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A Brief Reflection on Russias Diplomatic Eulogy to the World of 2014

Omar Alansari-Kreger

Information should be ingested with solid grains of salt and no issue in history
stands as an exception. With that in mind it becomes impossible to neglect the empirical
evidence that is otherwise irrefutable. NATO is closing in on every Russian Eurasian
flank and that implication is not a byproduct of politicized paranoia. What other
alternative does Russia have besides the Putin card? It would be overly asinine of us to
believe in the absence of democratic contenders for the seat of the Russian
government; competition for the seat of political power defines the true nature of a
democratic government. Taken a step further, when put to the test would any alternative
to Putin produce a different diplomatic approach to the situation in Ukraine or Russian
reaction in the Crimea?
Historically, tradition implies that Russia has always been in its own economic
orbit which has produced an array of politics unique to Moscow. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Moscow did not necessarily capitulate to the United States. Rather,
Western intelligence agencies carefully and nervously watched hoping that the breakup
of a monstrous superpower would be able to create an amicable divorce for every
former Soviet republic; thankfully that is what happened and World War Three was
finally averted beneath the historical guise of the Cold War. We seem to forget that the
capitulation of the Soviet Union did not exactly cede away the vast array of natural
resources that continues to sporadically saturate the Siberian mainland.
Russia is within its rights to assert its interests against politics of blackmailed
NATO encroachment. The West isn't really expressing a true interest in detente if it is
building military bases, staging strategic military operations, and deploying troop
detachments hours from Russian territory. There is an obvious bias in the manner in
which the Western media is covering the situation in Ukraine against Russia; for the
most part that approach works because the fear of Russia's propensity to territorially
annex its neighbors is still yesterday's memory for most of Eastern Europe and as a
result that is up-played to create this aura of a malignant Russia trying to resurrect its
former Soviet status. Russia has realized that the world has rapidly changed since the
early nineties; arms races of unpractical proportions aren't economical anymore and
surely the Soviet experience has confirmed that.


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Why create a military empire when you can control the resources that go directly
into its unilateral making? A saddening elegy of the times confirms that rule through the
common sense of reason has been thrown out of the window. The West has adopted a
neo-liberal order which has revitalized the White Mans Burden all over again; this time
around the parameters of its measures are entirely predicated on dominative geo-
politics as opposed to an imperialistic view of the world that thrives on prejudicial
orientalism. Therefore, any geo-political arena in the world is fair game and as long as
we can create a depraved situation that necessitates the direct intervention of the neo-
liberal order we can justify wars, occupations, and drone strikes.