Ukraine, Russie, Europe

Ukraine, Russie, Europe

Le Cercle Georges Sorel est le cercle de formation politique et culturelle du réseau M.A.S. Il organise régulièrement des conférences et des débats. Comme le grand philosophe et grand théoricien Georges Sorel, notre cercle entend dépasser les clivages idéologiques pour fonder l'alternative.

 

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« On ne va pas aller mourir pour du pétrole »

«On ne va pas aller mourir pour du pétrole»

Entretien avec Aymeric Chauprade

Aymeric Chauprade, docteur en sciences politiques, savant de renommée internationale, l’un des spécialistes de pointe de la géopolitique en France, assigne à la Russie un rôle de première importance dans la mise en place du monde moderne. En quoi la croissance de l’influence russe est-elle liée à la renaissance de l’Orthodoxie ? Comment notre pays peut-il aider les chrétiens persécutés du Moyen-Orient ? Comment son rôle particulier est-il lié aux protestations récentes de millions de Français contre le mariage homosexuel ?

 

C’est là le sujet de notre discussion avec Aymeric Chauprade.

 

La foi et l’argent

 

Thomas : qu’est-ce qui attire particulièrement votre attention dans la Russie d’aujourd’hui ?

 

Aymeric Chauprade : Je comprends pourquoi, pour les Français de ma génération ou même plus jeunes, la Russie est si attirante aujourd’hui, et pourquoi les gens apprennent le russe et déménagent ici pour y fonder leur propre affaire. Ce n’est pas une sorte de phénomène marginal, le flot de ces gens est de plus en plus significatif. Ils ne sont pas, bien sûr, des dizaines de milliers, mais ils sont nombreux. Et ce phénomène est nouveau. Avant, les jeunes gens partaient aux U.S.A., brûlaient du « rêve américain ». Et maintenant, vient le remplacer le « rêve russe ». Et il est lié, à la différence du rêve américain, non aux aspects matériels et financiers, mais ce qui est plus important, à la recherche de soi, en tant qu’homme, à un retour aux sources chrétiennes. Pour la plupart des Européens, qui se réfèrent à leur culture chrétienne, la Russie incarne de plus en plus une sorte de contre modèle de l’Europe, en ce qui concerne les valeurs familiales et spirituelles.

 

Thomas : C’est étonnant, vous avez, pour un étranger, une idée si flatteuse des Russes…

 

A.C. : Bien sûr, les Russes participent à la société de consommation comme tous les autres dans le monde entier. Mais tout de même, ici, en Russie, on rencontre chez les gens quelque chose de profond, (peut-être la « mystérieuse âme russe » ?), la conviction que l’argent n’est pas dans la vie la valeur suprême. Et cela est vraiment attirant pour les jeunes Français, ceux du moins qui se trouvent en quête de plus profond que l’élargissement de leurs possibilités matérielles. C’est paradoxal, mais c’est un fait. Je vois d’un côté, en Russie, quelque chose de très proche de la culture américaine : le besoin d’amasser, le désir de déballer son niveau de réussite. Mais d’un autre côté, il y a là quelque chose qu’on ne trouve pas dans la culture américaine : si l’on fait connaissance avec un Russe d’une façon moins superficielle, on s’aperçoit que mise à part la soif de réussite, il y a en lui le désir de se trouver lui-même : « Qui suis-je et pourquoi est-ce que je vis » ? Et à mon avis, cela est directement lié en premier lieu au retour des Russes vers la religion, en partie à l’Orthodoxie. C’est une renaissance religieuse, le besoin de restaurer le lien du présent avec toute l’histoire russe. Je n’idéalise pas, cela plane dans l’air et se sent clairement.  C’est seulement une réalité qu’on peut constater.

 

Thomas : Et que s’est-il donc passé pour que la Russie soit brusquement devenue attirante aux yeux des étrangers sur le plan des affaires ? Qu’est-ce qui a changé ?

 

A.C. : La façon de considérer la Russie a changé. Quand on disait « la Russie » dans les années 90, on comprenait la mafia. Et cela faisait peur de venir travailler ici et y investir de l’argent, on pouvait tout perdre d’un coup. Mais de telles associations n’existent plus. Les gens ont senti que sur le plan économique, ici, c’était maintenant sans danger. Il existe une différence colossale entre le tableau que tracent de la Russie les médias pro-américains et ce que connaissent de la Russie les analystes économiques. Les premiers considèrent tout ce qui est lié à la Russie d’une façon strictement critique.

 

Les seconds regardent les choses d’une façon lucide et réaliste et savent qu’en Russie, toutes les conditions sont rassemblées pour y conduire des affaires. J’ai personnellement entendu dire lors d’une conférence au directeur d’une compagnie française très importante : « Avant, nos entrepreneurs allaient en Chine, mais en réalité, personne n’a rien pu y gagner, à part les marques de luxe. Aujourd’hui, les compagnies françaises importantes gagnent beaucoup d’argent en Russie. Celui qui investit ici fait de bonnes affaires ».

 

La comparaison avec la Chine est vraiment intéressante. Il y eut en effet la période du boum chinois, les Européens ont pris pied dans le marché chinois, et au début, semblait-il, les bénéfices croissaient à des rythmes extraordinaires. Mais la différence entre les cultures est telle que les gens tombaient dans une véritable frustration et sortaient de ce marché : ils ne parvenaient pas à être « chez eux » dans cette civilisation, ils restaient de toute façon « étrangers » en Chine. Alors que les Russes et les Français, malgré toutes les différences sont en fin de compte très proches.

 

Thomas : En quoi la renaissance  économique du pays est-elle liée au retour des Russes vers la religion ?

 

A.C. : J’ai rencontré des Russes qui sont matérialistes à 100 %. Mais j’ai aussi rencontré personnellement ceux qui gagnent beaucoup d’argent mais se souviennent qu’il y a quelque chose de plus grand que l’argent, par exemple le salut de l’âme. Ces entrepreneurs qui sont loin d’être pauvres décident à un certain moment de dépenser une partie (parfois importante) de l’argent gagné pour financer des projets liés à l’Église, à l’éducation, à l’illumination, afin que les gens viennent à la foi en Dieu. C’est à mes yeux très important. À ce propos, cela existe aux U.S.A., dans les milieux protestants.  En France, justement, cela nous manque beaucoup, peu de gens qui, ayant gagné beaucoup d’argent voudraient l’affecter à la cause de la renaissance de la religion et des valeurs spirituelles. De mon point de vue, c’est la maladie gravissime de l’Europe Occidentale contemporaine.

 

Rattraper et dépasser l’Occident ?

 

Thomas : Quelles sont vos impressions personnelles de votre participation au club de discussion « Valdaï » en septembre 2013 ?

 

A.C. : Honnêtement, j’en garde des sentiments mitigés. D’un côté, j’ai été impressionné par le niveau du déroulement de l’évènement lui-même, la diversité des experts très intéressants et l’organisation intelligente des discussions. Mais ce qui me troublait d’un autre côté, c’est que la philosophie générale  de « Valdaï » est pénétrée de part en part par la vision du monde occidentale et libérale. J’avais l’impression que toute une classe de politiques russes, rassemblés à Valdaï, pas tous mais la majorité, essaie de dépasser l’Occident sur le plan des valeurs libérales. Et ils essaient de le faire de telle manière que la Russie reçoit ces valeurs comme la norme. D’après moi, c’est étrange. La Russie sur le plan spirituel et culturel a toujours suivi son propre chemin historique, et elle a aujourd’hui la possibilité de créer son propre modèle de civilisation sans copier l’Occident. Cela sonnera peut-être comme une provocation, mais quand à Valdaï j’ai entendu certains politiques, j’ai eu l’impression qu’ils se sentaient comme des représentants d’un pays du tiers-monde, et tentaient de toutes leurs forces de se montrer à leur avantage devant l’Occident « civilisé », comme pour dire : « Nous aussi, nous avons le progrès, regardez comme nous sommes libéraux. » Comme s’ils étaient des élèves, et que de l’Occident étaient venus des professeurs qui leur disaient avec condescendance : « Eh bien que voulez-vous, il vous faut encore, bien sûr, travailler à la lutte contre la corruption, à la défense des droits des minorités. Vous avez bien sûr fait des progrès particuliers, mais ce n’est quand même pas suffisant. » Et les savants russes, s’excusant, répondent : « Oui, oui, oui, nous allons essayer, nous allons grandir. » Je considère que la Russie mérite mieux.

 

Thomas : Mais il y vraiment en Russie de grands problèmes de corruption, tout le monde le sait…

 

A.C. : Je ne veux pas dire qu’en Russie tout soit rose. Je dis que dans les questions de civilisation et de culture, la Russie a ses réalités historiques, et il n’y a pas de nécessité à l’évaluer toujours sur le fond des pays occidentaux. Il va sans dire qu’en Russie, comme dans tout autre pays, il y a des problèmes. Il faut lutter impitoyablement contre la corruption, Mais soit-dit en passant, elle existe aussi de la corruption en Occident.

 

Thomas : Est-ce possible ?

 

A.C. : Le fait est que les critères pour déterminer le niveau de corruption de tel ou tel pays sont établis et installés par des agences occidentales et que d’après leurs estimations, en France, en Allemagne ou aux U.S.A. la corruption, cela va sans dire, ne peut exister. C’est pourquoi je ne prendrais pour preuves leurs estimations qu’en Russie tout va mal qu’avec prudence. J’affirme qu’en Europe, la corruption existe aussi. Peut-être n’est-elle pas aussi voyante, aussi criante, mais elle existe. Elle est seulement cachée, masquée, exprimée d’une autre manière que « Je te donne l’argent, tu me fais le contrat ». Dans le cas de l’Occident, il est plutôt question d’une corruption de l’esprit, du caractère des gens eux-mêmes. C’est une sorte de profonde corruption morale, exprimée en cela qu’on a complètement exclu Dieu de notre vie. Mais personne n’a parlé à Valdaï de cette corruption fondamentale du monde occidental.

 

Il faut défendre les chrétiens

 

Thomas : Pourquoi les persécutions de chrétiens au Moyen-Orient sont-elles devenues si cruelles ces derniers temps ?

 

A.C. : En fait, les chrétiens du Moyen-Orient se trouvent depuis longtemps dans une situation de continuelle pression. La Turquie en est l’éclatant exemple. Au début du XXe siècle, huit pour cent de la population turque était chrétienne, et il est aujourd’hui question de quelques centièmes d’un pour cent. Il n’y a pourtant pas, en Turquie, de persécution physique des chrétiens. En revanche, on interdit l’enregistrement de nouvelles paroisses, et les gens sont obligés de quitter le pays d’eux-mêmes. En un mot, on essaie doucement et en silence d’étouffer le christianisme. Et c’est la situation générale des pays du Moyen-Orient.

 

Mais il y a une autre tendance, une relation ouvertement grossière et cruelle aux chrétiens. Cette tendance s’est activée particulièrement après la guerre d’Irak. Il faut malheureusement reconnaître que les guerres des U.S.A. dans cette région ont facilité à leur manière l’émergence du fondamentalisme islamique, en particulier sunnite. Que ce soit il y a quelques années en Irak ou aujourd’hui en Syrie, ce sont les mêmes extrémistes sunnites. Ils détruisent les églises, scient les croix, profanent les icônes et, bien sûr, éliminent physiquement les chrétiens, parmi lesquels apparaissent à nouveau de véritables martyrs. C’est pourquoi si le régime du président de la Syrie Bachar el Assad s’effondre, il est tout à fait évident que les persécutions ne feront que s’intensifier. En un mot, ces jeux politiques, cette union entre les U.S.A., la Grande-Bretagne et, à mon grand regret, la France, font les affaires des islamistes fondamentalistes dans leur lutte contre les chrétiens. Je souligne que je ne parle pas de l’islam dans son ensemble en tant que religion mais bien des fondamentalistes, c’est-à-dire d’un groupe particulier de gens aux dispositions guerrières à l’intérieur du monde musulman.

 

 

La Russie, dans la situation de la persécution des chrétiens au Moyen-Orient peut jouer un rôle vraiment historique, tout à fait dans le courant de toute l’histoire russe. Car au cours de nombreux siècles, jusqu’à la révolution de 1917, la Russie a été le défenseur assidu des chrétiens d’Orient. Et il est indispensable aujourd’hui, à mon avis, qu’elle redevienne ce défenseur. Il faut que la Russie qui se retrouve grâce au renouveau de l’Orthodoxie, envoie au monde le signal : « Nous sommes un État chrétien et les défenseurs des chrétiens. En dehors des chrétiens d’Orient, nous soutiendrons tous les chrétiens qui s’opposent à l’imposition des principes d’individualisme, au Diktat des minorités, à la légalisation du mariage homosexuel et ainsi de suite. Nous les soutiendrons pour défendre les valeurs traditionnelles ». De la sorte, ce sont précisément les valeurs traditionnelles qui deviendront la principale ressource russe, son principal outil, et feront de la Russie un acteur important de la politique mondiale. J’y crois et m’efforce de promouvoir cette idée de toutes les manières. Et je sais qu’en Russie, beaucoup considèrent que c’est justement dans cette direction qu’il faut avancer : s’engager dans l’éducation, expliquer le christianisme aux gens, pour devenir un État qu’on puisse appeler chrétien de plein droit.

 

Thomas : Le thème de la persécution des chrétiens est-il évoqué par les médias occidentaux ?

 

A.C. : Ça dépend. Dans l’ensemble, on peut dire que la tendance est de le minimiser. Mais la situation s’arrange petit à petit, car Internet apparaît comme une puissante source d’information alternative. Les ressources d’Internet rappellent aux principaux média traditionnels, par exemple, à des journaux français tels que Le Figaro ou Libération, l’état réel des affaires. Et quand de pareils médias ne disent rien d’un événement comme l’exécution de chrétiens à Maaloula, ces choses surgissent sur Internet, et les médias ne peuvent faire autrement que de les mettre en lumière. C’est pourquoi la situation évolue. Et de plus en plus de chrétiens en France se rendent compte que les chrétiens au Moyen Orient, par exemple les coptes en Égypte, sont réellement en danger.

 

La France se réveille

 

Thomas : En avril 2013, la loi sur le mariage homosexuel est entrée en vigueur en France, ce qui a suscité de massives actions de protestations de la part des défenseurs des valeurs traditionnelles. Qu’en pensez-vous ?

 

A.C. : Il s’est produit en France un événement d’une importance colossale. Bien sûr, auparavant, s’est produit un regrettable événement : la loi sur la légalisation du mariage homosexuel a été adoptée. La plupart des ministres, les socialistes et les « Verts », ont soutenu et soutiennent le mouvement en ce sens. Chaque jour que Dieu fait, pas à pas, ils s’efforcent avec persévérance de détruire l’aspect chrétien de la France contemporaine. Un exemple tout récent : ils ont promu la proposition de supprimer du calendrier français les fêtes chrétiennes pour les remplacer par des fêtes juives et musulmanes. Mais la société réagit quand même. Trois millions de personnes étaient dans la rue pour protester contre la légalisation du mariage homosexuel. Des gens d’âges divers, de bonnes familles, étaient prêts à manifester avec le risque d’être arrêtés, pour dire non à cette loi et défendre la seule conception normale de la famille. Sur ce point, il s’est produit quelque chose de très important. Bien qu’aujourd’hui la vague de protestation ait reflué, elle a enclenché tout un processus, ouvert la voie à tout un mouvement de résistance, comme si un ressort sur la porte s’était tendu sous la pression, la serrure avait été arrachée, et la porte s’était ouverte toute grande. Les gens savent maintenant qu’ils ont une plateforme où ils peuvent se rassembler pour défendre les valeurs familiales traditionnelles. En outre, il y a aussi d’autres directions de « combat » : la question de l’immigration, la question de l’islamisation etc. Je suis persuadé que nous assistons à un processus très important : le réveil des Français. Bien que pour parler d’une façon imagée, les forces du mal soient de toute façon très puissantes.

 

Thomas : Beaucoup sont persuadés que le mouvement pour la défense des valeurs traditionnelles doit prendre une dimension internationale. Que pensez-vous, sur ce point, d’une collaboration entre le France et la Russie ?

 

A.C. : C’est justement là-dessus que je m’efforce de travailler. C’est le thème qui m’occupe en permanence. Je suis persuadé que personne ne gagnera dans la solitude. C’est comme la lutte avec le nazisme; la menace était si forte qu’on ne pouvait la contrer qu’en s’unissant, et ce n’est pas par hasard que la Russie a trouvé un allié dans la Résistance française. Nous avons aujourd’hui devant nous une nouvelle forme de totalitarisme. Il n’est extérieurement pas aussi évident, il est masqué, il ne porte pas de casque militaire, mais c’est bien un totalitarisme, quoique rampant, on impose aux gens les valeurs libérales, on met en doute les concepts traditionnels de dignité de la personne, on pousse l’homme à se révolter contre Dieu, et en ce sens, le nouveau totalitarisme revêt des traits vraiment sataniques. Il faut opposer à ce totalitarisme une puissante résistance. Et si la Russie se déclare un État chrétien, et le défenseur des valeurs chrétiennes, cela deviendra justement une réponse, et la création d’un contre-modèle à ce que l’on impose aux gens en Occident. On le leur impose précisément. Je ne considère pas, par exemple, que la légalisation du mariage homosexuel réponde à une position sincèrement motivée des gens ordinaires dans les pays d’Europe. Non, c’est celle de la minorité au pouvoir qui cherche à imposer ses critères au peuple : ils ont fabriqué la théorie du genre qui « fonde » la légalisation des mariages homosexuels. Je suis sûr que les Européens de base eux-mêmes, comme d’ailleurs les Américains, n’en veulent pas. Et si on leur propose un contre modèle, ils l’adopteront. La Russie, en collaboration avec d’autres pays et organisations sociales qui soutiennent la famille traditionnelle peut le réaliser.

 

Thomas : Mais pourtant, comme les informations nous l’ont appris, bien que trois millions de Français soient sortis dans la rue, pas moins de 60 % de la population française, c’est-à-dire la majorité, soutenaient cette légalisation du mariage homosexuel. Et vous nous dites que ce n’est pas l’avis du peuple…

 

A.C. : Il faut parler ici de la logique de l’histoire de l’humanité en tant que telle. La majorité des gens, dans n’importe quel pays à n’importe quelle époque est malheureusement passive. C’est seulement un fait historique. Cela concerne n’importe quel peuple. Cela signifie que si un gouvernant inculque le mal, le peuple le reçoit et suit le mal. Si le gouvernant fait le bien, le peuple l’accepte et suit le bien. Cela ne signifie pas que la société est stupide, pas du tout. Simplement la plupart des gens vit au quotidien, s’occupe de ses affaires au jour le jour. Ce n’est pas mal, ce sont de bonnes gens qui éveillent en moi personnellement une vive sympathie. Mais on ne peut pas les appeler des citoyens conscients, on ne peut pas dire qu’ils réfléchissent à ce qui se passe dans leur État. C’est toujours une minorité qui est consciente, dans la société, et qui se bat et s’oppose. Elle va se battre, par exemple, pour la liberté de l’homme, ce qui, en fin de compte, veut dire la lutte pour le triomphe d’une vérité chrétienne. Ce schéma est valable pour toutes les sociétés. Rappelez-vous la Résistance française, dont les participants étaient bien sûr en minorité. Et même en U.R.S.S., il y eut de la même manière le mouvement des dissidents qui résistaient au régime soviétique, et pourtant les Soviétiques en majorité n’étaient pas des partisans du régime déterminés, la majorité simplement se taisait, nageait dans le sens du courant. Je le répète, telle est la philosophie de l’histoire.  C’est la minorité active qui fait l’histoire, et la question est seulement de savoir quel choix elle va faire, dans le sens du bien ou dans celui du mal.

 

Thomas : N’êtes-vous pas seul de cet avis parmi vos collègues en France ? Le fait est que beaucoup généralisent, affirmant : « On considère en Occident… » Comme si l’Occident était quelque chose d’homogène, où l’avis des gens est unifié, et où les experts isolés, par exemple vous-même, vous êtes plutôt l’exception à la règle, le vecteur d’un avis marginal sur les choses. En quoi cela correspond-il à la réalité ?

 

A.C. : Je trouve important de le dire en Russie, dans une interview pour une publication russe. La réalité objective est la suivante : la majorité des gens en Occident ne réfléchit pas aux questions dont nous parlons maintenant. Et la minorité qui vit et travaille tous les jours avec ces questions se partage en deux groupes : le premier, ce sont ceux qui considèrent l’individualisme général comme la norme, et le deuxième, ce sont ceux qui  trouvent indispensable de revenir aux racines chrétiennes. C’est là, je le répète, le tableau objectif. Ce sont ces deux minorités qui créent les partis et les organisations politiques. Ensuite, c’est la question du libre choix des citoyens aux élections. Pour parler de la France, il existe aujourd’hui un parti qui, d’après les analystes, dans un proche avenir deviendra le premier de France par sa popularité, c’est le Front national. Un parti qui se dresse contre le système existant. Ses partisans ne sont pas une minorité, c’est une partie notable des Français qui affirment l’importance des valeurs chrétiennes, la dignité de la personne, le danger de l’islamisation de la France, le refus de participer aux guerres des U.S.A., etc. Il ne convient donc pas de me considérer comme un bien grand original. Non, une grande quantité de gens, en France, raisonnent selon la même logique. Parmi les économistes, parmi les militaires. Si vous pratiquez un sondage chez les officiers, vous verrez que 30 ou 40 % d’entre eux sont disposés envers la Russie de façon très, très positive; beaucoup plus positive qu’envers les U.S.A. J’ai enseigné dix ans à des officiers, j’avais presque trois mille étudiants, je sais de quoi ils parlent et ce qu’ils pensent. Sans conteste, il est parmi eux des « atlantistes » des gens qui sont à cent pour cent pour l’O.T.A.N., qui raisonnent jusqu’à maintenant en termes de guerre froide; soi-disant, « les Russes sont d’affreux communistes ». Mais il y a une part significative d’officiers, particulièrement chez les jeunes, qui raisonnent d’une façon radicalement différente.

 

Thomas : Vous avez évoqué le parti « le Front national ».  En Russie, la tendance est de craindre comme le feu les mots « national », « nationalité » etc. On confond le mot « nationalisme » avec le mot « nazisme ». Et tout ce qui est « national » entraîne une association directe avec fascisme, agression, génocide, camps de concentration, extermination physique des immigrés… Existe-t-il, d’après vous, un nationalisme pacifique et à quoi ressemble-t-il en pratique ?

 

A.C. : Il existe. L’exemple en est justement le Front national qui s’est déclaré dès le début comme un parti patriotique. Ce n’est pas un parti de nationalistes, si l’on comprend le nationalisme comme un synonyme d’agression. Le parti patriotique s’efforce de conserver le visage historique de la France, défend sa civilisation et sa culture contre les changements du système qui se produisent sous l’influence des étrangers. Il n’a jamais été question de chasser immédiatement du pays tous les immigrés. La question, c’est que le multiculturalisme nuit à la France dans un sens purement démographique, les gens qui sont arrivés des pays arabes et leurs enfants occupent de plus en plus la France et de ce fait, provoquent la guerre civile. Ce que nous voulons, c’est que les étrangers s’assimilent, c’est-à-dire deviennent proprement des Français. Cela peut naturellement être lié à l’adoption du christianisme. Mais pas forcément : celui qui trouve important pour lui de rester dans l’islam doit simplement connaître et accepter la culture française, ne pas obliger sa femme à porter le voile intégral, etc. C’est là le programme du Front national. On n’y trouve pas un mot sur le recours à la force contre les immigrés. En outre, parmi les députés élus à l’assemblée nationale il y a des Arabes, ce que peu de gens savent. Nous pensons simplement qu’une immigration trop abondante nuit à la France. Comme elle nuit à ces mêmes étrangers qui viennent en France

 

Je suis moi-même partisan du dialogue entre les civilisations. J’ai beaucoup travaillé et enseigné, par exemple au Maroc. J’ai pris parole à l’O.N.U. comme expert  du Maroc. J’ai des dizaines d’amis et de collègues parmi les musulmans, je crois en une politique arabe de la France. Les pays arabes sont nos voisins par la Méditerranée. Nous avons d’excellentes relations avec eux. La seule chose que nous devions faire, c’est contrôler les flux migratoires. Car aujourd’hui, cela ne peut pas continuer ainsi. Autrement la société française va tout simplement exploser, parce que la prospérité du gouvernement va s’écrouler, beaucoup de jeunes étrangers viennent en France dans l’espoir de vivre des allocations.

 

Être ou avoir

 

Thomas : Vous parlez beaucoup de religion. Dans quelle mesure la religion, en tant que domaine fondamentalement non matériel, peut-être un facteur géopolitique ?

 

A.C. : La géopolitique comprend au minimum trois choses fondamentales : La première c’est la géographie physique, c’est-à-dire où et comment le pays se situe, qui sont ses voisins, son ouverture sur la mer, etc. La deuxième, c’est la géographie des ressources, le pétrole, le gaz naturel, etc. Et la troisième, c’est la géographie identitaire, comment les gens se voient, quelle est leur identité. C’est relié directement aux conflits ethniques et religieux, car l’identité religieuse est l’une des plus importantes pour l’homme. En ce sens, on peut réduire de façon imagée la problématique de la géopolitique à deux verbes principaux, qui, dans la langue française sont également des auxiliaires qui servent à constituer les temps, le verbe avoir et le verbe être. À travers le verbe être, l’homme définit justement son identité, c’est-à-dire qu’il répond à la question : « que suis-je en cette vie ? » Cela concerne les questions de religion : « je suis chrétien », « je suis musulman », « je suis juif ».

 

 

L’identité religieuse a une énorme signification, car elle définit le système de valeurs de cette personne concrète, la façon dont il va percevoir le monde alentour. Et au moment où il se définit et commence à voir le monde précisément comme cela et pas autrement, cela devient un facteur de géopolitique. Car l’homme ne vit pas seul au monde mais en relation avec les autres. En un mot, la religion du point de vue géopolitique n’est pas pour les gens une question de connaissance théologique, ni de vie spirituelle intérieure, mais de recherche de sa propre identité, la tentative de décider « qui je suis » et d’agir en conséquence.

 

Beaucoup considèrent qu’en géopolitique domine tout ce qui est lié au verbe « avoir » : qui a quelles armes, les ressources naturelles, les technologies etc. C’est bien sûr important, mais ce n’est pas le plus important. Car on ne va pas aller mourir pour du pétrole. En ce sens, c’est le verbe « être » qui occupe la première place : les gens sont prêts à faire la guerre s’ils défendent leur identité, leur vision du monde, ce qui leur est cher.

 

 

L’identité religieuse, je le répète, est pour l’homme en un sens la principale, parce que la façon dont voit ses relations avec Dieu, avec l’Absolu, avec les valeurs supérieures, détermine celle dont il va construire ses relations avec tout le reste du monde terrestre.

 

Thomas : Et quel rôle jouent la religion et la foi dans votre vie ?

 

A.C. : Je m’intéresse beaucoup à tout ce qui est lié au catholicisme dans le monde contemporain. Mais l’Orthodoxie me fascine, je sens en elle quelque chose d’originel, un christianisme pur qui n’a pas été obscurci, le reflet de la foi des premiers chrétiens. En Occident, nous le savons, ces notions se sont en partie perdues.

 

Je suis marié, j’ai quatre enfants. Et la religion est pour moi une chose centrale et vitale. Ce qui ne change rien au fait que je suis pécheur, que la force et la profondeur de ma foi sont moindres que je le juge nécessaire. La religion, c’est ce qui permet de rendre plus digne notre façon de vivre et de s’opposer aux séductions du monde, comme par exemple, l’argent et les belles filles, qui sont d’ailleurs très nombreuses en Russie. On ne tient que grâce à la foi, la foi en Celui qui est plus grand que tout cela.

 

• Propos recueillis par Thomas et mis en ligne sur L’Esprit européen, le 15 décembre 2013.

 

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Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

 

URL to article: http://www.europemaxima.com/?p=3581

 

Viktor Orban in Moscow

 

Viktor Orban in Moscow

Pyotr ISKENDEROV

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

The first EU-Serbia intergovernmental conference coming up in January is supposed to demonstrate the progress of Serbia's application to join the European Union. «Serbia must continue the reforms it has begun, the results of which will be a key indicator in assessing the integration process», stated the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs. At the same time, in a discussion on Serbia's European prospects, members of the European Parliament hailed the local elections held in Kosovo in late 2013 as «a big step forward on the path to democracy». 

The politicization of Serbia's application to join the EU is obvious. This refers to the socioeconomic requirements being made of Belgrade and recommendations to revise the parameters of cooperation with Russia in the energy field, as they do not conform to the spirit of the European Union, the Energy Charter and the Third Energy Package. 

However, how can one talk about «nonconformity» if within the EU itself the approaches of individual countries to choosing an energy policy are increasingly different? The European Union is not a monolith. A number of its member countries have already made it clear that they do not plan to uncomplainingly follow the directives of Brussels in the energy field, although they do not call their EU membership into question (at least, not yet). At the very moment when the European Parliament members in Strasbourg were starting their discussions at their winter session, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived in Moscow for a working visit... 

Over the past two decades, relations between Russia and Hungary have seen complicated periods. There have been both actions of the Hungarian government against Russian oil and gas companies (mainly against Surgutneftegaz) and attempts by Budapest to play a «double game» on the energy field. However, in the last few years relations have been improving. Viktor Orban's working visit to Moscow in January 2013 was a momentous occasion. At that time, during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the head of the Hungarian government suggested that Russia participate in the modernization of Hungary's energy system. And now these plans are beginning to be implemented. 

According to Sergei Kirienko, the head of the state corporation Rosatom, nuclear energy is becoming an important area of bilateral Russian-Hungarian cooperation. «Negotiations with Hungary are in the active stage», stated Kirienko. This refers to Russia's participation in building two new power producing units at Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant (in addition to the existing four which were built with the help of the USSR) with a total output of 2500-3400 MW. The contract is valued at 10 billion dollars. «Over 40 percent of the work volume», according to V. Putin, «is to be done by the Hungarian side. This means that approximately three billion dollars will be allocated for supporting jobs in Hungary, and tax revenues alone will come to over a billion dollars.» 

And if one adds the agreements reached by Moscow and Budapest in late 2013 on strict adherence, regardless of possible complications, to the previously agreed-upon schedule for the construction of the Hungarian part of the South Stream gas pipeline and the start of Russian gas deliveries to Hungary in early 2017, one must acknowledge that cooperation between Russia and Hungary in the energy field is becoming a strategic partnership.

There are two main reasons for the progressive development of relations between Russia and Hungary. The first is connected with tension in the relations between Budapest and Brussels. Pressure from EU leadership on Hungary has become increasingly overt over the past few years, touching on both the state sovereignty of Hungary and the sentiments of its people. It is sufficient to recall the improvisations of German politicians with regard to the need to send paramilitary units to Hungary or the proposal discussed in the European Commission to impose sanctions on Budapest for peculiarities of Hungarian national legislation which did not please Brussels. 

In the eyes of Hungarians, all of this has significantly reduced the attractiveness, to put it mildly, of the European Commission's recommendations in other areas as well, including energy. Furthermore, why not follow the example of German business in this matter? In recent years it has been conducting an independent policy of cooperating with Russia in the energy field. This refers, in particular, to the recent withdrawal of the German energy holding RWE from the Nabucco project.

Furthermore, Russian-Hungarian cooperation has a good financial and economic basis. Russian proposals are simply more profitable, well-planned and serious than similar proposals from Western companies. This is proven by a simple fact: today Russia supplies 80% of oil and 75% of natural gas consumed in Hungary. 

As the Hungarian press acknowledges, among all the candidates for the contract, only Rosatom is prepared to provide appropriate preliminary financing for the project to develop the Paks nuclear power plant. At first the French company Areva and the Japanese-American company Westinghouse planned to take part in the tender, but Hungary never received any concrete proposals from them. The Russian corporation, on the other hand, proposed terms which serve the interests of the Hungarian side.

It must be said that Hungary's interest in developing atomic energy does not exactly suit the priorities of the European Union, where many are dreaming of a «shale revolution», which would bring Europe no less, but rather more, of an ecological threat than a nuclear plant. 

The Hungarian government's stake on the development of nuclear energy, observing, of course, all safety requirements, is an important step on a Europe-wide scale. As shown by Russia's cooperation with other countries, in particular Iran, Russian proposals fully meet safety requirements. So the energy alliance of Moscow and Budapest may serve as an example for other European countries.

Fiodor Tioutchev

Recension: Fjodor Tjutschew, Russland und der Westen. Politische Aufsätze, Verlag Ernst Kuhn (PF 47, 0-1080 Berlin), Berlin, 1992, 112 S., DM 29,80, ISBN 3-928864-02-5.

Totalement oublié, bien qu’il fut l’inspirateur de Dostoïevski et de Tolstoï, qui ne tarissaient pas d’éloges à son égard, Fiodor Ivanovitch Tioutchev (1804-1873) a été, sa vie durant, une personnalité écartelée entre tradition et modernité, entre l’athéisme et la volonté de trouver ancrage et refuge en Dieu, entre l’Europe et la Russie. L’éditeur berlinois Ernst Kuhn propose une traduction allemande des trois principaux textes politiques de Tioutchev, rédigés au départ en français (la langue qu’il maîtrisait le mieux); ces trois textes sont: “La Russie et l’Allemagne” (1844), une réponse au pamphlet malveillant qu’avait publié le Marquis de Custine sur l’Empire de Nicolas I, “La Russie et la révolution” (1849), une lettre adressée au Tsar rendant compte des événements de Paris en 1848, “La question romaine et la Papauté” (1849) qui est un rapport sur la situation en Italie.

Dans ces trois écrits, Tioutchev oppose radicalement la Russie à l’Europe occidentale. La Russie est intacte dans sa foi orthodoxe; l’Europe est pourrie par l’individualisme, issue de l’infaillibilité pontificale, de la Réforme et de la Révolution française, trois manifestations idéologiques qui ont épuisé les sources créatrices de l’Ouest du continent. La Russie est le dernier barrage qui s’opposera à cette “maladie française” (allusion à la syphilis). Cette vision prophétique de l’histoire, apocalyptique, le rapproche d’un Donoso Cortès: au bout du chemin, la Russie, incarnation du principe chrétien (orthodoxe) affrontera l’Occident, incarnation du principe antichrétien. Cette bataille sera décisive. Plusieurs idées-forces ont conduit Tioutchev à esquisser cet Armageddon slavophile. Pour lui, le besoin de lier toujours le passé au présent est “ce qui a de plus humain en l’homme”. On ne peut donc regarder l’histoire avec l’oeil froid de l’empiriste; il faut la rendre effervescente et vivante en y injectant ses émotions, en lui donnant sans cesse une dimension mystique. Celle-ci est un “principe de vie” (“natchalo”), encore actif en Russie, alors qu’en Europe occidentale, où Tioutchev a passé vingt-deux ans de sa vie, règne la “besnatchalié” (l’absence de principe de vie). C’est ce principe de vie qui est Dieu pour notre auteur. C’est ce principe qui est ancre et stabilité, pour un homme comme lui, qui n’a guère la fibre religieuse et ne parvient pas à croire vraiment. Mais la foi est nécessaire car sans Dieu, le pouvoir, le politique, n’est plus possible.

Mais cette mobilisation du conservatisme, qu’il a prônée pendant le règne de Nicolas I, a échoué devant la coalition anglo-franco-turque lors de la Guerre de Crimée. Ces puissances voulaient empêcher la Russie de parfaire l’unité de tous les Slaves, notamment ceux des Balkans. L’avènement d’Alexandre II le déçoit: “Que peut le matérialisme banal du gouvernement contre le matérialisme révolutionnaire?”, interroge-t-il, inquiet des progrès du libéralisme en Russie.

Tioutchev n’a pas seulement émis des réflexions d’ordre métaphysique. Pendant toute sa carrière, il a tenté d’élaborer une politique russe à l’intérieur du concert européen, s’éloignant, dans cette optique, de l‘isolationnisme des slavophiles. Ceux-ci exaltaient le paysannat russe et critiquaient la politique de Pierre le Grand. Tioutchev, lui, exaltait cette figure car elle avait établi la Russie comme grande puissance dans le Concert européen. Il optait pour une alliance avec la Prusse, contre la France et l’Autriche. Il voulait mater le nationalisme polonais et favoriser l’unité italienne. En ce sens, il était “moderne”, à cheval entre deux tendances.

Un auteur à méditer, à l’heure où la Russie, une nouvelle fois, est écartelée entre deux volontés: repli sur elle-même ou occidentalisation.

Robert Steuckers.

(recension parue dans “Vouloir”, n°105/108, juillet-septembre 1993).

Выпуск XXII 2013. Кибер

Выпуск XXII 2013.

