The Geopolitical Ghost of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Part 2

3,101 words

Part 2

Ukraine During the End of History

The Ukrainians were a major constituent nation in the Soviet Union, but there was always trouble. Most of the Soviet Union’s political prisoners were Ukrainian, for example. President George H.W. Bush attempted to keep Ukraine united with Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed, but Ukraine emerged independent, although treated with contempt by the West. The Ukrainians also gave the atomic weapons on their territory to the Russians after getting pressured to do so by the Americans. It is questionable whether the Ukrainians had operational control of the weapons, and some have argued the Ukrainians couldn’t maintain the bombs and therefore gave them up.

Regardless of the truth, Ukraine lost a military asset with the proven ability to deter full scale attacks. Ukraine also emerged as a truly independent nation state divided between a Western Christian, Ukrainian-speaking west and an Eastern Orthodox, Russian-speaking east. Samuel Huntington called Ukraine a cleft nation in that it was divided along the civilizational fault line between Western and Eastern Christendom. In 1996 he wrote,

[…]Ukraine could split along its fault line into two separate entities, the eastern of which would merge with Russia. The issue of secession first came up with respect to Crimea. The Crimean public, which is 70 percent Russian, substantially supported Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in a referendum in December 1991. In May 1992 the Crimean parliament also voted to declare independence from Ukraine and then, under Ukrainian pressure, rescinded that vote. The Russian parliament, however, voted to cancel the 1954 cession of Crimea to Ukraine. In January 1994 Crimeans elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of “unity with Russia.” This stimulated some people to raise the question: “Will Crimea Be the Next Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia?” The answer was a resounding “No!” as the new Crimean president backed away from his commitment to hold a referendum on independence and instead negotiated with the Kiev government. In May 1994 the situation heated up again when the Crimean parliament voted to restore the 1992 constitution which made it virtually independent of Ukraine. Once again, however, the restraint of Russian and Ukrainian leaders prevented this issue from generating violence, and the election two months later of the pro-Russian [Leonid] Kuchma as Ukrainian president undermined the Crimean thrust for secession. That election did, however, raise the possibility of the western part of the country seceding from a Ukraine that was drawing closer and closer to Russia. Some Russians might welcome this. As one Russian general put it, “Ukraine or rather Eastern Ukraine will come back in five, ten or fifteen years. Western Ukraine can go to hell!” Such a rump Uniate and Western-oriented Ukraine, however, would only be viable if it had strong and effective Western support. Such support is, in turn, likely to be forthcoming only if relations between the West and Russia deteriorated seriously and came to resemble those of the Cold War. [1]

NATO & Russia

Russia went into a tailspin throughout the 1990s. When Russia came out of the dive, whatever chance the Americans and Western Europeans had to integrate Russia into the Western system had evaporated. On the surface it appears that this was entirely due to Western failure, but in retrospect it is clear this was not the case. It is true that Russia was not integrated into NATO, but Russia was in a NATO-adjacent treaty organization called the Partnership for Peace. NATO did attack Eastern Orthodox Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars, but the conflict had already been ongoing for years prior to NATO’s intervention and Russia was part of the alliance with NATO during the campaign.

NATO did expand eastwards, and the dangers to America due to that increase were well understood. Many prominent Americans, including George Kennan and Pat Buchanan were against this expansion. The warnings of Kennan and Buchanan had an impact on the expanded alliance – America’s role in NATO’s east would always make for a defensive anchor. Russia was not threatened by an alliance whose most prominent member was hesitant to involve itself in aggressive actions.

Russia’s neighbors, however, are not wrong about Russian aggression and history of misrule. The expansion happened over the wise objections of American NATO sceptics partially because the Eastern Europeans were keen to join the alliance and did all the lobbying and cajoling they could to get in the club. This included a plausible threat by the Polish government to build an atomic bomb if denied entry. A Polish bomb would have altered the balance of power in Europe in an unpredictable way.

