Vladimir Putin and the Patterns of Power
By Adeyinka Makinde
Much has been reported and analysed about recent developments
pertaining first to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to
the United Nations General Assembly on September 28th 2015 and
shortly following that, the direct military action carried out by
the Russian armed forces in relation to the conflict within Syria.
Both events, it has been claimed, formally and decisively bring to
an end the de facto post-Cold War state of affairs of unipolarity;
that is, one which posits the United States of America as the sole
geo-political superpower that has been able to exercise exclusive
and unrestrained force in various parts of the world.
It is also clear that the denunciation by Putin of longstanding
American foreign policy as well as the projection of Russian power
within the cauldron of Middle Eastern affairs has brought into sharp
focus an aggregate of issues which taken together give the Russian
leader the upper-hand, not only in regard to that geared toward the
pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests, but also in the realms
of moral authority and legal justification.
It has left the United States reeling and presents a future laden
with a mixture of threats and benefits. The threats relate to a
re-ignition of a Russo-American Cold War replete with a formal
drawing of global spheres of influence, the fighting of proxy wars
and an ever-heightening danger of thermo-nuclear conflict.
The benefits, on the other hand, would comprehend a framework for
co-operation between the United States and the nations which it
presently regards as the greatest threats to its global imperium:
the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.
The masterful deconstruction Putin gave before the United Nations
laid bare the failings of American foreign policy during the decades
succeeding the ending of the Cold War. The Russian president
correctly characterised it as one abounding in mischief, negativity
and hubris – an analysis which has been bolstered by the widely
favourable reaction of swathes of public opinion around the world
towards Russian actions against anti-government insurrectionists in
the Syrian theatre as well as the unimaginative and miserly reaction
from the American government.
Events have made it clear that only a genuine and unequivocal
recalibration of American foreign policy rationales which have
fostered coup d’etats, ‘colour revolutions’ and wars of
destabilisation will serve the purpose of moulding the world into a
far less dangerous place than it is at present.
Classic formulations of theories underpinning the security systems
entered into by nation states often posit those representing
‘balance of power’ alignments or by an arrangement geared towards
what is termed ‘collective security’.
In the era of the Cold War which pitted the ideologically
incompatible systems operated by the United States and the Soviet
Union, each side established a military alliance of nations against
the other.
Aided by the threat of mutually assured destruction by thermonuclear
exchanges, the parity of the military machineries respectively of
the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact achieved what some referred to as a “balance of terror”.
While the world was far from being a docile place, the prevailing
circumstances meant that neither ‘superpower’ was prone to making
rash decisions so far as interfering with the sovereignty of other
nations within their immediate spheres of influence.
The operation of the United Nations to which both superpowers belong
provided more than a semblance of ‘collective security’ as was seen
in regard, for instance, to the behind-the-scenes work of UN
officials in combination with US and Soviet diplomats and statesmen
in brokering armistices and peace accords in successive Arab-Israeli
conflicts.
But with the crumbling of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and the onset of what
Francis Fukuyama referred to as “the end of history”, the previously
existing international system of checks and balances became somewhat
extinct.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the succeeding chaotic
transformation of Russia into a post-communist society provided
those holding the levers of power in Washington with the raison
d’etre to act on achieving an over-arching strategic goal; namely
that of preventing the rise of another power which would challenge
American dominance.
That the American system had prevailed against the challenge offered
by communism also granted it the right to remould the world, if not
completely in its image, in a manner nonetheless which would serve
the totality of its political and economic interests.
It followed that the United States had the right to act unilaterally
without cognisance of international treaty obligations or recourse
to international systems of regulation while in pursuit of its aims.
The ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’ thus set the tone for an era of American
militarism and imperialism.
Predating the “catastrophic and catalyzing event” of the September
11 attacks in 2001 which kick started a programme of armed
invasions, fomenting of colour revolutions and manoeuvres geared
towards destabilization was the role played by NATO in the ultimate
dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.
The United States, the undisputed leader of NATO, steered its member
states into supporting its decision to stage the illegal invasion of
Iraq. There was a continuum of this ethic after the expiration of
the administration led by George W. Bush. The ‘backseat’ approach
favoured by the Barack Obama presidency rode roughshod over the
strict letter of the law and convention by aiding Islamist rebels in
overthrowing the government of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.
