Unfinished Business

It’s been almost 34 years since the Soviet Union was dissolved.

After that happened, the US declared victory in the cold war, and since then, US went on to disintegrate and fight Yugoslavia, expand NATO in Europe, invade Afghanistan, Iraq and some other countries which all today are worse off because of what the US did.

The US, along with the combined west thought that this so-called victory over the Soviet Union proved that they were the most powerful force on earth, and that their ideology, theories, and actions for the past 40 years or so have been validated and proven correct and good.

Those who thought this after 1991 were either dummies, or liars who saw the dissolution of the USSR as an opportunity to claim victory and expand US influence.

They became drunk on succor of success and victory that the rest of the world became just a bunch of doormats to them, to be used however the US wished.

The US managed to convince too many people in the world that it won the cold war, and many still believe this to be the case today.

But all this was delusion.

The belief that the west won the cold war was always wrong.

There was no cold war victory. There was no success. US ideologies and theories have proven to be unmitigated disasters. There were no successes. It just took a while for this to become clear.

The USSR disintegrated not because of US sanctions, propaganda, or because the US won the arms race (USSR/Russia actually won that).

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a top-down revolution. It was not the result of people power, led by Boris Yeltsin, as it has been portrayed.

The dissolution of the Soviet union was presided over by the political top, who saw advantages for themselves in doing away with the Soviet socialist model and enrich themselves on the spoils and make deals with the west to enrich themselves even further.

That’s basically what happened.

From this traitorous political class, Russia got the future oligarchs, the mafia problems, and the poverty, misery, and chronic governmental corruption that characterized Russian life throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

So the fact that the end of the Soviet Union was a top-down, agreed-upon dissolution of the USSR, means that the US/west did not win the cold war. It also meant that the cold war did not truly end, as western views of Russia hardly changed.

Even after 1991, until now, the west continued to view Russia with suspicion, distrust, saw it as inferior, and as a threat. Granted, this was all covered up with lots of legerdemain by the west toward Russia to make it seem as if there was a thaw, but in reality key issues and complexes remained buried.

The US, which saw itself as a victor of the cold war, proceeded to treat Russia as a vanquished foe, rather than an equal partner after the cold war supposedly ended.

This rough treatment of Russia in itself is proof that the cold war never really ended.

It lectured the Russians, and directed a lot of their affairs under the guise of necessary economic reforms that favored the west most of all, at the expense of Russian society.

The west saw Russia as a vanquished foe, and gave itself the right to siphon off tribute from the Russian state in the form of billions of dollars through all sorts of crooked and shady investment schemes by unscrupulous western investors such as Bill Browder, and their Russian co-conspirators like Mikhail Khodorovsky, along with other corrupt and criminal Russian Jews who also spearheaded the so-called ‘Russian mafia.’

The US saw Russia as a defeated enemy who was inferior in every way, and that didn’t deserve full equality and consideration.

To the west, Russia was to play the role of a subordinate resource colony, under US political and economic control, with a degraded military.

Meanwhile, the NATO military alliance was not only allowed to continue to exist, but to expand up to Russia’s post-Soviet borders.

Add to this the west’s constant maligning of Russia by using nearby countries such as Georgia and ukraine to provoke Russia into taking military actions, and the situation only got worse.

The combined west, by its unfriendly actions toward Russia since 1991, has by itself proven that the cold war never ended. Because if it did, the west would have treated Russia much better, and with respect. It would not have exploited Russia’s willingness to work with the west as weakness and proceeded to rob it in any way it could.

That NATO still exists shows that the cold war isn’t over.

All these realities have caused tensions and problems between Russia and the west to mount to the point where they finally exploded in 2022 in ukraine.

But it must be asked, where it all went wrong, and who was responsible?

The answer is: Both parties were.

First, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, as well as the Russian communist party are to blame by willingly agreeing to dissolve the USSR in return for ‘western favors.’

They all gave away too much for too little, and consigned Russia to penury throughout the 1990s.

Post-communist Russian governments agreed to harmful and destructive western economic shock therapy which caused social chaos and set Russia back years, if not decades.

Russia actually allowed the US to treat it as a vanquished foe, whether it realized it, or not.

Gorbachev gave the west what it wanted in return for a pat on the head. Yeltsin gave the west what it wanted in return for bottles of vodka.

Neither leader demanded that NATO be dissolved, as it should have been, since this organization is a legacy relic of the cold war.

They did not demand permanent neutrality of all former communist states and binding pledges from them not to join any military alliances directed against Russia. Not doing this allowed NATO to expand, undermine Russia’s security, and become one of the main causes of the conflict in ukraine, and to cause trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere.

US and western Europe should have dissolved NATO voluntarily in the early 1990s.

Since they thought that they ‘won’ the cold war, then there was no longer a need for NATO.

A new security structure should have been formed back then that included everyone, and gave them all equal consideration, without military alignments and threats.

Trusting the west was a fatal flaw of the Russian leadership after 1991.

And after everything that has happened since then until today, none of that trust will ever be restored unless the combined west realizes that Russia is a world power worthy of respect and existence on its own terms.

The west must stop trying to treat it as a vanquished foe which it never was, and an inferior thing to be subdued and controlled.

Russia does not need to be told what to do, how to do it, and have its hand held by anyone in the west.

Russia has been around for over a thousand years, and can manage its own affairs just fine.

And viewing Russia as a threat, even when it is not, just to keep NATO and legions of western ‘security experts’ careers and paychecks alive is disastrous and counter-productive.

Both will eventually - and hopefully soon - have to go because neither have a good future, and are liabilities to peace and normalcy.

The recent negotiations with the US in Saudi Arabia to address the ukrainian conflict, as well as other festering issues in relations, are not driven by any Russian fear, desperation, and loss. They are a voluntary courtesy that Russia is giving to the new Trump regime.

Russians agreed to attend these talks as a last ditch attempt to settle outstanding problems at the negotiating table.

But if this does not work, Russia will settle things its own way on the battlefield. The SMO continues and Russia’s demand and terms still stand.

No. The cold war did not end in 1991.

It is still going on and the west did not win it. In fact, it is losing it.

The west will have to accept reality, and finally leave Russia alone.

Maybe the US master plan all along was to make the EU so disgusting and unpalatable to Russia, that it would not want to touch it. Only then can the US safely disengage from EU. In this, the US has actually succeeded.