Lauren Johnson Wrote:Well, David, I would have to say your post clears things up. Well, said. And it's sad the Yelstin years placed Russia its current trajectory. Just sad?
My view is that the Yeltsin years were terrible for Russia, which was being plundered violently and rapaciously, thanks to the emergent class of Mafiya and western bankers, advisers that swarmed around Yeltsin and the US engineered neoliberal order that replaced communism.
At that time the US elite could've taken a mature view of the Russia to come, and things would've worked out far better for all. But the elite couldn't control their ingrained urge to power and greed and took the decision to punish Russia for its sin of adopting communism. The plan was to banish it econmically back to the middle ages so that it couldn't rise again as a great power.
This was why Poppy Bush lashed out angrily at James Baker III and Herr Genscher, when Baker returned to report that he had agreed to the principal that NATO would move "one inch to the east" if Gorbachev would agree to allow the two Germany's to reunite. The US immediately reneged on this agreement (whereas the Russians held to their side of the bargain) and ever since has worked to push NATO as far east as they possibly can. One can easily understand how Putin has become as popular as he has inside Russia because he's restored some national pride.
You'll probably recall that circa early 1990's there was a period of several years when the term the "peace dividend" was almost daily discussed in the western media, following the end of the cold war. At the same time overseas US military bases were being closed and mothballed and personnel reduced. Things looked rosy to us all.
But.
The defence industry was hurting as never before at this and saw the future... and didn't like it one bit. In this context, I think we need to remember that the US became a global power solely because of WWII, therefore, war was viewed by its elite as it's greatest virtue and friend and a war economy its powerhouse and financial backbone, sinew and muscle. All of this was considerably threatened by a prolonged period of peace.
And so a prolonged period of peace was stifled at its infancy.
Say hello to the rise of the neocons and the penning of the Defence Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-6 that has become better known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. The core principal of this document was that only one superpower (the US) could dominate the world in perpetuity via the means of constructive behaviour (finance/economy) and military might (Pentagon) - in other words a carrot and stick approach. Of equal importance was the clause that no competitor nation, either friend or foe, be allowed to develop to challenge US supremacy.
The phrasing and meaning of this doctrine is clearly governed, in my view, by a massive Collective psychological inflation (hubris) - and this condition is always accompanied by a later and equally great fall from grace (
HERE).
Which is what we are now seeing taking place, I suspect.
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