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by smiths » Mon Feb 24, 2014 5:14 am
by justdrew » Mon Feb 24, 2014 5:34 am
by FourthBase » Mon Feb 24, 2014 8:53 am
AlicetheKurious » 24 Feb 2014 01:37 wrote:FourthBase » Sun Feb 23, 2014 7:38 pm wrote:If this were the beginning of a Eurasian Spring, would that necessarily be a terrible thing? If the CIA were to help Chinese dissidents launch a peaceful takeover of their own particular rigged economy and oppressive government (we all live in one), why should that necessarily be a terrible thing? Just because it would be a move rightward (from as left a starting point as it gets!) according to some silly left-right false bifurcation? There is free, and there is not-free. Fuck all non-freedom.
I can't decide if this is an example of dangerous naivete and ignorance and a cold, cold heart, or something else. To help me decide (if you wish): 1) can you point to a single example of US political/military intervention during the past 50 years, which made life better for the targets of this intervention rather than horribly, catastrophically worse? And, 2) do you give a shit?
by FourthBase » Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:07 am
by FourthBase » Mon Feb 24, 2014 10:17 am
Nordic » 24 Feb 2014 03:39 wrote:Fourth Base, it's pretty clear the point of view of who wrote the article Justdrew posted, and you don't have to read between the lines. It's all right there on front of you. Maybe you should read it again.
Also, look at what it leaves out. No talk of the West's motives, no talk of the American's admission of the money spent to stir things up, no talk of the IMF!
Ridiculous.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:44 am
Arrest Warrant Issued for Ukraine's Yanukovych
Parliament voted to remove him from power Feb. 22, 2014
Ukraine has issued an arrest warrant for ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him and other officials of mass murder of protesters.
Acting interior minister Arsen Avakhov announced the warrant in a Facebook statement Monday.
"An official case for the mass murder of peaceful citizens has been opened,'' Avakov wrote on his Facebook profile. "Yanukovich and other people responsible for this have been declared wanted.'' He said Yanukovych was last seen in the pro-Russian Crimea region of Ukraine, but the ousted leader's exact whereabouts are not clear.
Russia, Yanukovych's main backer, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities, declaring that Russian citizens' lives were under threat there, and contacted NATO to express concern.
Ashton visit
Meanwhile, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Kiev to discuss measures to shore up the ailing economy, which the finance ministry said needs urgent financial assistance to avoid default.
The EU has contacted the United States, Japan, China, Canada and Turkey to coordinate aid for Ukraine, a senior European Commission official said. France's foreign minister said an international donors' conference was being discussed.
There is a deep split in the country between those who want Ukraine to favor relations with Europe and those who want closer ties with Russia. Ousted president Viktor Yanukovych backed out of a trade deal with the EU in November, setting off protests that led to him being kicked out of office.
Interim president
Olexander Turchynov
Named interim president after ouster of Viktor Yanukovych
Served as Yulia Tymoshenko's deputy prime minister from 2007-2010
Deputy leader of Tymoshenko's Fatherland Party
Unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Kyiv in 2008
First elected to parliament in 1998
A pastor at Kyiv's Baptist Church
Has written several novels
Parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov became Ukraine's interim president Sunday. He highlighted the demonstrations in Kyiv's Independence Square and stressed the plan to embrace the EU in an address Sunday night.
"Our priority is returning to the path of European integration where the fight for Maidan began. We have to return to a family of European countries and to understand the importance of relations with the Russian Federation and be ready to build relations on new and fair partnership of good neighborly relations," said Turchynov.
He has promised a new government by Tuesday, and lawmakers have called for new elections on May 25.
Also Monday, the acting finance minister Yuri Kolobov said Ukraine will need $35 billion in foreign aid to cover its bills during the next two years. He called for an international donor conference and appealed for urgent aid, saying some of the money needs to come within two weeks.
Jonathan Adelman, a Russian expert at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies, told VOA that it would be logical for the country to split, but that is not likely because both sides are convinced they can dominate the government.
"Those in eastern Ukraine are convinced that with the backing of Russia they can hold their position and dominate the whole country, which they did under Yanukovych. The people in west Ukraine, of course, were looking at the 2004 orange revolution because they were heavily influenced by the Poles and Lithuanians and by more western Europeans, and they're convinced that with Western help they can dominate it. So I think the probability of a split is very small; even though it would be very logical, very few people seem to want it," said Adelman.
Flowers are seen placed at a barricade in Kyiv's Independence Square, Feb. 24, 2014.
◀▶<▶>1/7⇱ Disable Captions
Russia
Russia, a strong backer of the ousted president, on Sunday recalled its ambassador to Kyiv for consultations on what it said is the "deteriorating situation in Ukraine." A Russian Foreign Ministry statement cited a need for "a comprehensive analysis" of developments in Kyiv.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow had grave doubts about the legitimacy of those now in power in Ukraine and their recognition by some states was an "aberration''.
"We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our interests and to the lives of our citizens,'' Medvedev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
Russia cited a duty to protect the lives of its citizens in 2008 as one justification for military intervention in Georgia, another former Soviet republic, in support of Kremlin-backed separatists in South Ossetia.
The United States and Britain have warned Russia not to send forces into Ukraine. U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice said Russian military intervention would be a "grave mistake."
Opposition party leader Vitali Klitschko said Sunday the ousted leader should take full responsibility for the chaos in Kyiv that has resulted in the deaths of about 100 anti-government protesters in the past two weeks.
Yanukovych's party issued a statement blaming him for the surge of deadly violence that wracked the capital in recent weeks.
Ukrainian protesters took control of Yanukovych's offices in Kyiv on Saturday. Others let themselves onto the grounds of the president's lavish but secret estate outside Kyiv, which includes a private zoo, and toured his house. Some say they are stunned that one person could have so much while others in Ukraine have nothing.
by semper occultus » Mon Feb 24, 2014 2:04 pm
A withering portrait of Ukraine's 'saviour' by EDWARD LUCAS, a Russia expert who knows her well
Like many in the former Soviet Union, she believes in horoscopes and psychics.
According to Dmitry Vydrin, formerly a close adviser, she thinks she is the reincarnation of Eva Peron, the late Argentine leader immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita.
by conniption » Mon Feb 24, 2014 5:58 pm
counterpunch
February 24, 2014
...and Europe’s Cure
Ukraine’s Sickness
by ERIC DRAITSER
The situation in Ukraine is evolving by the hour. Right wing ultranationalists and their “liberal” collaborators have taken control of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and deposed the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, President Yanukovich.
Former Prime Minister, and convicted criminal, Yulia Tymoshenko has been freed, and is now making common cause with Right Sector, Svoboda, and the other fascist elements, while the opposition’s nominal leaders such as Arseny Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko begin to fade into the background.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly watches with anxiousness. In Washington, Victoria Nuland and the Obama administration rejoice. However, perhaps the most critical development of all is soon to emerge in Europe, as the forces of Western finance capital prepare to welcome Ukraine into the fold. They will come bearing the usual neoliberal gifts: austerity and “economic liberalization.”
With the overthrow of the Yanukovich government, the $15 billion of promised Russian financial assistance to Ukraine is in doubt. According to Moody’s rating agency, “Ukraine will require $24 billion to cover a budget deficit, debt repayments, natural gas bills and pension support just in 2014.” Without Moscow’s continued bond purchasing and other forms of financial aid, and with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe with all the usual austerity conditions attached.
In exchange for European “aid”, Ukraine will be forced to accept the driving down of wages, significant cuts to the public sector and social services, in addition to a rise in taxes on the working class and slashing of pensions. Moreover, the country will be compelled to accede to a liberalization program that will allow Europe to dump goods into the Ukrainian market, deregulation and the further opening up the country’s financial sector to predatory speculation and privatization.
It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict these developments. One merely has to look at the wave of austerity in European countries such as Greece and Cyprus. Furthermore, Eastern European countries with similar economic and historical conditions to Ukraine – Latvia and Slovenia specifically – provide a roadmap for what Ukraine should expect.
