Category Archives: Cold War

Cold War

Understanding How Trump Formulates Policy

by Fyodor Lukyanov

The key is understanding how the US president-elect formulates policy, and his background in the business world

Donald Trump formulates his political course using memes. Strategies, programs and action plans are then drawn up by people around him. But the impetus comes from the main character’s pronouncements.

That’s why we hear the US president-elect promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It sounds unrealistic, to say the least, but it reflects his desire. Which is obviously a conscious one. Which means it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

It’s a pointless exercise to speculate on the basis of leaks and anonymous comments from people – supposedly – close to Trump about what he really has in mind. In all likelihood, he doesn’t yet know himself what he will do. What matters is something else: how Trump’s approach to Ukraine will differ from that of the current presidential administration, and whether he even understands rapprochement.

With regards to the first of these, the difference is stark. President Joe Biden and his team represent a cohort of politicians whose views were shaped by the end of the Cold War. America’s ideological and moral righteousness – and its unquestioned power superiority – determined not even the possibility, but rather the necessity of world domination. The emergence of rival powers that could challenge certain elements of the liberal world order has been met with fierce resistance.

That’s because this setup didn’t allow for any deviation from its basic principles and refused to allow for compromise on fundamental issues. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are seen as an encroachment on the very essence of the liberal order. Hence the call for Moscow’s “strategic defeat.”

Trump stands for a change in positioning. Instead of global dominance, there will a vigorous defense of specific American interests. Priority will be given to those that bring clear benefits (not in the long term, but now). Belief in the primacy of domestic over foreign policy, which has always characterized Trump’s supporters and has now spread throughout the Republican Party, means that the choice of international issues is going to be selective. Preserving the moral and political hegemony of the US is not an end in itself, but a tool. In such a system of priorities, the Ukrainian project loses the destiny it has in the eyes of the adherents of the liberal order. It becomes a pawn in a larger game.

Another peculiarity of the president-elect is that even his detractors largely admit that he doesn’t see war as an acceptable tool. Yes, he’ll use hard bargaining, muscle-flexing and coercive pressure (as practiced in his usual business). But not destructive armed conflict, because that is irrational. Trump doesn’t seem to have a twisted heart when he talks about the need to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine and Gaza.

Now let’s look at his methods. Trump’s previous term offers two examples of his approach to regional conflicts. One was the ‘Abraham Accords’, an agreement that facilitated formal relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries. The second was the meetings with Kim Jong-un, including a full-fledged summit in Hanoi.

The first was the result of shuttle diplomacy by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The powerful financial interests of America, the Gulf monarchies and Israel led to a series of shady political deals. The current situation in the region is many times worse than it was then, but it cannot be said that the arrangements have collapsed. The framework is still in place. But such a foundation can hardly be considered a model. The system of relations in the Middle East is very special, and the scale of the Ukraine conflict is incomparably greater.

The second example is negative. Trump hastily tried to shift the systemic confrontation by resorting to a spectacle. The bet was on pleasing the ego of the interlocutor – the first North Korean leader to meet with a US president. It didn’t work, because beyond that there was no idea how to solve the real complex problems.

However, we can’t simply project the legacy of 2016-2020 onto the period ahead. Trump has gained some experience. His environment is different now, and his electoral mandate is what he could only have dreamed of back then. There is more room for maneuver than before, but not enough for the genuine concessions needed for a comprehensive agreement with Moscow.

It is in Russia’s interest to remain calm, and to refuse to react to any provocations. Yes, objectively the situation is changing. But now everyone will be talking about the fact that a window of opportunity has opened for a short time, and we must not miss this chance. In crises like the Ukrainian one, there are no simple solutions or easy “shortcuts.” Either this window is a gateway to new stable relations – and it cannot be forced open, but will need a careful approach. Or it’s a portal to an even more brutal struggle, because it births yet another disappointment.

Here’s What Trump’s Peace Plan Might Look Like & Why Russia Might Agree To It

by Andrew Korybko

Moscow-based American political analyst with a PhD from MGIMO

via https://korybko.substack.com/p/heres-what-trumps-peace-plan-might

Putin might agree to freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact in spite of prior rhetoric against this scenario in the event that Trump threatens to escalate the conflict as punishment if he doesn’t.

Trump’s pledge to resolve the Ukrainian Conflict in 24 hours is unrealistic, but he’ll inevitably propose a peace plan at some point in time, thus raising questions about what it would look like and whether Russia would agree to it. More than likely, he’ll seek to freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact (LOC), wherever it may be by that time, as he’s not expected to coerce Ukraine into withdrawing from the regions whose administrative borders Russia claims in their entirety.

Nor is Russia expected to obtain control over them by the time that Trump’s proposal is made. It still hasn’t removed Ukrainian forces from Donbass, which is at the heart of its claims, and therefore is unlikely to capture Zaporozhye city, that namesake’s areas on the side of the Dnieper River, nor Kherson Region’s aforesaid adjacent lands either. It might gain some more territory if Pokrovsk is captured, but the US might dangerously “escalate to de-escalate” to stop a run on the river if Ukraine is then routed.

This could take the form of threatening a conventional NATO intervention if the political will exists to spark a Cuban-like brinskmanship crisis, the odds of which would greatly increase if Russia made any move in that scenario to cross the Dnieper and thus risk the collapse of that bloc’s Ukrainian project. Be that as it may, no such run on the river is expected, with the most that Russia might do is lay siege to Zaporozhye city, but even that might not materialize by the time that Trump shares his peace plan.

Russia will therefore almost certainly be asked to freeze the conflict along the LOC, albeit without rescinding its territorial claims just like Ukraine won’t either, under the threat of Trump ramping up military support to Ukraine if the Kremlin refuses to cease hostilities. This prediction is predicated on summer’s report that some of his advisors suggested that he do precisely that as punishment for Russia rubbishing whatever peace plan that he ultimately offers it.

Considering his tough-talking personality and proclivity for “escalating to de-escalate” on his terms if he feels disrespected, which he flirted doing with North Korea during his first term as a negotiating tactic, he’s thus expected to comply with the aforesaid suggestion in that event. Given Putin’s consummate pragmatism as he understands his style to be and his aversion to escalations, he might very well comply, but he could also request that Trump coerce Zelensky into making concessions to facilitate this.

These might include rescinding 2019’s constitutional amendment making NATO membership a strategic objective, promulgating legislation that Russia considers to advance its denazification goals, freezing further weapons shipments to Ukraine, and carving out a buffer zone within part of Ukrainian territory. In the order that they were mentioned, the first one would be superficial after this year’s raft of security guarantees between Ukraine and several NATO countries already made it a de facto member of the bloc.

To explain, they all entail commitments to resume their existing military support for Ukraine if its conflict with Russia flares up again upon its eventual end, and this selfsame support arguably aligns with NATO’s Article 5. Contrary to popular perceptions, it doesn’t obligate them to send troops, but only to provide whatever support they believe is necessary to aid allies under attack. This is what they’re already doing, yet Russia never escalated in response to this being enshrined in their bilateral military deals.

As for the second speculative concession that Putin might request that Trump coerce Zelensky into making, the returning American leader and his team haven’t ever signaled any interest in helping Russia denazify Ukraine, and coercing it into promulgating legislation might be seen as bad optics abroad. Since Russia can’t force Ukraine to do this, that particular goal of the special operation will likely remain unfulfilled, in which case it probably wouldn’t be discussed much anymore by officials and the media.

Moving along to the third, Trump probably wouldn’t agree to freeze arms shipments to Ukraine, but they might naturally be curtailed as he refocuses America’s military priorities on containing China in Asia instead of continuing to contain Russia in Europe. About that, his reported plan to encourage NATO members to take more responsibility for their defense is already being implemented under Biden as explained here, and they might continue arms shipments even if the US curtails its own.

Even so, the potentially natural curtailment of US arms shipments to Ukraine could be spun as partially fulfilling Russia’s demilitarization goal, as could any buffer zone that Trump might agree to coerce Ukraine into carving out on its own territory to prevent it from shelling Russian cities. That’ll be a hard sell for Putin to make, and Trump might be pressured by the “deep state” (the permanent members of the US’ military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) into resisting, but it can’t be ruled out either.

The reason for this cautious optimism is because it would provide a “face-saving” means for Russia to freeze the conflict despite not achieving its maximum objectives instead of risking a Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis by rejecting Trump’s expected proposal to “save face” at home and abroad. Trump wouldn’t make idle threats and certainly wouldn’t let Putin call his bluff even if that was the case so he’s expected to go through with arming Ukraine to the teeth if his peace deal falls flat.

That said, he also campaigned on ending the Ukrainian Conflict, and he’d personally prefer to replenish America’s depleted stockpiles in parallel with arming its Asian allies to the teeth against China instead continuing to arm Ukraine and risking a major crisis with Russia. His Sino-centric New Cold War focus is shared by a minority of the “deep state”, the majority of whom want to continue prioritizing Russia’s containment in Europe over China’s in Asia but who still never recklessly escalated with Russia thus far.

They’ve indeed escalated, but this was always preceded by signaling their intent to do so (such as via the provisioning of various arms) long before this happened, thus giving Russia enough time to calculate a response instead of risking an “overreaction” that could spiral into war with NATO. These anti-Russian hawks might therefore begrudgingly go along with any buffer zone that Trump might agree to if it avoids a potentially uncontrollable escalation like what he might threaten to do if Russia doesn’t take his deal.

Subversive “deep state” elements might even try to provoke such an escalation in order to avert that buffer zone scenario or any other that they consider to be unacceptable concessions to Russia, which remains a risk before and after his inauguration, but it’s clearly not their faction’s preferred scenario. This conclusion is arrived at by recalling on the abovementioned observation about how they always signaled their escalatory intentions far in advance thus far at least in order to avoid a major escalation.

Even if Trump doesn’t comply with any of Putin’s speculative requests to help the latter “save face” by freezing the conflict despite not achieving his country’s maximum goals in the conflict, he could always dangle the carrot of phased sanctions relief of the sort proposed by Richard Haass earlier this week. The former President of the hugely influential Council on Foreign Relations suggested that this could encourage Russia’s compliance with a ceasefire, and it’s possible that Putin might agree to this.

The Russian economy weathered the West’s unprecedented sanctions regime, but Russia’s grand plans to create alternative financial institutions and pivot to the non-West haven’t been as successful. This analysis here about how the latest BRICS Summit achieved nothing of tangible significance at all points out how none of this association’s ambitious initiatives were rolled out. It also hyperlinks to proof that the Chinese-based New Development Bank and the SCO Bank surprisingly comply with US sanctions.

Moreover, “Russia & China’s US-Provoked Payment Problems Caught Most BRICS Enthusiasts By Surprise” in early September after RT published a feature analysis about this politically inconvenient development, which shows that the Chinese centerpiece of Russia’s grand plans isn’t fully on board with them. There’s also the similarly inconvenient fact that Russia’s pivot to the non-West mostly only consists of resource sales to such countries and has yet to become anything more significant.

