The West – or more precisely the Anglo-American axis – hates Vladimir Putin’s guts because they can’t stand an independent leader who works for his country’s best interests. They got Salvador Allende of Chile assassinated for nationalising Chilean assets. They deposed the democratically elected Mossadeq of Iran because he wanted a fair price for Iranian oil that British Petroleum was stealing. They hanged Saddam Hussein because he wanted to un-peg Iraq from the US dollar. They bayoneted Muammar Gaddafi because Libya enjoyed decades of prosperity without Western help.

But Putin is no Saddam; he’s the head of the country with the world’s second most powerful military – a military that can wipe the United States off the map in 30 minutes. What irks the Anglo-Americans is that the Russian leader takes care of Russia’s interests the way Westerners protect their own interests. He represents that moment when Russia was transformed from an economic basket case into a resurgent power. How can the West forgive him for that?

More significant is the impact on Western morale. The Russian military is once again able to operate out of its bases. Russian strategic bombers – with America in their crosshairs – are back over the Atlantic and the Pacific. On one notable occasion, two Blackjack bombers (armed with nuclear tipped cruise missiles) flew past the unprotected southern flanks of the US, causing panic in the Pentagon. And in 2014 a Russian nuclear submarine known as the Black Hole (because of its super stealth capabilities) sailed undetected along the US east coast. In Syria, he showed the world that American aggression against small countries can be stopped. He single-handedly signalled that US unilateralism was over. Not even China can do that.

All this was too much for the West, which was used to seeing Russia stagnating and shrinking.

The Man For All Seasons

As the Russian military machine rolled into Ukraine, Putin issued a dire warning to Western nations, saying they would face “consequences greater than any of you have faced in history” if they become involved with his invasion. It’s a very credible threat and the West is not used to being threatened. That’s where the bile comes from.

During the US presidential elections in late 2008, Hillary Clinton, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination, said, “He was a KGB agent, by definition he doesn’t have a soul,” to which Putin coolly replied, “I think that a head of state must have a head as a minimum.” That’s the kind of devastating comeback that few global leaders would have the wit or courage to make.

In October that year, after the war in Georgia, Putin famously described Western lackey Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia as “this corpse”. The Georgian leader never showed signs of life after that – despite mouth to mouth resuscitation by his mentors such as the (now dead) American senator John McCain.

So far, Putin has refrained from calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a corpse because Russia still hopes the Ukrainians will act reasonably and abandon their hair-brained scheme (conceived in Washington) to join NATO. But if the insanely stupid Zelenskyy keeps doing the bidding of his American handlers, the Russian Army won’t be so easy on Ukraine.

The New Great Game

Western Protestants and Catholics have historically hated the Eastern Orthodox Slavs, but they also see Russia as a geopolitical rival. Russian leaders have since the time of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988 wanted to establish a common market from Vancouver to Vladivostok. But since this wasn’t acceptable to the West, Putin has plans to forge a Eurasian Union on the vast swath of territory that used to be the Soviet Union to compete with the European Union and the US. This makes many Westerners nervous – the same folks who have moved the borders of NATO ever closer to Moscow.

The Eurasian Union, if it happens, will create a global power bloc that would straddle one fifth of the earth’s surface and unite almost 300 million people. “We have a great inheritance from the Soviet Union,” Putin wrote in an article. “We inherited an infrastructure, specialised production facilities, and a common linguistic, scientific and cultural space. It is in our joint interests to use this resource for our development.”

Russia has signed major oil and gas pipeline deals with both Europe and China, effectively shutting out British and American oil majors, ensuring smoother energy flows into the global system. The success of Nord Stream 1 (the Russian oil pipeline to Germany bypassing Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic republics) with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at its helm was a body blow to Anglo-American hopes of clipping Russia’s oil hegemony in Europe. Nord Stream 2, which was completed before the invasion, will bring even more Russian gas into Europe. It is now on ice until things settle down in Ukraine.

There’s something you should know about oil and gas pipelines. They are difficult to conceive, plan and construct because of high costs and concerns about monopolies, but once they are built they bind the consumer and the producer into a decades-long geopolitical embrace. Nord Stream 1 and 2 will bind Germany, Central and Eastern Europe to Russia in an economic partnership for decades. This is the stuff of nightmares for Washington.

As the American Conservative admits, “…..Moscow wants to corner the European markets for oil and natural gas. And what nefarious end does Putin have in mind? Raising prices and reinforcing Moscow’s political clout, not with nuclear blackmail but with good, old-fashioned economic power. We have plenty of that ourselves (or at least we used to). Putin, far from being a totalitarian ideologue, is an economic nationalist, as the leaders of great powers traditionally have been.”

The US plan has always been to wreck these pipelines by destabilizing Eastern Europe. However, no European country wants to give up rock-solid Russian oil and gas and become dependent on the volatile Middle East, which has a long history of conflicts, supply disruption and price fixing though the OPEC cartel. By invading Ukraine, Putin has folded up the US regime change apparatus in the country. Once the ceasefire is declared – decisively in Russia’s favour – Ukraine will cease to be a threat to Moscow and the Americans can say goodbye to their puppets in Kiev.

The Democracy Drivel

Another reason why the West hates Putin is that the autocratic democracy that he has established in Russia appeals to many countries around the world. The Western propaganda mouthpiece ‘The Economist’ once described Putin’s job swap with former President Dmitry Medvedev as making a mockery of Russian democracy. Really? How about two stolen elections in the US? In 2000, the US Supreme Court and the Governor of Florida (Jeb Bush) colluded to cheat Democratic candidate Al Gore and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. In 2020, the Democrats rigged the elections by stuffing ballot papers in key states, stealing the presidency from Donald Trump.

The Economist didn’t publish such idealistic tripe when the West’s blue-eyed boy, the vodka soaked Boris Yeltsin, was selling off Russia’s crown jewels to rapacious Western MNCs and plunging the country into Third World status. The same Yeltsin who ordered tanks against the Russian parliament. As tank rounds thudded into the Russian ‘White House’, killing dozens of deputies inside, TIME magazine described him as “the handsome Yeltsin”. Really? Handsome in the eyes of which species?

What Putin’s detractors fail to see is that democracy is not an end in itself but rather a means to achieve economic prosperity and security for the people. Putin himself has said that he doesn’t want the kind of democracy we now see functioning in Iraq and Libya. Authoritarian prosperity as practised by much of Asia and Russia is a viable option to the crumbling democracies of the West, which are staring at double digit unemployment, collapse of family values, and jihad.

No Place For Weak Leaders

Putin’s Russia may not be perfect. There is a lot of corruption (just like in any other country), Russian companies are yet to come up with world class consumer goods, and the Soviet era infrastructure is being overhauled. It is precisely because of such problems that strong leaders are needed. Russians have seen enough of the Yeltsin era chaos, and the last thing they want is a return to the days of lumpen democracy.

Before Putin took over, it was popular to pronounce that Russia was in a coma; that it would take decades to establish a post-Soviet system. But compared with the discontent that’s brewing next door in Europe or across the ocean in the United States, Russia’s problems, although huge, aren’t insurmountable. Russians aren’t fighting for bread like in America and Britain.

The Anglo-American axis and their hangers-on must realise that a foreign leader who protects his country’s interests is not a tyrant. Around 2,300 years ago, the strategist Chanakya wrote in the Arthashastra: “The foremost duty of a ruler is to keep his people happy and content. The people are his biggest asset as well as the source of peril. They will not support a weak administration.”

–The writer is a globally cited defence analyst. His work has been published by leading think tanks, and quoted extensively in books on diplomacy, counter terrorism, warfare and economic development. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda