I was writing about what Putin would do as far back as November. This is from 20 Jan. In the Minsk thread. I would love to know what I got wrong.
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The best way to think about the current enemies of all progress is with direct reference to fascism. For example, rightists like Bolt will refer to the current Chinese leadership as running a ‘communist party’ and all that does is speak volumes about the rightist’s ignorance of the struggle against the revisionists and those in power taking the capitalist road.
Naturally, at the time of the Chinese coup, the western rightists called the people whose basic dishonesty precluded them from ever after being taken seriously, the moderates! But they were indeed (as Mao insisted they would turn out to be if they were to come to power) fascists.
For the democratically-minded individual who wants to end any tyranny at all, ‘fascism means war’ is not a slogan but rather the reality they must grasp. Anti-democratic individuals can’t (in any long-run sense) hold power any other way than through the use of force and that direct force of the few on the few is the terror relied on to intimidate the masses; so a fightback against terror must evolve from few to many as the violence escalates; war is the inevitable result.
It isn’t just Assad who becomes a murderous fascist through this process.
The problem with your very first sentence when you say ‘he won’t invade Ukraine’ is that the anti-democratic dictator of Russia (forget the form and deal with the reality) already did that whole invade thing some years ago. That’s when he was in a barefaced manner telling the world that he was doing nothing of the kind. Consequent to his singular decision and all his subsequent lying 1.5 million people have now been displaced with 14,000+ killed.
Now the thing is that though opposing troops have been pot shot shooting at each other from their ‘trenches’ for over 7 years this almost frozen conflict is not resolving itself in a satisfactory manner for the Russian invaders. So the ball has returned to Putin in our new post mother Merkel, Sleepy Joe context.
Perhaps mother Merkel who helped him get a gas pipeline built was trying to tell him that if he did things a little differently and promised to play nice then all could return to normal and even get better! I don’t know but that pipeline is not delivering gas yet!
Putin does bluff and will again, but all along he kept sending out his boys to kill people on the streets of Europe and even started to play with US elections. He bombs hospitals and drives out refugees, and has launched many more acts of war since 2014 especially in what was formerly Syria.
Right now, for example, the disruptive cyber-attacks are underway directed against Ukraine as no doubt are the stealth preparations to match the open sabre waving he has conducted over the last year; more or less ever since Belarus imploded for Lukashenko. Russian state-run cyber-attacks are in truth acts of war and at some point will cost lives as well as ‘treasure’ so the invasion and general war-making are hotting up.
So Putin’s options as far as I can see are to;
1/ concede and withdraw from his Ukraine adventure, (and there is not much chance of that methinks) or;
2/ do nothing in the face of this unsatisfactory current freeze which is not currently working to his advantage. But this choice would over time only give further advantage to Ukraine. That’s because there is wide support for western powers pumping in special forces, more arms and training etc; even the sentiment for calling Putin’s bluff by making Ukraine a member of NATO might grow. So time is most probably on Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s and this is thus a bad choice for Putin or;
3/ he must unfreeze proceedings and resume the large scale killing! He must in short choose (as simply the best from a bad lot) the most unthinkable and audacious choice and count on terror to carry the next stage forward before western economic strength alters the military situation.
What you are saying won’t happen now, already did, and the only question for Putin is what to do NEXT from these 3 choices for this ongoing area of conflict, in his world of constant military deployments. All his options are predictably bad for all concerned but they stem from his original choice to make an aggressive counter-revolutionary war after Ukraine made the first stage of a democratic revolution to rid itself of its anti-democratic, pro-Russian Oligarchs.
Many people in the west were at that time painting the Ukrainian revolutionaries as some form of a reboot of the old Ukrainian fascist nationalists, but I took the view that things had turned into their opposites.
Meanwhile, down south beyond the Black Sea in what used to be the country of Syria, Putin has NOT done so well with his HIRISE war-making once he was pitted against the Erdogan run, NATO number 2 giant Turkey at about 86million strong. Turkey is not just strategically better placed either, it is well led by a democratic Islamist, who has had to fight for his life. But note well that the western MSM like the ABC/BBC is hostile to the conservative and Islamist (totally un-woke) Erdogan government! Of course, the PKK war is the backdrop for much of the confusion on this front as has been amply demonstrated by not just my former ‘comrades’ in Melbourne but by almost all of the world’s ‘progressives’ as with Steve Owens. But ALL are clearly being blindsided by events now progressed a decade further on from when I first began to write during that long ago Arab Spring about the big war coming. You even proclaimed some time back that the war that came -where you at one time supported the FSA- was some years after Putin’s intervention lost! In short, you proclaimed that Putin had won. But I know I would much rather be an FSA fighter now than in 2012. No hesitation. I adopted the Maoist longer-term revolutionary perspective and events have not proved me wrong.
In the interests of preventing the spread of not quite latter-day western-oriented democracy, just very basic democracy, Putin has caused all manner of astute political analysts to get ‘it’ totally wrong. Putin pushed back in support of tyranny!
I thought about his actions in a far less sophisticated manner and consequently ‘knew’ who he intended to bomb and where his fighting strength would come from as it unfolded. The Turkish backed FSA was the main target. Putin worked in a ‘coalition’ and sent forces to fight the very complex revolution that was underway.
