European Neighbourhood

War is a blessing while people are like grass

The war in Ukraine is dragging on. The end is nowhere in sight. It is dragging on and soon it will be entering its fourth year. Reason suggests that Russia with its demographic and industrial potential could put the hostilities to a rapid end. Nothing of the sort is happening. Reason suggests that Ukraine should lay down its arms since there is no way it can regain lost territories, not to speak of winning over its much stronger neighbour. Nothing of the sort is happening. Reason also suggests that the West should work towards ending the hostilities because if Ukraine’s defeat eventually comes, the EU will be politically worse off. Nothing of the sort is happening. Why?

Russia. Russia has been benefiting from the war effort just like the United States benefited from the First World War and the Second World War: at that time American economy was boosted, and so is Russia’s economy today. Russia is benefiting from the war also in terms of its society rallying around the head of the state. Precisely as it was the case with the United States in both world wars, so it is now in the case of Russia: it is not directly affected by the hostilities it. Yes, Russian soldiers are dying or are wounded, but Russian soil and Russian civilians remain for all practical purposes unscathed.

The European Union. The European Union is in decline. A decline caused by its deviant green ideology, by the indiscriminate acceptance of the influx of foreigners, and lastly by its economic problems brought about by the renunciation of cheap Russian gas. The welfare state is becoming overburdened, the governments and heads of state are increasingly unpopular while national and right-wing parties are on the political rise. Not infrequently people take to the streets and show their disdain for their leaders. The European dream is shattered. What then are the EU managers trying to do the save the day? Yes, they are trying to find a scapegoat for all the negative phenomena. This scapegoat is Russia. A very convenient scapegoat. All economic problems can now be blamed on the aggressor from the east, all shortages and shortcomings – on the ‘Mongols’ looming large on the eastern horizon. Europeans ought only to understand what is at stake, and rally round the EU commissioners in a joint attempt to defend the Garden against the Jungle.

The United States. The United States has used the war in Ukraine not only to weaken Russia, but also to subjugate Europe. Yes, Washington knows that Russia will eventually win, but in the process it will lose some of the people, and it will be kept busy, letting Washington more leeway elsewhere in the world. Europe has been conveniently rendered economically impotent, which is another gain for Americans. A competitor has been removed. The competitor’s reliance on Russian energy sources has been significantly lowered. Washington is cherishing high hopes that some of Europe’s industries and businesses will relocate to the United States, which will further deindustrialize the Old Continent and re-industrialize America.

What is the attitude of the three mentioned players to Ukrainians?

Russia. Russia recognizes in Ukrainians brothers by ethnicity. That is one of the reasons why Russian troops steer clear of destroying civilian objects and objects of cultural heritage. Concurrently, Russian troops are fighting hard culling the Banderite-type troops. This alone will render Ukraine less hostile to Russia. Also, the Russian army is destroying Ukraine’s military, thus making it no match to the Russian Federation in the nearest future. The destruction of the civilian infrastructure will make it barely possible for Ukraine to be accepted as a member of the European Union.

The European Union. The European Union couldn’t care less about Ukrainian life though, sure enough, the EU managers say they do. Ukrainian lives are pawns on the geopolitical chessboard and are willingly sacrificed on the altar of combating Russia. And what a paradox! The EU commissioners are gladly embracing ‘refugees’ from Africa and Asia who allegedly escape from war while they would gladly see all Ukrainian able-bodied men drafted into the Ukrainian army and sent to the front! The European Union accepts males from the Third World: why would it rather not accept all Ukrainian men who want to be drafted? True, Europeans are not as yet rounding Ukrainian men up in their cities and sending them back home, but such ideas have emerged now and again, here and there.

The United States. The United States views Ukraine precisely as Europe does: after all it was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American politician and political thinker, who famously framed the globe as a chessboard. That’s precisely how the big players think about nations and countries: nations are chessmen while their territories are black and white squares of the chessboard. Accordingly, you sacrifice a chessman or you let go of a square as the case may be. The United States is one player, Russia or China is the other. Anything between them is – as we have already said – chessmen and chessboard squares. That’s all there is to it.

That’s also precisely how the managers of the world view the common people and their countries. The European elites may be whipping up war hysteria, but they themselves will not handle rifles or lie in trenches. Far be it from them! Whatever they want to impose on the common man and woman, they themselves prefer not to be affected by. Immigrants by the million for the common European to live with on a daily basis, but the commissioners live in places where they do not need to bother about strangers. Is it any different with war? No. Consider Ukraine’s President Zelensky. How has he experienced the three years of hostilities? He’s been travelling the world over, has been warmly received everywhere, and has given hundreds of interviews and made hundreds speeches, issuing hundreds of statements. How about the members of the Ukrainian government, of Ukraine’s parliament, how about higher officers? Pretty much the same story.

It has always been so throughout human history. Napoleon Bonaparte had half a million soldiers killed, frozen, or maimed in Russian steppes, but he himself made sure to be able to escape from the enemy and the frost in a comfortable coach, wrapped in warm furs. Adolf Hitler and his entourage? After the Red Army had crossed the Oder and was approaching Berlin, he and his ministers and generals must have realized that the end was inevitable and that the end was just round the corner. Some of them must have already taken the decision to commit suicide, and yet in order to prolong their lives by mere three-four months they did not stop the war. Rather, they sent new waves of troops – teenagers and the elderly – and added hundreds of thousands if not millions deaths to the huge overall toll.

For the managers of the world affairs, war is a game, a game that thrills them because it is a game played in reality. It is not a computer game. Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland conspired with Tsar Peter I of Russia to attack Sweden in the latter’s possession on the Baltic. The war, which began in 1700 and lasted till 1721, soon after its outbreak turned to be a catastrophe for Saxony and partly for Russia. Augustus was forced to draft new and new men to either defend his country or help his Russian ally. When someone pointed to him that so many men had died and so many more were about to die, he shrugged his shoulders and merely replied: people are like grass. The more you trample it, the more abundantly it will regrow.

