Article from: http://www.balkanalysis.com
Russia: Richard Perle to the
rescue in Russia
By CDeliso
The last months have seen neocons, worst of all being Richard
Perle, protest the growing power of Russian president Vladimir
Putin. He sparked their ire by cracking down on
the country’s oligarchs, especially Yukos boss Mikhail
Khodorkovsky. The real outrage for the neocons was how this act
sidelined a deal between Exxon-Mobil and Yukos, a deal which would
have enormously enriched a professed political enemy of Putin while
putting a large chunk of Russia’s energy supply under the
control of an American company.
Yet it’s not just Exxon. Neocons fear that
Russian oil
might be diverted into pipeline projects to not only Japan but-
most fearsome of all- China.
The capper - that event that really drove the
neocons ballistic - was when the Russian people disagreed with them
and strengthened Putin’s party hold on parliament in
December’s elections. One can only imagine the inflammatory
rhetoric we will be subjected to following the Russian presidential
elections of March, which Putin will win.
Even these events beside, Vladimir Putin
fundamentally represents what neocons hate most - a
foreign politician who is actually a leader and who actually
stands up to the US. In the neocon political universe, the word
“leader” is synonymous with “evil dictator,” and
opposing the US could only logically be done by “rogue
states” and spiteful, impotent former allies. Foreign
governments are respectfully asked to be caretakers, sycophants,
“willing” to join coalitions and more besides. Anything
less is tantamount to betrayal and roguery.
Yet there are solutions for insolence. On 31
October, following the arrest of Yukos boss Khodorkovsky,
“Prince of Darkness” Richard
Perle demanded that Russia be expelled from the G-8: “No
(other) G-8 country is allowed to treat its leading businessmen the
way Russia treated Khodorkovsky,” he spewed. “I believe
Russia is moving fast in the wrong direction.”
As the neocons would have it, this was yet another
example of Soviet-minded politicians crushing the valiant free-market
reformers of the business class. On the same day, a very loaded
commentary from the Neocon-dominated
American Enterprise Institute bombastically declared that:
“… a scandal of Watergate proportions is
rocking Moscow. It threatens Russia's economic revival and
endangers President Vladimir Putin's long-term political survival.
Russians are calling it a signal event in their country's history,
comparable to Stalin's purges of the 1930s or the Soviet invasion
of Prague in 1968.”
The tacit absurdity of this statement is only
reinforced by the failure to cite anyone - anyone - except
“Russians” in general in defense of the comparison with
Stalin or the invasion of Prague. Unfortunately for the neocons, when
somebody did ask ordinary Russians for their opinion, they voiced it
loud and clear at the ballot box, just over a month later. And that
was the final straw for the neocons.
The parliamentary elections of 7 December saw a
big victory for pro-Putin “United Russia” candidates.
Rather than countenance the possibility that a majority of Russians
might actually have voluntarily supported a president with 80 percent
approval ratings, they instantly joined the chorus of outside voices
charging electoral unfairness and corruption. That international
cuckold, the OSCE, complained the election was a “regression in
the democratization process.” And US
media fretted that elections were “unfair” to the
opposition parties. The San Francisco Chronicle offered
this
misleading description of the state of affairs in Russia
today:
“…as parliament looked on, he (Putin) has
turned Russia into what Kremlin insiders and analysts call
‘managed democracy’- a state where democratic
institutions are too weak and the opposition is too vulnerable to
make a difference, and where political elites, not voters, decide
the country's future.”
The subtle implication of this approximation is
that in other places (i.e., America) it is the voters and not
“political elites” who decide the country’s future.
However, the alternative to Putin’s “managed
democracy” is not voter empowerment - rather, it is the rule of
the financial elite, Russia’s oligarchs. And that, come to think
of it, wouldn’t be too different from the political realities
operative in today’s America.
The timing of Khodorkovsky’s arrest was
politically significant, of course. A report from Reuters cited
well-connected foreign investors as saying Khodorkovsky was
planning to ‘buy’ 150 seats in the Duma:
“‘…he was trying to control 150 votes
in the Duma,’ said one international banker who asked not to
be identified. ‘He had at least 100 people lined up who would
vote as he wanted.’
…Putin is known to have been infuriated
when Khodorkovsky mobilized support in the Duma earlier in the
year to vote down an increase in taxation of oil company profits.
‘They (the Kremlin) believe he was launching some initiative
to take over the reins of power and that it was a very well
thought out attempt,’ said a prominent investment banker in
frequent contact with Kremlin insiders.”
While neocons portray the situation as one of a
Soviet-style Putin versus champions of the “free market,”
not a word is said about how Russia’s oligarchs were able to
enrich themselves so much and so quickly. In fact, there is an entire
website devoted to exposing
the oligarchs. It begins with this summary:
“…using their links with the state and,
sometimes, shadowy business connections made before the collapse
of the Soviet Union, a small number of well-placed and ruthless
men managed to thrive in the early days of Russia’s bandit
capitalism. When the great Soviet enterprises, oil companies and
fields, media outlets and mines worth billions of dollars were
privatized, they used their inside positions to amass huge wealth,
in the process acquiring the hatred of the Russian population and,
often, the adulation of a Western press eager to find successful
businessmen in the hub of the former communist empire.”
In 2000, there were no billionaires in Russia,
whereas today there are 17. Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo
recounted the oligarchs’ Soviet-style methods of enrichment, and
notes the
following irony in regards to Putin’s chief neocon
accuser:
“…it is oh-so-appropriate that Richard Perle
should become the chief Western defender of the crony capitalist
Khodorkovsky: Perle's links to such companies as Trireme Partners,
Boeing,
and Hollinger International have paid off as a direct result of
his high-level political connections.”
Indeed, the neocon affinity for dubious causes the
world over is well attested in the story of Comrade Perle and his
noble quest for international justice. When Perle decries
Putin’s way of “treating their leading businessmen like
that,” he is simply expressing his shock and confusion that
now-capitalist Russia nevertheless fails to attain the same heights
of state socialism so prevalent in the US today - the cozy cronyism
at taxpayer expense that has made chickenhawks such as Richard Perle
so fat and happy. Indeed, the innate contradictions so characteristic
of Perle’s thought - attacking
France while at the same time vacationing there, demanding a
bloody war while having no intention of fighting in it, ordering the
removal of political influence from capital in Russia while clearly
not planning to play by the same rules in America- is symptomatic of
all the bloated hypocrisies of neoconservative thought in general,
one that is tiresome, oafish and increasingly untenable.