Civil and regionally influenced war in Syria had kicked off at this time and in this Friday’s prayer manner as part of what was called the Arab Spring. But this was a Spring fully predicted by we few Australian communists and less clearly but more publicly by people like Hitchens; Arthur most coherently put the case, even if with some very big blind spots as are inevitable and to be expected in all advanced theory. I and several others made more modest contributions but we all followed the same basic revolutionary communist logic. The Arab Spring was predicted from 2002. That is when we advocated ripping the fascist heart out of the ME by liberating the three peoples of Iraq from the Baathists.
Who on earth but fellow fascists can side with the ‘resistance’ now!! Some prominent ‘leftists’ did in the past; yet what changed?
At least you won’t deny that Saddam Hussein was leading a very powerful regionally dominant fascist regime who had killed millions in his totally unnecessary war-making activities designed to either enslave more people on every occasion that he made war or preserve his murderous power. You won’t try to paint that fascist as just a nasty nationalist as you are now trying to paint Putin and I assume the Chinese fascists. I know what is currently waging war on the masses across the world and it is not reactionary nationalism as the Ukrainians were painted in 20014.
When -after several rounds of free and fair elections in Iraq and with the liberated Islamist revolutionaries fighting from the front foot against the underground enemies of all progress- the democratic spring finally did come, you -being totally familiar with our anti-fascist (not necessarily communist) theorising- were no more surprised by this regional yearning for democracy turning into action than I was!
Western ruling classes plus their elites of the MSM and intelligentsia are 20 years on from 2002 still clueless as usual but even they can spot the coming spread of warfare in Belarus and Ukraine! Yet you cant.
The regional revolution in the MENA had morphed into the protracted struggle that Mao had told the world to fully expect if they wanted to achieve an overthrow of their armed oppressors. Assad’s tyranny constitutes well-armed and murderously intentioned oppressors that will not give up without a fight to the finish and Putin is on the same trajectory. How could I be surprised by the protracted nature of developing effective peoples armies to progress the worldwide trend? How could I deny the strength of the fascists? Whenever was it not so?
After the Turks shot down the Russian jet the 2 leaders managed to avoid a direct war and yet the Turks HAVE subsequently advanced thousands of elite mechanized troops into Syria and positioned themselves to shoot down more jets and barrel bombing helios etc The No 2 military power in NATO has created more no-fly zones that HIRISE makes future war in at their peril!
Now the reality is that in this expanded footprint an army of the Syrian peoples is growing under the supervision (if you like) of the democratically-minded Turkish Islamists. These peoples and this Turkish government are by western standards very conservative but they also had to fight off their own murderous military sorts just a few years back!
It was, you recall, the ragtag army that had grown over about 4 years from a core of army deserters and civilian refugees into the army that was winning the war, until Russia and the rest of HIRISE stepped in back in September 2015 and despite the ½ theorists scoffing, reversed the flow of the fighting! But they are not really winning this protracted war. Peoples war is nothing but protracted. The peoples’ army continues to be built!
Nevertheless, Putin is meddling even further south with a footprint in Lybia where the Egyptians play the larger role on the anti-Islamic and thus anti-democratic side with Erdogan led Nato no 2 leading the Islamist and thus more democratically minded side! And yes there are Islamofascists who hide among the ranks of the democratic Islamists as we all ought to suspect they would and will. Nevertheless, the choice for westerners is between allowing the Islamically minded peoples to elect their own governments or we return to the rightist ‘realist policies’ and back the military coups that Abbott for example was so glad to see come to power with Sisi. This is no real choice for a genuine democrat.
In further partnership with Eygpt, Putin meddles in other parts of Africa; and so do the Chinese. All this meddling is clearly against the interests of any democratically minded individuals who live on planet earth!
Putin is undoubtedly going to intervene further in Belarus and large scale military ‘exercises’ are already underway even though they are scheduled for February. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/russia-moves-troops-to-belarus-for-joint-exercises-near-ukraine-border
I’m pleased to hear that you think NATO ought to sign Ukraine up but as you know that is NOT currently even on the table and we could guess that the remnant ‘Stoke the war coalitions’ types are opposed to NATO growing larger so glad to hear you are not. You may before very much longer regain your cruise missal status. We may get you to the missile stage yet. Some say prayers are better than nothing; I don’t.
The Russian dictator who just for the sake of current comparison (for example) poisons his political opponents and assassinates investigative journalists etc; runs a terror police state! That is who he is and what he does whatever the nationalist background that he claims motivates his decisions but what’s in his interests as he sees it, come well ahead of what’s in Russia’s national interest.
Putin’s troops are not really going to go home from Belarus!
Ukraine will face a large scale Russian invasion it is only a matter of when. I guess it will be soon but it might come next year after Putin swallows Belarus.
But more war will come to Ukraine and in this sense fascism is a one-trick pony.
BTW
‘US attacks Iraq’ ought to read US-led international coalition in conjunction with the Kurds directly liberated the 3 peoples that constitute the Iraqi masses from the Iraqi fascist tyranny.
‘US attacks Lybia’ must read US saves Libyan revolutionaries from a fascist slaughter.
‘US attacks Serbia’ could well read; an exasperated US government finally forces Serbian Fascists to desist from their vicious war-making!
‘UK attacks Argentina’ must-read; Argentinian fascist military Junta attacks the UK and many thought the UK would be defeated but after the heavy effort and loss of so many ships and men the fascists were defeated instead.
Iraq attacks Kuwait and Russia attacks Georgia are accurate; and in the end, in the evolution of the democratic revolution both invasions will not stand!
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