Russia is the most important obstacle to Global America
From the date of September 11, the US 2001 has been trying to speed up their project of rebuilding the world in the image and likeness of their “founding fathers”, who dreamed of a democratic and liberal society. However, across this path, the United States are non-Western societies that also demonstrate their will to rule. In particular, Russia, which is one of the most important geopolitical obstacles for Washington. Russia is gradually expanding its sphere of influence and showing the world that, especially in the energy sphere of politics, it has no equal.
One of the classics of geopolitics, Englishman Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947), who taught geography at Oxford, argued that the entire geopolitical dynamics of the world is built around the mainland of the continent of Eurasia, around the heartland (Heartland - the core of the earth, the main array). The central point of support (Pivot) of this heartland in the very center of Eurasia, which is unattainable for the maritime powers, for world politics is Russia. Russia is an empire, according to Mackinder, “which has the same strategic position as Germany in Europe throughout the world.”
Around this epicenter of global geopolitical "earthquakes", which is protected by a belt of natural obstacles (Siberian expanses, the Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, Tibet), which in turn form the "inner crescent" around the epicenter, the "coasts" of Eurasia - Western Europe, Asia Minor, Middle East, South and East Asia.
Behind these “shores” of Eurasia, separated by sea obstacles, are two island systems that complement the “inner crescent” of Eurasia - Japan and the United Kingdom, which are the bridge to the “outer crescent” around Eurasia, which includes the United States.
Within the framework of this concept of the geopolitical world, global sea powers, the so-called “thalassocracies” (Greek “talas” - sea, “short stories” - power), whose interests are protected by Mackinder, must constantly strive to prevent the continental unity of Eurasia. Thalassocracies should support conflict along the Eurasian East-West axis between the most important continental powers that could otherwise form an alliance (France / Germany, Germany / Russia, Russia / China), as well as the Thalassocracy within the framework of the Mackinder theory should be controlled and " coast "of continental Eurasia.
This Anglo-Saxon matrix, which is applicable both in the case of the British Empire of the 19 century and in the case of the US thalassocracy of the 20 century, remains to this day an important element for understanding the current geopolitics in the world. Mackinder's theory reminds us of two things that Anglo-Saxon Talas Socracies never forget: the project of Europe as a great power cannot, in principle, take place without a strong and independent Germany (Germany has been largely dependent on the United States since 1945); The second thing is that a global counterweight to US world domination is impossible without a strong Russia.
The United States wants Global America. The goal of American foreign policy, apart from elementary optimization of economic and strategic interests, is the reorganization of the entire world in the image of American society. The United States ascribes to itself the Messianic role, which is the internal engine for the advancement of American power in the world. When Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, they thereby created the long-desired world government, whose task was to organize and promote the liberal and democratic globalization of the world.
Before 1947, the United States sought to draw closer to the USSR in order to establish a world government in partnership with it, although the essences of the American and Soviet efforts to globalize the world were clearly not compatible with each other. Two years after the European collapse of 1945, the Americans realized that they could not integrate the Soviet Union into the liberal world order they had planned and accepted the fact that they would have to geographically narrow their project: atlantism temporarily replaced globalization.
When, in the year 1989, the USSR began to rock, the dream of globalization came to life again and moved the United States to strengthen its presence in the world. On the deathbed of communism, a new global enemy emerged as a pretext for expanding US global influence: Islamic terrorism.
During the Cold War with the USSR, the United States fed on Islamic terrorism in order to prevent socialist revolutions in countries stretching to Soviet Russia. Sunni Islamists were allies of the United States against the USSR in Afghanistan. Then Sunni Islamic militants were born, and in general, the Alkaida and Algerian Islamists matrix.
Then there was the Shiite revolution in Iran 1979 of the year, and the United States turned away from the Shah of Iran. Washington’s calculation was that the Shiite revolution - unlike the Marxist revolution - would not go toward rapprochement with the USSR and at the same time it would counterbalance the Sunni fundamentalists in the region.
