Of course Communism, which I identify with, is realism. Marx identified as anti-idealist (hence, his disparaging Utopian Socialism). Though others might retroactively assign idealism to some of his ideas, and one or two of his ideas might have been wrong, he personally strove to be empirical. Marx, and Marxist-Leninists identify as "Scientific." What that should mean is that they learn from history and experience. Not idealism. Idealism is for western consent manufacturing media and western quasi apologists such as Trotskyists.
Democracy is an idealism, in which "We the People" choose our destiny.
A realist view is that Bourgeois Democracy is mostly fake. It matters little who the people vote for. He/She is merely a friendly face in front of the real power and wealth in society, which at most he/she can steer only very slightly. And as bad as Bourgeois Democracy is in principle, US-style Neo Feudal Imperial Bourgeois Democracy may be the most fake of all. It's reasonable to believe the US is actually less Democratic in representing the popular will than either Russia or China based on national opinions of government, over 91% of Chinese support their government whereas only 39% of Americans support their government, Russia's government being at 75%. One area where it seems the US may still be more democratic is individual personal rights to Free Speech (see footnote 1).
In a small critically located state, such as Ukraine, most of that deep state is the imperial regime that local wealth relies upon. The imperial regime provides trade relations, banking, investment, and all forms of defense, including weapons. Without that deep state link to a more "powerful" state or empire, the local wealth would be unable to rule, either there would be anarchy or the country would be invaded or adopted by some other powerful empire specifically to challenge the adjacent one. So small states critically adjacent to powerful countries or empires are almost inevitably Client States, but when an empire has Client States all across the world--that is unstable and unsustainable. Some critically located small states like Switzerland HAVE been able to sustain a limited independent neutrality over some times...but it is not easy. It may require things like universal conscription, for both internal and external reasons (so the military is representative, for example, and not tilted towards one ethnicity). Since 1996, even with it's strong independence tendency Switzerland has been a NATO member--no longer completely independent.
Between 1764 and 2014, the imperial deep state behind Ukraine was Russia most of the time (and "New Russia" which is now Eastern Ukraine was considered part of Russia proper before 1917) but ever since 2014, the US has taken their place.
The People all across Ukraine can vote for the candidate, like Zelensky, who promises a peace deal with Russians, but it matters little if the deep state behind the Ukrainian government has something else in mind, notably using Ukraine as a wedge to break Russia.
For client regimes to rely on distant, as opposed to adjacent imperial regimes is inherently destabilizing. It is obvious to any realist what the distant empires want! A platform for war with their enemies! A nearby country only wants a friendly but neutral buffer, which is to maintain a state of peace.
Why is the US reaching halfway around the world to "protect" Ukraine with a weapons, etc?
Is it because of US ideals such as Freedom and Democracy?
Was it that noble idealism that led the US to spend (claims vary) 23 million to 5 billion dollars to support "Democracy Promotion" in Ukraine, especially including support of Neo-Nazi militias and other extremists from Catholic Galicia?
Interesting, recently Ukraine had been 78% Russian Orthodox in religion, reflecting a 250 year association with Russia and large settlement by Russians.
Certainly a realist would also be aware that Russia fought for over 50 years in the 1700's to defeat the Turks in order to acquire New Russia (now known as Eastern Ukraine because Lenin combined New Russia with the Ukrainian Republic).
A realist would also be aware of the times Russia had been invaded through Ukraine.
A realist would also be aware that Neo-Nazis do not only disparage Jews as "Untermenschen," they also so disparage Slavs and especially Russians. Basically anyone who is is an other (usually that means anyone who is not northern european white christian straight and pro-capitalist). However, the target of the day varies with convenience.
So a realist would understand that Russians generally take the US supported makeover of Ukraine very seriously. It's not just that"authoritarian dictator" Putin (who polls far better, at 71%, than the US deep-state-puppet President, at 42%). Though many young Russians in the international trade sector are extremely angry that Putin favored the general Nationalist/Populist view (no surprise!) and not the New Internationalist view they had been getting used to and now may have lost for a generation because of sanctions and war.
Conservative American Realists (George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer) have been saying since 1991 "Don't extend NATO (especially to Ukraine, which Russia is very sensitive about). It's certain to cause a war with Russia, which we don't need." But the US has continued expanding NATO and meddling with Ukrainian internal affairs exactly to force this hand. Overreach!
