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 Back cover

Why is Ukraine losing the war against Russia? How do both sides
think and operate? What were the mistakes on both sides? How did
the West contribute to the Ukrainian defeat?
To answer these and many other questions, Jacques Baud draws on
official information as well as American, Western and Russian
documents. He explains how Russia understands and conducts the
war. He shows how the West’s inability to grasp this reality and its
determination to weaken Russia has backfired in Ukraine. Following
on from the bestsellers Putin: Game master?, Operation Z and
Ukraine Between War and Peace, whose analytical work has been
acclaimed worldwide and translated into several languages, the
author returns to the war in Ukraine. He explains how Russia waged
the war, and reveals how the image portrayed by the West led to
Ukraine’s failure.

Jacques Baud was a member of Swiss strategic intelligence, a

specialist in Eastern Europe and former head of doctrine for UN
peacekeeping operations. During the Cold War, he worked on Soviet
military art and the war in Afghanistan. Within NATO, he was
involved in programs in Ukraine, notably after the 2014 Maïdan
revolution. In addition to his major works on the conflict in Ukraine,
he is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism,
including Gouverner par les fake news, Vaincre le terrorisme
djihadiste and L’Affaire Navalny, all published by Max Milo.
 Copyright

© Max Milo, Paris, 2024

www.maxmilo.com
ISBN: 978-2-31501-308-1
 1. Introduction

In 1973, while on vacation in Italy with my family, we stopped off at

the monastery of Monte Cassino, the scene of a violent battle in
1943. I remember spending long minutes in front of the grave of a
young Canadian who died at the age of 18, the same age I was at
the time.
Fifty years later, on the occasion of the visit of President Volodymyr
Zelensky,1 the Canadian Parliament gave a standing ovation to a
survivor of the 14th Grenadierdivision “1. Galizien” of the Waffen SS,
who fought against the Soviets and took part in atrocities against
Jews.2 Anthony Rota, President of the Parliamentary Assembly,
pointed out that this veteran “fought for Ukrainian independence
against the Russians and continues to support the truth today.”3 A
few days later, Rota awkwardly tried to justify himself, claiming that
he didn’t know the background of this soldier, which is a lie, since he
had invited him and the other guests had been duly vetted and
approved. To top it all off, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, could
think of nothing better than to blame it all on “Russian propaganda
and disinformation.”4 One wonders if they’re doing it on purpose, or
if they’re just totally retarded.
This incident illustrates several things that characterize the Western
approach to the conflict in Ukraine.
First of all, Rota’s justifications don’t change the bottom line: all
Canadian parliamentarians glorified those who fought for Canada’s
Allies in the Second World War! In fact, they spat on the grave of
this young Canadian who was fighting the same enemy as the
Soviets. In support, Zelensky, who knew full well what it meant to
fight the Russians in the Second World War, himself applauded this
former Waffen SS man! Let’s not forget that 7 million Ukrainians
fought the Third Reich on the side of the USSR and the Allies…
Secondly, these parliamentarians gave a former Nazi a standing
ovation without even asking questions. Like sheep. By neglecting
their duty of care, and acting without knowledge or understanding,
they are all, without exception, examples of an ignorant political
class, without honor, irresponsible, profoundly incapable of reflection
and humanity. They are a disgrace to democracy.
Thirdly, this incident shows the ambiguity of the situation of
Ukrainians, who owe their first independence to the Third Reich,
which makes the oppressors of Western Europe the liberators of
Ukrainians. The problem is that the Manichean world in which we
live cannot accommodate these complex relationships. This leads to
a form of negationism that has taken hold in our media, among our
journalists and our politicians.
Fourthly, Anthony Rota didn’t say that the veteran had fought
“Soviets” (which would have been a reference to their ideology, since
this was the USSR), but “Russians,” singling out an ethnic group. The
parliamentarians gave this a standing ovation, highlighting the
common ground between the Nazis of yesteryear, the neo-Nazis of
today, the Canadian parliamentarians and the rest—hatred of
Russians, the driving force behind the Ukrainian conflict. For not one
of our journalists has spoken out against the sanctions targeting the
Russian population, the murders and assassinations of Russian
personalities, the actions targeting Russian art and artists, even to
the point of renaming paintings in our museums! All mainstream
media journalists, without exception, have accepted a practice that
seemed to have been forgotten since the Holocaust—condemning
individuals for what they are, not for what they do.
Paradoxically, I don’t associate the vast majority of Ukrainians with
this hatred, because many of them don’t share it, even though the
war polarizes people’s minds. I also note that the Ukrainian press
often contradicts what our journalists say.
That’s why the incident at the Canadian parliament is more than an
anecdote—it’s the image of a Western political class adrift; of media
without faith or law; of politicians and journalists who live off the
blood of others, and, as we shall see, in particular that of Ukrainians.
This book—like its predecessors—is not about giving good points to
one side or the other. It does not seek to justify either side in the
conflict, but to explain what they are doing and why they are doing
it.
Naturally, in an intellectual context where everything the Russians
do is considered wrong, stupid and bad, explaining what they do is
enough to be cast as an “apologist.”
Like all conflicts, Ukraine was the scene of unbridled disinformation.
The phenomenon is not unusual, but here it took on an almost
cartoonish quality. From the outset, the Western narrative revolved
around the idea that “Russia cannot, and must not, win this war.”5
This is demonstrated by the hearing of Michel Goya, a colonel in the
French army, before a committee of the French Senate in November
2022.6 Without the slightest knowledge of Russian military doctrine,
with a very limited understanding of the art of operations and even
of the inner workings of the Atlantic Alliance, he analyzed the war in
terms of what a French soldier would do. Beyond navel-gazing, he
illustrates a very Western way of understanding war based on our
own logic, not on that of our adversary. This is what led to the
disasters of 1914 and 1940 in France, and to the failure of
operations in the Middle East and Sahel.
At the hearing of General Bruno Clermont on December 7, 2022,
Senator (LR) Cédric Perrin perfectly illustrated our inability to
understand war in any other way than the way we do:7
The Russians made a monumental mistake at the outset… by not
operating as Western doctrine would have it, i.e., by bombing the
areas which today allow the Ukrainians to respond to them.
In other words, he was surprised that Russia doesn’t apply our
operational principles. The inability to imagine several solutions to
the same problem, and to understand that others may have a
different, or even more effective, solution, is an expression of
Western ethnocentrism. This is exactly why Mali and Niger have
asked French troops to leave their territory.
The particularity of this conflict is that, on the Western side, the aim
was not to help Ukraine “win” it, but to force Russia to “lose” it. The
ultimate aim is not so much to win back territory, as to bring about
Vladimir Putin’s downfall.
That’s why, in August 2023, Ukraine’s inability to carry out its
counter-offensive made the West fear that it was “losing control of
its narrative.”8 Worse, as the New York Times noted, “U.S. officials
say they fear Ukraine has become reluctant to take casualties.”9
This is what Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico,
summed up so lucidly in June 2022 about NATO and EU policy
towards Ukraine10:
We supply the weapons; you supply the corpses! It’s immoral!
For, from the Western point of view, the course of the conflict
depends on the narrative. From the outset of the Russian operation
in Ukraine, Western discourse created a false sense of superiority,
leading Ukraine to underestimate the reality of the Russian threat.
We will seek to restore a balance to the information that our media
and their so-called journalists have deliberately falsified. Deeply
dishonest and bloodthirsty, they manage to contradict information
that even Ukrainian journalists have given. In this conflict, by
rejecting the deontology of the Munich Charter, our media have
abandoned their ethics and their honor. Comfortably ensconced in
their editorial offices, they have done everything in their power to
ensure that the conflict is prolonged and lives wasted. And this
responsibility predates February 24, 2022.
Our media and “experts” have literally pushed Ukraine into a
conflict, denying it any negotiating option, but convincing it that
Russia is an adversary, one that it is capable of defeating. They are
the most detestable, and I hope this book will help make Ukrainians
and Russians realize how dishonest they have been with them.
The misunderstanding of the conflict in Ukraine is partly the result
of the intellectual and semantic muddle with which we try to explain
it. Notions of strategy, tactics and—newly—“operative art” are boldly
mixed together, making it possible to castigate the Russian approach
and explain its impending “defeat”—which the West is still waiting
for!
Today, the Western narrative has gradually collapsed before the
reality of the facts, and what was described as conspiracism in 2022
has become reality.
As with any conflict, it can only be understood by trying to grasp
the perceptions and logics of the protagonists. In the pages that
follow, we will return to the way Russia sees and wages war. Our
military’s inability to understand the reality of the situation in Ukraine
is not only worrying for the future of our armies, it is literally one of
the main reasons for the Ukrainian defeat.

1. https://forward.com/fast-forward/561927/zelenskyy-joins-canadian-parliaments-ovation-
to-98-year-old-veteran-who-fought-with-nazis/
2. https://komb-a-ingwar.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_4610.html
3. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2012834/house-speaker-anthony-rota-to-address-
parliament-amid-ukrainian-veteran-fallout
4. https://www.opindia.com/2023/09/justin-trudeau-blames-russian-propaganda-after-
canadas-parliament-faces-global-shame-for-celebrating-nazis/
5. https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/rapports/cion_def/l16b1111_rapport-
information.pdf
6. https://youtu.be/CvAYOHc8sv4
7.”War in Ukraine: “It’s a 20th-century war””, Public Sénat/YouTube, December 7, 2022
(https://youtu.be/kIJtZmzK1mc)
8. Dan De Luce & Phil McCausland, “Is Ukraine’s counteroffensive failing? Kyiv and its
supporters worry about losing control of the narrative”, NBC News, August 4, 2023
(https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/ukraine-war-counteroffensive-russia-
success-failure-rcna98054)
9. Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Eric Schmitt & Julian E. Barnes, “Troop Deaths and
Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say,” The New York Times, August 18,
2023 (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html)
10. “Mexican president slams NATO policy in Ukraine,” AP News, June 13, 2022
(https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-mexico-caribbean-nato-
b9aaddc8e3da3ad2b2cc013a6e8ff4bb)
 2. Russian Military Thought

Throughout the Cold War period, the Soviet Union saw itself as the
spearhead of a historical struggle that would lead to a confrontation
between the “capitalist” system and “progressive forces.” This
perception of a permanent and inescapable war led the Soviets to
study war in a quasi-scientific way, and to structure this thinking into
an architecture of military thought that has no equal in the Western
world.
The problem with the vast majority of our so-called military experts
is their inability to understand the Russian approach to war. It’s the
result of an approach we’ve already seen in waves of terrorist
attacks—the adversary is so stupidly demonized that we fail to
understand his way of thinking. As a result, we are unable to
develop strategies, articulate our forces, or even equip them for the
realities of war. The corollary of this approach is that our frustrations
are translated by unscrupulous media into a narrative that feeds
hatred and increases our vulnerability.11 We are thus unable to find
rational and effective solutions to the problem.
The way Russians understand conflict is holistic. In other words,
they see the processes that develop and lead to the situation at any
given moment. This explains why Vladimir Putin’s speeches
invariably include a return to history. In the West, we tend to focus
on the immediate moment X and try to see how it might evolve. We
want an immediate response to the situation we see right now. The
idea that “from the understanding of how the crisis arose comes the
way to resolve it” is totally foreign to the West. In September 2023,
an English-language journalist even pulled out the “duck test” for
me: “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck,
it’s probably a duck.” In other words, all they need is an image that
matches their prejudices to assess a situation.
 The reality is far more subtle than the duck model. In Newsweek,
an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)—the American
equivalent of France’s Direction du Renseignement Militaire (DRM)—
notes:12
The way in which Russia is waging this brutal war differs from the
widely held view that Vladimir Putin wants to destroy Ukraine and
inflict maximum civilian casualties, but rather reveals the Russian
leader’s strategic balancing act.
The reason why the Russians are better than the West in Ukraine is
that they see the conflict as a process, whereas we see it as a series
of separate actions. The Russians see events as a film; we see them
as photographs. They see the forest, while we focus on the trees.
That’s why we place the start of the conflict on February 24, 2022,
or the start of the Palestinian conflict on October 7, 2023. We discard
the contexts that bother us and wage conflicts we don’t understand.
That’s why we lose our wars.

Architecture of Russian military thought

 Figure 1—Current Russian military thinking is strongly influenced by the thinking that has
been going on since the 1920s. It remains very logically constructed and is established in a
quasi-scientific manner based on acquired experience.

Russian Military Doctrine

Doctrinal Elements
Russian military doctrine is the subject of a great deal of study and
debate in Russia itself. Our Western perception of this thinking is
extremely simplistic and distorted by the American prism. We will not
deal here with all aspects of Russian thought and doctrine. We will
concentrate on that which is linked to the Ukrainian conflict and the
lessons we can learn from it.
Principles of Military Art
All countries articulate their military thinking or policy around
general principles which guide the design of their defense and
operations. The number of principles varies from country to country,
and is very similar. In Russia, unsurprisingly, the principles of the
military art of the Soviet forces13 inspired those currently in use:14

availability to carry out assigned missions;

focus on solving a specific mission;
surprise (unconventionality) of military action vis-à-vis the
enemy;
purpose determines a set of tasks and the level of resolution
of each task;
totality of available resources determines how the mission
is resolved and the objective achieved (correlation of forces);
consistency of leadership (unity of command);
economy of forces, resources, time and space;
supporting and restoring combat capability;
freedom to maneuver.
 It should be noted that these principles apply not only to the
implementation of military action as such. They are also applicable
as a system of thought to other non-operational activities.
An honest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine would have identified
these various principles and drawn useful conclusions for Ukraine.
But none of the self-proclaimed experts on TV were intellectually
able to do this.
Thus, Westerners are systematically surprised by the Russians in
the fields of technology (e.g., hypersonic weapons), doctrine (e.g.,
operative art) and economics (e.g., resilience to sanctions). In a way,
the Russians are taking advantage of our prejudices to exploit the
principle of surprise. We can see this in the Ukrainian conflict, where
the Western narrative led Ukraine to completely underestimate
Russian capabilities, which was a major factor in its defeat. That’s
why Russia didn’t really try to counter this narrative and let it play
out—the belief that we are superior makes us vulnerable.
Force Correlation
Russian military thought is traditionally linked to a holistic approach
to warfare, which involves the integration of a large number of
factors in the development of a strategy. This approach is embodied
in the concept of “correlation of forces” (Соотношение сил). Often
translated as “balance of forces” or “ratio of forces,” this concept is
understood by Westerners only as a quantity of a quantitative
nature, limited to the military domain. However, in Soviet thought,
the correlation of forces reflects a more holistic reading of war:15
There are several criteria for assessing the correlation of
strengths. In the economic sphere, the factors usually compared
are gross national product per capita, labor productivity, the
dynamics of economic growth, the level of industrial production,
particularly in high-tech sectors, the technical infrastructure of the
production tool, the resources and degree of qualification of the
workforce, the number of specialists and the level of development
of theoretical and applied sciences.
 In the military field, the factors compared are the quantity and
quality of armaments, the firepower of the armed forces, the
fighting and moral qualities of the soldiers, the level of staff
training, the organization of the troops and their combat
experience, the character of the military doctrine and the methods
of strategic, operative and tactical thinking.
In the political sphere, the factors that come into consideration are
the breadth of the social base of state authority, its organization,
the constitutional procedure for relations between the government
and legislative bodies, the ability to make operational decisions,
and the degree and character of popular support for domestic and
foreign policy.
Finally, in assessing the strength of the international movement,
the factors taken into consideration are its quantitative
composition, its influence with the masses, its position in the
political life of each country, the principles and norms of relations
between its components and the degree of their cohesion.
In other words, the assessment of the situation is not limited to the
balance of forces on the battlefield, but takes into account all the
elements that have an impact on the evolution of the conflict. Thus,
for their Special Military Operation, the Russian authorities had
planned the ability to support the war effort through the economy,
without moving to a “war economy” regime. Thus, unlike in Ukraine,
there was no interruption in the tax and welfare mechanisms.
This is why the sanctions applied on Russia in 2014 had a double
positive effect. The first was the realization that they were not only a
short-term problem, but above all a medium- and long-term
opportunity. They encouraged Russia to produce goods it had
previously preferred to buy abroad. The second was the signal that
the West would increasingly use economic weapons as a means of
pressure in the future. It therefore became imperative, for reasons
of national independence and sovereignty, to prepare for more far-
reaching sanctions affecting the country’s economy.
 In reality, it has long been known that sanctions do not work.16
Logically enough, they had the opposite effect: acting as
protectionist measures for Russia, which was thus able to
consolidate its economy, as had been the case after the 2014
sanctions. A strategy of sanctions might have borne fruit if the
Russian economy had indeed been the equivalent of the Italian or
Spanish economy, i.e., with a high level of debt; and if the entire
planet had acted in unison to isolate Russia.
The inclusion of the correlation of forces in the decision-making
process is a fundamental difference from Western decision-making
processes, which are linked more to a policy of communication than
to a rational approach to problems.
This explains, for example, Russia’s limited objectives in Ukraine,
where it is not seeking to occupy the entire territory, as the
correlation of forces in the western part of the country would be
unfavorable to it.
At each control level, force correlation is part of situation
assessment. At the operational level, it is defined as follows:17
The result of comparing the quantitative and qualitative
characteristics of the forces and resources (sub-units, units,
weapons, military equipment, etc.) of one’s own troops (forces)
and those of the enemy. It is calculated on an operational and
tactical scale throughout the area of operations, in the main and
other directions, in order to determine the degree of objective
superiority of one of the opposing camps. Assessing the
correlation of forces enables you to make an informed decision
about an operation (battle), and to establish and maintain the
necessary superiority over the enemy for as long as possible when
decisions are redefined (modified) during military (combat)
operations.
This simple definition is the reason why the Russians committed
themselves with forces inferior to those of Ukraine in February 2022,
or why they withdrew from Kiev, Kharkov and Kherson in March,
September and October 2022—we’ll come back to this later.
Nuclear War
Ongoing Evolution
In 1945, the USSR won the race to Berlin. It emerged victorious
from the war, but unlike the United States, it was bloodless. In the
United States and Great Britain, some leaders saw this as an
opportunity to resume the offensive towards Moscow, since it was
thought that Stalin had the same intention towards the Atlantic. But
the time was not ripe for the resumption of hostilities, and the Cold
War began.
Today, those who claim that Russia has expansionist intentions are
simply transposing—without taking the context into account—the
Marxist thinking that guided Soviet policy. In this scheme, the USSR
saw itself as the spearhead of the class struggle, engaged in a
permanent and systemic war with the West as part of a historical
process of struggle against capitalism. Until Stalin’s death, the
USSR’s strategic military thinking was dominated by the idea that its
security would only be guaranteed by a victory of socialism over
capitalism, and that confrontation between the two systems was
inevitable. Soviet strategists spoke of the principle of the
“inevitability of war” (неизбежность войны). This idea remained
until the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
in February 1956, when, under the impetus of Nikita Khrushchev, the
USSR adopted the principle of “peaceful coexistence.” From then on,
this was known as the “non-inevitability of war.”
This did not prevent Westerners from preparing for possible Soviet
aggression, although American documents, now declassified, show
that the Soviets had no intention of invading Europe:18
Recently declassified Soviet documents, articles and minutes of
meetings indicate that the Soviet leadership had no intention of
invading Europe19.
In the USSR, on the other hand, the fear of new Western invasion
attempts on its territory remained very real, prompting it to adopt a
policy of dissuasion:20
 However, the experiences of the First and Second World Wars
gave rise to fears that the West would invade the USSR if it
appeared militarily weak.
In 1949, the USSR acquired nuclear weapons. This led to the
creation of NATO the same year, with the aim of placing Western
Europe under the US nuclear umbrella. At this stage, nuclear war
was mainly considered at the strategic level, and tactical nuclear
weapons were not yet on the agenda. The risk was that the two
nuclear powers would be pushed towards direct confrontation and
nuclear exchange resulting in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
The Indivisibility of Safety
One of the special features of nuclear weapons is that they can
cause considerable, even existential, damage, leaving no time to find
a response, or even to exploit a final negotiating space.
The asymmetrical situation of the USA and Russia means that the
former can use Europe as a “buffer zone,” while Russia could very
quickly find itself faced with an existential problem. This is why,
since the end of the Second World War, a constant feature of
Russia’s defense policy has been to maintain a “buffer zone”
between NATO and its territory (also known as the “glacis” in French
and the “Vorfeld” in German), the aim being to give more space to a
conventional conflict and prevent it from becoming nuclear too
quickly.
During the Cold War, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (known in the
West as the “Warsaw Pact”) constituted this space. With NATO’s
eastward expansion and the progressive denunciation of
disarmament treaties by the United States since 2002, this space has
disappeared. For this reason, Russia has modified its doctrine of
nuclear engagement, enabling it to make more rapid use of nuclear
weapons.
It’s important to emphasize here that Russia is less afraid of NATO’s
expansion than of the United States’ exploitation of it.
In 1952, Turkey’s accession to NATO brought the Alliance close to
the USSR, alarming the Soviets. However, they did not react. It was
only nine years later, when the Americans deployed PGM-19 JUPITER
nuclear missiles in Turkey, that the crisis erupted. At the time, the
Americans did not yet have the technology to build intercontinental
missiles, and the JUPITERs were only an improved version of the
German V2s, with a range of 2,400 to 2,700 km.
Americans don’t like it when people do to them what they do to
others. The Soviets understood this and began deploying missiles in
Cuba, triggering a violent U.S. reaction known as the “Cuban Missile
Crisis” in 1962. Eventually, the Americans, caught up in their own
game, were forced to withdraw their missiles from Turkey. The USSR
won.
Until the early 2000s, new NATO members were accepted with
euphoria and without any strategic reflection, because Russia and
China were weak. Today, the situation is radically different—the
problem is that the legitimate security concerns of European
countries are bringing American nuclear power closer to the Russian
border, increasing the likelihood of nuclear war in the event of
heightened tension. The problems of one country can quickly
become those of the whole Alliance, as in 1914.
In 2002, when the USA withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (ABM Treaty) and began negotiations with Poland, the Czech
Republic and Romania to install dual-use launchers (anti-ballistic and
nuclear), the Russians perceived a direct threat. This is what
Vladimir Putin said in Munich in 2007, and what he underlined at his
press conference with Emmanuel Macron in Moscow on February 7,
2022. The problem is that we’re not listening to what he’s telling us.
This is not a completely new issue. It was already identified in 1949
by the authors of the Washington Treaty, NATO’s founding act,
article 10 of which states that
the Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite to accede to the
Treaty any other European State likely to promote the
development of the principles of the present Treaty and to
contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area. Any State so
invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its
instrument of accession with the Government of the United States
 of America. The latter will inform each of the Parties of the deposit
of each instrument of accession.
In other words, countries are “invited,” insofar as they can
“contribute to the security of the North Atlantic region.” Clearly, the
criterion is not the security of each individual member country, but
the collective security of the region.
This is what the “new Europe” countries have failed to understand.
They were accepted into NATO at a time when Russia was
weakened. Today, NATO offers them a kind of insurance, under
whose shelter they pursue ultra-nationalist and discriminatory
policies towards their Russian-speaking minorities, with the declared
aim of provoking Russia. In fact, their membership of NATO and the
EU is fundamentally destabilizing for the European continent. In fact,
even within the NATO military, their reputation is particularly bad, as
I have seen.
This also means that, potentially, every country in the Euro-Atlantic
area can be a member, but that the Alliance is under no obligation to
accept every country that wishes to join. This is one of the reasons
why Ukraine’s entry into NATO is so hotly debated within the Alliance
itself.
But an essential principle of Russian security policy is that of the
“indivisibility of security” (неделимость безопасности).21 It is not
exclusively Russian and has been accepted by OSCE members and is
enshrined in the Istanbul Document (1999)22 and the Astana
Declaration (2010):23
The safety of each participating state is inextricably linked to that
of all the others.
In other words, the security of one country cannot be achieved at
the expense of another. One example was the presence of the
French tactical nuclear PLUTON missiles, then the HADES, which
threatened the existence of “friendly” populations in Germany and
Switzerland.24
 However, when NATO—and the United States in particular—deploys
armaments, thereby reducing the warning and early-warning times
of a neighboring country (in this case, Russia), this principle is not
respected.
What bothers the Russians, therefore, is not so much the proximity
of NATO, as the willingness of the Americans to deploy nuclear
weapons there.25 This is because the installation of nuclear weapons
“point-blank” makes it virtually impossible to implement a bilateral
crisis management mechanism. Indeed, it was in the wake of the
Cuban crisis that the famous “red telephone” was set up between
Washington and Moscow—neither a telephone let alone a red
telephone, but an emergency communication channel designed to
facilitate crisis management.
What’s astonishing is that Westerners don’t seem to have perceived
this risk. NATO’s advance has been seen as a geographical success,
but no strategic conclusions have been drawn. And yet, by moving
closer to the Russian border, NATO is also removing its own early
warning capability. The RAND Corporation has clearly warned the US
government of this problem:26
While placing strike assets close to Russia would reduce the time
available to Russian military commanders to detect and respond to
air and cruise missile attacks, it would leave US and allied
commanders even less time to detect and respond to Russian
missile attacks against assets currently located at these bases.
This combination of mutual vulnerability and risk of surprise attack
could be seriously destabilizing in the event of a crisis, particularly
if tactical nuclear weapons are also stored at nearby sites.
Deploying missiles close to the Russian border has nothing
whatsoever to do with NATO’s defensive—or non-defensive—
vocation, as the Alliance runs exactly the same risk. This is what
Vladimir Putin tried to explain in his press conference on February 7,
2022, following Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow.
On March 25, 2023, on the occasion of Alexander Lukashenko’s visit
to Russia, Vladimir Putin declared on the Rossiya 24 channel that the
Belarusian president had asked him to deploy “tactical nuclear
weapons” on its territory.27 The reason given was Britain’s decision
to supply depleted uranium anti-tank shells.28 But—as always—the
reality is more complex.
First of all, Vladimir Putin is merely repeating Lukashenko’s words,
as the Russians make no doctrinal distinction between tactical,
operational and strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, the weapons
mentioned have ranges in excess of 1,000 km, whereas—
traditionally—nuclear weapons with ranges of 150 to 500 km are
considered tactical.
The Belarussian request came after a number of events that our
media carefully avoided mentioning—notably the attitude of Poland,
nostalgic for its past greatness and seeking to reconstitute the
Intermarium.29 It has its sights set on the western part of Belarus,
which it considers to belong to it historically, and whose reconquest
is part of its security policy.30 This is why it supports the opposition
in Belarus politically, materially and ostensibly, with the blessing of
the USA. On January 11, 2023, the signing of a joint declaration by
Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania forming the Lublin Triangle, a military
mini-alliance linked to NATO, worried Lukashenko.31
Moreover, as the situation in Ukraine deteriorated and Russia’s
predicted collapse faded, the U.S. began to work on “regime
change” in Belarus, in order to achieve a small “success.” On March
22, 2023, Wendy Sherman, Assistant Secretary of State, met with
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, leader of the Belarusian militant opposition,
to coordinate their actions. As the American media outlet The
Atlantic Council32 pointed out, the United States is seeking to
instrumentalize the Belarusian opposition for the benefit of Ukraine.
But another, more significant event explains the Russian decision—
the deployment, at the end of February 2023, of four American
strategic nuclear bombers of the B-52H STRATOFORTRESS type at
Moron air base (Spain) “to send a message to Russia.”33 On March
11, 2023, one of these aircraft (call sign: NOBLE61) carried out a
simulated nuclear attack (missile strike drill) against the city of St.
Petersburg from the Gulf of Finland.34 Reported by the Russian
opposition website Meduza35 on the same day, the information was—
obviously—not picked up by any mainstream Western media. Yet it
was probably what prompted Vladimir Putin, two weeks later, to
accede to President Lukashenko’s request to deploy nuclear weapons
on Belarusian territory.36
Russia’s decision was the occasion for further elucidations by our
“experts,” who played with words. Swiss expert Alexandre Vautravers
declared on RTS that this was an arms transfer, which would
contravene the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).37 Not true. As
confirmed on the same day by the Russian opposition media
Meduza, Vladimir Putin clarified that this was not a transfer but only
a deployment.38 The essential difference is that these weapons
remain under Russia’s exclusive authority. In other words, Russia is
no different from the USA, with its nuclear weapons depots in
Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey.
Russia is replaying the Cuban missile scenario in Belarus. As the
same causes have the same effects, the American administration did
an about-face. On June 2, 2023, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s National
Security Advisor, declared:39
The Biden administration is ready to discuss unconditionally with
Russia a future nuclear arms control framework.
As in the Cuban crisis, the Americans only understand the hard
way: instead of trying to bring about change through cooperation—
as was successfully done during the Cold War—they try to do it
through confrontation and exclusion.
Russian Nuclear Doctrine
On France 5 on October 27, 2022, in a program devoted to the
“dirty bomb” that Russia accused Ukraine of developing,
criminologist Alain Bauer explained that the Russians consider
tactical nuclear weapons to be conventional weapons.40 This is
totally false.
 In fact, Russian doctrine does not single out tactical nuclear
weapons. Russia has a range of nuclear weapons of varying
strengths, to be used according to circumstances and objectives. But
they consider the use of nuclear weapons—whatever their strength
—to be of a strategic nature, as they can provoke a nuclear
escalation.
In an article on this subject, Diego A. Ruiz Palmer, Head of the
Comparative Assessment Section of NATO’s Defense Policy and
Planning Division, recalled that the Soviets saw the use of nuclear
weapons only as a last resort:41
As early as 1966, the Central Intelligence Agency had identified a
growing Soviet interest in conducting military operations without
the use of nuclear weapons.
This was demonstrated by the DNIEPR 67 maneuvers, and
confirmed by the Soviet Union’s “growing preference for a purely
conventional option.”
The Soviets realized that the use of theater nuclear weapons could
only complicate operations. Russia has always favored maneuver
and rapid progress as its main operational and tactical principles.
They are therefore gradually abandoning the idea of using tactical
nuclear weapons in favor of new conventional weapons.42 This is
what we see today with super- or hypersonic-speed missiles. Russian
operative art and tactics are therefore not based on nuclear
weapons, but on concepts such as concentration of forces on the
main axis, partial victory and economy of forces.43
The concept of tactical nuclear weapons was essentially developed
by the Americans in the 1960s, in order to distinguish between
weapons that could be used on the European continent and those
that could affect the United States. To avoid reaching the point of
nuclear holocaust (MAD) too quickly, strategies were devised to
control a possible nuclear escalation. Both East and West equipped
themselves with weapons that would keep the prospect of MAD at
bay.
 In 1967, NATO adopted the “flexible response” strategy. Its purpose
was to make it clear to the Soviets that the United States would not
move directly and automatically to a strategic nuclear exchange.
Indeed, despite its evolution over time and technologies, U.S.
nuclear strategy retains one constant element—keeping the use of
nuclear weapons off U.S. soil. This is why the Americans advocate a
return of these weapons to the European theater,44 and why they are
so insistent on the idea that the Russians are seeking to use tactical
nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
The difference in approach between the two superpowers is
explained by the profoundly asymmetrical geostrategic situations of
the USA and Russia. The USA can reach Russian territory with
tactical/operational nuclear weapons, while Russia can only reach
American soil with strategic or intermediate-range weapons. So, in
the event of a major conflict, to avoid a strategic nuclear exchange
affecting their territory, the USA would seek to keep a nuclear
conflict in the European theater. To do this, they would carefully
avoid directly hitting Russian national soil, so as not to trigger a
“strategic duel” with Russia.
Paradoxically, this dissymmetrical situation is also asymmetrical. By
keeping the nuclear exchange at a tactical level, Russia can use low-
intensity weapons in Europe, while the United States can only
respond by striking the territory of its allies. It was this paradox that
led to the Euromissile crisis in the early 1980s, and gave rise to the
pacifist and anti-nuclear movement in Germany and Northern
Europe. It culminated in the signing of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).
Russian nuclear doctrine short-circuited American reasoning by
declaring that no distinction can be made between tactical and
strategic. Thus, the use of nuclear weapons on European soil (and a
fortiori against Russia) could trigger an intercontinental retaliation.
This is the essence of Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
Russia has adopted the USSR’s consistent no-first-use policy. On the
other hand, it has not specified—as France has—how it intends to
deal with an escalation. This is the principle of deterrence.
 Russia’s nuclear doctrine envisages the use of nuclear weapons only
in the event of an existential threat to the Russian state, as specified
in the presidential decree of June 2, 2020:45
The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons
in response to the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of
mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event
of aggression against the Russian Federation using conventional
weapons, when the very existence of the State is threatened.
The problem, in a nuclear exchange over short distances, and
therefore with short warning times, is to determine when the
country is under existential threat, and therefore when to react. For
this reason, the 2020 edition of Russia’s nuclear doctrine somewhat
lowered the level at which Russia can consider the use of nuclear
weapons. Funnily enough, this is what Sweden and Finland have
failed to understand—their request to join NATO has been widely
applauded, but in the event of war, these countries could be the first
to be pre-emptively nuclearized.
This is probably what motivated President Joe Biden’s decision, at
the end of March 2022, to abandon the no-first-use principle for
nuclear weapons.46 Until then, the United States had considered the
use of nuclear weapons solely for deterrence purposes (the sole
purpose policy). But Joe Biden’s decision “leaves open the option of
using nuclear weapons not only in retaliation for a nuclear attack,
but also to respond to non-nuclear threats.”47 Obviously, no Western
media reported this major change in US nuclear policy. For example,
the annual Swiss Security Report,48 published in September 2022 by
the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (SRC), says not a word about
it!
For the sake of clarity, we use English strategic terminology here,
which is more refined than French terminology:49

