by Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 4/23/24 (excerpt)

Chris Monday is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea. Andy Kuchins is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Note: This article is the third installment in a series on the succession of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Read the first and second here and here.

In our first article in this series exploring potential successors to Vladimir Putin, we examined one option: the semi-dynastic succession of Putin’s cousin, Anna Putina Tsivilyova. In our second article, we considered the possibility of a hardline succession featuring Putin’s Chairman of the National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, or his son Dmitri. In this article, we explore a third possibility: a reformer emerges from the ranks of the bureaucracy to become Russia’s next leader.

As renowned historian Vasily Kliuchevsky demonstrated, rather than hindering, war has necessitated reform multiple times in Russian history. Think of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander II, and even Gorbachev. Their initiatives depended on a unique class, what historian Bruce Lincoln called “enlightened bureaucrats” who play critical roles in running the government but are virtually never tapped as top leaders. These administrators wield their power thanks to their unique, specialized knowledge. Their mandate was to fortify the economy for prolonged conflicts while avoiding any fundamental reform.

The hereditary monarchy of Tsarist Russia made it impossible for these reformers to “rise from the ranks.” Peter needed military modernization and financing, not Western liberal values. His modernizers were mainly foreigners, especially Germans, and their increased presence in the Russian elite raised tension with conservative nobility whose wealth greatly depended on maintaining and deepening serfdom. This model peaked for the Russian Empire with the defeat of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As the nineteenth century wore on, it was increasingly clear that Russia’s considerable, illiterate, land-based serf population was a crimp on economic growth and technological development. However, as Tsar Nicholas I told his State Council in 1842, “Serfdom, in its present form, is an evil obvious to all; but to touch it now would of course be an even more ruinous evil.” Russian Tsars, Soviet General Secretaries, and Vladimir Putin have all faced this dilemma in some form or another: the system is inefficient and corrupt, but reforming it risks destroying the foundation of state power. Arguably, the only leader to attempt systemic reform was the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was—and still is—vilified by modern Russian and Chinese propaganda.

The best historical analog to Vladimir Putin is Nicholas I, who served as Tsar from 1825 until his death in 1855. He was a conservative who sought to promote a newly branded state identity based on the troika of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality while defending other conservative European monarchies. He and his fellow monarchs viewed the liberalism that felled the Bourbon dynasty in France as the most dangerous threat to their sacred status quo. Notoriously, Nicholas’s leadership concluded with the failure of the Crimean War.

However, Russia’s current technocracy takes its cues from Georg Kankrin, one of Nicholas I’s finance ministers. Kankrin, who some historians credit with assisting Russia’s victory over Napoleon, steeled the economy for war by economizing the budget and maintaining a rigid monetary policy. Kankrin, who met the Tsar on a daily basis, had a unique prerogative to speak his mind because of his personal relationship with the monarch. Other famous Tsarist and Soviet mandarins include Pyotr Stolypin, who, under Nicholas II, spearheaded partial privatization of the land; Sergei Witte, who made the ruble convertible and launched the Trans-Siberian Railroad; Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, who pushed Brezhnev’s politburo to implement administrative optimization. For nearly a decade, Putin’s friend, the former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, a fan of Kankrin, epitomized this brand of “enlightened” bureaucrat. This article focuses on the inheritor of this Russian tradition, Mikhail Mishustin, Putin’s current prime minister.

It’s a journalistic stereotype to assume the KGB runs Russia. Indeed, Mishustin, Kudrin (former head of the Accounts Chamber, former Minister of Finance, and current executive at Yandex), and his successor as Finance Minister, Elvira Naibvuilina, along with other Putin technocrats, wield significant personal power. They maintain influential patronage networks. The necessities of crisis management have granted these “enlightened bureaucrats” even more clout. In particular, Covid shutdowns and wartime disruptions have meant that they dole out massive state subsidies. Increasingly, Russian businesses and the military depend on the whims of the Kremlin’s civilian ministries.

