Two representatives of the old Soviet system are Sergei Kurginyan and Aleksandr Dugin. They do not represent mainstream Russia and are quoted by right-wing American institutes to smear Russia and the policymakers in the Kremlin. The scheme by NATO to confront Russia of Putin will endanger world peace. There are no more standing armies to play out a conventional war, thus by continuing this reckless policy may ultimately lead to a clash with nuclear weapons. US Congress is a tool of right-wing extremism in the United States, lobbyists and corporate power of the billionaire oligarchs … a dangerous playground without realpolitik of an evolving world in the 21st century. US/UK failures in Middle-East military intervention has made the world a more dangerous place in the coming decade(s). Democrats can join this foolish enterprise, or study the concept of war and peace in a unipolar world. The US can become a leader to confront the issues confronting a habitable planet or continue on a path to a Cold War 2.0 with Russia. Join Marco Rubio, John McCain, or set a new policy for the Democratic Party and path forward to solve problems, not create them.      

○ John B Dunlop – Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics [pdf] - GWU 31 Jan 2004

Studies/publications/opinions by the Hoover Institute are far distanced from my personal views.

    Funded largely by right-wing foundations and corporate donors, Hoover has been a mainstay of the Republican Party for decades, serving as a virtual revolving door for high-level GOP figures and appartchiks, including many who served in the George W. Bush administration.The institution would hire Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting scholar in 2007; and Condoleezza Rice as fellow.

    found a home at Hoover include former U.S. Central Command chief John Abizaid, State Department advisor Stephen Krasner, and John B. Taylor from the Treasury Department. The think tank's ties with the Reagan administration were similarly strong. Reagan advisers associated with Hoover included Secretary of State George Shultz, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. Margaret Thatcher and Newt Gingrich have also been Hoover fellows.

Author John B. Dunlop: Don’t turn Afghanistan into America’s Chechnya (Oct. 2001).

“Neo-Eurasianism,” the Issue of Russian Fascism, and Post-Soviet Political Discourse
Author: Dr. Andreas Umland, National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", Departament of Political Science

Aberrations of the Intelligentsia

Besides such tendencies in the broader public, there are similarly contradictory developments in the discourse of the elites and political pundits. On the one hand, the political leadership is promoting integration of Russia into Western organizations such as the G8 and the World Trade Organization. On the other hand, the discourse among political experts, as well as intellectual life in general, are characterized by the spread of an anti-Western consensus often described as “Eurasian,” the essence of which is the assertion that Russia is “different” from, or indeed, by its nature, the opposite of the US. The Russian book market is experiencing a glut of vituperative political lampoons whose main features include pathological anti-Americanism, absurd conspiracy theories, apocalyptic visions of the future, and bizarre fantasies of national rebirth. Among the more or less widely read authors of such concoctions are Sergei Kurginyan [hardliner communist, leader of New Red Project – Essence of Time Movement), Igor Shafarevich, Oleg Platonov, Maxim Kalashnikov (a.k.a. Vladimir Kucherenko), and Sergei Kara-Murza.

Probably the best-known writer and commentator of this kind is Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962), who holds a doctorate in political science from an obscure Russian provincial institute, and is the founder, chief ideologue, and chairman of the so-called International “Eurasian Movement,” whose Supreme Council boasts among its members former Russian Federation’s Culture Minister Aleksandr Sokolov, the Vice Speaker of the Federation Council, Aleksandr Torshin, several diplomats, and similarly illustrious personages, including some marginal Western intellectuals and CIS politicians. Dugin’s increasing celebrity is remarkable considering that the chief “Neo-Eurasian” is not only among the most influential, but also one of the most brazen of the ultra-nationalist publicists. While authors such as Kurginyan or Kara-Murza are satisfied to promote a renaissance of classical Russian anti-Western sentiments in their pamphlets, and only subtly draw on Western sources, Dugin admits openly that his main ideas are based on non-Russian anti-democratic concepts such as European integral Traditionalism (René Guénon, Julius Evola, Claudio Mutti, etc.), Western geopolitics (Alfred Mahan, Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, and others), the German “conservative revolution” (Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, etc.), and the francophone New Right (Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, Jean Thiriart).

○ The Rise of Putin in an America of racism, white supremacy and the Alt-Right

Furthermore, during the 1990s, Dugin repeatedly hinted at his sympathy for selected aspects of Italian Fascism and National Socialism, such as the SS and its Ahnenerbe (“Ancestral Heritage”) Institute, and has described the Third Reich as the most consistent incarnation of the “Third Way” that he advocates. In the chapter “Fascism – Boundless and Red” of the online version of his 1997 book Tampliery Proletariata (The Templar Knights of the Proletariat), he expressed the hope that the inconsistent application of originally correct ideas by Hitler, Mussolini, etc. would, eventually, be followed in post-Soviet Russia by the emergence of a “fascist fascism.” In Dugin’s apocalyptic worldview, global history consists of a centuries-old confrontation between hierarchically organized “Eurasian” continental powers and liberal “Atlantic” naval powers. Today, this confrontation is carried out between Russia and the US as the main representatives of the two antagonistic types of civilization, and its “final battle” is approaching (notably, Dugin uses the German word Endkampf, which has fascist connotations, without a Russian translation).

Alexander Dugin in broader context:

Russian Military Policy and Finland (2011) by Stefan Forss, Lauri Kiianlinna, Pertti Inkinen and Heikki Hult

The return of Russia’s geopolitical way of thinking

In the confusing times following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there arose in anti-Western circles an immediate desire to find a new direction and a new basis for values. From the group of conservative Russian geopolitical thinkers, there soon emerged a forward-looking young philosopher named Alexander Dugin (b. 1962), whose influence on ruling circles has been noteworthy. According to Dugin, who grew up in a military family, true patriotism is to be found only in the army and in the security services. 29

In 1992 Dugin had already been appointed teacher in the General Staff Academy of the Russian armed forces. There, under Lieutenant General Nikolai Klokotov, the director of the Academy’s Strategic Institute, and with the support of the Principal of the Academy and future Minister of Defence Army General Igor Rodionov, he started to work on an important book about the foundations of geopolitics and Russia’s geopolitical future.

In 2003, Dr. Alpo Juntunen, former Professor of Russia’s security policy at the Finnish National Defence University, encapsulated Dugin’s ideas as follows:

    [Dugin examines] everything as a battle between land and sea, in which the sides are the maritime powers led by the U.S.A., and Eurasia, led by Russia. The forces led by the United States are the enemy, which strives for a liberal-commercial, cultureless, and secularized world mastery. This grouping is now overwhelming, but in order to save the world, the Eurasian continent will have to counterattack under the leadership of Russia. A new great power alliance must be shaped, to be led by the Moscow-Berlin axis. 30

    […] Military cooperation with Germany must be made closer. The worst military problems facing the future superpower are the border areas, the rimland, which the Atlantic powers are striving to get under their control in order to weaken the Moscow-led mainland. Moscow has to take a firmer grip of the rimland area. […] Russia’s only proper form of government is imperial. 31

Giving up the process of empire-building is, in Dugin’s world of values, the same as “national suicide.” Without an empire,
Russia “will disappear as a nation”. 32 Indications of the impact of Dugin’s thinking came as early as October 1995 when INOBIS (Институт оборонных исследований, ИНОБИС), a semi-official defence research institute close to Russia’s power ministries, published an outspoken report which outlined the external threats to Russia’s national security and possible countermeasures. 33

“The chief aim of the US and Western policy toward Russia is not to allow her to become an economically, politically, and militarily influential force and to turn the post-Soviet space into an economic and political appendage to the West, as well
as its mineral-rich colony.

Russia’s Dugin is closely linked to another fringe group in Poland …

Mateusz Piskorski former member of parliament for the right-wing fascist party:
Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland [Klub Parlamentarny Samoobrona Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej]

New pro-Russia party emerges in Poland | EU Observer – March 2015 |

A new pro-Russia party has emerged on the Polish political scene and is hoping to scoop as much as 12 percent of votes in elections later this year. Zmiana – meaning “change” – has a strong anti-American streak and supports Russian president Vladimir Putin’s politics, seeing Russia as a natural ally for both Poland and the European Union.

Mateusz Piskorski, Zmiana’s leader, denies there is Russian aggression against Ukraine, supports pro-Russian separatists, says Crimea’s secession referendum (deemed illegal by the EU and UN) was fair, and criticises the Polish government’s “confrontational” and “anti-Russian” politics.

“Russia’s support to Ukrainian separatists is a natural reaction to a situation in which country’s compatriots are threatened by Ukrainian nationalists,” the political scientist told EUobserver.

…
Zmiana was even analysed by the National Security Council, but for now no evidence of direct ties with Russian entities were found.

“The claims that Zmiana party is run by some Kremlin agents is part of the political fight,” says Chwedoruk. “In my opinion there are people in Poland who have positive views on Russia and Putin and Zmiana just responds to those political moods”. Analysis of recent opinion polls suggests there is potential support for the party.

Due to historical events – like the Volhynian massacre – there is a strong anti-Ukrainian sentiment among Polish society. A March poll found more than one third of Poles believes that Poland should not support Ukraine in the current crisis.

