Why The Crimean Bridge Attack Was the Best Thing to Happen to Russia

Eric Arnow
OPEDS

Since the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and in fact, since the fall of the USSR, Russia has been in a state of indecision and trauma. Many of the Soviet people saw not just their country but their belief system collapse. They bought into the Western narrative that they are inferior, indeed immoral, as in master manipulator Reagan’s “Evil Empire’.

Neocon Victoria Nuland in Kiev, arrogantly offering bread to the anti-government protesters in a famous photo-op. As a US State Department official, Nuland was clearly (and illegally) meddling in Ukraine's affairs, but obviously she didn't care. Indeed, Washington had engineered the coup and would go on to support it to this day, as the object was the overthrow of Russia's government and her balkanisation into smaller, far less powerful entities subject to Western colonisation.

This is what the West has been doing for centuries. Go into a country, spread its ideas, and tell the indigenous people that they are inferior, based on technology or simple persuasion and lies, relying on their targets’ naivete.

Many Russians, and post Soviet peoples from former Soviet or Warsaw pact countries, assumed that the USSR fell because of its inherent weakness, which translated into generalized Russophobia, even among Slavic non Russians. Even Russians stopped believing in themselves.

Russia hit rock bottom in 1999, having been utterly subjugated by the US and British, with the 1996 election theft by Yeltsin, backed by Bill Clinton, and the continuing deterioration of the Russian economy and social life.

The West and its comprador elite in Russia thought they could dispense with Yeltsin [who was becoming highly unpopular], and put in some obscure bureaucrat who likewise bought into the idea of the West as role model. That was Vladimir Putin.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. Although Putin had apparently rejected Communism and wanted to join the West, the US and NATO, his ideas were rejected. Instead, Russia faced:

·          The continued rape of his country by homegrown oligarchs

·         The CIA sponsored war in Chechnya

·         The NATO illegal war against Yugoslavia

·         The continuous expansion of NATO even into Warsaw Pact countries

All served to gradually cause Putin’s inherent honesty, and Russian selfhood to change his thinking.

He realized that the West was not a real friend, but as he put it in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference “Comrade Wolf”. The renunciation in 2002 of the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty by George W. Bush and placement of ballistic missile defence systems on Russia’s borders had to cause concern. Even Russia could not believe the claims of its ‘Western Partners’, that those systems were to defend against Iran—which didn’t even have a missile capable of reaching the West.

That’s why Russia, after almost completely disarming after the end of the USSR, and the unilateral withdrawal of its army from Europe, followed by NATO’s armies moving right in, started to rearm.

The neocon War on Terror, conveniently distracted the US, which assumed that Russia was done, finished, and went to ‘work’ on the Middle East, to capture control if its oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Russia and China and Iran were rearming.

By 2008, the US was confident enough to recommend that both former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine enter NATO. Georgia, egged on by the US, tried to take over an ethnically Russia area, South Ossetia, killing Russian peacekeepers. Russia crushed that move in 5 days. But left Georgia intact, save for South Ossetia.

Meanwhile, the Brzezinski strategy of taking over Ukraine to serve as a dagger to the heart of Russia, to literally checkmate and destroy Russia's immanent great power potential, was being implemented. It almost succeeded in 2004 [via one of those cynical "color revolutions"], and in 2014, finally did succeed in bringing down the democratically elected [if admittedly corrupt] government of Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, Washington’s plan to override the EU’s timidity as exemplified by Victoria Nulands infamous “F-ck the EU” had created the 2014 coup. Why didn’t Russia respond to squelch that coup?

Was it because it was too distracted by the Olympics, or was it too afraid to take on the West? Was it too lacking in self confidence to help the majority of Ukrainians who opposed it? Was it too hampered by legalistic formulations of ‘non interference’ in the affairs of other countries?

All that is up for debate, but the result was that the Donbass people were stuck being part of Kiev’s regime via the Minsk Agreement. Finally, after 8 years of bombing and atrocities, as well as increasing signs of NATO encroachment, Russia’s Duma put forth a resolution to defend Donbass.

But even then, Putin chose the strategy of ‘going in soft’. He didn’t want to alienate the Ukrainian people [whom most Russians regard as "family"] by blowing up their infrastructure and disrupting their lives.  He didn’t authorize enough troops to defend territory that was captured, resulting in setbacks and reprisals to those who welcomed back or even accepted Russian humanitarian aid.

So there were three factors that seem to have forced the change in both Russia’s attitude and its policies.

·         The loss of territories previously won, while small, represented a humiliation of the Russian military, and what’s worse, a harbinger of future defeats in the face of NATO/US massive reinforcement

·         The [blowing up] of the Nordstream Pipelines, obviously an act of war by the US

·         And the final straw, the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, Russia’s engineering pride and joy

It is a fact that human beings for better or worse, bow down to power. Very few bow down to truth, or justice. Since the powerful make the rules, people are both inclined to respect rules, as well as fear the consequences for defying them.

The two latest fake victories were the best thing to happen. First, while NS2 was largely ruined, one branch was left intact, a sign of incompetence by the attackers. Second, the massive explosion on the bridge had a big psychological effect, that Russia is seriously vulnerable. But at the same time, the damage was not so great. That is also a sign of the incompetence of the perpetrators.

What that means to Russia and to ordinary Russians, is that not only is the ‘Collective West’ a serious threat, but at the same time it is, what Mao said, “A paper tiger”. Recent prevarications by NATO prove this. They’re arming Ukraine to the teeth—but not too much as NATO itself is afraid of being counterattacked by Russia. Likewise, claiming that if Ukraine falls, NATO loses, yet, NATO not willing to ‘go all in’ to defend its poor little fake democratic country Ukraine shows it’s not sincere, and indeed, it’s weak.

This has given Russia both the motive ---an existential threat to Mother Russia—and the CONFIDENCE to know that it can win but only if it shows its strength. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

The Collective West will back off, because it only attacks weak countries it knows it can defeat.

What’s even better, when Russia takes over all of Ukraine, the vast majority of average Ukrainians, who were fooled into believing in the preposterous ideology of Ukrainian Racial Superiority, will remember who their true friend and family is—Mother Russia. The diehards will take refuge with their Nazi collaborator forebears in the West. Or be crushed.

And the US/NATO, which likewise bought into its own centuries-old racist imperialist ideology of White Western Civilization, will get to feast on ice-cold humble pie this winter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE

Eric Arnow is a man almost impossible to classify. A westerner with family roots in old Russia, a serious student of Buddhism, and a real socialist, he is dedicated to educating the public about the global conflict between the capitalist Western empire and the emerging sovereign powers led by Russia, China, and Iran.