Dugin's call to arm US adversaries is at least five years too late: Russian troops have been in Latin America for years, and armed Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela

“The American Empire should be destroyed. And at one point, it will be.” - Aleksandr Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory

Vladimir Putin and his philosopher Aleksandr Dugin

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin, known as Putin's philosopher, who has Vladimir Putin's ear, has called for Russia to arm U.S. adversaries in Latin America like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. He is at least five years too late.

Russia already armed these three dictatorial regimes hostile to democracies in the region. Dugin's "threat" describes an existing state of affairs. 

Russia not only armed these three countries, but has had a military presence in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for years.

In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry declared the end of the Monroe Doctrine era. The US would no longer counter intrusions from outside powers into the Americas. 

The reality is that it had been a dead letter since 1961. 

In April 2016, Nicaragua purchased 50 Russian battle tanks at a cost of $80 million. Vladimir Putin signed a new security agreement with Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega in 2016.

Maduro's regime invited Russian mercenaries to protect him in Venezuela. Reports in 2019 indicated that there are already 2,000 Russian nationals working in intelligence roles and reporting to the Ministry of Defense, and their numbers are increasing.

During the Cold War, Paulina Zelitsky, a Soviet born Canadian Engineer, was a member of a design and construction team for a Soviet submarine base installation in Jagua Bay, Cienfuegos, Cuba. In 2020, she said, the Russians were rebuilding their nuclear submarine base in Cuba.

The United States has remained publicly indifferent to the Russian military buildup in Latin America.

In the case of Ukraine, when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, and Kyiv became independent with its own nuclear stockpile. Moscow tried to negotiate with Kyiv for them to give up their nuclear weapons, but could not reach an agreement. The United States and the United Kingdom together with Russia guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and Kyiv gave up their nuclear stockpile to Russia in the 1990s. 

In stark contrast, Vladimir Putin is threatening nuclear war because NATO countries are helping Ukraine, a nation he invaded in an act of naked aggression in violation of international law, and pledges made by Moscow too Kyiv to respect its territorial integrity. 

The invasion itself is considered a war crime, but the targeting of civilians rises to the level of crimes against humanity.  

Putin's enablers are trying to equate the present Ukraine crisis with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The two are not comparable. The United States did not invade Cuba when the Russian set up a military presence there, or armed the Castro regime with conventional weapons. 

It was only after the Soviet Union shipped in intercontinental ballistic missiles with hydrogen bombs that could reach the entire continental United States that the crisis began, and was ended when those offensive weapons were removed, but the Russians stayed, and so did their conventional weapons.

Dugin and Putin both seek the restoration of the Russian empire, and are willing to risk WWIII to achieve their imperial designs.  Russia in taking Ukraine would seize an additional 11.5% in world production of Wheat. The current war is also creating greater global food insecurity threatening multiple famines.

On September 21, 2019, at the Nexus Symposium in  Amsterdam French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy debated Russian philosopher and nationalist Aleksandr Dugin. Over the course of an hour one could hear first hand the case made for Russian imperialism by Dugin, and his critiques of Western democracy, the Enlightenment, and  Lévy's powerful rebuttal.

Reflections on Ukraine from a peace rally in front of the White House: Civilian based defense and strategic nonviolence

"The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view." - Václav Havel, "Freedom and Its Enemies" November 14, 2009.

Today, at the White House in Washington DC thousands of Ukrainians, and friends of Ukraine gathered to call on President Biden to do more. Politicians, diplomats, and members of the clergy spoke out for an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Václav Havel's words from November 14, 2009, speak to the present moment in Europe. Vladimir Putin's total invasion of Ukraine reveals that the era of dictatorship, and empire continues, and repeated efforts by various U.S. Presidents to legitimize Putin pursuing normal relations have failed. 

When negotiations between Ukraine and Russia broke down on removing nuclear weapons from Ukraine in September 1993, the United States government engaged in a trilateral process with Ukraine and Russia. This resulted in the January 1994 Trilateral Statement. Ukraine agreed to transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia. Ukraine received security assurances from the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The breaking of that agreement sends a dangerous message: if you give up your nuclear weapons then your neighbor can invade you with impunity, and in the case of Russia, a nuclear power, threaten nuclear annihilation. 

Putin's attacks against Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and the eight years long low intensity war in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, and the February 24, 2022, multipronged Russian invasion of Ukraine were all acts of aggression in violation of international law.

The Russian dictator's repeated aggressions were backed by Cuba in 2008, 2014 and now in 2022. They represent an alternative international order based on brute force. The Castro regime's foreign minister on Putin's invasion of Ukraine said that Russia “has the right to defend itself.”

