Puppet Masters

"Why do they hate us so?" A Western scholar's reply

Michael Jabara Carley
Strategic Culture
Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC

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I gave a lecture in Moscow during the spring about western-Soviet relations over the last
century. With the partial exception of World War II, it is a narrative of unrelenting
hostility. After I had finished, a student asked, "Why do they hate us so?" The answer is
not complicated. You cannot cross "da man" in the United States, that is, the
powerful, wealthy US "deep state", which sets the rules for everyone else and enforces
its worldwide hegemony against disobedient states and leaders.

You could not get more disobedient than the Bolsheviks. In November 1917, or
October according to Julian calendar, they seized power in Russia and declared their
intention to make a world socialist revolution. You can imagine the indignation and anger of
the western powers, all at war with Imperial Germany, looking over their shoulders to see
that revolution had erupted in Russia. It's a complicated story but not everyone in the
west reacted blindly to the Bolshevik seizure of power; none other than the British Prime
Minister David Lloyd George thought the Entente should back the Bolsheviks against the
Germans. His idea was an early prototype of the eventual Grand Alliance.

In 1918 there were few takers for that eccentric idea especially when the
Bolsheviks annulled the tsarist state debt and nationalised banks and industries in
which foreigners held billions in investments. In the west these actions struck at the heart
of the capitalist world order, and for the next three years, the Entente sent money, arms
and troops to overthrow the Soviet government.

The Bolsheviks acted as defenders of the revolution but also as defenders of

Russia. It was an easy transition since the so-called Allies, had they succeeded in
reversing Soviet power, would have established a Russian semi-colony, much as they
sought to do in the 1990s. The Poles too were mobilised against Soviet Russia, launching
an offensive in April 1920, with tacit French support, to re-establish their 18th century
eastern frontiers, including the city of Kiev. The Polish plan did not work out as intended,
the Bolsheviks fought back, portraying themselves as defenders of the traditional Russian
state. Admittedly it was an incongruous role for world revolutionaries, but if you scratched
the skin of most Bolsheviks, you would find defenders of Russian national security
interests.

During the interwar years Soviet-western relations were almost always bad. The former
Entente powers punished Soviet Russia for its refusal to pay the tsarist debts and
compensate foreigners for nationalised property and equities. They applied economic
sanctions to break the Soviet state where military force had not succeeded. The red
scare, anti-Soviet electoral politics, and containment characterised US, British and
French conduct during the 1920s. Those policies did not work. The Soviet
government relied on its own resources to modernise its economy. Joseph Stalin's policies
were brutal and ruthless, but they led to the building of a powerful, industrialised state by
the end of the interwar period.

During the 1930s the Soviet government, recognising early on the menace of
Hitlerite Germany, proposed collective security to the western powers, in fact, a
defensive anti-Nazi alliance. At first there was some western interest in Soviet ideas, but
not for long. One by one, the USSR's putative allies reverted to what one Soviet diplomat,
Ivan M. Maisky, called Sovietophobia and Russophobia. Adolf Hitler portrayed Germany
as a bulwark against communism, and the French and British elites played into his hands.
As Maisky put it, the great question of the decade was "Who is enemy no. 1, Nazi
Germany or the USSR?" With notable exceptions, ruling elites in Europe got the answer
wrong.
You have to give Stalin credit for he stuck to collective security for six years, in spite of all
the failures. Only in August 1939 did he abandon this policy when it became obvious that
France and Britain were not serious about a war-fighting alliance against Nazi
Germany. It was then that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was concluded. Western
opinion was generally indignant, conveniently forgetting the Munich accords in 1938 and all
the other western attempts to compose with Hitler. Even today Russophobic politicians,
journalists and historians harp on the non-aggression pact to blacken Russia and
its president Vladimir V. Putin. Such manipulations remind me of the Biblical parable of
the mote and the beam. The west, then as now, should pull the beam out of its own eye
before criticising the mote in the eye of Russia, Soviet or otherwise.

Roger Armstrong

Stalin concluded a modus vivendi with Hitler, not to make an "alliance" with him, but rather as one
scorpion wary of another might do, circling and raising its tail high, ready to strike.

Unable to count on France and Britain, Stalin concluded a modus vivendi with Hitler, not to
make an "alliance" with him, but rather as one scorpion wary of another might do, circling
and raising its tail high, ready to strike. Stalin did not want to fight alone against Nazi
Germany, but he outsmarted himself because, as it turned out, the USSR was obliged to
fight almost alone against the Wehrmacht for three years from 1941 to 1944. This
was the period of the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers.
I watched recently a Russian film about the Great Patriotic War. After some bloody fighting,
one Red Army soldier asks another "what kind of allies are they, who let us do all the
fighting against the Wehrmacht?" Not a bad question to ask. Perhaps it was unfair to
Franklin Roosevelt, but not to Winston Churchill. FDR was a rare president who was
able to keep at bay the Sovietophobic US "deep state". Churchill blew hot and cold
about his Soviet allies, but as soon as the tide of battle turned against Hitler, he erupted
about Russian "barbarians" and communist "crocodiles" even though some of his cabinet
colleagues were scandalised.