Russia stabilized around September 11, 2001. By 2014 it had modernized and rebuilt its armed forces to the point that they could successfully invade and occupy parts of Ukraine including the Crimea in 2014. The Russians did this by claiming their army in Ukraine was a force of Russian-speaking rebels who were “oppressed citizens” of Ukraine. The Russian troops wore no insignia and were called “Little Green Men.” It was only after this that Americans and Western Europeans started to think about more support for the people of the eastern flank of white Western Civilization.

The Peace of Poland’s Positive Effects

The Russians would have taken Ukraine in 2022, but the decisions of the post-Cold War German and Polish governments to cooperate and not seek to embark upon campaigns to effect border changes bore fruit in the form of just enough Western European support for Ukraine that the initial assault on Kyiv became a Russian failure. The Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and others were not divided by the bitter hostility which existed after World War I – there still is hostility over taxes, energy policy, and military efforts, but these controversies are technical disputes and not intractable ethnic issues. These nations can therefore unite in the face of the Russian threat.

An example of the positive fruits of Juliusz Mieroszewski’s ethnonationalist vision which can be summarized as ‘have what we hold, look to the future, and encourage border populations to not agitate against people of a different ethnicity but common race and civilization’ bore fruit after Russian operations against Ukraine intensified after 2014. Ukrainian ethnonationalists responded to Polish behavior with grace and reciprocity. In 2021 Olena Semenyaka, a prominent Ukrainian ethnonationalist, led a demonstration praising Polish-Ukrainian solidarity which would not have been possible in 1989. Polish media reported,

Olena Semeniaka w swoim przemówieniu przed ambasadą powiedziała, że Polska konsekwentnie wspiera Ukrainę w walce z neoimperialnym zagrożeniem całego regionu ze strony Moskwy. Semieniaka przypomniała o tym 10 kwietnia w Warszawie podczas pikiety przed ambasadą Rosji i podkreśliła, że obie akcje mają pokazać solidarność Polski i Ukrainy w tych trudnych czasach.

Translated as:

In her speech at the embassy, Olena Semenyaka stated that Poland consistently supports Ukraine in its fight against Moscow’s neo-imperial threat to the entire region. Semenyaka reiterated this during a picket in front of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw on April 10th, emphasizing that both actions are intended to demonstrate the solidarity of Poland and Ukraine in these difficult times.

While the West Half-Slept

Despite the positive actions of the Poles and Ukrainians, America and Western Europe were mostly only half-awake to the threat until the 2022 invasion.

Americans were distraught to see units such as the Azov Battalion who appeared to be ideologically aligned with National Socialism while also being aligned with Neo-Conservative Jews. This alliance appeared to negate the efforts of America’s World War II generation as well as push Jewish warmongering swindles such as those propagated by Bush 43. The alliance makes sense though when viewed through the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russian misinformation also played a significant role in muddying the waters.

The Moral Case for Ukraine

Since 2022 I’ve seen Ukrainian flags on bumper stickers, appeals that call for prayers for Ukraine on church messaging boards, and pro-Ukrainian demonstrations. While in Europe, I’ve seen Ukraine’s colors flying from the cathedrals. Should Ukraine be lost, Western Civilization will receive an emotional blow which will exceed that of the Fall of Saigon.

Emotional reactions are not as important as bread-and-butter issues, though. Should Ukraine fall, a major food producing region will be in the hands of a hostile civilization with a known history of inefficient and bumbling mis-management. Thomas Cromwell, a Christian anti-Marxist argues in his book, Why Ukraine Must Win (2023) that America and Western Europe should adopt Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising attitude – we win; they lose. Cromwell believes that there is no possible way to compromise or appease Putin and the Russians. He is especially frustrated with the Germans writing:

Germany has not succeeded in shaping a strong, constructive role for itself in Europe and the world. It has depended on the US-led NATO alliance to provide protection against aggressors – such as the Soviet Union during the Cold War – and in the post-Cold War era it has not met its NATO obligation to spend two percent of its GDP to defense.

