The Soviet Monster is Really Dead - my reply to Edward Lucas
The nature of the dispute between Edward Lucas and Me
Edward Lucas has written this reply
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/10/the-realism-we-need
to my ‘First Things’ article on why we should resist attempts to get us into war with Russia
which can still be read here
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/10/the-cold-war-is-over
Glorious things of thee are spoken
First, I must deal with his repeated repetition of my one use of the word ‘glorious’ in the article, which Edward parades in chains as if I had written repeatedly of the ‘Glorious Russian People’s Triumph’ or some such, referring to Russian power or the Russian state in this way. Here is the context : ‘This modest street, Bolshaya Ordynka, could outdo Paris in loveliness. Here, under many grimy and bloody layers of Leninism, neglect, and about three wars, lay Russia, a very different thing from the U.S.S.R. Unlike the U.S.S.R., it was profoundly Christian, rather glorious, and no particular threat to the West. Perhaps the Bolsheviks had not, after all, destroyed and desecrated absolutely everything, and a lost nation was waiting quietly to return to life.’
Now, I have taught myself to seek and find glory all the time in unlikely places, in all cases the glory of God rather than of man . There is, as the first epistle to the Corinthians says, and which is quoted at length in the burial service: ’…one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.’ I am certainly not speaking of medals or missiles. I formed this view on quiet rambles in the shabby, decayed but lovely streets of Moscow south of the river, where in those days few foreigners went. And I think Edward, who knows his prayer book and Bible, knows what my meaning is. So it is rather naughty of him to do what he does. Watch out for it.
Well, Edward, is it a New Cold War, or isn't it?
Edward begins: ‘Those of us who believe we are indeed in a new cold war do not argue that Russia is the Soviet Union or is trying to recreate it.’
Ah. Well, what then was he suggesting in this piece from the Daily Mail on 13th October 2006 : ‘The disinformation war is raging in a way not seen since Soviet times…
‘All that may be a nuisance for small countries on Russia's fringe, but why should we worry in Britain? The first reason is that small defeats now mean bigger ones later. Russia's petrocrats are determined to stem and reverse their country's geopolitical retreat. If they can derail Mr Saakashvili, it sends a powerful signal elsewhere. If Georgia falls, then others will be next. Russia's hold over Ukraine will strengthen. Moldova, the weakest country in Europe, will buckle too.
‘Then the shadow will stretch over the poorly governed and demoralised ex-communists of Central Europe and the Baltics. That will bring Russian neo-imperialism to our front door.’
This seems to me to suggest a revival of the Soviet threat, just a bit. By the way, he began this piece with the neo-conservatives’ reference to Neville Chamberlain. ‘If Russia is allowed to continue bullying its neighbour, its neo-imperialist appetite will spread to our front door. "A FARAWAY COUNTRY of which we know nothing." Neville Chamberlain may have been unfair to Czechoslovakia when he dismissed it so casually in 1938. But it is all too true of the countries on the fringe of Europe that now find themselves the front lines in the new cold war: Georgia and Moldova.’
In a July 2007 article on the youth movement ‘Nashi’ he made the parallel with Stalin thus :’ For the east European countries with first-hand experience of Stalinist terror, the Kremlin's rewriting of history could hardly be more scary. Not only does Russia see no reason to apologise for their suffering under Kremlin rule, it now sees the collapse of communism not as a time of liberation, but as an era of pitiable weakness. Russia barely commemorates even the damage it did to itself, let alone the appalling suffering inflicted on other people. ‘
In January 2008 he made this rather fevered comparison : ‘FEW things embodied Stalinist terror more than the midnight knock on the door. For millions of innocent victims it heralded interrogation, torture and a lengthy — and all too often lethal — sentence in the Communist concentration camps of the Gulag.
Now the heirs of Stalin's secret police are running Russia — and there could be few clearer signs of their true nature than the British Council's Russian staff being hauled from their beds to answer for the 'crime' of working for a foreign employer.
The harassment of the British Council on transparently bogus charges of tax evasion has prompted a protest even from our supine Foreign Office.’
In ‘The Times’ of February 5th the same year, he wrote ; ‘Sixty years ago the Berlin Airlift highlighted the menace of Stalin's Kremlin. Forty years ago Soviet tanks crushed both the Prague Spring and any remaining illusions about the Kremlin's grip on the captive nations. Twenty years ago we began dropping our guard, as totalitarianism withered under Mikhail Gorbachev. Now it is time to acknowledge the inconvenient truth. Russia is back: rich, powerful and hostile. Partnership is giving way to rivalry, with increasingly threatening overtones. The new Cold War has begun - but just as in the 1940s, we are alarmingly slow to notice it.’
Kremlinology returns?
Then there’s this in the Sunday Telegraph of March 2008: ‘We are back to the era of Kremlinology, when analysts of Soviet politics would scrutinise every nuance in Pravda for faint reflections of the power struggles in the Communist Party's politburo.
Writing about the crushed Prague Spring in the Daily Mail of 23rd August 2008, he said : ‘The parallels with the present are as disturbing as they are thought-provoking.
Then as now, the United States was weakened by ill-planned and costly overseas adventures. Back in 1968, Vietnam had destroyed America's moral capital and will to fight, just as George W Bush's 'war on terror' is sapping them now.
‘Then as now, Europe was distracted and timid. In 1968, it was hot-headed students and silly hippies who derided our institutions and eroded our sense of purpose. Now it is corruption in politics and the cynicism and apathy that it breeds.
‘Perhaps more sinisterly still, the invasion of 1968 highlighted Western impotence — just as Russia's occupation of Georgia has done now. No European country is prepared to cut their lucrative trade ties with Russia, particularly in energy, in order to prevent the dismemberment and destruction of Georgia, any more than the West was willing to go to war with the Soviet Union for a captive Czechoslovakia struggling for its freedom. Then as now, we bleat but do not act. Then, as now, the message to the Kremlin is clear: we have lost the will to stand up for our values.’