A pre-emptive strike is launched when a confrontation is

unavoidable and it is thought that the adversary might strike.
 A pre-emptive strike is triggered when there are concrete
indications that the adversary is going to strike (in the case of
nuclear weapons, based on observations from surveillance
satellites).
Launch-on-Warning is a shot fired while the opponent has
already launched a missile and it’s still in the air.

As Vladimir Putin made clear at the Eurasian Economic Union

summit in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) in December 2022,50 the principle of
nuclear engagement remains Launch on Warning (LOW). In other
words, the triggering of nuclear watch systems on alert.
In other words, while the Russians only plan to use nuclear
weapons first in the event of an existential threat, the Americans
allow themselves to do so at any time. As a result, Russia would use
nuclear weapons, if Moscow and the country’s institutions were
directly threatened. For example, a Ukrainian attack on Crimea
would most likely not be considered existential for the Russian state.
On the other hand, the USA could use nuclear weapons if one of its
military bases came under attack.
Diagram of nuclear decision and response mechanisms

Figure 2—Joe Biden’s decision to abandon the no-first-use policy allows the USA to carry
out pre-emptive (or even pre-emptive) strikes, while Russia restricts itself to LOW strikes,
which some see as part of pre-emptive strikes.

In October 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky inflamed passions by

proposing to strike Russia to prevent the use of nuclear weapons:51
 What should NATO do? Make it impossible for Russia to commit
nuclear weapons. But the important thing is that I again call on
the international community, as before the 24th (February 2022)
to strike pre-emptively so that they know what will happen to
them if they use them, and not, on the contrary, wait for Russia’s
nuclear strikes.
Our media and fact-checkers then tried to water down Zelensky’s
speech. On the media site 20minutes.fr, the expression “preventive
strike” (превентивний удар) clearly uttered by Zelensky became
“preventive measures,”52 which is literally disinformation. The claim
that Zelensky is ready to start a nuclear conflict is denied by stating
that he did not mention “nuclear strikes.” This is true, but irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter what kind of weapon he had in mind, because
Russian nuclear doctrine provides for:53
19. The conditions determining the possibility of the use of nuclear
weapons by the Russian Federation are as follows:
a) receipt of reliable information on the launch of ballistic missiles
attacking the territories of the Russian Federation and/or its allies;
b) the use by the enemy of nuclear weapons or other weapons of
mass destruction on the territory of the Russian Federation and/or
its allies;
c) enemy action on critical state or military facilities of the Russian
Federation, the disabling of which would disrupt the response of
nuclear forces;
d) aggression against the Russian Federation using conventional
weapons, when the very existence of the State is threatened.
Zelensky’s statements clearly fall within the scope of paragraph c).
For—probably unaware of the scope of his speech—he called for a
strike “that makes the use of nuclear weapons impossible.” Which,
for Russia, could be precisely the reason to use them. Once again,
our media are lying.
 The problem is that they systematically conceal information that
could help us understand the situation. Let’s recall here that during
the conflict with Ukraine, contrary to what Jean-Philippe Schaller, a
Swiss “journalist” accustomed to conspiracy,54 claimed, Vladimir
Putin never mentioned nuclear weapons before Western leaders
threatened to use them, like Liz Truss, then candidate for British
Prime Minister, who declared herself ready to unleash a “global
annihilation.”55 But the same journalist suggested that Russia
wanted to use chemical weapons in Ukraine56 without any evidence.
Here, we have the creation of fake news for the purposes of
influence.
Hybrid Warfare
Russia’s hybrid war is a carefully nurtured myth in the West, to
which everyone has their own definition. It has become a catch-all
“concept,”57 which our media and politicians (and even our
generals!) use to give an apparent coherence to events which, on
the face of it, have nothing to do with each other.58 In technical
terms, it’s conspiracism.
In 2017, Vladimir Putin told Le Figaro:59
You mustn’t invent imaginary threats from Russia, hybrid wars, or
other such specters; you’ve invented them yourselves. You’re
scaring yourselves, and you’re basing your policies on this
imaginary data.
The idea that Russia would have developed such a concept of
“hybrid warfare” is based on the interpretation of an article written
in 2013 by Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, in
an article entitled, “The Value of Science in Foresight.”60
In fact, the original article was published in the Journal of the
Academy of Military Sciences on January 26, 2013 under the title,
“Main trends in the development of forms and methods of employing
armed forces and the current tasks of military science to improve
them.”61 It describes the evolution of wars as waged by the West
against the Arab world, and the word “hybrid” does not appear in it.
In fact, the term “hybrid warfare” originated in the West. Pseudo-
experts and other journalists have tried to describe it without being
able to understand what it might be, giving us a fuzzy, impalpable
concept. After the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, Westerners were trying
to make sense of a “Russian invasion” without Russian troops; a
democratic revolution by far-right nationalist or even neo-Nazi
militants; the legitimacy of a government that governed without
having been elected, and so on. We then constructed a logic that
brought together cyberwarfare, terrorism, clandestine warfare,
conventional warfare and, naturally, information warfare.
Gerasimov’s article then became the key to reading naturally
incoherent events.
Our journalists thus artificially created a “doctrinal basis,” which
Le Point magazine claimed was “validated by Vladimir Putin”
himself.62 We don’t really know whether to condemn the journalist’s
racism or imbecility.
In fact, the concept of “hybrid warfare” does not exist in Russian
military thinking, and Russia has never theorized or invoked it. The
problem came from Russia specialist Mark Galeotti, who first
commented on Gerasimov’s article and deduced from it the existence
of a “Gerasimov Doctrine,” supposedly illustrating the Russian
concept of hybrid war.63 But in 2018, realizing the damage he had
unwittingly caused, Galeotti apologized—bravely and intelligently—in
an article entitled, “I’m sorry I created the Gerasimov Doctrine,”
published in Foreign Policy magazine:64
I was the first to write about Russia’s infamous high-tech military
strategy. One small problem: it doesn’t exist.
To understand the idea of hybrid warfare, we need to go back to
the typology of warfare. Without going into too much detail,
“conventional” warfare is what we’ve known since the Second World
War, and for which our armies have prepared themselves. It’s a war
that uses a combination of land, air and naval means to achieve
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damned nigger!" The boxer hauled back and hit him in the mouth
and he dropped to the pavement.
We hurried away to the restaurant. We sat around, the poor woman
among us, endeavoring to woo the spirit of celebration. But we were
all wet. The boxer said: "I guess they don't want no colored in this
damned white man's country." He dropped his head down on the
table and sobbed like a child. And I thought that that was his
knockout.
I thought, too, of Bernard Shaw's asking why I did not choose
pugilism instead of poetry for a profession. He no doubt imagined
that it would be easier for a black man to win success at boxing than
at writing in a white world. But looking at life through an African
telescope I could not see such a great difference in the choice. For,
according to British sporting rules, no Negro boxer can compete for a
championship in the land of cricket, and only Negroes who are
British subjects are given a chance to fight. These regulations have
nothing to do with the science of boxing or the Negro's fitness to
participate. They are made merely to discourage boxers who are
black and of African descent.
Perhaps the black poet has more potential scope than the pugilist.
The literary censors of London have not yet decreed that no book by
a Negro should be published in Britain—not yet!

VII
A Job in London
YET London was not wholly Hell, for it was possible for me to
compose poetry some of the time. No place can be altogether a
God-forsaken Sahara or swamp in which a man is able to discipline
and compose his emotions into self-expression. In London I wrote
"Flame-heart."
 So much I have forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.

I still recall the honey-fever grass,

But cannot recollect the high days when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow by-road mazing from the main,
Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
I have forgotten—strange—but quite remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.

