AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY From an Orthodox Christian Point of View VOLUME VI: THE AGE OF MAMMON (1945 to 1992) PART 2: from 1971 to 1992 Vladimir Moss © Copyright Vladimir Moss, 2018: All Rights Reserved 1 The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. J.R.R. Tolkien. It is time, it is the twelfth hour, for certain of our ecclesiastical representatives to stop being exclusively slaves of nationalism and politics, no matter what and whose, and become high priests and priests of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Fr. Justin Popovich. The average person might well be no happier today than in 1800. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments. We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling commitments and families. Yuval Noah Harari, (2014). The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. II Timothy 4.3-4. People have moved away from ‘religion’ as something anchored in organized worship and systematic beliefs within an institution, to a self-made ‘spirituality’ outside formal structures, which is based on experience, has no doctrine and makes no claim to philosophical coherence. Clifford Longley. That which is called democracy is always in fact plutocracy. The only alternative to the rule of the rich is to have a ruler who is deliberately made more powerful even than the rich. It is to have a ruler who is secure of his place, instead of rulers who are fighting for their place. G.K. Chesterton. Israel is where Jews are. It is not a line on a map. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The death of God does not mean that man will believe in nothing, but that he will believe in anything. G.K. Chesterton. ...today's concept of democracy, this horrible political correctness that so marks Western society: the people can do anything they want, but they don't trust themselves to think independently. Daniel Barenboim. 2 We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis... and the nations will accept the New World Order. David Rockefeller. Globalization is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and value of nothing. Without borders the world will become – is becoming – a howling desert of traffic fumes, concrete and plastic, where nowhere is home and the only language is money. Peter Hitchens. What began in Russia will end in America. Elder Ignaty of Harbin (+1958). 3 III. CAPITALISM WAVERS (1971-1982) 6 41. NIXON IN CHINA 7 42. THE NIXON SHOCK AND THE GLOBAL MINOTAUR 15 43. THE COSTS OF THE REVOLUTION 22 44. THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS RIGHT 38 45. SOLZHENITSYN, DÉTENTE AND APPEASEMENT 45 46. THE COLD WAR IN LATIN AMERICA 59 47. THE COLD WAR IN EAST ASIA 64 48. THE COLD WAR IN AFRICA 71 49. COMMUNISM VERSUS LIBERALISM 77 50. ROCOR’S THIRD ALL-EMIGRATION COUNCIL 81 51. THE GEORGIAN CHURCH AND THE KGB 95 52. “NIKODEMOVSCHINA” 98 53. SUPER-ECUMENISM (1) 102 54. THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION 108 55. THE DECLINE OF MARXISM-LENINISM 119 56. STATES AND INDIVIDUALS 125 IV. COMMUNISM IMPLODES (1982-92) 129 57. THE POLISH COUNTER-REVOLUTION 130 58. THE REAGAN-THATCHER ALLIANCE: (1) POLITICS 135 59. THE REAGAN-THATCHER ALLIANCE: (2) ECONOMICS 139 60. FRIEDMANITE ECONOMICS AND THE THIRD WORLD 145 61. THE ANATHEMA AGAINST ECUMENISM 156 62. CHAOS AMONG THE GREEK OLD CALENDARISTS 160 62. ROCOR BEGINS TO CRACK 185 64. SUPER-ECUMENISM (2) 195 65. ROCOR AND THE CATACOMBS 201 66. GLASNOST’ AND PERESTROIKA 207 67. CHERNOBYL 210 4 68. SOVIET DEMOCRACY? 218 69. ROCOR’S MISSION INSIDE RUSSIA 223 70. POLAND’S JOYS AND SORROWS 231 71. THE TIANANMEN MASSACRE 237 72. THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL 247 73. THE ROAD TO THE EURO 256 74. SUPER-ECUMENISM (3) 262 75. THE GULF WAR: THE NEW WORLD ORDER 271 76. YUGOSLAVIA: THE REVIVAL OF NATIONALISM 276 77. THE SOVIET UNION DISINTEGRATES: (1) THE AUGUST COUP 290 78. THE SOVIET UNION DISINTEGRATES: (2) UKRAINE 298 79. FUKUYAMA AND THE END OF HISTORY 308 APPENDIX 1. GLOBALIZATION AND THE EUROPEAN UNION 334 APPENDIX 2. AMERICA, ISRAEL AND RUSSIA 354 5 III. CAPITALISM WAVERS (1971-1982) 6 41. NIXON IN CHINA “As the 1970s began,” writes Chang, “China seemed beset by external and internal crises. Domestic politics took a bizarre turn in 1971 when it was revealed that Mao’s designated heir, Lin Biao, had perished in a plane crash in Outer Mongolia after twice attempting to assassinate the Chairman himself. At the same time, the Soviet Union was