Pro-Western fifth column in Russia by default

It’s not just a question of how much military power a given side to the conflict has at its disposal; it’s not even a question of whose economy is stronger. It’s more a question of which side prevails culturally, spiritually, or psychologically (psyche is Greek for soul or spirit).

Consider. The names of the months in Germanic and Romance languages, i.e. languages spoken in the West, have Latin origin. The names of the same months in Russian… also have Latin origin. Russians could have named the months giving them names in their native language, as the Poles or Czechs did; or they could have created the names of the months by drawing from Greek. The latter would have been more natural and understandable than taking those names from Latin: after all, the Russian principalities modeled themselves on Byzantium (a state that, although derived from the Roman Empire, used not Latin but Greek). Medieval Russians referred to Byzantium (and rightly so! and correctly so!) as to the Greek state; medieval Russians took Christianity from Byzantium; from the Greeks – Rus’ took (and slightly modified) the alphabet and modeled its own political system on Constantinople, which it called Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad – the city of the emperor or the city of emperors. And yet, Russians adopted the names of the months from Western languages. And not only the names of the months. Those who know the language know how many German and French and now English words have found their way into Russian. These foreign inclusions are foreign to the point that they are not even declined by grammatical cases, although all native words are. Why are we talking about this? Is it because we are interested in proper names or etymology or languages in general?

We talk about it because language reflects the soul of a nation. It’s not the Germans, French or Americans who have Russian words in their own languages, but, conversely, the Russians have plenty of French, German and English words in their language. This, in turn, attests to who has an overwhelming cultural, philosophical, mental, spiritual and psychological influence on whom. It shows who really rules over whom. This is a better litmus test for demonstrating who is subject to whom than finances, the economy or military conquests. Why? Because financial or economic advantage can be coerced, because military advantage is demonstrated through the use of brute force. In the case of language, it is quite different. No one outside Russia told Russians to adopt foreign words! They did it on their own, willingly, and they did it because they recognized the superiority of Western civilization. Patriotic Russians may deny it, but it is the language that is hard evidence that Russians have always considered themselves inferior.

To get an Oscar (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian film director; to get a Nobel Prize for literature (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian writer. Does any Western film director or Western writer dream of getting an award in Moscow or St. Petersburg?

It is the above-described sense of the inferiority complex on the part of Russians that makes rich Russians buy properties in the West and keep their money in Western banks. In other words, rich Russians are at the mercy and disfavor of the West, which can take these estates and accounts from them at any time it sees fit. Such Russians with estates and bank accounts abroad constitute a fifth column within the Russian Federation. Russians who have accounts in Western banks, who have properties in the West – what’s more – whose children study at Western universities do not think in Russian, whether they want to admit it or not. These Russians are a powerful force, scattered about the country, that works to the advantage of the West and to the detriment of their own homeland whether they want to admit it or not. Continue reading →

War over Minds

Military hostilities used to be the last argument of sovereigns. The barrels of canons would bear the inscription ultima ratio regum (in France) or ultima ratio regis (in Prussia). This has changed a little bit. Since warfare has become a very costly venture and especially since a number of states possess nuclear weapons whose possible use might wreak unimaginable havoc and render large swathes of territory useless for the victorious power, present-day sovereigns have resorted more and more to soft tactics, which are – despite their name – as efficient or even more efficient than firearms. Did not the Soviet Union collapse due to the soft penetration, infiltration and subversion applied by the West? The collective mind of the Soviet leadership was in the cross hairs of the financial, philosophical, political and cultural impact directed against it by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and smaller players. The result was more than impressive: neither Charles XII of Sweden in the 18th century, nor Napoleon Bonaparte in the 19th, nor Adolf Hitler in the 20th succeed in weakening Russia to anything remotely comparable with what happened with the Soviet Union in 1991 and thereafter. The territory of the superpower was significantly reduced, new independent states were carved out of it, and Russia herself was plunged into a decade of economic chaos and political turmoil in their magnitude surpassed only by the civil war of the early twenties of the 20th century if one only considers modern history. The battle for the minds is certainly not as spectacular as the clash between tanks or dogfights of aircraft, and it certainly is fought over a much extended period, but nonetheless its outcome is more than satisfactory.

The Chinese leadership drew its lessons from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and they have held a tight grip on the state matters before and especially since the 1989 Tiananmen Square riot. Beijing is well aware of the psychological infiltration, penetration and subversion targeting China’s population from abroad and so it has cut off the national internet from the global web and recently has cracked down on the entertainment industry, took control of the computer games and TV programmes to which the Chinese youth is exposed. That’s another instance of the battles for the minds. The European Union is not lagging behind in matters concerning psychological war.

In 2015, the EU’s East StratCom Task Force rolled out its flagship project – as they call it themselves – named EUvsDisinfo, a body that “identifies, compiles, and exposes disinformation cases originating in pro-Kremlin media that are spread across the EU and Eastern Partnership countries.” Within this project, in one of the tabs, news items originating from the sources just mentioned are quoted – white on black – and a disproof is presented: black on orange. In other places a whole analysis is offered, an analysis that devastatingly critiques a text recognised as the Kremlin’s propaganda. Surveying the hundreds of allegedly debunked pieces of information and their sources, one can see almost immediately that EUvsDisinfo has been targeting Sputnik most of the time. Anything that is written against the Post-West, the European Union, the United States, even individuals like George Soros in the media associated with Moscow or regarded as close to Russia comes under attack from EUvsDisinfo, which – naturally! – acts as an absolutely objective source of truth. Consider the following example. Continue reading →