While Russia’s military leaders have clearly underperformed, Russia’s financial wizards can boast of unqualified successes. Despite the West’s harsh sanctions, Russian supermarkets remain full. In the meantime, Russian military production has been significantly ramped up. Western experts are dumbfounded by Russia’s success in mass-producing deadly UAVs such as the Lancet model. Moreover, Putin’s technocrats have been able to replace European trade with alternative partners. The ruble, which was supposed to crush Putin, has remained stable. Despite isolation from international finance, there have been no Russian bank runs.

Ultimately, Putin (along with the majority of the elite) has realized there are few potential replacements with the necessary managerial competency and discretion available. Without his “enlightened bureaucrats,” Putin’s economy would crash quickly. Understanding their irreplaceability within the system, these bureaucratic managers enjoy significant leeway and wide prerogatives. It’s an open secret that Kudrin, Mishustin, and Nabiullina quietly opposed the war in Ukraine. Unlike other functionaries, they do not feel compelled to trumpet bombastic nationalist slogans. Their disciplined monetary policies, such as double-digit interest rates, have been widely criticized in the press and by heavyweights such as Igor Sechin. Nonetheless, with the full support of Putin, they refuse to back down. Putin knows well that a “patriotic” economist like Sergei Glaziev, who advocates free-wheeling spending on industrialization, would quickly run the economy into the ground.

From Systems Engineer to Tax Man to Prime Minister

Imagining a scenario in which a reformist leader in Russia could emerge under the current conditions of repression and militarization requires considerable imagination. Nonetheless, before his death in 2022, the wily Far-Right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky named Mishustin as the leading contender to succeed Putin. In addition, the Russian Constitution calls for the prime minister to assume office as acting president if the presidency is vacant until new elections within ninety days. Indeed, this was the path Vladimir Putin followed in 1999.

Putin has been mindful of limiting the scope and prerogatives of his own prime ministers. Putin’s first Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, was able and charismatic and enjoyed close ties to the Yeltsin family. Leery of a Westernizer, conservative forces mobilized a PR campaign to relegate Kasyanov to the margins. They branded him “Misha two percent” for his alleged standard take on government deals. After Kasyanov, Putin was mindful of selecting humorless men with limited ambitions.

In his first years in power, Putin’s greatest fear was the wealthy oligarchs and their ability to buy political power. Thus, Putin has been careful to prevent his officials from abusing their access to revenue flows. In particular, Prime Ministers Mikhail Fradkov and Viktor Zubkov both worked in the sensitive area of tax collection: both were connected to Russian intelligence. After serving as prime minister, Fradkov even became Director of Foreign Intelligence. But to the public, they were faceless placeholders.

Dmitri Medvedev, who served as Putin’s premier from 2012–2020, appears to be an exception among Putin’s prime ministers, given his legal training and lack of intelligence service background. His management of Putin’s “national projects” was judged as ineffective, and it is hard to identify a single, distinctive success in his eight years as prime minister. In a rare case of a public split among the Putin elite, Kudrin in 2011 called Medvedev incompetent in financial matters. Indeed, Medvedev’s principal virtue is his loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

Around this time, Putin sought to cement his legacy as a modern-day “Collector of the Russian lands” to cement his legacy in the pantheon of expansionist Russian rulers. Putin understood this entailed military aggression and possible international isolation. Consequently, he would need a far more competent prime minister than Dmitri Medvedev. Russia’s technological progress was an existential need for both military competition and societal control. While Medvedev cultivated the image of a posh trendsetter showing off his iPad on every imaginable occasion, Mikhail Mishustin presented a more compelling image as a former systems engineer with immense IT sector experience dating back to the 1980s.