threatening to use its most ‘modern and devastating weapons’… and target specific nuclear strikes against China. Mao’s foreign policies had created a threat environment that jeopardized the very continuity of the People’s Republic. Clearly, China’s foreign posture required reassessment… “That reassessment was undertaken under the direction of Zhou Enlai. The Manichaean notion that the world was divided into a capitalist and a socialist camp gave way to a conviction that reality was complex, where socialist China could be threatened by socialist Russia in league with socialist Vietnam. Suggestions began to be bruited that appeals be made to the capitalist powers for capital, technology transfers, and security assistance. Finally, Beijing announced that it no longer considered the United States to be China’s ‘number one enemy’. With that, China’s rapprochement with the West began – a process that spanned Mao’s remaining years, culminating in the normalization of relations between the United States and the People’ Republic of China on January 1, 1979.”1 The United States under Nixon and his crafty Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were quick to exploit the Sino-Soviet quarrel. After the clash on the Ussuri river in March, 1969, writes Stone, “Moscow asked Nixon to condemn the Chinese nuclear tests; there were hints at a nuclear strike to destroy the Chinese ‘facilities’; and the Chinese were refusing the Russians the right to fly supplies to Vietnam or to use their airfields. The Chinese needed America against Russia. There was room, here, for clevercleverness, and in April 1971 the world was surprised when an American table tennis team went to Peking. It was even more taken aback a year later, when Nixon followed, on 21 February 1972…”2 This moment of détente between the US and China was no less important than the other détente taking place between the US and the USSR. The latter was expressed mainly in open and business-like arms-control agreements and some loans from western banks to the Soviets. In the Chinese-American negotiations, however, everything was conducted in secret; neither side wanted to appear too eager to get together with the other. After all, Nixon had built his political career since the time of McCarthy on his anti- Communism, while Mao could not afford not to appear anti-American. In the event, both sides – but especially the United States – made unprecedented concessions they would not have dreamed of only a few years before. 1 Chang, op. cit., p. 148. 2 Stone, op. cit., p. 236. 7 Kissinger himself pointed out the importance of these events. “While I was on the way to China on the so-called secret trip in July 1971, [Nixon], addressing an audience in Kansas City,… argued that ‘Chinese domestic travail’ – that is, the Cultural Revolution – should not confer ‘any sense of satisfaction that it will always be that way. Because when we see the Chinese as people – and I have seen them all over the world… - they are creative, they are productive, they are one of the most capable people in the world. And 800 million Chinese are going to be, inevitably, an enormous economic power, with all that that means in terms of what they could be in other areas if they move in that direction.’ “These phrases, commonplace today, were revolutionary at that time. Because they were delivered extemporaneously – and I was out of communication with Washington – it was Zhou Enlai who brought them to my attention as I started the first dialogue with Beijing in more than twenty years. Nixon, inveterate anti-Communist, had decided that the imperatives of geopolitical equilibrium overrode the demands of ideological purity – as, fortuitously, had his counterparts in China…”3 The winner, unquestionably, was Mao. For the Chinese-American détente followed the pattern observed that in all negotiations between the Capitalist West and the Communist East at least until the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, of the West conceding more than it gained. As Jung Chang and Jon Halliday write, “Mao’s change of mind [about relations with America] changed his fortunes. The invitation [to the American table-tennis team], the first ever from Red China to an American group, caused a sensation. The fact that it was a sports team helped capture the world’s imagination. Chou En-lai switched on his charm, and his totalitarian regime’s meticulously orchestrated theatre, to produce what Kissinger called ‘a dazzling welcome’ for the ping-pong team.