As the Russian president’s year-end presser helped underscore, Europe will increasingly understand itself as the western end of Eurasia rather than the eastern shore of the Atlantic.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, visiting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2019. (Kremlin)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Vladimir Putin was “defiant” during his end-of-year press conference last Thursday. The Russian president, who has held these impressive question-and-answer events for the past 20 years, was “bellicose.” He was “threatening.” So we read in the all-the-same-always American press.
Here’s a gem from one Mary Ilyushina, a CBS News correspondent in Moscow: Putin is worried about the military activities of NATO members in Ukraine, she tells us, “you know, on Russia’s doorstep, which is what Putin believes Ukraine is.”
Putin believes. Got it. Mary Ilyushina, my nominee for president of the Overseas Press Club. I have other words for Putin’s performance before 500 domestic and international journalists, and it is far more pertinent to our circumstances. Putin was confident. He was clear, well-informed per usual, and meant neither more nor less than what he said.
I realize it is difficult for us, we Americans, to comprehend a political figure who is clear, well-informed, and means what he or she says. But this is what is noteworthy about Putin’s four-hour appearance. This is what’s worth our consideration.
Putin’s year-end presser, the Kremlin transcription of which is here, follows a series of developments that, in my read, has set in motion a profound shift in East–West relations as these play out along Russia’s border with Europe and across the Eurasian landmass.
“Putin wants to restructure the whole security architecture of Europe,” Mary Ilyunshina reported. Dead on this time, Mary. While Putin articulated no such thought, this is a serviceable summary of exactly his intent.
It is difficult to say just when the train of events now playing out between Washington and Moscow began. One can go back to the “civil society” funding the U.S. began sending Ukraine in the early post–Cold War years. But good enough here to mark down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Sept. 1 summit with President Joe Biden as the occasion that set this recent phase in motion.
NATO & Ukraine
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Dec. 16. (NATO, Flickr)
Zelenskyy wanted assurances that the Biden regime would hold his hand as he continued to ignore Ukraine’s Minsk II commitments and stoked increasing tensions with Russia. He got that. But he didn’t get what he truly came for: As noted in this space at the time, Biden stopped well short of any commitment to advance Ukraine toward membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
I may have misread that occasion as more of a setback than it was for the corrupt, Nazi–supported Russophobes running the Kiev regime.
What has since ensued leaves NATO membership well in the distance, but there are treaty documents and there are weapons shipments, infrastructure contracts, foreign mercenaries, purposeful naval provocations, and assorted other “facts on the ground.”
So far this year the Biden regime has approved $450 million in security assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total allotted since the U.S. inspired the February 2014 coup in Kiev to $2.5 billion.
During their Oval Office sit-down, Biden stayed awake long enough to promise Zelenskyy $60 million more in small arms, ammunition and radar systems. This materiel began arriving on Dec. 10 and will continue into the new year. Beyond that more, surely.
Britain is now at work constructing two naval ports along Ukraine’s Black Sea shoreline; in October the U.K. agreed to lend Kiev $1.6 billion to pay for an assortment of British-made naval vessels, some new, some outdated scows of the kind the West typically sells the non–West.
U.S. and British naval maneuvers off Russia’s Black Sea coast are now routine. Western military officials now talk of deploying potent new technology, all the way up to nuclear-capable missiles, along the alliance’s Russia-facing eastern front. We now have Russian reports that British mercenaries have joined the forces from NATO members already deployed in Ukraine. The numbers Russia is (unofficially) putting out: 10,000 troops and mercs from NATO members on Ukrainian soil, 4,000 from the U.S.
NATO–schmATO, if you see what I mean. The thought in Washington, London and Brussels seems to be, Well, we can’t put Ukrainian membership to paper —that might be a provocation too far — but, the hell with it, we can treat Kiev as more or less a member anyway.
Since the autumn we have had incessantly alarmist reports that the Russian Federation is amassing troops and materiel in its western region near the border with Ukraine. I read everything from 60,000 Russian soldiers to 175,000. Who knows? Maybe none, maybe the higher number (or higher than the higher number).
The Pentagon & Press
Our only certainty is that we cannot logically take the word of the Pentagon and its clerks in the press for what Russia is doing (on its own soil).
Be alert, readers! The West provoked the Cold War, left its provocations out and blamed Stalin’s Soviet Union for all that followed. The U.S. cultivated the coup in Ukraine seven years ago, left out copious evidence of this, and blamed Russia for reincorporating Crimea to protect its naval base on the Black Sea from the new crazies in Kiev.
