What has to be added to the discussion of failure of the American state under Obama is that the President allowed the Defense Department the CIA and FBI to undermine his policy, voice separate political opinions and basically ignore and sabotage the President. One of the most grievous examples was over the Kerry Lavrov accord over Syria. The Defense Department openly voiced an opinion that it would fail. Voicing opinions about policy is not the job of the Pentagon. Then came real sabotage: the humanitarian convoy was shot at and the Russians were blamed for it and the US air force by mistake attacked Syrian army position. The Present like Truman would have fired the Pentagon chief for this mistake and especially for voicing opinions about Syrian war policy. This incident illustrates a dangerous reality already in September 2016 that Defense and Intelligence agencies are free to pursue their own policy in the US. This is a sign of presidential weakness under Obama. He pretended to control something that he did not control. Hence a war between President elect Trump and the security agencies.

Lots of good comments here. Not much to add but here are a couple of observations. In the 1960s an average young white boy could have sensed an appeal in Make Love not War slogan. Why go to fight in Nam? Isn’t it better to get stoned? Now the average white guy does not feel any appeal in the Leftist message. To fight in the barricades for Muslim God given right to come to the US? Is that an inspiring goal? To fight for gays or lesbians to have their parades and privileges? Is that an attractive proposition? The big difference is that in the 1960s the hardworking middle class or working class was well off, standard of living was rising, industries expanding. Now it is in reverse. Standard of living is declining, industries collapsing. The Left has nothing to offer to middle America and that includes family-house-two-car garage blacks and Hispanics who made it. Moreover Globalist Imperialist Free Markets border-less agenda has already generated a Trump backlash. If the Dems push Trump out they will have to deal with Pence who is even more pro Christian conservative gay skeptical, imperialism fearful kind of guy. So if the Dems provoke a clash they will feel the fury of main street America.

Lots of good comments here. Not much to add but here are a couple of observations. In the 1960s an average young white boy could have sensed an appeal in Make Love not War slogan. Why go to fight in Nam? Isn’t it better to get stoned? Now the average white guy does not fell any appeal in the Leftist message. To fight in the barricades for Muslim God given right to come to the US? Is that an inspiring goal? To fight for gays or lesbians to have their parades and privileges? Is that an attractive proposition? The big difference is that in the 1960s the hardworking middle class or working class was well off, standard of living was rising, industries expanding. Now it is in reverse. Standard of living is declining, industries collapsing. The Left has nothing to offer to middle America and that includes family house two car garage blacks and Hispanics who made it. Moreover Globalist Imperialist Free Markets border-less agenda has already generated Trump backlash. If the Dems push Trump out they will have to deal with Pence who is even more pro Christian conservative gay skeptical, imperialism fearful kind of guy. So if the Dems provoke a clash they will feel the fury of main street America.

Click to Edit

He has not done it already because he just cannot let go of his dream to have it as he did in 2003, when Russia Germany and France together blocked legality of US war in Iraq. Putin still hopes for a good working relationship with major West European powers. Italy France and even Germany. He still hopes to draw them away from the US. However the obvious gains from Import substitution campaign make it apparent that Russia does benefit from sanctions, that Russia can get anything it wants in technology from the East rather than the West. So the break with Western orientation is in the making. Hopefully.

I fully agree with you. There is something called collective experience. After the experienced of daily shootings by Ukronazies the people of Donbas have already mentally broke with Ukraine. They are not one people any more even if ties to the rest of Ukraine remained. They now feel separate from Ukraine and close to Russia if not one with Russia. It seems the process is underway for Ukraine to be split along old division lines.

You are right of course as always in your judgments. Just want to add that the 50 billion hike in military budget shows Trump does not understand that the problem with American military is not lack of funds but in theft by elaborate system of prices and corruption, lack of accountability . What American military needs is not more funds but a good purse of the entire system of contracting, bids, and procurement reform. What the US military also needs is cut in number of useless bases and restructuring of NATO rather than its expansion. So far Trump has been continuing on the same wrong path as everybody else before him. too bad.

In one his earlier articles Pat Buchanan had himself identified the problem of the Europeans, that is that population on the other side of the Mediterranean is exploding into over a billion of hungry, angry and poor folks looking into wealthy, lazy, bisexual or gay or non=reproducing Europeans who have a guilty conscience over colonialism and cannot get themselves to enforce their own laws that people who come to Europe are supposed to have the visa. On top of that you have capital flight to third world countries, a failed integration through Euro and as a result resurgent nationalism, my country first survivalist panic. Of course Russia has nothing to do with any of it. All these challenges were of the Europeans own making.
For all those folks who demonize Putin, they should know that his government is the first government in one hundred years that made things better for the Russian people rather than for the worse.

