[p2p-research] Road to Polario: The Coming Russian-American Alliance

[Michel Bauwens]

Stimulating scenario from our friend Larry Taub,

Michel


by Lawrence Taub


Russia, the US, Canada, and Scandinavia – All Under One Roof, the North Pole



The year is 2020 and the unthinkable has happened -- the US and Russia,
together with Canada, several USSR successor states, and the Nordic
countries, have announced the formation of Polario, a political and economic
union along the lines of the European Union.  Economic, security, and mutual
confrontation issues, as well as the rise of Europa and Confucio (the East
Asian Union), have finally forced the hands of the two ex-superpowers.  An
economic-political union together with the other countries around the North
Pole has seemed the only way to solve their problems “permanently“.

                Far-fetched? That’s what people would also have said in the
1940s, if you had predicted a union that would have included Germany,
England, and France. Today, given the unpredictable and seemingly unfriendly
relationship between Russia and the US, most people I have discussed this
with say that such a forecast is one of the most ridiculous ideas they’ve
ever heard.

                Nevertheless, according to my book, *The Spiritual
Imperative: Sex, Age, and the Last Caste*, an alliance between Russia and
the US is almost inevitable, probably by the year 2020. *The Spiritual
Imperative* gives a “big picture“ of history and forecasts trends that are
likely to happen over the next hundred years, including this one, which I’d
like to explore here.

                As I discuss in the book (Chapter 9), Polario will not be
just a US-Russia alliance. It will be a union like the European Union (EU)
and will certainly contain three, but probably as many as twelve or
thirteen, countries. The three that are certain will be Canada, Russia, and
the United States. But Polario will also likely include the five
Scandinavian countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark) and
four neighbors of Russia closely connected to it, willy-nilly, by history:
Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, and Belarus. It may contain Mexico as well, thus
incorporating NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) into itself.


“Polario is Poppycock.” Arguments Against the Possibility of a US-Russian
Union



The main reason, I feel, that most people see a Russo-US-Canadian Union
(Polario) as impossible is because they have trouble seeing beyond the
status quo. Of course they are unfamiliar with the deep structures of
history that big-picture (macrohistorical) models describe. But even on the
everyday level, they somehow forget all those examples in history, when what
was true at one time completely reversed a short time later.

            Examples from the second half of the 20th century include the
French-German-British friendship soon after World War II, the collapse of
the European empires and the coming together of the former imperial nations
into the EU, the reunification of Germany, the dismemberment of the Soviet
Empire, the expansion of the EU into most of Eastern Europe, the shift of
China toward capitalism, the rise of Japan and India, the shift of world
economic power to the Far East, successful religious revolution in Iran and
Afghanistan, the entry of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma into ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the end of apartheid in South
Africa, peace and collaboration between Israel and bordering Arab countries,
Jordan and Egypt, Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations, the mass influx of
women into high power positions, the influence of the animal rights
movement, and the increasing similarity between male and female sexual and
love-relationship styles.

            Every one of these changes seemed impossible shortly before they
happened. You would have been considered a nut case to predict them. Yet the
models on which the book is based foresaw all of them that occurred after
1975, when I first became aware of the models. So why shouldn’t Polario
shift from “impossible” to possible as well?

            Whenever I bring up this subject, my interlocutors give the
following reasons for saying a Russian-American alliance won’t work and
can’t be. First come the philosophical reasons: Russia and the US are
completely different. The US is a democracy; Russia has no history of
democracy. First it was a czarist, then a communist, dictatorship. Then,
under Boris Yeltsin, it became an anarcracy. And now, with Putin and
Medvedev, it’s going back to dictatorship.

            Second, the US and Russia are culturally far apart as well. US
Americans value freedom and innovation, are irrepressibly ambitious,
individualistic, and upwardly-striving, continually resist authority and any
attempt to control them, and continually drag down their public servants
from their “high horses.” The Russians, on the other hand, love and seem to
demand the Strong Man.

            Then my interlocutors cite the political reasons for the
impossibility of a Russian American alliance, based on the present
Russian-American hostile relationship.

They, of course, cite the recent Russia-Georgia War of August 8 to 12, 2008.
As you know, the ex-Soviet, now independent, country of Georgia attacked its
breakaway region of South Ossetia, to assert control over it. South Ossetia
identifies with Russia rather than Georgia. The attack provoked a
counter-invasion by Russia of Georgia itself, to “come to South Ossetia’s
rescue.”

