Some months ago, Phil Butler invited me to contribute to a book to tell the stories of some people who are active in countering the anti-Russian line that has become so predominant in the West. Having read it, I find a common thread among most of the contributors. And that is that some excessively one-sided coverage of events – the Sochi Olympics and Ukraine are often mentioned – triggered their scepticism. It couldn't possibly be that one-sided they thought and they started to look elsewhere for information. This swiftly made them realise that almost everything in the Western MSM about Russia (and many other topics) is lies. Once they understood that, there was no way back.
I recommend the book https://www.amazon.com/Putins-Praetorians-Confessions-Kremlin-Trolls-ebook/dp/B076SS88CP/
I suspect most readers and commenters on this site have been through a similar journey. Anyway, here is mine.
I started work for the Canadian Department of National Defence in 1977 in the Directorate of Land Operational Research of the Operational Research and Analysis Establishment. I participated in many training games in real time and research games in very slow time. The scenarios were always the same: we (Canada had a brigade group in West Germany) were defending against an attack by the Soviet/Warsaw Pact side. In those days NATO was a defensive organisation and, as we later found out, so was the other side: each was awaiting the other to attack. Which, come to think of it, is probably why we're all here today.
I enjoyed my six years, often as the only civilian in a sea of uniforms, but I realised that a history PhD stood no change of running the directorate so, when the slot opened, I contrived to switch to the Directorate of Strategic Analysis as the USSR guy. I should say straight off that I have never taken a university course on Russia or the USSR. And, in retrospect, I think that was fortunate because in much of the English-speaking world the field seems to be dominated by Balts, Poles or Ukrainians who hate Russia. So I avoided that "Russians are the enemy, whatever flag they fly" indoctrination: I always thought the Russians were just as much the victims of the ideology as any one else and am amused how the others have airbrushed their Bolsheviks out of their pictures just as determinedly as Stalin removed "unpersons" from his.
That was November 1984 and Chernenko was GenSek and, when he died in March 1985, Gorbachev succeeded. While I didn't think the USSR was all that healthy or successful an enterprise, I did expect it to last a lot longer and when Gorbachev started talking about glasnost and perestroyka I thought back to the 20th Party Congress, the Lieberman reforms, Andropov's reforms and didn't expect much.
In 1987 two things made me think again. I attended a Wilton Park conference (the first of many) attended by Dr Leonid Abalkin. He took the conference over and, with the patient interpretation of someone from the Embassy, talked for hours. The Soviet economy was a failure and couldn't be reformed. That was something different. Then, on the front page of Pravda, appeared a short essay with the title "A New Philosophy of Foreign Policy" by Yevgeniy Primakov. I pricked up my ears: a new philosophy? But surely good old Marxism-Leninism is valid for all times and places. As I read on, I realised that this was also something new: the author was bluntly saying that Soviet foreign policy had been a failure, it was ruining the country and creating enemies. These two were telling us that the USSR just didn't work. As Putin told Stone, "it was not efficient in its roots".
These things convinced me that real change was being attempted. Not just fiddling around at the edges but something that would end the whole Marxist-Leninist construct. As far as I was concerned, it had been the communist system that was our enemy and, if it was thrown off, we should be happy. Sometime around then I was interviewed for a job at NATO and the question was what, with all these changes, was NATO's future. I said it should become an alliance of the civilised countries against whatever dangers were out there: the present members of course, but also the USSR, Japan and so on.
Well, that didn't happen did it? I remember a very knowledgeable boss assuring me that NATO expansion was such a stupid idea that it would never happen. He was wrong too.
In 1814 the victors – Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria – sat down in Vienna, with France, to re-design the world. They were wise enough to understood that a settlement that excluded France wouldn't last. In 1919 this was forgotten and the settlement – and short-lived it was – excluded the loser. In 1945 Japan and Germany were included in the winners' circle. At the end of the Cold War, repeating the Versailles mistake, we excluded Russia. It was soon obvious, whatever meretricious platitudes stumbled from the lips of wooden-faced stooges, that NATO was an anti-Russia organisation of the "winners".
