Reply #12: Except that the Russians aren't wrong about US subversion [View All]

Not to excuse the rise of red fascism, but the bits in the OP about "They have been taught to believe that the United States is actively preparing a pro-western revolution in their country" and their cracking down on the NGO's are not offbase.

The US has been using every tool in its possession both to maintain influence in the Central Asian republics which split off from the Soviet Union and to further fragment what remains of Russia along ethnic lines. I don't have a coherent narrative of what's been going on -- just a bunch of scattered notes -- but here are some of the relevant pieces:

- The role of the "pro-democracy" NGO's, such as the International Republican Institute, which have been behind many or all of the "color" revolutions. These groups are primarily funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in the 80's to outsource many of the regime change functions formerly carried on by the CIA. Since 2001, the NED has been headed by Bush intimate and "super-lobbyist" Vin Weber, and the groups it endows have been deeply implicated in questionable dealings in Haiti and in supporting the coup against Chavez. They have also been increasingly active in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Russia is not wrong to be suspicious of them.

- US support for Islamic terrorism in Central Asia as a means of undermining pro-Russian governments. This is a continuation of US support for al Qaeda in the 80's -- as well as the more recent support of many Neocons for the Chechen separatists in the 90's -- and, as Seymour Hersh has recently pointed out, is a continuing source of blowback, where our pet terrorists turn round and bit us in the ass.

- The role of the exiled Russian oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky, which in turn gets tangled up with the Russian-Israeli Mafia, drug smuggling, arms dealing, and even wilder stuff, such at the Litvinenko poisoning. All this further ties in with the darker corners of the global underworld that Peter Dale Scott has covered intensively if not always intelligibly.

- The theories of Bernard Lewis about using ethnic nationalism to fragment the Middle East, which have been widely adopted by both Neocons and "realists" in the US. We can see these ideas clearly on display in the US sponsorship of insurgent ethnic minority groups in Iran (Kurds, Balochs, etc.), but they are also behind Western encouragement of the fascist pan-Turanian (ie, pan-Turkish) nationalists in Central Asia. Most of this kind of meddling is directed against Russian influence, but it reaches ethnic minorities in China as well, such as the Uighurs.

The upshot of all this is that there is a very real war going on almost totally under the radar, which the Russians are entirely aware of, even if we in the US are not. The core of it, as nearly as I can tell, is that geostrategic thinkers in the US see the 21st century as being dominated by a struggle by the US against Russia and China for world domination, with Central Asia and the Middle East as the linchpin of that struggle.

That is also why we are stuck in Iraq for the long run. Even the "realists" surrounding Bush Sr. who were opposed to invading Iraq -- seeing it as a Neocon diversion of the real struggle to benefit their friends in Israel -- now have to be wary of getting out and leaving a power vacuum for the Russians and Chinese to fill. And it is why Iran -- which has been the gateway to Central Asia for the last 50,000 years -- is currently such a focus of obsessive activity.

The US is in the uneasy position of trying to project more power into Russia and China's own backyard than they can exert there themselves. And since that is probably an unrealistic expectation, Plan B is to sow chaos and fragmentation in the region instead.

That is what Putin knows and we don't. But, paradoxically, any appeal to Russian white nationalism, though it may seem to strengthen national coherence in the short run, can only increase ethnic fragmentation down the road. It's got to be a nasty puzzle for the Russians -- and one from which the US is pretty much exempt. (Though I can't help wondering if some of the maneuvering and rhetoric over Hispanic immigration grows out of a covert fear that the same tactic might yet be turned against us.)