Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Why one of Russia's top foreign policy experts is worried about a major war with Europe — Max Fisher and Amanda Taub interview Fyodor Lukyanov

Max Fisher: We talked earlier about scenarios that could lead to armed conflict in Europe between Russia and NATO. No one thinks it’s likely, no one wants it, but it could happen. Is there a fear of this risk in the Russian leadership, in the Russian establishment? Is it something the decision-makers in Moscow are afraid of?

Fyodor Lukyanov: There is a fear. A question that was absolutely impossible a couple of years ago, whether there might be a war, a real war, is back. People ask it. It’s terrible, but it shows how much the atmosphere has changed. Five years ago, nobody could even think about this.

Max Fisher: Those people in the government who are talking about the possibility of a war, how do they imagine it starting?

Fyodor Lukyanov: People don’t think of it in that particular of a way, but, for example, massive military help to Ukraine from the United States — it could start as a proxy war, and then [trails off]. It’s not a scenario that is explicitly discussed. But the atmosphere is a feeling that war is not something that’s impossible anymore.....
Max Fisher: Some people have read Putin’s recent statements on nuclear deterrence as a way of signaling that Russia could potentially use its nuclear weapons in the case of a conventional military attack on Russia, including Crimea.
Fyodor Lukyanov: Yes, I believe it’s in the Russian security doctrine, the preemptive use of nuclear arms in the case of conventional aggression [against Russia].
Vox
Why one of Russia's top foreign policy experts is worried about a major war with Europe
Max Fisher and Amanda Taub interview Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs and chair of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy

18 comments:

PeterP said...

Goes well with the headline "Why one of Third Reich's top foreign policy experts is worried about a major war with Europe, 1938"

Tom Hickey said...

The question is not who is right, but whether the world is slouching toward a war that non one wants, like WWI, and this time one that will almost certainly involve WMD in Europe.

This "clown" is sending a signal. That signal is loud and clear. The leaders are flirting with nuclear war. The people on one side know it and are OK with it to defend the Motherland. The people on the other side aren't being told that this is the price they will have to pay for the interests of their elites. Would they be OK with it if they realized the stakes?

Americans especially are pretty clueless about his being the Cuban missile crisis in reverse. It is potentially more dangerous now, because parity between the sides is no longer a mutual deterrent. Rather the policy of the US-Nato side is full spectrum dominance.

The only good thing is that the hotel line has been restored in order to reduce the potential for accidental unleashing of a strategic nuclear strike by either side due to a false signal.

The most worrisome thing is that the situation closely resembles that of WWI, where an aberrant incident in Eastern Europe by a wild card catalyzed hostilities. Now the situation is in the hands of the opposing sides in Ukraine. In other words in the hands of crazies still fighting WWII.

Anonymous said...

Excellent comment, Tom.

MRW said...

I absolutely agree with you, James. A great comment, Tom.

Nebris and PeterP: you aren't paying attention. The jejune comment that "I'm sure there are plenty of Eastern Europeans who'd be happy to fight there, eager to pay the Russians back for a half century of Soviet occupation" belies the fact that the Russians lost tens of millions of civilians and troops in WWII. Their soldiers fought in Global Cooling winters with newspapers for socks and vodka from Stalin to keep them from noticing it. We’d be speaking German if Russia hadn't done what it did during WWII; it saved the west’s bacon. Or are you one of those who think the US won WWII because you watched Hollywood movies?

The Russians have seen the ravages of WWII. We haven’t. The Russians have had bombs dropped on their country. We haven’t. The Russians have experienced the hunger and famine that war brings. We haven’t.

3,000 people die in two towers, we call it the greatest catastrophe of history, and use it to justify killing millions around the world. We’re pussies who know jack-shit about what war is like.

Tom has been urging for months now to see what’s going on through Russian eyes. You sneer at Fyodor Lukyanov? What part of "Putin Wants Peaceful Coexistence With the West” don’t you understand? You call him a clown? He was educated under the old Soviet university system, which puts ours to shame. He can speak and write in highly competent and refined English. Can you speak Russian? Can you even swear in Russian?

The geopolitical play is that Victoria Nuland and her friends want the Ukraine (including Crimea for the ports) in the EU so that bond vigilantes can collateralize Eastern Ukraine’s extraordinary energy resources and the richest agricultural land outside Africa, and when Ukraine can’t pay (whether that’s in their currency or the Euro) then they can swoop in and take the collateral. Biden’s son is sitting in the wings waiting for it: he gets to be Chairman. Nuland, et al, and the rest of her tribe, however, are using Obama for the big prize, a big cash payout after he’s out of office (and they are too), and Obama's too fucking narcissistic to know that he’s been played like a Hungarian fiddle. He thinks he’s wading in foreign policy waters and making big man decisions. Things he can write about in his next book.