I could go on but it would become boring by repetition. Archives are a terrible thing. I am really not sure that it can truly be said these articles, or indeed the book title ‘The New Cold War’ don’t argue that ‘Russia is the Soviet Union or is trying to recreate it.’ As it happens, I have on occasion come close, while examining the undoubted death of liberty in Russia, to similar sentiments. But I now regret them as crude and misleading.
Edward corrects his steering
Edward rightly corrects his steering by saying that Communist ways of thinking are gone; ‘It does not bear comparison with the grim but sophisticated edifice of Marxism-Leninism. The latter involved, for example, the compulsory study over many years of Dialectical Materialism (known unfondly to Soviet-era students as diamat). Nothing of the kind exists in Putin’s Russia.’
But then he makes this curious assertion: ‘What Hitchens fails to spot is that the Soviet Union was not just about Communism, or about Russia. It was an empire. One hundred twenty million-plus of the Soviet Union’s two hundred eighty-six-million population were non-Russians. Almost none of them were Soviet by choice, any more than the one hundred million people in the other Warsaw Pact countries wanted to be under Soviet tutelage. To view the collapse of the evil empire solely from a Russian point of view is therefore misleading. It would be like writing about Irish history solely from the point of the view of the British. Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other captive nations are real people, too. They have real languages, real histories, real dreams, and memories of statehood.’
Did Russians really support the Soviet System?
First, does he believe (as this seems to imply) that ethnic Russians were any less oppressed by Bolshevism than the other peoples he names? The Bolsheviks reconquered their lost territories in the name of the Workers’ State, not of Great-Russian Chauvinism which (for obvious reasons) was not much beloved by the CPSU.
Does he believe or claim that ethnic Russians were somehow keen supporters of the Soviet system? What is his evidence for this? They fell involuntarily under Bolshevik rule in a German-backed Communist putsch in 1917, a putsch which extinguished Russia’s nascent civil society and liberties for the most cynical of reasons. Nobody asked their opinion for the next 70 years.
Russians also died
Russians were not spared Stalin’s murders and famines. Russians, as well as Ukrainians, Belarussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians died in great numbers in the 1941-45 war, whatever we call it. Likewise, some Russians took the other side, mainly under Vlasov, though this is perhaps rather more the case among Ukrainians and some of the Baltic peoples. I’m aware of it. Is it actually the case that ‘*most* of the casualties and destruction of World War II involved these non-Russian countries’ peoples and their territories? I don’t see what this has to do with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I don’t defend it. It’s dead, like many cynical pacts of the time, one of which was concluded six years later at Yalta. Rightly, these events are not forgotten. Other actions and movements of the era, which ought to be remembered better in the West, are often by contrast forgotten here, such as Poland’s 1934 pact with Germany, Poland’s participation, as jackal, in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the homicidal and sometimes enthusiastic Judophobia under German rule in some of the territories we now discuss.
Kaisers, Presidents and Empires
Second, in what way do I ‘fail to spot’ this imperial element? I have written extensively about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the origins of the modern crisis in the imperial struggle between Russia, Hohenzollern Germany and Austria-Hungary, dwelling on the significance of Mitteleuropa, Richard von Kuehlmann’s far-seeing foreign policy, and the significance of the treaties of Brest-Litovsk. How could I, in doing this , be unaware of the empire which existed before Lenin, which he sought to recreate and Stalin sought to extend? Indeed, the reactionary in me (which regrets the fall of Austria-Hungary in the light of what followed it) is tempted to say that Russia’s pre-1914 borders may be more legitimate than the new ones created by the aggression of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the utopian meddling of Woodrow Wilson, the renewed aggression of Hitler and by Stalin’s ultimate crushing of that aggression. I wonder how many people who engage in this debate know that it was aggressive German force that first wrested the Baltic states from the rule of St Petersburg? But in fact I, like all sensible people, recognise that the power of the USSR is gone for good, and that if Russia wishes to be, once again, an influence in this part of the world it will have to achieve this through soft rather than hard power, softer as it happens than the militarily-linked NATO and EU advances into the area.
Soft or Hard Power?
It was, as Edward knows, the defeat of Russian soft power (the economic offer to Kiev) by Western hard-power (the NATO and US-backed Kiev mob which overthrew Ukraine’s legitimate government and ripped up Ukraine’s constitution) which led to the first significant instance of hard power use by Moscow since the 1990s – a reaction, be it noted not an initiative. I don’t attribute this slowness to virtue, but to a hard-headed recognition of weakness. Russia is not that strong. Russia is not that rich. As Tony Brenton recently wrote in words which immediately put this whole debate in a proper perspective: ‘Russian military expenditure is one tenth of Nato’s and their economy one twentieth.’ The open Crimea annexation (and the covert destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine) were hesitant and risky actions taken under immense provocation, falling well short of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine predicted by many panic-mongers at the time.
Something similar could be said of the famous 2008 Georgia War, which the EU’s own Tagliavini report concluded (annoyingly for Edward and his friends) had been started by Georgia.
Yes, I am an ex-imperialist
It is true that my view of Russia’s imperial withdrawal is influenced by my own experience as a child of a Naval officer closely involved in and directly affected by British imperial decline. My view is that there will always be empires, that it is idle to pretend this is not so, and that it is in general preferable to have one than be in someone else’s. I also hold to the view that great land empires are very hard to erase. They have physical reasons for existing and will arise again in new forms if they are defeated. The EU is the very successful continuation of Germany by other means, largely unresisted by nations and forces (including Russia) which would never have tolerated such an expansion of influence through direct conquest.
These are facts that cannot be altered by sentiment. I am less impressed by anti-Imperialist manifestoes and pleas than I would be had I grown up in an Irish nationalist home. But I should have thought that any conservative would see the importance of at least noticing and comprehending the point of view of the empire as well as that of the colonised. And it is one of the great paradoxes of history that Sinn Fein has ended up campaigning *against* Irish independence, preferring membership of the EU empire. This makes my point about the permanence of empires rather well.