It accordingly wouldn’t be surprising if Putin appreciated promises of phased sanctions relief in exchange for agreeing to freeze the conflict along the LOC no matter how disappointing of an end this may be to its special operation in the eyes of its most zealous supporters. After all, Foreign Minister Lavrov told a group of ambassadors last month that Russia demands “the lifting of Western anti-Russian sanctions”, so it’s clearly on the collective Kremlin’s mind no matter what its perception managers claim.

Even if Trump makes such promises, however, keeping them would be difficult since many of America’s anti-Russian sanctions are codified into law after being voted on by Congress. They might go along with any request to rescind them, but they also might not, thus throwing a wrench in Russia’s plans. The US also can’t force the EU to rescind its respective sanctions, and anti-Russian countries like Poland and the Baltic States might create obstacles to the resumption of trade with Russia if the EU’s ties with it thaw.

Should they be implemented even if only semi-successfully, then Trump could claim a victory in “un-uniting” Russia and China like he promised to do even if those two’s trade continues to grow (mostly through Chinese resource imports and replacing lost Western products on Russian shelves). He could also sell this phased sanctions relief proposal to anti-Russian “deep state” hawks and the Europeans on that basis to help secure their support and deflect from claims that he’s doing it as a favor to Putin.

Reflecting on the insight that was shared in this analysis, Trump’s peace plan isn’t expected to have any surprises, nor would it be surprising if Russia agrees to it for the reasons that were explained. The US holds the cards and will only agree to any of Putin’s speculatively requested concessions in order to make it easier for him to “save face” for freezing the conflict despite not achieving his maximum goals. Neither wants a major escalation and both are fatigued with this proxy war so such a deal might work.

It’ll therefore be interesting to see how the rhetoric from Russian officials and their global media ecosystem might change as reports leak out about what exactly Trump has in mind. He and the minority “deep state” faction that supports him are motivated by their desire to “Pivot (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China, hence their interest in wrapping up this proxy war. As for Russia, it’s beginning to realize that a compromise of some sort is inevitable and must thus prepare the public.

Something unexpected might of course happen to completely change this analysis such as if hawks on either side convince their respective presidents to double down on the conflict, but the arguments made therein cogently account for each side’s interests, especially Russia’s. If everything more or less unfolds as written, then observers can expect a “Great Media/Perception Reset” in terms of Russia’s narrative towards the conflict, which would be required to facilitate whatever compromises Putin might make.

The End of History or a War of American and Russian Messianisms

Ed. Note: Very interesting dive into Russia’s struggle to define its “manifest destiny,” which in the end resorts to mysticism and delusional religious fantasies. On that score, the struggle to define the Russian Idea gives a strong impression of why Russia cannot become the World’s Leader under such an ideology. Going back to Orthodox Christianity, Russia’s model — like Israel’s, like Islam’s model – cannot become a universalist ideology, cannot overcome the secular West. They are parochial, small-minded, clannish, rear-guard defense mechanisms for limited use by their communities under assault by the West.

On the other side of this global confrontation is the secular, the “practical realist” Anglo-Saxon mindset. When John Locke, in 17th-century England, took a look at the “idols of mind” and proclaimed the need for a “tabula rasa” in order to found our knowledge afresh on the basis of “perceptions and facts” – that revolutionary ideology set humanity on the path of the Industrial Revolution and that pursuit remains the only road to the title of the world’s leader.

The Soviet Idea did, indeed, resonate all over the world; it overcame class and ethnic divisions. But the Russian Idea? No way.

Russia can hope to keep the West in check and maintain a front of resistance, waiting for a new generation of Western leaders that can replace the “zero-sum” approach (derived from its own success) with a “win-win” approach — and thus reconsider Russia’s own realignment and eventual convergence into the secular Globalist world.

That would be the best to wish for.

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by Gordon Hahn via Gordon Hahn

In our age of crisis and chaos, it will be natural for great powers to rely on ideology and idealism rather than practical realism. Today’s international conflicts are increasingly becoming infused with ideological content, replete with universalist and messianic visions. Although the West first entered onto this path in the post-Cold War era and Russia seemed to eschew universalistic schemes and messianic dreams in the wake of the Soviet collapse, pre-revolutionary, traditional Russian transcendentalism, universalism, and messianism have become the default pillars upon which the conservative wing of the Russian elite and intelligentsia have increasingly relied. This raises the specter of a war or new Cold War of messianisms; one that can persist even if the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War ends in some minimal modus vivendi.

American Messianism and the New Cold War

In America and the larger West, ‘The End of History and the Last Man,’ as envisioned in the universalistic dreams of Francis Fukuyama and the American elite, is increasingly turning out to be a global nightmare. Theory’s waves of democratization have become a reality of authoritarianization globally, not least of all in America itself. The theory of ‘democratic peace’ was replaced by the harsh real-world consequences of pursuing American hegemonism: a world split apart and the risk of global conflagration sparked in Ukraine. This represents an unfortunate and seemingly ironic twist on Fukuyama’s title—as Fukuyama’s particular eschatology has not come to pass, as all universalistic absolutisms and ambitions ultimately do not.

The very same American and European actors who dream utopian dreams of universal republicanism [democracies do not exist outside perhaps the Swiss cantons] have cavorted with Islamist jihadists and Ukrainian neofascists alike. As Simone Weil described in her play “Venice Saved,” “(m)en of action and enterprise are dreamers.” Such Western men of action and enterprise can resemble Weil’s fictional depiction of pro-Spanish coup-plotters seeking to overthrow the classic Venetian republic on behalf of the Spanish Empire in 1618 or any others who pursue messianic dreams of universal systems and conquest. However, unlike Weil’s men of action, enterprise, and dreams, who fought their battles with their own hands and blood, today’s Western dreamers of a ‘democratic end of history’ and a ‘democratic peace’ wear clean, freshly pressed designer suits ensconced in the air-conditioned offices of Washington and Brussels. These ‘men of action and enterprise’ are quite daring in using others to achieve their democratic “Empire of the World.”

The American dream was from the beginning somewhat schizophrenic, with revolutionary dreams sitting uncomfortably next to practicality and humility. Accompanying American messianism is an American ‘revolutionism.’ As leading American historian Gordon S. Wood argues, revolution created our American political and strategic cultures: “Not only did the Revolution legally create the United States, but it infused into our culture all of our highest aspirations and most noble values. Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy”[[1]].

Missing from this description is messianic democracy’s faith in revolutions. Revolutionary republican messianism certainly would become a value or a near-value of our political and strategic culture if it was not part and parcel of them from the start. On the other hand, America’s first president, George Washington, famously warned against “foreign entanglements” and “enmities.” On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson, according to a dinner partner, was “a vigorous stickler of revolutions” and, “like his friend, T. Paine, cannot live but in a revolution.” Jefferson thought the French revolution’s fate would determine that of America’s own and hoped the former would spread the revolutionary flame across Europe. Although he deplored the French carnage of tens of thousands guillotined, he thought it necessary. In January 1793 he said: “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest and…rather than it should have failed. I would have seen half the earth desolated.” If the French Revolution succeeded, he thought, “it would spread sooner or later all over Europe.” Jefferson would not live to see half of Europe so desolated by the French. Jefferson added: “Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now”[[2]]. But America’s elite was quite divided over Napoleonic power; the Federalist Party countered the views of Jefferson, later James Madison, and the Democratic Republican Party during the Napoleonic Wars and supported Russia in its epic contest with post-revolutionary France’s own revolutionary republican messianism embodied in Bonaparte’s pan-European Grande Army[[3]].

In the 19th century, American idealism developed its own messianic ideology: Manifest Destiny. This idea held out a special American mission: the expansion of the American revolution and democracy to the continent’s hinterlands. Historian William Earl Weeks noted the religiously rooted precepts of this new messianic ideology: the existence of an exceptional American moral virtue; a special American mission to save the world through the spread of American republicanism and general way of life; and a belief in this American mission having been ordained by Providence[[4]].

America’s fifth president, James Monroe, declared a new foreign policy doctrine with global implications. The Monroe Doctrine held all the Americas, the entire western hemisphere, to be American republicanism’s exclusive sphere of influence. Any intervention by autocratic colonialism there was off limits. This opened the way for broad American intervention in South America. This policy holds today and is eerily reminiscent of Russia’s policy against great power encroachments along its border. Still, Abraham Lincoln, America’s sixteenth president, held the fort against foreign adventures. His political biographer concludes he was a master of “shrewd restraint” regarding foreign involvements. Although Lincoln was a committed “exceptionalist” regarding the American experiment’s potential for transforming government across the world, “he wasn’t a crusader. He remained a lifelong skeptic of grand foreign exploits—resisting imprudent calls for military action abroad and preventing diplomatic donnybrooks from morphing into war”[[5]].

But the next century saw America dragged into Europe’s Great War. The tide would turn sharply in favor of missionary dreams and democratic messianism. The twenty-eighth American president, Woodrow Wilson, was already championing making the world “safe for democracy,” the “self-determination of nations,” and America’s leading role in the League of Nations. Wilson had moved far beyond any realist formulation of America’s foreign policy foundation, no less that of Washington’s highly restrained realism or Lincoln’s realism of restraint. This shift was ideological, and it would take a second great war to establish the dominant position of this orientation. Thus, in the 1930s, according to David McCullough, the U.S. army was ranked 26th in the world, lagging behind Argentina and Switzerland[[6]].

Wilson was willing to send Americans to die in Europe for an esoteric American dream and ideal. Six years before the first great war, he told New Jersey Democratic Convention delegates: “America is not distinguished so much by its wealth and material power as by the fact that it was born with an ideal, a purpose to serve mankind. … When I look at the American flag before me, I think sometimes it is made of parchment and blood. The white in it stands for parchment, the red in it signifies blood—and blood that was spilled to make those rights real”[[7]]. Wilson’s friend and biographer, Raymond Stannard Baker, said Wilson saw his League of Nations as a project that would “save the world”[[8]].

American messianism would consolidate and intensify throughout the 20th century. America’s revolutionary messianic orientation was invigorated during the Second World War and Cold War. The defeat of fascism brought a ‘twilight struggle’ against communism and the USSR. That struggle required of the U.S. the formation of massive domestic and international structures: NATO, the Defense Department, CIA, DIA, NSA, National Security Council, among very many others. The original U.S. government of several hundred officials has burgeoned into a massive bureaucratic labyrinth of millions with their corporate interests tied to mammoth business, media, academic, and think tank enterprises and revolving doors between them all.

During the first Cold War’s wake, these structures did not disappear or even shrink but rather grew in size and power. Moreover, the sense grew that the U.S. foreign interest lay in repeating the fall of communism in new form, defeating all non-republican governments across the globe. A pseudo-science of democratic transition or ‘transitology’ provided the intellectual and practical know-how for how the inevitable coming of universal republicanism could be accelerated in line with U.S. and Western immediate interests. The decision to adopt ‘democracy’ was a rational choice, and those who made the wrong choice were deemed to have insufficient cultures, to be backward or backsliding. ‘Regime change’ methodologies — democracy-promotion (DP) and its attendant practices of network-building, party-building, coups, bribery, and the like — should be applied to all less-than-democratic states, regardless of their importance to American interests and security. DP was a ‘dual-use technology’ that could be used to forward democratic reforms or foment more uncontrollable revolutions that risked and often turned violent and could bring in the bargain less-than-democratic elements to the fore, as in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Tens of billions of dollars have been and are being spent on education, propaganda, and intelligence efforts towards DP, with the added advantages now of the social net and artificial intelligence.

