Moscow affected by U.S. play for Iran

http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/engsmi/1270.html

The above article was written by Fyodor Lukyanov for Russia in Global Affairs, April 15, 2009, and is entitled “High Stakes for Moscow in U.S. Play for Iran.” It is available at the above site in English, Russian, Czech and Polish.

Lukyanov believes that Iran was the only clear winner “following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.” That remains to be seen. Saddam Hussein, it is true, was Iran’s chief rival, but Hussein was a disruptive influence that has now been replaced by something else. That “something else,” i.e., what Iraq is becoming, may be another winner. It is too soon to tell. And Lukyanov’s assumption that Iraq and Iran, once the U.S. leaves, will be natural allies, isn’t something I would assume. Yes, the majority in Iraq are Shiites; so they Iraq may become an ally of Iran, but Arab Shiites have not traditionally been allies of Persian Shiites. The Arab Shiites had no qualms about supporting Saddam Hussein in an eight-year-long war against the Persian Shiites.

Lukyanov assumes another thing I wouldn’t, namely that the US is interested in reducing European dependence on Russian gas and oil. Russia needs to sell gas and oil as much as Europe needs to buy it. I don’t see a problem there. Does Lukyanov think the US is worried about a resurgent Russian Empire? Yes, I know Putin and the Sovereign Democrats are hinting at that, but I would be surprised if anyone in the US state department believed Russia could pull it off. Russia is a dwindling force in the world and needs (I would hope our State Department believes) to be encouraged rather than opposed. Five years ago the CIA voiced the opinion that the Russian Federation would break up within ten years: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/cia-angers-russia-by-predicting-breakup-of-state-within-10-years-561727.html I don’t know if the CIA still believes that, but plenty of people in Russia believed it. If Putin has a number of Russians now thinking they can become Tsarist Russia redivivus, then more power to them – well sort of. I wouldn’t want them invading Poland, Ukraine or anyone else, but a non-active myth of Tsarist Russia – sort of like the myths of the American cowboy and the Japanese Samurai, might do them some good.

Lukyanov doesn’t consider the possibility that Israel may take military action, merely that the US might, indeed might have to. Lukyanov is intrigued over the possibilities: “Iran is a problem for Russia regardless of which direction Tehran goes. A nuclear-armed Iran would greatly destabilize the region. It is difficult to predict the extent and aim of Iran's ambitions. Any attempt by the United States to apply force against Iran would mean that the military conflict would be brought to Russia's southern border. Moreover, if Washington achieves its objectives in Iran, it would shift the strategic balance of power in favor of the United States and away from Moscow. But a failure by the United States to achieve its goals in Iran could undermine the existing balance of power.

“No matter how subsequent events develop, Moscow will play no more than a supporting role at best. One big risk for Russia is coming out the loser if it supports the wrong side in the struggle.”

I don’t agree with Lukyanov’s belief that a victory over Iran would result in a “strategic balance of power in favor of the United States.” The political advantage, wouldn’t represent a “shift in power” that I can see, and if we consider military action, then I would observe that Lukyanov doesn’t fully grasp how much the US wants not to engage in it. In the days of the British Empire, the British loved it that the sun never sat on its empire. Churchill regretted the loss of empire, I’m sure until the day he died. But the US has a different tradition. We have a tradition of not desiring to be embroiled in foreign wars. It does no good to observe that we have been embroiled in foreign wars aplenty, they are engaged in reluctantly. Critics see us cause a regime change in Iraq and say “ah ha,” the US is expanding its empire. Baloney. The longer we stayed in Iraq the louder the hue and cry for us to get out became. We can never have an empire. We can’t even dream of an old one the way Russia can.

What we can do, and this is more or less approved by both Democrats and Republicans is a seeking after “stability.” We don’t like “Rogue States” that can disrupt the stability of a region, for even though we aren’t an empire we have lots of allies, or “client states” if one prefers, and we don’t want them invaded or even threatened. If the threat is sufficient, we could rush half say around the world with our C-17s and smart bombs and “stabilize” a hitherto disruptive Rogue State. But be sure that after we do, assuming that we do, we shall load our C-17s back up and rush home – the sooner the better for congress, our media and all the folks at home wringing their hands.

Depopulation threatens Russia 10 Ways

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/04/window-on-eurasia-depopulation.html

The above article was written by Paul Goble and entitled “Depopulation Threatens Russia 10 Ways, Moscow Demographer Says.”

Goble tells us that a “leading Moscow demographer,” Olga Lebed of Moscow State University wrote an article entitled, “The Social Consequences of Russia.” In this article, Lebed tells us that “Russia’s population will continue to decline over the coming decades, threatening first some regions and then the country as a whole with depopulation, a trend whose consequences are both more immediate and more widespread than many now assume. . . the demographic situation which has arisen in Russia over the course of recent decades has achieved such a critical point that it is impossible not to pay attention to it’ ( www.contrtv.ru/common/3100 )

“At present, even with immigration, the population of the Russian Federation is declining by almost a million people a year . . . [also] differences in birthrates and survival rates among the indigenous ethnic groups of the country and among immigrant populations mean that depopulation will be accompanied by “a change in the nationality composition of Russia,” with the [100% white Russians] forming an ever smaller share.”

“Second, depopulation will threaten the foundations of the preservation of “the self-consciousness” of the [100% white Russians] . . . and entail ‘the loss of national traditions,’ . . .”

“Third, she writes, depopulation will threaten the ability of the country to maintain its territorial integrity and the well-being of the population. Already Russia is one of the least densely populated countries on earth, and it will soon lack the numbers of people needed to hold its current borders if they are challenged within or without.

“Fourth, the country will face an increasing shortage of workers, a trend that will make it ever more difficult for the population to maintain its standard of living . . .”

“Fifth, depopulation will mean, assuming that it is combined with an aging population, that every remaining worker will have to carry a greater burden in order to support the non-working segment of the population. . . .”

“Sixth, the depopulation of Russia is likely to be accompanied by a further exacerbation of the gender imbalance within the population. . . .”

“Seventh, current depopulation trends increase the likelihood that ever more parents will outlive their children. . . .”

“Eighth, that in turn will lead, Lebed says, to “the replacement of family relations by social ones,” with the family becoming ever less important as a socializing factor and other groups and institutions rather more. . . .”

“Ninth . . . the problems of socialization brought on by depopulation will lead to more . . . mental illness, more anti-social behavior, and the need for more institutions to cope with societal breakdown. . . .”

“And tenth . . . the depopulation of Russia is likely to produce a variety of demands, not now in evidence, to engage in such population-boosting but at present “fantastic” measures as state-supported “incubator” children, “hybridization of embryos,” cloning, and greater efforts to exten[d] life spans and working lives. Not all experts would agree with Lebed on this list, but many do – she cites numerous authorities in her 3,000-word article – and consequently, her list is useful as a way of going beyond the crude numbers concerning the decline in the population of the Russian Federation which is happening now and will accelerate to the consequences of that decline for all concerned.”

COMMENT:

What a contrast between what Lebed is telling us and what Putin and the Sovereign Democrats are pushing as a resurgence of the Russian Empire. Lebed worries about Russia’s ability to hang onto what it has, not push outward into the near abroad nations with costly expenditures of people, materials and finances. Perhaps a war with Georgia is more attention-getting, but in few years, if Lebed is right, Russia will have more important things to worry about, like the diminishing number of men available to join (or be drafted into) the Russian army.

In a sense, the depopulation of Russia at the rate of 1,000,000 a year is an environmentally friendly occurrence. That same sort of thing is occurring throughout Europe and the rest of the world. With fewer people in the world, we will be applying a smaller environmental footprint on the world’s resources. But can we as a species tolerate a dwindling population.

What, in Lebed’s ten threats is more than fundamentally, as regards the human species, unacceptable? Yes, the 100% white Russians will chafe at being replaced by non-100% White Russians, but the species at large won’t be affected.

The most significant worry is probably economic. Our welfare programs are basically Ponzi schemes dependent upon growing populations. If populations no longer grow, some people who counted on receiving benefits aren’t going to get them, but worse things have happened in the course of human history, and at some point we need to face the fact that no Ponzi scheme can go on indefinitely.

