Why do Americans hate Putin so much?

Why do Americans hate Putin so much?

Priyantha Hettige

2022/06/30

Lawyer and ex-KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, has pulled together the countries of the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1979 -1980. He has helped them regain their prosperity. After the fall of Communism, Russia was in the mud, weak and anyone could pick its pockets. Since then it has been a hard and difficult road to climb; but now, Russia and these mid-Asian republics are experiencing some economic prosperity and development.

This rising of the Phoenix or correctly the Duran, the two-headed eagle, has caused abject hostility and hatred in members of both the Democrats and Republican parties in the US. You can only call it irrational, but it is a mass psychosis. The State Department has Nazis who are driven by a hatred of Russia. A certain CIA top officer calls Russians subhuman! This is not rational. Why is this? What has caused this paranoia to take hold of large areas of the US Government, especially those who advise and carry out US international policy?

You must remember that the US Pentagon, the HQ of the US military, needs a constant stream of enemies, in order to ensure a constant stream of funding for itself, and give uninterrupted work for its powerful defence industry. (Once skilled craftsmen and engineers with specialist know-how are laid off, they are lost, weakening the defence contractor company and the industry.) America, as the most powerful country in the world, is obliged to maintain its status. It thinks it is at the highest point of world civilization, the supremely powerful, most advanced civilization the world has ever known. Therefore, it is exceptional, and superior to all others. It is proud of itself and its power.

But Buddhism says that being proud is a serious form of delusion – madness. This madness leads to false views, wrong thinking and bad decisions. This is costly and/or dangerous for all those who get involved with them. Note that these same ideas about themselves were used by the Nazis of Germany, at that time to justify the Aryan white master race’s desire to conquer and rule the world. Therefore, a mass psychosis, irrationality arose then, and the same psychosis has arisen in America and Europe again, today.

Putin’s crime has been to strengthen the Russian Federation and by doing that, he has unavoidably created a power centre, not under the control of America which is the supreme world power. This is the new enemy the Pentagon needed, irrational as it seems. And together with China and India, these developing, large economies are able to question and challenge US activities around the world. These are most unwelcome developments for the supreme world power and the leader of the free world, who is exceptional, powerful and superior in all its authority.

It is known that recently America wanted to build a military base in Crimea, but Russia, in a very skilful military operation invaded Crimea, to keep it for themselves. They needed it as an outlet for Russia’s shipping to get access to warm-water sea routes. In addition, the people of Crimea are culturally more like Russians than Ukrainians. They are very happy to join Russia and get all the social payments and pensions. This unexpected move has thwarted US plans to have close relations with its Ukrainian ally, and with this association to influence the region. This blocking of US plans has caused US government officials to be very angry.

In addition to US officials’ dislike of growing Russian prosperity, development and power, there is the ‘carry-over effect of the Russian Hoax. This was a false story or hoax perpetrated on President Donald Trump as soon as he got into office, where false allegations were made and powerful media outlets spouted ant-Trump and anti-Russian damaging stories for four years. They claimed Russia influenced the voting to get Trump into power – all without any evidence. The carry-over from this hoax would add to the bad feelings already held against Russia.

What has been revealed recently is that a considerable proportion of the population of Ukraine – up to 30 percent, support right-wing extremism, especially those who live in western Ukraine. Support for this ideology tapers off as you move towards the Russian-speaking East. Right-wing Ukrainian extremists openly say Russians are inferior due to having been invaded by Mongols, etc., in the past. They also say they want to kill all Russians. These people worship a German Nazi officer, Stephan Bandera, a friend of Hitler who served in the War. At that time there were serious crimes against humanity being committed against Jews in Ukraine, and it was Ukrainians who actively shipped them off to German concentration camps, or massacred them themselves. The area of western Ukraine has some really crazy people. These Nazis of Ukraine are being used by the US to irritate and undermine Russia.

The US has set up over 30 biological research laboratories doing research into banned, illegal, dangerous biological diseases in Ukraine. Why? Victoria Newland, of the State Department, has acknowledged this as being true. What is the purpose of these? In the Azov Steel Plant, there are extensive underground bunkers. A Canadian General has emerged and is now being questioned by the Russians. There are more US officers underground there, too. Why? What were they doing? Why Generals??

