Despite the mistaken view that this blog is somehow "pro-Putin" and "pro-Russian" ( though, yes, it stands up for ordinary Russians crushed and omitted from much Western writing on why Putin was able to build an authoritarian state ), it is being delayed by my work for Cracovia Urbs Europaea.
Many of the views expressed here will differ radically from that of Krakow's conservation movements as anti-Russian sentiment and nationalism is not always clearly distinguishable from admirable traits of patriotism, though most of the Poles I work with are patriots with a belief the Krakow Rada Mieijska is selling out the city to global corporations from elsewhere.
This sunny afternoon in Krakow I am buying the 2009 edition of Edward Lucas' dismal anti-Russian tract which Norman Davies made the mistake of supporting with a foreword. Naturally, it's slightly pradoxical I want Davies as UNESCO Professor of History at Jagiellonian University to support the conservation movement.
Hence my work to meticulously create a dossier on the actions of the Rad Meijska since 2006 as Davies rquested in reaction to my plea for his support. But the conservation movement is "anti-political" as it requires really that the Rada in Krakow sticks by its duties to protect Krakow's historical buildings from blighting by ads, tacky neon logos and so on.
No person who did not care for Poland or Krakow would do this. This blog is not anti-Polish nor pro-Russian and criticises atavistic nationalists in both countries spoling for ramping up conflicts and using history for current propaganda reasons. One reason that it is stunning that Davies cannot see that Edward Lucas does precisely that in The New Cold War.
The New Cold War is a fiction concocted by reckless pro-NATO expansionists for reasons Davies tends to overlook-the return of the Great Game in which all the players from the USA to Russia and China and the EU are vying cynically for pipiline control and control of oil and gas as a political lever.
Davies is a great historian but he tends to overlook that in the Great Game for oil and gas ( he writes a devastating criticism of the folly of the Iraq War in East and West by the way ) streches back to Brzezinski's plan to exploit Islamist to destabilise the Soviet Union and simultaneously open up the natural resources of the "stans" to Western control.
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So, is the New Cold War worth reading? If you read while being aware of the bias are there any good parts? If not, what is an alternative summary?
ReplyDeletecheers
scott
Well, I often have to buy books I don't like but as a summary of a viscerally Russophobic worldview dressed up as liberal idealism it is a polemic of force.
ReplyDeleteBut it's full of what Davies claims it is not-mere rhetoric, sleights of hand and a rejection of any parallels being drawn between US actions like Iraq which are "mistakes" and "blunders" whilst Chechnya is a hideous crime under Putin and a war Yeltsin, though well intentioned, blundered into because somehow neoliberal IMF reforms did not proceed quickly enough.
They were unsuited to Russia and led to so much misery that a new form of assertive Russian sovereignty under Putin emerged to curtail the power of pro-Western oligarchs.Lucas is interesting as a neoliberal ideologue who blithely ignores the impact of "shock therapy".
The real propaganda here being Yeltsin was good because he did the West's bidding. China did not and now has greater power and influence and respect.Russia is still regarded as a pain in Europe's rear because it has the oil and gas we need but hate the fact that as it diminishes worldwide we have to deal with Gazprom or pay pseudo-liberals and weird coalitions through BGO's to get rid of Putin and get neoliberal reforms back again. It won't happen,
That's why it's interesting. It will be of marginal intesrest in 15 years just as much as those banal and paranoid books predicting a Japanese takeover of the globe.
The whole text is littered with banal propaganda tropes of Putin being a potential "new Mussolini" whilst of course it is never entertained that the New Cold War is a messianic and dangerous concept that encourages atavistic nationalism in the Baltic States and Georgia.
As an alternative summary you're better off with Reddaway and Glinka's seminal Market Bolshevism: The Tragedy of Russia's Market Reforms.But if you can get a bargain bin copy of the New Cold War do so, as Lucas gets less royalties.
NGO's I mean !
ReplyDeletecheers!
ReplyDeletewill have a look at the alternative summary and the new cold war is being sold on amazon for 1p.
scott
Alas I had to but a copy for 42zl to get the revised edition.
ReplyDelete