More than half of Poles believe that Poland should help Ukraine but shouldn’t go beyond the collective EU respose.

World War II Isn’t Quite Over for Poland and Ukraine By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News |

Poland’s ‘Cold War II’ Repression

On the morning of May 18, 2016, officers of the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) searched apartments of members of the national leadership of the Zmiana (Change) Party, demanding that they hand over hard-disks, memory sticks, documents etc. The search took place in three different cities at the same time, and in some cases (as in our Warsaw office) with a serious violation of legal procedures.

Besides seizing computers, telephones and hard drives, ABW officers took all our books, leaflets, posters, the sound system we used during a demonstration, banners our party flags and even Polish national flags – to prevent and complicate any political actions and protests in the future. Some members of our party who did not want to participate in the unlawful activities of the Internal Security Agency were intimidated.

This type of action is an obvious form of a political repression against those who hold different visions of Poland’s foreign, domestic and socio-economic policies than those of the Polish neoconservative and pro-NATO authorities.

Arrest of an Anti-NATO Dissident

The leader of Zmiana, Mateusz Piskorski, affiliated organizations and independent groups were acting in conformity with Polish law in spite of harassment from state institutions, such as prolonged registration procedures of the party. The action of the ABW was a significant breach of law and order which is not acceptable in a democratic state that declares respect for the freedom of speech.

Mateusz Piskorski is one of the most important anti-NATO activists in Poland, a political expert and a co-founder of the Polish think-tank, the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis. He was a Member of the Polish Parliament from 2005-2007 and for many years he has spoken out in favor European-continental cooperation and against the NATO and American policy towards Europe and the Middle East.

Mind Games: Alexander Dugin and Russia’s War of Ideas | World Affairs – March/April 2015 |

A prolific writer who has authored dozens of monographs and hundreds of essays, Dugin tours the country and the world lecturing on political philosophy. His objective is to attract like-minded thinkers from the international fringe, involving them in debates and panels that imitate the mainstream discourse that shuns and excludes them. He has been an influence on the so-called new right of Europe, including such parties as Germany’s National Democratic Party, the British National Party, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik, and France’s National Front.

○ [Update-1] :: Germany’s Constitutional Court rules against banning far-right NPD party | DW – Jan. 17, 2017 |

Dugin’s ideas are given added reach by a group called the Eurasia Youth Union, headquartered in Moscow, which broadcasts news and analysis via a website in Russian, English, Romanian, Serbian, and Ukrainian. The EYU has also supplied manpower for the separatist movement in Ukraine, its members fighting there under the banners of various Russophile armed groups.

Dugin has also been actively involved in the politics of Russia’s elite, serving as an adviser to State Duma chairman and key Putin ally Sergei Naryshkin. His disciple Ivan Demidov serves on the Ideology Directorate of Putin’s United Russia party, while Mikhail Leontiev, allegedly Putin’s favorite journalist, is a founding member of Dugin’s own Eurasia Party.

While claiming to be suspicious of the liberalizing effects of modern communication technology, Dugin utilizes it adroitly for his own objectives. Numerous websites that can be traced to him and his allies constantly cross-reference each other (for example, 4pt.su, which is devoted to the Fourth Political Theory, and Evrazia.org, which hosts Neo-Eurasianist content), creating a sort of feedback loop in cyberspace that rivals mainstream news and social networks and serves as an aggregator for political outcasts. Despite Dugin’s professed anti-racism, one of the consistent pathways to his area of the Internet is through American white supremacist media. He doesn’t denounce them because his tactics favor the empowerment of destabilizing agents everywhere, so long as their common enemy is the liberal order.

Aleksadr Dugin, idealoque of Novvorussya, got his pink-slip from Moscow University.
No doubt through intervention of Putin’s Kremlin | Foreign Policy – June 2014 |.

    Another eyebrow-raising development, this one in Russia, was the sacking of Alexander Dugin from his post at Moscow State University in late June. The Rasputin-bearded Dugin, the country’s foremost philosopher of “Eurasianism,” has been the most ardent cheerleader not just for the separatist cause, but for Russia’s outright invasion and annexation of eastern Ukraine. Now, though, he’s out of a job at the most elite Russian university, a termination that couldn’t have happened without political pressure from the top. Dugin’s fall from grace could mean that yesterday’s useful pro-war ideologue has suddenly become today’s dangerous subversive.

The Shortsightedness of NATO’s War with Serbia Over Kosovo Haunts Ukraine

Now 91 years old, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, has just published his latest book, World Order. It reiterates, for a new age, the classically realist principle that a stable international order lies in equilibrium among the world’s great powers.