The US will fight Russia up to, and using last Ukrainian, so the saying goes, as they pull the strings from a distance – from a world apart located on the American continent. The Ukrainian people as a whole are suffering from these plans. With every war in Ukraine, it gets geographically smaller, but America does not care for Ukrainians – it cares only for itself.

NATO, as a military alliance for protecting Western Europe, lost its purpose after the fall of Communism. The staff and directors of the organization had to reinvent its purpose, and found one of ever-expanding into eastern European countries – and even as far as Central Asia. Everyone warned that this expansion eastwards into Europe would be seen by Russia as a threat to its security and a provocation. Allowing Ukraine to join NATO would mean having ballistic missile bases installed close to the Russian border, and who could tolerate that?! That was an unacceptable danger for Russia, a red line. Military strategists all around the world knew this NATO expansion would cause a progressive loss of security (or increasing danger) for Russia, and at some point, there would be a counter-reaction by Russia.

But still the US carried on with its plans to integrate Ukraine into NATO. NATO acts as a foreign legion for the US around the world. NATO had made promises to Ukraine and Georgia of joining NATO at the Bucharest conference. An insurrection and coup instigated by the US Obama regime occurred in Kyiv, Ukraine in February 2016, and the democratically elected president was replaced by a pro-American president, surrounded by a team of far-right elements. People of the Donbas region rebelled at this and formed an independent enclave in Ukraine, which the Ukrainian military forces then attacked. Russian-speaking Ukrainians were being shot and killed by the Ukrainian army – 13,000 people were killed in eight years of shelling. The Ukrainian army was/are using prohibited weapons such as anti-personnel cluster bombs and even white phosphorous bombs – a most horrendous weapon, against the civilian population. Russian police and war crime tribunals are already overwhelmed by many cases. This loss of life went unreported by the world’s press until Russia finally invaded to save these poor Ukrainian people of the Donbas region. But this action of mercy has been widely condemned around the world. In the world’s press, the journalists have double standards, they are not impartial.

Around 2017, France and Germany met in Minsk with Ukrainians to end the killing in the Donbas and settle the problem of the breakaway enclaves peacefully. They set up the Minsk accords. They had met in Minsk and the Ukrainian government signed an agreement to implement these accords. The Ukrainian government was required to stop the shelling and to talk to the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk enclaves to get a settlement of the problem. But for eight years Ukraine did nothing to implement the agreement, but continued the shelling and recently, even planned to invade and overrun these Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas.

In January 2022 Russia knew it had to act fast before the Ukrainian Army invaded the Donbas. Russia’s plan was first, simply recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk areas as an independent territory, and then invade to protect them from the Ukrainian shelling and expected invasion. And they also needed to neutralize the Ukrainian army to prevent it from starting shelling again after the Russians went away. The Ukrainian army in the area was about 60,000 men.

Those were two large military campaigns, in themselves. Russians realized all the towns along the coast of the Azov Sea were a hotbed of Ukraine army intermingled with far-right fighters following Stepan Bandera. This fact obliged them to also invade Mariupol city, because these extreme right units of the Ukrainian army – the Azov brigade — had a stronghold in the Azovstal steelworks there. What is shocking is that the CIA, France and Britain had been training these Nazi forces in an effort to counter any Russian invasion. By doing this they would prolong the war and more people would be killed. When Europe sends weapons to the Ukrainian side, this action also prolongs the war and more people on both sides are killed.

In 1945, Russia drove the Nazi forces back into Berlin at a great cost in human lives, and now, in 2022, it wants to de-Nazify Ukraine, because it does not want such an unpleasant enemy right on its doorstep, especially armed by NATO. After this new military incursion in 2022, the Russian forces have listed their demands necessary to reach a peace deal with the Ukrainian government. This deNazification has become one of Russia’s main demands. Other demands are the official recognition of Crimea as being part of Russian territory; that the Donbas enclaves be independent, and that they allow the Russian language to be used legally and officially in Ukraine.

But as the fighting is prolonged, Russian demands will grow.

Lawyer and ex-KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, has pulled together the countries of the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1979 -1980. He has helped them regain their prosperity. After the fall of Communism, Russia was in the mud, weak and anyone could pick its pockets. Since then it has been a hard and difficult road to climb; but now, Russia and these mid-Asian republics are experiencing some economic prosperity and development.

