President Vladimir Putin's recent speech before the Munich Conference on Security Policy created something of a sensation. Putin criticized NATO expansion and U.S. foreign policy in a way reminiscent of the old Soviet enemy. In response, the Secretary General of NATO expressed disappointment mixed with the hope that a way around Putin's remarks could be navigated. Former security advisor to three U.S. presidents, Brent Scowcroft, said Putin's speech was "obnoxious," but noted the fact that Putin was still ready to cooperate with the United States. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates responded dismissively by saying that "one cold war was quite enough" while President Bush assured his countrymen that Russia and America would continue to work together.
What did Putin say in his speech that created such a stir?
At the outset of his speech, Putin said: "This conference's structure allows me to avoid excessive politeness and the need to speak in roundabout, pleasant but empty diplomatic terms. This conference's format will allow me to say what I really think about international security problems." A statement of this kind, in the mouth of a former KGB officer and current-day dictator, invariably prefigures deception. Though he may reveal certain truths, the Russian president would hardly give out his real thinking, because such giving out would deflate his speech from pedestrian obnoxiousness to hair-raising predatory cynicism. A man who orders the assassination of dissident journalists cannot afford to expose his grim thought process to normal people. This is because Mr. Putin is not normal. He is a KGB-man. He is a "Soviet person." And his achievements - if one credits them at all - are not really his own. The military science, sociology and economic thinking behind Russia's reemergence is the achievement of hidden organizers, secret KGB and CPSU structures. Putin is the creature of these structures, whatever his exact status or real power. There is a hidden Russian establishment and Putin is their visible representative, not to be confused with the type of president we find in Western countries. Neither should we confuse Russia's political system with any other, as it is uniquely Asiatic. It is a system that relies on a secret army of informants and provocateurs, on coordination between organized crime and the police, on controlled opposition and double agents, on false fronts and Potemkin villages. In this context, the last thing you are going to hear from a Russian leader is what he "really thinks." What you hear from his lips is something calculated. However crude or initially ineffective it may seem, it is psychologically weighed in advance. The statements of Russian statesmen are part of Russian strategy.
According to Putin, "It is well known that international security comprises much more than issues relating to military and political stability. It involves the stability of the global economy, overcoming poverty, economic security and developing a dialogue between civilizations." Putin is appealing to the wounded feelings of the poor countries, and to the "liberal guilt" of the rich countries. The formula of rich nations versus poor nations is fundamental to his strategy. Class warfare, the most fundamental concept in all of Marxism, is being pushed to the front. Here is a weapon for rallying the majority of countries. Think of the global situation as follows: there is war, and on one side are the poor. On the other side are the rich. It is in this context that President Putin quotes U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said: "When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger." It is something that Roosevelt said at the outset of World War II. This remark, says Putin, "remains topical today."
Putin is saying that we are at the outset of another world war. Only this time, America is the aggressor country. America is the main threat to the security of the planet. All the world must now either bend to "one master, one sovereign," or resist. Putin does not aim these words at America or Europe, even though he says them before an assembly of American and European leaders. He aims his words at the Arab world, at Africa, Asia and Latin America. He is telling them that America wants to tyrannize the planet "contrary to democracy," that America's pose of teaching others democracy is sheer hypocrisy. "Those who would teach us," he says, "do not want to learn themselves."
The global dominance of the United States is unacceptable, says Putin. It leads to war and mass slaughter. "Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained use of force - military force - in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts," claims Putin. "We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?"
Putin is appealing to the growing anti-Americanism that decades of Bolshevik propaganda have cultivated around the world. He defies the hegemonic power to its face. He pretends to speak for developing world, including the Arab World. After all, he is about to visit Saudi Arabia. The two great oil-producing countries, Russia and Arabia are drawing together. Energy strategy is part of Russia's grand strategy. In his address, Putin is warning OPEC against a grave danger. He says that international law can no longer protect them. The Americans can and will invade you. But you have a powerful alternative to America. The unwritten subtext is that Russia and its allies (like China, India and Brazil) have the economic clout and military strength to turn the tables on America and on Europe too. "The combined GDP," noted Putin, "measured in purchasing power parity of countries such as India and China is already greater than that of the United States. And a similar calculation with the GDP of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - surpasses the cumulative GDP of the EU. And according to experts this gap will only increase in the future." If America wants an arms race, bring it on. Russia is ready and preparing to rearm in a big way, as the Russian defense minister announced a short while ago. And Russia has the wealth to overtake its nemesis.
According to Putin, the Americans themselves are responsible for the terrorist and WMD situation on the planet. American hypocrisy, says Putin, even extends to nuclear non-proliferation because America's threatening domination "encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction." It is America's fault if North Korea and Iran are building a nuclear arsenal. The Americans have provoked it themselves. One has to ask, says Putin, why the Americans are bombing and shooting people at this stage in the game? After all, Russia has become a democracy! What is the problem here? Have the Americans lost faith in the power of culture and democratic values?
And what has happened to the arms control and disarmament process? Well, says Putin, the Americans have trashed this process. "Russia intends to strictly fulfill the obligations it has taken on [in terms of arms control treaties]. We hope our partners [i.e., the Americans] will also act in a transparent way and will refrain from laying aside a couple of hundred superfluous nuclear warheads for a rainy day. And if today the new American defense secretary declares that the United States will not hide these superfluous weapons in warehouses or, as one might say, under a pillow or blanket, then I suggest we all rise and greet this declaration standing. It would be a very important declaration."
Putin's totalitarianism is hidden, just as the secret structures that brought him to power were hidden during the Yeltsin presidency. The totalitarian mind is a paranoid mind. It builds its position on lies and hatches plots of destruction, fully expecting that its main enemy is doing likewise. When Putin suggests the United States wants to hide nuclear weapons "under a pillow," he is confessing that Russia has done much more. In fact, Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons that are hidden and unaccounted for (according to the late Bill Lee, a leading U.S. intelligence expert). Russia has broken nearly ever treaty it has signed. Anyone who follows the newspapers closely enough will recall stories about chemical, nuclear and biological weapons violations of existing treaties. And now that Russia is helping Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal it is almost laughable when Putin says to his listeners in Munich: "Russia strictly adheres to and intends to further adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as the multilateral supervision regime for missile technologies." The Russian president is not serious. He is cynical, and counts on the cynicism of his Third World comrades.
Putin does hint that Russia will have to break out of the INF Treaty, restricting medium-range nuclear missiles. These are the weapons Russia used to threaten Europe in the 1980s. These were considered the most destabilizing weapons of their time. One should imagine the shudders going through the European statesmen at the meeting.
But the reaction from America was weak. There was no Winston Churchill ready to say that Russia was still a threat, and Russia was breaking its treaties while preparing for war. By undoing the blunder of the Iron Curtain, Russia's new totalitarianism is sleek, selective, and deceptively open. The West has become economically entangled in its web. One might argue there is freedom in Russia, if it wasn't for the elimination of so many journalists - like Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya (not to mention the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London). The methods for squashing dissent are more precise today, with the added benefit of plausible deniability. Some observers have compared Putin's speech to Churchill's Fulton Speech. Some have said that Putin was declaring a new Cold War. But there was nothing new in Putin's speech. Top Russian leaders and representatives of the regime have said many of the same things time and time again. Besides, Putin already declared war on the United States after the Beslan massacre. He accused the United States of being behind the terrorists in Russia.
Russia is therefore on the march, and has been on the march for some time.