But I retained hope. I think my most reprinted piece has been "The Third Turn" of November 2010 and in it I argued that Russia had passed through two periods in the Western imagination: first as the Little Brother then as the Assertive Enemy but that we were now approaching a time in which it would be seen as a normal country.
Well, that didn't happen did it?
And so the great opportunity to integrate Russia into the winners' circle was thrown away.
For a long time I thought it was stupidity and ignorance. I knew the implacably hostile were out there: Brzezinski and the legions of "think" tanks (my website has a collection of anti-Russia quotations I've collected over the years) but I greatly underestimated their persistence. Stupidity and ignorance; you can argue with those (or hope to). But you can't argue with the anti-Russians. Russia wants to re-conquer the empire so it invaded Georgia. But it didn't hold on to it, did it? No but that's because we stopped it. Putin kills reporters. Name one. You know, whatshername. Provocative exercises on NATO's borders. But NATO keeps moving closer to Russia. Irrelevant, NATO's peaceful. Putin is the richest thief in the world. Says who? Everybody. Putin hacked the US election. How? Somehow.
I quoted Hanlan's razor a lot – "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". And, stupidity and ignorance there were (a favourite being John McCain's notion that the appropriate venue for a response to a Putin piece in the NYT was Pravda. And then he picked the wrong Pravda! (But he won't hate Russia or Putin any the less if he were told that, would he?) At some point I came to understand that malice was the real driver.
I suppose it grew on me bit by bit – all the stupidity converged on the same point and it never stopped; but real stupidity and ignorance don't work that way: people learn, however slowly. I think the change for me was Libya. I started out thinking stupidity but, as it piled up, it became clear that it was malice. I'd seen lies in the Kosovo war but it was Libya that convinced me that it wasn't just a few lies, it was all lies. (My guess is that Libya was an important development in Putin's view of NATO/US too.)
Naive perhaps but, for most of history stupidity has adequately explained things and malice is, after all, a species of stupidity.
So what's the point of writing? I'll never convince the Russia haters, and there's little chance of getting through to the stupid and ignorant. And most people aren't very interested anyway.
Well, this is where malice meets stupidity. If we consider the Project for a New American Century, the neocon game plan "to promote American global leadership", what do we see twenty years later? Brzezinski laid out the strategy in The Grand Chessboard at the same time. What today? Well, last year he had to admit that the "era" of US dominance, he was so confident of twenty years earlier, was over. There's no need to belabour the point: while the US by most measures is still the world's dominant power, its mighty military is defeated everywhere and doesn't realise it, its manufacturing capacity has been mostly outsourced to China, domestic politics and stability degenerate while we watch and there's opioids, spectacular debt levels, incarceration, infant mortality, недоговороспособны and on and on. Donald Trump was elected on the promise to Make America Great.... Again. Hardly the hyperpower to lead the globe is it?
The Twentieth Century was the "American Century" thanks to limitless manufacturing capacity allied to great inventiveness anchored on a stable political base. What is left of these three in 2017? Can America be made "great" again? And wars: wars everywhere and everywhere the same. And what other than malice has brought it to this state? Malice has become stupidity: the neocons, Brzezinskis, the Russia haters, the Exceptionalists, scheming "to promote American global leadership", have weakened the USA. Perhaps irreparably.
So, who's the audience today? The converted and people at the point when a little push can break their conditioning have always been there. But now there is a potentially huge audience for our efforts: the audience of the awakening.
Which brings me back to where I started. Except that it's the USA this time:
IT'S NOT WORKING
We're here and we're waiting for you: you've been lied to but that doesn't mean that everything is a lie.
Thank you very much for this; it is much needed.
Posted by: Imagine | 28 October 2017 at 11:20 AM
Excellent says. Thank you!
"The Twentieth Century was the "American Century" thanks to limitless manufacturing capacity allied to great inventiveness anchored on a stable political base." -- These three should be made into a ground rock of the US internal/foreign policies, not the Kagans-CIA adventurous spirit of war profiteering.