What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year

We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade.
We were so happy, happy, I remember,
Beneath the poinsettia's red in warm December.
And then I became acquainted with Sylvia Pankhurst. It happened
thus. The Daily Herald, the organ of British organized labor and of
the Christian radicals, had created a national sensation by starting a
campaign against the French employment of black troops in the
subjection of Germany.
The headlines were harrowing:
"Black Scourge in Europe," "Black Peril on the Rhine," "Brutes in
French Uniform," "Sexual Horrors Let Loose by France," "Black
Menace of 40,000 Troops," "Appeal to the Women of Europe."
The instigator of the campaign was the muckraker E.D. Morel,
whose pen had been more honorably employed in the exposure of
Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Associated with him was a male
"expert" who produced certain "facts" about the physiological
peculiarities of African sex, which only a prurient-minded white man
could find.
Behind the smoke screen of the Daily Herald campaign there were a
few significant facts. There was great labor unrest in the industrial
region of the Rhineland. The Communists had seized important
plants. The junkers were opposing the Communists. The Social-
Democratic government was impotent. The French marched in an
army. The horror of German air raids and submarine warfare was still
fresh in the mind of the British public. And it was not easy to work up
and arouse the notorious moral righteousness of the English in favor
of the Germans and against the French. Searching for a propaganda
issue, the Christian radicals found the colored troops in the
Rhineland. Poor black billy goat.
I wrote a letter to George Lansbury, the editor of the Daily Herald,
and pointed out that his black-scourge articles would be effective in
stirring up more prejudice against Negroes. I thought it was the duty
of his paper as a radical organ to enlighten its readers about the real
reasons why the English considered colored troops undesirable in
Europe, instead of appealing indirectly to illogical emotional
prejudices. Lansbury did not print my letter, but sent me a private
note saying that he was not personally prejudiced against Negroes. I
had no reason to think that Lansbury was personally prejudiced. The
previous summer, when colored men were assaulted by organized
bands of whites in the English ports and their bedding and furniture
hurled into the streets and burned, Lansbury had energetically
denounced the action. But I didn't consider the matter a personal
issue. It was the public attitude of the Daily Herald that had aroused
me. An English friend advised me to send the letter to Sylvia
Pankhurst, who was very critical of the policies of the Daily Herald. I
did, and Sylvia Pankhurst promptly printed my letter in her weekly,
the Workers' Dreadnought.
Maybe I was not civilized enough to understand why the sex of the
black race should be put on exhibition to persuade the English
people to decide which white gang should control the coal and iron
of the Ruhr. However, it is necessary to face the fact that prejudices,
however unreasonable they may be, are real—individual, national
and racial prejudices. My experience of the English convinced me
that prejudice against Negroes had become almost congenital
among them. I think the Anglo-Saxon mind becomes morbid when it
turns on the sex life of colored people. Perhaps a psychologist might
be able to explain why.
Sylvia Pankhurst must have liked the style of my letter, for she wrote
asking me to call at her printing office in Fleet Street. I found a plain
little Queen-Victoria sized woman with plenty of long unruly bronze-
like hair. There was no distinction about her clothes, and on the
whole she was very undistinguished. But her eyes were fiery, even a
little fanatic, with a glint of shrewdness.
She said she wanted me to do some work for the Workers'
Dreadnought. Perhaps I could dig up something along the London
docks from the colored as well as the white seamen and write from a
point of view which would be fresh and different. Also I was assigned
to read the foreign newspapers from America, India, Australia, and
other parts of the British Empire, and mark the items which might
interest Dreadnought readers. In this work I was assisted by one
Comrade Vie. Comrade Vie read the foreign-language papers,
mainly French and German.
The opportunity to practice a little practical journalism was not to be
missed. A little more schooling, a few more lessons—learning
something from everything—keeping the best in my mind for future
creative work.
The association with Pankhurst put me in the nest of extreme
radicalism in London. The other male-controlled radical groups were
quite hostile to the Pankhurst group and its rather hysterical
militancy. And the group was perhaps more piquant than important.
But Pankhurst herself had a personality as picturesque and
passionate as any radical in London. She had left the suffragette
legion for the working-class movement, when she discovered that
the leading ladies of the legion were not interested in the condition of
working women.
And in the labor movement she was always jabbing her hat pin into
the hides of the smug and slack labor leaders. Her weekly might
have been called the Dread Wasp. And wherever imperialism got
drunk and went wild among native peoples, the Pankhurst paper
would be on the job. She was one of the first leaders in England to
stand up for Soviet Russia. And in 1918 she started the Russian
Information Bureau, which remained for a long time the only source
of authentic news from Russia.
Comrade Vie was a very young foreigner with a bare bland innocent
face. He read and spoke several languages. I did not know his
nationality and refrained from asking. For the Pankhurst
organization, though small, was revolutionary, and from experience
the militant suffragettes knew a lot about conspiracy. However, I
suspected that Comrade Vie was a foreign revolutionist. The
Pankhurst secretary, a romantic middle-class young woman, had
hinted to me that Comrade Vie was more important than he
appeared to be.
Comrade Vie wrote also and we often compared articles. I criticized
his English and he criticized my point of view, showing me how I
could be more effectively radical.
Soon after I became associated with the Workers' Dreadnought, a
sawmill strike broke out in London. Most of the sawmills were in the
East End, where also the publishing office of the Dreadnought was
located. One mill was directly opposite the Dreadnought office. I was
assigned to do an article on the strike. A few of the sawmill workers
were sympathetic to the Dreadnought organization, and one of the
younger of them volunteered to take me round.
There were some sixty sawmills in London, one of the most
important of which was either owned or partly controlled by George
Lansbury, Labor Member of Parliament and managing editor of the
Daily Herald. Some of the strikers informed me that the Lansbury mill
had in its employ some workers who were not members of the
sawmill union and who were not striking. Technically, such workers
were scabs. The strikers thought it would make an excellent story for
the militant Dreadnought. So did I.
The name of Lansbury was symbolic of all that was simon-pure,
pious and self-righteous in the British Labor movement. As the boss
of the Daily Herald, he stood at the center like an old bearded angel
of picturesque honesty, with his right arm around the neck of the big
trade-union leaders and Parliamentarians and his left waving to the
Independent Labor partyites and all the radical Left. Like a little cat
up against a big dog, the Workers' Dreadnought was always spitting
at the Daily Herald.
I thought the story would give the Dreadnought some more fire to
spit. Here was my chance for getting even with the Daily Herald for
its black-scourge-in-Europe campaign. Comrade Vie helped me put
some ginger into my article. When I showed the article to Miss
Smyth, the upper-middle-class person who was Pankhurst's aid, she
gasped and said: "But this is a scoop." Her gentle-lady poker face
was lit as she read.
Finally the article reached Sylvia Pankhurst. She summoned me and
said: "Your article is excellent but I'm so sorry we cannot print it."
"Why?" I asked. "Because," said she, "we owe Lansbury twenty
pounds. Besides, I have borrowed paper from the Daily Herald to
print the Dreadnought. I can't print that."
It is possible that Miss Pankhurst acted more from a feeling of
personal loyalty. Although Lansbury was centrist and she was
extreme leftist, they were personal friends, ever since they had been
associated in the suffrage cause. And after all, one might concede
that there are items which the capitalist press does not consider fit to
print for capitalist reasons, and items which the radical press does
not consider fit to print for radical reasons.
That summer Sylvia Pankhurst made the underground trip to Russia
to attend the Second Congress of the Third International.
Early in September, 1920, I was sent down to Portsmouth to report
the Trades Union Congress for the Dreadnought. There were
gathered at the Congress some of the leaders who later became
members of the British Labor Government: J.H. Thomas, J.R.
Clynes, Arthur Henderson, A.A. Purcell, Herbert Morrison, Frank
Hodges, and Margaret Bonfield. The most picturesque personage of
them all was Frank Hodges, the secretary of the Miners' Federation,
who in his style and manner appeared like a representative of the
nobility. I mentioned this to A.J. Cook, who was a minor official of the
Federation, and he informed me that Hodges was always hunting
foxes with the lords.
At the press table I met Scott Nearing, who, after listening to clever
speeches by the labor leaders, whispered to me that England would
soon be the theater of the next revolution. The speeches were warm;
Labor was feeling its strength in those times. Even J.H. Thomas was
red, at least in the face, about Winston Churchill, who had declared
that "Labor was not fit to govern."
As a Dreadnought reporter, I had been instructed to pay little
attention to the official leaders, but to seek out any significant rank-
and-filers and play them up in my story. I was taken up by delegates
from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, which was the extreme
leftist element of the Miners' Federation. One of them, A.J. Cook,
was exceptionally friendly and gave me interesting information about
the British Labor movement. He was very proud that it was the most
powerful in the world and included every class of worker. He said he
believed the labor movement was the only hope for Negroes
because they were in the lowest economic group. He pointed out
that J.R. Clynes' General Union of Workers consisted of the lowest
class of people (domestic servants and porters and hotel workers)
and yet it was extremely important in the councils of the Trades
Union Congress.
At that time I could not imagine Cook becoming a very influential
official. He was extremely loquacious, but his ideas were an odd mix-
up of liberal sentiment and socialist thought, and sentimental to an
extreme. He was also a parson, and divided his time between
preaching and the pit. However, the radical miners told me they were
going to push Cook forward to take the place of Hodges, whom they
could no longer stomach. And sure enough, in a few brief years
Cook became the radical secretary of the Miners' Federation.
But the labor official at the Congress who carried me away with him
was Robert Smillie, the president of the Miners' Federation. Crystal
Eastman had given me a note to him and he had said a few wise
words to me about the necessity of colored labor being organized,
especially in the vast European colonies, for the betterment of its
own living standard and to protect that of white organized labor.
Smillie was like a powerful ash which had forced itself up, coaxing
nourishment out of infertile soil, and towering over saplings and
shrubs. His face and voice were so terribly full of conviction that in
comparison the colleagues around him appeared theatrical. When
he stood forth to speak the audience was shot through with
excitement, and subdued. He compelled you to think along his line
whether or not you agreed with him. I remember his passionate
speech for real democracy in the Congress, advocating proportional
representation and pointing out that on vital issues the united Miners'
Federation was often outvoted by a nondescript conglomeration like
J.R. Clynes' General Union of Workers for example. You felt that
Smillie had convinced the Congress, but when the vote was taken it
went against him.
I wrote my article on the Trades Union Congress around Smillie
because his personality and address were more significant in my
opinion than any rank-and-filer's. It was featured on the front page of
the Dreadnought. But when Pankhurst returned from Russia, she
sharply reproved me for it, saying that it wasn't the policy of the
Dreadnought to praise the official labor leaders, but to criticize them.
Naturally, I resented the criticism, especially as Pankhurst had
suppressed my article on Lansbury.
Just before leaving for the Trade Union Congress I was introduced to
a young English sailor named Springhall. He was a splendid chap.
He had been put into the British navy as a boy and had developed
into a fine man, not merely physically, but intellectually. Springhall
was a constant reader of the Dreadnought and other social
propaganda literature and he said that other men on his ship were
eager for more stuff about the international workers' movement. At
that time there was a widespread discontent and desire for better
wages among the rank and file of the navy. Springhall came to the
Dreadnought publishing office in the Old Ford Road and we gave
him many copies of the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought was legally
on sale on the newsstands, so he had the legal right to take as many
as he desired. Before he left he promised to send me some navy
news for the paper.
When I returned to London I found a letter from the young sailor,
Springhall, with some interesting items for the paper and the
information that he was sending an article. The article arrived in a
few days and it was a splendid piece of precious information. But its
contents were so important and of such a nature that I put it away
and waited for Pankhurst to return and pass it.
Pankhurst returned late in September. I turned over Springhall's
document to her. She was enthusiastic, edited the document, and
