Posted on 04/16/2014 9:08:34 PM PDT by dangus
No, Putin isn't re-building the third Reich: Chamberlain isn't a historic villain because he did nothing after Hitler seized neighboring German-speaking territories. He's a historic villain because he did nothing after Hitler blamed Christianity for poisoning Europe with weakness, swore to destroy the Jews, build a master race, set fire to the Reichstag, seized all police powers, built concentration camps and THEN invaded German-speaking lands.
No, Putin isn't re-building the Soviet Union: He has implemented a flat, low tax rate, struck the authority of local commissars to impose taxes, decriminalized tax disputes, decentralized agriculture and industry, seen the numbers of abortions decrease 83%, and championed Christianity in the public square.
No, Putin isn't building Aleksandr Dugan's Eurasia, a concept that sounds almost as if it were written by the C.I.A. to justify paranoia and panic. Dugin has been called a trusted advisor to Putin. In fact, Dugin and his allies have been enemies of Putin since before the fall of Gorbachev. Dugin is to Putin what Pat Buchanan is to Barrack Obama, what Rev. Wright is to George W. Bush. Dugin's Eurasia is a communist-Islamicist alliance, whereas Putin has been deeply ingratiating himself as a devout Orthodox Christian.
One thing everyone who has met him, whether Bush supposedly seeing into his soul, or Clinton's loathing the sight of him, is that Putin is a pragmatist, not a crazed ideologue like Hitler, Stalin, Dugan or Zhirinovski. Even his Christianity is pragmatic: He's no like King Henry IV of France, who feigned Catholicism because one mass was a small price to pay for Paris. No, he believes in Christianity because he believes it works. While this sounds grating to the Protestant ear, bear in mind the Orthodox revere Emperor Constantine as a great saint. Western Catholics and Enlightenment-era Protestants might even call it "Natural Law." And the re-Christianization of Russia is progressing rapidly. (If you're such the believer that works and justice have nothing to do with Christianity, it's at least the re-Orthodoxidation?)
In 1991, only 30% of Russians considered themselves Christian. In 2001, that number increased to 51%. Today, the same poll says 73% do. Another poll says 82% of Russians consider themselves Christian. Millions of Muslims have converted. (2 million had by 2005, and reports say the rate of conversions has increased.)
Christian morality is coming back, and Putin's government is leading the char gem crusading against abortion, childlessness, divorce, and alcoholism. As I mentioned, abortion is down an astounding 83%. But parenting is also up more than 50%. And life expectancy has risen 5 years in just the last 8 calendar years.
Putin cannot achieve his goals largely by military annexation. He needs to keep a Duma that supports him, and the leftists coalition of socialist, communists, pensioners and Eurasianists have closed the gap on his right-wing alliance. He can't afford more opponents, politically, economically or militarily. In fact, Russia so far has declined to annex South Ossetia, Transdneiper, Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia; Crimea was an exception because it had been so long Russian and was so dominated by Russian people. He also must seduce allies to his side, and one is seldom seduced by another who has been seen raping a third. If the Donbas region of the Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, etc.) becomes part of Russia, Putin must be able to convince Russophiles that they did so willingly. Any further intrusions into the Ukraine will come years later, should other oblasts (counties) decide that annexation has profited the Donbas.
Putin has defended Christians in the Middle East while the West has sided with Islamicist radicals. Putin will continue to seek a constructive relationship with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. (Yes, Israel is turning away from America as a fickle ally who punishes her friends and coddles her enemies.)
The Eurasian Economic Community consists of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and will likely soon include Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgystan, Moldova and Tajikistan. Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are majority-Muslim nations with sizable Christian minorities, like Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Putin's involvement in Egypt, Israel and Syria demonstrates that the Christian communities in these nations will have a defender. Russia may well be Christianity's best shot for maintaining a foothold in the Islamic world.
If he's really ambitious, Putin may hope that the whole of the Orthodox world may be attracted to Russia, and to expand the Russian-led customs union to Greece, Romania, Serbia, etc. But military aggression would be deadly to such ambitions.
Russia abolished serfdom before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, so don't misread me. But what Putin wants is a modern Russian Empire. And if his methods aren't evil, I'm pretty sure that's not a bad thing.
The continuing existence of Lenin monuments across Russia, combined with Russian anger at the removal of Lenin statues in Ukraine, suggests that it's not merely Putin, but Russians at large, who continue to reject the idea of Russian guilt for the atrocities committed during the Communist era. In this respect, Russia resembles Germany during the interwar years.
I wonder about that, but then why is Israel remaining expressly neutral? Strange.
I don’t *know*, but I can infer.
