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Russia vs, ‘the West’: John Gray’s ’Apocalyptic’ Prediction

John Gray is considered an English philosopher. According to the British journalist Francis Wheen, Gray “has published dozens of increasingly apocalyptic books and articles on the need to end the Enlightenment project forthwith.”

Excerpts from ‘The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses?’

The New Statesman, July 28-August 17, 2023

“The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses?

If Ukrainian forces nonetheless fail to break through Russian positions, a frozen conflict becomes a realistic outcome. Western support is nearing exhaustion.

Deindustrialised societies cannot sustain a protracted conflict when Russia is operating as a fully fledged war economy.

The West is staking its endgame on regime change. What if that has the same result as it did in Iraq and Libya?”

In the Russian Civil War of 1917-1921 “Western military intervention involving British and other foreign troops exacerbated the bloodshed. As many as ten million people died, some in battles and massacres, many more from famine and disease. Millions fled to Europe and Asia.

Human beings crave safety more than they yearn for liberty, and nowhere more so than in Russia. For all its cultural achievements, this vast country has never enjoyed an extended period of freedom - only interludes of chaos in immemorial despotism.

In Russia, there is practically nothing on which a Western-style state could be built.

A larger version of the ethnic mayhem that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, intensified by wars for control of unevenly distributed natural resources, is more likely. A humiliated Russia would be driven back into an impoverished, nuclear-armed Muscovite redoubt. Floods of refugees would head for Europe, destabilising governments across the continent. We may not be far from a point at which a Chinese takeover of Russia would be welcomed with relief.

Unless the West shakes off its liberal delirium regarding the future of Russia, Ukraine's tragedy could be swallowed up in a still greater calamity.“


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