The reviews will come—and some already have. But, especially relevant today is his warning, in a 1999 Newsweek article, about the shortsightedness of NATO’s war with Serbia over Kosovo:

    “The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of its implications … The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping to an institution prepared to impose its values by force … undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion.”

Those who believe Putin’s Russia a corporatist, nationalistic state with scant regard for the rule of law will find Kissinger’s prescience remarkable:

    “The tribulations of Yugoslavia … emphasized Russia’s decline and have generated a hostility towards America and the West that may produce a nationalist and socialist Russia – akin to the European Fascism of the 1930s.”

Reviews Kissinger’s book World Order:
Walter Isaacson, Time:
“Dazzling and instructive… [a] magisterial new book.
…
Provocative and articulate, blending historical insight with geopolitical prognostication,
World Order is a unique work that could come only from a lifelong policymaker and diplomat.”

Hillary Clinton, The Washington Post:
“It is vintage Kissinger, with his singular combination of breadth and acuity
along with his knack for connecting headlines to trend lines.”

Russian Military Policy and Finland – cont’d

At the CSCE summit meeting held in Budapest in December 1994, a clear change in direction could be noted. “Europe may be forced into a Cold Peace”, President Boris Yeltsin, warned.24 After this, Russia’s liberal political leadership was gradually forced to step aside. In January of 1996, Yevgeni Primakov , a high-ranking officer in the former KGB and the head of the foreign intelligence service SVR, replaced Mr. Kozyrev. Political power in Russia and the responsibility for threat assessments and situational awareness shifted increasingly into the hands of conservatives who were close to the country’s security agencies and military authorities.

The development sketched out in Andrei Kozyrev’s “joking speech” of 1992 was conclusively realized after the war in Georgia,
when President Medvedev presented the main principles of Russian foreign and defence policy in August of 2008. Special attention was aroused by the point at which the president stated that: “Protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be, is an unquestionable priority for our country. Our foreign policy decisions will be based on this need. We will also protect the interests of our business community abroad. It should be clear to all that we will respond to any aggressive acts committed against us.” 25 These principles were finally written into law at the end of 2009, giving Russia’s armed forces the right to operate abroad.26

…
Later developments, such as the war in Georgia and the continued pressure on that country,36 clearly show that Dugin’s basic
ideas are significant and enjoy far-reaching support.37

Russia has also succeeded in keeping central Asian states which are rich in hydrocarbons [pdf] quite well in her grasp and
has gained agreements advantageous to her from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. 38 Prime Minister Putin’s initiative in October 2011 to establish a Eurasian Union fits Dugin’s vision well.39

The construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea partially serves the same goal. Poland and the Baltic States
have strongly opposed the construction of the pipe for reasons of economics and political security.40

One can also view the increasingly warm relationships between Russia and Germany in the light of history. U.S. history professor emeritus and former diplomat Albert Weeks emphasizes: “In the present postcommunist era in Russia, Moscow’s ties with Germany can be described as stronger than those with any other state.” 41 The cooperation between these countries is extending strongly also into the military sphere,42 which has caused uneasiness especially among the new NATO member states.

…
For a long time, the NATO enlargement has been a sore spot for Russia. The writers of the INOBIS report already considered
the enlargement of NATO and especially the possibility of Baltic NATO membership so dangerous that Russia should have prepared to occupy those countries. Russia did not, however, resort to such extreme measures, but the so-called Bronze warrior dispute and especially the war in Georgia in August of 2008 demonstrated that Russia was prepared to take stern measures when necessary. “If we had wavered in 2008, the geopolitical layout would have been different; a range of countries which the North Atlantic [Treaty Organization] tries to artificially ‘protect’ would have been within it”, President Medvedev said in November 2011.45

…
Russia’s former Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev wrote in the Newsweek magazine (10th February, 1997) that “the Russian people must be told the truth, and the truth is, NATO is not our enemy.” 48 The contrast between the views of Kozyrev and those of the current Russian leadership is great.49 According to a Wikileaks report published in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten on December 17, 2009, Vladimir Putin allegedly told NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen that NATO no longer has a purpose and it was in Russia’s interest that NATO no longer exists.50 The director of the Carnegie Moscow Institute, Dr. Dmitri Trenin, wrote in late November 2011 that “The Russians … persist in seeing the United States through the old Soviet prism of a superpower confrontation.” 51

At the Istanbul summit in 1999, the OSCE member states, including Russia, approved the Charter for European Security (in The Istanbul Document).52

○ Milhail Gorbachev: Ukrainians must get rid of all mentors and advisers from the U.S. and the EU (Feb. 23, 2014)

0 0 votes
Article Rating