Кибер

 

 

ЛЕОНИД САВИН

Введение в кибергеополитику..................................5

 

ДЖЕЙМС ДЖЕЙ КАРАФАНО

Понимание социальных сетей и 

национальная безопасность...................................22

 

АННЕГРЕТ БЕНДИ, КАТРИН АЛМЕР

Киберзащита — многосторонний 

политический вызов..............................................35

 

ВИНСЕНТ МАНЗО

Сдерживание и эскалация в 

междоменных операциях: где смыкаются 

космос и киберпространство?...............................43

 

ДЖЕЙМС СТАВРИДИС

Плавание в киберморе...........................................54

 

ФИЛИП БОЙС

Цифровые дипломаты Косово..............................67

 

АЛЕКСЕЙ ХАРИН

Смещение центра власти на Восток:

PRO et CONTRA....................................................71

 

ЛЕОНИД ДОБРОХОТОВ

Сирийский излом США или Обама

в «пасти льва»........................................................81

Файл в формате pdf: 

geopolitikan22.pdf

• 424 просмотра

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has the House of Saud seen its Stalingrad?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

 

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/volgograd-and-the-conquest-of-eurasia-will-the-house-of-saud-see-its-stalingrad/5363440

The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America.

So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented? Firstly, it is not schizophrenic to tie the events in Volgograd to either the conflict in the North Caucasus and to the fighting in Syria or to tie Syria to the decades of fighting in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. The fighting in Syria and the North Caucuses are part of a broader struggle for the mastery over Eurasia. The conflicts in the Middle East are part of this very grand narrative, which to many seems to be so far from the reality of day to day life.

 “Bandar Bush” goes to Mother Russia

For the purposes of supporting such an assertion we will have to start with the not-so-secret visit of a shadowy Saudi regime official to Moscow. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the infamous Saudi terrorist kingpin and former House of Saud envoy to Washington turned intelligence guru, last visited the Russian Federation in early-December 2013. Bandar bin Sultan was sent by King Abdullah to solicit the Russian government into abandoning the Syrians. The goal of Prince Bandar was to make a deal with the Kremlin to let Damascus be overtaken by the Saudi-supported brigades that were besieging the Syrian government forces from Syria’s countryside and border regions since 2011. Bandar met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two held closed-door discussions about both Syria and Iran at Putin’s official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo.

The last meeting that Bandar had with Putin was a few months earlier in July 2013. That meeting was also held in Russia. The July talks between Prince Bandar and President Putin also included Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. One would also imagine that discussion about the Iranians increased with each visit too, as Bandar certainly tried to get the Russians on bad terms with their Iranian allies.

After Bandar’s first meeting with President Putin, it was widely reported that the House of Saud wanted to buy Russia off. Agence France-Presse and Reuters both cited the unnamed diplomats of the Arab petro-monarchies, their March 14 lackeys in Lebanon, and their Syrian opposition puppets as saying that Saudi Arabia offered to sign a lucrative arms contract with Moscow and give the Kremlin a guarantee that the Arab petro-sheikdoms would not threaten the Russian gas market in Europe or use Syria for a gas pipeline to Europe.

Russia knew better than to do business with the House of Saud. It had been offered a lucrative arms deal by the Saudi regime much earlier, in 2008, to make some backdoor compromises at the expense of Iran. After the compromises were made by Moscow the House of Saud put the deal on ice. If the media leaks in AFP and Reuters were not tactics or lies in the first place aimed at creating tensions between the Syrian and Russian governments, the purportedly extravagant bribes to betray Syria were wasted on the ears of Russian officials.

The House of Saud and the undemocratic club of Arab petro-monarchies that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have always talked large about money. The actions of these self portrayed lords of the Arabia Peninsula have almost never matched their words and promises. To anyone who deals with them, the House of Saud and company are known for habitually making grand promises that they will never keep, especially when it comes to money. Even when money is delivered, the full amount committed is never given and much of it is stolen by their corrupt partners and cronies. Whether it is the unfulfilled 2008 arms contract with Russia that was facilitated with the involvement of Iraqi former CIA asset Iyad Allawi or the overabundant commitments of financial and logistical aid to the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples that never materialized, the Arab petro-sheikhdoms have never done more than talk grandly and then get their propagandists to write articles about their generosity and splendor. Underneath all the grandeur and sparkles there has always been bankruptcy, insecurity, and emptiness.

A week after the first meeting with Bandar, the Kremlin responded to the media buzz about the attempted bribe by Saudi Arabia. Yury Ushakov, one of Putin’s top aides and the former Russian ambassador to the US, categorically rejected the notion that any deal was accepted or even entertained by the Kremlin. Ushakov avowed that not even bilateral cooperation was discussed between the Saudis and Russia. According to the Kremlin official, the talks between Bandar and Putin were simply about the policies of Moscow and Riyadh on Syria and the second international peace conference being planned about Syria in Geneva, Switzerland.

More Leaks: Fighting Fire with Fire?

If his objective was to get the Russians to abandon Syria, Prince Bandar left both meetings in Russia empty-handed. Nevertheless, his visit left a trail of unverifiable reports and speculation. Discretion is always needed when analyzing these accounts which are part of the information war about Syria being waged on all sides by the media. The planted story from the Saudi side about trying to buy the Russians was not the only account of what took place in the Russian-Saudi talks. There was also a purported diplomatic leak which most likely surfaced as a counter-move to the planted story about Bandar’s proposal. This leak elaborated even further on the meeting between Bandar and Putin. Threats were made according to the second leak that was published in Arabic by the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir on August 21, 2013.

According to the Lebanese newspaper, not only did Prince Bandar tell the Russians during their first July meeting that the regimes of the GCC would not threaten the Russian gas monopoly in Europe, but he made promises to the Russians that they could keep their naval facility on the Mediterranean coast of Syria and that he would give the House of Saud’s guarantee to protect the 2014 Winter Olympics being held in the North Caucasian resort city of Sochi, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, from the Chechen separatist militias under Saudi control. If Moscow cooperated with Riyadh and Washington against Damascus, the leak discloses that Bandar also stated that the same Chechen militants fighting inside Syria to topple the Syrian government would not be given a role in Syria’s political future.

When the Russians refused to betray their Syrian allies, Prince Bandar then threatened Russia with the cancellation of the second planned peace conference in Geneva and with the unleashing of the military option against the Syrians the leak imparts.

This leak, which presents a veiled Saudi threat about the intended attacks on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, led to a frenzy of speculations internationally until the end of August 2013, amid the high tensions arising from the US threats to attack Syria and the threats coming from Iran to intervene on the side of their Syrians allies against the United States. Originating from the same politically affiliated media circle in Lebanon, reports about Russian military preparations to attack Saudi Arabia in response to a war against Syria began to circulate from the newspaper Al-Ahed also, further fueling the chain of speculations.

A House of Saud Spin on the Neo-Con “Redirection”

Seymour Hersh wrote in 2007 that after the 2006 defeat of Israel in Lebanon that the US government had a new strategy called the “redirection.” According to Hersh, the “redirection” had “brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.” With the cooperation of Saudi Arabia and all the same players that helped launch Osama bin Ladin’s career in Afghanistan, the US government took “part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.” The most important thing to note is what Hersh says next: “A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

A new House of Saud spin on the “redirection” has begun. If there is anything the House of Saud knows well, it is rounding up fanatics as tools at the service of Saudi Arabia’s patrons in Washington. They did it in Afghanistan, they did it Bosnia, they have done it in Russia’s North Caucasus, they did it in Libya, and they are doing it in both Lebanon and Syria. It does not take the British newspaper The Independent to publish an article titled “Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis” for the well-informed to realize this.

The terrorist bombings in Lebanon mark a new phase of the conflict in Syria, which is aimed at forcing Hezbollah to retreat from Syria by fighting in a civil war on its home turf. The attacks are part of the “redirection.” The House of Saud has accented this new phase through its ties to the terrorist attacks on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on November 19, 2013. The attacks were carried out by individuals linked to the notorious Ahmed Al-Assir who waged a reckless battle against the Lebanese military from the Lebanese city of Sidon as part of an effort to ignite a sectarian civil war in Lebanon.

Al-Assir’s rise, however, was politically and logistically aided by the House of Saud and its shameless Hariri clients in Lebanon. He is also part of the same “redirection” policy and current that brought Fatah Al-Islam to Lebanon. This is why it is no surprise to see Hariri’s Future Party flag flying alongside Al-Qaeda flags in Lebanon. After Al-Assir’s failed attempt to start a sectarian Lebanese civil war, he went into hiding and it was even alleged that he was taken in by one of the GCC embassies.

In regard to the House of Saud’s roles in the bombings in Lebanon, Hezbollah would confirm that the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut was linked to the House of Saud. Hezbollah’s leadership would report that the Abdullah Izzam Brigade, which is affiliated to Al-Qaeda and tied to the bombings, is directly linked to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, the Saudi agent, Majed Al-Majed, responsible for the attack would be apprehended by Lebanese security forces in late-December 2013. He had entered Lebanon after working with Al-Nusra in Syria. Fars News Agency, an Iranian media outlet, would report on January 2, 2014 that unnamed Lebanese sources had also confirmed that they had discovered that the attack was linked to Prince Bandar.

Wrath of the House of Saud Unleashed?

A lot changed between the first and second meetings that Prince Bandar and Vladimir Putin had, respectively in July 2013 and December 2013. The House of Saud expected its US patron to get the Pentagon involved in a conventional bombing campaign against Syria in the month of September. It is more than likely that Riyadh was in the dark about the nature of secret negotiations that the US and Iran were holding through the backchannel of Oman in the backdrop of what appeared to be an escalation towards open war.

Bandar’s threat to reassess the House of Saud’s ties with Washington is probably a direct result of the US government keeping the House of Saud in the dark about using Syria as a means of negotiating with the Iranian government. US officials may have instigated the House of Saud to intensify its offensive against Syria to catalyze the Iranians into making a deal to avoid an attack on Syria and a regional war. Moreover, not only did the situation between the US and Iran change, Russia would eventually sign an important energy contract for Syrian natural gas in the Mediterranean Sea. The House of Saud has been undermined heavily in multiple ways and it is beginning to assess its own expendability.

If one scratches deep enough, they will find that the same ilk that attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut also attacked the Russian Embassy in Damascus. Both terrorist attacks were gifts to Iran and Russia, which served as reprisals for the Iranian and Russian roles in protecting Syria from regime change and a destructive war. It should, however, be discerned if the House of Saud is genuinely lashing out at Iran and Russia or if it being manipulated to further the goals of Washington in the US negotiations with Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus.

In the same manner, the House of Saud wants to generously reward Hezbollah too for its role in protecting Syria by crippling Hezbollah domestically in Lebanon. Riyadh may possibly not want a full scale war in Lebanon like the Israelis do, but it does want to neutralize and eliminate Hezbollah from the Lebanese landscape. In this regard, Saudi Arabia has earnestly been scheming to recruit Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman and the Lebanese military against Hezbollah and its supporters.

The Saud grant of three billion dollars to the Lebanese Armed Forces is not only blood money being given to Lebanon as a means of exonerating Saudi Arabia for its role in the terrorist bombings that have gripped the Lebanese Republic since 2013, the Saudi money is also aimed at wishfully restructuring the Lebanese military as a means of using it to neutralize Hezbollah. In line with the House of Saud’s efforts, pledges from the United Arab Emirates and reports that NATO countries are also planning on donating money and arms to the Lebanese military started.

In addition to the terrorists bombings in Lebanon and the attack on the Russian Embassy in Damascus, Russia has also been attacked. Since the Syrian conflict intensified there has been a flaring of tensions in Russia’s North Caucasus and a breakout of terrorist attacks. Russian Muslim clerics, known for their views on co-existence between Russia’s Christian and Muslim communities and anti-separatist views, have been murdered. The bombings in Volgograd are just the most recent cases and an expansion into the Volga of what is happening in the North Caucasus, but they come disturbingly close to the start of the Winter Olympics that Prince Bandar was saying would be “protected” if Moscow betrayed Syria.

Can the House of Saud Stand on its Own Feet?

It is a widely believed that you will find the US and Israelis pulling a lot of the strings if you look behind the dealings of the House of Saud. That view is being somewhat challenged now. Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, threatened that Saudi Arabia will go it alone against Syria and Iran in a December 2013 article. The letter, like the Saudi rejection of their UN Security Council seat, was airing the House of Saud’s rage against the realists running US foreign policy.

In this same context, it should also be noted for those that think that Saudi Arabia has zero freedom of action that Israeli leaders have stressed for many years that Tel Aviv needs to cooperate secretly with Saudi Arabia to manipulate the US against Iran. This is epitomized by the words of Israeli Brigadier-General Oded Tira: “We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran.”

Along similar lines, some may point out that together the House of Saud and Israel got France to delay an interim nuclear agreement between the Iranians and the P5+1 in Geneva. The House of Saud rewarded Paris through lucrative deals, which includes making sure that the grant it gives to the Lebanese military is spent on French military hardware. Saad Hariri, the main Saudi client in Lebanon, even met Francois Hollande and French officials in Saudi Arabia in context of the deal. Appeasing the House of Saud and Israel, French President Hollande has replicated France’s stonewalling of the P5+1 interim nuclear deal with Iran by trying to spoil the second Syria peace conference in Geneva by saying that there can be no political solution inside Syria if President Bashar Al-Assad stays in power.

Again, however, it has to be asked, is enraging Saudi Arabia part of a US strategy to make the Saudis exert maximum pressure on Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus so that the United States can optimize its gains in negotiations? After all, it did turn out that the US was in league with France in Geneva and that the US used the French stonewalling of an agreement with Iran to make additional demands from the Iranians during the negotiations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed that the US negotiation team had actually circulated a draft agreement that had been amended in response to France’s demands before Iran and the other world powers even had a chance to study them. The draft by the US team was passed around, in Foreign Minister Lavrov’s own words, “literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.”

Instead of debating on the level of independence that the House of Saud possesses, it is important to ask if Saudi Arabia can act on its own and to what degree can the House of Saud act as an independent actor. This looks like a far easier question to answer. It is highly unlikely that Saudi Arabia can act on its own in most instances or even remain an intact state. This is why Israeli strategists very clearly state that Saudi Arabia is destined to fall apart. “The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia,” the Israeli Yinon Plan deems. Strategists in Washington are also aware of this and this is also why they have replicated models of a fragmented Saudi Arabia. This gives rise to another important question: if they US assess that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a sustainable entity, will it use it until it burns out like a flame? Is this what is happening and is Saudi Arabia being sacrificed or setup to take the blame as the “fall guy” by the United States?

 Who is Hiding Behind the House of Saud?

Looking back at Lebanon, the messages from international media outlets via their headlines is that the bombings in Lebanon highlight or reflect a power struggle between the House of Saud and Tehran in Lebanon and the rest of the region. Saying nothing about the major roles of the US, Israel, and their European allies, these misleading reports by the likes of journalists like Anne Barnard casually blame everything in Syria and Lebanon on a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, erasing the entire history behind what has happened and casually sweeping all the interests behind the conflict(s) under the rug. This is dishonest and painting a twisted Orientalist narrative.

The outlets trying to make it sound like all the Middle East’s problems are gravitating around some sort of Iranian and Saudi rivalry might as well write that “the Saudis and Iranians are the sources behind the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the sources behind the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq that crippled the most advanced Arab country, the ones that are blockading medication from reaching Gaza due to their rivalry, the ones who enforced a no-fly zone over Libya, the ones that are launching killer drone attacks on Yemen, and the ones that are responsible for the billions of dollars that disappeared from the Iraqi Treasury in 2003 after Washington and London invaded that country and controlled its finances.” These outlets and reports are tacitly washing the hands of  actors like Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris, and London clean of blood by trying to construct a series of false narratives that either blame everything on a regional rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh or the premise that the Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims are fighting an eternal war that they are biologically programmed to wage against one another.

Arabs and Iranians and Shias and Sunnis are tacitly painted as un-human creatures that cannot be understood and savages to audiences. The New York Times even dishonestly implies that the Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims in Lebanon are killing one another in tit-for-tat attacks. It sneakily implies that Hezbollah and its Lebanese rivals are assassinating one another. Bernard, its reporter in Lebanon who was mentioned earlier, along with another colleague write:

In what have been seen as tit-for-tat attacks, car bombs have targeted Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut and Sunni mosques in the northern city of Tripoli.

On Friday, a powerful car bomb killed Mohamad B. Chatah, a former Lebanese finance minister who was a major figure in the Future bloc, a political group that is Hezbollah’s main Sunni rival.

The New York Times is cunningly trying to make its readers think that Hezbollah was responsible for the bombing as part of a Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict by concluding with an explanation that the slain former Lebanese finance minister belonged to “Hezbollah’s main Sunni rival” after saying that the bombings in Lebanon “have been seen as tit-for-tat attacks” between the areas that support Hezbollah and “Sunni mosques” in Tripoli

The US and Israel wish that a Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict was occurring in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. They have been working for this. It has been them that have been manipulating Saudi Arabia to instigate sectarianism. The US and Israel have been prodding the House of Saud—which does not represent the Sunni Muslims, let alone the people of Saudi Arabia which are under its occupation—against Iran, all the while trying to conceal and justify the conflict being instigated as some sort of “natural” rivalry between Shiites and Sunnis that is being played out across the Middle East. 

It has been assessed with high confidence by outsiders concerned by the House of Saud’s inner dealings that Prince Bandar is one of the three Al-Saud princes managing Saudi Arabia’s security and foreign policy; the other two being Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the Saudi deputy foreign minister and one of King Abdullah’s point men on Syria due to his ties to Syria from his maternal side, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the interior minister. All three of them are tied to the United States more than any of their predecessors. Prince Bandar himself has a long history of working closely with the United States, which explains the endearing moniker of “Bandar Bush” that he is widely called by. “Chemical Bandar” can be added to the list too, because of the reports about his ties to the Syrian chemical weapon attacks in Ghouta.

As a US client, Saudi Arabia is a source of instability because it has been conditioned hence by Washington. Fighting the terrorist and extremist threat is now being used by the US as a point of convergence with Iran, which coincidently has authored the World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE) motion at the United Nations. In reality, the author of the regional problems and instability has been Washington itself. In a masterstroke, the realists now at the helm of foreign policy are pushing American-Iranian rapprochement on the basis of what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor of the US, said would be based on Tehran and Washington working together to secure Iran’s “volatile regional environment.” “Any eventual reconciliation [between the US and Iranian governments] should be based on the recognition of a mutual strategic interest in stabilizing what currently is a very volatile regional environment for Iran,” he explains. The point should not be lost either that Brzezinski is the man who worked with the Saudis to arm the Afghan Mujahedeen against the Soviets after he organized an intelligence operation to fool the Soviets into militarily entering Afghanistan in the first place.

The House of Saud did not work alone in Afghanistan during the Cold War either. It was rigorously backed by Washington. The United States was even more involved in the fighting. It is the same in Syria. If the diplomatic leak is to be believed about the meeting between Bandar and Putin, it is of merit to note that “Bandar Bush” told Putin that any “Saudi-Russian understanding” would also be part of an “American-Russian understanding.”

Has the “Redirection” Seen its Stalingrad?

Volgograd was called Stalingrad for a part of Soviet history, in honour of the Republic of Georgia’s most famous son and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. It was Volgograd, back then called Stalingrad, where the Germans were stopped and the tide of war in Europe was turned against Hitler and his Axis allies in Europe. The Battle of Stalingrad was where the Nazis were defeated and it was in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where the bulk of the fighting against the Germans was conducted. Nor is it any exaggeration to credit the Soviets—Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Tartar, Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Chechen, and all—for doing most of the fighting to defeat the Germans in the Second World War.

Judging by the bellicose 2013 New Years Eve speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the terrorist attacks in Volgograd will be the start of another Battle of Stalingrad of some sorts and the launch of another Russian “war on terror.” Many of the terrorists that Russia will go after are in Syria and supported by the House of Saud.

The opponents of the Resistance Bloc that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance groups form have called the battlefields in Syria the Stalingrad of Iran and its regional allies. Syria has been a Stalingrad of some sorts too, but not for the Resistance Bloc. The alliance formed by the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel has begun to unravel in its efforts to enforce regime change in Syria. The last few years have marked the beginning of a humiliating defeat for those funding extremism, separatism, and terrorism against countries like Russia, China, Iran, and Syria as a means of preventing Eurasian cohesion. Another front of this same battle is being politically waged by the US and the EU in the Ukraine in a move to prevent the Ukrainians from integrating with Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia

While speculation has been entertained with warning in this text, most of what has been explained has not been speculative. The House of Saud has had a role in destabilizing the Russian Federation and organizing terrorist attacks inside Russia. Support or oppose the separatist movements in the North Caucasus, the point is that they have been opportunistically aided and used by the House of Saud and Washington. Despite the authenticity of the narrative about Bandar’s threats against Russia, Volgograd is about Syria and Syria is about Volgograd. Both are events taking place as part of the same struggle. The US has been trying to encroach into Syria as a means of targeting Russia and encroaching deeper in the heart of Eurasia.

When George Orwell wrote 1984 he saw the world divided into several entities at constant or “eternal” war with one another. His fictitious superstates police language, use total surveillance, and utterly manipulate mass communication to indoctrinate and deceive their peoples. Roughly speaking, Orwell’s Oceania is formed by the US and its formal and informal territories in the Western Hemisphere, which the Monroe Doctrine has essentially declared are US colonies, confederated with Britain and the settler colonies-cum-dominions of the former British Empire (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa). The Orwellian concept of Eurasia is an amalgamation of the Soviet Union with continental Europe. The entity of Eastasia on the other hand is formed around China. Southeast Asia, India, and the parts of Africa that do not fall under the influence of Oceanic South Africa are disputed territory that is constantly fought for. Although not specifically mentioned, it can be extrapolated that Southwest Asia, where Syria is located, or parts of it are probably part of this fictional disputed territory, which includes North Africa.

If we try to fit Orwellian terms onto the present set of global relations, we can say that Oceania has made its moves against Eurasia/Eastasia for control of disputed territory (in the Middle East and North Africa).

1984 is not just a novel, it is a warning from the farseeing Orwell. Nonetheless, never did he imagine that his Eurasia would make cause with or include Eastasia through a core triple alliance and coalition comprised of Russia, China, and Iran. Eurasia will finish, in one way or another, what Oceania has started. All the while, as the House of Saud and the other rulers of the Arab petro-sheikhdoms continue to compete with one another in building fancy towers, the Sword of Damocles is getting heavier over their heads.

 

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

Douguine : «Les Etats-Unis sont derrière les attentats de Volgograd»

Alexandre Douguine : «Les Etats-Unis sont derrière les attentats de Volgograd»

Auteur : Algérie Patriotique

Ex: http://www.zejournal.mobi

Algeriepatriotique : Quelle analyse faites-vous de la dégradation de la situation sécuritaire en Russie après les deux actes terroristes perpétrés à Volgograd ?

Alexandre Douguine : Je ne crois pas qu'il s’agisse de dégradation de la situation sécuritaire en Russie. Certains actes terroristes sont presque incontrôlables quand il est question des régions ayant des populations plus ou moins homogènes qui soutiennent, dans une certaine mesure, des groupes terroristes comme c'est le cas au Caucase du Nord, en Russie. Le fait que l'activité des terroristes s’accentue ces derniers temps montre que les forces qui veulent déstabiliser la Russie se focalisent sur les Jeux olympiques de Sotchi. Les Etats-Unis et les pays de l'Otan veulent montrer Poutine, qui s’oppose radicalement au libéralisme et à l’hégémonie américaine, comme un «dictateur» en comparant Sotchi à Munich à l'époque d’Hitler. C'est la guerre médiatique. Dans cette situation, les forces qui soutiennent la politique hégémonique américaine, avant tout les réseaux sub-impérialistes locaux – comme les wahhabites soutenus par l’Arabie Saoudite –, cherchent à confirmer cette image en faisant de la Russie un pays où il n’y a pas le minimum de sécurité et qui est prêt à installer la dictature en réponse aux actes terroristes qui visent essentiellement les Jeux olympiques de Sotchi chers à Poutine. On sait que le chef des renseignements saoudiens, Bandar Bin Sultan, a proposé à Poutine de garantir la sécurité en Russie en échange de l'arrêt de l'appui russe à Damas. Poutine a piqué une colère et refusé cela d'une manière explicite, en accusant les Saoudiens d'être des terroristes, ce qu'ils sont en vérité, pire que ceux qui servent les intérêts des Etats-Unis. Donc, les groupes wahhabites qui activent en Russie, téléguidés par les Saoudiens et à travers eux par leurs maîtres de Washington, ont accompli la menace de Bandar Bin Sultan. En fin de compte, ce sont les Etats-Unis qui attaquent la Russie de Poutine, afin de le châtier pour sa politique indépendante et insoumise à la dictature hégémonique américaine et libérale.

Qui en est à l'origine ?
Je crois que je l'ai expliqué dans ma réponse à la question précédente. Quant aux organisateurs concrets de cet acte terroriste, je n'en sais pas plus que les autres. Il semble que ce sont des réseaux wahhabites du Caucase du Nord et les femmes de terroristes liquidés par les services spéciaux russes. Je crois qu’elles sont ignoblement utilisées par les chefs cyniques, consciemment ou inconsciemment, qui travaillent pour les intérêts des Américains.

D'aucuns estiment que ces attentats terroristes sont la conséquence du soutien indéfectible de la Russie à la Syrie et à l'Ukraine. Etes-vous du même avis ?
C'est absolument correct. Il s'agit du «châtiment américain» accompli par les complices des Américains par le biais des Saoudiens.

Quelles vont être les mesures que prendra le Kremlin pour parer à une escalade de la violence dans le pays ?
Je crois que la montée de la violence durant la période des Jeux olympiques de Sotchi est inévitable. J'espère qu’à Sotchi on réussira quand même à contrôler la situation, mais c'est théoriquement impossible de le faire dans les régions qui l'entourent et qui sont organiquement liées à certains groupes de population du Caucase du Nord où se trouvent les bases principales des terroristes. Cette fois, ce n'est pas la Tchétchénie qui est au centre du dispositif du terrorisme, mais plutôt le Daguestan et la République de Kabardino-Balkarie. On essayera de faire pour le mieux, mais il ne faut pas oublier qu’on a affaire à une grande puissance mondiale, celle des Etats-Unis, qui nous attaque. C'est un défi sérieux qui demande une réponse symétrique. Donc, on verra...

- Source : Algérie Patriotique

Double attentat à Volgograd : une première analyse

Double attentat à Volgograd : une première analyse (VineyardOfTheSaker)

by Raphaël "JahRaph" Berland

 

Ex: http://www.cercledesvolontaires.fr

 

Le double attentat qui vient de se produire à Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad) constitue sans conteste une escalade dans la guerre larvée mais constante qui a opposé les insurgés wahhabites non seulement au Kremlin, mais aussi à toutes les autorités musulmanes traditionnelles en Russie. Avant d’examiner ce que ces dernières attaques pourraient signifier pour la Russie en général et pour les imminents Jeux Olympiques de Sotchi, il serait utile de revenir sur quelques faits essentiels.

La Tchétchénie

Tout d’abord, ce serait une erreur de croire que tout acte terroriste « islamiste » commis en Russie devrait impliquer des Tchétchènes. La réalité est que la Tchétchénie a non seulement été pacifiée, mais elle est même paisible. Le dirigeant tchétchène Ramzan Kadyrov a littéralement réalisé un miracle en transformant le « trou noir » tchétchène ravagé par la guerre en une république prospère et *véritablement* paisible. Le fait que ce miracle ait été soit passé sous silence, soit ridiculisé par les « experts » anglo-sionistes, qui avaient tous déclaré devant les caméras que l’insurrection tchétchène ne serait jamais vaincue, est compréhensible : admettre ce succès serait tout simplement politiquement impensable. Pourtant, le fait que Ramzan Kadyrov, le jeune homme qui avait toute l’apparence extérieure d’un voyou tchétchène moyen, se soit avéré être un leader politique extrêmement capable et sage est indéniable, et même si aucune « guerre contre le terrorisme » n’est jamais vraiment tout à fait « gagnée », il serait juste de dire que, au moins pour le moment, le phénomène terroriste tchétchène a été ramené à près de zéro. Malheureusement, si l’avenir s’annonce très prometteur pour la Tchétchénie, les choses sont infiniment pires dans le Daghestan voisin.

La Tchétchénie et le Caucase

Le Daghestan

La Tchétchénie et le Daghestan sont voisins, mais ils pourraient difficilement être plus différents. En premier lieu, la Tchétchénie est principalement habitée par des Tchétchènes, alors qu’il n’existe pas vraiment de « Daghestanais » : plus d’une douzaine de groupes ethniques différents vivent côte à côte au Daghestan. En fait, le Daghestan est la plus diversifiée de toutes les républiques russes, dans laquelle aucun groupe ne peut constituer une majorité. Cet aspect est absolument crucial parce que le fait qu’il n’y ait pas de groupe ethnique dominant signifie qu’il ne peut pas y avoir de « Kadyrov » Daghestanais. Deuxièmement, l’économie du Daghestan est dirigée par des élites très corrompues qui luttent les uns contre les autres et contre leurs clans respectifs. En termes pratiques, cela signifie que la « recette » utilisée en Tchétchénie (donner à un leader tchétchène local un niveau maximal d’autonomie et d’autorité) serait un désastre pour le Daghestan. La bonne « solution » pour le Daghestan impliquerait probablement une intervention très énergique du Centre Fédéral et une destruction de l’actuel système de clan basé sur l’ethnie – ce que personne au Kremlin ne serait empressé d’entreprendre.

Cependant, pour le moment, le Daghestan est le repaire du terrorisme wahhabite. On pourrait dire que le cancer wahhabite qui avait d’abord contaminé la Tchétchénie s’est répandu au Daghestan pendant qu’il était détruit en Tchétchénie. L’extrême pauvreté du Daghestan, combinée aux millions de dollars fournis par les Saoudiens à leurs alliés et agents, leur a rendu extrêmement aisée la tâche de commercialiser leur marque de wahhabisme au Daghestan et de recruter des agents locaux d’influence et des terroristes, ce qu’ils ont entrepris avec beaucoup de succès.

Les terroristes du Daghestan ont bien tiré les leçons de la Tchétchénie, et ils n’essaient jamais de contrôler de territoire ou de créer une sorte de mini-État wahhabite au Daghestan : bien au contraire, jour après jour, les forces de sécurité affrontent les terroristes Daghestanais, ce qui se termine à chaque fois pour eux par la capture ou la mort (surtout la mort). La raison en est évidente : les terroristes du Daghestan sont faibles et ils ne peuvent même pas s’en prendre aux policiers locaux. Mais ils sont juste assez forts pour attacher des explosifs sur un jeune homme ou une jeune femme et les envoyer se faire sauter dans une station de bus ou de train.

Les Wahhabites dans le reste de la Russie

Il serait également erroné de supposer que tout le terrorisme wahhabite en Russie doit provenir du Daghestan ou même du Caucase. Les Wahhabites (soutenus par l’Arabie Saoudite) recrutent littéralement partout – du sud de la Russie à Saint-Pétersbourg et du Tatarstan à Moscou. En conséquence, dans certains cas, des Russes ethniques étaient impliqués dans des actes terroristes wahhabites. Ainsi, la réalité est la suivante : le terrorisme wahhabite en Russie n’est pas un problème régional ou un problème ethnique, c’est un problème idéologique. C’est pourquoi il ne faut pas tirer hâtivement de conclusions ni présumer quoi que ce soit au sujet de qui pourrait être derrière les derniers attentats. Ça pourrait littéralement être n’importe qui.

De Volgograd à Sotchi ?

Volgograd a été le théâtre de plusieurs attentats terroristes dernièrement, et les attaques des 29 et 30 décembre 2013 ne sont que les plus récentes dans une longue série d’événements. Pourquoi Volgograd ?

Sud de la Russie
(cliquez pour agrandir la carte)

Eh bien, Volgograd est – avec Rostov-sur-le-Don et Krasnodar – l’une des principales villes du sud de la Russie et elle est assez proche du Daghestan pour qu’il soit assez facile pour les wahhabites Daghestanais (en supposant qu’ils soient impliqués) d’organiser une attaque terroriste dans cette ville. En fait, Volgograd est à peu près à la même distance du Daghestan que Sotchi. Ce n’est pas une pensée agréable.

Un autre facteur qui pourrait avoir joué un rôle dans la décision des terroristes de frapper à Volgograd est que la plupart des efforts russes de lutte contre le terrorisme sont actuellement concentrés à l’intérieur et autour de Sotchi. Une des règles de base de la lutte contre le terrorisme est qu’il y a toujours plus de cibles potentielles à protéger que de ressources pour les protéger. Même si Volgograd avait été complètement bouclée, les terroristes auraient pu choisir Astrakhan, Elista, Stavropol ou n’importe quelle autre ville. Je pense que la sécurité locale et fédérale est principalement axée sur la protection de l’infrastructure olympique et que par conséquent, Volgograd était plus vulnérable que d’habitude.

Que savons-nous jusqu’à présent ?

Plusieurs d’entre vous m’ont écrit (par courriel ou dans la section commentaires de mon blog) pour me demander si je pensais que ces dernières attaques étaient la conséquence des récentes menaces saoudiennes [d’attaques contre les J.O. de Sotchi si la Russie continue à soutenir la Syrie]. Honnêtement, je ne sais pas, c’est beaucoup trop tôt pour le dire. Les Russes travaillent vite et les médias russes rapportent que le kamikaze qui s’est fait exploser dans la gare hier a été identifié comme Pavel Pechenkin.

Pavel Pechenkin

Pour autant que je sache, cela n’a pas été officiellement confirmé et des analyses ADN sont encore en cours. Néanmoins, si c’était vrai, cela désignerait comme responsables un groupe de Russes ethniques qui inclurait Dimitri Sokolov, qui a récemment été tué par les forces de sécurité. D’origine russe, il a vécu au Daghestan et a rejoint un groupe terroriste dans la ville de Makhatchkala. Cependant, il est intéressant de noter que son contact avec le milieu wahhabite n’a pas commencé au Daghestan, mais dans une mosquée de Moscou où il s’était inscrit à des cours d’Arabe. Sokolov était le mari de Naida Asiialova, une kamikaze qui s’est fait exploser dans un autobus bondé à Volgograd au mois d’Octobre de cette année. Pechenkin, Sokolov et Asiialova faisaient apparemment tous partie de la même cellule terroriste qui, bien que basée au Daghestan, incluait des Russes ethniques.

D. Sokolov et N. Asiialova

Ce groupe était très bien connu des services de sécurité russes, et les parents de Sokolov et Pechenkin ont tous deux fait des déclarations désespérées via les médias russes, suppliant leurs enfants de ne commettre aucun acte de violence et de renoncer à leur vie de terroriste. Bien qu’ils aient certainement eu des complices, Sokolov et Pechenkin constituaient clairement l’image de ce groupe aux yeux du public, et autant que je sache, il n’y a plus de membres importants de cette cellule en cavale. Jusqu’à présent, et c’est une analyse très préliminaire, il n’y a pas d’« empreintes saoudiennes » sur ces attaques. Elles semblent être ce que les Américains appellent un cas de « terreur d’origine intérieure » et s’il y a un lien Saoudien, c’est à travers le financement massif des mosquées wahhabites en Russie (et dans le monde entier).

Options internes russes

Comme l’a écrit H. L. Mencken, « Pour chaque problème complexe, il y a une réponse qui est claire, simple et mauvaise ». Dans ce cas, cette solution simple est de fermer toutes les mosquées ayant des liens avec les wahhabites en Russie, et certains individus simples d’esprit ont déjà exprimé leur désir de voir cela se produire. Une telle « solution » pose de nombreux problèmes :

1) Ce serait tout simplement illégal. La Russie est (enfin !) plus ou moins devenue un Etat de droit où la loi règne, ou, du moins, la Russie est-elle en bonne voie pour devenir un tel pays. Ce qui est certain, c’est que la grande majorité des Russes veulent que leur pays devienne un pays normal, civilisé, où le respect des lois est au cœur de la vie politique. Fermer des mosquées serait tout simplement illégal. Pour quelles raisons devraient-elles être fermées, d’ailleurs ? Pour « soupçon de wahhabisme » ? Il n’y a pas de tel crime en droit russe. Pour recevoir de l’argent de l’étranger ? Ce n’est pas illégal non plus. Pour être liées à des réseaux terroristes ? Oui, ce serait illégal, mais c’est aussi très difficile à prouver et il n’y a aucun moyen pour que le FSB (Service fédéral de sécurité) ou le Comité d’enquête puissent faire accepter de telles accusations par une cour de justice contre la plupart de ces mosquées. L’idée directrice est la suivante : Poutine n’est pas un dictateur et il ne peut pas agir en dehors du cadre de la loi russe, et du reste il ne le souhaiterait aucunement.

2) Ce serait immoral. J’ai vécu pendant de nombreuses années littéralement juste à côté d’une grande mosquée entièrement financée par les Saoudiens, et à ma connaissance, non seulement cette mosquée n’a jamais rien eu à voir avec le terrorisme, mais les personnes qui fréquentaient cette mosquée n’ont même pas été impliqués dans le moindre cas de petite délinquance. Dieu sait que je hais l’idéologie wahhabite de toute mon âme et de tout mon cœur, mais je ne peux pas dire que la plupart des wahhabites soient de mauvaises personnes, ou qu’ils soient liés au terrorisme. Ils ne sont pas et ne doivent pas être des boucs émissaires pour les actions d’autres personnes. Je suis tout à fait favorable à la destruction physique de chaque terroriste wahhabite sur la planète, mais tant qu’ils ne prennent pas les armes et ne se mettent pas à assassiner et mutiler les êtres humains, les disciples d’Ibn Taymiyya et de Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ne doivent pas être forcés à payer pour les actions des autres.