decided to give it the front page. We used a nom de plume and a
fictitious name for a battleship. Only Pankhurst and myself knew who
the author was. The intelligence of the stuff was so extraordinary that
she did not want to risk having the youth's identity discovered by the
authorities. And she thought he could serve the social cause more
excellently by remaining at his post.
A couple of days after the issue appeared, the Dreadnought office
was raided by the police. I was just going out, leaving the little room
on the top floor where I always worked, when I met Pankhurst's
private secretary coming upstairs. She whispered that Scotland Yard
was downstairs. Immediately I thought of Springhall's article and I
returned to my room, where I had the original under a blotter. Quickly
I folded it and stuck it in my sock. Going down, I met a detective
coming up. They had turned Pankhurst's office upside down and
descended to the press-room, without finding what they were looking
for.
"And what are you?" the detective asked.
"Nothing, Sir," I said, with a big black grin. Chuckling, he let me pass.
(I learned afterward that he was the ace of Scotland Yard.) I walked
out of that building and into another, and entering a water closet I
tore up the original article, dropped it in, and pulled the chain. When I
got home to the Bow Road that evening I found another detective
waiting for me. He was very polite and I was more so. With alacrity I
showed him all my papers, but he found nothing but lyrics.
Pankhurst was arrested and charged with attempting to incite
dissatisfaction among His Majesty's Forces. She was released on
bail and given time to straighten out her affairs before she came up
for trial. She received many messages of sympathy and among them
was a brief telegram from Bernard Shaw asking: "Why did you let
them get you?"
Pankhurst's arrest was the beginning of a drive against the Reds.
For weeks the big press had carried on a campaign against Red
propaganda and alien agitators and Bolshevik gold in Britain. Liberal
intellectuals like Bertrand Russell and Mrs. Snowden had visited
Russia, and labor men like Robert Williams and George Lansbury.
There was an organized labor and liberal demand to end the
Russian blockade. And when the press broadcast the fact that
$325,000 of Bolshevik capital had been offered to the Daily Herald, it
must have struck Scotland Yard like a bomb.
Within a week of Pankhurst's arrest, Comrade Vie was seized just as
he was leaving England to go abroad. He was arrested as he was
departing from the house of a member of Parliament who was a
Communist sympathizer. The police announced that he was a
Bolshevik courier. They discovered on his person letters from
Pankhurst to Lenin, Zinoviev and other members of the Bolshevik
Politbureau; also notes in cipher, documents of information about the
armed forces, the important industrial centers, and Ireland, a manual
for officers of the future British Red army and statements about the
distribution of money. Comrade Vie was even more important than I
had suspected.
One evening when I got back home from Fleet Street I was surprised
to find Springhall, the sailor, there. He had come up to London to see
Pankhurst. He said his ship was leaving England and he would like
to talk to her. He was on one of the crack battleships. I begged him
for God's sake to leave at once, that he could not see Pankhurst,
who had been enjoined from political activity by the court and was
undoubtedly under police surveillance. Also, as editor of the
Dreadnought, she had taken the full responsibility for his article, and
her difficult situation in the movement would be made worse if the
police should get him too.
Springhall returned to his ship. But he was bold with youthful zeal
and extremely incautious. I remember his actively participating in his
uniform in the grand demonstration in Trafalgar Square for the
hunger-striking and dying mayor of Cork. And he marched with the
crowds upon the prison and fought with the police and got severely
beaten up. He wanted to quit the navy, believing that he could be a
better agitator outside. But his friends on the outside thought that he
could be of more importance at his post. Anyway he must have
acted indiscreetly and created suspicion against himself, for when
his ship arrived at its next port, he was summarily dismissed.
However, his revolutionary ardor did not handicap him in being
clever enough to maneuver his dismissal and steer clear of a court-
martial. A few years after he visited Russia, and later I was informed
that he subsequently became an active leader of the British
Communist Youth Movement.
Comrade Vie was convicted under the simple charge of alien non-
registration. He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and to
pay the costs of his trial and deportation. Upon his release,
Pankhurst's secretary followed him to Russia, where they were
married. Apparently it was his preoccupation with his love affair that
enabled the detectives to trap Comrade Vie. Three years later I saw
them again in Moscow, but he did not seem to be importantly
employed.
 VIII
Regarding Reactionary Criticism
MY little brown book of verse, Spring in New Hampshire, appeared
in the midst of the radical troubles in the fall of 1920. I had not
neglected the feeling of poetry, even while I was listening to Marxian
expositions at the International Club and had become involved in
radical activities. A little action was a nice stimulant for another lyric.
C.K. Ogden, the author of Basic English and The Foundation of
Esthetics, besides steering me round the picture galleries and being
otherwise kind, had published a set of my verses in his Cambridge
Magazine. Later he got me a publisher.
But I was so anxious about leaving London for America that I hardly
felt the excitement I should about the first book I had done since I left
Jamaica. The Pankhurst group had been disrupted by the police
raids. Many of the members were acquainted with Comrade Vie, but
unaware of his real identity. His unexpected arrest and the
disclosures of the police that he was a Bolshevik agent had started
lots of rubberneck gossip. Some asserted that Comrade Vie had
been deliberately betrayed. And members accused other members
of being spies and traitors. A dissident group, headed by Edgar
Whitehead, the secretary of the organization, desired to bring
Pankhurst herself to a private trial and I also had to give an
accounting of my activities.
One evening, when I visited the International Club the secretary
showed me an anonymous letter he had received, accusing me also
of being a spy. I declare that I felt sick and was seized with a crazy
craving to get quickly out of that atmosphere and far away from
London. But I had used up all of my return fare. All I had received
from the Dreadnought was payment for my board. The organization
was always in need of money.
My little book had brought me no money. I hadn't been banking on it.
I had stopped writing for the Negro World because it had not paid for
contributions. An English friend, and I.W.W. who had lived in
America (I think he had been deported thence), undertook to find a
group of friends to put up the fare to get me back there.
While I was hotly preparing my departure, Sylvia Pankhurst was
sentenced to six months' imprisonment. Pankhurst was a good
agitator and fighter, but she wasn't a leader. She possessed the
magnetism to attract people to her organization, but she did not have
the power to hold them. I remember a few of them: William
Gallacher, Saklatvala (the Indian M.P.), A.J. Cook, who became the
secretary of the Miners' Federation, and that very brilliant and
talented writing couple, Eden and Cedar Paul. And I was informed
that before my time there had been others even more brilliant among
the Left literary and artistic set. I remember saying to Springhall that
it was a pity the organization was too small for him. It was a one-
woman show, not broad-based enough to play a decisive rôle in the
labor movement.
At last, when I was safely fixed in my third-class bunk, I had time to
read and ponder over the English reviews of my book. If it is difficult
to ascertain the real attitude of the common people of any country
regarding certain ideas and things, it should be easy enough to find
out that of the élite by writing a book. The reviews will reveal more or
less the mind of the better classes.
In most of the reviews of my poems there was a flippant note, either
open or veiled, at the idea of a Negro writing poetry. After reading
them I could understand better why Bernard Shaw had asked me
why I did not go in for pugilism instead of poetry. I think I got as
much amusement out of reading them from my own angle as the
reviewers had in writing from theirs.
But more than all there was one that deserves special mention. It
was the review published in the Spectator, the property, I think, of
the Strachey family, and the organ of the Tory intellectuals. There
can be little doubt that the London Spectator represents the opinion
of that English group, which, because of its wealth and power, its
facilities for and standards of high education, and its domination of
most of the universe, either directly or indirectly, is the most superior
in the world.
Said the Spectator critic: "Spring in New Hampshire is extrinsically
as well as intrinsically interesting. It is written by a man who is a
pure-blooded Negro.... Perhaps the ordinary reader's first impulse in
realizing that the book is by an American Negro is to inquire into its
good taste. Not until we are satisfied that his work does not overstep
the barriers which a not quite explicable but deep instinct in us is
ever alive to maintain can we judge it with genuine fairness. Mr.
Claude McKay never offends our sensibilities. His love poetry is
clear of the hint which would put our racial instinct against him,
whether we would or not."
So there it bobbed up again. As it was among the élite of the class-
conscious working class, so it was among the aristocracy of the
upper class: the bugaboo of sex—the African's sex, whether he is a
poet or pugilist.
Why should a Negro's love poetry be offensive to the white man,
who prides himself on being modern and civilized? Now it seems to
me that if the white man is really more civilized than the colored (be
the color black, brown or yellow), then the white man should take
Negro poetry and pugilism in his stride, just as he takes Negro labor
in Africa and fattens on it.
If the critic of the organ of British aristocracy had used his facilities
for education and knowledge and tolerance (which the average black
student has not) to familiarize himself with the history and derivations
of poetry he might have concluded that the love poetry of a Negro
might be in better taste than the gory poetry of a civilized British
barbarian like Rudyard Kipling.
It seems to me that every European white lover of lyric and amatory
poetry should be informed that one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, poets of love, was a Negro named Antar. And that
European or white man's love poetry today probably owes much of
its inspiration to Antar, who was the son of a Negro woman and an
Arabian chieftain.
One of the big surprises of my living in North Africa was the
discovery that even the illiterate Moor is acquainted with the history
and the poetry of Antar. Often in the Arab cafés (which I haunted like
a loco, because of the native music), when I was especially
enthralled by the phrasing of a song, I was informed that it was an
Antari (a song from Antar). When I was introduced as a poet there
was not a suspicion of surprise among the natives. Instead I was
surprised by their flattering remarks: "A poet! Mezziane! Mezziane!
Our greatest poet, Antar, was a Negro."
W.A. Clouston, who writes with authority on Arabian poetry, says: "It
is far from impossible that the famous romance of Antar produced
the model for the earliest of the romances of chivalry." Certainly it
was the Arabian poets who, upon the Arab conquest of Spain,
introduced lyric feeling into the rude and barbaric accents of the
Europeans. The troubadours of southern Europe stem directly from
the Arabian poets. The Arab poets and musicians were the original
troubadours. And happily they exist today exactly as they did thirteen
centuries ago, wherever Moslem culture holds sway.
Says Sismondi, the famous scholar: "It is from them that we have
derived that intoxication of love, that tenderness and delicacy of
sentiment and that reverential awe of woman, by turns slaves and
divinities, which have operated so powerfully on our chivalrous
feelings."
But it should not be necessary for me in this place to attempt to
enlighten the English gentlemen. I am not a scholar and this book is
not scholarly. The English gentleman has the means and the
material to educate himself that no Negro has. If he does not make
the proper use of them it must be because he is spoiled by his
modern civilization. The story of Antar was translated from the
Arabian into English way back in 1820, and by an Englishman
named Terrick Hamilton.
Antar is as great in Arabian literature as Homer in Greek. Said the
founder of Islam: "I have never heard an Arab described whom I
should like to have seen so much as Antar." In the universal white
system of education the white school boy learns about Homer and
Virgil and their works, even if he does not read Greek and Latin. He
learns nothing of Antar, although it is possible that European poetry
derives more from Antar than from Homer. Yet the white child is so
rich in its heritage that it may not be such a great loss to him if he
grows up in ignorance of the story and poetry of Antar. The Negro
child, born into an inferior position in the overwhelming white world,
is in a different category. He should know something of the Antar
who was born a slave, who fought for his liberation, who loved so
profoundly passionately and chastely that his love inspired and
uplifted him to be one of the poets of the Arabian pleiades.
Behold the sport of passion in my noble person!
But I have thanked my forebearance, applauded my resolution.
And the slave has been elevated above his master;
For I have concealed my passion and kept my secret,
I will not leave a word for the railers, and I will not ease the hearts
of my enemies by the violation of my honor.
I have borne the evils of fortune, till I have discovered its secret
meaning ...
I have met every peril in my bosom,
And the world can cast no reproach on me for my complexion:
My blackness has not diminished my glory.

