Canadian Cincinnatus

John Tory’s focus-tested BS

During last Thursday’s mayoral debate, Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory declared that he doesn’t believe in “turning left or turning right.” Rather he believes in “moving forward.”

Who speaks like this? What does this even mean? Specifically, how does moving neither left nor right, but only going forward, have for the practical questions of the day such as: contracting out of garbage collection, property taxes, the expansion of the Island Airport, or the debate about the Scarborough subway vs. LRT?

I can’t say, but only because I think there is no answer. It is a phrase devoid of meaning that has been crafted by advertising consultants, and poll-tested to invoke a warm and fuzzy feeling in the low information voter. Unfortunately for the focus-grouped politician, because it is completely insubstantial, it is also open to ridicule. It is also indefensible when challenged. An American example was George H W Bush’s, “a thousand points of light”, ridiculed (justly) by Neil Young in his song, “Rockin’ In the Free World.”

You know, if you are a political candidate and you are presented with a slogan by your campaign, it is a good test to ask yourself, do ordinary people talk like this? If not, don’t talk like it either.

This is one of Rob Ford’s secrets as a master communicator (and yes, he is a master communicator). He doesn’t spew out bafflegab like this. He talks like an ordinary person using plain language everybody can relate to. This is one of the keys to his popularity, and what allows him to survive scandals the size of tactical nuclear wars. It is also what allows him to differentiate himself from phony slicksters like failed Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory.

 

Putin’s Long-Term Strategic Weakness

A perceptive article in the Financial Times nails it:

“But the notion that Mr. Putin has notched up a brilliant victory is misleading. In reality, he has gambled dangerously – and he is likely to lose his bet on the use of force. The annexation of Crimea is risky enough. But an invasion of eastern Ukraine would spell disaster for Russia” 

I think this is right. Putin looks very powerful right now because he has played his cards brilliantly, in contrast to his principal adversary, the befuddled Barack Obama.

“But by grabbing Crimea, Russia has ensured that it will eventually lose Ukraine. If Ukraine is allowed to proceed with elections in May, an anti-Moscow majority is all but assured since the Russian speakers of Crimea will no longer be voting, and the remaining electorate is likely to be radicalized by the Russian threat.” 

For instance, according to PJ Media:

“Ukraine has signed the European Union deal that started the Maidan protests:

The European Union signed a landmark association agreement with Ukraine today.”

“Ukraine has also left the Commonwealth of Independent States.”

This is exactly what Putin didn’t want the Ukraine to do. Unless he wants to militarily occupy 45 million hostile people, he’s made the Ukraine into a mortal enemy. So contemplating further military action, Putin is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Back to the Financial Times: 

“A military move into Eastern Ukraine would greatly increase the dangers of a political, military and economic blowback sufficiently powerful to threaten the leadership in the Kremlin. … Recent military history suggests that, when the world’s leading powers resort to military intervention against a hostile local population, they almost always suffer a long-term strategic defeat.”

The article points out the threat of guerilla war by the Crimean Tatars, an action the West would be well advised to facilitate and supply.

“The Russians have one ‘advantage’ that they could deploy in trying to suppress an insurgency in Ukraine: the willingness to act with extreme brutality that was displayed during the Chechen Wars.”

But as Max Boot points out in his book, Invisible Armies, history teaches us that brutality usually backfires on the counterinsurgents. 

On the energy front, the Europeans are desperate to do anything to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas, not only to protest the annexation of Crimea but for their own energy security. This will likely mean a slow reduction in oil and gas exports to Europe over time. In the short-term, this won’t have much of an impact on Russia, but in the long-term it strikes at the heart of it economic power. 

If Obama had any sense, he would be approving all the pending licence applications for the liquefied natural gas terminals designed to export LNG to Europe. 

This pessimism of Russia’s long-term prospects is echoed by George Freidman of Stratfor:

“In my view, Russian power is limited and has flourished while the United States was distracted by its wars in the Middle East and while Europe struggled with its economic crisis. That does not mean Russia is not dangerous. It has short-term advantages, and its insecurity means that it will take risks. Weak and insecure states with temporary advantages are dangerous.”

I think this is a very important point that should be kept in mind when listening to those who would poo-poo the crisis.

“The United States has an interest in acting early because early action is cheaper than acting in the last extremity.”