As to the provocative idea that Russia (and if Russia then surely other European nations) will begin an industry of cloning, I wonder if that will be cost effective. Won’t it be cheaper and less traumatic to let the old and retired to have fewer benefits.

American illusions destroyed in Poland after WWII

I heard it said not so very long ago that Roosevelt was a great friend of the Soviet Union and that it was only after his death that America perfidiously and without cause turned against Stalin and the Soviet Union. Martin Walker in The Cold War presents a different perspective.

On page 17 he writes, “The next victims of Yalta were American illusions. Within days it became clear that Stalin’s promise of democracy and independence in Poland did not include any serious political role for the Polish government-in-exile which had spent the war in London. ‘We began to realize that Stalin’s language was somewhat different from ours: “Friendly neighbors” had an entirely different connotation to him,’ Harriman recalled. ‘I am outraged,’ he cabled back to the White House in March, when the Russians refused to let American medical teams into Poland to treat and evacuate American prisoners of war. On 3 April, Harriman reported that the Polish talks had degenerated to breaking point, and asked to come home. Harriman planned to take with him an eight-page memorandum drafted on 21 March, which could not have been more bluntly phrased: ‘Unless we wish to accept the 20^th century barbarian invasion of Europe, with repercussions extending further and further in the East as well, we must find ways to arrest the Soviet domineering policy . . . If we don’t face these issues squarely now, history will record the period of the next generation as the Soviet age.’

“In the final days of his life, Roosevelt seemed to agree. At Warm Springs, receiving one of Harriman’s angry telegrams after lunch, Anna Hoffman reported that the dying President slammed his fists on his wheelchair and declared, ‘Averell is right. We can’t do business with Stalin.’ But Roosevelt’s last reply to the Moscow Embassy on 12 April called for more conciliation, and he died that day. His policy, however, of refusing finally to believe the worst of his Soviet comrade-in-arms would outlive him for some time.”

COMMENT:

Most if not all of the major political representatives of the American government during World War II and immediately after were pragmatists. Yes, everyone was familiar with the theories, rumors, and arguments about “Communism,” but World War II involved people doing things, not just theory, and the Soviet Union was on the same side as America and Britain. Surely that overrode the negative things written by right-wing and fascist intellectuals.

It is an ancient dictum in war that you hope for the best but prepare for the worst, that is you “prepare for the worst” if you are sensible, something the U.S. and Britain could not lay claim to prior to World War II, but what about after the war? Despite Roosevelt’s well-known hoping-for-the-best from Stalin, was America preparing for the worst? Not exactly, but it really didn’t matter.

Tony Judt writes on page 104 of Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, “Thanks to German aggression the United States was now, for the first time, a power in Europe. That the US had overwhelming strength was self-evident, even to those mesmerized by the achievements of the Red Army. US GNP had doubled in the course of the war, and by the spring of 1945 America accounted for half the world’s manufacturing capacity, most of its food surpluses and virtually all international financial reserves. The United States had put 12 million men under arms to fight Germany and its allies, and by the time Japan surrendered the American fleet was larger than all other fleets in the world combined. What would the US do with is power?” Judt asks.

Well, one thing it would not do is feel intimidated by the USSR, and so the Cold War began. I will probably have to read elsewhere to find out if the US was ever allowed by the Soviet Union to give medical aid to American prisoners of war, or to evacuate them back to America.

Timbo and Chris Gallucci

I watched “Tusks and Tattoos” on the Animal Channel yesterday, a story about two social misfits who in a touching way saved each other. Timbo was a large male elephant known as a trouble-maker. He was very much in danger of being euthanized. Chris Gallucci was a tattooed biker who was in and out of prison. It was during a movie being made with Tippi Hedren that he came in contact with Timbu. After the movie many of the animals could not be returned; so Hedren set up an animal preserve she called Shambala. Gallucci stayed on to take care of Timbo – and took care of him for the next 30 years.