I agree with the main thesis of Saker that Russia today under President Putin is slowly moving towards discovering itself as a culture as a civilization separate from Western Europe, as a civilization that is unique in combining Orthodox Christian tradition and the oriental influences of Eurasia.
However, I disagree with a simplistic notion that in 1917 a change occurred from one Westernized elite to another Westernized elite. In fact the process of Russia defining itself separately from Europe has begun under Nicholas I and then accelerated under Alexander the III. This is the time in the 1880s when attempts were made to define nationality, orthodoxy and monarchy as three foundations of Russia. The search for pre-Petrine Russia was in vogue. In fact when Alexander II was killed the Church on Skilled Blood in Sankt Petersburg was built in old Russian slyle like St. Basil in Moscow. This was and still is the only church in Sankt Petersburg in old Russian style. The process of rediscovering the pre-Petrine authentic Russia continued under Nicholas II. He in fact was the first Russian Emperor since Alexey who was a genuine believe an Orthodox Russian Tsar. Moreover he distrusted Europeanized bureaucracy and believed that he had a deep personal understanding of the Russian people. The reason he disliked the Duma and the modern institutions was precisely because they were too Western for him. He really adored pre-Petrine Russia a genuine Russia in his view.
Moreover during that time great Russian religious philosophers defined Russia in fundamentally new ways. Petr Struve starting as a Marxist praised Russian gosudrastvennost and scolded Russian Westernized intelligentsia. Nikolay Berdyaev, Sergey Bulgakov, Fedor Dostoevsky explained to the world what Russian idea is, rooted in Orthodoxy, in Sobornost, a term that is impossible to translate into English. It signifies a Russian unity, in faith, a collectivity and sharing, a faith that is not connected to reasoning as in the West. Dostoevsky spoke of pochvanichestvo meaning rootedness of Russian culture. None of that was ever understood in the West. This generation of Russian thinkers and philosophers and writers actually explained quite well Russian civilization, its meaning and its values, its faith and its separate course.
Russia may have been governed by a Westernized elite but a great and ghrowing part of the educated society was increasingly rediscovering its own Russian identity.
If we consider Russian peasants in early 20th century the 130 million of them then of course there is no doubt that they were living in their own world pretty much a pre-Petrine non westernized world. As I wrote in my book Russia After Lenin, on the 1920s even then Russian peasants could not possibly comprehend what the Bolsheviks were talking about using the words proletariat socialism, etc. They lived in their world of sacred icons, and holy wells, and a miracle making old men a world defined by grain growing as it has been for hundreds of years. Moreover, even among the Socialists the largest political party that of Socialist Revolutionaries, was profoundly anti0Western anti-Marxist and anti-Capitalist. They dreamed of free peasant communes without the landlords. In 1917 they were the largest political party in Russia of one million members and they were the ones who won the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
So the notion that Russia was Western in early 20th century is not quite correct. The Tsar was the first Orthodox monarch who despised Western educated bureaucracy and cherished old Russia, educated society was moving in the seek roots direction and the overwhelming majority of the population the peasants were still in their traditional world.

What has happened is one of two things as far is Trump is concerned. Either he walked into a trap prepared for him by the Deep state, willingly or unwillingly. If willingly he knew he was set up and accepted it because he has no choice. He could not disobey the military. They have their own agenda in Syria which they had been pursuing for a while, that is carving out American zone of occupation in eastern Syria with the help of Sunny states. Or Trump simply capitulated to the deep state as Obama did before him. If that is the case we know now how American is governed, by the military industrial complex that dictates its policy. The sad part is that the Constitution is disregarded once again, that the Liberals who used to be peaceniks, are now cheering for war, that the UN is marginalized, that Trump uses it just as Bush did to justify an illegal war.