No, the British Empire was not peacefully wound up
As it happens, while prepared to defend many aspects of the British empire, by comparison with its rivals from the Spanish, the Russian and the German, the Chinese, the EU and the American, I do not join in the chorus of praise for its dissolution. It was a disaster, caused by a defeat. We made a terrible mess of India, a mess which still plagues the world. Likewise Palestine and Cyprus, not to mention Africa. The bloody partition and the scuttle which accompanied the Indian withdrawal were not peaceful. Nor did we give up voluntarily. I am always amazed by how few British people (or American admirers of Churchill) manage to recall the catastrophic defeat of British arms at Singapore in 1942, the worst defeat ever suffered by this country and the end of the British empire in the East. Try as we might to re-establish ourselves, we lacked either the wealth or the standing to do so (having been shown by Japan to be far from invincible at Singapore). Like the Norway campaign, the PQ-17 episode, the Dunkirk evacuation and other sidelined or misunderstood episodes in the 1939-45 war, it is ignored or passed over quickly.
Sharpened shovels in Tbilisi, bullets in Vilnius
The USSR did not in fact undergo such events. It sometimes behaved atrociously, especially in Tbilisi in 1989 when Soviet troops murdered protestors with sharpened shovels, and in Vilnius in January 1991 when (overshadowed by the first Gulf War) Gorbachev ordered special forces to attack the TV tower. I was there, and so know especially well what happened that day and that night and how stupid and horrible it was. I could barely speak to Russian friends and colleagues for weeks afterwards, being in those days unable to separate ‘Soviet’ from ‘Russian’ in my mind. And yet, once the August 1991 putsch (which I also witnessed) had collapsed, Moscow gave up the fight. Baltic independence, which the supposedly liberal Gorbachev had furiously opposed, became a fact, and was left unmolested by Moscow for many years before the Baltic states joined the EU or NATO. The loss of Ukraine was likewise simply absorbed a blow upon a bruise. The small states of the Caucasus, too, broke away. Yes, there were episodes of divide-and-rule, designed into the old Soviet map by Stalin when he deliberately gave his Soviet republics awkward minorities. But these have their parallels in other empires and, while unlovely, were marginal events until the EU’s bold and predictably fraught effort to end Ukraine’s sensible non-alignment and draw it into a politico-military alliance with the West.
I do not know what Edward means when he asserts ‘the Soviet Union and Russia did not “withdraw” from these countries and the Warsaw Pact. Of course they did. It sin indisputable physical fact. Three Shock Army has left Germany, along with a huge tonnage of artillery, planes, missiles and materiel. Soviet forces have likewise left Czechoslovakia and Hungary , and the Baltic States, and Ukraine, and Belarus. Why suggest it is not so? Yet there was no Soviet or Russian equivalent of our Singapore in 1942.
I am interested that he adds ‘The Russians, the supposed masters of the whole system, revolted against the lies, brutality, and incompetence with which they were being governed.’ Quite. This corrects the weird implication, earlier, that ethnic Russians were enthusiasts for Soviet rule. He adds ‘Many of them revolted against the idea of empire, too.’ Perhaps. No doubt some Moscow liberals took this view, but my experience is that normal Russians were as wounded and demoralised by their truncated nation’s diminished status as the British working class were after Suez left us naked. This was not because they loved Stalin, but because this is how patriotic people feel about the public defeat of their country.
Like Moscow, I accept the permanence of the withdrawal
Edward writes as if I am urging some compromise between the withdrawal that happened and another, smaller withdrawal. Not a bit of it Like most sensible Russians, I recognise that the dissolution of the USSR had to come and is permanent. What did not have to come was the maintenance and extension of NATO up to Russia’s borders, and the campaign to align Ukraine and the Caucasus with a clearly anti-Russian alliance.
It is this silly aggression which is endangering the perfectly workable settlement of 1991.
If the countries involved ‘fear invasion’, it is because they have been urged to do so by us, and because they have been aggressively recruited into an alignment they had no need to join. Ponder this. Were the Baltic States at more risk from Russia ( assuming they are at any risk at all) before or after they joined NATO? As Richard Sakwa so eloquently points out in his ‘Frontline Ukraine’ : 'In the end, NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement. The former Warsaw Pact and Baltic states joined NATO to enhance their security, but the very act of doing do created a security dilemma for Russia that undermined the security of all…NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence’.
I notice that Edward barely replies at all to my fanciful but carefully drawn portrait of a defeated USA undergoing humiliations similar and comparable to those endured by Russia. This is because it is unanswerable. The USA, even truncated and impoverished, would never submit to such treatment by and through its neighbours as Russia has endured. Nor should it do so. No sovereign nation, intending to stay in being would put up with such manoeuvres on its frontiers. Edward knows this. Why doesn’t he publicly acknowledge it? It is no good switching the subject the internal governance of the countries involved. It is not, and he knows it, the issue. Countries fortunate enough to live safely behind the barrier of the ocean are able to develop free institutions and the rule of law, if they wish. Those without this blessing are not.
What is all this about the Crimean Tatars? Does Edward, who writes ‘ that they ‘have a better claim to the peninsula than do the Soviet-era military pensioners and dependents who moved there after the war’, seriously advocate the re-Islamisation of the Crimea? This takes Russophobe dog-in-the-manger attitudes beyond the giddy limit. If not, he shouldn’t say such silly things. He’ll be urging the handover of the Malvinas to the Argentines, next, and sitting on some UN anti-colonialism committee.
He says the Tatars see Ukraine as 'their only hope’? I can’t think why. The Tatars were deported and horribly persecuted by Stalin and restored to their homes by Gorbachev, both under the USSR and long before Ukrainian independence. I know of no evidence that their position, as a people, is significantly worse under Russia than it was under the rule of Kiev.
Natural History
I do indeed see ‘one power bloc expanding into the area another bloc has vacated.’ This is the normal process throughout the history of our continent (See the fate of Ireland, discussed above), and I see no reason why it should be suspended now, even if the weapons these days are ‘people power’ and ‘civil society’ organisations, euros, dollars and 24-hour TV, rather than mangonels or siege engines or long-range artillery or tanks.
