"Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the country's parliament, speaking about Russia's success in the defense sector, relations with the US and NATO, social and economic development of the country, as well as Moscow's plans concerning the technological advance in big data, AI and cryptocurrency."

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​The crowning period of humanist U.S.-Russian collaboration was during the Lincoln administration, when a wartime alliance between the United States and Russia was negotiated by U.S. Ambassador to Russia Cassius Clay (1861-1862 and 1863-1869). This is a chapter of American history which is no longer known today by Americans: It was Russia's military weight and threats of reprisals against Britain and France, that prevented any British-led intervention against the Union.
​
America and Russia shared the conception of transforming this wartime pact into a permanent alliance based on developing Russia into a technologically progressive nation of 100 million, combined with an industrialized United States with a population approaching 100 million by the end of the nineteenth century. This combination was seen as an unbeatable axis for implementing a worldwide ``Grand Design,'' an ordering of sovereign nations committed to economic and technological progress--the ``American System'' of political economy, against the British Empire's ``free trade'' policy of keeping the colonial world in perpetual backwardness and misery. Ambassador Clay specifically considered his own mission to be the forging of an alliance among the United States, Russia, and the Mexico of President Benito Juárez, committed to the spread of republicanism around the globe.

Two opposing alliances
The American Civil War was a global political war that came--several times--within a hair's breadth of global shooting war. The global battle lines were drawn between two international alliances: the Union and the Russian Empire, arrayed against the Confederacy in alliance with England and France--the Russell-Palmerston alliance with their tool, ``Petit'' Louis Napoleon (III).

The Union's survival and ultimate victory was achieved in part thanks to the influential ``American'' faction in Russia, to whose outlook Alexander II tended. This faction stuck to its guns, despite all British threats, to ensure the survival and development of the United States for the common interest of Russia and America.

At several of the most critical junctures of the Civil War, the Lord Russell-Petit Napoleon axis was on the verge of declaring war on the Union. Each time, they were forced to weigh the consequences of a fully mobilized Russia's declaration of war on England and France. Russia's huge land armies were ready to roll over the Ottoman Empire and India, thus ending British political domination of an area extending in a great arc from the Balkans through the Middle East to London's subcontinental ``jewel'' of India.

Had Russia not lined up with the Union, a wavering London-dominated Bismarckian Germany, with no anti-British continental powers nearby, would have been able to swing nationalist elements in the German leadership into joining Britain and France as a junior partner. The fact that Russia allied with the Union and mobilized to fight if necessary, guaranteed that if a global war erupted, German national interests, which could not tolerate the elimination of the United States and Russia and a Europe under the complete domination of England and Petit Napoleon, would lawfully assert their control over German policy and move against London.

In short, the ``concert of powers'' rigged game that had characterized European affairs since the Congress of Vienna would be over. The means of British political control over the continent would have exploded in the faces of Russell and Palmerston.

The cornerstone of Britain's operational policy, from no later than 1860 on, was to dismember both the United States and Russia. This was the prelude to enacting a ``new world order,'' devoid of sovereign nation states, an order centered on a British-controlled Grand Confederacy, labeled by British policymakers ``The United States of Europe.''

A history of collaboration
What was achieved during the Civil War by the two ``superpowers'' was the consummation of a quarter-century-long bitter struggle by factions in the United States and Russian against the London-orchestrated political machines in their respective nations. From 1844 to 1860, British agents of influence repeatedly sabotaged earlier potentialities for the alliance to develop. It was a quarter-century punctuated with missed opportunities and tough lessons learned, as a result of which the strategic perceptions and capacities for action of the foremost of the U.S. Whigs and their Russian counterparts were shaped and increasingly perfected.

The foundation of U.S.-Russian collaboration was laid in the 1763-1815 period. It was the product of the political influence exerted within Russia by the networks organized by Benjamin Franklin in the Russian Academy of Science (whose leading members were followers of the tradition of technological progress established by the collaboration of Gottfried Leibniz and Peter the Great) and through the American Philosophical Society.

In the period from 1776 to 1815, Russia twice played a crucial role in safeguarding the existence of America. During the Revolutionary War, the acceptance of Epinus' draft of a Treaty of Armed Neutrality by Russian Premier Count Panin was not only key in thwarting Britain's plans for building an anti-American coalition in Europe, but also marked a signal triumph by the Russian friends of Benjamin Franklin, in wresting political hegemony away from the pro-British Prince Potemkin. In the War or 1812, Russia, under Czar Alexander I, submitted a near-ultimatum to England to hastily conclude an honorable peace with the United States and abandon all English claims of territorial aggrandizement. The American negotiators were the first to confirm that only the application of Russian pressure produced the sudden volte-face in Britain's attitude that achieved the Treaty of Ghent.

One may also note that directly prior to the War of 1812, through the negotiating efforts of John Quincy Adams (at the time United States Minister to Russia), exponential growth rates in U.S.-Russian trade were achieved. By 1911, the United States had by far and away become Russia's largest trading partner.

The event that completed the molding and toughening of the commitment to entente of the Russian and American factions was the 1853-56 Crimean War. Russia's humiliation, and the acute realization that British policy was orienting toward actual dismemberment of the Russian Empire, together with the accrued lessons of the missed opportunities of the 1844-46 period, burned in the requisite lessons. The fundamental point that could no longer be ignored was that Russia would have no security as a nation, let alone prosperity, unless it committed itself to the abolition of serfdom and a policy of industrialization to fortify itself against the British monarchy.
To most Americans today, the image of the Crimean War connotes a war waged by ``civilized'' England and France against ``semi-barbarous'' Russia, with the clearest image being the romantic drivel of Tennyson's ``Charge of the Light Brigade.'' In 1854, most of the American population was avowedly pro-Russian in its attitude toward that conflict. The Whig press, led by the New York Herald, was openly advocating a U.S.-Russian alliance, in response to Russia's repeated requests for assistance.

The United States Minister to St. Petersburg, T.H. Seymour, in a line of argument that illustrates the Whig thinking at the time, repeatedly warned the foolish President Franklin Pierce and his Anglophile Secretary of State William Marcy, what Britain was up to. He wrote to Marcy, in a letter dated April 13, 1854: ``the danger is that the Western powers of Europe ... after they have humbled the Czar, will domineer the rest of Europe, and thus have the leisure to turn their attention to American affairs.''

Under the rotten Pierce and Buchanan administrations, alliance was out of the question, but the process that was to define the Grand Design was developed in the years 1855 to 1861.

On the eve of the Civil War
During those years, the Russian ``American faction'' led by the new czar, Alexander II, Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov, and a group in the Russian Navy Ministry under the Grand Duke Constantine (which included the minister of war, Count Dmitri Miliutin, and the minister of finance, Mikhail Reutern), battled the feudal provincial nobility, which formed the social backbone of the ``British faction'' within Russia. Gorchakov, the central figure in determining the American faction's policy moves, was not overly concerned, during this period, that the United States government, under the wretch Buchanan, would ignore and reject Russia's offers of cooperation. His goal was much more sophisticated: to gain the acceptance of the American Whig grouping of the entente foreign policy perspective. This goal was achieved.

Thus, from 1855 on, Russia renewed as a standing offer the donation of Alaska to the United States, under the anti-British Empire conditions enunciated first in 1845. This standing offer was followed up with numerous substantial project offers to American capitalists.

Most notable were the Russian government's Siberian-Far East and Near East development packages. In 1858, Russia proposed an agreement with the United States for cooperation in developing trade with China. In conjunction with this offer, Russia unilaterally opened the entire Amur River basin region (the maritime Provinces of Siberia) to free trade with the United States. The series of development proposals had begun as early as June 18, 1855, when Russia offered to extend its facilities to the United States in negotiating a commercial treaty with Persia, a step that would have begun the process of ending British hegemony in the region. During the 1858-60 period, United States ambassador to Russia Francis Pickens wrote on numerous occasions urging U.S.-Russian joint trade and economic expansion to effect a strategic shift against England.

On Jan. 12, 1859, Pickens wrote:

``Russia can hold a more certain control over Europe by her influence in the East, and she wishes the U.S. to tap the China trade from the East in order to keep England out.''

On April 17, 1860, after talks with officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Pickens conveyed an urgent warning to Washington that a full U.S.-British rupture was close, concluding with this advice:

``It is thus imperative that we keep an able Minister here ... to produce through Russia a strong organization of the Baltic States against the power of England.''

This letter is of extraordinary historical significance, as it testifies directly that the relevant factions in the United States and Russia were convinced--correctly--that danger of a British-inspired conflict against the United States was rapidly increasing. Pickens's policy, reflecting the views of Alexander II and Gorchakov, was geared to imminent or actual war conditions, conditions of acute danger to the survival of the American republic. The Russian government had arrived at precisely such an evaluation in the spring of 1860, and, under Gorchakov's direct personal supervision, dispatched a top-level covert intelligence mission to the United States, headed by Col. Charles DeArnaud. That team was to play a decisive role in stymieing the Confederacy's 1861 blitzkrieg strategy.

With the advent of the Lincoln administration, the U.S.-British rupture came to a head. All the Russian economic development proposals of the preceding five years were ripe for implementation. American Whigs, led by Lincoln, Clay, Admiral Farragut, and others, were preparing to launch a policy to develop Russia industrially and militarily.

In the Western Hemisphere, the end of British control over Ibero-America and Canada was considered imminent. The deputy foreign minister of Colombia expressed this sentiment:

``The United States Civil War is a step in the direction of the United States' mission, to regenerate the whole continent, and ... the United States and Russia, the two great Northern powers, `Colossi of two continents,' if they could identify their interests, would be the surest bulwark of the independence of the world.''

Canada was all but ready to be annexed by the United States in 1861. By 1860, the United States government was receiving a tidal wave of petitions from western Canada urging annexation to the United States. Similar agitation was widespread in Lower Canada (Quebec). The Nor Wester, a newspaper in the Red River settlement that serviced the western region, wrote in an editorial, ``England's policies leave us no choice but to break.''

This, then, was the strategic conjuncture in 1860, when Britain utilized the last portion of the traitor Buchanan's term in office to launch its project for Southern secession.

Ambassador Clay and Lincoln's policy
President Lincoln's top priority in foreign policy following Fort Sumter was forging a strategic alliance with Russia. Lincoln was aware that under the political hegemony of Foreign Minister Gorchakov, Russia was modernizing. The freeing of the serfs had occurred in the spring of 1861, and a vast program of railroad building was under way. Lincoln was also aware that both Gorchakov and the czar were pro-American and anti-British.

In May 1861, in choosing his personal envoy to St. Petersburg, Lincoln went outside all normal channels, and selected the nephew of American Whig statesman Henry Clay, Cassius Marcellus Clay, as his ambassador to Russia.

Clay viewed his primary task as developing and consolidating the Russian elite into an unbeatable political machine, such that it would acquire the talent and muscle necessary to see through Russia's full-scale industrialization. Clay brought with him many copies of one of the primary treatises of the ``American System'' of political economy, Henry Carey's book The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial, hand-delivering them to Alexander II, Gorchakov, Navy Minister Prince Dolgoruky, Grand Duke Constantine, and a host of other high officials and industrialists. Clay toured the major cities, delivering speeches to thunderous applause from captains of industry, regional and national government officials, and merchants, expounding on the need for Russia to industrialize. His speeches were reprinted throughout the Russian press, and the name Henry Carey became a household word in Russia.

In his memoirs, Clay described the effect of his industrialization drive in Russia:

``A large class of manufacturers was aggregated about Moscow.... England was our worst enemy in the world and I sought out how I might most injure her. Russia with her immense lands and resources, and great population, was a fine field for British manufactures, and she had made the most of it. I procured the works of H.C. Carey of Philadelphia, and presented them to the Foreign Office, to the Emperor himself. So, it began to be understood that I was the friend of home industry--the `Russian System.' I encouraged the introduction of American arms, sewing machines, and all that, as far as I could; the mining of petroleum, and its manufacture; and got the United States to form a treaty preventing the violation of trademarks in the commerce of the two nations. So, when I was invited to Moscow, it was intimated that a tariff speech would be quite acceptable. A dinner was given me by the corporate powers of Moscow....

They got up a magnificent dinner; and with the American and Russian flags over my head, I made a regular tariff speech. It was translated into Russian as I spoke, and received immense applause. It was also put in Russian newspapers and into pamphlet form, circulated in the thousands all over the Empire. This touched England in the tenderest spot; and whilst Sir A. Buchanan and lady [the British ambassador, who was present] was too well bred to speak of it, one of the attachés was less discreet and shouted how much I threatened British trade. The dinner was photographed at the time.

``I found that the argument which I had made for years in the South, in favor of free labor and manufactures, as cofactors, was well understood in Russia; and since emancipation and education have taken a new projectile force, railroads and manufactures have the same propulsion as is now exhibited in the `Solid South.'|''

Clay's speech concluded with the Russian industrialists toasting the ``great American economist Henry Carey.''

Clay also went to work paving the way for the military alliance that would dismantle the British Empire, and in conjunction with this, negotiated with Russia the construction of a Washington-St. Petersburg cable, via the Pacific through San Francisco and Vladivostok. Here is how he motivated the cable project:

``If we have to battle England on the sea, and should Russia be our ally, we shall have means of much earlier intelligence than she.... I think ourselves fortunate in having this great power as our sincere friend. We should keep up this friendly feeling, which will finally give us an immense market for our commerce, and give us a most powerful ally in common danger. We will and must take a common interest in the affairs of Europe.''

After the war, Clay summarized his mission as follows:

``I did more than any man to overthrow slavery. I carried Russia with us and thus prevented what would have been a strong alliance of France, England, and Spain against us, and thus saved the nation.''

The entente concept of Clay and Lincoln was developed in full, in a Clay dispatch to Lincoln from St. Petersburg, dated July 25, 1861:

``I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was. They hoped for our ruin. They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the North nor the South. They hate both. The London Times... in concluding its comments on your message [Lincoln's July 5, 1861 message to Congress] says: `And when we prefer a frank recognition of Southern independence by the North to the policy avowed in the President's message, it is solely because we foresee as bystanders that this is the issue in which after infinite loss and humiliation the contest must result.' And that is the tone of England everywhere.... If England would not favor us whilst following the lead of the anti-slavery policy--she will never be our friend. She will now, if disaster comes upon our arms, join our enemies. Be on your guard....

``All the Russian journals are for us. In Russia we have a friend. The time is coming when she will be a powerful one for us. The emancipation [of the serfs] move is the beginning of a new era and new strength. She has immense lands, fertile and undeveloped in the Amoor country, with iron and other minerals. Here is where she must make the centre of her power against England. Joined with our Navy on the Pacific coast we will one day drive her [England] from the Indies: The source of her power: and losing which she will fall.''

The communication concluded with advice to Lincoln to:

``extend the blockade to every possible point of entry, so that if England does intervene--she will be the aggressor before all the world. Don't trust her in anything.''

From the Russian court
In this earliest phase of the developing entente, the Russians were pro-American, though cautious. The caution was a lawful expression of a legitimate Russian concern: The Russians demanded to know if Lincoln would stand firm and fight the conflict through to preserve the Union. This was precisely the line of questioning of the czar's first meeting with Clay in July 1861, culminating with the question of what the Union would do should England intervene. Clay advised Lincoln:

``I told the Emperor we did not care what England did, that her interference would tend to unite us the more.''

After this U.S. reassurance, Russia stood firmly behind its U.S. alliance. The policy was elaborated in a lengthy personal communication from Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov to President Lincoln, dated July 10, 1861:

``From the beginning of the conflict which divides the United States of America, you have been desired to make known to the federal government the deep interest with which our August Master [Czar Alexander II] has been observing the development of a crisis which puts in question the prosperity and even the existence of the Union.

``The Emperor profoundly regrets that the hope of a peaceful solution is not realized and that American citizens, already in arms against each other, are ready to let loose upon their country the most formidable of the scourges of political society--civil war.

``For the more than eighty years that it has existed the American Union owes its independence, its towering rise, and its progress, to the concord of its members, consecrated, under the auspices of its illustrious founders, by institutions which have been able to reconcile union with liberty. This union has been fruitful. It has exhibited to the world the spectacle of a prosperity without example in the annals of history....

``The struggle which unhappily has just arisen can neither be indefinitely prolonged, nor lead to the total destruction of one of the parties. Sooner or later it will be necessary to come to some settlement, which may enable the divergent interests now actually in conflict to coexist.

``The American nation would then give proof of high political wisdom in seeking in common such a settlement before a useless effusion of blood, a barren squandering of strength and of public riches, and acts of violence and reciprocal reprisals shall have come to deepen an abyss between the two parties, to end in their mutual exhaustion, and in the ruin, perhaps irreparable, of their commercial and political power.

``Our August Master cannot resign himself to such deplorable anticipations ... as a sovereign animated by the most friendly sentiments toward the American Union. This union is not simply in our eyes an element essential to the universal political equilibrium. It constitutes, besides, a nation to which our August Master and all Russia have pledged the most friendly interest; for the two countries, placed at the two extremities of the world, both in the ascending period of their development appear called to a natural community of interests and of sympathies, of which they have given mutual proofs to each other....

``In every event the American nation may count on the part of our August Master during the serious crisis which it is passing through at present."

Lincoln was deeply moved on receipt of this Russian policy statement, telling the Russian ambassador:

``Please inform the Emperor of our gratitude and assure His Majesty that the whole nation appreciates this new manifestation of friendship. Of all the communications we have received from the European governments, this is the most loyal.''

Lincoln then requested permission, which was granted, to give the widest possible publicity to the Russian message. This was crucial. The U.S.-Russian alliance was no secret pact. Quite the contrary, by mutual agreement between the two nations, the arrangement was given as much publicity as possible, as were the reasons behind it and its absolute necessity to the Union. Only later was the historic entente sold by Anglophile historians as a Russian move for ``balance'' on the European continent.

Sabotage efforts by a `fifth column'
Clay's success in consolidating the Union-Russian alliance produced more than a mild panic in London, and the British fifth column in the U.S. government began to lobby Lincoln for Clay's recall and replacement. The removal of Simon Cameron as secretary of war, on the grounds of rank incompetence, was to become the object of a ``double judo'' by the British agents of influence.

In the spring of 1862, Lincoln was persuaded by William Seward and his allies to replace Cameron with the traitor Edwin Stanton as secretary of war, while Cameron was shunted off to become the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, replacing Clay. Clay was bitter over the move, and begged Lincoln to allow his nephew, who had accompanied him as his assistant, to succeed him. Despite these protests, Clay was recalled, leaving St. Petersburg in June 1862, the same month in which Cameron arrived.

Clay fought these dirty maneuvers tooth and nail, pointing out to Lincoln that the purpose of appointing Cameron to St. Petersburg was to ensure no effective American presence and communication with the Russian government during the most critical phase of the Civil War. Clay wrote to Lincoln in June 1862:

``I had made arrangements to stay here and made the necessary expenditures accordingly. I have several thousands of roubles of property here, which is usually turned over to successors--but Mr. Cameron cannot buy: He says he will positively ask leave to retire from this post at the end of the next quarter, the 1st of September next. He proposes to come home on your leave of absence, and then remain.''

This letter makes clear how transparent the traitors' maneuver was: Get Clay out, put in Cameron as a rump, three-month ambassador in name only, and then leave the U.S.-Russian entente severed during precisely the phase of Civil War in which the danger of overt British military intervention was greatest.

Two things were to deny the British-agent conspirators the fruit of these evil schemes. Clay, though losing the recall battle, was to return in short stead to St. Petersburg, as we shall see; and Gorchakov and the American faction in Russia did not budge from their policies. The Russians, too, had their British faction surrounding the czar, but the czar and Gorchakov, like Lincoln, never wavered.

Clay fought back. Denied for the time being the ambassadorship, he used the period of his return to the United States to organize nationwide public support for the entente with Russia, and for immediate emancipation of the slaves in the United States.

