By Gilbert Doctorow, Blog, 9/22/22

The televised speech yesterday morning by Vladimir Putin and the follow-up remarks by his Minister of Defense Shoigu announcing the partial mobilization of Russia’s army reserves to add a total of 300,000 men to the military campaign in Ukraine have been widely reported in the Western press. Plans to hold referendums on accession to the Russian Federation in the Donbas republics this weekend and also in the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts in the very near future also were reported by the Western press. However, as is very commonly the case, the interrelationship of these two developments has not been seen, or, if seen, has not been shared with the general public. Since precisely this interrelationship has been highlighted on Russian state television talk shows these past two days, I use this opportunity to bring to my readership the key facts on what turn the ongoing conflict in Ukraine will now take and an updated view of when it will end and with what results.

The very idea of referendums in the Donbas has been ridiculed by mainstream media in the United States and Europe. They are denounced as ‘sham’ and we are told that the results will not be recognized. In fact, the Kremlin does not at all care whether the results are recognized as valid in the West. Their logic lies elsewhere. As for the Russian public, the only critical remark about the referendums has been about the timing, with even some patriotic folks saying openly that it is too early to hold the vote given that the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhie and Kherson oblasts have not yet been fully ‘liberated.’ Here too, the logic of these votes lies elsewhere.

It is a foregone conclusion that the Donbas republics and other territories of Ukraine now under Russian occupation will vote to join the Russian Federation. In the case of Donetsk and Lugansk, it was only under pressure from Moscow that their 2014 referendums were about declaring sovereignty and not about becoming part of Russia. Such annexation or merger was not welcomed by the Kremlin back then because Russia was not ready to face the expected massive economic, political and military attack from the West which would have followed. Today, Moscow is more than ready: indeed it has survived very well all the economic sanctions imposed by the West from even before 24 February as well as the ever growing supply to Ukraine of military materiel and ‘advisers’ from the NATO countries.

The vote over joining Russia will likely hit 90% or more in favor. What will immediately follow on the Russian side is also perfectly clear: within hours of the declaration of referendum results, the Russian State Duma will pass a bill on ‘reunification’ of these territories with Russia and within a day or so, it will be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and immediately thereafter the bill will be signed into law by President Putin.

Looking past his service as a KGB intelligence operative, which is all that Western “Russia specialists” go on about endlessly in their articles and books, let us also remember Vladimir Putin’s law degree. As President, he has systematically stayed within domestic and international law. He will do so now. Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has not ruled by presidential decree; he has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted from several parties. He has ruled in keeping with international law promulgated by the United Nations. UN law speaks for the sanctity of territorial integrity of Member States; but UN law also speaks of the sanctity of self-determination of peoples.

What follows from the formal merger of these territories with Russia? That is also perfectly clear. As integral parts of Russia, any attack on them, and there certainly will be such attacks coming from the Ukrainian armed forces, is a casus belli. But even before that, the referendums have been preceded by the announcement of mobilization, which points directly to what Russia will do further if developments on the field of battle so requires. Progressive phases of mobilization will be justified to the Russian public as necessary to defend the borders of the Russian Federation from attack by NATO.

The merger of the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories with the Russian Federation will mark the end of the ‘special military operation.’ An SMO is not something you conduct on your own territory, as panelists on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show remarked a couple of days ago. It marks the beginning of open war on Ukraine with the objective of the enemy’s unconditional capitulation. This will likely entail the removal of the civil and military leadership and, very likely, the dismemberment of Ukraine. After all, the Kremlin warned more than a year ago that the US-dictated course of NATO membership for Ukraine will result in its loss of statehood. However, these particular objectives were not declared up to now; the SMO was about defending the Donbas against genocide and about de-nazification of Ukraine, itself a rather vague concept.

Adding another 300,000 men at arms to the force deployed by Russia in Ukraine represents a near doubling and surely will address the shortages of infantry numbers that has limited Russia’s ability to ‘conquer’ Ukraine. It was precisely lack of boots on the ground that explains Russia’s painful and embarrassing withdrawal from the Kharkov region in the past two weeks. They could not resist the massive concentration of Ukrainian forces against their own thinly guarded hold on the region. The strategic value of the Ukrainian win is questionable, but it greatly enhanced their morale, which is a major factor in the outcome of any war. The Kremlin could not ignore this.

At the press conference in Samarkand last week following the end of the annual gathering of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Vladimir Putin was asked why he has shown so much restraint in the face of the Ukrainian counter offensive. He replied that the Russian attacks on Ukrainian electricity generating plants which followed the loss of the Kharkov territory were just ‘warning shots’ and there would be much more ‘impactful’ action to come. Accordingly, as Russia moves from SMO to open war, we may expect massive destruction of Ukrainian civil as well as military infrastructure to fully block all movement of Western supplied arms from points of delivery in the Lvov region and other borders to the front lines. We may eventually expect bombing and destruction of Ukraine’s centers of decision-making in Kiev.

As for further Western intervention, Western media have picked up on President Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threat to potential co-belligerents. Russia has explicitly stated that any aggression against its own security and territorial integrity, such as has been raised by generals in retirement in the USA speaking to national television in the past several weeks about Russia’s break-up, will be met by a nuclear response. When Russia’s nuclear threat is directed at Washington, as is now the case, rather than at Kiev or Brussels, the supposition till now, it is unlikely that policy makers on Capitol Hill will long remain cavalier about Russian military capabilities and pursue further escalation.

In light of all these developments, I am compelled to revise my appreciation of what transpired at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting. Western media have focused full attention on only one issue: the supposed friction between Russia and its main global friends, India and China, over its war in Ukraine. That seemed to me to be grossly exaggerated. Now it appears to be utter nonsense. It is inconceivable that Putin did not discuss with Xi and Modi what he is about to do in Ukraine. If Russia indeed now supplies to its war effort a far greater part of its military potential, then it is entirely reasonable to expect the war to end with Russian victory by 31 December of this year as the Kremlin appears to have pledged to its loyal supporters.

Looking beyond Ukraine’s possible loss of statehood, a Russian victory will mean more than an Afghanistan-like bloody nose for Washington. It will expose the low value of the U.S. military umbrella for EU member states and will necessarily lead to re-evaluation of Europe’s security architecture, which is what the Russians were demanding before their incursion into Ukraine was launched in February.

By John Parker, Covert Action Magazine, 9/15/22

The eastern Ukrainian countryside is being littered with Ukrainian Army mines while some towns have been abandoned as residents had to escape Ukrainian Army shelling.

Residents consider Americans who send money to the Ukrainian government in the belief that they are protecting them from the Russians to be “idiotic” and “foolish.”

From May 1 to May 12, I traveled to both Russia and the Lugansk People’s Republic, an independent republic in the Donbas region, formerly part of eastern Ukraine. The purpose of this fact-finding mission initiated by the Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La-Lucha.org was to report the suppressed information challenging the narrative of NATO and its member states, led by the U.S., in this proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

My visit to Lugansk was made possible with the assistance of Borotba (Struggle), a socialist political organization in Ukraine and Donbas that we have worked with for many years. Alexey Albu, one of the leaders of Borotba, also provided translation for me during interviews. This is the third part of my report.

On May 8, two days after we visited the Rubizhne shelter, we made our way from Lugansk city to the villages of Sokilnyky and Krymske. Both had recently been taken over by the joint forces of the Lugansk People’s Militia (LPM) and the Russian military.

After the 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine that brought to power a pro-Washington, anti-Moscow regime partnering with fascist forces, the majority Russian-speaking people of the Donbas region decided they did not want any part of this backsliding of history.

Dramatic evidence of the new coup government’s fascist leanings came in its support for the neo-Nazis who burned alive activists at Odessa’s House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014. To this day, none of the perpetrators has been charged with any crime. Given that incident, the people of the Donbas region declared themselves the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). They voted by 89% in Donetsk and 96% in Lugansk for that change.