The saying, a stitch in time saves nine is never truer than when the subject is deterring aggression. If France had stood up to Hitler when he reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, World War II would have been reduced to a minor border squabble. But because they didn’t, the problem festered into a world war.

“This is a case of anti-air missiles, attack helicopters, communications systems and training, among other things. These are things the United States has in abundance. It is not a case of deploying divisions, of which it has few. The Poles, Romanians, Azerbaijanis and certainly the Turks can defend themselves. They need weapons and training, and that will keep Russia contained within its cauldron as it plays out a last hand as a great power.” 

Though for nuclear reasons the US and Russia can never fight each other directly, much can still be done militarily. And should be.

Crimean troublemakers now active in Latvia

According to this article in the Estonian newspaper, The Postman, the Russian fifth column organization Rusintern (for Russkii Internatsional – presumably modeled after the Comintern) is now active in the Baltic Republic of Latvia. One of its leaders is a Latvian Russian. The organization was active in the Crimea in formenting unrest among ethnic Russians in prelude to Putin’s Anchluss

Why do so many people find Vladimir Putin a “riddle”?

The title of a recent New York Times article is “3 Presidents and a Riddle Names Putin”. In exactly what way is Putin a riddle, or a mystery to anybody who is paying attention? He is probably the most straightforward leader in the world today. The article should have been titled, “3 Riddles and a Dictator named Putin”. According to the Timesmen:

“For 15 years, Vladimir V. Putin has confounded American presidents as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. He has defied their assumptions and rebuffed their efforts at friendship. He has argued with them, lectured them, misled them, accused them, kept them waiting, kept them guessing, betrayed them and felt betrayed by them.”

The clues as to what Putin is, what he is about, and what he believes in have been there for all to see for 15 years. He once famously said that the greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. I believe it was the 60^th anniversary of the end of World War II, with George Bush, Angela Merkel and Tony Blair in attendance, where he displayed a thirty foot high portrait of Stalin in the background. Just last year, on the 70^th anniversary of Stalingrad, he temporarily renamed the City of Volgograd back to Stalingrad. In 1999, within two months of him first becoming Russia’s Prime Minister, a series of horrific apartment house bombings rocked Russia. In the very last of these, the bombers were discovered to be FSB men. The journalist who investigated the link between the bombings and Putin was machine-gunned to death on Putin’s birthday. An FSB man who defected to the West, and who alleged Putin was behind it all, was murdered in London from an exotic radioactive substance. These clues and many, many others speak clearly about who exactly Putin is.

If people in the West are still mystified, it is not because Putin has been inscrutable in word or deed, but because they have been blinded by their own wishful thinking.

 

 

Separating the Chamberlains from the Churchills

Two individuals whose writing I have had a lot of respect for in the past are Roger Kimball and David Goldman (aka Spengler). However, with the Ukrainian crisis, they both seem to be channeling Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, as in this article penned by Kimball, where he extensively quotes Goldman:

‘And this brings us to the Ukraine. Goldman, remember, was writing in 2008, but he might have been writing yesterday. 

“The place to avert tragedy is in Ukraine. Russia will not permit Ukraine to drift to the West. Whether a country that never had an independent national existence prior to the collapse of communism should become the poster-child for national self-determination is a different question. The West has two choices: draw a line in the sand around Ukraine, or trade it to the Russians for something more important. 

My proposal is simple: Russia’s help in containing nuclear proliferation and terrorism in the Middle East is of infinitely greater import to the West than the dubious self-determination of Ukraine.”’ 

The Middle East is more important than the birthplace and epicenter of Western civilization - Europe. Really? Who knew?

I know what Goldman is up to here. His heart is more in Israel than in Eastern Europe. Fine. With me it is the other way around, but you know what? I justify my support of the fledgling republics of Eastern Europe the same way I justify my support of Israel: free, democratic, Western societies, governed by rule of law, and with respect for individuals and property rights are a rarity in human history. It is therefore incumbent on the citizens of free states to help defend similar states from aggression.

Does this mean we should overthrow every dictatorship in the world, as some have suggested George W Bush wished to do? No. But where free countries are threatened from without, or where a people are rising up against their tyrant, we have a moral duty to help out.

Now back to Goldman (and Kimball):

‘“The West should do its best to pretend that the “Orange” revolution of 2004 and 2005 never happened, and secure Russia’s assistance in the Iranian nuclear issue as well as energy security in return for an understanding of Russia’s existential requirements in the near abroad. Anyone who thinks this sounds cynical should spend a week in Kiev.”

Is Goldman right? I do not know. Personally, I tend to regard Putin as an ex-KGB thug with an unfortunate nostalgia for the Soviet Leviathan. But Henry Kissinger had a point when, earlier this month, he observed that “for the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” The Manichean temptation should be resisted in world affairs as well as in matters of theology.’ 

In Putin’s Russia, journalists who say critical things of Vladimir Putin find themselves machine-gunned in their apartment lobby on Putin’s birthday, or they are poisoned by polonium 210, even though they reside in London. What aspect of Putin’s rule were they criticizing?

Why the disturbing possibility that some of the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia - that were blamed by Putin on Chechen terrorists - were actually orchestrated by him. In the city of Ryazan, the local cops arrested a group of men for smuggling a bomb into an apartment building, only to find out that they were from the FSB (what the KGB is called these days). The type of explosive used in the bombings was RDX, a military explosive produced in only one closely-guarded facility in Russia. Since then, the Duma has sealed all records related to the bombings for 75 years.

After the Beslan School Massacre, one of Putin’s ‘security measures’ was to replace the elected governments in Russian provinces with his appointees. This is the equivalent to Bill Clinton replacing every state governor with his own stooge after the Oklahoma City bombing. 

What the West has yet to come to grips with is the depth of Vladimir Putin’s moral depravity. This isn’t ‘Manicheanism’; it is a realistic assessment about the facts on the ground.

“It is easy and dramatic to draw up armies of angels and devils. The actual troops on the world stage are seldom that easy to distinguish.” 

It’s easy enough to do in a military invasion.

‘In the case of the Ukraine, Kissinger is probably correct: “Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West.”’

The showdown is usually ‘posed’ by Kremlin imperialists.

“But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” Kissinger warned that Moscow must not move to force the Ukraine into satellite status “again.”  At the same time, he wrote, the West “must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.”

You know what? The B movie actor who won the Cold War did so in large part by replacing Kissinger’s realpolitik with a more morality-centered strategy.

“Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then.”’

Part of that ‘intertwined history’ is the Holodomor, one of the most gruesome acts of mass murder in a century filled with gruesome acts of mass murder, a fact that has not escaped the Ukrainians who feel little love towards their Slavic cousins.

One of the advantages of terrible crises such as this is that it allows one to tell the Chamberlains apart from the Churchills.

The Ukraine should have kept its nukes

In 1994, the newly independent Ukraine was forced to give up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal by the Budapest Moratorium. At the time, some in the Ukraine wanted to keep a few nuclear weapons as a counter to Russian ambitions, but the Ukrainians were pressured by all sides to turn them over. I distinctly remember that the Clinton administration was particularly insistent on this matter. In return, the Ukraine got guarantees of territorial sovereignty from Great Britain, France, the United States, China and Russia (!). 

I remember thinking at the time: don’t do it. I figured – correctly, as it turned out – that nuclear weapons were the Ukraine’s best guarantee of territorial sovereignty. I also remember thinking that the Clinton administration’s was naively self-defeatingly stupid: a nuclear-armed Ukraine would have been the best way to permanently stalemate Russian designs on the rest of Europe.

As an aside, I think the Crimean episode perfectly illustrates the impracticality of nuclear nonproliferation. It hasn’t done a damn thing to keep nukes out of the hands of bad or unstable actors – cf North Korea and Pakistan. The effect it does have is to effectively deny pro-western countries this cost-effective means of self-defence; including functioning democracies with rule of law, property rights, and liberty, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Baltic States and indeed every other eastern European country. These peaceful people have a crying need for a cost-effective means to deter the aggressions of much larger, and much more brutal, regimes with evil designs.

I long for the day when the good countries in the world is governed by clear-eyed realism rather than sentimental wishful thinking.

Calling all friends of Liberty: A March for Crimean this Sunday in downtown Toronto

The “Mega March for Crimea” is being organized this Sunday (March 16) by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to protest Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of the Crimean Peninsula, specifically the fraudulent ‘referendum’ being held there by Putin’s masked bandits. The march begins at Young/Dundas Square at 3:00 PM, and it will end at the Russian Consulate on Bloor and Church Street.

