"What’s
going on right now in the Middle East reminds me of the period between the First
and Second World Wars. ... The leader of a democratic country cannot, like
Stalin, stigmatize Hitler today, and then sign a pact with him to divide Europe
tomorrow. ... in terms of lies and violence, totalitarianism is more effective
than democracy. Only in terms of economics are democracies more effective than
totalitarianism, and this in the end proved fatal to the USSR."
Former Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin [top] and Germany's most disasterous leader ever, Adolph Hitler: Stalin's capacity to embrace Hitler one day and villify him the next highlights one of the chief advantages totalitarian regimes have over Western democracies, both then and now.
What’s going on right now in the Middle East reminds me
of the period between the First and Second World Wars.
Then, too, the world was divided in two. But not between
the forces of evil and good, but the forces of evil and idiots.
On one side there was Stalin. Sauron-Stalin,
who consistently transformed his country into a war machine for conquering the
world. Also consistently, through the Comintern
and other agents of influence, he siught to destroy Western democracy from within. Stalin
bought sample weapons in the West, blamed the West for aggression against the “Pax USSR,” he explained to all that the Soviet Union was
the only world government, that the world bourgeois would surely attack him for saying so,
and then! …
... On the other side were, alas, not Gandalf and Frodo,
but idiots. Idiots who sold Sauron the designs for
military technology, and then fell convincingly into every political and
ideological trap set for them.
Generally speaking, democracies don't like to go to war.
Money wasted on war could be much better spent on the voters, and in addition, presidents
rightly mistrust generals. Democracies are ill-suited to geopolitics, because
geopolitics is unthinkable without lies, intrigue and betrayal; and democracies
cannot publicly lie and betray. The leader of a democratic country cannot, like
Stalin, stigmatize Hitler today, and then sign a pact with him to divide Europe
tomorrow.
That is to say, in terms of lies and violence,
totalitarianism is more effective than democracy. Only in terms of economics
are democracies more effective than totalitarianism, and this in the end proved
fatal to the USSR.
Today the situation is very similar.
There is an evil force. It is the Islamic world, which
wants to destroy the West and at the same time accuses the West of aggression
against it. This is the worst kind of paranoia - the aggressors imagining
themselves as victims. In the first place, the difference compared with the communist
Sauron is that the Islamist world isn't united.
There is Ahmadinejad. Here we have a pure Islamic Hitler.
Essentially, Ahmadinejad plays the same role for Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar
as Hitler did for Stalin: he's a scarecrow. Thanks to his existence, America has
been forced to defend the interests of Saudi Arabia.
There is “al-Qaeda.” Like Stalin’s agents, al-Qaeda
well understands that their best ally in the West are its useful idiots - human
rights and international organizations, honed since communist times by the
destruction of the bourgeois state through delegitimization, of the
West's right to use violence against terrorists and subversives.
There is Qatar and Saudi Arabia: rentier-states with great ambitions, huge sums of money and
despotic eastern fantasies, who argue very simply: “We can buy any Western
politician, and in a pinch, hire any lobbyist.”
Ironically, the position of the West in the Middle
East can often be explained by the fact that it does whatever Saudi Arabia
needs it to do. Not in the sense that there is a Western politician who
believes it necessary for his nation to do so, but when a Saudi carrying a big
sack of money comes to him and says, “Do the opposite,” he will by and large do
it. And the fact is, that there is no geopolitics in the West. The Great Game
is no fun for democracies. So if you don’t give a damn either way, why not do
what a good friend asks you to do? It’s like you go into a store and think,
“should I get cheese with or without holes?” In theory it’s all the same. But
then your friend says “Get it with holes.” So you buy the cheese with holes.
And finally, there is Turkey. The Islamist prime
minister of Turkey, RecepErdogan, has chosen openly to restore
the Ottoman
Porte [government of the Ottoman Empire].
In 1923, the great reformer Kemal
Ataturk turned Turkey into a
European country, banning the Arabic alphabet and Arab garb. RecepErdogan is [reversing the
process], making Turkey into a new Ottoman Porte.
This is a fact of the greatest importance. At
the beginning of the 20th century, there was no question in the minds of sensible
reformers about what needed to be done to ensure a country's survival. “Do as
they do in Europe.” Now for Erdogan, there is also no
question about what to do to ensure his country's survival. “Don’t do as Europe
does,” because now, emulating Europe is synonymous with madness and suicide.
The Turkish economy is not in crisis. It continues to
grow. Healthy, an efficient and young population, ease of doing business,
promotion of entrepreneurship, a vision of Turkey as leader of the Islamic
world - this is Erdogan. You’d have to be crazy if, in
its place, you began to produce rogue proletarians and bureaucracies, and
imported all kinds of Blacks into your country saying “Oh, we conquered you
once, so now we owe you.”
Here, indeed, is the new chessboard.
On the one side - the forces (plural) of evil, on the other - the politically
correct democracies - the idiots. The difference between today and the first
half of the 20th century is that, first, as I said, this time there are lots of
Saurons with competing objectives. The second
difference is that, losing to the Soviets in terms of the effectiveness of
violence, Western democracies triumphed over the Soviets through economic
efficiency. The lesson of the Soviet collapse lay in the fact that an efficient
economy won over effective violence.
Unfortunately, this
is no longer true. The lumpenization of the democratic
countries, and the paying off of voters by politicians, has gone too far. [The
term "lumpenization" was used by Marxist thinkers
to refer to the deterioration of the economic and social position of the
proletariat under capitalism]. Of course, this is not to say that the Turkish
economy is more efficient than the European. But what we are talking about, is
the fact that the European economy can no longer serve as an example and model.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
In all major wars, the winner is either not involved at
all or only marginally engaged.
Therefore, the winner of the Thirty Years War was
Great Britain, the winner of the First and Second World Wars was the United
States, and in the war between Islam and the West, the winner will be China.
And as for Russia's role in all this chaos, it
is distinctly third-rate. In principle, I would have to characterize the policy
of the Russian authorities in Syria thusly: The Kremlin sincerely believes that
with the outcome of the war in Libya, the cursed Pindos [Americans] conned them and
failed to abide by their promises. The question of what the Americans can promise
to a country in which their own ambassador can be killed does not honestly come
to mind in the Kremlin, because, like its Arab allies, the Kremlin genuinely
believes that there is a great Satan in the world, and that he lives on the Potomac.
The most amazing thing in this case, is that
all of our Eastern friends, starting with Iran and ending with the same Assad, really
con Putin every day, putting him in an idiotic position before the United
Nations or Washington. "Conning Putin" is in fact a Middle Eastern
game. Promise him something so he will rush to Washington shouting, "I came
to an agreement with Assad, he will leave," making him look like a fool.
Strangely - for those who deceive him, Putin has no complaints. On the other
hand, in a situation in which all parties come to the table irrationally, why
should Putin be rational?
In general I would say that the Kremlin shares the crazy fantasy
of the Islamists, excepting their sacrifices, because rather than Allah, the
Kremlin believes in loot. As a result, Russia turns out devils that are evil,
but without force.