Upon arriving in Washington, Clay gave Lincoln a blunt strategic briefing on the European situation:

``All over Europe governments are ready to intervene in America's affairs and recognize the independence of the Confederate States.'' Clay argued that ``only a forthright proclamation of emancipation'' and alliance with Russia ``will block these European autocracies.''

In a speech in the American capital, Clay began his public speaking tour for the consummation of the U.S.-Russian entente:

``I think that I can say without implications of profanity or want of deference, that since the days of Christ himself such a happy and glorious privilege has not been reserved to any other man to do that amount of good; and no man has ever more gallantly or nobly done it than Alexander II, the Czar of Russia. I refer to the emancipation of 23,000,000 serfs. Here then fellow citizens, was the place to look for an ally. Trust him; for your trust will not be misplaced. Stand by him, and he will, as he has often declared to me he will, stand by you. Not only Alexander, but his whole family are with you, men, women and children.''

Clay's policy of utilizing the strategic options available to the Union to forestall English-French armed intervention, was readily accepted by Lincoln in both areas: movement towards emancipation, and securing the Russian alliance. Lincoln immediately commissioned Clay to sound out public opinion in his native border state of Kentucky on emancipation, before applying the policy nationally.

It was now dawning on Stanton, Seward, and the fifth column that their coup in removing Clay from the ambassadorship was backfiring. Clay, in the United States, with constant personal access to Lincoln, was a far more dangerous adversary than Clay in St. Petersburg.

Seward advised Lincoln that Clay's speaking activities were ``dangerous,'' that his ``unrestrained agitation for emancipation will drive Kentucky into joining the secessionist States.'' Lincoln accepted this ``advice'' to mend shaky domestic political fences, and, as Cameron's resignation as ambassador to Russia had just occurred, promptly reappointed Clay to his ambassadorship. Clay wrote an immediate acceptance letter to Lincoln:

``I avail myself of your kind promise to send me back to my former mission to the Court of St. Petersburg and where I flatter myself that I can better serve my country than in the field under General Halleck who cannot repress his hatred of liberal men into the ordinary courtesies of life.''

Russia saves the Union
During Clay's absence from St. Petersburg from June 1862 until the spring of 1863, there was no wavering of Russia's support for the Union. Cameron arrived in St. Petersburg in June 1862 with instructions from Lincoln to secure an interview with the czar, to ``learn the Russian monarch's attitude in the event England and France force their unwelcome intervention.'' After the interview, Cameron was able to report to Lincoln:

``The Czar's spokesmen have assured me that in case of trouble with the other European powers, the friendship of Russia for the United States would be shown in a decisive manner which no other nation will be able to mistake.''

Cameron wrote the following on the Russian political situation to Secretary of State Seward in July 1862:

``The Russians are evincing the most candid friendship for the North.... They are showing a constant desire to interpret everything to our advantage. There is no capital in Europe where the loyal American meets with such universal sympathy as at St. Petersburg, none where the suppression of our unnatural rebellion will be hailed with more genuine satisfaction.''

Already by the Civil War's summer 1862 campaigns, every knowledgeable leading political figure in Europe and the United States was drawing the conclusion that foreign intervention in the American Civil War in support of the Confederacy would be taken as a casus belli by Russia.

The autumn of 1862 was extremely critical for the Union. England and France were on the verge of military intervention on the side of the Confederacy. On the Union side, everyone was girding for an Anglo-French invasion, an invasion which could include British allies Spain and Austria as well. Anglo-French pressure on Russia to abandon its pro-Union stance was stepped up to fever pitch. The Union's salvation depended on Russia.

Lincoln, in this darkest hour of his administration, sent an urgent personal letter to Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov for delivery to the czar. Lincoln believed correctly that France had already decided to intervene and was only awaiting a go-ahead from England. Lincoln was under no illusions that if the Union was to be saved, it would be saved by Russia. And Russia came through.

We quote here in full Foreign Minister Gorchakov's reply to the President, drafted in the name of Czar Alexander II. It is one of the most critical documents in American and world history:

``You know that the government of United States has few friends among the Powers. England rejoices over what is happening to you; she longs and prays for your overthrow. France is less actively hostile; her interests would be less affected by the result; but she is not unwilling to see it. She is not your friend. Your situation is getting worse and worse. The chances of preserving the Union are growing more desperate. Can nothing be done to stop this dreadful war? The hope of reunion is growing less and less, and I wish to impress upon your government that the separation, which I fear must come, will be considered by Russia as one of the greatest misfortunes. Russia alone, has stood by you from the first, and will continue to stand by you. We are very, very anxious that some means should be adopted--that any course should be pursued--which will prevent the division which now seems inevitable. One separation will be followed by another; you will break into fragments (emphasis in original).''

Bayard Taylor, secretary of the legation to St. Petersburg, acting under Lincoln's instructions, gave the U.S. reply:

``We feel that the Northern and Southern States cannot peacefully exist side by side as separate republics. There is nothing the American people desire so much as peace, but peace on the basis of separation is equivalent to continual war. We have only just called the whole strength of the nation into action. We believe the struggle now commencing will be final, and we cannot without disgrace and ruin, accept the only terms tried and failed.''

Gorchakov reiterated Russia's stance, giving Taylor the following message to convey to Lincoln.

``You know the sentiments of Russia. We desire above all things the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation. We cannot take any part, more than we have done. We have no hostility to the Southern people. Russia has declared her position and will maintain it. There will be proposals of intervention [by Britain]. We believe that intervention could do no good at present. Proposals will be made to Russia to join some plan of interference. She will refuse any intervention of the kind. Russia will occupy the same ground as at the beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon it, she will not change. But we entreat you to settle the difficulty. I cannot express to you how profound an anxiety we feel--how serious are our fears (emphasis in original).''

How many Americans today know that Russia intervened, at this October 1862 darkest hour of the American Republic, to save it? But every American citizen knew it then, and the entire proceedings were ordered published and distributed throughout the nation by a joint resolution of Congress.

France was promoting an ``armistice'' plan that would have effectively stopped Lincoln's prosecution of the war and rendered permanent the split in the Union. Britain's Lord Russell favored the plan, ``with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confederates. I agree further that, in case of failure, we ought to ourselves recognize the Southern States as an independent state.''

The British cabinet was now plunged into debate on whether to intervene, with all eyes and ears nervously awaiting the signal from St. Petersburg of what Russia's response to Britain's overtures would be. In the midst of the debate, Lord Russell received a telegram from British Ambassador Napier in St. Petersburg advising him that Russia had rejected Napoleon's proposal of joint intervention. On Nov. 13, the British cabinet reached its decision: ``It is the cabinet's belief that there exists no ground at the moment to hope that Lincoln's government would accept the offer of mediation.''

We give the final word to Czar Alexander II, who held sole power to declare war for Russia. In an interview to the American banker Wharton Barker on Aug. 17, 1879, he said:

``In the Autumn of 1862, the governments of France and Great Britain proposed to Russia, in a formal but not in an official way, the joint recognition by European powers of the independence of the Confederate States of America. My immediate answer was: `I will not cooperate in such action; and I will not acquiesce. On the contrary, I shall accept the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States by France and Great Britain as a casus belli for Russia. And in order that the governments of France and Great Britain may understand that this is no idle threat; I will send a Pacific fleet to San Francisco and an Atlantic fleet to New York.

``Sealed orders to both Admirals were given. My fleets arrived at the American ports, there was no recognition of the Confederate States by Great Britain and France. The American rebellion was put down, and the great American Republic continues.

``All this I did because of love for my own dear Russia, rather than for love of the American Republic. I acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American Republic, with advanced industrial development were broken up and Great Britain should be left in control of most branches of modern industrial development.''

The Russian Navy arrives
The second half of 1863 and early 1864 mark the second critical phase of the Civil War period, where again the world came very close to a British-instigated eruption of global war. The second half of 1863 witnessed even more earnest British deliberations on intervening, this time on a now-or-never basis.

By July 1863, desperation gripped Lords Russell and Palmerston. The South's invasion of the North had failed at Gettysburg. The violent anti-war movement in the North, including the bloody New York City draft riots, had also failed. As of July 4, 1863, the Union controlled the entire length of the Mississippi, cutting the Confederacy in two, while Lincoln's naval blockade had become almost completely effective. In Russia, the British-orchestrated Polish rebellion was being extinguished. The British grand strategy of dismembering both the United States and the Russian Empire and creating the ``United States of Europe'' as a satrapy was crumbling into dust.

In these utterly desperate circumstances, Britain was crazy enough to go to war, and almost did. Throughout the summer of 1863, thinly disguised ultimatums were repeatedly hurled at Russia by Britain and France, and the British were deliberating on intervening against the Union.

World war almost came in the late summer and fall of 1863. The fact that it did not was not a result of British policy in and of itself, but because joint U.S.-Russian war preparations and preemptive actions raised the penalty factor to a threshold sufficient to force Britain once again to withdraw from the brink.

It was in this context that the entire Russian Navy arrived in the United States on Sept. 24, 1863.

Russia's policy, from 1861 on, was war avoidance as long as Britain did not intervene militarily against the Union. From 1861, Russia developed a war-fighting strategy in the event Britain could not be dissuaded from intervening. One critical strategic aspect of this contingency plan concerned the deployment of the Russian fleet.

To avoid a repetition of the disaster of the Crimean War, where the fleet was bottled up and attacked in the Baltic and Black Seas, Russia's Navy was placed on constant alert status during the United States Civil War, ready to set sail and head for the United States to join up with the United States Navy and provide a maximum combined naval capability that would be directed against the vulnerable island state of Britain. The timing of the fleet's departure from Russian ports was decided on the basis of highly accurate Russian intelligence estimates that considered the outbreak of world war to be imminent. These estimates cohered with the fact that Britain's propensity to go to war in late 1863 was far greater than even during the intervention proposal period of late 1862.

