As Shock Therapy failed miserably in the 90s, the neocon dynasty seeks now direct confrontation with Russia
In
on of his most interesting films,
The
Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom,
Adam
Curtis
describes how the free market fundamentalists attempted to apply what
has been called 'Shock Therapy' in Russia, right after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. 'Shock Therapy' not only ruined the Russian
economy, but even led to the rise of Vladimir Putin in power.
As Curtis says:
In 1992, the American government
had passed the Freedom Support Act. Its aim was to help Russia
reconstruct itself. Along with millions of dollars of aid, came a
group of young American advisers, economists and political theorists,
that had a radical vision of what was necessary. They called it
'Shock therapy'. The aim was to remove all State control over the
Russian economy as a stroke. All price subsidies will be removed, and
all State industries privatized overnight. Their leader was a Harvard
economist called Jeffrey Sachs.
The Americans allied themselves
with a group of young radical free marketeers around Yeltsin, and
together they drew up a plan. Underlying it there was a theory of how
to transform society by creating new human beings. It was the same
theory that laid behind the rise of what was called market democracy
in Britain and America in the 1980s.
The theory said that if one
destroyed all the elite institutions that in the past had told people
what to do, and instead allowed individuals to become independent in
the market place, then they would become new kinds of rational
beings, choosing what they wanted. Out of this, would come a new form
of order, and a new kind of democracy, in which the market, not
politics, gave people what they wanted.
But things didn't work out as the
theory predicted. On the first day of the plan, all price controls in
Russia were removed, and the cost of all goods soared. Millions of
people found themselves unable to afford even the most basic of
goods, and with no one to help them. The only solution for millions
of Russians, was to come out on to the streets and sell their
belongings for anything they could get.
The chaos began to spread, as the
currency no longer had any value. Factories began to pay their
workers in the products they made, which the people then had to sell
wherever they could in order to live. Then, the privatization plan
kicked in. Every Russian was given vouchers to buy shares in the
privatized companies, but desperate for cash, they simply sold their
vouchers to ruthless businessmen for a fraction of their worth. And a
new elite began to emerge who snapped off vast sections of Russian
industry. They became known as the 'oligarchs'.
Faced with this, the deputies in
the Russian Parliament, began to protest against what they called
'economic genocide', would led to chaos and violence inside
Parliament. And in the face of this the group of reformers around
Yeltsin persuaded him he had to suspend Parliament. In protest, the
deputies occupied Parliament. Yeltsin's response was brutal. He
ordered the army to attack, the deputies were arrested, and Yeltsin
announced that he would now rule by decree.
Shock Therapy continued, but in
the future, people were going to be made free, through force and
dictatorship. But what actually happened was that Yeltsin became the
creature of those with the real power in the new Russia, the
oligarchs. In return for loans, Yeltsin gave oligarchs like Boris
Berezovsky, the rest of Russian industry. Sometimes at less than 2%
of its real value. And then, in 1998, the experiment came
dramatically to an end.
The days of economic reforms seem
to be well and truly over here. Out of this economic catastrophe, a
new order emerged, but it wasn't a spontaneous order dreamt of by the
free market utopians. It was the very opposite, a harsh, tough
nationalism, imposed by the new president Vladimir Putin. Putin
arrested or exiled the major oligarchs, and set about dismantling
many of the democratic freedoms in the new Russia. But this was
welcomed by the majority of Russians, who now wanted order, not
freedom. What president Putin could offer Russians were other things,
security, dignity, and above all, a meaning that went beyond their
own individual lives.
Curtis presents ideas originated
from the neoconservatives, first appeared in the US in the early 70s.
This coincides with the neoliberalism era that dominated the West for
about four decades until today. Since then, the neocon/neoliberal
establishment of the West has spread chaos in various regions through
military or economic intervention.
Russia was on its knees after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. But it is obvious that the neocons not
only failed to fulfill their ultimate target which was the definite
occupation of Russia from inside through an economic war, but,
instead, they helped Putin to rise in power. Now, they want
desperately to return to Russia with the same target. With Putin in
power, things now are much more difficult. The US deep state has only
one option: provoke an open and direct conflict.
As
already
described,
what we see in Ukraine is probably another
failure of various think tanks, mostly from Washington, which they
are funded, of course, by the international capital. It seems that,
apart from the fact that they have underestimated Putin's abilities,
they have also wrongly estimated that Russia had passed permanently
in the neoliberal phase and would be ready to become an easy victim
to promote their plans. According to these plans, the ultimate goal
would be probably to dissolve the vast Russian territory in future
and bring in power Western-friendly puppet regimes, in order not only
to conquer the valuable resources, but also to impose permanently the
neoliberal doctrine on "unexplored" regions and
populations.
The sloppy
and obsolete propaganda has started, yet people
don't buy it that easily, anymore ...
Naomi Kline pretty much says the same thing in her book "The Shock Doctrine"........
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