The statistics show that in Russia only 10 percent live well, while 75 percent are in poverty. It is worse in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan.
In the outer space, meaning the rest of the world, illusions alternate with despair, except perhaps in some peaceful places, like Norway, where a prevailing natural wisdom may not be easily explained.
There are also lesser exceptions, like the Ukrainian diaspora that lives by its own checkout register. It is based on being blindsided to socioeconomic and political numbers in its own backyard, while concentrating on what it thinks is important in Ukraine — mostly downhill since the assumption of power by the Regions Party in February 2010.
Shadowy and vile practices in Western societies are never on the diaspora’s screen — such as the connection between election campaign money and political power, or the effect of the U.S. war lobby and the war in Afghanistan on Russia’s weight in Ukraine.
Consider the following episode. Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state arms exporter, signed a contract with the U.S. army last month to supply 21 military helicopters to boost the capacity of the Afghan air force, heralded the Financial Times on May 31. This is not a joke, despite sounding very unusual.
Ordinarily, the U.S. would fiercely compete with any country to sell aircraft of its own make. But in this case, “the contract demonstrates a high level of U.S. trust in Russia,” wrote the Financial Times’ Isabel Gorst in Moscow.
And it gets more surreal: “U.S. plans to withdraw from Afghanistan have prompted Russia to cooperate with NATO in boosting security in the country, which borders former Soviet Central Asia.” Of course, anything can be shown as a threat to Russia’s empire — from Chechen villagers and Afghan Mujahideen to polar bears and the Eskimos. But if the U.S. expects Russia’s help in extricating itself from Afghan mess, it has come to a dead-end in search of a face-saving exit strategy.
In the grand scheme of things and the exhaustion from endless Afghan hangover, the West has been ignoring, for now, its own decline. Its luck could be running out in the face of the ongoing real climate change, which may gradually erode its technological advantages and living standards.
The persistent and revolving cycle of natural and man-made environmental disasters in America magnifies the damage from the recession and joblessness.
But at the very top of entrenched wealth, the party is in full swing. Last January, the kings of finance and investment wizards came to London to celebrate the opening of the most expensive edifice ever built in the high flyers’ sector. Wall Street greats showed up, alongside with Abu Dhabi zillionaires and Russia’s oligarchs.
Each square foot of the development costs at least $8,000. The unwritten word “prestige” was gleaming on every front and backside. Other words came to mind, none of them sounding like praising an epitome of democracy or decency.
This glimpse at the Olympus of the world’s maharajas of wealth puts into an embarrassing perspective the horrid destruction of humanity at the other, almost invisible end of the planet – in Iraq eight years now and in Afghanistan since the 1980s Soviet and then the American invasion.
Notice the thunderous silence in the media on the subject of war crimes in these places, before and after the curtain was stirred, just a smidgeon, by WikiLeaks. It is nothing like the uproar about John Demjanjuk, a favorite punching bag over the last 30 years, who took the rap for the guys with big boleros in Munich.
The astronomic expense of Iraq and Afghan ventures (“off-budget” in the Pentagon parlance) together with Wall Street financial fraud, brought the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse in 2008. U.S. President Barack Obama is now expected to fix it, with not much help from the Republican House majority that has a Las Vegas interpretation of the deficits that have been piled up during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.
The Republican Party has suddenly become champion of fiscal austerity — to be achieved, on its agenda, by dismantling essential social entitlement programs that have not caused the red ink. In addition, the Party would compound the travesty with tax cuts.
Not surprisingly, America’s mood is turning against financial drain of military adventures and against potholes on highways. Towns and states are running out of money to repair them.
Meanwhile, there is also an ongoing sabotage of Obama’s recent initiative to resolve the Palestinian issue, and also to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year. Regrettably, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush era and scheduled to leave soon, has publicly verbalized against the president’s intent to begin the Afghan drawdown, and so did Admiral Michael Mullen, who is leaving his post as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Clearly, this meddling of Pentagon brass in policy issues not in its domain is a violation of the letter of the U.S. government, and it says something about the resilience of the war lobby that represents special domestic and foreign interests. The late U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to the American people, in his farewell address in January 1961, about the danger from excessive power of the military-industrial complex should be read again, on prime time.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
