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Western Alliance nations have announced sweeping monetary sanctions against Russia in retaliation for that country's invasion of the Ukraine. They have frozen Russia's assets held in western banks and have cut Russian banks out of the "SWIFT" inter-bank messaging system. Essentially e-mail for banks, the system allows for the near instantaneous coordination of transactions from a bank card transaction at the supermarket to a government transferring billions of its assets. However, no tickee, no shirtee.
Unlike sanctions which target a specific person, entity or industry, targeting a country's currency is a form of collective punishment. “The move on the central bank is absolutely shocking in its sweeping wording,” said Adam Tooze, the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. As stated by John Maynard Keynes: “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”
With Keynes in mind, it can be seen that it is somewhat inaccurate to speak of "sanctions". A sanction is a measure or punishment aimed at inducing compliance. What is being attempted now is the destruction of the Russian state. EU president Ursula von der Leyen put it impeccably: “Putin embarked on a path aiming to destroy Ukraine, but what he is also doing, in fact, is destroying the future of his own country.”
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| Announcing the Destruction of Russia |
It is par for the course that people who impose sanctions get sanctimonious about it. An impeccable personage like von der Leyen literally cannot conceive of herself doing anything inappropriate much less ill-advised or wrong. She walks through the battlefield with a rose in her hand. Armoured with her self-certainties. She is much the perfect poster-girl for the neo-liberal world order.
We can accept, at least for the sake of argument, that Russia's invasion of the Ukraine was a violation of international law or at a minimum ill-advised. But nothing in that action entailed the destruction of Russia. Indeed, the rationale Putin has given was that he was protecting Russia from having NATO missiles being installed on its very border. The same protection that motivated JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The sanctions now being imposed are analogous to a medieval siege or to Allied carpet bombing during the World War. They go beyond even collective punishment. They entail collective destruction. It will be useful to think through the analogy.
Throughout the 20th century the United States and the United Kingdom (USUK) resorted to massive use of air power to win their wars. Militarily, air power was used to "soften up" (i.e. blast into oblivion) enemy positions before assaulting them. It was also used to destroy factories and specific instructure that enabled warfare.
Much more controversial was the use of destructive air power that was not targeted; that is, for the purpose of "area" or "carpet" bombing. The idea of indiscriminate bombing derived from the theory of Giulio Drouhet, an Italian general, who theorized that the way to win wars to was to "break the will of the people to fight them." The way to break the will of the people was to "expose" the civilian populations to the terror of bombing, massive destruction of vital infrastructure and to the existential hardships of shortages of heat, food, medicines and just about everything. What gets omitted from this usual formulation is that the “exposure” also destroys people.
In short, Drouhet called for the overturn of the Law of War which, since the days of Grotius, had sought to draw a distinction between "military" and "civilian" so as to confine the horror of war to the former while sparing as much as possible the latter. Drouhet believed that total war was the shortest war.
Drouhet was proved wrong. The massive terror bombing of Germany which destroyed 50% of 80% of its cities did not shorten the war one minute. On the contrary it stiffened the resolve of the Germans. The Allied bombing of German into rubble only produced death, destruction and suffering; but it did not end the war.
Neither did area bombing shorten the Vietnam War. Despite massive defoliation and urban bombing the war dragged on for 13 years. Air power was good at nothing save destruction for destruction's sake.
Certain necessary but inevitably muddy distinctions have to be made at this point. As stated, targeting military positions is legitimate warfare, even if collateral damage results. Similarly where a city is itself the military objective of a campaign, the bombing of that city is inevitable. Such was the case with Stalingrad and Berlin. Humane leaders or commanders usually allow an opportunity for the civilian population to evacuate prior to the assault.
Similarly legitimate, although not without controversy, is the bombing of armaments factories which can be considered by their nature to be "military installations." The difficulty here is that in the modern industrial world almost anything -- cotton for example -- can have a military application. Is bombing a factory that produces cotton which can be used for bandages and explosives a military or a civilian installation?
Grey as these distinctions may be, there is nothing grey in the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of cities as such. As was said of the Romans, "they created a desert and called it peace." In my view there is no excuse or justification for such barbarism. War is horrible enough with willfully and intentionally making it as horrible as possible.
There are those, particularly in the United States, who hitch up their pants and puff out their chests and say with a jejune belligerence: "Hey, War is hell." They might well recall that General Sherman who shrugged off the total destruction of Georgia "from Atlanta to the sea," also went on to advocate and participate in the total destruction of the American Indians. If a destructive and genocidal psychopath is your hero I have nothing to say to you.