There appears to be a faulty logic in Germany’s post-WWII thinking. Instead of redirecting its nationalist energies that were misused to build empires in WWl and WWII into providing principled leadership for Europe and the world, Germany has pursued policies that incur a minimum risk for its own interests while contributing little to a good and peaceful world. Behind the façade of its self-interested public policies there lurks the real driver of modern Germany – its powerful industrial companies with their global commercial interests.

Cromwell points out that Germany’s commercial interests are making money trading with Russia and others while encouraging Germans to do nothing in the face of the moral tragedy and outrage in Ukraine. Cromwell continues:

This approach makes Germany susceptible to manipulation by the world’s bad actors and compromises its ability to take principled stands on foreign policy issues. It is this German disease that now makes Berlin a feckless ally for the Western alliance.

A symptom of this disease was on display when the German delegation to the United Nations during the General Assembly in 2018 broke out in laughter when President Donald Trump warned that Germany’s dependence on Russian gas was a dangerous policy that made it hostage to Moscow! In hindsight, Trump’s words would prove prophetic:

‘Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states such as Poland for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.’ [2]

Focus on Defeating Eurasianism

There is some flawed thinking in Cromwell’s case for a moral crusade against Russia. The logical endpoint of his proposal is the Vernichtungskrieg – war of annihilation – of World War II’s Eastern Front but this time against a people equipped with atomic weapons. Cromwell is also influenced by Victor Davis Hanson’s view that the failure to crush Germany during World War I caused the Second World War. This is a counterfactual that can be refuted by another counterfactual – that England and France failed to take Germany’s security concerns seriously or the Western Powers failed to stop interwar Poland’s aggressive actions against its neighbors in the 1920s which gave the infant Nazi Party a major talking point and a path to electoral victory.

Russia is part of a unique civilization: Russkiy Mir (Russian World), which is based on the Russian ethnicity and the Eastern Orthodox religion. The collective mentality of its people is different from the collective mentality of those in the West. An American can go to Holland and recognize the similarities between the Dutch and himself. That is not the case when an American goes to Russia.

Convincing the Russian people with facts and logic to see the Western way of things will never fly. There are, however, weaknesses to exploit which can help change the situation without atomic warfare. In the Russian language, the word for “Russia” is bifurcated into words that better convey the two different senses of the term “Russia.” There is the ethnic term for Russians – russky (русский) and the civic nationalist term for paper citizens like Tartars in the Russian-controlled lands –rossisky (российский).

A large-scale American-led attack on the russky (русский) can quickly become a disastrous ethnic conflict, but a strategy of a waging a “war” against rossisky (российский) has a plausible chance for victory without shots being fired. Belarus is an uneasy partner in Putin’s Russkiy Mir. Bularus’s autocratic president is past seventy. When he dies or retires, the cracks in the façade of his semi-Stalinist Russian vassal state will widen to the point where opportunities can be taken for reform. In the meantime, Westerners can support a metapolitical campaign in Belarus. Lithuania’s road to revival started with a single man writing a history. The same thing can be done in Belarus. Additionally, Western Christian missionaries should work to convert Belarus people in the Belarus diaspora and in the land of Belarus itself. A Belarus language revival should also be encouraged.

Russia’s weakest geopolitical effort grows out of the export version of rossisky (российский) – Eurasianism. This philosophy, best explained by Alexander Dugin, boils down to an excuse for an expansionist Russian empire. It is a civic nationalist idea which denies the importance of the russky (русский) as central to the entire system. Eurasianism equates Chechen culture with that of Russia’s. It is like making the terrorist Tsarnaev brothers equal to Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The Eurasianist ideological geopolitical exporting plus Eurasianism’s weaknesses can be seen by the current the Russian-China alliance, Russian interactions with Iran, and the use of North Korean troops in Ukraine. All these alliances have the potential for fracture. The Cold War began with Soviet troublemaking against Iran in 1946, so the Iran-Russia relationship will never be free from enormous mistrust. North Korea’s support for Russia is purely mercenary. China’s support is similar in motivations to that of North Korea except the ongoing Ukraine War ties down American resources which could be shifted to the Indo-Pacific.