Mishustin’s father, Vladimir Moiseyeich Mishustin, was a KGB officer who worked most of his career at Aeroflot, an airline company. Trained as a systems engineer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mikhail joined the International Computer Club, established in 1988 during Perestroika as a central node for the nascent IT industry. There, he had the opportunity to network with international IT companies and Russian state enterprises. Mishustin rose quickly and eventually became a co-owner of the ICC and chairman of its board. KGB authorities were likely involved in the establishment of this club and certainly monitored it very closely. Selling used and new Western computers just before and after the collapse offered substantial profit opportunities. Notably, future Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky started his entrepreneurial career using siphoned Komsomol funds to buy and sell computers and other IT equipment….

A Man to Watch

Is there a chance for a relatively liberal figure to become the next Russian president? While we would like to conclude “never say never,” the practical chance is dim. After Putin’s persecution, is there even a liberal constituency left in Russia?

What are the chances of a modernizing reformer becoming the next leader of Russia? At least here, we have three examples of Russian leaders who fit this mold: Peter the Great, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. Putin started in 2000 viewing himself as a modernizing reformer, but for a variety of reasons, he evolved into a reactionary autocrat.

After surveying the field, the only viable candidate we can identify is the current Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin. Ultimately, it’s not clear Mishustin would even be a moderating force. We know as much today about what Mishustin really thinks as we did about Vladimir Putin in 1999. They each keep their cards close to their chest, which is usually wise in a political snakepit. Those who know, or claim to know, Mishustin often remark that he is not politically ambitious. But frankly, it is difficult to believe anybody in any system who reaches the position of prime minister does not have a deep wellspring of ambition within them. In fact, this seems more the case for Mishustin than Putin, as there is a fairly clear history of networking and schmoozing mentors that have helped his rise. Perhaps when Putin was in the KGB and Mishustin at the International Computer Club before they became state officials, they were not politically ambitious, but not after.

It’s doubtful that it’s Mishustin’s time “to make a move.” He has served Putin effectively and loyally as Prime Minister for four years. Putin has shown that he values Mishustin’s work, as he has already strongly hinted that Mishustin will stay on as Prime Minister. What happens to the rest of the government as Putin enters his fifth term remains to be seen. What is clear is that no longer can anyone diminish Mishustin by describing him as merely a transitional figure.

Probably the most powerful Russian prime minister since Victor Chernomyrdin under Yeltsin in the 1990s, Mishustin is clearly a man to watch, and Western governments and analysts should invest more resources in getting to know him better. However, it is critical to understand that the West cannot help him politically, even if it wants to. By this time, we should know that even the perception of such support is the kiss of death for any Russian politician, reformist or otherwise.

YouTube link here.

What do readers think of this analysis and proposal? – Natylie

By Prof. Geoffrey Roberts, Brave New Europe, 4/22/24

President Vladimir Putin started the Ukraine war and he could – and should – end it by negotiating a peace deal that includes Ukraine’s membership of NATO.

Such a scenario is not as implausible as it might seem. While a Russian military victory in Ukraine is all-but assured, Putin needs to win the peace as well. He went to war to safeguard Russia’s security and to protect pro-Russian Ukrainians. The last thing he needs is a permanent confrontation with a militarised West abetted by a defeated but still dangerous Ukraine. He needs a stable European and international order that will facilitate Russia’s recovery from the war, not least the rebuilding and re-population of its newly acquired territories in Ukraine.

For Putin to contemplate such a radical concession, Ukraine and its Western backers would have to give cast-iron commitments to Ukraine’s permanent demilitarisation, albeit within the framework of NATO membership. Establishing Pan-European security structures that contain conflicts rather than incubate them would also be a crucial part of any peace package.

Russia has been railing against Ukraine joining NATO since the country was first slated for membership in 2008. There is no chance it will rub-out this red line in advance of any peace talks but a private signal that Putin might be prepared to allow Ukraine to join NATO under certain conditions is not so improbable.

Putin did not invade Ukraine to prevent it becoming a member of NATO. By the time he launched the so-called Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, Ukraine was de facto a NATO member and rapidly developing into a highly threatening Western military bridgehead on Russia’s border. In Putin’s eyes, Ukraine had become an anti-Russia – an ultra-nationalist state intent on using NATO as a shield to re-gain by force Crimea and rebel Donbass. The SMO was a preventative action to nip that danger in the bud and to force the West to negotiate a security treaty that would preclude further NATO deployments along Russia’s borders.