Same thing once again. This latest crisis over the Ukraine question is the West’s doing, and — forgive the lapse here, please — the bullshitters in Washington are once again selling most of us on the idea that Russia is the aggressor.
July 7, 2016.: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, on phone, in Kiev. (U.S. State Department)
I am reminded of that wonderful moment amid the earlier phase of the Ukraine crisis when John Kirby, then as now the not-too-bright Pentagon spokesman, complained to Matt Lee, the Associated Press’s able diplomatic correspondent, that Russia was too close to NATO’s eastern borders.
Everybody has to be someplace, as the old saying goes.
Everyone in Washington knows, just as you and I know, that Russia has no intention of “invading” Ukraine. This is merely the cover story blurring, in Washington’s seven-decade tradition, cause and effect.
When Biden asked for a video conference with Putin earlier this month, it looked to me as if our addled president wanted to come away saying, I talked tough and he retreated.
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Six days after the two leaders’ video encounter, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, handed his American counterpart two draft treaties that Moscow proposes as the basis of a comprehensive agreement to deescalate the dangerous situation Washington has assiduously conjured along Russia’s western frontier. One is a bilateral accord between Washington and Moscow; the other is a draft accord Russia and all NATO members would sign.
Unusually, the foreign ministry in Moscow published both documents two days after Ryabkov handed them to Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried. This was astute on Russia’s part: It leaves no room for Washington to misrepresent the Russian position. It also conveys the extent to which Russia intends to hold to its position even as it looks forward to negotiations in Geneva after the year turns.
Said position in sum:
- NATO will cease all efforts to expand eastward, notably into Ukraine and Georgia.
- NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missile batteries in nations bordering Russia.
- An end to NATO military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
- The effective restoration of the treaty covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The U.S. — yet again blaming Russia — abandoned the INF pact in August 2019.
- An ongoing security dialogue.
The talk in Washington and Brussels now is that these proposals are entirely unreasonable and that Russia understands this without saying so. The thought that Russia’s position is entirely unreasonable is … entirely unreasonable. Whether or not Moscow expects to negotiate down from these stipulations is an outstanding question.
Moscow Is Serious
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivering year-end press conference on Dec. 23. (RT still)
Moscow’s seriousness is not. I was struck last Friday to find no less a figure than the nonagenarian Michail Gorbachev, who was famously betrayed on the NATO question as the Soviet Union gave way, laying into the U.S. during an interview with RIA Novosti for provoking the current crisis in Ukraine out of sheer “arrogance and empire-building.”
Here is how Putin put it in his press conference last Thursday:
“We have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?”
This is what I mean by confidence. In Putin’s diction I read a determination to protect Russia’s interests in the face of what the U.S. and its European satellites have turned into something approaching an existential challenge. Washington has given Putin no choice as it has turned up the heat — as it has aggressed — since the Biden–Zelenskyy summit. Moscow has taken its only alternative.
Corollary: Years ago, the late Stephen Cohen taught me to distinguish between spheres of influence, which we agreed was a 19th century terminology, and spheres of security, which are a 21st century reality. In effect, Washington is talons-out vigilant in guarding its own security perimeters — imperially defined as these are — while insisting there is no need to observe anyone else’s.
There are a couple of other factors to consider here.
One, as Moscow understands, along with what sane heads there may be in Washington, it is inconceivable that the West in any formation — via NATO, via the U.S. and Britain alone — could prevail in an armed confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. As my colleague Marshall Auerback has astutely argued, in this respect NATO’s recent belligerence on the Ukraine question, being ultimately impotent, will stand in history as the alliance’s Waterloo. Halle-damn-lujah if this proves so.
Two and more broadly, there is the question of history’s arc. Putin, having an active mind and a grasp of the moment — and how weird is this to Americans? — appears to understand that the Eurasian landmass, from Shanghai to Lisbon, is emerging as something like humanity’s new center of gravity (which marks a return of sorts).
Does Putin propose to restructure “the whole “European architecture of Europe?” In my mind he sees this as inevitable and thinks it is time to get on with it. Mary Ilyushina implies this is reckless, weird, unthinkable. It is none of these. We ought to celebrate the insight.
Europe, in other words, will increasingly understand itself as the western end of Eurasia as against the eastern shore of the Atlantic. Is it a coincidence that the Russian leader, a week after the video encounter with Biden, had a similar summit-via-video with Chinese President Xi Jinping that turned out to be the strongest affirmation to date of the alliance-like relationship between Moscow and Beijing?
I don’t think so.