I have no doubt that the elites of the new NATO countries and the new EU countries keenly supported their accession into these organisations. It is easy to see why. Elites love such organisations, and are loved in return by them. But I do not think their poorly-led peoples were really offered any choice, and recall (for instance) the forgotten period when Polish coalminers stormed through Warsaw protesting at the EU’s threat to their jobs. Now they and their children plant and pluck beetroot in Lincolnshire instead. In modern Europe, anyone west of the River Bug must belong the EU or NATO bloc, or both. Be there, or be square. Only Switzerland, Finland and Ireland now resist both or one of these memberships (and perhaps Britain may eventually quit the EU). But they could not have done so had they achieved their independence since 1991.
Edward says :’ To equate the Russian pull-out from the Baltic states, say, with those countries’ subsequent membership in the EU and NATO is to regard kidnapping and marriage as fundamentally the same thing.’ But I don’t equate them. I say that the one need not have been followed by the other. They had no *need* to swap one bloc for a rival bloc. It would have been perfectly possible for Russia and the EU to have maintained civilised economic and political relations with the newly-liberated countries without requiring them to align with Moscow or Brussels.
Surely it was independence they wanted, not a change of master? With their markets and borders thrown open to Germany, and their laws made in Brussels and Luxemburg to German design, how are they now independent? Germany gets on well with the countries on which it once made war because they have accepted, after two (in some cases three) hard lessons, that it is better and easier to let Germany get its way peacefully, which is the foundation of the EU. These countries have no borders of their own, don’t make their own laws, treaties, trade agreements or foreign policy. Most don’t even have currencies. Do we regard them as real countries? Do we not ‘blast them with propaganda’, especially if they vote the wrong way in referenda? Revanchism is fine, it seems, if done politely.
I have written little about Ukraine because it is not the subject of this discussion. It is and ought to be an independent country. I wish it was better-governed and not so willing to be used as the toy of others.
I do not think I underplay Russian foreign policy or Russia’s internal repressions. I think Edward exaggerates Russia’s aggressive designs, not least because Russia lacks the money and muscle to adopt the policies he attributes to it. I am a consistent critic of Russia’s internal regime and have never deviated from my view that Vladimir Putin is a sinister tyrant. I here repeat it.
I do not ‘privilege big countries over small ones’. The natural order does that. I just think it idle to pretend that this isn’t the case., or to try to act as if great powers aren’t different from small ones. I only make the point about the unpleasantness of our allies because Edward makes the internal arrangements of Russia such an issue. We did not oppose the USSR because it was a tyranny, but because it was a dogma-driven aggressive empire with a blue-water navy and global ambitions to extend an ideology which threatened the liberty of the world. To that end we were even prepared to sustain apartheid South Africa against the Soviet-backed ANC.
Russia is a sordid despotism, but it is not a dogma-driven ideological global empire whose ideology threatens our liberty. . China, Saudi Arabia etc are likewise sordid despotisms, and China is unquestionably aggressive and expansionist in a way that Russia is not, as we now see in the South China Sea, and also in Tibet.
If we can get along with China and Saudi Arabia, we can certainly get along with Russia. The comparison is *not* the same as the ‘whataboutery’ of the Cold War, which confused authoritarian and despotic states with a global aggressive Communist monster quite different in character. To grasp that this monster is dead is to grasp the whole matter. . .
Wonder what reward the despots who rule Saudi Arabia will give their pet pork-barrel at the Foreign office for his ongoingly fervent (and spectacularly unquestioning) support of fanatically sectarian jihadi terrorists ... oops, sorry, they're the extremists and of course he only supports jihadi sectarian fanatic terrorists who as everyone knows are exceedingly moderate chaps.
Occasional lapses into mass-beheading, slave trading, rape, gas or chemical warfare, cannibalism, massacre, burying would-be escapees alive, shelling civilians etc. really shouldn't be held against such moderate rebels (foreign though most are) since after all they're only doing their job.
Errr .... under the UK government's own anti-terrorism laws, why hasn't he been arrested?
Posted by: C. Morrison | 16 October 2016 at 11:21 PM
@CMorrison The Liberal media calls for No Fly Zones and for Russians to be put on trial for war crimes while ignoring what looks like the type of crisis which could end up in a world war.For example there has been nothing about Russian officials being told to bring their children and elderly realtives back to Russia a story which has featured in several newspapers.You would think that TV news would want to cover such a story to confirm or deny it but so far nothing.That is something that happened in 1914 and 1939 when British tourists were told to get themselves home from the Continent if they had not done so already.Of course this could all be psychological warfare,bluff in other words.However is it a bluff that any but the most fool hardy would want to call?
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 13 October 2016 at 10:50 AM
@ Ky
I am pleased to hear you enjoyed and appreciated it.
As Ray Davies once famously remarked, 'When everybody else (in the 60s) thought that the hip thing to do was to drop acid, do as many drugs as possible, and listen to music in a coma, The Kinks were singing songs about lost friends, draught beer, motorbike riders, wicked witches and flying cats.'
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 12 October 2016 at 04:13 PM
**** ..... we can certainly get along with Russia. ****
Yes, but that would require there to be more honest politicians in the UK parliament ... and is almost impossible anyway, if ITN and the BBC persist in being unquestioning purveyors of US State Department propaganda -- especially that which promotes the interests of IS and Al-Nusra terrorists attacking Syria and sponsored by the US regime, its sectarian Gulf allies, and servants of both at Westminster.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 11 October 2016 at 10:22 PM
The world may well be heading for a Cuban style crisis between the West and Russia which those who did not live through the last one will find extremely frightening.The important thing will be not to lose your head.Both Moscow and Washington may not be averse to such a thing as they are both powers on the slide who may wish to warn the rising power China that they still calll the shots. Hopefuly we will all be around at the end of this clearing of the air just as we were in 1962.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 11 October 2016 at 07:31 PM
@Kevin 1
Thank you so much Kevin, for this beautiful but sad sad song about life, love, anger and fear. I really appreciate the song.
Besides the poignant lines you highlighted, I liked the following lines:
"It's strange we always go to church on Sundays
After getting right out of it on a Saturday night
And if we stay here too long, I know that we'll quarrel
And end up having a fight
Just a couple of losers putting the world to right".
Posted by: Ky | 11 October 2016 at 12:41 PM
John New London
Well, while we'e talking hypotheticals, how about the possibility of the hypothetical creation of what Professor Charles Truxillo and his "cadre of intellectuals" refer to as The Republica del Norte, in which the Southwest secedes from the US and the northern states of Mexico secede from Mexico, the ex-US southwest and the ex-northern states of Mexico come together to form The Republic of the North, with its capital at Los Angeles.
"I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland, but by the end of the century (2080) my students' kids will live in it, sovereign and free." -
Again, I refer the reader to search 'vdare allan wall 35' for further details.
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 11 October 2016 at 10:05 AM
***PH responds. Bert here ignores the little matter of the status quo ante....***
Not only but also, what's good for the goose....there was that not so small matter regarding Cuba and Russia when the West interfered in their mutual security agreement with threats of war.
Such Western hypocrisy is now seen as its right!
Posted by: Michael Wood | 10 October 2016 at 07:13 PM
@ Ky
Thank you for posting the lyrics to Bob Dylan's song 'Masters of War', I hadn't heard this song before but I like it.
As a Kinks fan however I tend to approach this subject from a different angle. That is ol say, rather than looking at it from what I call the universal perspective, I much prefer a lyric which examines the effects of human conflict on the private, individual citizen, the father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife or friend.
With this thought in mind, I'd like to share a part of the lyric to the Kinks song "The Informer" which is set in Northern Ireland during the most recent troubles and tells the story of two friends who, having lived through this troubled period in Irish history, are reunited under unusual circumstances.
Part of the lyric runs thus:
'Just two people trying to get by
But we're torn apart
Because of different pressures
From different sides ...'
I think the most poignant line in the song however is this one:
'But belief aside, religion apart
Did you ever think about all the suffering you caused
And the broken hearts?'
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 10 October 2016 at 04:18 PM
Mr Hitchens, I see that once again the sympathy you have for poor old mother Russia comes to the fore. Your analogy does not work, of course. For example, if Ukraine wishes to join the EU, that is a matter for Ukraine. There is no existential threat to Russia from this policy - it has nothing to do with whatever the real life equivalent of forcing Russia to sell up and move on is.
And am I to assume that the answer to my original question was ‘yes’? If so, does any warning, if subsequently ignored by the warnee, ‘entitle’ the warner to apply military force?
Posted by: Thucydides | 10 October 2016 at 03:47 PM
I am fascinated by this comment from PH, to a contributor: ‘How many times must a state warn against a neighbour's policy, before it is entitled to act to counter it?’ Does this mean that if Ukraine decides to join the EU, and Russia warns it that it, Russia, does not like that policy, Russia is therefore ‘entitled’ to launch military action against Ukraine?
***PH responds. Bert here ignores the little matter of the status quo ante. Ukraine did not even exist as a sovereign country until 1991. Perhaps he might imagine Russia as a longstanding householder compelled to sell much of his land by straitened circumstances, then finding the occupier of the land creating disputes over noise, fences and trees in alliance with a developer, clearly aimed at forcing him to sell up and move. ***
Posted by: Thucydides | 10 October 2016 at 01:28 PM
*** Germany gets on well with the countries on which it once made war ...***
Germany seems -- just coincidence? -- most supportive of countries which sided with Germany in either or both world wars. Maybe not so keen on those which didn't....
Posted by: C. Morrison | 10 October 2016 at 12:08 PM
Isn't it peculiar, there are people who cannot believe what they saw and could still see with their own eyes, which is the total destruction of nation after nation at the hands of the West and its allies, illegally and without mercy, and yet those same people claim to witness terrible war crimes and aggression by Putin's Russia on all of it's neighbours.
Truth is definitely not alone in being the first casualty of war - their common sense commited suicide.
Posted by: Michael Wood | 09 October 2016 at 09:29 PM
Interesting to note that nuclear capable missiles able to strike Berlin and Warsaw have just been installed in the Kaliningrad Oblast.Kalingrad was once the German city of Koenigsburg birth place of the philosopher Kant .It was once as German as Yorkshire is English .Another comparison could be imagine if the entire city of Edinburgh had been totally wiped from the map and its inhabitants expelled and another new city filled with Russian speakers called Molotovgrad erected in its place, the Firth of Forth becoming a permanent part of Russia and a naval base for the Russian navy . That is what can happen to you if you lose a war .
***PH notes: leave aside the missile issue but Kaliningrad/Koenigsberg is indeed a fascinating subject. Kalinirad itself, which I visited when it was finally opened to foreign journalists in 1992, is more or less wholly Soviet though there are a few remnants of the German past, mainly a few streets of obviously German houses from the Wilhelmine era, very run down, but also the railway station, built on German rather than Russian principles so the platforms are reached from subways. Immanual Kant;s tomb is also preseerved at the surprisingly small Cathedral. The great citadel, symbol of German power in the region, was obliterated by high-explosive on the orders of Alexei Kosygin in, I think, the 1960s. One of the many fascinating details in Neil MagGregor's wonderful book 'Germany,: Memories of a Nation' is that if you look closely at the Kaliningrad manhole covers you can see that they are German - some having been made in a factory named after the Norse god Odin. I missed this during my visit, though there were hawkers selling scrappy and basic maps of the streetplan of the German city. My favourite sduiscovcery was that 'Goeringstrasse' (Goering Street) had become 'Ulitsa Gagarina' (Gagarin Street). I never discovered the fate of Adold Hitler Strasse (every German city had one, and my treasured 1936 Baedeker, acquired since my Kaliningrad visit, tells you exactly where it was in each case.
Even more fascinating was the territory around the city, which included an entirely unspoiled seaside resort on the lovely Baltic coast, all pines and white sands. It had for many years been reserved as a sanatorium for senior Communists, and so had survived rather well. We passed very close to Tilsit, where the Tsar Alexander and the usurper Bonaparte held their famous summit in the middle of a river.