I was interested in the way Galluci “walked” Timbo. He would let him go wherever he liked on the Shambala animal preserve. He would just follow along to see what Timbo did. That is pretty much what I do when I walk Sage and Ginger at the river. I love watching the way they relate, especially when they are chasing each other, chasing a rabbit or coyote, or encountering a feral dog. Gallucci said he would let Timbo do whatever he liked, but I noticed he told him when it was time to go back to the compound. I don’t actually tell Sage and Ginger when it is time to go back to the Jeep, I just head back myself and they follow, ranging about, left and right still on the lookout for rabbits.

One of Gallucci’s crises occurred when Timbo broke a tusk and Gallucci’s father died shortly thereafter. He quotes his sister as telling him he “must come to the funeral.” But the area around where Timbo’s tusk had broken was infected and Gallucci had to administer medicine in that area three times a day. Timbo wouldn’t let anyone else do it; so Gallucci stayed with his elephant and missed his father’s funeral. I gather he suffered socially for his decision.

I am reminded of something similar, if less dramatic that happened long ago. Trooper injured himself seriously on a hike. He too had an infection. The vet sewed him up and said it was critical that he not be allowed to lick his stitches. As it happened, that very night we were expected at a friend’s birthday party. His wife did not understand why I made the decision to stay with Trooper. “He is only a dog,” she said; which forever demoted her in my estimation to “only a human.”

Timbo died in 2005, shortly after “Tusks and Tattoos” was made. Gallucci is quoted as saying Timbo’s death was the worst and best thing that had happened in his life. I can understand why it might be the “worst,” but the best? His explanation didn’t adequately justify that term, but upon thinking about it I thought I could understand how he might feel a certain satisfaction. We, some of us, make a commitment to our animals, but we know we are fallible. Gallucci with his experience must have been especially conscious of his own fallibility. He knew how much Timbo depended upon him. Perhaps Timbo wouldn’t even survive if he abandoned him, but he was fallible and could only hope he wouldn’t in some moment of weakness do something that might put him back in prison. So in 2005 when Timbo died, he had to feel satisfaction and relief that he hadn’t let him down. He had stayed with Timbo until the end.

Abandonment is part of our relationships. We will abandon our dogs, cats or elephants, or they will abandon us. We will die first, or they will. Who is to say which will be the greater mourning?

Israel ready to destroy Iran's nuclear capability

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN14452667

In the April 14, Reuters article above, written by Louis Charbonneau, we learn again, that Israel is prepared to use military force against Iran if it refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions. Shimon Peres says that if “U.S. offers of dialogue failed to persuade Ahmadinejad to halt Tehran’s uranium enrichment program, ‘We’ll strike him.’”

The Iranian UN Ambassador’s response to Israel’s threat is interesting: "These outrageous threats of resorting to criminal and terrorist acts against a sovereign country and a member of the United Nations not only display the aggressive and warmongering nature of the Zionist regime, but also constitute blatant violations of international law," Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee wrote.”

Only in an “Authoritative Regime” can one make such absurd statements and expect anyone to believe them. Who would believe them? Why Iranian citizens and the citizens of the other authoritarian Middle Eastern nations. But the facts seem clear to me, Iran is a Rogue State threatening its neighbors through Hezbollah and swearing to destroy Israel. Common sense and ordinary prudence would suggest that Israel would be well served to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons – if it has the means to do so; and we believe that it does.

In 1981 Israel, under Menachem Begin, destroyed the Iraqi nuclear weapons development center at Osirak. Are Iran’s nuclear activities any less of a threat to Israel? Of course not. But perhaps not all Israeli presidents would have acted as Begin did; so we need to ask whether the current one, Shimon Peres, would. We have received our answer: Peres says, “We’ll strike him.”

Now it is up to Obama’s vaunted diplomacy to turn Iranian policy around. As we have guessed, the “military option” is not on Obama’s table, but we have also been fairly certain that it has never left Israel’s. Obama speaks well and can be very convincing. Will he convince Ahmadinejad and Iran’s religious leaders to abandon their nuclear ambitions? Obama hasn’t threatened to “strike him,” but he has threatened “sanctions.” Would sanctions satisfy Israel? We lived through years of sanctions not working against Saddam’s Iraq. Why would they be expected to work any better against Ahmadinejad’s Iran?

Against a nation who can send its Ambassador to the UN to voice the above quoted psychotic absurdities, the military option, should never be off the table.