3) Ce serait contre-productif. L’avantage de laisser les mosquées wahhabites libres d’agir est qu’elles constituent pour les forces de sécurité une cible parfaite pour infiltrer et surveiller les terroristes. Fermez ces mosquées et vous les pousserez dans la clandestinité et il pourrait être beaucoup plus difficile de les infiltrer. En fait, ces mosquées wahhabites peuvent même être utilisées comme des appâts pour attirer, identifier et arrêter les terroristes locaux.

Non, la meilleure façon de faire face à la propagande et au terrorisme financés par l’Arabie Saoudite est de soutenir les organisations islamiques et chefs religieux traditionnels anti-wahhabites. Il y a beaucoup de musulmans bien éduqués et instruits en Russie, y compris un bon nombre d’imams renommés, qui peuvent mener la lutte idéologique et spirituelle contre les wahhabites et les dénoncer pour ce qu’ils sont. Ce que l’Etat russe devrait faire est a) protéger physiquement ces gens b) les écouter et prendre en considération leur évaluation de la situation c) expliquer à la population non musulmane que ce sont des alliés essentiels dans la lutte contre le terrorisme wahhabite.

Que faire si on trouve des indices inculpant l’Arabie Saoudite ?

C’est un grand « si » ! Mais supposons, pour la commodité du raisonnement, que les Russes trouvent de quelconques « empreintes » saoudiennes dans ces attaques, ou dans des attaques à venir au cours des Jeux olympiques de Sotchi, et considérons différentes réponses russes :

1) Une frappe de représailles ouverte contre l’Arabie saoudite :

En termes purement militaires, cela ne poserait aucun problème. Les Russes pourraient frapper avec des bombardiers, des missiles de croisière sous-marins, des missiles balistiques… Tout ce qu’on veut. Les Etats-Unis exprimeraient certainement toute leur indignation, mais le CENTCOM ne pourrait rien y faire parce que le but initial du CENTCOM était d’empêcher une invasion soviétique de l’Iran, et pas de défendre les Saoudiens contre une frappe de représailles russe. Le problème de cette option est qu’elle serait illégale selon le droit international et c’est quelque chose que la Russie ne veut pas.

Si la Russie décidait d’accuser publiquement et officiellement l’Arabie saoudite d’attaques terroristes contre la Russie, elle devrait aller au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU ou à la Cour internationale de justice et porter l’affaire sur le terrain légal.

2) Déposer une plainte officielle à la Cour internationale de justice et essayer d’obtenir un vote du Conseil de sécurité condamnant l’Arabie Saoudite :

En fait, c’est une option excellente parce qu’elle mettrait les Saoudiens dans une position politique très embarrassante. Selon le libellé de la résolution, les États-Unis s’abstiendraient ou y opposeraient leur veto, car peu importe l’ampleur des problèmes qu’il y a eu entre les deux pays récemment, les États-Unis et l’Arabie Saoudite sont toujours des alliés stratégiques. Pourtant, une telle plainte officielle par la Russie contre le régime saoudien mettrait encore plus d’embarras sur les visages des singes médiévaux au pouvoir à Riyad. Personnellement, cette option me plairait beaucoup, mais ce ne serait pas dans le style de Poutine – il préfère un genre de diplomatie beaucoup plus discret.

3) Une frappe de représailles secrète contre l’Arabie saoudite :

Cette option est également tout à fait réalisable pour le Kremlin, non seulement parce qu’il pourrait utiliser les capacités russes pour frapper un ou deux princes saoudiens, mais parce qu’il pourrait facilement sous-traiter ce travail à une force alliée. Le problème, c’est que même si c’est une frappe de représailles, ce serait toujours un acte de terrorisme. Jusqu’à présent, le seul cas que je connaisse où les Russes ont assassiné quelqu’un, c’est quand ils ont tué le terroriste notoire Ibn al-Khattab : les services spéciaux russes ont intercepté une lettre de Khattab et l’ont imprégnée d’un poison spécial qui serait sans danger pour quiconque sauf Khattab (une méthode beaucoup plus efficace et sophistiquée que l’accusation stupide selon laquelle ils utiliseraient du polonium pour tuer quelqu’un). Mais dans ce cas, les Russes ont admis leur rôle et ont même fait des déclarations plus ou moins officielles donnant les détails de l’opération. Bien que cet assassinat ait été mené en utilisant des méthodes secrètes, ce n’était pas véritablement une opération secrète car les Russes ont admis d’eux-mêmes qu’ils en étaient responsables. Khattab était une telle raclure que personne de sain d’esprit n’a exprimé de problèmes à l’égard de cette opération : ce fut l’une de ces affaires très rares, où le bon et le méchant sont clairement désignés, et où presque tout le monde convient que la personne tuée l’a vraiment cherché et que justice a été faite. Mais c’est une exception. Beaucoup trop de soi-disant « opérations secrètes » ne sont qu’un pieux euphémisme pour désigner des (contre-)attaques terroristes c’est à dire quelque chose qu’un pays civilisé ne devrait pas faire.

4) Quoi d’autre ? Viser le long terme

Dans la lutte contre le terrorisme, il est absolument vital de rester exemplaire sur le plan de la morale : il faut faire tout son possible pour dénier à l’ennemi le statut de « combattant pour la liberté ». Pour ce faire, il faut absolument garder ses mains aussi propres que possible et il ne faut s’engager que dans des actions qui, si elles étaient découvertes et révélées au public, nous feraient paraître honorables. Le concept de Dick Cheney selon lequel « maintenant on ne prend plus de gants » ne fait que traduire son manque de sophistication. On peut dire la même chose du « déni plausible » (plausible deniability) de la CIA. Le résultat de cette auto-illusion est que les Etats-Unis sont haïs et méprisés dans le monde entier, et que littéralement, il n’y a pas d’action trop vile, trop lâche ou trop stupide pour être considérée par quiconque comme ne pouvant pas être une opération secrète des États-Unis : tout le monde les sait capables de tout, même des choses les plus basses. Est-ce que la Russie veut vraiment devenir le « prochain méchant » (encore une fois !) ?

Personnellement, je pense qu’il est crucial pour un pays civilisé que sa politique officielle, annoncée et publique soit en harmonie avec ce qu’il fait dans les coulisses. Il n’y a rien d’intrinsèquement mauvais dans les opérations secrètes tant qu’elles sont conduites de manière à ce que ceux qui les ont ordonnées puissent paraître raisonnables et honorables si l’opération est découverte et révélée au public. La Russie ne peut pas constamment parler du rôle absolument crucial qui doit être joué par le droit international dans les relations internationales, puis aller joyeusement violer des règles de base du droit international. Pour cette raison, toute utilisation de la force (ouverte ou secrète) par la Russie devra être fondée sur les principes suivants :

1) Toutes les autres options non-violentes auront déjà été tentées, ou seront impossibles à mettre en œuvre.

2) L’utilisation de la force sera proportionnelle à l’attaque qui l’a déclenchée.

3) Tous les efforts seront faits pour éviter des victimes innocentes.

Cela semble être d’un optimisme béat ? Eh bien, ce n’est pas le cas !

Des décennies d’utilisation de la force de manière tout à fait irresponsable et imprudente par les Etats-Unis, les Israéliens, les Européens et les Soviétiques nous ont complètement désensibilisés à l’immoralité fondamentale de la violence. Elevés pour la plupart avec les films de John Wayne et les présidences de Ronald Reagan, nous avons perdu le dégoût de l’homme civilisé pour la laideur et l’immoralité de la violence. Pire encore, nous sommes tellement conditionnés par des décennies de reportages spéciaux de CNN venant du Pentagone et montrant le dernier « briefing » d’une intervention militaire américaine que nous oublions qu’agir impulsivement et « tirer à tout va » est une façon très inefficace de faire face à un problème.

Pour traiter un problème comme le terrorisme, il est toujours préférable de planifier sur le long terme. De ce point de vue, je dirais que le régime saoudien est un problème suffisamment important pour mériter d’être considéré comme une menace inhérente à la sécurité nationale de la Russie, et cela implique en retour que parvenir à un changement de régime au Royaume d’Arabie Saoudite devrait être une stratégie de sécurité nationale de la Russie. Cependant, cet objectif doit être poursuivi uniquement ou, du moins, principalement par des moyens légaux tels que, par exemple, armer les Iraniens et les Syriens qui, à leur tour, armeront le Hezbollah. Cet objectif peut également être atteint en isolant l’Arabie saoudite sur la scène internationale par le biais de « consultations » avec les alliés et les nations amies. En outre, la Russie devrait chercher à élargir son rôle et son influence dans le monde musulman et dans le monde arabe afin de contrebalancer l’influence actuelle des Saoudiens et des autres monarchies du Golfe.

À court terme, le public russe doit être prévenu ouvertement que le terrorisme ne peut être éradiqué, que c’est là un rêve chimérique concocté par des politiciens malhonnêtes. Mais si aucun pays ou gouvernement ne peut vraiment éradiquer le terrorisme, on peut apprendre à vivre avec. Après tout, le nombre réel des victimes du terrorisme est extrêmement faible, bien moins que, par exemple, celui des accidents de la route. La vraie puissance du terrorisme réside dans l’effet psychologique qu’il a non pas sur ses victimes directes, mais sur ceux qui en sont témoins. Dès que le grand public aura accepté l’idée que même si les attaques terroristes peuvent être réduites à un minimum, il sera toujours possible que certains attentats aient lieu, le terrorisme perdra sa force réelle. Soit le terrorisme est accepté comme une réalité de la vie, soit une nation pourra être tirée dans une spirale sans fin de mesures futiles de lutte contre le terrorisme qui sont beaucoup plus néfastes que le terrorisme qui les déclenche.

Est-ce que la Russie veut vraiment devenir un état fasciste terrifié et paranoïaque comme les États-Unis ? Ou préfère-t-elle accepter le fait que le terrorisme ne sera jamais « vaincu » et continuer à vivre le mieux possible dans un monde toujours dangereux ?

Les hommes politiques russes débattent déjà vivement de la question de l’annulation du moratoire actuel sur la peine de mort : Nikolaï Pligin, député du parti « Russie unie » et chef du Comité du droit constitutionnel de la Douma, a déclaré qu’ « aucun des groupes sociaux ne sera victime de discrimination, aucune activité spéciale ne sera réalisée contre un groupe spécifique : toutes les activités seront menées uniquement d’après les normes constitutionnelles et conformément aux lois en vigueur », tandis que Ramzan Kadyrov a exhorté le Parlement à « augmenter infiniment la peine non seulement pour ceux qui commettent des actes terroristes, mais aussi pour ceux qui partagent les idées des terroristes, répandent leur idéologie et les entraînent. Je suis absolument certain que nous ne pourrons pas faire face à ce mal en jouant la démocratie et l’humanité. »

Eh bien, au moins tous les deux sont d’accord sur le fait que le bon endroit pour discuter de cette question et décider quelles politiques il faut adopter est le Parlement. Je m’attends à ce que la Douma s’exprime d’une seule voix et accorde au Kremlin à peu près n’importe quelle loi qu’il voudra faire passer, donc la vraie décision sera entre les mains de Poutine. Je suis personnellement convaincu que son choix sera de se conformer très strictement à la lettre et à l’esprit de la législation nationale russe et du droit international et qu’il n’y aura pas de sur-réaction de la Russie.

Le Saqr

Article original publié sur VineyardSaker.blogspot.com

Traduction réalisée par AxeDeLaResistance.com

Une thèse sur Valentin Raspoutine

Une thèse sur Valentin Raspoutine

par Robert Steuckers

Recension: Günther HASENKAMP, Gedächtnis und Leben in der Prose Valentin Rasputins, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1990, VII + 302 S., ISBN 3-447-03002-X.

Valentin Grigorevitch Raspoutine, né le 15 mars 1937 en Sibérie, est le petit-fils d’un chasseur de la taïga et de Mariia Guerassimovna qui lui a raconté, pendant son enfance, les contes populaires de sa région. Ce qui lui a donné à jamais le sens de la continuité et de la durée, un goût indélébile pour tout ce qui est “archétype”. Son oeuvre de grand prosateur russe est placée entièrement sous le signe de la “perte de conscience” qui affecte nos contemporains, du passage d’une conscience mythique-intégrative à une attitude totalement démythifiée. Tel est le déficit —la plaie béante— de nos temps modernes. Cette crise doit être dénoncée et combattue. Après la période de stagnation brejnévienne (la “kosnost”), Raspoutine retrouve pleinement son rôle d’“écrivain-prédicateur”, qui va s’engager pour son peuple, afin qu’il retrouve une morale basée sur les acquis de son histoire et de sa tradition. Avec les autres “ruralistes” de la littérature russe contemporaine, il mènera la “guerre civile” des écrivains contre les “libéraux”, c’est-à-dire ceux qui veulent introduire en Russie les idées occidentales et la culture de masse calquée sur le modèle américain. Contre cette vision purement “sociétaire” qui ne reconnaît aucune présence ni récurrence potentielle aux moments forts du passé, qui ignore délibérément toute “saveur diachronique”, Raspoutine et les ruralistes défendent le statut mythique de la nation, révalorisent la pensée archétypique, réhabilitent l’unité substantielle avec les générations passées.

Le slaviste allemand Hasenkamp démontre que cet engagement nationaliste repose sur une “conscience mythique” traditionnelle où il n’y a pas de séparation entre le microcosme et le macrocosme, entre la chose et le signe, la réalité et le symbole. Dans Adieu à Matiora, son plus célèbre roman, l’île qui va être engloutie par le fleuve représente la totalité du monde, sa continuité, qui va être submergée par la pensée calculante, techniciste, administrative. Matiora est la continuité, face au “temps nouveau”, qui déracine les habitants et prépare l’inondation finale. Cette ère nouvelle sera une ère de discontinuité qui claudiquera d’interruption en interruption, de retour furtif à une vague stabilité en nouveau déracinement. Cette fragmentation conduit au malheur et à la dépravation morale. Les axes majeurs de la pensée philosophique de Raspoutine, qui ne s’exprime pas par de sèches théories mais dans des romans poignants, où l’on retrouve des linéaments d’apocalypse ou de Ragnarök, sont: la mméoire et la réalité transcendantale. Derrière la réalité empirique, derrière les misères quotidiennes et la banalité de tous les jours, se profile, pour qui sait l’apercevoir et l’honorer, une réalité supérieure, immortelle. Le monde moderne a voulu faire du passé table rase, a jugé que la mémoire n’était plus une valeur et la faculté de se souvenir n’était plus une vertu. Contre l’idéologie dominante, qui veut nous arracher nos histoires pour nous rendre dociles, l’oeuvre de Raspoutine, sa simplicité poignante et didactique, son universalité et sa russéité indissociables, sont des armes redoutables. A nous de nous en servir, à nous de diffuser son message. Qui est aussi le nôtre.

(recension parue dans “Vouloir”, n°105-108, juillet-septembre 1993, p. 23).

Russia hit by Terrorist Attacks

Russia hit by Terrorist Attacks: Gulf Petrodollars, Syria and Caucasus Islamists

Ramazan Khalidov and Lee Jay Walker

http://moderntokyotimes.com

The Russian Federation is once more in the spotlight because of Sunni Islamist terrorism. In recent days two terrorist attacks highlight many factors related to the intrigues of major Western and Gulf powers alongside Turkey. This is based on the destabilization policies of the above in Syria and in other nations. It is abundantly clear that Sunni Islamist terrorists from Chechnya, Dagestan, and in other parts of the Russian Federation, have gone to Syria to kill Syrians who are loyal to the government of this nation. These Islamists are also intent on killing Alawites, Christians and Shia Muslims based on sectarianism. Also, just like in the Russian Federation and Syria, the same Sunni Islamists hate mainstream Sunni Muslim leaders who support the mosaic in both nations therefore Sunni Muslim clerics are also being killed by the same Takfiri mindsets.

In many nations that are hit by terrorism and sectarianism it is clear that the linkage with Gulf petrodollars, militant Islamist organizations in the West, the murky role of covert operatives from several nations, media manipulation, geopolitical ambitions, Islamist charities being a front for obtaining funds – and other factors – all come into play. Of course, nations including China, Egypt, Kashmir (India), Iraq, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other nations, will have different underlying causes. However, the external element is a reality in all the above even if the combination of factors is very different. Therefore, the same also applies to the Russian Federation because in the past it was abundantly clear that Georgia and Turkey, two nations with good relations with Western powers, were conduits for Chechen terrorists based on terrorist havens, Islamist funding and other factors.

Indeed, the role of NATO Turkey being a conduit for international Sunni jihadists, militant Takfiris, a source of military hardware, covert operatives, and so forth, against Syria is also a modern reality. At the same time, vast numbers of jihadists from the Caucasus region are entering Syria via NATO Turkey. Therefore, the knock on effect for the Russian Federation is abundantly obvious even if internal issues also exist. Given this reality, then the words of Doku Umarov appear to indicate this because he states that the Riyad-us-Saliheen Brigade is now “replenished with the best among the best of the Mujahideen and if the Russians do not understand that the war will come to their streets, that the war will come to their homes, so it is worse for them.” 

Umarov also issued a warning in July that the Winter Olympics in Sochi would be targeted. He stated: “We, as the Mujahedeen, must not allow this to happen by any means possible.”

Therefore, the two recent terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation would appear to be based on Umarov and other Sunni Islamist terrorist forces. The BBC reports about the latest attacks by stating “At least 14 people have been killed in a suicide bombing on a trolleybus in the Russian city of Volgograd, investigators say.”

“The blast comes a day after 17 people died in another suicide attack at the central station in the city.”

The barbarity of the latest terrorist attacks is all too common because of jihadists in this part of the world. After all, Caucasus Islamists butchered vast numbers of children in Beslan after taking them hostages in 2004. Yes, the so-called jihadists who are waging a holy war kidnapped over 700 children in this barbaric attack. In other words, Caucasus Islamists think nothing about kidnapping children, killing children based on their planned operations, beheading captured individuals, blowing people up on buses, suicide attacks,  – and other brutal realities. At the same time, they hope to cleanse Orthodox Christians throughout the Caucasus region based on fear and to crush mainstream Sunni Islam.

Returning to Syria, the Kavkaz Center, a propaganda vehicle for Chechen and Caucasus Islamists, stated in August about this nation that “Troops of the Northern Directorate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham began a decisive attack on the positions of Assadites, anchored on the territory of an important strategic facility – airport Minnag near Aleppo.”

Kavkaz continued by reporting that “Recently, Emir of the Army of Emigrants of Supporters, Omar al-Chechen, was appointed to the post of the commander of the Northern Directorate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham. Most forces of the Mujahideen in northern Syria came under his command.”

This angle was also mentioned by The Jamestown Foundation because it was stated that “The Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Helpers) brigade is made up of Chechens and North Caucasians, but, unsurprisingly, the group also contains a large number of local Arabs, so the total number of people in the brigade could be 1,500. An ethnic Chechen from Georgia, Abu Umar Shishani (a.k.a. Umar Gorgashvili), is the leader of this group. In the past, Gorgashvili fought in Chechnya and served in the Georgian special forces during the 2008 war with Russia (www.rosbalt.ru/main/2013/08/20/1166093.html). Since last summer, Gorgashvili has been elevated to the position of the commander of the northern sector of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (http://shamcenter.info/news/92/134/obraschenie-komanduyuschego-severnym-napravleniem-islamskogo-gosudarstva-iraka-i-shama-amira-umara-ash-shishani/d,detail-de/). There are also other well-known Chechen commanders, such as Emir Muslim (Muslim Margoshvili), Emir Seifullah (Ruslan Machaliashvili), Emir Salakhdin and Emir Abu-Musaaba (Musa). Emir Seifullah was expelled from Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar for embezzlement and erroneous interpretation of Islamic values during a time of jihad and his actions during jihad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU6K1mq38jw).”

No individual of credibility would deny that Afghanistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Iraq, Libya, and other parts of the world, don’t have genuine internal issues to various different degrees. Yet, without the intrigues of powerful Western and Gulf powers alongside Pakistan then al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other sinister forces throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, would never had existed in the first place – or if they did exist – then the level would have been massively reduced. However, enormous funding was given to various Islamist movements in this period.  The other vital component was enormous spending on spreading Salafi Islamic mindsets and other militant Islamist thought patterns.

The conflict in Iraq that overthrew Saddam Hussein unleashed a vacuum and tragically this became filled by international jihadists, militant sectarian forces and various affiliates of al-Qaeda.  In Libya major NATO and Gulf powers worked hand-in-hand with various jihadist groups and an array of different militias. Once Gaddafi was butchered then another vacuum emerged whereby Mali became destabilized. Also, Libya now became a powerful element in the destabilization of Syria based on exporting military hardware, North African jihadists, linking covert operatives from various nations and being a direct link with the sinister intrigues of NATO Turkey. Therefore, just like in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recent events in Iraq, Libya, and Syria; it is abundantly clear that Gulf and Western intrigues are an enormous boost for various al-Qaeda affiliates and an array of Sunni Islamist militant groups. Likewise, Salafi indoctrination and militant versions of Islam emanating from the Gulf region, then start to usurp traditional Sunni Islam by spreading an alien message based on Gulf petrodollars.

In another article about the Caucasus and Syria by Modern Tokyo Times it was stated “The collective intrigues of America, France, Georgia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, towards Syria – and their respective policies in the North Caucasus region – should alarm the Russian Federation because the same intrigues are aimed at Moscow. Kadyrov stated that secret agencies were actively involved in recruiting Caucasus terrorists and mercenaries. Therefore, the growing influence of this group does give credence towards a powerful enacted outside force and clearly Georgia and Turkey provide a natural geopolitical reality to the linkage between the Russian Federation and Syria.”

Also, Modern Tokyo Times stated the need for the Russian Federation to take action in Syria because like Umarov states, the jihadists have been “replenished with the best among the best of the Mujahideen.”  Clearly, much of this replenishing is down to new Caucasus Islamists going to Syria and obtaining training and finding a bloodlust based on sectarianism. Therefore, Modern Tokyo Times commented “The growing menace of Chechen and Caucasus Islamists and the role of Salafi indoctrination in Syria should lead to the Russian Federation taking action. This applies to sending covert operatives to take out leading Islamist terrorists by working with the Syrian armed forces; providing major intelligence to the government of Syria; increasing military hardware of greater sophistication which suits the nature of the conflict; and by providing greater economic assistance. Also, political leaders in Moscow must raise this question seriously with Turkey because clearly this nation is a conduit of major terrorist and military ratlines which are anti-Syrian government. Similarly, the petrodollars of the Gulf are spreading the dangerous Salafi ideology and this fact needs to be raised.”

Special agencies including the CIA, MI6, and ISI, were all involved in funding Sunni Islamic jihadists in the 1980s and early 1990s in order to overthrow the government of Afghanistan. The chaos engulfing Libya and Mali, and creating powerful ripples in Tunisia, was ignited by the intrigues of major Gulf and Western powers. Of course, internal realities already existed in the Caucasus region just like they existed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Yet, once outside meddling happens, just like in modern day Syria; then many intended or unintended convulsions happen because of the vacuums being created by Gulf and Western powers alongside Turkey. Either way, Umarov is making it clear that the jihadist movement in the Caucasus region is now “replenished.” This replenishing is based on outside meddling in Syria, Gulf petrodollars and the intrigues of covert agencies who collectively utilize chaos and mayhem. Therefore, elites in Moscow need to take defensive measures in order to preserve regional stability and to protect nation states. After all, Gulf and Western intrigues are based on creating failed states and this can visibly be seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. The same forces are also intent on creating a failed state in Syria based on several different geopolitical ambitions and this policy is also endangering the Russian Federation.

Obviously, prior to outside meddling in Syria it is clear that Iraq and the Caucasus region in the Russian Federation were already blighted by terrorism. However, the conflict in Chechnya and Iraq were both being contained despite knock-on-effects causing mayhem in Dagestan and other parts of the Caucasus region in relation to Chechnya. Yet, since outside meddling in Syria then the crisis in Iraq is once more spreading a fresh cycle of sectarianism. Also, al-Qaeda affiliates have been boosted by the intrigues of Gulf and Western powers in Syria. Similarly, Umarov and Islamist forces are now gaining from a fresh wave of jihadists throughout parts of the Russian Federation and Central Asia based on the destabilization of Syria.

http://www.jamestown.org/ The Jamestown Foundation 

Hundreds of North Caucasians Have Joined the Ranks of Syria’s Rebels

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/08/07/18145.shtml

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/08/06/18143.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25546477

http://www.moderntokyotimes.com/2013/04/02/russia-should-send-covert-operatives-to-syria-chechen-caucasus-angle-and-iran/

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http://moderntokyotimes.com

Vladimir Putin uomo della Tradizione

Vladimir Putin uomo della Tradizione

Autore: Alfonso Piscitelli

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it

Nel suo discorso nel Giorno della Costituzione del 12 dicembre 2013 Vladimir Putin cita due personaggi russi significativi: il Primo Ministro Stolypin e il filosofo Berdaiev. Stolypin negli ultimi anni dell’Impero Zarista cercò di portare avanti una riforma agraria che diffondesse la piccola proprietà contadina, di affermare il principio dell’auto-governo locale (Zemtsvo) e di porre le basi di una grande modernizzazione industriale. Insomma Stolypin cercava di opporsi alla marea montante del comunismo rivoluzionario sviluppando una politica di riforme graduali, che salvaguardassero i due pilastri della tradizione politica russa: lo Zarismo e l’Ortodossia.

A rivoluzione russa avvenuta, l’altro nome citato da Putin, Berdaiev abbandonò il proprio paese e in esilio sviluppò i principi della sua filosofia esistenzialista e cristiana: Berdaiev era infatti un discepolo di Dostoevskij e cercava una terza via tra collettivismo marxista e individualismo liberale. Davvero significativa è la sua citazione nel discorso del 12 dicembre. Putin si definisce conservatore nei valori e aggiunge: “citando le parole di Nikolaj Berdaiev, l’essenza del conservatorismo non è l’impedire il movimento in avanti e verso l’alto, ma l’impedire il movimento all’indietro e verso il basso, nella tenebra del caos e nel ritorno a uno stato primitivo”. Con questi riferimenti molto alti lo statista russo indica le basi di filosofia politica delle ultime decisioni significative assunte dalla Federazione Russa: no alle adozioni gay, no alla propaganda della sessualità non tradizionale ai minori, disincentivo ai divorzi, lotta all’aborto, politiche per la natalità, lotta alla diffusione della droga.

Putin si definisce apertamente “uomo della Tradizione” e sottolinea che tutta la sua azione di governa è finalizzata alla difesa dei “valori tradizionali”. Ovviamente il tradizionalismo nei valori si coniuga nel suo pensiero politico con un “progressismo sociale”, ereditato anche dalla esperienza ideologica del socialismo di Stato. Nel precedente discorso del Giorno della Costituzione del 2012 Putin aveva ribadito i valori della “uguaglianza per tutti” e la necessità di una modernizzazione per estendere a tutti i cittadini la prosperità propiziata dalla crescita economica della Russia a partire dal 2000.

Il riferimento ai valori tradizionali si lega in Putin a un riferimento esplicito a una concezione spirituale della vita. Del resto lo abbiamo visto al fianco di papa Francesco baciare l’icona della Madonna di Vladimir, una icona importantissima nel suo intreccio con la storia religiosa e politica della Russia. Dice Putin: “La distruzione dei valori spirituali non solo porta a conseguenze negative per la società, ma è anche essenzialmente antidemocratico, dal momento che viene effettuata sulla base di idee astratte ideologiche, in contrasto con la volontà della maggioranza, che non accetta le variazioni avvenute o le proposte di revisione dei valori”. Il riferimento è a quei gruppi di pressioni e a quelle lobby che egemonizzando i mass media occidentali tentano di imporre cambiamenti (pensiamo all’ideologia del Trans-Gender o alla folle concezione dello “ius soli”) ai quali si oppone la maggioranza delle persone sensate: una maggioranza che spesso purtroppo rimane “maggioranza silenziosa” e indifesa.

Nelle parole del presidente Putin si avverte anche l’eco di una delle preoccupazioni fondamentali del grande pontefice Benedetto XVI: “Oggi molte nazioni stanno revisionando i loro valori morali e le norme etiche, erodendo tradizioni etniche e differenze tra popoli e culture. Le società sono oggi spinte ad accettare non solo il diritto di ognuno alla libertà di coscienza, di opzione politica e di privacy, ma anche ad esse è richiesto di accettare l’equiparazione assoluta dei concetti di bene e male”. La problematica additata è insomma quella del relativismo, quella concezione scettica secondo la quale non solo tutte le vacche di hegeliana memoria ma anche tutte le scelte morali sono “nere”, indifferenti. Il relativismo non è solo una posizione filosofica, ma è anche quell’atteggiamento di fondo che rende oggi gli uomini occidentali caratterialmente deboli, umbratili, alla mercé di poteri forti.

Tuttavia, di contro al modello occidentale Putin non ha un “russian style of life” da imporre: egli non crede nella necessità di imporre a livello mondiale un’unica regola, crede invece nel diritto dei popoli e delle civiltà di preservare le loro diversità e le loro tradizioni: “Noi non pretendiamo di essere alcun tipo di superpotenza con pretesa di egemonia globale o regionale; non imponiamo il nostro patrocinio su nessuno e non cerchiamo di insegnare agli altri come vivere la loro vita. Ma ci sforzeremo di esercitare la nostra leadership difendendo il diritto internazionale, lottando per il rispetto delle sovranità nazionali e l’indipendenza e l’identità dei popoli”.

L’importante però è che nessun popolo si senta “eletto” e nessuno si arroghi una missione “eccezionale”. Questo era anche il senso del finale della sua storica lettera al New York Times nei giorni della crisi siriana: “E’ estremamente pericoloso incoraggiare la gente a vedersi eccezionali, qualunque sia la motivazione. Ci sono paesi grandi e piccoli, paesi ricchi e poveri, quelli con lunghe tradizioni democratiche e quelli che stanno ancora trovando la strada verso la democrazia. Anche le loro politiche sono diverse. Siamo tutti diversi, ma anche quando chiediamo la benedizione del Signore, non dobbiamo dimenticare che Dio ci ha creati uguali”.

Il discorso di Putin ha toccato tutte una serie di questioni ovviamente non solo morali, ma anche pratiche e organizzative: il presidente ha parlato di valorizzazione delle aree rurali, della necessità di incoraggiare i russi a ripopolare le campagne, l’importanza di giungere a una piena autarchia anche nel settore alimentare. Con soddisfazione Putin sottolinea “Abbiamo già investito molti soldi nello sviluppo del settore agricolo. Il settore sta mostrando un momento di dinamica positiva. In molte aree ora possiamo coprire interamente la domanda interna con prodotti interni russi”.

Per quanto riguarda lo sviluppo economico, le priorità sono indicate da Putin nella formazione professionale, nello sviluppo tecnologico, in un mercato del lavoro flessibile e in “un buon clima per gli investimenti” (abbassando ulteriormente la pressione fiscale e creando in Siberia aree di completa esenzione per le imprese che investono). Un fondo scientifico specifico è stato concepito da Putin per incrementare il livello tecnologico del paese.

Un progetto importante della Federazione è quella della costruzione di alloggi. Lo Stato interviene direttamente nel settore edilizio per realizzare un imponente “Piano Casa”: “Il governo ha già predisposto le misure strategiche necessarie per l’attuazione del programma per la costruzione di alloggi a prezzi accessibili. Questo programma prevede la costruzione di almeno 25 milioni di metri quadrati di nuove abitazioni, completi con la corrispondente infrastruttura sociale, entro il 2017”.

Il piano di costruzione degli alloggi rappresenta indubbiamente la “base solida” della politica di incremento demografico che Putin sta portando avanti: la vasta diffusione degli aborti in epoca sovietica e il drammatico impoverimento degli anni Novanta avevano condotto la demografia russa in una spirale “recessiva” preoccupante. A partire dal 2000 il governo si è posta l’esigenza di favorire la natalità per risollevare le sorti della demografia russa. Putin con soddisfazione sottolinea che il trend demografico è ritornato ad essere positivo. Sullo sfondo di tali prese di posizione vi è anche una questione geopolitica fondamentale: la Russia con il suo completamento siberiano è un territorio immenso e ricchissimo di risorse del sottosuolo. Si capisce a quale esito può portare il rapporto tra una popolazione che invecchia e un ricchissimo territorio, circondato da popolazioni asiatiche (i cinesi, gli indiani) che superano il miliardo… Nell’ambito della politica in favore della natalità si inserisce anche il programma culturale che punta a un fortissimo disincentivo dei divorzi e degli aborti.

Politica di natalità e salute della popolazione sono strettamente intrecciati, per cui Putin ribadisce anche quello che era un cardine della vecchia politica sanitaria sovietica: il valore dell’assistenza medica estesa a tutti e completamente gratuita. Nella Russia attuale i cittadini sono chiamati a pagare una assicurazione per le malattie che consta di una cifra simbolica irrisoria, che consente cure che Obama neppure osa sognare di notte, per paura di essere accusato di “socialismo”. Dal punto di vista pratico rimane il problema di ri-organizzare la sanità dopo gli anni di caos succeduti alla perestrojka. E tuttavia Putin ha progetti ambiziosi sul versante della salute e della prevenzione: “A partire dal 2015 tutti i bambini e gli adolescenti dovranno usufruire di un check-up medico obbligatorio gratuito annuale, mentre gli adulti dovranno essere sottoposti a tale esame ogni tre anni”.

Prevenzione e salute, a livello giovanile si sposano con l’enfasi posta sullo sport. Da qualche mese sono tornati nelle scuole i “giochi ginnico-militari”: un misto di educazione fisica e militare. In questa ottica si inserisce l’esigenza di un ampliamento delle palestre, dei campi sportivi: “Dobbiamo continuare a sviluppare una vasta gamma di infrastrutture sportive per bambini e ragazzi. Dobbiamo fare di tutto per aumentare la popolarità di stili di vita attivi. Questa è stata l’idea principale alla base delle Universiadi che si sono svolte con successo a Kazan”.

Per quanto riguarda i docenti Putin annuncia aumenti salariali per riqualificare il valore dell’insegnamento: “Stiamo alzando i salari nel settore dell’istruzione e della sanità in modo che il lavoro di insegnanti, professori e dottori diventi di nuovo prestigioso, per attirare validi laureati”. L’insegnamento scolastico viene concepito come un settore strategico: da un lato per trasmettere un metodo di pensiero “creativo ed indipendente”, dall’altra per rafforzare il senso dell’identità trasmettendo i valori della nazione, la storia e le tradizioni.

Il tema della identità viene riproposto anche in relazione al delicato problema della immigrazione. Avendo la Russia di Putin un ritmo di crescita molto superiore a quello dei paesi UE, negli ultimi anni il flusso migratorio (soprattutto dalle repubbliche ex sovietiche) si è fatto più ingente e, anche alla luce di recenti fatti di sangue, l’esigenza di regolare con chiarezza tali flussi è divenuta impellente. Ovviamente per Putin gli ingressi clandestini sono inaccettabili, gli immigrati regolari hanno il dovere di rispettare i valori e la cultura della Russia, di adeguarsi ad essa. Rispetto e reciprocità sono i principi cardine per regolare l’immigrazione. E già qualche mese fa, alla richiesta di costruire nuove moschee in Russia, Putin – forse ironicamente … – aveva subordinato l’esaudimento di tale richiesta al principio di reciprocità, richiedendo la costruzione di chiese in Arabia Saudita.

E tuttavia Putin ha ritenuto di porre un argine alle ondate di xenofobia che si diffondono anche in Russia in conseguenze di crimini gravi compiuti da immigrati. Putin tiene a sottolineare che non è l’origine etnica ad essere “male in sé”: “Tali tensioni non sono provocate dai rappresentanti di una specifica nazionalità, ma da persone prive di cultura e di rispetto delle tradizioni, sia delle proprie che di quelle altrui. Essi sono espressione di una sorta di Internazionale dell’Amoralità”. Insomma il problema non è l’appartenenza etnica, l’identità nazionale, ma appunto l’abbandono di quella identità e lo sradicamento in nome della mescolanza multietnica.

Certo in Russia ci sono forze più estremiste, di opposizione, che soffiano il fuoco sulla protesta, pensiamo ai nazionalisti di opposizione o anche ai neocomunisti, che di volta in volta invocano uno Stato più forte e meno influenzato dalle degenerazioni politiche e di costume che provengono dalla mentalità occidentale. Di fronte a questi atteggiamenti più intransigenti, il partito di Putin si pone come una forza più “centrista”, questo è anche il motivo del vasto consenso democratico che Russia Unita ha riscosso nelle ultime elezioni politiche.