In the Arab world, they were the Muslim Brotherhood, from Egypt to Syria sponsored by the United States. Washington provoked Iraq to war with Iran and vice versa, according to the principle of “let them kill themselves” (let them kill each other), which the Americans have already tried in the case of Russia and Germany. The goal of the Iraqi and Iranian wars was that Washington saw the destruction of Arab nationalism, which ran counter to Israeli interests in the region. This US alliance with the fundamentalist Muslim Brothers survived the collapse of the USSR and was involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia and the creation of two Muslim states in Europe: Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Islamic fundamentalism has always been beneficial to the United States, both in the struggle against communism during the Cold War, and in its new role as the official enemy at the end of the bipolar world system. Of course, there are real Islamists in fact, they are not a virtual mirage created by the United States. Islamists can really cause trouble and destabilize. But even if the Islamists kill people, by this they do not change and cannot change in their favor the global balance of power between the world powers.
The war against radical Islamists is only the official cover for a much more real war: the US war against the powers of Eurasia.
After the disappearance of the USSR, it became clear to the Americans that one of the continental powers of Eurasia, in combination of its demographic mass and industrial potential, could impede the implementation of the Global America project, and this power is China. The dizzying industrial and financial upsurge of China in relation to the United States resembles the situation with Germany, which in its development on the threshold of the First World War caught up with the Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy, on the threshold of surpassing them. And this was the most important reason for the first World War.
The logic of American strategists is as follows: if China, with the help of its economic power and geopolitical independence, becomes the most important world power, adhering to its Confucian model, which strongly shields China from Western democracy, this will mean the end of the Global America project. ". In this case, Americans should abandon their famous “fateful predestination” principle (“Manifest Destiny”) of America 1845, and also abandon the ideology of American messianism of the “founding fathers”.
Already at the time of the collapse of the USSR, the Americans were pondering how to prevent the strengthening of China. Probably they then understood how relevant the logic of Mackinder's theory was. The Anglo-Saxons first did away with the Eurasian project of Germany, then finished with the same project of Russia, and now they must put an end to the Eurasian project of China. Again, the sea wanted to curb the land.
The wars against terrorism and for human rights are only occasions that should fog the real goal of the new Eurasian war: China as the goal of this war, and Russia as a condition of victory in this war. China is the goal of this war, because it is the only power in the world that in the coming 20 years will be able to rob the US of global primacy. Russia as a condition for the US victory in this war, because of the strategic deployment of Russia in one direction or the other depends on what configuration the global world of tomorrow will take: unipolar or multipolar. As Russia decides, it will be all over the world.
Against China, the Americans have developed a new global strategy, which consists of several points:
- Expansion of the transatlantic bloc close to the borders of Russia and western China
- Establishment of control over China’s dependence on energy and resources
- The environment and isolation of China through old and new US alliances with traditional historical opponents of China (India, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Taiwan)
- Elimination of the balance of strategic nuclear weapons between nuclear powers through the development of a global US missile defense system
- Instrumentalization of separatism for political purposes (in Serbia, Russia, China to the very borders of Indonesia) and redrawing of borders (in the Arabic Middle East)
After 1990, Washington hoped to win over Russia to form a large transatlantic bloc from Washington to Moscow, in the middle of which would be the European periphery, which, after 1945, was reoriented to the Atlantic. That hope was expressed by Bush Sr. in 1989 when he called for an alliance "from Vladivostok to Vancouver." This alliance would be a union of white people led by the hegemon of the United States, which, paradoxically, does not sound, with 2050, he himself will comprise less than half of the whites from his population.
The expansion of the trans-Atlantic bloc takes place within the framework of the first level of the great Eurasian game. The Americans not only saved NATO after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, but also gave this military bloc a new life: first, NATO turned from a military bloc based on classical international law (military function in case of aggression against one of the NATO members) into a bloc with the right to military intervention. Second, the NATO bloc increased due to the admission of Central and Eastern European countries. The Baltic and Yugoslav space (Kroatsia, Bosnia, Kosovo) was also included in the sphere of influence of NATO. To continue the expansion of NATO for the final encirclement of Russia, the Americans staged the so-called “orange revolutions” (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2004, Kyrgyzstan 2005) - peaceful regime changes - which were organized and funded by American foundations and NGOs, and were aimed at planting old regimes new - anti-Russian. As soon as the pro-Western president of Ukraine Yushchenko came to power, he immediately demanded that the Russian fleet be withdrawn from the Crimea, at the same time expressing Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. In exactly the same way, the freshly baked President of Georgia in 2003 acted, speaking in favor of Georgia’s membership in NATO and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Until the very day of September 11, the 2001 USA, with the help of NATO, was building up its influence in Europe. They strengthened Albanian and Bosnian Islamism and simultaneously deprived Russia of influence in the post-Yugoslav space. However, in the 2000 year, one important event took place, perhaps the most important event since the end of the Cold War (even more important than the events of 11 on September 2001): the coming to power of Vladimir Putin. This was one of those events that occur from time to time in history, returning to balance the natural influence of geopolitical constants on the historical process after historical outbursts.