Paradoxical as it may be, in the rage of war, all sides must make an effort to keep one's actions as delineated and proportionate as possible. And in fact, although it is not generally known, they have attempted to do so, howsoever imperfectly. During the World War the armies of each of the belligerents maintained a war crimes bureau to keep track of and investigate violations of the law of war, so that corrective action could be taken.
It is with these considerations in mind, it can be seen that the "total financial war" the West in proposes to wage on Russia is the the equivalent of a financial atomic bomb, which like the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan are total, indiscriminate and poisonously long lasting. There is no excuse of a resort to this kind of tactic.
It could be argued that modern war can never be restricted to battlefields; that it is always whole countries that go to war, and that economic sanctions are more humane than artillery barrages. There is merit in that argument. However, this reasoning applies to sanctions that are specifically targeted. A blanket sanction that disables the ability of a country to have an economy at all is total war and total war is always totally destructive. Justice and just wars, on the contrary, always entail discrimination.
Moreover, the tactic is likely to boomerang. The very integration of the world into a global economy means that it operates as a singular organic unit. Hurting Russia is very much like shooting one's self in the foot.
Western leaders have actually acknowledged this, but they say that it is worth the pain to protect “our values”. However, it is not theses pampered princelings -- the Hillaries, the Ursulas, the Kamalas and the Boris-and-Harries of the world -- who will pay the material value for protecting the moral one. “Only little people pay taxes,” quoth Leona Helmsely. Only little people fight the wars and pay at the pump for protecting our “liberal democratic values” so impeccably articulated by von der Leyen.
The West is not in great financial shape. Cutting it off from cheap Russian gas in exchange for more expensive US produced liquid gas might benefit a few American oligarchs but it will cost everyone else. The same can be said of wheat and the myriad other natural resources Russia produces.
The West can probably weather the shock. The working and middle class will get more impoverished but, what they hell, they haven't revolted yet; and, since the narrative is controlled by elites, they most likely won't.
Not so weatherable is a Russia descended into chaos -- the very thing the Giulio Drouhets of the world salivate over. What kind of imbecile thinks that a “terrorized” populace “overthrows” its leadership in an orderly democratic fashion? We bomb. They get demoralized. Leadership changed. Ah yes! so simple but for the fact that overthrows never happen neatly. There is always push-back, conflict, chaos and the rise of despots and desperados.
And yet, the U.S. does it over and over again. Gleefully. According to Hillary an Iraq descended into chaos was a great “opportunity for investment.” According to her, the success story that is Libya was “we came, we saw, he died, ha ha ha.” Great news. Slave markets back, mass immigration into France and Italy start. Not even the Greek playwrights and poets could have conjured up such an image of feminine monstrosity as Hillary.
But to be fair, she is just one horrible visage of the U.S. neocon establishment. There was always Richard Perle for the male version. The point is that these same people who brought us endless “full spectrum” war around the globe actually relish the idea of a Russia descended into chaos. Their mindset (and this is borne out by their own words) is that the more debased and degraded another becomes, the more predominant and victorious the United States is. Their idea of a global world order is simply that of a boot (our boot) on everyone else's neck. Anyone who doubts this can go read their policy papers and manifestos for himself.
So who, I ask, will hold the key to the nuclear arsenal of a Russia descended into chaos? Do these neocon ghouls propose that the United States send in troops to guard the nukes and maintain order (as they did so successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan)? Really?
The imbecilic “press” in the West crows that Putin is a deranged despot trapped in a delusional bubble. The FemWoke Guardian sneers that he has a short man complex. Snicker, snicker. But how much will the Guardiana snicker when the delusional man with a complex is pushed into a corner with nothing but nukes as a last resort? You wanna see penis...?
The idea of “destroying” Russia with financial carpet bombing is the dumbest idea the West has managed to come up with in 70 years.
The West has always been very adept at wrapping itself up in tissues of piety, engaging in barbarism of the most brutal sort while yapping about preserving "liberal democracy." The honeyed phrases of "democratic values" and "liberal democracies" have become dog-whistles for undercover and overt aggression.
It is an established fact that the neocon establishment in the United States has long sought the destruction of Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, there was much talk about the end of the cold war, mutual cooperation and a peace dividend that could be used to improve social welfare rather than being spent on manufacturing weapons of mass and minor destruction.