Putin’s gambit almost succeeded. In spring 2022 there were Russo-Ukrainian peace talks in Istanbul that resulted in a number of draft agreements under which Russia would withdraw its troops in exchange for Ukraine’s neutralisation and disarmament. But many details remained unresolved, above all the nature of an international security guarantee of Ukraine’s future territoriality, sovereignty and independence.

Kiev walked away from these talks and it may well have been the West’s refusal to underwrite the proposed security guarantee that prompted Zelensky to withdraw from the negotiations. Certainly, the West proved more than willing to continue its extensive military support of Ukraine as part of a proxy war to topple the Putin regime.

Two years into the Western proxy war on Russia, Ukraine’s integration into NATO is infinitely greater. Co-operation and co-ordination of Ukrainian and Western militaries could hardly be closer. Ukraine’s war effort is sustained by Western arms, money and intelligence, not to speak of special forces, mercenaries and sabotage groups. Cutting Kiev’s connections with NATO would require Ukraine’s complete capitulation, or its wholesale occupation by Russia.

Ukraine’s rapidly approaching military defeat means that ending the war as soon as possible is Kiev’s and the West’s most rational course of action. The longer the war goes on, the greater will be Ukraine’s defeat. The sooner it ends, the more salvageable will be Ukraine’s sovereignty and the more viable its independent statehood.

The problem is that Western and Ukrainian politicians don’t how to extricate themselves from the conflict without a catastrophic loss of political face.

John Mearsheimer has suggested the United States could cut the Gordian Knot by severing all its security connections with Ukraine. But, as he himself says, this is most unlikely, given Western leaders’ immense economic, ideological, political and psychological investment in defeating Russia in Ukraine

Signalling that Ukraine might be able to join NATO could help open the door to serious peace negotiations. Ukrainian membership of NATO would be spun as success for the West, but PR is far less important than the achievement of Putin’s prime goal – neutering the NATO-Ukraine threat to Russia’s security.

Ukraine’s military collapse in the coming weeks and months seems increasingly likely but that would not necessarily terminate the war. Kiev’s remaining forces may be able to retreat to the Western banks of the Dnieper and hold out in big cities like Kharkov and Odessa. Such respite might be temporary, but it could be enough to prolong the war into 2025 and beyond. In a worst-case scenario, the Kiev government could flee abroad and continue the fight from exile, much like many European governments did during World War II.

Russian hardliners are sanguine about such prospects. They believe neither Ukraine nor NATO can be trusted to honour any commitments they might make to Russia and that the only lasting victory is Russia’s occupation of the whole of Ukraine.

Western hardliners are equally keen to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’ – seen as a way to weaken Putin’s regime and buy time to prepare for a direct war with Russia in the not too-distant future.

Western publics were never enthusiastic about NATO’s dangerous proxy war with Russia, and this scepticism has been reinforced by an avalanche of media reports detailing Russia’s military advances and Ukraine’s huge losses of men and materiel.

Support for continuing the war is also crumbling within Ukraine as more people embrace the detested but realistic outcome of trading territory for peace.

In Russia, public support for Putin’s war remains strong but a majority want to see the conflict resolved as soon as possible, even if that means a compromise peace.

A peace settlement that included Ukraine’s membership of NATO would be anathema to a substantial minority of Russians, but Putin’s overwhelming victory in the presidential election shows he has the power and popularity to face down such opposition.

In the West, the current chatter about a possible Ukraine peace deal centres on the idea of reviving the Istanbul peace talks – of updating the draft agreements of spring 2022, notably to take account of the formal incorporation of the provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe into the Russian Federation in October 2022.

Recent comments by Putin have lent credence to the possibility of an Istanbul+ peace agreement. Everyone assumes Ukraine’s non-membership of NATO and its neutrality will remain key Russian demands. But the decisive tilt of the war in Russia’s favour has radically changed the strategic situation.