The main thesis of the author is sound. The US policy is self defeating, destructive and in the end it strengthens ISIS. However, the author as most Americans focuses on the US policy as if US policy matters. In reality whatever the US does or does not will not change substantially the larger social, economic and ideological processes in the Middle East. These are:
First: population exposition in the region that generates tens of million people every ten years that cannot be absorbed into local economy. They are attracted to more prosperous neighboring Europe which detests them but still rescues them from the sea by the hundreds of thousands every year thus increasing the pool of angry young Muslims in Europe. The US action or inaction on this front changes nothing.
Second: tribal religious identity fragmentation of the region. In each of the ME country there is a significant religious or tribal or ethnic minority. For centuries they lived in oblivion and no one ever knew about Christians in Syria. Now for the first time in centuries we have a conflict in Syria, In Egypt between Christians and Muslims. Actually it is not a conflict it is Sunny aggression against the Christians. Alowites, Shia, Druze, Yazidies, Sunnies are suddenly rediscovering their religious, tribal, regional identities as the only thing that matters to them. Assad’s most reliable units of the army are Alawites. In Bahrein the Shia majority is waiting for a convenient moment to overthrow the rule of the Sunny dynasty as they did in Yemen. Even in Morocco the long dormant Berbers are rediscovering their ancient non-Arab identity. This is the process that Huntington called indigenization. What can the US do about it? Absolutely nothing.
Third: And finally, the moral dimension. The author is right the American policy reveals is hypocrisy, double standard that generates more hostility to the US. But here again, the deeper, underlying issue is the moral decay of the West, something that Ben Laden also wrote about. For the good practicing Muslims who are not supporters of ISIS or anyone close to those folks, for whom the US and Europe are countries they potentially would like to work or visit for those people equalization of marriage between a man and a woman with the gays is unacceptable and incomprehensible. That is only one example. What they dislike is the collapse of the family, of parental authority, of morals and lifestyles. They detest endless stream of semi naked women in mass media, my body my sex propaganda in journals like Cosmopolitan. It is a clash of civilizations of traditional values and Western permissiveness, abandonment of what really are Christian family values. Here again the US cannot do anything about. That clash is going to grow and blow up into the face of the West.

Christiany was never a block to progress? What about Spain under Inquisition? Actually for the first 14 centuries Christianity was exactly that a block to Progress. Only with Renaissance that challenged the Church and Reformation that challenged Religion and finally the Age of Enlightenment that overthrew the power of both did the West begin its free thought.

All this has nothing to do with the original argument: that is to what extent Christianity promoted or obstructed progress. By progress we mean not capacity to make money or invent new technology, but capacity of a human being to think free, to be free. In that sense Christianity was the obstacle to progress until about 1400. Aristotle was of no interest to either Byzantines or Romans. As for Spanish inquisition I am appalled that you dare to defend that criminal organization, and forget its tens of thousands victims who were tortured to death. The Muslims and Jews will never forget its genocidal expulsion of 1482. These were the people who killed em mass and for pleasure in the name of Christ. That is truly perverse.

Of course the Russians had suffered the heaviest losses. That is obvious. For me the question is why did they suffer more losses than the Germans. Leaving the civilian casualties aside for the moment, as these were obviously victims of German occupation, why front line losses on the Soviet side were so much heavier. Here it seems there are two contradictory explanations. On the one hand you have serious strategic incompetence of Soviet High Command, presumably comrade Stalin. Specifically I mean prepositioning Soviet air force near the border to be wiped out on the first day, the refusal to allow orderly retreat in August 1941, the ridiculous order to advance in May 1942 near Kharkov that cost 400000 Soviet losses, the similar incompetent order a year later in same area that cost loss of Kharkov after it had been liberated. And the list goes on. Stalin was impatient, inconsiderate of losses, did not like to hear objections, made people around him afraid to speak their mind, tended to blame others for his own blunders. All these factors cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives that could have been avoided.
On the other hand, when I read Alaxander Werth, a French Russian journalist describe the battle of Stalingrad, I notice things no one is talking about now. We all are so profoundly respectful and grateful to those who fought and died fighting the Germans that we forget or refuse to acknowledge what Werth noticed writing as an eyewitness. There was a lot of cynicism among the troops, a lot of disbelief that anybody could withstand German onslaught. Werth writes about lack of desire to go a die in an endless war that was being lost, as it seemed in 1942. From here follows a conclusion that many patriotic Russians will find uncomfortable, namely that the war was won because of Stalin\s ruthless determination. He held the reluctant and the doubtful in check, he reversed the catastrophic panicky retreat of 1941 and 1942. he managed to mobilize, arm and throw into battle millions new troops after 3 million were taken prisoner of war. He basically overcame apathy, defeatism, fear, lack of belief in the possibility of victory by 1943. That is why despite the blunders, despite the strategic incompetence, he whipped the Russians to victory.

