If there had been any doubt—and I for one had never bought the idea that the Cold War was over—that doubt has been brutally confirmed. A tiger does not give up its stripes just on its (cunning) say so. Russia has never in its history been different from what it is today (save for that brief period in the early ‘90’s when Communism lay in tatters) : a cold, anti-democratic, anti-free speech, anti-human rights dictatorship. (Putin’s symbolic democracy is just that. There is only one authority allowed in Russia, and that’s Putin’s iron fist.)
What to do now? Russia should be kicked out of its place with the EU and US. Trade agreements should be nullified. But more than that The West has few non-military options, and sending in troops is not an option.
Russia’s main source of income is its natural gas pipeline to Europe. Here again we see how the oil industry fuels wars. They have bought off so many politicians that trying to develop non-oil/gas alternatives has largely failed, which failure has then led us into war after war in the Middle East, and renders any economic sanctions against Russia unimportant.
China is in the same position as Russia is. Thanks to Corporate Capitalism China has reached a position where it will assert its dominance in the region more and more. When business people make foreign policy rather than experts, so that profit and not prudence rules the agenda, then we see what happens, now in the Ukraine, or the Middle East, or in Asia.
The world experiences this over and over again. Journalists like Anthony Summers have exposed how capitalists like JP Morgan and Rockefeller put Lenin in power; and Henry Ford built for Stalin his first automated (car) factory. (McCarthy and his thugs graciously ignored these and other facts of Communist/capitalist collusion when they began their anti-Communist witch hunts. As always, the rich and powerful, who create these international crises, escape intact.)
We saw the same Corporate collusion with the Nazis, both in the years leading up to WWII, and infamously even during it (Roosevelt was incensed, but even his hands were tied due to their wealth and power), and ignobly after the war. The grandfather of President Bush was a party to all this as well, in cooperation with the OSS, the fore-runner of the CIA, which absorbed thousands of SS Nazis.
When you have the rich rule, whose interests do we believe they will serve?—the poor? the sick? the elderly? the powerless?
When the rich, vested interests rule, misrule, corruption, and war are the inevitable results.
Len Sive Jr.