Then, also in contravention of international law, Washington oversaw
the recruitment, training and financing of armed Islamic fanatics
–some of them transferred from the carnage of Libya- to another
theatre of Jihadist insurrection; namely that of Syria.
The consistent practice of American policy towards governments which
did not consent to do the bidding of Washington was that of
promoting destabilization. This has obviously been the case in
regard to its relationship with Russia since that nation began
charting a very different course to that which had been followed by
Boris Yeltsin.
But even prior to the ascent of Vladimir Putin to the helm of the
Russian Federation, the American’s had breached an important
protocol of the agreement to allow a unified Germany to join NATO.
This entailed that there should be no expansion eastwards.
NATO has nonetheless continued to admit former members of the Warsaw
Pact into its ranks and has been behind provocations on Russia’s
borders via the fomenting of conflicts in the former Soviet
Republics of Georgia and Ukraine.
These highly dangerous intrigues along with the policy of
encirclement via the deployment of nuclear ‘defensive shields’ are
in keeping with a vital counterpart of the Wolfowitz Doctrine,
namely that espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential
political thinker whose ideas are apparently much admired by the
incumbent Obama.
Obama’s policy via the successful efforts of US intelligence assets
in fomenting dissent and eventually overthrowing the democratically
elected president of Ukraine, are consistent with Brzezinski’s
strategy of pressuring and intimidating Russia with the end of
reducing it to a vassal status by balkanising it and ensuring that
it does not in concert with any other nation form a Eurasian power
bloc that could challenge the economic domination of America and the
Western European world.
In many ways, Putin’s speech before the UN General Assembly, a brief
and clear summation of the ills caused by the untrammelled exercise
of American power, performed the feat of turning history on its
head.
Here after all was the leader of the successor state to the “Evil
Empire” giving a moral lecture to the presumed leader of the “free
world”. The “Evil Empire” phrase, coined by US President Ronald
Reagan had a great degree of resonance because of the obvious
failings of the Soviet system in terms of its poor record in
guaranteeing individual freedom. The oppressive apparatus wielded by
the Soviet state towards it own citizens extended to its iron-fisted
response to dissent within its satellite states.
Putin, a man often taken to task for his description in 2005 of the
fall of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geo-political catastrophe
of the twentieth century” was honest enough to admit the following:
We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we
remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union
exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries
for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences
and caused degradation instead of progress.
His exposition on the failure of American policy was concise and
difficult to contradict. The host of disasters which have followed
in the wake of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 are clear for
all to see, just as is the reduction of Libya from a nation with
Africa’s highest standard of living to the broken down rubble of
warring militias that it is today.
The fracture of civil society and creation of chaos in those nations
is being replicated manifold in the tragedy of Syria that again is
authored by the United States with the connivance of its NATO allies
and friends in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
As Putin put it:
Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly
destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead
of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social
disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the
right to life.
The neoconservative idea of purportedly exporting democracy to
Middle East through the barrel of a gun or bomb-bays of military
aircraft continues, heedless of Robespierre’s warning about the fear
and resentment inspired by “armed missionaries”.
The United States has cynically utilised Sunni Islamist militias
adhering to the ideology espoused by al Qaeda as its ‘shock troops’;
a kind of a foreign legion tasked with bringing down the secular
regimes of the Arab world as well as the Shia powers not disposed to
following the agenda set by Washington. This amounts an unholy
alliance with groups of the sort that reportedly were at the root of
the disaster of September 11, 2001.
To this Putin offered the following:
The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is
hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat
of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels
used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug
trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade.
It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use
them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find
a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them.
I’d like tell those who engage in this: Gentlemen, the people you
are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart
as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here? The
recent incident where the most “moderate” opposition group handed
over their weapons to terrorists is a vivid example of that.
We consider that any attempts to flirt with terrorists, let alone
arm them, are short-sighted and extremely dangerous.
Putin went on to plead for a re-institution of the collective
security system. In other words, he called for an end to American
unilateral action and a return to the co-operative basis on which
the principles of the United Nations system for ensuring multi-state
security is predicated.
The reason for his call for cooperation is not hard to fathom.
