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 The real Russia March 22, 2008
Jonathan Jensen (Surrey, UK)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. A fascinating insight into the challenges facing Europe and the United States in their relationship with Russia. Provides a lot of detail on Russia today. Well worth reading.
Is Russia assembling a new & expanded Axis of Evil? May 18, 2008
Pieter (Johannesburg)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
Russia is heading in an ominous direction that poses a threat to its own citizens, neighboring states and the world as a whole. This book with its disturbing message takes a hard look at the Russian ruling elite which emerged almost entirely from the ranks of the old KGB. Harboring resentment and malice against the West, this elite's attitude is crude and unsophisticated compared to the hostility of the Brussels Eurocracy towards the USA and Israel. The Russian government now directly competes with the West on various fronts, both economical and political. Genuine freedom of expression and the rule of law are long gone and the state has grabbed all political and economic power that matters. Putin's term "managed" or "sovereign" democracy really means a particularly malignant form of Tsarism or Fascism. In her 2004 book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, Anna Politkovskaya correctly observed that the brutality in Chechnya was an omen of Russia's future cruelty to all its citizens.
For a long time the West refused to notice. It should have woken up during the second Chechen war but instead there was only isolated protest in Europe and the USA, primarily from private bodies like the Jamestown Foundation and Italy's Radical Party. When Putin seized all influential media the West opened one eye then shut it again. When Khodorkovsky was jailed the same thing happened, and when the murder of dissidents and journalists became commonplace more observers expressed alarm though government criticism in the Western Alliance remained rather muted. This license to kill spread beyond the borders of Russia with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in the UK at a time when Tony Blair was almost embarrassingly amicable with Putin. More detailed information on the Litvinenko murder is available in Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB by Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, and The Litvinenko File by Martin Sixsmith.
The media now portrays Putin as a hero that rescued the country from the "chaos" of the 1990s since the political class has revived the Soviet habit of revisionism. And it uses the Orthodox Church for spreading the ideology of patriotism and Russian nationalism, a policy that inflames xenophobia resulting in violent racist attacks on non-Slav and non-Russian citizens. There have also been signs that this church is reverting to its infamous history of antisemitism. Militarism and imperialism are integral to the new nationalism although Lucas believes that the aim is the "Finlandisation" of Europe rather than territorial expansion. In the West Russia has plenty of paid propagandists plus the romantically deluded species known as Russophiles for whom this failed state with its history of genocide, sadism and misery can do no wrong.
Lucas charts the rise of Putin (explained in horrifying detail in Blowing Up Russia) and the course of the new cold war in a thorough and systematic manner, concluding with advice for the West on how to conduct and win it. Although he doesn't soon expect any military threat, Russia's nuclear stockpile must be reckoned with. The weapons employed in this multifaceted undeclared war are oil, gas and the revenues generated by their export. Instead of allocating it to real needs, the Kremlin uses the income to further its imperialist ambitions by acquiring strategic assets in Europe. Some of it flows straight to the elite for private investment abroad.
This war is pursued while Russia suffers from demographic collapse, massive corruption and widespread lawlessness. Ex-KGB operatives are in charge of all major companies and state enterprises, ensuring more inefficiency and corruption. On the international stage, not only has Russia behaved like a thug against Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia and Georgia, it is supplying weapons to rogue states Iran and Syria and their terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. There is no shortage of willing collaborators in the West, like previous German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, although western investors have begun to realize that investment in Russia is not worth the risk. When foreign companies resist state interference they risk confiscation. A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia exposes the mentality, power and incompetence of the ruling class.
The geopolitical implications are staggering, as the Putin gang eagerly befriends all enemies of the West. Russia is pursuing an energy policy aimed at strangling the liberal democracies by e.g. establishing a gas cartel. Lucas warns the West to get its house in order by inter alia cleaning up financial markets and reconsidering Russia's G8 membership. Should a criminal state be allowed to remain in a club of civilized nations? Whatever other evils result from Russia's abandonment of Western values, it is sure to become a more barbaric place for its citizens and a considerably more dangerous international player. One may confidently expect it to supply Iran with nuclear weapons technology and to cooperate with every loathsome thugocracy that defiles the planet.
Evidence is accumulating that Russia seeks an alliance with the Islamic world and a partial restoration of the Soviet Empire through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of which China is a member. The Kremlin ignores the real threat from China despite the particularly dire demographic and infrastructural implosion in Russia's far east. However, the Shanghai arrangement will bring the Turkic speaking states of Central Asia (plus Persian Tajikistan) back into the bear's embrace. Turkey's future role will be crucial; it remains to be seen where its recent Islamist trend will take it and how its foreign policy might change in case of almost certain exclusion from the inner core of the EU. Of course economic ties to Europe are assured but the country might establish closer relations with the aforementioned Central Asian states.
Should Israel be forced to act against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah an intensified Russian engagement in the Middle East conflict cannot be excluded. It might reluctantly be drawn into direct military intervention by its humiliated and devastated allies in the region. For those interested in prophetic speculation, I recommend Epicenter by Joel Rosenberg, an engrossing book based on the prophecies of Ezekiel about an anti-Israel confederacy which increasingly resembles an expanded axis of evil, an anti-western alliance that Russia is so vigorously pursuing.
Russia is scary April 6, 2008
T. M. Chassay (UK)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This boook is a really great read and shows how we in Eurorpe really have to pay attention to whats going on with our newly powerful and manipulative nieghbour.
 An Important Book February 26, 2008
T. R. Cowdret (Nottingham England)
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
While every reader might not agree with every idea Lucas puts forward in this important book (Mr Berezovsky will certainly have a few words to say, I'm sure!), I think most would agree that it is an extremely interesting and on the whole accurate explanation of Russia's present relationship with the West.
Lucas has lived through much of what he writes about in this account and his first hand knowledge imbues this work with both detail and common sense. He has spent most of his journalistic career examining Russia and is therefore particularly well-placed to write such a useful book.
Although the ideas are dense and in some places extremely complex, Lucas writes with clarity and deftness.
A thoroughly interesting book.
A great read November 15, 2008
M. Ward (Shropshire, England)
A fascinating insight into how Russia operates in the modern world and the challenges she poses for the West. I found this book to be very well written and a delight to read. A great book for anyone interested in international politics.
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