Putin’s Grand Plan for Europe and America 

 

Although Hitler made a fortune on the publication of Mein Kampf, few people have read his diatribe wherein he declared his hatred of democracy, Marxism and the Jews, and his belief that the Aryan race—specifically, the Germanic—was divinely decreed as the master race. Well, if you missed your chance to learn about his part in history and his advocacy for preordained nationalism, you now are witness to its reincarnation. President Putin believes that Providence guides Mother Russia to rule all of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans—what he terms Eurasia. He detests democracies, LGBTQ people, and anybody, including Slavs, even Russians, who dare to oppose his right to re-establish—and extend—the former Russian empire under his rule. He has warned that any country opposing him would face the full force of Russian power. (Is this not a reference to his nuclear arsenal?) His Eurasia myth promises to replace chaotic democracies anywhere with nationalist rulers who bow to his dictates. Of course, the beneficiary of this proposed nationalist empire can only be Putin and the coterie of his chosen sycophants, who are currently his Russian oligarchs and chosen military leaders. Those he will govern are destined to a limited or even meagre subsistence while told to bask in the glory of an all-powerful state and in gratitude to its supreme leader.  

 

What the world is seeing in Ukraine today is not merely Putin’s fear of Western hegemony, but his attempt to advance Russian dominance in Europe on his way to Eurasia. Ukraine is just another hurdle to overcome. Chechnya, Crimea, and parts of Georgia and Syria are behind him. Belorussia, already cowed to his will, and Moldovia may be next, then Poland and the Baltic states. He is acting on a long-held belief that it is his destiny to restore and extend the Russian empire to its full glory as preordained by Providence. As a result, he will concoct any imagined pretense—whether it is to rid Ukraine of neo-Nazis and protect its Russian inhabitants, or to counter NATO’s infringement on Russia’s hereditary lands, or to prove Russia as a legitimate counterweight to American power. Rather than a free democratic Ukraine, he will make Ukraine a vassal of Mother Russia like its former colonial status under Soviet rule. But the war he has started clearly has a purpose beyond Ukraine. Caesar recognized Gaul was divided into three parts and that he had to conquer all its parts before establishing the Roman Empire. Napoleon crossed every border with his massive army on his way to Moscow. And Hitler too was looking beyond Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, to extend his reign even beyond the point of Napoleon’s failure. These world conquerors—Putin’s kin—must unleash the hell fires of war and extend their dominion to match their inflated egos (reference “Recurring World Visions”).  

 

The twentieth Century has taught us of both modern warfare’s enormous devastation and its unpredictability. I certainly cannot offer a ready bromide for this recurring human ailment. But we can better cope with this current crisis if we understand how it came to be. Putin’s wars have a prelude where all the discordant notes were played in advance of the main theme. 

 

That prelude began with Putin’s sudden rise to power in 2000. From an unknown former KGB operative in the 1980’s, he came to prominence in St. Petersburg where he used his government position to enrich himself and his assembled gang of thieves. Meanwhile, he rose through the ranks of the KGB—now the FSB—to become its leader. Three months before President Yeltsin’s unexpected retirement, he was appointed Vice President. Then, in January 2000, he inherited the presidency when the former President was forced into retirement at the end of 1999. (He was eventually elected in March of 2000 under a very dubious “free” election, reference “Is War in Europe Inevitable?”) The Soviet era and his KGB training had been the major influences in his life and on his mindset. ¹ Shortly after Putin became the head of state, he consolidated his power by protecting and enriching the men—mostly his St. Petersburg gang—who would become his oligarchs. For Americans, his approach was not dissimilar to Trump’s appointments of self-interested millionaires, lobbyists, and criminally prone individuals to government positions or to his “kitchen cabinet.” Like Putin, Trump’s back story included mob boss tactics of bending the rules and of employing sycophants to serve his self-interests. Trump’s mindset was not dissimilar to Putin’s. 

 

It should not be surprising then that Putin’s intelligence network had noted Trump’s potential as an “idiot source” long before he won the presidency. He had been weaned on laundered money from Russian oligarchs. And Putin, as the experienced KGB handler he once was, tested this source by inviting him to Russia and offering him free publicity and a Moscow venue for his beauty pageant. Subsequently, he used the opportunity his newly won supplicant provided to assist Trump’s campaign for the Presidency. He had his intelligence operatives engineer a massive online effort to support Trump’s candidacy. If he did not personally suggest, he most certainly approved of the man who volunteered to lead the candidate’s campaign for free (reference “Why Does Putin Favor Trump?” written in 2015). That man was Paul Manafort, a Putin operative who had served/guided Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President who also served at Putin’s pleasure.  

 

Putin’s grand plan was hatched early in his Presidency and implemented in stages by – 

 (1) amassing a 600 billion rubles government surplus in a strained Russian economy, as a future war fund secretly financed by the Russian people,  

(2) staging a coup in Crimea, followed by the invasion and occupation of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, 

(3) setting up a favorable bilateral relation with the President of Belorussia who later would allow the placement of the Russian military on Ukraine’s northern border, close to Ukraine’s capitol,  

(4) planning the elaborate movement of 70-75% of Russia’s military resources from all sectors of the country to strategic locations surrounding Ukraine. 

(5) and, of course, abetting the election of Donald Trump to lessen America’s official aversion to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his ongoing incursions into southeastern Ukraine.

 

When Putin’s plan succeeded in duping enough Americans needed to elect his candidate, he must have been delighted to see how President Trump responded to his wishes by –  

(1) reducing America’s short range nuclear missiles deployed in Europe,  

(2) decommissioning the spy plane that had previously been part of mutually agreed overflights of American and Russian terrain to assure both signatories were adhering to their nuclear arms treaties, 

(3) destroying the plane’s ultramodern surveillance equipment, thereby prohibiting its future reuse, 

(4) reducing American support for NATO, even to the extent of pulling troops back from Eastern Europe. 

(5) and delaying arms shipments to Ukraine while accusing Ukraine of meddling in America’s Presidential election—thereby exonerating Russia, the actual perpetrator.  

  

Within a few short years, Putin had been able to concoct this elaborate plan to attack and subjugate a democratically free state, while neutralizing any American opposition. In his mind, he was on a divinely ordained mission to restore the Russian empire that had fallen victim to the hegemony of European democracies and to the United States. Does his elaborate plan not remind us of another obstinately determined and deranged visionary of 20th century vintage? 

 

As one might expect, the reference here is to Adolph Hitler. Of course, Hitler revealed his megalomania much earlier than Putin. In 1924, he had been arrested, trialed, and convicted of treason. But he denounced the verdict in his rebuttal: “You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over, but the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to tatters the brief of the state prosecutor and the sentence of this court. For she acquits us.” After his three and a half weeks in court, he spent another 9 months in the Old Fortress at Landsberg where he dictated Mein Kampf to his forever loyal Rudolf Hess. ² This self-proclaimed bible fortified his quest for power and subjugation.  

 

Putin, likewise, has written lengthy treatises justifying his tactics, much of its philosophy torn from the pages of Ivan Ilyin’s writings. Note that Ilyin “began his article on ‘Russian Nationalism’ with the simple claim that ‘National Russia has enemies.’” ³ How often have we heard this refrain repeated by Putin? The world is Russia’s enemy until subjugated by Russia under its nuclear umbrella. And Putin has no need to call upon some goddess to justify his actions, for he believes Divine Providence already guides him. But, as warned in the Bible, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Mathew, 7:15). And further, “They speak visions of their own mind, not from the mouth of the Lord.” (Jeremiah, 23:16). Putin, like one such ravenous wolf, has concocted a scheme out of his bewitched mind to swallow up the nation of Ukraine. He has become our 21st Century Hitler. But he wields not the “sword of the spirit” (Ephesians 6:17), nor Hitler’s blitzkrieg, but an unprovoked and genocidal war under the threatening cloud of nuclear war. Stated bluntly, Putin threatens an apocalypse unless granted unbridled power over the lives of innocents. 

 

The lesson of history here is plain: as Lord Acton told us, “All power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The quest for power is not an uncommon human trait. But so is the urge to form self-supporting communities and a system of social justice. For the past 235 years, the United States has struggled with these often-opposing traits. How have we survived? The answer: we repeatedly revive the power of our union and its guarantees of liberty and justice for all. And we do so at the polls. For example, we recently voted out of office a pretend dictator. Throughout our history, we have used our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to correct any waywardness from their provisions and to right the course of our democracy. Nevertheless, no human society is or stays innocent of wrongdoing. The saving virtue of democracy is its ability to right its course. When America loses this ability, it loses its place in history as perhaps the best hope for humankind. All who support democracy must stand together, otherwise we will all face the same recourse that the Russian people face today, that is, subjugation to a maniacal tyrant or—in America’s case—to a rogue political party fallen under the spell of Donald Trump, our very own Putinesque fanatic. Of course, our “fanatic” is less likely to speak in religious terms, but in terms of wealth and power. But history has shown us that men who seek absolute power (yes, they are always men) surround themselves with sycophants who feed off the trough of that power and extend its reign. 

 

It is both natural and necessary for Americans to support Ukrainians, for their struggle is the same as ours. They were developing a democracy just as we have been struggling to preserve ours. Our futures are intertwined. And the world depends upon our success in this struggle. May God help the Ukrainian people and guide us to form societies and governments that guarantee liberty and justice for all. The alternative is a return to feudal conditions, aristocratic rule, and sworn loyalty to an autocratic system under a soulless dictator. If you will forgive my poetic fancy, there is a line from a Robert Burns’ poem that has always stayed with me:  

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

      Gang aft a-gley, 

An’ lea’s us nought but grief an’ pain, 

      For promised joy . . . 

But och! I backward cast my e’e 

      On prospects drear! 

An’ forward though I canna see, 

      I guess an’ fear!”˜  

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 ¹ If you really want to understand this man and his objectives, read “Mr. Putin,” authored by Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gadddy. And, if you want to know how he rose to such power, read Karen Dawisha’s “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” where his brutal rise is extensively documented. 

² William L. Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” pp. 75-79 (quote taken from P.78). 

³ Timothy Snyder, “The Road to Unfreedom, p.28.  

˜ Robert Burns, “To a Mouse,” Norton Anthology of English Literature,” p. 1786.