At a time when the entire Western world, including the Russian Federation is facing an unprecedented and dangerous threat from brutal Islamic terrorism and expansionism, what is the West doing? It is bending over backwards to placate and appease this threat, while at the same time seeking to create yet another unrelated and completely unnecessary threat in the forlorn hope that by doing so the Islamic threat will just wither and go away.
I speak of the EU, NATO, the UK and America’s sabre rattling against the Russian Federation, deliberately inducing a return to the once highly dangerous Cold War. Vladimir Putin has been set up as enemy No 1 in the eyes of the West. Yet who put him there? We in the West did of course. When Mikhail Gorbachev introduced Perestroika and Glasnost to the then Soviet Union and attempted to move Russia away from a Stalinist type Communism, he wanted to create a socialist State which embraced a degree of wealth creating Capitalism. He wanted to rid Russia and the West of the Cold War which was crippling the Soviet economy and endangering the world, but he wisely knew that he would have to do it with patience and control because you can’t just change from a wholly Communist State to a wholly Capitalist one at the press of a button. That however, wasn’t good enough for the West who wanted an instant overnight transformation from Stalinism to unbridled, unfettered Capitalism. When Gorbachev was manoeuvred out of office and replaced by the alcoholic buffoon Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the West got what it thought it wanted. Yeltsin set about privatising everything and sharing it all out among his friends.
Russia rapidly sunk into a Capitalist free for all which in turn inevitably developed into a criminal Mafia type of oligarchy, heading for a Banana Republic. The West thought, great! Revenge was sweet for all these years of Stalinism. They didn’t give a damn about the Russian people. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man” The West hadn’t accounted for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the desperately needed strong man who could wrestle his country out of the grip of the criminal thugs who threatened to destroy Russia and the Federation, and he is well on the way to achieving his aims.
The West has made great play on Putin’s actions in Ukraine. So let’s examine the West’s somewhat hypocritical complaint. In October 1962 Nikita Khrushchev the then Soviet leader began shipping nuclear missiles to Cuba presenting a military threat to the US literally on her doorstep. President J F Kennedy rightly said no, he would never allow it. He considered the threat from a potentially hostile Soviet Union so close to American soil to be so great that he risked nuclear war to force Khrushchev to withdraw them. Thankfully, Khrushchev agreed after getting the US to withdraw their missiles from Turkey.
The point I am making is that the Ukraine situation is no other than Putin’s ” Cuban Crisis “. The Ukraine situation was deliberately provoked by the EU, America, Britain and NATO. One of the few people with the courage to acknowledge this was Britain’s UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and he was heavily criticised for it. He was right. Another important contribution to this argument can be found here. It is an article by Christopher Booker in ” The Telegraph “. If Ukraine joined the EU and NATO as the West was pressurising her to do, Russia would have lost her vital Black Sea Crimean naval port of Sevastopol. Not only that but the still hostile ( and it is ) NATO would have been parked firmly with all it’s military power right on Russia’s doorstep. The Ukraine would cease to act as a buffer State between a belligerent NATO and the Russian Federation. Just as Kennedy had no choice in 1962, so too Putin had no choice with Ukraine.
Putin had to act, and the reason he had to act was because despite the courageous actions by Gorbachev to bring about the end of the Cold War, the West has never accepted that it has ended. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has summed it up nicely “ For us in Russia, Communism is a dead dog, while for many in the West, it is still a living lion “. Judging from the almost daily hostile rhetoric emanating from America, Britain and the EU aimed at Russia, it would seem that enmity with Russia is almost a tradition to be preserved for posterity, and they perversely persist in fighting a dead Russian dog.
When Margaret Thatcher first met Gorbachev in London in 1984 she famously said “ He’s a man we can do business with”. Today in 2016 Donald Trump has repeatedly said exactly the same regarding Vladimir Putin, but the American political elite in both parties and the media all went into a screaming fit of rage and horror. How could he possibly say he could deal with the anti-Christ ?
Of all the world’s people, the Jewish people have more reason than any to be wary and suspicious of the ex-Soviet State, but remarkably Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown amazing diplomatic skills and statesmanship by talking regularly with Putin, and Putin in turn has responded with equal statesmanship. As a result the relationship between Israel and the Russian Federation is successful and positive. “Israel Hayom” has an article by Ariel Bolstein entitled “Israel and Russia’s open dialogue”, which is a must read.
Neither Vladimir Putin or the Russian Federation are enemies of the West, except when they are poked in the eye by the West. The Russian people have survived hundreds of years of Tsarist despotism and decades of Stalinist dictatorship. All they want is to live a peaceful life, live in a stable secure country, with the same rights to reasonable wealth, power and influence in the world as the rest of us. They deserve it. The people of Russia are not only compatible with people in the West they are naturally inclined to it.
So what about the incidents in the Baltic where Russian jets have been buzzing American warships. Well! It takes two sabre’s to make them rattle, and why should American warships be patrolling in the Baltic Sea right up to the Gulf of Finland and just a few miles from St Petersburg and the Russian Federation? It is to threaten Putin not to invade the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia despite the fact that there is no evidence that Putin has any intention to do so and has openly denied it. Never mind, baiting the Russian bear is a good way to assert your supremacy. Imagine if Russian warships began patrolling a few miles from America’s coast? Us jets would be buzzing them within minutes.
Does anyone really believe that Putin will choose to go to war with NATO and the West? Putin may be many things but he most certainly isn’t suicidal. If anyone wants to confront real suicidal maniacs, then look no further than the real enemy, the enemy of both the Russian Federation and the West – Islamic terrorism.
The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent, Bridget Kendall has an interesting article on the BBC’s Website on this subject, where she interviews and quotes retired Lt General Ergeny Buzhinsky “ It is my strong belief that although we occupy part of Asia and part of Europe, Russia is a European country – in our way of thinking and everything we are much closer to the US and Europe than to China, India and Korea. I do not think the Russian people even at the time of the Cold War considered Americans as enemies. ” This lies at the very core of what this article is about.
Did Russia have anything to do with the terrible events on 9/11, or the London bombings, or the Madrid bombings or the French and Belgian shootings or thousands of other atrocities throughout the world ? The answer is emphatically no. Indeed Russia herself has had to endure similar terrible acts of barbarism against her people, by the same Islamic enemy. Yet the West persists in doggedly (pun intended) pursuing the dead dog of Communism while appeasing and ignoring the real common enemy.
If Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel can find the statesmanship to lay aside his differences with Russia and create mutual respect and cooperation, why on earth can’t the rest of the West’s leaders? Donald Trump a non-politician has once again repeated that he can easily deal with Putin , and I believe him. We can only hope that the great American people will elect him President, because the overwhelming majority of Western leaders are politically and ideologically insane. As far as the West is concerned ” Cold War ” seems to be their default position.