The Model of “Success”
As Ukraine’s pro-EU “leadership” under Tymoshenko & Co. (and the fascist Right) begins to eye the future, they will immediately look to Europe to address the most pressing economic concerns. The Ukrainian people however would do well to examine the precedent of Latvia to understand what lies in store for them. As renowned economists Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers wrote in 2012:
What enabled Latvia to survive the crisis were EU and IMF bailouts…Elites aside, many emigrated…Demographers estimate that 200,000 have departed the past decade – roughly 10 per cent of the population…Latvia experienced the full effects of austerity and neoliberalism. Birth rates fell during the crisis – as is the case almost everywhere austerity programs are imposed. It continues having among Europe’s highest rates of suicide and of road deaths caused by drunk driving. Violent crime is high, arguably, because of prolonged unemployment and police budget cuts. Moreover, a soaring brain drain moves in tandem with blue-collar emigration.
The myth of prosperity to follow EU integration and bailouts is just that, a myth. The reality is pain and suffering on a scale far greater than the poverty and unemployment Ukraine, especially the western portion of the country, have already experienced. The most highly educated, those most equipped to take up the mantle of leadership, will flee en masse. Those leaders who remain will do so while lining their pockets and ingratiating themselves to the European and American financiers who will flock to Ukraine like vultures to carrion. In short, the corruption and mismanagement of the Yanukovich government will seem like a pleasant memory.
The “liberalization” that Europe demands will create massive profits for speculators, but very few jobs for working people. The best land will be sold to foreign corporations and land-grabbers, while the resources, including the highly regarded agricultural sector, will be stripped and sold on the world market, leaving farmers and city dwellers alike in grinding poverty, their children going to bed hungry. This will be the “success” of Ukraine. One shudders to think what failure would look like.
In Slovenia, another Eastern European country that has experienced the “success” Europe strives for, the economic dictates of Brussels have ravaged the country’s working people and its institutions. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a 2013 report in which it recommended that, as a first step, Slovenia act to “help the banking sector stand on its feet again,” adding that, “additional and radical measures are necessary as soon as possible.”
Furthermore, the OECD recommended the full privatization of Slovenia’s banks and other major firms, despite predicting a more than 2% contraction of the economy. In laymen’s terms, Europe recommends that Slovenia sacrifice itself and its people to the forces of international finance capital, nothing less. Such is the cost of European “integration.”
Ukraine is undergoing a transformation of the worst kind. Its political institutions have been trampled upon by a motley collection of delusional liberals, slick politicians in fancy suits, and Nazi extremists. The social fabric is tearing apart at the seams, with each region searching for a local solution to the problems of what used to be their nation. And, in the midst of it all, the specter of profit-seeking financiers with dollar signs in their eyes is all the Ukrainian people can expect.
Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.
by Nordic » Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:43 am
FourthBase » Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:17 am wrote:Nordic » 24 Feb 2014 03:39 wrote:Fourth Base, it's pretty clear the point of view of who wrote the article Justdrew posted, and you don't have to read between the lines. It's all right there on front of you. Maybe you should read it again.
Also, look at what it leaves out. No talk of the West's motives, no talk of the American's admission of the money spent to stir things up, no talk of the IMF!
Ridiculous.
If it's so clear, then someone surely won't mind explaining it all to me.
Maybe you should do that. Show me what's untrue in the article itself.
American motives and involvement are not necessarily dealbreakers for me.
I'm not sure why they should be to anyone.
If the result is Ukrainian self-determination, I don't care who else wanted it or helped.
The same reason I find American interference abhorrent re: other nations.
Chile, for example. I don't really care if Allende was abetted by or in league with a ghastly totalitarian regime (the USSR) because it was a people exercising power over their own lives, more of it anyway, and what the demons at CIA, Inc. helped bring about was, as Alice put it, a catastrophe. If it had been America behind Allende and the USSR behind the coup, I wouldn't feel any less disgusted by that coup and the subsequent nightmare.
So, again, how is a geopolitical philosophy described as Eurasian by that writer not a potential global nightmare? OR...explain to me exactly how the writer is wrong. I have no fucking clue who the writer is, or what publication that was from. All I care about is facts.
by FourthBase » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:12 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:20 am
Neocons and the Ukraine Coup
February 23, 2014
Exclusive: American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change” on Russia’s western border. But the coup – and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront – also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has failed to take full control over his foreign policy, allowing a bureaucracy shaped by long years of Republican control and spurred on by a neocon-dominated U.S. news media to frustrate many of his efforts to redirect America’s approach to the world in a more peaceful direction.
But Obama deserves a big dose of the blame for this predicament because he did little to neutralize the government holdovers and indeed played into their hands with his initial appointments to head the State and Defense departments, Hillary Clinton, a neocon-leaning Democrat, and Robert Gates, a Republican cold warrior, respectively.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Even now, key U.S. diplomats are more attuned to hard-line positions than to promoting peace. The latest example is Ukraine where U.S. diplomats, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, are celebrating the overthrow of an elected pro-Russian government.
Occurring during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the coup in Ukraine dealt an embarrassing black eye to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had offended neocon sensibilities by quietly cooperating with Obama to reduce tensions over Iran and Syria, where the neocons favored military options.
Over the past several weeks, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was undercut by a destabilization campaign encouraged by Nuland and Pyatt and then deposed in a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias. Even after Yanukovych and the political opposition agreed to an orderly transition toward early elections, right-wing armed patrols shattered the agreement and took strategic positions around Kiev.
Despite these ominous signs, Ambassador Pyatt hailed the coup as “a day for the history books.” Most of the mainstream U.S. news media also sided with the coup, with commentators praising the overthrow of an elected government as “reform.” But a few dissonant reports have pierced the happy talk by noting that the armed militias are part of the Pravy Sektor, a right-wing nationalist group which is often compared to the Nazis.
Thus, the Ukrainian coup could become the latest neocon-initiated “regime change” that ousted a target government but failed to take into account who would fill the void.
Some of these same American neocons pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, not realizing that removing Saddam Hussein would touch off a sectarian conflict and lead to a pro-Iranian Shiite regime. Similarly, U.S. military intervention in Libya in 2011 eliminated Muammar Gaddafi but also empowered Islamic extremists who later murdered the U.S. ambassador and spread unrest beyond Libya’s borders to nearby Mali.
One might trace this neocons’ blindness to consequences back to Afghanistan in the 1980s when the Reagan administration supported Islamic militants, including Osama bin Laden, in a war against Soviet troops, only to have Muslim extremists take control of Afghanistan and provide a base for al-Qaeda to plot the 9/11 attacks against the United States.
Regarding Ukraine, today’s State Department bureaucracy seems to be continuing the same anti-Moscow geopolitical strategy set during those Reagan-Bush years.
Robert Gates described the approach in his new memoir, Duty, explaining the view of President George H.W. Bush’s Defense Secretary Dick Cheney: “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.”
Vice President Cheney and the neocons pursued a similar strategy during George W. Bush’s presidency, expanding NATO aggressively to the east and backing anti-Russian regimes in the region including the hard-line Georgian government, which provoked a military confrontation with Moscow in 2008, ironically, during the Summer Olympics in China.
Obama’s Strategy
As President, Obama has sought a more cooperative relationship with Russia’s Putin and, generally, a less belligerent approach toward adversarial countries. Obama has been supported by an inner circle at the White House with analytical assistance from some elements of the U.S. intelligence community.
But the neocon momentum at the State Department and from other parts of the U.S. government has continued in the direction set by George W. Bush’s neocon administration and by neocon-lite Democrats who surrounded Secretary of State Clinton during Obama’s first term.
The two competing currents of geopolitical thinking – a less combative one from the White House and a more aggressive one from the foreign policy bureaucracy – have often worked at cross-purposes. But Obama, with only a few exceptions, has been unwilling to confront the hardliners or even fully articulate his foreign policy vision publicly.
For instance, Obama succumbed to the insistence of Gates, Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, though the President reportedly felt trapped into the decision which he soon regretted. In 2010, Obama backed away from a Brazilian-Turkish-brokered deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program after Clinton denounced the arrangement and pushed for economic sanctions and confrontation as favored by the neocons and Israel.