The fleet that came on Sept. 24, 1863 to U.S. waters--on both coasts simultaneously--came under arrangement of a U.S.-Russian political-military alliance which would become fully activated in the event of war. Cassius Clay, during his tenure as United States ambassador to Russia, spoke openly and continuously of a U.S.-Russian alliance. No ambassador, without being subject to immediate recall, could do such a thing if such an alliance did not actually exist. Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov also announced officially, in a communication to his ambassador, Stoeckl, that the alliance existed:

``I have given much thought to the possibility of concluding a formal political alliance ... but that would not change anything in the existing position of the two nations ... the alliance already exists in our mutual interests and traditions.''

To this memo, dated Oct. 22, 1863, Alexander II added the comment, ``très bien'' (``very good'').

How the Russian Navy was built up
The actual history of U.S.-Russian military-technological collaboration, both before and during the Civil War, makes a mockery of the revisionist historians' claim that there never was a Russian-American alliance. The origins of the modern Russian Navy itself attest to this. John Paul Jones, or ``Pavel Ivanovich Jones'' as he was called during his service in the Russian Navy, did not arrive in Russia in 1788 by a miracle and receive a commission as a rear admiral in Catherine the Great's Navy. Nor was it mere chance that a document drafted by Jones in 1791, following his Russian tenure of duty, was adopted by Russia as the basis for reorganizing its fleet into a modern Navy.

From 1781 on, Princess Catherine Dashkov, the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences (of the same Dashkov family that Cassius Clay frequently cites as ``my good friends'' in his Memoirs), was in correspondence with Benjamin Franklin and his great-nephew and Paris secretary, Jonathan Williams--the future superintendent of West Point. Dashkov functioned then and later as a liaison channeling Franklin and Williams's political, scientific, and military writings into the Russian Navy Ministry and the Russian Academy of Sciences, where they were promptly translated and circulated. It was through similar network arrangements among leading figures that Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures was translated and widely circulated in Russia by 1783.

In the period of Whig resurgence, beginning in the 1840s, the strong military ties connecting the United States and Russia were fashioned. It was the former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officers who supervised the construction of Russia's first railroad. The individuals who were to become the naval commanders of both powers during the Civil War were already committed in their own minds to the policy of entente between the two powers, based on their mutual commitment to progress, no later than the Crimean War years. In the extensive fraternization and discussion that occurred among the Mediterranean squadron commanders (Farragut, the Grand Duke Constantine, Lessovsky, and others), a powerful U.S.-Russian military alliance against Great Britain came to be viewed by the participants as a historical necessity.

After the Civil War began, the implementation of a joint U.S.-Russian naval buildup began. Long before the Russian fleet was en route to the United States, a vast stream of American military aid had already begun transforming Russia into a first-rate naval power, soon to be technologically superior to Great Britain. The abrupt transformation of backward Russia into a first-class naval power was the subject of many fear-ridden commentaries in the London Times. In 1861, Russia still had no shipbuilding facilities for ironclads. By mid-1862, Cassius Clay's ``Russian system'' had not only established new shipyards capable of turning out ironclads (of the latest American designs, built to American specifications), but also the necessary metalworking, machine tool, and armaments enterprises--all with completely indigenous materials and labor force.

By the end of the Civil War, Russia had 13 ironclads, equipped with 15-inch guns, constructed from the blueprints of the U.S.S. Passaic--warships that nothing in the British Navy at the time was capable of sinking.

"God bless the Russians"
On Sept. 24, 1863, the Russian fleet dropped anchor in New York harbor. America exploded with joy. Harper's Weekly took special pride in pointing out the American design of the ships and the armaments on board:

``The two largest of the squadron, the frigates Alexander Nevsky and Peresvet, are evidently vessels of modern build, and much about them would lead an unpracticed eye to think they were built in this country.... The flagship's guns are of American make, being cast in Pittsburgh.''

New York City was ``gaily bedecked with American Russian flags,'' the fleet's officers were given a special parade with a United States military honor guard escorting them up Broadway past cheering crowds.

British newspapers began an angry howl, denouncing ``Lincoln's threats of war'' against Britain and launching a press campaign ``poking fun'' at the ``Americans, who have been hoodwinked by the Russians.''

Harper's Weekly ran an editorial in reply to this English psychological warfare campaign which expressed the prevailing consensus in the United States:

``John Bull thinks that we are absurdly bamboozled by the Russian compliments and laughs to see us deceived by the sympathy of Muscovy.... But we are not very much deceived. Americans understand that the sympathy of France in our Revolution for us was not for love of us, but from hatred of England. They know, as Washington long ago told them, that romantic friendship between nations is not to be expected. And if they had latterly expected it, England has utterly undeceived them.

``Americans do not suppose that Russia is on the point of becoming a Republic, but they observe that the English aristocracy and the French Empire hate a republic quite as much as the the Russian monarchy hates it; and they remark that while the French Empire imports coolies into its colonies, and winks at slavery, and while the British government cheers a political enterprise founded upon slavery, and by its chief organs defends the system, Russia emancipates her serfs. There is not the least harm in observing these little facts. Russia, John Bull will remember, conducts herself as a friendly power. That is all. England and France have shown themselves to be unfriendly powers. And we do not forget it.''

The Russian fleet was to remain in United States waters for seven months, departing in April 1864 only after both Russia and the United States had fully satisfied themselves that all danger of war from Europe had passed. Throughout the stay there were continuous celebrations, festivities, and a daily public outpouring of American gratitude. The Russian ships stationed off New York sailed in December for Washington, and made their way up the Potomac River, dropping anchor at the nation's capital. This commenced another round of celebrations. With the unfortunate exception of Lincoln, who at the time was suffering a mild case of smallpox, the entire cabinet and Mrs. Lincoln hosted the Russian officers at gala receptions on board the flagship. The Russians toasted Lincoln, and Mrs. Lincoln led a toast to the czar and the emancipation of the serfs.

A two-power, two-ocean Navy
The Russian Pacific fleet's stay in San Francisco was also filled with celebrations, and provides further evidence of how detailed were the plans which had been worked out for the alliance.

During the Civil War, the United States had only a one-ocean navy, and it patrolled the East Coast while the Pacific Coast remained unprotected by U.S. naval forces. Under these conditions, the Russian fleet at San Francisco filled the wartime function of a U.S. Pacific fleet. Recall here the testimony of American Admiral Farragut and Russian Atlantic fleet commander, Admiral Lessovsky, corroborating the czar's reference to the existence of sealed orders for the Russian fleet's intervention on the side of the Union should England or her allies attack Lincoln's government.

We now cite the testimony of Pacific fleet commander Popov to establish the case that not only the Russian fleet in the Atlantic, but the czar's Pacific fleet, as well, was under such orders.
In the winter of 1863-64, rumors swept San Francisco that an attack by the Confederate raiders Alabama and Sumter was imminent. The California government appealed to Admiral Popov for protection. Popov's reply, citing his orders for the contingency of a British or a Confederate naval attack on the West Coast, demonstrates beyond a doubt that London's continuous denunciations of a ``secret alliance'' between Russia and the United States during the Civil War period were based on reality:

``Should a Southern cruiser attempt an assault ... we shall put on steam and clear for action.... The ships of his Imperial Majesty are bound to assist the authorities of every place where friendship is offered them, in all measures which may be deemed necessary by the local authorities, to repel any attempt against the security of the place.''

The United States West Coast was never attacked.

The postwar outlook
The central determinant of world politics through the period from 1863 to 1867 was the drive of American Whigs and the Russian government to consolidate their wartime alliance into a permanent entente. Throughout the 1860s, American and Russian ``Whigs'' continuously pushed to secure this permanent alliance, even, in the American case, under the enormous handicaps that emerged after Lincoln's assassination.

At the height of the celebration that engulfed the United States following the arrival of the Russian Fleet, on Oct. 17, 1863, Harper's Weekly ran an editorial which expressed the nation's dominant public sentiment. The editorial called for a permanent alliance with Russia, as the international strategic anchor to guarantee world peace and economic development for decades to come. This document speaks eloquently for itself:

``It seems quite doubtful, under these circumstances, whether we can possibly much longer maintain the position of proud isolation which Washington coveted....

``The alliance of the Western Powers [Britain and France], maintained through the Crimean War and exemplified in the recognition of the Southern rebels by both powers conjointly--is in fact, if not in name, a hostile combination against the United States.

``What is our proper reply to this hostile combination?|... Would it not be wise to meet the hostile alliance by an alliance with Russia? France and England united can do and dare much against Russia alone or the United States alone; but against Russia and the United States combined what could they do?

``The analogies between the American and Russian people have too often been described to need further explanation here. Russia, like the United States, is a nation of the future. Its capabilities are only just being developed. Its national destiny is barely shaped. Its very institutions are in their cradle, and have yet to be modeled to fit advancing civilization and the spread of intelligence. Russia is in the agonies of a terrible transition: the Russian serfs like the American Negroes, are receiving their liberty; and the Russian boiars, like the Southern slaveowners, are mutinous at the loss of their property. When this great problem shall have been solved, and the Russian people shall consist of 100,000,000 intelligent, educated beings, it is possible that Russian institutions will have been welded by the force of civilization into a similarity with ours. At that period, the United States will probably also contain 100,000,000 educated, intelligent people. Two such peoples, firmly bound together by an alliance as well as by traditional sympathy and good feeling, what would be impossible? Certainly the least of the purposes which they could achieve would be to keep the peace of the world....

``At the present time Russia and the United States occupy remarkably similar positions. A portion of the subjects of the Russian Empire, residing in Poland, have attempted to secede and set up an independent national existence, just as our Southern slaveowners have tried to secede from the Union and set up a slave Confederacy; and the Czar, like the government of the Union, has undertaken to put down the insurrection by force of arms. In that undertaking, which every government is bound to make under penalty of national suicide, Russia, like the United States has been thwarted and annoyed by the interference of France and England. The Czar, like Mr. Lincoln, nevertheless, perseveres in his purpose; and being perfectly in earnest and determined, has sent a fleet into our waters in order that, if war should occur, British and French commerce should not escape as cheaply as they did during the Crimean contest.

``An alliance between Russia and the United States at the present time would probably relieve both of us from all apprehensions of foreign interference. It is not likely it would involve either nation in war. On the contrary, it would probably be the best possible guarantee against war. It would be highly popular in both countries....

``The reception given last week in this city to Admiral Lisovski [Lessovsky] and his officers will create more apprehension at the Tuilleries and at St. James than even the Parrott gun or the capture of the Atlanta. If it be followed up by diplomatic negotiations, with a view to an alliance with the Czar, it may prove an epoch of no mean importance in history.''

The end of the entente
The fact that such a post-Civil War epoch of peace and development, based on a formal ``superpowers'' entente, did not materialize, requires no long-winded explanation. Lincoln's assassination by a British conspiracy cost the United States Whigs the Executive. After Lincoln's death, the White House and the cabinet fell under the sway of British agents of influence, sealing the fate of the entente.

A year and a day following Lincoln's death, on April 16, 1866, the czar narrowly escaped assassination. This galvanized the American Whigs into action. The Republican congressional leadership drafted a resolution, which was overwhelmingly passed by Congress, authorizing the dispatch of a special envoy to Russia ``to convey in person to His Imperial Majesty America's good will and congratulations to the twenty millions of serfs upon the providential escape from danger of the Sovereign to whose head and heart they owe the blessings of their freedom.''

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox was selected to head the mission. On Aug. 8, 1866, Fox, accompanied by Ambassador Clay, formally presented the joint resolution of the Congress to Alexander II, with Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov standing in attendance. The American delegation went on a national tour, with entertainment, fireworks, and parades everywhere.

The U.S. delegation's tour marked the postwar high-water mark of the entente. After late 1866, the cabinet of the Johnson administration, under Secretary of State Seward's direction, successfully implemented a containment strategy against the Whig goals. The British consolidated their position in Canada, one step in reestablishing British imperial hegemony on a global scale. The consolidation included the murder of Alexander II at the hands of a British-deployed assassin in March 1881.

Humanity, then, came very close to securing the world for global industrial development, with a United States-Russian entente as its strategic core. The prospects for entente and the objective capability of a United States-Russian alliance to finish off the City of London exist today. We dare not fail a second time.

References

• Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War
• John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. 2.
• Thomas W. Balch, The Alabama Arbitration (Philadelphia: Allen, Lane and Scott, 1900).
• Wharton Barker, ``The Secret of Russian Friendship,'' published in the Independent, LVI, March 24, 1904.
• Rev. Charles B. Boynton, The Four Great Powers: England, France, Russia and America: Their Policy, Resources, and Probably Future (Cincinnati, Chicago: C.F. Vent and Co., 1866).
• James Callahan, ``Russo-American Relations During the American Civil War,'' Morgantown: West Virginia University Studies in American History, 1908, Series I, Diplomatic History No. 1.
• Cassius Marcellus Clay, The Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (Cincinnati: J.F. Brennan and Co., 1886).
• Charles A. DeArnaud, The Union and Its Ally Russia (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1890).
• Harper's Weekly, Oct. 17, 1863.
• Lincoln Papers: No. 10880-4, Clay to Lincoln, private, July 25, 1861.
• Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1959).
• Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 91:1947.
• James R. Robertson, A Kentuckian at the Court of the Tsars (Berea, Kentucky: Berea College Press, 1935).
• Benjamin Platt Thomas, ``Russo-American Relations, 1815-1867,'' Johns Hopkins Studies, series 48 (1930).
• U.S. Department of State Archives, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, June 21, 1861.
• U.S. Department of State manuscripts, Cameron to Seward, Dispatches, Russia, 1860-1869. Washington.

​
​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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​Before interviewing Petro Poroshenko on 9/25/2016, CNN’s Fareed Zakariah had made ads for the show suggesting that Petroshenko is an “authority” on Vladimir Putin because, supposedly, “no one knows Putin better than Poroshenko.” In fact no one but the Russian people, who confer on Putin an over 80% popularity rating, truly know their president, whom they adore. So if Fareed wanted people to really know Putin, then why did they choose as an authority a man who considers Putin his worst enemy, who has only met with Putin a few times and has mainly discussed the aftermath of a disaster created by Western meddling aimed at harming Putin and Russia? Well, let’s see: we are on the eve of the presidential debates and the only motive for choosing the anti-Putin Poroshenko would be to give the US people a distorted image of Putin. Why? Because Donald Trump is perceived as being pro-Putin and CNN sees it as their mission to have Trump defeated. I doubt if their viewers are unaware of this duplicitous strategy. I saw through it instantly – with great aversion.

Secondly, Poroshenko claims that there are x-number of Russian troops on “Ukrainian” soil. That is not true. There are none.

Let me explain:

1--Ukraine does not have a legitimate government in Kiev. The so-called “government” there is the heir to an illegitimate regime under Yatseniuk, who was hand-picked by Victoria Nuland of the US Department of State – as revealed by a now-notorious phone conversation proving that it was the US, and not the Ukrainian people, who installed an anti-Russian current government (this is  based on a transcript leaked to the BBC, as reported here), of which Poroshenko is an extension.   Not only did the US government install Yatseniuk as president but it also, along with George Soros and other Western actors, was deeply involved in the bloody illegal Maidan coup. Fareed himself interviewed George Soros personally in May of 2014 and in that program, Soros admitted that he was involved, as I showed here in an extensive analysis of Soros’ remarks to Fareed. Obviously, if the Maidan coup had been the spontaneous grass-roots movement that it was billed as, there would have been no need for foreign intervention. Yet several European heads of state and officials were there, including German foreign minister Steinmeier. Obviously they did not go because they knew the coup would succeed without them and their agitation. Therefore, the current government in Kiev is not a properly and democratically elected Ukrainian government but rather a foreign government installed by subterfuge and controlled by the US and its anti-Russian allies. It is therefore illegitimate and should be disbanded.

2--Novorossia is not part of the Ukraine. It is a Russian speaking region that was part of the pre-coup Ukraine but now has its own government and its own military. In the same way as Scotland was allowed a referendum to determine its own fate, Novorossia is entitled to determine its own future course and is being illegally denied that right by the Western Establishment. The US-led illegitimate Kiev government deliberately provoked the Russian speakers in what is now Novorossia (Donbass, Lugansk) by denying them the official use of their native language, Russian, causing them to wish to split from Ukraine. Their demonstrations were met by military responses, including murder of citizens by aerial bombardments and assassinations, by the Kiev government, which are ongoing today, as shown at this site, which provides regular updates of Kiev’s violation of the Minsk treaties and ceasefires.

The US and the Kiev regime knew full well that this ban on the Russian language would be offensive to people who had been using Russian in their homes, in their schools, in their local government, on street signs and in official documents of all kinds.

To add insult to injury, Kiev collaborated with groups, such as the Azov battalion, which had ties to the German Nazis in the Ukraine and helped exterminate the Ukrainian Jews. Kiev’s ties to these fascists are extremely offensive to Russians, whose country was practically devastated by the Nazis and lost 11 million soldiers, between 7 and 20 million civilians, and billions of dollars worth of industrial capacity, precious monuments and art treasures, to the Nazis – but also managed to kill 4 times as many Nazis as the rest of the allies combined. To the Russian people, seeing the fascist fighters of US-backed Kiev killing Russian speakers was as if the Western allies had suddenly sided with Hitler. The Washington Post, in a rare report less critical of Russia than usual, recounts this story, closing it with:

“…we shouldn’t forget how the Soviets won World War II in Europe.”

While the highly unpopular US puppet Petro smears Putin, arguably the world’s most popular national leader, as dishonest, he Poroshenko is the dishonest one because he denies the crucially important reality expressed in this point and in point no. 1 above.

Speaking of dishonesty, Poroshenko’s government pretends that it no longer is responsible for the payment of its debt for gas supplies because of alleged Russian involvement with the Novorossian military. That is not true. The real reason that Kiev will not pay is because the corrupt Ukraine government and business class have bankrupted the country and they simply cannot afford to pay this debt.

Thus the reality that Fareed Zakaria carefully shields his audience from is that Poroshenko is an illegitimate, and very unpopular leader (see this International Business Times article), and that the bait that was offered to the Ukrainians to induce them to execute their Maidan coup was precisely something that is no longer available to them, namely, EU membership.  They were cheated.

There are several reasons why EU membership is not available to Ukraine:

—The country, as detailed above, is insolvent and would represent a burden on the already foundering EU, which has since lost one of its key members and tax payers, ie, the UK

—The EU is tearing apart at the seams, with several insolvent member states, an insolvent Deutsche Bank, and a host of third parties in member states that, if able to gain control, will give the people referendums on leaving the EU. If – or rather when – even one more major state exits, the EU will collapse.

—One crucial reason for this vulnerability of the EU is the policy of forcing member states to accept refugee quotas, despite the extreme unpopularity of this policy.

—Another reason for the EU’s vulnerability is the Russia sanctions policy imposed on the EU by the US, which has caused a deep rift in Europe, whose businesses are losing millions as a result of this policy. German businesses are lobbying hard for an end to the sanctions against Russia, as reported by the WSJ.

Poroshenko has been presiding over a country that has lost significant territory and seen double-digit negative economic growth since it began allowing the US to write national policies that deliberately provoke Russia (in a fruitless effort to isolate Russia) and what is now known as Novorossia.

Putin presides over a country that had a GDP of 1,362 billion in 2015 at a population of 146 million.

The GDP per capita of Ukraine was 2,824 USD in 2015 (down from 3,123 the previous year), compared to 9,000 USD in Russia in 2015, or about 3 times less – despite sanctions.
So you can argue over whose fault the Ukrainian failure is, but one thing remains certain: The country that decided to go its own way is arguably 3 times better off economically than the country whose leaders dragged it into a proxy war on the US side. Back when Ukraine was trading freely with Russia, it was still struggling but at least it was solvent. Now, after US meddling, it can no longer pay its debts.

And whether or not Poroshenko is an authority on Putin, yesterday’s CNN interview is still a case of the mouse jumping the cat.

Contact CNN’s Fareed Zakaria (fill in short form at bottom):
http://edition.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?126

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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June 21, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - Some 50 State Department officials have signed a memo calling on President Obama to launch air and missile strikes on the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad.