Putin had a very clear and clear program: by exporting energy resources, Russia’s power could be restored again. The oligarchs had to be deprived of control over the country's mineral resources, because they practically did not care about Russia's national interests. Putin has built powerful oil (Rosneft) and gas (Gazprom) concerns that serve as instruments of Russia's state and strategic interests. But Putin has still not revealed his cards regarding what position Russia will take in the American-Chinese struggle. This question he left open. Some, including myself, had previously held the opinion that the rapprochement between the US and Russia would be short-lived and purely utilitarian-market-oriented (the official American doctrine of the war against terrorism did not allow the US to put pressure on Russia because of its military operations in Chechnya), but at the same time, I and others from the very beginning understood that Putin would strive to pursue a policy of Russia's independence, although there were others who believed that Putin was a pro-Western politician. Putin had to first resolve the conflict in Chechnya and put energy under the control of the state, and it was a very difficult task. One unambiguous and clear criterion, however, indicated that Putin had returned to the basics of the policy of the Russian great power: a change in policy in favor of Iran and the resumption of arms sales to it, as well as assistance to Iran in conducting a nuclear program for civilian purposes.
Why was the coming to power of Putin so important? Although at first it was not so clear at the time, Putin’s coming to power meant Russia's not joining the transatlantic alliance, which automatically meant the collapse of the US unipolar world, including the collapse of their Grand Strategy towards China, which was supposed to break the back of China and most to prevent the onset of a multipolar world order.
In addition, many Europeans did not immediately realize that Putin personified an effective response to global economic competition, a response that suggested economic competition in the world between countries based on their identity and belonging to certain civilizations. Perhaps the Americans understood this better than the Europeans. Hasn’t Bush Jr confirmed this in his own words about what he saw in Putin a man who devoted his life to Russia's interests without a trace?
11 September 2001 opened up opportunities for Americans to accelerate their program to Americanize the world, i.e. establishing unipolarity. In the name of the war against evil, which they themselves created, the Americans without any delay received: unlimited support from Europeans (that is, they strengthened "atlantism" and at the same time weakened "the great power of Europe"); temporary rapprochement with Russia (Russia agreed to this rapprochement in order to suppress Islamic separatism in Chechnya); squeezing China's influence from the Muslim republics of the former USSR in Central Asia at the expense of this temporary US-Russian alliance; the American presence at the very border of Western China and on the southern borders of Russia in Afghanistan; the return and strengthening of US influence in southeast Asia as a whole.
But the euphoria of Americans in Central Asia lasted the entire 4 year. Fearing for the Orange Revolution, the leadership of Uzbekistan drove the Americans out, moving closer together with Russia, although before that Uzbekistan had dreamed of rising for a split second to the great power of Central Asia as opposed to its older brother Russia. Since 2005, Washington has begun to lose its position in Central Asia, as it is increasingly retreating in Afghanistan, despite the additional military contingent from Europe demanded to help, whose troops are not able to take over the fate of their own civilization in the fight against the Taliban-Pakistani alliance directly supported by China, which the United States, in turn, seeks to oust from Central Asia.
The Chinese can now again dream of access to Kazakh oil and Turkmen gas in exchange for building oil and gas pipelines in their own East Turkestan (Xinqiang province). Beijing also hopes that Russia will in the future balance its energy supplies to Europe with supplies to China (not only to China, but also to India, Japan, South Korea, etc.).
Thus Putin’s political game appears before us in all its clarity. Russia went to rapprochement with the United States for the sake of suppressing Islamist terrorism on its territory, which had so greatly weakened the country. But with this rapprochement, Putin in no way intended to give up Russia's legitimate interests: reunification with Ukraine (Ukrainians and Russians are kindred peoples, and besides, reunification with Ukraine will give Russia access to the Mediterranean through the Black Sea from Sevastopol to the Crimea) and interception Georgia’s accession to NATO. And if the United States and the countries of the European Union supported the independence of Kosovo, why then is Russia denied the right to support the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose residents do not want to be part of Georgia?