This is a cash play using the US military to get it, and enforce it. And Putin knows this. His master’s degree is in International law. His PhD thesis was how to bring a totalitarian state in to the 21st C using the nation’s national resources.

Nebris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nebris said...

First, I called Max Fisher - the writer of the piece - a 'clown'. So much for reading comprehension. And yes, I can curse in Russian, suka blaat.

As for the old Russia won WW2 meme; while it has some value, if they had not, you can be sure Berlin and probably Hamburg would have vanished in balls of nuclear fire in the summer of 1945, courtesy of the US 8th Air Force. I suspect that would have resolved the matter even when dealing like psychopaths like the Nazis.

And gee, because 26 million Russians died on Der Ostfront, y'all think it was okay for the Soviet Union to put its boot on the collect necks of the peoples of Eastern Europe for 46 years? Well, yop taviya maat, as the Russians like to say.

Tom Hickey said...

There's a good reason that the leadership of the USSR sought expand it's territory as far as possible toward the Atlantic. Stalin knew full well that the USSR was in the sights of the Western powers since the Bolsheviks came to power.

Stalin was acting very much like the US is now in projecting power where it perceives its interests threatened. Some would say that the comparison is disproportionate; others would not.

The difference is that Stalin has a powerful enemy that would have marched to Moscow after Hitler was dispatched if they were able.

But the Allies were too war weary. The alternative plan was to nuke both Russia and China before they could gain traction after the destruction they sustained in WWII. But the leaders didn't have the stomach to do it before Russia got the bomb and then it was too late. But if you recall, MacArthur wanted to "do" China during the Korean Conflict and was so up front with it that Truman fired him for insubordination.

It's still argued on the left that socialism has never had a chance to develop because the capitalist powers have perceived it as an existential threat and have been proactive in destroying it wherever it begins to take hold, or to isolate it and cut off politically and economically while waiting for an opportunity to do away with it.

Anyone who is knowledgeable of history, geopolitics, geostrategy, and military operations — and is able to examine the facts dispassionately — can see the same game being played for millennia, with the victors writing history and picking the heroes and villains.

It's just a matter of how hard the boot on one's neck is. The US has been hardening its boot, both internationally and domestically, because freedom.

Nebris said...

Oh well then...I'm sure the peoples of Eastern Europe will understand. Why don't find some and explain that to them?

Magpie said...

Tom,

"In other words in the hands of crazies still fighting WWII."

Spot on: by reading the comments in this thread, it should be evident how true that last sentence is.

Tom Hickey said...

Oh well then...I'm sure the peoples of Eastern Europe will understand. Why don't find some and explain that to them?

Maybe the same thing should be explained to the people of Iran where CIA overthrew the elected leader and installed he repressive shah and then backed Saddam in his subsequent was with Iran in which he used chemical weapons, the people of Chile (where the CIA was involved in the overthrow the elected leader who was a socialist and then backed the repressive regime of a military dictator, the people of Iraq who were "liberated" from a dictator only to see their country and culture destroyed, the people of Syria who the US is now liberating from a dictator and planning to install an Islamic militant government instead of the present secular one, the people of Ukraine, where the State Department and NGOs funded a coup that has reduce the country to penury.... The list goes on, like training Latin American death squads. And more names of countries are being added to the list to topple or destabilize all the time. In self-defense? Of course not. Imperial booty for the elite and imperial power for the leadership.

Oh and did I mention the genocide of Native Americans, whom it was not only legal to hunt but there was also a bounty on them. Or the Africans who were first bought to the US as slaves and later bred as slaves. Thomas Jefferson bred slaves for sale. Even his mistress that bore him several children was a slave and so were the children. How is the US dealing with that still festering sore now. The US has the largest incarcerated population in the world per capita and the most executions per capita.

There are very few white hats and black hats. That's history written after the fact by the victors.

Stalin is actually quite well thought of in Russia today, and Hitler's popularity has also increased. There are neo-Nazis just about everywhere there is a sense of exceptionalism and superiority. Japanese militarism is rising again also.

Nebris said...

"Japanese militarism is rising again also." Which is a direct result of Chinese expansionism, which is both an Imperial undertaking and a Nationalist ploy to distract 'the folks at home' from how much of a toxic shithole China has become.

