Russia Does Not Fight Enemies - It Devours Them

Pravda.Ru editor-in-chief Inna Novikova, political technologist Anatoly Wasserman and economic commentator Sayeed Gafurov discussed recent events in Russia and abroad: confrontation between Russia and the United States, deadly and mysterious Ebola virus and actions of the government and the Central Bank of Russia against the backdrop of anti-Russian sanctions.

“Not that long ago, at the UN General Assembly, Barack Obama said that three were biggest dangers: Ebola virus, Russia – the chief terrorist – and the Islamic State. In 1983, the Soviet Union was the empire of evil for the United States, and now we have come back to that again.”

Anatoly Wasserman: ”Well, clearly, the empire is getting very angry, when someone is trying to go against it. As they say, an animal can be very dangerous when it’s being attacked. Throughout almost all of our history, Russia was dangerous from this point of view. When we are attacked, we defend ourselves. This is a typical mechanism of response to external challenges. Well-known historian and philosopher of history, Arnold Toynbee, described several of such typical mechanisms. In particular, for the Russian civilization, if it is attacked, it first tries to shrink away from an attack. But after a while, it dramatically expands, absorbs the source of attack and transforms it into a sources of its strength.”

Sayeed Gafurov: “Obama’s speech at the UN, I believe, was purely an election speech. They have elections in November, so the speech was purely of election character, because he is campaigning for his party.”

A.W.: ”Not quite. This is, of course, a campaign speech, but as far as I can say, Obama does believe that the Russian Federation is a threat to the established world order. He is actually right, because this order was created under the leadership of the United States of America, to meet US interests to the detriment of the rest of the world. Of course, people do not want to put up with such an order. But everyone is waiting who goes first. Russia can go first, and in this sense it is certainly dangerous to the American world order.”

“In the past, there were two centers of power: the Soviet Union and America. And then, for 25 years, there was only America. The Americans are very displeased about Russia’s return to the center of world politics. But why such a strange company – the Islamic State and Ebola virus?”

A.W.: ”Well, I must say that the Ebola mortality is one of the highest. Chances of survival are significantly lower than chances of dying. Another thing is that the virus has become a real danger, in fact, only by virtue of market economy.”

“Because one needs money for research?”

A.W.: ”Exactly. When the virus appeared, experts unanimously said that, in principle, developing a vaccine against this infection was not too difficult, but no one would do it. Ebola is raging in extremely poor areas, where one does not make money on drugs. The spending on research and development will be very large, and there is not even a chance to cover the outlay.”

“But it can always jump from poor to not so poor areas.” 

S.G.: ”The problem is that a lot of Chinese people became sick, and they now return to China. It was primarily the Chinese, who were restoring Liberia after the civil war. They won all contracts. The Chinese do not advertise the data on cases of the infection, but they are already plentiful.”

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