Mackinder was right. In the big Central Asian game, Russia remains the most important player. Putin’s policy to a greater extent than China’s policy is blocking Washington’s path, although America’s main goal is China, as the only potential contender for world supremacy among the great powers. It was Putin’s policy that created the Moscow-Tehran-Caracas energy axis, which includes a quarter of all the world's proven oil reserves and up to half of the gas (which will soon replace oil). This axis represents a strategic counterweight to US-owned Arabian gas and oil. The United States intended to cut off oxygen to China through energy control. But even if the United States controls the oil and gas of Saudi Arabia and Iraq (1 and 3 are ranked respectively by the world's proven oil reserves), the United States does not control either Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela, or Kazakhstan. On the contrary - these countries are rallying more and more closely. Together, they intend to end the dollar hegemony in the global economy (this dollar hegemony allows the US to force Europeans to pay US debts and help bankrupt American banks).
No one doubts that the United States will try to end this policy of Russia, putting pressure on countries neighboring Russia. The Americans will also try to build alternative Russian oil and gas pipelines, because Russia owns an extensive network of such pipelines, covering the whole of Eurasia and providing energy resources to Europe and Asia. But what can Washington do against the energy and strategic heart of Eurasia? Russia is a nuclear power. Those sensible Europeans who are not blinded by the misinformation of the American media know that they are more dependent on Russia than Russia on them. The whole of Asia, whose economies are now growing by leaps and bounds, craves for Russian and Iranian oil and gas.
In these conditions, and in the process of the emergence of a multipolar world, the Europeans would have brought themselves a lot of benefits if they now began to regain consciousness and wake up. Will the current deep crisis in which they are now in the minds of Europeans? Let us hope that this will be a positive consequence of the difficult situation in which the peoples of Europe will find themselves in the coming decades. ”
About the Author:
The author of the article, a Frenchman, Aymeric Chauprade, studied at universities in Switzerland and Sorbonne in Paris, holds a doctorate in political science, worked as an assistant professor at the Military Academy at the General Staff in Paris during the 1999-2009 period, (according to some information, he was dismissed from due to disagreements with the leadership in the vision of geopolitical reality) is the author of several fundamental works on geopolitics (below), collaborates with many magazines and newspapers as the author of articles (information about him in French wikipedia om: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymeric_Chauprade), has its own website "Realpolitika", dedicated to geopolitics (http://www.realpolitik.tv/) with a lot of own and foreign materials, including many ( up to half) is devoted to Russia. In addition, the site maintains an additional blog: http://blog.realpolitik.tv/.
One of the classics of geopolitics, Englishman Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947), who taught geography at Oxford, argued that the entire geopolitical dynamics of the world is built around the mainland of the continent of Eurasia, around the heartland (Heartland - the core of the earth, the main array). The central point of support (Pivot) of this heartland in the very center of Eurasia, which is unattainable for the maritime powers, for world politics is Russia. Russia is an empire, according to Mackinder, “which has the same strategic position as Germany in Europe throughout the world.”
Around this epicenter of global geopolitical "earthquakes", which is protected by a belt of natural obstacles (Siberian expanses, the Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, Tibet), which in turn form the "inner crescent" around the epicenter, the "coasts" of Eurasia - Western Europe, Asia Minor, Middle East, South and East Asia.
Behind these “shores” of Eurasia, separated by sea obstacles, are two island systems that complement the “inner crescent” of Eurasia - Japan and the United Kingdom, which are the bridge to the “outer crescent” around Eurasia, which includes the United States.
Mackinder Illustration Map
Within the framework of this concept of the geopolitical world, global sea powers, the so-called “thalassocracies” (Greek “talas” - sea, “short stories” - power), whose interests are protected by Mackinder, must constantly strive to prevent the continental unity of Eurasia. Thalassocracies should support conflict along the Eurasian East-West axis between the most important continental powers that could otherwise form an alliance (France / Germany, Germany / Russia, Russia / China), as well as the Thalassocracy within the framework of the Mackinder theory should be controlled and " coast "of continental Eurasia.
This Anglo-Saxon matrix, which is applicable both in the case of the British Empire of the 19 century and in the case of the US thalassocracy of the 20 century, remains to this day an important element for understanding the current geopolitics in the world. Mackinder's theory reminds us of two things that Anglo-Saxon Talas Socracies never forget: the project of Europe as a great power cannot, in principle, take place without a strong and independent Germany (Germany has been largely dependent on the United States since 1945); The second thing is that a global counterweight to US world domination is impossible without a strong Russia.
