The European Union and the United States of America have gone to extreme lengths to punish Russia for what many experts claim was a breach of international law. When the Crimea peninsula rejoined Russia in March of 2014, the globalists used a foregone conclusion to great effect. Today, the most liberal interpreters of the situation misinform society by taking advantage of people’s limited knowledge of legal precepts.
I was reading (with some amazement) earlier today a story in The International Policy Digest entitled; “What Would Kant Tell Putin?”, in which author Sargis Karavardanyan set out to add further enmity to the already oozing sore of international policy against Russia. The would be data scientist who’s a PhD candidate PhD Student and Graduate Teaching Assistant at UC Irvine School of Social Sciences creates an imaginary moment in Kant’s hometown of Kalingrad where the meets up with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a café. Before I delve into Karavardanyan’s manipulation of Kantian ideas, it’s important to frame where UC Irvine is on the globalist-liberalist scale. I suppose we need to also mention that the chair of the political science department, Jeffrey Kopstein, who’s another crusader for amplifying the flight of European and Russian Jews. As anybody who’s been a student knows, there’s no influence like that of a teacher with his pencil poised over your gradebook, and Kopstein’s seemly vendetta against Russia is case I must point to. Taking the gloves off, if Karavardanyan wanted to put a shiny apple on the desk of the department chair, bashing Putin falls right in line with the kind of Russophobia the UC Irvine professor expounds on with “The Weimar/Russia Comparison”, which lays the academic groundwork for building Putin into a fascist. I’ll not delve too deeply into Kopstein, his “Post-Communism, The Civilizing Process, and the Mixed Impact of Leninist Violence” reveals the deeply disturbing dystrophy that affects all political academia in the west, the thesis of proving the shining liberal democratic Utopia. In this science of philosophical fairytales Putin is some byproduct of a cosmic political tempest only California professors understand.
Immanuel Kant and his misfortune at having lived in Kalingrad, Sargis Karavardanyan’s argument intends to lend credence to so-called Kantian “fundamental principles to achieve perpetual peace”. But the argument stinks of ultra-liberal bias. The missing variables, the contrivances by the United States and the globalists to “democratize” Ukraine are absent as usual. These academics use their credentials to pump up theories and the ensuing political narratives for cause, but without true science behind. How would Kant consider international tribunals or the UN today where to act in a truly jurisperitus manner AND “dexterously apply the law to occurring cases?” After all, according to Kant the gulf in between what composes positive law (jus scriptum), and the mere theory of law is a wide crevasse indeed. To quote on the difference from Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Ethics [1796]:
“By the science of law is meant the systematic knowledge of the principles of the law of nature (from which positive law takes its rise), which is for ever the same, and carries its sure and unchanging obligations over all nations and throughout all ages.”
The case of Ukraine in its “entirety” is an adjudication that no person or body has addressed, at least not to my knowledge. The interference, investment, and outright subversive activities by western entities during the EU accession processes, nor the veritable coup that took place in and around Maidan Square do not even factor into these judicial or academic narratives. The Soros NGO efforts, Senator John McCain cheerleading the overthrow, and US dignitaries arrogantly stomping on the rights of half of Ukraine have no bearing. And the academic experts like Kopstein only mention Soros or the Ford Foundation in terms of their having been tossed out of Russia. The sacrosanct way in which these liberals operate is sickening. And the next generation being cloned like Karavardanyan is so obviously being groomed simply destroys any hope the world will ever have justice and peace. Liberalism is the only truth, the only goal, the only God for these people. Emmanuel Kant is rolling in his grave right now. Kant is the end all on this issue though.
“An obstacle opposed to that which hinders an effect, advances that effect, and tends to that end. But everything unjust is a hindrance to freedom, according to law universal. Again, co-action is a hindrance put upon freedom. Therefore, if a certain use of freedom is a hindrance to freedom universal, i.e., unjust and wrong, then co-action preventing such misuse of freedom goes to establish freedom according to a universal law, i.e., is just or right; and consequently law has in itself a right to co-act him who attempts to violate it.”
So, the case can be made that Vladimir Putin and Russia acted out of the universal law proposed by Kant in order to co-act those who were attempting to use law to violate freedom. And with this I’ll suggest our good scholars broaden their scope of study beyond “outcomes” other than justice and the real law. Maybe I am being too course with these deep-thinking philosophers, but somehow I doubt it. I am open to their further “just” arguments.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.