So Russia has launched an air campaign in Syria to allegedly defend the embattled Assad regime. While this action will undoubtedly tickle the fancy of Putin’s diehard supporters in anti-Zionist circles, it does not undermine the logical, factual inferences I laid out in my recent essay.
The bottom line is this: Putin is not an “anti-Zionist.” He has never been one and he will never truly be one. As I noted in the essay, Russia and Israel have much more in common than Russia has with any Arab, Muslim-majority state.
Russia’s alliance with Syria and Iran is based on economic pragmatism, not ideological kinship. It is essentially no different than the Kremlin’s strong partnership with Erdogan’s Turkey, Al-Sissi’s Egypt, and Modi’s India, the only difference being the latter three countries are not being threatened by the West or Israel at the moment because they are all neutralized on the Palestine question and submit to Western economic and geopolitical demands.
At no point has Putin expressed support for the principled rhetoric emanating from Tehran with regards to Israel. He has in fact condemned it as “irresponsible and counterproductive.” Putin has extremely friendly and cordial relations with Israel and hardly ever criticizes the belligerent Netanyahu regime. And when he does it is exceedingly mild in tone and narrow in scope, resembling the kind of feeble, politically correct stuff we hear from official opposition parties in Britain, Canada and elsewhere in Europe.
The claim that Putin is a secret anti-Zionist working against Israel is undermined by Russia’s strong economic, political and military cooperation with Israel. It is undercut by Putin’s own statements to the contrary, most especially his characterization of Israel as a “special state to us” whose “struggle” he “supports.” It is discredited by virtue of the fact that Putin himself has identified Israel’s large Russian population as holding a special place in his heart, whose well-being he “will always care about.” With these facts in mind, it is relatively straightforward to conclude that Putin’s Russia will never confront or seek to undermine the existence of Israel in its current configuration.
While paying lip service to the two-state solution, Putin has never suggested that Israel should even retreat back to its 1967 borders, as many ‘pragmatic’ pro-Palestinian activists advocate. The Palestinian “state” that Putin envisions is the same one that the Zionist-subservient Western regimes foresee: a totally disarmed, rump state with no capacity to resist aggression from Israel. Putin would not even dream about suggesting Israel pay reparations to Palestinians nor will he likely ever champion the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees currently scattered across the Levant.
On Syria and Iran, the best we can attribute to Putin is a desire to maintain a quasi “balance of power” between them and Israel, but he is definitely content with Israel having the upper hand over all of its neighbours, militarily speaking. Putin has never pressured Israel to abandon its nuclear or chemical weapons stockpiles, nor would he ever do so because 1) he’s not opposed to Israeli military supremacy, and 2) that would call into question Russia’s own possession of such weapons. Moreover, it was Russia that spearheaded the effort to disarm Syria of its advanced chemical weapons, which was advantageous to Tel Aviv.
Putin’s foreign policy is motivated by business concerns and power politics, not moralism or idealism. Putin is not acting against ISIS in Syria because it’s the “right thing to do” or because he actually has an aversion to terrorism. Like all self-serving statesmen, Putin disingenuously decries terrorism and violence that jeopardizes the interests of his regime, whilst concurrently employing terrorism, violence and coercion which buttresses it. In all likelihood, Putin and his FSB henchmen masterminded false flag terrorist bombings in Russian apartment complexes in 1999, thereby securing Putin’s position as a neo-Czar and perennial ruler of Russia. Putin’s political trump card was his Israeli-modeled ‘war on terror’ in Chechnya – a heinous and dirty conflict rife with Russian duplicity, deception, false flags, agent provocateurs and all the usual imperial dirty tricks. That murderous and savage campaign extinguished the lives of around 100,000 Chechens. But for some peculiar reason, Chechen lives mean little to Putin’s diehard groupies, even the ones who claim to be anti-imperialists. Palestinian lives matter; Iranian, Afghani, Syrian, Libyan and Iraqi lives matter; but not Chechens.
The reality is that Putin is pursuing this campaign in Syria because it is a sure way for him to boost his global prestige, and perhaps to pressure Washington to lay off its support of anti-Russian elements in Ukraine. Anything that irritates the Washington/EU consensus is beneficial to Putin’s political game at this point. So it makes sense, from the standpoint of Putin’s self-interest, for him to finally – after four long years of inaction and straddling the sidelines – intervene in Syria in support of Assad as a jab at Washington.
Of course, the naysayers and complainers who deplore my reasoned critiques of Putin predictably level false accusations at me, such as that I’m “with the West” or some such nonsense. The skewed logic here is that since the West and Russia are, at least on the surface, at logger-heads right now, then not supporting Putin somehow equals an endorsement of Western policy. This is not only bad logic but it’s dishonest and obviously a misrepresentation of my views. One can simultaneously critique the West, Israel and Russia. It is perfectly reasonable and consistent to view them all unfavourably.
Secondly, I don’t endorse or support Western belligerence towards Russia. But a consistent anti-imperialist would also condemn Russia’s aggression and belligerence in its own sphere of influence, which is where Putin’s ugly side is the most potent. And, as is typical of the Kremlinites, it’s not a sufficient excuse to write-off all of Moscow’s misconduct as over-reactions to Western intrigue. That’s a convenient excuse that Moscow uses to commit crimes and run roughshod on its neighbours. It would be akin to Washington justifying all of its invasive and coercively criminal policies in Latin America under the pretense that Russia was influencing the region and cultivating pro-Russian, anti-US outposts. In fact, that’s exactly how Washington rubber-stamped its crusade of coups and proxy wars across Latin America during the Cold War. Russia did the same and continues to do it today.
From the other angle, NATO was ostensibly established to counter Russian expansionism in Europe, which was clearly a reality post-WW2 as Stalin consumed half the continent under the Red Army jackboot. Despite the apologetics of zealous Russophiles, Soviet imperialism was a real phenomenon, and NATO was set-up as a competing gang.
Western hostility towards Putin is an illustration of globalist gangwars. The criticism of Putin and Russia that appears on Fox News or from the mouth of the reprobate John Mccain is insincere and obviously comes from an amoral place. It is mostly stupid, American exceptionalist chest-beating and jingoistic crap. Gangsters, crooks and criminals badmouth their competition all the time. Gangs and organized criminal groups war with each other. Criminal states also do battle against each other. The US is a criminal state, Britain is a criminal state, Israel is a criminal state; Russia and China are also criminal states.
On the other hand, my critiques of Putin and Russia are obviously not coming from a pathetic jingoistic Western perspective, but from an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, moralist vantage point.
It’s understandable that people disaffected with Western foreign policy find it refreshing to see a world leader stand up to the Washington-NATO axis and not kowtow to their crazy agenda. But it should not go unstated that on a smaller level, those who refuse to bend to Moscow’s regional desires meet a similar dismal fate to those who fall afoul of the West. Few have heard the name of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first Chechen President who was assassinated by Russia in a laser-guided missile attack in 1996, or Aslan Maskhadov, the second President of Chechnya also killed by Russian special forces thugs.
Exposing and critiquing Western and Zionist foreign policies has been my forte, so any suggestion that my opposition to Putin’s Russia stems from sympathy for the West falls completely flat. These simpletons and Kremlinites not only impute false motives onto me but they ignore Putin’s history of complicity with the West, such as his initial embrace of the West’s “war on terror,” as well as his cooperation with and appeasement of Israel.
With that said, Syria’s predicament is such that Assad is looking for help from anywhere he can get it. And if it comes from a gangster like Putin, then so be it. As an outside observer I’m able to critique all of the bad actors and hold them all to a high moral standard, whereas Assad simply doesn’t have that luxury, especially in the precarious position he finds himself in.
However, Putin’s sordid past and corrupt ascent to power on the Zionized “anti-jihadist” warrior ticket should matter to those who presently support him and his duplicitous politics. Putin’s dodgy activities in the KGB, his use of false flag terrorism, his war crimes in the North Caucasus and involvement in the murders of many dissident Russian journalists and whistleblowers should be a cause for concern and skepticism of the former KGB spy.
It’s unlikely that those in desperate search for a “saviour” will heed my warnings though.