WAR MAKES HISTORY

HERE WE GO AGAIN

The earlier unjustifiable, unprovoked fascism, greedy plutocracy, imperial overstretch, murderous paranoia and other aspects of the Dark Side get smashed, the better.

Such is the most basic lesson of the 1930s.

By 1936, fascist regimes in Italy, Japan and Germany had taken offensive actions against other countries, by invading them. What did Western “democracies” do? Nothing (for various reasons; the case of deeply anti-Nazi France, led by a Jew, Leon Blum, in 1936, was the opposite of that of the, de facto, Nazi collaborating UK and USA).

A doctrine of Russian foreign policy is that “Russian ethnicity and citizenship trump national sovereignty” That mean that, wherever there are Russians, Putin ought to invade. That was exactly the Nazi doctrine: wherever there were Germans, Nazis ought to rescue them, and invade. Conveniently, there were Germans all over Eastern Europe, all the way to the Volga.

Russian Plutocracy In Full, Version 1900 CE.

I’m sure that, deep down inside, following the Czarist doctrine, Putin views the Poles as Russian.

Indeed, notice in the map above, that most of Poland is owned by Russia. The Russian empire also owned all of present day Ukraine, except for the extreme western piece that is part of Austro-Hungary, presently with one of the largest city in Ukraine, L’viv… Known as Leopolis in Latin, capital of ancient Galicia. A city with an outstanding intellectual tradition up to 1939, with its great mathematical school; some of those mathematicians, hunted by the Nazis and their Soviet allies (!) having fled to the USA, elaborated the (Teller-Ulam) H bomb design.

So here we exact identification: Putin can be identified as a classic dictator, the 1930s class. He invades countries, based on abominable theories of historical ownership. Not surprising for something molded as a KGB officer.

Starting around 1930, Stalin forcefully exerted genocide on Crimea’s inhabitants, the Tartars. Stalin even drove their language and their alphabet out. Finally he deported them all, out of their homeland.

Putin is reinforcing that genocide, with the lie that it never happened, or that, if it did, it was of no consequence, and certainly no consequence that can be reversed. (Yet Spain just repaired its unjust, total expulsion of Sephardic Jews in 1492 CE. More than 5 centuries ago. Jews were in Hispania before Christianism was invented.)

In the 1930s, the less they were resisted to, the more encouraged the fascists felt. They invaded more and more countries, in most of a decade, until France and Britain declared war.

Even then, the only way Hitler’s abominable regime kept on going is that many, in that regime, believed a critical mass of the leadership of the USA was on their side. (Hitler’s and Mussolini’s successes, in turn, encouraged the top Japanese military to engage in the worst exactions… even inside Japan. And soon, genocide. Japanese genocidal activities then fed-back to Hitler and Mussolini; it’s why it’s encouraging that China was not supportive of Putin March 3, 2014, at the UN: the PCR made a not so veiled critique of the Russian dictator’s invasion.)

Fortunately, this time, in 2014, France, Germany, Great Britain and, most importantly the USA, are on the same democratic frequency. Samantha Powers, the USA’s UN ambassador, gave a perfect discourse at the United Nations.

But for one point. The most important point.

The announcement of crippling sanctions. That’s not helped with Obama declaring that he does not want a “cold war”.  The “cold” war is past. We have a hot war. Overnight.

The expression “Cold War,” was derived from a phrase used in Europe during the late 1930s to characterize the war of nerves between Hitler and the French Republic, which was described as “la guerre blanche or la guerre froide.” Confronting Hitler was delayed all too long, because France could not attack as long as the Anglo-Saxons were, de facto, allied to Hitler.

Hard core pacifists, Nazis, pro-Nazis and Pat Buchanan said: “Oh, that was a mistake, we should have made peace with Hitler, it was all the fault of the French.” Auschwitz ‘s ashes are on their shoes, for all to see.

Hard core pacifism is a form of cretinism, in the world we presently have. It overlooks the fact that, thanks to the enormous power of technology, the evil of one man can be multiplied nearly infinitely.  That’s how Stalin, Hitler and the emperor of Japan, could kill so many. Although they were just three guys.

The social structures of this world are still tribal: France and the USA have great chiefs whom I had the extraordinary opportunity to approach. The level of security is properly astounding. Layers upon layers, many in plain clothes. Officers with nuclear weapons’ codes is in plain view. However the question comes to the fore: with so much power in just one man, what if he goes nuts?

