Late-December 2016 news coverage of the diplomatic conflict between the United States and Russia induced repeated reference to a game Russia is better at chess.
If we therefore using chess notation to record the incident, Russian chairperson Vladimir Putins move declining to retaliate to U.S. chairwoman Barack Obamas expulsion of 35 Russian diplomatic officials and imposition of new targeted sanctions would be marked with at the least one exclamation point.
Actually, Obamas more of a basketball guy. So maybe this metaphor is more apt Putin shook his man so bad he broke his ankles.
The game isnt over, of course, but Putin has reframed the United States retaliation for Russian meddling in the recent U.S. general elections not as an escalating conflict between national interests, but instead as an act of petulance from a sore-loser, lame-duck president.
Everyone, of course, expects things to improve for the Russians once Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Trumps fondness for the Kremlin contains serious contradictions. Russias primary interest is in weakening the United States imperial power. Trumps interest is in extending it that is, Making America Great Again. Furthermore, Russias most important strategic alliances are anathema to U.S. imperial interests none more so than Russias relationship with Iran. How can Trump perhaps resolve this?
Russias primary interest is in weakening the United States imperial power. Trumps interest is in widening itthat is, Making America Great Again.
Perhaps no other contradiction in Trumps inconsistent vision is more significant than this one, because it threatens the United States fundamental place in the world, and some of the timelines twisting out from it end in nuclear war. It demands analysis and understanding.
The first step in reaching this understanding is dispelling the notion that Russia is a rival of the United States and seeks to supplant us as the leading global superpower. This is a vestige of Cold War coverage of the rivalry between the Soviet Union which was much bigger than Russia and the United States. In fact, Russia has no meaningful capability to contest the United States as a global power. Our economy is 55 times the size of theirs is. Our military budget is approximately 14 days the size of theirs. Hell, the U.S. Department of Agriculture expends more than twice so much better every year as the Russian military spends.
Our navy has nearly three times the personnel and more than 10 hours the naval aircraft. And while the United States has 10 big aircraft carrier, Russia has precisely one. Russia controls 18 foreign military bases. The United States controls more than 800.
Russian country media photo
Still, expansive U.S. power cannot long tolerate even regional alternative centers of power. Eventually our ambitions will run up against their power and either we will submit to them or we will overpower and supplant them. The first option is an invited to global resistance and the end to the imperial project wholly, so the only regional powers we tolerate are those who serve as lieutenants to the U.S. empire. Russia is unwilling to act as such, an outrage to our sense of domination, and thus a threat to our national security.
The media and mainstream experts explain Russias regional ambitions in mystic or idealistic terms of traditional spheres of influence terms which Russia themselves and computer networks of Russophile allies in nearby countries echo.
All of this, however, is a cover story for the basic material fact that Russias economy is export-driven, dominated by energy resources and other raw materials and that these exports are primarily consumed by nearby European and Asian economies.
Getting these exportations to market means transiting the surrounding countries of their traditional sphere of influence, and these economies thus have a symbiotic economic relationship with Russia the Russian Federation is typically one of their primary trading partners. This makes a network of interests that make this region of acute concern to Russias economic elites. Hence their drive to establish regional primacy.
Russia could conceivably establish its regional dominance on words acceptable to the United States and pass on economic and military benefit to the empire as we demand it, but the nature of Russias export economy and the changing shape of the global market is such that they simply do not have the margins to afford such capitulation.
Neither are the Russians in a position for direct showdown with us, so they move in asymmetric and circuitous ways, utilizing tools including cyberwarfare and quasi-covert confrontations with potential U.S. regional allies such as Ukraine.
And of course they have the ultimate equalizer at hand a massive nuclear arsenal that requires that we both tread carefully with them and give them prominence in international dialogues.
Regardless, even with a relatively modest military, the Russian military is still the worlds fourth-largest force-out, and despite the Russians energy- and raw material-focused exportation economy, they still have one of the worlds most advanced systems of industrial production.
These resources can be turned to other aspiring regional powers for the sake of creating a multi-polar world without America in charge they use strength in numbers against the U.S. hegemon.
Iran is the most significant ally of this sort in the Middle East, and together the two countries are collaborating with the other major Countries of the middle east opponent of American/ Israeli/ Saudi power Syria in the theater at the center of this struggle today, the Syrian civil war.
Now, it is possible that Trump is simply an isolationist, a true America First-er as his sloganeering reference to anti-internationalist Nazi sympathizers of the World War II era would have it. If thats the case, then there is no contradiction between his desire to roll back U.S. interference in the region and Russias desire to minimize American imperial meddling in Russias backyard. But how does Trump square this away with his antagonism to Iran and his alliance with the most activist elements of Israeli foreign policy?