In this connection, I loved the head on a story The Hill published after the Putin-Xi meeting. “‘Allies’ China and Russia Are Ganging Up on America,” it read. It takes a little fun out of it that Gordon Chang wrote the piece, given that the blindingly Sinophobic Chang is always wrong about anything to do with China. But still, good for a chortle.
Nobody’s ganging up on anybody, Gordy. It’s the turning of history’s wheel. Can’t you hear it slowly creaking away?
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I can think of no reason Russia wants to invade any European NATO state.
It could well wish to reincorporate Belarus and Ukraine, mainly for reasons of nationalism.
Apart from the Donbass region, it seems fairly clear the people of those States would prefer links to Europe and the west. Russia knows the difficulties of occupying people who don’t want to be occupied.
We have nothing to lose to agreeing to the proposed terms.
Military power diminishes with distance. Russia has a tactical advantage on its borders but it would be reduced if it moved west. Likewise, the US can’t match them in the east of Europe.
The danger is politicians trying to run a chest beating foreign policy. For some reason I think Putin is too realistic. And it is more likely in the US.
Thank you Patrick Lawrence. Yes, “The West provoked the Cold War” when it should have respectfully acknowledged that Germany lost the war on Soviet soil at enormous cost to the Soviet Union (Soviet deaths 26,000,000). And now we are again doing the opposite of what we should be doing, even against our own long-term self-interest. So what should we be doing?
NATO should invite Russia to become a member nation. That would require recognizing Russian sovereignty over Crimea – an established reality – and endorsing the autonomy of Donbass and Luhansk. The alternative is a palpable threat of war between an organization that holds all twelve face cards (NATO) and a nation that holds all four aces – i.e., nuke-loaded hypersonic missiles – (Russia). The war alternative could lead to a Russian showoff destruction of Diego Garcia with the message that San Diego is in the crosshairs. We should not poke the bear.
NATO’s next membership target could be China. Most NATO nations already recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan by virtue of recognizing the PRC while not recognizing the ROC. With good will, the Uighurs issue could be resolved. China is even ahead of Russia in hypersonic missile technology. NATO might catch up in three years – catch up to where China and Russia are now – not to where they will be then. Until we catch up, we should not bring a knife to a gunfight.
It is time for some profoundly creative thinking. NATO could change its name to POETO (Peace On Earth Treaty Organization) and live up to that name, instead of clinging to its current misnomer and its overbearing arrogance.
Patrick Lawrence’ s and Sam F’s near excellent write ups leave precious little to be said further on the loonies, unfortunately, at the helm in Washington and their self-destructive antics across the world. The world’s frustration and dejection is also well captured by Lawrence’s creative rendering : Halle-damn-lujah !
Thank you Patrick Lawrence for an excellent article and Thank you Sam F for an excellent comment. I couldn’t agree with you more.
However, I have a question. On the Lawrence comment that Putin sees the new configuration from Singapore to Lisbon; is that saying that all of southern Europe- Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are saying goodbye to France, Germany, Poland, Austria and the Scandinavian and Balkan conglomerates? That’s a very interesting cleavage socially, economically and politically.
As someone who has lived and/or traveled in all of those countries except Romania and Bulgaria that’s a very astute break. The British islands are mere subjects of the U.S. without the benefits of statehood. America is Germany and vice versa. The French become angry when they are told they have become Americanized since the death of De Gaulle, but they still display a modicum of independence.
So can anyone give me the source of that break?
An absolutely marvellous article, Patrick! The US idea that it is always right, always fair, peaceful, interested in human rights and democracy, suddenly hits a roadblock of sanity and shudders to a halt.
I think it would be prudent and smart for Russia to inform the US and NATO (secretly or publicly?) that nuclear missile launch sites placed in neighboring countries will be destroyed as soon as they are discovered. Likewise, China should present the same warning to the US regarding the placement of offensive missile sites along China’s coastline. There is a blindingly obvious precedent for the threat of such pre-emptive actions–the Cuban missile crisis, in which the US lost its mind upon discovering Soviet missiles deployed in nearby Cuba (which in itself was a response to the US placing nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy).
The US/NATO alliance is truly a paper tiger at this point. Short of an all-out nuclear war in which all sides lose, they cannot even dream of defeating Russia or China in conventional wars fought thousands of miles from the US mainland. That is a fact that every Western military planner with an ounce of sense knows to be true. Russia and China should call their bluff and put them on notice.
To be honest ,I believe that they have.
Cheers.
I prefer to stay optimistic for now, I think USA only wants to force Russia to act militarily in Ukraine in order to permanently separate them from Europe and I think they will achieve their goal this time.