Putin is nuts. And he commands the world’s largest thermonuclear bomb stockpile.

Angela Merkel speaks perfect Russian, and had, over the years, deeply disturbing encounters with Putin, that revealed him to be “in another world”, as she reported. Even more disturbing, what Angela reported was never denied by the Kremlin. Putin’s insanity is the new normal there.

Putin is nuts.

People will say: ”So what? Just one man, don’t listen to him. Just wait for the next guy.”

However people saying this would not understand how leadership, in other words, autocracy, works. I agree that the Leadership Principle ought to be discontinued in politics. However, right now it reigns. So Putin is Russia.

And Putin is nuts.

When one guy like that leads a country, and he is nuts, he makes the country he leads nuts, too.

This is what happened with the fascist regimes of the 1930s. Nuttier and nuttier every year. After ten years, the insanity had become mass murdering, and the leaders of Germany and Japan deliberately killed dozens of millions. Each. (Italy’s Mussolini lost the war too fast to kill many millions.)

Here is Putin, sitting in the Kremlin, having rigged all sorts of things, from elections to exploding apartment buildings (OK, there are no proofs, but that’s precisely the proof). He is leading the world’s largest country into the ground, thanks to the plutocracy he leads. Russia is indeed 70% larger than the already gigantic USA. 17 million square kilometers (Canada, the USA and China follow with around 10 million sq km). Russia has enormous resources. So why is Putin obsessed by recovering territories the Tsars used to rule?

The Tsars ruled much of Poland, and all the way to Alaska and beyond, establishing forts all the way to Northern California. They ruled not just Ukraine, but Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, parts of China.

Putin has, clearly the agenda of recovering all that empire (but for Alaska, “Seward’s folly”, legally sold to the USA). It’s a secret agenda inside his head, a temptation, a way to make his rule indefinite. Should the West not threaten the use of overwhelming force, he will be encouraged, and will proceed further.

What Was Given To Stalin At Yalta, Putin Wants Back

“Overwhelming force”? What’s that? First shut down all the relations with Russia that can be closed right away. If that’s not enough, keep on closing what’s next. Close the whole thing, even the Space Station. When the enemy invades, it’s too late to prepare peace.

On his website, Putin just declared his intent to invade Eastern Ukraine, not just Crimea. Talk about talking too much. We cannot say we have not been forewarned. (Let’s hope the NSA, CIA and other dark horses of the apocalypse, are finally put to good use…)

Die for Ukraine? Not exactly. But Putin will not stop. Not on his own. He has crossed a psychological Rubicon. He will not stop at Ukraine. Putin has to be shown clearly, now, that, should he proceed in his pattern of invading other countries, his regime will not survive.

A new cold war? Well, Putin rigged the last elections. In a way that makes him less legitimate than the USSR.

Indeed, Stalin’s successors had the excuse that they found a very bad system that they tried to improve: they made things better. This time is different: Putin has been making things worse. And now he wants to make them way worse, because he is a weak and desperate leader. For all his badness, even Stalin was more cautious.

Do not underestimate weakness and desperation as strong motivators: Hitler’s acts, after 1937, were all about jumping from weakness to desperation (that’s why he attacked the Jews, Czechs, Austrians, Poles, Norway, France, and finally, his ally Stalin. That’s not my own fancy psychobabble theory, we have explicit statements and discourses from the Nazi dictator to that bear witness).

By the way, “violation of international law” (Obama) by war of aggression (an invasion qualifies) is a war crime. Putin does not have a semblance of a UN mandate to invade Ukraine (as Bush had in Iraq, sort of). Vladimir Putin and his cronies should be formally informed, right away, that they expose themselves to prosecution for war crimes.

Total economic war now is better than war later. (After all, Switzerland got struck by sanctions from the EU the day after the Swiss people voted against free circulation of people in Europe, two weeks ago.)

A UN Security Council proposition ought to be presented right away  to send UN observers in Ukraine. Russia would veto it, but get even more isolated than he is now. (The OSCE, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, presided by the Swiss president at this point, is sending observers to Ukraine, March 4, 2014, but that’s not enough.)