America’s global dreams eventually have impinged on the national and local levels to the detriment of the very republicanism Washington and Brussels have been selling; hence the growth of the state structures leading the military-industrial-congressional-media-academic meta-complex. Unity on the global level under the Empire necessitates tighter unity at home. Consequently, the original American dream of a ‘city on a hill’ for others to emulate, if they so wished, is becoming a city of arrogance, avarice, hubris, hypocrisy, corruption, and sin. America’s original political culture was anchored in virtue for the sake of republicanism—initially, for the most part, America’s republic. Contemporary American political culture is anchored in self-aggrandizement in the service of American national, nationalist, and globalist power—sheer power and nothing more than power—whether in the domestic or international arena. American republicanism is dying in its modern-era cradle—USA—murdered by Washington’s men of action, enterprise, and dreams that live on ‘eternal enmities’ of the kind the national capitol’s namesake warned against.

Under today’s curious form of messianic republicanism, its adepts comfortably cavort with ultranationalists and neofascists from Ukraine, Libya, or Syria—including self-righteous adepts such as Fukuyama and his transitology sidekick Michael McFaul[[9]]. It is no accident that the university they thrive within is championing the destruction of free speech and inspiring witch hunts for any who deviate from the Washington-Brussels uni-party line on Ukraine or the Democrat Party-state on any and all issues[[10]]. The end is the global dream; the means can be any, both at home as abroad.

The priority given to ends over means among Western elites pursuing ‘democratization’ casts doubt on their ‘good intentions.’ These Westerners, as Paul Grenier notes, are like the ‘Men with Thistledown Hair,’ who pave the road to hell deaf to the views of others: “This faerie uses his power to ensnare and trap victims within his own world, a world which the man with thistle down hair considers utterly delightful. This faerie takes a fancy to certain characters in the novel and sets about, with perfect sincerity, to ‘help’ them. He demonstrates, like a good Kantian, a will dedicated to doing good, with the only problem being that the goods that he bestows are only those that he himself defines. It is not that he hears, but is indifferent to, the protests of his victims, who do not want any of these ‘gifts.’ What we have in the faerie is a degree of egotistic solipsism that has reached an infinite degree, such that he is simply incapable of noticing anything outside of his own interpretation of the world”[[11]].

Thus, Democratic Peace Theory—an outgrowth of utopian republican messianism—is a curiously convenient hypothesis. Since democratic regimes supposedly never go to war against each other, it can and should be inferred that authoritarianism is the cause of all wars. In this way, wars between ostensible or self-declared democracies and authoritarian regimes are always the result of authoritarian regimes’ actions, which are inevitable deviations from the eschatological line. Thus, authoritarian regimes are to blame for the existence of war and force democracies to fight ‘to defend themselves’ and ‘make the world safe for democracy.’ If a Western coup designed to ‘expand the community of democracies’ leads to civil war in a country Westerners neither understand nor particularly care to understand, and forces an authoritarian regime to intervene, it is the authoritarian regime and only the authoritarian regime that bears responsibility. Its military action was not provoked by Western policies and their consequences but rather by the backward culture of the authoritarians, who inherently are bursting at the seams to destroy democracy. Thus, we often hear that AQ, ISIS, ‘Putin’s Russia,’ or Xi’s China hate us for our ‘democratic way of life’ and so want to destroy it. So after Ukraine, Russia will march into the Baltics, China into Taiwan, etc., etc., etc. But could it be that in the West today, it is we who hate Russia for having a home and roots and which, like Venice, is the target of a self-righteous imperial mission conjured up by restless, ambitious men of action, enterprise, dreams, and messianic, utopian, and incidentally profitable schemes. Many in the West do hate Russia for having a home and honoring its traditional roots—now a secular sacrilege in the West. Russian rootedness and tradition are affronts to the West’s ‘sophisticated’ world of anything-goes plurality and its domestic wars against family, religion, national culture, and humility.

Will this Western dream, through the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war or some greater cataclysm, spark in the end a Russian overreaction, a new Russian messianism politicized beyond the original religious-cultural idea of the Third Rome? Indeed, once, under Soviet power, this notion was transformed into new universalist and messianic political and imperial goals in more secular, materialist guise. Will Russia become more like its enemy, the way the West—US, Europe, Israel—are becoming more like their enemies, real and imagined? Will a Russian reaction to its recent secular past and the present secular threat from the West counter with its own religious messianism? There is good reason to think that it very well might. After all, both Jews and Muslims have their messianisms, and they undoubtedly help drive the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So do Russia’s ancient antagonists, the Poles. Putting aside the risk of nuclear war, cannot Russia and the West fall into a long conflict of two incompatible messianisms?

Russian Religious-based Messianism and Russian Tselostnost’

History demonstrates that Russia or many Russians are not immune to messianic dreams. NATO’s ‘new cold war’ turned hot could very well be regenerating—limited albeit in breadth as yet—a Russian religious-based messianism as an antidote to the anti-religious, secularist Western messianism. Just as Russia’s 19th-century Slavophiles politicized the 16th-century Third Rome idea, so too today there is the potential for, if not the beginning of, the politicization of this and similar messianic Russian dreams conjured from aspects of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Russian transcendentalism and universalism suggest that Russian culture may be more susceptible to such messianism. Residual materialism from Russian communism, only recently relegated to the dustbin of history, may be temporarily holding back the return of Russian messianism. Russian tselostnost’ and transcendentalism tend to seek absolutism and a mission. Since much of Russian tselostnost’ and transcendentalism are rooted in Orthodoxy, we can expect that any new Russian absolutism or messianic dreams and absolutisms will propose some universal, perhaps wholly or partially Orthodox, dream.

If some rise of Russian messianism is occurring, is it a response to Fukuyama’s ‘democratic messianism’? Is there a messianic version of democratization’s or color revolutions’ supposed ‘demonstration effect’? Is Russian messianism a deliberate mimicking of Western messianism—if they can, so can we—as we have seen in Ukraine (color revolution in Crimea and Donbas as in Kiev, Russian ignoring the international law’s principle of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Russian military intervention in Ukraine and NATO military intervention in Yugoslavia, Serbia, Kosovo)? If Washington has a global mission and can write the rules of the international order, why cannot Russia (and China) do the same? Will the flowering of any new Russian messianism result in its institutionalization as state policy or ideology?

Within the post-Soviet return of Orthodoxy and even tselostnost’ in its various forms, we can see the melding of a new form of Russian messianism with roots in the late Imperial Era Religious Renaissance and Silver Age. At the center of this revival is the late 19th-early 20th century Religious Renaissance and related Silver Age. Since I have addressed this in Russian Tselostnost’ and in a short monograph-length article “Russian Historical Tselostnost’,” I will only mention the ubiquity of monism, universalism, communalism (social, group unity), solidarism (national unity of various kinds), and historical wholeness. Examples of these in Russian discourse are endless: Vladimir Solovev and the other God-Seekers, Nikolai Berdyaev and the Vekhi thinkers, the idealist or intuitivist philosophers (Nikolai Losskii, Semyon Frank, and others), Russian literature (Fedora Dostoevskii, Lev Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol’ and many others), the symbolist movement in philosophy and the arts (Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, Andrei Bely, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vasilli Rozanov, Aleksandr Scriabin, and others), and even the socialist and revolutionary movements (e.g., Anatolii Lunacharskii, Aleksandr Bogdanov, Vladimir Mayakovskii, Andrei Platonov, and others) [[12]].

Russian messianism is not only closely related to a certain Russian exceptionalism. It is closely related to two of the five tselostnosts I perceive in Russian culture, thought, and discourse: monism and universalism. The source of tselostnost’ appears to be Orthodox monism (the ultimate integrality of Heaven and Earth, God and Man, spirit and matter) and perhaps secondarily attendant Orthodox universalism (Christian or Orthodox unity in Christ). These helped engender the materialist monism of Man and Machine in the USSR and proletarian internationalism, utopianism, and messianism. Russian ideas surrounding the wholeness of the world and Russian history and theurgical teleologies related to Christian eschatology are another source of the Russian tendency—always present but not always dominant—towards some historical mission mandated by God and/or Humankind. They help the Russian inclination towards the transcendental over the everyday, reflected in monism and universalism to maintain a presence in Russian culture and discourse. The revival of these modes of thinking has intensified and penetrated new works more broadly as disenchantment with the West mounted beginning in the late 1990s, leading to an abandonment of Western signposts for creating a new Russian identity and culture and a return of pre-revolutionary religious, philosophical, and artistic culture and discourses.

In addition to the post-Soviet revival of the pre-Soviet Russian Religious Renaissance and Silver Age cultures, there are a plethora of new original works and trends in Russian culture, thought, and discourse that reflect and refract the intellectual return of the imperial twilight with new nuances defined by contemporary developments. Some are more religious-, Orthodox-based and provide monist support for messianism. Others are more secular and driven by geopolitical thought and concerns and lend support to a new universalist or semi-universalist mission. Some combine elements of both these tendencies. The trend to a new anti-Western messianism and universalism was signaled decades ago. For example, in literature, Mikhail Yurev’s 2006 futuristic novel Tret’ya Imperiya (The Third Empire) reflected an urge for revenge against the West for its spurning of Russia. In Yurev’s novel, a revived Russian Orthodox, quasi-tsarist Russia defeats the West in a nuclear war and comes to rule the world. Recent trends are less aggressive and more subtle, but the direction is clear: Russia is moving from the local and regional to the universal and some elements wait in the wings to abandon Putin’s practicality in favor of a more transcendental, messianic project.

The first post-Soviet geopolitical trend to counter the pro-Western majority of the early 1990s, neo-Eurasianism, was semi-universalist in scope but hinted at a more universalist orientation in the future. Largely geopolitical and secularist, it initially was merely tinted with Orthodoxy but more as a civilizational rather than religious force. Aleksandr Panarin and Aleksandr Dugin, discussed below, have been the most prominent examples of the contemporary semi-universalism of neo-Eurasianism. Panarin proposed a global Russian-Eurasian vision and ambitious Eurasian integration projects. Like Gumilev, for Panarin “the main creative success of Russian (rossiiskaya) civilization is the capacity to form large interethnic syntheses; this was its response to the challenge of the steppe plains’ expanse.” There is a hint of Pushkin’s Russian obzyvchyvost’. It is not of special concern that the West “not only did not accept (Russia) into the ‘European home’ but tried to block and isolate her within the post-Soviet space using anti-Russian sentiments.”