A "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons," they claim, "would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process."

In brief, to strengthen the hand of our diplomats and show we mean business, we should start bombing and killing Syrian soldiers.
​
Yet Syria has not attacked us. And Congress has not declared war on Syria, or authorized an attack. Where do these State hawks think President Obama gets the authority to launch a war on Syria?

Does State consider the Constitution to be purely advisory when it grants Congress the sole power to declare war? Was not waging aggressive war the principal charge against the Nazis at Nuremberg?

If U.S. bombs and missiles rain down on Damascus, to the cheers of the C-Street Pattons, what do we do if Bashar Assad’s allies Iran and Hezbollah retaliate with Benghazi-type attacks on U.S. diplomats across the Middle East? What do we do if Syrian missiles and Russian planes starting shooting down U.S. planes?

Go to war with Hezbollah, Iran and Russia?

Assume U.S. strikes break Syria’s regime and Assad falls and flees. Who fills the power vacuum in Damascus, if not the most ruthless of the terrorist forces in that country, al-Nusra and ISIS?

Should ISIS reach Damascus first, and a slaughter of Alawites and Christians ensue, would we send an American army to save them?

According to CIA Director John Brennan, ISIS is spreading and coming to Europe and America. Does it make sense then that we would launch air and missile strikes against a Syrian regime and army that is today the last line of defense between ISIS and Damascus?

Does anyone think these things through?

Wherever, across the Middle East, we have plunged in to wage war – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria – people continue to suffer and die, and we are ensnared.

Have we not fought enough wars in this Godforsaken region?

Last week, Russian planes launched air strikes on the rebels in Syria whom we have been arming and training to overthrow Assad.

Said John Kerry, "Russia needs to understand that our patience is not infinite." But why are we arming rebels to overthrow Assad?

Who rises if he falls? Moscow’s alliance with Damascus goes back decades. Syria provides Russia with a naval base in the Mediterranean. Vladimir Putin’s support for the embattled Syrian regime in the civil war being waged against it is legal under international law.

It is our policy that appears questionable.

Where did Obama get the right to arm and train rebels to dump over the Damascus regime? Did Congress authorize this insurrection? Or is this just another CIA-National Endowment for Democracy project?

Why are we trying to bring down Assad, anyhow?

U.S. foreign policy today seems unthinking, reactive, impulsive.

Last week, 31,000 NATO troops conducted exercises in Poland and the Baltic republics, right alongside the border with Russia.

For the first time since 1945, German tanks appeared in Poland.

Now we are planning to base four NATO battalions – one U.S.-led, one British, one German, and perhaps one Canadian, as the French and Italians are balking at being part of a tripwire for war.

How would we react if 31,000 Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian and North Korean troops conducted military exercises across from El Paso and Brownsville, Texas?

How would we react if each of those countries left behind a battalion of troops to prevent a repeat of General "Black Jack" Pershing’s intervention in Mexico in 1916?

Americans would be apoplectic.

Nor are some Europeans enthusiastic about confronting Moscow.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the NATO exercises "warmongering" and "saber-rattling." He adds, "Anyone who believes that symbolic tank parades on the alliance’s eastern border will increase security is wrong. We would be well-advised not to deliver any excuses for a new, old confrontation."

Not only is Steinmeier’s Social Democratic Party leery of any new Cold War with Russia, so, too, is the German Left Party, and the anti-EU populist party Alternative for Germany, which wants closer ties to Russia and looser ties to the United States.

This month, we sent the USS Porter into the Black Sea. Why? Says Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, "to deter potential aggression."

While there is talk of a NATO Black Sea fleet, Bulgaria, one of the three NATO Black Sea nations, appears to want no part of it.

The European Union also just voted to extend sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in Ukraine.

Donald Trump calls the NATO alliance a rip-off, a tripwire for World War III and "obsolete." Hillary Clinton compares Putin’s actions in Ukraine to Hitler’s actions in Germany in the early 1930s.

Looking for a four-year faceoff with a nuclear-armed Russia?

Hillary’s the one!

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com 

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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​On June 16, the New York Times reported :

“More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.

The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times by a State Department official, says American policy has been “overwhelmed” by the unrelenting violence in Syria. It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.”

We are a group of concerned U.S. citizens currently visiting Russia with the goal of increasing understanding and reducing international tension and conflict. We are appalled by this call for direct U.S. aggression against Syria, and believe it points to the urgent need for open public debate on U.S. foreign policy.

Center for Citizen Initiatives - Vision and Mission: Massive nuclear arsenals are once again on high alert in the United States and Russia. Misunderstandings, fallacious accusations, flare ups and demonizing propaganda have covered print media and television screens for two years. At CCI, we see the need and possibility for changing this situation. When real people in large numbers get involved, amazing things begin to happen. Join us! Let's help reduce the tensions existing today between the two Superpowers.

Continue reading at: http://ccisf.org

​
Bridging Divides of a New Cold War
By Ann Wright - June 15, 2016

As NATO steps up military maneuvers near Russia’s borders and congressmen fume about “Russian aggression,” a delegation of Americans including former U.S. officials is looking for face-to-face ways to encourage peace, writes Ann Wright.

I just flew across 11 times zones — from Tokyo, Japan to Moscow, Russia. Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, nearly twice as large as the United States and has extensive mineral and energy resources, the largest reserves in the world. Russia has the world’s ninth largest population with over 146.6 million people. The population of the U.S of 321.4 million is more than twice as large as Russia’s.

I haven’t been back to Russia since the early 1990s when the Soviet Union dissolved itself and allowed 14 new countries to be created from it. At the time I was a U.S. diplomat and wanted to be a part of the historic opening of U.S. Embassies in one of the newly formed countries. I asked to be sent to a new country in Central Asia and soon found myself in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Continue reading at: http://ccisf.org

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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The US establishment writers on Russia are one and all “presstitutes” and when you put their writings together, back to back, in 40 pages or so as JRL has so kindly done in their Christmas eve issue, the result is an astounding propaganda barrage.

This essay is dedicated to the 24 December 2015 issue of Johnson’s Russia List. I begin with a brief description of JRL to those of you in the general public who are, likely as not, unfamiliar with this internet resource. I then make an aside to share some personal reflections on the context for this remarkable edition: the bitterly partisan Information War over the nature of Vladimir Putin’s ‘regime’ and how to conduct relations with it. And I conclude with a detailed response to one of the articles in the Christmas eve issue, chosen precisely because of its scholarly pretensions and seeming freshness of material versus the rehash of analyses of why Putin’s Russia is failing that we get in all the rest of the 24 December entries in JRL.

Johnson’s Russia List (www.russialist.org) is an internet digest published roughly six days a week year round and focused on Russia, now with a separate section on Ukraine. The JRL is a project domiciled at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and operated by Richard Johnson who founded it something like twenty years ago. Its banner tells us that it receives partial funding from the George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, partly from the Carnegie Corporation, New York, neither of which may be considered neutral in matters concerning Russia, quite the contrary. But further funding comes from the voluntary contributions of subscribers, of whom there are perhaps 6000, mostly American academics and university centers having an interest in Russian affairs. Appearing in JRL is an ambition of a great many wannabe experts and authorities in the field, mostly but not exclusively political scientists and journalists.

As an institution seeking to be fair-handed in purveying news and opinion about Russia, theJRL has been in the cross-hairs of activists on both sides of the highly divisive pro- and anti-Putin camps. About a year ago one of the most outspoken Russia-bashers, liberal economist Anders Aslund, publicly broke with JRL for what he saw as going easy on Putin in its selection of material. Alternative media commentators like Michael Averko have hit out at JRL for the opposite alleged abuse. In Johnson’s defense, one might argue he chooses selon le marché, ie., from what is being published.

Undeniably, US and UK scholars and pundits are lopsided in their bias against Putin and Russia. Nevertheless, even within the scope of this allowance for what there is to choose from and the presumed desire to run his shop straight down the middle, the 24 December issue of the Johnson’s Russia List was a doozy. The count was 14 articles or transcripts of video events slamming Russia and Putin to 0 articles holding any other view. And among the publishers or hosts of the 14 entries being republished in JRL are not just heavy guns in the media wars but also would-be temples of learning: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the European Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy magazine, the Center for European Policy Analysis, the American Council on Foreign Relations, The Moscow Times, the Kennan Institute, The National Review, Forbes.com and Home Box Office.

Putin’s personality figures large in nearly all of these essays and discussions as the sole explanation for all the turns in Russian foreign and domestic policy. This is entirely in keeping with the ad hominem argumentation that has become the norm in political discussions generally in the US. Joseph Stalin, with his no man, no issue philosophy of governance must be chuckling, wherever he is, over how this view has caught on in what passes today for polite society.

The phenomenon is something I felt acutely this past spring in its McCarthy-ite form when I appeared as one of three participants in the Euronews hosted talk show The Network. The subject of the day was the assassination of Kremlin critic and opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot down within proximity of the Kremlin walls a few days earlier. We were discussing media coverage of that event and who was to blame for politically motivated crimes in Russia, when a fellow panelist, Elmar Brok, the chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on foreign relations, who was irritated by my insistence that Russian media gave a great many different takes on the news and was anything but monolithic, said in an aside to me that was picked up by the microphones and later went on air: “How much is the Kremlin paying you?” Not being a hardened politician like Brok, stunned by the way a senior official of the EU could stoop to such low-life viciousness, and naively believing that Europe’s most watched news station would not broadcast crude libel, I said nothing in response and the talk moved on.

Having just come back a week ago from Moscow, where my stay was picked up by a Kremlin-funded institution, I now can give a fairly precise answer to MEP Brok’s impertinent and malicious question: for three years of occasional guest appearances as interviewee and panelist on the Cross Talk program of Russia Today, I have been paid 3 nights in a 5 star hotel in downtown Moscow, lavish buffet breakfasts, a tour of the Kremlin and a seat at the banquet dinner celebration of Russia Today’s 10 years on air where Vladimir Putin was the keynote speaker.