Putin has seen all nice signs and kind discretion from the West to him as weakness. Say when Obama agreed not to install an anti-ballistic missile system in Europe: weakness. Similarly for the lack of reaction to the invasion (and persistent occupation) of part of Georgia by Putin, under Bush: weakness.

The final encouragement to Putin was Obama’s reculade in Syria. French pilots were actually inside their fully armed jets when Obama announced he has had a cold sweat, and would not send his missiles against the satanic Assad with the only language mass murdering dictators understand, high explosives. At that point, Putin understood in turn what Hitler understood early on: as long as he used force, forcefully, nobody would stop him.

This is 1936, all over again. History is repeating itself. But, for one drastic difference.

In 1936 the West was just 3 countries: France, the UK, the USA. Only France wanted to destroy Hitler, the other two wanted to collaborate with him some more.

In September 1939, France and Poland found themselves fighting Hitler  alone, plus Stalin, and most plutocrats of the USA and their tentacular corporations. The war did not go well until the USA got involved, 40 months later.

This time, the West is most of the planet, and, in particular, the USA and the EU, are fully united (and Japan is an ally). Hence Putin can, and should be, struck as vigorously as possible, in all ways. Spare him not.  Now that Putin has engaged in an act of war, albeit a small one (as of March 3, 2014; March 4^th could be very different). Thus, the more force is used now, the more powerfully, the less will have to be used in this war, overall. Because it’s war. Please wake up.

We did not chose to have war in Ukraine. Putin, an apex plutocrat, did.

We did not choose to have war in Ukraine. But we can choose to lose it. If we do, we are choosing to fight the continuation of the war on less strategically favorable terms.

When tiny Athens (with only around 80,000 citizens) confronted the remarkable Achaemenid empire (“Persia”), it confronted an ultra-modern state with no less than 45% of the world’s population. Resisting Persia was sheer insanity. All proportion kept, it was if Luxembourg declared war to China.

Persia got obsessive about Athens, because Athens, tiny Athens, launched a mood that could not be forgiven, once the Spartans threw down a well the Persian emissaries (after being insulted in Athens, they made the mistake of asking Sparta for earth and water, to symbolize Sparta’s subjugation).

The Athenian army confronted the Persians at Marathon. The reason? Athens enjoyed direct democracy, whereas the empire founded by Cyrus the Great was an extremely wealthy fascist plutocracy. Athens won, and here we are, heir of the same principles. Those principles made the genius of our genus.

We are a deeply equalitarian species. Out of equality rises our superior cultural performance. Plutocracy, the rule of the Dark Side, denies giving, love, and the equality which make us possible. Thus plutocracy is a denial of our species. Only an anger great enough to destroy it, will save us, and the biosphere. And there is hope: greed is neither as natural, nor as strong as anger.

It’s time to get angry against dictator Putin. Angry now is better than very sorry tomorrow.

War makes history. Of this we must think, if we want to make history better.

Patrice Aymé

Notes: I already called on expulsing Russia from the G8 (that means no meeting in Sochi). Replace him by Brazil, India, whatever. Prepare to cut off the flow of Russian gas (Oh, the pseudo-ecologists don’t like it, and Germany whines, because it’s cold out there? So why did not they push for safe nuclear power then? Meanwhile, I’m sure Obama will be happy to sell Germany coal). The G8 meeting (sans Putin) should he held in Warsaw.

Putin being crazy, that would be a bit dangerous; but the time to take risks has come. A solution is to hold the G8 in Gdansk (Danzig). When Gdansk got attacked on September 1, 1939, France and Britain sent Hitler an ultimatum. But the USA kept collaborating with Hitler. Not so this time. An unmistakable message.

US Navy cruisers off shore, equipped with anti-ballistic missiles, could provide protection.

Oh, another thing: the plutocrats around Putin have huge assets in the West. Freeze them. Including private estates on the French Cote d’Azur, and London. There are hundreds of billions of dollars of them in the EU alone. The freezing of the vast assets of Putin’s plutocrats will be humiliating, and revealing, for the whole world to see.

Meanwhile expedite a war crime inquiry in the International Court in La Hague, for “wars of aggression, and mass murder” in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine.

Tags: Crimea, EU, Invasion, Punitive Sanctions, Putin, Russia, Ukraine, USA, War Crimes, War Of Aggression