MONGOLS FROM BYZANTIUM

Here's one key in unlocking the mystery of Putin and Russia continuing to pick fights with the West instead of accepting the invitation to join it in a post Cold War world.

Pope John Paul II traveled to dozens of countries around the world, yet never Russia.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Vatican made numerous attempts to persuade the revived Russian Orthodox Church to invite him.  The attempts were always rebuffed.

Yes, you have a gangster-KGB elite running the country and the economy.  Yeltsin's biggest mistake was not breaking the KGB's power when he had the chance in the early/mid 90s.  So it took over with a KGB colonel (Putin) in charge.

That's how we have the richest mafiacracy in history, with Putin The World's Richest and Most Dangerous Gangster having amassed a personal fortune in excess of $20 billion.

This figure comes from sources within FINCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that tracks global money laundering.  Putin's fortune is deeply layered within a labyrinth of dummy corps and lawyer fronts, but the FINCEN guys have told Bush all about it.  All he has to do is give them the nod, and it's exposed, even quietly seized.

Perhaps a hint of this was dropped at Rostock this week, allowing Bush to publicly assault the destruction of democracy in Russia under Putin, and calming down Putin's threats to aim Russian nukes at Europe.

Yet the KGB-ification of the Russian government doesn't fully explain the more fundamental cultural disparity between Russia and the West.  That lies in the Russians being Mongols from Byzantium.

As we saw in A Short History of Russia, the barbarian tribes in the sub-arctic forests of Suzdalia, where Russia originated, were converted to Orthodox Christianity by missionaries from Byzantium (Constantinople) a thousand years ago.  Then came the Mongols of Genghiz Khan.

Thus Mongol concepts of justice and morality, lacking any notion of individual rights or even the basic worth of the individual, were grafted onto the version of Christianity implanted in the Russians.

When Constantinople fell to the Moslem Turks of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1453, and the entire Byzantine Empire was Islamicized, the Russian Church declared it was Byzantium's heir, that Moscow was the "Third Rome."

The promise never materialized.  The Mongol values gave Russia Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) instead of the Renaissance, leaving the Russian Church – always a State Religion with the Czar as its de facto Pope – and Russians in general from peasantry to aristocracy with an envious hatred towards the West.

The hatred took the form – we need professional psychologists like Joel Wade to explain the mental contortionist mechanism – of contempt and superiority over Western culture (even going so far as Russian Church leaders claiming Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are only "sects" and "cults," while theirs was the only genuine church of Christianity.

This belief and attitude system is hard-wired into the Kremlin elite who rule Russia today.  They truly hate America, hate Europe, hate the West, hate democracy, hate the entire tradition of individual rights, of political freedom and democracy.

This means there is no hope at present for Russian democracy leaders like Gary Kasparov, no hope of Russia evolving into a normal country with normal freedoms.  Among Bush's advisors are those who understand this, who are explaining to him that there is only one way – only one – to deal with Russia: 

Recognizing the Cold War has returned.  We're in Cold War II.

CWII will be a test of will, not ideology.  Russia has no "Marxism-Leninism" to justify itself, just the will to power.  Russia has no military strength, its armed forces a rusted remnant of the mighty Soviet Red Army.  All it has is the threat of nukes, an empty threat for the Kremlin elite isn't suicidal like Moslem crazies.

Basically CWII means dismissing illusions of Russians embracing Western values of individual freedom and dignity.  It means teaching them to behave by not tolerating their bullying and intimidation – and by going after them where they are weakest.

They are weakest in their wallets.  The KGB elite has billions, much of which is illicit.

Maybe GW will target Putin's fortune for real.  Maybe even the threat of targeting it will moderate his behavior.  But with the Bush Presidency coming to a close, we have to focus on making sure the next president understands the reality of CWII and has the will to conduct it with American strength.

By understanding that Russians are Mongols from Byzantium, the next president will not find Russia a Churchillian mystery wrapped inside an enigma.  Then he will have a clear picture of the ruthless power politics he'll have to play.