The "New Cold War Fallacy" with Regards Russian Foreign Policy Part I.

Edward Lucas resorts to all manner of flawed and deeply illogical statements when he criticises Russian foreign policy for being neo-Soviet or on the offensive once more on the world stage. This is clear in Chapter 8 "Sabre Rattling or Selling Sabres?".

Nearly everything he writes about Russia , "still an intimidating military power"-could be as well applied to the USA which has actually violated international law in invading Iraq in 2003 using charming titles such as "shock and awe". Result 1.3 million dead.

Russia has inherited much state of the art military hardware-the Moskit ship launched supersonic missilles, the Shkval torpedo wis a weapon which could ( my italics ) endanger an American aircraft carrier and has increased its military procurement budget under Putin.

But even so that hardly bears out the sensationalistic idea that Russia is on the offensive as opposed to reacting to the hegemonic designs emanating from Washington and not Moscow. This is the problem that Lucas has in selling "The New Cold War".

The greatest spender and seller and developer of military hardware is by far the USA. Mentioning the Kremlin as a Menace to the West omits the simple perception that in the Middle East and Latin America, the USA is regarded as far more of a direct menace.

There is absolutely zero points to be had from complaining about Putin played host to the "fire eating" Hugo Chavez who made the statement in the summer of 2007 with regards Venezuela that he was leading a 'wordwide revolution' against 'American tyranny'.

Time and time again, the USA has tried to meddle in the internal affairs of the USA to funnel funds through the National Endowment for Democracy to oligarchs who want to roll back Chavez's use of Venezuela's oil wealth to provide schools and literacy campaigns.

Most of the time these strategic alliances are nothing to do with a New Cold War, and if Chavez indulged in corny rhetoric, calling George Bush II a "cowboy" and a "donkey", this is no less silly than Lucas saying he eats fire, as though he were a Dragon or calling Chavez a dictator.

By any definition Chavez has been repeatedly re-elected by Venezuelans through democratic elections regarded as free and fair: the Sumate opposition simply boycotted the polls very often simply to protest that they were rigged but, in reality, as they had no chance of victory.

Yet such alliances, where they involve Russian and Venezuelan joint naval maneouvres as in 2008 0r the sale of $3 billion dollars worth of Russian weapons ( 53 military helicopters and 24 Sukhoi fighter jets ) is a defensive measure against US Imperial pressure.

Now one of the most surprising aspects of radical American critic and dissenter Noam Chomsky's dissection of 'The American Empire Project' is that he seldom ever mentions the aims of the USA in Central Europe, though he pays much attention to Latin America and the Middle East.

Having ploughed through Edward Lucas' appalling propaganda tract The New Cold War it was refreshing to to find a writer who does not buy into the idea that "our" double standards are somehow superior to "their" double standards.

For obvious double standards are a boon to the very 'populists' like Chavez or Lukashenko who can use them in domestic propaganda to show how the USA is like an increasingly Fascist power, a rather extreme and silly statement when Chomsky compares the USA to the Third Reich.

The USA is not some version of the Third Reich: it's an increasingly megalomaniac hyperpower but there is none of the explicit talk nor an agenda to exterminate Iraqis or intentionally murder swathes of populations where the USA needs access to strategic raw materials.

However, the Drang Nach Osten is present in the Alexandrine schemes to gain hegemony over Eurasia and thus dominate the Heartland that MacKinder spoke of in the run up to World War One in Britain.

These geoploitical views of huge shifting power blocks and unstable frontiers and treacherous allies provided the basis for much of George Orwell's classic anti-totalitarian tract 1984, so Lucas has no right to use the anti-totalitarian trope to justify NATO expansionism.

Not least when Lucas resorts to reports of "rumours" about Russia supplying Iraq with weapons of mass destruction that were baseless as he never actually had them. Lucas also claims "rumours" about Russia helping Iran's nuclear programme.

Lucas provides no evidence for that. He is simply repeating Washington propaganda whilst at the same time trying to have it both ways by claiming that those who point to Iraq's "bloodsoaked and bungled aftermath" are switching the subject.

The fact is that they are not: it is uncritical apologists for US power that are doing that as well as fuelling the alliance of non alingned states in a way reflected equally in 'leftist' doublethink when Chomsky never deigns to mention Venezuela's support for Zimbabwe.

That is the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, lauded once as a Marxist-Leninist freedom fighter, and now a brutal, paranoid and murdering tyrant. Radicals like John Pilger, Tariq Ali and Chomsky remain deadly silent on the morality of Chavez's alliance with him.