Just last summer, Obama – only at the last second – reversed a course charted by the State Department favoring a military intervention in Syria over disputed U.S. claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians. Putin helped arrange a way out for Obama by getting the Syrian government to agree to surrender its chemical weapons. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Showdown for War or Peace.”]
Stirring Up Trouble
Now, you have Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, acting as a leading instigator in the Ukrainian unrest, explicitly seeking to pry the country out of the Russian orbit. Last December, she reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve “its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion.” She said the U.S. goal was to take “Ukraine into the future that it deserves.”
The Kagan family includes other important neocons, such as Frederick Kagan, who was a principal architect of the Iraq and Afghan “surge” strategies. In Duty, Gates writes that “an important way station in my ‘pilgrim’s progress’ from skepticism to support of more troops [in Afghanistan] was an essay by the historian Fred Kagan, who sent me a prepublication draft.
“I knew and respected Kagan. He had been a prominent proponent of the surge in Iraq, and we had talked from time to time about both wars, including one long evening conversation on the veranda of one of Saddam’s palaces in Baghdad.”
Now, another member of the Kagan family, albeit an in-law, has been orchestrating the escalation of tensions in Ukraine with an eye toward one more “regime change.”
As for Nuland’s sidekick, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Pyatt previously served as a U.S. diplomat in Vienna involved in bringing the International Atomic Energy Agency into a line with U.S. and Israeli hostility toward Iran. A July 9, 2009, cable from Pyatt, which was released by Pvt. Bradley Manning, revealed Pyatt to be the middleman who coordinated strategy with the U.S.-installed IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano.
Pyatt reported that Amano offered to cooperate with the U.S. and Israel on Iran, including having private meetings with Israeli officials, supporting U.S. sanctions, and agreeing to IAEA personnel changes favored by the United States. According to the cable, Pyatt promised strong U.S. backing for Amano and Amano asked for more U.S. money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “America’s Debt to Bradley Manning.”]
It was Ambassador Pyatt who was on the other end of Nuland’s infamous Jan. 28 phone call in which she discussed how to manipulate Ukraine’s tensions and who to elevate into the country’s leadership. According to the conversation, which was intercepted and made public, Nuland ruled out one opposition figure, Vitali Klitschko, a popular former boxer, because he lacked experience.
Nuland also favored the UN as mediator over the European Union, at which point in the conversation she exclaimed, “Fuck the E.U.” to which Pyatt responded, “Oh, exactly …”
Ultimately, the Ukrainian unrest – over a policy debate whether Ukraine should move toward entering the European Union – led to a violent showdown in which neo-fascist storm troopers battled police, leaving scores dead. To ease the crisis, President Yanukovych agreed to a power-sharing government and to accelerated elections. But no sooner was that agreement signed then the hard-right faction threw it out and pressed for power in an apparent coup.
Again, the American neocons had performed the role of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, unleashing forces and creating chaos that soon was spinning out of control. But this latest “regime change,” which humiliated President Putin, could also do long-term damage to U.S.-Russian cooperation vital to resolving other crises, with Iran and Syria, two more countries where the neocons are also eager for confrontation.
by Nordic » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:50 am
FourthBase » Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:12 am wrote:Here's the thing, phony, put the fuck up or shut the fuck up. It's super-simple.
Either you know what I'm getting wrong and can explain it, or you know nothing.
by 82_28 » Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:24 am
by FourthBase » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:33 am
Nordic » 25 Feb 2014 00:50 wrote:FourthBase » Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:12 am wrote:Here's the thing, phony, put the fuck up or shut the fuck up. It's super-simple.
Either you know what I'm getting wrong and can explain it, or you know nothing.
Figure it out yourself you fucking blowhard. READ. Or is that too much work when you'd rather be bloviating about your ignorant half-baked opinions nobody cares about. And don't fuck with me.
by FourthBase » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:54 am
The protesters represent every group of Ukrainian citizens: Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers (although most Ukrainians are bilingual), people from the cities and the countryside, people from all regions of the country, members of all political parties, the young and the old, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Every major Christian denomination is represented by believers and most of them by clergy. The Crimean Tatars march in impressive numbers, and Jewish leaders have made a point of supporting the movement. The diversity of the Maidan is impressive: the group that monitors hospitals so that the regime cannot kidnap the wounded is run by young feminists. An important hotline that protesters call when they need help is staffed by LGBT activists.