Instead of honoring the wishes of the people of Donbas, Kyiv labeled them terrorists and sent armed forces with heavy artillery and aircraft against civilians, threatening to wipe out the population. The Lugansk People’s Militia was organized to defend the area.

Continue reading here.

Link here.

By Luke Sayers, NYU Jordan Center, 9/13/22

I disagree with the writer’s assertion that Stalin was not psychopathic. The level of power and repression Stalin attained required a degree of ruthlessness – combined with being an ideologue – that most average people simply do not possess. In psychology there is what is known as the Dark Triad of negative personality traits, comprised of the psychopath, the narcissist and the Mach (short for Machiavellian). Machs tend to be extremely manipulative, ruthless and highly intelligent. They often lack the impulsiveness of the psychopath and the insecure ego and need for approval of the narcissist. Based on my study of Stalin, I tend to think he was a Mach. Interestingly, Machiavelli was one of Stalin’s favorite political philosophers. – Natylie

Joseph Stalin loved to read books. His vast personal library contained roughly 25,000 volumes, about 400 of which the dictator personally marked and annotated. Most of these books were held in a large library room in his private dacha outside of Moscow, though he eventually needed to move into an adjoining building to make room for his ever-expanding collection. He developed his own library classification system and enlisted the services of a private librarian to help him manage his books. As a good Marxist, his favorite subject was history; his favorite author was Lenin.

In Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books (Yale University Press, 2022), Geoffrey Roberts provides a unique look at Stalin by examining the contents of his personal library. His is an intellectual biography of Stalin, told through analysis of the books he read, the pamphlets he wrote, and the projects he edited.

Stalin would often escape from the demands of running the Soviet Union to find solace in his collection of books. Roberts unpacks this interest in books to show that Stalin was an intellectually rigorous and genuinely curious individual, whose library was not a showpiece but a place of serious thought, reflection, and learning.

Throughout his life, Stalin sought constantly to learn something new. He studied a variety of foreign languages, although he only ever mastered Russian, in addition to his native Georgian. He read extensively in history, often conversing with his guests about topics ranging from Oliver Cromwell to Otto von Bismarck. If a guest made a mistake, he was quick to scold them for their lack of historical perspective.

The first thing Stalin would do when visiting others was to inspect their libraries. He wanted to know what other people were thinking and which authors they were reading. Some of his personal favorites apparently included Lenin, Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, along with future “enemies of the people” Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Trotsky. Though these last three authors would eventually be purged or exiled and executed (Zinoviev in 1936, Bukharin in 1938, and Trotsky in 1940), their volumes lived on in Stalin’s collection because he thought it important to understand his rivals and studied them carefully. As Roberts points out, he probably learned more from Trotsky than from almost anyone else.

Stalin was not only a voracious reader, but also a prolific writer and an astute editor. He authored works like Anarchism and Socialism? (1907), Foundations of Leninism (1924), Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), Marxism and the National Question (1942), as well as various essays on Bolshevism and the proletariat. His contributions to theory may have been minimal—although his perspective on “socialism in one country” certainly had a profound influence on Soviet politics—but he achieved much as an efficient simplifier and popularizer of Party ideology.

As editor, he directed the production of the Short Course History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1938), a textbook Roberts thinks expresses Stalin’s own views of Party history. He also oversaw the writing of his own biography (still in progress when he died in 1953), but what may come as a surprise is that, unlike the Short Course, this text downplayed Stalin’s role in the Revolution. Not only was performative modesty an important part of the dictator’s self-presentation, but also, in the Marxist terms of Dialectical Materialism, the Revolution realized not the ambitions of any single person, but the triumphant progress of historical Spirit.

In Roberts’ estimation, Stalin may not have been an original thinker, but he was certainly a serious one. He fashioned himself after the manner of Lenin or Marx, becoming a self-styled philosopher-dictator who could lead the people to communist utopia through rigorous thought and consistent application of Marxist theory to politics.