Russia has understood this very well but is no longer wanting to do everything to avoid it, and China is siding with them more and more explicitly. These two together don’t need us as much as we need them and if they handle this step well, others will join.
For me, the West is dying of its misinterpretation of the world order, lobotomized by decades of its own propaganda and Europe will be the first fuse, committing suicide under the unbelieving eyes of their post colonies.
I fear more the moment when the american financial boiler will finally explode in the midst of a deeply disunited population, let us pray that fate will protect them and us from their frustration.
Putin and the Russian Federation would have No problems at all with the American Empire if it didn`t have large reserves of Oil and Gas.
Truly a good analysis of the subject . The Western media types can continue to howl ,lie and malign anyone that stands up to the bully .
For any geopolitical analytical enthusiast it is obvious ,the world has changed since the downfall of the soviet union. By the grace of God, Russia has pulled itself from it’s proverbial bootstraps and is now a country with it’s people , proud ,strong and prosperous .
It has come a long way since the fall of the soviet system .
Is it so hard to believe that the new world will be multi-polar , with no one nation daring to usurp ,blackmail ,extort and exploit one another .The way of the future will be of respect and trade among nations .There is no other way , to continue the war mongering as is presently predominant will lead to the annihilation of us all and I refuse to believe that we ,humanity , do not choose the higher road.
Best regards to all of goodwill .
Great article, thanks.
You really had me at “Halle-damn-lujah if this proves so.” Enough. Enough already, U.S./NATO.
F35s, 60’s era nukes and a gender neutral military, come on guys, wise up, your current way of life is over. Time to try, being nice and reasonable and respectful.
There is a Russian demand that Patrick did not mention, end of storing and “sharing” American nuclear weapons in Europe in otherwise non-nuclear countries. Do European need those weapons? Do Americans need them? And what is the purpose of training European militaries in using those weapons?
Another interesting aspect worth to mention is a recent “cordial and productive” meeting of presidents of Russia and India, and extensive preparations in Russia to reduce impact of putative economic sanctions. In the same time, West, most notably Europe, is more vulnerable.
The “Moderate Rebels” podcast with Max Blumenthal interviewed Scott Ritter …
Is Russia really planning a war in Ukraine – or is Washington?
hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLpPyuzxSf4
Where Ritter expanded on the point you make here and the absurdity of Ukraine demanding that Russia keep transporting its oil to Europe through the Ukraine which generates $2-3B in much needed cash for Zelinsky.
Ritter also explained the absurdity of the American Military which requires nearly $1T/year to do basically nothing useful, while Russia with its comparatively puny $60B budget will kick American Ass in a ground war in the Ukraine because America no longer deploys the type of division required to win such a war; no longer trains for such a war; and procures useless military hardware such as the F-35.
Ritter also published a shorter article: 2022 – Year of Major Power Conflict Over Ukraine, written exclusively for Consortium News,
where he suggests that America’s decision to deploy its own hypersonic missiles (Dark Eagle) to Europe will result in Russia using their hypersonic missiles first.
I read the Russian stance as wanting peace guaranteed-in-writing.
But this would mean that Nato has no reason to exist as an organisation any longer so it simply will not happen.
I’m not sure NATO ever had a valid reason to exist. The entire cold war was contrived out of whole cloth.
A surprise posting, Patrick. As usual you are largely right. I would object to calling the Europeans America’s satellites. That’s a way too honorable term. They are vassals and sniveling ones at that. I realize that as a journaliste who does reportage (I’m working here off a Peter Cook/Dudley Moore beyond the fringe skit) you are very cautious about making predictions but being merely an observer, I would predict that if US/EU/NATO doesn’t line up, sign up, and re-enlist today that we will see Russian nukes mounted on medium/short range missiles in Belarus and well as Russian bases in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and maybe even Cuber. Russia might well make a real push with Cuba at the UN to try to force the US to return Gitmo to Cuba. Can you see the look on the faces of the elites in DC if Russia were able to use the harbor at Guantanamo Bay?
Then there’s the issue of NSII. The Russian envoy to the EU told TASS that Russia didn’t really care. Not having NSII was no skin off its nose but EU consumers would suffer. Ukraine wants to EU to force Gazprom to sell gas on the EU spot market. Good luck with that. OTOH, Russia is exceeding its contract requirements for gas delivery to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline according to TASS. EU is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
The EU is trapped between a rock and a (kinda) hard spot: the U.S. and NATO.
How many people today know you are referring to JFK’s pronunciation of “Cuba?”