Further details can be found on Facebook and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress website.

I’ll be there. Will you?

“Putin Advisor Publishes Plan for Domination of Europe”

To get a glimpse of what Vladimir Putin is up to, consider Alexandr Dugin, who is “a very influential geostrategic and ideological advisor to the Putin regime” (h/t Robert Zubrin at National Review). According to his Wikipedia page: “After breaking with Limonov, he became close to Yevgeny Primakov and later to Vladimir Putin's circle.” Here is what Dugin says on his Facebook page (emphasis added). The rant is long, but well worth the (frightening) read:

“Scenario Russian spring 

1. Kiev takes a waiting position, concentrates its troops on the border with the Crimea, and threatens, but takes no direct action. The U.S. strongly pressures Russia, freezing accounts, and actively wages information war, but they and NATO avoid direct clashes. Kiev receives substantial support from the West, but focuses on domestic issues. The border with Russia is closed.

The referendum [in the Crimea on whether to join Russia] passes with minimal problems. The vast majority vote for joining Russia. No country recognizes the referendum except Russia. Russia raises the question of retaliatory actions if it receives Crimea into Russia. Both chambers of the Duma promptly ratify the annexation. Crimea is returned to Russia. Russian forces enter.

The West rages strong pressure on Russia. Militants in the North Caucasus and the fifth column in Moscow are activated. Putin is supported by everyone. His popularity among the people climaxes. This helps him cope with internal challenges.

2. In eastern Ukraine, Kiev starts to take tough punitive measures. There is a straight nationalist dictatorship. Individuals attempt to attack Crimea or commit acts of sabotage. They start taking revenge on Russians and the Russian-speaking east and south for the loss of Crimea. This leads to the onset of resistance. The second phase of Ukrainian drama begins: The Battle for New Russia. People wake up at once and quickly. Ukraine establishes a state of emergency, in connection with what is defined as “Muscovite aggression.” The last traces of democracy are abolished. Elections are held in May in wartime. 

3. The nationalists arrange a series of terrorist attacks in Russia. In Russia itself, the regime evolves, and starts to clean out the fifth column.

4. In Novorossia, resistance increases and gradually moves to the phase of direct rebellion against the Kiev henchmen. There is a bloody civil war. Russia deploys massive effective support structure; symmetrically the West supports Kiev. At a certain moment, in response to the sabotage in Russia and bloody actions of the nationalists and the repressive apparatus of Kiev against civilians and the east of Ukraine, Russia sends its troops into the east. The West threatens nuclear war. This is the existential moment for Putin. But he cannot stop. Going hard (possibly with heavy losses), Novorossia is liberated. The Left-bank Ukraine is conquered, with its border along the Dnieper. A new government is founded — for example, Ukraine or Novorossia. Or a version of Crimea may be repeated.

5. The Right-bank Ukraine, which does not recognize secession (as Yugoslavia under Milosevic and later Serbia against Kosovo), forms a new de facto Ukraine-2 state. NATO bases are immediately located on its territory, stopping the possibility of Russian move to Kiev.

6. The new rigidly nationalistic Ukrainian government quickly comes to a crisis. Direct clashes begin between ethnic groups (Ruthenians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, other minorities) and on political grounds (power loss blamed for half the territories of Ukraine). The state weakens. The process of new secessions begins.

7. Russia does not stop there, but carries activity into Europe, acting as the main element of the European Conservative Revolution. Europe starts to crack: Some countries are behind the U.S., but more often begin to listen to Russia. Against the background of the financial crisis, Russia’s position becomes more attractive. Russia takes on the protection of multipolarity, continentalism, and new conservatism (the Fourth Political Theory).

8. In western Ukraine, Ukraine-2, a pro-European (pro-German) political force comes to power that begins to soften anti-Russian policy and moves away from the U.S.

9. Across Europe, the de-Americanization process begins. An autonomous European armed force is created independent of NATO on the basis of the German Armed Forces and the French.

10. A new great Continental Association is formed, as a confederation of Europe and Eurasia, the European Union and the Eurasian Union. Russian, Ukrainians and Europeans are on one side of the barricades, the Americans on the other. American hegemony and dominance of the dollar as well as domination of Atlanticism, liberalism and the financial oligarchy is ended. A new page in world history begins. The Slavs are reunited not against Europe, but with Europe in the framework of a multipolar polycentric world. From Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

On the face of it, this is absurdly grandiose. But then again, so was Mein Kampf. The danger is not that it is doable, but that the man controlling the world’s largest nuclear arsenal might think that it is doable.

At CPAC, Rand Paul prattled on about Ronald Reagan as peacemaker. In fact, Ronald Reagan became a peacemaker only by standing up to authoritarian bullies. The peacemaking, which came at the end of his tenure, was a dividend of his hard-line approach early on. Being conciliatory now with Putin would only encourage him more and imperil the very peace Rand desires. It’s too bad that the presidential candidate with the best domestic policy is disqualified from executive office by foreign policy naivete. Neville Chamberlain, et tu?

In fact, Russia is Potemkin Villages all the way down, as the absurdly overpriced Sochi Olympics, complete with shoddy accommodations, illustrates. Putin’s Russia has 1.2 times the GDP of Canada with 4.1 times the population. In other words, he has that much less disposable wealth than Canada to throw around in imperialist adventures. Putin’s Russia is a one note economy. It is Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons and a drinking problem - minus the birth rate (except for its surly – and growing - Muslim minorities). What people like Thomas Friedman forget is that dictatorships always look better from afar. That is because, unlike democracies, they can hide their dirty laundry. The rot is hidden away, until the regime can’t hide it any more. We need to remember that when we confront thugs like Vladimir Putin.

Where is the NSA when you need it?

The Boston Marathon bombing, the Invasion of Georgia, the Invasion of the Ukraine, and now Malaysian Airlines Fl. 370 – how many of these events did the NSA provide predictive intelligence on?

As I write this, the jury is still out on whether Flight 370 was downed by terrorists. But even if it wasn’t, what about the two Iranian nationals who were travelling on it with stolen passports? Isn’t this the kind of thing that the NSA’s electronic eavesdropping program is supposed to detect?

On the one hand, when it comes to tracking ordinary Americans and spying on their congressional overseers, the NSA is on the job, 24 hours a day. On the other, detecting a full-scale military invasion? Meh, too hard.

“Why We Keep Getting Putin Wrong”

George W Bush famously said of Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin: 

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country." 

According to the Atlantic:

“Damon Wilson, who in 2008 was the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and the lead manager at the George W. Bush White House for the Georgia crisis, was blunt in his assessment of the warnings before Russia’s invasion that summer. “Our analysts missed it on Georgia,” he said. 

Wilson, who is now the executive vice president of the Atlantic Council, also said an important reason was that the U.S. government has failed to understand that Putin does not see America as a friend or a partner.”

“But the biggest problem, according to Wilson, was a failure to absorb that Putin does not assess his own interests in the way Americans believe that he should.

A veteran intelligence analyst with the United States military, noted that younger colleagues had been confident that "Putin wouldn't do anything" in the current crisis. Then came the stealth invasion of Crimea. … "Why anyone should be surprised is what is surprising. We are believing our own spin that the world has changed. Not in the Russian government, it hasn't.”

The problem here, as I see it, is that Americans find it difficult to think like Russians. Americans are naturally optimistic and believe in progress. Russians are naturally pessimistic and believe that life is a veil of tears. Americans understand the difference between a zero-sum game and a positive-sum game. The Russians think concepts like that are just American fairy dust designed to bamboozle them.

Until American analysts come to terms with the fact that the Russians hold a much different world view than they do, they will continue to be surprised by the behaviour of their government, and their leaders, who only recognize concepts like winning and losing. No rising-tide-raises-all-boats for them.

Vladimir Putin has been in power for 14 years now so we should have a good idea of who he is. He is aggressive and belligerent and opportunistic, but he is not reckless. In other words, he lies midway between Otto von Bismarck and Joseph Stalin. He lacks the apocalyptic recklessness of Adolph Hitler (which is a good thing as he is sitting on a colossal pile of nukes); and he only strikes when the cards are in his favour.

While I am not the biggest fan of John McCain, I think he was right on the money when he said this:

“I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three things — a K and a G and a B.”