Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 27 – A newly
coalescing “Mobilization Party” in the Kremlin is convinced that it can only
save its own position and boost that of Russia internationally by shaking up
the political board in radical ways and that the most effective way to do that
is via a limited nuclear strike, Andrey Piontkovsky says.
This “party” which the Russian
analyst describes in detail in a new commentary believes that the West would in
19 cases out of 20 back down rather than counter with a massive counter-strike,
allowing those who orchestrated this move to remain in office for the rest of
their lives and Russia to dominate half the world or more (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5CC4589A8C134).
And its members are convinced,
Piontkovsky continues, that even if they do turn out to be wrong in this game
of “Russian roulette” and the West does respond, they will go out in glory and
ascend to heaven while the Western leaders will go directly to hell, a point of
view that Vladimir Putin has even presented in public.
His new article builds on arguments
he made two weeks ago in a Radio Liberty essay (svoboda.org/a/29879125.html, discussed
at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/to-save-his-regime-putin-preparing-to.html).
But this time, Piontkovsky focuses less on what he calls “Putin’s Plan for Victory”
than on the coalescence of Russian leaders behind it.
According to the Russian analyst,
many in and near the Kremlin are worried about two things: the collapse in
public support for Putin that has kept the current regime in place for so long
and mounting evidence that any repetition of actions that helped him in the
past will in fact hurt him and them now.
Consequently, Piontkovsky continues,
they believe they need to do something not by 2024 but this year and that they need
some “unbelievable means which will completely change the agenda.” Their
choice, he argues, is the use of a limited nuclear strike, one the West likely
wouldn’t respond to and the Russian people would view as validation of Putin’s
regime.
“Within the Putin bureaucracy is
forming and strengthening a political party which has a vision of the present
day and future of Russia.” It can be called “a mobilization party.” At its head
stands Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council; and its
members include Igor Sechin, Yury Kovalchuk, Sergey Ivanov and Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“Naturally,” the Russian analyst
continues, “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in part belongs to it.”
According to Piontkovsky, “this
party is growing in strength because the transit of power is turbulent.” Recent
high-profile cases like Abyzov and Ingushetia are “the product of this party.
But not all siloviki have joined it and not all who are in this political party
are siloviki.” It draws support from the
LDPR and KPRF.
The unifying ideas are the need to
shore up the current system at home and restore “an enormous powerful
revanchist Soviet country which will control half the world” and make the other
half afraid of it.
This is not really “a party of war.”
For it, “war is only a means of achieving its goals.” If it can achieve them
without a war well and good but if not, it is ready to roll the dice. Patrushev
has been pushing for a doctrine of first use of nuclear weapons for almost a
decade. He appeared to be rebuffed, but in fact, he has picked up support and
continues to press the idea.
He is setting himself up to become “under
Putin in the fourth world war what Ludendorff was under Kaiser Wilhelm in World
War I – that is, a military dictator.” And
he has picked up support from Putin in this because Putin is increasingly
concerned about his standing in the country and is pleased to have someone work
to solidify it in this way.
“When the head of a nuclear power
seriously proposes using nuclear weapons not to oppose an aggressor who
threatens the very existence of the state but for the achievement of some ambitious
geopolitical goal, there are only two possible explanations for such behavior,”
Piontkovsky says.
The first is that he is a fanatic
prepared to die in the pursuit of his goals, “but the second is that he is an
adventurer-player, which is much closer to the truth in our case.” He will
threaten to use nuclear weapons and then, if that isn’t enough, actually use
them in a limited way that he believes will cause the West to back down rather
than escalate.
Piontkovsky says that many in
response to his suggestions that this is the Kremlin’s strategy like to point
out that the people in the Kremlin have children, wives, mistresses palaces,
yachts and billions in the West and aren’t likely to be willing to see all this
become “radioactive rubble.”
“Of course, they can’t. But Patrushev, Putin, Kovalchuk
and their mobilized party comrades do not intend to die or give up their lives
as dollar multi-billionaires or destroy the Western civilization” which makes
this all possible for them, the Russian analyst says. Instead, they want it all
– victory over the West and “political immortality” at home.
The
members of this party, he continues, believe there is only one chance in 20 that
the West won’t back down and will instead escalate to mutually assured
destruction. But in that off chance,
they are sure they will go to heaven and everyone else will simply burn in
hell, a victory of sorts in their mind.
Piontkovsky
concludes his essay by quoting his own words of 20 years ago when Putin came to
power: “Putinism is the highest and concluding stage of bandit capitalism in
Russia. Putnism is war, ‘the consolidation’ of the nation on the basis of some ethnic
group, isolation from the outside world and further economic degradation.”
“Putinism
is,” he says, “a control shot at the head of Russia.” Everything else has
happened. Only that remains to happen before the mobilization party will test
its calculation that it has a 95 percent chance of winning at home and abroad with
a limited nuclear first strike.
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