Yet when it comes to international relations as set out in Imperial Ambitions ( 2005 ), Failed States ( 2006 ) and What We Say Goes ( 2007 ), Chomsky is superb on how the USA has consistently ramped up the arms race and tried to evade the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In What We Say Goes, Chomsky make is clear that Article 6 of the NPT makes it incumbent on all the Great Powers to show good faith negotiations to reduce them. Whilst none of the signatories has lived up to it, Chomsky correctly claims

'The USA has violated the agreement much more than others. It's in the lead in violating the NPT-especially this ( George Bush II ) administration, which has stated that it isn't subject to Article 6 and has developed new nuclear weapons systems".

The missile shield was also part of this strategy no less than the continuation of the Star Wars System, one which gives such Full Spectrum Dominance, that all other states like Russia feel obliged to start flexing their nuclear weapons muscle again.

The missile shield effectively does give the USA the hegemonic lead over states like Iran and if it had not been about targetting Russia, or at least pre-empting any Russian co-operation with both Iran and China, then it is difficult to see what the missile shield was about.

A defensive posture as afforded by the Missile Shield in Poland the Czech Republic can effectively be an offensive strategic manouevre. If it had not been about Russia, why were all the USA's erstwhile Atlanticists up in metaphorical arms about Obama's decision to scrap it.

Only it has not been scrapped but moved down towards the Black Sea in Romania, the idea always being first and foremost to contain and control Iran from the Black Sea , not least after it was empowered with the effective break up of the artificial Iraqi state after 2003.

The "rumours" of Iran developing nuclear weapons capability ignore the fact that though all proliferation is bad and should be opposed, the USA has taken the lead in ramping up the nuclear arms race and stated it will use nuclear weapons in a first strike scenario.

Set against the actual fact of the invasion of Iraq because it was weal and did not have nuclear weapons seems to give Iran all the more reason to develop them should even conclusive proof from the IAEA be found. Not least as the pressure to get 'regime change' is stepped up.

Iran, of course, should not be lauded as some bastion of anti-imperial resistance by left wing thinkers for whom anti-American poses are an automatic badge of virtue but it is far less repressive than Saudi Arabia, an erstwhile US and UK client with an atrocious rights record.

If "regime change" was really connected with human rights it would start there but overdependence of cheap and stable petroleum prevent that for a while: the invasion of Iraq was part of a diversification strategy and the fact sanctions had crippled oil well efficiency.

Both Israel and India, key allies in US geopolitical strategies stretching from the Middle East into Central Asia are allowed to have nuclear weapons outside the NPT whilst IRAn is not: yet developing them outside the restrictions placed on states by treaties is even worse.

Predictably, there is nothing by Lucas on that. Chomsky gets a lot of things badly wrong too but he recognises that "If you threaten people, they are going to create defences" ( p 148 WWSG ).

Interestingly back in 2000 there was a large fuss about the Chinese threat and Chinese Jets in US airspace which led to talk of A New Cold War-not with Russia but with China and it was the Rand Corporation that tried to moot the idea of the US Missile Shield after that.

For what the USA fears is Russian-Chinese-Iranian collusion to control the pipelines and resources, though this paranoid vision is insane as Russia is just as fearful in many ways of China as the USA is whilst the USA has continued to delegate economic power to China.

The Rand Corporation, according to Chomsky, themselves pointed out the following and outstandingly bloody obvious fact,that goes way above Lucas's waffle about Russia being on the offensive in foreign policy,

....other countries regard what we call a "missile defense" as a first strike weapon. A missile shield could never impede a first strike, but it could conceivably impede a retaliatory strike. So if you have a functioning missile defence system, and the adversary has no way around it, they're going to understand it as a first strike weapon.

So , of course, they're going to find ways of going to find ways around missile defence. And one of the ways to do it-and this was proved long ago-is to destroy the satellite missile system, which is a lot easier than shooting down missiles. ... The Chinese are pursuing this approach. The same is true with the uproar about the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, re-creating the Cold War by objecting to an anti-missile system in eastern Europe"

Lucas misses the point that the "Missile Shield" might not be aimed at Russia directly ( implying it could be aimed indirectly as part of a broader geostrategy ) and claims it "was aimed at Irans's missiles", despite the fact that Iran's missiles do not actually as yet exist.

To be fair to Lucas he admits that,

"The American administration has refused to discuss...arms control..seriously...it has rebuffed Kremlin proposals for a third Strategic Arms Treaty ( START 3 ) to replace START 1 which expires in 2009.

Correctly, Lucas points out that this is "unwise" and "dangerous" but he can only defend US actions on the illogical and flawed pretext the Kremlin's arguments on missile defence are much weaker as

'The Kremlin both complains that the new missile defence system threatens its security, while boasting that its missiles are so technologically advanced that it poses no threat"

That might be a contradiction, but it still does not get around the fact that Russia is simply reacting to prior US offensive strategies and trying rather desperately to "defend" itself here with mere rhetoric as opposed to the reality of what the USA is actually doing.

The fact that Obama pulled the plug on the Missile Shield was partly because he was not even sure it would work for as Lucas suggests "the technical difficulty is akin to hitting a bullet with a bullet" but the massive investment in the pork barrel project is continuing.

It really defies belief that the continuation of the Missile Shield is only about the USA's military-industrial complex and it of obvious concern to Russia to pre-empt any potential pre-emptive move by the USA to evade the restrictions of the NPT.

That Lucas refuses to admit that is that his mask of impartiality is fraudulent: he affects it ultimately to justify the imposition of US global power worldwide, something shown by the glaring omissions where the USA has diplomatically supported Central Asian dictatorships.

As well as ignoring the obvious fact that Russian posturing is often a sign of insecurity and weakness with the USA increasingly embarking on a hegemonic project that is no mere paranoid projection on the Kremlin's part of isolating and surrounding it with NATO states.

When Russia said it would target its nuclear weapons at Poland if the Missile Shield was constructed, they were reacting to the messianic rhetoric of New Cold War Warriors like Radek Sikorski that the shield would protect Poland. The question was against whom ?

For in 2008 it was hardly likely that Poland was really a target for Iran but politicians kept justifying it by defending it by lying that it was. And if it was not, then it was perceived by them as part of a defence measure against Russia.

For it is curious that as soon as Obama dropped the Missile Shield a whole host of fanatically pro-US Cold Warriors started moaning in an Open Letter that they had been let down and that the USA must re-affirm it's devotion to protecting Central Europe again Russia.

Such signatories included Alexander Kwasniewski, Lech Walesa, Adam Michik, Vaclav Havel, Maart Laar ( a great fan of Edward Lucas; The New Cold War ). The response of Zbigniew Brzezinski was to tell Central Europeans to 'stop whining' and 'grow up'.

The reason for that is that because Brzezinski, Obama's foreign policy brain, does not want Central Europeans to step out of line with Washington thinking-that of detaching Russia from China subtly by diplomacy in the Great Game for resources.

That last think Brzezinski wants is moralistic Central Europeans parroting the kind of neoconservative platitudes that led to the support for the Iraq War which messed up his strategy and emboldened Iran.

Also irritating is that ex-Solidarity elites like Lech Walesa and the former Czech dissident Vaclav Havel keep annoying Brzezinski by mentioning China's appalling crimes against Tibet and the destruction of its culture. Brzezinski wants to keep China an ally at the moment.

It is darkly ironic that the fulminating of those Central Europeans Lucas admires so much with regards the USA's abandonment of the Missille Shield in Poland also ensured that Russia could claim the Missile Shield was about them.

For there was no other reason why politicians like Adamkus and Laar in the Baltics and Sikorski in Poland would have been making such an issue about it. And such neoconservatives were out of favour after Obama became President in 2009.

That's where Lucas gets dreadfully confused. The New Cold War, by positing a king of "clash of civilisations thesis" between "the West" and Russia just ignores that divisions within the Western NATO and EU nations are not created by Russia but actually bt the USA.

That's what the division between "New Europe" and "Old Europe" made by Donald Rumsfeld was actually about-the idea that European nations were either for or against the USA and "New Europe" generally consisted of those like Poland who were uncriticial satellite powers.

European nations are hardly going to act as Warsaw Pact members in the former Soviet bloc were, with their varied political traditions and social and economic systems. Clearly, by New Europe, Rumsfeld ( and Lucas ) means those that have adopted US neoliberal models.

The staunchest New Cold Warrior in that respect has been Poland which implemented Leszek Balcerowicz's partially successful but ultimately flawed reforms, mooted in Washington, as well as demanding the accession of nations to the East such as Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia.

Ironically Stalin said, he who takes a nation imposes its own social system what the USA wants is, along with a craven and subservient Britain, to undermine the core of postwar Rhineland models of capitalism in Belgium, Germany and France, the "old core" of the EU.

So Lucas inverts the truth: it is not Russia dividing and ruling the EU but the USA for its own geopolitical plans to expand its sphere of influence further East into Central Asia and the ex-Soviet republics and the Balkans in order to protect the pipeline routes.

Coming Next.
-'The New Cold War Fallacy and Russian Foreign Policy Part 2.
-A Dissection of Lucas' New Cold War Chapter 7 'Pipeline Politics:The Threat and the Reality
-The Myth of Leon Trotsky and his Influence on Radical Neoconservatives and NATO expansionists.

Bibliography

Edward Lucas, The New Cold War ( 2009-Revised Edition )
Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions ( 2005 ),
Noam Chomsky, Failed States ( 2006 )
Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes ( 2007 ),