"Malice has become stupidity: the neocons, Brzezinskis, the Russia haters, the Exceptionalists, scheming "to promote American global leadership", have weakened the USA. Perhaps irreparably." -- True. They are the traitors and destroyers of the formerly great country.
Posted by: Anna | 28 October 2017 at 11:39 AM
While he's right on almost every point, all I can say is: Good luck with that.
The trend of history is not reversed by bloggers. I simply don't see a "huge audience of the awakening." There may be a huge audience of discontented people, but they're unlikely to 1) fully understand what's going on, and 2) be able to organize enough to do anything about it. History may show such situations occurring, but the US is a big, diversified country and it moves like an iceberg and is unlikely to be diverted from its course (short of melting economically or militarily.)
I'd start looking for a retreat in an area unlikely to be hit by nukes. Even better, move to a country that isn't likely to be hit and where the population doesn't already despise Americans (or certainly will if we start WWIII) - if such a country exists.
Posted by: Richardstevenhack | 28 October 2017 at 12:13 PM
PA
Well done. Thank you. The post Cold War expansion of NATO was madness driven by the "conditioning" of the Cold War decades. I railed against it then and was met with stony stares everywhere in the government. The influence of the Russia Haters like Zbig has been pervasive for a long time. In addition to that I would say that the US no longer has a foreign policy in the ME. Israel has a policy which reflects their cartoonish view of the supposedly universally hostile Gentile world. The US is engaged in attempting to execute that policy. If people think that is not true, they should consider the zombie utterances of Nikki Haley in Kinshasha and Tillerson in Geneva. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 28 October 2017 at 12:38 PM
"move to a country that isn't likely to be hit"
I don't know if these are apocryphal stories but I heard somewhere that a couple in the 1930s had picked Iwo Jima as a safe place to wait out the coming trouble. And then there was a couple who moved to the Falkland Islands in the 1960s or 1970s.
As for change in the USA, who knows? Obama was elected by people who wanted change and so was Trump. The desire is out there, at any event.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 October 2017 at 12:40 PM
I would just add Saudi Arabia to that. When I was reading up on jihadism it became clear how much SA had infiltrated academia and think tanks, to say nothing of mosques in the USA. IMO Jerusalem and Riyadh are united on one big issue and that is that Iran is the Big Enemy.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 October 2017 at 12:42 PM
The trend of history is not reversed by bloggers. I simply don't see a "huge audience of the awakening."
Check out current POTUS and recall on what program he gained votes in November 2016. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
Posted by: SmoothieX12 | 28 October 2017 at 12:51 PM
PA
Agreed. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 28 October 2017 at 12:58 PM
I also think that you only have to have followed Social Media during the Trump/Clinton election campaign and followed Twitter memes like draftourdaughters - posted and followed by millions of ordinary Americans - and showing great wit and irony and genuine feeling and contempt for Clinton's virulent anti-Russian campaign, to realize that there are huge numbers of ordinary Americans who are thinking for themselves and not swallowing the warmongers propaganda.
Posted by: johnf | 28 October 2017 at 01:06 PM
For me the turning point was realizing that The New York Times (and the Manchester Guardian) is at the very heart of the rabid anti-Russian propaganda. As I said to SWMBO, find a pro-Russian article in the New York Times in the past three years. And when I say pro-Russian, I include neutral, anything at all that isn't a full bore attack. These are supposed to be intelligent, unbiased, analytical outlets. They aren't. (Of course, I realize the counter-argument is that there is nothing good to say about Russia. Or, more succinctly, why don't you move to Russia? My reply is that I don't want Russia as an enemy. Why would I and why would any man?)
I would pose the following question to PA. Given that just about every technique possible has been mounted against Russia to destroy its political system and society, would you be surprised if some of these techniques were used against the U.S. by Russia? If Trump makes Taylor the head of the Federal Reserve, he will have been the most disruptive, inflammatory, divisive political leader in the history of the U.S. I think it is a reasonable question to ask whether the U.S. can survive much more of Trump.
