The Cold War Is Over

First Things ^ | October 2016 | Peter Hitchens

[Nextrush]

Like most Englishmen, I grew up with a natural dislike of "abroad" and a belief in the inferiority of all foreign things.........

... When I went to live in Moscow in 1990, I felt that I had somehow betrayed my native soil.....I still recall a brief return from the U.S.S.R. to my hometown of Oxford, during which I was asked for directions by an American tourist. "You must live here," he said, impressed by my historically detailed advice. "No," I confessed with a strange feeling of guilt. "I live in Moscow." For the first time in my life I had chosen to live in foreign parts, and very strange and hostile parts they seemed to be.

Yet the experience of living in that sad and handsome place brought me to love Russia and its stoical people, to learn some of what they had suffered and see what they had regained. And so, as all around me rage against the supposed aggression and wickedness of Vladimir Putin's Russia, I cannot join in. Despite the fact that Moscow had abandoned control of immense areas of Europe and Asia, self-appointed experts insist that Russia is an expansionist power. Oddly, this "expansion" only seems to be occurring in zones that Moscow once controlled, into which the E.U. and NATO, supported by the U.S., have sought to extend their influence.

The comparison of today's Russia to yesterday's U.S.S.R. is baseless. I know this, and rage inwardly at my inability to convey my understanding to others. Could this be because I have been unable to communicate the change of heart I underwent during my more than two years in the Russian capital?

Let me try again....

[Nextrush]

Its Christmas time, a time for 'hating and fighting to cease' as a song sung by Cliff Richard ("Mistletoe and Wine") goes.

When it comes to 'hating' there's a lot directed at Russia by political leaders of both major parties.

Peter Hitchens shares his insights on Russia.

Peter the Christian used to debate his late atheist brother Christopher Hitchens about God.

Peter's willingness to admit he's wrong shines in this writing.

Christmas Is Love.

Christmas Is Peace.

The Russians just defeated people Peter Hitchens has described as "Osama Bin Laden sympathizers". These enemies of America are supported by American political leaders of both major parties.

That's probably why so many of our Democrat and Republican politicians are more interested in attacking and investigating Russia than admitting and investigating their wrongdoing in supporting a Syrian Civil War backing Al Qaeda forces leading to the creation of the Islamic State and all the horrors in Syria and beyond.

Let us hope and pray that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin can work toward "Peace on Earth" in the new year.

[ETL]

Re: The Cold War is over.

Your azz is “over”. Both Russia and China have substantially built their military and both have been increasingly flexing their muscles.

[HLPhat]

That face somebody makes -- when the tap on the Military Industrial Crony-cash teat they've been suckling from gets shut off...

Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech

Origins and Significance

US National Archives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-jvHynP9Y

[HarleyD]

I don’t trust half the American people. Why should I trust the Russians?

[ETL]

Here's Trump's VP, Mike Pence, on the subject of Obama, KGB Putin, and Syria, from the Oct 5th 2016 VP debate. ...

“When Donald Trump and I observe that, as I’ve said, in Syria, in Iran, in Ukraine, that the small and bullying leader of Russia has been stronger on the world stage than this administration, that’s stating painful facts. That’s not an endorsement of Vladimir Putin — that’s an indictment of the weak and feckless leadership of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.”

______________________________________________________________

Also from the debate...

QUIJANO (Moderator): I want to turn now to Syria. Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?

PENCE: The United States of America needs to begin to exercise strong leadership to protect the vulnerable citizens and over 100,000 children in Aleppo. Hillary Clinton’s top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset, the Russians reset. After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea.

And the small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America — the greatest nation on Earth — just withdraws from talks about a cease-fire while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defense system in Syria while he marshals the forces and begins — look, we have got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.

It begins by rebuilding our military. And the Russians and the Chinese have been making enormous investments in the military. We have the smallest Navy since 1916. We have the lowest number of troops since the end of the Second World War. We’ve got to work with Congress, and Donald Trump will, to rebuild our military and project American strength in the world.

But about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.

And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.

There’s a broad range of other things that we ought to do, as well. We ought to deploy a missile defense shield to the Czech Republic and Poland which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pulled back on out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.

QUIJANO: Governor, your two minutes are up.

PENCE: We’ve just got to have American strength on the world stage. When Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the Russians and other countries in the world will know they’re dealing with a strong American president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/politics/vice-president-transcript.html

______________________________________________________________

Again, from the Oct 5, 2016 VP debate...

PENCE: What we’re dealing with is the — you know, there’s an old proverb that says the Russian bear never dies, it just hibernates.

And the truth of the matter is, the weak and feckless foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has awakened an aggression in Russia that first appeared a few years ago with their move in Georgia, now their move into Crimea, now their move into the wider Middle East.

And all the while, all we do is fold our arms and say we’re not having talks anymore.

To answer your question, we just need American strength. We need to — we need to marshal the resources of our allies in the region, and in the immediate, we need to act and act now to get people out of harm’s way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/politics/vice-president-transcript.html

[ETL]

Donald Trump: 'Putin has eaten Obama's lunch' on Ukraine

Mar 13, 2014
Eun Kyung Kim: TODAY

Donald Trump slammed President Obama Thursday on TODAY for failing to take a stronger line against President Vladimir Putin in dealing with Ukraine, saying he feared Obama would now make up for lost time with imprudent moves to "show his manhood."

The real estate mogul and reality-TV star, who has criticized Putin for sending military troops into Crimea, said Obama must now take fierce steps to prevent the situation from escalating further.

"We should definitely do sanctions and we have to show some strengths. I mean, Putin has eaten Obama's lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time," Trump said. ..."

http://www.today.com/news/donald-trump-putin-has-eaten-obamas-lunch-ukraine-2D79372098
________________________________________________________

Russia Deploying Tactical Nuclear Arms in Crimea

Obama backing indirect talks with Moscow aimed at cutting U.S. non-strategic nukes in Europe

BY: Bill Gertz
October 10, 2014

Russia is moving tactical nuclear weapons systems into recently-annexed Crimea while the Obama administration is backing informal talks aimed at cutting U.S. tactical nuclear deployments in Europe. ..."

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-deploying-tactical-nuclear-arms-in-crimea/
________________________________________________________

Ignore the red and orange lines. They were already on the map when I downloaded it.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Oddly, this "expansion" only seems to be occurring in zones that Moscow once controlled, into which the E.U. and NATO, supported by the U.S., have sought to extend their influence."

Revisionist history. Those "zones that Moscow once controlled" were countries NOT historically part of Russia before the USSR annexed them.

[ETL]

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
______________________________________

"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...

"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."

"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.

If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
______________________________________

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
______________________________________

______________________________________

"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
______________________________________

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

" KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts - in Russia and the West - have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..."

(continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[ETL]

From Sept 2016...

Russia 'to revive the KGB' after Putin wins biggest majority

Telegraph (UK) ^ | 19 September 2016 • 3:39PM | Marc Bennetts

Russia plans effectively to revive the KGB under a massive shake-up of its security forces, a respected business daily has reported.

A State Security Ministry, or MGB, would be created from the current Federal Security Service (FSB) , and would incorporate the foreign intelligence service (SVR) and the state guard service (FSO), under the plans. It would be handed all-encompassing powers once possessed by the KGB, the Kommersant newspaper said, citing security service sources.

Like the much-feared KGB, it would also oversee the prosecutions of Kremlin critics, a task currently undertaken by the Investigative Committee, headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former university classmate of President Putin.

The Kremlin has not commented. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...

***********************************************************

"For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.

He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004."

"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

[vooch]

the cold war ended 21 years ago - capitalism crushed communism

time to move on

[Oratam]

from the article:

Perhaps we would understand Russia’s situation better if we imagined that NATO has been dissolved and that the Confederate States and the territories conquered in the Mexican-American War have declared independence. The U.S. retains a precarious hold on the naval station at San Diego, sharing it with the Mexican Navy on an expensive lease that Mexico regularly threatens to cancel. Americans still living in San Diego are compelled to adopt Spanish names on their drivers’ licenses, and movie theaters are instructed to show films only in Spanish. Schools teach anti-American history. Quebec has seceded from Canada, and is being wooed by a Russo-Chinese economic union, with a pact including military and political clauses. Russian politicians are in the streets of Montreal, urging on a violent anti-American mob, which eventually succeeds in overthrowing Quebec’s pro-American president and replacing him with a pro-Russian one—violating Quebec’s constitution in the process. This brings military forces aligned with Russia right up to the border with New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

[outofsalt]

The Bolsheviks are living in the cities and enclaves where Hillary won the popular vote. Do not imagine they are not a threat.

[ETL]

the cold war ended 21 years ago - capitalism crushed communism time to move on

The international communist movement is very much alive and well today, not just in Red China and North Korea, but throughout Latin America. And in case you're not aware, a communist was twice elected president of the US. Communists are numerous in the demonRat party today. Russia still arms and supports all of these communist regimes. Strange, wouldn't you say, if they were in fact truly done with communism, and now despise it and lecture us about it?

[ETL]

How Russia arms America's southern neighbors

Ioan Grillo
May 9, 2014

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Russia's push into Ukraine has put many on edge. But less known is that Russia is also strengthening its military links south of the Rio Grande and re-establishing itself as a power in the region.

Vladimir Putin has been strengthening military links here, and Russia is now the largest arms dealer to governments in Latin America, surpassing the United States.

Russia has even floated the possibility of building new military bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and putting its warships permanently in the Caribbean.

In the midst of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov recently visited Cuba, Peru, Chile, and Nicaragua, where he announced that Russia would also pour money into the new Central American canal project. ..."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140508/russian-arms-military-trade-latin-america
___________________________________________________

Russia Boosts Arms, Training for Leftist Latin Militaries

Moscow defense minister inks deals with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua for joint exercises

BY: Bill Gertz
February 20, 2015

Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow's Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said.

Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb. 11 to 14. It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit.

Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu recently promised would include flights over the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-boosts-arms-training-for-leftist-latin-militaries/

[jmacusa]

Most of what Russians have suffered throughout their history has been self-inflicted. As to their stoicism in enduring it I think Pasternak put it quite well in "Dr. Zhivago when he wrote ''We endure because of our cursed capacity to endure..''.

[ETL]

Most of what Russians have suffered throughout their history has been self-inflicted.

"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
______________________________________

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

[bert]

——Nobody who has seen these things could possibly compare the old Soviet Union with the new Russia——

I am pretty certain there are those that do make the comparison and see no difference. The reason is they look through a paper towel tube and their view is very very narrow.

Is Putin good or is he bad? History will tell but one thing is certain, Mother Russia is dying and Putin is trying to save her

I confused peter with Christopher Hitchens)

[jmacusa]

Thanks I'll check it out. The Russians claim to have lost 20 million in WW2. Add to that the millions who died from 1900 under various Czarist pogroms, to the millions who were killed during WW1, the millions more during the Revolution, the subsequent Civil War after and the millions during Stalin's Terror and the Ukrainian famine and the figures are just incredible.

[alexander_busek]

...I still recall a brief return from the U.S.S.R. to my hometown of Oxford, during which I was asked for directions by an American tourist. "You must live here," he said, impressed by my historically detailed advice. "No," I confessed with a strange feeling of guilt. "I live in Moscow."

No American tourist asking for directions in Oxford cares that you live in Moscow. Get over yourself!

[...] to learn some of what they had suffered [...]

They suffered under the Czars, and they suffered under the Communists.

[...] Despite the fact that Moscow had abandoned lost control of immense areas of Europe and Asia [...]

There, fixed it!

Oddly, this "expansion" only seems to be occurring in zones that Moscow once controlled [...]

Yeah, sort of like if the U.K. were to try to regain territory in India, or in the U.S. I expect that might cause some problems.

The comparison of today's Russia to yesterday's U.S.S.R. is baseless.

Still waiting for factual argumentation to support this rediculous claim!

Could this be because I have been unable to communicate the change of heart I underwent during my more than two years in the Russian capital?

Perhaps he should try instead to communicate actual factual evidence to support his statements, rather than "fee-eelings."

Also, "two years?!" A measley two years?! Really?!

Regards,