Dec. 26—The good news is that Russia’s leadership cared enough to leave some coal in your Christmas stocking.
Over the last three days, Russia’s President Putin, former President Medvedev and Foreign Minister Lavrov, amongst others, have gone out of their way to disabuse the West of a deadly illusion. Russia has no longer any interest in begging for any sort of arms control treaty, as much as they previously thought it was the highest of priorities. They admit that they were wrong to treat the West as rational negotiating partners.
As Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, put it in his Dec. 25 exclusive column in Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “Regrettably, but there is no one in the West we can negotiate anything with…. For years, perhaps decades ahead, one can forget about normal relations with the West. This is not our choice. Now—let’s do without them until a new generation of reasonable politicians comes to power there. Let’s be careful and vigilant. We will develop relations with the rest of the world, which is very big and has normal relations with us.”
He explained that Moscow still needs security guarantees but, without a change in heart and mind in the West, they mean nothing. “New disarmament agreements are currently unrealistic and unnecessary. The sooner the maximum security guarantees that suit our country are received, the sooner the situation will normalize. If we do not receive them, the tension will persist indefinitely. The world will continue to balance on the brink of World War III and nuclear catastrophe. We will do everything to prevent them.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added his voice today in a discussion with various media, pointing at the West’s belief in the “Fukuyama” fantasy of “an end to history” meaning “the complete dominance of liberal ideology, democracy, way of life and the disappearance of the competing world system….” He addressed the press: “The course of history cannot be stopped, there is no and never will be an end to history,” and sooner or later the West will have to engage in genuine negotiations with other nations. “The course of history cannot be stopped. There is no end to history and there never will be. Humanity has more than once gone through attempts to subjugate it by one force or another, which set out to dictate everything and everything to everyone. So it will be this time.”
He concluded: “We are not going to run after the West. They ended almost all relationships…. We will focus on those who have never let us down, with whom difficult compromises were sometimes reached, but when they were achieved, no one ever deceived anyone.”
Otherwise, consider a few developments. 1. The leader of a delegation from Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to Israel did a photo op at the ruins of Masada, with his modernized Nazi swastika on his shirt. There was not a peep of protest in the land. 2. The release of Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files’ 8th installment show the FBI and their “thought police” friends muscling social media to censor mention of the “BRICS,” the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa grouping, representing a massive force for an industrial/agricultural/science-driven economic future. This is not the FBI doing a dirty partisan trick, e.g., for Democrats and against Republicans; but rather a more realistic insight into what the fascist drive wrapped up in the “Russiagate” package actually is. 3. Meanwhile, Brazil and Argentina are making plans for large-scale economic development projects, as Brazil’s newly-elected President Lula da Silva is to be inaugurated on Jan. 1. Yet over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, two violent plots against the inauguration were disrupted and arrests made.
As Lyndon LaRouche famously forecast, “I don’t know about a Happy New Year; but I can promise you a turbulent New Year.”
So, give thanks for the coal in your stocking.
Then, perhaps it is time to make a real new year’s resolution. Instead of being tormented by a Damocles’ sword nuclear war threat, or being tormented by attempting to squeeze such an uncomfortable reality out of one’s life, perhaps taking seriously the need to develop a “new generation of wise politicians.” It could put the “happy” back into the new year.
A fine start is to begin digesting the happy business of statecraft with the Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture.