Profil: :Three Cheers for 2008"
By Alexander Dugin
To build the future you have to understand the past, otherwise our future will be made by somebody else. If we understand correctly what happened last year, it will be easy to make predictions or express wishes for the new year and the following years.
I don't think there can be any doubts as to the highlights of 2008 (I am referring to politics and the more important factors that influence our life). They were:
-the election of Dmitry Medvedev as Russian President;
-the August war between Russia and Georgia, followed by the liberation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Russia's recognition of their independence;
-the election of the first Afro-American US President, Barack Obama of the Democratic Party;
And
-the world economic crisis that broke out in October.
Medvedev is truly our President
The election of Dmitry Medvedev as the new Russian President marked a turning point in our recent history.
Russia's political and ideological identity has still not jelled. In the late 1990s, after the egregious Gorbachev and still more egregious Yeltsin, President Putin gave the people a room to breathe. This is not to say that Putin is a genius, but compared to his two awful predecessors any sane politician would appear to be a saviour. Putin was perceived as such by the majority of Russians and he did not let them down.
After Putin's "golden age" sped by, many began to fear that a constitutional change of leadership in a country that has failed to generate a unifying national idea or any measure of geopolitical certainty could have dire consequences. These fears were expressed by the "third-term party" (to which this writer belonged), but were simultaneously the hopes of those who had not given up the idea of staging a comeback and bringing back "the wild 1990s". However, the choice of Medvedev showed that our political system was strong enough and that Putin's course - moderate, pragmatic, sometimes overly cautious, but with a sense of purpose, the revival of national grandeur after decades of heavy defeats and unheard of betrayal - would be pursued in his stead, especially since Putin did not quit, but merely moved to the Prime Minister's seat.
Some may argue that the choice of the Russian President, which involved heavy use of administrative resources and was backed by Putin's high approval rating, was bound to be a technical operation and does not merit too much attention, but this may only appear to be the case. You only have to imagine what would have happened if the transition of power had not gone as smoothly as it did, if frictions had emerged between the new President and Putin, and if the world economic crisis had broken out six months earlier than it did. Everything might have turned out differently and Russia might have descended into turmoil. As it is, everything went off calmly without any hiccups, which was in itself a remarkable phenomenon.
Those who believe that the political developments in Russia are signs of parochialism are mistaken, because at all stages in its history Russia has played a huge geopolitical role among the world powers, and even in periods of decline and catastrophe it turned out that we were simply storing up strength for another spiral, with every new spiral being more sweeping than the previous one... This is why Russia's "concentration", the logic and pace of our recovery from the insane 1990s, are phenomena with global consequences. We are steadily moving towards a new upsurge, and in such periods the most terrible thing that can happen is being "shot down during takeoff". The takeoff - admittedly still to a low altitude - was not interrupted by the election of President Dmitry Medvedev. Those who did not fall down flew.
Realising that the "liberal lawyer" Medvedev turned out to be a supporter of the strong Russian state, the West modified its rhetoric with regard to the new President; in fact, it became rather similar, in terms of its critical metaphors, to the rhetoric about Putin. If our opponents berate our President, it means they respect and fear him. It is hard to imagine greater praise. The only people that should be feared are those who are praised in the West. We experienced it just recently with Gorbachev, so we have no illusions on that score.
A genuine victory
The second key event of 2008 was Saakashvili's attack on Tskhinval and the movement of Russian troops into Georgian territory. It fully confirmed the thesis that "Medvedev is our President" - "our" and not "their" President. Undaunted by the prospect of serious geopolitical consequences and risking a nuclear showdown with the US and NATO (although it soon became clear that the West was bluffing), Russia intervened on behalf of the miserable Ossetians, who were being murdered in the eyes of the world community, stopped the genocide of civilians, and bloodied the nose of a rabid aggressor with no compunction about shooting Russian peacekeepers in the back, thus putting himself beyond the pale of civilisation. At that moment the new President took the decision to stand up for Russia's honour, our values, our ideals, and our interests. It was a real test, one that Medvedev passed with flying colours. The enemy was humiliated, and Russian soldiers were hailed as winners in a just war for a righteous cause. It had been a long time since our soldiers and Russian tanks were welcomed with tears of happiness, with eyes full of hope and gratitude, as they were greeted in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Afghanistan, Chechnya, and even the liberation of some East European countries during the Second World War pale in comparison. As German lawyer Karl Schmitt wrote, "He is sovereign who makes a decision in an emergency". Medvedev proved that he is a sovereign president of a sovereign country. All doubts were erased.