One of Roberts’ goals in Stalin’s Library is to debunk various conspiracy theories about Stalin. Stalin’s legacy of violence has understandably generated much dubious conjecture—who wouldn’t want an easy explanation for the apparent madness of Stalinist brutality? Some speculate that Stalin was abused as a child or that he felt an almost religious devotion to authoritarian figures in history, such as Ivan the Terrible or Genghis Khan. Others think Stalin planted false flags during the Kremlin Affair surrounding the 1934 killing of Sergei Kirov in order to justify the purges of the 1930s.

In Roberts’ view, however, such theories are not based on hard evidence; in fact, Stalin’s library holds the key to explaining some of the apparent paradoxes such theories claim to reveal. Furthermore, these conspiracy theories distract from the consistency and stability of Stalin’s mind. He was not a psychopath but an ideologue, not personally traumatized but politically driven.

By contrast, Roberts portrays Stalin as a surprisingly normal person. Stalin was confident, direct, extremely efficient in his work, and dedicated to a few guiding ideological principles. He was an intelligent man who, tragically, used his talent to commit some of the worst crimes in history, but he was not the maniacal and irrational brute that many imagine him to have been.

Roberts never defends Stalin or his crimes, but he does affirm Stalin’s rationality, arguing that Stalin’s actions can be understood in light of his ideas. His steadfast pursuit of communist utopia, as expressed in the Marxist ideology and the politics of class warfare, produced the politics of purge and famine that defined the Soviet 1930s. It was a political principle, not personal psychosis, that led Stalin to act as he did.

This attention to rationality is what makes Roberts’ study of Stalin so relevant today, as the world seeks to understand the seemingly impenetrable actions of authoritarian rulers the world over, not least in Russia itself. Dismissing what we do not understand as madness, illness, egoism, or simple despotism, unfortunately, causes us to see possible rational explanations—both realist and ideological—for contemporary global politics.

Perhaps what Roberts discovers about Stalin’s intellectual and political motives is equally true of other world leaders today: the key to understanding their behavior may be hiding in plain sight, in the ideas they discuss, the speeches they make, and the books they read.

by Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman, Libertarian Institute, 9/20/22

Two new polls from Morning Consult and Concerned Veterans for America show at least a plurality of Americans are tired of interventionism. The results show twice as many Americans want to send less aid to Ukraine than those who would support sending more. Meanwhile, only 17% of Americans are concerned about defending democracy around the globe. 

The Joe Biden White House built its foreign policy around the idea it would move away from fighting wars against terrorists in the Middle East, and refocus the Department of Defense on “Great Power Competition.” The administration marketed the policy as “autocracy versus democracy” with the White House leading the Western countries against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other ostensibly bad countries. 

The White House has faced some criticism for claiming to promote democracy and selling weapons to brutal tyrants in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and apartheid Israel. Though Morning Consult’s polling released last week shows the White House’s idea of promoting democracy is not resonating with the American people. 

The poll asked Americans about their views on the country’s most pressing foreign policy challenges. Only 17% of respondents told the pollsters that “upholding global democracy” was a top five concern, ranking 11th behind drugs, climate, immigration, terrorism and the economic crisis. 

The poll was backed by another by Concerned Veterans for America that found US citizens do not want increased involvement in Ukraine. “Only 15% of the American public support sending more military and financial aid to Ukraine than wealthy European countries, with almost twice as many people (34%) wanting to send less assistance,” CVA wrote. Additionally, a majority of Americans only want the assistance to continue if Europeans match the American commitment. 

The poll shows Americans are firmly opposed to military intervention in Ukraine. Over 55% of respondents oppose direct American military intervention while only 14% percent support fighting a war for Kiev. The results for Ukraine were similar to Americans wanting a scaled-back role in the world, with 42% of respondents saying they want a smaller role and only 7% supported more intervention.