Liberals once mocked the Bush–Cheney regime’s with-us-or-against-us routines. Now the trans–Atlantic foreign policy cliques have no capacity to see the world differently.
A Joint Honor Guard member holds Ukrainian flag as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcomes Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to the Pentagon on April 21. (DoD, Lisa Ferdinando)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
I was interested to read, last December, of the expansive agreements Vladimir Putin and Mahendra Modi signed at the conclusion of a summit the Russian and Indian leaders held in New Delhi. These came to 28 and covered all manner of things — defense cooperation, energy projects, production sharing, technology transfers, investments in a range of industrial sectors India is eager to develop.
The two leaders were very clear this was about more than rubles and rupees. Putin: “The ties are growing and I’m looking into the future.” Modi: “A lot of geopolitical equations have emerged, but India–Russia friendship has been a constant.”
Here’s the thing about those numerous rounds of cabinet-level talks and the summit that capped them: By Monday, Dec. 6, when the Russian president and the Indian prime minister smiled for the cameras, Washington and its NATO allies were busily provoking Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and insisting the world line up against the evildoing Russian Federation.
Nobody outdoes the Indians when it comes to nonalignment.
Also interesting reading was Lloyd Austin’s testimony to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on April 6, wherein the defense secretary explained that those damnable Indians were going to have to ditch their defense ties to Russia. “We continue to work with them to ensure that they understand that it’s not in their — we believe that — it’s not in their best interest to continue to invest in Russian equipment,” he said.
The biggest pebble in the Pentagon’s shoe is India’s agreement to purchase the Russian-made S–400 missile-defense system, which must be some piece of gear considering that Washington is unfailingly inflamed whenever anybody buys it.
“And our requirement going forward,” Austin continued, “is that they downscale the types of equipment that they’re investing in and look to invest more in the types of things that will make us continue to be compatible.”
I just love that last bit: Our requirement. You have to sound tough up on Capitol Hill, I suppose.
Peddling Weapons & Sanctions
Now I’m interested to read — so many interesting things in the papers these days, providing you read beyond the American dailies — that Ursula von der Leyen spent two days in New Delhi this week. The dull, ineffectual president of the European Commission was peddling two items: European weaponry — surprise, surprise — and Western sanctions against Russia. Apart from the material agreements New Delhi and Moscow signed in December, the Modi government has declined to condemn the Russian intervention in Ukraine and is not participating in the sanctions regime.
Ursula von der Leyen at a NATO defense minister session in 2019. (NATO)
What are we looking at here? Two matters are worth noting.
One, the Biden administration can pound all it wishes with its rhetoric to the effect that the whole world is horrified by Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine. We have all seen the maps: Most of the world isn’t. Subscribers to the sanctions and the shrieks of horror are by and large limited to the Western democracies.
The long-term effect of this bifurcation will be the West’s increasing alienation from the vast majority of humanity, otherwise known as the non–West. In time this will turn out to be big. Corollary: Those of us, myself included, who have longed over many years to see Europe act as an independent pole of power, in effect a mediator between West and non–West, can forget about it.
The current generation of European leaders including Emmanuel Macron, the poseur Gaullist just reelected to the French presidency, simply don’t have it in them to stand on their own two feet.
Two, the non–West’s impulse to return to the principles of nonalignment so brilliantly articulated by the charismatic leaders of the “independence era,” the 1950s and 1960s, has been evident for some time. But the Ukraine crisis appears to be infusing this welcome trend with a distinct electrical charge. Again, big stuff as we look out front just a little beyond our noses.
Emergent Nonalignment
China and Russia appear to have understood from the first that the Ukraine crisis would affect the geopolitical maps in these two ways. Their joint statement on Feb. 4, the eve of the Beijing Olympics and slightly more than two weeks before Russia began its intervention, was a not-very-veiled rejection of the West’s claim to global hegemony and an invitation to begin constructing a new world order based on principles Western nations profess but pay no mind to.
If nonalignment is the emergent drift in global politics and policy, India is logically prominent among the battlegrounds where the fight is engaged. India is big and populous. It is influential among non–Western nations. And Washington has long entertained ridiculous fantasies to the effect that it can pull New Delhi decisively into the Western camp against Russia and China alike.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Indian Prime Minister Modi, during a visit to a shipbuilding plant in Vladivostok in 2019. (MEAphotogallery, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Where, at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House, do they get these unschooled notions? From Nehru’s day to ours, the principle of nonalignment has been a sanctified a pillar of Indian foreign policy, as “freedom” is to all right-thinking American ideologues.
