The World has entered a period of great flux. Thirty years ago it was in such a period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That event came about with great suddenness, despite signs being there that something was going to happen of a fundamental nature. Likewise, today.

In the late 1980s Soviet leaders and American strategists did not foresee the collapse of the Soviet system. It was a great internal collapse provoked by First Secretary Gorbachev. Much nonsense has been written about it since. But it was clear from the record that the West neither expected it or were prepared about how to handle it, to the benefit of humanity. They initially acted pragmatically and then, unfortunately, they looked for ideas and found them in that great complex of academia and think-tanks that had grown up, and grown rich, to service the propagandist function.

Russian collapses have not been handled well by the West. One thinks of the 1917-21 period and how that played itself out in the expansion of Russian power half way across Europe by 1945. But in 1991 it was the United States who had to manage it, rather than European statesmen.

At the point of the Soviet collapse the United States faced the choice over what to do in relation to Russia. Jeffrey Sachs remembers requesting financial aid for Russia on the lines of a Marshall Plan. After all, the Marshall Plan had been applied to the enemy of the United States, Germany, in the cause of stability. Of course, the problem was that it had to have been applied in relation to an external enemy – Soviet Russia – to bolster a former enemy.

in 1990 The United States had no enemies. It could do to the world whatever it wanted. And that seems to have been its big problem ever since.

The US chose to allow Russia to go into freefall. In the 5 years following the fall of the Soviet Union Russian production dropped by around 50%. Investment shrunk to nothing. The Russian currency became virtually worthless and there was even a resorting to a barter economy. The independence of Ukraine and Belarus cut 70 million people out of the heart of the Soviet system and the Russian population itself fell to 144 million as against America’s 285 million.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a Polish American diplomat who became an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson.  In 1997 he treated eastern Europe as a Chessboard, in a situation in which the fall of the Soviet Union left the United States as the only military superpower in the world.   Brzezinski’s plan was essentially to wipe out Russia for its own good!  He published a book entitled, Grand Chessboard:  American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives.

As part of this he proposed bringing Ukraine into the West and using Uzbekistan as a lever against Russian influence in Eurasia. Russia was to be isolated and picked apart, squeezed between Europe and Japan and cut off from China and Iran. Russia would effectively be deprived of all means of manoeuvring out of a terrible decline.

There is an old adage: “Never kick a man when he’s down; he may get up to fight again!”

Washington’s main activity was aimed at corralling Russia or provoking it through the eastward expansion of NATO with overtures to Ukraine being the dagger at its heart. in 2002 George W Bush spoke of co-operation with Russia while at the same time American troops were setting up operations in the Caucasus, in Georgia. Washington took obvious pleasure that NATO would be enlarged and nuclear systems would be installed without consulting Moscow.

America had two strategies: The first objective was the disintegration of Russia through stimulating disruptive nationalist movements in Ukraine, Belarus and the Caucasus. The second objective was to maintain tension between the US and Russia to prevent reconciliation between Europe and Russia in order to prevent a reunification of Western Eurasia.

However, the US’s misadventures in the Middle East, destroying Muslim states, encouraged Europe to engage with Russia and let it back in as an international player. Something that Vladimir Putin took advantage of in an impressive speech given mostly to Germans before the Bundestag in September 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. Putin offered the West an end to the Cold War. He also offered the US short-term help in Afghanistan:

“It is my firm conviction that in today’s rapidly changing world, in a world witnessing truly dramatic demographic changes and an exceptionally high economic growth in some regions, Europe also has an immediate interest in promoting relations with Russia. 

No one calls in question the great value of Europe’s relations with the United States. I am just of the opinion that Europe will reinforce its reputation of a strong and truly independent centre of world politics soundly and for a long time if it succeeds in bringing together its own potential and that of Russia, including its human, territorial and natural resources and its economic, cultural and defence potential. 

Together we have already taken the first steps in that direction. The time has now come to think about what should be done to make sure that a united and secure Europe becomes the harbinger of a united and secure world.”

Putin’s objective was to develop and create more ties with Europe, the world’s industrial power at that point. In 2001 Russia and the United States did 10 billion Euros of business with each but Russia and the EU did 7.5 times more – 475 billion Euros worth. Russia could get along without the United States but not without Europe and it was offering Europe a counterweight to American military influence giving it a secure supply of its energy requirements. This was a tempting offer that the EU snapped up. It was win/win for Europe and Russia, bringing the prospect of a stable, profitable future for both. This situation developed over the course of 2 decades before Washington managed to subvert it.

Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard book perhaps did not notice that Russia’s national game was chess and Putin seemed to be a master of it.

From the turn of the Century the Russian economy was got moving again with positive growth. This was not just the result of oil and gas exports but Russian industry grew by an estimated 10% and there was a great revival of light industry. The barter economy was stopped and renewed confidence in the Russian currency began to produce budget surpluses. Russia was able, again, to present itself as a reliable financial partner servicing it’s foreign debt with no difficulty. The failed attempt to open up the economy in the 1990s with the help of American advisors had led the country into chaos. The return of the Russian State under effective leadership ended the chaos and led to a revival of Russia and its return as a Great Power.

While Russia began to return to the ranks of the Great Powers, in no way was Russia a threat to either the United States or Europe. It was certainly not an expanding force, having given up a large amount of territory. No matter what form its government took Russia was shrinking demographically. Its population was decreasing and ageing and its army was relatively small. But it should not have been underestimated.

Russia was a reliable partner to Europe because it was weak and under Putin it knew its limitations. Russia possessed the temperament capable of perceiving International relations in a just and egalitarian way which would contribute to the equilibrium of the world in a way that United States hegemony and complete spectrum dominance could never do.

The United States promoted a Franco-German reconciliation after WW2 in order to assure the coherence of NATO on the continent against Russia. But it never imagined a reconciliation that would lead to the birth of a competing strategic entity. Europe, once it had pulled itself together began constructing a social system that was immensely superior to its patron in the United States and which was also antagonistic to the free market ideology of America.

The establishment of the Euro was seen as a threat by the US. Europe was also becoming, thanks to Russian energy and American de-industrialisation, more powerful than the United States industrially. In Germany an industrial Rhineland model promoted social cohesiveness, stability, worker training and long-term technological investment, in contrast to the US model that encouraged the mobility of labour, short-term profits and capital investment.

Commentators outside United States recognised the superiority of the German or Japanese model in the 1980s. In Europe the behaviour of Germany as a united and dominant economic power was an important event. Europe became an autonomous power, in spite of itself annexing new spaces on its hinterland to the east, on the inspiration of Britain, which had an interest in disabling the European core by diffusing its energies eastward.

In a peaceful environment and within good relations with Russia, Eastern Europe initially became a Western European space, rather than something the United States controlled and used as an anti-Russian instrument. The weight of Europe was enough to frustrate British Balance of Power playing and the British were forced to bow out, through Brexit, in frustration at not being able to exert control over the direction of travel of the EU.

Globalisation, originally put in motion by the United States, itself framed the emergence of an integrated Europe that was strategically better situated than the United States – as long as it maintained peace with Russia. A decade ago Europe stood to multiply its ties with Russia. Russia was no longer a strategic threat and was making a positive contribution to European military security. Some Europeans even advanced the possibility of a symbolic association of Russia within NATO. 

This was all alarming and impermissable for the people in Washington who have made a living out of asserting US power to the maximum on the World.

They identified the key to subverting the stable, prosperous future for Europe and Russia as lying in Ukraine.

They realised that Ukraine had enough cultural differences with Russia to enable it to take on its own identity. But without a social dynamic of its own Ukraine could only escape Russian control by being pulled into the orbit of another Power. It is essentially a vague borderland, as its name suggests, and a decrepit backwater, needing inspiration from elsewhere.

For centuries that inspiration came from Russia. The US was attempting to wrench it away from its historic development and put it on another course. Little thought was given to the feasability of this and its effect on the mixed Ukrainian population. All that mattered was that it was going to give pain to Russia and prevent it with a great problem. Something akin to this might be China turning Canada or Mexico into a sattelite.

The EU embarked on the project initially of attempting to take Ukraine in hand. But Washington realised that Europe did not have it in them to do a proper job of wrenching the country away from Russia. It had no military power, for one thing and would be half-hearted if bit came to bit, as Washington intended. So Washington/Victoria Nuland said “Fuck the EU!.” The coup was launched in Kyiv in 2014 and the rest is history.

The US destruction of the Nordstream pipeline in September 2022 (which they attempted to blame on Kyiv) was the symbolic coup de grace to Europe-Russia inter-connectedness and development.

Europe has now been put in its place by Washington in a situation akin to vassalage. The US may yet succeed in handing over the ownership and cost for the war it provoked, as the Ukrainians fail to see it through because of terrible population losses, on and off the battlefield.

Some people believe this to have been a very clever move from Washington. But one doubts that will be the end of it, as panic now grips the Chancelleries of Europe.