Unless this preferential tagging is the first salvo in the new Cold War?

One reason that he Russian people have — to the extent they have — accept a new strong man — an new Czar, as you put it — is the failure of the economic and social reforms that were implimented when the Soviet Union broke up. It would be helpful to see if there is a good study of that period. My own expectation is that such a study would conclude that this is yet another case study of what happens when the objectivist/conservative paradigm is followed. In a land where the government controlled everything, suddenly there was no control; what happened was that the economy was turned over to criminal enterprises. Putin’s totalitarianism is yet another swing of the pendulum against that criminality, though there was some creative dynamic going on there, as well.

As to why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. I suggest that the best book to read to understand what is still going on in that part of the world is Rudyard Kipling’s /Kim\. The reality is that Afghanistan has never been valued for what is there, but for what is beyond it. It has the unfortunate fate of being the place between the conquerors and what they want. The plan then was to use Afghanistan and Pakistan as a pathway to the constant goal of the Russians, whether under the czars on the commissars or the businessmen: they were seeking an ice-free, open-water port to be the end point for oil pipelines between the fields in central Asia and the world marketplace.

And guess what? That is exactly what the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, and several other cronies of you-know-who have been trying to achieve in the midst of the occupation of Afghanistan and our struggles with the Taliban. Oh, goody.

Finally, on the question of Great Powers. You may not remember the nineties, and the great debates that were going on after the fall of the Soviet empire. There were many at that time who actually missed the good old days of the Cold War, mainly because without an Enemy at the Gates, there were no more excuses for their actions in support of profits and power. The so-called War on Terrorism was a godsend to these people; another excuse to pour money down the rathole of defense contracting, make a frontal assault on the Constitution, and sacrifice everyone else’s safety, security, and prosperity on the altar of corporate profits.

I just attended a seminar on “Alternatives to the Vision of the War on Terror.” The only comment I made there was that they were wasting their time and efforts (but they were getting paid for it, so it can’t have been a waste). There is no vision, no strategy, no goal, no War on Terror to have an alternative to. We have done not one thing in the last decade that has weakened those who harmed us or seek to harm us, or made the country at all more secure. And that is because the purpose of the War on Terror is not this thing they call victory, but to simply excuse their looting of the public treasury, the public reputation, and the public commonweal.

Were either Russia or China to rise to the level of a real threat to us, that would be welcomed by the corporate oligarchy, but neither country is really looking to dominate the globe the way we are, and with the current pr campaign going so well, what do they need with an Enemy they can actually find?