Now, I realize that there are a great many Trump supporters not only within the sound of my voice but also in the comments to this blog. And I also realize that hypothesizing that Trump's actions could be directed in any way by Russia places me in a tin foil hat. I realize that. But eliminate the impossible... What is more, how much influence would Russia have to have on Trump to get him to come along?
And I would also add the observation that German tanks swept the field at the start of WWII and Russian tanks annihilated them (and the Japanese) at the end.
Posted by: Bill Herschel | 28 October 2017 at 01:14 PM
1. I do not believe that there is any connection/influence between Russia and Trump. Period. That was a lie made up to excuse the DNC's swindle.
2. Russia wants a quiet life and has no interest in trying to bring down a foe as dangerous in its death throes as the USA would be.
3. That having been said, I believe Moscow and Beijing know that the US is going down and are hoping to manage the fall as best they can.
4. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there were a note somewhere in the two akin to Kennan's Long Telegram arguing that the US is going down, it's a matter of time, be patient and try to contain it.
5. Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 October 2017 at 01:28 PM
Patrick, re Saudi infiltration. It is not only in the USA, their pernicious Wahhabi ideology, riding on the back of their huge petrodollar resources, has infiltrated the whole Muslim world. This is what has created the Jihadi monster that was born there, and now stalks the world.
Most Muslim populations adhered to a moderate form of Islam prior to this invasion. Now, these adherents have either been converted, or find it expedient to adopt extreme discretion to continue to live their lives. Anyone bold enough to still speak out against it runs the risk of being accused of blasphemy and killed.
The USA is complicit in this development, initially to use it against the Soviet Union, and later against other "enemies" such as Iran. Attempts to divert this Frankenstein monster towards other targets, as in Syria, will only delay the inevitable, when it turns upon its creators in SA and the UAE, as stooges of the Christian West, its ultimate enemy.
The foolish Saudi princeling, who now talks of revising the Wahhabi creed, doesn't realise that he is digging the grave of the House of Saud.
Posted by: FB Ali | 28 October 2017 at 01:32 PM
Patrick,
I agree fully with your conclusions.
As for the equivalent of the Kennan argument, I think it was clearly underlying the recent statements by Putin at the Valdai Club and by Xi at the party conference.
Posted by: FB Ali | 28 October 2017 at 01:39 PM
Patrick, Colonel,
There is much afoot in the Ukraine, this time sadly on the religious side of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aou_v6TuXuE
Posted by: J | 28 October 2017 at 01:39 PM
Yes indeed. Without the Wahhab-Saud connection and implied blessing to give them legitimacy, the Saud family are just a bunch of bandits who seized Arabia.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 October 2017 at 02:20 PM
Fully agree with your five points PA, and happy to tell you that in our neck of the woods we have been saying exactly that years ago...., especially points 2 to 4; and the point of “ managing the inevitable fall of the US.....
Posted by: Willybilly | 28 October 2017 at 02:26 PM
PA,
Thank you for this excellent article. However, I think you are being too charitable by defining malice as just another species of stupidity. While the term "stupid" fits those deceived by the propaganda, wouldn't "evil" be a better descriptor of the malice displayed by zio-con and wahhabi high-priests?
Ishmael Zechariah
Posted by: Ishmael Zechariah | 28 October 2017 at 02:38 PM
In Re~Wahabbism:
Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines offer alternatives to neuter that trend. These countries have maintained a good bit of independence from the Saudi/US sphere of thought, and in many cases it is because the Chinese populations, in those countries, are closely tied to the Muslim countries.
Notably, those Chinese people are neutral on the Taiwan-vs.-Mao question. I have met and learned from a good lot of them, who have come to Taiwan to learn. They are practical, and understand not only Taiwan's precarious status, but also the value in maintaining that status for as long as possible.
There are very few Chinese in SE Asia who think that Taiwan would be best served by a declaration of independence.
There are very few Muslims in SE Asia who are friends with those Chinese who are linked to Wahabbi groups.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | 28 October 2017 at 02:39 PM
Koros, Hybris, Ate and eventually Nemesis. You have to be a bit stupid the repeat that, don't you think?
Surely to be malicious and provoke trouble and take delight in others' troubles leads to your disaster and, altogether, is pretty stupid.
But I take your point. I used the words because of Hanlan's Razor.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 28 October 2017 at 02:47 PM
>>>Check out current POTUS and recall on what program he gained votes in November 2016. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
Check out Google and Twitter censorship of major news outlets, as well as the massive censorship of blogs and alternative media--oh, wait: that would be media mercenaries complicit in peddling un-American narratives, right?
Either way, it's fucking censorship.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | 28 October 2017 at 02:49 PM
Fantasy.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 28 October 2017 at 03:03 PM
Mr. Ali very well said, as I am very sure you have already read, Crown prince MBS is trying to blame their adoration of ultra militant extremist Islam on Iranian revolution, in this suggestion, he wants his audience to believe hey chose this path to defend the Islam they practice against the islam or Majos Iranians that could affect the Sunni Islam. Therefore I believe they have thought what explanation can win both western audience as well as Muslim sunni audience. To one side it blames it to Iranian Revolution and to the other side he suggest they have defended the Sunni against Shia founding and promoting militant extremist Sunni Islam.
Posted by: kooshy | 28 October 2017 at 03:14 PM
Artificial Intelligence increases the efficiency of intellectual operations exponentially, without increasing their wisdom [unless explicitly designed in]. Good gets done faster, but stupid gets done faster and stronger too. Helping a poorly-designed system move faster only leads to it flailing itself apart like the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
Recent events include the breath-taking black-holing of freedom of press at the United Nations:
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2017/03/31/israel-is-an-apartheid-state-even-if-the-un-report-has-been-withdrawn/
the equally breathtaking attempt to make it a 20-year-prison federal felony to criticize Israel in the United States:
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/
and Israel Minority-Report jailing people for posting on Facebook:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.792206
"if you get to their house a week before the attack the kid doesn’t know that he is a terrorist yet”.
The CIA now has over a thousand programmers. How do you see boosted efficiency of Deep State operations playing out in the real world in the coming years?
Posted by: Imagine | 28 October 2017 at 03:48 PM
Surely to be malicious and provoke trouble and take delight in others' troubles leads to your disaster and, altogether, is pretty stupid.
unfortunately for us average citizen hubris doesn't quite work as excellently as it does in Greek tragedy?
My no doubt innocently ignorant experience is that as as long as you are well embedded in whatever system you can well survive its fall.
But yes in that context Iraq seemed to be something of a new age experience, whatever that new age may be.
Posted by: LeaNder | 28 October 2017 at 03:54 PM
PA, Colonel,
Excellent article.
There is nothing like travel and living abroad to broaden one's perspective. Little wonder that US citizens who have never ventured outside their home state, let alone country, simply fail to grasp the gravity of the world situation, particularly in countries where the expedient discretion, as FB Ali gently states, means survival. Where it takes little courage to make it through the day, the risk is falling into a state of passive complacency. Opiated, in a sense.
Having grown up in the Central American sector I can tell you, as a child in an expat household, our lives contained a geometrically larger array of moving parts compared to those who have never left the home country. While my childhood revolved around riding a bicycle in the boulevards and beautiful parks of the city, whatever peers I had have long since fled the violence, as I have, and those who remain might as well be in a warzone. Such a beautiful yet toxic beauty, Mexico.
So, if your question is, "where would I move to be safe when the proverbial s hits the f?", part of me thinks that living close to the most likely target for nukes to hit, in the first wave, is a practical solution, to be unaffected by the aftermath. Can't afford to move to Dubai, after all. In the meantime, you should see my banana peppers and parsley this year.
Posted by: Stumpy | 28 October 2017 at 04:08 PM