This rising of the Phoenix or correctly the Duran, the two-headed eagle, has caused abject hostility and hatred in members of both the Democrats and Republican parties in the US. You can only call it irrational, but it is a mass psychosis. The State Department has Nazis who are driven by a hatred of Russia. A certain CIA top officer calls Russians subhuman! This is not rational. Why is this? What has caused this paranoia to take hold of large areas of the US Government, especially those who advise and carry out US international policy?

You must remember that the US Pentagon, the HQ of the US military, needs a constant stream of enemies, in order to ensure a constant stream of funding for itself, and give uninterrupted work for its powerful defence industry. (Once skilled craftsmen and engineers with specialist know-how are laid off, they are lost, weakening the defence contractor company and the industry.) America, as the most powerful country in the world, is obliged to maintain its status. It thinks it is at the highest point of world civilization, the supremely powerful, most advanced civilization the world has ever known. Therefore, it is exceptional, and superior to all others. It is proud of itself and its power.

But Buddhism says that being proud is a serious form of delusion – madness. This madness leads to false views, wrong thinking and bad decisions. This is costly and/or dangerous for all those who get involved with them. Note that these same ideas about themselves were used by the Nazis of Germany, at that time to justify the Aryan white master race’s desire to conquer and rule the world. Therefore, a mass psychosis, and irrationality arose then, and the same psychosis has arisen in America and Europe again, today.

Putin’s crime has been to strengthen the Russian Federation and by doing that, he has unavoidably created a power centre, not under the control of America which is the supreme world power. This is the new enemy the Pentagon needed, irrational as it seems. And together with China and India, these developing, large economies are able to question and challenge US activities around the world. These are most unwelcome developments for the supreme world power and the leader of the free world, who is exceptional, powerful and superior in all its authority.

It is known that recently America wanted to build a military base in Crimea, but Russia, in a very skilful military operation invaded Crimea, to keep it for themselves. They needed it as an outlet for Russia’s shipping to get access to warm-water sea routes. In addition, the people of Crimea are culturally more like Russians than Ukrainians. They are very happy to join Russia and get all the social payments and pensions. This unexpected move has thwarted US plans to have close relations with its Ukrainian ally, and with this association to influence the region. This blocking of US plans has caused US government officials to be very angry.

In addition to US officials’ dislike of growing Russian prosperity, development and power, there is the ‘carry-over effect of the Russian Hoax. This was a false story or hoax perpetrated on President Donald Trump as soon as he got into office, where false allegations were made and powerful media outlets spouted ant-Trump and anti-Russian damaging stories for four years. They claimed Russia influenced the voting to get Trump into power – all without any evidence. The carry-over from this hoax would add to the bad feelings already held against Russia.

What has been revealed recently is that a considerable proportion of the population of Ukraine – up to 30 percent, support right-wing extremism, especially those who live in western Ukraine. Support for this ideology tapers off as you move towards the Russian-speaking East. Right-wing Ukrainian extremists openly say Russians are inferior due to having been invaded by Mongols, etc., in the past. They also say they want to kill all Russians. These people worship a German Nazi officer, Stephan Bandera, a friend of Hitler who served in the War. At that time there were serious crimes against humanity being committed against Jews in Ukraine, and it was Ukrainians who actively shipped them off to German concentration camps, or massacred them themselves. The area of western Ukraine has some really crazy people. These Nazis of Ukraine are being used by the US to irritate and undermine Russia.

The US has set up over 30 biological research laboratories doing research into banned, illegal, dangerous biological diseases in Ukraine. Why? Victoria Newland, of the State Department, has acknowledged this as being true. What is the purpose of these? In the Azov Steel Plant, there are extensive underground bunkers. A Canadian General has emerged and is now being questioned by the Russians. There are more US officers underground there, too. Why? What were they doing? Why Generals??

The US will fight Russia up to, and using last Ukrainian, so the saying goes, as they pull the strings from a distance – from a world apart located on the American continent. The Ukrainian people as a whole are suffering from these plans. With every war in Ukraine, it gets geographically smaller, but America does not care for Ukrainians – it cares only for itself.

NATO, as a military alliance for protecting Western Europe, lost its purpose after the fall of Communism. The staff and directors of the organization had to reinvent its purpose, and found one of ever-expanding into eastern European countries – and even as far as Central Asia. Everyone warned that this expansion eastwards into Europe would be seen by Russia as a threat to its security and a provocation. Allowing Ukraine to join NATO would mean having ballistic missile bases installed close to the Russian border, and who could tolerate that?! That was an unacceptable danger for Russia, a red line. Military strategists all around the world knew this NATO expansion would cause a progressive loss of security (or increasing danger) for Russia, and at some point, there would be a counter-reaction by Russia.

But still, the US carried on with its plans to integrate Ukraine into NATO. NATO acts as a foreign legion for the US around the world. NATO had made promises to Ukraine and Georgia of joining NATO at the Bucharest conference. An insurrection and coup instigated by the US Obama regime occurred in Kyiv, Ukraine in February 2016, and the democratically elected president was replaced by a pro-American president, surrounded by a team of far-right elements. People of the Donbas region rebelled at this and formed an independent enclave in Ukraine, which the Ukrainian military forces then attacked. Russian-speaking Ukrainians were being shot and killed by the Ukrainian army – 13,000 people were killed in eight years of shelling. The Ukrainian army were/are using prohibited weapons such as anti-personnel cluster bombs and even white phosphorous bombs – a most horrendous weapon, against the civilian population. Russian police and war crime tribunals are already overwhelmed by many cases. This loss of life went unreported by the world’s press until Russia finally invaded to save these poor Ukrainian people of the Donbas region. But this action of mercy has been widely condemned around the world. The world’s press, and the journalists have double standards, they are not impartial.

Around 2017, France and Germany met in Minsk with Ukrainians to end the killing in the Donbas and settle the problem of the breakaway enclaves peacefully. They set up the Minsk accords. They had met in Minsk and the Ukrainian government signed an agreement to implement these accords. The Ukrainian government was required to stop the shelling and to talk to the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk enclaves to get a settlement of the problem. But for eight years Ukraine did nothing to implement the agreement, but continued the shelling and recently, even planned to invade and overrun these Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas.

In January 2022 Russia knew it had to act fast before the Ukrainian Army invaded the Donbas. Russia’s plan was first, simply to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk areas as an independent territory, and then invade to protect them from the Ukrainian shelling and expected invasion. And they also needed to neutralize the Ukrainian army to prevent it from starting shelling again after the Russians went away. The Ukrainian army in the area was about 60,000 men.

Those were two large military campaigns, in themselves. Russians realized all the towns along the coast of the Azov Sea were a hotbed of Ukraine army intermingled with far-right fighters following Stepan Bandera. This fact obliged them to also invade Mariupol city because these extreme right units of the Ukrainian army – the Azov brigade — had a stronghold in the Azovstal steelworks there. What is shocking is that the CIA, France and Britain had been training these Nazi forces in an effort to counter any Russian invasion. By doing this they would prolong any war and more people would be killed. When Europe sends weapons to the Ukrainian side, this action also prolongs the war and more people on both sides are killed.

In 1945, Russia drove the Nazi forces back into Berlin at a great cost in human lives, and now, in 2022, it wants to de-Nazify Ukraine, because it does not want such an unpleasant enemy right on its doorstep, especially armed by NATO. After this new military incursion in 2022, the Russian forces have listed their demands necessary to reach a peace deal with the Ukrainian government. This deNazification has become one of Russia’s main demands. Other demands are the official recognition of Crimea as being part of Russian territory; that the Donbas enclaves be independent, and that they allow the Russian language to be used legally and officially in Ukraine.

But as the fighting is prolonged, Russian demands will grow.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Why does the Western world hate Russia?
  • Hari Narayan
In light of the increased focus on the probe into possible Russian meddling in the U.S. elections, it becomes educative to understand the West-centric narrative of Russophobia and the origins of suspicion and antagonism towards the erstwhile Communist behemoth.

For a U.S. President, Donald Trump has displayed far greater reconciliation with Russia than most of his predecessors, who fostered a diplomatic and ideological antagonism towards the Soviet nation. | The Hindu

Following his much-watched meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit, United States President Donald Trump, for a change, made a coherent statement: “Time to move forward in working constructively with Russia.”