This is a great summary of where America is today. What could Trump do? Here is a piece of advice. He should choose one intel agency that he can trust, may be DIA or create a new one, may be even informal one to fight the leaks which are after all felony. He should confront his Republican enemies like McCain openly that it is the President that makes foreign policy not senators, he should confront Russia gate openly, by insisting he had a right to establish whatever channels he wished to, he should reopen investigation of Clinton,s emails, Clinton foundation, investigation of who leaked DNC materials in other words refocus the attention on Clinton and Dems, something he should have done from day one. He should activate the social base of supporters in a variety of ways, he should mobilize those segments of business that support him and stand to benefit from his policies. A war is war, he should stop procrastinating in a kind of dismissive defensive posture, it is time to hit back and hit hard.

Bravo. Reading this I begin to realize that I am sane and that there are people out there who are sane too and have the courage to describe reality exactly as it it.

Thank you for your steadfastness, honesty, courage and determination.

Saker did a great job of explaining Cohen’s position on Putin that had been misunderstood in mainstream Western media. Cohen has basically been trying to show that Putin is a normal leader, ready to cooperate with the US and defend his country’s national interests. His posture has been defensive. Cohen is trying to reason with the liberals and New York Jews. He is trying to convince them that the mainstream media is lying. Fine.
But that does not explain what Putin’s agenda is. Saker goes further. He does explain most of Putin’s past and present. But still there is room for disagreement. Saker argues that Putin knew all along the wicked intentions of the US and openly revealed that knowledge after the Ukraine take over by the US. Here I disagree. When Bush came to Russia Putin greeted him with genuine enthusiasm. Putin then did hope that Russia and US could turn the page and begin a new relationship. That did not happen. Expansion of NATO happened instead. And that is when Putin began to reconsider. My difference with Saker is that I believe that Putin still does not know what his policy to the US should be. He still hopes that Trump will live up to his pre-election promise. Putin is still beholden to the moment of 2003 when Russia Germany France and Italy were together in opposition to US Iraq war. He still craves for the days when the German Chancellor and Italian leader were his personal friends. He hoped then and still hopes today to draw Europe to Russia and undermine NATO from within.
However, the Ukraine conflict has completely messed up that dream project. My most important objection to Saker is that Putin does not know what to do about Ukraine and does not have a policy on Ukraine. He puts up with what no Russian leader would put up with. Americans are arming Ukrainian neo-Nazies for a war with Russia. And Putin does nothing. Americans openly arm terrorists on Syria who shoot a Russian airplane and Russia does nothing. Basically Putin’s policy of turning enemies into partners and partners into friends and friends into allies has partially succeeded in Syria but failed in Ukraine. Is he going to wait until US missiles are established in Ukraine? Is he going to accept de facto NATO membership of Ukraine. Where is the red line beyond which he would not go?

The author is wrong. There is nothing in common between Gru and Trump. Gru is a reformed communist who wants to destroy the oligarchy whose wings Putin clipped but left intact. He wants modernization plus workers rights. Trump needs workers votes but he is not for workers\ rights. He is not and never has been anything close to Socialism. But back to the main idea of the author which is European Socialism will stage a comeback. Here again I disagree. The main problem left wing working class parties have in Europe is that the proletariat is no longer of their indigenous nationality. The proletariat in Germany is Turk and Muslim in France is Arab and Muslim and in UK Pakistani and Muslim. The exploited oppressed masses do not crave just equal pay and decent social services. They have that already. they want identity politics. They want more mosques, traditional family values of the societies they had left to be imported and recognized in Europe. That my dear opponent the European Left cannot deliver. If it tries, it will be smashed by the angry indigenous population. In Marxist terms the main class conflict in Europe today is not between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but between the French Italian German English workers and entrepreneurs in one boat trying to stay who they are faced with the growing minority of third world migrants that are changing the fabric of their societies. The Socialist left has no answers now.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENT. iT MEANS A LOT FROM A SPECIALIST LIKE YOU.
I follow your article avidly

You are so concerned why I do not live in Russia. So to satisfy your curiosity. I have been in the USA since I was 22 now I am 66. I have lived most of my life in the West. But in 2000 I did for as long as it was possible five years. go back to Russia as an American Professor and stayed and taught there at a university. You live where your job is.