What is particularly important is that Medvedev and Putin managed to overcome the attack of the fifth column of Western agents who, during the difficult August days, raised hue and cry in order to first prevent the introduction of Russian troops and then prevent them from moving inside Georgian territory and finally, the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. At each of these stages, we heard panicky arguments: "It signifies a total break with the West", "It will put Russia on the brink of a nuclear confrontation", the Russian Atlantic lobby (both loyal to Medvedev-Putin and those in the opposition) whined. Eventually we acted as we saw fit, and no break with the West, no nuclear conflict occurred. Medvedev was aware of the historical necessity, followed his moral instincts and his patriotic consciousness, and was proved right. It was an unqualified victory, one of the few victories in our recent history. And what of the West? After some loud protests, it calmed down. Russia had cleared its way back into history and is poised for a new surge in upholding its priorities and values.
The key point of the Russian-Georgian war was the decision to move outside the Russian Federation, something the Russian leadership had been afraid of doing even when it did not hesitate to take tough measures to restore order on its own territory. Nonetheless, the law of geopolitics reads that "he who does not control neighbouring territories cannot be the master in his own land." Russia's security directly depends on strategic control over the post-Soviet space. One can accuse Russia of "imperialism" till one is blue in the face, but Russia has always been an empire, and in the future it will either be great or will not exist at all. So, the August events and the steely determination in recognising the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia set the stage for a new historical spiral. The Russians are coming back, and woe betide those who stand in our way. During the August war Russia did not just defeat the "jackal" regime of Saakashvili. That would have been a trifle. It demonstrated who calls the shots in the entire post-Soviet space, shattering the myth of American might and showing the true worth of Washington's promises to its local puppets that in a critical situation "the brave NATO guys will always come to the rescue". Where are these guys? The same will happen to anyone who tries to test our strength.
In 2008 Russia reminded everyone - friends and foes, close and distant countries - that it is a great power. If so, this is a logical point from which to begin our triumphant march towards restoring our former power.
A chocolate rabbit: America's sunset?
The third major event of the year happened in the US, which for the first time in its history elected an Afro-American as its president. Many saw it as a symbol: the nucleus of the American nation, the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), for the first time surrendered its position and bowed to the political correctness they had long prided themselves on but were cautious about applying in practice. Does this signal the end of America as we knew it? Many in the world would like it to be the case. The US has generated so much resentment on account of its double standards, its crude interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, its ambitious and obsessive belief that the American system is a universal model for all other peoples, and its claim to be the sole world leader, that "the end of America", its disintegration in the midst of a rising multicultural chaos under an Afro-American President (who before he ran for President, by the way, was a follower of the Afro-American racist pastor Jeremiah Wright of "Goddamn America" fame) may be around the corner. Perhaps two thirds of humanity, and certainly the majority of Africans, were genuinely glad about Obama's victory, anticipating that it could be the beginning of America's decline. It is hard to say whether or not Obama will live up to these expectations. Interestingly, the expectation is that he will not save, but precipitate the fall of the US. He is a "messiah in reverse"; his task is to destroy America as quickly as possible so that the curse of his mentor, Jeremiah Wright, "Goddamn America!" comes true.