For this token of respect by my hosts at RT, I am duly grateful. Yet, I know full well that it is not to be compared with the lavish hospitality bestowed on attendees at the annual Kremlin-organized gatherings of the Valdai Discussion Club to which many senior US academics, Angela Stent, of Georgetown University, to name one, Robert Legvold of Columbia and Tufts, to name another, have been invited regularly notwithstanding the fact that most are hostile, at best agnostic to the ‘Putin regime’ in their public writings and appearances.

Now that I have ‘come clean’ about Kremlin blandishments that have come my way, I turn to my political opponents who have a monopoly on yesterday’s JRL and ask how much they are benefiting in terms of grants, professional promotions and access to the high and mighty in Washington for publicly supporting the propaganda lines of State Department handouts. I wouldn't dream of accusing them of being on the CIA payroll...

Put another way and avoiding rhetorical questions, I assert plainly that the Establishment writers on Russia are one and all “presstitutes” and when you put their writings together, back to back, in 40 pages or so as JRL has so kindly done in their Christmas eve issue, the result is an astounding propaganda barrage.
From these collected rants by some very well known “authorities,” I have chosen the one piece which presents itself as sort of scholarly. In this it stands apart from the slapstick humor of Richard Haass and Kimberley Marten in the transcript of an HBO airing and from the rehash of analyses of the fatal weaknesses in the Putin regime that constitute the bulk of the writings of other essayists.
Unlike the others, Kirk Bennett’s article would appear to break new ground. In “Russia and the West. The Myth of Russia’s Containment: Has the West always had it in for Russia? Hardly” we are treated to an historical analysis intended to debunk what the author identifies as a key Kremlin propaganda line. It tries to refute Vladimir Putin’s assertions in several speeches that the West has always been an opponent of Russia, whether out of envy or fear. This victimization narrative of the Kremlin, in the view of the author, and of the great majority of U.S. international relations experts, is used to whip up patriotic fervor in the broad Russian population and underpin a regime that is undergoing great strain from economic hardships and stagnation,as well as from the international isolation that followed its annexation of Crimea.

The author starts out in paragraph two citing the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev to show us he is no carpetbagging political scientist, that Russian studies are in his blood. Indeed, as we see through his text to the end, he has read his Russian and European history.

That is his strong point, compared to many of the other loudmouths in the articles republished by Johnson’s Russia List. It is also his weak point: he has read Russian history but he has not researched or written it. This is not an accusation, but a mere statement of the facts. Bennett is introduced to us as a ‘former U.S. Foreign Service officer who spent most of his career working on post-Soviet issues.” For an historical overview like the article in question that goes back almost 300 years, he is clearly something of a lightweight.

Bennett’s article appeared originally in The American Interest, the publication founded and run by the key popularizer of Neoconservative philosophy, Francis Fukuyama. He otherwise has recently published in the online platform of The American Center for a European Ukraine, which should explain where he is coming from politically and to whom he is reaching out.

In effect, Bennett is just one more American thinker who presumes that he understands Russian history and Russian national interest vastly better than the Russians themselves do. In this regard, my best advice to him and to his followers is to sit down with a couple of books written by Dominic Lieven, a scion of one of the great families in the Russian Baltics who is presently a visiting professor at Yale University and who spent more than 25 years as professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics.

The two books in question are Russia Against Napoleon (2012) and The End of Tsarist Russia(2015). Both present the history of momentous periods from a novel perspective, Russia’s own, based on extensive work in the Russian historical archives. Together they sweep into the dust bin most of the simplistic remarks of Bennett about the nature of Russian-European relations since the 18th century up to 1917. For example, Lieven explains at length the competing imperialisms, European and Russian of the 19th century, which were underpinned not only by Russia's Panslavism, but by Pan-Germanism and by myths to justify Anglo-Saxon world hegemony, which put the powers at odds and which spread widely the denigration of Russia that survives to our day in the West. From Lieven's archival research and detailed attention to the advice the Russian rulers received from their senior advisers, both in 1812-1815 and in 1906-1917, both from generals and civilians, it is clear that the Putin narrative on Russian history which Bennett tries to shoot down had far wider acceptance among serious, well educated Russians and far more subtlety to it than Bennett can imagine.
But Bennett’s problem is not just his average-level consumer’s as opposed to scholar’s knowledge of Russian history. It extends to current events. Bennett distorts present realities. Yes, he is right that Vladimir Putin from time to time plays the ‘victimization’ card, just as from time to time, more generally, the Russian President invokes nationalism. The simple fact is that in Russia, just as in most Western countries including the USA, nationalism has broad resonance and popular understanding, playing as it does to the heartstrings, whereasRealpolitik, which is the dominant approach to policy behind Putin’s thinking, is seen as cold and unfeeling by the public, too cerebral, so is held back from the addresses to the nation that Bennett cites.

It would be more appropriate to describe Vladimir Putin’s characterization of Russia’s talking partners on the international stage as “Frenemies.” Anyone paying close attention to his major speeches knows that he is never excited, least of all does he engage in “tirades” over the conduct of this or that country in its relations to Russia because the underlying expectation of Putin is that all countries are in permanent competition for their own advantage and only alignment of interests can ensure genuine meeting of minds and common action. Personalities as such count for almost nothing.
Contrary to the facile generalization of Bennett, Vladimir Putin has always followed a foreign policy that had a plan A, of joining NATO or otherwise entering into a shared security platform with the West, and a default position plan B of going it alone, as we now see today after the sharp confrontation over Ukraine.

It will be interesting to see in the days ahead if David Johnson has the courage of his convictions and publishes my indictment of his latest harvest of anti-Russian invective.

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2015

G. Doctorow is an occasional guest lecturer at St. Petersburg State University and Research Fellow of the American University in Moscow. His latest book, Stepping Out of Line: Collected (Nonconformist) Essays on Russian-American Relations, 2008-12, is available in paperback and e-book from Amazon.com and affiliated websites worldwide.

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.
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Notable comment: 
Dr. Doctorow, a truly independent scholar and long-time expert on Russia, has, as we Americans say, "hit the nail on the head!" I, too, am a long-time specialist in Russian affairs -- both from an academic and intelligence/foreign policy point of view. And I, too, am saddened at the current academic and media pandering that has been facilitated by the kind of "academics" reminiscent of those who bent to the prevailing winds during the very sad days of Sen. Joe McCarthy. And, as Dr. Doctorow indicates, it is virtually impossible for those of us with a more balanced view toward President Vladimir Putin to be published in the U.S. "mainstream" media that is owned and operated by what Pope Francis has called the "blood-soaked arms trade." Quite simply, peace -- or even detente -- is bad for business. Painting Putin as Joe Stalin and Russia as an "existential threat" is good for business -- and for all manner of other emoluments. The rest of us, who know something of American as well as Russian history, are blacklisted from the unrestrained, Putin-bashing "mainstream" media.

Ray McGovern, former Chief, Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, Central Intelligence Agency
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Original article source: 
http://usforeignpolicy.blogs.lalibre.be/archive/2015/12/25/a-christmas-present-to-russia-bashers-from-johnson-s-russia-1148604.html

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​The major influential western print media are engaged in a prolonged, large-scale effort to demonize Russian President Putin, his politics and persona. There is an article (or several articles) every day in which he is personally stigmatized as a dictator, authoritarian, czar, ‘former KGB operative’ and Soviet-style ruler; anything but the repeatedly elected President of Russia.

He is accused of hijacking Russia from the ‘road to democracy’, as pursued by his grotesquely corrupt predecessor Boris Yeltsin; of directing the bloody repression of the ‘freedom loving Chechens’; of jailing innocent, independent and critical oligarchs and robber barons; of fomenting an uprising in the ‘democratic, newly pro-Western’ Ukraine and seizing control of Crimea; of backing a ‘bloody tyrant’ in Syria (elected President Bashar Assad) in a civil war against ISIS terrorists; of running the Russian economy into the ground; and of militarily threatening the Baltic and Eastern European NATO member countries.

In a word, the media have propagated an image of an ‘out-of-control autocrat’, who makes a mockery of ‘democratic’ norms and ‘Western values’, and who seeks to revive the ‘Soviet (aka Evil) Empire’.

The corollary is that ‘Western powers’, despite their peace-loving propensities and fraternal attempts to bring Russia into the democratic ‘fold’, have been ‘forced’ to now surround Russia with NATO military bases and missiles; to finance a violent coup in the Ukraine (on Russia’s frontier) and arm the Ukrainian putsch government and neo-fascist militias to ‘restore democracy’ and violently suppress ethnic Russian ‘separatists’ in Eastern Ukraine. We are told that US and EU sanctions against Russia were carefully crafted ‘diplomatic’ measures designed to punish the Moscow ‘aggressor’.

In reality, the Western media has relentlessly demonized Vladimir Putin in a campaign to further NATO military expansion and undermine the Russian economy and its national security. The goal is ultimately to force a ‘regime change’, restoring the neo-liberal elites who had pillaged Russia’s economy during the 1990’s and whose brutal economic policies led to the premature death of over 6 million Russians due to deprivation and the collapse of the healthcare system.

The Western media has backed every oligarch, gangster and fraudster who has gone on trial and been convicted during Putin’s term in office. The propagandists tell us the reason for this affinity between the Western media and the gangster-oligarchs is that these convicted felons, who claim to be ‘political dissidents’ and critics of Putin’s rule, have been dispossessed, and jailed for upholding ‘Western values’.

The Western media conveniently ignore the well-documented studies on the source of the gangster-oligarchs’ wealth: The violent and illegal seizure of multi-billion dollars-worth of natural resources (aluminum, oil and gas), banks, factories, pension funds and real estate. During the Yeltsin period the oligarchs controlled thousands of armed gangsters and engaged in internal warfare during which thousands were killed, including top government regulators, police officials and journalists who dared to oppose or expose their pillage and property grabs.

Putin’s prosecution of a mere fraction of the most notorious oligarch-gangsters has won the support of the vast majority of Russian citizens because it represents a return to law and order and the return of stolen public wealth.

