The Balkan Trap

This is a very remote possibility, but I figured I better post something about it just in case.

Way back in 1994, when I was still a graduate student in college, I wrote an editorial that was published by my college newspaper under the heading: "Involvement With Serbia Will Trigger World War Three".

At the least, from it you can see just how far back goes my beliefs regarding Russia, Slavophilism, Orthodoxy, the rise of the Russian Right and the Kremlin's ultimate plan to wage an apocalyptic world war to vanquish the West and establish a bogus, tyrannical 'kingdom of god'.

When the article was published, I posted copies of news articles regarding the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church occurring then (noted at the bottom) all over my college campus. Of course, at the time everyone thought I was completely nuts and had no idea what I was warning them all about. Of course, that's unfortunately likely true today as well. But that might be about to change.

I believe what I have been warning the world about for some 17 years is now proving true, although I would have to think some of the details in my 14-year-old editorial are now off the mark.

The idea that Zhirinovsky would be brought to power in Moscow seems particularly remote, but I want to point out here that it's not impossible.

The crisis over Kosovo is being triggered just before the Russian presidential election slated to occur March 2nd. With a week to go before the election, Zhirinovsky is reportedly polling around 10% of the vote and is running second to Vladimir Putin's anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, who has the support of some 70 percent of the voters and is considered a lock for the next Russian president.

Is it possible Zhirinovsky is going to surge ahead in the polls and be elected Russia's next president?

This seems ridiculously implausible right now. However, it just may be that a new Balkan crisis over Kosovo's declaration of indepedence from Serbia is being stirred just before March 2nd to create cover for this seemingly impossible turn of the Russian presidential election.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is deemed to be the ultra-nationalist candidate for president of Russia. An explosion in the Balkans over Kosovo, particularly should it involve renewed NATO military action against the Serbs, would result in a massive nationalist backlash in Russia. And this, in turn, would give seeming cover for staging a presidential victory by Vladimir Zhirinvosky on March 2nd. More plausibly, a very strong showing by the LDPR leader would at least make him an obvious candidate for a nationalist coup in Moscow sometime in the near-future.

Of course, whatever the outcome of the Russian presidential election is, it is not authentic. Russia's political landscape is nothing but theater with performances meant for Western consumption.

Notably, a surprising victory by Vladimir Zhirinvosky would not be without historical precedent. Just prior to the 1993 parliamentary elections in Russia, I wrote an article dubbed, "The Zhirinovsky Connection", in which I predicted that Zhirinovsky would:

"....astound the world through his party's success in the election of the new Russian parliament. Already the hints are being circulated to the West. Starting from a mere 2% in the polls, support for Zhirinovsky has supposedly climbed four-fold in less than a month to around 8%."

Zhirinovsky's misleadingly named "Liberal Democratic Party" reportedly captured nearly a quarter of the vote in the Russian parliamentary elections that year, the most of any party. The world, indeed, was astounded. I was not.

As Joseph Stalin once quipped:

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."