But, knowing how stable the American elite is, I think the joy is premature. The personal factor means much less in US politics than in Europe, not to speak of Russia, where it is everything. The Obama administration consists of the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party and is a carbon copy of the Clinton administration, beginning with his wife Hillary, who is now Secretary of State. Obama himself is not a political force, he is a media phenomenon, a typical post-modern politician created by spin doctors who is sensitive to the demands of the average American voter. Most likely, Obama will become a cardboard cut-out politician, a gadget for the masses, while the decisions that count will continue to be made by the WASPs. The US will hardly renounce its plans of world domination, globalisation, and the building of a "world empire". When the neoconservatives were masters of the White House under Bush Jr., this was openly admitted. Now the same policy will be pursued in a subtler way: Washington will go through the motions of taking counsel with its allies, but in the end it will do things its own way. Those who fell under Obama's spell will soon shed their illusions and become disappointed as they see that America continues to behave as it did before him. In a sense it has no other way; the Liberal-Democratic messianism and the euphoria of victory in the Cold War left all the American elites with no alternative (both the neocons and the members of the softer Council on Foreign Relations, which now stands behind Obama) to the course for world domination. So, everything will soon fall into place, and Obama will demonstrate his other side (remember that he himself is a WASP on his mother's side). If, however, America quavers under Obama, we should take advantage of it (Nietzsche's advice "to push what is falling down" would come in handy), but the odds are that everything will remain as before and the advocates of a multipolar world (in the first place, Russia) should brace themselves for a new confrontation with the superpower's imperialist claims.
The bubble is the final refuge
The fourth key event of last year was the world economic crisis. It was triggered by the American mortgage crisis, but soon led to the bursting of the entire financial bubble and gradually developed into a global economic catastrophe that buried under its rubble the "new economy" that, until recently, was thought to be assured of eternal and ever more rapid growth.
While initially the fanatics of liberalism tried to mumble something about a "technical malfunction of the world financial market regulation mechanisms", today it is evident that we are witnessing the end of a major cycle of the capitalist economy. The period of burgeoning financial institutions - stock exchanges, hedge funds, derivatives, options, and futures whose overall turnover has long exceeded the mass of commodities and the size of the real world economy many times over - has come to an end. The discrepancy between the real sector and virtual finances had reached a high point, and it was at that moment that the whole system came tumbling down. This crisis is far larger than the Great Depression in the US, which was one of the factors that led to the Second World War (disappointed with the international market, the Western countries at the time fell back on selfish protectionism, pushing contradictions among states to their limit).
The other day, American car workers in Detroit, faced with massive layoffs (the days of the American automobile industry are numbered, because even at its best it could not hold its own against its Asian competitors, and in a crisis the weak die first, such is the law of the market) took to the street together with Protestant pastors and posters that read "Give us one more bubble". Of course that is the way the liberal economy develops, from one crisis to another, from one bubble to another, but there is much to suggest that this bubble was the last. The sharp and unsupported capitalisation of the world, in the first place American, markets (although the Europeans and even some Russians, by jacking up oil and gas prices, managed to take a chip off that pyramid; in the Russian case, after the collapse of the "casino capitalism" our Stabilisation Fund went up in flames) created first a euphoria of rapid economic growth and then revealed itself as a fiction and almost a fraud (similar to the MMM or Vlastelina pyramid schemes in the early perestroika years). The father of the world financial system, Alan Greenspan, recently admitted to the US Congress that his faith in the self-regulation of the market had turned out to be a mistake. This is an important admission: for the Americans, the collapse of those symbols of reliability, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Fannie Mae, means simply the end of the world.
"God died" in America in the autumn of 2008. The American God of free trade, liberalism, and the "invisible hand of the market". For many other nations, though, it was not a god, but rather the opposite.
How to get out of the crisis? No one has a definitive answer to that, though one thing is clear: it is suicidal to try to treat the disease with the very conditions that provoked it. Today one should heed any recipes except the liberal ones. It would make sense to impose a moratorium on liberalism, just like on National Socialists and more recently, on the Communists. Liberalism is a criminal ideology with all the consequences that entails.
Europe is tackling the crisis through social democratic methods: the European leaders have agreed to nationalise the entire European financial system (at least until the end of 2009) - and this is only the beginning. Washington rejected the "left-wing extremism" of Brown and Sarkozy, but it did the same with regard to its own floundering industry: the poor Detroit workers clamouring for a "bubble" have been given three-month subsidies. Although non-interference of the state into private business is an article of faith for the American economy, as soon as private business began to collapse it went panhandling to the state. So far, however, the Americans, unlike the Europeans, do not have the guts to recognise that Keynes was right. In Europe, meanwhile, they are dusting off Keynes and may soon be brushing up on the works of Marx.
How is Russia coping with the crisis? Honestly, not very well. During the "Putin golden age" our economic growth was also based on integration into the world economy, as Medvedev has admitted, which accounted for the growing energy prices and relative prosperity. True, the prosperity owes a lot to Putin's determination to redirect part of the oil export revenues into industry and the social sphere. If we had lived according to the notions of the 1990s, the windfall oil and gas profits would be redistributed within a narrow circle of oligarchs and "the family". As it is, ordinary people got a slice of the cake.
Considering that Russia has no industry to speak of and the commodity prices have plummeted, it is hard to see what Russia can do. The first thing that comes to mind is to part with the liberals who have fulfilled their programme, both in the good and the bad sense. Their time is over. Keynes is relevant and it would make sense to revert to the Socialist recipes and perhaps reread Marx.
Obviously, nationalisation of the economy is on the agenda. One should take a closer look at that concept this year: from now on we will hear the word more and more often. Nationalisation means the transfer of management of big industry, in the first place the companies that have to do with natural resources and energy, to the state. The oligarchs are now resting; some like Berezovsky and others like Khodorkovsky. Quick bucks always carry big risks.
The big question, however, is where the government will get efficient managers. It will call for imagination, an unorthodox approach, hard thinking, new strategies and a serious rotation of the elites: the era when PR replaced politics is receding into the past.
Nationalisation is an excellent term. It is an economic trend that is the opposite of privatisation and a call for a new, national style in politics. Those who are integrated into the world economy will be hardest hit by the crisis. Those who form the roots of the nation, the salt of the earth, will be less affected, although they too will experience problems. Patience is an ingrained national trait, but it manifests itself especially when the principle of equality is observed: if patience is required, then everyone should be patient to the same degree. So, even if nationalisation is not the final answer, it is the main avenue that needs to be explored. Those who obstruct thinking in that direction should be "gently" asked to step aside for a while.
So, 2008 saw the bursting of the last bubble of world capitalism in its post-industrial phase. Or was it the last? Reverting to the dizzying growth of fictitious capital is probably worse than temporary difficulties while there is still hope for creating a more stable, more realistic, fair and humane economic model. So, burying liberal capitalism is, among other things, a moral imperative; it should be buried thoroughly to prevent it from coming out of its grave as a zombie that will inflate a new, fatal, and truly lasting bubble, the global virtual derivative of post-humanity. God forbid that.
Balance of the year: we are in the black
To sum up the balance sheet of 2008. Medvedev was elected President. That is good. He proved to be the right guy. That is a plus. We won the war with Georgia and called America's bluff. That makes two pluses. They have elected Obama, which is more on the plus side, especially if we do not entertain foolish hopes or stand idly by waiting for Obama to bring about the disintegration of American capitalism (alas, the people around him would prevent it). It is an important event with mixed consequences. And finally, the global economic crisis: it is a minus in the short and medium term because it will affect everyone. But if the right conclusions are drawn in a timely manner, if we learn from mistakes and politely part company with liberals of every sort (both docile and feisty ones) and learn to say the word "nationalisation" calmly and with dignity, then it may turn out to be a large and vitally important plus.
In short, 2008 was a splendid year. Wish there were more such years.