The world media at the time presented conflicting reports of both what
happened and who the “bad guys” were, the Georgians or the Russians. But
either way, the Western countries and their press generally posited the idea
that the “aggressive” Russian action was an attempt to regain the domination
both the Russian (Czarist) Empire and the USSR had over ex-Soviet countries
like Georgia, Ukraine, the three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania), and others. And they see it as a possible resumption of the Cold
War.

The interlocutors also point out, to back up their skepticism of a
Russian-American alliance, that Russia follows up its Georgia venture with
other actions consistent with its former Soviet world power and opposition
to the West. It makes gestures of solidarity with US Latin American
opponents like President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, flies long-range
strategic bombers and sails naval ships to Venezuela, sends many ships to
visit Cuba, tries to reestablish the close relationship the USSR had with
Cuba, and sends its navy through the Panama Canal – to show that if the US
and NATO can expand their power presence to Georgia and other countries in
Russia’s “near abroad”, and send their navies into the Black Sea, Russia can
do the same in the US’s backyard.

In Europe, meanwhile, the US, Poland, and the Czech Republic agreed that the
US would station a missile defense system in the latter two countries,
thereby angering the Russians, who threatened that such agreements put the
two countries at risk.

All these Russian countermoves seem to create a political picture of mutual
hostility between the US and Russia, leading observers to ask me: “Taub, how
do you square this hostility with your rosy prediction that the two
countries, Russia and the US, will be hugging and kissing so as to form an
alliance – the Polario Union – with Canada and all of Scandinavia thrown in
to boot? Are you totally mad?”


Why Polario is Almost a Sure Thing.



That’s the point: This very hostility is what makes a US-Russian Union
almost certain, as we shall see.

There are at least three ways (levels) to explain future shifts like this
one. There’s the superficial tit-for-tat, action-reaction level, which you
find a lot in the mainstream media. The writers shout at each other who are
the good guys (victims) and who are the bad guys (aggressors). Russia
invades Georgia, so the US and Europe “react” by doing something to cope
with the “revived Russian menace.”

The second level is the deeper, “big-picture” strategic analysis, which
Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting: www.stratfor.com) does brilliantly. It’s
unbiased, and looks at Russia’s deeply-thought-out national interest and
strategy behind the Georgia invasion. Then it predicts what the US and
Europe’s well-thought-out counter strategy might be. No bad guys or good
guys. Both are both. On this level politics is a chess game between top
pros.

In *The Spiritual Imperative* I use the third, macrohistorical level to
explain why Polario is almost certain and other future shifts. This level
describes the deepest underlying forces of history, which explain how
history develops stage by stage, from one paradigm to the next.

Most macrohistories – once called “grand narratives of history” – aren’t
very helpful, I feel. They describe history’s stages either too broadly or
too vaguely. So you can conclude from them anything about the future you
like, or incompletely or wrongly. So their forecasts are way off.

But I found three excellent ones. Their descriptions of the forces of
history ring true and are hard to argue against. And their forecasts have
been on the mark since I started using them in 1975. I call them the Sex
Model, the Age Model, and the Caste Model.

The Caste Model especially seems to show that a US-Russian Polario Union is
certain, in the next 10 to 20 years. It explains how human history started
out with a Spiritual-Religious Age, with the emphasis on “religious”
(basically pre-history), followed by the Warrior Age (the ancient world and
the Middle Ages), the Merchant Age (early capitalism), the present Worker
Age (mature capitalism), and the recently-started second Spiritual-Religious
Age (emphasis on “spiritual”). The ages have no clear boundary and overlap
in time.

Through the Caste Model, I realized that, accompanying the Worker Age are
deep historical forces that all but guarantee that the US and Russia will
become close buddies and form a Union with neighboring North Pole countries.
(These forces will continue into the following Second Spiritual-Religious
Age.)

One of these forces is that countries will continue to “bunch up” to form
unions with their neighbors: the EU, ASEAN, Mercosur, NAFTA, SAARC (South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), etc. Another is that three
unions will lead the world politically and economically. The No. 1 world
power (Union) will be “Confucio”, the culmination of the shift of world
power to the Far East. Confucio will consist of Japan, China, Taiwan, and a
reunified Korea. The No. 2 most powerful Union will be “Europa,” the present
European Union expanded to include most of Europe, minus Russia and its
neighbors that will join it and the US in Polario (Scandinavia, Belarus,
Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia).

