Posted on 11/12/2001 10:04:03 PM PST by ouroboros
As President Bush hosts President Putin at his Texas ranch, Russia seems but a shadow of what she was only yesterday.
Since the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik, Iceland, Russia has lost a worldwide empire stretching from Cuba to Cam Ranh Bay, including all of Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and Ukraine are gone, as are Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, and the five republics of Central Asia. Smaller today than she was 150 years ago, Mother Russia no longer shares a border with Hungary, Rumania, Turkey or Iran. In the 1991 break-up, Moscow lost territory 10 times the size of France.
But that is only the beginning of a perhaps terminal crisis.
Russia is dying. In 2000, her population fell to 145 million, and Putin warns of a possible collapse to 123 million by 2015. That would mean the disappearance of one-seventh of all Russian people in 15 years, a loss greater than the death toll from World War II. The average Russian male today is dead before he is 60.
Russia's dying population is the cause of the second and third threats to her survival. To the south, she faces the menace of the holy warriors of Islam coming north to aid secessionist movements, such as the Chechen rebellion. But an even greater danger is China.
In the 19th century, a weak China was preyed upon by all the great European powers, and the czar's agents ripped California-sized chunks out of her land. Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, home port of Russia's Pacific fleet, sit on terrain that belonged to China until 1860. Early in Richard Nixon's first term, Chinese and Russian troops clashed repeatedly along the Ussuri and Amur rivers.
As China's population soars to 1.5 billion and Russia's falls to less than one-tenth of that, Beijing will begin to reoccupy her lost lands. Only a threat of nuclear war is likely to keep these lands Russian.
A Moscow-Beijing clash seems inevitable. With British Hong Kong restored, Han Chinese are now being transferred in the millions into Tibet, Mongolia and China's far west. Beijing also lays claim to all the disputed islands of the South China and East China Sea, as well as Taiwan. When these are secure in the embrace of the Motherland, Russia's turn will come.
In the Clinton years, Putin seemed to have concluded that the United States, which was moving NATO into Moscow's front yard, was the once and future enemy. But Putin now appears to have decided that America – all the bluster from her elites about global hegemony and a Pax Americana aside – presents no threat comparable to Islamic fundamentalism, Chinese revanchism or a dying population.
His old comrades in the KGB and the ex-Communist Party and Red Army cadres must be appalled at Putin's outreach to the Americans, but it should become clear soon, even to them, that U.S. and Russian strategic interests no longer clash as once they did.
Within days of the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin not only lifted his objections to a U.S. military presence in the former republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, he began to provide ammunition and armor for the victorious offensives of the Northern Alliance that chased the Taliban back to Kabul.
He then ordered the closing of Moscow's Cold War intelligence base at Lourdes, Cuba, and of the Soviet base at Cam Ranh Bay. Sept. 11 was one of history's "plastic moments," as Walter Lippmann called them, when new possibilities suddenly appear for the shuffling off of the carcasses of dead policies.
While Putin appears to see the post-Cold War realities, does the West? All of our recent blather about the inevitable triumph of free markets, free trade and global democracy now seem as great an act of self-delusion as the 1930s conviction that Hitler could be appeased with the return of lands taken away at Versailles.
We are approaching the end of the Western moment in history.
Not only have all the Western empires vanished and all the European colonialists gone home, the peoples they once ruled – Africans, Arabs, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese – are migrating in the millions into the West itself, where they will change forever the character and culture of our once-Christian countries.
Putin seems to have recognized that Russia's place is with the West, inside the castle walls. If indeed he has, let us lower the drawbridge and bring him in. Russia belongs with the West.
As they say is the Hertz commericials...not exactly. Check out this little didy PJB wrote back in April during the China spyplane fiasco. "Wiley" indeed.
Excellent retort. You assert something that turns out to be less than accurate so you follow it up with more of the same. Good show.
Patrick Buchanan, to my knowledge, has never been a "newscaster". Newscasters are talking monkeys who read off cards like Paula Zahn, Dan Rather, or even Shep Smith. Patrick Buchanan is a columnist and a commentator, and always has been, except when he was working for government or running to serve in it.
Whether Patrick Buchanan is a true "politican", is immaterial the discussion on the merits of bringing Russia back into the Western fold. Buchanan is a gifted individual who was more than qualified to run for the office he ran for. The proper outlet for his talents now seem to be in commentary and analysis rather than pure politics but, once again. that has nothing to do with the fact that he is right on Russia and always has been.
Furthermore, he is adamant, that the 3 nations that defeated Germany will unite once again to defeat terrorism worldwide. Only this time, with three "moral" leaders. In other words, whilst Blair is no Churchill, Putin is NOT Stalin, and Bush is far superior to Franklin in every moral way, Bush is more Truman.
IMO the wildcard is England. I see the world shaping up to three major powers: US/Russia, EU, and China. The EU is trying to woo the UK, but in its heart of hearts, it holds pretty much the same contempt for the UK as it does for Russia, and the main reason it would want to "include" England is to prevent it from aligning with us.
So, England is torn between the two "big league teams", but it will only get a fair shake with one of them.
While I see China as the biggest threat on all levels, I don't really trust the EU. I think it's fooled a lot of people into perceiving it as sort of an expanded Common Market, created for the purpose of cutting red tape in dealings between its members. In reality, I think its main goal is to essentially put the US out of business.
Russia knows it's got no future with China, and no future with the EU. England, though, seems to want to keep one foot in each sphere.
As always with Pat, too little too late. He did put the pieces together right however. He is expressing the truth that isolation won't cut it. We live in an interactive world, like it or not.
Pat is correct - Russia IS dying. Are we willing to do what is necessary to save them? IE - open the trade barriers, send them aid in the form of money and industrial experts to cultivate their vast resources of intelligence and natural resources? I don't think Pat would buy into it, but in order to save Russia, we must turn her into the industrial powerhouse that we are. We must buy her oil, and help her figure out ways to tap it more efficiently. We must buy their goods, which means low trade tariffs.
Are you willing to do these things, Pat?
Right. Buke has become a boring windbag.
Why do you hate him so much? Don't you understand that his followers voted for Bush knowing that otherwise their votes would be wasted and Gore would be elected. When Buchanan had some remote chance 15 percent was will willing to vote for him. This 15 percent is still around and without them liberals woul rule.
We are approaching the end of the Western moment in history. Not only have all the Western empires vanished and all the European colonialists gone home, the peoples they once ruled – Africans, Arabs, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese – are migrating in the millions into the West itself, where they will change forever the character and culture of our once-Christian countries.
Is Pat being paranoid or is he speaking the truth?
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