it never stopped its surveillance flights and, of course, the armed forces of Russia’s neighbours are indeed NATO assets, as are their bases and territories.
NATO has outrightly deceived Moscow on several occasions: 1) certainly when it changed its mind about expansion 2) with Kosovo the NATO states had Resolution 1244 approved so as to post facto legitimise the intervention under the motto ‘illegal but legitimate’ and then proceeded to violate it, in turn, by recognising Kosovo’s independence and violating Serbia’s territorial integrity, 3) Brussels persuaded Moscow to pass Resolution 1973 approving a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011, only to violate that too by sending ‘little green men’ to aid the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi and then blatantly lying about it for months until the dictator was killed 4) in Ukraine specifically, the Weimar Triangle served as guarantors of the agreement signed by Yanukovych and the opposition, but then had no qualm reneging on it, less than 24 hours later when the opposition stormed the presidential palace and chased the Ukrainian President out of Kiev 5) Kiev never even attempted to implement the Minsk Agreements which provided for measures such as a cease-fire, demobilisation, direct negotiations between Kiev and the Donbass rebels and political referenda throughout the country on a future federal framework of administration 6) Mink II had to be negotiated following renewed fighting and added the obligation of constitutional reforms on the part of Kiev but as with Minsk I, the West never pressured Ukraine to implement it.
On the contrary, NATO refinanced, rearmed and refortified Kiev’s positions in the Donbass, also largely ignoring Russia’s warnings of support for the rebels, should Kiev attempt to retake the region by force a third time. Observing the military build-up in preparation for a new offensive, the russians went to the americans directly, to offer a frozen conflict in return for an official NATO disinvite for Ukrainian membership: this would have allowed the rebels a certain degree of autonomy and proximity to Russia without risking Ukrainian territorial integrity à la Crimea in 2014, as well as having guaranteed effective Ukrainian control over the segment of the Donbass it had already conquered, eschewing the possibility of having to abandon the fortifications it had already invested in.
Washington DC dismissed the offer outright. Moscow proceeded with the official recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, concluded a military pact with them and warned Kiev that any attack on the republics would be met with the utmost military resolve. Kiev ignored and continued its artillery duels with the rebels leading to Russia’s offensive of February 2022.
Even after the political disaster of a Russian campaign against the most important Brussels protectorate in the continent, the atlanticists persist in their self-delusions imagining anti-Putin coups in Moscow, believing themselves capable of blackmailing Russia economically through ineffective sanctions that harm them more than the Federation, and add insult to injury by failing spectacularly in persuading the rest of the world to join them in their boycott of the Russian economy, only to see their diplomatic standing decreased for naught.
This is where finlandisation comes in. Moscow has committed itself to two seemingly incompatible policies: sovereignty and denazification. Putin can injure Ukraine’s territorial integrity without affecting its sovereignty but he cannot denazify Ukraine without overthrowing its government. The solution might be finlandisation as this would assure the neutralisation of what will be left of Ukraine while allowing the residual regime to decide its own fate. It would be politically unsustainable for such a regime to continue to tolerate its ultra-nationalist elements while deserting the West, disarming, negotiating with Moscow the amputation of its own territory and future economic issues such as the provision of energy. While there is still no hint of a movement against the Zelensky dictatorial regime, be it on the streets or in the hallways, the Ukrainian Presidency has been busy conducting purges of the government’s inner circle.
As previously mentioned, such a coup would stand little chance of success without the complicity of the Ukrainian military and Russia…
The Desolation of C.H.A.O.S.
On May 18th 2022 and after 75 years of neutrality, Finland and Sweden submitted their applications for entry into the North Atlantic Alliance.
For a dispassionate observer, the bid might seem irrational. Throughout the Cold War, with a totalitarian superpower as a neighbour, Stockholm and Helsinki did not dare contribute to the joint Western effort against the Soviet threat. Moscow sought to subvert every state with an active communist party, it sponsored wars in continents where Russia had no obvious interests, it directly invaded Afghanistan (not to mention Finland in the 1930s) and crushed dissent in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it maintained totalitarian regimes in its eastern European satellites, it acted as patron of some of the worst totalitarian dystopias on Earth and it brought the old continent to the verge of nuclear catastrophe during the Chernobyl disaster. Yet, non of this ever swayed the bothnian brethren into abandoning their non-alignment.
No, the baltic brothers decided that it was in 2022 that it would be finally worth joining the Atlantic Alliance. The decision was made in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the stated goal of increasing the security of the two neutral nordics, ostensibly against the threat of the Russian Federation.
This is a rather inconsistent position on the part of the two countries. The USSR is no longer and while Russia is an economy of global importance integrating the G20, it is hardly a superpower anymore. Furthermore, the ruling conservative regime in Moscow has shown exactly zero interest in promoting or forcing any ideological doctrine on the world. Much to the contrary, it seems focused on promoting its economic and strategic interests by partnering with as many marxist inspired regimes (Venezuela, Cuba) as conservative ones (Saudi Arabia, Hungary), democracies (India, Serbia) or autocracies (Belarus, Iran). Moreover, under Vladimir Putin himself, Russia was originally quite interested in joining NATO and never shied away from commercial agreements with the EU member-states, even subjecting itself to the jurisdiction of the Council of Europe and its ECHR on humanitarian issues.
It is true that Russia has seen itself involved in a number of conflicts during Putin’s tenure but at a closer lens, Moscow has been on the reactive side of the disputes, not on the aggressor side. In Georgia, it was Saakashvili’s government that chose to defreeze the Ossetia issue and bomb russian troops. In Syria too, it was the West that decided to endorse the revolution while the russians had always been close to the regime in Damascus and merely helped it survive. During events in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, Moscow acted always as a defender of the status quo and it was atlanticist forces that pushed externally for regime change. Therefore, even if one were to interpret Moscow’s 2022 intervention in Ukraine as an aggressive move, one would have to concede that it was most certainly not part of a pattern with the potential to threaten Sweden and Finland.
If the timing appears off, the strategic vision informing the policy is just as much fraught with inconsistencies.
Going by the rhetoric, swedes and finns wish to join NATO motivated by fears of political aggression, especially from an authoritarian power with reckless disregard for human rights; Democratic Peace Theory reigns supreme in the foreign policy of both the Hereditary Prince Palace and the Marine Barracks.
Let us firstly concede the obvious contention that the nordics are more likely to see themselves involved in a conflict with Russia than they are with the United States. Indeed, the elites and technocratic establishment maintain far closer relations and enjoy greater cultural proximity to the Atlantic than to Eurasia.
That being said, NATO is hardly an answer to what the nordics seek. In terms of aggressive conduct, illegal under International Law, Brussels has been far more aggressive than Moscow for the past decades and with far deadlier and more destructive consequences. It is worth reminding that the nordics’ attachment to one of the EU’s Four Freedoms (circulation) went out the window when they were forced to suspend the Schengen Area agreement, shortly after the NATO regime change intervention in Libya which caused an invasion of Europe by millions of third world illegal immigrants. Staying on the topic of illegal invasions, one must inevitably focus on Turkey since Ankara is currently occupying three different states. The human rights record is not better with the Turks currently imprisoning more journalists than Russia and Ukraine combined.
Empiricism is always useful and while Finland had to endure a soviet invasion, Sweden has not had to fight Russia since 1809. Helsinki also allied with Nazi Germany during the Second World War and fought Britain – another democracy – during the global conflict. True, the finns were ‘finlandized’ throughout the Cold War but Moscow remained true to its peace guarantees to this day. It is therefore hard to make a convincing case for an emerging threat from Russia. In addition, let us not forget that as members of NATO, Stockholm and Helsinki will be asked to contribute to the war effort, the next time Brussels and DC decide to intervene in the name of ‘peace enforcement’, ‘responsibility to protect’ or some other perversion of international norms by any other name.
Shortly after the announcement of their candidacy, Sweden and Finland were caught off guard by the stance of the Turkish government, warning of a veto on principle, to the entry of the two countries.
Here we enter into even more controversial territory given that while the northern peoples may be culturally distant from the slavic russians – as already admitted – they are arguably even more incompatible with their Mediterranean would-be-allies. The example of Turkey is not unique, for Greece too endured difficult relations with the nordics during its dictatorial times. Within NATO, Athens was heavily criticised by Denmark and Norway for its anti-democratic practices and in the Council of Europe, the two nordic kingdoms were joined by Sweden and the Netherlands in denouncing and lambasting the hellenic republic – some allies… Perhaps the most egregious example might be that of Portugal. Not only a member but actually a founding member by American and British invitation, Lisbon had to endure decades of derision from Oslo and Copenhagen. Not content with diplomatically discriminating against the portuguese, the nordics not only did not aid their ‘ally’ when it was attacked by communist forces equipped by the USSR, in South Asia and Africa, but they actually rejoiced when the iberian member lost its territories to the friends of Moscow. Tensions between the supposed allies came to a head in the 1971 NATO meeting in Lisbon with norwegians exchanging recriminations with the greeks and portuguese. As if that were not enough, the puritanical nordics went to the extreme of floating the option of either Portugal and Greece being expelled, or they themselves exiting the Alliance.
Recently, following the Great Recession, tensions arose between the EU’s fiscally sound northern states and the infamous southern PIIGS – with even Finland joining the mix, this time. This past does not bode well for the future of an alliance with the added membership of Sweden and Norway – perhaps we should start calling them the CHAOS countries: Copenhagen, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm.
NATO insiders or not, the nordics have always insisted on humanitarian foreign policies. Their obsession with values has led to their hosting various international normative initiatives such as the Helsinki Accords, the Reykjavík Summit, the Oslo Accords or, of course, the Nobel Prize ceremonies. They have equally been at the forefront of several humanitarian minded conventions and were some of the first to impose normative conditionality in their commercial and diplomatic dealings around the world. Sweden’s success in exporting its fighter aircraft, SAAB’s JAS-39 Gripen, for instance, is widely recognised as being hampered by Stockholm’s humanitarian demands. Norway has often courted diplomatic trouble with the choice of Nobel Peace Prize winners. Generally, the nordics are usually the ones to instigate sanctions aimed at human rights violators around the world.
It is uncertain how any of this behaviour actually benefits the nordics but their external relations are their own prerogative and they cannot possibly be accused of inconsistency. That is until they request access to the hallways of international military alliances. One would imagine that Stockholm and Helsinki would be more at ease partnering with the likes of New Zealand or Bhutan for their security arrangements since such choices would make little sense strategically but at least they would be consistent with their clear conscience imperative. Approaching NATO is bizarre at best but more to the point, it raises another problem: the consequences of their actions in the past half century.
Technically, no NATO member is undemocratic at the moment but who knows what the future may hold? The West’s definition of ‘democracy’ is certainly not becoming more encompassing… The current problem that Finland and Sweden face is related to their defence of the kurdish cause in Turkey but why should, say, Hungary or Poland be willing to accept the two states into the Alliance? It is not like they have been making their life easier within the EU. Why should they wish to invite their recalcitrance into yet another vital forum?
Moralpolitik has always been rid with strategic pitfalls for strategy requires cold blooded calculations and not pink unicorn utopias conceived in politically correct academies. As is typical of idealists, the nordics are trying to reach for the best of both worlds: the moralist prestige and the realist means for their defence. It is high time that the idealists to the north learn that the two don’t go together and that their doctrine’s chickens have finally come home to roost.
The War of the Soviet Succession
The Special Military Operation is the latest struggle for normative hegemony in the post-Soviet space.
Such a conflict has not been witnessed since the Russian Civil War – a century ago; and prior to that we would have to return to the competition between the oligarchic catholics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the absolutist orthodox Muscovite Tsars, back in the 17th century.
After 1989 the technocratic elites of the soviet bloc were forced to conceive a political solution to the problem of internal regime change. The chinese decided to move ahead with economic liberalisation but maintain political autocracy and this model was at times similarly followed in southeast Asia, central Asia and the Balkans. The velvet republics opted for full political and economic liberalisation but were cautious to maintain cultural institutions or even strengthen them; this allowing them to maintain social order in the surrounding chaos of institutional upheavel. Russia attempted to follow the same path but the results were disastrous.
The ‘velvet model’ could not work in Russia which was a vast multi-ethnic nation and where the organic moral institutions had been purged for over half a century. Hence, social cohesion could not be kept the way it was in central Europe. Similar problems were encountered in Russia’s periphery from Ukraine to Central Asia and the Caucasus. Indeed, the Chechen Wars were a local attempt to deal with the instability stemming from the soviet breakup, by emulating Middle Eastern models inspired by Islam.
In time, the Siloviki came to the same conclusion that the KGB had arrived at in 1991: Russia as an entity does not possess a circumscribed territory to where it can withdraw in an emergency and must, therefore, make strategic depth its defensive policy; this, in turn, requires a centralized government bent on preventing separatism and secession. If the KGB had a bad reputation after ’91, with the Chechen Wars, the nomenklatura came to understand the point and Putin was eventually suggested to Yeltsin as a viable solution for his succession.
The appointment of Putin, however, meant partly ending the oligarchic model which had been entertained until 2000. Moscow was, in fact, coming around to empathising with the asian adaptations to capitalism. This realisation served Moscow well and soon the chaos was ended, the economy was made to prosper, dependency towards foreign interests subsided and a military modernisation was carried out.
Unlike Belarus and Russia though, Ukraine began to stagnate after the 2000s, precisely because part of its intelligentsia insisted on following atlanticist doctrine. Ukraine too was a multicultural state whose christian ethics had been purged and therefore, it came to experience similar problems to those of Yeltsin Russia. Viktor Yanukovych’s government programme was partly a response to this degeneration which had only worsened with the Orange Revolution. Rather than reining in the corrupt oligarchy, the weakening of the central government authority before domestic kleptocrats and foreign technocrats, was causing Ukraine to regress back to social instability and political sclerosis.
Following the Maidan Revolution, the impetus became to cement the verge westwards. As Ukraine was an artificial entity, that could only be done artificially through force but unlike other post-communist regimes, Kiev’s authoritarianism was not merely political, it was totalitarian. In pursuit of the maximalist goals of atlanticist doctrine, Ukraine would attempt to mimic the velvet model of the central european homogeneous states, parties to the Brussels institutions.
Therein lied the Faustian bargain: the homogenisation of Ukraine could only be achieved with the totalitarian methods of the ultranationalists, whereas the inflow of funds which the central europeans had enjoyed as a product of their membership and voting rights, for Ukraine were available only via the diktats of the universalist technocrats; emanating from the Brussels bubble and the DC deep states, these technocrats were even less popularly accountable and, thus, even further capriciously ideological.
The Biden clan’s infamous dealings in the region must be seen as entirely natural given the promiscuity and mutual dependence between the Beltway’s military industrial complex and the subversive Brussels elites, desperately clinging to the jurisdictional legitimacy of their transnational powers. In the absence of war, it is simply convenient to stoke friction with the most proeminent military power lacking influence in Washington. For Brussels, any crisis which serves to further justify the acruement of its authority and the reinforcement of its narrative, is worth it. Brussels’s legitimacy is procedural: once national leaders allow the eurocrats to take charge, those powers are never returned – anyone suggesting it immediately being maligned for wanting a ‘civilisational setback’ which goes against acquired rights and liberties, for defending ‘autocratic revisionism’ or ‘russian revanchism’.
In the 21st century, therefore, the struggle is between two competing models of development: on one side stand the individualist ascepticists of the demo-humanitarian Internationale, while on the other side stand the idiosyncratic conservatives of the international alliance of sovereigntists.