Russia demanded Ukraine’s neutrality to keep NATO at bay. That goal has now been achieved by other means – Russia’s military expansion into Ukraine. How far Putin intends to go remains unclear. Occupation of the whole of eastern and southern Ukraine is one possibility, but more likely is the establishment of a demilitarised zone as a security buffer between Russia and a rump Ukraine. In any event, Ukraine’s formal neutrality would be of little practical importance.

Crucially, there is the unresolved issue of a security guarantee for unoccupied Ukraine. Without some kind of guarantee there can be no negotiated peace settlement. By far the simplest solution is for NATO to provide this by virtue of Ukraine’s membership of the organisation. Arguably, NATO, with its diverse membership and its collective decision-making, would be a far more stable container of Ukrainian revanchism than any ad hoc security guarantee.

In the 1950s the Soviets feared re-armed West Germany’s entry into NATO would revive German militarism and aggression. Actually, membership of NATO (and the EU) helped pacify Germany.

Conceivably, Putin could agree to such a step, provided Ukraine remains disarmed and NATO’s commitment to its security purely defensive. While there is no guarantee NATO and Ukraine would stick to their commitments, the hard-line alternative of seeking total victory and a dictated peace has its own drawbacks, notably the cost in lost Russian and Ukrainian lives.

A grand gesture by Putin that conceded Ukraine’s membership of NATO as part of an overall peace settlement would be an act of true statesmanship, not least in the eyes of his many friends and allies in the Global South.

By Benjamin Abelow, Antiwar.com, 5/15/24

A friend recently sent me an article that was published in The Atlantic by a Ukrainian journalist. The title and subtitle read as follows:

UKRAINE HAS CHANGED TOO MUCH TO COMPROMISE WITH RUSSIA

My generation has tasted freedom and experienced a competitive, vibrant political life. We can’t be made a part of what Russia has become.

— By Illia Ponomarenko

I don’t particularly recommend this article, but it you want to read it, try this link.

My friend asked me what I thought of the article. From his wording, I inferred that he was impressed and was inclined to accept the article’s conclusions, as well as the unstated policy implications for Americans: Keep supporting this war!

When I wrote back to my friend, I had only glanced at the article, but I’ve since read it, and it does exactly what the title leads you to expect.

I can empathize with the person who wrote the article. He experienced an attack on his country and his community, and no doubt has friends and loved ones who have been wounded or killed in this war. But he believes that the continuation of the war will help his country, his community, his loved ones, and himself. It will not. It will only lead to more destruction.

With the permission of my friend, I’ve removed his name, made a few minor edits, and am copying here what I sent him:

Dear _______,

My patience is very low at this moment, so forgive me if I’m more direct, even blunt, than I might otherwise be.

I’ll take a quick look at the article, but really, based just on the title and subtitle, I want to say: you’re missing the big picture and buying far too readily into a highly propagandized narrative.

The US created this war for no reason other than to expand NATO right up to a 1200 mile border with Russia. The US broke up peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia during the first days of the war — negotiations that likely would have brought Ukraine back to its pre-invasion borders. And as a result of these American actions, the war continued and roughly 500,000 Ukrainians have died or been seriously injured or maimed, and 8 million have fled the country.

The Ukrainian far right, acting in accord with the Kyiv government, has now created what is in important respects a terror state — no free press, no elections, people are being grabbed off the street, beaten, and sent to the front to serve. Ukrainian men who fled to Poland and Lithuania may now be forced back into Ukraine — where they don’t want to be — to serve and quite possibly to die.

The next step is for US allies, and then perhaps NATO itself, to send in troops to directly engage with Russia — on its border, in a conflict that Russia perceives to be existential yet is not at all significant to the West or, frankly, to you, in any direct, meaningful, skin-in-the-game way.

