The latest moves on the geopolitical chess board have more than a few people in the States repeating some tired old saws:  Putin is Hitler, Russian aggression, and so forth.  There are some historical misconceptions within those statements that need to be cleared up.

Starting with more recent history, there is a good reason why Russia would be concerned about Western intentions and actions in the Ukraine and elsewhere in her near-abroad – actually several reasons, those being previous Western efforts to invade and conquer Russia.  Fr Andrew Phillips gives some dates as well as some other details, to which we shall return in a moment:

Russia has continually been invaded by Western countries, notably in more recent history in 1812, 1854, 1914 and 1941. Western aggression there is notorious. In 1812 and 1945, the invasions ended with Russian liberations of Paris, Vienna and Berlin, respectively. The dismantling of Soviet Eastern Europe and then its occupation by the US military means that the buffer zone set up to protect Russia after 1945 has gone. We wonder what the US reaction would be if Russian missiles were being positioned on the US-Mexican border, as the US is positioning its missiles on the Russian-Ukrainian border?

One can go much further back in time than this for examples of Western aggression against Russia, to the 13^th century with the attacks of the German Teutonic Knights and also the Swedes, who were all defeated by the exceptional Prince Alexander Nevsky.

The present times offer no comfort, though.  Per Andrew Bacevich:

As the Costs of War study notes, “Between 1995 and 2019…3,455 U.S. citizens were killed in terror attacks”—by no means a trivial number. It also states that the U.S. wars undertaken in response to 9/11 “directly killed over 929,000 people,” an altogether jaw-dropping figure. Sadly, this exchange ratio of nearly 300 to 1 is indicative not of success but of strategic bankruptcy. It also raises profound moral questions that Americans have too casually ignored.

What national leader would trust a country with that kind of dismal moral track record?  The lack of trustworthiness is compounded by the lies the US told Russia during the George H. W. Bush and Clinton years that NATO would not expand to the east after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The US also have their own hypocrisy to deal with.  Pres. Biden said in some recent public remarks, ‘Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belongs to his neighbors?’  If that is troublesome to Biden, he first needs to reunite West Virginia with Virginia, for the former was ‘declared a new so-called State on territory that belonged’ to Virginia by Lincoln and the Yankees, quite unconstitutionally, during the War of Northern Aggression.

The forced annexation of Hawai’i by Washington City would also need to be addressed by the crusaders against Russia before the US were in a moral position to act.

But perhaps most relevantly, why on earth are we focusing on the Ukraine, a country that affects the States hardly at all, when there is an actual, literal invasion taking place at the Mexican border?  In the mainstream media, those who say anything remotely nice about Russia are branded traitors.  Is it not closer to the truth to say that those in the federal government, the press, the think tanks, and so on, who would rather send US soldiers and war weapons to guard the Ukrainian border instead of the southern US border, where millions of illegal immigrants from all over the world together with tons of deadly drugs are pouring into the States, are betraying their fellow citizens?

The US must come to grips with the geopolitical situation of today.  The Cold War is over.  It ended more than 30 years ago.  The influential place the US held during that era and immediately afterwards is an aberration in history; powerful countries and empires in other parts of the world have always had, and should continue to have, their own peaceful spheres of influence.  This is the expected practice in a world of many different cultures.  It is the twisted ideology of New England’s Pilgrims – that America is a country chosen by God to go forth and conquer and enlighten and reshape the world with a new political-religious paradigm, a new gospel – the ideology that won out at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865, that drives the States’ reckless foreign policy of maintaining a unipolar world order that submits in all things at all times to Washington’s whims.

The good news is that hostilities are not inevitable.  Especially for conservatives, revivalists, traditionalists, paleocons, SAGEcons, etc., there is common ground we can stand on with Russians as we work to ratchet down tensions.  For instance, Russia has passed several high-profile laws and constitutional amendments to strengthen moral virtues and the Christian family and protect children from corrupting influences.  One of the latest proposals there would ban satanists from having interaction with Russian children.  This is something that conservatives in the US will have to confront in a substantive way fairly soon, as satanists continue to use the vagaries of ‘religious freedom’ statutes to worm their way into schools and elsewhere, to the detriment of our children.  Russia is showing us a way forward, if we are humble enough to take notice.

The pro-Christian, pro-tradition, anti-Revolutionary, nature of the works of the giants of Russian literature – Dostoevsky, Gogol, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, and others – are another patch of common ground that we can stand on together.

But greater than all of those contributions to reconciliation are the holy saints who are common to both Russia and North America (St Herman of Alaska and others).  We would point especially to St Tikhon, who served as a missionary bishop to the United States and all of North America and then as archbishop of Moscow, where, due to the efforts of the Communists, he met an untimely death in 1925.  There is a touching account by an Orthodox priest from the States, Fr Daniel, and his wife Dunia, who were Providentially present in Russia at the uncovering of the holy relics of St Tikhon in 1992.  Reading it reveals the great measure of friendship that is possible between the US and Russia.

We understand that it ain’t all peaches ’n cream between the Ukraine and Russia, but that is primarily their problem to hash out, together with the Europeans nearby them.  The US have enough problems of their own with which to grapple without getting tangled up in briar patches overseas – covid tyranny, massive waves of illegal immigration, drug overdose deaths, surging crime rates, the LGBT mafia, a collapse of the Christian faith, and more besides.

The corrupt, transnational elite have long targeted Russia for elimination because of what she has stood for since her baptism more than 1,000 years ago in the person of the holy Great Prince Vladimir, an event that took place on precisely the same Ukrainian territory that is at the center of today’s international turmoil:  a powerful, traditional Christian nation.  They are more than happy to use the people and resources of the US to bring about her demise and to usher in the new utopian world and its corresponding New Man – a confused, debased subhuman who cares only about his own material comfort and emotional satisfaction.  We should foil that any way we can, and instead forge as close of an anti-globalist alliance with Russia as possible.