This latest act of aggression has been met with a brave response of the Ukrainian military, and the citizenry who have violently resisted the latest Russian invasion, but the costs in deaths and destruction meted out by the Russian invaders continues to be high. Over a million Ukrainians have fled the country, and it appears there will be many more. 

In light of this what can be done to repel and/or frustrate the aggressors while minimizing the loss of life? 

How effective is it to arm grandmothers and children with AK-47s to take on battle hardened Russian troops? Or Germany sending the government of Ukraine 35-year-old anti-aircraft missiles that were deemed unusable in 2012? 

Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, and he is also guilty of poisoning and murdering Russian dissidents and journalists throughout his rule. He is a brutal dictator experienced in violent conflict.

Too many discard nonviolence as an option claiming that Putin is as bad as Hitler, but the reality is that nonviolent actions against the Nazis in Denmark and Germany were successful. Secondly, Putin is not Hitler, but a brutal dictator and former KGB officer.

University academics and nonviolent theoreticians Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. 

They found that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns.

Even the 26% figure needs to be looked at in the Cuban context. The above-mentioned Stephan, Chenoweth study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” 

There is an alternative to a violent insurgency or abject surrender.

This isn't the first time Russia has invaded a neighbor who was not a threat to them, and unlike Afghanistan, the example of Czechoslovakia offers some useful insights for today. 

On August 20, 1968, Warsaw Pact military forces initiated a massive invasion of Czechoslovakia. On the morning of the 21st Czechs and Slovaks found their streets filled with tanks and troops from East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia. However, it would take these occupation forces eight months to complete their invasion. This was due to a nonviolent civilian defense that was mounted and sustained for months, and laid the groundwork for the Velvet Revolution.

Although not focused on in most media accounts there are examples that civic resistance is having an impact in Ukraine.

The nonviolent theoretician Gene Sharp published a book that is available online titled Civilian Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System that explores how these methods can be applied at the national level as a method of national defense.

Waging Nonviolent makes the case how nonviolent resistance can demoralize an army and lead to mutinies, and references Sharp's book.

In his highly-relevant text “Civilian-Based Defense,” Gene Sharp explained the power of mutinies — and civilians’ ability to cause them. 

“Mutinies and the unreliability of troops in repressing the predominantly nonviolent Russian revolutions of 1905 and February 1917 were highly significant factors in the weakening and final downfall of the tsar’s regime.”  

Mutinies increase as the resistance targets them, attempting to undermine their sense of legitimacy, appealing to their humanity, digging in with prolonged, committed resistance, and creating a compelling narrative that the invading force simply does not belong here.

Friends of a free Ukraine, and against Russian imperialism owe it to themselves, and the people of Ukraine to share this information on nonviolent resistance that has been shown in other circumstances to be more effective in resisting brutal despots like Vladimir Putin.

Visiting the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism: A Reflection

"National Socialism means: Enmity with neighboring nations, tyranny internally, civil war, world war, lies, hatred, fratricide and boundless want." - Dr.  Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich, Der gerade Weg, 31 July 1932

Entrance to the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

This year marks 80 years since the outbreak of World War 2, and during a visit to Munich happened to find markers and plaques across the German city highlighting the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP; Nazi Party) , their criminal regime, and the continuing crimes by Nazis following the end of the Second World War.

For example outside of the Old City Hall in the historic heart of Munich the above plaque was prominently displayed along with an English translation that read:

FOR CENTURIES THIS BALLROOM IN THE OLD CITY HALL WAS USED FOR MUNICIPAL AND CIVIC GATHERINGS AND FESTIVITIES.

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REGIME MISUSED THE VENUE TO PLAN THEIR ANTI-SEMITIC CRIMES.

DURING A NAZI PARTY CELEBRATION ON THE EVENING OF 9TH NOVEMBER 1938 THE ANTI-JEWISH VIOLEENCE BEING INCITED IN MANY CITIES OF THE REICH WAS EXTENDED HERE INTO A NATIONWIDE POGROM.

THE "REICHSKRISTALLNACHT" OR "NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS" AS IT BECAME KNOWN WAS THE PRELUDE TO THE ANNIHILATION FOR EUROPE'S JEWS.

Walking further came across an ominous marker that indicated that Nazi crimes did not end in 1945. The marker recognized in both German and English that "[t]heir unheeded suffering admonishes us to care. The deeds of right-wing extremists call for vigilance. Munich remembers the victims of the Oktoberfest Bomb Attack on 26 September 1980 and all those affected by it." Through a quick Google search learned that the marker had been placed there on September 4, 2018 and that 13 people had been killed and 219 wounded in the bombing.

