Slaughtering Russia is U.S. Policy
American policy makers have been planning to “carve up” the Russian Federation for years. And Putin is right to use the word “existential” when describing this war.
On February 14, 2023, policymakers, government officials and geopolitical “experts” gathered at the Hudson Institute, just down the street from the White House, for a half day conference to discuss the future of Eurasia.
As these policy potentates took their seats in the hall of one of the US’s greatest Washington think tanks, the air must have crackled with electricity. They were there, after all, on a momentous mission: to plan for the dissolution of the Russian Federation.
The Hudson Institute held a seminar on how to carve up Russia {Source: The Hudson Institute]
The introductory brief set the tone of the conference:
While it is unknown when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will end, a Russian defeat would likely lead to the dissolution of the Russian Federation as it is known today. Because of the Kremlin’s decision to attack Ukraine, Moscow’s once extensive influence across Eurasia has dwindled, and the war has devastated Russia’s economy, military, and social stability.
US and allied policymakers need to understand this possibility and prepare for the new Eurasian geopolitical reality that a fall of the Russian Federation might bring.
The conference consisted of two panels, with a keynote address from a Ukrainian MP. The two panels featured Neocons from The Jamestown Foundation, the Atlantic Council and other right wing think tanks, USAID, as well as “dissidents” from Chechnya and Georgia.
The conference was part love-in, part communal fantasy game in which the participants grew rapturous in projecting the fall of Putin and the break-up of Russia.
Official US policy: “Decolonizing Russia”
It is not just the private think tanks that are preparing to break up Russia — “decolonizing” Russia is also official US policy. The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, is an independent commission of the U.S. Federal Government.
In June, 2022, the CSCE held its own conference, called simply “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative”.
These people believe that the socialist USSR was not a force for “liberation” but rather one for “colonisation”. It assumes that Putin is a deranged megalomaniac trying to “reconstitute the Russian Empire”, and whose days are now numbered.
The conference focused on what they called “Russia’s interior empire”, and discussed “Moscow’s dominion over many indigenous non-Russian nations, and the brutal extent to which the Kremlin has taken to suppress their national self-expression and self-determination”.
“Serious and controversial discussions are now underway about reckoning with Russia’s fundamental imperialism and the need to “decolonize” Russia for it to become a viable stakeholder in European security and stability”.
The Russians Are Aware
I first found out about the Hudson Institute event from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who mentioned it in a speech.
He and Putin have both talked often about how the ultimate plan of the “collective West” (read: USA) is to “carve up Russia into bite-sized, digestible bits” in order to steal natural resources and wealth.
And of course they are right. When Western hegemonists look at Russia, they see one big prize — a huge collection of natural resources and manpower, just waiting to be exploited for obscene profits.
In other words, they just want to pick up where they left off when Putin came to power — they want to continue the “Rape of Russia” by repeating the same story. In 1991, the “Communist” USSR needed to be broken up and restructured under a “democratic” model.
Now, in 2023, the “autocratic” Russian Federation needs to be broken up and restructured under a “democratic” model.
In other words, “Oligarchs ‘R’ Us” needs to get back in business. The Russian leadership knows all this.
“It’s 1991 Again”
The conferences at the Hudson Institute and the Helsinki Commission revolve around the same theme: that in 1991 the West was “unprepared” for the fall of the Soviet Union, and so a tremendous geopolitical and financial opportunity was missed.
Both events assumed that Putin was failing and that the Russian Federation was set to “implode” at any moment.
In order to successfully profit from the “imminent” collapse of the Russian Federation, the West needs to prepare NOW.
That viewpoint is also reflected in the fever swamp of anti-Russian journalism.
Alexander J. Motyl, noted Russophobe and Western Ukrainian nationalist (which is redundant, I know), is trying to get everyone ready for the collapse of the Russian Federation:
It’s 1991 again and, now as then, Western policymakers and analysts are terrified of confronting the two big “what if” questions raised by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calamitous war with Ukraine: What if the Russian Federation is following in the Soviet Union’s footsteps and is on the verge of collapse? What if, once again, the process is driven by internal factors and there’s nothing we can do about it?
