Understanding Putin’s Role in a World of Dwindling Sovereignty

On September 11th, many New York Times readers were no doubt more than a bit surprised to read an Op-Ed piece by Russian President, Vladimir Putin where he makes a direct appeal to the American people to uphold the principles of international law vis-à-vis the UN Security Council and the ongoing conflict in Syria.

While the article was well-written, its effectiveness in terms of convincing the American public will remain limited as long as the majority of Americans fail to understand the lessons of the last hundred years of Russian history and the way that Vladimir Putin himself has been able to alter the course of Russian history in an indisputably positive way, particularly when it comes to the re-establishment of sovereignty of that nation after nearly a hundred years of oppression, including the so-called Perestroika years of the 1990s.

Therefore, in light of the immediacy of the Syria crisis, Putin may not be his own best advocate when it comes to helping Americans understand the historical factors for why he and not President Obama can claim the moral high ground when it comes to questions of international law and the cooperation of nations, with the emphasis on the importance of preserving sovereignty in each nation, so that international relations can function in a more cooperative way.

Ironically, it seems easier to understand Putin when examining the work of his critics, of which there are many, than through his own words.

On August 14th, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his Op-Ed piece entitled “Putin, Obama and Snowden” provides the perfect foil as he attempts to put his own brand of Globalist spin on Putin-bashing in the wake of the Snowden asylum affair and the crisis in Syria.

While you don’t have to be a scholar of 20th Century Russian history to realize the writer’s claims about Vladimir Putin and today’s Russia are absurd and wrong, it’s the anti-sovereignty subtext of Friedman’s article which should be taken more seriously. The Snowden story is an obvious red herring and not even worth discussing here.

A couple of key quotes from Friedman’s column sum up the author’s position on Putin and Russia:

Putin’s insistence on blocking any diplomacy on Syria that might move out “his guy,” President Bashar al-Assad, his abuse of Russian gays and lesbians, and his blatant use of rule-by-law tactics to silence any critics mean that we’re not getting anything from this relationship anymore, nor are many Russians.

But rather than punch Putin in the face, which would elevate him with his followers, it would be much better to hit him where it would really hurt by publicly challenging the notion that he is making Russia strong.

So is Putin making Russia “strong” or not? To answer that question, a little historical perspective goes a long way.

Not only did an estimated 60 million Russians lose their lives throughout the 20th Century, the entire nation was traumatized, terrorized and turned completely upside down and inside out for nearly a hundred years as follows:

World War I, The Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War, Lenin’s Collectivization, The Gulag System, Stalin’s massive expansion of Lenin’s murderous policies throughout the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, Cold War isolation and total surveillance state, the Western-sponsored, Oligarch-led raping, pillaging and looting of anything not nailed down that occurred during the Yeltsin years of the 1990s.

That and more provides the historical back-story to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and the Phoenix-like transformation from mortally wounded country to a modern nation of principles and relative prosperity.

So in answer to Friedman’s question: is Putin “making Russia strong?” Absolutely! No wonder Putin enjoys an overwhelming majority of domestic support. The contrast between today and the prior 100 years of catastrophe is beyond measure.

Foreign Policy regarding Syria? Who has sought diplomacy and out of the box thinking more? Obama with his call for bombing based on a false flag chemical weapons attack, or a Putin-sponsored initiative, agreed to by Syria, to turn over its chemical weapons to the international community?

True, Syria is a long-time Russian ally, and Russia has a naval base in Syria, and therefore from a military strategic perspective has been able to count on Russia’s support, but the deeper reason for Putin’s ongoing veto of increased American and international support for military strikes on Syria has to do with respecting Syria’s sovereignty and right to self-determination. What applies to one country applies to all, no matter how weak, strong or influential any particular nation may be.

What about Gay Rights? Just as the issues of “Women’s Rights,” “Abortion” and “Gay Rights” have served to divide citizens of the United States, all the talk about Putin’s Russia being anti-gay is little more than a distracting, globalist sponsored political wedge issue designed to sow social discontent and undermine the family. Like Snowden, it’s a media-created red herring intended to distract from the fact that Putin has recreated a nation that is no longer subservient to foreign interests. Gay people are as free in Russia to be who they are as they are in other modern nations, but what Putin refuses to allow is the politicization of “Gay Rights” to undermine Russian tradition and culture that binds the nation together.

If Mr. Friedman were Russian instead of American, he would see that Vladimir Putin is, justifiably, a hero to his people, and if his story were more widely distributed, he would be similarly admired in the West for his stand on the value of national sovereignty over a Globalist New World Order which is not based on the rule of law, but instead operates on a “might makes right” basis.

To reclaim what had been lost during the Yeltsin years, but which in reality had already been long gone during the catastrophe of over seventy years of Soviet insanity, Putin, with the backing of relationships forged over the course of decades in the KGB as well as in St. Petersburg politics during Perestroika, has, unlike anyone else before him in Russian history, been able to leverage all his experience and relationships to gain the backing of the intelligence agencies, military and political infrastructure in order to take back, piece-by-piece from the Globalist-sponsored Oligarchs, the foundational cornerstone sectors of a sovereign Russian state: Energy, Media and Central Banking.

Nothing personal against Obama, but his accomplishments so far as U.S. president have been minimal to non-existent. Comparatively, the U.S. president is a joke, but the country and its once-cherished sovereign principles are no laughing matter. As two of the world’s three most powerful nations, bilateral relations between Russia and the United States are critical to the reestablishment of international relations based on the sovereignty of each nation state rather than a privately run, borderless world defined by the unimpeded flow of capital and appropriation of resources.

With great power comes great responsibility, and one does hope that Mr. Putin can find a way to transition into a more democratic model in the future than the present “managed democracy” of today’s Russia, but when the patient is dying, you do everything in your power to save that life, and in no uncertain terms, Russian sovereignty had been on life support for nearly a century. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Consider this “managed democracy” as a necessary first-step in protecting hard-fought sovereign gains from those who have constantly sought to undermine Russia’s independence. Putin is too wise to Globalist tactics to allow destabilizing NGOs and their Color Revolutions to take root in Russian soil, even if that policy does lend itself to accusations of xenophobia. So be it.

In classic “world is flat” style, Thomas Friedman furnishes a couple of fancy new acronyms for his readers to consider: H.I.E.’s (high imagination-enabling countries) and L.I.E.’s (low imagination-enabling countries) as he attempts to unfavorably compare the cultural and economic climate in today’s “low imagination” Russia to that of the more imaginatively advanced United States:

No creative person has any future in Putin’s Russia because he doesn’t understand the present: There are no ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries anymore. There are only H.I.E.’s (high imagination-enabling countries) and L.I.E.’s (low imagination-enabling countries). That is, countries that nurture innovation and innovators and those that don’t — in a world where so many more people can turn ideas into products, services, companies and jobs faster and cheaper than ever. Putin is building a political monoculture that will make Russia the lowest of low imagination-enabling countries.

Is the U.S. lobby-controlled democracy with its Executive Orders any more free than Putin’s “managed democracy?” It really isn’t, and in fact it’s probably a good deal more managed when you factor in the lack of sovereignty that comes with having a privately run Federal Reserve, the largest national debt in the world, a national media in the hands of a few media moguls, over-dependence on foreign oil, and some of the lowest education standards among first world nations. How does that environment nurture creativity? It certainly does not, and anyone living in 21st Century United States can attest to that.

It’s not Putin but Friedman and his fellow Globalist cheerleaders who are guilty of building a monoculture by failing to recognize the value of national sovereignty in a world where it is under constant attack by the corrupting, demoralizing influence of international finance and dumbed-down global mainstream media in their quest for a “flatter” borderless world.

While Putin recognizes that Russia needs to be more competitive in light industry and the manufacturing of consumer products with global brand appeal, even China, with it’s universally recognized economic emergence realizes that it too has a long way to go in creating internationally recognized brands. Russia should be given a similar chance to develop its brands and a domestic policy that nurtures those traits, but that takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Since 2000, when Putin became President, he’s helped Russia regain its footing in every key area of political, economic, spiritual, cultural and military life. In comparison, the first thirteen years of the 21st Century have been an unmitigated disaster for the United States: 9/11, recession, spiraling debt, multiple wars, cultural and educational decline; all contributing to a marked loss of national sovereignty.

And according to Thomas Friedman:

Any system that does that for long, dies.

Of course Friedman is really describing Russia with that quote, but ironically, it’s a far more accurate description of a teetering American system than a resurgent Russia.

The leader of any country can only do so much. A majority of Russians support Putin and his policies because they’re based on common sense and support not less but more national sovereignty.

If and when Americans are capable of rediscovering, as the Russians have done after unimaginable suffering, the real and actual sources of freedom and creativity that stem from a truly sovereign system based on a sane, credit-based financial system and not one controlled by private bankers, which throughout America’s relatively brief history has been and continues to be the defining struggle of its national existence, but one which has sadly been largely glossed over and obscured in its history books, the United States may then be fortunate enough to have a Putin of its own emerge to help lead the nation and its people out of the world government desert and back to the greatness of the sovereign principles that the country was founded upon, and which made it “exceptional” and the envy of the world.

By better understanding Putin, Americans stand a greater chance of avoiding the kinds of calamities that bedeviled Russia for the better part of a Century.

Committed to raising the curtain on illusion in order to reveal the beauty of unadorned truth wherever he can find it and communicating it to whoever dares to listen, with an appetite for ceaseless exploration, Balzac invites readers to join him on a fun-filled journey of investigation into the strange and wondrous worlds of art, history, philosophy, psychology, politics and the law.