The current war does not confront russians and ukrainians exclusively. Kiev has managed to recruit international volunteers indoctrinated by liberal propaganda into the famous ‘International Legion’. The nazi regiments operating in the Donbass had integrated neonazi militants from around the world since 2014. Opposition russians and belarussians in exile also have their own ‘Freedom for Russia’ and ‘Kastus Kalinouski’ battalions, respectively. Chechens operate on both sides, along the same clan lines which separate them at home: the ‘Dzhokhar Dudayev’ and ‘Sheikh Mansur’ battalions are under Kiev orders whereas ‘Kadyrov Guard’ elements went to fight in Ukraine as part of the Russian National Guard (RosGvardia) mobilisation to the Donbass. In addition, balkan serbs have integrated the Donbass militias since 2014.
Lately, Ukrainian officials have been appealing to an internationalisation of the conflict with the idea of opening two additional fronts: in Transnistria and Galicia. The russian dominated Transnistria enclave in Moldova, holds a small russian garrison guarding a sizeable ammunition depot, dating back to the Cold War. If the ukrainian army were to attack it, it could divert russian attention from the eastern front, draw in NATO allies into the ukrainian quagmire as well as, potentially, supplying ammunition to the increasingly deprived Armed Forces of Ukraine. Rumours have circulated of plans for a polish-romanian task force readying to mobilise to Moldova to fight any russian attempt to defend the garrison from the ukrainians. The Galicia concept would consist of a polish military mobilisation into west Ukraine which would establish a sanctuary for ukrainian forces, under the protection of a NATO aerial defense umbrella, thus contesting russian aerial supremacy and endangering any further Moscow advances west of the Dniepr.
The peripheral successors of the USSR appear to seek the west european solution of ethnically homogeneous states connected by endless porous political networks, ultimately resulting in technocratic world government. The USSR centre conversely seeks self-reliance and strategic depth so as to resist political universalism. The moderate reasonable position is certainly the latter, while the former relies, ultimately, on maximalist goals and utopian federations of incompatible interests.
Putsching Ukraine
As previously discussed, Ukraine greatly resembles the fascist regimes of the 1930s. Its borders and nationhood are significantly artificial, and its regime is ultra-nationalist and focused on establishing nationhood with a grievance narrative. It also relies greatly on propaganda and indoctrination to achieve political legitimacy rather than elections.
Vladimir Putin made sure to appeal to a change of leadership in Ukraine during his declaration of war speech in February: “I once again appeal to the military personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine: do not allow neo-Nazis and (Ukrainian radical nationalists) to use your children, wives and elders as human shields (…) Take power into your own hands, it will be easier for us to reach agreement”.
Therefore, Putin is effectively appealing to a coup in Kiev, in order for Ukraine to save itself. Reality is rapidly reshaping the future of Ukraine and the revolutionary regime’s intransigence is not helping the country’s future, at all.
The question now is whether such a coup can in fact take place.
The truth is that the political and military leadership in Kiev understand the odds they face against Russia and neither Zelensky nor the nazi cliques are being evicted.
In order for a leader to be overthrown he must be unpopular and Zelensky benefits as much – if not more – from the war induced rally-to-the-flag patriotism, as Putin does. Thus no Operation Valkyrie is feasible since the political leadership is popular enough and the memory of the Maidan is still present. If Yanukovych can be chased out with 40% approval, then surely no obscure general doing the bidding of Russia could survive the atlanticist mob.
Another equally ruled out scenario is a Night of the Long Knives since that would require a parallel militarist organisation to rival that of the nazis but no such faction exists. The Maidan regime relies on liberals, oligarchs and nazis but only the nazis are disciplined and armed enough to co-opt or seize political power.
There are two segments of Ukrainian society that might have an interest in regime change. One is the Ukrainian russophone deep state that must not have appreciated seeing the young anglophone euro-fanatics coming in to replace their influence built during soviet times and using soviet methods. The other is the military, especially if complemented by disillusioned veterans arriving from the frontlines who realize the society back home is utterly indoctrinated and living some twilight zone level mass delusion of victory and heroism.
However, these two groups are not properly motivated. The Special Military Operation has been merciful to an extreme with the civilian population and the average Ukrainian is not suffering nearly as much as civilians in any other theatre of war. In addition, there is the Skorzeny contingency of seeing the NATO powers flying in their own puppet rather than waiting for Kiev to produce its own replacement, should Zelensky be removed from power.
Indeed, the main obstacle is western influence. Brussels funding and propaganda helps keep both the Ukrainian population on a path to destruction as well as preempt any unilateral moves by west-ukrainians to replace the current regime. Any new regime would find itself completely isolated in communications, military aid, finances and diplomacy. Moscow might help but even that would constitute a poisoned chalice.
As observed in Turkey, Portugal and other cases, a coup or revolution does not usually work at the first attempt and there have been no movements in Ukraine to even seek that political solution.
Simply put, both the people and the foreign partners of Ukraine are united in demanding a military solution for the conflict, however impossible a victory may be. Without dismantling the totalitarian apparatus guarded by the banderites, no military moves will even be attempted as most institutions in Ukraine have been lustrated for the past 8 years.
Whereas the Russian operation is going well militarily, one wonders how denazification is possible without entering Kiev and Lviv, and tearing down the Bandera monuments as well as kicking out the Banderites
It would appear that Moscow expected its initial shock and awe to scare the regime into exile across the border with Poland. Yet, the Ukrainian army chose to fight on and the leadership received ample funding and political capital from the west, too. Now that they are entrenched in Kiev and Lviv, how can denazification take effect?
Mariupol, the Stalingrad of Orthodox Atlanticism
Following the fall of the Reichskanzlei in 1945, western elites embarked on a process of ideological colonisation by, ironically, their former colonial dependencies. The rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson contaminated the post-War elites with its exceptionalist liberal democracy melting pot narrative. Normatively, the two sides of the Iron Curtain diverged quickly: the USSR did not demobilise its WWII army, it did not allow democratic elections in its conquered territories and rejected Marshall Plan aid. This stood in stark contrast, not to the USA but to the decisions of western European elites. Led by the atoning Germans, the european elites came to associate nationalism to fascism, and thanks largely to their international cosmopolitan status, became believers in an ‘american model’ for Europe and, eventually, the world. The EEC would be a halfway house to European unity – the US of Europe – which in turn would be a stepping stone to continental demo-liberal integration – African Union, ASEAN, etc – ultimately resulting in empowering the UN to rule the globe.
In successive waves of accession, the Brussels bubble never realised the cultural and national forces which were incompatible with its ideological uniformity delusions. BENELUX merged with the Dunkirk Treaty and proceeded to adopt the PIIGS without comprehending that their catholic/adriatic mentality was not compatible with the political and financial governance standards of the north. Next, Brussels turned to the Velvet vector without understanding that their stance against dictatorship stemmed from a national conservative instinct and not from an individualist liberal mindset. While losing political capital to Visegrad’s nationalist and traditionalist policies and haemorrhaging money to both the south and east, Brussels still partnered with Washington DC, in order to evangelise the post-soviet space. Progressive atlanticism was advanced by NATO expansion, EU association agreements and normative subversion undergirded with massive funding, put to proper use by local Soros and CIA nomenklatura – formalized under the auspices of NATO’s Partnership for Peace and the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy.
Moscow was caught off guard in 2003 by the Rose Revolution in Georgia and then again by the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine which quickly began allying with revolutionary Georgia. In 2005 it was the turn of Kyrgyzstan with the Tulip Revolution which while displacing the ruling dynasty of the republic, did not succeed in extirpating Russian influence. In all these episodes, Moscow was surprised by political developments which disregarded Russia’s natural interdependencies with the respective former possessions. In 2008, Georgia, led by its Eurasian internationalist president Mikhail Saakashvili, started a war with Russia by invading South Ossetia. The frozen conflict was reheated and, fumbling with an obsolete army of conscripts, Moscow eventually managed to re-establish the status quo ante, not without having come close to being denied use of its military facilities in Ukrainian Crimea – Tbilisi was not overthrown by Moscow but Saakashvili was eventually removed by the Georgian establishment itself which also returned Georgia to its traditional neutral status. Shocked by what was happening, the Putin government moved to begin fighting fire with fire, and picking players in Ukraine to counter-balance western universalist subversion. By 2010, Moscow had succeeded in legitimately seeing its own Ukrainian candidate freely elected into the presidency but subsequently to Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU’s association agreement, the atlanticist intelligentsia of Kiev decided to force him out without caring about the consequences. The Russian Federation gave up playing the fixed political game and annexed Crimea as well as loaning support for the pro-Russian rebels in the Donbass region of Ukraine. In 2020, Russia abstained from having its influence much felt when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia in Karabakh. This served both as a punishment for Armenia pursuing a semi-atlanticist path with its new government and as a favour to Erdogan’s Turkey, thus further putting the Turkish leader in Russia’s debt – after Russia’s helpful hand in aiding Reçep Erdogan avoid a coup in 2016. Following its Turkish precedent, the Russian government helped Lukashenko stave off a colour revolution in Belarus in 2020 by providing the Byelorussian president with sensitive intelligence. The Kremlin mobilised the CSTO to preempt yet another in Kazakhstan in 2021.
Why should they be classified as ‘colour revolutions’? Because they were ostensibly financed and politically controlled from abroad by atlanticist forces. It is questionable that they occurred organically but certain they were managed politically throughout the events.
In 2022, Moscow went on the offensive thereby inaugurating the conservative counter-revolution of the 2020s. Ukraine and its army of a quarter million men, spearheaded by Galician neonazis and marketed by Ruthenian-Carpathian-Kiev eurofederalists was indeed being built up to intervene in a future conflict, possibly within Russia, in order to tip the scales in favour of atlanticism, thus furthering Russia’s disintegration.
Russia is regarded by the universalists as the single greatest obstacle to their world unity dreams, precisely due to its stubborn defence of sovereignty, and success with conservative policies. Even Beijing is not as feared since China’s energy supplies can be cut and its activities in Africa and Latin America are vulnerable to Western military threats, as well.
In Mariupol too much is at stake. It was the bastion of Kiev’s shock troops in the Donbass, it was the base of the extremists’ torture and intimidation programmes – as Mariupol was not only Russophone and Russophile but it was actually ethnically Russian – and it still stands as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance; exploited by Kiev’s giant propaganda machine to deceive Western audiences into believing that aiding the war effort is not only moral but also not a lost cause.
The fall of Mariupol will also mean the liberation of Russian and Donetsk forces to participate in the further encirclements of Ukrainian regiments in the east, accelerating the collapse of the Ukrainian army and, in turn, allowing the rapid advance of Russian forces to the Dnieper and to Odessa – hence landlocking the Banderite regime in Kiev.
The destruction of the neonazi batallions could remove the political leverage the far-right holds over president Zelensky and drive him to sue for peace with Moscow but the euro-federalists still hold much sway in the capital and could prevent Zelensky from negotiating. If part of the Ukrainian bureaucracy and military decides to revolt against the madness, an internal putsch could be in the offing, especially since Putin hinted to such a move in his war declaration speech.
More significantly, the more tardive the capitulation, the greater the risk to Ukrainian territorial integrity since Galicia and the Trans-Carpathians may very well decide they cannot live in a Russian influenced polity, under the leadership of Putin’s niece’s parents and the dynasty of the Gas Princess. Indeed, Ukraine succumbed to extremist totalitarians and militant utopians precisely because its nationhood is so artificial – much resembling the German and Italian fascists whose states were relatively recent fabrications, in the 1920s/30s.
In remains to be seen whether Ukrainian liberals will one day come to regret their romance with the post-soviet fascists, if they are forced to share a polity with them which no longer merits much funding or media attention from Brussels. This was the case of the el Baradei progressives in Egypt when they realised their affair with the Muslim Brotherhood was actually worse than secular military dictatorship.
Such tends to be the bitter aftertaste of indulging in dystopian self-delusion; an ailment only stoic pragmatism can cure.
The Westphalian Post 