Motyl is by no means alone, however. The US military is also warning us to get ready for The Fall:
“I now believe it is a genuine possibility that (Russian dictator) Vladimir Putin’s exposed weaknesses are so severe that we might be witnessing the beginning of the end — not only of his regime, but of the Russian Federation itself”, [General Hodges said].
“If we fail to prepare for this possibility in the way that we failed to prepare for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it could introduce immense instability to our geopolitics”.
Our British allies across the pond are practically giddy with anticipation — even now:
The Ukrainian press is of course optimistic:
With every passing month of the Ukraine war, the prospect of the Russian Federation collapsing into a collection of smaller states seems more credible. Heavy losses on the battlefield, an ailing economy, and an ever-shrinking occupation footprint in Ukraine is all contributing to growing instability of the regime.
The question then becomes: what should the West do when Russia “collapses”?
The answers are not surprising.
NATO Enlargement on Steroids
The Hudson Institute’s policy memo and subsequent conference includes some “key take-aways”, one of which is — surprise! — a massive and aggressive expansion of NATO.
Many will recall that Russia at one time was interested in joining NATO as part of an overall European Security Framework. Indeed, Bill Clinton reportedly offered NATO membership to Russia, and Putin has stated that they discussed the possibility, but that in the end — and not surprisingly — Neocons within the US government had no real interest in pursuing that path.
Ironically, the Hudson Institute’s Luke Coffey, himself a dedicated Neocon who authored the December 2022 policy memo, is now proposing that the leftovers of the Russian Federation be folded into NATO once Moscow has been made “weak”:
“When the Russian Federation dissolves, NATO and the European Union should take advantage of Moscow’s weakness and push for a “big bang” enlargement for remaining candidate and aspirant countries”, Coffey writes.
What is striking is the cavalier attitude towards the EU and NATO, as if they were merely extensions of the US State Department (which in many ways they are):
“Where NATO or EU membership is not appropriate, the US should pursue stronger relations on a bilateral or multilateral basis — especially by leveraging regional groupings like the GUAM1or the Organization of Turkic States”.
In Coffey’s eyes, the US would be the sole arbiter of which states were “appropriate” for EU and/or NATO membership. And if those new, ex-Russian states could not be brought under US hegemony through one of those US proxies, the US can just take them over directly.
The sheer, unvarnished arrogance is breathtaking.
A New Nuremberg Trial Process
Since these warmongering hegemonists are so fixated on calling Putin a “modern day Hitler”, it is little wonder that they would suggest a “modern day Nuremberg”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an interesting proposal, supported by various Western parliamentary bodies, to create a Special Tribunal for the Punishment of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The tribunal would hold Russia’s most senior political and military leaders accountable for committing the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
Note there is NO mention of holding the Ukrainians responsible for anything.
Round up the Nukes
This is the least mentioned goal set forth in the Hudson policy memo. It simply says:
There are almost 6,000 nuclear warheads in Russia, and the country is known to have a significant chemical and biological weapons program. Accounting for these weapons would be in the interest of the international community.
Amazingly, that is all they have to say about the nuclear threat.
Back in the USSR
The Hudson Institute conference was based on a research study that carried a similar name, which Hudson had published two months earlier: “Preparing for the Final Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Dissolution of the Russian Federation”.
The idea of seeing modern Russia as just the latest iteration of the Soviet Union is as bizarre as it is telling: these people see the US and Russia locked in a “New Cold War” and Ukraine is merely the latest flashpoint in a 100-year long struggle that started with the Russian Revolution in 1917.
These days there is an entire cottage industry in the think tank West that is based on the idea that the Russian Federation is still the USSR, still The Enemy writ large; still the bane of human existence; still the giant gulag filled with terrified and subjugated people; still the Stalinist dictatorship you loved to hate 75 years ago.
And it needs to be broken up and broken down, just as the Soviet Union did.
Of course, the message has had to be tweaked, given that Putin is actually an avowed anti-Communist and the Russian system is now solidly capitalistic.
This is why Biden and other Western leaders bang on so much about “autocracy”. It is the autocratic nature of Russia that has to change, they say. It is Vladimir Putin the man, the monster, the Great Autocrat, who needs to go away.
Fighting the “New Cold War”
The Hudson Institute, the Helsinki Commission and a horde of Western journalists and pundits are all living in a fantasy world in which Russia is defeated and Putin killed or put on a show trial.
But there are some Russophobes who look at the situation with steel-eyed realism and rub their hands with glee at the prospect that Ukraine will be defeated, but that defeat will only be, as Churchill said, “the end of the beginning” of a global war against Russia.
Ian Bremmer is the Founder and President of something called The Eurasia Group. Writing under the title of “Thought Leader”, Bremmer says that, as the Ukraine conflict enters its second year, we are faced with “a dangerous new reality”:
Gone are the days when Russia’s war aims consisted solely of “de-Nazifying and demilitarizing” Ukraine. Also gone are the days when U.S. and allied governments limited their involvement to helping Ukraine defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Leaders on both sides of the conflict have now crossed a series of lines that cannot easily be uncrossed. The result is a new Cold War between Russia and its opponents — one that promises to be less global than its twentieth-century counterpart but also less stable and predictable.
Elliott Abrams, who may well be the most bloodthirsty, ghoulish and downright evil Neocon on the planet, shares Bremmer’s view of a “new reality” emerging from the Ukrainian conflict.
Abrams wrote a blog post shortly after Russia invaded in 2022 that starts with the usual “Putin as madman bent on Empire” trope:
The first and quick U.S. reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should be to understand that aggression will be repeated unless it incurs a heavy price…Putin must learn that crime does not pay, or else he will try it again — even against NATO countries we are pledged to defend. If we are cowed by his threats…we are telling him that we will not stop him from reestablishing Russian domination over all of Eastern Europe — the Soviet empire rebuilt.
Unlike the pie-eyed dreamers, however, Abrams envisions a world in which Ukraine loses, and that loss leads to a protracted and expensive proxy conflict between Russia and the West:
That means a permanent refusal to recognize Putin’s conquest and the quisling government he may install. The United States refused to recognize Stalin’s 1940 annexation of the Baltic states, even as decade after decade rolled by. The same adamant refusal should govern here, however long it takes for Ukraine to be free again.
In other words, endless war. A war that will keep America’s Military Industrial Complex and National Security apparatus well-funded for, as Abrams puts it, “decade after decade”.
But that is not all. Abrams also foresees a sort of Ukrainian version of Operation GLADIO:
And real resistance to Putin means backing a Ukrainian resistance and supplying it with the money and weapons it will need to bleed Putin. Facing a determined and effective Ukrainian insurgency is the best way Russians may come to conclude that Putin’s gamble has been a disaster — and turn against him.
Here we go again, “weakening Russia”. It seems that is all these guys think about.
Abrams suggests basing the Ukrainian partisans out of Poland, which will of course lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, but hey — you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few Pierogis.
It truly is “existential”
Western leaders and pundits like to call Putin all sorts of names and accuse him of “imperial dreams” of “conquering Europe” (if not the world).
Yet, no one in the Western “intelligentsia” seems to take these accusations seriously.
The DC Think Tank Complex are all focused on how to handle Putin’s demise and the accompanying downfall of Russia. Many accept that Ukraine will not win their war with Russia, but they all seem to be in agreement that Russia is “on its way out” as a nation. Its fall is imminent. Russia is soon to be — finally — consigned to “the dustbin of history”.
Putin knows this. Lavrov knows this. Russia is in an “existential” struggle with the West for its very existence. It is a struggle they cannot afford to lose.
#End
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