Let me be clear about my posting of this essay--I think it is abominable! But because Engdahl has written many articles that helped us clarify various geopolitical issues--and I have posted many--I am posting this piece because he is so influential as an alternative geopolitical analyst from the usual capitalist funded analysts. This morning I debated on whether to waste my time on it or to attack it. What I ultimately decided was to rather briefly point to the most obvious flaws in his arguments.
He states near the end of the essay (which I think should have been placed near the beginning) a rather self-serving observation which, of course, does point to a little more than a grain of truth:
A deep study of history then can tell us volumes about what forces Russia, Germany and the world face today.The only problem with this aphorism is that their are many histories and certainly not all of them are true primarily because most of them have been written by the powerful, and secondarily because of the limitations of any one historian. Only people, who can use a reasonable amount of independent judgement and agree on historical facts, can judge whether any given historical fact is true. And I think his understanding of history as expressed in this piece is riddled with inaccuracies. Thus, his conclusion based on this flawed history cannot be trusted, or at least not be taken at face value. The conclusion he, like many well indoctrinated middle class intellectuals, is essentially arguing is that a multipolar capitalist world will bring peace, social justice, and prosperity to all.
He repeats what I have heard said by those whose obvious motivation was to undermine Russian history and to create cynicism among activists. These history mischief-makers allege one incident as historical fact without presenting any reference to credible evidence, and then use it to generalize about the entire Russian revolution! In this piece Engdahl even omits the alleged historical fact, but simply points to the generalization, without any supporting documentation.
Wall Street and the City of London financed Leon Trotsky, Lenin, and the Bolshevik Revolution essentially as they did Boris Yeltsin after 1990, to open up Russia for looting and balkanization by favored western companies.I suspect that this undocumented generalization is derived from the above mentioned alleged historical fact that I have heard repeated numerous times, from people whose motives I questioned, is that various rich capitalists, often the Rockefellers, paid expenses for Lenin and Trotsky to return to Russia to foment revolution. But then, consider this: it is an indisputable fact that around 13 capitalist nations invaded Russia immediately following their revolution and many of these nations also funded the White armies opposing the Bolsheviks. So how can the repeated allegations about funding the trip expenses of Russian revolutionary leaders or Wall Street, etc funding their revolution be reconciled with this historical fact?
If true, this can be easily explained by what has been frequently observed among capitalists: they use their money to try to co-opt antagonists in order to eventually control them. Often they succeed, but they certainly failed with the Russian revolutionaries. So, Engdahl appears to use what is essentially a rumor to generalize that "Wall Street and the City of London financed Leon Trotsky, Lenin, and the Bolshevik Revolution". Is this an illustration of a "deep study of history"?!!
Now for those of you who are new to this website, please do not infer from my above commentary to conclude that everything that Engdahl argues is wrong, or that I dislike Putin's and Russia's policies and actions in Syria. No one likes a bully, and the US (ruling class directorate) has not only been acting like a bully, no, much worse than that--like a serial war criminal. This time the bully is having his comeuppance.