In April 1945, it took the US "deep state" only a fortnight after the death of FDR to
persuade his successor, Harry Truman, to call into question the Grand Alliance. It was
also a fortnight after VE Day in May 1945 that Churchill received a copy of "Operation
Unthinkable", a plan he requested to make war against the USSR, stiffened with ten
German divisions.

Having greased the rails with the Marshall plan and CIA money, NATO was established in
1949. Soviet propaganda portrayed the NATO "allies" as mere US ciphers. Little has
changed since then. Present day NATO members remain compradors, obedient
vassals of the United States, rather than defenders of the national interests of the
countries they represent.

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Soviet propaganda portrayed the NATO allies as mere US cyphers.

It took another forty years for the USSR to collapse and disappear. That period was
marked by visceral hostility, interrupted only by a brief period of cosmetic dtente after
the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. World War II had scarcely ended before the red scare and
containment policies returned to the fore. It was Act II of the Cold War. In the 1980s the
USSR tried to defeat an Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan supported by the United
States. The Americans allied themselves with Islamist fundamentalists, most
notably Osama bin Laden, portrayed as a hero then, who became a villain later.
"Blowback", one American professor called it. Bin Laden was eventually shot by US Navy
Seals in Pakistan. There were many other Wahhabis, however, to take his place.

After the disappearance of the USSR, you might think the Americans would have declared
victory and then offered a hand to the Russian rump state under Boris Yeltsin, who played
court jester in President Bill Clinton's White House. Yeltsin claimed he had no choice
but to submit to the Americans, but of course he had a choice. In 1991 he and two
other Soviet politicians plotted the dissolution of the USSR for their own political purposes.
They sold out the country which the Bolsheviks had defended, and for which 26 million
soldiers and civilians died during the Great Patriotic War.

Yeltsin's grovelling in Washington and his encouragement of his oligarchs' looting of

Russian national resources earned only American contempt. "Keep 'em down" was the US
policy; generosity was out. "We won, you lost," the Americans proclaimed. Contrary to
commitments made to the fatuous Mikhail S. Gorbachev about no NATO eastward
expansion, NATO drove right up to Russia's western frontiers.

In 2000 when Putin was elected president, he publicly promoted security and
economic cooperation with Europe and the United States. After 9/11, he offered real
assistance to Washington. The United States accepted the Russian help, but continued its
anti-Russian policies. Putin extended his hand to the west, but on the basis of five
kopeks for five kopeks. This was a Soviet policy of the interwar years. It did not work then
and it does not work now.

In 2007 Putin spoke frankly at the Munich conference on Security Policy

about overbearing US behaviour. The "colour revolutions" in Georgia and the Ukraine, for
example, and the Anglo-American war of aggression against Iraq raised Russian concerns.
US government officials did not appreciate Putin's truth-telling which went against
their standard narrative about "exceptionalist" America and altruistic foreign policies to
promote "democracy". Then in 2008 came the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the
successful Russian riposte which crushed the Georgian army.

It's been all down-hill since then. Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen are all victims of US
aggression or that of its vassals. The United States engineered and bankrolled a
fascist coup d'tat in Kiev and has attempted to do the same in Syria reverting to their
"Afghan policy" of bankrolling, supplying and supporting a Wahhabi proxy war of
aggression against Syria. Backing fascists on the one hand and Islamist terrorists on
the other, the United States has plumbed the depths of malevolence. President Putin and
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have made important concessions, to persuade
the US government to avert catastrophe in the Middle East and Europe. To no avail, five
kopeks for five kopeks is not an offer the United States understands. Asymmetrical
advantages is what Washington expects.

One cannot reproach the Russian government for trying to negotiate with the United
States, but this policy has not worked in the Ukraine or Syria. Russian support of the
legitimate government in Damascus has exposed the US-led war of aggression and
exposed its strategy of supporting Al-Qaeda, Daesh, and their various Wahhabi iterations
against the Syrian government. US Russophobia is redoubled by Putin's exposure of
American support for Islamist fundamentalists and by Russia's successful, up to now,
thwarting of US aggression. Who does Putin think he is?

From my observations, I would reply that President Putin is a plain-spoken Russian

statesman, with the support of the Russian people behind him. For five kopeks
against five kopeks, he will work with the United States and its vassals, no matter how
malevolent they have been, if they adopt less destructive policies. Unfortunately, recent
events suggest that the United States has no intention of doing so. After one hundred
years of almost uninterrupted western hostility, no one should be under any
illusions.

So then, the question is "Why do they hate us so?" Because President Putin wants
to build a strong, prosperous, independent Russian state in a multi-polar world.
Because the Russian people cannot be bullied and will defend their country
tenaciously. "Go tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives" Prince Aleksandr Nevskii
declared in the 13th century: "Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as a guest.
But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and
forever will we stand!"