Therefore, I consider USA to be 99% responsible for the violence in Ukraine, including the Russian military intervention of 2022. Russia is 1% responsible because in principle Putin could have been "St. Putin." St. Putin would have said "We could lose our cherished Crimea, the Donbas could be recaptured or ethnically cleansed of separatist Russians, we could face an ongoing threat of destruction through Ukraine as we have many times in the past, there will be NATO armed Russian-loathing Neo-Nazis on our border, but it must all be God's Will, God will protect us, and everything will work out better for us in the long run." That's what Western idealists say he should have done, including many self identified Communists and Peace Activists and Anti-Imperialists. They are not realists! This was not ever going to happen! Such a St. Putin would never have become President of Russia, and/or if they had they would have been sacked pretty quickly like Yeltsin or Gorbachev. It is absolutely certain US planners KNEW that Russia would eventually respond, and a war would be started in Ukraine, likely just before US weapons there reached critical mass.
(BTW, the Russian Communist Party CPRF, the second largest political party in Russia, is about 75% in favor of the Ukrainian intervention, almost an exact reflection of Russian popular opinion.)
Many Russians feel that New Russia is still a very important part of Russia, despite mistakes made by Lenin and Gorbachev which resulted in it being lost (but still mostly retained anyway, as part of the Ukrainian client state). New Russia is what gave Russia a warm water port to the Mediterranean. Russians tried to reclaim New Russia in 1991 and again in 2014, while showing that a majority of people in these areas preferred association to Russia than Ukraine. But as the far greater power, the US was always able to quash this.
But Russians were and could again be happy with 1991 Ukraine (less Donbas and Crimea) as an independent state, so long as it's not a US/NATO client state. That's the main thing they were asking for, over and over for decades. It wasn't and still isn't unreasonable. It is what the US does--and then some. It's unreasonable that by all appearances the US tries to use Ukraine for it's own attacks on Russia, and doesn't let go, with no end of hypocrisies.
The US/NATO should never have offered NATO membership to Ukraine. That offer itself constituted a declaration of intent for war against Russia. That US then sponsored a coup in 2014 to ensure that offer was accepted was yet another poke to the Bear, and then more and more and more. In 2021 Zelensky started effort to reclaim Donbas and Crimea, with 150,000 troops including Neo-Nazis surrounding Donbas, and in 2021 he discussed restarting the Ukranian nuclear weapons program, and sanctions were already being ramped up on Russia merely for having troops in it's own territory, while attacks on the Donbas ramped up. Russian intel also showed there were already US-supported biological weapons labs in Ukraine, and possibly more.
****
****
1 One area where it seems the US may still be more democratic is individual personal rights to Free Speech, though through in the US media this freedom (where money is speech) largely becomes all the more scams and bullshit...bullshit that other countries may be justified in winnowing out. So I'm less concerned about that kind of spam filtering and more about the personal rights of the kind I may be relying on to continue my full throated critiques. This is true only since the hardly known Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), the tallest jewel from the Warren Court. Prior to that, the US or its states might well lock up communists merely for words or books. BTW, the filtering done by US social media companies amounts to state censorship by proxy., all the more so for being controlled by the deep state and not anything democratic. But I don't think there is such a universal right to be "broadcast," which is essentially what social media is. One only has a right to be treated "fairly" by the-sum-of-all-broadcasters. The exact situation in Russia regarding laws against "misinformation" that targets people such as war protesters is hard for me to figure, as western media can't be trusted and Russian media tends not to talk about it. It seems likely to be in the area of things that would be considered "internal matters" and that Russians wouldn't tolerate more than that. As such we would be entitled to sympathize with (some?) Russians, but refrain from persistent whining or other forms of meddling. Protestors sometimes face prosecutions in the USA, but not so much supposedly for the content of their speech (except for a few things, such as Hate Speech) but specific disruptive action, though the content of their speech may have been what actually targeted them in particular. What Russia and perhaps China do wrt speech is perhaps motivated by fear of damaging foreign misinformation, which is indeed problematic, the western Empire of Lies is vast and diverse. But western experience shows you don't have to regulate individual speech at all, only broadcast, to have sufficient mind control. But perhaps that requires a sufficiently vast diversity of misinformation, at which none can top the West. And Maidan Ukraine has been no great shakes in free speech either, outlawing Russian language and "misinformation."
No comments:
Post a Comment