This underlines the sensitivity of the area to Russians. If you read that disturbing book 'the Kindly Ones' by Jonathan Littell, (which I found so horrible that I chucked it away, guilty at having enjoyed any of it) I think there are scenes set in East Prussia as the Red Army advances., which illustrate the sheer rage of the Soviet soldiers as they enter the the territory of the foe who has raped their own land and whom they have (tho that foe'as considerable surprise) defeated. ' There is a description of a farm, horribly pillaged and looted and its occupants raped and murdered, and written on the walls something like 'You had your own land, comfortable homes, tinned food and feather beds. Why couldn't you have stayed at home?'.
There is no doubt that the near-Carthaginian treatment of Koenigsberg, whose German inhabitants were deported en masse with great ruthlessness, was a deliberate act of theatre by Stalin, who knew very well how much the city was valued in German culture and history. He also knew perfectly well of the barbarities inflicted by the Red Army on Germans, and intended them. Germans, as he intended, still remember them in great detail, though they are not much talked about even now. This is indeed what happens if you lose a war, and especially if you lose a war you started, and which you conducted without mercy. Russians would recognise Churchill's slogan of 'In defeat, defiance', but would not even understand the other part of it 'In victory, magnanimity'. You can only afford that sort of thing if you have a deep, wide moat of stormy salt water. Even then, it may not be entirely wise. But let us hope that it is. ****
.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 09 October 2016 at 08:44 PM
@Steve P, it is very simple to stop this confrontation, Russia allows the democratic government's of eastern europe to associate with who they wish (and like the vents that lead to the Maidan protests where a party elected on a platform of EU association turned around and betrayed the electorate after huge bribes from Russia, and, unlike us, the Ukranians did not take such a betrayal lying down, and resisted heroically) and until Russia stops being a religiously motivated monstrosity, with the evil of chrisitainity and it's unending need for rape and murder as it;s motivating force, it must be opposed.
Posted by: rob godfrey | 09 October 2016 at 03:55 PM
Why should the people of the Ukraine be forced to lie supine before Russia, just waiting for the knife?
***PH asks: Who is suggesting that they should? Russia's relations with Ukraine were perfectly peaceful until the EU sought to align Ukraine with the western alliance and end the non-aligned status it had sensibly maintained since 1991. By making themselves the plaything of outside forces, they provoked an entirely predictable response from Russia, which had warned repeatedly against any further expansion eastwards by the Western alliances. If Russia had not reacted to the violent mob overthrow of Ukraine's legitimate government, it would have been guilty of severe appeasement of the weakest sort. I thought we were against that.**
Are they lesser to the British somehow? If so why?
**PH replies: Lesser? Don't think so. But their geographical position and history are very different. Modern Ukraine was created in 1918 by the German army, to weaken Russia. And it was recreated 23 years later by *another* German Army for the same purpose. Then it re-emerged in the vacuum eft by the collapse of the USSR.
It has no defensible physical borders, and nor does its Russian neighbour - which might reasonably object to the presence of troops of an anti-Russian alliance 450 miles from its capital. Sorry to mention it, but if England had allowed the French to establish themselves militarily and politically in Scotland, there's be no Britain now. Fact of life. Nations that don't defend themselves, don't survive. Next fact of life. If you try hard enough to provoke someone, you will eventually succeed. ***
Posted by: rob godfrey | 09 October 2016 at 03:45 PM
@CS In 1941 Hitler's Europe actually had a bigger much more technologically sophisticated economy than the primitive backward Soviet Union.Hitler remarked you have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.Well we all know how that turned out..As always it is not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.I would say there is considerabley more fight in the Russian dog than the Western one these days,
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 09 October 2016 at 12:19 AM
"Germany gets on well with the countries on which it once made war because they have accepted, after two (in some cases three) hard lessons, that it is better and easier to let Germany get its way peacefully, which is the foundation of the EU."
Interesting observation, but it misses the point that this acceptance was facilitated by Germany breeding their agents of influence since the 80s (when STASI and BND slowly started to merge).
Few examples:
The Polish PO Minister for Defence Bogdan Klich was paid directly by German foundations, which resulted in Poland buying German submarines that even the Greeks did not want for that price. So was Mr Donald Tusk, whom I remember writing articles for a German magazine.
Another example.
When Margaret Thatcher was still the Prime Minister of Great Britain, she said she would veto Germany’s reunification unless Germany sings a peace treaty with Poland. Chancellor Kohl was ready to prolong the occupation of Germany rather than sign the Peace Treaty. Eventually Germany confirmed a Border Treaty from 1970 (signed by Willy Brandt and Wladyslaw Gomulka), still refusing to sign the Peace Treaty – and Polish government did not put any pressure.
On 12 September 1990 the 2 + 4 Treaty signed in Moscow ended the occupation of Germany and the legislation was supported by Treaty of Good Neighbourhood and Cooperation.
The latter treaty had two statements attached, one by German Minister Genscher (who actually was an active Nazi during WWII, but let’s not be petty) and the second one by a Polish Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski (against whom the German secret service – BND – used files their inherited from Stasi, in order to blackmail the Polish Foreign Minister, as was officially confirmed by the main adviser of the then Polish Prime Minister, Krzysztof Wyszkowski; Minister Skubiszewski did not sue Mr. Wyszkowski or even denied that).
By the way, both statements stipulated that the treaty does not deal with claims to German property on Polish western lands (and, in case someone does not know, Germany was allowed to escape with no WWII war reparations made to Poland, Czech Republic or Greece - again, as you Peter probably do not know, the Germans killed more ethnic Poles in Poland than they killed ethnic Jews, and Auschwitz was for a long time a concentration camp for rounded up innocent Poles, and the Jews did not start to arrive in it until 1942).
Posted by: Grzegorz Kolodziej | 09 October 2016 at 12:07 AM
Peter, you state : 'Those who overthrew Yanukovych in a violent putsch started this war.' Yanukovich looted $billions from his own people and ran a corrupt crony capitalist state on the Putin business model.
***PH notes: Oh, do come on. No politician in Ukraine can be held up as a model of probity. Yanukovych was not significantly worsein this respect than any other major figure. To pretend that corruption and clean government is a real issue between the Kiev factions is ridiculous. The Poroshenko state has spectaculatlu failed to fulfil its promises to clean up the country, as he knows.***
The violence was committed on his (likely ultimately Putin's) orders: 100 unarmed men were shot to death by professional snipers who were witnessed to have Russian accents.
***PH notes: Oddly enough there is no reliable information on this, even though the Kiev government has had many months to conduct a full and impartial inquiry. What we do know is that 14 police officers died at the hands of the supposedly peaceful idealistic prayer-meeting which Mr 'Horace' admires so much. If they weren't a violent menace, why did Yanukovych flee from them?***
It is NOT a war; it is an invasion by a brutal fascist power that has inflicted indescribable death and misery. I am glad Mr Lucas is your friend; perhaps he can yet persuade you that your pro-Putin position is wrong.
***PH: I do not have a pro-Putin position. Russia's internal affairs are none of my business, just as ours are no business of Russia. I oppose my own country's foolish policy of supporting eastward expansion of NATO and the EU, that is all.***
You get many things right; hopefully your Christian concience will eventually stop you from writing articles that defend the indefensible.
PS, bringing up Bandera is a standard pro-Putin ploy. As you well know, the far right were soundly defeated in the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2014. Bandera was a person who rightly objected to being occupied by the red army and having 6-10 million of his people being systematically murdered by an occupier of equal brutality to the nazis, who actually locked him up during their period of occupation.
***It may be a pro-Putin ploy, when used by pro-Putin people. But it is also the truth. Readers who make a few investigations on the Internet will find Mr 'Horace''s description of Bandera rather hilariously incomplete. ***
Posted by: Horace | 08 October 2016 at 08:36 PM
"Other actions and movements of the era, which ought to be remembered better in the West, are often by contrast forgotten here, such as Poland’s 1934 pact with Germany, Poland’s participation, as jackal, in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the homicidal and sometimes enthusiastic Judophobia under German rule in some of the territories we now discuss. "
Peter, your ignorance is encyclopedic. Per capita, Poles earned most medals among the Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jews, even though occupied Poland was the only country where there was a death penalty for rescuing Jews. Also, it was because of a Pole Witold Pilecki that the world found out about the Holocaust - and it was the Englishman Anthony Eden who - at his meeting with President Roosevelt - was against accepting Eichmann's offer of releasing Jews from concentration camps in exchange of the lorries. It was England who did not put up any fight against Hitler in September 39, not honouring her military agreement with Poland (they did not even sent weapons Poland paid for) and limiting itself to lip-service. It was the Poles who won the Battle for Britain (according to the Royal AirForce Commander, the planes they had shot down were decisive in the Battle of Britain - they were they most efficient pilots, according to Churchill). And the only gratitude Poland has received was England demanding that Poland pays for the planes they used defending your country (also, the Poles were the only ones not invited to a victory parade in London - even people from Mauritius were). And - which you probably are also unaware off - 50% of all of your intelligence information came from the Polish underground. Last but not least - what happened to tons of gold Poland deposited in London in 1939 - are you going to return it any time soon?
P.S. Regarding Russia - are you aware that Poland invaded Russia twice and Russia invaded Poland 16 times?
Posted by: Grzegorz Kolodziej | 08 October 2016 at 08:35 PM
Moving on! Is Putin bluffing? Russia does not have the military capability to annex or invade a large country like Ukraine or Poland and then pacify it. Hypothetical question! Could The USA invade Mexico, pacify it and then transform it into The 51st State? Of course not! Invasion is the easy bit, what comes after is a nightmare and a never ending one. What is the point of having an empire in the modern world? What did The USSR gain from occupying East Germany, Poland and Hungary for a mere 45 years? certainly not wealth. Like Peter, I worked in these countries when they were Communist and as miserable as they were, the citizens had a much higher standard of living than the Russian people back then. Military conquest and occupation is not the same as empire building, as Nazi Germany found out! Maybe Putin simply wants Russia to be seen as a great power, something that appears to appeal to a majority of Russians. As for for Syria, that is surely all about The Russian Naval Base at Tartus, the only place The Russian Navy can refuel in The Med. If or when Assad falls, what chance of them hanging on to that, either legally or by force?
Posted by: Jim New London | 08 October 2016 at 05:56 PM
Mr Hitchens writes,
”If you don't like atrocities, don't start wars.”
”… my horror of and loathing for violence grows the more I know about it. I am appalled by the irresponsibility of those who began this conflict, and condemn them with all the force at my command.”
It is a powerful statement.
Bob Dylan has started his never-ending tour again last night in California. (The show last night was a part of the event called The Desert Trip with The Rolling Stones & Paul McCartney- who has stopped using cannabis, well.)
However, I think it is interesting that Dylan has chosen Masters of War as his final song of the night. Although the song was written more than 50 years ago, it is still ’up-to-date’ and he performed it powerfully. (Available on the net, so far.)
Dylan might feel again in the wind that a war is coming.
Masters of War
Come you masters of war
…
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
…
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
…
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
…
(1963)
Posted by: Ky | 08 October 2016 at 04:16 PM
John New London
There are two types of empire the traditional kind (like the British once had) which was obtained by use of hard power and then there is the modern variant which relies almost exclusively on soft power to maintain control of its people and resources. I say almost because there are now strong indications that post Brexit the EU will create its own army. If or when this happens it will be interesting to see if that army is deployed within EU borders to threaten any member state which refuses to strictly adhere to the diktat of Brussels and/or Berlin. Time alone will tell.
The United States of America gained its empire status via the process of Manifest Destiny and it did it the traditional manner. That is to say, it conquered the indigenous people of the land currently known as the USA and, yes, it even conquered (annexed) overseas territory too - Hawaii.
"We need Hawaii as much and a good deal more than we did California." - William McKinley.
It obtained colonies too, like Guam and Puerto Rico.
Finally, we have Thomas Jefferson's 'Empire of Liberty" We could call that a third definition of the term "Empire" if you like.