However, allegations of interference in the U.S. presidential elections notwithstanding, it is unlikely that Mr Trump’s suggestion of forging a “constructive” partnership with the Cold War foe would find any takers in the U.S. foreign policy establishment on either side of the aisle. For, despite it being more than a quarter-century since the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union, the U.S. and its allies have rarely shown an appetite in building a good relationship with the Russian Federation. They have, on the contrary, only fostered a greater sense of insecurity in the minds of Moscow through the expansion of their military power, to the point that there is direct weaponry targeting Russia.

In the aftermath of 9/11, one question the average American asked is, “Why do they [Islamists] hate us.” Perhaps it is time foreign policy observers raise a similar question: “Why does the West hate Russia so much?”

Some answers are provided by writers and filmmakers willing to cast a more empathetic eye on Russia. One of them is Oliver Stone, whose four-part series The Putin Interviews met with near-unanimous criticism from the Western media last month.

The series provides the average viewer with an opportunity to acquaint himself with the thinking of a leader who has become the most reviled in the Western world in the last six months. It also gives us a glimpse into the mind of the average Russian. Shot between June 2015, when Moscow was beginning to feel the impact of sanctions imposed by the West, and February 2017, when calls for a probe over alleged Russian meddling into U.S. presidential elections intensified, the documentary presents some key strands in Putin’s thinking, which help us view Russia from Moscow’s perspective, as compared to that of the U.S. foreign policy czars.

The first is that Putin sees Russia as a victim of aggression rather than the perpetrator. The second is that his purportedly benign attempt to forge a sphere of influence in the country’s neighbourhood has been seriously threatened by the continued expansion of NATO since the end of the Cold War. Russia views this as a threat to its own sovereignty, much like India views China’s construction activities along the border with Bhutan as a threat to its own security.

Putin gives an impression of betrayal and pain when he says Mikhail Gorbachev, though he obtained verbal assurance from the U.S. that NATO would not be expanded to the east of the erstwhile German Democratic Republic, did not insist on a written declaration.

Russia is neither a threat to the West’s dominance nor a military evil knocking at its gates. It is as much a victim of terror as the U.S., as much a developing nation striving to deal with its bread-and-butter issues as India, and as much a proud culture as France.

To put things in perspective, Russia views the erstwhile Soviet states in its immediate neighbourhood as a buffer between the Russian mainland and Western Europe. Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in its last phase, is quoted as saying that the West gave a “clear commitment” that NATO would not be expanded further to the east. However, since 1999, in the final year of Boris Yeltsin, NATO has expanded four times, taking in 13 countries. These include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and other countries like Romania and Croatia.

As this The Independent article shows, the Baltic states, Romania and Bulgaria are hosting soldiers from all NATO member states. Further, at least 7,000 troops are deployed in countries bordering Russia. This constitutes the greatest military build-up since the end of the Cold War in 1991 to deter perceived Russian aggression. Moscow feels a threat to its sovereignty and has little option but to respond. And, in one of his rare aggressive moments in the documentary, Putin says Russia’s response will be “rough”.

Putin emerges, from his portrayal in the documentary at any rate, as a pragmatist. But what explains his continued popularity, well into his third term? Is it genuine or fabricated? The documentary depicts how Putin inherited the shambles left behind by a Yeltsin regime that had been subservient to the interests of the West and brought about considerable reduction in poverty as well as an increase in the standard of living of the masses. He was aided in this by the commodities boom during his early years, a lifeline he has now exhausted.

Official economic data shows that Russia’s poverty rate, which was 29% in 2000, came down to 11% in 2012, before rising marginally to 15% by 2015. The country’s GDP increased from $10,462 in 2000 to $24,448 in 2014, making it a developing country but not, in any way, a threat to the U.S.’s might.

Even now, despite Russia being badly bitten by the Western sanctions imposed in the aftermath of its annexation of Ukraine and the oil prices in free fall, the U.S. establishment continues to view it as a threat. Crude oil prices have reduced from $110 a barrel in February 2012 to under $50 in July 2017. There has been a contraction in GDP by about 4% in 2015 and 2016. However, Russia’s military expenditure has been steadily rising, with it occupying the third position behind China and the U.S. in terms of amounts spent on the military, signifying a further expansion in the arms race.

When it comes to the allegations of hacking against Russia, irrespective of the findings of the numerous congressional investigative committees, the fact remains: attempts at improving diplomatic ties will bear little fruit. The reason? The phenomenon of ‘Russophobia’, or the inherent antagonism that prevails in the Western world’s perception of Russia.

