Suppose I said the following to you: “The Putin doctrine is
a decisive, well thought out attempt to strengthen Russian foreign policy in
order to improve the country's strategic and economic outlooks, thus
re-establish it as a hub of progress that will be respected again.” Will you
accept this as a legitimate effort on the part of Putin? Of course you will;
and that's because there is nothing wrong with what Putin is trying to do.
Look now how these same ideas were expressed by a
contributor to the Weekly Standard: “The Putin doctrine is a decisive,
calculating attempt to imperialize Russian foreign policy in order to
re-establish Russia
as a strategic and economic hub of power.” Now, that's something scary, don't
you think? The reason is that the contributor characterized Putin's effort not
as a legitimate endeavor but a diabolic illegitimate plot. He did it with the
use of three alarming notions: Putin is calculating, he wants to imperialize Russia 's
foreign policy, and that's because his ambition is to re-establish the lost hub
of Russian (read Soviet) power.
You'll find that passage and many more like it in the
article that came under the title: “The Putin Doctrine in Action,” written by
Lamont Colucci and published in the Weekly Standard on September 26, 2015. By
the time you have gone through the entire article and cleaned it of its
negatively biased editorializing, you'll have realized that Putin is a regular
guy that's doing nothing more than discharge the duties placed on his shoulders
by virtue of the office he occupies.
This being the case, you ask two pertinent questions: (1)
Why did Colucci adopt the tone that he did? And (2) What does this approach do
that's different from stating his opinions in a straightforward manner? Well,
with regard to the first question, you get an inkling as to what the answer may
be when you look at the first sentence in each of the article's first two
paragraphs.
The first goes like this: “Unlike American presidential
doctrines, Russian doctrines tend to go unnoticed by the western media or are
often dismissed as propaganda.” The second goes like this: “As the Obama
doctrine is a tortured pathway of penance, contrition, and risk aversion
designed to manage the decline of the United States abroad...” That is,
the author hates Obama, and hates the western media for not shaming him, which
it could do by pointing out he is the weakling that Colucci implies he is.
As to the second question, the answer to it is a little more
complicated. That's because in telling what the Colucci approach has
accomplished that's different from what it would have been had he stated his
opinion in a straightforward manner, we find ourselves in a situation akin to
standing between two mirrors facing one another – each being reflected by the
other being reflected by it.
Here is the problem: Colucci accuses the western media of
dismissing Russian doctrines as propaganda. This means he believes that the
western media persistently fail to understand Russia 's intent and the effect of
its doctrines. But that's what can also be said about Colucci, except that the
roles are reversed. As it turns out, he too fails to understand Obama's intent
and the effect of his doctrine.
Whereas he sees the Obama doctrine as a tortured pathway of
penance, contrition and risk aversion, Colucci fails to see that the intent
here is to ask the world for time out. Time out? What does that mean? Well,
since World War II , America
has been involved in four or five dozen conflicts around the world, neither of
which – except for Iraq
1 – has been a resounding success. This is like playing a deadly game that
exhausted it, and risks putting it out for good. The wise thing to do under
this condition was to ask for time out to catch one's breath, take a sip of
water, and tend the wounds that promise to bleed you to death. And that's what
Obama did.
No, no! has cried Lamont Colucci who sees Obama's approach
as being “designed to manage the decline of the United States abroad,” instead
of ignoring that apparent decline and fighting to the death. The problem with
this view is that the decline is not only apparent but real, even if it is
relative rather than absolute. And there is nothing that America can do, being
exhausted as it is, aside from taking a rest and preparing for an entirely new
world whose emergence and eventual rise it can neither stop nor slow down.
It is clear that the problem with Colucci and the media in
general is that they do not understand economics, let alone the economics of the
new world order. Aside from being illiterate in the related subjects, they are
confused by economists, pseudo-economists and downright charlatans who
deliberately or inadvertently flood the public square with false ideas. These
people do so because they don't know what they are talking about or because
they wish to mislead the public in furtherance of personal and political gains.
And yet, understanding economics is key to understanding the new geostrategic
order.
The reality that is lost on many is that China has been
the last nation to project economic power around the world by growing its
economic base horizontally. The old Soviet Union ,
together with the Warsaw Pact allies, had all that was necessary to become this
kind of economic superpower, except that it had neither the inclination to do
it, nor the vision to know how to do it. That's because “consumerism” was
synonymous to decadence which was anathema to Communism. This restricted the
Communist world to expanding the economy by growing vertically with mega
projects consisting of advanced science, heavy industries and infrastructure
works, all happening at a time when the population was craving the consumer
goods it new the Capitalist countries had in abundance.
But the world that is shaping now in this post-China
horizontal growth, is one in which the production of consumer goods is becoming
the poor-man's occupation while knowledge pertaining to projects in advanced
science, heavy industries and infrastructure – is becoming the way to building the
super-economy of the future. This is where Russia
has a clear advantage over China ,
Europe and America .
Do not be distracted by the low price of oil; look instead to what Putin is
offering the emerging economies, and draw your own conclusion.
To end his article, Colucci asks: How far will we allow the
Russians to proceed in successfully implementing their doctrine? What will it
take for America
to act?