Whether or not the article is explicitly arguing for direct NATO engagement, that is where it will lead and that is where The Atlantic’s neocon editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, may want it to lead — to a direct NATO-Russia war. Because there is no way that Ukraine can win with just western weapons — which weapons, in fact, the West does not have to give anyway. We’re largely tapped out. (By the way, you can read about Jeffrey Goldberg here. See especially the final section, which pertains to the role he played in promoting the American war in Iraq.)

I assume you know that Russia just announced that it is going to undertake a practice exercise in the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This was announced in response to French statements about possible troop entry into Ukraine, and also in response to recent British statements that Ukraine can use its Storm Shadow missiles to attack targets inside Russia. If you think Russian consideration about the use of tactical nukes in response to NATO involvement is a sheer bluff — as our media like to report without any basis — you need to think again.

There are plenty of people in Ukraine who would want peace now — but most are afraid to speak. And even if that were not the case, which it is, you need to think about your own family. I’m not joking. If NATO goes in, tactical nukes may be used; if nukes are used, it will be impossible to reliably contain escalation; if escalation occurs, you, your wife, and your daughters may be killed.

There is no reason for any of this to continue — no reason for the US, none for Ukraine.

Please forgive the sharp edge, my friend.

Ben

So, what was I telling my friend? I have long emphasized that the interests of the Ukrainian people are aligned with the interests of the American people — that the best thing for everyone is that the war be ended now through a negotiated settlement. I have emphasized that to be compassionate to the Ukrainian people means to end the war, not to support its continuation. Many Ukrainians understand that. If you doubt this, read this article in the Daily Beast. The title is “Frontline Ukrainians Fear New Aid From U.S. Will Be a Disaster.”

But even if every Ukrainian wanted the war to continue, and believed that continuing the war would lead to Ukraine’s salvation, it would not make it true. People closest to a conflict have a detailed knowledge of events that they witness first hand, and they may have certain insights that outsiders lack. But they also may be blinded by passion, or they may see the events in granular (and often traumatic) fashion, and fail to understand the context of how things reached that point. Their grasp of the big picture may be obstructed by the painful quotidian experiences they are enduring. The expression, “Not seeing the forrest, for the trees,” can readily apply. They may be subject to domestic war propaganda. And they may be afraid to speak out and say what they really believe.

So, I have always emphasized that what is good for Ukraine is good for America — and what is good for everyone is the exact opposite of the policies that American, Ukrainian, and European governments are pursuing.

But that is not the only thing I was saying to my friend. I also was strongly emphasizing to my friend that as a father and husband, as an American citizen, and as a self-responsible person who also should value his own life and safety, he has an obligation to protect things closer to home. And this is true regardless what he might think about those in other lands. Yes, there is a balancing act here — one must not be indifferent to the suffering of others — but one also must have a clear grasp about the dangers closer to home and take everything in to consideration when deciding what to do.

At times, viewing one’s own situation clearly can lead to real moral quandaries. It can lead to difficult and painful decisions in which one trades one’s own safety for the safety of others, or the safety of others for the safety of oneself. Fortunately, this is not the case with respect to the American and European role in the conflict in Ukraine. In this situation, thankfully, to end the war helps Americans, Europeans, and, above all, the Ukrainian people.

In my book on the Ukraine war, I emphasized that a desire to do good can lead to great harms — the classic story of the messianic do-gooder who travels to a remote land to save the day but ends up creating a disaster for himself and everyone else. It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions — and that certainly applies to the misguided beneficence of both Americans and Europeans with respect to the Ukraine war. In my book, I said that America’s claimed generosity to Ukraine was destroying the alleged beneficiary:

Even from a blinkered American perspective, the whole Western plan was a dangerous game of bluff, enacted for reasons that are hard to fathom. Ukraine is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a vital security interest of the United States. In fact, Ukraine hardly matters at all. From an American perspective — and I say this with no disrespect for the Ukrainian people — Ukraine is irrelevant. Ukraine is no more important to the citizens of the United States than any one of fifty other countries that most Americans, for perfectly understandable reasons, couldn’t find on a map without a lot of random searching. So yes, Ukraine is irrelevant to America. And if the leaders of the United States and NATO had acknowledged that obvious fact, none of this would be happening.

If you haven’t read my book yet, you can read it here on Medium, free of charge, in essay format. Or if you want to buy it, here’s the Amazon link. You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or other large chains. Or you can read about it on the book’s website. The book is now out in seven translations — German, French, Italian, Polish, Danish, Dutch, and Slovenian — and has sold a total of 50,000 copies.

Since I wrote to my friend, two important things have happened.

First, Russia called in both the French and British ambassadors to Moscow for immediate consultation. The exact things said were not disclosed, but it is known that the Russians issued a warning to the British, and told them that if British Storm Shadow missiles were used as Britain had suggested — to attack targets inside Russia — Russia would consider British military forces anywhere in the world, including in Britain itself, legitimate targets for missile attacks by Russia.

Second, as I understand it, the British, French, and also the Americans — notwithstanding their public bluster — have taken these Russian threats seriously and have backed away from their more bellicose postures. For an update on all this, the first half of this episode of the excellent geopolitics podcast, The Duran, is worth hearing:

The sequence of events that just occurred is of great importance to all of us. It involved the risk of a major escalation, including the use of nuclear weapons — but, to my knowledge, no mainstream western media reported it adequately.

Yet again our media are failing us.

This is one more indication that — instead of remaining independent and fulfilling their societal responsibilities — our media have become, in effect, a propaganda wing of the state, continuing to serve as cheerleaders for a war that should have ended long ago.

Ben

By Kit Klarenberg, Substack, 4/4/24

Within just 24 hours of the horrific mass shooting in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22nd, which left at least 137 innocent people dead and 60 more critically wounded, US officials blamed the slaughter on ISIS-K, Daesh’s South-Central Asian branch. For many, the attribution’s celerity raised suspicions Washington was seeking to decisively shift Western public and Russian government focus away from the actual culprits – be that Ukraine, and/or Britain, Kiev’s foremost proxy sponsor.

Full details of how the four shooters were recruited, directed, armed, and financed, and who by, are yet to emerge. The Kremlin claims to have unearthed evidence that Kiev’s SBU were the ultimate architects, which the agency denies, charging that Russian authorities knew about the attack and permitted it to happen, in order to ramp up its assault on Ukraine. It has been reported that the killers received funds from a cryptocurrency wallet belonging to ISIS’ Tajikistan wing.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it is certain that the four individuals responsible had no clue who or what truly sponsored their monstrous actions. Contrary to the group’s mainstream portrayal, as inspired by fanatic, extreme religious fundamentalism, ISIS are primarily guns for hire. At any given time, they act at the behest of an array of international donors, bound by common interests. Funding, weapons, and orders reach its fighters circuitously, and opaquely. There is almost invariably layer upon layer of cutouts between the perpetrators of an attack claimed by the group, and its ultimate orchestrators and financiers.

Given ISIS-K is currently arrayed against China, Iran, and Russia – in other words, the US Empire’s primary adversaries – it is incumbent to revisit their “parent” group’s origins. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere just over a decade ago, before dominating mainstream media headlines and Western public consciousness for several years before vanishing again, at one stage the group occupied vast swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory, declaring an “Islamic State”, which issued its own currency, passports, and vehicle registration plates.

Devastating military interventions independently launched by the US and Russia wiped out that demonic construct in 2017. The CIA and MI6 were no doubt immensely relieved. After all, extremely awkward questions about how precisely ISIS came to be were comprehensively extinguished. As we shall see, the terror group and its caliphate did not emerge in the manner of lightning on a dark night, but due to dedicated, determined policy hatched in London and Washington, implemented by their spying agencies.

‘Continuingly Hostile’

RAND is a highly influential, Washington DC-headquartered “think tank”. Bankrolled to the tune of almost $100 million annually by the Pentagon and other US government entities, it regularly disseminates recommendations on national security, foreign affairs, military strategy, and covert and overt actions overseas. These pronouncements are more often than not subsequently adopted as policy. 

