PUTIN posed the question at last week’s International Discussion Club in Sochi: ‘The World Order: New Rules or a Game without rules’. (see feature)
He was unable to supply an answer, since he is essentially hoping for a change of heart by the western imperialist powers, who are now being driven by their desperate economic and political crisis into taking actions to reorder the world, with the aim of implementing their ‘final solution’, reconquering the areas of Russia and China, using a combination of wars and regime change attempts from within to restore the power of imperialism.
The right-wing coup in the Ukraine is a dress rehearsal for Belarus, and then Russia itself.
Putin spoke about the end of the Cold War, after the Stalinist bureaucracy, led by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, gave up the struggle, even for socialism in a single country, and moved sharply to the right, creating the Oligarchs, a class of billionaires who graduated from the bureaucracy to seize part of the property of the workers state for themselves, but were willing to accept the political leadership of the Kremlin.
He said: ‘The Cold War ended, but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards.
‘This created the impression that the so-called “victors” in the Cold War had decided’ that ‘If the existing system of international relations, international law and the checks and balances in place got in the way of these aims, this system was declared worthless, outdated and in need of immediate demolition’ . . .
‘Let’s ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? . . .
‘A unilateral diktat and imposing one’s own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.’
He concludes: ‘Essentially, the unipolar world is simply a means of justifying dictatorship.’
He asks ‘What is in store for us if we choose not to live by the rules – even if they may be strict and inconvenient – but rather live without any rules at all? . . .
‘We are well aware that the world has entered an era of changes and global transformations, when we all need a particular degree of caution, the ability to avoid thoughtless steps. In the years after the Cold War, participants in global politics lost these qualities somewhat. Now, we need to remember them. Otherwise, hopes for a peaceful, stable development will be a dangerous illusion, while today’s turmoil will simply serve as a prelude to the collapse of world order.
‘Yes, of course, I have already said that building a more stable world order is a difficult task. We are talking about long and hard work . . . Our common duty is to resolve this fundamental challenge at this new stage of development.’
So the question of war or peace is reduced to whether the bureaucracy can make a deal with the imperialist powers that satisfies these predators, while, just in case, the Russian military rebuilds its power to restore a ‘mutually assured destruction’.
Everything is subordinated to making a deal with the imperialists that will convince them that there is no need to go to war, including the struggle of the workers in the East of the Ukraine and everywhere else, of course.
Putin has broken with socialism, even in a single country, and the vast state property that remains in the degenerated workers state is there because of the power of the working class.
He is a Russian nationalist who considers that Lenin betrayed Russia with his policy of revolutionary defeatism in World War One and with the signing of the Brest Litovsk Treaty.
Yet it is the world socialist revolution, the October 1917 revolution in Russia and the November 1918 revolution in Germany that stopped the First World War. It will be the continuation of that revolution that will prevent a Third World War by smashing capitalism and imperialism worldwide.
Building the Fourth International to lead this revolution is the way forward. Putin’s campaign to convince the imperialists to stop being imperialists is doomed to ignominious failure.