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 08 October 2016 at 01:56 PM
@C Morrison That the US is in bed with types like Al Nusra shows its eites have learned nothing from 911 and subsequent events.A drift back into a nuclear stand off cold war with Russia seems the likeliest future with Islamists findingthe pressure off them and even becoming the US new allies when they oppose Russia and its interests. As Kipling puts it "the dog returns to his vomit ,the cow returns to her mire and the burnt fools bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire " The Gods Of The Copybook Headings 1919.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 08 October 2016 at 01:46 PM
C.Morrison states: 'Horace", so casually dismissive of Peter Hitchens, is content for Ukraine to be administered by a regime of racist neo-nazis and gangsters on behalf of the USA and its multinational corporate owners'. Such evil and hateful drivel can only have been gleaned from the troll TV channel RT or its many affiliates, because it has not the remotest basis in reality, as Peter Hitchens would know very well.
***PH rematrks: Actually there *is* a very repellent strand in Ukrainian nationalism, the reverence accorded to Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Hitler, and the use of National Socialist symbolism, such as the wearing of 'Wolfsangel' by some nationalists. There is undoubtedly soem Russophobe racial hatred involve din this, evidenced by the use of the term 'Moskal' for Russians by some Ukrainians. This is not a majority position, but it is embarrassing to the cause of Ukrainian patriotism and has to be addressed. Several of the nationalist movements in this part of the world have not properly come to terms with the past, and the actions of their forerunners in the Nazi era. Russia is often rightly criticised for distorting its history, but it is not a uniquely Russian problem.***
The naked hatred in Edward Klimenko's comment is that of the imperialist who feels free to take anything he wants because he sees the inhabitants as subhumans. But it is he who is displaying the subhuman tendencies.
Peter, thank you for your replies to my post. They do contain your usual pro-invader bias though, such as justifying the theft of sovereign territory.
***Actually I don't justify it. If there *is* international law, Russia broke it, just as Kosovo broke it when it seceded from Serbia, and just as Turkey broke it when it seized North Cyprus. These unpunished breaches of international law suggest to me that it has no real existence. Personally I think we need a mechanism whereby foolishly-drawn post-colonial borders can be redrawn with mutual agreement. In the meantime, this sort of thing will happen, and Ukraine provided Russia with the opportunity to achieve it, by becoming the plaything of the EU, the USA and NATO rather than continuing to assert its non-aligned status..***
You say: 'Nobody really disputes that the Crimea's people prefer Russian rule to Ukrainian, and would vote for it in a properly-conducted poll - a choice they were denied by Ukraine in 1992'. Firstly, the occupier installed as PM a charming piece of work known as 'goblin' in the criminal underworld from which he came. He managed to secure a magnificent 3% of the vote in the last legitimate pre-occupation election. You approve this choice? Secondly, the pre-occupation percentage of ethnic Russians on the peninsular was 58%. Nevertheless, in the referendum of Dec 1991, it voted along with every other Ukrainian oblast for independence from Russia. The result was 56%. In Donbas it was 83%. In the rest of Ukraine it was 93% on average. Given that the average population of ethnic Russians across all Ukraine is c.17%, it demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Russians in Ukraine actually identify as Ukrainian.
***PH notes, there is a neat sleight of hand here. The 1991 referendum was not about secession from Russia but from the Soviet Union, by then utterly discredited among ethnic Russians as well as others. Nobody understood that it would lead to an actual enforced border btween Russia and Ukraine, and to the separation of ethnic Russians from Russia in a country which did not even fully recognsuie their language. Otherwis none of his points actually addresses or undermines my assertion that a proper, freely-conducted referendum in Crimea would undoubtedly vote for union with Russia. He knows it is true. So did the leaders of Ukraine in 1992 when, as I have described at length here in a carefully-researched post called ' A (not so) brief history of Crimea' , the inhabitants of the peninsula sought such a referendum under law, and were prevented from holding it by threats of violence from Kiev. ****
Indeed many of them fight for Ukraine in the armed forces and volunteer battalions.
You make this fantastic statement: 'As it happens, the Russian response was highly cautious, calculated and measured.' Sending in two extreme right Muscovites, Girkin and Borodai, (both close friends of the genocidal fascist Dugin) to invade Donetsk and Luhansk with an army of Russian mercs backed up by Russian regulars and 500 Russian tanks is measured?
***PH writes: yes, of course it is. Armed conflict is not nice, but it can be limited by such methods, and was. The point is that Moscow was placed in a position where it either did nothing, and so conceded an issue on which ti had been diplomatically firm and unequivocal for decades, or it acted in some way. It chose calculated, limited action. Would he have preferred a march on Kiev, which would undoubtedly have succeeded? Most states use covert, undeclared war at some time or another, to avoid open declarations of war and direct engagement between national forces.***
Swastika tattooed thugs roamed across the land taking whatever they wanted, torturing and murdering as they went along.
***PH , indeed, such people attached themselves to the conflict on both sides. It is most regrettable. But the demons of war were not summoned up by Russia, but by the heedless action of the Western powers and their Ukrainian playthings, in the violent overthrow of the legitimate government and the highly dangerous entry of Ukraine into a politico-military alliance with the West. If they did not know and expect that this would produce a severe response, they were stupid. I think they knew and were prepared to risk it, in which case they were not stupid but wicked,. How many times must a state warn against a neighbour's policy, before it is entitled to act to counter it? ***
Some of these vermin can be seen looting the wreckage of M17. Still no condemnation of that or any of the many other atrocities committed by the occupier Peter?
***I condemn all the atrocities without exception. I always have. But I stick to my simple position: If you don't like atrocities, don't start wars. Those who overthrew Yanukovych in a violent putsch started this war.***
Are you sure your youthful adherence to extremely violent ideologies has actually gone? It hasn't gone in Corbyn, which is perhaps why you are so soft on him and reserve your most bitter criticism for Cameron, the man who saved us from the horrors of a Lab-SNP government?
***On the contrary, my horror of and loathing for violence grows the more I know about it. I am appalled by the irresponsibility of those who began this conflict, and condemn them with all the force at my command.***
Posted by: Horace | 08 October 2016 at 08:17 AM