Ukraine Crisis is New Cold War/The Rise of Fascism in the West

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1. James Baker: Ukraine Crisis is New Cold War - Newsmax.com

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   www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/...cold-war.../556916

   2014. 3. 9.

   The crisis in Ukraine has the potential for spiraling out of control and could lead to ... "It is clearly the most ...

Ukraine as Stalking Horse

The Rise of Fascism in the West

by NORMAN POLLACK

Fascism dribbles off the tongue too easily, yet it is possible to wrap one’s arms around the concept and practice with, allowing for historical variations, some degree of precision. Hitler’s Germany may be the gold standard by which to measure all else, but even there correction can be made for both underlying structural features and ideological themes applied to other and different settings. By that I mean, e.g., functional equivalents of Nazi societal organization, if you will, foundations or perhaps sub-foundations of the social order and political culture. If we return to Franz Neumann’s Behemoth, the now-neglected classic on the subject and Robert A. Brady’s Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, also near-forgotten, focused on the ideology of business organization, we can say that the primal factor in fascism’s internal composition is capitalism, not your everyday Smithian variety happily ensconced in Econ. 101 textbooks, but the real thing at an advanced form of development: monopolization, greater cohesion through trade associations, neutralization of labor as a collective-bargaining social force, above all, an hierarchical class system with commanding decisions at the top then filtered down through gradations of rank, integrated with and complemented by the political-structural framework of business-government interpenetration.

This paradigm of centralized power embedded in the synthesis of corporatism and the State, the latter, itself the more powerful the better, in order to serve and protect the business system, its dominance over labor, its penetration of foreign markets, its further concentration through preventing internecine competition, is equally characteristic of 1930s Germany (already mostly evident under Weimar) and the US beginning in earnest still earlier but perhaps taking more protracted form. Diagrammatically, we are, circa 2014, more than superseding that German stage, our “cartels” disguised by other names, our rate of concentration the apogee of capitalist inner logic. From here it is readily apparent the appetitive and combative nature of capitalism, egged on or reinforced by the Statist dimension: America’s version of globalization to a tee.

This underpinning, not the concentration camp or gas chamber, establishes the bedrock on which the fascist edifice rests, makes them possible, embodied in militaristic aggression in Germany, but, for the US, and as Barrington Moore pointed out, in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, for Japan as well, what is critical to fascism is not only business-government interpenetration (Masao Maruyama years ago termed this, for Japan, the “close-embrace” system), but also the regimentation of the people, glimpses of which appear in the NSA wholesale surveillance of the public, and a prepackaged ideology of permanent-war readiness buttressed by a saturated climate of counterterrorism.

I think you get the picture. America is not all Innocence and Milk-and-Honey, the hegemonic demiurge in full throttle under Obama, now poised for the much anticipated (and, I believe, welcomed) conflict with Russia, having carefully arranged the chess board, the rooks, IMF and NATO, the queen, all-purpose privatization, the pawns, “friends and allies” persuaded to do America’s bidding, finally, the king, not the innocuous piece, nor here, a single individual, but Obama’s collective national-security advisors, taking in CIA, NSA, Pentagon officials, even then, the tip of the iceberg of war-making, war-striving apparatus, Washington up to its neck from every quarter, bipartisan all the way, in sharpening the killer instinct. Kerry and Biden are the cheerleaders for imperialism and, increasingly, militarism, for they, and Obama, recognize the two are inseparable, to which they seem especially dedicated. Ukraine has found its soul mates.

My New York Times Comments on the editorial, “Post-Crimea Relations With the West,” (March 19), and Peter Baker, “If Not a Cold War, a Return to a Chilly Rivalry,” same date, as are my Comments, follow:

I
Truly marvelous. The Times joins the Cold War chorus with enthusiasm. Nowhere do I find mention that the NATO putsch/push eastward via the coup d’etat in Kiev inspired Putin’s action–missiles and bases right up to the Russian border. The events flesh out NATO’s meaning and significance. E.g., today’s Erlanger article, quoting Ian Bond, Ivo Daalder and others, makes clear that “collective defense” is code for the US-EU-IMF-NATO continued pressure for globalization according to the Washington Consensus. America and its “friends and allies” are willing to go to war for market fundamentalism, privatization, and, huge military outlays–the Alliance thrives on perpetuating tension. Nor do we see more than a passing reference to Ukrainian FASCISM, and that altogether dismissive.

Dr. Strangelove would be proud of The Times, saber-rattling through greater and greater military presence, emissaries of death like Joe Biden (Obama has found his willing lap dog!), a society, political culture, press, and other media, tired of the challenges of peace, thriving on confrontation, bruiting manliness, toughness, credibility, as part of the New Decalogue–I honestly cannot see how nuclear war can be avoided: a colossal wish-fulfillment of a society and political economy deep-down mired in guilt, chauvinism, selfishness, wanting to end it all.
The Times takes joy in demonizing Putin. The West can do no wrong! When fascism becomes more transparent–perhaps minds will change.

II
The “resets” were founded on convenience and hypocrisy, business as usual marking the continuation of the Cold War, Crimea not signifying a New Cold War. Stating that Russia is more isolated than ever, the “international community” regarding it as an aggressor and wanting its pariah-status, is Washington propaganda and whistling in the dark. We’ve heard little from Asia or Latin America, and even a submissive EU has mixed feelings about following the US lead of confrontation, knowing that in fact there was a coup d’etat (not merely Baker’s “pro-Western street protests,”), that the US applauds Svoboda and Right Sector, and that the potential NATO incursion eastward means a provocative armed presence on the Russian border.
Do continue to defame Putin and ascribe 100% blame on Russia for deteriorating East-West relations. America eventually will have its global comeuppance as its interventions and imposition of IMF austerity cum privatization measures take hold and the world has had enough of its hegemonic drive and mindset. A “defense” budget the equal of the rest of the world, nuclear modernization, the Pacific-first strategy, paramilitary operations galore, often directed to regime change, use of the Espionage Act to silence whistleblowers, MASSIVE SURVEILLANCE at home, eavesdropping on foreign leaders, who’s kidding whom about aggressive global behavior and respect for international law?

