It's quite simple: do what you say, say what you do. If you are fighting a "war on terror," then don't give money and arms to terrorists. Treating with a sovereign government does not give you the right to overthrow that government. Saying the USSR supported autocrats like the US is a gross simplification of history. The USSR did not invest in finance capital, or export capital for the purpose of extracting surplus value. Upon the collapse of the USSR, there were no Soviet enterprises in foreign nations bleeding surplus value into the hands of a few oligarchs. THAT happened in Russia after the split, NOT under socialism.
You're a confusing man, at once spouting the merits of revolution and yet defending massed state institutions run by the rich and powerful against national self determination. Communist in name only I think.
You don't even have to look beyond the USSR's border to see that it supported and autocratic state run by a small cabal of powerful white-Europeans. If the Soviets were true to their cause of workers freedom and anti-imperialism, why did they not break up the empire? Why does Moscow control Siberia, central Asia, the caucuses, etc. Why are white-Europeans governing non-white non-Russians across a vast expanse of land?
I'll tell you why. Rhetoric means nothing and Soviet rhetoric against imperialism stopped at their own border. I'd believe them if they dismantled the empire, but they didn't. They held onto the territory stolen from Siberians, colonized by Russians. They still held onto territory stolen from Kazakhs, Turkmen, Chechens, Manchurians, and even Koreans. Millions of people forced into a system of European oppression, ruled by white imperialists and the USSR didn't even blink. Hell, they expanded into Poland and Finland. The USSR, just like America, was an imperialist state. Ruling an empire of millions in the name of greater ideology, which was really nothing other than white-man's burden re-purposed. Stupid brown people, stupid Asian people, stupid Muslims, and mountain clans, they can't govern themselves. They need superior white Russians to liberate them through solidarity and socialism.
It's not so much what actually happened that's disgusting, but the lack of acknowledge pisses me off. The assumption that these borders existed and therefore are sacred, that they themselves do not tell a tale of suffering and hardship, of stolen land and repression, does not sit well at all. We in America are only slowly coming to terms with the impact our expansion had on native Americans, African Americans, and other people whose land has been stolen, and we are far from completely fixing it. But goddamn, at least we acknowledge the destruction caused in the 19th and 20th century, and are looking to hopefully make some right to the immense suffering we forced on people.
And I won't even begin on the imperialistic adventures you deny, such as the project in Afghanistan. The USSR did not extract resources through private corporations, they just did it through public corporations. I fail to see the difference. In each case white-Europeans, rich and powerful, steal from the weak and the oppressed just so they can fight their global war for workers liberation. Hypocritical and disgusting.
However, that said, the US insisting on supporting the crazy-ass nutjobs who are actually using chemical weapons against the citizens in an attempt to overthrow a sovereign state is not what the principles of the UN were based on. Russia has consistently stood on the high ground, and was proven correct in every instance. Yes, they are looking out for their best interests, but NOT at the expense of the rest of the world. Putin;s speech at the UN during the 70th General Assembly debates laid out that Russia would, and other should, stand on the principle of not interfering with the internal affairs of sovereign states.
Why are you defending the sovereignty of states? Aren't you a communist? What happened to revolution? Or did communism fail, and its supporters grumpily going back to supporting state violence against workers? I'm genuinely why a communist would defend violent and unequal institutions like the state.
Hell, why are you defending the UN? An institution designed with inequality in mind! It's job was to preserve the power of the top dogs, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, China, France, against an entire world. They are the only ones who have true power through veto, it is inherently undemocratic, un-socialist, and yet you support it's principles? Who are you?
Russia's "high ground" is just what the US did during the Cold War. Russia will unashamedly support dictators, autocrats, those suppress freedoms, jail, maim, exploit the workers, just because they tow a familiar line. You support widespread oppression and the exploitation of the working class because the white people in charge have Slavic names instead of English ones.
It is even stranger to see that you yourself have dismembered Putin rhetoric in your own paragraph. If he is against interfering with the internal affairs of sovereign states, why is he helping in Syria? Why is he quashing Syrian self-determination, who is he to decide that it is in Syrians best interest to be ruled by a brutal Shah?
Don't you think that should be up to the Syrians to decide for themselves?
You don't though. You think its the white man's burden to decide for them, a relic of the imperialist age.
Putin is a ruthless realist, and so are you. He says one thing, does another. His game is power based, his goal to amass as much power as he can before Russia ceases to be a relevant world actor. Once the white-man is no longer exalted as the best man, Russia too will be left to be nothing more than an imperialist relic, an old land power, centuries out of date and obsolete. To think Putin has anything else at interest other than uplifting Russia and doing only what is in the interest of his state and the Russia people (to an extent) is naive.
Intervention in Syria, at the Syrian government's request, was carefully considered on the part of the Russians, because the United States was in word and deed interfering with the internal affairs of Syria, as they did in Iraq, Libya and Ukraine. The Russians, in true fashion, went after the Chechen terrorists first, who were a direct threat to Russian national security.
I already made my point above but I will just say it again. You support Russian state imperialism and violence against Chechen self-determination. In the white man's world, Chechens are nothing but brown mountain people to be crushed under the imperialist's heel. Shame on you.
There is place in this scenario where the US has been correct. None. The Russians have yet to be wrong. That takes a lot for me to say, because while I personally like Putin, Russia is NOT a socialist nation, and I am under no obligation to support it. I just happen to think that they are correct.
You happen to think they are correct because they do not belong to the English world. That's it, and that's where your support derives from. You would curse US propping up of Pinochet, yet praise Russian propping up of Assad. In both cases dictators, autocrats, supported in the name of stability and because they can promise easy support on the world stage.
You just so happen to have chosen the side that supports conservative authoritarianism in the name of stability. You, like Russia, are frightened of change, of a new world where people are not so easily beaten into submission. Because that is ultimately a threat to the massed and violent state institutions they have built up.
If you were true to your principles, you'd be crying for Syrian revolution, the overthrow of the conservative order, the chaos of revolution. Stability means oppression, only in instability can freedom and rights be achieved.
But you're not. You're just a conservative, an imperialist, holding up white man's burden in a world which increasingly rejects inequality between cultures.
I'd admire you more if you weren't such a hypocrite.