One important study that tries to get to the roots of the Russia-baiting tendencies of the average American expert is Swiss journalist Guy Mettan’s Creating Russophobia .

Mettan traces the roots of the aversion to the 5th Century A.D, when, as the Western Roman Empire fell, Byzantium became the focal point of debates on Christianity, following which the East-West schism between the Orthodox and Catholic sects arose. The church at that time recognised the authority of the Roman Catholic Pope as ‘primus inter pares’, or the first among equals, out of the five patriarchs. A divergence over whether the ‘Holy Spirit’ proceeded from the ‘Father’ or both the ‘Father and the Son’ led to differences. And a doctrine, which was later proved to be false, made these patriarchates give primacy to the papacy.

In an age when religious power was equivalent to political power, the Russian Orthodox church thus could not claim as much authority as the other. That the Russian empire, as the locus of the ROC, could never claim as much political power as the Roman and other Western empires, only added to its further denigration.

Metta goes on meticulously chronicling the Russophobia of different cultures — the French Russophobia, its German, English, and American versions, calling this tendency of the Western liberal societies to see a common threat in Russia as a systematic, continuous affair.

The American iteration of the concept has been a more recent phenomenon, one that took shape in the aftermath of the Second World War. This has been dealt with by Oliver Stone himself in his book and documentary series  The Untold History of the United States.

He calls the Cold War largely a project on the part of the U.S. to establish a new form of superiority from the ruins of the Second World War.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, fear of communism and a necessity to pre-empt the rise of popular Left-wing regimes in the Soviet Union’s neighbourhood led the U.S. to prop up dictators in Europe. Despite the U.S.’s monopoly over the atomic bomb, something President Harry S. Truman was sure wouldn’t be threatened, and the Soviet isolation at the UN, Washington sought to present Moscow as a threat, says the documentary. The U.S. and the Soviet Union, allies during the War, became adversaries in peace. This went against the vision of both its war-time President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his one-time deputy, the pacifist Henry Wallace.

An out-of-power British PM Winston Churchill, a staunch anti-Communist, made an infamous speech in Truman’s home State of Missouri in March 1946 that is considered as marking the beginning of the Cold War. He said: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. In a great number of countries, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a great challenge to the Christian civilisation.” The tenor of the speech was as Russophobic as it was anti-Communist. Oliver Stone says this one speech condemned forever, the Soviet Union in the eyes of the Americans.

The Truman Doctrine

Josef Stalin’s moves to conceptualise five-year plans to rebuild Russia’s economy had already been viewed among the Western Right as a declaration of war. This was followed by the stoppage of war reparation payments to the Soviet Union, the propping up of dictatorships against popular liberation movements in Greece and Turkey and the presentation of the Truman Doctrine. For the first time, the U.S. committed itself to the deployment of troops even at a time of peace, becoming the policeman of the world. This would be met with Soviet counter-aggression in countries such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the form of the installation of friendly regimes and the creation of another form of East-West schism that would last another half a century.

Russia hence is neither a threat to the West’s dominance nor a military evil knocking at its gates. It is as much a victim of terror as the U.S., as much a developing nation striving to deal with its bread-and-butter issues as India, and as much a proud culture as France.

With both the Soviet model of centralised planning and the Western model of free-market capitalism has come in for criticism in recent times — the election of Trump represents , for many, the latter’s nadir — the world is in need of a new stabilising order, one that empowers the ‘many’, not ‘the few’. The formation of this new order requires not the expansion of military alliances like NATO and a new arms race — these bespeak a geopolitical approach that birthed the Cold War — but the forging of common pacts of cooperation such as the Paris Climate Agreement. It is unlikely that without the coming together of the two major powers — one has the biggest economy and the other the biggest landmass —such a vision would ever become reality. The last thing we need is another East-West schism leading to mass enrichment of the military-industrial-finance complex and the mass impoverishment of the 99%.

As Henry Wallace said during the first death anniversary of Roosevelt: “The source of all our mistakes is fear. Russia fears Anglo-Saxon encirclement… In fear, great nations have been acting as cornered beasts, thinking only of survival.” It is time for the West to overcome the fear of Russia and exorcise the threat perception against the country.

https://www.thehindu.com/thread/politics-and-policy/why-does-the-western-world-hate-russia/article19279052.ece

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