General Discussion

From Carrick Ryan's FB page (don't know how to share other than paste this profound information posted 16 hours ago and widely shared)

Putting aside the possibility of Trump somehow being compromised (as far fetched as it sounds, it's impossible to rule out), it's increasingly obvious to me that he simply doesn't understand Putin as a person.

Trump spent time in Moscow in 2013 for his Miss Universe pageant, and would have learned a lot about how the Russian state functions from the oligarchs who hosted him.

Putin is effectively the head of the world's largest organised crime syndicate, and as someone who spent his career working in casinos and real estate development, I suspect Trump recognised a "mob boss" and genuinely thought that he knew how to deal with him.

Immediately following the failed meeting in Anchorage, Trump lamented the missed economic opportunities that could have been explored between the two nations.

My suspicion is that Trump offered Putin trade deals or investment opportunities, perhaps ones that both men could personally profit from, in exchange for a Ukrainian peace deal that would have handed Trump a massive political victory. I think Trump is genuinely frustrated and confused as to why Putin isn't interested.

But understanding Putin the criminal is only understanding half the man. Russia expert Anne Applebaum said in a recent interview that the biggest thing the West fails to understand about Putin is just how extremist he is in his quasi-religious nationalist ideology.

To understand Putin's mindset, we need to discuss a little known 1997 book by a Russian neo-fascist and political philosopher named Alexandr Dugin, a man so closely associated with the belief systems and values of Vladimir Putin that he became colloquially known as "Putin's brain".

Dugin has spent his life warning of the evils of liberalism and democracy, and insisted that only Russia could save humanity through the advancement of Christian Russian Orthodox values.

The book provides the blueprint for how Russia could fight "the battle for the world rule of Russians". It laid out in detail how Russia needed to use information warfare, economic power, and military force, to establish a new Eurasian Empire.

It's been used a textbook in schools, indoctrinating a generation of Russians into a belief that the Russians had a God given right to rule the world from the "third Rome" (Moscow), and that notions like democracy and civil liberties were a uniquely Western invention that were bordering on satanic.

It called for Georgia, most of the Baltic States, Finland, and Central Asia to be annexed into this new empire though force, while Belarus and Moldova are expected to voluntarily join after a decades long propaganda onslaught.

He was adamant that an independent Ukraine could not exist if Russia was truly going to become a superpower, arguing that "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics".

Western Europe, meanwhile, would become a collection of weakened vassal states, subordinate to Russia's will, and argued that to achieve this Russia could help fund and organise a collection of right wing political parties to infiltrate and erode liberal democracy from within. To achieve this, Dugin suggested finding ways to weaken the NATO alliance, culminating in the removal of US military presence in Europe.

But perhaps most disturbing is Dugin's vivid advice on how Russia could subdue the greatest impediment to Russian ambitions, the great defender of the liberal values Dugin despised... the USA.

He argued that Russia should use special services to "...introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics'."

The book was written in 1997.

Vladimir Putin became Russian President in 2000. He's had 25 years to put this plan into place. He is not going to abandon his life's work for some sanctions relief and a trade deal.