By Patrick Armstrong, Website, 8/2/26
Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defense specializing in the USSR/Russia. He started in the time of Chernenko and watched the whole thing develop. He was a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow 1993-1996. He retired in May 2008 and has been writing on Russia and related subjects online since then.
A couple of years ago I had lunch with a former colleague. We had worked together for several decades and I had always regarded him as a very good analyst. He was able to find evidence, evaluate it and put together a competently argued thesis to explain or describe objective reality. As I have said before I, and he, were not formally in an intelligence unit but our work was similar: trying to figure out what’s going on in Country X.
So we’re talking away and I make the comment that some of what Russia is doing in Ukraine reminds me of the tactics used by Brusilov in 1916. (see my piece here). Immediately came an outburst – Russia is a shithole country, Bucha, unprovoked invasion, Bucha, shithole. Quite passionate and sounding almost as if he had rehearsed it and was just waiting for the cue to unload.
Now a real analyst would have responded by asking what I meant, listening, questioning, contradicting with an argument and so on. At the end of the process we would have got a bit closer to reality. Or, alternatively, just said he didn’t want to talk about it.
Some time ago Paul Robinson observed that there were two approaches to foreign policy operating in the world today. One is a belief in “a traditional, Westphalian, order in which states are equal sovereign entities”. The other is quite different:
“By contrast, human rights reasoning has pushed the West in an opposite direction, towards a preference for legal asymmetry. In this model, the just and the unjust, those who respect and those who don’t respect human rights, are not legally or morally equal.”
A very perceptive observation, in my opinion, and I wrote my own essay on why I thought Russia took a “Westphalian” view of things. My argument, in essence, was that Moscow had spent seven decades pushing an exceptionalist/moralist view – the world’s first socialist state, the bright future of mankind and all that stuff – and had found it to be a complete failure. It had learned the hard way that countries are as they are and have to be dealt with as they are. Moralistic posturing leads to failure.
Readers of this site will no doubt have concluded that I come down on the “Westphalian” side of the argument. You may not like your neighbours but they won’t disappear if you shut your eyes and disdain them. You may feel smug for a while but, when you open your eyes again, nothing will have changed. To deal with them, you have to try to understand them; try and see the world from their point of view. A veil of moral superiority obstructs a clear view.
But getting back to my colleague’s response, what do we see here but feelings substituted for reason? Don’t bother to make the effort to try to understand how Moscow sees things, just say it’s a shithole country. Judgement and condemnation supplant thinking and understanding.
The essence of intelligence is the attempt to see the other guy’s point of view. How does he see things? What’s he trying to do? What threats does he see? What is he able to do about it? That’s the whole point of intelligence, analysis, international relations, diplomacy and all that sort of thing. It’s difficult and you’ll never entirely get it right but you must keep your moral judgements to yourself and try and see reality. And that’s what disappointed me about his rant: I thought he was better than that. He just sounded like some think wank “expert” on TV saying we’re great and they suck. Moralism is easy, analysis is hard.
The first problem with the moralistic worldview is that one soon becomes very restricted on whom one can talk with. After all, the Good cannot acknowledge the Bad. Especially after all the carefully constructed war words have been deployed: the “regime’s” “claims” are “unverified”, they’re “disinformation” spread by “state media; they’re “talking points” from the “playbook”. The Good, The Just, by contrast, have democratic governments, speak the truth and have a free media. The more the Good stresses the evil of the other, the less it can know or understand. And certainly can never pollute its purity by meeting with The Bad. Here’s the essence of Robinson’s legal asymmetry expressed by one of its chief practitioners: Putin’s a monster, “there you go” “Russian talking points” and NATO is defensive. What more do you need to say or think?
When moral superiority becomes entrenched, other superiorities soon take root. We’re morally better and everything we do is better too. Evil fails across the board, in war and in peace. Our tools work better and we use them better. The morally inferior are worse at war too. And so we come, to quote a certain Austrian watercolourist, to the expectation that “one good kick at the door and the whole rotten edifice will collapse”. But the USSR did not collapse in 1941 and neither did Iran in 2026.
And there are so many wars because there is so much evil that cannot – ought not – be reasoned with and certainly not left alone. And so NATO, that alliance of the morally superior, had to intervene in the Balkans, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine. War all the time and everywhere.
“Essentially, NATO not only helps to defend the territory of its members, but also engages – where possible and when necessary – to project its values further afield, prevent and manage crises, stabilise post-conflict situations, and support reconstruction”
Interesting how often this “projection of values” involves bombing isn’t it? Here’s a picture of NATO’s values projected into Raqqa.
The moralistic view is disastrous for its practitioners (to say nothing of thousands and thousands of the recipients). The moralists never see reality – how can they when it’s so evil!? They underestimate the opponent and over estimate themselves.
It’s hard to see reality, but reality has teeth that eventually bite. (Vide Washington and Iran at the moment.)
Moralism is fatal for intelligent decision making and it absolutely blocks the real purpose of intelligence. But I fear that moralism has taken over in the West and all “analysts” today have to agree with Nuland that Putin is a monster. Anyone who swims against the tide is a “Putin apologist” (which I have been called) and therefore at least a little bit monstrous too.
No wonder all of NATO’s wars have been defeats.
(And a good thing I retired 16 years ago.)