There’s no touching it. This was part of Modi’s point when he spoke alongside Putin on Dec. 6.
Antony Blinken made his first state visit to New Delhi in July 2021, a few months after taking office. His themes were the usual — “our strategic partnership” and so on. “Our interests are shared, our concerns are similar, and our convergences are strong,” saith the American secretary of state. All that is fine: India has no desire to stand militantly against the U.S.
But the reality beneath the pronouncements of Blinken, Austin, von der Leyen, et al. is that the West simply cannot accept a world in which nonalignment, noninterference, territorial integrity, and associated precepts are held up as abiding principles. A lot of liberals mocked the Bush–Cheney regime and its with-us-or-against-us routines. Now we find that Western elites and the trans–Atlantic foreign policy cliques have no capacity to see the world differently.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin and Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov meet with NATO counterparts at the Ukraine Defense Consultative Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany on Tuesday, April 26. (DoD, Chad J. McNeeley)
First Corporate Media Account
Hannah Beech, The New York Times Southeast Asia bureau chief, shared the byline Monday on a story headlined, “With Us or With Them? In a New Cold War, How About Neither.” This is the first — and so far only — clear-eyed report we have in corporate media on the nonaligned majority of nations that the Ukraine crisis has pushed to the fore. Beech and her colleagues write:
“The geopolitical landscape following the Ukraine invasion has often been likened to that of a new Cold War. While the main antagonists may be the same — the United States, Russia and, increasingly, China — the roles played by much of the rest of the world have changed, reshaping a global order that held for more than three-quarters of a century.”
More in the way of 500 years, Hannah, but who’s counting?
I have a certain amount of time for Beech. She has good bloodlines, as they say in the trade: Her father, Keyes Beech, was among the outstanding Asia correspondents of his generation. And she has a measured sympathy for non–Western perspectives that is unheard-of among the drips that generally populate the Times’s foreign bureaus.
Beech and her colleagues make the very astute point that non–Western nations paid a very high price for the deprivations and depredations the Cold War decades inflicted upon them — and do not intend to pay it again. “Governments representing more than half of humanity have refused to take a side,” they write, “avoiding the binary accounting of us-versus-them that characterized most of the post–World War II era.”
I do not see this sentiment ebbing once the Ukraine crisis is resolved one way or another. Washington’s overreaching adventure, with NATO allies following its lead, may well divide the world once again — not as the West intends, but between those nations who insist on a proper world order based on international law and those who insist they are above it.
For half a millennium — from Portugal’s 15th century intrusions in Asia and the Americas — there was no such thing as isolating the West: It was a logical impossibility, a convolution. This is no longer so, as the leading non–Western nations now know. So long as Western democracies refuse to accept this, they will set themselves up to lose the 21st century.
Alistair Crooke, founder and director of the Conflicts Forum and a familiar commentator on global affairs, just published an interesting piece headlined, “The Dynamics of Escalation: ‘Standing with Ukraine.’” Crooke thinks the Biden administration has effectively trapped itself on a path to military involvement in Ukraine — direct involvement, this is to say.
The war-by-sanctions, for a variety of reasons, cannot succeed in bringing Russia down as intended. At the same time, Crooke reasons, Biden and the mainstream Democrats cannot possibly accept defeat or failure — not with midterm elections coming, not with all the mythologies they conjured as to Russia’s responsibility for their loss at the polls in 2016:
“The conviction that the European liberal vision faces humiliation and disdain, were Putin to ‘win,’ has taken hold. And in the Obama–Clinton–Deep State nexus, it is unimaginable that Putin and Russia, still regarded as the author of Russiagate for many Americans, might prevail.
The logic to this conundrum is inexorable — Escalation.”
How quickly Crooke’s logic manifests itself. During and since their weekend visit to Kiev to promise the regime more weaponry, Austin and Blinken have made it terrifyingly clear that the true objective of the U.S.–NATO campaign in Ukraine is just as the more honest among us have said from the start: This is about “weakening Russia,” as the two secretaries put it — subjugating Russia, in other words, crushing it.
Have two not-quite-competent American officials just declared the start of World War III? Let me know when it is all right to express concern about the danger of a nuclear exchange without being called a treasonous propagandist in Moscow’s behalf.
Let’s not miss in all this: The logic of escalation also leads to deepening isolation — America’s, the West’s — from the currents that already carry our century forward.
Washington and NATO may be intent on making a hot war out of Cold War II, but they’ve got a radically wrong read on our moment: The further they take this crazy adventure, the more thoroughly they will alienate the rest of the world.
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.
Alastair Crooke’s logic regarding military escalation by the US/NATO is hard to discount. What the Western leaders may not understand is that Russia’s military capabilities far exceed those of their own nations. Under conditions of direct engagement between Western and Russian forces, the former are likely to experience a profound and startling realization of this fact. In particular, the American people may learn for the first time what it means to be under attack in their own cities. It is at that point that the urge to go nuclear may be difficult for US leaders to resist. Can we count on cooler heads prevailing? Defeat is a bitter pill to swallow, especially for those who are so convinced of their own virtue and superiority.
Excellent assessment!
Consider that the US domestic political roots of this “all in – damn the consequences” are in Hillary Clinton’s ’16 loss and the DNC refusal to reflect and admit failed policy/program, and instead manufacture the Russia-gate narrative.
Now consider that if the DNC/Clinton/MIC Corporate Dems were willing to go all in on that narrative (A small lie) – with total US media and Dem. Party regular support – for merely partisan and electoral and personal reputation consequences – just think how far they will go now to avoid crushing and humiliating loss of US global prestige, loss of the dollar as the world currency, and the emergence of a Russia-China-Global south multi-polar power system! (think how far the US NSS/MIC went in Vietnam, with far less on the line).
Boots on the ground is the least consequential possibility – it seems that some kind of nuclear exchange is “baked in”, given these dynamics.
A good article by Patrick Lawrence.
But he seems to underestimate the shift that has taken place here.
Russia has made a decisive move from West to East.
China is the economic powerhouse that has made it possible. If there are two poles now, they are not Russia and the US but China and the US.
And the developing nations of the world, the Global South, are following the lead of China in asserting themselves.
Finally, unlike in the past period of Non-alignment these nations are no longer so poor
These aspects of the Ukraine crisis are laid out in an article today on Antiwar.com
See: hxxps://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2022/04/27/on-ukraine-the-world-majority-sides-with-russia-over-us/
Somehow a typo crept into the link above. My apologies if it was me not some devil residing in the net.
It should be: hxxp://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2022/04/27/on-ukraine-the-world-majority-sides-with-russia-over-us/
Another great one, Mr. L. Esp. the recent despite-their-class observations of Beech and Crooke. I think their logic can be extended a bit. As follows.
Jason Stanley asserts that the fundamental (psychological) trait of fascism is one class or group’s projections of its own motives onto others. Yet he commits the all-too-standard error of identifying ‘them’ as the Trumpian under-class(es), and ‘us’ as the enlightened liberals or meritocrats. If only because I haven’t known any of the latter class for years, I identify them as the Machine perpetrators of ‘liberal democracy,’ known more commonly to CN readers as the perpetrators of US empire.
There was an interesting socio-analysis of the 1/6/21 Capitol invaders, and interview of its main author on 5/6/21. Robert Pape, with the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, did a much larger interview-based study of the perps.
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dskVval50AE&ab_channel=AmanpourandCompany
Main factual surprise: ‘… of the nearly 400 rioters arrested or charged [to date], 93% are white and 86% are male. But not the Trump-type Red-state crowd of Stanley’s lore; they were overwhelmingly rich and/or mamagerial Folks from the suburbs.
Main conclusion: ”the #1 risk factor [in whether they would show up] was the % decline in their [local] non-Hispanic population….’ From a controlled large study conducted by ….more than 4% said they would participate in a violent rebellion if they believed that’s what was happening….’
Main thereapeutic routes, if any, RE ‘stress testing’ factors, ‘We need to assess the [strength] of the insider threat in the military….Though only 10 of rioters were in the military, 3 of them were active military, trained in the highest standards of [use of force].’ ‘Going forward’ to ’22 elections, ‘how much violence should we expect?’
Give me a better profile of the BIden/Blinken warrior class, and/or their MSM stenographers! For now, I hope that Pape’s fears of future violence are soon defeated by Lawrence’s World class of multipolaristas.
