Russian Ambassador to Italy Alexander Paramonov: "Russia vs. the West: Myth or Reality?"

Russia’s ambassador to Italy and San Marino wrote the following article that was published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 22 February 2024 with the title, “Russia vs. the West: Myth or Reality?” Russia’s MFA posted it to its website on the 29th. His argument is constructed well, but it’s hard to know how it was received by the Italian public. Readers will experience a different voice extolling Russia’s diplomatic line to Europeans. It might be seen as a new arrangement of the song remains the same, perhaps because it was written in Italian, translated into Russian and then into English:

Recently, in the speeches of Western politicians and in the materials of the leading media, I have increasingly noticed statements about Russia's allegedly aggressive intentions towards the "collective West" and especially the EU member states after the end of the conflict in Ukraine, about the alleged inevitability or high probability of an armed clash between Russia and NATO in a few years. More and more "secret plans" of NATO in the event of a war with Russia are being thrown into the media space, literally creating an atmosphere of pre-war psychosis.

Even the death of Alexei Navalny, a sudden and tragic event in itself, which should have caused understandable sympathy among people, is used in the West, first of all, to bring accusations and increase hostility against the Russian authorities, as well as to justify a deep split in relations between Russia and the West.

Let's be honest and remind ourselves of a well-known truth: in its more than 1,000-year history, Russia has never shown expansionist aspirations to the West, it has only responded to previous acts of aggression. At the same time, the West's persistent attempts to weaken Russia and push it into the world's backyard are made regularly, and with enviable persistence about once a century. In the last 400 years alone, Russia has had to endure the Polish-Lithuanian occupation of the 17th century, the campaigns of King Charles XII of Sweden, the invasion of Napoleon's "Grande Armée" and Hitler's failed "blitzkrieg". Russia also does not forget about the post-war plans of the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition to subject almost all major cities of the USSR to a massive atomic bombing as part of Operation Dropshot, since all documents have long been declassified. Through the prism of this historical experience, NATO's eastward expansion, which began in the 1990s contrary to existing agreements and objective necessity, but with the same hostile, expansionist goals, is also considered. They are especially evident in the West's attempt to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia at the hands of Ukraine, which the Westerners have long identified as their hybrid weapon in the fight against Moscow and have done everything necessary to target, configure and prepare the Kiev regime for this.

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have repeatedly said in recent months that Russia has no aggressive intentions towards Western countries. And if the most knowledgeable Italian publicists (such as the respected editor-in-chief M. Molinari) admit in the pages of leading newspapers that Russian leaders, unlike their Western counterparts, "always do what they say," then they should be consistent and agree that this is the case in this case as well. This is confirmed by the main conceptual documents, first of all, the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, approved by President Vladimir Putin in 2014, after reading which even a non-specialist understands the purely defensive logic of Russia's actions in the field of military development.

If during the Cold War the thesis about the inevitability of a clash between the West and the East was justified by the insurmountable ideological contradictions between the capitalist world and the socialist system, and this looked more or less rational, today this statement is made on the basis of the idea of the modern world as a battlefield between "Western democracies" and "Eastern autocracies" that is now fashionable in the Anglo-American expert environment. Such a picture of the world, however, is very artificial, superficial, in fact, anti-scientific and is not confirmed by objective observations of the trends of world social development and the emerging realities of international life. If only because the definition of "Western democracies," which originally had a very specific meaning, is becoming more and more emasculated. The erosion of genuinely democratic foundations in the West has been noted by many researchers. The new situation was described most vividly by the French historian and sociologist Emmanuel Todd, who, in his latest book The Defeat of the West (2024), proposed to consider the current conflict as "a clash between the authoritarian democracy of Russia and the liberal oligarchy of the West." Indeed, the paths of elites and populations in many Western countries have long since begun to diverge significantly. During the pandemic and against the backdrop of the conflict around Ukraine, we have witnessed how the ruling circles in the Western political system listen less and less to the voices of citizens and more and more follow the lead of various political, industrial and financial lobbies and groups of influence, whose interests have nothing to do with the needs of the population, and in most cases directly contradict them. At the same time, it is hardly possible to dispute the fact that the presidential form of government in Russia, introduced in accordance with the 1993 Constitution and taking into account the amendments of 2020, is characterized by signs of direct democracy, and not representative, as in most Western countries. So the French researcher's point of view seems to be much closer to reality than official statements from high Euro-Atlantic tribunes.