This essay gets at what I call The Mearsheimer Conundrum, when Realists are confused and perplexed as to why the West is acting against its own obvious interests in Ukraine. The solution to the conundrum is to recognize that there are two groups striving to advance western hegemony. On the one hand there are the NeoCons who want to rule the world because they think they can (power for its own sake). The Realists understand the Neocons perfectly. On the other hand there are the NeoLibs who are on a crusade to covert the world to their own values, which in the final analysis are religious values held religiously. Atheism is religious. Since most Realists are atheistic with a materialistic worldview, this is their blind spot. They don’t get that the NeoLibs are on a crusade and when you’re on crusade, you don’t engage in cost/benefit analysis because there is a higher purpose to the crusade. These folks (now running the West generally) are deeply offended by women’s head coverings, lack of access to abortion, the limitation of marriage to opposite sex, the insistence on a binary approach to gender, etc.. .so offended they’ll go to war to change things no matter what the cost.
Excellent comment.
One way to see it.
I would however suggest that none of the idealist positions (aka “human rights”) put forward by the Western power elites in public are pursued in any sincere honesty.
“It´s lies. Nothing but damned lies.”
1) For instance when in the 2000s Neocons and their acolytes in media, academia and the economy were speaking about spreading democracy in the MidEast – who could take that ever seriously?
The lies were gargantuan. Looking at the staggering numbers is enough: 6M people killed in 20 years of War against Terror. Huge parts of those areas turned into dust and ruins. (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lybia, Syria, Yemen.)
They destroyed parts of an entire civilisation.
The War on Terror had nothing to do with the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It was it´s absolute nemesis and devised to destroy it and the intern. order.
2) If we want to understand what Necons really want(ed) a look into such documents as the US National Security Strategy of 1992 (devised by Cheney as SoD) gives us a sobering look: World domination (until may be recently).
And eventually this was not new.
Global hegemony was the only acceptable outcome with the emergence of the National Security State of 1946/47. The US aware of its unique status as sole nuclear superpower until 1950 (170 nukes by 1949 vs. USSR: 1) realized that this was their moment in history.
That had nothing to do with democracy, with human rights or any other concepts of empathy.
3) When people are truly religious they are following an irrational concept or higher authority beyond their own will and if that authority demands its disciples to sacrifice themselves they will.
Thus religion will force the true believers to act against their own interest.
Now one thing is certain as the law of gravitation:
Neocons will never act against their own interests.
The only question: Who is so privileged as to belong to that in-group whose interests are taken into consideration by them?
Everything else is projection.
4) If you look at Europe closely it´s no different. All the bluster about human rights is again propaganda.
How does the European Union act whenever it is involved in negotiations over trade deals with other powers or continents.
They behave against powerless African states like savages. Extorting their resources, dumping European garbage and agricultural surplus on African nations and forcing their educated to leave.
France without stealing the resources of its African colonies like the little state of Niger would have never made it into the group of international powers. Niger alone amounted for 20% of French uranium and at least $200M worth of gold.
In correspondence to its natural wealth Niger was among the poorest countries in Africa. (They did throw out the French with RU support in 2023.)
And this kind of robbery you would unearth in every bilateral or multilateral relationship between Europe and lesser powers.
What has changed since the advent of colonialism?
Nothing.
Or as the former Austrian SoS Karin Kneissl stated on Glenn Diesen´s show a few weeks ago: Europe is a actually rather poor as natural resources are concerned.
Violence was the only means to overcome this disadvantage.
So my personal advice: Do not fall for the fake redderick over „idealism“.
You make a lot of valid points. I would say that what you’re talking about is how the people at the very top who are actually making the decisions think. What Tony is referring to is the educated professional class (media, academia, etc.) and the ideology that they believe in. They are the ones charged with projecting a propaganda narrative that regular people are supposed to buy into in order to accept these wars and interventions.
Yes!
I agree but its also necessary to alloy this to the innate superiority and thinking of these elites many of whom believe in Western white supremacism. In an exploitive capitalist system legitimised by an entrenched neocon ideology this appears perfectly reasonable and totally normal. Human rights is advocated for all but in practice it is filtered through the materialist reality of an exploitive alienating system. Bluntly put it reads as “If you have money your rights are worth a lot more than the pauper the homeless”! A commiserate legal system is constructed to enforce this maxim and solidify its advantage to the rich and powerful.
In elite political reasoning simplistic moral framing is easily understood by the masses who living in a propaganda saturated knowledge environment have a limited grasp of reality except in their immediate surroundings.
Any greater understanding will seek to undermine the all consuming narratives of these elites.
Whenever I make the mistake to listen to a conversation/panel in non-alternative media – not just national broadcasting but cultural high profile instiutions – I am shocked / amazed how seriously dumb and uneducated the scholars who participate are.
The things they are saying are deeply embarrassing.
And I am not even referring to the supremacist idea. Often that is not even the issue.
It is other literal “narratives” that have become laws that you do not question. Assumptions that are so outright inept – were they applied to for instance the US these people would outright ridicule them.
But because it corresponds with our ideological necessities re: RU their minds are able to perform acts of insanity.
Quiet startling to witness this with individuals (people who teach the young at universities, people who have decade-long tenure) who in some topics can produce decent, even intelligent thoughts – matters that may be their actual expertise – prove incapable to TRANSFER theoretical, epistemic concepts.
Elemtary rules of reasoning are completely discarded. It´s almost like a psychosis. And it is normal. Their views are the standard thing to say in the country.
p.s. sorry, problems with the keyboard…