The course of the protest has very much been influenced by the presence of a rival project, based in Moscow, called the Eurasian Union. This is an international commercial and political union that does not yet exist but that is to come into being in January 2015. The Eurasian Union, unlike the European Union, is not based on the principles of the equality and democracy of member states, the rule of law, or human rights.
On the contrary, it is a hierarchical organization, which by its nature seems unlikely to admit any members that are democracies with the rule of law and human rights. Any democracy within the Eurasian Union would pose a threat to Putin’s rule in Russia. Putin wants Ukraine in his Eurasian Union, which means that Ukraine must be authoritarian, which means that the Maidan must be crushed.
The dictatorship laws of January 16 were obviously based on Russian models, and were proposed by Ukrainian legislators with close ties to Moscow. They seem to have been Russia’s condition for financial support of the Yanukovych regime. Before they were announced, Putin offered Ukraine a large loan and promised reductions in the price of Russian natural gas. But in January the result was not a capitulation to Russia. The people of the Maidan defended themselves, and the protests continue. Where this will lead is anyone’s guess; only the Kremlin expresses certainty about what it all means.
The protests in the Maidan, we are told again and again by Russian propaganda and by the Kremlin’s friends in Ukraine, mean the return of National Socialism to Europe. The Russian foreign minister, in Munich, lectured the Germans about their support of people who salute Hitler. The Russian media continually make the claim that the Ukrainians who protest are Nazis. Naturally, it is important to be attentive to the far right in Ukrainian politics and history. It is still a serious presence today, although less important than the far right in France, Austria, or the Netherlands. Yet it is the Ukrainian regime rather than its opponents that resorts to anti-Semitism, instructing its riot police that the opposition is led by Jews. In other words, the Ukrainian government is telling itself that its opponents are Jews and us that its opponents are Nazis.
The strange thing about the claim from Moscow is the political ideology of those who make it. The Eurasian Union is the enemy of the European Union, not just in strategy but in ideology. The European Union is based on a historical lesson: that the wars of the twentieth century were based on false and dangerous ideas, National Socialism and Stalinism, which must be rejected and indeed overcome in a system guaranteeing free markets, free movement of people, and the welfare state. Eurasianism, by contrast, is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy.
The Eurasian ideology draws an entirely different lesson from the twentieth century. Founded around 2001 by the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, it proposes the realization of National Bolshevism. Rather than rejecting totalitarian ideologies, Eurasianism calls upon politicians of the twenty-first century to draw what is useful from both fascism and Stalinism. Dugin’s major work, The Foundations of Geopolitics, published in 1997, follows closely the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi political theorist. Eurasianism is not only the ideological source of the Eurasian Union, it is also the creed of a number of people in the Putin administration, and the moving force of a rather active far-right Russian youth movement. For years Dugin has openly supported the division and colonization of Ukraine.
The point man for Eurasian and Ukrainian policy in the Kremlin is Sergei Glazyev, an economist who like Dugin tends to combine radical nationalism with nostalgia for Bolshevism. He was a member of the Communist Party and a Communist deputy in the Russian parliament before cofounding a far-right party called Rodina, or Motherland. In 2005 some of its deputies signed a petition to the Russian prosecutor general asking that all Jewish organizations be banned from Russia.
Later that year Motherland was banned from taking part in further elections after complaints that its advertisements incited racial hatred. The most notorious showed dark-skinned people eating watermelon and throwing the rinds to the ground, then called for Russians to clean up their cities. Glazyev’s book Genocide: Russia and the New World Order claims that the sinister forces of the “new world order” conspired against Russia in the 1990s to bring about economic policies that amounted to “genocide.” This book was published in English by Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine Executive Intelligence Review with a preface by LaRouche. Today Executive Intelligence Review echoes Kremlin propaganda, spreading the word in English that Ukrainian protesters have carried out a Nazi coup and started a civil war.
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