And the No. 3 world power, of course, will be the Polario Union of Russia,
the US, etc. With the formation and rise of Confucio and Europa to top
power, politically and economically, Russia and the US will find themselves,
as I have put it, “odd men out,” thus pressured to get closer and form their
own bloc.

This shifting of alliances and fall of the US (and Russia) to No. 3 in the
world power hierarchy doesn’t mean that either country will have declined or
lost its power. It just means that three unions, consisting of the Northern
industrialized countries that lead the world now, will continue to do so,
but in a tri-polar world, or rather tri-goose formation, with the lead goose
shifting from the US to the Far East, and the other two close on its wings.

So, prodded by the “bunching-up” force, Russia and the US will be pushed
into each other’s arms (how romantic!).


Uncle Sam Helps His New Nephew



The Caste Model explains the deep “bunching-up” force and the “odd-men-out”
momentum driving the US and Russia together. But we don’t have to go that
deep. Already on the less deep big-picture level (strategic analysis), we
get a glimpse of how the two “enemies” will embrace.

Let’s look at the context. What’s behind the mutual hostility between the
West and Russia? The US is still the world’s only superpower. Despite the
current economic crisis, its economy is still larger than the next three
combined: those of Japan, Germany, and China.

When the Cold War ended, the USSR system was replaced, and the Union’s
components went back to being independent countries. The US took a
triumphalist “winner-take-all,” “we-won-the-Cold-War,” “we-are-the-greatest”
approach, as Stephen F. Cohen put it.1 US leaders treated Russia as “a
defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan.”2 (If you
are interested, I debunk this “capitalism-defeated-communism” and
“we-won-the-Cold-War” attitude in Chapters 11 and 12 of *The Spiritual
Imperative*.)

As with Germany and Japan, the US and Western Europe naturally felt they
should expand their “winning” democratic and capitalist system to the former
USSR countries. So, for example, they expanded NATO to include not only
Eastern European countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltics,
etc., but they hoped also to include USSR successor states like Ukraine and
Georgia. And they agreed to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, despite
Russia’s “nyet” on this issue.

As George Friedman of *Stratfor* puts it, despite its winner-take-all
attitude, the US really saw its policy as “a benign attempt to stabilize the
region, enhance its prosperity and security and integrate it into the global
system.”3 Russia was too weak and unstable to “resist [the] American and
European involvement in its regional and internal affairs.”4


Putin Opens the Window of Opportunity



But Russia cannot just sit back, relax, and welcome this US-European
“generous help.” Its past history and experience won’t allow it. As Peter
Zeihan points out, Russia lacks easily definable and defendable borders,
unlike the US, which controls a whole continent “from sea to shining sea”
with little threat from its neighbors. So Russia has often been invaded and
occupied – by the Mongols, the French under Napoleon, and Nazi Germany, for
example.

So it cannot simply trust other countries to leave it alone. Today the US
and Europe are “benevolent brothers,” but tomorrow? Russia therefore needs
non-threatening buffer states at its borders to keep possible serious future
enemies – Germany, Turkey, Iran, China, Japan? – at a safe distance.5

Another big Russian problem is that it is multiethnic. Many minorities live
on their own territories within the Russian Federation. These resist central
control and would in many cases split off from it if they could, thus giving
up their buffer role. To keep these minorities from damaging central
control, Russia needs strong internal security and intelligence services.
The Czars had Cheka, the USSR had the KGB, and now Russia has the FSB
(Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation)6.

And so Russia must look at recent US and European actions, not as simply
benign, but, in effect, as taking advantage of Russia’s weak position to
surround it with countries allied with the US and NATO. It sees the three
Baltic states’ admission into NATO as step one in this direction and the
possible expansion of NATO into Georgia and Ukraine as steps 2 and 3. Thus
Russia would find itself in an untenable and indefensible position, and
therefore feels the US must be hostile and that Russia must push back
against US-Western “encroachment” in its area.

The US’s currently distracted position gives Russia the needed window of
opportunity. The US, right now, is a giant with chained military ankles. It
is not yet out of the woods in Iraq. It is going deeper into the woods in
Afghanistan. It must keep most of its air power focused on Iran. And
Pakistan may turn into a forest fire. The US thus has few military resources
to spare outside these regions.