The United States wants Global America. The goal of American foreign policy, apart from elementary optimization of economic and strategic interests, is the reorganization of the entire world in the image of American society. The United States ascribes to itself the Messianic role, which is the internal engine for the advancement of American power in the world. When Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, they thereby created the long-desired world government, whose task was to organize and promote the liberal and democratic globalization of the world.
Before 1947, the United States sought to draw closer to the USSR in order to establish a world government in partnership with it, although the essences of the American and Soviet efforts to globalize the world were clearly not compatible with each other. Two years after the European collapse of 1945, the Americans realized that they could not integrate the Soviet Union into the liberal world order they had planned and accepted the fact that they would have to geographically narrow their project: atlantism temporarily replaced globalization.
When, in the year 1989, the USSR began to rock, the dream of globalization came to life again and moved the United States to strengthen its presence in the world. On the deathbed of communism, a new global enemy emerged as a pretext for expanding US global influence: Islamic terrorism.
During the Cold War with the USSR, the United States fed on Islamic terrorism in order to prevent socialist revolutions in countries stretching to Soviet Russia. Sunni Islamists were allies of the United States against the USSR in Afghanistan. Then Sunni Islamic militants were born, and in general, the Alkaida and Algerian Islamists matrix.
Then there was the Shiite revolution in Iran 1979 of the year, and the United States turned away from the Shah of Iran. Washington’s calculation was that the Shiite revolution - unlike the Marxist revolution - would not go toward rapprochement with the USSR and at the same time it would counterbalance the Sunni fundamentalists in the region.
In the Arab world, they were the Muslim Brotherhood, from Egypt to Syria sponsored by the United States. Washington provoked Iraq to war with Iran and vice versa, according to the principle of “let them kill themselves” (let them kill each other), which the Americans have already tried in the case of Russia and Germany. The goal of the Iraqi and Iranian wars was that Washington saw the destruction of Arab nationalism, which ran counter to Israeli interests in the region. This US alliance with the fundamentalist Muslim Brothers survived the collapse of the USSR and was involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia and the creation of two Muslim states in Europe: Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Islamic fundamentalism has always been beneficial to the United States, both in the struggle against communism during the Cold War, and in its new role as the official enemy at the end of the bipolar world system. Of course, there are real Islamists in fact, they are not a virtual mirage created by the United States. Islamists can really cause trouble and destabilize. But even if the Islamists kill people, by this they do not change and cannot change in their favor the global balance of power between the world powers.
The war against radical Islamists is only the official cover for a much more real war: the US war against the powers of Eurasia.
After the disappearance of the USSR, it became clear to the Americans that one of the continental powers of Eurasia, in combination of its demographic mass and industrial potential, could impede the implementation of the Global America project, and this power is China. The dizzying industrial and financial upsurge of China in relation to the United States resembles the situation with Germany, which in its development on the threshold of the First World War caught up with the Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy, on the threshold of surpassing them. And this was the most important reason for the first World War.
The logic of American strategists is as follows: if China, with the help of its economic power and geopolitical independence, becomes the most important world power, adhering to its Confucian model, which strongly shields China from Western democracy, this will mean the end of the Global America project. ". In this case, Americans should abandon their famous “fateful predestination” principle (“Manifest Destiny”) of America 1845, and also abandon the ideology of American messianism of the “founding fathers”.
Already at the time of the collapse of the USSR, the Americans were pondering how to prevent the strengthening of China. Probably they then understood how relevant the logic of Mackinder's theory was. The Anglo-Saxons first did away with the Eurasian project of Germany, then finished with the same project of Russia, and now they must put an end to the Eurasian project of China. Again, the sea wanted to curb the land.
The wars against terrorism and for human rights are only occasions that should fog the real goal of the new Eurasian war: China as the goal of this war, and Russia as a condition of victory in this war. China is the goal of this war, because it is the only power in the world that in the coming 20 years will be able to rob the US of global primacy. Russia as a condition for the US victory in this war, because of the strategic deployment of Russia in one direction or the other depends on what configuration the global world of tomorrow will take: unipolar or multipolar. As Russia decides, it will be all over the world.
Against China, the Americans have developed a new global strategy, which consists of several points:
- Expansion of the transatlantic bloc close to the borders of Russia and western China
- Establishment of control over China’s dependence on energy and resources
- The environment and isolation of China through old and new US alliances with traditional historical opponents of China (India, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Taiwan)
- Elimination of the balance of strategic nuclear weapons between nuclear powers through the development of a global US missile defense system
- Instrumentalization of separatism for political purposes (in Serbia, Russia, China to the very borders of Indonesia) and redrawing of borders (in the Arabic Middle East)
After 1990, Washington hoped to win over Russia to form a large transatlantic bloc from Washington to Moscow, in the middle of which would be the European periphery, which, after 1945, was reoriented to the Atlantic. That hope was expressed by Bush Sr. in 1989 when he called for an alliance "from Vladivostok to Vancouver." This alliance would be a union of white people led by the hegemon of the United States, which, paradoxically, does not sound, with 2050, he himself will comprise less than half of the whites from his population.
The expansion of the trans-Atlantic bloc takes place within the framework of the first level of the great Eurasian game. The Americans not only saved NATO after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, but also gave this military bloc a new life: first, NATO turned from a military bloc based on classical international law (military function in case of aggression against one of the NATO members) into a bloc with the right to military intervention. Second, the NATO bloc increased due to the admission of Central and Eastern European countries. The Baltic and Yugoslav space (Kroatsia, Bosnia, Kosovo) was also included in the sphere of influence of NATO. To continue the expansion of NATO for the final encirclement of Russia, the Americans staged the so-called “orange revolutions” (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2004, Kyrgyzstan 2005) - peaceful regime changes - which were organized and funded by American foundations and NGOs, and were aimed at planting old regimes new - anti-Russian. As soon as the pro-Western president of Ukraine Yushchenko came to power, he immediately demanded that the Russian fleet be withdrawn from the Crimea, at the same time expressing Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. In exactly the same way, the freshly baked President of Georgia in 2003 acted, speaking in favor of Georgia’s membership in NATO and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Until the very day of September 11, the 2001 USA, with the help of NATO, was building up its influence in Europe. They strengthened Albanian and Bosnian Islamism and simultaneously deprived Russia of influence in the post-Yugoslav space. However, in the 2000 year, one important event took place, perhaps the most important event since the end of the Cold War (even more important than the events of 11 on September 2001): the coming to power of Vladimir Putin. This was one of those events that occur from time to time in history, returning to balance the natural influence of geopolitical constants on the historical process after historical outbursts.
Putin had a very clear and clear program: by exporting energy resources, Russia’s power could be restored again. The oligarchs had to be deprived of control over the country's mineral resources, because they practically did not care about Russia's national interests. Putin has built powerful oil (Rosneft) and gas (Gazprom) concerns that serve as instruments of Russia's state and strategic interests. But Putin has still not revealed his cards regarding what position Russia will take in the American-Chinese struggle. This question he left open. Some, including myself, had previously held the opinion that the rapprochement between the US and Russia would be short-lived and purely utilitarian-market-oriented (the official American doctrine of the war against terrorism did not allow the US to put pressure on Russia because of its military operations in Chechnya), but at the same time, I and others from the very beginning understood that Putin would strive to pursue a policy of Russia's independence, although there were others who believed that Putin was a pro-Western politician. Putin had to first resolve the conflict in Chechnya and put energy under the control of the state, and it was a very difficult task. One unambiguous and clear criterion, however, indicated that Putin had returned to the basics of the policy of the Russian great power: a change in policy in favor of Iran and the resumption of arms sales to it, as well as assistance to Iran in conducting a nuclear program for civilian purposes.
Why was the coming to power of Putin so important? Although at first it was not so clear at the time, Putin’s coming to power meant Russia's not joining the transatlantic alliance, which automatically meant the collapse of the US unipolar world, including the collapse of their Grand Strategy towards China, which was supposed to break the back of China and most to prevent the onset of a multipolar world order.
In addition, many Europeans did not immediately realize that Putin personified an effective response to global economic competition, a response that suggested economic competition in the world between countries based on their identity and belonging to certain civilizations. Perhaps the Americans understood this better than the Europeans. Hasn’t Bush Jr confirmed this in his own words about what he saw in Putin a man who devoted his life to Russia's interests without a trace?
11 September 2001 opened up opportunities for Americans to accelerate their program to Americanize the world, i.e. establishing unipolarity. In the name of the war against evil, which they themselves created, the Americans without any delay received: unlimited support from Europeans (that is, they strengthened "atlantism" and at the same time weakened "the great power of Europe"); temporary rapprochement with Russia (Russia agreed to this rapprochement in order to suppress Islamic separatism in Chechnya); squeezing China's influence from the Muslim republics of the former USSR in Central Asia at the expense of this temporary US-Russian alliance; the American presence at the very border of Western China and on the southern borders of Russia in Afghanistan; the return and strengthening of US influence in southeast Asia as a whole.
But the euphoria of Americans in Central Asia lasted the entire 4 year. Fearing for the Orange Revolution, the leadership of Uzbekistan drove the Americans out, moving closer together with Russia, although before that Uzbekistan had dreamed of rising for a split second to the great power of Central Asia as opposed to its older brother Russia. Since 2005, Washington has begun to lose its position in Central Asia, as it is increasingly retreating in Afghanistan, despite the additional military contingent from Europe demanded to help, whose troops are not able to take over the fate of their own civilization in the fight against the Taliban-Pakistani alliance directly supported by China, which the United States, in turn, seeks to oust from Central Asia.
The Chinese can now again dream of access to Kazakh oil and Turkmen gas in exchange for building oil and gas pipelines in their own East Turkestan (Xinqiang province). Beijing also hopes that Russia will in the future balance its energy supplies to Europe with supplies to China (not only to China, but also to India, Japan, South Korea, etc.).
Thus Putin’s political game appears before us in all its clarity. Russia went to rapprochement with the United States for the sake of suppressing Islamist terrorism on its territory, which had so greatly weakened the country. But with this rapprochement, Putin in no way intended to give up Russia's legitimate interests: reunification with Ukraine (Ukrainians and Russians are kindred peoples, and besides, reunification with Ukraine will give Russia access to the Mediterranean through the Black Sea from Sevastopol to the Crimea) and interception Georgia’s accession to NATO. And if the United States and the countries of the European Union supported the independence of Kosovo, why then is Russia denied the right to support the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose residents do not want to be part of Georgia?
Mackinder was right. In the big Central Asian game, Russia remains the most important player. Putin’s policy to a greater extent than China’s policy is blocking Washington’s path, although America’s main goal is China, as the only potential contender for world supremacy among the great powers. It was Putin’s policy that created the Moscow-Tehran-Caracas energy axis, which includes a quarter of all the world's proven oil reserves and up to half of the gas (which will soon replace oil). This axis represents a strategic counterweight to US-owned Arabian gas and oil. The United States intended to cut off oxygen to China through energy control. But even if the United States controls the oil and gas of Saudi Arabia and Iraq (1 and 3 are ranked respectively by the world's proven oil reserves), the United States does not control either Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela, or Kazakhstan. On the contrary - these countries are rallying more and more closely. Together, they intend to end the dollar hegemony in the global economy (this dollar hegemony allows the US to force Europeans to pay US debts and help bankrupt American banks).
No one doubts that the United States will try to end this policy of Russia, putting pressure on countries neighboring Russia. The Americans will also try to build alternative Russian oil and gas pipelines, because Russia owns an extensive network of such pipelines, covering the whole of Eurasia and providing energy resources to Europe and Asia. But what can Washington do against the energy and strategic heart of Eurasia? Russia is a nuclear power. Those sensible Europeans who are not blinded by the misinformation of the American media know that they are more dependent on Russia than Russia on them. The whole of Asia, whose economies are now growing by leaps and bounds, craves for Russian and Iranian oil and gas.
In these conditions, and in the process of the emergence of a multipolar world, the Europeans would have brought themselves a lot of benefits if they now began to regain consciousness and wake up. Will the current deep crisis in which they are now in the minds of Europeans? Let us hope that this will be a positive consequence of the difficult situation in which the peoples of Europe will find themselves in the coming decades. ”
About the Author:
The author of the article, a Frenchman, Aymeric Chauprade, studied at universities in Switzerland and Sorbonne in Paris, holds a doctorate in political science, worked as an assistant professor at the Military Academy at the General Staff in Paris during the 1999-2009 period, (according to some information, he was dismissed from due to disagreements with the leadership in the vision of geopolitical reality) is the author of several fundamental works on geopolitics (below), collaborates with many magazines and newspapers as the author of articles (information about him in French wikipedia om: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymeric_Chauprade), has its own website "Realpolitika", dedicated to geopolitics (http://www.realpolitik.tv/) with a lot of own and foreign materials, including many ( up to half) is devoted to Russia. In addition, the site maintains an additional blog: http://blog.realpolitik.tv/.
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