Conspiracists, propagandists and hate-mongerers tell you what someone is doing by presuming what their motives are. That’s only a reflection on the conspiracist, propagandist or hate-mongerer. The truth is that you can never tell someone’s motives. You watch their actions. And you conclude what further actions would be consistent with their past actions. That’s all I have done.
It certainly helps though if you do not have a leader who is a complete obstruction to any luck that might come the country’s way. And, really, at least 40% of the country cheering him on to their own detriment.
Add Turkey, they were money laundering for Iran.
Your touching on the 1917 era when the Rothchilds set up Lenin, Trotsky and others up to Stalin for the actions of Marx and Engels to depose the Czar who wouldn’t buy into the Rothchilds intent to control the Russian banking system. The same group did make some gains in the USA under President Wilson’s Fed Reserve which is not a USA controlled entity. George Soros was a spawn of the same cabal along with other people in high places.
No, it resembles Germany during the post-war years.
The liberals in the Knesset.
Russia is following Germany’s trajectory during the interwar years, including an economic recovery, followed by a military build-up, except Russia has helped kill tens of millions more non-Russians than Imperial Germany killed non-Germans.
Don’t forget about the rehabilitation of Stalin.
Or Nashi.
If Russia were halfway well-run, the people would have higher incomes than Americans. Australians certainly do, and they don't have nearly the mineral resources per capita of Russia.
Oh no doubt. I am not saying Putin is wonderful ... I am just saying.... I’d trade. (:
Russia is accepting applications for skilled immigrants.
Trade one autocrat for another?
“followed by a military build-up,”
Putin actually cut Russia’s army forces from 2 million, to 800,000, and introduced an NCO-level command/decision structure like the west, doing away with the old, rigid Soviet-Style command system. (That China still uses, by the way. They started working on a twenty-year plan for upgrading capabilities, with a much smaller military, in Putin’s first terms.
He dropped several divisions from the structure, and the Soviet Cadre system, that resulted in lots of chiefs, but few Indians.
Russia has since concentrated on upgrading several of the remaining units along the lines of the U.S. “Heavy” Brigade structure, with inter-changeable BCT’s.
He has done the same with the Air Force and Navy, scrapping old units, and concentrating on a three-level system of “World Class”, “good”, and reserve.
And Russia is spending massive amounts of money to build/rebuild infrastructure, from double/triple-railing the trans-Siberian, to building a road and pipeline network in the far East and Siberia.
In 10-15 years, backed by the resources opened up in the north and east, Putin sees Russia’s return as true economic power house.
Now, compare that to what has been happening in America since the late 70’s...
The Israelis have always looked out for No. 1. They did sell the plans for the Lavi to the Chinese, and almost sold an AWACS system to them. When confronted over these deals, Israeli defense officials huffed, in an interview with Haaretz, that the Pentagon scotched the Israeli AWACS deal because US defense companies were themselves hoping to sell these systems to China. They are alleged to have traded the American secrets Jonathan Pollard handed to them to the Russians in exchange for exit visas for Jewish scientists:
A number of officials strongly suspect that the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard's material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union. A significant percentage of Pollard's documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union. One longtime C.I.A. officer who worked as a station chief in the Middle East said he understood that "certain elements in the Israeli military had used it" -- Pollard's material -- "to trade for people they wanted to get out," including Jewish scientists working in missile technology and on nuclear issues. Pollard's spying came at a time when the Israeli government was publicly committed to the free flow of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union. The officials stressed the fact that they had no hard evidence -- no "smoking gun," in the form of a document from an Israeli or a Soviet archive -- to demonstrate the link between Pollard, Israel, and the Soviet Union, but they also said that the documents that Pollard had been directed by his Israeli handlers to betray led them to no other conclusion.
High-level suspicions about Israeli-Soviet collusion were expressed as early as December, 1985, a month after Pollard's arrest, when William J. Casey, the late C.I.A. director, who was known for his close ties to the Israeli leadership, stunned one of his station chiefs by suddenly complaining about the Israelis breaking the "ground rules." The issue arose when Casey urged increased monitoring of the Israelis during an otherwise routine visit, I was told by the station chief, who is now retired. "He asked if I knew anything about the Pollard case," the station chief recalled, and he said that Casey had added, "For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets." Casey had then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet emigres. "How's that for cheating?" he had asked.
Food for thought.
tcrlaf, How dare you inject fact into a perfectly fine rant? ;-)
The interwar Reichswehr (Imperial Defense) was, at just over 100K men, a fraction the size of the Deutsches Heer (Imperial German Army). Then in 1935, the Reichswehr became the Wehrmacht (Defense Force) and ballooned out to become the juggernaut that steamrolled, for a time, armies all over Europe.
Selective distortion coupled with outright lies were how the Russians convinced a good chunk of the world that the CIA invented AIDS to kill black people. Blood libels are a Russian specialty. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are of Russian origin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.