This commitment goes deeper than words.
Trumps nominee for national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was an Iran hawk whose former colleagues have publicly carried frets that he will result the United States to war with Iran. Trump has also named a hardline ambassador to Israel who is aligned with the most expansionist parties in individual regions, the ones most committed to conflict with Iran.
How does he follow the track signaled by these appointments, set down in his persistent menaces against Iran, and at the same day collaborate with their most significant military and political friend?
It bears noting here that the United Staes has allies in the region, too allies who pose existential threats to the Iranian and Syrian regimes. Israel, for one, serves as a proxy military force for U.S. and Western imperialism, striking jolts when necessary to the anti-imperialist regimes in the area, or at least posing threats to each of them on words we could not get away with politically.
Saudi Arabia, for another, has employed its unique stance as the host of the holiest sites in Islam and its tremendous petroleum wealth to carry out a protracted ideological project turning Sunni Arabs and other Sunni Muslims a strong majority of the region to a decide of culture and political commitments that undermine the movements most historically threatening to U.S. imperialism. Arab patriotism, anti-colonialism and communism, in particular.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting at least two proxy wars against one another at the moment. First in Syria where the Saudis, the United States, the Gulf State and Turkey have been backing Sunni jihadist rebels fighting against the secular chairman Bashar Al Assad, Russia and Iran but also in Yemen where the Saudis have been collaborating with U.S. forces to put down an Iran-supported Shia-led confederation defying a Saudi-imposed government.
So there are a finite number of permutations for resolving the contradiction posed by varying relations between Russia and its allies Iran in particular, but also Syria and the United States and its allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. Lets take them one by one.
The easiest alternative would be for Trump and the United States to simply turn on Russia. Each of the past three U.S. presidents have done this. Pres. Bill Clinton was close to then-Russian chairwoman Boris Yeltsin but objective up at a skeptical distance from his replacing, Putin.
Obama sought a reset with Russia then ended up with the Kremlin allegedly hacking his political partys computers to ratfuck his preferred successor. If Trump flipped, it would be part of this trend.
But there has been no issue on which Trump has been as consistent as his defense of the Putin regime. Even his anti-immigration message has hesitated more than this commitment to the Russian state, going so far as to drop his own working mate in the grease on the issue during a presidential debate. Flipping on Russia would be easy, but it would have been easy before now so why hasnt he done it already?
But there has been no issue on which Trump has been as consistent as his defense of the Putin regime.”
There is no good, apparent answer for this. One potential is that KGB-veteran Putin is utilizing his asset recruiting skills to manipulate Trump, flattering him and playing into his overwhelming narcissism and so he cannot deal with Russia rationally.
Another, more sinister prospect is that Trump is somehow exposed to the Russians, claims reported by CNN to have been presented to Trump by the United States senior-most intelligence chiefs. We have no idea about the details of his complex and likely corrupted business dealings he might be in a vulnerable financial position to Russian business interests, something alleged during the campaign.
If the United States does not flip on Russia, the options from there are further limited. Russia could, for one, flip on Iran and Syria and side with the United States and our regional allies.
Russia and Iran, however, are about to win in Syria and there seems to be little reason for them to abandon the strategic confederation that has extended their power to grow closer to the losing side.
This scenario would also by definition benefit U.S. and Western imperialism, which is not just a threat for Russia in the Countries of the middle east. Their major interest is in restoring their economic power in Eastern Europe, including with the Balkan States members of both the European Union and NATO.
Empowering the most powerful elements of these rival alliances runs contrary to Russian national interests.
Another option is that the United States could stick with Russia and shift our regional alliance away from Saudi Arabia and Israel in favor of Iran and Syria.
This is very unlikely and dangerous. First, it is one of the only political moves Trump could build that his base personally loyal to him beyond almost any other value or interest abandon him. Their antagonism to Iran goes back virtually 40 years and has been cultivated by generations of authoritative reactionary ideologues.
Abandoning Israel would furthermore be tantamount to apostasy for many of them. It also operates altogether contrary to every single one of his personnel appointments made to date.
That said, Israel has often followed U.S. military policy in individual regions and they have resolved changes with enemies before. Prior to the Camp David Accords, Egypt was Israels major military rival. The two have been at peace ever since.
Whether Iran would repress its proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas would be a key point of contention here, which would both be easier said than done and likely way outside Irans interests these are two of their most significant assets for power projection, their capacity for countering Saudi Arabias ideological hegemony in Arab culture and politics.
The opportunity to end one of the most vexing regional conflicts might interest the ruling classes of all the contending nations, however, and make a thaw profitable.
