Gangsterpolitik: New World Disorder
Heydarian provides the perfect material for the short piece as the Part II, which is the deep dive is not yet finished. It is also hard to read Heydarian since he stopped employing a ghost writer. His style is to fill his column with quotes from famous authors and fill it in with what little original thoughts he puts down to paper. Then that is about it for the reader.
If you believe all that has been written about Putin and his rise to power, Heydarian takes the gangsterpolitik from Putin’s alleged association with Russian mob personalities in addition to the oligarchs. If you want to swallow all of what he is and his Western counterparts are shoving down people’s throats you are welcome to partake.
But the issue is not that simple given the complicated history of Europe.
The issue goes back to several centuries during the evolution of what eventually became the Russian Empire which evolved out of Kyiv Rus. Yes, Russia originated from Ukraine and not the other way around.
There has been centuries of conflict between the peoples and nations of Eastern Europe which has resulted in the redrawing of the map. These conflicts have not been permanently resolved and occasionally reach the tipping point again. Cases in point are the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Russian incursions into Georgia and Ukraine.
The US and NATO have always played the role of peacekeeper in Europe. It can be said that the US also plays the role of agitator in its bid to get states to follow in the footsteps of its prescribed democracy.
This contrasts with Putin’s nationalistic bent given his background as a former KGB officer. Many believe that Putin casts himself in the mold of Peter the Great, the last strongest Tsar of Russia which saw the rise of the empire from Europe all the way to Asia.
Nothing has been written about the rightist bent of Ukrainians and how these paramilitary groups collaborated with the Nazis during World War II in the extermination of the Jews. Putin was not lying when he mentioned the de-nazification of Ukraine as one of his goals when he gave the go signal for the invasion. The irony is it is now Putin who is being compared to Hitler who used the premise of territorial dispute to annex the Sudenteland in 1938 before he unleashed the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS battalions on the rest of Europe.
Leftist-liberals in the Philippines are now critical of the government’s lack of response to the conflict and have begun comparing Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to Putin along with Duterte, who was the only post-Marcos President to reach out to Russia after Marcos Sr. did during the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Duterte landed a Time magazine cover along with Putin as the modern day strongmen.
The US and NATO will not pass on this opportunity to bring down Putin through sanctions. They are hoping that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the catalyst which will give impetus to Russians to go out in the streets and finally oust Putin.
The West has been controlling the market’s reaction to the conflict as it cannot afford for oil and gas prices to spike. Europe is dependent on Russia for its energy requirements. Russia is one of the largest exporters of oil and natural gas and war only exacerbates the global energy picture which has already seen oil hit its pre-pandemic high.
Leaders come and go but what is really at stake are Russian energy, minerals and food exports and the chance to finally be in control of Russia through a “democracy.”
The risk here is what will happen if all does not go to plan and there is no other strongman to hold Russia together. This is how real wars begin. World War I began with the assassination of one man.
Manlets like Heydarian are not able to see the whole picture because they do not take into account history. This is why history repeats itself.
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