Tom Hickey said...

Well, while we're tossing around the Native Americans, how about the Celtic genocide of the Brythonic peoples of the British Isles? Or their conquest by the Romans - who only killed some of them - and then the Angle/Saxon/Jute genocide of the Celts? Normans, etc blah blah blah

That's what we humans *do*.


Yes. Exactly.

And we humans are not only doing it again but we are also preparing to do it again on another massive scale. It is endless.

However, even though I recognize this as the human condition, I would like to see humanity avoid it if possible. So I am sounding the alarm. Do I think it will be effective? Most probably not in light of history and current events.

However, I am not too concerned about someone "starting" a nuclear war, e.g.., with a preemptive strike. What I am concerned with is, first, a nuclear accident as in "shit happens,", and secondly escalation that gets out of hand and leads where no one really wanted to go.

I've served in the military during war time and I can tell pretty surely where things stand fight now — locked and loaded. And those weapons are aimed at strategic targets designed to take out potential adversaries or disable them. We aren't at the punitive stage yet though, at least I don't think so.

Moreover, the arms race is already on and that is also concerning. It means building bigger and better weapons systems and more of them. The world is awash with arms already since the arms business is so profitable and an integral aspect of several large economies — US, British, French, Russian, and now Chinese.

So we are looking at global proliferation that makes the future uncertain, on one hand, and also pretty certain on the other. Almost certainly some of those weapons will be used, but when, where and how is uncertain at this point, if history is any guide.

OK, I realize that anti-war or pacifist activity is seldom effective at preventing conflict. But I happen to think, first, that reasonable people need to point out the danger that is not yet come and might be avoided, and secondly, that moral people have a duty to do what they can in such circumstances.

I was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam war, after I got out of the service. I am prouder of that than my service, which I came to realize was based on lies for which many died or permanently scarred.

I realize, too, it wasn't the anti-war movement that brought Agnew and then Nixon down. They did that all by themselves with no help from us. Ironically, it turned out that Nixon was a crook after all.

Tom Hickey said...

<"Japanese militarism is rising again also." Which is a direct result of Chinese expansionism, which is both an Imperial undertaking and a Nationalist ploy to distract 'the folks at home' from how much of a toxic shithole China has become."

I wouldn't put it that way. More likely that Japanese leaders realize that now that China is getting strong Japan is going to come in for an ass-whupping in return for WWII. Moreover, Japanese leaders are egging China on by visiting the war shrine and laying wreaths for war criminals.

Anyone that thinks WWII is over is not paying attention.

MRW said...

Well, "yop taviya maat," right back at ya', Nebris. And yes, I know what it means, mommy. ;-) Although I usually pronounce it "yip."

MRW said...

@Nebris,

"but does not give Putin a pass. He's KGB to the bone and those guys are evil bastards."

Jesus, that was a quarter of a century ago. Everyone was different then, but you claim only the KGB guys are the same today, unchangeable, and evil.

He spent his KGB years in Germany, not Russia.

Putin is one thing now: the protector of Mother Russia. And to a Russian, Mother Russia supersedes oblast, village, religion, family name, all loyalties.

I do not doubt that if threatened, Putin would put the world on fire to save Mother Russia. And the fucking idiots advising Obama think they can challenge this resolve, poke at it. As if only American interests matter on the world theater, as if only we care about living peacefully with our children and grandchildren.

We are arrogant, and we are a destructive nation. An we need to face ourselves in the mirror.

MRW said...

@Tom,

BTW. "CIA overthrew the elected leader and installed he repressive shah and then backed Saddam in his subsequent was with Iran in which he used chemical weapons."

Saddam didn't use chemical weapons on northern Iraq against the Iranians. We did. I have a a video on an old drive of the US military officer admitting it to his class in a (I think) NY State university.

We, the US, supplied and used the chemical weapons. I think the US military guy's first name was Patrick, but don't hold me to it.

The video I have somewhere is of the guy who was tasked with releasing those chemical weapons and he says so to students in his class.

MRW said...

BTW, Nebris. Putin met Angela Merkel in East Germany when she was with Staasi and he was with the KGB. That's where their friendship started.

Now Merkel is the head of Germany. Why don't you apply the same assessment to her as you do with Putin?

Nebris said...

I believe I have said here that the Germans are using Euros like Panzers. That Merkel is ex-Staasi would help explain that.

"Jesus, that was a quarter of a century ago." Would you say the same about former Gestapo officers?