You won’t find this anywhere in corporate media, but the most remarkable interview ran Tuesday in Chinese news outlet Xinhua. I chuckled,
wryly, as I read the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, since it is literally impossible to imagine our country’s ostensible president delivering intelligent, aware, and persuasive remarks like this without devolving into nonsense words, hair sniffing, or pugilistic threats.
I’ll quote a few points of interest, but for comprehensive readers, here is the full text of Xinhua's interview with Putin.
Warning: the U.S. government has determined that anything Putin says is automatically disinformation and might crack your delicate brain like an egg. So only read this next segment if you want to try to understand for yourself how our geopolitical enemies like Russia, China, and the BRICS nations think.
Back in the day,
Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy once explained his State Department mentors bragged that "in the final analysis, the United States was the locomotive at the head of mankind, and the rest of the world was the caboose." That confident swagger tracked a pre-Reagan “City on a Hill” philosophy, a philosophy born of America’s undeniable role in shining the headlight of freedom into the darkest corners of the globe.
But over time, especially lately, the non-Western world has grown increasingly skeptical whether the American conductor is staying sober, or is throwing some kind of party up there and about to get us all killed. Here’s how Putin described Russia’s overarching concerns, cleverly invoking inherently American values of human equality and even, hilariously,
diversity.
In Putin’s view, America and Europe have privileged themselves at the expense of the developing world, and now the ‘developing world’ wants out, to make their own international system, as equals:
“Earth is the cradle of humanity, our common home, and we are all equal as its inhabitants. Most people on the planet share this view. However, the countries of the so-called ‘golden billion’ do not seem to think so. US-led Western elites refuse to respect civilizational and cultural diversity and reject centuries-old traditional values. Seeking to retain their global dominance, they have usurped the right to tell other nations with whom they may or must not make friends and cooperate, and deny them their right to choose their own development models. They disregard other countries' sovereign interests. They seek to secure their well-being at the cost of other states, using neo-colonial methods.
Neither Russia nor its partners are happy with this situation. We have actively contributed to launching multilateral associations and mechanisms independent from the West, which build on the principles of equality, justice, transparency, and respect for mutual interests.”
Also cleverly, Putin isn’t calling for a completely new system. Putin just wants the United Nations to live up to its charter. He’s sick of hearing Biden’s diplomats talking about the so-called “rules-based international order,” which seems different from this United Nations project on which everybody has been laboring for decades. Putin just wants international rules that apply
the same to everybody.
It’s almost like Putin was talking about a
two-tiered justice system:
“The main problem we are dealing with is states whose ruling circles seek to substitute the world order based on international law with an ‘order based on certain rules,’ which they keep talking about but which no one has ever seen, no one has agreed to, and which, apparently, tend to change depending on the current political situation and interests of those who invent these rules.
We reject Western attempts to impose an order based on lies and hypocrisy, on some mythical rules of no one knows whose making. With the UN’s central coordinating role, we advocate for the primacy of international law, equal, indivisible, comprehensive and sustainable security at both the global and regional level.”
Finally, Putin reiterated that Russia has been and continues to be ready to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, but nobody in the West wants to negotiate with them. To the Russians, it seems like every time they turn around it’s sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions:
“Russia stands ready for negotiations. We have never refused to negotiate. But Western elites are stubbornly working to ‘punish’ Russia, isolate and weaken it, supplying the Kiev authorities with money and arms. They have imposed almost 16,000 unilateral illegitimate sanctions against our country. They are threatening to dismember our country. They are illegally trying to appropriate our foreign assets. They are turning a blind eye to the resurgence of Nazism and to Ukraine-sponsored terrorist attacks in our territory.
We seek a comprehensive, sustainable and just settlement of this conflict through peaceful means. We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine, but such negotiations must consider the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours. They must also involve a real discussion about future global stability, and provide reliable security guarantees both for Russia's opponents and, naturally, for Russia.”
While you can quibble about Putin eliding Russia’s part in the conflict, you must admit it’s maddening that no one in the West — certainly none of Biden, Blinken, or Nod — ever mentions a
negotiated end to the Ukraine war. It’s almost like all the Western leaders made a secret pact never to suggest
diplomacy.
The result is they look like cowards; stinking of fear, they ceaselessly worry they’re outmatched and outwitted by the Russians, and agonise that if they negotiate with Putin, he’ll somehow wind up getting the better deal. Talking won’t work! So fighting is the only option. But they’re even too scared to fight the Russians directly. So it’s the old game, ‘how about you and him fight?’
Let’s just give the Ukrainians some more missiles and let THEM fight the Russians.
Maybe things were different fifty years ago, while the third world remained largely uneducated and unconnected to the Internet, without AI chatbots, and the rest of the world lay stifled by autocratic excess and Iron Curtain censorship. The passengers didn’t know where they wanted to go back then.
But now, we can’t expect the passengers back in the caboose to just keep quiet and not ask questions. Countries like Russia and China are surpassing the United States in some ways, and they understandably want to help look over the map.
Nobody knows who made the self-evident but widely-cited point: “We don't make peace with our friends. We make peace with our enemies.” It’s past time to make peace with Russia. There must be
something else the military-industrial complex could profitably do in the meantime. Feel free to offer your suggestions.
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