In the current situation of the West's escalation of hostility towards Russia, something else is surprising. We see how there is less and less Europe as such amid the talk about the "strategic autonomy" of the European Union. It seems to be dissolving in the increasingly militarized homogeneous ranks of the "collective West," formed mainly by the United States and Great Britain through the rigid system of transatlantic relations, which has long been the main military and political instrument of Anglo-Saxon hegemony. At the same time, even during the Cold War, the states of continental Europe were less subservient to the United States than they are now. Now we are witnessing how our former European partners – some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent – have been drawn into a conflict that runs counter to their interests and leads them to self-destruction. Therefore, it seems quite logical that some political science studies should suggest that the level of Europe's aggressiveness towards Russia may increase significantly as the socio-economic situation continues to deteriorate and the number of impoverished and morally devastated people increases. Aren't these the goals pursued by the warmongers, who, despite everything, are pushing the EU towards a complete economic and "civilizational" break with Russia?

Therefore, no matter how provocative and paradoxical it may sound, the failure of the plans of the "collective West" in Ukraine could be a real victory for Europe, which would finally be able to breathe "with both lungs", freed from the need to be a territorial base of the United States in Eurasia, to resist Russia "at any cost", which is becoming more and more expensive every year. In addition, the European Union and its member states, as well as the United States itself, would have a chance for free self-realization in the emerging multipolar world and would be able to sovereignly and fully use their indisputable civilizational, technological, and cultural advantages without looking back at anyone.

Today, more than ever before, our former partners should abandon their self-destructive political course and think about the future, about the unprecedented opportunities that innovations in the field of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies, robotics, biomedicine, space exploration, transport, urbanism, ecology, culture and many other areas open up for humanity. It is these topical issues that are among Russia's main priorities, both in the formation of the domestic agenda and in relation to the ideas proposed for interaction in the format of the Greater Eurasian Partnership as a space of multifaceted, mutually respectful strategic cooperation on the basis of equality, consideration of each other's interests, respect for sovereignty, cultural, traditional and civilizational differences, in which continental Europe could find for itself a worthy place.

However, in response to the unifying agenda that Moscow has been proposing for so many years, Western policy-making circles continue to try to resurrect the destructive constructs of the past, divide the world into "us" and "them," and create hotbeds of tension and conflict among the undecided, stimulating chaos, poverty, and mass migration. Is this beneficial to Europe, and where are Moscow's aggressive, expansionist aspirations? The answer seems obvious.

It is deeply regrettable that against the backdrop of all that is happening in Europe, the cradle of Judeo-Christian civilization, even the art of diplomacy is degenerating. Now painstaking joint efforts to find mutually acceptable compromises on the basis of mutual consideration of interests are not considered the optimal form of resolving contradictions. The "herd instinct", the right of the strongest, the dictate, the rejection of alternative arguments and points of view, blind faith in the a priori superiority of the Western-centric model of the world order, and in the indisputable obligation for all decisions made by the structures of the "golden billion" prevail. All this, of course, does not bring closer the prospects for a return to mutually respectful dialogue and a transition to a more secure, just and inclusive world order. But there is hope that this will not always be the case. [My Emphasis]

Citing Todd’s recent work was a smart ploy, IMO. The style of argumentation employed is curious, but then I’m not part of the target audience and need no convincing. The appeal to the genuine past versus the altered version seems aimed at a more mature audience not taken-in by the Narrative constructed since 2014. Readers having different interpretations are invited to provide them in the comments.

*
*
*
Like what you’ve been reading at Karlof1’s Substack? Then please consider subscribing and choosing to make a monthly/yearly pledge to enable my efforts in this challenging realm. Thank You!