Not surprisingly then, many Russians, including President Vladimir Putin, have adopted much of the program proposed by Panarin in his 1998 Revansh Istorii. According to Panarin, Russia’s messianic role is to “propose to the peoples of Eurasia a new, powerful, superenergetic synthesis” based on “people’s conservatism” and “civilizational diversity.” The fundamental tenet of the Russian-Eurasian “mission of people’s conservatism” is “socio-cultural conservatism,” the goal of which is to preserve Eurasia’s and the world’s traditional cultures, religious mysticisms, and ethnic and “civilizational diversity and pluralism” from Western-framed globalization, cultural homogenization, and the left-liberal intelligentsia’s attraction to mass, urban, “semi-bohemianism” (polubogema) and “consumer hedonism.” Thus, Orthodox Eurasia will give birth to a “new historical paradigm of humankind.” Despite its economic weakness relative to the West and Eurasia’s China, Russia can lead Eurasia and the world into a new post-industrial, eco-cultural, multi-civilizational world that rejects the anti-cultural ‘technologism’, consumerism, and homogeneity of the ‘soulless’ American worldview which threatens nature and national cultures.

For his part, Dugin in 2014 offered a Panarinian assertion of neo-Eurasianist universalism and messianism: “Only Russia in the future can become the main pole and haven for the planetary resistance and rallying point of all the world’s forces insisting on their own special path.” This semi-universalist messianism has echoes of many past Russian thinkers’ universalist messianic pronouncements. Thus, for Fedor Dostoevskii, the “Russian national idea” is in the end “nothing other than worldwide universal unity.” Indeed, “universality is the main character trait and destiny of the Russian.” Dostoevskii came to see the second half of the 19th century as a regrettable “era of universal differentiation, which only Russia could overcome and bring unity.”

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has become a prominent proponent of what might be called Orthodox geopolitical thinking. The ROC’s Worldwide Russian People’s Assembly (Vsemirnyi Russkii Narodniy Sobor or VRNS) seeks to unite all Rus Orthodox around the world in support of ROC’s ecclesiastical goals and to a certain extent Russian government policies. VRNS Deputy Chairman, Prof. Aleksandr Shipkov, argues that Russia must become the core of a “North-South Center,” a “meaningful core of Christian civilization,” not an economic center but a “value center that can win world authority.” We can see elements of this approach in Russia’s intensified global foreign policy, expanding beyond BRICS to court all non-western countries and counter them against the antagonistic, anti-traditional West. With this new universalism comes another semi-universalism with concerns beyond Greater Eurasia: Russia also must re-integrate European consciousness and the false opposition between tradition and modernity extant there. The ROC’s and Orthodox thought’s active involvement in Russian foreign policy’s soft power and public diplomacy reflects a larger trend of greater religious influence on Russian political thought. Thus, a new religious-philosophical renaissance is producing new strains of thought. One of the new trends, Orthodox Eurasianism, has rapidly expanded its views beyond Eurasia to the global scale.

Nikolai Vasetskii, Moscow State University Professor of international sociology and one-time co-author with nationalist-populist leader of the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Vladimir Zhirinovskii, and his 2019 A Sociology of the History of Russia: Basic Meanings and Values (Notes of Sociologist) are good examples of religious influence on neo-Eurasianist thought. Vasetskii argues convincingly that Patriarch Kirill is an Orthodox Eurasianist, who frequently uses the term “Eastern-Christian Orthodox civilization” when interacting with political figures, and proposes the aforementioned VRNS as a key institution for developing and implementing such a strategy. Citing thought leaders of the pre-Soviet Russian Religious Renaissance copiously, Vasetskii offers a pro-VRNS pan-Orthodox/neo-Eurasianist project uniting all Russian Orthodox communities everywhere behind ROC and Kremlin projects. He regards Kievan Rus’s first Metropolitan, Illarion (Hilarion), and his ‘Slovo’ not merely as the earliest artifact of “Russian sociopolitical thought and culture,” but the document that “determined the basic meaning and values of Ancient Russian civilization.” It set the “worldview of the Russian superethnos for a thousand years forward.” Vasetskii sees Illarion’s views as implicit legitimization of Russia’s present-day foreign policy principle of the “multipolarity of the world and civilizations.” The epistle “Slova o Zakone i Blagodati” (“A Word on Law and Grace”) written in the years 1037-1050 by Kievan priest Illarion (Hilarion), is a panegyric to the unification of mankind with God in and through Christ. Illarion Kievskii’s significance for Russian religiosity and literature is difficult to overstate. He is “unanimously” regarded as the foremost theologian and preacher of both Kievan and Muscovite Rus’ and “stands at the very springs of original Russian literature.” His prayers and teachings continue to influence Russian Orthodoxy today. Illarion’s ‘Slovo’ was, in Russian religious historian George Fedotov’s words, “a theological hymn to salvation” on the “national theme interspersed with the great universal-historical picture of God’s redemptive Providence,” vividly expressing the “Russian national spirit.” Thus, the Russian national spirit is rooted in God’s Providence, which is God’s interaction with human history. Illarion’s effort was rewarded by Prince Yaroslav the Wise with his appointment as Kiev’s first metropolitan, the first Russian to hold this post (previous Kievan metropolitans were Greek) and appointed by Kiev and not the Constantinople patriarch. Kiev’s emerging conflict with Constantinople came as Rus’ reached the apex of its power, and the ‘national party’ in Kiev was led by Illarion himself.

Vasetskii extrapolates from the usually general propositions and strategies in Russia’s Orthodox and Eurasianist discourses and designs detailed international strategies for Russian public diplomacy. Building on the ‘Russian world’ (Russkii mir) proposed by Patriarch Kirill and political scientists such as Vyacheslav Nikonov (grandson of Stalin era Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov), he proposes an Orthodox-Eurasianist policy he calls in Nikonovian terms “the Russian world as a symphony of ethnoses” for maximizing Russia’s cultural leverage and other forms of soft power and influence. The strategy is to build a worldwide network of Orthodox Christian and Russian-oriented states, sub-state regions, and communities. Such entities with significant Orthodox Christian populations are to provide the leverage for maximizing Russian influence and power. Clusters of such states, regions, and populations, in Vasetskii’s analysis, are spread out across the globe. The core of this Russian world is Eurasia plus Slavdom: the Slavic core (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Transdnistria), East Europe and the Balkans, and Eurasia. Further afield are African and Near East enclaves, the emigration (diasporas) in America, Europe, Australia, Africa, “and others.” This Orthodox community, though perhaps centered in Russia and then Eurasia, is to partner with other traditional civilizations opposed to the new Western decadence. Thus, Orthodox neo-Eurasianism is centered on traditional religions, especially Russian Orthodox civilization’s unique affinity with the mysticism of Eurasia’s other major religions – Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism — as Panarin proposed.

Thinkers like Dugin soon adopted a kind of theo-ideology, expanding their vision beyond Eurasia to the entire globe and deploying monist and universalist assertions drawn directly from Russian Orthodoxy as they interpret it. This is part and parcel of the new religious-philosophical renaissance. Dugin’s recent The Fourth Theory offers an esoteric philosophical alternative of Beingism or Daseinism as the next ideology confounding The End of History in Fukuyama’s sense. In Dugin’s conception, Russia is the Last Man and will lead a “sophiological revolution” that will bring in the Apocalypse, Second Coming, and merging of Heaven and Earth, God and Man, spirit and matter. Dugin’s imaginative, mystical, sometimes irrational side envisions the Atlanticist-Eurasianist tectonic in “realms lying well beyond the reach of empirical investigation,” including mysticism, myth, and apocalypticism. The ‘sophiological revolution’ he envisions in The Fourth Way: Introduction to the Fourth Political Theory is expected to be global and to bring in the last stage of human history. In a monist-universalist flight of fancy, Dugin sees a new transmogrified global society:

“(T)he reincarnation of a reorganized spiritual society as a holistic whole along a vertical of the heavenly flame; a Radical Subject and superman.”

By using the term ‘sophiological,’ Dugin is invoking a more or less esoteric idea popular among some Orthodox thinkers, especially during the Russian Religious Renaissance and Silver Age, that there is a feminine principle or spirit of Divine Wisdom — Holy Sophia — that, depending on the thinker, helps to maintain the unity of all existence or that of the Holy Trinity and is variously described as mankind’s guardian angel, the Eternal Bride of ‘Logos’ (the Word of God), the primordial nature of creation, the creative Love of God. In the thinking of perhaps Russia’s greatest philosopher, Vladimir Solovev, his central idea of the unity of everything with everything or ‘all-unity’ (vseedinstvo), which was widely popular in Russian intellectual circles before the Imperial crash, was closely tied to Holy Sophia. She symbolizes ‘perfected Femininity,’ ‘Eternal Femininity’ – as the spiritual energy linking and permeating the Holy Trinity, God’s Kingdom, and all Creation. Like Christ, Divine Sophia enables vseedinstvo to manifest itself. Solovev’s religious philosophy stipulated two kinds of tselostnost’ of the divine: “the acting or producing unity of the divine creativity of the Word (Logos) and the unity produced and realized.” Christ – and therefore God – and Divine Sophia are connected not just through their places in these two constituent types of divine tselostnost’ but also by virtue of Sophia’s being perfected mankind, which is contained in Christ the God-Man:

“If in the divine being – in Christ the first or producing unity is actually the Divine – God is the active force or Logos, and if, therefore, in this first unity we have Christ as our own divine being, then the second, produced unity, to which we gave the mystical name Sophia, is the beginning of humanity and the ideal or normal person. And Christ, tied to the human principle in this unity, is a man or, in the words of Holy Scripture, the second Adam. And so, Sophia is the ideal, perfected mankind, eternally contained in the integral divine being, or Christ.”

In sum, Dugin believes in the emergence of a neo-traditional spirituality that communes with nature and God and, in Hegelian terms, will be the antithesis to the Western techno-globalization thesis, producing a new type and level of universal civilization, in which Russia can play an important, even leading role in founding.

Aleksandr Prokhanov’s novels always have a global setting. While this might not be so surprising for a writer who during the Soviet era was nicknamed the Red Army’s ‘nightingale,’ what perhaps is surprising is his recent novels’ nod to the religious. His popular novel “Mr. Hexogen” involves an eternal struggle fought across all history. Agent Belotseltsev receives and fights on the side of “God’s design.” Wherever he goes he is being tracked in a ubiquitous web of enemy agents or technical means. This small unity is embedded in an infinitely larger one, a monist-universalist vision that literary critic Oksana Timofeeva calls “an eschatological project.” Prokhanov writes:

“And you see God’s design is something else. (It is) to end the separation of the Churches, with the separation of the peoples, with multi-theism, with multi-linguality, with the constant strife and antagonism over living space, over pastures, over caravan paths, over locations with uranium and kimberlite loadstocks. (It is) to create a united mankind, and in it is reflected the united image of the one, universal God.”

Belosel’tsev receives the truth from on high (in one scene from a holy fool) and “experiences grace” (blazhenstvo) from God and “God’s Providence.” In Prokhanov’s novel “The Political Scientist,” the hero Styzhailo is a devious, ‘khitryi’ Westernizer but has a conversion moment and is “just as blessed [by God] as Belosel’tsev” and finds himself in a “Russian paradise.” Prokhanov is also an adherent to one of the traditional forms of Russian universalism. He articulated the Dostoevskian view of Russian universal receptivity in a June 2021 radio interview, noting: “The Russian consciousness is open to all civilizations and all cultural codes. Dostoevskii spoke about this. The Russian code speaks about this – the soul of the world.”

Konstantin Malofeev (1974-present), Yurii Mamleev (1931-2015), Mikhail Nazarov (1948-present), and others put forward an Orthodox monarchism with a theurgical Orthodox mission. For example, Malofeev’s “Imperiya XXI Veka” (2022), the last book in a trilogy, puts forward Malofeev’s standard monarchist line with a healthy dose of Orthodox messianism: “the main thing for the future emperor is an awareness of his high mission as tsar of the Third Rome, holding back the world from evil.” Russia is Katechon – the biblical force that restrains Satan and evil. “The mission of Katechon should be codified in the constitution.” The new Russian empire will be eternal, dying at the end of the world, he says, and then quotes Putin: “Why do we need a world in which there is no Russia?” (Malofeev, p. 480). Malofeev knows Katechon poorly because, according to Scripture, Katechon is not a force for good, since the revelation of the Anti-Christ’s identity is necessary for the War of all against all, the apocalypse, and Christ’s second coming, ending human time and history. If Malofeev is a Christian, then he should regard the End as inevitable, and so giving Russia the role of Katechon is neither here nor there.

Aleksandr Bokhanov’s 2023 “The Russian Idea” gives us a “cosmological approach” and “Christ-centric perspective” in his message of Russian Orthodox messianism [Aleksandr Bokhanov, “Russkaya ideaya” (Moscow: Prospekt, 2023), pp. 7-8 and 12-13]. Again we meet the Third Rome idea, with Russia succeeding Constantinople as the carrier of the Orthodox Empire, similarly ordained from above as in Malofeev’s vision. “Several centuries filled with heavy tribulations and national cataclysms were necessary for the idea of ‘the land’ to be transformed into the ideal of the world mission ‘land-kingdom’ in the Russian consciousness.” ‘Land-kingdom’ in Russian easily connotes ‘Earth-Heaven.’ For Bokhanov, the Western icon of freedom, New York’s Statue of Liberty, is “an ugly cyclops of a structure,” an artificial image of freedom which pales in the face of the Russian idea of freedom “in the image of Christ, imparting the highest spiritual content to the earthly existence of mankind.” In discussing the prophets of doom in Russia’s 20th century, Bokhanov concludes his book as follows:

“Father Serafim (Sarovskii) also knew something else: in the end, the Lord ‘will forgive Russia and lead her by the path of suffering to great glory.’ Other holy ascetics also foretold this. That is why the Russian idea is alive because the Light of Christ is eternal.
“She that is gifted not only by Orthodoxy, and in no way only because of it, but by it first of all. From this (comes) its universal significance and universal destiny. As a contemporary philosopher wrote: ‘The Russian idea is urgent as never before, you see humankind (and not just Russia) has approached the edge of the abyss.’
“At the beginning of the 21st century, the experience of allegiance to Christ has turned out to be broadly and badly needed in Russia, and so broadly as never in other parts of the world. Precisely this Christian breakthrough once more underscores that the Russian idea never disappeared and could never have. Its historical realization is in no way at all comparable to an attempt to establish God’s Kingdom on earth. Russian Christian thought never even thought about anything like it. It is a search on the road to Heavenly Jerusalem and the Eternal World and to find that which will help grace, the testament of the Savior, and the storehouse of the Holy Spirit’s legacy.”

In a world where post-modernism, artificial intelligence, and humankind-technological singularity are on the march, Orthodox eschatology and messianism are mixing with a new cosmism or immortalism, melding not just Man and Machine, like the Bolsheviks and Rev’ry God-builders (Lunacharskkii, Bogdanov), but bringing God back in. This is facilitated by the revived popularity of Russia’s original immortalist and cosmist, Nikolai Fyodorov (1829-1903). He proposed that mankind could unite with God only by conquering nature and death and proposed grand projects to tame the former and defeat the latter. Today, Dmitrii Itskov, founder of the transhumanist ‘Russia 2045’ initiative, takes the same approach. He founded a transhumanist political party ‘Evolution 2045’ to inspire “a spiritual revolution” under which technology would eliminate aging, disease, death, crime, conflict, and even the “possibility of war.” He proposes a “spiritual-bodily strategy” towards the creation of “neo-mankind” and “a new model for society’s existence – spiritual, human, ethical, and high-technological.” Mankind and technology, neo-mankind, must begin the “process of mankind’s integration into a united collective super-reason (sverkhrazum) and superbeing (sverkhsushchestvo)” in order to “take under control” both the negative and positive attributes of humankind and “reveal the creative consciousness of the genius-creator.” The ultimate goal is cosmologically millennial and utopian: “Neo-mankind…will open a principally new epoch—a cosmic civilization of people of the future.” Chief traits of neo-mankind, according to Itskov, are “the ability to unite into a collective giant mind – the noosphere – a complex self-organized free society of progress, evolution and synergy” and “synergy between technological and spiritual development, superintelligence, immortality, multi-corporeality, cosmic creativity, and technologies aimed at improving the physical carrier of a person.”

Itskov envisages a transition period lasting throughout the 21st century, during which the following goals and tasks must be accomplished: project “Avatar,” producing technologies for “transferring individual human consciousness to a non-biological… artificial body” (replacement of the human body by a robot or cyborg); establishment of conditions for merging science and spirituality; “transhumanistic medicine based on avatar technologies of cybernetic artificial organs and systems; and the education of a spiritual, humane, future-oriented, creative people who believe in their divine potential.” Goals and objectives for the 22nd and 23rd centuries include immortalist and cosmist targets: the attainment of “unlimited immortality” for all neo-humankind by its transfer to a non-biological carrier; free unlimited movement in space; universal access to “multi-corporeality and consciousness distributed on many carriers, the free life of one consciousness in several immortal bodies and control over them”; and the ability to live simultaneously and move freely in several realities. From the 23rd to the 30th centuries, goals and objectives include: “ending the need to live only on planet Earth (‘Earth is the cradle of mankind, but you can’t live in the cradle all your life.’ K. E. Tsiolkovsky)”; resettlement of humankind to near and deep space; unlimited movement across the universe; “complete control of reality by the power of thought and will”, the ability to self-organize, order and complicate space, and “create new worlds”; creation “for each neo-human a personal, mind-controlled Universe”; and “the management of the course of personal history by the power of thought until the completion of all historical processes at the point of singularity (end of history, collapse of time).”

This utopian and promethean project, like earlier Russian and Soviet predecessors, adds Russian messianism to its mix of monism, universalism, millennialism, prometheanism, utopianism, and transcendentalism. In Itskov’s vision, Russia is poised to be world transhumanism’s “leader” and “epicenter,” “driving the locomotive of history” to its monist ‘point of singularity,’ a new variation of the vseedinstvo theme. In sum, Itskov immortalizes humankind by downloading its minds and souls into a general server of humankind’s consciousness in order to meet or construct God, and God is a Russian! Broader support for this project could only come post-Putin, if ever; Putin and the Russian elite remain too down to earth and practical for such a wildly transcendentalist and messianic program.

Conclusion

None of the above is meant to suggest that the new Russian universalism and messianism are veering towards an aggressive imperialistic universalism. It is to say that Russia has rejected the often hypocritical teachings brought from other shores after the Soviet collapse and, having sailed into open waters, is now guided by pre-Soviet traditions of religious universalism and messianism of a more modest type. However, the Soviet experience of fervent faith and zealous struggle for a universalistic, messianic utopia, backed up by violent and military means, suggests the potential for such a bad turn. Although it is important to note that there is no firm movement in such a direction at this stage, war has a way of transforming societies and states, as the Russians learned a little more than a century ago.

Clearly, there is a coalescing intellectual trend mixing Russian Orthodox images of the meaning and end of history, the superiority and Providentially-ordained Russian traditions of universality, communalism, and spirituality versus the Western descent into social decay and individualistic assertion through decadence, and a geopolitical confrontation that reflects these two beliefs. For now, the Putin government remains far too practical to adopt projects like those offered by Dugin, Malofeev, Yurev, and Itskov. But ideas of more moderate and limited scale, such as those of Schipkov, Vasetskii, and Bokhanov, already are a good part of the Russian elite’s worldview and policy preferences.

For Russia to adopt one or more of the more moderate programs full-scale as the bases for a state ideology, not to mention such adoption of the more radical orientations, several conditions would need to prevail. First, there would have to be an end to Putin’s rule, which, ironically, the West requires in its quest to realize its own messianic vision. Second, there would need to be an absence of hope for a rapprochement with the West, which, again ironically, the West is doing everything it can to bring about. Third, Russia likely would have to undergo a defeat in the NATO-Russia Ukraine War or any war extending out from it; another end the West is hoping to arrange. On the other hand, a quasi-revolutionary ideological fever inspiring a fervent messianic Russian teleology, even eschatology, could be sparked by a resounding, glorious Russian victory over the West. Time or History will tell whether Russian messianism emerges as Moscow’s ideological countermove to Washington’s messianic dreams.

*The seminal work on Russian messianism is Manuel’ Sarkisyants, “Rossiya i messianizm: k ‘russkoi idee’ N. A. Berdyaeva,” (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, 2005) [translated from Manuel Sarkisyanz, “Russland und der messianismus des Orient: Sendungsbewusstsein und politischer Chiliasmus des Ostens” (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mahr, 1955)].

FOOTNOTES

[1] Simone Weil, Venice Saved (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 31 and 94.

[2] Gordon S. Wood, Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), pp. 2-3.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 180-1.

[4] I. I. Kurilla, “‘Ruskie prazdniki’ i amerikanskie spory o Rossii,” in Rossiya i SShA: poznavaya drug druga: sbornik pamyati akademika Aleksandra Aleksandrovich Fursenko (Saint Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya, 2015), pp. 168-79.

[5] William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), pp. 183–184.

[6] Kevin Peraino, Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power, cited in www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304434104579382990902123538.

[7] David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), p. 73.

[8] Arthur Herman, 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder (New York: Harper, 2017), p. 65

[9] Herman, 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder, p. 66.

[10] Alec Regimbal, “Author Francis Fukuyama, a Stanford fellow, backs far-right Azov group after school visit,” SF Gate, 12 July 2023, https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/fukuyama-senior-fellow-stanford-far-right-group-18193614.php; Lee Golinkin, “Why Did a Group of Stanford Students Host Azov Neo-Nazis, Forward.com, 3 July 2023, https://forward.com/opinion/552958/why-did-stanford-host-azov-neo-nazis/; Larry Cohler-Esses, “Does Ukraine Really Have a Neo-Nazi Problem?”, Forward.com, 28 July 2023, https://forward.com/news/555676/azov-brigade-ukraine-nazi-extremism-jewish-criticism/; and “Stanford is supporting Neo-Nazi ideology by welcoming Azov: Russia,” Al Mayadeen, 14 October 2022, https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/stanford-is-supporting-neo-nazi-ideology-by-welcoming-azov:.

[11] Ben Weingarten, “Stanford, Silicon Valley and the Rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex,” Real Clear Investigations, 31 May 2024, http://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/05/30/stanford_silicon_valley_and_the_rise_of_the_censorship_industrial_complex_1034440.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR25g-LjnVX0LdNvdH1Gmjw8lK58XajcwrZEyD-U4uvrGl9UPtBo1xSzl5s_aem_8V-dcm296x1ePC2Zv1rGSw.

[12] Paul Grenier, “American Messianism,” Landmarks, 12 June 2024, https://landmarksmag.substack.com/p/american-messianism?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share.

[13] Gordon M. Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture, Thought, History, and Politics (London: Europe Books, 2021). On Russian historical tselostnost’, see Gordon M. Hahn, “Russian Historical Tselostnost’,” Russian and Eurasian Politics, 13 April 2023, https://gordonhahn.com/2023/04/13/working-paper-russian-historical-tselostnost-parts-1-3-conclusion/.

[14] A. S. Panarin, Revansh istorii: Rossiiskaya strategicheskaya initsiativa v XXI veke (Moscow: Logos, 1998), pp. 362 (from here on cited as Revansh istorii).

[15] Panarin, Revansh istorii, pp. 14-15.

[16] Panarin, Revansh istorii, pp. 13-15, 222-27, and 357.

[17] For Panarin’s words on these points, see Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’, pp. 517-19.

[18] Aleksandr Dugin, “Yevraziiskii put’ kak national’naya idea,” Yevravziiskoe obozrenie, No. 9, 31 May 2003, pp. 71-90, at p. 85.

[19] F. M. Dostoevskii, Dnevnik pisatelya (Saint Petersburg: Lenizdat, 2001), p. 403.

[20] Dostoevskii, Dnevnik pisatelya, p. 239.

[21] Dostoevskii, Dnevnik pisatelya, p. 174.

[22] A. V. Shipkov, Diskurs ortodoksii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskoi Patriarkhii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi TseArkvy, 2021), p. 252.

[23] Shipkov, Diskurs ortodoksii, p. 252.

[24] Vasetskii, Sotsiologiya istorii Rossii: Bazovyie smysly i tsennosti (zapicka sotsiolog), pp. 128 and 180-93.

[25] N. A. Vasetskii, Sotsiologiya istorii Rossii: Bazoviye smysly i tsennosti (Zapiski sotsiolog) (Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt, 2019), pp. 36-7.

[26] In arguing the contemporary neo-Eurasianist and Putin era Russian policy position that U.S. and Western neo-liberal hegemony maintains an undemocratic international order and threatens civilizational diversity and traditionalist civilizations such as Russia’s own, Vasetskii asserts that Illarion’s “Word” introduced the idea of the equality of all nationalities, nullifying the idea of a “chosen people.” Vasetskii, Sotsiologiya istorii Rossii: Bazoviye smysly i tsennosti (Zapiski sotsiolog), pp. 38-9.

[27] Fedotov, Russkaya religioznost’- Chast’ 1: Khristianstvo Kievskoi Rusi, X-XIII vv., p. 86.

[28] Fedotov, Russkaya religioznost’- Chast’ 1: Khristianstvo Kievskoi Rusi, X-XIII vv., pp. 88 and 91.

[29] Despite his stature, Illarion soon disappeared from the historical chronicles, and the Russian Church neglected the memory of Illarion as a historical personality, despite his having been one of the first and “most remarkable archpastors.” Fedotov, Russkaya religioznost’- Chast’ 1: Khristianstvo Kievskoi Rusi, X-XIII vv., p. 86.

[30] Vasetskii’s East European/Balkan region encompasses Serbia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbska, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Rumania, Moldovia, and Orthodox segments of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Albania. The Eurasian mega-region includes all of the Transcaucasus (including Abkhazia and South Ossetiya, excluding Azerbaijan) and Orthodox segments in the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. The African and Near East enclaves include Ethiopia, Antioch and the Orthodox communities in Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, including the Orthodox center of Jerusalem. In addition to this list, Vasetskii notes that “no one has repealed Russian America in California,” and “Russian influences are appearing in China, on the Russian border, and in Mongolia. He also notes the emergence of Orthodox communities and priests among “ethnic Chinese and Japanese.” Vasetskii, Sotsiologiya istorii Rossii: Bazovyie smysly i tsennosti (zapicka sotsiolog), p. 131.

[31] Stephen D. Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 195-7. In his Misterii Yevrazii (Mysteries of Eurasia), Dugin asserts that there was once an island Arctic paradise ‘Hyperborea’ from which a pure Aryan race, the Russians’ ancestors, moved into Eurasia. Alexander Dugin, Misterii Yevrazii (Moscow: Arktogeia, 1996) cited in Sheffield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements, pp. 196-7.

[32] Aleksandr Dugin, Chetvertyi put’: Vvedenie v chetvertuyu politicheskuyu teoriyu (Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt, 2014), p. 40.

[33] Dugin, Chetvertyi put’: Vvedienie v chetvertuyu politicheskuyu teoriyu, p. 65.

[34] Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie Istiny, p. 329.

[35] Solovev, Chtenie o Bogochelovechestve in Solovev and Radlov, Sobranie sochinenii Vladimira Sergeevicha Solov’eva, Tom III, p. 121.

[36] Alexander Prokhanov, Mister Hexogen cited in Oksana Timofeeva, “Russkii rai, ili Rodina-Mat’,” in Marlen Laryuel’ (Marlene Laruelle), ed., Russkii natsionalizm: sotsial’nyi i kul’turnyi kontekst (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008), pp. 339-68, pp, at p. 348.

[37] Prokhanov, Mister Hexogen cited in Timofeeva, “Russkii rai, ili Rodina-Mat’,” pp. 350-2.

[38] Timofeeva, “Russkii rai, ili Rodina-Mat’,” pp. 365-6.

[39] Interview with Alexander Prokhanov, “Koronovirus, Putin, stat’ya Lavrova,” Program ‘Osobie mnenie,’ Ekho Moskvy, https://echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/2862332-echo/, last accessed on 5 July 2021.

[40] Aleksandr Bokhanov, Russkaya ideya: Istoriya i istoriosofiya gosudarstva Rossiiskogo (Moscow: Prospekt, 2023), p. 82.

[41] Bokhanov, Russkaya ideya: Istoriya i istoriosofiya gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, p. 103.

[42] Bokhanov, Russkaya ideya: Istoriya i istoriosofiya gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, p. 554.

[43] Dmitrii Itskov, “Put’ k neochelovechestvu kak osnova ideologii partii ‘Evolyutsiya 2045’,” 2045.ru, 9 November 2012, http://www.2045.ru/articles/30840.html, last accessed on 24 October 2020.

[44] Itskov, “Put’ k neochelovechestvu kak osnova ideologii partii ‘Evolyutsiya 2045’”.

[45] Itskov, “Put’ k neochelovechestvu kak osnova ideologii partii ‘Evolyutsiya 2045’”.

The New York Times: CIA, Busy Bee in Ukraine

via RT

Donetsk resident with a flag with an autograph of DPR militia commander Arsen Pavlov (Motorola) at the farewell ceremony for the commander.

The US intelligence agency has aided Kiev in setting 12 secret bases along the border, the paper has reported

Today’s sensation is a huge article in the New York Times. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has turned Ukraine into one of its major assets in spying on Russia over a decade that has passed since the 2014 Maidan coup, the New York Times revealed in its piece on Sunday.

The US specialists funded and organized a network of secret bases on the territory of the former Soviet state and made Kiev a part of a “secret coalition”against Moscow, the paper said, citing a host of current and former officials in the US, Ukraine and Europe.

Ukraine currently hosts at least 12 secret spy bases located near the Russian border that gather all sorts of information on Russia as well as coordinate drone strikes and a network of agents supposedly operating inside Russia.

The NYT journalists were able to visit one such forward operating base located in an underground bunker. The reporters said that the place was used to eavesdrop on Russian military communications and oversee drone strikes on Russian territory. The base was funded and equipped by the CIA, NYT said, citing a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, General Sergey Dvoretsky.

The US intelligence agency particularly equipped the base with communications equipment and large computer servers, the general told NYT, adding that the bunker was used to hack into Russian, Belarusian and Chinese satellites.

According to the paper, the CIA and other American intelligence agencies also supplied Ukraine with information on Russian troop movements and missile strikes throughout the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

The active cooperation between the two nations’ intelligence services started almost immediately after the 2014 Maidan coup and Kiev has since turned into “one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin,”the paper said.

The post-coup Ukrainian authorities actively sought America’s approval by particularly handing over Russian secrets to them since the US had little interest in assets that could not produce any intelligence of value on Moscow, NYT said.

In 2015, the then head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, General Valery Kondratiuk, handed over a stack of top-secret files, including information on the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet and nuclear submarine designs at a meeting with a CIA deputy station chief in Kiev.

A year before that, the then head of the Ukrainian domestic security service (SBU), Valentin Nalivaichenko, who was appointed by the post-coup authorities, approached the local CIA and MI6 chiefs, seeking a three-way partnership and asking them to help him rebuild his service from scratch.

In 2016, the CIA started training an elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245. General Kirill Budanov, who currently heads Ukrainian military intelligence, is also a former member of the CIA-trained Unit 2245, according to NYT.

American spies also provided specialized training to members of the Fifth Directorate – a paramilitary unit created by Kiev for operations against Russia. The members of this hit squad were involved in some high-profile assassinations in Donbass, including that of a commander Arsen Pavlov, aka ‘Motorola’, who was blown up in an elevator in 2016, NYT said. Existence of the assassination unit was also revealed by Nalivaichenko in a separate interview with The Economist in September 2023.

The US intelligence operatives were also instrumental in Kiev’s response to the start of the Russian military operation in February 2022. The CIA operatives remained at a certain location in western Ukraine while the US was evacuating its personnel from the country ahead of the conflict.

“Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians,” Ivan Bakanov, another former head of the SBU, told NYT.

Moscow has repeatedly pointed to the threats to its national security coming from the increased US activities on Ukrainian territory and Kiev’s NATO aspirations. It also cited the need to ensure Russia’s security as one of the reasons for the start of its military operation in February 2022, while Kiev maintained that Moscow’s actions were “completely unprovoked.”

Ukraine under the occupation of the United States and the United States, through the hands of Ukraine, are waging a war against Russia since 2014.

But the purpose of the article is different – to show Republicans in Congress what enormous value the pro-American regime in Ukraine represents for US interests and that therefore it is necessary to vote for funding this regime.

That’s why the CIA agreed to an unprecedented disclosure of top secret information.

“It is China’s Fault Not Helping End the Wars”

by Timur Fomenko, political analyst

The US and UK are currently waging a bombing campaign against the Ansar Allah militia group in Yemen, commonly known as the Houthis. The Houthis have been responding to the ongoing conflict in Gaza by attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, attempting to use the geopolitically critical Gulf of Aden to strangle one of the world’s most important commercial routes, and therefore escalating pressure on the West to end the conflict.

Of course, the US has been completely unreasonable in its unconditional backing of Israel’s military campaign, and rather than confronting the problem directly, it has proposed another idea – to outsource both blame and resolution to China and ask Beijing to help end the conflict. This is not a new tactic by Washington, as it has done the same thing with the Russia-Ukraine war, crafting a narrative that it is China’s “responsibility” to end it, of course, conveniently on terms that are favorable to America.

In reality, the US has absolutely no chance of getting China to end these respective conflicts, primarily because it is in China’s best interests not to secure outcomes that amount to geopolitical gains for America. However, that is the point in itself, as the US wants to intentionally frame Beijing as “the bad guy” and therefore push the perception that Beijing is a challenge to the international order and a threat to peace. The US is effectively trying to gaslight China by making it look morally bad for conflict Washington itself creates and not agreeing to the outcomes Washington wants. It is a blame game.

American foreign policy has little room for compromise and is driven by a zero-sum mindset that emphasizes absolute strategic gains for the US at all costs. The US does not negotiate with its adversaries for the sake of peace, but rather attempts to maintain a long-term strategic posture in the hope they, through pressure or other means, eventually capitulate to US preferences. For example, the US position regarding the Ukraine war has never been to negotiate with Russia or respect its strategic space but to attempt to impose a strategic defeat on Moscow and enable further expansion of NATO, which in turn is another vehicle for American pressure. Even as this approach is proving increasingly ineffective, there’s no shift in Washington’s foreign policy in sight.

Similarly, the US has been happy to offer unconditional backing to Israel in its war in Gaza, despite claiming to push for peace. Washington has allowed the conflict to continue and avoided calling for a ceasefire at all costs. It then responds harshly to the instability the conflict creates, such as attacks from the Houthis. Logically speaking, Houthi attacks would stop if the US ended the conflict in Gaza, but that’s just how US foreign policy thinking works. There must never under any circumstances be concessions regarding the strategic status quo, only a doubling down on the current position with any options necessary. That’s the thinking that led Washington to scrapping the Iran nuclear deal and allowing a peace process with North Korea to collapse.

Now, the US is articulating a strategy whereby when conflict occurs, it tries to outsource responsibility by blaming the lack of peace on China. As the narrative generally goes, “If only China would act and stop this, then there would be peace,” whether it be in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, or wherever. Of course, that peace is strictly conditional on terms the US has set and not terms that China itself might want to set. If Beijing does press for peace but on alternative terms to what America wants, such as attempting to mediate in Ukraine rather than pushing for the collapse of Russia, those peace terms are quickly rejected and condemned by the mainstream media.

What we have is a no-win situation where Beijing is framed as a perpetuating, if not instigating, force in conflicts, no matter what it does. China is portrayed as actively preventing peace, or alternatively, enabling the “enemy” side to continue its perceived aggression and offering terms that favor said “enemy,” and therefore is complicit in antagonism towards the West. China is therefore made out as a threat to the international order and world peace unless it agrees to exactly what the US wants, which of course, logically works against the interests of China as a whole. Why, for example, would China agree to crippling Russia? Or turn against its strategic partner, Iran? This narrative always and deliberately ignores the role that the US has played in instigating, escalating, and perpetuating the given conflicts at hand and pushes the “good vs. evil” binary rather than acknowledging the complex realities of geopolitics.

In reality, China is always careful to explicitly take no sides in such conflicts and strives for balance, such as when it mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, for the US, which thinks only about zero-sum political gains as opposed to peace in the interests of all, this will never ever be acceptable. Therefore China remains a villain and a threat.

CIA Media Empire: Who Owns the Information Space of Serbia?

via Rybar.ru

The CIA’s Media Empire: Who owns Serbia’s information space?
A scandal is breaking out in Serbia due to the leak of documents according to which the state-owned company Telekom Srbija is secretly selling its strategic assets to the United Media holding company. The conglomerate, created by CIA specialists with financial assistance from British investors, acquired the main regional media in just a decade and bought up the lion’s share of providers in the Balkans. Thanks to such manipulations, even though Serbia is not a member of the European Union and has not imposed anti-Russian sanctions, Russian media are already being censored.

But about everything in order.

Unexpected success
The story of the great success of the United Media media empire has its roots in the fateful year 2000 for Yugoslavia. After the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, an ordinary Serbian businessman Dragan Sholak registered a small cable telephony company – KDS. At first, she did not differ much from other Serbian operators and barely made ends meet, but two years later, Sholak suddenly receives $ 10 million from the Investment Fund of Southeastern Europe, funded by the American government agency Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It was not a simple agency, and the fund manager of Overseas Private Investment Corporation was the company of the famous “philanthropist” George Soros — Soros Investment Capital Management. It was later renamed Bedminster Capital Management.

Thanks to large–scale investments, KDS quickly absorbed other cable TV providers and soon transformed into Serbia Broadband – SBB, which eliminated competitors one by one.Then there were 15 million euros from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a lot of bought-out providers, and soon SBB began to pose a threat even to the state operator Telekom Srbija.

In 2007, the Mid Europa Partners Fund acquired a controlling stake in Sholak’s company. Merging with the local operator Telemach, the company became part of the United Group along with the cable operators of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro. With massive acquisitions and mergers, only one thing remained unchanged: Dragan Sholak was still the head of the conglomerate. The thing is that Sholak did not build a media empire alone, but under the strict control of influential foreign patrons, who ensured the success of all his operations.

In a diplomatic telegram from the American Embassy in Belgrade dated 2007, U.S. Ambassador Michael Polt conveys to Washington Sholak’s concern about the monopoly of the Serbian operator Telekom, and also reports on the joint efforts of American diplomats and Western investors to solve the problem.

The telegram was dated June 1, 2007, and on June 27, Mid Europa Partners announced the conclusion of a historic deal — the acquisition of SBB. The fruitful cooperation of Sholak’s company with American diplomats did not end there. So, Cameron Munter, after leaving the diplomatic service, continued his career as an adviser to SBB / Telemach. And his predecessor, William Montgomery, the first U.S. ambassador to take office after the NATO intervention in 1999 and the color revolution on October 5, 2000, was a business partner of Brent Sadler— director of N1 TV. This is the flagship channel of the United Group, which, in fact, is an exclusive CNN affiliate in Eastern Europe.

The CIA’s Media Empire
And that’s where the fun begins. In just a few years, the conglomerate acquires shares in leading TV channels and media outlets and forms its own content distribution network. In addition, most of the Internet traffic in the Balkans today passes through providers also bought out by the British. Mobile operators were also bought up massively in the Balkans: the Slovenian wireless operator Tusmobil became Telemach Mobil, Tele2 Croatia became part of the holding, and so on. By 2013, United Group, which was majority owned by Mid Europa Partners and the EBRD, already included not only Serbia Broadband, Telemach Bosnia & Herzegovina and Telemach Slovenia, but also the DTH Total TV platform covering Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as a number of small operators such as Absolut OK, KDS NS, Jet TV, Beogrid, Telekabel, VI-NET and ArtNet. At that time, the company was an association of leading cable, satellite and Internet service providers, which together served about 2 million users in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The media giant also had at its disposal a unique infrastructure of 10,000 km of fiber-optic networks connecting Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sarajevo. Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. L. P. (KKR), an investment company founded by George Soros’s neighbor on the Atlantic coast, Henry Kravis, decided to use such a powerful resource. One of the owners of the American investment company was the former head of the CIA, David Petraeus. Throughout his life, he convinced American generals of the key role of information technology in hybrid warfare and called on the command of the US Armed Forces to move from conventional warfare to more productive activities in cyberspace under the slogan “conquer hearts and minds.” In 2010, it was he who created the first Internet troll factory under a contract with the Central Command of the US Armed Forces (CENTCOM).

Under Petraeus’ leadership, the foundation began to expand its presence in the region by leaps and bounds. Through United Group, they bought out the entertainment industry giant Grand Production and acquired a controlling stake in the Montenegrin cable operator BBM. The company also became a co-owner of the number one information portal in Serbia Blic.rs , having bought a 49% stake from Swiss Ringier Digital SA. N1 TV has studios in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo, and the management of the United Group has taken control of the distribution of a significant part of the content.

Financial barbarians
In 2017, United Group acquired Central European Media Enterprises (CME) in Croatia and Slovenia, including TV Nova— the most popular Croatian channel, whose evening news attracted a wide audience, as well as POP TV, whose 24ur broadcast was Slovenia’s main news program. United Group continued to expand its fixed and mobile telephony operations and absorb competitors including BHB Cable TV (Bosnia and Herzegovina), M kabl (Montenegro) and Ikom (Serbia).

Moreover, from an economic point of view, the fund’s astronomical investments and the acquisition of more and more regional companies did not justify themselves: even the buyout of the flagship SBB in Serbia and Nova TV in Croatia was unprofitable. Annual reports indicate financial losses of millions of euros: 29 million in 2014, 33 million in 2015, and in 2016 SBB It suffered record losses of 35 million euros.

However, the “financial barbarians”, as one of the Western publications nicknamed Petraeus and his team, did not care much about this. By buying media in the former Yugoslavia, the ex-head of the CIA gained influence. Already in March 2017, SBB ousted the most watched channel of the RTS1 television company from the leading positions that it had held since the advent of television in the region. His place was taken by the “exclusive CNN affiliate.” Soon his twin brother Nova S was launched, and a couple of years ago Montenegrin Vijesti were added to the portfolio of United Media. Today, the company broadcasts 55 channels in 8 countries in the region, and they are available for cable platforms, as well as DTH, OTT and IPTV. Her legal entity is registered in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Censorship without sanctions
The news about the secret transfer of Telekom Srbija assets to United Media seriously scared the Serbian public. According to information leaked to the media, they include the most important telecommunications towers and infrastructure (power plants, solar panels). A total of 1,827 such towers, of which 995 are located in Serbia, 725 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 107 in Montenegro, are acquired by the British company Actis GP LLP. To do this, it must receive financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank lending institution. There are suspicions that the British investment company is just a laying firm, and the assets of the state–owned enterprise will eventually end up in the hands of United Media investors.

Of particular concern is that, thanks to such manipulations, the Serbian leadership is actually losing power over its own information space. For example, Russian media outlets opened in Serbia have recently been blocked through an Internet provider that provides access to the network for universities, institutes, schools and other research organizations.

The European Academic Network (GEANT) blocked RT Balkan and Sputnik Internet resources in institutions. The restrictions affected about one million users, which is 15% of the country’s population. In the same way, with the beginning of the SVO in the spring of 2022, Russia Today broadcasting in other languages was turned off in Serbia. SBB, owned by Sholak, simply stated that it was not able to rebroadcast the channel on the EON, Total TV and D3 platforms.

Whoever owns the information owns the world. Looking at what is happening in Serbia and other countries in the region, and assessing the speed with which Western investors are buying up local media resources and providers, as well as the consequences of such a takeover, you understand the relevance of what Nathan Rothschild said back in the 19th century.

The West is Going Full Ape Against Russia

via RT

Moscow has accused the European Union of taking pointers from Nazi Germany, as the 27-nation bloc mulls plans to issue special “democracy passports” to Russian opposition activists working toward regime change in the country.

Commenting on a recent draft document put under consideration by the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the bloc hoped to use Russian citizens as its “little helpers,” drawing comparisons to the policies of the Third Reich.

“It is known that during the years of Nazi occupation, persons wishing to cooperate with the German administration were offered to sign the so-called ‘Volkslist,’ a special document that played the role of [passport],” she said, adding that the EU had similarly proposed “passports for good Russians.”

The draft report, penned by Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius, calls on the bloc to adopt a new sweeping strategy to pursue a “change of power in Russia,”saying it would work with “democratic forces” in and outside the country to topple the current leadership and establish a “transitional government.”

As part of that plan, the bloc suggested a new “democracy passport” and “special visa arrangements” for Russian opposition activists working “in exile”from EU member states, offering to scale back travel restrictions for dissident Russians.

“They have big plans,” Zakharova continued, going on to quote the EU policy paper. “Holders of ‘passports of democracy’ will become the backbone of the EU after ‘the victory of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia, which will open a window of opportunity for the transformation of Russia into democracy.’”

The spokeswoman noted that, under Soviet law during the Second World War, signing the German ‘Volklist’ was “qualified as treason” and “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” calling on Russian legislators to “work out a possible reaction if the European Parliament approves such decisions.”

The European Union has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia since the conflict with Ukraine escalated in February 2022, also approving a long list of arms transfers to Kiev. It said it would continue those policies in the near term, hoping for a “decisive Ukrainian victory” that would ultimately pave the way to “fundamental political changes in Russia.”

Former Samsung executive Yang Hyang-ja urges US to abandon China chip strategy

The US’ strategy to curb Chinese semiconductor industry, including attempts to persuade Asian allies to introduce restrictions against China, could lead to the disruption of supply chains and other countries forming alliances against the US, a South Korean lawmaker and former Samsung executive, Yang Hyang-ja said on Sunday.

“If [Washington] continues to try to punish other nations and to pass bills and implement ‘America First’ policies in an unpredictable manner, other countries could form an alliance against the US,” Yang said in an interview with British business daily, the Financial Times.

Yang Hyang-ja, a member of South Korea’s parliament, said countries could form an alliance against the US if it continued with its ‘America First’ and anti-China policies © Office of Yang Hyang-ja/Handout

______________________________
by Christian Davies and Song Jung-a in Seoul via ft.com – Excerpt

An influential South Korean legislator has strongly criticised Washington’s interventions in the global semiconductor industry, in a sign of the disquiet in Seoul over US efforts to corral Asian allies into its economic security agenda. Yang Hyang-ja, a former chip engineer and Samsung executive who chaired a ruling party committee on South Korea’s semiconductor competitiveness until early this year, said that measures to curb China’s ability to access or produce advanced chips risked damaging relations with its Asian allies.

“If [Washington] continues to try to punish other nations and to pass bills and implement ‘America First’ policies in an unpredictable manner, other countries could form an alliance against the US,” Yang told the Financial Times in an interview.

“The US is the strongest nation in the world,” she added. “It should consider more of humanity’s common values. Appearing to use its strength as a weapon is not desirable.” The US has passed legislation offering tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to non-Chinese chipmakers to increase semiconductor production in the US, in exchange for restrictions on their ability to upgrade or expand their facilities in China.

The Biden administration has also imposed sweeping export controls on critical chip manufacturing tools to China and prohibited US nationals and companies from offering direct or indirect support to Chinese companies involved in advanced chip manufacturing.

But there are concerns in Seoul that the US measures will provoke a backlash from Beijing, disrupting finely calibrated supply chains and threatening profits.

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s leftwing opposition Democratic party, has accused the conservative government of harming the country’s economic and security interests by siding too closely with the US and Japan against China and Russia.

Yang, a former Democratic party member who formed her own technocratic party, Hope of Korea, in June, acknowledged that “US tech war measures are not harming our semiconductor industry yet because sanctions against China could actually reduce output, leading to higher prices”. But she added: “The more the US sanctions China, the harder China will try to make rapid technological progress. China will provide more national support for the goal. Then it will pose a crisis to South Korea, given China’s abundant talent and raw materials.”

“The US should abandon its current approach of trying to get something out of shaking and breaking the global value chain,” she said. Yang added that the US had benefited from South Korean and Taiwanese expertise in manufacturing memory and processor chips respectively, saying it was “trying to demolish the status quo through sanctions”.

Many analysts said the US measures actually helped South Korean chipmakers by hampering the progress of their Chinese competitors. The biggest long-term threat to South Korea’s semiconductor industry, they said, was not supply chain disruption but the rise of state-backed Chinese rivals such as YMTC, which has made rapid progress in closing the technological gap with leading Korean chipmakers in the Nand flash-memory sector.

Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute of America, notes that US tech giant Apple had considered using YMTC’s Nand flash-memory chips for the current iPhone 14, until political pressure from US lawmakers forced it to abandon the option. “The Apple-YMTC episode demonstrated both how far the Chinese have come in the Nand memory sector, and how Korean companies have benefited from US intervention,” said Stangarone.

The FT has also reported that US export controls helped thwart an alleged attempt by a renowned South Korean semiconductor expert to build a “copycat” memory chip plant in China. According to Korean prosecutors, the plant “would have caused irrecoverable losses to the [Korean] semiconductor industry”.

Yang accepted that the US-China tech war had bought South Korea time to develop its own technologies but added that the country’s semiconductor industry was in a “very precarious situation”. The lawmaker, who was instrumental in passing the K-Chips Act this year to boost tax credits for companies investing in chip manufacturing in South Korea, said the country had to address what she described as neglect of its own engineering talent.

“In Taiwan, technicians get treated better than lawyers and judges. But in Korea, they are not treated well,” said Yang, who is also a member of a cross-party committee on cutting-edge technologies.

“Smart Korean students want to become doctors, dentists or oriental medicine practitioners rather than to become engineers,” she said. “Only technology can set us free from all these geopolitical problems.”

How CIA Schemes Color Revolutions Around the World

by Yuan Hong via Global Times

cyber attack Photo:VCG

For a long time, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has plotted “peaceful evolution” and “color revolutions” as well as spying activities around the world. Although details about these operations have always been murky, a new report released by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and Chinese cybersecurity company 360 on Thursday unveiled the main technical means the CIA has used to scheme and promote unrest around the world.

According to the report, since the beginning of the 21st century, the rapid development of the internet offered “new opportunity” for CIA’s infiltration activities in other countries and regions. Any institutions or individuals from anywhere in the world that use US digital equipment or software could be turned into the CIA’s “puppet agent.”

For decades, the CIA has overthrown or attempted to overthrow at least 50 legitimate governments abroad (the CIA has only recognized seven of these instances), causing turmoil in related countries. Whether it is the “color revolution” in Ukraine in 2014, the “sunflower revolution” in Taiwan island, China, or the “saffron revolution” in Myanmar in 2007, the “green revolution” in Iran in 2009, and other attempted “color revolutions” — the US intelligence agencies are behind them all, according to the report.

The US’ leading position in technologies of telecommunication and on-site command has provided unprecedented possibilities for the US intelligence community to launch “color revolutions” abroad. The report released by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 disclosed five methods commonly used by the CIA.

The first is to provide encrypted network communication services. In order to help protesters in some countries in the Middle East keep in touch and avoid being tracked and arrested, an American company, which, reportedly, has a US military background, developed TOR technology that can stealthily access the internet — the Onion Router technology.

The servers encrypt all information that flows through them to help certain users to surf the web anonymously. After the project was launched by American companies, it was immediately provided free of charge to anti-government elements in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries and regions to ensure that those “young dissidents who want to shake their own government’s rule” can avoid the scrutiny of the government, according to the report.

The second method is to provide offline communication services. For example, in order to ensure that anti-government personnel in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries can still keep in touch with the outside world when the internet is disconnected, Google and Twitter quickly launched a special service called “Speak2Tweet,” which allows users to dial and upload voice notes for free.

These messages are automatically converted into tweets and then uploaded to the internet, and publicly released through Twitter and other platforms to complete the “real-time reporting” of the event on site, said the report.

The third method is to provide on-site command tools for rallies and parades based on the internet and wireless communications. The report noted that the US RAND Corporation has spent several years developing a non-traditional regime change technology called “swarming.” The tool is used to help a large number of young people connected through the internet join the “one shot for another place” mobile protest movement, greatly improving the efficiency of on-site command of the event.

The fourth is American developed software called “Riot.” The software supports 100 percent independent broadband network, provides variable WiFi network, does not rely on any traditional physical access method, does not need telephone, cable or satellite connection, and can easily escape any form of government monitoring.

The last one is the “anti-censorship” information system. The US State Department regards the research and development of the system as an important task and has injected more than $30 million into the project.

High vigilance needed

Moreover, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 company have spotted Trojan horse programs or plug-ins related to the CIA in recent cyberattacks targeting China. The public security authorities have investigated these cases, the Global Times has learned.

Aside from the five methods the CIA has used to incite unrest globally, through further technical analysis, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 company also identified another nine methods used by the CIA as “weapons” for cyberattacks, including attack module delivery, remote control, information collection and stealing, and third-party open-source tools.

The response center and 360 company also spotted an information-stealing tool used by the CIA, which is also one of the 48 advanced cyber weapons exposed in the confidential document of the US National Security Agency.

The discovery of these information-stealing tools shows that the CIA and the US National Security Agency will jointly attack the same victim, or share cyberattack weapons with each other, or provide relevant technical or human support, according to the report.

These new findings also offer important new evidence in tracing the identity of the APT-C-39 attackers. In 2020, 360 company independently discovered an APT organization that had never been exposed to the outside world, and named it APT-C-39. The organization specifically targets China and its friendly countries to carry out cyberattack and stealing activities, and its victims are spread all over the world.

The report also noted that the danger of CIA attack weapons can be glimpsed from third-party open-source tools as it often uses these tools to carry out cyberattacks.

The initial attack of the CIA cyberattack operation will generally be carried out against the victim’s network equipment or server. After obtaining the target purview, it will further explore the network topology of the target organization and move to other networked devices in the internal network to steal more sensitive information and data.

The controlled target computer is monitored in real time for 24 hours, and all information will be recorded. Once a USB device is connected, the private files in the victim’s USB device will be monitored and automatically stolen. When conditions permit, the camera, microphone and GPS positioning device on the user terminal will be remotely controlled and accessed, according to the report.

These CIA cyber weapons use standardized espionage technical specifications, and various attack methods echo and interlock and have now covered almost all internet and IoT assets worldwide, and can control other countries’ networks anytime, anywhere to steal important and sensitive data from other countries.

The American-style cyber hegemony is evident, the report notes.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday that US intelligence and espionage activities and cyberattacks on other countries deserve high vigilance from the international community.

The US must take seriously and respond to the concerns from the international community, and stop using cyber weapons to carry out espionage and cyberattacks around the world, Mao said.

In response to the highly systematic, intelligent, and concealed cyberattacks launched by the CIA against China, it is important for domestic government agencies, scientific research institutions, industrial enterprises, and commercial organizations to quickly find out and deal with them immediately upon discovery, the report says.

The report suggests that in order to effectively deal with imminent network and real-world threats, while adopting self-controllable localized equipment, China should organize self-inspection against APT attacks as soon as possible, and gradually establish a long-term defense system to achieve comprehensive systematic prevention and control against advanced attacks.