This article appears in the February 19, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Vladimir Putin and the New Hope for Mankind

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by Robert Ingraham

Feb. 13—Satanically gleeful, with bugged-out eyes and flapping arms, on Oct. 20, 2011 during an interview with CBS news, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, upon hearing of the sadistic torture and murder of Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, gushed out in an orgasm of ecstacy, “We came, we saw, he died.”¹

It is now known that Mrs. Clinton’s master, Barack Obama, has carried out ten times more drone strikes than those ordered by his White House predecessor George W. Bush. Obama has killed at least 5,000 people, of whom 90-95% have been innocent men, women, and children. And these figures do not include the more than 1,000 drone attacks in Afghanistan.

This is a dark age, where murder is celebrated with triumphalism. It is bestiality. It is human depravity. It is a dying empire, lashing out, killing, spreading chaos, destroying cultures—all in a futile attempt to save itself. As Lyndon LaRouche described the current state of humanity, in a dialogue on Feb. 8, 2016²:

Well, let’s take the case of the Roman Empire, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and what we’re looking at is a phenomenon very much like that, which is happening throughout the trans-Atlantic area. Now therefore, what happened, as we saw in the case of the Roman Empire, this thing never cured itself. It was always evil. And what happened is, it was never purified, except that some of the people were removed, by being reduced. So therefore, the disease was less manifest.

What we’re in now, is a situation which is comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire. That is, the entire area, remember the Roman Empire: What is the Roman Empire? Well, implicitly it’s the trans-Atlantic community, and the trans-Atlantic community is ready to go to Hell. And the point is, is don’t worry about that, don’t try to save it. If you try to save the Roman Empire, if you read the Roman legacies and so forth, you find that didn’t work very well at all. They got killed!

The point is, you’re going to get an extermination of a policy, a mental case of outlook, which is going to be comparable to the decline of the Roman Empire. And as I say, the British Empire is the new Roman Empire, and the problem is that the British Empire, which includes the United States, still does mean the United States! That’s what’s happened to the United States; it happened immediately, with the beginning of the United States as a nation. The destruction was massive: most of the Presidents of the United States were actually enemies of the United States; most of them were! And that’s why the problem keeps coming back. And still does: This is the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire model.

I. The Way Out

On June 16, 2009 the first formal summit of the BRICS³ nations was held at Yekaterinburg, Russia. This event had been preceded by negotiations going back to an original meeting of foreign ministers held in New York City in 2006. The Yekaterinburg summit was followed by the creation of the BRICS Forum in 2011, and at the fifth BRICS summit in 2013 a decision was reached to create a global financial institution which would liberate these nations from financial subservience to the trans-Atlantic dominated IMF and World Bank. In September 2013 an agreement was finalized at a meeting of BRICS leaders in St. Petersburg for the creation of a $100 billion development bank, with China contributing $41 billion; Brazil, India, and Russia $18 billion each; and South Africa $5 billion.

kremlin.ru The first formal summit of the BRIC nations (before South Africa joined) was held on June 16, 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. This summit led to the formation of the BRICS Forum, ultimately leading to the decision to create an alternative global financial institution to end IMF dominance.

On July 15, 2014 the sixth BRICS summit convened at Fortaleza, Brazil, where the leaders of the BRICS nations signed the documents to create the $100 billion New Development Bank and simultaneously establish a reserve currency pool worth another $100 billion. Various documents on economic cooperation and development projects were also signed.

Even prior to these developments, on June 15, 2001 representatives of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, at a meeting in Shanghai, China issued the Declaration of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, establishing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a body committed to pursuing cooperation, regional security, economic and scientific development, and defending national sovereignty. One month later, on July 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin, in Moscow, signed the bilateral Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a twenty-year strategic treaty between the two nations which commits them to friendship and in-depth partnership in economic, military, diplomatic, and scientific spheres. A selected clause defines the intent of the treaty: to “endeavor to enhance relations between the two countries to a completely new level, determined to develop the friendship between the people of the two countries from generation to generation. . . .”

Half of Humanity

In July 2005 a watershed was reached when India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan all attended an SCO summit for the first time. At that meeting, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazhkstan, greeted the guests in words that had never before been uttered: “The leaders of the states sitting at this negotiation table are representatives of half of humanity.” By 2007 the SCO had initiated dozens of large-scale projects related to transportation, energy, and telecommunications, establishing a paradigm which would then be further advanced with the 2009 founding of the BRICS and the subsequent announcement by Xi Jinping of the “One Belt, One Road” policy in September 2013.

