The Russian Agenda

by Dave Sewell on 8.11.08

Nuclear Armageddon is, at time of writing, imminent. Every front page tells me so: Russia is about to nuke Poland, having already invaded and annexed half of Georgia. And to think, all this while we were distracted by the chase for crappy shiny things at the Olympics.

There’s a few things wrong with that paragraph.

Not the bit about the Olympics so much. It sure has been a nauseating summer on that front, with the journalistic and political elites of the nation torn over which line to take.

Do they salivate over the awesome power of the corporate police state, conjuring up fantasies of a London (2012) made perfect by an “Anti-Terrorism” Bill (2011)?

Do they indulge their inner human rights activist, realising with glee that for a few short weeks of going on about Tibet they can pretend that Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were but a distant, drunken nightmare? Or do they sod it all, because Britain has finally won something?

No, I stand by that sentence of cynicism, but there are a few other things wrong with that opening paragraph.

Firstly, there’s the implication that I wrote this column before my deadlines had started whooshing past: at the time I’m really writing this, the non-Olympics section of the front pages has moved on to Presedent Obama, and if Nuclear Armageddon really was imminent last week then the last few days must just have been a hallucination flashing before my eyes as the radiation poisoning set in.

So there’s that. And then there’s all that stuff about Russia.

Apparently some Russian general has said that, as the location of new American bases full of missiles aimed at Russia (officially, these missile platforms are the only way – the only way, you understand – for America to protect Britain from Iran), Poland has made itself a target.

Well shock and bloody horror, who would have seen that coming? Who except for, maybe, half of Poland?

It’s not just in Britain that we march against the War Of Terror; the installation of American power in Eastern Europe has been provoking massive protests all along.

And then there’s Georgia (the country).

First of all, let’s be clear about who invaded whom. South Ossetia was autonomous from Georgia within the USSR, and separated from Georgia as soon as Georgia had separated from Russia.

Since then, South Ossetians have used Russian Roubles and voted in Russian elections, and when faced with tanks from Tblisi would have expected nothing less than a timely intervention in their defence by the Russian army. Which is exactly what they got, not an invasion so much as a rescue.

Of course, this spirited defence of national liberation is a world away from Russia’s policy toward nearby Chechnya, victim of a long and brutal occupation. If this seems contradictory or confusing to you, you’re not alone: Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Sudoku”, or something.

But I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the drunken ramblings of that old Tory.

Churchill was full of shit, seriously, and there’s nothing mysterious or peculiar about Russian policy.

After all, the same broad coalition of American and European governments currently whomping the crap out of Afghanistan and making excuses for Israel’s occupation of Palestine were quick to egg on the borderline-fascist “freedom fighters” of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo against their Serbian neighbours in the 1990s.

Not that Serbia’s leaders were any better, but egging one side on inevitably led to catastrophe – at which point, the West was able to just shrug and sigh at the primitive nationalistic instincts of the former-Yugoslavian savages.

If only the civilised world could have started bombing them sooner. Russia’s cynical manipulation of the Caucasus is no less revolting, but it’s also no worse.

Hopefully you won’t roll your eyes too much when I say that the superpowers’ scrap over Georgia (the country) is about oil. The Caucasus lies right between the petrol pumps and immersion heaters of Europe and the gas and oil wells of Central Asia.

Who controls Georgia (the country) controls a massive slice of Europe’s energy supply, and neither Russia nor America wants to see that prize fall into the other’s hands. So they sponsor the different nationalities of the region and pit them against each other in proxy wars that will only get bloodier.

“Blood for oil” is never the end of the story, though, and Georgia (the country) is just part of a renewed rivalry between America and the rest of the world. As the almighty Dollar collapses, Uncle Sam’s world domination becomes more reliant on the almighty bomber, on overt military power.

Resource depletion – “Peak Oil” – only intensifies that competition, and from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, America’s rulers are having to move on to bigger targets, pushing countries with at least some capacity to push back. And they’ll never stop pushing, either; as the oil runs out, they’ll only fight harder to control it.

As gas and oil prices go up, the sensible thing to do (along with rolling out the wind turbines and solar panels) would be to ask those at the top if they really need their private jets when others can’t heat their homes. That’s the last thing they want to be asked, and they’ll have an easy way of dodging the question. Not enough oil? Blame Russia, blame Iran.

Why invest in renewable energy in England and Wales when we could invest in military bases in Pakistan and Ethiopia? Why tax the rich, when we could rob the foreigner? This goes double in post-Yeltsin Russia, where the bosses own half the Premier League and the workers are freezing to death.

Endless war: it’s their only strategy to keep the wheels of capitalism in motion, and if we don’t stop them it will tear us apart. I can’t wait for NATO’s 60th birthday next year, can’t wait for the protests all across Europe, against the war machine and the system that relies upon it.