My mother is Zebeeda,
I disavow not her name and I am Antar,
But I am not vainglorious ...
Her dark complexion sparkles like a sabre in the shades of night
And her shape is like the well-formed spear....
To me these verses of Antar written more than twelve centuries ago
are more modern and full of meaning for a Negro than is Homer.
Perhaps if black and mulatto children knew more of the story and the
poetry of Antar, we might have better Negro poets. But in our Negro
schools and colleges we learn a lot of Homer and nothing of Antar.

PART THREE
 NEW YORK HORIZON

IX
Back in Harlem
LIKE fixed massed sentinels guarding the approaches to the great
metropolis, again the pyramids of New York in their Egyptian majesty
dazzled my sight like a miracle of might and took my breath like the
banging music of Wagner assaulting one's spirit and rushing it
skyward with the pride and power of an eagle.
The feeling of the dirty steerage passage across the Atlantic was
swept away in the immense wonder of clean, vertical heaven-
challenging lines, a glory to the grandeur of space.
Oh, I wished that it were possible to know New York in that way only
—as a masterpiece wrought for the illumination of the sight, a
splendor lifting aloft and shedding its radiance like a searchlight,
making one big and great with feeling. Oh, that I should never draw
nearer to descend into its precipitous gorges, where visions are
broken and shattered and one becomes one of a million, average,
ordinary, insignificant.
At last the ship was moored and I came down to the pavement. Ellis
Island: doctors peered in my eyes, officials scrutinized my passport,
and the gates were thrown open.
The elevated swung me up to Harlem. At first I felt a little fear and
trembling, like a stray hound scenting out new territory. But soon I
was stirred by familiar voices and the shapes of houses and saloons,
and I was inflated with confidence. A wave of thrills flooded the
arteries of my being, and I felt as if I had undergone initiation as a
member of my tribe. And I was happy. Yes, it was a rare sensation
again to be just one black among many. It was good to be lost in the
shadows of Harlem again. It was an adventure to loiter down Fifth
and Lenox avenues and promenade along Seventh Avenue.
Spareribs and corn pone, fried chicken and corn fritters and sweet
potatoes were like honey to my palate.
There was a room for me in the old house on One Hundred Thirty-
first Street, but there was no trace of Manda. I could locate none of
my close railroad friends. But I found Sanina. Sanina was an
attractive quadroon from Jamaica who could pass as white. Before
prohibition she presided over a buffet flat. Now she animated a cosy
speakeasy. Her rendezvous on upper Seventh Avenue, with its pink
curtains and spreads, created an artificial rose-garden effect. It was
always humming like a beehive with brown butterflies and flames of
all ages from the West Indies and from the South.
Sanina infatuated them all. She possessed the cunning and
fascination of a serpent, and more charm than beauty. Her clients
idolized her with a loyalty and respect that were rare. I was never
quite sure what was the secret of her success. For although she was
charming, she was ruthless in her affairs. I felt a congeniality and
sweet nostalgia in her company, for we had grown up together from
kindergarten. Underneath all of her shrewd New York getting-byness
there was discernible the green bloom of West Indian naïveté. Yet
her poise was a marvel and kept her there floating like an
imperishable block of butter on the crest of the dark heaving wave of
Harlem. Sanina always stirred me to remember her dominating
octoroon grandmother (who was also my godmother) who beat her
hard white father in a duel they fought over the disposal of her body.
But that is a West Indian tale.... I think that some of Sanina's success
came from her selectiveness. Although there were many lovers
mixing up their loving around her, she kept herself exclusively for the
lover of her choice.
I passed ten days of purely voluptuous relaxation. My fifty dollars
were spent and Sanina was feeding me. I was uncomfortable. I
began feeling intellectual again. I wrote to my friend, Max Eastman,
that I had returned to New York. My letter arrived at precisely the
right moment. The continuation of The Liberator had become a
problem. Max Eastman had recently resigned the editorship in order
to devote more time to creative writing. Crystal Eastman also was
retiring from the management to rest and write a book on feminism.
Floyd Dell had just published his successful novel, Moon Calf, and
was occupied with the writing of another book.
Max Eastman invited me to Croton over the week-end to discuss the
situation. He proposed to resume the editorship again if I could
manage the sub-editing that Floyd Dell did formerly. I responded with
my hand and my head and my heart. Thus I became associate editor
of The Liberator. My experience with the Dreadnought in London
was of great service to me now.
The times were auspicious for the magazine. About the time that I
was installed it received a windfall of $11,000 from the government,
which was I believe a refund on mailing privileges that had been
denied the magazine during the war.
Soon after taking on my job I called on Frank Harris, I took along an
autographed copy of Spring in New Hampshire, the book of verses
that I had published in London. The first thing Frank Harris asked
was if I had seen Bernard Shaw. I told him all about my visit and
Shaw's cathedral sermon. Harris said that perhaps Shaw was getting
religion at last and might die a good Catholic. Harris was not as well-
poised as when I first met him. Pearson's Magazine was not making
money, and he was in debt and threatened with suspension of
publication. He said he desired to return to Europe where he could
find leisure to write, that he was sick and tired of the editor business.
He did not congratulate me on my new job. The incident between
him and The Liberator was still a rancor in his mind. He wasn't a
man who forgot hurts easily.
But he was pleased that I had put over the publication of a book of
poems in London. "It's a hard, mean city for any kind of genius," he
said, "and that's an achievement for you." He looked through the little
brown-covered book. Then he ran his finger down the table of
contents closely scrutinizing. I noticed his aggressive brow become
heavier and scowling. Suddenly he roared: "Where is the poem?"
"Which one?" I asked with a bland countenance, as if I didn't know
which he meant.
"You know which," he growled. "That fighting poem, 'If We Must Die.'
Why isn't it printed here?"
I was ashamed. My face was scorched with fire. I stammered: "I was
advised to keep it out."
"You are a bloody traitor to your race, sir!" Frank Harris shouted. "A
damned traitor to your own integrity. That's what the English and
civilization have done to your people. Emasculated them. Deprived
them of their guts. Better you were a head-hunting, blood-drinking
cannibal of the jungle than a civilized coward. You were bolder in
America. The English make obscene sycophants of their subject
peoples. I am Irish and I know. But we Irish have guts the English
cannot rip out of us. I'm ashamed of you, sir. It's a good thing you got
out of England. It is no place for a genius to live."
Frank Harris's words cut like a whip into my hide, and I was glad to
get out of his uncomfortable presence. Yet I felt relieved after his
castigation. The excision of the poem had been like a nerve cut out
of me, leaving a wound which would not heal. And it hurt more every
time I saw the damned book of verse. I resolved to plug hard for the
publication of an American edition, which would include the omitted
poem. "A traitor," Frank Harris had said, "a traitor to my race." But I
felt worse for being a traitor to myself. For if a man is not faithful to
his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.
I soon became acquainted and friendly with The Liberator
collaborators and sympathizers: Art Young, Boardman Robinson,
Stuart Davis, John Barber, Adolph Dehn, Hugo Gellert, Ivan Opfer,
Maurice Becker, Maurice Sterne, Arturo Giovanitti, Roger Baldwin,
Louis Untermeyer, Mary Heaton Vorse, Lydia Gibson, Cornelia
Barnes, Genevieve Taggard. William Gropper and Michael Gold
became contributing editors at the same time that I joined The
Liberator staff.

The Liberator was frequently honored by visitors, many of them

women, some beautiful and some strange. Of course they all wanted