There seems little hope, however, of including Saudi Arabia in any such compromise. They are far too exposed in their political projects against Iran, the legitimacy of the Saudi state remainders on a sectarian religious authority definitionally hostile to the Iranian regime, and the monocultural, hidebound, isolated, tiny and incestuous Saudi ruling class considers control of the Persian Gulf in particular as a zero sum game. Iranian advance is the Saudi elites defeat.
A U.S. switch to Iran would also be crushing to the Saudis national identity which is marked by their historic confederation with the United States and this would lead to outcomes the hell is unpredictable in their specifics, but easy to predict in their broadest outlines. It would mean war.
Such a war is a deeply serious matter. If long standing distrusts of a nuclear pact between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are true and the Saudis gain access to atomic weapon it creates the stakes to the most dangerous levels. The United States turning towards Saudi Arabias rivals would pose an existential threat to the regime. They should be expected to respond proportionally to that threat.
Nonetheless, the very isolation and narrowness of their ruling class poses persistent problems to their class allies in the United States and the West. If the Saudis usefulness on a regional basis has been eclipsed, there might be a strong move to trade them out for a more cosmopolitan conservative upper-clas such as Irans if such a switching is politically feasible.
After all this there is one more permutation possible. The United States could align itself with Russia while still resisting Iran sharply. As recent U.S. foreign policy indicates, theres no requirement that alliances and strategies be coherent and consistent.
Trump has no idea what hes doing and many of the hardliners in his administration are naive ideologues and eccentrics. Why not objective imposing sanctions on Russia and grow closer to their fellow reactionary autocrats while simultaneously retain their antagonism to Iran and its allies and proxies in individual regions?
Russia would like this. The things the United States is likely to do in a Trump-led conflict with Iran are most likely to their benefit. Chief among these is Trumps threat to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran. The stick of the bargain is that if Iran infringes it the previous sanctions regime is supposed to snap back into place.
But if the United States unilaterally cancels the bargain, there is no reason to believe that such sanctions would return.
It seems decidedly unlikely that Trump will have the global influence and respect are required to put such a challenging regime into place, especially when the sanctioning nations have no reason to expect that their actions will contribute to a lasting solution to the conflict. If the agreement is scrapped, Iran has no limits on their nuclear program or other military advances and no limits on their economic activities, something that benefits its major military and commercial partners including, of course, Russia.
As for an actual U.S. war in Iran something, again, that major administration figures have advocated such an invasion “wouldve been” far less successful than even the Iraq fiasco, with no meaningful base of popular support in the country. In fact, there would be a broad-based insurgency against such a crime.
Iran also boasts a much larger and more treacherous terrain and significant proxies abroad capable of extending asymmetric resistance to U.S. forces and our allies.
Even U.S. air strikes and other direct assaults short of full war could be met with proportionate Iranian attacks on U.S. forces-out and allies in individual regions, an escalation that has nowhere to go but this very no-mans-land of ground war in Central Asia. If the United States aims up down that route our capacity for imperial influence on the region will come to an end, maybe along with our empire altogether.
Again this has been Russias hope all along.
CHRIS KEANE/ Reuters
Russia and Iran and Syria versus the United States and Israel and Saudi Arabia. Either we buddy up with all of them and ditch our friends, they buddy up with all of us and ditch their friends, we buck them wholly or we divide the difference and side with Russia while maintaining our antagonism to their proxies.
If Trump cant or wont flip on the Russians in total, the options all end up instead ugly.
It is important to remember in the end that there is only one constituency that really matters to the U.S. empire the financial upper-clas and billionaire ruling class and that class sees that Putin has established a formal oligarchy and unfettered capitalism without liberalism, a monopoly economy in the private interest.
If Trump keeps the U.S. empire alive, American upper-class win that style, but if he cant, they can use the time until it falls apart to draw closer to the Russian oligarchs and generate relationships that will posture the U.S. ruling class to widen that order here. They cant lose as long as fellow arch reactionaries are calling the shots.
If Putin was able to punk Obama on his way out, you have to expect hell also play Trump on his way in. If Russia did interfere in the campaign and the proof that it did so is still very weak it was because they wanted someone easy to manipulate running the empire they want out of their way.
The most likely outcomes of it all will destroy lives all around the world. We have to resist this not by taking the pathetic liberal road of defending empire, but rather by fighting U.S. war-making and empire on progressive, liberatory terms not for the sake of a chauvinistic regime such as Putins.
Maybe Putin and the Russians see an outcome better than the ones outlined here Ive never been very good at chess or basketball and God merely knows what crazy shit Trump might come up with.
But whatever comes, unless we can supplant the Trump regime, Russia, its oligarchs and its power-elite fan club in the U.S.will define the terms, and that isnt good for working person and their families in Russia, in Iran, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.
Russian country media photo
CHRIS KEANE/ Reuters
