Balance of Power or Balance of Terror?

I would like to share some perspectives on the Russia-US-Ukraine War, that may be helpful, or at least of interest.  They may not be popular and they could be construed as merely “pro-Russian;” however I simply report my perspectives and experience, and leave some of the implications to the reader’s judgement.  I have lived and worked throughout the FSU (Former Soviet Union) for a large multinational technology company, and on some occasions with the U.S. State Department and other US, European and Russian agencies in technical assistance programs.  I speak Russian, have a degree in Russian Language and Literature, and have written on Soviet science and technology, including in defense applications.  I have a graduate degree in business and have been a science and technology chief executive.  I have also worked in global aerospace and defense for the largest US defense management consultant.

I worked mostly in Moscow (Russia), Minsk (Belarus) and Kiev (Ukraine) beginning in 1990 right after the Berlin Wall episode, and during former Soviet leader Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” (“Rebuilding”) and “Glasnost” (“Openness”) programs.  I met Gorbachev personally.  I also had first-hand experience with the so-called US-designed “Shock Therapy” policy that was thought of then as a way of transitioning the former Soviet Union from a state-centered and planned economy into a market-based one.  It was modelled after programs previously used in Chile’s privatization programs, and championed by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman, and then later in Russia, it was orchestrated and overseen especially by Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs.  I will return to the Shock Therapy question in a moment, as it provides very important context in the current Ukrainian conflict.  First, may I share some opinions on what is happening in the contentious conflict in Ukraine?  I’m not the first to broadcast some of these perspectives, but some aspects of my views and experiences, may provide some ways of seeing more of the linkages between Russian and U.S. behavior in foreign policy dimensions.

Certain foreign policy and international relations observers and researchers, including University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer (author of “The Israel Lobby”), remain in a small minority, largely ignored or sidelined by major media, but who clearly lay out the historical missteps and provocations made by the US, toward Russia.  His view is that the U.S. all but guaranteed a Russian invasion into Ukraine.  Other observers including long-time Soviet media journalist Vladimir Posner made a coherent description of events, at a  talk at Yale University.  Others including consultant Samo Burja have spoken at length on Russia, as has former White House advisor Col. Douglas Macgregor who in my view stands apart from most of the “talking Generals” who sit on defense contractor Boards.

These alternative, in some cases, expert views, generally coalesce around three themes: one, that NATO expansion threatened (and threatens) Russia; two, that Russia has legitimate, current strategic interests in Ukraine including warm-water sea access; and three, that the US and EU are using Ukraine as a staging base, or proxy, for an unrelenting ideological war against Russia, including harboring the belief that the West can “defeat” Russia once and for all, and destroy is industrial base.  All three factors are correct.  But there is much more.

In my view it is no coincidence that Ukrainian-born US Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was at the center of the Trump impeachment operation, and alleged a legitimate impeachment cause of action, after he was listening in on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Zelenskyy.  Some have not unreasonably asserted that Vindman may be a “double agent” which drew immediate defensive posturing and reputational “whitewashing” from various quarters of the Washington, DC, establishment.  I think this is essentially a correct characterization, but he is more than a “double agent.”  He is part of an explicit cooperative operation between the US State Department (in part by Victoria Nuland) and Ukraine special interests, with Zelenskyy as their front spokesman, to pursue a mixed but ultimately mutually reinforcing policy of war profiteering, financial fraud, and US “Green New Deal” extremism that can be arranged under a war footing (oil and gas disruption, and demographic management by food shortages).  The war also provides a “blank check” for US pretextual and “false flag” operations, including cyber-attacks.  The assertion of a nuclear accident, exchange or other detonation, can also set the stage for the US administration’s shift into its next phase of public control and suppression—in part due to election engineering objectives—by declaring various states of emergency, including martial law.

Concerning the prior US policy of “Shock Therapy” that was orchestrated by Western economic advisors in the early 1990s as a way to turn Russia into a western-style commercial market economy, it not only failed—Russia had no history over a 500-year period, of any formal democracy, nor any critical legal, banking or management infrastructure whatsoever—but it turned Russia upside down in a cynical if cruel effort to exploit the country.  Putin witnessed it all.  I was in Moscow at the time. It was demoralizing to see the extent of suffering, confusion, and mass dislocation.  Princeton historian Stephen Cohen, with whom I have corresponded at length, and who recently passed, had been one of the few sane voices warning the West about such mendacious foreign policy.

In closing, I would like to underscore the utility of understanding Russian philosopher and government advisor (called by some, “Putin’s Brain”) Alexander Dugin, who presents an argument of Russian geopolitical, and other motivations that few in the West care to confront, although he has received significant media coverage.  Some, such as Canadian scholar Michael Millerman, give a  balanced context, with his paper, “Alexander Dugin on Eurasianism, the Geopolitics of Land and Sea, and a Russian Theory of Multipolarity” (Interview.)

As for Jewish Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he is running a “war within a war” by attacking—militarily, psychologically, and economically—his own people (reported here by Canadian award-winning journalist Eva Bartlett in her asserted eyewitness testimony), and forcing mass panic, suffering and migration, largely in order to put on a “financial road show” by bilking the UK and US out of billions of dollars in cash, technical assistance and military hardware, much of which may end up going to NGOs favored by U.S. politicians. He may be a war criminal of the highest order, and the current incompetence of US leadership at nearly all levels, combined with special interests orchestrating the fraud within the US, makes for easy pickings, and one of the “heists of the century.”  Zelenskyy also recently passed an order banning opposition political parties.

Ms. Bartlett describes from her location in the Donbas, that Ukraine has for many years consistently terrorized Russian regions of Ukraine with shelling.  She reports of mid-day Ukrainian rocket attacks on civilian shopping areas, while also visiting areas of current Ukrainian-alleged Russian “war crimes” such as Bucha’s mass grave sites, where such evidence appears inconclusive or strangely arranged.  She is an experienced independent war correspondent, including in Syria and Palestine, and although she discloses some occasional journalism work for RT News, she appears largely outside mainstream media bias, and her work by them, ignored or suppressed.  Her very interesting WordPress website is here, where she reports on these issues, among others.

As for “winning” a war against Russia, the West, including the EU and NATO, do not realize that Russia may have effectively “won” the Eurasian land conquest, in part by its reserves of kinetic and other weaponry still held in abeyance, and by its alignment with China, India and Iran.  Putin may also be right that sanctions are hurting the U.S. more than Russia: For the US, in fact, the concept of “winning” isn’t actually the objective, as current US domestic policy wins by losing: losing the US, that is, by seeking to destabilize its industrial infrastructure and economy, in part as a tactic to cloak current government extremism, while carrying out its radical “re-set” ideology centered in Green extremism.