My latest article for Canadian Dimension magazine analyses recent escalations in the war in Ukraine and the prospects for peace once Donald Trump becomes US president. You can read it here.
Vindication
In an earlier post, I drew attention to the evidence that I had given to the public inquiry on foreign interference and to the fact that an application had been made to strike part of my testimony from the record. The Commissioner has now made a judgement on the issue and rejected the application. You can read the judgement here: https://foreigninterferencecommission.ca/fileadmin/foreign_interference_commission/Documents/Procedural_Documents/Decisions/2024-10-29_-_Decision_on_Application_to_Strike_Statements.pdf
The New Red Scare
In my latest article for Canadian Dimension, I discuss what I call the ‘New Red Scare’ and in particular accusations levelled against the Ottawa Citizen’s defence correspondent David Pugliese. Read here.
Evidence to Foreign Interference Commission
Yesterday, I gave evidence to the public inquiry into foreign interference, taking place here in Ottawa. You can watch it here
I am the first witness, right at the start. For a postscript, though, go to the 3:59:55 mark.
Ukraine’s Victory Plan
My latest article for Canadian Dimension magazine, titled ‘Ukraine’s “Victory Plan” Faces Sobering Realities,” has now been published. You can read it here.
Russia’s World Order – Book Cover Revealed
I have a new book coming out in April, entitled ‘Russia’s World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict with the West’. It will be published by Cornell University Press, under the imprint of Northern Illinois University Press. It will be published as a trade book, and should therefore be reasonably priced. I have just received a picture of what will be the book cover. Here it is. Further updates on the book will follow as the publication date gets closer.
Roundtable on Russian Messianism
With Paul Grenier, Gordon Hahn, and Victor Taki, I have taken part in an online roundtable on the topic of Russian Messianism that has been published by Landmarks, the journal of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy. If you are interested, you can read it here.
In addition, since last posting on this website, I have penned a couple more columns for Canadian Dimension magazine. The first, relating to Hungary and Slovakia’s political and economic tussles with Ukraine, is here. The second, concerning Ukraine’s recent attack on Kursk province in Russia, is here.
I hope that you find it all illuminating.
Far Eastern Promises
In my latest monthly column for Canadian Dimension magazine, I discuss Vladimir Putin’s trip to North Korea in the context of America’s ‘pivot to the east’. Read here.
Writing and Reading
In case anybody is interested in the inputs and outputs of my intellectual life, here is a little update on what I have been writing and reading.
Writing
Some good news! I have another book on the way. It’s title has been confirmed as Russia’s World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict with the West. It will be published by Northern Illinois University Press (now an imprint of Cornell Univesity Press) on 15 April next year. It will be published as a trade book, and thus should be available at an easily affordable price. I will post the cover once it is available.
Reading
Here are a few things I have read recently that might be of interested to purveyors of this site:
Ian Proud is a former British diplomat who served in the UK’s embassy in Moscow and was also responsible for organizing British sanctions against the Russian Federation. He has since left the Foreign Office, written his memoirs. and started a blog on which he regularly criticizes British policy towards Russia and declares the sanctions he enacted to be a total failure. You can read his blog here.
The memoirs are written in a light, engaging style, but contain a serious message. Proud argues that successive British governments have for a long time been totally uninterested in talking to Russia. He also paints a picture of British diplomats who not only mostly didn’t speak Russian but also weren’t interested in doing so. Dispatches to London, he claims, consisted largely of bits cut and paste out of media articles. One has to wonder about the quality of the intelligence that London was receiving.
Worth a read.
I used to teach a course titled ‘Irrationality and Foreign Policy Decision-Making’, which looked at all the ways that foreign policy decision processes deviated from the kind of rational actor models that public policy students are taught to follow.
It’s interesting, therefore, to come across a book that claims that all the stuff I taught is wrong and foreign policy is for the most part a rational endeavour. I can’t say that I was 100% convinced by this book, which I found a bit repetitive, and perhaps worthy more of an extended article than a full-length book. Still, if I ever teach that course again, I will have to bear what this says in mind and suggest it to my students.
This one got a stinker of a review from Joy Neumeyer in the New Left Review, in which, among other things, Neumeyer accused author Jade McGlynn of plagiarizing her work. You can read that review here.
McGlynn’s basic argument is that the war in Ukraine is not Putin’s war but Russia’s war, as Putin and the war have broad support from the Russian population. I would generally agree, but the problem is that McGlynn then goes beyond this and tries to explain this phenomenon by recourse to a sort of Homo Sovieticus argument, namely that the reason why the Russian masses support Putin and the war is that they are psychologically retrograde.
Personally, I don’t see why it’s even necessary to write a whole book explaining the phenomenon. Populations everywhere tend to rally around the flag. It’s natural. And when they do, we don’t have to resort to explanations of the masses’ psychological failings. Why does Russians’ support for Putin mean that Russians are psychologically twisted in a way that Americans’ support for George W. Bush or Britons’ support for Tony Blair during the war in Iraq doesn’t?
By all means read ‘Russia’s War’ if you want, but I can’t say that I got anything useful from it.
This one I haven’t actually read yet. It’s on my shelf awaiting a moment when I have spare time on my hands. The reason I got it is that the description of the book’s thesis seems fascinating. If I am understanding it right, author Tomila Lankina is claiming that there was an astonishing lack of social mobility in the upper middle classes in Russia in the twentieth century. It was more or less the same families who made up that class in Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and post-Soviet Russia. This existed alongside a newer, ‘inferior, second-class middle-class’ (as Lankina calls it) made up of ex-workers and peasants and their children, who rose up in the Soviet era. The two middle classes remained distinct, however, and it was the former that transmitted liberal values from the late Imperial era into the early post-Soviet one.
If true, this casts enormous doubt on the ability of governments of any hue to promote social mobility. Wealth and privilege, it seems, have a way of surviving even regimes dedicated to destroying them. Is it true? I guess I’ll have to read the book to find out.
The title of this book – also still to be read – says it all. ‘The Stupidity of War’. Amen to that!
More publications
Here are links to a couple of other recent publications by me.
The first is a piece published by Landmarks, the online journal of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy. It is one of a set of responses to proposals for a new policy of containment against Russia and China. You can read it here.
The second is my latest piece in Canadian Dimension magazine, in which I discuss the protests currently taking place in Georgia. Click here.
Happy reading.
IRRUSSIANALITY 