Back in the USSR

No thanks. 'Neither Washington nor Moscow' makes as much sense now as it did when the barnacly old SWP has it as a slogan on its front page. That is, quite a lot. Edward Lucas in The Guardian warms up the stale old dung of who supported who in the one-sided Russia Georgia war.

First he writes as if what he conveys is original, when it's been hashing about in the bloggiverse since the squalid little war started. All that gloaty stuff about the 'old lefties falling in line behind their erstwhile Moscow allies - tsk task!', the trusty old anti-Americans and "In odd alliance with the anti-globalists are the champions of international business." This 'Look at who supports this argument too though!' line of critique is thin stuff. You object to the death penalty. So does Margaret Thatcher! As if sensing this or letting his real reason for the article shine through; Lucas strays into outright anti-Russianism.

His conclusion is that "It is all very odd. Russia is an oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy ruled by secret police goons and their cronies." which vitriol is odd since the neo-liberals (assumption: Lucas himself is a neo-lib. Check this - Ed.) helped to set it up that way. He ends his little tantrum by remarking incredibly that " However bad other countries may be, it is hard to find anything there worth emulating."

His anti-Russian feelings are as pointless as the anti-American ones he criticises earlier on in his text.

When faced with a spurious "either/or" choice - always think about the "neither" option.

His wider analysis (put forward in his blog where we discover that he must be a neo-lib since he writes for the Economist) is the devastatingly unoriginal idea that another cold war has broken out between west and east. The old cold war was a complicated conflict with subtleties and facets that Lucas, judging by his wild remarks in his blog , is unfit to analyse. As for the phoney new one - it's guff. Just like Lucas' book.