Taking advantage of this open window, Russia is making the power comeback it
feels it must, although posing a threat to US and European eyes. The
comeback includes the high-visibility steps mentioned earlier: Russia’s
objecting to the US placing ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and
the Czech Republic; warning those two countries about the risks to them in
doing so; invading Georgia; cozying up to the Venezuelan, Nicaraguan,
Bolivian, and Cuban governments in the US’s Latin American “backyard;” and
sending its navy through the Panama Canal.

Russia also behaves so as to undermine US policy toward Iran, and in that
spirit indicates that it might sell its advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile
system to Iran, which would protect that country against possible US or
Israeli military action against it. More such moves are possible, unless
US-Russian relations improve, i.e., head in the direction of Polario.


The Experts Pose the Problem and Suggest Solutions



But already a subtle shift has occurred. The US-Russia hostility level is
somewhat down, and a Cold War replay doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Is
that due to Barack Obama’s election and the change of mood in the US? Is it
due to the economic crisis hitting Russia? Is it owing to the fall in the
price of oil? Was there a deal between the two countries over the missile
defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic?

            But the abatement of hostile feelings may be temporary. How can
it be made permanent? At the time of the Russia-Georgia War, articles and
discussions appeared all over the media trying to answer that question. Two
articles stand out in my mind.

            One was by Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New
York University, in the *International Herald Tribune* of July 2, 2008, that
is, several weeks before the Russia-Georgia War broke out. In it he looks at
the question from the US perspective. The title: “Wrong on Russia.”

            The other, “Brussels vs. Moscow,” by two Polish writers,
appeared in *The Wall Street Journal* of September 9, 2008. The authors,
former foreign and finance minister of Poland Andrzej Olechowski, and Pawel
Swieboda, president of demosEuropa--Center for European Strategy, look at
the Russian confrontation from the European perspective.

            Both articles pose essentially the same question: How can the
West and Russia develop a cooperative rather than confrontational
relationship?

            Cohen suggests first steps to a big change in US policy towards
Russia: treating “Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate
national interests,” ending “NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine,” “a
full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all
nuclear stockpiles and to prevent the impending arms race, which requires
ending or agreeing on US plans for a missile defense system in Europe.”

            Olechowski and Swieboda present the problem/solution this way:
“Today we ‘Europeans’ are incapable of conceptualizing a role for Moscow
that would be both satisfactory for Russia and useful for Europe. That lack
of a concept is one of the reasons for our policy failure.” They quote
Putin’s political opponent Boris Nemtsov: “Unless Russia can be embedded in
some sort of Western security concept, Moscow will ‘venture around
threatening everybody in search for an enemy.’”

            The experts thus see the problem and ask the right question. But
they offer either no solution or answer or simply good suggestions for
improving the relationship between the West and Russia. It’s obvious we need
a “final solution,” and I think Nemtsov hit the nail on the head when he
said that Russia must be *embedded* in some sort of Western security
concept.


The German Example



The only solution that might have a chance of permanence – and would help
solve many other major world problems besides – is one which we can extract
from Nemtsov’s “bed” analogy: Russia and the US have to get in bed together
in the Polario Union. German history shows by example why and how this will
happen.

After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814-1815, the Congress of Vienna set up a
reactionary balance of power system aimed at stabilizing Europe and
preserving the power of the traditional monarchic (warrior caste)
hierarchies. It reorganized Europe into spheres of influence, and suppressed
the aspirations of Europe’s different nationalities to create their own
nation states.

But nationalism was one of the main drives, and the nation-state the main
socio-political unit, of the accelerating Merchant Age. So sooner or later
the people of yet-un-unified regions would buck the Congress and create
unified nations of their own. Italy and Germany succeeded, though along
conservative rather than liberal lines. But German unification in 1871 made
Germany, now a big country right in the heart of Europe, a geopolitical
problem.

Prussia, led by Minister President Otto von Bismarck and the main force
behind German unification, was the main power and largest member of the new
country. After its defeat by Napoleon in 1806, the royal Prussian government
had seen the need to – and did – reform and modernize Prussia and its
military. So by the time Bismarck unified Germany, the country was
economically dynamic and growing faster than even its main rivals, France
and the U.K., not to mention Russia. Its navy was getting powerful enough to
challenge British control of the seas and oceans, and, as a major exporter,
it was taking markets away from France and the U.K.