Putin ha ribadito peraltro il riconoscimento del valore del pluripartitismo, segnando un distacco netto dal vecchio sistema del partito unico, di epoca sovietica: “Ritengo importante che molti nuovi partiti abbiano fatto sentire la loro presenza. Conquistando posti negli organismi comunai e regionali, hanno gettato le basi per la partecipazione alle prossime campagne elettorali federali. Sono sicuro che sapranno degnamente competere con i protagonisti politici di vecchia data. La Russia oggi richiede un ampio dibattito politico per arrivare a risultati concreti”.

Tipico del pensiero storico-politico di Putin è di non rinnegare nessuna fase della storia russia (dallo zarismo al sovietismo), ma nello stesso tempo di restaurare esperienze politiche ormai consunte e slegate dalle esigenze del momento. Già al forum di Valdai del 19 settembre aveva affermato: “Ci siamo lasciati alle spalle l’ideologia sovietica, e non c’è ritorno. Chi propone un conservatorismo fondamentale, e idealizza la Russia pre-1917, sembra ugualmente lontano dal realismo, così come sono i sostenitori di un liberalismo estremo, all’occidentale”. Indubbiamente anche il liberalismo-liberismo-libertarismo occidentale è una ideologia consegnata al passato, così come l’attuale crisi economica e morale dell’Occidente testimonia.

Andando oltre le ideologie del passato Putin prospetta l’idea di una “sintesi” tra le istanze migliori che sono emerse appunto nelle ideologie politiche di massa, e prospetta l’idea di una “terza via”. Già a Valdai si espresse in tal senso: “tutti noi – i cosiddetti neo-slavofili e i neo-occidentalisti, gli statalisti e i cosiddetti liberisti – tutta la società deve lavorare insieme per creare i fini comuni di sviluppo. Ciò significa che i liberisti devono imparare a parlare ai rappresentanti della sinistra e che d’altro canto i nazionalisti devono ricordare che la Russia è stata formata specificamente come Stato pluri-etnico e multiconfessionale fin dalla sua nascita”.

Terza via significa anche conciliare in un sistema politico Ordine e Libertà. In tal senso egli interpreta e celebra la Costituzione Federale Russa dopo un ventennio dalla sua proclamazione: “La nostra Costituzione – dice Putin – mette insieme due priorità fondamentali, il supremo valore dei diritti e delle libertà dei cittadini e uno Stato forte, sottolineando il loro obbligo reciproco di rispettarsi e proteggersi a vicenda”.

Questi sono i temi del pensiero politico di Vladimir Putin. Sono temi che indubbiamente sollecitano una riflessione anche per ambienti che si riuniscono attorno alla rivista “Confini”, riguardo all’opportunità di costituire uno schieramento politico, economico, culturale che vada da Roma a Mosca: incentivando le interazioni economiche e i rapporti imprenditoriali; costituendo insieme agli amici russi una “Internazionale Europea” basata sui principi cristiani, nazionali, sociali comuni;  approfondendo l’idea di Europa sulla scia delle grandi intuizioni di Charles De Gaulle (l’Europa Unita dall’Atlantico a Vladivostok) e di Giovanni Paolo II (i due polmoni dell’Europa: cattolicesimo e ortodossia).

Alfonso Piscitelli

La Russie prône la révolution conservatrice contre les déchéances

Poutine a-t-il tout compris ?

 

La Russie prône la révolution conservatrice contre les déchéances

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

L’homme qui vénère Staline et le général Denikine, qui se veut l’héritier  d’une certaine grandeur soviétique se pose aussi en rempart de la tradition européenne. La Russie, dans un monde instable, doit être un rempart à l’hégémonie américaine et garantir les valeurs traditionnelles face à la déchéance du monde occidental. Toute la politique de Poutine tient en une phrase qui le désigne pour le mondialisme comme l’homme à abattre.

La troisième Rome est de retour

« Le monde devient de plus en plus contradictoire et agité. Dans ces conditions, c’est la responsabilité historique de la Russie qui se renforce », a déclaré M. Poutine lors de son adresse à la nation dans une salle d’apparat du Kremlin. Il s’agit de la responsabilité d’un « garant clé de la stabilité globale et régionale, et d’un État qui défend avec constance ses valeurs », a-t-il ajouté. « Nous ne prétendons pas à l’appellation de superpuissance, si on entend par là une ambition d’hégémonie mondiale ou régionale, nous ne nous attaquons aux intérêts de personne, n’imposons à personne notre parrainage, et ne faisons la leçon à personne », a déclaré M. Poutine, dans une allusion claire aux États-Unis. « Mais nous nous efforcerons d’être des leaders », a-t-il ajouté. Poutine, au pouvoir depuis plus de 13 ans et dont l’emprise sur le pays n’a cessé de s’affirmer, a aussi souligné sa détermination à faire aboutir le projet d’union économique eurasiatique de pays issus de l’ex-URSS, dans laquelle la Russie invite avec insistance l’Ukraine. Cette zone renforcée de libre-échange, qui se veut l'alternative à l'Est de l'accord d'association proposé par Bruxelles, regroupe aujourd'hui la Russie, la Biélorussie, le Kazakhstan et demain, l'Arménie, voire le Kirghizstan.

M. Poutine a enfin présenté son pays comme la dernière place forte du « conservatisme », notamment dans la conception de la famille par rapport à une déchéance morale supposée du monde occidental. Il a prôné « la défense des valeurs traditionnelles qui constituent depuis des millénaires la base morale et spirituelle de la civilisation de chaque peuple ». Poutine incarne donc une sorte de révolution conservatrice face à la subversion politique et morale que veut imposer l’occident atlantique. «On procède aujourd’hui dans de nombreux pays à une réévaluation des normes morales», a déclaré M. Poutine. Mais la Russie refuse «la soi-disant tolérance, stérile, qui ne fait pas de différence entre les sexes», a-t-il ajouté. La Russie a été vivement critiquée en Occident après la promulgation en juin dernier par le président Poutine d’une loi punissant la «propagande» homosexuelle devant mineurs, un texte dénoncé par des défenseurs des droits de l’homme qui le jugent potentiellement discriminatoire.

La Russie avait auparavant réagi avec vigueur à la légalisation du mariage homosexuel dans plusieurs pays dont la France. « On exige de la société, aussi étrange que cela puisse paraître, qu’elle mette sur le même plan le bien et le mal», a encore déclaré M. Poutine. La Russie a, en la matière, «un point de vue conservateur, mais le conservatisme a pour but d’empêcher un mouvement en arrière et vers le bas, dans le chaos des ténèbres», a-t-il conclu, citant le philosophe orthodoxe Nicolas Berdiaev, qui avait été expulsé de Russie après la révolution de 1917. Voila un langage clair et qui explique tout.

S'agissant de l'Ukraine, Moscou «n'impose rien à personne», a déclaré le président russe. «Si nos amis [ukrainiens] le souhaitent, nous sommes prêts à poursuivre le travail», a-t-il simplement ajouté. Contre toute évidence, Moscou prétend que, même sans l'adhésion de Kiev, un pays de 46 millions d'habitants considéré comme le berceau spirituel de la Russie, son union douanière resterait suffisamment «puissante». Et dément avoir exercé toute «pression» sur les industriels ukrainiens. C’est moins convaincant. 

En revanche il faut le croire quand il conclut : «Personne ne doit avoir d’illusions sur la possibilité d’obtenir la supériorité militaire sur la Russie. Nous ne l’accepterons jamais», a déclaré M. Poutine, rappelant avoir lancé un programme de réarmement du pays «sans précédent».

Meeting with Helmut Schmidt

 

Ex: http://eng.news.kremlin.ru

Late last night, Vladimir Putin met with Helmut Schmidt, a German statesman and the fifth chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1974 to 1982.

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Mr Chancellor, please allow me to warmly welcome you.

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to meet with you in Moscow, for you are not only the patriarch of European politics but of global politics as well.

You have done a great deal for the development of the Federal Republic and Europe, but you have also made significant contribution to the development of Russian-German relations. The decision on the “gas for pipe” contract was made while you were a member of the Government. In one of your articles I read that at that time, after the war, no hatred remained between the Germans and the Russians toward one another, and this was very good.

I want to tell you that we have made a great deal of progress in developing our relations. Today, Germany is one of our leading trade and economic partners. This year, I believe we will cross the threshold of $75 billion in trade. Some two thousand German companies are operating in Russia, there is a large volume of mutual investment, and all this is developing. We are carrying out large-scale joint projects, working not only at the ministerial level, but the regional level as well.

We are broadening contacts between civil societies and people, which is probably more important than anything.

I am very happy to see you. Welcome, Mr Chancellor.

HELMUT SCHMIDT (translated from Russian): Thank you very much, Mr President,

You have already mentioned that neither Russians nor Germans harbour any hatred toward one another. And that, indeed, is a surprise; having been a soldier in World War II, I simply cannot believe that we have reached such a positive result, which was simply impossible to dream about at the time.

Mr President, you have already said some beautiful words about me, but you must nevertheless know that I am almost 95 years old; I am a very old man who is hard of hearing and no longer needed. Today, I am only an observer; I am observing what is happening in the world. I can say that things have been worse on our planet, but we can still improve our current state of affairs. Nevertheless, today, I am no longer an active player in this arena; I am simply observing what is happening.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Your birthday is on December 23, isn’t it?

HELMUT SCHMIDT: That’s right. I was almost a Christmas baby; Christmas is celebrated in Germany on the 24^th.

You know, this is – how can I say – my farewell visit to Russia, because it has become very difficult for me to travel; I didn’t even really want to come here, because it truly is quite difficult for me. But ultimately, you must say your proper goodbyes to your neighbours, right? I have already visited China, the United States, Italy and France. But it was particularly important for me to come here, because I remember that at the end of the last century, in 1999, at the end of this century, at the end of the next century – we will always remain neighbours. In spite of any economic developments, or military developments, we will always be bound by fate; we will always remain neighbours. Granted, we have Poland and Ukraine between us, as well as other nations. But in good times and in bad times, we nevertheless remain neighbours forever – neighbours who depend on one another.

You know, about 40 years ago, the General Secretary [of the Central Committee of the CPSU] Leonid Brezhnev came to visit Germany – West Germany at the time – and met with then-Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt. This was in the 1970s and I was present at that meeting. And Brezhnev spoke for a very long time, listing the terrible actions we committed on Russian soil. I think he spoke for about 15 minutes. When he finished, I also made a long speech. I said, “Mr General Secretary, everything you just said is, of course, true. Everything is correct; we committed terrible acts on Russian soil. Yes, we started the war, all this was our fault, but if you say that all Germans were fascists, I must tell you that is not true. Yes, all this was our fault, but not all Germans were fascists. In most cases, these were simply German soldiers who felt that they must defend their Fatherland. Yes, all this happened, all this was simply awful, but it is nevertheless wrong to call all Germans fascists. These were simply soldiers who were misled to believe in the wrong values.”

I want to stress again: it truly is a miracle that there are nearly no feelings of hatred between our peoples today. And you very rightly mentioned that our relations are very good and tight, not only economically, but in many other areas as well. Indeed, we have become good neighbours, and I am one of the very many Germans who have always felt and continue to feel today that this is very important, to always have good neighbourly relations between our nations.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Mr Federal Chancellor, you said that this is your farewell visit. But I hope we will still remain in contact. You will soon be celebrating your birthday, so please allow me to wish you a Happy Birthday.

We truly know how much you have done since Mr Willy Brandt passed the baton on to you. And your opinion regarding the future of Russian-German relations is very important for us and for future politicians.

Of course, there has been a great deal of tragedy in our relations. But you rightly stated – the interpreter left out a detail, but it is important – the detail is that we have always been together, in good times and bad. And it will be the same in the future. Still, we need to strive to avoid dark spots; on the contrary, we have everything we need to grow together, rather than fight one another. Today’s trends in global development are pushing us toward joining forces.

I am certain that there are more elements uniting us than problems, which might cause disputes, both on a day-to-day level and politically. I would very much like for the opinions of people such as you to be spread even wider within our Russian establishment, as well as in Europe.

HELMUT SCHMIDT: You know, I would very much like that too. Although I must say that at this time, Europe is undergoing a crisis and things are not at their best; Europe is going through an institutional crisis.

I must say that the parliament is not very capable, the commission in Brussels is not functioning so well, various councils of ministers are also not working well, and the actions taken by individual governments leave something to be desired. I think there have been two outstanding leaders in Europe since the war: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Since then, the quality of European leaders is gradually going down.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: The Chancellor who preceded you, Willy Brandt, certainly belongs to this cohort, at the very least.

HELMUT SCHMIDT: I agree with you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If I may, I have already said that you firmly gripped the baton that was passed to you, and I think you also played a tremendous role, as did the other Federal Chancellor, Mr Helmut Kohl.

As for critical statements, you certainly have the right to make them. But I do not share your view. Still, you and I can discuss this matter further.

HELMUT SCHMIDT: But I haven’t criticised anything yet.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: So this was only a prelude.

HELMUT SCHMIDT: No, I just stated the facts.

VLADIMIR PUTIN:  You see, the global economic situation is complicated. It’s true that it is difficult to resolve the problems Europe faces, given the European nations’ large social burden, which is due to their development model. But on the other hand, it is precisely these difficulties that should prompt us to work together.

Wozu wird ständig auf Russland eingedroschen?

von Karl Müller

Ex: http://www.zeit-fragen.ch

Manch einer behauptet, die internationale Lage habe sich in den vergangenen Monaten entspannt. Ein direkter Krieg der USA und ihrer Verbündeten gegen Syrien sei verhindert worden, mit Iran habe es eine erste vertragliche Einigung gegeben. Überhaupt seien die USA, die in den vergangenen 20 Jahren eine Reihe von völkerrechtswidrigen Angriffskriegen des «Westens» angeführt hatten, mittlerweile so geschwächt, dass sie gar nicht mehr in der Lage wären, weitere grosse Kriege zu führen. Und die Verbündeten der USA, allen voran die anderen Nato-Staaten, von denen die meisten auch EU-Staaten sind, seien nicht dazu fähig, ohne die USA einen Krieg zu führen.

Dass die USA dabei sind, den Schwerpunkt ihres unmittelbaren Eingreifens in den pazifischen Raum zu verlagern und die EU-Staaten (unter der Führung Deutschlands?) – vielleicht auch versteckt hinter den hohen Wellen der NSA-Affäre – quasi die Stellvertreterrolle für die USA im Nahen Osten und in Afrika übernehmen sollen, gerät dabei allerdings leicht aus dem Blickfeld.

Die ständigen Berichte über die «angespannte» Lage in Asien, derzeit wieder zwischen China und Japan, können verschiedene Funktionen erfüllen. Zum einen können sie Stimmungsmache gegen China sein, zum anderen eine Art von Alarmismus, der den Europäern beweisen soll, wie wichtig die US-Präsens im Pazifik ist. Und zum dritten selbstverständlich auch die Vorbereitung auf einen tatsächlich geplanten Krieg gegen China.
Gar nicht diskutiert wird in der Öffentlichkeit die Politik der EU und hierbei wiederum insbesondere Deutschlands in Richtung Osteuropa und Russland. Dabei haben sich die Nato-Staaten und mit ihnen die EU seit 1990/91 – seit dem Ende von Warschauer Pakt und Sowjetunion und entgegen den Zusagen an die damalige sowjetische Regierung – das Ziel gesetzt, den Osten vom Westen her «aufzurollen», immer mehr Staaten Osteuropas bis hin zur russischen Grenze zu Mitgliedern von Nato und EU zu machen und zugleich Russland zu schwächen und Schritt für Schritt zu unterwerfen. Das Buch des Hintergrundberaters verschiedener US-Präsidenten, Zbigniev Brzezinski, «Die einzige Weltmacht» aus dem Jahr 1997 ist ein eindeutiger Beleg für diese Pläne.

In den neunziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts schien mit dem russischen Präsidenten Jelzin auch fast alles nach Plan zu laufen. Russland versank mehr und mehr in einem alle Lebensbereiche erfassenden Chaos und stand vor dem Bankrott: politisch, wirtschaftlich und auch gesellschaftlich. Naomi Klein hat in ihrem 2007 erschienenen Buch «Die Schock-Strategie. Der Aufstieg des Katastrophen-Kapitalismus» detailliert nachgezeichnet, wie versucht wurde, die russische Wirtschaft und vor allem den Reichtum an russischen Bodenschätzen mittels US-amerikanischer «Beratung» und der falschen Theorie von den Segnungen eines zügellosen Kapitalismus US-amerikanischen Finanzinteressen zu unterwerfen und dienstbar zu machen.

Mit dem Krieg der Nato gegen Jugoslawien 1999 trat jedoch eine erste Wende ein. Nun war nicht mehr zu übersehen, dass das US-amerikanische Konzept einer «neuen Weltordnung» ein imperialistisches Konzept war, das nichts anderes dulden wollte als die Unterwerfung unter die «einzige Weltmacht». Und mit dem Wechsel im russischen Präsidentenamt im Jahr 2000 versuchte die neue russische Regierung den Kurs zu ändern und die Wirtschaft und den Reichtum des Landes, aber auch das soziale Leben und die Politik des Landes vom US-amerikanischen Zugriff zu befreien – ein äusserst anspruchsvolles und wohl nur in kleinen Schritten zu erreichendes Anliegen in Anbetracht der Schwere und der Fülle der Probleme.
Vergleicht man die Jahre 2000 und 2010, so sind die Ergebnisse des russischen Weges beachtlich: Das russische Sozialprodukt hat sich verdoppelt, der Aussenhandel hat sich vervierfacht, die Schulden im Ausland betragen nur noch ein Sechstel des Ausgangswertes, die Höhe der Löhne stieg inflationsbereinigt um das 2,5fache, die Renten stiegen um mehr als das Dreifache, die Armutsrate ging um mehr als die Hälfte zurück, die Arbeitslosigkeit sank von 10 auf 7%, die Geburtenrate nahm um 40% zu, die Sterbefälle gingen um fast 10% zurück, die Säuglingssterblichkeit sank um 30%, die Lebenserwartung stieg um 5 Jahre, die Verbrechensrate sank um 10%, die Anzahl der Morde sogar um 50%, die Selbstmordrate sank um 40% und die Anzahl der Alkoholvergiftungen um mehr als 60%.

Grosse Unterstützung durch den «Westen» gab es dabei nicht. Im Gegenteil, die Mittel der westlichen Zersetzungsversuche waren nun zwar weniger offensichtlich, aber nicht weniger perfide. Und wer diese Mittel öffentlich anprangerte und Gegenmassnahmen ergriff, so wie es die russische Regierung nun schon seit Jahren tut, der machte sich im Westen gar nicht beliebt.

In dieser Kampagne gegen Russland spielten und spielen die westlichen Leitmedien eine besonders und zunehmend kritikwürdige Rolle. Während die Politik der EU und auch hier wieder insbesondere die deutsche Politik aus wirtschaftlichen Erwägungen heraus zweigleisig fuhr und fährt und versucht, antirussische Rhetorik mit lohnenden Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zu verknüpfen, sind die Leitmedien «von der Leine gelassen». Anders als zum Beispiel bei China, das hier und da zumindest wegen seiner wirtschaftlichen Leistungen (und seines Absatzmarktes) hofiert wird, ist die Medienberichterstattung über Russland auf eine unerträgliche Art und Weise ausschliesslich negativ. Und zwar so negativ, dass der unbedarfte Medienkonsument nur das Schlimmste über Russland denken soll. Dieses Negative umfasst in der Tat alle Lebensbereiche. Alte Vorurteile gegen Russland werden dabei tatkräftig bedient.

Nichtsdestoweniger hat die russische Regierung in den vergangenen 13 Jahren immer wieder das Angebot gemacht, gleichwertig mit den anderen Staaten Europas und zum Vorteil aller Seiten zusammenzuarbeiten. Solche Angebote reichen bis in die Gegenwart.
Nicht aus Liebe zum ukrainischen Volk, sondern aus geostrategischen Gründen versucht die EU seit mehreren Jahren, die Ukraine von Russland weg und zur EU hin zu ziehen. Heute ist bekannt, dass schon die «Orangenfarbene Revolution» 2004 eine vom Westen mit gesteuerte Smart-Power-Aktion war, die sich vor allem gegen Russland richtete. Dieser Umsturzversuch war letztlich nicht erfolgreich, und auch jetzt wieder sind die Pläne der EU nicht aufgegangen. Wie zu erwarten war, wurde das Scheitern der eigenen Politik hinter dem Vorwurf versteckt, Drohungen und Erpressungen aus Moskau sei es zuzuschreiben, dass die Annäherung der Ukraine an die EU unterbrochen worden sei. Dass die russische Regierung das Angebot gemacht hat, so zu verhandeln, dass die Anliegen der EU, der Ukraine und Russlands in einem Vertragswerk gleichberechtigt berücksichtigt werden und dass die EU es war, die dieses Angebot ausgeschlagen hat, wird hingegen nur selten erwähnt.
Nun hat der russische Präsident Putin eine 35 Minuten dauernde Unterredung mit Papst Franziskus in Rom gehabt. Anders als der gewohnte Tenor der Leitmedien sprach man von seiten des Vatikans von einer «herzlichen» Atmosphäre bei diesem Gespräch. Der russische Präsident besuchte den Papst nicht als ein geistlicher Führer der russisch-orthodoxen Kirche, sondern als Staatsmann. Aber als ein Staatsmann, der schon seit geraumer Zeit die Bedeutung einer grundlegenden Werteordnung für Fortschritte in der Entwicklung seines Landes, aber auch in der internationalen Politik betont. Anders als im Westen, in dem immer häufiger und ganz ungeschminkt ein utilitaristisches und materialistisches Politikmodell als Orientierungspunkt genannt wird, scheint die russische Regierung von einem personalen Menschen- und Weltbild auszugehen, das dem der christlichen Kirchen ähnlich ist. Wo gibt es das im Westen noch, dass die Bedeutung der Familie, der Religion und der Nation für das Wohl der Menschen und den Fortschritt hochgehalten wird? Wer denkt heute im Westen noch daran, dass die freie Entfaltung der Persönlichkeit ohne sichere Bindungen und gefestigte Identität ins Leere der postmodernen Oberflächlichkeit und Gleichgültigkeit abgleitet? Der Papst und der russische Präsident, so darf man annehmen, werden sich in der Diagnose des westlichen Zeitgeistes und seiner falschen Theorien und im Weg zu deren Überwindung sehr wohl gut verstanden haben.

Hier soll nicht behauptet werden, dass im heutigen Russland die Familien intakt sind, die Menschen nach den Werten der Religion leben und die Nation den Menschen schon den Rückhalt gibt, der wünschenswert wäre. Derjenige, der erkennt, dass hier noch viel zu tun ist, wird aber wohlwollend bleiben und hilfreich seine Hand reichen, wenn dies gewünscht wird. Und derjenige, der die Zersetzung von Familie, Religion und Nation anstrebt, wird genau das Gegenteil tun.

Nur täusche man sich nicht: Mehr Frieden auf der Welt kann man so nicht schaffen. Im Gegenteil, die Politik der Zersetzung zielt auf Konflikt und Eskalation. Ist man auch bereit, den Preis dafür zu zahlen? Sind die Bürger bereit, den hohen Preis dafür zu zahlen?
Wie aufgehetzt die Stimmung in Deutschland mittlerweile ist, zeigte eine Konferenz zum Thema «Für die Zukunft der Familie – Werden Europas Völker abgeschafft?» am 23. November in Leipzig. Eine Schar gewalttätiger Demonstranten störte die Konferenz massiv und traktierte die Gäste aus dem russischen Parlament mit Tritten. Und die anwesende Polizei liess die Dinge geraume Zeit geschehen, ohne einzugreifen. Früher einmal gab es das Gebot der Gastfreundschaft und des Respektes vor der anderen Meinung. Und wo stehen wir heute?    •

«Vergleicht man die Jahre 2000 und 2010, so sind die Ergebnisse des russischen Weges beachtlich: Das russische Sozialprodukt hat sich verdoppelt, der Aussenhandel hat sich vervierfacht, die Schulden im Ausland betragen nur noch ein Sechstel des Ausgangswertes, die Höhe der Löhne stieg inflationsbereinigt um das 2,5fache, die Renten stiegen um mehr als das Dreifache, die Armutsrate ging um mehr als die Hälfte zurück, die Arbeitslosigkeit sank von 10 auf 7%, die Geburtenrate nahm um 40% zu, die Sterbefälle gingen um fast 10% zurück, die Säuglingssterblichkeit sank um 30%, die Lebenserwartung stieg um 5 Jahre, die Verbrechensrate sank um 10%, die Anzahl der Morde sogar um 50%, die Selbstmordrate sank um 40% und die Anzahl der Alkoholvergiftungen um mehr als 60%.»

«Ohne moralische Werte, die im Christentum und anderen Weltreligionen begründet liegen, ohne Normen und moralische Werte, die sich Jahrtausende lang formiert und entwickelt haben, werden die Menschen unvermeidlich ihre Menschenwürde verlieren. Und wir halten es für richtig und für natürlich, diese moralischen Werte zu verteidigen und zu wahren.»

Rede des russischen Präsidenten Vladimir Putin vor dem Diskussionsforum Waldai vom 16. bis 19. September 2013 über «Russlands Vielfalt in der modernen Welt»

TWO STUDIES ON NEO-EURASIANISM

TWO STUDIES ON NEO-EURASIANISM

by Martin A. Schwarz

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org

Marlene Laruelle: Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, 288 p.

Alexander Höllwerth: Das sakrale eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin. Eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen Rechtsextremismus. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 59. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag 2007. 735 p.

Different strands of Russian Eurasianism (Laruelle, part 1)

Marlene Laruelle, a young but prolific French-American scholar, who has already published books about the classic Eurasianism and about its precursor in the 19th century, has now written “Russian Eurasianism. An ideology of Empire”, one of the first comprehensive academic studies of Neo-Eurasianism, or at least in the West. In difference to other works of this kind, the author sticks to her principles of impartiality, which does not mean that she does not present her own theories about history and function of Eurasianism as an “ideology of Empire”, but, in her own words “this book analyzes Neo-Eurasianism without judging it, for two reasons. First, I do not think one may, either methodologically or ethically, judge and analyze at the same time. Knowledge is a prerequisite of argument, but the former must precede the latter. Second, as Pierre-André Taguieff has remarked, ‘There is no need to put words into an author’s mouth or demonize him in order to critically examine theses that one believes must be opposed.’” (Laruelle, p. 13)
 
After a brief introduction in which she points to the relevance of the subject, her different approach (as mentioned), and the specific weight of the personalities she choose for presentation, the first chapter is devoted to the original Eurasianism from 1920-1930. This is a rather brief outline, as she has already written a book on the subject (L’Idéologie eurasiste russe ou comment penser l’empire, Paris 1999) , and brings not many new or original informations about a movement, which was the “conservative revolution” á la Russe, borrowing from Fascism and Bolshevism, but denouncing their short-comings and “Western” features. Two things though seem to be central for Laruelle’s understanding of the Eurasianists: the notion of a “geographic identity” for Russians, instead of the Western self-understanding of a “historic” and therefore progressive understanding of the identity of nations (which of course was transferred as “historical materialism” to Russia, and also was promoted by liberals and – inverted – by nostalgic monarchists). Therefore the geographic orientation of Eurasianism lies at the core of the movement, but was paradoxically developed in the Western exile: “The Eurasianist doctrine must be grasped in its fundamentally provocative character. It was born of the malaise of young nationalists who were reluctant to integrate into the host culture and who refused to resign themselves to the thought that links with homeland were definitely broken. Their rejection of Europe can only be understood if we remember that it was elaborated in the West by those Russians who, culturally speaking, were the most Europeanized.” (p. 25) While it is undeniable true, that Eurasianism as self-affirmation could only become self-knowledge in the encounter and subsequently (at least partial) rejection of Western ideologies, Laruelle shows a tendency to psychologize the phenomenon: “(Eurasianism) attempts to theorize what is above all an experience and a feeling: the experience of young men in exile who feel humiliated by the defeat of the Whites and try to understand the reality of the motherland and stay in touch with it.” (p. 47)
 
Another paradox or ambiguity can be found in the Eurasianist re-evaluation of the Far Eastern part of Russian history and culture, the Mongolic and Islamic one. „(…) before Eurasianism in the 1920s, no Russian intellectual movement displayed a real openness to the Turko-Mongol world. Asia was only ever highlighted under the aspects of Aryanism; it was a mere detour to reinforced claims of Europeaness.“ (p. 4) While this heritage was now used by the Eurasianists as an argument for the distinction of Russia not only to Western Europe but also to Pan-Slavism, the religions and cultures of Buddhism and Islam as such were denigrated in favor of a militant Orthodox Christianity. As the final parts of this book are dedicated to the relation between (neo-)Eurasianism and Islam, this question has not to be answered at this point.
 
After this brief, not very differentiated presentation of the original Eurasianists, Laruelle looks more in detail in the thinking of the three most influential neo-Eurasianists. These are, in her words “the theories of ethnogenesis elaborated by the Orientalist Lev N. Gumilëv (1912-92); the fascistic geopolitics of the fashionable theorist Aleksandr Dugin (1962-); the philosopher Aleksandr Panarin’s (1940-2003) defense of a multipolar world.” (p. 2)
 
Lev Gumilëv, the missing link – or rather: not missing link – between “old” and “new” Eurasianism enjoys nearly universal popularity in Russia. His theories of Ethnogenesis are generally excepted and taught in schools and universities, often without reference to the Eurasianist Weltanschauung, although they are deeply connected with their organic understanding of peoples and societies. While Gumilëv shares with the Eurasianists the idea that the individual draws the meaning from the totality, Gumilëv’s theory of ethnos is definitively on the more biologistic and deterministic side of possible variations of this idea. One that, as I must say, does not fit well with the ideas of an supra-natural origin of culture, which is the normal religious concept, and also especially stressed by the representatives of integral traditionalism (René Guénon, Julius Evola, and others), whose ideas were introduced to neo-Eurasianism by Aleksandr Dugin and Geidar Dzhemal. As Laruelle writes, “he [Gumilëv] takes up the original Eurasianists’ organicism and radicalizes it, using numerous biological or even genetic metaphors with far-reaching political implications”, although “he does not, strictly speaking, develop a political theory; and […| he cannot be considered a partisan of conservative revolution.” (p. 82) Instead he stressed (as must remembered: in the time of Soviet stagnation of the Brezhnev era) very social conservative norms: endogamy, family life, respect for the elderly, the nation, and rejection of any challenge to the powers that be, all necessary for the survival of the ethnos. Laruelle considers him – understandably – “the least intellectually relevant and the least original (Neo-)Eurasianist.” (p. 82) As Gumilëv was neither in touch with Western intellectuals nor in tune with Soviet science , “his thought, the product of intellectual solitude, was fundamentally autistic” (p. 82), This result, if true, is by the way in striking contradiction to his notion of the supremacy of the collective ethnos as a sovereign whole, and also a total contrast to the very mercurial and alert ideologue of Neo-Eurasianism, Aleksandr Dugin, well-known in the West and very present in Russian media.
 
Before devoting space to Dugin, Laruelle discusses Aleksandr Panarin, whom she clearly favors. She calls him intellectually superior to Dugin and Gumilëv, or to be exact: she writes that “many”, but unnamed “Russian scholars” (p. 86) did consider him to be. Be this at it may, Panarin was in the Yeltsin era a promoter of “people’s capitalism” (p. 87) and in the Putin era an advocate of “the restoration of both Orthodox spirituality and Stalinist statehood.” (p. 88) Maybe he could be considered as flexible or opportunist as Dugin? Nevertheless he presented a “civilized Eurasianism”, “civilized” here being the indicator of “the exact opposite to Dugin’s variety.” (p. 88) Nevertheless Panarin became a member of the Central Council of Dugin’s Eurasian Party in 2002, and planned to write a foreword to a book by Dugin, but as Laruelle writes, “death put an end to this unlikely cooperation.” (p. 89) Panarin’s work was marked by the search for a third way, “between the West’s egalitarian universalism and the ethnic particularism of the non-European world.” (p. 93) Panarin’s model for an Eurasian Empire in his words, as quoted by Laruelle: “The principle of cultural pluralism, as well as attention and tolerance for different ethnocultural experiences are combined with a monist political authority that tolerates no opposition.” (p. 97) One of the intriguing but also problematic ideas of Panarin was the need for a combination of the Eurasian religions into something, what he calls the “Great Tradition” (p. 98), especially a fusion between Orthodox Christianity and Islam. In his quoted words: “We need a new, powerful world-saving idea that would ensure a consensus between Orthodox and Muslim culture for the benefit of a common higher goal.” (p. 99) Later he seemed to have abandoned this attempt in favor of an Orthodox supremacism and a renewed pan-Slavism, according to Laruelle in reaction to the NATO bombardment of Serbia. (p. 100)
 
The chapter on Aleksandr Dugin in titled “Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?“ and was published before as a study by the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, DC. While the title indicates the direction and the somewhat limited approach to the multi-faceted Dugin, it can be said that this attempt to analyze the influences of the New Right and the „Traditionalist school“ on Dugin’s theories is of much superior quality than the ramblings of the ubiquous Andreas Umland and his school of Dugin bashing. Like the New Right in Western Europe Dugin has attempted to adopt the teachings of Carl Schmitt, Karl Haushofer, Ernst Niekisch and Moeller van den Bruck, the so-called “Conservative Revolution” in Germany’s Weimar period, to the present situation of Russia, which largely means the attempted forced Westernization through Globalization and the counter-measures of the re-establishment of state power. This “conservative revolution” intellectual heritage is accompanied by two more currents, the New Right or rather: Nouvelle Droite, and the „integral Tradition“, both not so much of German but French and Italian origins, although the thinking of Alain de Benoist not only has a strong „Conservative Revolutionary“ foundation, but was also influenced by Armin Mohler, the personal link between Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt, and Alain de Benoist. Additionally and largely unrelated to Benoist was the Belgian European activist Jean Thirirat, whose model of an „European nation“ has preformed Dugin’s „Eurasian nation“ as much as the French Nouvelle Droite’s think tank GRECE and their meta-political approach did for the somehow fluctuating style of Dugin’s intellectual enterprises. Therefore Laruelle is not mislead, when she writes: “Dugin distinguishes himself from other figures in the Russian nationalist movements precisely through his militant Europeanism, his exaltation of the Western Middle Ages, and his admiration for Germany. All these ideological features contrast strongly with the ethnocentrism of his competitors.“ (p. 128)
 
Even more on the point is her acknowledgment of the influence of René Guénon and Julius Evola, and their minor intellectual allies and successors, on Dugin. She calls „Traditionalism“ the „foundation of Dugin’s thoughts“. While it can correctly be said, that the notion of a primordial Tradition as the common origin of all the religious-cultural traditions of Eurasia, can not be found in the writings of the „founding fathers“ of Eurasianism and was directly alien to some of their ideas – the rambling against the „Roman-Germanic civilization“ - , nevertheless Dugin could find only here the organic and integral solution to some of the most urgent problems of Russia’s Eurasian (com)position between Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and other more minor elements: the transcendent – esoteric - unity of the exoteric different heirs of one primordial Tradition. Which is why – in our not Laruelle’s view – and without considering possible personal idiosyncrasy and political opportunism, his brand of neo-Eurasianism must be considered superior to those of his „competitors“, take for example the ill-fated attempt of Panarin’s Islam/Orthodoxy „melting pot“. Dugin’s claim of post-Guénonism because of his attempt to „Russify“ Guénon and to criticize the lack of references to Orthodox Christianity (p. 123), should be seen rather as a complementary effort. Similar is his attempt to reconcile Evolian „paganism“ (p. 123), or rather Aryanism, with Russian Christianity, with its strong national element. And not only of theoretically value is the distinction between Traditional Islam – as represented in the Sufi traditions and in Shiite Iran – and the Western-allied Wahhabite branch. In this context Laruelle makes reference to the important symposium “Islamic Threat or Threat against Islam?” (p. 118) which intended to establish a Russian-Muslim strategic partnership.

A „discourse analysis“ of Aleksandr Dugin (Höllwerth)

Alexander Höllwerth’s doctor thesis in Salzburg (Austria) on the „sacred Eurasian empire of Alexander Dugin“ impresses by it sheer quantity of more than 700 pages. The reader expects to gain access to fundamental texts of Russian neo-Eurasianism, otherwise only available in Russian. This expectation is fulfilled only partially because the author does give way to much space to his own objections, considerations and assumptions. A part called „contextualisations“, which brings nothing new, but gives an oversight of the historical Eurasianist movement, follows the book’s methodological reflections (reaching from Foucault’s discourse notion to Buruma’s occidentalism model).
 
Höllwerth then summarizes the literature from Stephen Shenfield („Russian Fascism“) to Andreas Umland (who is the editor of this volume and wrote its preface) on the biography of Aleksandr Dugin. He gives his estimation of the relationship between the subject of the book and the current Russian regime. Höllwerth states that Dugin is one of the few prominent intellectuals in Russia whom it is allowed to criticize the Kremlin without being banned from public discourse into the small niches of opposition media (which are rather the domain of Dugin’s enemies, the Western orientated liberals). Dugin has written in 2005 that the “acting of Putin can be evaluated as an artificially masked continuation of the pro-American, liberal, pro-oligarch strategy of Yeltsin, as a camouflage of the decline of Russia and its geopolitical spheres of influence.” (Höllwerth, p. 182) But this harsh assessment was followed by a phase of “reconciliation”. One could consider this as an evaluation of differing politics by a principled intellectual, the changes being on the side of the Kremlin and not on the side of the commentator. Höllwerth tends to mystify this point of view, but with the help of Dugin himself or rather his edition of Jean Parvulesco’s book “Putin and the Eurasian Empire” which differentiates between “Putin-1”, the real Putin, and “Putin-2”, the metaphysical Putin, the “mysterious builder of the Great Eurasian Empire of the End” (p. 184), the agent or tool of the great Eurasian conspiracy, a vulgarized or at least popularized variation of the initiation as described by René Guénon, but assuming in the sketch of Parvulesco rather counter-initiative features.
 
But what is the real and not “metaphysical” influence of Aleksandr Dugin, according to Höllwerth? “The attempt to estimate the ‘real political influence’ of Dugin is confronted with the difficulty to separate the plane of staging from the plane of factuality. This difficulty, with which the external scholar is confronted, seems to be part of a conscious strategy: the meaning of Dugin’s staging does, metaphorically put, not be to let the viewer look behind the scenery of the staging, but to focus his attention on the staging itself. (…) ‘Behind the scenery’ activities in connection with the Dugin phenomenon (secret services, political string-pullers, etc.) can not be excluded, are even probable, but should not lead to ambitious speculations based on few evidences.” (p. 194 f.) By the way, a sensationalist piece of work, based on such “ambitious speculations based on few evidences” was published by the same publishing house, which did not dare to include it in their scientific series and did flank it with cautious remarks. (Vladimir Ivanov: Alexander Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke. Fakten und Hypothesen zu den internationalen Verflechtungen der russischen Neuen Rechten. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2007) And of course also with a preface by the inevitable Andreas Umland. A work to be put on the same shelve with Jean Parvulesco’s political fiction, but one has to admit that it has better entertainment value than Höllwerth’s rather sour work.
 
With page 197 starts the real discourse-theoretical body of the book, being also the real achievement of Höllwerth: „Dugin’s construction of world and reality“. Which is itself parted into three: Space, Order, Time, or also: Geopolitics, State, and History. But through these 500 pages goes one leitmotif: Höllwerth tries to reduce the complexity of Dugin’s system of synthesis and distinction to simple dualisms; we and the other, Eurasia (=Russia) against the West, Empire against democracy, etc., which are in return recognized as redundant repetitions of one and only mantra of power. After Dugin’s philosophy and policy has passed through Höllwerth’s mechanism of discourse analysis we arrive at exactly the same result, a more temporizing genius like Andreas Umland did achieve with one piece of paper and only two quotes of Dugin out of context: the exposure of a dangerous enemy of freedom and democracy. Vade retro, Dugin! But with Höllwerth’s help the Western reader can uplift himself by dining from a broad protruding self-affirmation of Western values with a more than saturating scientific apparatus.
 
The most compelling aspect of Höllwerth’s de- and reconstruction of Dugin’s discourse is its stringent structure. Also the obvious inclusion of the most important Western and Eastern authors must be noted. The confrontation with the matadors of Western liberalism (Jürgen Habermas, Sir Karl Popper, Bassam Tibi, Jean-François Lyotard) could be seen as helpful. But the extensive reproduced arguments of Dugin’s counter-parts are put on the same level of discourse with Dugin, even where Höllwerth notes the metaphysical character of Dugin’s traditionalists argument. The resulting impossibility of a dialogue between equals is construed by Höllwerth as a deficit of Dugin’s discourse.
 
Another example of Höllwerth’s inadequate approach: Höllwerth did indeed – and this is rather remark- and laudable - read the French metaphysician René Guénon. But only to point out the deviations of Dugin from the Guénon traditionalist “standard”, which is rather pointless, because Höllwerth himself has already classified Dugin correctly as Russian Evolianist (p. 355 ff.) and most of Höllwerth’s arguments seemingly advocating Guénon could also been directed against Julius Evola, and on this subject a large intra-traditionalist discussion could be cited. More than once Höllwerth argues that Dugin postulates a metaphysical dichotomy of East and West, while Guénon did stress the common original unity and only accepted a difference East-West since the decline of the West beginning with the modern era. But the West is the Occident, the sphere of sunset, by definition, and essential before the temporal decline began. So Dugin and Guénon are both correct, if they are read correctly!
 
Not unrelated is another important objection, which may indeed be problematic if true. This is the dependency of Dugin not only from Western authors in general, but also in his understanding of Eastern, meaning mainly Russian-Orthodox authors. Höllwerth tries to argue this in detail in some examples (for example: p. 664 ff.), this unfortunately cannot be assessed by me, due to my lack of knowledge of the Russian sources. But one thing is clear, this argument of Western influence can cut in two directions. Höllwerth points out that in one of Dugin’s best known texts “The metaphysics of national-bolshevism” Dugin does refer to Sir Karl Popper’s view of Platon, (p. 320 ff.) but everything the ideologue of the “open society” does characterize negatively is affirmed by Dugin, therefore he arrives at the holistic, total state of the philosophical rulers and the caste of watchers, this not through an adequate study of Platon, but as the reverse of an one-sided caricature made by Popper. If we see the Western history of philosophy not as a footnote to Platon, as was famously said, but as the decline from Platon to Popper, which really was the case, we can still see a partial truth in Höllwerth’s criticism of Western dependency by Dugin, but we have also to recast it into a much greater blame against the West, not to have remained true to its origin.
 
The adherence of Dugin to a kind – and which kind - of nationalism or a nation-transcending form of Eurasianism would be another question which would need a deeper consideration than Höllwerth provides. The question of nation can in the East not be separated from the confession. From the point of view of metaphysics and tradition (in the sense of René Guénon) most of the values attributed to the Russian nation should be rather connected with the Russian-Orthodox church. The formulation of the “angels of peoples” by the great Russian philosophers and theologians are thought from the premise of the identity nation=religion and correct for all authentic traditions but certainly not for nations in the modern Western sense, where Evola’s and Guénon’s critique of nationalism is totally applicable. Höllwerth’s attempt to find a contradiction between Dugin and the different strands of thought which convene in his own – traditionalist, conservative revolutionary, Orthodox and Russian – can therefore not be followed so easy.
 
Russia’s Eurasian mission, which lies in the simple fact to be Eurasia in the excellent sense (there is a incomplete Eurasia possible without China or India or Western Europe, but without Russia it makes to sense to speak from Eurasia), is not necessarily a chauvinism of thinking of itself as the hub of the world, but a fact of geopolitics, which can be confirmed by a look at the world map. If the space called Russia would be not be populated by Russians, there would be another people populating this space, and it would have to adopt to the stated property of large space, and would become exactly “Russian” in this way. Thus it becomes clear, why Höllwerth can quote Dugin’s definition of the being (Wesen) of the Russians as space (extension) (p. 401). All this is to keep in mind, when Höllwerth agitates himself on Dugin’s corresponding affirmation, that Russia is the whole (of Eurasia).

The difference between land (Eurasia) and sea (Anglo-America), coincident with rise and decline, Orient and Occident (in the afore mentioned sense of temporal difference by same origin in the metaphysical North, p. 212 ff.) would demand another thorough study. Höllwerth makes a lot out of the seemingly different use of the term “Nomos of the earth” (Nomos der Erde) by Carl Schmitt and Aleksandr Dugin. While Schmitt did mean the search for a new principle of international law for the whole globe, Dugin exclusively uses the phrase as synonym with “Nomos of the land” as contrasted with “Nomos of the sea” (p. 249). This dichotomy of laws according to the different Nomos is not the only problem of mediation, the intra-Eurasian and therefore more urgent is the juristic mediation of the different tradition, when according to Dugin the law is not universal but traditional (for each tradition) (p. 475 ff.). The “integral traditionalism” is exactly the only possible foundation to preserve the differences of the traditions while acknowledging their common and in this sense universal origin (the primordial Tradition). The “universalism” of traditionalism allows to stress the discerned internally and the common ground externally. Especially Hindu tradition and Islam have traditionally absolutely no problems in recognizing the other traditions as varieties of the one Tradition. (But Dugin may not evaluate these two as much as would be desirable, especially in their function of beginning and closing the cycle of mankind.) Finally it becomes absurd when Höllwerth in his “discourse analysis” regards the universalism of all traditions as structurally equivalent to the arrogant “universalism” of Western liberalism. On the one hand, favored by Dugin, the land-bound traditions take all part in the whole of Tradition (analogue to the classic model of idea by Platon), on the other hand, the Western universalism, championed by Höllwerth, is nothing more than a particular, very late development deviation from one specific tradition, the rejection of Western Christianity in its own boundary, and its violent expansion on the way of the world’s seas, postulating itself as the only valuable, and this exactly because it is anti-traditional (“enlightened”)!
 
Coping with Dugin’s philosophical and geopolitical notion of sacredness, Höllwerth seems to misled by a point of view, which he seems to have adopted from Mircea Eliade, a founder of the modern science of comparative religion (p. 209, p. 529 f.). A partial truth, the difference of profane and sacred, is been used as absolute segregation. There exist sacred places (and times), and on this the sacred geography (and sacred history) is founded, whose importance for Dugin’s geopolitics Höllwerth does carve out – much to his credit, as this level of argument is overlooked to often as pure rhetoric. But are there also in a strict sense profane things? “Come in, here do dwell Gods, too”, Heraclitus did say. Or, speaking with Guénon: there exists no profane thing, but only a profane point of view. Dugin seems to look at all questions also – certainly not only – in a metaphysical perspective, and in general he is able to explain why a certain political action is seen as necessary in this metaphysical perspective by him. This opens here the possibility of misuse through the sacralization of the profane, as on the other hand the profanization of the sacred in the West. The Western man is the one who takes the utilitarism as the measure for all things. The pure action – of which Julius Evola speaks - , which principle of not-clinging to the fruits of action has been affirmed by Dugin, the exact opposite of utilitarism, can only be seen as measure for the validity of Dugin’s decisions. To say, that he may not always be in the right in his metaphysical decisions is a different thing than saying he is guided by profane utility, as the sacred point of view does not make a saint. Höllwerth´s grasp of this problems is flawed because of his attempt to arrange the perceived oppositions into mirrored congruencies, instead of acknowledgment their structurally inequality, which would lead to the necessarily conclusion of the metaphysical superiority of the Eurasian tradition over its Western descent and rival.

Eurasianism and Islam (Laruelle, continuation)

In the last two chapters of her book Marlene Laruelle gives attention to the Muslim Eurasianists, first between the Muslim minorities of the Russian federation and then outside. This topic, though well-known by specialists, did not grasp the attention of a broader public as much as for example Dugin’s role in relation to the Kremlin. Therefore Laruelle’s retelling of the sometime short-lived organizational and personal development is very helpful, but can obviously not been retold in this review. In general there are two kinds of involvement of the Muslim minorities, one in specific Islamic Eurasianist parties, and the other the involvement of Islamic representatives in the general Eurasianist movement. There are two rival organizations representing the Muslim citizens of the Russian Federation, who were headed by two personal rivals, Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, who died shortly ago, and Mufti Ravil Gainutdin. The first was a member of Dugin’s party, close to the Kremlin, and a friend of the Russian patriarch Alexis II (p. 156), who coincidentally also died shortly ago. Gainutdin on the other hand keeps more distant to the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin (p. 158), and supports one of the more important Eurasianists rival of Aleksandr Dugin, Abdul-Vakhed V. Niizaov and his Eurasianist Party of Russia. (p. 161) The author summarizes the differences of the Muftis, which also reflect the differences of Dugin and Niizaov: “Tadzhuddin and Gainutdin embody two poles of traditional Russian Eurasianism: on the one hand, Russian nationalism and Orthodox messianism; and on the other hand, a more secular patriotism, which combines great-power ambitions with an acknowledgment of Russia’s multiethnic and multireligious character. Thus Eurasianism has become one of the crystallization points between the various Islamic representative bodies (…)” (p. 161 f.) Alongside these two mainstream bodies of Islam in Russia, there exist many smaller groups. One deserves special mention, the Islamic Commitee of Russia, lead by a former ally of Aleksandr Dugin, who broke with him on several issues, Geidar Dzhemal. The philosopher Dzhemal is an Azeri Shiite (Shiism being the dominant branch of Islam in Azerbaijan), with a close relation to the Islamic Republic of Iran, what separates Dzhemal from the other mentioned Muslim representatives. Strangely this fact is not mentioned by Laruelle. What she stresses, is the importance Dzhemal gives to Islam for securing Russia’s future: “Dzhemal […] states: ‘Russia’s only chance to avoid geopolitical disappearance is to become a Islamic state.’ Thus the movement remained on the borderline of Eurasianism, because it talked of conversion rather than cultural symbiosis ” (p. 147) Dugin’s apparently strong opposition to any conversions on the other hand is self-contradictory given his heavy reliance of his “Traditionalist” foundation on the teaching of René Guénon, also known as Sheikh Abd al-Wâhid Yahya. But it cannot neglected that the Orthodox-Islamic tension in the Eurasianist movement is as much ethnic as religious. The Turkic people can claim to represent “Eurasia” even more than Russians do. “In this view, the Russian people are European and party alien to Eurasia, as opposed to the Turkic people, who are considered to better illustrate the great meeting between Europe and Asia. Russia is no longer understood as a great power but as the most backward part of Europe, by contrast with the dynamism of the Far East and China.” (p. 169) A certain ambiguity in this question goes back to the classic Eurasianist movement of the Twenties of the last century, as Laruelle earlier in a different context has already stated: “Eurasianism’s place within the Russian nationalist spectrum has remained paradoxical due to the fact that it can be interpreted in either a ‘Russocentric’ or a ‘Turkocentric’ way. However, the paradox is not simply in the eye of the outside beholder; it has also divided the Neo-Eurasianists, who have accused each other of advocating the supremacy of one people over another.” (p. 5)
 
Naturally there is no question on which side the Eurasianist interpretation leans in the cases of Turkish Eurasianism outside of Russia, which is the final topic of this manifold book. In Kazakhstan one can state a “Eurasianism in Power” (p. 171), but a pragmatic Eurasianism this is, without any of the eschatological or traditionalist features of Dugin’s world-view. But Kazhakh Eurasianism as a whole is a multifaceted movement: “’Eurasianist’ Kazakh nationalism has several embodiments: a literary tradition introduced by Olzhas Suleimenov; a highly pragmatic variety used by the presidential administration; and a type of Eurasianist rhetoric that merely masks a much more traditional view of the nation and its right to exist, and mentions Russia only in the negative.” (p. 172) Suleimenov being a friend and ally of Lev Gumilëv (p. 175) and an apologist of “multiethnicity, tolerance, and diversity”, as characteristics of Eurasia. (p. 175) Also present in this intellectual Eurasianism seems to be a religious syncretism, “embracing all the religions that have ever (co)existed in the steppe. For example, the Kazakh Eurasianists make a great deal of archaeological traces of Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism, trying to go beyond the classic Orthodox-Islamic dualism.” (p. 176) President Nazarbaev proposed a “Union of Eurasian States” already in 1994 (p. 177) and embodies a mainly “economically based Eurasianism, whose integrationists ideas are popular among those who have suffered from the breakdown of links between the former Soviet republics.” (p. 177) But Nazarbaev is nothing less than an ideology-free technocrat, he has written even a book “In the stream of history”, in which he claims the Aryan and sedentary origin of Kazakhstan, predating the Mongol nomadic arrival. (p. 186) Additionally, the country’s Muslim character of the country is stressed, and Nazarbaev is proud of the global Islamic relevance Muslim scholars of Kazhakh origin like Al-Farabi and Al-Buruni.
 
Finally the only example of Eurasianism beyond the border of the former Soviet Union, studied by Laruelle, is the case of Turkey. Here the Eurasianist claim of the Turkish people goes along with the implication, “that Russia and Turkey are no longer competing for the mythical territory of Inner Asia – which both Eurasianists and pan-Turkists claim as their people’s ancestral homeland – but are Eurasian allies.” (p. 171) Laruelle starts by postulating common ideological roots of Eurasianism and Turkism, the “official Turkish state discourse on the nation’s identity” (p. 193), in romanticism and “Pan-“Ideologies (p. 188), but this seems to be rather a feature of Pan-Slavism than of Eurasianism with its re-evaluation of the non-Russian strands of the Empire. A similar development in the development from Turkism to Avrasyanism seems to be lacking. Rather it can be seen as a turning the back to the West, to which Mustafa Kemal, the so-called Atatürk (Father of the Turks), wanted to direct the aspirations of the Turks. The author states the original competition between the Turkish Avrasyian tendency and the Russian Eurasianist movements, similar to the natural antagonistic relation of nationalisms. But the interesting developments are the recently “attempts (…) to turn the two ‘Eurasias’ into allies rather than competitors” and parallel “a Dugin-style ideologization of the term in response to American adcendancy.” (p. 198) The few pages Laruelle dedicates to these developments are rather brief, and she has in the mean time published a more extensive study (Russo-Turkish Rapprochement through the Idea of Eurasia: Alexander Dugin’s Networks in Turkey, Jamestown Foundation, Occasional Paper, 2008), which itself has been overtaken by the dismantling of large parts of these „networks“ through the Ergenekon affair, but which is definitively outside the scope of this review.
 
The different manifestations of Eurasianism in this book leave the author and the reader with the question of the unity of Eurasianists idea. Laruelle states that Eurasianism is “a classic example of a flexible ideology. This explains its success, its diversity, and its breadth of coverage.” (p. 221) Without arguing about sheer words the author cannot be followed in her strict subsumption of Eurasianism under the term nationalism. At least a more nuanced view of nation in a more traditional sense, common to both Orthodox and Islamic thinking, in difference to the Western concept of nation-state (as I discussed in the part on Höllwerth) would have to be considerated instead of stating that the Eurasianists “concept of ‘civilization’ is only a euphemism for ‘nation’ and ‘empire.’” (p. 221).

 

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IL “NIET” DELL’UCRAINA ALL’UE: MITI E REALTÀ

IL “NIET” DELL’UCRAINA ALL’UE: MITI E REALTÀ

Giuseppe Cappelluti

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org

Il 21 novembre 2013 il Primo Ministro ucraino Nikolaj (in ucraino Mykola) Azarov ha annunciato che il suo Paese non intende più firmare l’Accordo di Associazione con l’Unione Europea e che intende invece rilanciare le proprie relazioni commerciali con la Russia, l’Unione Doganale Eurasiatica e i Paesi della CSI[i] ^[1]. Nello stesso giorno, in una seduta parlamentare condita da forti polemiche e scambi di accuse, il voto contrario dei comunisti e del Partito delle Regioni attualmente al governo ha impedito il trasferimento a Berlino per cure mediche dell’ex Primo Ministro Julia Tymošenko, che l’Unione Europea aveva posto come una delle maggiori precondizioni per la stipula dell’accordo che avrebbe portato alla liberalizzazione degli scambi commerciali tra UE e Ucraina, salvo che per i prodotti agricoli[ii] ^[2].

Si tratta, probabilmente, dell’atto finale di una commedia che perdura ormai da diversi anni, e la cui conclusione ha lasciato sorpresi in molti. Dopo la guerra commerciale tra Ucraina e Russia dello scorso agosto e l’approvazione da parte del governo di alcuni dei provvedimenti in termini di giustizia, sistema elettorale e riforme economiche richiesti dall’Unione, la prospettiva che il Vertice di Vilnius previsto per il prossimo 29 novembre si sarebbe concluso con la sottoscrizione dell’Accordo di Associazione tra Unione Europea e Ucraina non era più così lontana. A metà ottobre, poi, il futuro europeo dell’Ucraina pareva ormai vicino quando il Presidente Viktor Janukovič annunciò la possibilità di concedere alla Tymošenko la possibilità di recarsi all’estero per cure mediche[iii] ^[3]. Ma così non è stato, e anzi gli ultimi giorni prima della decisione finale hanno visto un raffreddamento dei rapporti euro-ucraini e una parallela intensificazione dei contatti tra Janukovič e Putin. Un epilogo quasi preannunciato, malgrado tutto, e che non ha mancato di suscitare polemiche.

Dall’Occidente, come si può facilmente immaginare, sono arrivate forti critiche nei confronti di Janukovič e della Russia. L’Alto Commissario per la Politica Estera Catherine Ashton ha dichiarato che “la decisione è un fallimento non solo per l’UE, ma anche per il popolo ucraino” e il Ministro degli Esteri svedese Carl Bildt, uno dei protagonisti delle trattative tra l’UE e l’Ucraina per l’Accordo di Associazione, ha accusato la Bankova di essersi chinata alle “brutali pressioni” del Cremlino. Più contenuta la reazione del Ministro degli Esteri tedesco Guido Westerwelle, il quale ha affermato che “l’Ucraina ha il diritto di scegliere quale percorso seguire”[iv] ^[4]. Anche la stampa occidentale è schierata in gran parte contro Janukovič e Putin. Deutsche Welle, ad esempio, titola “Le minacce russe bloccano l’accordo commerciale euro-ucraino”[v] ^[5], e il titolo del New York Times è sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda[vi] ^[6]. Non pochi, poi, hanno accusato Janukovič di aver sacrificato la prospettiva europea sull’altare dei propri interessi personali mantenendo in carcere una sua pericolosa rivale. Putin, dal canto suo, ha rispedito al mittente le accuse di minacce denunciando un “ricatto” dell’Europa nei confronti dell’Ucraina[vii] ^[7].

Si tratta, però, di posizioni che non focalizzano il problema, oltre a denotare una palese faziosità antirussa. La Tymošenko, infatti, è solamente la punta dell’iceberg, e se Azarov alla fine ha scelto di gettare la spugna i motivi sono soprattutto di natura economica. L’Ucraina, pur avendo un notevole potenziale agricolo e industriale, è stata notevolmente colpita dalla fine del sistema sovietico e dalla rottura dei legami tra le Repubbliche dell’URSS, ma il Paese, a differenza delle Repubbliche Baltiche, è stato incapace di sostituirli con qualcosa di nuovo. Allo stesso tempo, però, non ha potuto né voluto mantenere forti legami economici con la Russia e i Paesi della CSI come ha fatto la vicina Bielorussia. Questo limbo è dovuto in gran parte alle forti divisioni tra la popolazione ucraina: l’Ovest è culturalmente legato all’Europa, le regioni orientali e meridionali guardano verso la Russia e sono di religione ortodossa, mentre una porzione non marginale degli abitanti del Paese, pur ricordando i Russi sotto molti aspetti e parlando russo più che ucraino, guarda con favore alla prospettiva di entrare nell’Unione Europea e agli apparenti benefici che comporta quest’adesione, mentre vede la Russia in una luce tutt’altro che positiva. Tutto ciò ha limitato in maniera non indifferente lo sviluppo del Paese, condannato a oscillare tra Occidente e Russia ma senza diventare parte integrante dell’uno o dell’altra.

Negli anni Duemila l’Ucraina ha goduto di un buon andamento economico, ma la crisi del 2008 ha colpito il Paese molto duramente. Gli anni successivi hanno visto una leggera ripresa, ma il Paese continua ad essere uno dei più poveri d’Europa. La Naftogaz, la società nazionale degli idrocarburi nonché la maggiore azienda del Paese, è fortemente indebitata con Gazprom, anche a causa di quei contratti sfavorevoli al Paese sottoscritti nel 2009 dalla Tymošenko quando era ancora Primo Ministro[viii] ^[8]. Nel 2011 la prospettiva di una fusione tra Naftogaz e Gazprom in cambio di sconti sul gas è stata rigettata dal governo ucraino[ix] ^[9], mentre il passaggio al colosso russo della gestione  della rete di gasdotti, ma non della proprietà, è al momento bloccato in quanto tale passo richiederebbe l’approvazione di una riforma costituzionale[x] ^[10]. Il problema, però, resta: Kiev paga a Mosca prezzi esosi per il suo gas (400 dollari ogni 1000 metri cubi), e a fine ottobre Gazprom ha richiesto alla controparte ucraina un pagamento di ben 882 milioni di dollari per le forniture di gas di agosto, portando così il debito della compagnia a 1,4 miliardi[xi] ^[11].

I contratti firmati nel 2009 hanno valenza decennale, e la Russia si è mostrata disposta a una loro revisione solo in cambio dell’adesione dell’Ucraina all’Unione Doganale. Lo sconto proposto da Mosca consentirebbe a Kiev di risparmiare circa 8 miliardi l’anno[xii] ^[12], ma malgrado tutto il Paese non sembra intenzionato a compiere un passo che implicherebbe dire addio alla prospettiva europea. Il Paese, anzi, ha avviato da circa due anni una strategia per la riduzione della dipendenza dal gas russo, basata soprattutto sulla diversificazione degli approvvigionamenti e sullo sfruttamento delle riserve di gas non convenzionale (il cosiddetto “gas da argille” o shale gas)[xiii] ^[13]. Si tratta, però, di una mossa tardiva, che probabilmente non darà i risultati sperati, e in ogni caso la strategia di diversificazione degli approvvigionamenti portata avanti da Kiev è di gran lunga in ritardo nei confronti di quella delle vie di trasporto che la Russia porta avanti da più di quindici anni e che, con la futura entrata in funzione del gasdotto South Stream, potrà dirsi a pieno regime. E’alquanto probabile, quindi, che la Russia uscirà vittoriosa da questa “guerra”.

L’intreccio tra gas e politica è un altro grande problema dell’Ucraina odierna. La possibilità di offrire gas a prezzi politici è infatti un importante cavallo di battaglia per i politici ucraini, specie a ridosso degli appuntamenti elettorali, ma i vari governi hanno sempre osteggiato la possibilità di accettare una soluzione affine a quella bielorussa, che recentemente ha venduto alla Gazprom la società che gestisce la rete di metanodotti del Paese. Il risultato è che l’Ucraina, pur acquistando il gas a prezzi piuttosto alti, lo vende ai suoi cittadini a prezzi convenzionati, con conseguenze che si possono facilmente immaginare. Nel 2011 l’Ucraina ha dovuto chiedere un prestito di 15 miliardi di dollari al Fondo Monetario Internazionale, ma l’organizzazione pose come precondizione l’abolizione dei sussidi sul gas, e il rifiuto di Kiev segnò il fallimento dell’accordo[xiv] ^[14]. Un’analoga richiesta di prestito presentata all’FMI due anni dopo si è anch’essa risolta con un fallimento, e questo solo il giorno prima del gran rifiuto di Azarov[xv] ^[15]. Il fallimento delle trattative tra l’Ucraina e l’FMI ha avuto senza dubbio un ruolo cruciale nell’allontanare Kiev da Bruxelles e nel riavvicinarla a Mosca. Un riorientamento che ha già iniziato a dare i propri frutti: il 24 novembre, infatti, il Cremlino ha annunciato la propria disponibilità a una revisione dei termini dei contratti sul gas con l’Ucraina[xvi] ^[16].

Accanto alle questioni del gas e dei debiti, va ricordata quella della bilancia commerciale del Paese. Per la Russia un eventuale ingresso dell’Ucraina nell’Unione Doganale rappresenterebbe senza dubbio un grande successo geopolitico e morale, ma dal punto di vista economico i benefici sono più limitati, sebbene consentirebbe al mercato eurasiatico una maggiore autosufficienza e lo renderebbe più attraente agli occhi di esportatori e investitori stranieri. Ben maggiori sono invece i vantaggi per l’Ucraina: secondo alcune stime, infatti, gli sconti sul gas, l’abolizione delle misure protettive e delle barriere tecniche e la rimozione delle tasse sulle esportazioni garantirebbe al Paese esteuropeo guadagni pari a 11-12 miliardi annui[xvii] ^[17]. Ben diverso, invece, è il discorso nei riguardi dell’Accordo di Associazione con l’UE. L’industria ucraina, malgrado il suo potenziale, non è competitiva con quella dei Paesi europei, e si prevede che un’eventuale stipula dell’accordo provocherebbe un peggioramento del 5% della bilancia commerciale del Paese[xviii] ^[18]. L’impatto sarebbe particolarmente pesante nelle regioni orientali, polmone industriale del Paese nonché roccaforte elettorale di Janukovič, e agli inizi di novembre Azarov ha dichiarato che il Paese necessiterebbe di 150-160 miliardi di euro per allineare agli standard europei l’industria ucraina[xix] ^[19]. Ma l’UE non risulta particolarmente propensa ad aiutare Kiev: alla richiesta di quest’ultima di un prestito di 8 miliardi di dollari, infatti, Bruxelles ha risposto offrendone uno di 1 miliardo di euro (ossia circa 1,3 miliardi di dollari), e peraltro ha posto come condizione l’approvazione di tagli potenzialmente destabilizzanti per il Paese[xx] ^[20].

Nell’UE l’Ucraina sarebbe una seconda Grecia, mentre il suo habitat naturale sembra essere un’Eurasia dove il suo potere sarebbe secondo solo a quello di Mosca. Un Ucraino occidentale o particolarmente “patriottico” può dire che “l’Ucraina non è la Russia”, e ciò è sostanzialmente vero se si parla, ad esempio, di Leopoli o della Transcarpazia; ma, allo stesso modo, non è la Lettonia, e non ha la stessa propensione ai sacrifici che ha dimostrato Riga nel cammino che l’ha portata all’adozione dell’euro. Nella prima metà di ottobre Azarov ha dichiarato che “nulla vieta all’Ucraina di sottoscrivere l’Accordo di Associazione con l’UE e, nel contempo, creare un’area di libero scambio con l’Unione Doganale”[xxi] ^[21], ma quest’idea, all’apparenza la migliore soluzione per il Paese, non è fattibile per il tipo di rapporti che si sono venuti a creare tra Russia e Ucraina. I due Paesi, infatti, hanno frontiere sostanzialmente aperte, e l’abolizione dei dazi tra UE ed Ucraina provocherebbe, almeno secondo il Cremlino, un’invasione di prodotti europei a prezzi non gravati dai dazi sui mercati dell’Unione Doganale, rendendo così necessaria l’introduzione di misure protettive nei confronti di Kiev[xxii] ^[22]. Le perdite dovute alle sanzioni, a detta di Janukovič, si aggirerebbero attorno ai 15 miliardi di dollari, e ciò, per il Paese, sarebbe un’autentica pugnalata[xxiii] ^[23]. Il fatto che l’accordo di libero scambio con l’UE escluda i prodotti agricoli, che per l’Ucraina sono una delle maggiori merci di esportazione, non è propriamente di secondaria importanza.

La svolta del 21 novembre, che alcuni in Ucraina hanno già ribattezzato “il giovedì nero”, è senza dubbio una sconfitta non solo per l’Unione Europea, ma per l’intero Occidente, che malgrado l’impegno degli Stati Uniti si rivela più debole della Russia nello spazio ex-sovietico. Per la Russia, invece, si sta per chiudere un autunno denso di successi: la mediazione di Putin per prevenire l’intervento americano in Siria, la svolta eurasista dell’Armenia, le elezioni in Georgia e il miglioramento della posizione della Russia in una serie di indicatori economici. Ma la virata di Kiev verso l’Eurasia è tutt’altro che priva di risvolti positivi per l’Europa. La Russia forte e imperialista tanto osteggiata da politici europei e attivisti dei diritti umani, infatti, per l’Europa è di gran lunga meno pericolosa di una Russia debole. La Russia moderna, infatti, non è l’Unione Sovietica, e a differenza di quest’ultima non ha e né può avere ambizioni universaliste. L’assenza del ruolo dell’ideologia comunista obbliga il Paese a promuovere i propri interessi nel mondo non in quanto portabandiera della rivoluzione mondiale, ma in quanto Russia, e ciò riduce di molto il suo raggio d’azione impedendole di intervenire qualora non siano in gioco i propri interessi diretti o quelli di una nutrita schiera di cittadini russi o di Russi etnici. Allo stesso modo l’Unione Doganale, ispirata ai principi del libero mercato, non propone un ritorno al passato. Ma molte delle sfide che oggi la Russia si trova ad affrontare sono comuni all’Occidente: il fondamentalismo islamico, il traffico internazionale di stupefacenti, la stabilità di regioni potenzialmente a rischio come l’Asia Centrale. Per l’Europa, quindi, è di fatto più utile un’Ucraina filorussa che non un’Ucraina nell’UE: la prima contribuirebbe in maniera sostanziale al miglioramento della sicurezza e della situazione economica dell’Eurasia, la seconda si trasformerebbe inevitabilmente in una nuova Grecia. Ma, per vedere l’Ucraina fare domanda di ammissione nell’Unione Doganale (o, in alternativa, intraprendere seriamente il cammino dell’eurointegrazione), dovremo probabilmente attendere il 2015. L’anno delle prossime elezioni presidenziali.

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[i] ^[24] http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_22/Kiev-suspends-drafting-of-the-EU-Ukraine-Association-Agreement-8935/ ^[25]

[ii] ^[26] http://lenta.ru/news/2013/11/21/no/ ^[27]

[iii] ^[28] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/18/us-ukraine-tymoshenko-idUSBRE99H05120131018 ^[29]

[iv] ^[30] http://rt.com/news/eu-ukraine-agreement-reaction-125/ ^[31]

[v] ^[32] http://www.dw.de/russian-threats-block-ukraine-eu-trade-deal/a-17244844 ^[33]

[vi] ^[34] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/world/europe/ukraine-refuses-to-free-ex-leader-raising-concerns-over-eu-talks.html?_r=0 ^[35]

[vii] ^[36] http://italian.ruvr.ru/2013_11_23/Putin-lEuropa-usa-con-lUcraina-la-pressione-e-il-ricatto/ ^[37]

[viii] ^[38] I contratti del 2009 sono stati la causa della condanna della Tymošenko a 7 anni di carcere per abuso di potere.

[ix] ^[39] http://en.ria.ru/business/20110903/166395045.html ^[40]

[x] ^[41] http://temi.repubblica.it/limes/nella-guerra-del-gas-tra-russia-e-ucraina-vincera-putin/45202 ^[42]

[xi] ^[43] http://rt.com/business/ukraine-naftogaz-stopped-gazprom-536/ ^[44]

[xii] ^[45] R. Dragneva e K. Wolczuk, Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU: Cooperation, Stagnation or Rivalry?, Chatham House, Londra, 2012, p. 11.

[xiii] ^[46] http://temi.repubblica.it/limes/lucraina-sogna-lindipendenza-energetica-ma-rischia-un-brusco-risveglio/54205 ^[47]

[xiv] ^[48] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/31/uk-ukraine-eu-idUKBRE99U0W320131031 ^[49]

[xv] ^[50] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/world/europe/ukraine-blames-imf-for-collapse-of-accord-with-european-union.html?_r=0 ^[51]

[xvi] ^[52] http://tengrinews.kz/sng/rossiya-soglasilas-peresmotret-gazovyiy-kontrakt-s-ukrainoy-246070/ ^[53]

[xvii] ^[54] http://kapital.kz/world/20375/vstuplenie-v-ts-prineset-ukraine-12-mlrd.html ^[55]

[xviii] ^[56] http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/quale-unione-per-lucraina/20091/ ^[57]

[xix] ^[58] http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en/publish/article?art_id=246840758&cat_id=244314975 ^[59]

[xx] ^[60] http://rt.com/business/5-reasons-ukraine-eu-155/ ^[61]

[xxi] ^[62] http://tengrinews.kz/sng/ukraina-ne-vidit-prepyatstviy-dlya-odnovremennogo-vstupleniya-v-es-i-ts-243364/ ^[63]

[xxii] ^[64] http://rt.com/business/5-reasons-ukraine-eu-155/ ^[61]

[xxiii] ^[65] http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/11/ukraine-and-eu-0 ^[66]

La voie ukrainienne

La voie ukrainienne

http://www.dedefensa.org

Bien entendu, les “images” abondent, c’est-à-dire les illustrations des habituelles narrative en développement pour ce genre de situation. («A broad desire to change the way their country is run is driving Ukrainians to the streets.», nous disent, la plume mouillée, Jana Kobzova et Balazs Jarabik, dans EUObserver le 3 décembre 2013.) Il y a, dominant le tout, la narrative vertueuse et pleine d’espérance démocratique de la “Révolution Orange-II”, qui a l’avantage, pour nombre de plumitifs de la presse-Système, d’user de la technique du “copié-collé” avec leurs articles de 2003-2004 pour nous présenter d’excellentes analyses-Système de la situation ukrainienne de 2013. Cela, c’est pour le décor de carton-pâte et la facilité de la lecture.

Les protestations de l’opposition ont commencé après le refus du gouvernement ukrainien de signer l’accord de coopération avec l’UE. Le lien entre les deux était évident, dans la narrative de convenance, et il a été aussitôt imposé comme allant de soi. Pourtant, la phase de la protestation n’est peut-être si complètement liée avec la question de l’accord UE refusé. C’est une interprétation qui est assez courante, et par ailleurs assez évidente ; c’est celle de Poutine, comme celle du Polonais Mateusz Piskorski, député et directeur du European Centre of Geopolitical Analysis, qui juge que si l’opposition qui tient la rue venait au pouvoir, elle-même ne signerait pas l’accord avec l’UE («I guess that even the opposition, if it comes to power in the coming months, wouldn’t be ready to sign free trade agreement with Europe...»).