Russia as with China has sizeable Muslim populations which can pose
internal security problems if the Islamic State strain of fanaticism
is allowed to spread.
An enduring Islamic State in the Levant which is subject to measures
aimed at merely containing it provides a global threat to all; a
threat to those Western European nations with rising Muslim
populations and indeed Muslim states around the world.
The inexorable logic behind the call for collective action must be
obvious to all. Putin was clear in his plea for a break with the
unipolar mode by not merely calling for the revival of the UN as a
valid conduit for fostering international cooperation, but also
specifically for a alliance of the sort last seen with the
anti-Hitler coalition of the Second World War.
Yet, the response from Washington has been largely marked by
cynicism and continued hostility. On the one hand, such reaction
confounds the mind of the objective bystander who cannot fathom why
a common cause cannot be made against a dreaded foe such as the
Islamic State.
On the hand it is illuminating. The conclusion drawn by the
objective observer is that the reluctance to create a unified and
concerted effort against the Islamic State and other similar hued
forces fighting against the Assad government is that the militants
are serving the geo-strategic interests of the government of the
United States.
The abject failure in building a viable opposition political
movement and a ‘Free Syrian Army’ are palpable when the official
yield of a $500 million dollar investment is a paltry five
guerrillas.
Whereas in the past, the abstract principles governing the legality
of intervention and non-intervention were sufficiently blurred by
the legitimacy conferred on a genuine and sizeable anti-government
movement, the situation in Syria does not permit this. The
anti-Assad contingents of guerrillas are largely composed of
imported Jihadis.
Experts such as Professor Stephen Cohen insist that there are no
credible entities which can be referred to as ‘moderate rebels’; an
appellation which has been subject to much derision. Further, the
Assad government has a great deal of support from the Sunni majority
including that of the Grand Mufti of Syria.
It needs to be reminded that it is the Assad government which has
borne the brunt of fighting Islamist fanatics, and that his secular
regime presents the only hope for maintaining a Syrian state which
will protect religious minorities including Christians from an
ominous fate under an Islamic State.
Claims by Washington that the Assad government lacks legitimacy are
not credible given that he won an election in June of 2014. The
United States, of course, in 1864 underwent an election during its
own civil war when the electoral votes of eleven Southern states
were not counted.
Neither can Washington’s contentious claims of the deliberate use by
the Syrian Army of barrel bombs against civilian targets be used to
argue the case for illegitimacy. It is an accusation reeking of
hypocrisy given the numerous innocents killed by United States drone
warfare, bombings and other military attacks, some involving the
targeting of civilians with depleted uranium munitions.
It is clear that Washington hopes that the demonization of Vladimir
Putin for which much of the Western media has been complicit, will
discredit his message.
Putin it seems alternately inspires dread and hope: From
anti-Russian Central and Eastern Europeans eternally unforgiving of
the historical domination of their homelands by Russian and Soviet
empires to the White Nationalists that tout him as the ‘saviour’ of
the white race.
From the archetypal ‘liberal’ Westerner inculcated with years of
anti-Putin propaganda portraying him as the quintessential
practitioner of a Russian brand of oriental despotism to the Western
‘Leftie’ still besotted with Russia or, at least, enduringly
sympathetic to the role Russia played in attempting to set up a
Marxist utopia.
But whatever the point of view, the argument for a return to a
collective security arrangement based on mutual interest is
difficult to displace given that American dominance has not been
exercised with benevolence. Putin has already demonstrated a high
level of statesmanship in averting an American bombing campaign
against Assad’s forces back in September of 2013 after the chemical
attack in Ghouta.
The negotiated programme for collecting and destroying Syrian
chemical stocks alleviated the need for this, much to the relief of
war-weary legislators and their constituents in both the United
States and Britain.
This was a noteworthy example of the benefits of multi-state
co-operation of the sort which Washington has seemingly chosen to
forswear. The suggestion by Putin of the formation of a
Russo-American coalition against the Islamic State and other
Islamist militias deserves consideration rather than contempt.
A re-orientating of the global patterns of power is long overdue.
And given the state of the world after decades of effective
unipolarity, it can only be for the better.
Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based law lecturer with an interest in
intelligence and Security matters.
(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2015) -
Source -
http://adeyinkamakinde.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/commentary-vladimir-putin-and-patterns.html