So naturally, it feared an attack at some point by France and Russia, with
the U.K. blockading its ports at the same time. All three countries would
have liked nothing better than to remove the “German threat” by defeating
Germany and pushing it back to its pre-unification condition.

Since Germany had to take such an attack for granted and couldn’t defeat all
three at once, it pre-empted: It started World War I (1914) by attacking
France, hoping to defeat France quickly as it did in the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-1 (before the Brits could blockade effectively) and concentrate its
full force against Russia.

But France bogged Germany down in trench warfare, Germany lost the war in
four years, and got the short end of the stick in the Treaty of Versailles
(1919). This, along with the Great Depression of the 1930s, set the stage
for Hitler and World War II.

In other words, Germany’s very existence as a separate country, not to
mention the very structure of a Europe divided into separate countries,
easily led to a forecast of further wars if the situation in Europe got
unstable enough.

The solution to the “German problem” was the establishment of the European
Economic Community (EEC) and NATO. This embedded Germany first with its arch
enemies, France and the U.K., and eventually, after the Cold War’s end, led
to the EEC becoming the EU, embracing most of Europe, east and west.

Getting all these enemies, especially Germany, together in the same bed was
not the only reason the EEC, NATO, and the EU were set up. But it is, for
the indefinite future, the ideal and only solution to the German
geopolitical problem. I doubt that anyone can suggest another solution that
would work.


Germanizing Russia



Russia’s situation today resembles Germany’s before the EEC/EU and NATO. The
only definitive way to make Russia secure and the West secure from Russia is
the Polario embedment. As Olechowski, Swieboda, and Nemtsov put it, Russia
must be embedded in some sort of Western security concept.

Stuffing Russia into the EU won’t work. The country is too big and would
dominate the Union, militarily and eventually economically. That would not
make Germany, France, Britain, and the Eastern European countries,
especially the USSR’s former satellites, like Poland and the Baltics, happy.
They would feel virtually back in the Soviet Empire.

What about NATO? Why not just invite Russia to join NATO? That would put
Russia deeply enough in bed with the West, no? It might for a while,
especially with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at
the US helm, dropping the earlier US triumphalism and moving to cooperation
and partnership with Russia. But what happens with a future US government,
the haughty Republicans again, perhaps?

Not solid enough. NATO is mainly a military alliance. What embeds Germany
solidly in the EU are the economic bonds between its members. Secondly,
NATO’s original purpose was to defend its member states from the USSR during
the Cold War. Its goals have changed, and who knows what they will be in the
future. Maybe it won’t have any, and will simply disband.

Future relations between Russia and its fellow NATO members-to-be might
sour. It might then decide to leave NATO, or its military command structure,
as France did under President de Gaulle. It could do so easily, without
qualms or consequences.

No, the only true embedment of Russia would be in a bloc as economically,
politically, and culturally solid as the EU, though not the EU. A Polario
US/Canadian-Russian alliance is the only such bloc I can see. If you have a
better solution, I am all ears and eyes.

I may be the first to come up with the Polario idea. But other more
prominent people hint in its direction. James Traub, in his article
“Taunting the Bear,” writes that the illustrious archrealist Henry Kissinger
argued that Putin era policy has been driven not by dreams of restoring
Russian glory, but by “a quest for a reliable strategic partner, with
America being the preferred choice.” And Russian President Medvedev, right
in the middle of the Russo-Georgia War, said that Russia wanted a better
partnership with the US. Neither posited this partnership as a Union, but
let me recount a relevant experience.

When *The Spiritual Imperative* was still unfinished, I gave many talks on
its contents and predictions for the late 1970s on. In 1986, a Tokyo-based
Soviet journalist arranged for me to give such a talk to the Soviet press
corps at the TASS office in Tokyo. When I stressed the inevitability of a
Russian (Soviet)-American Union, my organizer and the other journalists
present said, to my amazement, that many Soviet citizens hope for such an
alliance, and were “sure” it would happen someday, though they didn’t think
about it as “polar.”

Kissinger, Medvedev, and the Russian journalists and citizens stressed
Russia’s desire for the partnership. But soon the US will become even more
eager for Polario than Russia, because it needs such a Union even more than
Russia does. Here are just a few examples why:

The US needs Russia not to undermine its Iran policy – by helping Iran with
its nuclear weapons program or selling it other weapons, especially the
highly effective S-300 air defense system. The US needs Russia to stop
undermining its national security by working against it in South and Central
America, as explained earlier, and in Mexico, by supplying weapons to the
Mexican drug cartels. Doing so would help make Mexico ungovernable and
chaotic, the bad effects of which would spill over into the US, and
undermine its security from right over the Rio Grande. And the US needs
Russia to supply and protect its supply routes into Afghanistan, for the
duration of that war.

The surest way the US can be confident that Russia will not work against it
over the long haul is to bring the two countries as tightly together
economically and politically as Germany, France, and Great Britain are now,
i.e., via the Polario Union.


The Cowboy and the Cossack



As mentioned earlier, people skeptical of a US-Russian Union focus on the
differences between the two countries as arguments for their view. But I
find such arguments irrelevant for two reasons.

First, if big differences keep countries from “unionizing,” how did Germany,
France, Britain, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. (and maybe Turkey
one day?) ever get together in the EU? How did Burma, Singapore, Vietnam,
and Malaysia do it in ASEAN? Not to mention the Yankees and ex-Confederates
in the “United” States.

Second, those who argue against the possibility of Polario on the basis of
differences between the US and Russia overlook the similarities. These to me
are more significant than the differences because they are, on the whole,
unique to these two countries, whereas the differences can apply to almost
any set of countries. I feel it’s these unique similarities which can supply
the ties that bind.

I here give myself permission to cite the list of these similarities from my
own book (*The Spiritual Imperative*, Chapter 9, p. 126):



Alexis de Tocqueville and, more recently, Paul Dukes, in his book, *The
Emergence of the Super-Powers: A Short Comparative History of the USA and
the USSR* (London: Macmillan, 1970), drew parallels between Russia and the
United States. We do not usually think of these two countries as being
culturally similar. A close look, however, reveals a range of common
cultural and other features.

Both countries are superpowers with superpower mentalities. They are huge in
size, comparable in population, and similar in climate, temperate zone
location, and topography. Both are multicultural – they have multi-ethnic
populations – but dominated culturally, economically, and politically by a
main group (WASPs in the U.S. and Canada, Russians in Russia).

Both the United States and Russia’s recent incarnation, the USSR, were born
in revolutions against European empires, based on humanitarian political
ideals rather than, as most countries in Europe, on the fact that a certain
ethnic group or groups existed on their territories. Both Russia and the
U.S. expanded by taking over the lands of indigenous peoples at about the
same time (the 19th century). Both have “union,” or federated, political
structures, mainly European cultural roots, and the two largest and most
influential Jewish populations outside Israel – about 1.5 million in the
CIS, about 5.5 million in North America.

Both countries have the largest weapons arsenals, capable, perhaps, of
destroying the world, and years of experience in space exploration. Until
recently, as Dukes writes: “Each believe[d] that it [had] a manifest
destiny, a world mission, and that the other [was] the principal obstacle to
its success.” They had the Cowboy/Cossack mystique, and the related tendency
to see all political/religious issues in simplistic, black-and-white terms.
The list goes on. Despite the obvious differences, such as the relation to
authority, there is a lot more cultural affinity between Russia and the
United States than we imagine.


Polario Solves Scary World Problems



Since US and Russian (and Canadian and European) interests on several
dangerous world problems coincide, rather than diverge, in the long run,
Polario will be the key to solving them. Let’s look at how this will happen
in connection with the, perhaps, four scariest of the lot: Iran’s nuclear
ambitions, the Afghanistan-Pakistan complex, the EU’s east-west political
split, and Russia’s very near abroad.


*IRAN AND THE BOMB*



The Iran-West confrontation is perhaps the scariest of the four. If Iran
seriously seeks and gets the bomb and the missiles to deliver it, it will
upset the power balance in the region, and lead to nuclear proliferation and
a general arms race there. Iran’s main regional rivals (Israel apart), Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, will work to get it too. Iran will have an easier time
intimidating Europe, frustrating US actions aimed at winding down the Iraq
War, and make an Israel-Palestinian peace harder to achieve than it already
is.

Worse, as soon as Iran appears close to nuclear weaponization, either Israel
or the US, with tacit Egyptian, Saudi, Jordanian, gulf-state, and European
support, will attack Iran. This will lead to Allah-knows-what Iranian
retaliation, and a possible Armageddon situation that will affect the whole
world economically and militarily in ways best unthought about. (Israel,
being in the eye of the storm, may suffer the least.)

Until now Russia has been using Iran to bargain with the US. It weakens
sanctions against Iran, helps Iran’s nuclear program, and dangles the sale
to Iran of its S-300 anti-aircraft missile system before America’s eyes.

But as Polario allies, Russia and the US will share a common policy
regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Russia fears a nuclear and regionally
too-powerful Iran as much as the US does. It knows that today Iran’s nuclear
intentions (if they really exist) are aimed at Israel and the West, but
tomorrow Iran might switch its nuclear aim north toward Russia itself. In
the eyes of Iran’s hardliners, Russia is as much of an infidel enemy as the
Christian-Jewish world in general. And as Iran gains more regional power and
security, it becomes Russia’s natural competitor for influence in Russia’s
Islamic minority regions and in the ex-Soviet Islamic Central Asian
republics.

Iran would use hard-line Islamists in these regions as proxies to undermine
Russia as it uses Hezbollah and Hamas today against Israel, the Palestine
Authority, and the US.

Tied together in Polario, Russia and the US will thus share a common policy
to keep Iran’s nuclear and other ambitions in reasonable check. As a result
– let’s dream on – following up on President Obama’s current opening-up to
Iran, the three countries (Russia, the US, and Iran) can reach agreement
that satisfies all three, as well as Iran’s Arab and Israeli neighbors. And
by coaxing Hezbollah and Hamas from terror more towards politics, such
agreement will make an Israeli-Palestinian peace and equal coexistence
easier to achieve.


*AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN*



The second crucial problem Polario will solve is the Afghan-Pakistani one.
The Taliban is coming back to power in Afghanistan. If it succeeds too well,
Al Qaeda will come back with it, using the country again as a secure base
from which to attack the West and West-friendly Islamic countries: so, more
September 11s, Madrids, Balis, and Ammans.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda are also gaining power in Pakistan. They now
control large areas of the country, and successfully attack US-NATO supply
depots and convoys delivering essential war supplies for the Afghan War.

The US-Russia Polario alliance will solve this problem. The only viable
alternative supply and fuel routes for NATO and US forces in Afghanistan go
through regions in central Asia either controlled by Russia or through
Russia itself. The US and NATO need Russian approval for both routes.

But, as with Iran, neither the US nor Russia want the Taliban to succeed in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Russia fears the Taliban’s extreme brand of Islam
might spread into its territory through the ex-Soviet Central Asian
republics that separate it from Afghanistan.

Presidents Obama and Medvedev are already shifting their countries’ policy
from mutual hostility to collaboration here as well. But what about the
future, if a less Russia-congenial US government appears? Polario will
solidify the collaboration, including by guaranteeing Russian approval for
US-NATO use of the alternative supply and fuel routes. This will keep the
world physically safer from the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Here Russia and the US will probably make common cause with Iran, which does
not want the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda either. And Iran would offer
yet a third alternative war supply and fuel route for the US and NATO.


*EUROPE*



A third world danger point is Europe. Europe has progressed steadily toward
economic and political unity since 1951-2, when the Treaty of Paris created
the 6-member European Coal and Steel Community, which evolved into the
European Economic Community (EEC) and eventually into the EU. The EU now has
27 members and a growing Eurozone.

As a result, instead of being a source of world war and destruction, as
before 1945, Europe is now one of the key promoters of world peace,
prosperity, stability, and spiritual progressiveness.

But the recent Russia-West hostility threatens to split Europe down the
middle, threatening its progressive, peace-and-stability-promoting unity.
The split is between West Europe (“old Europe”) and its recent Eastern
European, ex-Soviet-satellite members: the Baltic countries, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Hungary, and the others (“new Europe”).

“Old Europe” cannot afford to stand up strongly to Russia’s aggressive
moves. It cannot afford to revive the Cold War, and Germany does not wish to
again be caught between France and Britain in the West and Russia in the
east. And Germany, especially, is dependent on Russia for its natural gas
supply.

But “new Europe” feels directly threatened by the re-assertive Russia, and
expects the rest of the EU to support it against Russia politically. (For
the moment this split benefits the US, which can strengthen its ties with
“new Europe” in dealing with Russia, while “old Europe” looks on
helplessly.)

The Polario Union will heal this internal EU split. By negating Russia’s
threatening posture towards Europe that causes these opposite reactions
within it, eastern and western Europe can heal their split, thus allowing
the EU to integrate economically and politically more tightly. Europe can
thus bolster its role as a source of world peace, prosperity and spiritual
progressiveness, rather than as a source of conflict, greater world poverty,
and reaction.


*RUSSIA’S VERY NEAR ABROAD*



Connected with the danger to the world of the east-west Europe split, and
the main cause of it, is a fourth danger that Polario will neutralize –
related to Russia’s very near abroad, countries formerly in the USSR that
are now independent. These total eleven countries, but the danger refers to
only those six that are in Europe (Belarus, Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan,
Ukraine, and Georgia), especially the latter two, which are current
flashpoints.

As mentioned earlier, it was Western action aimed at including these two
states into NATO, and their desire to join it, that aggravated the current
world-endangering Russia-West mutual hostility. By joining NATO, perhaps
eventually the EU, they hope to escape what they see as the oppressive
Russian sphere of influence and the possibility that Russia might reassert
its imperial ambitions and swallow them up again.

Polario will eliminate the danger from the Russian-Western tug-of-war over
these countries’ allegiances. That is, it will alleviate both the fear these
countries have of falling back under the “Russian yoke” and Russia’s fear
that their shift to the Western sphere of influence will jeopardize Russia’s
self-defensibility and sovereignty.

How? The basic need Ukraine and Georgia feel is to join a Western bloc. NATO
and the EU are the only current choices that serve their purpose. Polario
offers what I consider a better alternative. Since they will, together with
Russia, join Polario, they will be in an alliance with the US itself. Why is
an alliance with the US a better alternative than the EU? As it does for the
“new European” members of the EU, the US offers these countries greater
political security and support than the “old European” members of the EU can
offer.

Reinforcing such close political ties will be deep cultural ties. The US and
Canada both have sizeable immigrant communities from Ukraine and Georgia,
absorbed over many generations, which are much more deeply integrated into
US and Canadian life than the corresponding immigrant communities in Western
Europe. These immigrant communities in North America will be important
economic and political links between their countries of origin and the
US/Canada once Polario is established, and an influx of new immigrants from
them will be much more welcome in the US and Canada than they would be in
Western Europe, if they were to join the EU.

Polario will also eliminate Russia’s fear, and thus its need to protect
itself by the unstable method of bullying these countries into submission.
This is because Polario turns the main source of Russia’s fear, it’s main
“enemy,” into its main ally. And this means that the US, as its main ally,
also offers Russia support against other possible enemies that might arise
in the future – whether they be Turkey, Iran, China, Islamic militants, or
even Europe itself.

Finally, assuming NATO is still around when Polario forms and continues to
no longer be aimed against Russia, all of these European USSR successor
states, as well as Russia itself, will be welcomed into NATO if they still
so desire.

In this way, Ukraine, Georgia, etc., via Polario, satisfy their need to be
part of a Western bloc and the desire they may still have to join NATO as
well. And so Polario relieves the world of the danger that ensues from the
conflict between Russia and the US over the allegiance of Russia’s very near
abroad.


Conclusion



What I’ve tried to show here is that not only is Polario a high probability,
it is the only way to fully solve the problem of embedding Russia in a
suitable Western security structure that will permanently eliminate the
dangerous confrontation between Russia and the West. If Europe was able to
unify into the EU and embed Germany within it, then I see no reason why the
North Polar countries cannot unify into Polario and embed Russia within it.

Polario would resolve all US/Western-Russian issues and solve, or help
greatly to solve, a lot of the world’s other major problems at the same
time.

So if I were you, I would start investing in the *polar* (or *drouble*: the
rouble-dollar) and polar-denominated securities today, when they are not
only cheap, but don’t even yet exist.



NOTES



   1. Stephen F. Cohen, “Wrong on Russia,” *International Herald Tribune*,
   July 2, 2008.
   2. Ibid.
   3. George Friedman, “Real World Order,” *Stratfor*, August 18, 2008.
   4. Ibid.
   5. Peter Zeihan, “The Russian Resurgence and the New-Old Front,”
   Stratfor, September 15, 2008.
   6. Ibid.



END




-- 
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