Europe's tensions
Ukraine: there’s more to it than a Russia-Ukraine stoush and issues over NATO
A reader has brought to our attention a Counterpunch article by Michael Hudson: America’s real adversaries are its European and other allies.
It’s all very well for the US to call for strong sanctions against Russia, but because western Europe is so dependent on Russian trade, not only for gas, sanctions would be costly for Europe as they switch to more expensive American sources, and of net benefit to America.
Since 1944 (the Bretton Woods Conference) the US has deliberately allowed the rest of the world to use its currency to finance its current account deficit, resulting in an over-demanded and therefore over-valued $US. Sanctions against Russia would turn western Europe, which has been turning eastward for trade and commerce, to the US for those relationships.
Hudson does not deny the security issues involved in the conflict, but he adds the perspective of the US as an economically imperial power. He also has an unusual observation on America’s trade in weapons, which he classifies as “luxuries”. (Would a pilot who describes the F35 as “a lovely piece of kit” apply the same description to the SU75?)
Is Putin the saviour of western values?
In Australia we tend to see “western values” in terms of the Enlightenment values of secularism and liberalism, but to Putin, and many in Russia, the west, particularly western Europe, is seen as decadent and morally corrupt.
On the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report Andrew West interviews Marlene Laruelle, of the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, on Putin’s socially conservative beliefs and values, and on the extent to which they reflect mainstream Russian opinion: Putin's culture war against an “increasingly decadent west”. Although Russians, after 70 years of communism, are not strong on religious observance, they see the Orthodox Church as an important symbol of Russian culture and tradition, and generally align with its conservative moral teachings.
She sees more than geopolitical and military considerations driving the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It’s also about Russia’s desire to exert a cultural hegemony. In the same context she wonders if western Europe really wants Ukraine, a country where many hold social and political values closer to Russia’s than to those of western Europe, to become a member of the EU. The EU is already struggling to keep Poland and Hungary, with their authoritarian and illiberal regimes, inside the fold, and does not necessarily want another such member.
Laruelle also reminds us that although parties and governments of the centre-left in Europe and America generally have a cold attitude to Putin and Russia, many on the right in those countries are attracted to Putin because of his illiberalism and social conservatism. (14 minutes)
She is author of Is Russia fascist: unravelling propaganda east and west.