Two things happened at this point. Under the guise of assisting the "liberalization" of the Russian economy, neo-liberal investors (in tandem with CIA backed NGO's) went to work plundering it. At the same time, neo-conservatives went to work lobbying for increased defence spending on the grounds that the United States had to "maintain" its "predominance" in the world by slapping down "potential" adversaries.
One such "potential adversary" was Russia. The strategy here was to break up and roll back Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski even wrote a book about it. The two pronged approach worked like a charm and by the end of the decade Russia was an economic, military and political basket case.
Then came Putin who patiently and cunningly put Humpty Dumpty back together again. His tacking and trimming were a marvel to watch. He not only had to stabilize the economy, reorder government finances and rebuild the military, he had to do all this while balancing still extant Communists against Liberals and finding an historical consensus that all could find harbor in. The grotesque caricature of the man served up by the Western Mudia is stuff for infants and idiots.
Putin was never an "anti-capitalist." He accepted the neo-liberal premise of global-free trade and he sought to integrate Russia into that system. He was mostly successful. The very fact that the West can threaten sanctions means that there is something to sanction in the first place. That "something" is a wide array of investments, partnerships, co-ventures and so on between Russian and "Western" companies around the world. However, the one thing Putin could not tolerate was strategic encirclement of his country.
It is a fact that Gorbachev allowed the reunification of Germany on the assurance that, after that, NATO would not advance "one inch eastward" beyond the Oder River. The Western media do their best to blabber away or outright ignore this fact. For example a recent (2/23) New York Times editorial noted that Putin issued a "broad set of grievances and demands, effectively claiming that the United States and its allies reneged on a promise not to expand NATO to Russia's borders."
And...?
... And?
Did the United States reneg on a promise? Yes or No?
Instead the editorial went on to prattle that ""There are areas in which the West Can reassure Mr. Putin...."
Uh huh. And do any of those "areas" involve an insurance of non-expansion of NATO?
Of course not
Here are the facts. In the ongoing and complex negotiations attending the end of the Cold War and the establishment of a new world order, one thing is clear: Russia was assured that its strategic interests would be respected and that NATO would not expand. In 2004, the Baltic States joined NATO. Putin protested. He was ignored.
Putin may have vented his frustration but he was not checked out of his mind when he called the West an "Empire of Lies." And the western media is very good at packaging lies in the most attractive way possible. Quite frankly Russian propaganda is no match for Western disinformation. But that is another topic. The point at hand is that Putin had every objective reason to suspect that the West was trying to roll Russia back and gut it as an economic or military power.
The tipping point came in 2014. Since 1991, the U.S. had invested $5 billion in the Ukraine cultivating its "European aspirations" -- in other words to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit to the exclusion of Russian influence. Russia also invested in the Ukraine. It underwrote IMF loans to keep Ukraine afloat. It provided under-market gas to Ukrainian households. It promised $16 billion in development aid if the Ukraine stayed economically tied to Russia. The duly and democratically elected Yanukovich vascillated and ultimately went with the Russian offer.
Those with "European aspirations" (amply cultivated by Western NGO's) began to protest. Without delving in detail into the sequence of events, the upshot was basically simple: Yanukovich was run out of office. He was replaced before his term was up. In normal parlance that is what is called a coup.... or in New York Timespeak, a "Maidan Spring." One thing we can all be certain of: Russia did not organize the coup.
What it did do was seize the Crimea. Needless to say, the West which had just seized the Ukraine went into paroxysms of outrage and imposed sanctions on Russia. Omitted from all the moralized frothing was the strategic fact that, under an arrangement with the Ukraine, Sebastopol was the home of the Russian Southern Fleet and, as such, represented an essential, critical national security interest to Russia.
Given all the churning in Pentagon and neocon planning and policy papers about "extending the Homeland's security perimeter eastward" one can see how Russia might reasonably feel that Ukraine's "European aspirations" would include shutting the Russian fleet out of its home port. Putin acted swiftly to protect a vital defence interest.
In my view, all the to'ing and fro'ing about the Minsk Accords and the separatists in the Donbas region is just peripheral noise. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is nothing everybody can't put up with while they pursue more important interests. What was non-negotiable from Putin's point of view was the admission of the Ukraine into NATO and the installation of NATO missiles on Ukrainian territory. I have never read in the sagacious pages of the Times that the U.S. "and its Allies" ever gave an inch on this issue.
On the contrary. There is no question but that the West (mostly the US) was funding and providing training for right wing militias in the Ukraine (Azov Brigade). Since 2014 the United States has provided $2.7 billion in "security assistance" to the Ukraine. In 2017 Trump (whom the Democrats inanely and viciously accuse of being 'Putin's Puppet') "began providing millions in lethal assistance [to the Ukraine], including Javelin anti-tank missiles – a sensitive defense technology that held symbolic significance for both Russia and Ukraine, as it had generally been reserved only for close U.S. allies and NATO members." (Link)
Of course, the West rationalizes all of this was simply "countering" a Russian "threat." But that pretext ignores the longstanding U.S. policy of extending NATO and pushing Russia "back" into Asia or at least into irrelevance. Let us return to 1990. At that time, the Soviet Union collapsed. It's leadership foreswore communism and sought to "partner" with liberal democracies. What threat was there? The fact that Russia exists at all? Apparently so. Instead of treating Russia as a friend, the American military establishment treated her as an enemy and kicked her while she was down. This was not the policy of American Capital by the way. It was basically the policy of the neocons in the government. But in any event, if you repeatedly beat up on someone, don't be surprised when he retaliates.
Putin's persistent and increasing complaint about Ukraine's drift into NATO were laughed off. His critical speech on 8 January 2022 was not even covered by the U.S. media. But that it was ignored does not mean that Russia's legitimate security concerns do not exist or that its fears were delusional or as the FemWokeGuardian was wont to say, were the result of a psychological complex for being too short.
It is hardly surprising that Putin felt he needed to do something to be taken seriously by the West. And in fact, that assessment was correct. Once the staging of troops began, then -- all of a sudden -- the telephone calls and the flights to Moscow began.
But amid all the fevered flurry, what the Western media have never made clear is whether anyone in the West gave a commitment to Russia that NATO would not incorporate the Ukraine. Apparently not. All anyone heard was that Ukraine had a sovereign right to join NATO if it so chose.
That was actually not correct. Ukraine has a right to apply but not to be admitted. Admission depends on the unanimous consent of member countries of NATO. Did anyone assure Russia that NATO had no strategic interest in extending eastward and that the Ukraine would not be admitted should it apply? Apparently not. In effect, the West called Putin's bluff and he struck.
In my opinion, the way Putin struck was a mistake and a disaster. I had thought he would send in peacekeepers to the Donbas region. Such a move would have made it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO and probably the EU as well. The night before the invasion, a friend and I agreed that if Putin invaded the whole of the Ukraine he would find himself bogged down in an unwinnable, asymetrical disaster that would make the Russian experience in Afghanistan look like a cake walk. It would also require escalated responses and thus subject the Ukrainians to endless and increasing misery. To our surprise that is exactly what Putin did. Perhaps he has lost touch with reality. What is certain to me is that the whole affair can only end in grief and tragedy for Ukrainians and Russians alike. It will not benefit the rest of us either.
But rather than back-pedal, rather than looking to give Putin an off-ramp, the West is doing just the opposite by egging everyone on from the “sidelines” and pushing the aid-envelope as much as it can. Needless to say the moron-chorus that is the Western media, cheers this on and sings the praises of its latest Hero of the Hour. No one can begrudge Zelinsky his patriotism and ardour. For someone in his position, he has stepped up with courage and elan. Hats off! But it is one thing for Zelinsky to rally his country to fight the Russians to the death, it is quite another for the West to allow, much more encourage it. It is in the interest of the whole rest of the world to defuse the conflict before it turns into a disaster for the Ukrainians and indeed for the world.
I am not hopeful. In my view, the kernel of the whole problem is the U.S./Western expansion of NATO. That is a “security architecture” which is either abandoned or not. This means that one side or the other must give on this issue, which neither side shows any signs of doing. With good reason, Putin will not be bought off with more vague assurances that never amounted to more than the breath they were uttered with. Thus, the West will have to come up with some sort of formula that maintains “principle” while making its realization practically impossible. I have seen no sign that the West is moving in that direction.
There are cooler heads in the West. Macron is one of them and, surprisingly, Joe Biden may be another. Their task of diffusing the situation, seriously addressing Russia's concerns and providing Putin a graceful exit from his mistake is a tall order. Whatever means and solutions they come up with, financial terror bombing and the economic destruction of Russia ought not to be one of them.
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