Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 24 – The West won’t impose serious sanctions on Vladimir Putin for his
actions in Ukraine or provide support for his opponents inside Russia because Western
leaders view Putin as an “SOB” but “their SOB,” someone they don’t like but who
is largely doing what they want, according to Vladimir Basmanov, a
self-described anti-imperial Russian nationalist.
Basmanov,
known for his anti-immigrant activities as a leader of the Movement Against
Illegal Immigration (DPNI), argues that Western realpolitik pragmatists don’t
really care about democracy in Russia but do want to have someone in the Kremlin
who can control Russia (rusmonitor.com/putinshhina-i-zapad-luchshe-strashnaya-pravda-chem-sladkaya-lozh.html).
The
Russian nationalist is certainly wrong in many respects, but his comments are
worth noting because those who see Putin as an agent of the West and his regime
as fundamentally illegitimate as a result and who do not see any hope that the
West will live up to its ideological claims and support democracy or protect non-Russian
countries are typically ignored altogether.
Unfortunately,
Basmanov says, the dominant groups in the West aren’t that interested either in
saving Ukraine or in supporting Russian democracy because they don’t want to do
anything that might threaten the continued control of “their SOB” in Moscow and
his willingness to behave in ways that the West finds congenial.
There
are some in the West, of course, who care about Ukraine and who recognize that
a democratic Russia could be a much better partner for the West, but such
people lack significant influence and are opposed by those who think that even
if that is true, getting from here to there could prove difficult and
dangerous.
For
those who control Western governments now, Putin is “no Hitler, Noriega, Saddam
Hussein or Qaddafi” whom they must contain and work to remove but rather “’a
junior partner’” who may behave badly on occasion but who overall is doing what
the Western governments want.
According
to Basmanov, “the Russian Federation is a semi-colonial state economically and
politically dependent on Europe and the United States.” That doesn’t mean that
Moscow will “always and everywhere” do what the EU and the US want. Rather it means
that the Russian Federation “by its very nature” is such a state.
Unfortunately,
he continues, “not everyone understands this. Many Russians believe that the
West wants to destroy them, and many in the West think that “Putin is an
anti-Western dictator … In fact, both opinions are mistaken,” mislead by the
propaganda of their governments intended for domestic use only.
The
Russian Federation was set up according to the desires of the West, and both
Boris Yeltsin and Putin were chosen or at least approved of by the West,
Basmanov says. He notes that one representative of the American establishment
wrote in his memoirs that the West rejected the division of Russian territory
into smaller starts, such as Siberia, as inherently unstable.
(Basmanov
acknowledges that there were people in the West who supported the emergence of
such states but says that their views were in a minority and ignored.)
In
Basmanov’s telling, “Putin has one overriding task: not to allow Russians to
recover their own state.” Instead, the Russian
Federation was organized to serve as a supplier of raw materials to and a
market for products from the West and to avoid “presenting any threat
economically or politically” to the West.
Putin
remains “acceptable” for the West because he does not threaten it, however much
he may threaten the Russian people or Russia’s neighbors. And therefore, there
will not be any serious sanctions against him for actions against either or
serious support for the Russian opposition to Putin’s regime.
According to Basmanov, “Putin is in no way
diametrically hostile to America. This is a tale for internal use for the
residents of the Russian Federation and for the residents of America,” so that the
former will support their system “out of ‘patriotism’” and the latter will feel
good that their country is promoting democracy.
To say this, he argues, is not to
suggest there is any conspiracy. Instead, it is to point out something that is “the
customary policy of ‘great powers’ in the world.”
Moreover, Basmanov continues, it
means that Russians to a large extent “need to say thank you to ‘the West’ for
the fact that the dog Putin is in power,” a situation that reflects the West’s “selfish
interests.” And it means that Russians who want to see Putin replaced are going
to have to do that on their own.
The West is concerned about the possibility
that people will come to power in Russia whom it does not control and who do
not live according to the provisions of Moscow’s agreements with the West. “Why
risk it?” is their attitude, especially since “Putin is a reliable and tested
partner.”
He is someone the West can work
with. Moreover, Yeltsin and Sobchak “recommended him. It is not excluded that
Putin is a pedophile and a murder who has stolen money in Switzerland. [But] it
is not difficult to resolve questions” with someone like that.
“A rich, free and genuinely
independent Russia without the parasite RF on its body and the tyrant Putin
would not be a good thing for the US, the EU or anyone else in the world
because it would begin to produce goods and become a player in the world.”
Despite what many think, this isn’t about whether the West likes “this or that
mad dictator.”
Rather it is about whether the West considers
someone, however much of an SOB he may be, “useful” in “keeping under control
the situation in the world.”
According
to Basmanov, “the Russian Federation de jure and de facto is a continuation of
the USSR,” and “the regime of Putin and his band is an occupation regime,”
which will become ever more harsh and cruel with time.
Russians
don’t have much time to address this problem, Basmanov says. By mid-century,
they will be a national minority, and “after that, the change in the country
will be zero.” If Russians can’t achieve
change by themselves, “the current anti-Russian parasite state by the name of
Russian Federation will continue to exist on the land of Russia.”
In
that event, “Russians have no future.”
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