Hello Everybody,   
      
   One more time.   
   You're Vladimir Putin.   
   What do you do?   
      
   --Lee   
      
                        -=-=-=-=-   
      
   YOU'RE VLADIMIR PUTIN   
   by Norman Spinrad   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin, and you don’t understand why the   
   so -called “West” finds you so hard to understand. Perhaps   
   because the United States and the European Union are so   
   blinded by their ideology that they genuinely can’t even   
   see that they have one?   
      
   But it is glaringly obvious from inside the Kremlin looking   
   out.  Their leadership and their press proclaim that their   
   globalized transnational banking dominant brand of market   
   economy is no ideology but the triumphant “end of history,”   
   as their pundit Fukuyama so grandiosely put it before their   
   “Great Recession” and their current so-called “New Normal,”   
   with its massive national governmental debts, massive   
   unemployment, downward pressure on wages, and grotesque   
   levels of income and wealth inequality rendered such   
   ideological breast-beating pathetically ridiculous.   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin, and since you were a product of   
   the Soviet Union’s Communist ideology, you can certainly   
   recognize a failed ideology when you see one!  Just because   
   Communism failed it doesn’t meant that predatory globalized   
   transnational capitalism is in the process of succeeding.   
   In Greece, for horrible example, in Spain, in Ireland,   
   indeed in the European Union as a whole or for that matter   
   in the holier-than-thou United States.   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin, a former KGB professional, and   
   therefore a pragmatic realist who doesn’t make decisions   
   on the basis of any ideology at all.  You’re the thrice-elected   
   President of the Russian Federation, and your job is to defend,   
   protect, and enhance the national self-interest of the Russian   
   State and the Russian people, period.   
      
   And the Russian people have been betrayed, and welched on ever   
   since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is why you have   
   famously declared that collapse the greatest catastrophe of   
   the 20th Century.  For the Soviet Union was a transnational   
   state with complex levels of internal autonomy, a true   
   federation bound together by bonds of mutual economic   
   self-interest, not narrow tribal chauvinisms.  When Gorbachev   
   announced that he would “deprive the west of an enemy” and   
   acceded to the reunification of Germany within NATO, the deal   
   was supposed to be that NATO and the European Union would not   
   move west into Russia’s near abroad.  But they did just that,   
   into the Baltic States, into Poland, into the Slavic Balkans,   
   and now they would swallow Ukraine.   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin, you’ve reclaimed the Crimea virtually   
   without firing a shot, and you’ve massed Russian forces near   
   the eastern borders of Ukraine.  But you have no intention   
   of invading. For the last thing you want is to annex Ukraine   
   or the Eastern part of it into the Russian Federation by   
   military force or any other means.   
      
   You have a much grander goal--a Eurasian Union, stretching   
   from Kaliningrad and the western border of Russia east across   
   vast Siberia to Vladivostok and the Bering Straight, from north   
   of the Arctic Circle to the Caucasus and the border of China.   
   Not an expanded Russian Federation per se, but a transnational   
   confederation something like the European Union, with Russia   
   as its senior member as Germany dominates the EU only more so.   
      
   This dream has been belittled as a “Soviet Union Lite.” And   
   in truth it would be something like the Soviet Union without   
   the Communist ideology.  Not ideologically based at all but   
   a multicultural civilization vaster than Europe, with a   
   customs union, common currency, economic integration, but   
   not a national state.   
      
   For all of its history, Russia has vacillated between looking   
   west to Europe or east across Siberian to the Pacific.   
   You're Vladimir Putin and you say it should do both.   
   You're Vladimir Putin and you dream of of your place in   
   history as the creator of this Eurasian Union.   
      
   And an independent sovereign Ukraine with a government   
   you can deal with is the key.  For the core around which   
   the Eurasian Union has to be built, is the very same core   
   whose disintegration doomed the Soviet Union--Russia, Belarus,   
   Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.  Alone, these four states, would   
   already be the core of a Eurasian Union.  But if the   
   globalized American dominated west swallows Ukraine it   
   can never be.   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin and you cannot allow Ukraine to join   
   either NATO or the European Union.  And you won’t.  The military   
   force you have assembled on its eastern borders is the stick.   
   But once there is a Ukrainian government you can deal with,   
   you have an even mightier carrot to wield.   
      
   Let the European Union and its Troika strong-arm banking   
   enforcers lay their severe economic demands on the table so   
   that all the Ukrainian people understand that their “austerity”   
   will mean poverty and hardship in the service of their “fiscal   
   responsibility.”   
      
   And then you offer your alternative.  If Ukraine joins the   
   Eurasian Union, Russia will not merely lend it the money to   
   carry its debt in return for austerity.  It will wipe out   
   the debt entire by purchasing the Crimea from Ukraine.   
   You're Vladimir Putin.  With the stakes this high you can   
   afford to do it.   
      
   You're Vladimir Putin, formerly of the KGB.  You're Vladimir   
   Putin, and if you’ve learned nothing else there, you’ve learned   
   how to make an offer that can’t be refused.   
      
                             end   
      
          Posted 7th April 2014 by Norman Spinrad   
      
                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   
      
   Comments, anyone?   
      
   --Lee   
      
   --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb   
    * Origin: news://felten.yi.org (2:203/2)