Excellent time to bring up the non-alignment movement. Furthermore, a new financial system may come out of this that is blockchain-yuan based, rather than the Bretton Woods dollar system.
Yes Ryan, Socrates stated that “all wars are about money”. I believe the USA volunteered its services in WWI and WWII in order to control the global financial system. Any action that threatens that prize, to which they are now accustomed, will be a trigger for major escalation. A trading system that excludes the USA will be such a trigger. The new financial trading system exists, appears successful and is likely to grow. The USA will be apoplectic. It will be plutonium missiles at 20 paces. I believe their view to be that if they cannot rule the world there will be no world to rule. The most dangerous inhabitants of Planet Earth.
Unless our political center implodes in some feud among its various components….
The bankers don’t quite have their egos so tied up in it, so much as looking for the advantages to be gained and they become limited when the missiles are everywhere.
I can see the plug being pulled on various figureheads, Clintons, Bidens, hopefully Trump…
It may be politics all the way down, but it’s economics all the way up.
You can dream all you want, but being hungry and cold is a reality check.
Indeed. When the full economic repercussions of economic sanctions on Russia work their way through the nations of the world, let’s hope that the actual perpetrators get the blame.
I was just reading a WAPO article on Why Bidenism is failing, by a gentleman of color. He got over 5500 comments that roasted him or maybe boiled him in oil. I read perhaps 75/100 of them by eyeless, mindless zealots. The article was reasonable, although it left out many of the reasons why Biden’s polls are so bad. Poor WAPO! Like the NYT it was once such a valid, left-leaning, but not crazy left in-depth investigative source of news. Now, for those who have grown beyond the teddy bear and lollipop age, both are exercises in all that democracy should not be.
So thanks for an immediate return to intelligence. I don’t always agree with CN, but it is never stupid.
It is a frightening time. Cornered and frightened animals respond aggressively. When flight is not an option, they attack viciously. The Democrats have cornered themselves and they have no way to extract themselves from the corner they put themselves in. No matter what they do at this point they lose so frighted and mindless aggression is, unfortunately for humanity, likely their path.
Based on decades of observing dictatorships, the Dems’ best bet would be to viciously turn on Uncle Joe, blame him for the entire fiasco, impeach him, and remove him and his entire leadership from every vestige of power, and putting them in jail for good measure. The full monty would involve dispensing what Nagi Bulla, Saddam Hussein, Momar Gaddafi, Nicolae Ceau?escu, and Benito Mussolini received. Unfortunately, we are “civilised” in America and only mete out such genuine punishment to whistle blowers and similar do-gooders from the ranks of the prols and plebs. Like the “made man” in the mafia, the insider elites have a lifetime guarantee against anything of consequence being done to them or taken from them. But, in theory, the Dems could turn on a dime to save their worthless asses, but it would require human sacrifice of some bastards who very much deserve such. At the very least the Biden’s, Clinton’s, and Obama’s would have to go. The GOPers could show some pseudo solidarity with the public interest by also throwing the Bush’s to the street mobs. Nixon was probably the last burnt offering made by his party to placate the gods. Herbert Hoover, informally, before that. The Dems, in fact, tried to do this to Trump and drive a stake through the chest cavity of an already feeble GOP, but the aging billionaire grifter knew how to find sympathy from his very marks. Neither party is really strong, which is why we have only septuagenerians and soon octogenarians to fill our highest perches of power. Both can be crushed permanently if someone who knows what he or she is doing makes the right moves. The wrong moves could easily leave us with a genuine military dictatorship in place of the Zelensky-like buffoons we presently endure.
Very good article. It’s hard to see U.S. policy wrt Russia, China, India, and other non-West countries changing in any significant way. You don’t even get to play the game in Washington unless you’re all-in on U.S. hegemony to the exclusion of all other countries. In truth, you can’t play the game in internet blogs if you defend Putin/Russian actions. I doubt I could come up with a list of the names I’ve been called. I’m an American who’d love to see the U.S. get its comeuppance.
As always, astute, and well-informed commentary from Patrick Lawrence. I would only add, if the NATO (European vassal) forces follow Uncle Sam’s desire for World War Three in order to destroy Russia and plunder it for it’s natural resources and all, I believe it will lead to a nuclear confrontation, and in Number Three, the American People won’t have to go to the movie theaters and see newsreels about the wars, as they did in the First Two.
More money for supporting the corrupt Zelensky Regime. What a waste!
The shining beacon on the hill has been transformed into a wreckers light, intended to mislead passing ships of state onto the rocks.
Author Vincent Bevins missed this point in his disappointing book on the non aligned movement, The Jakarta Method. China’s Belt and Road project was a game changer. If one adds in Russia and India to that equation, that is over half the world’s population. And China’s wealth is fast appreciating to the point it may soon become the world’s leading economy. The non aligned movement, as Bevins tried to insinuate, is not gone. It will probably return in a more imposing way than ever.
The last photo, of the cast of hundreds, is interesting in that only Austin seems to have brought folks in fatigues, which in my day were called utilities. I suppose now they are called something like camo to indicate a readiness to rock and roll.
Ukrainians. The little blue and yellow flags on the table.
I fear your assessment is all too accurate, Patrick. Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned but it also has almost no fury like a politician shown to be a fool. I fear that that is what we are looking at. They’d probably prefer to destroy the world rather than to have to back down. But they’ve decided to take on the only other country in the world with the clear capacity to destroy it. Putin has already said he has no plans to walk away.
Moreover, for those who sneer at Russia’s reduced population and diminutive economy (and therefore “staying power” in a protracted war with the “West”) when compared alongside America’s sizeable but faltering empire, I’m pretty sure that China knows that it cannot allow Russia to be crushed by Washington and must take all measures necessary to ensure that Russia prevails, no matter how much money, arms or high-tech components for Russian weaponry they must contribute (whether by loan or outright gifts).
Russia’s defeat by the corrupt Nazi puppets in Ukraine would mean the end of its defense umbrella afforded to China and the Chinese BRI scheme to unite the entire world community outside of the unwilling and hostile West in trade and finance, if not politics–which is rightfully considered an internal matter for all sovereign states by the non-West. Moreover, with China and Russia as each other’s foremost allies, China shall never want for the natural resources of Russian Siberia, and Russia shall never want for a customer to purchase its natural bounty. Toss in India, Iran and Pakistan (for starters, and probably including most of Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa some day) as part of this alliance and trading union and North America becomes the backwater it was before the industrial revolution–though this won’t bankrupt or starve the US for resources, which it still possesses aplenty, along with those of Canada and Latin America which it will have no compunctions about stealing or strong-arming as it always has done.
We Anglo-Americans and all of our polyglot migrant replacements soon to outnumber us will never actually “want” for any necessities, though we will lead simpler, less extravagant and more insular lives without our empire. Our oligarchs like Musk and Bezos will have Mars and the asteroid belt instead. Probably all for the better–certainly for the rest of the world and any Americans not killed as soldiers enforcing American hegemony on the opposite side of the globe. In time, even the pompous fools in Europe should wake up and see the folly of hitching their stars irrevocably to the American traveling snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers. Maybe the rest of Eurasia in time will have them back and integrate them into the BRI and the whole contiguous Lisbon to Vladivostok marketplace just as originally planned. Having defiantly shat in the punch bowl, the North Americans will probably have to wait a bit longer for their invitation.
Thanks for this interesting article.
As you notice, it seems indeed that the E.U. has totally adopted the US and British line. Is this the end of European ambitions for a more independent role?
Hello Martin. Your use of the term “more” is interesting, as in “more” independent. Perhaps the point is that the EU, a creation of the USA in the 1950s, was never independent. It helped to economically integrate and coordinate the large number of Marshall Plan funds from the United States in 1952. It has been tied to the USA purse since. Many of its members are tied to a USA tank. A European ambition for a independent role is likely never to have existed. I cannot discern it.
Mikael
The EU dates from 1993.
In the early 1950s several European countries formed the Coal and Steel community was formed in 1951 proposed by Robert Schuman of France. It was to create a common market and make war impossible. The model was used to set up the European Economic Community in 1957.
In 1956 the British and French invaded Egypt to re-gain control of the Suez Canal. Eisenhower rightly objected and refused to support the British pound so the two countries (the attack was aided by Israel ) had to withdraw. The UK sought to mend fences with the US while France saw its future was in Europe and not the Empire in Africa.
There were Americans who encouraged it but the impetus came from Europeans. The EEC expanded with Ireland, Britain and Denmark in 1973 and continued to expand.
After the Cold War the concept of a wider Union was implemented involving foreign aid ( former Communist states were mentored in modern governance ) joint research, culture and regional aid. A directly elected Parliament was introduced. It is not a federation, which Americans often assume to be the case.
Most of its members were also NATO members and NATO remained its defence organisation. Of the present 30 NATO members 27 are European -28 if one counts Turkey which has some land in Europe). France had indeed opted out of NATO for some years. And when the invasion of Afghanistan occurred, Europe supported it. As did Iran! But many did not participate in invasion of Iraq.
The experience of Trump encouraged voices questioning the American alliance. Few expected Russia to launch a war other than the Cold War warriors but the consequence has been a remarkable show of unity. Whether it lasts is another matter but there is and will be a lot of reassessment. Europe has hosted several million refugees and the sympathy is not with Russia.
Hungary and Turkey have not joined the sanctions against Russia, a clear crack in NATO “unity.”
The EEC was initially a plan to facilitate the flow of goods and citizens between their 6 countries. That goal was completely achieved by the mid-Eighties and the EEC became the EU. Then the politicians saw lots of meat and money in the EU and politicized it. Brussels became a place for politicians who lost their election to live and make a lot of money. It became the “easy” life spot. I fear they have become soft and willing to accept life under the wing of the United States – even France and Germany.
I lived there through much of this and it’s been a long time since I began to wonder about the demise of the EU spine to form a block to counter America’s economic weight as they added more and more members who they could milk and ilk. Now they have gone from sagged to broken it seems. Pitiful.
The worst of it is that the planning for all of this rupture via the Ukraine began during the Obama administration when Biden was the VP and the State Dept was pretty much his baby, because Hillary was there primarily to acquire a presidential resume. The Bidens’ intense interest in a country that few paid much attention to has paid off. I believe that what we’re seeing has gone exactly to his plan so far.
Sorry, the word ilk was meant to be bilk.
You say you ‘lived there’. so I assume you don’t live in Europe. I live in the UK but have family in the EU. We, in Britain, have had Brexit which a majority now think was a mistake. Almost no benefits have been attained. IMHO the Brexit campaign was to impose an American style right wing economy on us. It was financed, in part by US money and Farage worked with Steve Bannon.
The former Warsaw Pact countries were not “added” as though they had no choice. They wanted to join and no anti-EU party ( wanting to leave ) has been elected. Even in the UK the majority of people , in the last election, some 56% voted for parties which wanted a confirmatory referendum or were against Brexit like the Scottish National Party, the Party of Wales, the Greens and Liberal Democrats. First Past the post voting distorts results.
Of course, the Polish and Hungarian governments are in dispute with Brussels but the younger voters are pro EU-for all its faults. The Polish govt. has been pressing the US to be more active in support of Ukraine. They have offeerd their Soviet era tanks. The people have taken over a million refugees into their homes. As they see it, Europe is more liberal, the media offers alternative views, there is less nationalism of the sort we see in Trump rallies. They know people on the other side of the border are much like them, while being patriotic . Nationalism and patriotism is not the same.
These views are found in Belarus and Ukraine, quite strongly. It is what they vote for for the most part. Lukashenko rules Belarus because of the police state. Very few dispute that. Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia. Would they resist like they have if they did? Putin has made it clear that he doesn’t think Ukraine should be separate from Mother Russia and the Russian media follows his lead.
Americans, many of us think, whether of the neo-Con type or the more radical persuasion, seem to consider things only happen in the rest of the world because of what America does or does not do. It ain’t so.
The way the West goes about trying to bribe, bully and coherse countries and telling others who to pick as friends says it all. Why hasn’t someone examined why they feel they have the power and authority to do that? Is it believed just because they do it?
The truth is the Entire West is controlled by a small group of financial Mafia, who own most everything. Inflation, rising prices and shortages does not affect them; it only affects the masses.
Everyday we are swamped with their propaganda and lies, fooling the brainwashed public. But does China, India or any other country need to be told repeatedly by Zion controlled white West what is in their best interests?
Putin made it clear today that if you go too far; you will be hit with things that you do not possess, and it will be lightning fast.
Previously, he said to some: “you will experience something you have never seen before in your history”. I think that it is USA/Canada that he was referring to, as Europe always had wars.