On Putin vs. the Truth

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22642

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books is the article “Putin vs. the Truth” which is loosely built by Orlando Figes upon a review of Inside the Stalin Achieves: Discovering the new Russia.”

Notice Putin’s view of historians who won’t be taking up Putin’s partisan banner: “Oh, they will write, all right. You see, many textbooks are written by those who are paid in foreign grants. And naturally they are dancing the polka ordered by those who pay them. Do you understand? And unfortunately [such textbooks] find their way to schools and colleges.” There is no rough and tumble scholarly debate in Putin’s cosmology. If you discover something untoward in Soviet history then you are obviously dancing the polka ordered by some organization like Yale. Clever people those Yale administrators to know what they want even before researchers have discovered it.

And Putin takes a very different view from mine. I have argued that historians have been very soft on Stalin and Soviet history – well, not soft enough to suit Putin: “As to some problematic pages in our history—yes, we've had them. But what state hasn't? And we've had fewer of such pages than some other [states]. And ours were not as horrible as those of some others. Yes, we have had some terrible pages: let us remember the events beginning in 1937, let us not forget about them. But other countries have had no less, and even more. In any case, we did not pour chemicals over thousands of kilometers or drop on a small country seven times more bombs than during the entire World War II, as it was in Vietnam, for instance. Nor did we have other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance. All sorts of things happen in the history of every state. And we cannot allow ourselves to be saddled with guilt....^”

One of the most remarkable items in this article is in reference to a new teacher’s handbook that prescribes how to teach Russian history:

"The Modern History of Russia, 1945–2006: A Teacher's Handbook had been directly commissioned by the presidential administration itself, which had issued the following guidelines to the textbook's authors about how they should evaluate the leaders of the period:

"Stalin—good (strengthened vertical power but no private property); Khrushchev—bad (weakened vertical power); Brezhnev—good (for the same reasons as Stalin); Gorbachev and Yeltsin—bad (destroyed the country but under Yeltsin there was private property); Putin—the best ruler (strengthened vertical power and private property)."

COMMENT:

Ah, Putin, you scoundrel you. You had better put my blog on your forbidden list.

Ukrainian Genocide -- 1932-1933

I feel uncomfortable using the term “genocide” when applied to the Soviet orchestrated Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, and probably anyone approaching this subject will feel this way. “Genocide” has been applied too often to what Hitler did for it to be readily applied to what Stalin did as well. But they are equivalent. Hitler’s assumptions had to do with racial superiority and a conspiracy theory that blamed the Jews for all Germany’s problems. So he killed Jews in ovens.

Stalin’s assumptions had to do with class rather than race. The “Capitalist” class was to be exterminated. And since Stalin was concerned about the eventual conversion of all the world to Communism, he was more circumspect in his extermination methods. No ovens for Stalin. But the Soviet Union had something just as effective, the vast wilderness of Siberia and its gulags. Actually, had he shipped the Ukranian kurkul off to Siberia he could have covered his crime a bit better, and according to the Bilinsky article, he wanted to. Absent that first choice, he had to exterminate them in situ.

Now at this point any discussion is likely to break down in a series of quibbles, for the very reason I mention in the first paragraph above. “Genocide” has already been defined and what happened in Ukraine doesn’t meet that definition very well (although Bilinsky and Ukrainian intellectuals make if fit). I’m going to set that particular quibble aside by claiming that what Stalin did was equivalent to what Hitler did. Hitler’s motives were racial superiority. Stalin’s were class superiority. Hitler got rid of millions of racial “enemies” (using his assumptions). Stalin got rid of millions of class “enemies” (using the definitions Stalin inherited from Lenin). And I have used the term “Genocide” in my title because that term implies the most heinous of acts – any “equivalent” term had a connotation of being a lesser crime. No, what Stalin and his Soviets did in Ukraine was just as criminal as what Hitler did to the Jews – all quibbling aside.