The Times will be complicit in nuclear annihilation, if it should come.

Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/20/the-rise-of-fascism-in-the-west/

Cold War reflexes return to Europe over Ukraine

• REUTERS
 
• WORLD
 
• 17 MAR 2014 08:53 (SOUTH AFRICA)
 
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The Cold War is back. Russia's military seizure of Crimea and preparations for a possible annexation of the southern Ukrainian province have revived fears, calculations and reflexes that had been rusting away since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. By Paul Taylor.

Whether the crisis triggered by President Vladimir Putin's attempt to prevent Ukraine, a strategic former Soviet republic, turning to the West, becomes a turning point in international relations like the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States or the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, is not yet certain. There are still some steps to play out.

But policymakers and strategic analysts are thinking through the consequences of a potentially prolonged East-West tug-of-war. And states in the middle such as Germany and Poland are starting to weigh uncomfortable adjustments to their policy.

The standoff is already posing tricky questions about the balance between sanctions and diplomacy, setting loyalty tests for allies and raising the risk of spillover to other conflicts and of possible proxy wars.

"Welcome to Cold War Two," Russian analyst Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace declared in an article for Foreign Policy magazine.

"The recent developments have effectively put an end to the interregnum of partnership and cooperation between the West and Russia that generally prevailed in the quarter-century after the Cold War," he said.

Trenin is not alone in seeing the struggle for Ukraine as the biggest game-changer in European security since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

While no one imagines the superpowers returning to a hair-trigger nuclear confrontation or a bloc-against-bloc military buildup - for starters, Russia no longer has a bloc - the knock-on implications for other security problems, and for the world economy, are significant.

Frozen conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan, all "near abroad" post-Soviet states, could be reactivated.

In Berlin, policymakers worry that Russia could raise the stakes by stopping cooperation with the West over Iran's nuclear programme, the civil war in Syria, security in Afghanistan and managing North Korea's unpredictable leader.

Any one of those could make life more uncomfortable for the United States and its European and Asian allies by destabilising the Middle East and southern Asia or raising tension on the Korean peninsula.

"THIS IS THE BIG ONE"

The realisation that Germany, Europe's central power, has no special influence with Russia when the geopolitical chips are down, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel has been unable to sway Putin despite their common languages, has concentrated minds.

In hindsight, Russia's 2008 military intervention in breakaway regions of Georgia was a dry run. It had less global impact partly because an erratic Georgian leader fired the first shots, but also because it barely changed the status quo.

"Ukraine is different. It's on the fault line and it's too big," says Constanze Stelzenmueller, senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund think-tank, who led a recent major study on Germany's new foreign and security policy.

"Now we are entering a systemic competition. That's why I think the Cold War analogy is accurate. If you're in Berlin, that's the way it feels. This is the big one."

Despite its strong economic interests in Russia, where 6,200 German companies do business, and its dependency on Russian natural gas for 40 percent of supplies, Stelzenmueller expects Germany to "surprise on the upside by being firm".

Moscow is only Berlin's 11th trade partner, below Poland. Germany's main trade body said last week a trade conflict between the two would hurt German business but it would be life-threatening for a stagnant Russian economy.

As former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten observes, while almost every European household owns goods made in China, few if any have anything produced in Russia, except gas and vodka.

Central European economies could be severely disrupted if Moscow played with the gas taps, but stocks are high, winter is over and Russia needs the revenue.

GOING NEUTRAL?

In Cold War One, hawks in the United States and western Europe fretted that then West Germany could turn neutral in its pursuit of detente with the Soviet Union and its east European allies, including communist East Germany.

That never happened. Bonn remained firmly anchored in the Western political and military camp. But there were some epic transatlantic battles along the way.

They included a 1982 clash with the United States over a German-Soviet gas pipeline deal which the Reagan administration feared would make West Germany dangerously dependent on Moscow.

The Germans stood their ground. The pipeline was built and is one reason why Germany remains so hooked on Russian energy.

That dispute - just a year after a Moscow-inspired military crackdown in Poland - may have lessons for any new Cold War.

A year later, Bonn withstood mass protests and threats from Moscow to deploy U.S. medium-range nuclear missiles on its soil in response to Soviet SS-20 rockets pointed at the West. That led eventually to a negotiated end to the East-West arms race.

Then as now, a perceived Russian threat ultimately united Europeans and the United States, despite public misgivings reflected today in opinion polls showing neither Germans nor Americans are keen to get tough with Russia.

Then as now, both Moscow and the West turned to China to try to tip the balance. Then as now, U.S. strategists traded charges of appeasement and warmongering as they argued over the right policy mix between containing Russia and taking its interests into account.

If Putin moves to annex Crimea, Europeans may soon have to contemplate awkward sacrifices to show their resolve.

For France, this could mean suspending a contract to sell helicopter carriers to Russia. For Britain, closing its mansions and bank vaults to magnates close to Putin. For Germany, initiating gradual steps to reduce dependency on Russian gas.

It will take Cold War-style determination for any of that to happen. Maintaining EU unity if the going gets tough, with states in southern Europe such as Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria closer to Moscow, could prove a challenge. DM

Photo: US President John Kennedy and USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev