Re: meiksins-wood article

["ÁÎ×Ó¹â Henry C.K.Liu ¹ù¤l¥ú" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I always find Mark Jones' post on Russia informative and enlightening.
Someone said recently that since the collpase of the USSR, the US has no more
need for a foreign policy because of its new omnipotence.  The Roman empire had
no foreign policy, only a colonial policy.  After the defeat of Napoleon, the
British Empire's colonial office dominated Whitehall.  The US is granting
legitmacy to Russia, because it sees the existing Russian government as the best
instrument for insuring the return of communism in Russia and in Europe.  The
geopolitical conflict between the US and Russia is neither structural nor
permanent.  In fact, Russia will be needed by the US as a counter balance for a
potentially powerful and contentious EU.  Also, the triangular US/Russia/China
game is now reemerging under post Cold War conditions, without ideological
underpinning.  Over time, due to economic weakness, Russia will lose its nuclear
parity with the US.  Without a royalty and a aristocracy, Russia will have
difficulty holding the ethnically diverse nation together, and it will lack the
economic resources to offer incentives for thawing splittism.

The lesson of Russia is that once a socialist system falls, it will take another
world war to have a second chance.  For China, this means no price is too high
to sustain the survival of the CPC, even with its faults, corruptions and all.

Henry

Mark Jones wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> >The problem is that neither Doug nor Ellen has a
> > grounding in Leninist politics so the question of what they mean by
> > fighting on the terrain of the national state is open to question.
>
> a propos cop-outs I've jusrt been reading an egregious article about Putin's
> Russia and US policy, in the current Nation by its editor (?) Katrina vanden
> Heuvel. It's relevant that her partner is eminent sovietologist and
> Bukharin-biograpger, Stephen Cohen. The long and short of it is that it is
> time to confer some kind of 'legitimacy' on the post-Soviet Russian regime.
> Thus Nation like the rest of the mainstream media has decided to adopt and
> sanctify the results of the counter-revolution and the grand larceny of
> state assets by the 'oligarchs'. This is a terrible shame, innit? But it's
> what you can expect, I guess.
>
> Mark Jones