A Struggle Amongst Oligarchs in Ukraine Pt.2
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First of all, the European Union and NATO is not the same, but there is a very deep interconnection. And this interconnection is, by the way, not very positive, because very often when people are thinking about economic, cultural, political close relations with European Union, with standards of European social democracy, this is positive, but when we must be part of NATO policy, with attack against Iraq, for example, or something like this, this is very negative. That’s why it is a big question mark—big contradiction between NATO and the European social democratic values.
And we are thinking more about not social democratic values but about NATO. Why? Because in periphery of European Union countries, there is a few features of social democratic model. There are a few aspects of social protection, social justice which is more or less typical for Scandinavian countries. But there are a lot of elements to use these territories as part of the full manipulation with the goals of NATO. That is why there is big tension.
And the image of NATO as not very friendly organization to Russia is also part of reality, unfortunately again. And very often we cannot understand against whom is NATO—against terrorism, but here there is no necessity to have strategic weapons; against China, but there is no—any declarations about this; against Russia, no. So this is big question mark for Russians: against whom is NATO? Why we cannot create international system of security under the supervision of United Nations? Why we need NATO? And for Russians, this is big questions. And militarization of Russia is negative tendency, but for many people this is understandable tendency. And I don’t like both trends, militarization and these changes in mass mentality of Russians.
Also, in Russia, we have people who are supporters of real human rights, real protection of national sovereignty, and so on. But very often United States politicians, NATO policy, has double standards, and what is okay for NATO is not okay for Russia. We can start war in Iraq, I mean, NATO, but Russia cannot start war in another region without our permission. We are the only world policeman, NATO proclaims that NATO is the only world policeman, nobody else. I don’t know if all countries agree with this. In Russia, a majority will not agree with this.
And one more aspect. We have negative aspect of behavior of our far-right liberals, for whom all decisions of Western right-wing politicians are good, all other decisions are bad, and it doesn’t matter who made this decision—Cuban leader, Venezuela leader, Russian leader, Chinese leader: if Obama said it’s bad, it’s bad. And such type of behavior of our so-called elite right-wing intelligentsia creates alienation of this so-called elite from majority of Russians and provoke more and more nationalism.
Finally, real democrats and internationalists like me, like all our friends and network alternatives, movement in defense of democracy, movements in defense of education, and so on, we are in terrible situation, because when we are speaking about democracy for majority, this is democracy by NATO troops established by NATO troops, not from below. And every time we must discuss this question, we must explain that this is not geopolitics of NATO, this is real necessity of Russian people, and so on.