Nonetheless, there is a serious potential for a complete Sino-Russian split. The book on the Ukraine War’s international impact, edited by Michael Slobodchikoff describes Chinese angle in the following way:

Despite the pro-Russia view of the Ukraine-Russia war promulgated in heavily censored Chinese media outlets, a diversity of perspectives has percolated under the surface, some of which no doubt express convictions that are shared by the Chinese leadership itself. At the mass level, the Chinese blogosphere remains largely favorable to Russia, but the deficiencies of the Russian military operation have led Chinese users of social media increasingly to depict Russia as a “weak goose” (caie), a play on words that refers to Russia as a weak state. It is also the case that Russia’s exposed vulnerability has led nationalistic netizens to push for the return of territories ceded to Russia by China in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun. [3]

A way to divide China from Russia is for America to withdraw or plausibly threaten to withdraw from South Korea. Such an event will alter the situation in northeast Asia to the point that Russia and China would easily come into conflict and North Korea would be forced to cease military operations in Europe.

The Trump administration is coming around to dealing with the Ukraine War. American energy policy is being deployed to damage Russia’s hydrocarbon cash cow. Increased oil production in the United States can cause Russia to shut down its expensive wells. Once the Russian wells are offline, the permafrost will break the wells, which will require a time-consuming re-drill. The economic loss will mean less support to Russia’s army.

Additionally, Europe can be supplied by oil from Libya. This will require some form of security to stabilize the country. It is time for Europe’s armed forces to deploy there – Afrika Korps style. This will get Libyans out of the slave and migrant smuggling business and into better paying jobs in North Africa’s oil patch. A stabilized Libya can also be a place to house troublesome groups currently in Europe such as the Pakistani Groomers in the same way deported MS-13 gangsters are held in El Salvador. This will demonstrate to the Russians Western European resolve. Overturning the illicit second constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act will also motivate American whites to return to civic involvement. America’s ability recruit, train, and deploy a force of Deportation Officers in an expanded ICE, will also demonstrate resolve.

Recognizing that India is a semi-hostile power is also important. Currently, Indian shell companies and Indian-flagged ships are allowing Russia to sell its oil abroad. Confronting this swindle can be made by ending Indian immigration. Then there is the final problem of Russia’s expanded Eurasianism, the so-called BRICS financial system. This is an alternative financial system which threatens American prosperity.

A precursor to the BRICS threat was felt during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. American banks lent money to Brazilian agricultural firms while farmers in Nebraska suffered for want of loans. Every country in BRICS should be seen as a hostile economic rival and be subjected to tariffs and immigration restrictions, especially for the BRICS member states’ respective political and social elites.

It is hard to end a war, especially one that has cost so much as the Ukraine War, but the end is in sight. Young European men need to join their respective nations’ militaries and work hard. A single enlistment can go a long way in helping a man’s career and an efficient European force will discourage Russian warmakers. Ukrainian and Polish soldiers should also be trained in America to store, transport, and maintain atomic weapons. Finally, an Intermarium command and control network needs to be developed which stretches from Findland to Ukraine so that classified military information can quickly be passed in a secure network. This will further show Russia that continued action is futile.

Notes

[1] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1996) p. 167

[2] Thomas Cromwell, Why Ukraine Must Win, (Washington DC, East West Publishing, 2023) p. 126/7

[3] Michael O. Slobodchikoff, Breaking Point: Russia, Ukraine, and the Future of International Relations, (Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) p. 81

Bibliography

Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation, Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, (New York: Random House, 1995)

Thomas Cromwell, Why Ukraine Must Win, (Washington DC, East West Publishing, 2023)

Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1996)

Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, (New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2013)

Michael O. Slobodchikoff, Breaking Point: Russia, Ukraine, and the Future of International Relations, (Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)

Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1769 – 1999, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003)