The day before had toured the Alte Pinakothek, the old art museum, saw the old masters, and returned the following day to see impressionist painters at the newer museum, the Neue Pinakothek, which is just across the street and complements the old art museum, but found it was closed for renovations from December 31, 2018 until some time in 2020.

Walking back I happened upon the the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. This museum opened on May 1, 2015 with the objective of "education and remembrance documenting and addressing the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and their origins, manifestations and consequences right up to the present day." 

Site in Munich were Nazis had their headquarters

It is one of those things that is known, but that one does not connect with an area best known for Oktoberfest, and the great culture and civilization of Bavaria. The Nazis first came into power in Munich, and had their main headquarters there.

Spent about four hours going through the different multi-media presentations beginning just after WWI all the way through to the present. It documents the violence, criminality and horror of the NAZI's and their skillful use of propaganda that dehumanized the other, especially Jewish people. 

Because it has a Munich focus it addresses the gathering there of Hitler, Italy's Mussolini, Britain's Chamberlain, and France's Daladier in 1938 and the agreement they all signed that met all of the German Fuhrer's demands and sealed the fate of  Czechoslovakia, but did not deter the oncoming war. 

However there was no mention of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact that spurred on the war with the division of Poland in secret protocols between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia or the resistance of housewives in Berlin, who in 1943 went on strike and got their Jewish husbands back with a coordinated non-violent action.

Student Resistance: The White Rose

However many acts of resistance in Munich were featured including, The White Rose, a student resistance to the Nazis.  In the picture above three members of the movement are gathered: Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst on July 23, 1942. All three would be executed by the Nazis. Resistance to the Nazis began early.  Conservative journalist Dr.  Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich campaigned against the Nazis early on (see his quote at the top of the page) was taken to the Dachau concentration camp in 1933 and murdered by the the Nazis in 1934.

The case of Johann Georg Elser is also highlighted in the museum. Elser was a 36-year-old carpenter from a small town in southern Germany who came close to assassinating Adolf Hitler on November 8, 1939. The carpenter's objective was to kill Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels. He planted a bomb with a timer where the three men would be while Hitler was making his annual speech at a Munich beer hall. Hitler and his delegation left earlier than planned. The bomb went off 13 minutes after the high-ranking Nazis left and eight were killed and 63 injured.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H25087 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Nearly five years later on July 20, 1944 the failure of another bomb to kill Hitler brought to an end a high level plot by civilian and military officials. The bomb went off and injured, but did not kill Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, a command post near Rastenburg, East Prussia (present-day Poland). The conspiracy was code named Operation Valkyrie. In the end 7,000 people were arrested, and 4,980 executed for their role in the plot.

However, what remains disturbing is that the man who broke up the conspiracy Otto-Ernst Remer (18 August 1912 – 4 October 1997) would go on to play a big role in post-Nazi Germany. Captured by the United States, he remained a prisoner of war until 1947. Following his release, he obtained funding from the Soviet Union and established the Socialist Reich Party in 1950 that worked with the Communist Party of Germany.  Campaign themes of the Socialist Reich Party included that the Holocaust was an allied propaganda invention, it accused the United States of building fake gas chambers and producing fake news-film footage about concentration camps, that the politics of the Allied-powers created West German state were merely a front for American domination, and that West Germany's puppet status of the United States should be opposed. 

(SRP) leaders; Chair Dr. Fritz Dorls, Otto Ernst Remer, 2nd Chair Fmr SS / Hitler Youth leader Count von Westarp.

The Socialist Reich Party was banned in 1952 and Otto-Ernst Remer fled to Egypt. He served as an advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser, and worked with other Germans assisting Arab states with the development of their armed forces. He often met with Johannes von Leers. It is worth providing some background on von Leers.

Johannes von Leers had been Waffen SS in Nazi Germany, was also a professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics, and was an important ideologue of the Third Reich, serving as a high-ranking propaganda ministry official. He would offer these services to Nasser at the Egyptian Information Department and serve the Egyptian leader as an advisor. He also provided publishing services in Peron's Argentina. Johannes von Leers converted to Islam, took the name Omar Amin, and died in Egypt at age 63 in 1965. 

In the early 1960s Otto-Ernst Remer had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons.

Otto-Ernst Remer returned to West Germany in the 1980s, and set up an organization entitled the "German Freedom Movement" (G.F.M.), which advocated the reunification of East and West Germany, and the removal of NATO military forces from West German soil. The G.F.M. was an umbrella organization for multiple underground Neo-Nazi splinter-groups, and Remer used it to influence a new generation of post-war born Germans. Until the end of his days he continued to engage in Holocaust denial, was an unrepentant Nazi and continued to promote and organize underground Neo-Nazi movements that continue to engage in acts of terror and murder to the present day.

It is also disturbing that Communist Russia allied with Nazi Germany in 1939 to start World War Two, and covertly promoted Nazi elements again in post-war Germany after 1945 in order to undermine West German democracy. Is Vladimir Putin carrying on today where Josef Stalin left off? How much of a role did and does Nazism play in exacerbating anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world?

Visiting the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism led me to take a closer look at Nazism past and present and its enablers. 

The words of Primo Levi from the The Drowned and the Saved in 1986 should cause us to be ever vigilant: "It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." 

Cold War II: How Obama - Clinton "Russian reset" paved way for current foreign policy disaster

Cold War 2.0 and the 2016 Election

Obama Administration's Russian reset launched new Cold War

This blog focuses on U.S. - Cuba policy but as the geopolitical situation deteriorates, U.S. - Russia relations deteriorate and Russia returns to Cuba and makes new inroads into Latin America the obvious question arises: How did the new Cold War between Russia and the United States materialize?


First, the end of the Cold War without a major war on the European continent was achieved during the Reagan - Bush era (1981 - 1993). Ronald Reagan entered The White House rejecting the failed policy of detente that had ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the Carter administration. However, the first Bush Administration pledged to Gorbachev in 1990 that in return for German unification and freeing the "captive nations" there would be no NATO expansion. Bill Clinton abandoned this agreement and NATO went on to expand with 12 nations of the former Warsaw pact joining and encircling Russia on its western front. During the second Bush Administration plans to install a missile defense complex in Poland were announced.

Secretary Clinton and Foreign Minister Lavrov press button marked "overload" in 2009 

On March 6, 2009 Secretary Hillary Clinton in Geneva, Switzerland announced the "Russian reset" with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov but things did not go as expected as Time Magazine's Simon Shuster reported a year later when there were already signs that things were going in the wrong direction:

Last March, she had the honor of starting Obama's charm offensive by presenting her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with a little red button. It was supposed to have the Russian word for reset on it and was meant as a harmless bit of fun. But thanks to a spelling mistake somewhere in the State Department (presumably the Gimmicks Directorate), Lavrov had to explain that the button actually said overload. It caused some awkward laughter.

In September of 2009 the Obama Administration announced that they "no longer planned to move forward" with the missile shield and scrapped it, but pursued an alternative scaled down version that still bothered the Russians who viewed the President as weak.


On March 26, 2012 President Obama was caught on a hot mike telling then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility." President Medvedev replied, "I understand. I transmit this (inaudible) to Vladimir." President Obama went on to win re-election.

In August of 2012 President Obama made his famous statement of a "red line" in Syria over the use of chemical weapons leading to a U.S. military response only to back down when Assad used them.
This was all taking place under a backdrop where the Putin regime was transitioning into a more authoritarian regime murdering opposition activists, human rights defenders and independent journalists. The Obama administration did not allow these developments to effect their approach to Russia.

By 2014 Vladimir Putin responded to President Obama's promise of "flexibility" by militarily taking part of Ukraine, backing Assad in Syria, and floating the idea of opening Russian military bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Today in 2016 as construction begins on a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, and Russians have now returned to Latin America expanding their position there not only in Cuba but also Nicaragua the prospects that a second Cold War is underway is a reality.

U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration has been a mixture of signals perceived as weak being sent, inviting aggressive responses by outlaw regimes and adversaries, followed up by responses that threaten to explode into conflict.

This is how today the Russians are involving themselves in the U.S. elections mocking The White House, as Russian planes buzz U.S military warships around the world, and the unprecedented statement by Vice President Biden announcing a "covert" operation against Russia for its alleged leaking of hacked e-mails of the Democratic National Committee, and John Podesta. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored protocols placing her electronic communications on a private and unsecured server. Until now there have been no leaks of her e-mails but could there be a late "October Surprise" as Russian revenge for Bill Clinton's NATO expansion?


This "Russian reset" was part of President Obama's overall charm offensive with various adversaries of the United States which amounted to neo-appeasement, and as was the case in Cuba and Venezuela failed terribly, and has created the conditions for future conflict that are now erupting at the end of his presidency.