Russia can even deploy submarines in international waters off both US coasts that can lob missiles onto most major American cities. Doing so won’t require involving other western hemisphere countries. The US/NATO military alliance is struggling so hard to remain relevant that they don’t seem to realize that they are already checkmated, and I haven’t even mentioned Russia’s hypersonic weapons currently or soon to be in the field.
Very reasonable observations, by Mr. Lawrence. Indeed the US is lost in vacuous mass media propaganda.
The US and NATO politicians make propaganda and threats about imaginary risks from Russia and China, so as to pose as defenders even while stealing taxpayer money for the MIC to feed back as campaign bribes. If they did not, they could have used the defense rhetoric to shift to a “war footing” against the Covid-19 epidemic. Already the US has over 835,000 Covid deaths, more than all war deaths in US history (using the lower estimates for Civil War deaths). A mere ten percent of the fake-defense budget for one year would have produced enough vaccines for the entire world, but the US will not even seize the vaccine IP and let other nations produce their own.
The US spends almost nothing on humanitarian aid, less than one meal a year for the world’s poorest, starving the UN of funds for desperately needed relief programs in conflicts and emergencies, but every year spends ten times the amount on the military than is necessary for defense, by simply inventing foreign monsters to scare the population. A nation that allows bully-boy propagandists to steal its resources and starve its humanitarian programs is a failed state. The military alarmists of the US are imbecile bully-boys and thieves, of no value at all to US security, who must be pulled from their positions in disgrace, and called out everywhere as worthless cowardly opportunist warmongers.
The US could easily have lifted half the world from poverty, ignorance, malnutrition, and disease since WWII, and would now have no enemies. Instead they played with expensive toys, built grand homes as monuments to themselves and their greed, and murdered 20 million innocents abroad to aggrandize themselves. The world will not miss the US.
The U.S.—“Instead they played with expensive toys, built grand homes as monuments to themselves and their greed, and murdered 20 million innocents abroad to aggrandize themselves. The world will not miss the US.”—here means the ruling from the shadows elite, the wanna-be world-dominating power mongers led by the CIA and Wall Street. The Allen Dulles formulated and formatted cabal that has done any goddamned thing it has desired to do since November 22, 1963, the day the CIA and its fellow militaristic minions (Wall Street’s Praetorian Guard) gutted democracy and representative government in the United States of America.
And so they have held sway right up to today, leaving us as the most loathed and feared nation on this planet. Up until now.
It’s hardly shocking to me that a likely majority of the world’s population is rooting for Russia right now. The Owners of this country have more than earned the enmity in my lifetime.
What is the most galling is that those who are most eager to beat the drums of war are people who will never be placed in harm’s way but will force others to place themselves and their loved ones at the front of the battlefield.
@W.R. Knight
Neoconservatives (“chickenhawks” to the rest of us) regard themselves as intellectually and spiritually superior to the great masses of people. War, to them, is a character-building enterprise, something to be sought, not avoided, so long as they and their class are not doing the actual fighting and dying. My wish is for anyone in a position of influence or power who advocates for a war of aggression to be placed unarmed in the frontlines of that war.
Patrick Lawrence reaffirms the force of common sense, but he believes the West, the U.S. and/or NATO, knows it could not prevail in a conflict with Russia over Ukraine, suggesting it would not risk such a war. But our leadership openly states that it has modernized our nuclear weapons in order to make them “more useable,” calls them tactical nukes, and publishes a rationale for their use in order to prevail. John Bolton is running our foreign policy, not some imaginary sane person none of us can name.
The problem, the whole problem, is that our leadership is batshit crazy, or it is as ruthless as the Nazis and willing to eliminate everyone they have no use for, which could be everybody, even the people of the United States.
“John Bolton is running our foreign policy…”
A John Bolton-type, aye. Along with AIPAC.
Yes, I think you are right. Everything these BSCrazy folks do makes sense when you force it through a world-domination-at-all-costs perspective, which our dear leaders are obviously operating from. They care nothing for what the people of the world want or how many die as a result of their insatiable greed and lust for power.
Please, someone prove me wrong.
As 2021 comes to a close and the new year 2022 is set to begin, it may be of some benefit to acknowledge that 99.999% of humanity firmly opposes any more unnecessary, tragic (from any perspective), ultimately stupid/unwise criminal wars of aggression, including biological warfare.. What about “We don’t want any more proven-catastrophic wars!” do the world’s war criminals simply find impossible to understand?
For peace on Earth in 2022, and forever….
As long as war profiteers and current economic model stays, war is inevitable. I wish it wasn’t so, but that is the reality.