WHY WE NEED A NEW SOVIET UNION

By Finian Cunningham informationclearinghouse.info Here's a thought to perk up your morning coffee. Let's bring back the Soviet Union. Seriously, why not? We are not talking about going back in time to the way things were. No-one would want to resurrect the worst excesses of Stalinism: bureaucratic despotism, gulags and the Big Brother state. Also, a centrally planned economy would this time around have to be genuinely socialist and scientific, with production geared by accurate information on markets and human needs not by bureaucratic book-cooking. With modern communication technology such an optimised economic operation of industries would be eminently feasible. Central planning? Is that not anathema, you might say? No. After all in the capitalist West, economic production is mostly centrally planned by behemoth corporations under the false guise of "free markets"; but the big difference is that system is driven by private profit for a wealthy minority - instead of for the greater public need, development and benefit. Given the crisis over Ukraine and allegations of Russian aggression and President Putin as the new Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin etc., the suggestion of a new Soviet Union may be incendiary. The howls of ridicule from the US and its vassals in Europe and the Western corporate media will be deafening. But let them roar in their craven impotence. American imperialists and their servile European flunkies and news media have indeed been accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of revanchism to bring back the Soviet Union. They point to the crisis in Ukraine as evidence for their accusation. The American-led charge against Putin is of course empty propagandistic demonising. The Russian leader may have previously expressed regret that the Soviet Union collapsed more than two decades ago. But that does mean that he is harbouring plans to reconstitute the old Soviet state in which he formerly served as a KGB officer. It makes a good horror story for American demagogues, but it's baseless. However, in a very real substantive way, Putin's regret over Soviet demise can be argued as perfectly reasonable. For, ever since, the US has indulged in arrogant triumphalism and has tried to expand its global hegemony through unbridled militarism. This has unleashed a world of ceaseless wars and the gutting of international law, as Putin remarked in a speech last month in Sochi. Think about it. Ever since the Soviet Union came apart in 1991, and the Cold War formally ended, we have seen Washington and its coterie of allies embark on one war after another into what is now a state of permanent war. It is no coincidence that no sooner had the Soviet Union floundered than the US launched its first of several wars on Iraq, invaded Somalia, and then under the flag of NATO began bombing former Soviet states, primarily Yugoslavia, leading to the latter's dismemberment. The aggressive expansion of the US-led NATO military club over the past 20 years and the hostile encirclement of Russia is the context for the present crisis in Ukraine. From that point of view, the dissolution of the Soviet Union is highly regrettable because of the lawless American behaviour, wars and deterioration in global security that have ensued. Relentless American war spending, in particular the arms race initiated by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, was a major factor in why the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. Washington got away with it then and continues to get away with military hedonism now because its rulers just keep putting the gargantuan bill on the public tab of unlimited national debt (currently $17 trillion and rising), which is largely why America and the world finds itself in the economic crisis it is in. America may have won the Cold War in a narrow sense, but the rest of the world is paying for it. Clearly, a unipolar world dominated by a self-proclaimed exceptional superpower is highly unstable and dangerous. A countervailing force is needed. A new Soviet Union is the obvious candidate to rebalance the world that has succumbed to depraved American tutelage. President Putin and other like-minded leaders should make the case through global media - in spite of the anticipated howls of derision from the Western pea-brains. In any case, a revitalised Soviet Union of sorts is already underway. Russia and China are developing strategic energy, trade and transport partnerships that will transform the global economy. The Russia-China alliance is a state-planned economic model that provides for a more rational organisation and distribution of resources, rather than for the insatiable avarice of Wall Street and its European minions who are driven by elite, private profit. Russia and China's seminal use of bilateral currencies for energy trade and other commerce as opposed to the decrepit US dollar will break, fatally, the monopoly of American financial imperialism and will allow for more democratic control of resources. Russia is also forging ahead with other strategic Eurasian economic partnerships, including with neighbouring energy giant Kazakhstan and the energy-rich nations of the Caspian Basin - Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In May this year, Moscow formed the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The EEU will comprise about 15 per cent of the world's landmass and is set to overtake the dollar-peddling OPEC as the primary energy supplier. The dominance of the EEU will grow even further with other Central Asian nations preparing to join it, including Armenia and Tajikistan. A new Soviet Union of nations is thus already taking shape that will stretch from eastern Europe all the way to China and the Pacific. But unlike in the past, this union will not be dominated by Moscow; rather it is being based on mutual partnerships that include genuine commitments to shared defence, already outlined by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Russia and China's nuclear power status is an important cornerstone to the defence system and to the adherence to international law. If the economic principles of democratic governance, public good and social development, workers' rights, equitable management and distribution - in a word "socialism" - can be maintained then the new Soviet Union will truly be a global force to reckon with. It will expose sharply the bankruptcy of Washington's capitalist empire straddling North America and the European Union, which only serves to enrich a warmongering oligarchy while oppressing the mass of people with unremitting austerity and stagnation. President Putin should make the case urgently. The American war machine knows full well the potential nemesis to its failing hegemony from a rising Russia, China, Eurasia and the other emerging BRICS nations, in addition to others from South America and Africa. American professor of political science, Colin Cavell, notes that the US imperial war agenda against Russia and China will be stepped up under the new Republican-controlled Congress. "Attacking Russia's internal stability will be the prime target for the US," says Cavell. "Putin will need to pull the Russian people together, that is to 'unite and prevail' against the US strategy of 'divide and conquer'." In this regard, Putin needs to bolster the strength not only of his own nation but also that of regional neighbours by formalising the re-emergence of the Soviet Union. As noted this new union is distinct from the past in that it is based on democratic and mutual governance. "Such a new Soviet Union would be a deadly blow to arrogant American capitalism which feels completely unrestrained to do what it wills in the world," adds Cavell. The time is indeed ripe. Not only to safeguard world peace, but to abolish the destructive and unsustainable American empire, with its scourges of poverty and war. The time is ripe to democratise the global economy so that all our basic human needs are delivered with justice and peace. Where society is dedicated to labour and the rights of ordinary citizens, not to capital. The funny and ironic thing is that many American and European citizens will gladly want to have this union extend to their countries too. The world needs to go on the ideological offensive, to turn the tables on the plutocratic masters of war. We should stop letting them set the agenda all the time and limiting our actions and thoughts to merely defensive reaction. A new Soviet Union should be put forward to the world as a bold manifesto. Why not? We've got nothing to lose except our chains.