Thank you for kind words. If you are interested in Russian history I posted a whole bunch of lectures on you tube under my name.

The Suvorov controversy is something I lived with from the times of being a graduate student of Russian History at Princeton. I attended many conferences in Germany and Russia on this subject. The most powerful part of Suvorov’s argument is the structure of Soviet forces, the positioning of tanks and air force on the border. However, that is not enough to produce a thesis that Stalin wanted to invade and conquer all of Europe. It suffices to suggest that he may have considered offensive operations in Germany.
There are many arguments that weaken Suvorov’s thesis. I shall start with the one that strengthens it.
At Princeton I studied under Professor Robert Tucker who wrote a three volumes psychological biography of Stalin. Tucker argues that Stalin throughout the 1930s had what could be called ideal scenario of the coming war: That is that France and Germany exhaust each other, in a replay of WW1 and then Soviet troops would plunge into Germany and make not conquest but Communist revolution.
That was the dream not reality. The big blow to that dream was the defeat of France in June 1940. According to Tucker, Stalin did not know what to do next. He was scared of Hitler by this point, as getting too powerful.
Another factor that you omit entirely but the one that had enormous influence on both Stalin and Hitler is the Soviet Finnish war of end of 1939 and early 1940. It was a total disaster for the Soviets and it was that war that convinced Hitler that the Germans could defeat the Red Army easily.
The Finnish war showed world war one riffles, enormous casualties of hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. A million and half is the largest estimate I read about. Stalin knew about Soviet performance in the Finnish campaign and he knew he was not ready to attack Germany even if he wanted or hoped to do that.
Another factor that no one is taking into account is German Polish relations. Everybody is plain silent on this subject. What I know is that the Poles offered to the Germans territorial concessions and in Germany there were plans to enlist Poland as an ally against Soviet Russia. Stalin may have known about these plans and offers.
In other words outward offensive structure of Soviet army does not in itself prove Stalin;s intention or a plan of action especially in view of collapse of France and Soviet defeat in Finland.
And finally it is common knowledge among historians of the war preceding Suvorov thesis that the field commanders in the Red army on the eve of the war had all orders to –transfer hostilities to emery territory. This is a widely known fact. This most likely has to do not with a grand plan to conquer Europe but with a replay of August 1914. In August 1914 Russian troops crossed the East Prussian border and at first had a serious success that could have led to a loss of East Prussia to the Russians. The Colonel Ludendorf showed his military genius and overturned the tables on the Russians and won the campaign and then the war on the Eastern front. The Russians remembered the lesson and prepared much better the second time and may have contemplated a much better prepared attack on East Prussia this time around.

Mr Buchanan is usually right but this time he got it the other way around. He gives the American perspective here which is fundamentally wrong. Here is why. The trade deficits are here not because Non Americans sell more to the US but because American companies prefer to produce in China where it is cheaper to produce and ship stuff back to the US hence the deficit. As for Europe, German cars and better and German machines and equipment is better than anyone else,s and that is why there is a deficit in trade.
Now on NATO. It is an outdated myth that NATO defends Europe from Soviet Russian aggression. There is no aggression. It is all made up in Pentagon to have an excuse to keep bases in Europe because bases are jobs, money, careers, military procurement and on and on. Let us not kid ourselves, the US troops in Europe have nothing to do with the Russians and have everything to do with US world wide strategic objectives, such as have a secure base on the way to Mid East or Iran or Far East.
US needs those bases and needs NATO for its own imperial ambitions.
Suppose the Germans will say one day, You want to have bases on our territory pay for the privilege, here is rent price. That is why US needs to make Russia look aggressive and dangerous. Trumps aggressive push in trade and in NATO spending push will lead to Europe shaking off American tutelage. The process is on and Trump speeds it up.

Dear Mr. Unz
I want to add a couple of details to the story of a possible Allied action against the Soviet Union in 1941.
Many years ago in the Soviet Union a very prestigious journal Novyi Mir published memories of an Soviet Interpreter who accompanied Molotov on his visit to Berlin in November 1940. The discussion of Molotov and Ribbentrop focused on a plan suggested buy the German side for a joint Soviet German action in India against the British. Nothing concrete was decided and the issue was soon forgotten. But in view of the possible Baku operation planned by the British and the French this episode acquires some relevance. If Stalin went for it we could have had a Soviet German clash with the British French in spring 1941.