Only the Western media has dared to refer to these convicted felons as ‘political victims and reformers’. They did so because the oligarchs had become the most loyal and submissive assets in the US and EU governments’ efforts to convert Russia into an irreversibly weak vassal state.

The Western media constantly refer to President Putin as the ‘authoritarian ruler’, despite the fact that he has been repeatedly elected by large majorities in competitive elections against Western backed and funded candidates. His popularity is attested to by opinion polls conducted by Western agencies.

In 2015, President Putin’s support soared to over 85%. The pro-Western Russian neo-liberal politicians scored in the low single digits according to the same independent polls.

Clearly the Russian public does not want to return to the poverty and chaos of the Western-backed gangster politics of the 1990’s.

Whatever reservations working and middle class Russians have over President Putin’s style of decision-making, they clearly value his crackdown on gangster-controlled elections, Chechen terrorism, and his restoration of Russian military defense of its frontiers, including the annexation of Crimea, following the US-engineered coup in Ukraine.

Every day, the Western media recycle reports of the ‘decline and demise’ of the Russian economy, blaming ‘statist’ mismanagement of the economy by Putin. They claim ‘declining living standards’, the ‘negative growth’ of the economy and the ‘growing isolation’ of an ‘expansionist’ Russia in the face of Western sanctions.

These media claims are laughable. Readily available data demonstrate that living standards of the vast majority of Russian citizens have significantly increased under President Putin’s administration, especially after the utter collapse under the free marketers of the1990’s. Russian workers receive their pay, pensioners their pensions, enterprises their loans – on time. During the ‘free market’ days of Boris Yeltsin, workers went up to a year without pay, pensioners were selling their heirlooms in the street to survive and enterprises paid extortionate interest rates to oligarch-gangster controlled banks! Comparative data, easily obtained, are deliberately ignored by the mass media because it doesn’t fit the demonological narrative.

The mass media present the neo-liberal ‘opposition’ and ‘liberal critics’ as Russian democrats defending ‘Western values’. They forget to mention that these ‘liberal critics’ have been directly funded by Western foundations (National Endowment for Democracy, Soros Foundation, etc.) and Russian non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) with longstanding ties to US and EU governments, intelligence agencies and exiled Russian billionaires. The so-called ‘Russian’ democratic opposition revealed their abject servility to Western interests when they openly supported the Ukrainian coup and Kiev’s bloody assault on ethnic Russian-Ukrainians in the eastern ‘Donbas’ regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Odessa. Whatever shreds of respectability and credibility the ‘democratic opposition’ retained with the Russian public, up to that point, was lost. They were seen for what they are: propaganda arms of Western imperialism and mouth-pieces for neo-fascists.

The Western mass media charge Putin’s government with the same crimes that their own governments commit. After the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland admitted to channeling $5 billion to fund the 2014 coup in Ukraine and after the Polish regime boasted of training far right street fighters, whose mob violence served as a pretext for the coup, and after neo-fascist coalition partners in Odessa of burned alive four dozen ethnic Russian-Ukrainian citizens opposed to the coup, the Western mass media accused Putin of ‘intervening’ in Ukraine. This was because Russia had convoked a referendum in Crimea, in which over 80% of the electorate voted to secede from the illegitimate Ukrainian coup regime and rejoin Russia.

In truth, the Putin government is a victim of the Western power grab in the Ukraine, with Russia having to absorbed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russian refugees driven out of the Donbas, yet the Western media portray Putin as the executioner. Meanwhile the Western coup-makers and their far-right allies are depicted as victims… forced to bomb and decimate the Donbas region.

The charade continued. The Western media portray the subsequent punitive, economic sanctions imposed by the expansionist US and EU on Russia as a result of Putin’s ‘aggression’, referring to Russia’s defense of Crimea’s self-determination and the rights of the millions of bilingual ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine.

The absurdity and convoluted nature of Western demonological propaganda has reached new even more bizarre heights with their hysteria against Russia’s military support of the secular Syrian government against ISIS and other jihadi terrorists.

The Western mass media have launched a global campaign charging that the Russian air force bombs ‘non-ISIS military bases’, presumably the bases of Western-backed ‘friendly’ jihadi terrorists. This ridiculous ‘reportage’ and its accompanying ‘photos’ were published before the Russian air strikes even took place!!

Apparently timing doesn’t matter in Washington’s ‘alternative universe of lies’!

NATO passed its political line to the media that Russian support for the legitimate regime of President Assad must be discredited; that the Russian presence is ‘provocative’ and responsible for ‘creating tensions’ in the region – after years of Western-sponsored jihadi terrorism against Syria!

Obedient to its masters, the Western media breathlessly ‘reported’ that the Russians were ‘really’ engaged in Syria in order destroy the pro-Western ‘fighters’ leaving ISIS alone.

No credible evidence for this propaganda was ever presented. They trotted out aerial photos of wreckage, which had likely been lifted from previous US bombings.
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The media’s clumsy execution of the Pentagon’s line managed to embarrass even the US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, who backed off of such claims and called for an explanation from Russia. Even Secretary Kerry, who now seeks to secure Putin’s military support for the US against ISIS while withdrawing Russia’s political backing of President Assad, has cautioned the media to modify its line, now that the US favors ‘greater coordination’ with Russia – but under US leadership. The media has recently conformed to this line, although it has not managed to explain how Washington could now work with the demonic President Putin.

Western media is engaged in an intense long-term propaganda campaign to demonize President Putin. Its role is to convince world public opinion and world leaders to blindly follow the US and EU, as well as their ‘allies’ and vassal states, in a campaign to degrade and undermine Russia, and consolidate a unipolar empire under US tutelage.

The Western mass media is important; but it must be remembered that the media is an instrument of imperial state power. Its lies and fabrications, its demonization of leaders, like President Putin, are one part of a global military offensive to establish dominance and to destroy adversaries.

The more intense the imperial campaign, the riskier the power grab, the greater the need to demonize the victims.

This explains how the escalation of the rabid anti-Putin propaganda campaign coincides with the single biggest Western power grab – the Ukraine coup (‘regime change’) – since West Germany annexed East Germany, and NATO and the EU incorporated the Baltic States, Eastern Europe and the Balkans into the West’s strategic alliance. The West’s bloody break-up of the Yugoslav federation was part of this strategic program.

The problem with the Western demonization of adversaries, whether it is Russia, Iran and China today, or earlier Cuba, Libya and Yemen in the past, is that Washington and the EU face severe economic crises at home and military defeats abroad by armed Islamic and nationalist resistance movements.

The US had invested hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a shaky puppet regime in US-occupied Iraq, yet the US-trained and supplied Iraqi Army fled as the Baathist-Islamist ‘ISIS’ quickly over-ran half the country.

US troops have occupied Afghanistan for fourteen years, losing tens of thousands of lives and limbs and yet the nationalist-Islamist Taliban can easily take over Afghanistan’s third largest city, Kunduz (population 300,000), and occupies three quarters of the rest of the countryside.

Libya and Somalia are a disaster. And still Washington allocates a half billion dollars to train pro-Western mercenaries to overthrow Syria’s President Assad – mercenaries who give up their arms or join ISIS the moment they cross the border from Jordan or Turkey. The US trained mercenaries have handed over untold millions of dollars worth of heavy and light weapons and armored carriers to ISIS and Al Qaeda. The EU and the US face the dismal reality that Libya, Somalia and Syria are over-run by anti-Western Islamic fighters.
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In Asia, China is demonized in the Western media, portrayed as being on the verge of collapse, facing a hard landing, even as China grows at 7%. The Western media wring their collective hands over the crisis in China while Beijing finances two new international development banks for $100 billion, raises its contribution to the IMF and brings 50 countries, including most of the EU but minus the US and Japan, into a new infrastructure lending institution.

Why do the Western media launch a campaign of demonization that doesn’t correspond to reality? What is the goal of such demonization, which objectively undermines the possibility of forming tactical alliances to end the US’ military losses, political defeats and diplomatic isolation? The US needs Russia to defeat ISIS.

For Moscow, the fight against ISIS is crucial to Russian national security: Thousands of Chechen terrorists (some trained by the US) are fighting with ISIS and threaten to return to the Caucuses and terrorize Russia. Unlike the US public’s opposition to Washington’s role in forcing ‘regime change’ in Syria, the Russian public supports Moscow’s military support for the Syrian government because the Chechens’ campaign of terror within Russia, especially the 2004 massacre of hundreds of school children, teachers and parents in Beslan, is seared into their memory – a fact conveniently ignored by Western media when it ‘sympathizes’ with Chechen ‘freedom fighters’.

In reality, Washington should have a common interest to ally with Russia in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. However Obama is committed to ousting Assad (Russia’s ally) to expand US dominance in the Middle East in partnership with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Clearly there are insurmountable contradictions between short-term military objectives (fighting ISIS) and strategic imperial political imperatives (consolidating US-Israeli hegemony over the Middle East and Iran).

Washington has moved to end its isolation in Latin America by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Meanwhile, Washington retains the economic blockade of Cuba and its huge US military base in Guantanamo. Cuba is seen as a tactical political ally in ‘moderating’ the leftist government of Venezuela and pressuring the Colombian FARC to disarm, even as Washington deepens its military presence in the continent.

Obama signed off on a nuclear agreement with Iran (but the crippling sanctions and blockade remain in place) in order to secure Tehran’s support for the war against ISIS in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Temporarily, the Western mass media has ‘toned-down’ its demonological reporting on Iran and Cuba, for tactical purposes.

The Obama regime has adopted a ‘good cop/bad cop’ (or schizophrenic) posture with Russia on Syria – Secretary of State John Kerry speaks of joint co-operation with Moscow while Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter proposes to militarily confront ‘Russian aggression’. The media hasn’t made the switch because they don’t know which orders to obey or which line to ‘parrot’.
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In the meantime, the domestic economic crisis deepens, ISIS advances, the Taliban approaches Kabul, the Russians are arming and defending President Assad and millions of refugees, fleeing the war zones, have over- run Europe. European border wars are raging. And Obama wrings his hands in impotence. Demonology offers no allies, no solutions and no positive path to peace and co-existence.

© James Petras
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James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. 

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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