Nous dirions que la phase des protestations de rue doit être détachée de la phase des négociations avec l’UE et de la rupture, pour être considérée en elle-même comme une crise interne ukrainienne, renforcée par les diverses forces extérieures de déstabilisation (celle-là, certes, sur le modèle de la “Révolution Orange”, bien entendu, avec les usual suspects, ou pour faire plus net, les coupables habituels, tout l’appareil “sociétal” de subversion et de déstructuration du bloc BAO). Finalement, la situation interne ukrainienne joue le rôle central, avec une prodigieuse corruption, touchant tous les appareils politiques, celui du gouvernement comme celui de l’opposition, une gestion grossière des situations de crise (les violences de la police), une tension endémique entre les deux parties du pays, s’opposant selon des fractures religieuses, ethniques, culturelles, etc., entre “pro-russes” à l’Est et “anti-russes” à l’Ouest. Tous ces éléments sont archi-connus et admis, d’une façon beaucoup plus évidente qu’en 2003-2004, d’autant que la situation n’a fait qu’empirer à cet égard. Le soi-disant pro-russe et président ukrainien Viktor Ianoukovitch et son gouvernement ne sont guère plus appréciés des commentateurs russes que des commentateurs du bloc BAO, et en général pour des raisons sérieuses, dénuées de l’affectivité sociétale qui marque les écrits des seconds. (Fédor Loukianov, le 29 novembre : «Mais l'esprit de compétition va se dissiper et on ignore toujours quoi faire avec ce pays voisin et aussi proche. Après tout l’Ukraine n'a fait aucun choix en faveur de Moscou, elle l’a une nouvelle fois esquivé en espérant pouvoir continuer à mener par le bout du nez les uns [l’UE] et les autres [la Russie]...») On citera ici plus en détails quelques observations sur la situation en Ukraine.

• Quelques observations sans ambages de Poutine (Russia Today, le 3 décembre 2013) lors d’une visite en Arménie, assorties de l’affirmation officielle que la Russie se tient de toutes les façons complètement en dehors des actuels événements, selon le principe de la souveraineté.

«“As far as the events in Ukraine are concerned, to me they don’t look like a revolution, but rather like 'pogrom'. However strange this might seem, in my view it has little to do with Ukrainian-EU relations,” Putin said. [...] “What is happening now is a little false start due to certain circumstances… This all has been prepared for the presidential election. And that these were preparations, in my opinion, is an apparent fact for all objective observers,” Putin stressed.

»He has said that now the Ukrainian opposition is either not in control of the protests, or it may serve as a cover-up for extremist activities. The footage from Kiev clearly shows “how well-organized and trained militant groups operate,” the Russian President said. Nobody seems to be concerned with the actual details of the Ukrainian-EU agreement, Putin said. “They say that the Ukrainian people are being deprived of their dream. But if you look at the contents of the deal – then you’ll see that the dream may be good, but many may not live to see it,” he argued. Putin then explained that the deal offered to Ukraine by the EU has “very harsh conditions”.»

• L’analyste William Engdahl estime que les événements actuels en Ukraine son essentiellement la réalisation d’un programme du bloc BAO, avec les USA “manipulant“ l’UE, avec les habituels outils de subversion (thèse de la “Révolution Orange-II”). Il met aussi en évidence la responsabilité de la direction ukrainienne. (Russia Today, le 2 décembre 2013.)

«First of all I think it’s quite right about the economic damage with the special association with the European Union. This was a Washington agenda and has been for more than six years. The EU is simply acting as a proxy for Washington to essentially strip Ukraine from Russia and weaken and isolate Russia even more. So the geopolitical stakes are huge in this.

»The Ukrainian police made a colossal blunder, the same as Milosevic made back in Yugoslavia, and the same blunder that Bashar Assad made at the onset of the protests in Syria – and that is to react with state violence, because that is exactly what the opposition was hoping and praying for: that they would lose their cool and give a red flag for the protesters to come out on mass. And that’s precisely what has happened.»

• Enfin, on citera le Polonais Mateusz Piskorski, interviewé le 2 décembre 2013 par Russia Today. Ses réponses, qui reprennent les lignes générales déjà vues, donnent des détails intéressants sur la situation interne de l’Ukraine et sur les événemets.

Russia Today : «Ukraine is a divided country, with the West ardently supporting European integration and the East historically more pro-Russian. Do you think the opposition intends to have some kind of dialogue with the easterners?»

Mateusz Piskorski : «I guess, first and foremost, all the protests that we can now see in the central squares and streets of Kiev are protests that have been raised or supported by some external factors and actors of the Ukrainian political scene. First, we see a huge professionalism of those who have organized the protests, because before the protests we heard about the activities of several embassies and NGOs financed and supported by different foreign countries. So we see this kind of pressure exerted by the external forces for the Ukrainian government to think once again about which geopolitical and geo-economic choice would be right and better for Ukraine. We can, of course, see the protests organized by the other side, by the Ukrainian Communist Party, by some members of the Party of Regions, which are in the eastern and southern towns of Ukraine. Unfortunately, in Europe and the United States we only see what is happening now in Kiev, but we cannot see the reaction of the other parts of Ukraine.» [...]

Russia Today : «Should the opposition succeed in overthrowing the government in Ukraine? Do you think the EU want to associate with such a turbulent nation as Ukraine?»

Mateusz Piskorski : «I think for the moment being any kind of association and signing a deeper and more comprehensive fair trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine would be a kind of economic suicide for Ukrainian side. If we look at the things which have happened during the last few months, I mean during the economic conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it was a clear proof that Ukraine’s economy is very closely connected to Russia. These are the ties that have remained from the Soviet times; we perfectly know that Ukraine is a part of the post-soviet economic area which is now integrating into the Eurasian bloc. We can tell only that the EU is not capable of compensating all the financial losses that Ukraine would encounter in case of closer cooperation with the EU. I guess that even the opposition, if it comes to power in the coming months, wouldn’t be ready to sign free trade agreement with Europe if it studies the possible results of such an agreement, as well as of the association agreement. This pro-European rhetoric aims at causing internal crisis and early elections, perhaps next year.»

D’une façon générale, on trouve dans ces diverses déclarations la confirmation des différents éléments déjà mentionnés : l’aspect catastrophique pour l’Ukraine de l’accord avec l’UE, la situation de corruption générale de la classe politique, l’absence d’habileté des réactions des autorités, l’intervention sans doute très importante d’éléments extérieurs de désordre et de déstabilisation. Certains détails, certaines précisions sont discutables. Il y a, notamment pour notre compte, l’analyse d’Engdahl faisant de l’UE un outil d’un “agenda” US : notre analyse est bien que l’UE agit dans ce cas sans nécessité d’impulsion ou d’“ordre” washingtonien, mais de son propre chef, selon l’impulsion-Système affectant tous les acteurs du bloc BAO dans la course à l’expansion et à la puissance quantitative. Bien entendu, les différents groupes et réseaux de déstabilisation US suivent, comme ils n’ont jamais cessé de faire en soutenant tout ce qui a un ferment de déstabilisation. Le but de déstabiliser les voisins de la Russie sinon la Russie elle-même est également évident, mais comme un comportement quasiment mécanique, se nourrissant de lui-même depuis la chute de l’URSS et surtout depuis 9/11. Il n’y a là-dedans rien de nouveau ni rien d’absolument efficace...

Le plus extrême de cette situation, d’un point de vue institutionnel, serait la chute de Ianoukovitch et l’arrivée au pouvoir de l’opposition. On se trouverait alors devant une nouvelle phase de la même séquence, aboutissant au délitement du nouveau gouvernement dans la corruption et le reste. Le seul facteur qui pourrait interrompre cette espèce d’évolution “en boucle” comme l’on dirait de l’inventeur du mouvement perpétuel serait une rupture opposant les deux parties du pays, la pro-russe et l’antirusse. Dans ce cas, le processus de déstabilisation-déstructuration de l’Ukraine passerait au stade du processus de déstabilisation-dissolution, toujours selon un cheminement classique des événements dans la crise générale qui nous affecte. On se trouverait alors devant des perspectives inconnues, les acteurs extérieurs étant cette fois directement concernés, mais des perspectives inconnues toujours marquées par les contraintes et les pesanteurs autant de l’Ukraine elle-même que de la domination du facteur de la communication.

Le principal enseignement se trouve plutôt dans le constat de la tendance au désordre de la situation considérée objectivement, et le constat de la tendance à accentuer le désordre de la part des acteurs du bloc BAO qui sont les principaux représentants du Système. On dira : rien de nouveau là-dedans, notamment par rapport au temps de la “Révolution Orange-I”, et alors pourquoi ne pas parler effectivement d’une “Révolution Orange-II” en reprenant les logiques et les accusations qui accompagnèrent l’événement ? Simplement parce qu’il s’est écoulée une quasi-décennie entre les deux événements, et si les composants ukrainiens (situation interne et interventionnisme déstabilisant) n’ont pas changé, par contre les situations internes du bloc BAO ont complètement basculé dans la crise ouverte. Dans ce sens, la poursuite des mêmes tactiques de déstabilisation et de déstructuration change complètement de sens et pourrait conduire, au niveau des relations internationales, avec le chaudron ukrainien toujours actif et conduit à une nouvelle phase paroxystique, à des situations de tension renouvelée ou accentuée, induisant alors par conséquence d’enchaînement indirect un désordre encore plus accentué où tous les acteurs seraient concernés.

C’est-à-dire qu’on ne peut revenir à la situation de la “Révolution Orange-I” où il semblait qu’une Russie encore affaiblie était assiégée par les acteurs occidentaux (non encore constitués en bloc BAO), semblant alors encore triomphants malgré les premiers revers (évolution de la situation en Irak). Aujourd’hui, la crise interne du bloc BAO, c’est-à-dire la crise du Système, et même la crise d’effondrement du Système, tout cela est partout présent et produit constamment des effets et des interférences aux conséquences insaisissables et souvent catastrophiques. Par conséquent, et à terme assez court, si le désordre en Ukraine se poursuit et débouche sur une nième déstabilisation du pays, la Russie en sera affectée, mais également le bloc BAO d’une façon ou d’une autre. En langage express des experts-Système, il s’agit d’une situation lose-lose classique, comme on en voit partout, avec la diffusion du désordre nihiliste caractérisant les effets des politiques en cours. A ce point du raisonnement, on irait même jusqu’à observer, malgré la proximité du nouveau foyer de désordre, que la Russie serait la première à réagir d’une façon constructive, si elle s'appuie comme elle a coutume de faire sur sa politique principielle de fermeté, contre le désordre anarchique des “valeurs” du bloc BAO. Et, certes, dans le cas contraire, si la situation en Ukraine s’apaise, ce ne sera que temporaire vu l’état intérieur du pays et surtout de sa direction, et le mécanisme de déstabilisation-déstructuration se manifesterait à une prochaine occasion.

Tout cela témoigne non pas d’affrontements ordonnés assortis d’“agendas” cohérents, notamment de type géopolitique, mais bien du tourbillon de désordre de l’ère psychopolitique. Chercher un vainqueur dans une telle occurrence n’a pas de sens, tout comme la situation elle-même. (Les résultats obtenus finalement, quelques années plus tard, par les diverses “révolutions de couleur” de la période 2003-2005, pourtant parties de bases infiniment mieux maîtrisées, sont éloquents à cet égard : accentuation du désordre partout où ces événements eurent lieu, renforcement de la Russie autour de sa politique principielle, qui en fait l’acteur le plus sûr mais tout de même sans capacité de vaincre ce désordre [voir le 2 décembre 2013].) Bien évidemment, si l’on s’arrête aux événements du jour, aux vociférations de foules plus ou moins malheureuses et plus ou moins manipulées à la fois, aux slogans du bloc BAO et à la narrative de ses commentateurs, on peut toujours s’exclamer devant la puissance du Système et à nouveau proclamer son invincibilité. Pour notre cas, nous verrons dans tout cela, selon notre analyse classique, la manifestation évidente de sa surpuissance se transformant instantanément en effets d’autodestruction.

Tajikistan remains of highest strategic value for Russia and India

Tajikistan remains of highest strategic value for Russia and India

Victoria Panfilova, specially for RIR

Ex: http://indrus.in

 

The re-election of Emomali Rahmon will ensure that the Central Asian country keeps a balancing act when dealing with regional and world powers. New Delhi, Moscow and Washington each eye the Ayni base.

 

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Relations with Russia are of a dual nature, although it is believed that Tajikistan is one of the main allies in the region. Photo: Tajik President Emomali Rahmon (L) and Vladimir Putin. Source: Olesya Kurlyaeva/RG

Few were surprised that acting head of the state President Emomali Rahmon won the Tajikistan presidential elections with 83.6 percent of the votes. Experts believe that the courses taken by Emomali Rahmon in the last ten years will continue. This means that the coming years will be very difficult for both the president and his country.

A complete economic collapse in Tajikistan and instability in the neighboring Afghanistan, which the U.S. military will partially vacate next year, may lead to internal disturbances in the republic. To keep the situation under control Rahmon is trying to follow a multi-vector foreign policy, relying, in extreme cases, for outside help.

Newly elected Tajik President faces Afghan problem

Relations with Russia are of a dual nature, although it is believed that Tajikistan is one of the main allies in the region. The republic accommodates the 201st Russian military base, which will remain there until 2042 according to the agreement. However, the ratification of the relevant treaty was delayed by the parliament, controlled by Rahmon for a whole year. All this time, Tajikistan extracted various concessions out of Russia.

The Ayni conondrum

Rahmon promised to rent out the Ayni military airfield near the Tajik capital to India, Russia and the US. All three countries are interested in obtaining the lease of the site. However, the president’s "multi-vector" policy complicated the situation so much that now the potential tenants are unclear about the status of the base.

India spent a significant amount of money over the last decade developing Ayni, hoping that it would be a major base for the strategically important region. New Delhi is very serious on the Ayni air base project to gain a strategic foothold in Central Asia and improve its C3I (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence) network to fortify its operations in Afghanistan and keep a close eye on Pakistan. India has however met with Russian resistance as Moscow has been unrelenting in its stand that it doesn’t want foreign powers to deploy fighter aircraft in its backyard and a former territory.

Ayni Air Force Base, also known as Gissar Air Base, is a military air base in Tajikistan, just 10 km west of the capital Dushanbe, which served as a major military base of the Soviet Union in the Cold War era.

The situation with Ayni shows that Tajikistan is not really in position to sign a consistent and binding agreement and that Dushanbe may be left with nothing.  “Rahmon will seek preferences in the supply of arms in lieu of renting out the base,” says Azhdar Kurtov, an expert of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies.

Dushanbe’s bargaining chips

In exchange for the ratification of the agreement on the 201^st Russian military base, Moscow promised to expand a free education program in Russian military academies for citizens of Tajikistan and to provide $200 million worth of arms to the republic. In addition, Moscow has modified work permit laws for citizens of Tajikistan, allowing them to work in Russia for up to 3 years. This is relevant for Dushanbe - according to the Russian Federal Migration Service there are more than 1.2 million citizens of Tajikistan in Russia, who this year alone remitted $3.5 billion to their home country.

However, even such a dangerous dependence on Moscow does not discourage Dushanbe from demonstrating its activity in relation to other countries. For example, until recently it seemed that the US was paying considerable attention to Tajikistan. For a while, the United States and NATO were sizing the option to withdraw troops from Afghanistan via Tajikistan, but Pakistan’s conditions regarding this issue were far more suitable for the West.

Related:

Russia to modernise Tajikistan’s army

Russian and Tajikistani Presidents to discuss law enforcement cooperation

1,900 gangs smuggling Afghan drugs to Russia – anti-narcotics agency

Such behaviour periodically makes experts say that Tajikistan is slipping away from Russia’s influence to China, India, Iran, or even the United States. Elena Kuzmina, Manager of the Sector for Economic Development at the Institute of the economy of post-Soviet states recognizes that in the past two years, in fact, it was China that has become a major trading partner and investor in Tajikistan. Russia is only in the second place. Chinese investment accounted for 40 percent of total investments in the Tajik economy. In addition, China provides grants for the construction of infrastructure projects. With the support of the Celestial Empire, Tajikistan was able to implement large-scale projects in the energy and communication sectors.

“It would still be improper to say that Tajikistan is moving away from Russia,” says Kuzmina. There is cooperation between Moscow and Dushanbe in many areas. According to Kuzmina, it would be more accurate to say that Tajikistan has expanded the scope of its economic interests, and will continue to try to expand and diversify its cooperation with various countries.

Azhdar Kurtov also believes that there will be no sharp geopolitical fluctuations, not to mention a change of Dushanbe’s main external partner. “The republic has no oil or gas and because of the high-altitude terrain, production of other resources is more expensive.  Its geographical location does not allow the deployment of a large-scale construction, including, for example, transport communications, which Tajikistan has pinned high hopes on. Attempts to refocus on Iran by creating a union of three Persian-speaking countries (Tajikistan, Iran and Afghanistan), were not successful, “Kurtov said.

Andrei AKULOV

Ex: Strategic-Culture.org

Russia and Middle East Policy: Story of Success and Growing Clout

Resurgent Russia is asserting itself in the Middle East as a big an important international player. The recent diplomacy that averted a U.S. strike on Syria underscored the extent to which Moscow’s steadfast support for its last remaining Arab ally has helped to solidify its role. Russian President Vladimir Putin has emerged as the world leader with the single biggest influence over the outcome of a raging war that is threatening the stability of the broader region. Meanwhile new alliances and old friendships are being revived reaching out to countries long regarded as being within the Western, predominantly US, sphere of influence. Egypt, Jordan and Iraq are exploring closer ties with Moscow at a time when the Obama administration fails to come up with clear-cut regional policy.

Iraq

On October 16 Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s top media adviser said that that Baghdad had begun receiving arms from Russia under a historic $4.3-billion deal it signed last year but then scrapped amid corruption allegations. A review conducted, Baghdad had ultimately decided to keep the agreement. It makes Russia the Iraq’s second-largest arms supplier after the United States to herald its return to a lucrative Middle East market.

Iraqi officials announced at the start of the year that Baghdad had canceled the contract due to corruption allegations that were not spelled out. “We really did have suspicions about this contract,” the Iraqi government’s media adviser Ali al-Musawi told Russia’s RT state-run broadcaster. “But in the end the deal was signed. We have currently started the process of implementing one of the stages of this contract.” (1) The shopping list includes 40 MI-35 and Mi-28NE attack helicopters (4 rotary wing aircraft added as a bonus to make the deal really lucrative), as we’ll as 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems. In case of helicopters, the number 40 justifies the creation of helicopter service center on Iraqi soil.  Further discussions were also held about Iraq’s eventual acquisition of MiG-29 jets and heavy armored vehicles along with other weaponry. Musawi said Iraq was primarily interested in acquiring helicopters that could be used by the military to hunt down suspected rebels staging attacks across the war-torn country. Alexander Mikheyev, deputy general director at Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, said in late June that the helicopter contract also covers pilot and technical personnel training and the delivery of essential weapons systems. This is the first contract with Iraq under the package agreement, he added. (2)

By the end of last month it was reported that the northern Kurdistan regional government ordered 14 light helicopters from US MD Helicopters formally for local security forces and medical emergencies. Allegedly the rotary wing aircraft will join the inventory of Peshmerga armed formations.  Unlike in the case of the US, Baghdad may not worry about Moscow, military cooperation with Iraqi Kurds is not on its agenda.  Washington also looks disapprovingly at Iraq’s contacts with Iran, while Iraq felt small when its peace proposals on peaceful management of Syria’s conflict were ignored by Washington. Iraq’s Prime Minister put forward the detailed plan this August with no response from the US.  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made two trips to Moscow in the past year and none to the United States.

Jordan

 According to RIA-Novosti news agency, on November 15 an official from Russia’s state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said Jordan is interested in locally assembling Russian-designed helicopters and anti-tank missile systems. “Our Jordanian colleagues have shown interest in setting up domestic assembly of portable Kornet anti-tank missile systems and several types of helicopters,” said Mikhail Zavaly, head of the Rosoboronexport delegation at the Dubai Air Show 2013. Russia’s Kornet-E system, produced for export, has a firing range of up to 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) and features semi-automatic laser-beam guidance with a thermal imaging site. The system, armed with missiles using dual warheads with shaped charges, is highly effective against tanks with reactive or explosive armor as well as against fortified buildings and helicopters. In May this year Jordan has already launched licensed production of Russian-designed Nashab RPG-32 portable rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which the Jordan Times (3) reports is superior to the RPGs that are currently used by the Jordanian armed forces. Jordan is manufacturing weapons as part of a joint venture with Russia. The plant, which manufactures RPG-32 Hashim launchers, is located about 20 kilometers northeast of Jordan’s capital, Amman. It has been built and equipped by the Jordanian side, whereas Russia’s Rosoboronexport is supplying components for the assembly of the grenade launchers and is overseeing the production process. (4)

On October 25 Jordan announced that it has selected Russian state-owned firm Rosatom as its preferred vendor to construct two 1,000-megawatt (MW) nuclear power plants at a site near Qusayr Amra, some 60 kilometres northeast of Amman and at the edge of the northern desert by 2022. As part of the decision, the government and the Russian firm have entered negotiations over electricity pricing in order to reach a final agreement and break ground on the reactors by 2015. Energy officials listed the safety track record of the firm’s AES92 VVER1000 reactor technology among the main advantages of the Russian bid, which beat out shortlisted French firm AREVA’s experimental ATMEA1 reactor and Canadian AECL’s CANDU technology.

No doubt financial arrangements played an important role. Under the proposal Rosatom has agreed to take on 49 per cent of the plants’ $10 billion construction and operation costs on a build-own-operate basis with the government shouldering the remaining 51 per cent and retaining a majority share in the plants.

The proposal mirrors a similar agreement struck by Rosatom and Turkey in 2010, under which the firm is set to construct four 1,000MW reactors at a $20 billion price tag.

Officials say the deal aims to help achieve energy independence in Jordan, which imports around 97 per cent of its energy needs at a cost of over one-fifth of the gross domestic product, and bring stability to a sector that has been impacted by ongoing disruptions in Egyptian gas.  

Jordan has become the third Arab state to pursue peaceful nuclear energy, with the UAE set to build four reactors with a combined 5,600MW capacity by 2020 and Egypt reaffirming earlier this month its plans to establish a 1,000MW reactor by the end of the decade. (5)

On November 15 His Majesty King Abdullah and a visiting Russian Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fedorov stressed their commitment to boosting cooperation between the two countries and to maintain coordination and consultation vis-à-vis various regional issues of mutual concern. At a meeting with and the accompanying delegation, the King highlighted cooperation prospects and means to develop them in the various sectors, mainly agriculture, tourism, transport and energy as well as in economic fields. The minister is co-chairing the joint Jordanian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission’s meetings in Amman. Fedorov asserted Russia’s commitment to strengthening its relations with the Kingdom and to maintain coordination on all issues of mutual concern, stressing Russia’s willingness to support the Kingdom in the fields of energy, transport, agriculture, tourism and capacity building.

Commending the Kingdom’s track record, the Russian official expressed appreciation of Jordan’s progress in various areas and lauded the Kingdom’s position on different regional issues as well as His Majesty’s efforts to foster peace and stability.

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Kingdom last year, Jordan and Russia signed an agreement to establish a joint Jordanian-Russian committee to activate cooperation between them. The two countries are also bound by several agreements on economic cooperation.

Jordanian officials held negotiations with the Russian delegation at the Planning and International Cooperation Ministry, and agreed to form a joint business committee to boost commercial and investment cooperation between the two countries.

Saif told reporters following the meeting that Jordan and Russia had signed a memorandum of understanding in the field of nuclear technology, adding that a Jordanian official delegation would visit Moscow early next year

The Russian minister indicated that the two sides also agreed to increase the inflow of Russian tourists seeking religious and medical tourism. 

8 years ago President Putin said he was sorry the bilateral trade turnout was just over modest $50 million. It grew up to $426, 5 million in 2012.

Egypt

Russian Foreign and Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu paid a visit to Egypt on November 13-15 for a two-day visit to discuss «the full spectrum» of ties between the two countries, including «military-technical cooperation».  President Putin is expected to visit to Egypt pretty soon.  The talks revealed Egypt is seeking to acquire fighter planes, air-defence systems and anti-tank missiles with 24 MiG-29 M2 fighters are at the top of the shopping list added to the Buk M2, Tor M2 and Pantsir- S1 short- to medium-range Russian defence systems. 

Last month the US froze a sizable portion of the yearly $1.5 billion aid package as a sign of discontent with Egypt’s slow progress towards democracy. The step followed after the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets was suspended and biennial US-Egyptian military exercises were cancelled.

In Egypt, where the military-backed government has accused Washington of sympathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood, some protesters have hailed Putin as a potential diplomatic counterbalance to the United States. Pro-military demonstrators have even drawn parallels between the former KGB operative and their own strongman: During a July protest in the city of Alexandria, pro-military demonstrators unveiled a large poster of the Russian President wearing a naval uniform beside that of Army Chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, bearing the inscription "Bye bye, America!"

       ***

The Russia-initiated breakthrough on Syria is followed by a host of tangible Middle East policy successes. No doubt it’s a feather in the Russian leadership’s hat, the country is strongly back in the region, its clout growing by leaps and bounds, while the US faces the music having lost its way in the regional maze of overlapping problems and complexities. No calls for revival of Cold War days competition, to the contrary joining together to get down to brass tacks will benefit all. The initiative on Syria proved the possibility and expediency of this approach.        

 Endnotes:

1)    http://rt.com/news/iraq-election-candidates-dead-031/

2)    http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20131017/184210687.html

3)   http://jordantimes.com/king-abdullah-inaugurates-jordanian-russian-rpg-factory

4)  http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20131115/184734272/Jordan-Wants-to-Make-Russian-Helicopters-Anti-Tank-Missiles.html

5)   http://jordantimes.com/russian-firm-set-to-build-jordans-first-nuclear-plants

Выпуск XXI 2013. Война

 

http://www.geopolitica.ru/magazine/

Матвиенко Ю. А.

Апология полемоса...........................................................5

Савин Л. В.

Горизонты войны............................................................22

Раджпут Патьял

Принципы войны: необходимость переосмысления....35

Фрэнк Г. Хоффман

Гибридные угрозы: переосмысление изменяющегося характера

современных конфликтов................................................45

Джордж Бергер

Сунь Цзы и Клаузевиц: кто более релевантен 

современной войне..........................................................63

Чэнь Чжихао

Военно-политические отношения между Китаем и Индией:

перспективы и вызовы....................................................72

Мануэл Охзенрайтер

Военная стратегия Германии..........................................87

Николас Гвоздев

Подход Бисмарка к разрешению конфликтов XXI века.92

Ян Алмонд

Британская и израильская помощь для США в стратегии пыток

и контрповстанческих инициатив в Центральной

и Латинской Америке, 1967-96:

аргумент против комплексификации.............................95

Колин С. Грэй

Возрождение стратегии сдерживания:

Пересмотр некоторых основополагающих принципов..115

Дональд Хоровиц

Общественный конфликт: политика и возможности....125

Рецензии............................................................................141

Сведения об авторах.........................................................160

Файл в формате pdf: 

geopolitikan21-last.pdf

Notes sur le désordre “apolaire” du Moyen-Orient

Notes sur le désordre “apolaire” du Moyen-Orient

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

L’étrange “politique” américaniste au Moyen-Orient, que certains voient comme un spectacle de “folies-bouffe” (ce 7 novembre 2013), d’autres comme une quête dérisoire et sans fin de l’«America’s Top Diplomat [Kerry] Lost in Space» (voir le 3 novembre 2013, sur TomDispatch.com), conduit à un désordre considérable que certains acteurs mieux organisés songeraient à réorganiser.

De là s’explique l’entêtement considérable du site DEBKAFiles à construire, nouvelle exclusive après nouvelle exclusive, l’impression d’une sérieuse entreprise de réorganisation de la région de la part de la Russie, à laquelle Israël, incontestable pays favori du même DEBKAFiles, ne serait pas indifférent. D’où, selon une logique développée par la même source, cette rencontre Poutine-Netanyahou du 20 novembre à Moscou, annoncée le 5 novembre un peu avant que John Kerry, le “Top Diplomat Lost in Space” ait posé un pied, le gauche ou le droit, sur le sol israélien. La nouvelle de cette rencontre n’a guère suscité de commentaires ni de supputations dans la presse-Système des pays du bloc BAO, à peine son annonce ici et là, ce qui est peut-être un indice de son importance. Ainsi en est-il également (discrétion) de la visite de Lavrov et du ministre russe de la défense russe au Caire, mardi et mercredi prochain.

Note sur un “fil rouge” à suivre avec des pincettes

Si nous citons DEBKAFiles avec toutes ses casseroles des liens avec la propagande et “les services” israéliens, c’est avec les considérables réserves d’usage, maintes fois mentionnées, avec à boire et à manger, avec fort peu à boire (source claire) et beaucoup à manger (débris troubles et stagnants) ... L’expression «se dit d’un liquide, vin, bouillon, café, etc., trouble et épais» et, au figuré, «se dit d’une question qui présente deux sens, d’une affaire qui peut réussir ou ne pas réussir, d’un ouvrage où il y a du bon et du mauvais».

Il faut donc séparer le bon grain de l’ivraie (autre expression, marquant décidément combien cette sorte de situation est courante) ; c’est notre tâche et une tâche délicate, où l’intuition prend le pas sur la connaissance. Si nous citons DEBKAFiles (bis), un peu comme un fil rouge de cette Notes d’analyse, c’est parce qu’il faut reconnaître au site israélien qu’il a beaucoup insisté et “révélé” sur des événements qui commencent à se concrétiser, et notamment (voir ci-dessous), le cas du rapprochement vers une coopération stratégique et militaire, – ce qui n’est pas rien en fait de bouleversement, – de la Russie et de l’Égypte.

Judo Bandar-Poutine

Il y a plusieurs volets, plusieurs orientations, certains diraient “plusieurs pistes” dans cette supputation que constituent ces Notes d’analyse, mais la logique répond à un grand événement qui est celui d’une nouvelle “grande absence”, qui est la politique en pleine dissolution des USA au Moyen-Orient. Le premier signe déjà lointain, entretemps considérablement brouillé par divers événements où l’habileté bien connue mais un peu trop réduite à la tactique de manigance de Prince Bandar-le-diabolique, remonte à la rencontre extrêmement secrète de ce dernier avec Poutine, à la fin juillet. Rarement rencontre “secrète” n’aura reçu autant d’attention et de célébrité, autant d’interprétations, autant d’appréciations impératives et en divers sens contraires.

Le 24 août 2013, nous donnions notre appréciation de cet événement “secret” en signalant au moins un point d’accord, qui aurait été l’idée que la Russie envisage de vendre des armes à l’Égypte (Bandar parlant alors au nom des Saoudiens qui soutiennent financièrement l’Égypte depuis l’intervention des militaires et la chute de Morsi donnent aux Égyptiens une aide financière puissante, supérieure à $10 milliards). Ces échanges de vue se faisaient sur fond de mésentente grandissante entre les USA et l’Égypte, et un sentiment anti-US grandissant en Égypte, – la chose s’étant confirmée depuis par des mesures de restrictions de l’aide militaire US à l’Égypte. Le reste de l’entretien “secret” est plus incertain, voire franchement antagoniste, avec des menaces voilées de Bandar (qui s’en délectaient) à l’intention des Russes et des réactions furieuses de Poutine.

(Un conseiller de Poutine qui se trouvait, avec quelques autres, dans l’antichambre de cette rencontre en tête-à-tête [plus les interprètes] qui dura quatre heures, a fait quelques confidences à quelques amis. Il vit sortir de l’entretien un Poutine manifestement furieux, presque rouge de colère, et un Bandar avec une expression presque triomphante et certainement sardonique. Dans la perspectives qu’on connaît désormais, on fera de ces précisions d’humeur un témoignage des caractères respectifs plus qu’une mesure des résultats de la rencontre. C’est vrai qu’il y eut des mots de Bandar qui ressemblait à des menaces adressées à la Russie [le passage sur le terrorisme tchétchène et les JO de Sotchi], et Poutine n’aime pas qu’on traite la Russie comme une vulgaire Syrie ; peut-être la colère de Poutine, personnage que les gazettes anglo-saxonnes nous décrivent comme “très physique”, vint-elle de son regret qu’il n’y ait pas eu un complément à l’entretien du type rencontre de judo.)

Lavrov au Caire

Nous restons sur cette question des relations Russie-Égypte et des armes russes ... Après diverses affirmations officieuses à cet égard et dans le sens évoqué plus haut, dès le courant août (voir le 19 août 2013), notamment très péremptoires de la part de DEBKAFiles, l’idée a pris une tournure très officielles depuis hier (Novosti, le 8 novembre 2013), et une allure-turbo avec l’annonce de la visite des ministres russes de la défense et des affaires étrangères la semaine prochaine (les 12-13 novembre) pour la négociation de contrat d’armements russes modernes portant sur $4 milliards.

«“We are ready to negotiate with the Egyptian side the possibility of deliveries of new weaponry as well as repairing equipment supplied in Soviet times,” the Rosoboronexport official told RIA Novosti. He said such new deliveries would depend on Egypt’s ability to pay for them. But he noted, “Moscow is ready to discuss with Cairo a possible loan to that country.” [...]

«Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said earlier Friday that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet with their Egyptian counterparts during their visit to Egypt on November 13-14. The Russian delegation will include the first deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, Andrei Boitsov, and Rosoboronexport officials. “The upcoming visit will help us to outline the prospects of our [defense] cooperation,” the Rosoboronexport source said...»

Sur cette question des armements russes pour l’Egypte, DEBKAFiles frappait fort, le 29 octobre 2013, en écrivant que les Egyptiens, qui recevaient ce jour-là au Caire le chef d’état-major adjoint russe et chef du GRU, le général Kondrachov, voudraient effectivement beaucoup d’armes russes, dont des missiles balistiques de théâtre à portée moyenne (2 000 kilomètres), des SS-25. («[The Egyptians] told the Russian general that Moscow’s good faith in seeking to build a new military relationship between the two governments would be tested by its willingness to meet this Egyptian requirement. They are most likely after the brand-new SS-25 road-mobile ICBM which has a range of 2,000 km., which the Russians tested earlier this month.») Le 4 novembre 2013, DEBKAFiles remet cela en annonçant que les Russes demanderaient aux Égyptiens la disposition d’une port de relâche qui serait presque une base en Égypte pour leur flotte en Méditerranée (Alexandrie et Port-SaÏd étant parmi les options envisagées). Le site israélien ne manque pas de répéter ce qu’il martèle régulièrement, savoir que tout cela est soutenu, non plus encore, encouragé et même machiné par les Saoudiens de Riyad, comme vu plus haut dans le chef franc et ouvert de prince Bandar : «As DEBKAfile reported earlier, Saudi Arabia engineered the Russian-Egyptian rapprochement with a view to bringing Russian military advisers back to Egypt for the first time since they were thrown out in 1972. Moscow was designated as major arms supplier to the Egyptian army in lieu of Washington.»

Passons donc, puisqu’on nous y invite, à l’Arabie Saoudite.

Fureurs saoudiennes

Depuis près de deux mois, depuis l’attaque US avortée contre la Syrie, l’Arabie tempête. Il y a d’abord le volet opérationnel et stratégique agressif : prendre en mains les affaires, et suppléer à l’inconsistance et à la dissolution de la politique US, contre la Syrie, mais aussi contre la “machination“ US du rapprochement avec l’Iran. Il y a ensuite et surtout la dénonciation extraordinaire des USA par l’Arabie. La fureur anti-US de l’Arabie s’est étalée publiquement à partir de la mi-octobre. La “crise syrienne” (guillemets nécessaire) est ainsi devenue “la crise autour de la Syrie” avec le considérable appendice iranien. Essayons, non pas d’y voir plus clair, mais simplement de dérouler quelques nouvelles qui, mises à bout à bout, rendent un son charmant de désordre chaotique ou de chaos désordonné, c’est selon. Là-dessus, rien n’empêche de construire de grandes prospectives concernant cette région, ce n’est pas Prince Bandar qui démentira.

La colère, voire le mépris furieux des Saoudiens vis-à-vis de leurs tuteurs et alliés de plus de deux tiers de siècle s’est affichée et s’affiche sans la moindre retenue. Le 24 octobre, le service BBC Monitoring Middle East a diffusé une traduction d’un article du Elaph News Website, site réputé comme influent et bien informé pour l’Arabie Saoudite et les pays du Golfe. Il y a d’abord les remarques extrêmement acerbes, et publiques, de Prince Turki al-Fayçal, membre de la famille royale, ancien chef du renseignement saoudien, ancien ambassadeur du royaume à Londres et à Washington... «Prince Turki al-Faysal made scathing critical remarks of Obama’s policies in Syria and described them as “worthy of lamentation.” [...] Prince Turki described Obama`s policies in Syria as “lamentable” and mocked the US-Russian agreement on getting rid of the chemical weapons of Al-Asad`s government. [...] [Turki] said: “The present drama on the international control of the chemical arsenal of Bashar al-Asad will be comical, if not blatantly ridiculous, and it aims at giving the chance to Mr Obama to back down (on carrying out military strikes) and also help Al-Asad to slaughter his people.”»

Le même texte, après avoir détaillé divers aspects de la situation saoudienne en fonction de sa brouille, ou supposée avec les USA, conclut à partir d’une source saoudienne présentée comme très sûre et de très haut niveau : «The Saudi source said: “All the options are on the table now, and certainly there will be some impact.” He added that no more coordination with the United States will take place concerning the war in Syria where Saudi Arabia provides opposition groups fighting Al-Asad with weapons and money.»

L’idylle Tel Aviv-Ryhad

On sait que cette querelle entre l’Arabie et les USA a été présentée avec le complément d’un rapprochement stratégique remarquable entre les Saoudiens et Israël. Des informations officieuses ont déjà cité des visites de Prince Bandar en Israël et, dans l’autre sens, des déploiement de certains militaires israéliens, notamment en Arabie (voir notre texte du 19 octobre 2013). Le climat de la communication est à mesure ... Un commentaire israélien typique de cette situation est celui de Ariel Kahane, dans Ma’ariv du 25 octobre 2013 : «The rift between the US and its allies in the Middle East on the Iranian issue is widening. For the first time in the region’s history, the Arab countries are forming a united front with Israel against the more lenient position being taken by the Obama administration.» Il y a beaucoup d’écho aux déclarations de la ministre israélienne Tzipi Livni lors d’un récent colloque (voir Gulf News [Reuters], le 25 octobre 2013 : «Israelis, Saudis speaking same language on Iran, says Tzipi Livni. There is a need to cooperate with those who perceive Iran as a threat, says minister...»).

DEBKAFiles s’intéresse évidemment beaucoup à cette querelle entre USA et Arabie, d’autant plus qu’il y a cet élément de proximité de circonstance de l’Arabie avec Israël. Le 25 octobre, le site, dans son domaine payant, affirmait que les Saoudiens avaient décidé de livrer des armes avancées (missiles) antichars et antiaériennes rapprochées, du type que les pays du bloc BAO, et surtout les USA, ont officiellement prohibé de crainte qu’elles ne tombent dans les mains des extrémistes. La décision est aussi bien opérationnelle (en faveur des rebelles syriens) que politique (en défiance des USA). Le rapport de DEBKAFiles annonçait notamment  : «The US media suddenly discovered Tuesday Oct. 22 that Saudi Arabia had a serious bone to pick with US President Barack Obamaover his Middle East policies, a pivotal development which DEBKA has been carefully tracking in the four months since the first major falling-out occurred over Egypt’s military coup. [...] The Saudis had meanwhile gone into action. That same Tuesday, DEBKA's intelligence sources in the Gulf disclose, a small summit met quietly in Riyadh of likeminded Mideast and Gulf heads of state to determine how and from what territory heavy weapons systems would be put in the hands of the Syrian rebel militias backed by Saudi intelligence. They decided that those militias must be given enough anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to stand up to Assad’s army – a direct challenge to the Obama administration’s resolve to keep out of rebel hands the heavy hardware capable of contending with Bashar Assad’s tanks and air force.»

L’Amérique qui-n’a-rien-à-craindre

Pour autant, la partie US et le bloc BAO, du côté des commentateurs, ne s’affolent nullement. Ce point de vue du type “pas de panique, la situation est sous contrôle” est appuyé sur les certitudes occidentales et surtout anglo-saxonne, d’une hégémonie continue et de la situation, pour les alliés-vassaux, de ne pouvoir rien faire d’important sans le soutien anglo-saxon. C’est ce que notait Karen Elliott House, dans le Wall Street Journal du 24 octobre 2013 ; elle parlait, pour qualifier la position de l’Arabie, d’une situation où leur propre survivance continue à dépendre de leurs protecteurs de déjà plus d’un demi-siècle : «Sadly for the Saudis, there is no alternative protector, which means the two countries will continue to share an interest, however strained, in combating terrorism and securing stability in the Persian Gulf.» On peut trouver la même analyse, par exemple, chez Shashank Joshi, du Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) britannique, rapporté par Bloomsberg.News le 23 octobre 2013.

Certains vont même jusqu’à rassurer Washington sur l’excellence de sa “politique” en l’assurant que l’Arabie et ses amis du Golfe, avec leur soi-disant politique indépendante, vont rapidement se trouver devant le monstre qu’ils ont contribué à créer : un al Qaïda gonflé aux stéroïdes du Golfe, se retournant contre le Golfe. C’est le cas de David Andrew Weinberg, Senior Fellow à la Foundation for Defense of Democracies (un think tank de tendance néoconservatrice, semble-t-il), sur CNN le 25 novembre 2013...

«Some observers are bullishly optimistic about the foreign policies of America’s Gulf allies, suggesting Saudi Arabia backs “the least Islamist component of the rebellion” and Qatar’s young new emir is displaying a more “mature” foreign policy that seeks to avoid controversy in places like Syria. However, there is worrying news coming from Syria’s Raqqa Province, now controlled by the al Qaeda affiliate Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Hateful books described by several different sources as the area’s new academic curriculum,reportedly originate from Saudi Arabia.»

Alerte terrorisée

Tous ces avis sont relatifs dans la mesure où ils parlent d’une “politique” des USA au Moyen-Orient. On sait l’état de la chose. Par contre, là où ils n’ont pas nécessairement tort, même si par inadvertance peut-être, dans l’évaluation des situations et la perception des différents acteurs, c’est pour ce qui concerne la “politique extérieure” de l’Arabie/des pays du Golfe. On peut même prendre l’avis de Weinberg et remarquer qu’il rejoint des appréhensions de DEBKAFiles, pourtant dans le camp opposé pour ce cas puisque favorable in fine à la “politique” saoudienne de la saison, à la fois anti-iranienne et anti-US, donc proche d’Israël, – mais tout ce beau monde se trouvant, à cause de leur autre “politique“ syrienne anti-Assad, effectivement en train de fabriquer un monstre.

Donc, le 26 octobre 2013, DEBKAFiles sonne l’alarme, pour Israël, pour le Liban, pour la Jordanie, pour l’Égypte, enfin pour l’Arabie Saoudite, voire pour l’Irak et le Yemen (sans parler de la Syrie), etc. Soudain, l’on fait état d’une monstrueuse extension des effectifs et des capacités d’al Qaïda à partir du “centre” syrien, et cela malgré que les activités des divers pays cités comme étant menacés aient contribué, au moins indirectement, à cette expansion en affrontant le régime syrien d’Assad. (On notera dans cette citation qu’il est même question d’un apport de djihadistes du Caucase, ce qui nous amène à nous interroger à propos des affirmations bombastiques de prince Bandar face à Poutine fin juillet, sur sa capacité à faire faire ce qu’il veut aux terroristes islamistes du même Caucase...)

«The alarm in the Israeli and Jordanian high commands over Al Qaeda’s looming encroachments is shared by Saudi Arabia, whose intelligence services now estimate that Al Qaeda and its multiple branches have massed some 6,000 fighting activists in Syria – 12 percent of them Saudi nationals. Since more are pouring into the country all the time, intelligence experts in Riyadh calculate that the current number will double itself in the next six months. And that will not be the end: the 12,000 jihadists concentrated in Syria by next spring may have multiplied to 15-18,000 by the winter of 2014. Most of them are streaming in from across the Muslim world including the Russian Caucasian.

»Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who is in charge of the Saudi effort in Syria, has warned that Riyadh cannot afford to have al Qaeda hanging massively over its front, back and side doors – in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Egyptian Sinai, and threatening to overrun Lebanon and Jordan. A jihadi victory in Syria would boost al Qaeda in Iraq on its northern border.

»Israel is in the same position...»

Perspectives iranienne et syrienne

... Tout cela nous conduit à minimiser considérablement le tohu-bohu considérable fait autour de la fronde saoudienne, menaçant de partir en guerre au côté d’un Israël qui ne sait plus exactement qui attaquer en premier. Quant à une alliance israélo-saoudienne pour ramener l’Iran “à l’âge de pierre”, selon la délicieuse recette du général LeMay en mal d’attaque aérienne, on peut s’autoriser quelque scepticisme, – entre Israël qui ne contrôle plus ses propres drones destinés à réduire la défense anti-aérienne iranienne (voir le 19 octobre 2013), et l’Arabie qui attaque à coups de $milliards et de djihadistes qui lui reviennent en boomerang “gonflé aux stéroïdes”. Il y a bien les annonces spectaculaires jusqu’au surréalisme d’une Arabie saoudite devenant nucléaire avant l’Iran, grâce à l’achat d’une bombe pakistanaise, resucée d’un vieux canard relancé par la BBC (le 6 novembre 2013) et dont profite DEBKAFiles pour étoffer ses scoops parfois très fantasyland ; le doute est de rigueur, comme chaque fois lorsqu’une narrative veut nous convaincre que l’Arabie a des muscles et aura l’audace de s’en servir. Comme dit la chanson : «Che sera, sera...»

En attendant, les négociations sur l’Iran, comme on le sait, ont avancé. Prêtes d’être bouclées ce 9 novembre, dans tous les cas pour ce qui est d’un accord intermédiaire, bloquées par la France posant en extrémiste de type neocon et défenderesse des intérêts israéliens selon ses étranges et nouvelles habitudes de politique extérieure correspondantes à une situation intérieure en complète dissolution, on espère que leur reprise, le 20 novembre, permettra effectivement un tel accord. (Voir Russia Today le 9 décembre 2013.) A côté de cela, l’autre point chaud qui faillit, lui aussi (puisqu’on a souvent parlé de guerre mondiale à propos de l’Iran), nous précipiter fin août dans une “Troisième Guerre mondiale” terriblement usée à force de n’avoir pas servi, dito la Syrie, se replie dans les violences coutumières et les amertumes des rebelles, entre ceux de ces rebelles qui croient qu’Assad va gagner (Antiwar.com le 9 novembre 2013) et ceux des rebelles qui espèrent qu’Assad l’emportera, plutôt que les extrémistes djihadistes (Buzzfeed, le 8 novembre 2013). Bien entendu, la perspective de Genève-II continue comme d’habitude à s’éloigner au plus l’on s’en rapproche, et DEBKAFiles clame bien fort (le 6 novembre 2013), se référant à de nouvelles perspectives où la rencontre Poutine-Netanyahou tient une place majeure : «Geneva II cancelled: Moscow I is the big coming event...»

... Si nous sommes si courts sur ces deux chapitres, si importants puisqu’ils ont monopolisé l’essentiel de la tension au Moyen-Orient depuis sept et trois ans, et ’attention officielle par conséquent, c’est parce que notre sentiment est que nous serons très vite en voie de découvrir, si leurs tendances actuelles se poursuivent, qu’ils sont moins importants en eux-mêmes que par les tensions centrifuges et indirectes considérables qu’ils ont suscitées. Ces deux énormes crises ont été suscitées par des montages, par des narrative, essentiellement de fabrication garantie bloc BAO comprenant Israël certes (à peu près dans la proportion, pour la paternité des narrative, de 99% contre 1% en faveur du bloc, pour prendre le rapport favori de notre Système triomphant). Ces deux crises sont, pour leur ampleur et leur expansion, l’expression des phantasmes, des paranoïas, de la “fuite en avant” mâtinée d’hybris grossière, enfin de l’auto-terrorisation des directions politiques du Système attentives aux agitations des basse-cours provinciales de leurs capitales respectives. Leurs issues, si issues il y a et si c’est dans le sens qui se dessine, ne constitueraient pas un bouleversement mais un règlement géopolitique dans une époque qui n’évolue que sous la dynamique du système de la communication. Pour prendre la perspective la plus optimiste, on dirait qu’un accord avec l’Iran ne ferait pas de l’Iran le pays hégémonique et conquérant du Moyen-Orient, parce que l’Iran, qui a une diplomatie avisée et principielle, ne mange pas de ce pain-là ; et un tel accord ne créerait pas un axe Washington-Téhéran, parce que les USA ne peuvent faire d’axe avec personne et qu’ils ont l’esprit ailleurs, complètement ailleurs, c’est-à-dire en plein effacement...

Le changement profond de ce bouleversement tourbillonnant et vibrionnaire actuel se trouve, à notre sens, dans deux orientations respectivement d’influence et de désordre, qui, toutes les deux, dépendent dans leur expansion, moins de la géopolitique que de la communication.

Le triomphe méthodologique russe

Certes, on peut parler dans l’évolution générale de la situation du Moyen-Orient d’un “triomphe russe” dans la méthodologie, obtenu avec un sang-froid remarquable et sans agitation excessive malgré des situations qu’on percevait parfois comme très pressantes, et justement ce sang-froid et cette absence d’agitation ayant projeté une perception à la fois de fermeté de comportement, de sûreté de jugement, de solidité de situation, de retenue de l’ambition. A peu près tout le contraire des USA, qui ont congénitalement un comportement erratique, un jugement changeant, une situation totalement incertaine et des ambitions grotesques de réaffirmation constante d’une hégémonie en pleine dissolution, et ainsi les USA qui ne cessent de s’éclipser de plus en plus rapidement, comme on s’efface, des restes de leur position “impériale”. Ainsi les Russes apparaissent-ils comme une “borne de stabilité” (plutôt que l’expression trop structurée de “pôle de stabilité”, – voir plus loin), dont la proximité n’est pas vraiment dangereuse, au contraire de l’instabilité US qui risquerait à chaque moment de vous emporter. (Même des acteurs devenus secondaires à cause de leur propre comportement erratique, reconnaissent cela, comme la Turquie, qui resserre ses liens aussi bien avec l’Iran qu’avec la Russie, selon cette même logique qu’on décrit ici.)

Les cas les plus remarquables concernent les deux pays les plus instables ou les plus extrêmes dans leurs positions vis-à-vis des USA et vis-à-vis des tensions en cours. D’un côté, beaucoup sinon tout semble opposer, dans nombre de circonstances, Israël et l’Arabie Saoudite d’une part, la Russie de l’autre. Il y a des occurrences où l’on pourrait même envisager qu’ils s’opposent directement dans des situations d’affrontement (la Syrie). Pourtant, la tendance inverse semble devoir trouver une possibilité de s’exprimer, voire de gagner du terrain si l’on accepte certaines interprétation, – , savoir que, pour ces deux pays, une proximité avec la Russie présente de nombreux avantages de situation, – sans qu’il soit question d’“alliance”, de “tutorat”, etc., de quelque façon que ce soit. Ainsi, et pour prendre le cas précis vu plus haut, un mouvement se dessine-t-il pour envisager que la Russie puisse constituer, en échange d’avantages stratégiques, une sorte de soutien extérieur à l’Égypte, pour tenter d’éviter à ce pays de sombrer dans une instabilité meurtrière ou suicidaire. C’est favoriser, dans le chef d’une Arabie anti-Assad, deux pays qui sont ouvertement (Russie) ou discrètement (Égypte) pro-Assad.

On peut certes parler d’un “retour triomphal” des Russes, dans la possibilité de telles perspectives, par rapport aux décennies qui viennent de s’écouler. Mais il s’agit plus d’une situation à la fois méthodologique et sanitaire qui s’imposerait devant les dégâts causés à la structuration de la région durant ces dernières années. La Russie, plus qu’une ambition, plus encore que ses intérêts, représente une référence, voire une influence principielle dont tout le monde sent la force stabilisatrice. Bien entendu, le comportement erratique et incontrôlé des pays du bloc BAO a grandement servi à mettre cette vertu en évidence.

... Mais pourtant triomphe le monde apolaire

Pour autant, nous retenons notre plume en évoquant cette perspective, cette hypothèse de développement, du moins dans toutes ses conséquences. Le côté sombre, inéluctable de la situation, c’est le désordre qui s’est installé, qui a proliféré, qui a transgressé les frontières, qui a infesté les psychologies, imprégné les esprits et orienté les pensées, et que plus rien ne semble pouvoir écarter tant il est devenu naturel aux événements. Il n’y a pas de responsabilité directe pour cette évolution, on veut dire pas un seul acteur, pas une seule politique à mettre en accusation principalement mais les divers outils, accélérateurs, fomenteurs que constituent divers acteurs et leurs politiques, d’une tendance générale et irrésistible. Certains sont des exécutants zélés certes, mais ils suivent plus qu’ils ne provoquent même s’ils contribuent à la préparation des événements.

D’une certaine façon, il y a un besoin de stabilisation des crises impliquant les acteurs étatiques (Iran, Syrie) parce que le désordre prend le dessus partout, que ce soit celui de l’expansion du terrorisme semi-idéologique et d’une exaltation nihiliste, et de plus en plus semi-mafieux ; que ce soit le désordre des pays du bloc BAO qui commence à se plonger dans sa crise interne générale (NSA et le reste) après les aventures extérieures couronnées d’échecs et de déstabilisation de ces dernières années, et eux-mêmes, ces pays, outils majeurs de la déstabilisation que l’on décrit ici et acteurs majeurs du processus d’autodestruction ; que ce soit le désordre d’acteurs incertains et passant d’une position extrême à une autre position extrême (Israël, Arabie) ; que ce soit le désordre des situations internes elles-mêmes, qu’on supposerait stabilisées en fonction des développements politiques généraux (voir l’extraordinaire reportage de Andre Vltchek dans CounterPunch, le 14 octobre 2013, sur le désespoir, l’amertume, la haine anarchiste régnant en Égypte). Ainsi, la phase actuelle où l’on perçoit la possibilité du règlement de grandes crises d’axes jusqu’alors déstabilisateurs, où l’acteur principiel prend la place centrale, n'est en rien synonyme d’apaisement, et certainement pas de restructuration ; tout au contraire, la déstructuration subsiste, et la dissolution intervient dans certains cas. Simplement, et somme toute fort logiquement, il y a de moins en moins de cohérence, de logique politique justement dans cette évolution.

D’une certaine façon, il s’agit, expression appropriée tombée miraculeusement par rapport à la politique française totalement invertie de la bouche du ministre Fabius lors d’une récente conférence à Science Po, de la découverte angoissée d’un monde apolaire (ou bien “zéropolaire”, mais nous préférons nettement la précédente, et la conservons) ; après les épisodes unipolaire et multipolaire, un monde “sans pôle”, qui a perdu toute forme et toute cohésion... Un monde de toutes les opportunités de crises et de tensions souvent surgies par surprise... Un monde de tempêtes, sans vent dominant et où tous les vents prétendent dominer dans une surenchère de souffles furieux, où la tempête lève de tous les côtés.

Выпуск № 5. Контргегемония

 

http://www.geopolitica.ru/magazine/

Дугин А. Г.

Контргегемония............................................................7

Дугин А. Г.

Контргегемония в теории многополярного мира....27

Мелентьева Н. В.

Контргегемония по горизонтали и по вертикали

(пролегомены к Евразийской версии).......................55

Савин Л. В.

О некоторых аспектах контргегемонии.....................80

Сперанская Н. В.

Стратегия контргегемонии....................................... 87

Стивен Гилл

Грамши и глобальная политика:

К пост-гегемонистской программе исследований...96

Роберт У. Кокс

Грамши, гегемония и международные отношения:

очерк о методе............................................................121

Часть II. 

Дугин А. Г.

Взгляд на мир с позиции моря.................................151

Джон Хобсон

Конструирование евроцентризма

и теория международных отношений

как евроцентристский конструкт..............................181

Димитрис Константакопулос

Самоубийство Европы:

триумф империи Ллойда Бланкфейна,

или как Германия уничтожает Грецию, 

Европу... и Германию

(при поддержке греческого правительства)............224

Occult Roots of the Russian Revolution

Occult Roots of the Russian Revolution

Ex: http://www.gnostics.com

Dearest friend, do you not see
All that we perceive –
Only reflects and shadows forth
What our eyes cannot see.
Dearest friend, do you not hear
In the clamour of everyday life –
Only the unstrung echoing fall of
Jubilant harmonies.
– Vladimir Soloviev, 1892

The Great Russian Revolution of 1917, launched by Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevic party, profoundly influenced the history of the twentieth century. The fall of the Russian Empire and its replacement by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ushered in а new аgе in world politics. More than this, the Russian Revolution was the triumph of а dynamic revolutionary ideology that directly challenged Western capitalism. But what of the hidden origins of this Revolution? Did secret influences contribute to the victory of Lenin and the Bolshevics?

Innumerable books, not to forget massive scholarly studies, are devoted to examining the Russian Revolution and the rise of Soviet Communism. All this impressive research is almost exclusively devoted to the obvious political, economic and social dimensions, i.e. the surface manifestations of history. However, within or behind this mundane history lies another reality that is more interesting and more important than the everyday analysis offered by mainstream historians and writers.

Establishment historians pay little attention to the remarkable impact occult and Gnostic ideas had on the rise of Bolshevism and the victory of the Russian Revolution.

A number of social and political movements, including Marxism and Lenin’s Bolshevism, have been linked to Gnosticism, which flourished in the early centuries of the Christian era. The political scientists A. Besancon and L. Pellicani argue the intellectual roots of Russian Bolshevism are a structural repetition of the ancient Gnostic paradigm. A distinguishing feature of Gnosticism is an illusive, symbolic interpretation of reality, including history.

For the early Christian Gnostics the Absolute – termed the ‘Unknown Father’– has nothing in common with the wrathful ‘God’ worshipped by theist religion. In fact, for these Gnostics, the ‘God’ of the Old Testament is the adversary of their ‘Unknown Father’, the true God. Our world, including all human institutions, is not the work of the true God, but of a false creator, the Demiurge, who keeps us captive in the world, away from the divine light and truth.

Therefore, in Gnosticism, the world is merely a sort of illusion, a set of allegorical symbols, a reverse image of the real essence of history. Man, who is asleep to his inner potential, must awake and become an active partner of the ‘Unknown Father’ in the transformation of all life. Otherwise he remains a prisoner in what the eminent Russian Gnostic philosopher Vladimir Solviev (1853-1900) aptly described as “a kind of nightmare of sleeping humanity.” A number of Gnostic communities – like nineteenth century communists – held contempt for material goods and lived communally, teaching “the world and its laws, religious, moral and social, are of little relevance to the plan of salvation.”¹

Gnostics, Mystic Sects & Radicals

Russian mystical sects played an extremely important part in the Bolshevik revolution, on the side of the Bolsheviks. In spite of their rejection of the state and the church, these sects were deeply nationalistic, since their members were hostile to foreign innovations. They hated the West.
— Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome

Throughout nineteenth century Europe we find numerous connections between Gnostics, mystics, occultists and radical socialists. They constituted what the historian James Webb calls “a progressive underground” united by a common opposition to the established order of their day. Constantly, Webb writes, “we find socialists and occultists running in harness.”² Sundry spiritual communities emerged across the United States, with clear Gnostic and occult doctrines, which attempted to follow a pure communistic life style. Victoria Woodhull, the president of the American Association of Spiritualists during the 1870s, was a radical socialist. Woodhull believed that Spiritualism signified not only religious enlightenment, but also a cultural, political and social revolution. She published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto and tried in vain to persuade Karl Marx that the goals of Spiritualism and Communism were the same.

Dissident Christian mystics, spiritualists, occultists and radical socialists often found themselves together at the forefront of political movements for social justice, worker’s rights, free love and the emancipation of women. Nineteenth century occultists and socialists even used the same language in calling for a new age of universal brotherhood, justice and peace. They all shared a charismatic vision of what the future could be – a radical alternative to the oppressive old political, social, economic and religious power structures. And more often than not they found themselves facing the same common enemy in the unholy alliance of State and Church.

The birth of radical socialist ideas in Russia cannot be easily separated from the spiritual communism practiced by diverse Russian sects. For centuries folk myths nourished a widespread belief in the possibility of an earthly communist paradise united by fraternal love, where justice, truth and equality prevailed. One prominent Russian legend told of the lost land of Belovode (the Kingdom of the White Waters), said to be “across the water” and inhabited by Russian Old Believer mystics. In Belovode, spiritual life reigned supreme, and all went barefoot sharing the fruits of the land and their labour. There were no oppressive rules, crime, and war. Another Russian legend concerned Kitezh, the radiant city beneath the lake. Kitezh will only rise from the waters and appear again when Russia returns to the true Christ and is once more worthy to see it and its priceless treasures. Early in the twentieth century such myths captured the popular imagination and were associated with the hopes of revolution.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, a schism occurred within the Russian Orthodox Church of a new religious movement called the Old Believers. The result was that many Russian spiritual dissidents took courage from the split to found their own communities, giving vent to Gnostic ideas that had long been simmering underground. The Old Believers, in the face of severe repression, clung tenaciously to their ancient mystic tradition and expressed their separation from the official world of Imperial Orthodox Russia in collective migration to the fringes of the state, mass suicide by fire, rebellion, and a monastic communism.

Gnostic communities, with their communalism and disdain for private property, proliferated throughout Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Known by a variety of names such as Common Hope, United Brotherhood, Love of Brotherhood, Righthanded Brotherhood, White Doves, Believers in Christ, Friends of God, Wanderers, their followers reportedly numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Ruthlessly persecuted by the authorities, they made up a spiritual underground, often hiding themselves from inquisitive eyes. A countrywide revolutionary sectarianism that rejected the state, the church, society, law, and even religious commandments, which they declared were abolished when the Holy Spirit descended to humanity.

The origin of Gnostic ideas in Russia is difficult to trace, but they appear to be an outgrowth of two powerful spiritual impulses in Russian religious history. The first is the Christian esoteric tradition preserved within the monastic communities of the Russian Orthodox Church. A mystical tradition going back by way of Greek Neoplatonism, Origin and Clement of Alexandria to St. John the “beloved disciple”. “Russian Orthodox mystical theology has bent more than a little in the direction of the Gnostic heresy,” notes the historian Maria Carlson.³ The second impulse originated with Essene and Manichean missionaries who reached Russia in the early centuries of the Christian era. An impulse later given new vitality by the Bogomils whose Gnostic teachings had gained a foothold in Russia by the thirteenth century.

By the end of the nineteenth century occult and Gnostic ideas enjoyed wide circulation among all segments of the Russian population. At one point the Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948) welcomed the Gnostics, urging “Gnosticism should be revived and should enter into our life for all time.”⁴ After the 1917 Revolution, Gnosticism, observed the Russian scholar Mikhail Agursky, “contributed considerably to Soviet culture and even influenced Soviet political life. Its foundations were laid before the revolution…[by] several gnostic trends in nineteenth century Russian culture.”

While Russian Gnostics rejected the world order and strove to live by the apostolic precept to hold “all things in common,”⁵ they were also profoundly aware of the approaching end of the age. “Russian popular Gnosticism had a very pronounced apocalyptic character,” says Mikhail Agursky. “Russian mystical sectarians lived in anticipation of a catastrophe. The degradation of human life demanded purifying fire from heaven, which would devour the new Sodom and Gomorrah and replace them with the Kingdom of God. Any revolution could easily be identified by such sectarians as this fire, regardless of its external form.”⁶

Russian Socialism

Bolshevik collectivism had roots in long-standing Russian values of individual self-sacrifice. The suffering, martyrdom, humility, and sacrifice of Christ was deeply embedded in the texture of Russian religious thought and practice, and the lives of Russian saints were a litany of suffering. The Old Believers, heretics in the eyes of the official church for their adherence to their own version of the truth, suffered persecution for centuries at the hands of the government and sought escape in mass immolation, colonization, and, finally, economic mutual aid.
— Robert C. Williams, The Other Bolsheviks

Alexander Herzen (1812-1870), seen by many as the father of Russian socialism, was a friend and admirer of the French revolutionary Proudhon, who viewed himself as a Christian socialist. Proudhon worked intermittently all his adult life on a never completed study of the original teachings of Jesus Christ. Herzen also paid special attention to Russia’s persecuted religious sectarians. He printed a special supplement for the Old Believers, the mystic Christian traditionalists who had been driven out of the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas Chernyshevsky, another Russian socialist thinker of the nineteenth century, wrote an article in praise of the “fools for Christ’s sake” and defended members of the spiritual underground.

The Russian radicals of the 1800s, in the words of James H. Billington, looked upon “socialism as an outgrowth of suppressed traditions within heretical Christianity.”⁷ They saw the genesis of Russian socialism in the spiritual underground of the Gnostics and religious sectarians. One influential network of Russian socialists openly claimed to be rediscovering “the teaching of Christ in its original purity,” which “had as its basic doctrine charity and its aim the realisation of freedom and the destruction of private property.”⁸

Nicholas Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), who spent much of his life in penal servitude, penned the utopian novel What Is To Be Done? as a vision of the future new society and a guidebook for the revolutionaries who would build it. Chernyshevsky wrote:

Then say to all: this is what will come to pass in the future, a radiant and beautiful future. Have love for it, strive toward it, work on behalf of it, bring it ever nearer, bear what you can from it into your present life. The more you can carry from that future into your present life, the more your life will be radiant and good, the richer it will be in happiness and pleasure.

Chernyshevsky’s novel inspired two generations of idealistic young radicals. Among them was Alexandre Ulianov, the beloved elder brother of V.I. Lenin. He was executed in 1887 for his part in the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III. Vladimir Lenin told how Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? “captivated my brother, and captivated me… It transformed me completely.” What impressed the future leader of the Russian Revolution was how Chernyshevsky:

not only demonstrated the necessity for every correctly thinking and really honest man to become a revolutionary, but also showed – even more importantly – what a revolutionary should be like, what his principles should be, how he must achieve his goals, what methods and means he should employ to realise them.⁹

Nicholas Berdyaev observed that the “Russian revolutionaries who were to be inspired by the ideas of Chernyshevsky present an interesting psychological problem. The best of Russian revolutionaries acquiesced during this earthly life in persecution, want, imprisonment, exile, penal servitude, execution, and they had no hope whatever of another life beyond this. The comparison with Christians of that time is almost disadvantageous to the latter; they highly cherished the blessings of this earthly life and counted upon the blessings of heavenly life.”¹⁰

Chernyshevsky, like those who followed him, was passionately committed to the power of reason. His philosophy firmly grounded in the materialist outlook and a sober utilitarianism. But in his life Chernyshevsky was the embodiment of self-abnegation, single-mindedness and asceticism. Like a true saint he asked nothing for himself, but wanted everything for the people as a whole. When the police officers took him into exile in Siberia they said, “Our orders were to bring a criminal and we are bringing a saint. “These two elements, the religious and the secular, the ascetic and the calculating,” writes historian Geoffrey Hosking, “remained in unresolved tension in his personality, but on the level of theory he sought a resolution in the idea of a social revolution to be promoted by the best people on the basis of personal example.”¹¹

Inspired by Chernyshevsky, groups of young radicals emerged committed to the reconstruction of Russia as a federation of village communes and communally run factories. The reading list of one such revolutionary cell is revealing because it included the New Testament and histories of Russian Gnostic communities. The leader of the main radical circle in the Russian capital St. Petersburg spoke of founding “a religion of humanity.” He called his circle “an Order of Knights” and included in its ranks members of a Gnostic “God-manhood sect” which taught that each individual is potentially destined to become a god. It was not uncommon for the revolutionary call “liberty, equality, and fraternity” to be written on crosses, or for Russian revolutionaries to declare their belief in “Christ, St. Paul, and Chernyshevsky.”

The Russian socialists frequently visited religious sectarians and sought their support because of their history of alienation from the tsarist regime. Emil Dillon, an English journalist who had personal contact with several persecuted religious communities, reminds us:

Among the various revolutionary agencies which were at work… the most unpretending, indirect, and effective were certain religious sectarians…. Coercion in religious matters did more to spread political disaffection than the most enterprising revolutionary propagandists. It turned the best spirits of the nation against the tripartite system of God, Tsar, and fatherland, and convinced even average people not only that there was no lifegiving principle in the State, but that no faculty of the individual or the nation had room left for unimpeded growth.¹²

 V.I. Lenin & The Spiritual Underground

Men who are participating in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. These constructions… I propose to call myths; the syndicalist “general strike” and Marx’s catastrophic revolution are such myths.
— Georges Sorel, 1906

Religious sectarians played a significant part in the formation of Bolshevism, V.I. Lenin’s unique brand of revolutionary Marxism. Indeed, Marxism with its aggressive commitment to atheism and scientific materialism, scorned all religion as “the opium of the people.” Yet this did not prevent some Bolshevic leaders from utilising concepts taken directly from occultism and radical Gnosticism. Nor did the obvious materialist outlook of Communism, as Bolshevism became known, stop Russia’s spiritual underground from giving valuable patronage to Lenin’s revolutionary cause.

One of Vladimir Lenin’s early supporters was the radical Russian journalist V. A. Posse, who edited a Marxist journal Zhizn’ (Life) from Geneva. Zhizn’ aimed to enlist the support of Russia’s burgeoning dissident religious communities in the fight to overthrow the tsarist autocracy. Posse’s publishing enterprise received the backing of V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, a Marxist revolutionary and importantly a specialist on Russian Gnostic sects. Through Bonch-Bruevich’s connections to the spiritual underground of Old Believers and Gnostics, Posse secured important financial help for Zhizn’.

The goal of Zhizn’ was to reach a broad peasant and proletarian audience of readers that would some day constitute a popular front against the hated Russian government. Lenin soon began contributing articles to Zhizn’. To Posse, Lenin appeared like some kind of mystic sectarian, a Gnostic radical, whose asceticism was exceeded only by his self-confidence. Both Bonch-Bruevich and Posse were impressed by Lenin’s zeal to build an effective revolutionary party. Lenin disdained religion and showed little interest in the ‘religious’ orientation of Zhizn’. The Russian Marxist thinker Plekhanov, one of Lenin’s early mentors, openly expressed his hostility to the journal’s ‘religious’ bent. He wrote to Lenin complaining that Zhizn’, “on almost every page talks about Christ and religion. In public I shall call it an organ of Christian socialism.”

The Zhizn’ publishing enterprise came to an end in 1902 and its operations were effectively transferred into Lenin’s hands. This led to the organisation in 1903-1904 of the very first Bolshevic publishing house by Bonch-Bruevich and Lenin. Both men viewed the Russian sectarians as valuable revolutionary allies. As one scholar notes, “Russian religious dissent appealed to Bolshevism even before that movement had acquired a name.”¹³

V.D. Bonch-Bruevich (1873-1955) came to revolutionary Marxism under the influence of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s social teachings. Like Lenin’s wife Krupskaya, he started his revolutionary career distributing Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is within You, a work infused with neo-Gnostic themes. In 1899 Bonch-Bruevich left Russia for Canada to live among the Doukhobors, Russian Gnostic communists whose refusal to pay taxes and serve in the army drove them into exile. Bonch-Bruevich reported on the secret doctrines of the Doukhobors and put in writing their fundamental oral teachings known as the ‘Living Book’. On his return to Europe in 1901 Bonch-Bruevich introduced Lenin to the chief tenets of these Gnostic communists. The Doukhobors, with their radical rejection of the Church and State, with their denial of the uniqueness of the historical Christ, and their neglect of the Bible in favour of their own secret tradition, were of some interest to the founder of Bolshevism.

In 1904 Bonch-Bruevich, with Lenin’s support, began publishing Rassvet (Dawn) in an effort to spread revolutionary Marxism among the religious dissidents. His first editorial attacked all the Russian tsars for their persecution of the Old Believers and sectarians, and stated that the journal’s goal was to report events occurring world wide, “in various corners of our vast motherland, and among the ranks of Sectarians and Schismatics.” Rassvet combined Communist and apocalyptic themes that were both compelling and comprehensible to Russia’s spiritual underground.

By the early years of the twentieth century Russia was in a revolutionary mood. Bonch-Bruevich wrote that this would soon produce a “street battle of the awakened people.” He urged his fellow Communist revolutionaries to use the language of the spiritual underground in persuading the masses that the government was “Satan” and that “all men are brothers” in the eyes of God. He wrote:

If the proletariat-sectarian in his speech requires the word ‘devil’, then identify this old concept of an evil principle with capitalism, and identify the word ‘Christ’, as a concept of eternal good, happiness, and freedom, with socialism.

 Communist God-Builders  & The Occult

If a newcomer to the vast quantity of occult literature begins browsing at random, puzzlement and impatience will soon be his lot; for he will find jumbled together the droppings of all cultures, and occasional fragments of philosophy perhaps profound but almost certainly subversive to right living in the society in which he finds himself. The occult is rejected knowledge: that is, an Underground whose basic unity is that of Opposition to an establishment of Powers That Are.
— James Webb, Occult Underground

A Marxist pamphlet written before 1917 and later reissued by the Soviet government bluntly declared that man is destined to “take possession of the universe and extend his species into distant cosmic regions, taking over the whole solar system. Human beings will be immortal.” Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Commissar of Enlightenment in the new Soviet state, believed that as religious conviction had been a great force of change in history, Marxists should conceive the struggle to transform nature through labor as their form of devotion, and the spirit of collective humanity as their god.

A.V. Lunacharsky (1875-1933) and the Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), close friends of Vladimir Lenin, were acquainted with a broad spectrum of occult thought, including Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy. Both these prominent Bolshevic revolutionaries shared a life-long interest in ancient mystery cults, religious sectarianism, parapsychology and Gnosticism. Maria Carlson maintains that Gorky’s “vision of a New Nature and a New World, subsequently assimilated to its socialist expression as the Radiant Future, is fundamentally Theosophic.”¹⁴ Gorky valued the writings of the occultists Emanuel Swedenborg and Paracelsus, as well as those of Fabre d’Olivet and Eduard Schure.

Drawing on the imagery of the ancient solar mysteries, Gorky declared in Children of the Sun, “we people are the children of the sun, the bright source of life; we are born of the sun and will vanquish the murky fear of death.” In his Confession, the “people” have become God, creators of miracles, possessors of true religious consciousness, and immortal. Gorky envisioned a beautiful future of work for the love of work and of man as “master of all things.” Revealing his familiarity with parapsychology and faith healing, Gorky tells how an assembled crowd uses its collective energy to heal a paralysed girl. He was deeply impressed by research into thought transference, often writing of the “miraculous power of thought”, while expressing the hope that one day reason and science would end fear.

The ideas advanced by Lunacharsky and Gorky became known as God building, described by one researcher as a “movement of secular rejuvenation with mystery cult aspects.”¹⁵ God building implied that a human collective, through the concentration of released human energy, can perform the same miracles that were assigned to supra-natural beings. God builders regarded early Christianity as an authentic example of collective God building, Christ being nothing other than the focus of collective human energy. “The time will come,” said Gorky, “when all popular will shall once again amalgamate in one point. Then an invincible and miraculous power will emerge, and God will be resurrected.”¹⁶ Years before, Fyodor Dostoyevsky had written in The Possessed, “God is the synthetic personality of the whole people.” According to Mikhail Agursky:

For Gorky, God-building was first of all a theurgical action, the creation of the new Nature and the annihilation of the old, and therefore it coincided fully with the Kingdom of the Spirit. He considered God to be a theurgical outcome of a collective work, the outcome of human unity and of the negation of the human ego.¹⁷

Before the Russian Revolution, Lunacharsky’s political propaganda relied heavily on words and images ultimately derived from Russian Gnostics and religious sectarians. In one pamphlet he urged readers to refuse to pay taxes or serve in the army, to form local revolutionary committees, to demand ownership of their land, overthrow the autocracy and replace it with a “brotherly society” of socialism. Indeed, there was as much attention given to Christ as to Marx in Lunacharsky’s writings. “Christianity, in all its forms, even the purest and most progressive,” he wrote, “is the ideology of the downtrodden classes, the hopelessly immobile, those who cannot believe in their own powers; Christianity is also a weapon of exploitation.” But Lunacharsky realised there is also an underground spiritual tradition, the arcane language and symbols of which might be used to mobilise the people to carry out the revolution.

Occult elements are obvious in Lunacharsky’s early plays and poems, including a reference to the “astral spirit”, and a familiarity with white magic and demonology. He discussed Gnosticism, the Logos, Pythagoras, and solar cults in his two volume work Religion and Socialism. After the Bolshevic Revolution, Lunacharsky wrote an occult play called Vasilisa the Wise. This was to be followed by a never published “dramatic poem” entitled Mitra the Saviour, a clear reference to the pre-Christian occult deity. Significantly, it is Lunacharsky, along with the scholar of Russian Gnostic sects V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, who is credited with developing the so-called “cult of Lenin” which dominated Soviet life following the Bolshevic leaders’ death in 1924.

 Soviet Power & Spiritual Revolution

A Weltanschauung has conquered a state, and emanating from this state it will slowly shatter the entire world and bring about its collapse. Bolshevism, if unchecked, will change the world as completely as Christianity did. Three hundred years from now it will no longer be said that it is merely a question of organising production in a different way… If this movement continues to develop, Lenin, three hundred years from now, will be regarded not only as one of the revolutionaries of 1917, but as the founder of a new world doctrine, and he will be worshipped as much perhaps as Buddha.
— Adolf Hitler, 1932¹⁸

In the wake of the total collapse of Imperial Russia and the devastation caused by the First World War, Lenin and the Bolshevics seized power in October 1917. A revolution that would not have been possible without the active support and participation of the Russian spiritual underground. The Bolshevics, in the opinion of one Russian scholar:

most probably would not have been able to take power or to consolidate it if the multimillion masses of Russian sectarians had not taken part in the total destruction brought about by the revolution, which acquired a mystical character for them. To them the state and the church were receptacles of all kinds of evil, and their destruction and debasement were regarded as a mystic duty, exactly as it was with the [medieval Gnostic sects of] Anabaptists, Bogomils, Cathars, and Taborites.¹⁹

Ground down by centuries of autocratic tsarist rule as well as the Orthodox Church, its mere appendage, the Russian people came to accept the Communism of Lenin. “Bolshevism is a Russian word,” wrote an anti-Communist Russian in 1919. “But not only a word. Because in that guise, in that form and in those manifestations which have crystallized in Russia… Bolshevism is a uniquely Russian phenomenon, with deep ties to the Russian soul.”²⁰ Even the Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Goebbels, who built his political career fighting Communism, confessed that no tsar had ever understood the Russian people as deeply as Lenin, who gave them what they wanted most – land and freedom.

Lenin wedded the dialectical materialism of Marx to the deep-rooted tradition of Russian socialism permeated as it was by Gnostic, apocalyptic, and messianic elements. In the same manner he reconciled the Marxist commitment to science, atheism and technological progress with the Russian ideas of justice, truth and self-sacrifice for the collective. Similarly the leader of Bolshevism merged the Marxist call for proletarian internationalism and world revolution with the centuries old notion of Russia’s great mission as the harbinger of universal brotherhood. Violently opposed to all religion, atheistic Bolshevism drew much from the spiritual underground, becoming in the words of one of Lenin’s comrades, “the most religious of all religions.”

“Nonetheless we have studied Marxism a bit,” wrote Lenin, “we have studied how and when opposites can and must be combined. The main thing is: in our revolution… we have in practice repeatedly combined opposites.” Several centuries earlier the Muslim Gnostic teacher Jalalladin Rumi pointed out, “It is necessary to note that opposite things work together even though nominally opposed.”

After the 1917 Bolshevic Revolution:

occultism was part of a cluster of ideas that inspired a mystical revolutionism based on the belief that great earthly events such as revolution reflect a realignment of cosmic forces. Revolution, then, had eschatological significance. Its result would be a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ peopled by a new kind of human being and characterized by a new kind of society cemented by love, common ideals, and sacrifice.

The Bolshevic Revolution did not quash interest in the occult. Some pre-revolutionary occult ideas and symbols were transformed along more ‘scientific’ lines. Mingled with compatible concepts, they permeated early Soviet art, literature, thought, and science. Soviet political activists who did not believe in the occult used symbols, themes, and techniques drawn from it for agitation and propaganda. Further transformed, some of them were incorporated in the official culture of Stalin’s time.²¹

Apocalyptic and mess-ianic themes, popularised for centuries by the Russian spiritual underground, were played out in the Bolshevic Revolution and fueled the drive to build a classless, communist society. The dream of a communist paradise on earth created by human hands, a new world adorned by technological perfection, social justice and brotherhood, was found both in Marx and in the Russian spiritual underground.

Lenin promulgated a law exempting religious sectarians from military service. Writers and poets, drawing inspiration from the Russian religious underground, hailed the Revolution as a messianic, world mystery. One writer compared the Bolshevic Revolution with the origin of Christianity. “Christ was followed,” he exclaimed, “not by professors, nor by virtuous philosophers, nor by shopkeepers. Christ was followed by rascals. And the revolution will also be followed by rascals, apart from those who launched it. And one must not be afraid of this.”

Alexander Blok (1880-1921) was the most important Russian poet to recognise the Bolshevics. A student of Gnosticism, Blok discerned the inner meaning of the tumultuous political and social events. There was a hidden spiritual content at the core of the external upheavals of the Revolution and the bloody Civil War that followed. Blok clearly expressed this in his famous poem The Twelve, where the invisible Christ leads the revolutionary march.

Another Russian poet and occultist, Andrei Bely, a disciple of Steiner’s Anthroposophical movement, hailed the Revolution as the first stage of a far greater cultural and spiritual revolution to come. For Bely, as for his contemporary Blok, the Bolshevic Revolution was above all a powerful theurgical instrument. Andrei Bely (1880-1934) saw theurgy as a means to change the world actively in collaboration with God. In spite of the turmoil and bloodshed, for these Russian occultists the revolution served as an instrument of the new creation. Bely celebrated the 1917 Revolution in a poem, Christ is Resurrected, in which the Bolshevic take over is compared with the mystery of Crucifixion and Resurrection. Rudolf Steiner understood why the Russians welcomed the October Revolution, but criticised Bolshevism as a dangerous mix of Western abstract thinking and Eastern mysticism.

The Russian spiritual underground spawned several important writers and poets who welcomed the Bolshevic Revolution. Two of the most outstanding were Nikolai Kliuev (1887-1937) and Sergei Esenin (1895-1925). Occult images and Russian messianic themes abound in their poems. Kliuev saw Lenin as the popular leader and embodiment of the Old Belief. In typically Gnostic fashion Esenin disdained the old God of the Church and proclaimed a “new Nazareth”. The young Esenin gave support to the Bolshevic Red Army and even tried to join the Bolshevic party. Tragically, Kliuev felt betrayed by the Revolution, was arrested and died on the way to a labor camp in 1937. Esenin took his own life in 1925 believing dark forces had usurped the Russian Revolution.

By the early 1920s the Bolshevics had consolidated their hold over much of the former Russian Empire. The Communist Party emerged as the monolithic embodiment of the popular will. All occult societies, including the Theosophists and Anthroposophists, were disbanded. Freemasonry was virulently condemned and its lodges closed. In the drive to modernise Russia and build a technologically advanced Soviet Union, occult notions were publicly classed as superstition and openly ridiculed. The new Soviet State, with its Marxist-Leninist ideology, became the sole arbitrator of all thought. Leading occult teachers were forced into exile. Yet many of those associated with the spiritual underground joined the Communist Party and found employment in various Soviet organisations.

The sway of the spiritual underground did not disappear. Arcane truths and primordial urges took on new forms in keeping with the new reality. Esoteric ideas were clothed in the language of a new epoch. One writer explains:

In Stalin’s time, occult themes and techniques detached from their doctrinal base became part of the official culture…. The occult themes of Soviet literature of the 1920s were transformed into the magical or fantastic elements that observers have noted in Socialist Realism. Stalin himself was invested with occult powers.²²

The Russian thinker, Isai Lezhnev (1891-1955), insisted on the profoundly religious character of Communism, which was “equal to atheism only in a narrow theological sense.” Emotionally, psychologically, Bolshevism was extremely religious, seeing itself as the only custodian of absolute truth. Lezhnev correctly discerned in Bolshevism the rise of a “new religion” which brought with it a new culture and political order. He embraced Marxism-Leninism and welcomed Stalin as a manifestation of the “popular spirit”.

The Russian Revolution, which gave rise to the super power known as the Soviet Union, cast a gigantic shadow over the twentieth century. Bolshevism, the materialistic worldview developed by Vladimir Lenin, left its mark on all aspects of modern thought. And the roots of Lenin’s Communism and the Soviet Union go deep into the ancient secret tradition of humanity.

Was atheistic Bolshevism, for all its worship of science and materialism, the expression of something supra-natural? Many in the spiritual underground passionately believed so. The Gnostic poet Valery Briusov (1873-1924), who joined the Bolshevic party in 1920, had been involved in magick, occultism and spiritualism prior to the revolution. Briusov stressed that Russia’s destiny was being worked out, not on earth, but by mystic forces for which the 1917 Revolution was part of the occult plot.

Another prominent Russian occultist, the acclaimed artist Nicholas Roerich, acknowledged Lenin and Communism as cosmic phenomenon. In 1926 he wrote:

He [Lenin] incorporated and circumspectly fitted every material into the world order. This opened up for him the path into all parts of the world. And people have formed a legend not only as a record of his deeds but also as a mark of his aspirations…. We have seen for ourselves how the nations have understood the magnetic power of communism. Friends, the worst counsellor is negativity. Behind every negation ignorance is concealed.

The philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev, a former Marxist who came to embrace Christian mysticism, was exiled from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. He had studied occultism and was acquainted with many Russian Gnostic sects. His 1909 book The Philosophy of Freedom is full of Gnostic themes. And like the Gnostics, Berdyaev opposed the institution of the family as yoking men and women to “necessity” and the endless chain of birth and death. Writing from exile, more than twenty-five years after the Revolution, Berdyaev observed:

Russian communism is a distortion of the Russian messianic idea; it proclaims light from the East which is destined to enlighten the bourgeois darkness of the West. There is in communism its own truth and its own falsehood. Its truth is a social truth, a revelation of the possibility of the brotherhood of man and of peoples, the suppression of classes, whereas its falsehood lies in its spiritual foundations which result in a process of dehumanisation, in the denial of the worth of the individual man, in the narrowing of human thought…. Communism is a Russian phenomenon in spite of its Marxist ideology. Communism is the Russian destiny, it is a moment in the inner destiny of the Russian people and it must be lived through by the inward strength of the Russian people. Communism must be surmounted but not destroyed, and into the highest stage which will come after communism there must enter the truth of communism also but freed from its element of falsehood. The Russian Revolution awakened and unfettered the enormous powers of the Russian people. In this lies its principle meaning.²³

 

The Hammer and Sickle: Occult Symbols?

Throughout the twentieth century the hammer and sickle were universally recognised as symbols of communism and the Soviet Union. For millions of people the hammer and sickle symbolised a new political and economic order offering progress, justice and liberty. While countless others looked on the same hammer and sickle as ominous emblems of oppression, hatred and tyranny.

Occultists and students of ancient wisdom saw something more. Behind the outward appearance of these communist emblems, which officially represented the emancipation of labor, there was an element unknown to the masses.

Russian occultists saw the Bolshevics as unconsciously working for the cosmic mission of Russia and interpreted the Soviet hammer and sickle as hidden symbols of the blacksmith’s art, hinting at future transmutation and transformation. Both metallurgy and alchemy (regarded as an occult science) sort to destroy impure elements with fire and thereby release a refined product, whether forged metal (the smith) or spiritual gold (the alchemist). Fire is associated with transfiguration, regeneration, and purification, while iron is associated with Mars (the god of war) and the astral world.

To the occultist, the communist hammer and sickle symbolised conflict and transmutation. The forging – in the fires of struggle – of base elements into a purer, higher form. The atheistic Bolshevic, like the occultist, proclaimed that ordinary man must be transformed into new man, free of the bonds of selfish desires and of the oppressive past, in order to freely build the new civilisation of the future.

Footnotes:

1. Benjamin Walker, Gnosticism Its History & Influence

2. James Webb, Occult Underground

3. Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher Than Truth

4. As quoted in Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher Than Truth

5. Acts 2:44-47

6. Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome

7. James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe

8. As quoted in James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe

9. As quoted in Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia

10. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Russian Idea

11. Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire

12. As quoted in Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome

13. Robert C. Williams, The Other Bolsheviks

14. Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher Than Truth

15. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult

16. Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome

17. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

18. As quoted in Hitler’s Words, edited by Gordon Prange

19. Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome

20. As quoted in Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924

21. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

22. Ibid

23. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Russian Idea

Entrevista a Alexander Dugin

Entrevista a Alexander Dugin: El Occidente actual debe ser aniquilado y la humanidad debe ser reconstruida en un terreno diferente

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

[Aecio] Excelente entrevista que realiza la revista lituana Radikaliai a Alexander Dugin, donde con un toque más personal se habla del posible colapso del mundo occidental, la Cuarta Teoría Política y sus fundamentos, la situación actual del Eurasianismo de la mano de Rusia y la visión del mundo post-moderno que nos depara.

Mindaugas Peleckis: Estimado profesor ¿podríamos iniciar la conversación con su muy interesante biografía? Antes que nada ¿es cierto lo que está escrito en Wikipedia y otras fuentes oficiales? ¿Qué es verdad y qué no lo es? Padre que trabajaba en la GRU; nazi del círculo dirigido por E. Golovin; muchas perturbaciones políticas; un buen amigo del Sr. Putin…

Alexander Dugin: Todo es pura mentira. Ni Putin, ni nazi, ni padre en el GRU y así sucesivamente. Mi biografía es mi bibliografía (cf. J.Evola). No cambio nada en Wikipedia por dos razones:

1) Hay un grupo de administradores Wiki liberales que restablecerán de inmediato todas las mentiras para conservar la imagen peyorativa de mi persona (la guerra cibernética – es sólo una democracia, no es nada personal, pero la democracia es siempre una mentira).

2) El individuo (Yo mismo) no importa. Para mí, sólo importa la misión.

Hasta ahora no me siento inclinado a hablar de mi persona. Lea mis libros, forme su opinión personal acerca de mis ideas (primero) y la personalidad del autor (segundo – es opcional).

M. P.: De todas maneras lo principal a discutir en esta entrevista son sus ideas, las cuales considero bastante interesantes y de importancia global a medida que el mundo occidental parece estar colapsando. ¿Lo es? El fin de la civilización occidental se predijo bastante tiempo atrás. ¿Cuánto tiempo tenemos que esperar? ¿Hay algo que tiene que suceder? ¿La Tercera Guerra Mundial? ¿Revolución mundial? ¿Nada (significando el colapso como un proceso natural)?

A. D.: Yo más bien creo que no pasará nada, nada en absoluto. Eso es algo que es realmente terrible. La eternidad es el momento perpetuo del aburrimiento. Heidegger estudió en su obra “Die Grundbegriffen der Metaphysik” el fenómeno del aburrimiento profundo. Como la función existencial del Dasein moderno. El gnóstico Basílides describió al mundo después del fin como completamente equilibrado, el mundo sin ningún acontecimiento. Eso no quiere decir que no haya más eventos, significa más bien que no vivimos los acontecimientos como eventos. El colapso duradero es bien analizado por el escritor inglés Alex Kurtagić.

El verdadero problema viene cuando nadie percibe que es un problema. Así que estamos aquí. El Occidente es el centro del aburrimiento. No explota, más bien implosiona cada vez más y más profundo.

Tienen razón en que durará para siempre. El fin del mundo es la imposibilidad del mundo a acabarse. El mundo sin fin ya no es más el mundo, es la suma de los fragmentos sin sentido del todo inexistente. Estamos viviendo en las hipótesis 6-9 de “Parménides” de Platón – hay multitudes (πολλά), pero no hay ninguna unidad (ἓν). Tal mundo no puede existir (según los neoplatónicos). Estoy bastante de acuerdo con ellos, no con los medios de comunicación y la cultura prêt a porter o con los intelectuales hegemónicos.

M. P.: Usted publicó muchos libros – ni siquiera puedo contarlos ¿usted podría?. Recuerdo el primero que leí – era sorprendente- en 1999, sobre conspirología. ¿Usted cree en una conspiración global seria como Bilderberg/Masones/ Illuminati o cualquier otro que esté realmente pasando en este momento? Si es así, por favor explique cómo funciona y qué debemos esperar más adelante.

A. D.: No recuerdo la cantidad de mis libros, recuerdo su calidad. La calidad es muy diferente, ya que los libros fueron escritos para públicos diversos. La conspirología es descrita por mí como una especie de sociología primitiva. Para la sociología, hay un punto muy importante: lo que la sociedad piensa sobre lo que está sucediendo a su alrededor es importante, no menos de lo que sucede realmente o lo que los expertos científicos piensan. Así que estudiando las teorías de conspiración estudiamos la mente de la gente, los mitos, la cultura, los miedos, las estructuras gnoseológicas y cognitivas. La gente cree en conspiraciones. Eso significa que “existen” o ” subsisten ” (de acuerdo a la ontología diferenciada de Alexius Meinong).

M. P.: Se le considera como el padre del Eurasianismo y de la Cuarta Teoría Política. ¿Podría explicar los fundamentos de sus ideas?

A. D.: El Eurasianismo no ve a Rusia como país, sino como una civilización. Por lo tanto, debe compararse no con países europeos o asiáticos, si no con Europa o el islam o las civilizaciones hindúes. Rusia-Eurasia consiste en elementos modernos y pre-modernos, de culturas y etnias europeas y orientales. Esta identidad particular debe ser reconocida y reafirmada en el marco de un nuevo proyecto de integración. El eurasianismo niega la universalidad de la civilización occidental y la unidimensionalidad del proceso histórico (dirigida hacia el liberalismo, la democracia, los derechos humanos, la economía de marcado y así sucesivamente).

Hay diferentes culturas con diferentes antropologías, ontologías, valores, tiempos y espacios. El Occidente no es otra cosa que el mundo hipertrofiado e insolente con megalomanía. Es el caso más abyecto del hybris. La humanidad debe luchar contra Occidente con el fin de poner sus pretensiones en los límites legítimos. El mundo debe convertirse en lo que es -la provincia, el caso aislado histórico, la elección – no el destino universal y normativo o el objetivo común.

La Cuarta Teoría Política es la teoría que afirma:

1) Las tres principales ideologías políticas modernas (liberalismo, comunismo/socialismo, fascismo /nacionalsocialismo) ya no son adecuadas – así que tenemos que descartarlas todas, lo que significa no más liberalismo, socialismo, fascismo (chequee lo del fascismo y compare con lo que dicen de mí);

2) Necesitamos construir la Cuarta Teoría Política más allá, descartando las tres, y esta debe ser no-moderna (puede ser post-moderna, puede ser pre-moderna);

3) El sujeto de la Cuarta Teoría Política es el Dasein que Heidegger ha descrito en sus obras (no el individuo como en el liberalismo, ni la de clase como en el marxismo, ni la raza/estado como en el nacionalsocialismo/fascismo) – El Dasein debe ser liberado del modo inauténtico de la existencia;

4) El Dasein es plural y depende de la cultura, por lo que el mundo debe ser multipolar (cada cultura, etnia o religión tiene su propio Dasein – no son necesariamente contradictorios pero sí son diferentes)

5) Hacemos un llamado a la revolución mundial existencial de los Daseins – Daseins de las sociedades humanas unidas por la lucha contra hegemónica – en contra de la globalización occidental y el universalismo liberal, así como en contra de la dominación de Estados Unidos.

M. P.: La Unión Euroasiática se estableció hace varios años. Ahora parece que está en el limbo, aunque se puede ver que la parte oriental del mundo (China, Irán, etc.) es cada vez más fuerte mientras la occidental se debilita. ¿Sucede así? ¿Cuál es la situación actual con la Unión Euroasiática y cual que es su predicción para el futuro?

A. D.: La Unión Euroasiática es nuestra idea tomada por los burócratas de Putin. Creo que es la única manera de asegurar el futuro de Rusia y una condición indispensable para la multipolaridad. Rusia debe estar en el lado de las potencias no occidentales. Hay muchos problemas con la Unión Euroasiática, objetiva y subjetivamente. La hegemonía de Estados Unidos y la quinta columna en Rusia la sabotean activamente, y la ineficacia de la burocracia rusa empeora la situación. No obstante, se llevará a cabo, porque debe hacerse.

M. P.: Guerras y revoluciones suceden en todas partes actualmente… Malí, Siria, Palestina, Túnez… ¿Qué piensa acerca de la situación en el Magreb/Oriente Medio? ¿Terminará en un baño de sangre y con otros diez años de guerra?

A. D.: No, nunca va a terminar. Es el proyecto caótico patrocinado por el Occidente que está perdiendo su poder para controlar las sociedades no occidentales por otros medios. La sangre será derramada más y más. Sólo cuando todos los musulmanes apunten sus armas contra los occidentales y se unan a la batalla eurasianista final contra la hegemonía esta se detendrá. El Imperio sigue dividiendo, pero ya no puede controlar todo efectivamente. Así que empieza a dividir y eso es todo. No puede gobernar, sólo matar. Así que tenemos que devolver el golpe.

M. P.: ¿Cuál es su opinión sobre el Islam e Irán?

A. D.: Admiro Irán y admiro el Chiísmo y el Sufismo. Es una tradición espiritual que lucha en contra de la modernidad apuntando a su centro. Hay muchos tipos de Islam. Me gustar el Islam tradicional y tengo algunas dudas sobre la versión wahabista. Es una versión modernista y universalista del Islam, además que parece funcionar acorde a los intereses de Estados Unidos como una especie de unidad sub-imperialista. Así que apoyo el tradicionalismo en todas las religiones. Sin embargo, amo con mi corazón a Irán y a la tradición chií.

M. P.: ¿Qué mundo futuro (cercano y lejano) te gustaría ver? ¿Cuál es su visión?

A. D.: En la situación actual estamos desprovistos de futuro. Entiendo el futuro existencialmente como el horizonte de la auténtica existencia del Dasein, como Ereignis (acontecimiento/ser parte de), la llegada del último Dios (letzte Gott). Pero este futuro es incompatible con el Logos en descomposición de la historia occidental. El Occidente actual (Estados Unidos y parte de Europa) debe ser aniquilado y la humanidad debe ser reconstruida en un terreno diferente – en frente de la cara de la Muerte y el Abismo.

Debe haber un nuevo comienzo de la filosofía o… nada de nada. La misma nada como ahora, no se percibe más como tal. Así que el futuro no vendrá por sí mismo. Tenemos que hacerlo. Pero antes hay que destruir lo que es o parece ser.

M. P.: Como veo en Facebook y páginas de Internet, hay un montón de gente dispuesta a algún cambio revolucionario de paradigma en su mente, e incluso quizás a revoluciones físicas. ¿Son cambios reales que vienen a nuestro mundo? ¿Podría predecir cuándo y cómo?

A. D.: El cambio de paradigma es absolutamente necesario. No veo suficientes hombres y mujeres dispuestos a cambiarse a sí mismos y el mundo que los rodea. Pero veo algo. Es demasiado pequeño para la esperanza, pero demasiado grande para la desesperación. Me gustaría ver medidas más decididas y concretas. Es bueno que algunos comiencen a despertar. Obviamente el odio a Occidente, a la globalización, al consumismo, a los medios de comunicación, a las mentiras democráticas, a la basura de los derechos humanos, a la dictadura del capitalismo, a la llamada “sociedad civil” y a la dominación estadounidense es cada vez mayor. Así que debemos ir más allá. La vigilia significa la revolución y la guerra. Es poco probable que comience ahora. Pero deberían comenzar ahora mismo, porque mañana será demasiado tarde.

M. P.: Deseándole todo lo mejor y dándole las gracias por las respuestas, la última pregunta por ahora: ¿cuáles son las principales ideas en las que está trabajando actualmente?

A. D.: Algunos proyectos actuales son:

-El manual de Relaciones Internacionales para las universidades rusas.
-La teoría de mundo multipolar (publicada, pero aún en desarrollo).
-El desarrollo de la Cuarta Teoría Política.
-Estudios de Heidegger en el campo de la filosofía (He escrito dos libros sobre Heidegger ya y seguiré trabajando sobre el mismo tema).
-El tradicionalismo (Henri Corbin, el círculo Eranos – Recientemente he comprado todos los números de la Eranos Jahrbuch en Suiza).
-La sociología de la imaginación (en el estilo de G.Durand – Hice hace dos años el doctorado sobre el tema).
-Nuevos libros de geopolítica (geopolítica histórica de Rusia, las regiones del mundo, y así sucesivamente).
-Platonismo y neoplatonismo, eurasianismo (por supuesto).
-La teología ortodoxa.
-Antropología Social y etnosociología.
-Economía (vías alternativas).
-Estudios conservadores.

También:

-La enseñanza en la Universidad Estatal de Moscú (siendo jefe del departamento de Sociología de Relaciones Internacionales) – Relaciones Internacionales, Geopolítica, Etnosociología, Sociología.
-Conferencias (en todo el mundo)
-Asesorar al Gobierno ruso y el Parlamento (siendo miembro oficial del consejo de asesores del jefe del Estado del Parlamento, S. Narishkin).
-Dirigir el Movimiento Eurasiático Internacional

M. P.: Gracias.

A. D.: De nada

Fuente: The Four Political Theory

“Rusia es la Tercera Roma”

Entrevista a Adolfo Morganti

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

El 16 de octubre de 2013 se publicaba esta entrevista en el prestigioso medio italiano BARBADILLO, laboratorio di idee nel mare del web. Alfonso Piscitelli entrevistaba a Adolfo Morganti, presidente de la asociación italiana IDENTITÀ EUROPEA, que estudia y promueve la construcción de una Europa fiel a sus raíces clásicas y cristianas. El tema central que aborda la entrevista es Rusia, pero la cultura del entrevistador y del entrevistado logran que sea todo un diálogo ameno y provechoso. Hemos creído oportuno traducirla y publicarla en RAIGAMBRE para el público hispanohablante. 

La asociación Identità Europea tiene en los históricos Franco Cardini y Adolfo Morganti, editor del “Il Cerchio”, a sus exponentes más importantes. Hace años que promueve iniciativas que reclaman una reflexión sobre las raíces del continente europeo (raíces clásicas y cristianas) y sobre su destino. Recientemente “Identità Europa” ha organizado en San Marino un Congreso sobre “Europa en la época de las grandes potencias, desde 1861 a 1914”, en el ámbito de ese discurso se ha abordado también la naturaleza compleja de las relaciones entre Italia y Rusia. Replanteamos el argumento a menudo descuidado por los historiadores contemporáneos, con el presidente de Identità Europea, Morganti.

Alfonso Piscitelli.: En la segunda mitad del XIX se articulaba una red compleja de alianzas entre naciones europeas continentales: la Triple Alianza (Alemania, Austria, Italia) y por un cierto tiempo el Pacto de los Tres Emperadores (Alemania, Austria, Rusia). ¿Fue el intento de superar los nacionalismos en orden a una cooperación continental?

Adolfo Morganti: Era la tentativa de superar los límites y los conflictos cebados por el nacionalismo jacobino, pero al mismo tiempo eran fuertes las tensiones estratégicas que se localizaban en el área balcánica con Rusia, que patrocinaba los movimientos nacionalistas del pueblo eslavo y Austria que contenía estas pulsiones subrayando el aspecto supranacional del Imperio de los Habsburgo. Sarajevo no fue una sorpresa, como localización del foco de la primera guerra mundial.

A. P.: E Italia, ¿cómo se movía sobre el plano internacional?

A. M.: Todos conocemos el impulso profundo que el arte italiano dio a Rusia: un impulso evidente en San Petersburgo. Menor fue la intensidad de las relaciones marítimas entre Italia y el Mar Negro, que han plasmado la estructura económica misma de aquellas regiones. Sobre el plano diplomático, después de la intervención piamontesa en la Guerra de Crimea, las relaciones con Rusia indudablemente tenían que recuperarse: en efecto, por largo tiempo, Rusia representó algo extraño y distante, en los mismos años en los que Italia establecía una alianza con Austria y Hungría.

A. P.: Con el enemigo por excelencia de la época del Risorgimento [Austria].

A. M.: Más tarde, con el viraje que supuso 1914, obviamente la situación cambió las tornas: los rusos vinieron a ser aliados en el curso de la Primera Guerra Mundial, pero las relaciones gubernamentales y diplomáticas no fueron tan frecuentes y orgánicas como lo fueron, en cambio, las relaciones económicas.

A. P.:: ¿Crees que hoy Rusia deba ser incluida en la identidad europea, a la que alude el nombre de tu asociación?

A. M.: Con seguridad, la parte europea de Rusia debe ser considerada un elemento importante en el discurso sobre la Europa contemporánea. A partir de su conquista de Siberia, relativamente reciente, Rusia ha adquirido una vocación más amplia: la de Eurasia; pero Europa es impensable sin su área oriental, así como la identidad cristiana del continente es impensable sin contemplar el papel de la ortodoxia. Rusia, por una parte es Europa y reconocida como tal (y desde un punto de vista existencial hoy defiende los valores europeos incluso más que muchos estados de la Comunidad Europea), por otra parte, se atribuye una misión y una identidad que rebasa los confines de la misma Europa.

A. P.: El diálogo ortodoxo se ha reanudado a lo grande en los años sesenta con Pablo VI, con la recíproca retirada de excomuniones y el abrazo con el patriarca Atenagoras.

A. M.: Generando entusiasmos y resistencias a las dos bandas: resistencias que en el ámbito ortodoxo amenazaron con producir un cisma, que más tarde se hizo realidad.

A. P.: Y el hecho de que Juan Pablo II fuese un eslavo, un polaco (no extraño al “humus cultural” del nacionalismo polaco), ¿ha facilitado o ha creado alguna fricción y malentendidos entre las dos partes?

A. M.: Ciertamente, cuando la primera jerarquía católica de la Rusia post-soviética fue elegida por Juan Pablo II, la presencia de prelados polacos fue relevante y esto creó notables problemas de coexistencia con los ortodoxos. La misma acción de los franciscanos en Rusia era vista como una fuerza de penetración católica en el área del cristianismo ortodoxo. Ahora, con el cambio de jerarquía, en que la presencia de Italia está representada autorizadamente por el actual Obispo de Moscú, estos problemas casi se han disuelto.

A. P.: Si recuerdo bien, fue Ratzinger quien determinó una nueva relación, promoviendo el cambio de jerarcas.

A. M.:: Exactamente.

A. P.: Un recordatorio siempre es útil… ¿por qué se originó y por qué persiste la división entre cristianos católicos y cristianos ortodoxos?

A. M.: Hay toda una serie de diferencias dogmáticas que dividen a católicos y ortodoxos: la cuestión del “filioque” (de la procesión del Espíritu Santo), la diversas valoraciones de ultratumba (los ortodoxos no conciben el purgatorio), el diverso modo de entender la confesión. Son diferencias importantes, pero en la historia del cristianismo tales divergencias no han impedido necesariamente la unidad de las iglesias: por caso, pensemos que, durante una época en la historia, el cristianismo irlandés calculaba la Pascua de manera diferente al cristianismo continental. Ya hemos tenido otras situaciones de diversidad, que no afectan a la unidad subyacente. En el caso ortodoxo vino, en cambio, una separación profunda, pero no ocultemos que el cisma maduró sobre la cuestión del primado del Obispo de Roma, primado de honor, según los ortodoxos; primado jerárquico, según los católicos.

A. P.: También hay temas fuertes que unen a los dos mundos espirituales, pensemos en la gran devoción a la Madre de Dios; y en lo que atañe al tema mariano no podemos olvidar que al inicio del siglo XX, la profecía de Fátima está estrechamente ligada al tema de Rusia. ¿Qué ideas te has hecho a propósito de esto?

A. M.: La profecía de Fátima veía en Rusia el centro de una gran apostasía, que luego se verificó con el comunismo; pero las profecías son un terreno resbaladizo. Sin lugar a dudas, el gran gigante ruso constituye un escenario fundamental para la articulación de las fuerzas en la confrontación entre tradición y modernidad, entre el cristianismo y la tentativa ilustrada de disolverlo o reducirlo a la esfera privada, está a los ojos de todos.

A. P.:  ¿Es verdad o solo es una simplificación decir que el espíritu cristiano de Rusia está atraído particularmente por el Evangelio de San Juan y por el Apocalipsis?

A. M.: Es un enfoque para la escatología en general. Pero este enfoque es compartido con la milenaria tradición católica: en el ámbito católico hasta lo que no ha mucho se hacía en las llamadas meditaciones sobre los “Novísimos” (muerte, juicio universal, infierno y paraíso) era intensa; después (por usar un eufemismo) no ha sido valorada al máximo…

A. P.: Y el tema típicamente ruso de la Tercera Roma, ¿puede todavía jugar el papel de idea movilizadora en el ánimo de Rusia y en el ánimo de los europeos que miran con atención a Rusia?

A. M.:: Rotundamente: sí. Rusia es la Tercera Roma, tanto para los rusos creyentes como para los laicos. Los laicos ven en el poder de Moscú la continuación efectiva de una autoridad imperial a través de todas las modificaciones históricas posibles. Para el creyente, el concepto de Tercera Roma tiene una resonancia ulterior, pero todos los sujetos político-culturales rusos comparten el sentido de esta misión histórica, sean comunistas o nacionalistas, religiosos o laicos.

A. P.: Sin embargo, en el inmenso territorio ruso existen también otras tradiciones religiosas: el ministro de defensa Shoigú es un budista de la zona siberiana.

A. M.: También hay regiones de la Federación Rusa de mayoría hebrea y zonas en las que se arraigó el islam chiíta (principalmente en la parte ocupada por población turcófona) o sunnita. Desde los tiempos del imperio zarista, la multiplicidad de tradiciones religiosas no ha creado problemas de convivencia.

A. P.: ¿Podría decirnos su valoración personal de la figura de Vladimir Putin?

A. M.: ¡Putin es un ruso! En cuanto tal, él continúa encarnando esta misión de Rusia, cristiana e imperial. El hecho de que Putin sea más creyente o menos es indiferente. Su misión personal es la de proteger a Rusia y Rusia tiene esta identidad (imperial y cristiana) y no otra alguna…

(Traducción al español por Manuel Fernández Espinosa)

Fuente original en italiano: L’intervista. L’editore Adolfo Morganti: “Mosca è ancora la Terza Roma”

Fuente: Raigambre