Consider the article I’ve referred to before: http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/02/window-on-eurasia-to-counter-ukraine.html having to do with Russia’s senior archivist quibbling with the Ukrainians who are charging that the 1932-33 famine was genocide. The Archivist said, “the famine was the result of the errors and miscalculations of the political course of the leadership of the country in the course of the realization of collectivization.” And he insisted that he and his researchers had not found “a single document” showing that Stalin planned “a terror famine” in Ukraine.” When I wrote about this before I was most interested in the fact that Stalin and his soviets killed all these people through experimentation and a belief in an untried system. I still hold by what I wrote, but that doesn’t prevent movement in the direction of Bilinsky and Robert Conquest by adding that what this experimentation involved was equivalent to what Hitler did to races he believed were inferior. Stalin eliminated his class enemies just as Hitler eliminated his race enemies. Since the laws were written around Hitler’s “genocide,” there may be years of quibbling remaining before Stalin’s crimes are appropriately defined, but that is for the lawyers. Here, we can ignore the quibbles – or perhaps I should better say that we can try to.

The following article by Yroslav Billinsky was written in 1999 for the Journal of Genocide Research. It is entitled “Was the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 Genocide? http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/bilinsky.html This is an interesting article on our subject. Bilinsky discusses the major writings on the Ukrainian Famine. I noted that he was disappointed when he looked at Conquest’s index in Harvest of Sorrow and didn’t find “genocide.” Conquest doesn’t have time for this quibble. Some other term would work just as well for him, but, of course, not for someone writing for the Journal of Genocide Research.

But Conquest wrote a whole book on this subject and doesn’t need Bilinsky to apologize for him. For example, on page 24 he wrote,

“A conversation took place in August 1917 in the Smolny Institute canteen between Dzerzhinsky (shortly to be Lenin’s Police Commissar) and Rafael Abramovich, the Menshevik leader. Dzerzhinsky said to Abramovich, “ . . . that a constitution is determined by the correlation of real forces in the country. How does such a correlation of political and social forces change?’

“’Oh well, through the process of economic and political development, the evolution of new forms of economy, the rise of different social classes, etc, as you know perfectly well yourself’.

“’But couldn’t this correlation be altered? Say, through the subjection or extermination of some class of society?’

COMMENT:

Communist theory involves the “elimination” of Capitalism. Of course they didn’t call it “theory.” They invoked Marx who invoked Hegel on the philosophy of Historical Determinism. Consider the discussion above between the Communist Dzerzhinsky and the Menshevik Abramovich. We encountered this same sort of disagreement recently in the “Neocon” ranks. Fukuyama, invoking Hegel, said it was historically determined that Liberal Democracy would defeat all competitive systems. His followers didn’t want to wait for this to happen on its own. They wanted to hasten matters along. As Eric Hoffer would have said, Fukuyama was a “man of ideas” to be swept away by men of action. Of course the Neocon experiment was a tempest in a teapot compared to the Communist experiment. The Communist vanguard obtain control of a whole nation (unlike the Neocons) and hastened the process they believed in.

The “elimination of Capitalism” can sound almost clinical and abstract but when one moves away from “ideas” and engages in “action,” then elimination involves blood. Zinoviev is quoted in Bilinsky’s article as saying the enemies of Communism “must be annihilated.” What he said isn’t unusual or unique if one reads much Communist literature. Communist intellectuals thought of this annihilation as being akin to revenge: the Capitalists have ground the proletariat under its Iron Heel (the title of a pro-Communist novel by Jack London, btw). Now the Proletariat must rise up and throw off its chains. As the process developed, the revenge and the throwing off of the chains involved the killing of a wide variety of people in a wide variety of ways. The Ukrainian Kulak (called kurkul in Ukrainian) was not a Capitalist. He was not “rich” in any sense we would recognize – unless we applied the term to the very few who were actually rich, but that was not Stalin’s intent. As a “class,” independent farmers were opposed to State Control. It was their independence rather than their capitalistic nature that required their elimination. One only needs to think of Stalin’s purges to recognize his motivation. “Couldn’t this correlation be altered,” Dzerzhinsky is quoted as asking in1917 before the Soviets took power. Couldn’t the situation be altered by the “extermination of some class of society?”

Well, yes it could, Stalin could say in 1932 as he initiated the elimination of an offending “class” of independent people in the Ukraine.