These developments all flow from the 2001 collaboration between Vladimir Putin and the Chinese leadership, and all were made possible by the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness. As the trans-Atlantic world—now dominated by cannibalization of its productive capabilities and a crashing imperial financial system, fractures and crashes like the Roman Empire, more than half of humanity has now vowed to build a better world of economic development and human opportunity. Short of an Obama/House of Windsor provoked World War III, this is the hoped for future for mankind.

II. Enter Vladimir Putin

To quote again from Lyndon LaRouche’s Feb. 8 dialogue:

And what you’ve got, you’ve got the Eurasian model now, the resuscitation of China; what Putin has done on his part. He was inspired on this thing. Remember, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, his family, Putin’s family came from an area which was a concentration of death, because of the location of the battles there. And Putin has managed to be a factor in bringing about a strengthening, of both China and Russia, to save Russia. And what the implications are; and what I’ve seen from the areas I used to poke around in, you know, in India and so forth, areas which I was working in.

And what we’re seeing is that this area, this Eurasian area contains within it, elements which are the basis of creating or recreating a new system for mankind. And what the result will be, the characteristic built into this thing, the characteristic is, the space program.

Russian State TV Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned Dec. 31, 1999, handing over power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In 1996. Yeltsin had signed a humiliating treaty with terrorists in Chechnya.

By 1999 the Russian nation was at the point of disappearing. This is not a mere figure of speech. Many people talked openly about the impending “Yugoslavization” of Russia.⁴ Not the dismemberment of the already disappeared Soviet Union, but of Russia itself. During the Yeltsin years of the 1990s, Russia had been stripped bare and looted by western banks and speculators, and its army and military capabilities reduced to a shadow of their former strength. More than half of Russian industry was closed down. Tens of millions were living in bitter poverty; actual starvation was rampant, and the total population of the nation began to drop sharply.

Chechnya Salient

In 1996, after a four year war which saw the Russian Army lose more tanks than during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a humiliating peace treaty with the terrorists in Chechnya, de facto (if not legally) recognizing the independence of the “Chechen Republic.” All Russian forces were withdrawn from the area.

Then, following a three year build-up of terrorist and western-aided military capabilities within Chechnya, in August 1999 Chechen forces invaded the neighboring Russian province of Dagestan. Defeatism was rampant in the Kremlin, with Russian Prime Minister Stepashin publicly stating, “We will probably lose Dagestan.” On Aug. 9, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired Stepashin and appointed the forty-six year old Vladimir Putin as Russia’s new Prime Minister.

Russian State TV In August 1999, after Chechnyan terrorists invaded the Russian province of Dagestan, Putin went to the front lines and delivered a legendary toast to military commanders, stating that he and they would not drink the vodka toast until the crucial task was completed.

Eighteen days later Putin flew into Dagestan, to the front lines, and there, in a tent, met with all of the military commanders. He delivered what is now a legendary toast: Raising a glass of vodka, he stated that we will drink the vodka, “not now, but later. Later. When the task, this crucial task you all know about, is completed.” And he put the vodka, untouched, back on the table.

Within three weeks the Chechen forces had been driven out of Dagestan and back towards Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. After a string of apartment house bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities by Chechen terrorists—bombings which killed more than 300 people—Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Chechnya. This decision was preceded by a meeting with all of the former Russian Prime Ministers, including Viktor Chernomyrdin, Sergei Kirilenko, Yevgeny Primakov, and Sergei Stepashin, where all of them opposed the invasion. Putin listened—and then rejected their advice. Putin vowed that he was determined to “go to the source.”

Speaking later of these events, Vladimir Putin reflected upon his thinking at that time:

We will never have another chance to save the country. . . . We will stop the demise of Russia.

If we don’t put an immediate end to this, Russia will cease to exist. It is a question of preventing the collapse of the country.

It is the only option. . . . I will go to the end.⁵

Going to the Source

If Chechnya were lost, Russia would be lost. Saudi-sponsored Wahhabist organizations were firmly established in Chechnya by the mid-1990s, and from Chechnya, terrorists were being deployed to many other regions to carry out attacks and to create “new Chechnyas.” There are nine autonomous Russian republics in the area of the Caucasus, all of them with sizable, even majority, Muslim populations. To “leave Chechnya alone,” as many then proposed, would have led to more terrorist atrocities and cascading breakaway scenarios in which other republics declared their independence from Russia.⁶

On Dec. 31, 1999 Boris Yeltsin resigned as the President of Russia and Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Acting President. Immediately after the ceremony, on New Year’s Eve, Putin flew to the combat zone in Chechnya. His helicopter was shelled and had to turn back. He commandeered an automobile and drove all night until he reached the troops.

Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was captured by Russian forces in 2002, but fighting continued, and Russia did not declare victory until 2009. During those years additional terrorist attacks were carried out against Russia citizens. On Oct. 23, 2002, 40 to 50 armed Chechens took 850 hostages at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. After a two-and-a-half day siege and the execution of two female hostages, the theater was stormed by special forces, during which 130 of the hostages were killed. On Sept. 1, 2004, Chechen terrorists occupied a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, taking more than 1,100 people (including 777 children) as hostages. After a three-day stand-off Russian security forces stormed the building. At least 385 hostages were killed, including 186 children.

III. The Great Patriotic War

The Siege of Leningrad lasted from Sept. 8, 1941 to Jan. 27, 1944—for 872 days.

The siege remains, to this day, the single deadliest continuous battle in human history. It is not known how many people died, but estimates of just the Russian deaths range from the more conservative consensus of one and a half million deaths to as high as two and a half million. And these figures do not include the one and a half to two million people who fled or were evacuated from the city, of whom perhaps as many as half or more also died. Some estimates put the total death toll at over four million.

RIA Novosti Two Russian soldiers in a trench during the siege of Leningrad, which lasted from Sept. 8, 1941 to Jan. 27, 1944.

The city was completely cut off, with no escape and no access to outside supplies. People died from German air raids, German shellings, and German assaults. Far more died from starvation, disease, and freezing to death. In the winter of 1941-1942, the death toll hit 100,000 per month.

Vladimir Putin’s mother lived in Leningrad throughout the siege. She never left. Her only son (at that time) died from diphtheria. She, herself succumbed to hunger and collapsed. Presumed dead, she was thrown in with a pile of corpses, only to be rescued when someone heard her cries of help coming from beneath a covering of dead bodies. She was later wounded by German artillery.

Putin’s maternal grandmother and all of his maternal uncles were killed in the war, and his mother’s sister was forced to work as a slave laborer at a German factory in the Baltic region. Two of his father’s brothers were also killed in combat. His father was severely wounded by a German grenade and only saved from certain death when another soldier carried him on his back across the frozen Neva River.

RIA Novosti The Soviet Union lost more than 30 million dead in World War II. Here, nurses come to the aid of the wounded after a German bombardment in 1941.

The Soviet Union lost more than 30 million dead in World War II. This is part of who they are. It is written into their souls. This is what Vladimir Putin grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s. But with the loss and the pain and the suffering also came pride. For it was the Soviet Union which defeated Nazi Germany. It was the people of Russia who held out in Leningrad. By the time that British and American troops landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944, the Germans were already defeated. They had been beaten by Russia between 1941 and 1944, and every Russian schoolboy of Vladimir Putin’s generation knows this to be the case.

The Russians call it The Great Patriotic War. It was not a war for communism—and certainly not a war for Joseph Stalin. It was a war for Russia. This is the reality, the life-story, of Vladimir Putin’s family, and this patriotic heritage is what Vladimir Putin has given back to the Russian people.⁷

IV. The Speech that Shook the World

Described by some as “inflammatory” and by others as “terrifying,” on Feb. 10, 2007 Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to heads of state, ambassadors, military leaders, and elected officials at the 43rd Munich Security (“Wehrkunde”) Conference, a speech which still brings seizures of rage to policy makers in London and Washington. Representing a nation in which only nine or ten years earlier, millions of people had been starving in the street, President Putin did something which no other world leader had done up to that time. Quite simply, he “called a spade a spade,” that is, he spoke the truth about the imperial ambitions of NATO, the European Union, and the United States, and he identified that the ongoing effort to demonize and destroy Russia would lead to world war. This speech garnered for him the undying hatred of the war faction in the British Empire and the United States.

Antje Wildgrube Addressing the 43rd Munich Security Conference (Wehrkunde) on Feb. 10, 2007, Puting warned that the effort to demonize and destroy Russia could lead to a world war. He identified the imperial ambitions of NATO, the European Union, and the United States.

To put this speech in context, be aware that it was delivered four years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, three years after the NATO expansion into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic had already joined NATO in 1999), and two years after the “Orange Revolution” had overthrown the legitimate government of Ukraine. Western moves for the military encirclement of Russia were well underway. The speech also occurred one year after the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and two years after the initial founding of the BRICS.

He said, in part:

What is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision making.

It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious, not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s—and precisely in today’s—world, then the military, political, and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization. . . .

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: Wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. . . . And no less people perish in these conflicts—even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force—military force—in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural, and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

No One Feels Safe

And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this—no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats—though they were also well-known before—have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.

And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue. Especially since the international landscape is so varied and changes so quickly—changes in light of the dynamic development in a whole number of countries and regions.

I am convinced that the only mechanism that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the Charter of the United Nations. And in connection with this, either I did not understand what our colleague, the Italian Defence Minister, just said or what he said was inexact. In any case, I understood that [he said] the use of force can only be legitimate when the decision is taken by NATO, the EU, or the UN. If he really does think so, then we have different points of view. Or I didn’t hear correctly. The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN. When the UN truly unites the forces of the international community and can really react to events in various countries, when we leave behind this disdain for international law, then the situation will be able to change. Otherwise the situation will simply result in a dead end, and the number of serious mistakes will be multiplied. Along with this, it is necessary to make sure that international law has a universal character both in the conception and application of its norms.

NATO Expansion

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

The Adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in 1999. It took into account a new geopolitical reality, namely the elimination of the Warsaw bloc. Seven years have passed and only four states have ratified this document, including the Russian Federation.

But what is happening at the same time? Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men in each, [have been established]. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.

I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. [Manfred] Wörner in Brussels on May 17, 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?

The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice—one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia—a choice in favor of democracy, freedom, openness, and a sincere partnership with all the members of the big European family.

And now they are trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us—these walls may be virtual but they are nevertheless dividing, ones that cut through our continent. And is it possible that we will once again require many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to disassemble and dismantle these new walls?

V. Leadership

Individual action, individual courage, when it springs from a commitment to what is morally right and historically truthful, can change history. It is this quality of creative human intervention, of “voluntarism” if you wish, which is the defining characteristic of the development of the human species.

However, this is no schoolbook academic term. It is not the province of dilettantes. As stated, leadership involves courage; it involves a heavy personal responsibility for one’s actions. It stems from a deep moral character within the soul of the individual in question.

Putin’s courage at Munich, much as in his stand in Dagestan in 1999, reveals this quality of character and leadership. The soul of Putin, so to speak, was unveiled to the people of Russia even during his first twelve months in office.

During the winter of 1999-2000 a human crisis erupted throughout the entire Far East of Russia. After eight years of free trade and western looting, most of the productive economy of Russia was shuttered, with only desperate black market activity keeping large sections of the population alive. By January 2000, hundreds of thousands of people in the Far East were freezing, with no heat and no coal. Industrial activity and government functioning were both paralyzed. The imminent death of thousands, and perhaps millions, was apparent. Putin flew to the Far East. He traveled to many cities. He walked the streets and talked to citizens. He fired 28 mayors; elected officials and business leaders were arrested, some pulled out of bed in the middle of the night. He ordered emergency coal shipments. He even flew in tens of thousands of electric radiators to be distributed to the needy. Putin acted—much like Franklin Roosevelt’s stand for the “forgotten man” in the United States—as the defender and champion of the Russian people against the corruption of the political machinery and the power of the Russian oligarchy that engulfed Russia throughout the 1990s.

Sinking of the Kursk

On Aug. 12, 2000 the nuclear submarine, the Kursk, the most modern warship in the Russian Navy, exploded and sank without warning while on an exercise in the Barents Sea. All 118 crewmen died, 95 immediately and 23 within hours after the sinking. Even though there was no hope for rescue, the tragedy produced anger and rage against the government due to both the inept rescue efforts as well as a continual series of lies which came from naval officials who tried to cover up what had occurred. On Aug. 22, ten days after the sinking, President Putin traveled to the Vidyayevo naval base and met with about 350 family members of the Kursk crew as well as several hundred other residents of the navy base.

Russian State TV Putin faced six hours of questions and accusations from family members of the crew of the Kursk submarine, which exploded and sank in 2000, killing all 118 crewmen.

Putin began the meeting by informing the women in the room that there was no hope for rescuing the crew members, that their husbands and sons were dead. The six hour meeting was one of accusations, screaming, crying, and denunciations, with people demanding, “Why have you murdered our husbands? . . . Why are you lying to us? . . . Who are you going to punish for their deaths?” One woman cried out, “You better shoot yourselves now! We won’t let you live, bastards!”

A witness who later reported on the event stated that as he watched Putin talk to the families, he had never felt such an intense atmosphere of pain and anger in his entire life: “I honestly thought they would tear him apart . . . There was such a heavy atmosphere there, such a clot of hatred, and despair, and pain . . . I never felt anything like it anywhere in my entire life . . . All the questions were aimed at this single man.” Putin never left his chair and answered every question and accusation until the meeting ended after six hours.

VI. The Russian Miracle

Between 2001 and 2007 the Russian economy grew at a rate of 7% per year. Russia’s Domestic Product (GDP) increased sixfold, climbing up from 22nd to the 10th largest in the world.⁸ Average wages increased almost tenfold and real disposable income doubled. The percentage of people living below the poverty line was cut in half. Nearly all foreign debt was paid off, freeing the nation from the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and western banks.⁹ Between 1999 and 2008, revenues of the central government more than doubled.

In 2008 Putin established a special state investment fund designed to accumulate energy revenues. Its explicit purpose was to direct capital investment into the country’s industrial, transportation, and communications infrastructure.

Since 2001, industry has grown substantially as has production, construction, real incomes, credit, and the middle class. Major cities, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as many, many provincial cities like Novgorod, have become unrecognizable to anyone who had seen them or visited them during either the Yeltsin years or the late Soviet period. They are now vibrant, prosperous, and teeming with economic activity and human life.

By 2012, under Putin’s leadership, Russia reversed its suicidal twenty-five-year depopulation trend, what economist Sergey Glazyev has defined as the western-imposed Genocide against Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, Russia can boast of what no Western European nation can—a natural “baby boomlet,” that is, population growth that is not reliant upon Third World immigration. Concrete steps, including economic and other subsidies, were implemented to encourage family formation and childbirth, but in the final analysis this rebirth of the Russian nation has come from the Optimism that now permeates the country.

China and Space

In 2009 China became the top trade partner of Russia. Trade between the two nations went from $4.3 billion in 1995 to $59.3 billion in 2010, and then to $87.5 billion in 2012. In 2013, during the first official visit of Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to Moscow, the Chinese and Russian leaders announced a goal of $200 billion in annual trade between their two nations by 2020.

kremlin.ru During a state visit to Beijing in September 2015 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Putin stated that Russia/China relations were at the highest point ever. Here Putin (center) is shown with Kazakstan President Nursultan Nazarvayev (left) and China President Xi Jinping.

In 2015, during a state visit to Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, President Putin stated in an interview that “Russian-Chinese ties have now probably reached a peak in their entire history and continue developing. The partnership between Russia and China is based on sincere friendship and sympathy between our peoples, on deep respect and trust, consideration for each other’s key interests and commitment to make our countries flourish.”

As the Russian-Chinese partnership has developed, an increasing emphasis has been placed on cooperation between their space agencies and plans for large-scale space projects. Despite the damage and decay inflicted on the Russian space program during the Yeltsin years, these initiatives are now picking up momentum. In July 2015 joint Russian-Chinese plans were announced to conduct joint manned space missions, including to the moon. The announcement was made by Denis Kravchenko, deputy general director of the United Rocket and Space Corporation, who stated, “The Chinese side expresses interest in collaborating to create manned Lunar exploration infrastructure.” Plans are now proceeding to solidify an aerospace alliance and to conduct joint manned space missions, including to the Moon. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has announced Russia’s intention to create a permanent manned Lunar station in collaboration with China.

All of these developments have their origin in the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation signed by President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin. The same is true for the 2001-2009 emergence of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS. All of this begins with Vladimir Putin’s appointment as Russian Prime Minister in August of 1999. Many people today view Russia as the weaker partner in the China-Russia alliance, and economically and technologically this is undeniable.

Putin Had Opened the Door

But it was Putin who opened the door to aid China in overcoming its own geo-political isolation, and it has continued to be Putin—in the Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere—who has provided a quality of brilliant strategic leadership against the designs of London and Barack Obama. The Russian intervention into Syria has been one of those singular, historic, and unexpected actions upon which the entire directionality of world affairs might be changed. To this very moment, as you the reader study this article, Vladimir Putin continues to provide—day to day and hour by hour—extraordinary leadership as the NATO war hawks push the world closer and closer to thermonuclear war.

The Syria deployment demonstrated—with absolute finality—Putin’s superior strategic thinking to that of his enemies in the west. Much like Douglas MacArthur’s creation of the Inchon Landing, the trans-Atlantic war faction is now confronted with a superior mind.

Russia and China. China and Russia. This is a partnership. It represents not merely hope for the future but, more immediately, the strategic power to stop the war drive. It represents all that is best, at this moment, about the potential for future human development.