For example, a July 2016 RAND paper on the prospect of “war with China” forecast a need to fill Eastern Europe with US soldiers in advance of a “hot” conflict with Beijing, as Russia would undoubtedly side with its neighbour and ally in such a dispute. It was therefore considered necessary to tie down Moscow’s forces at its borders. Six months later, scores of NATO troops duly arrived in the region, ostensibly to counter “Russian aggression”. 

Similarly, in April 2019 RAND published Extending Russia. It set out “a range of possible means” to “bait Russia into overextending itself,” so as to “undermine the regime’s stability.” These methods included; providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine; increasing US support for the Syrian rebels; promoting “regime change in Belarus”; exploiting “tensions” in the Caucasus; neutralising “Russian influence in Central Asia” and Moldova. Most of that came to pass thereafter.

In this context, RAND’s November 2008 Unfolding The Long War makes for disquieting reading. It explored ways the US Global War on Terror could be prosecuted once coalition forces formally left Iraq, under the terms of a withdrawal agreement inked by Baghdad and Washington that same month. This development by definition threatened Anglo dominion over Persian Gulf oil and gas resources, which would remain “a strategic priority” when the occupation was officially over.

“This priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war,” RAND declared. The think tank went on to propose a “divide and rule” strategy to maintain US hegemony in Iraq, despite the power vacuum created by withdrawal. Under its auspices, Washington would exploit “fault lines between [Iraq’s] various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts”, while “supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran”:

“This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations, unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces…The US and its local allies could use nationalist jihadists to launch proxy campaigns to discredit transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace…This would be an inexpensive way of buying time…until the US can return its full attention to the [region]. US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict…by taking the side of conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”

‘Great Danger’

So it was that the CIA and MI6 began supporting Sunni “nationalist jihadists” throughout West Asia. The next year, Bashar Assad rejected a Qatari proposal to route Doha’s vast gas reserves directly to Europe, via a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometre-long pipeline spanning Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. As extensively documented by WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables, US, Israeli and Saudi intelligence immediately decided to overthrow Assad by fomenting a local Sunni rebellion, and started financing opposition groups for the purpose.

This effort became turbocharged in October 2011, with MI6 redirecting weapons and extremist fighters from Libya to Syria, in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s televised murder. The CIA oversaw that operation, using the British as an arm’s length cutout to avoid notifying Congress of its machinations. Only in June 2013, with then-President Barack Obama’s official authorisation, did the Agency’s cloak-and-dagger connivances in Damascus become formalised – and later admitted – under the title “Timber Sycamore”.

At this time, Western officials universally referred to their Syrian proxies as “moderate rebels”. Yet, Washington was well-aware its surrogates were dangerous extremists, seeking to carve a fundamentalist caliphate out of the territory they occupied. An August 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report released under Freedom of Information laws observes that events in Baghdad were “taking a clear sectarian direction,” with radical Salafist groups “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

These factions included Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing (AQI), and its umbrella offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The pair went on to form ISIS, a prospect the DIA report not only predicted, but seemingly endorsed:

“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria…This is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime…ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create great danger.”

Despite such grave concerns, the CIA continued to dispatch unaccountably vast shipments of weapons and money to Syria’s “moderate rebels”, well-knowing this “aid” would almost inevitably end up in ISIS hands. Moreover, Britain concurrently ran secret programs costing millions to train opposition paramilitaries in the art of killing, while providing medical assistance to wounded jihadis. London also donated multiple ambulances, purchased from Qatar, to armed groups in the country.

Leaked documents indicate the risk of equipment and personnel from these efforts being lost to Al-Nusra, ISIS, and other extremist groups in West Asia was judged unavoidably “high” by British intelligence. Yet, there was no concomitant strategy for countering this hazard at all, and the operations continued apace. Almost as if training and arming ISIS was precisely the desired outcome.

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