I know Kazakhstan very well and I can say with certainty that there never was and never will be any conflict between our two countries. President Noursoultan Nazarbaïev foresaw the situation in which Georgia and Ukraine finally found themselves. He was the first to understand the essential law of the post-soviet space : the territorial integrity of every State on the territory of the ex-USSR depends on its relationship with Russia. If the relationship is acceptable, integrity is guaranteed. No post soviet country has been blackmailed with the “Russian factor” in order to annex territories where ethnic Russians live. Not one time. And no Russian politician has ever contested the right of Kazakhstan to be sovereign. It is Nazarbaïev himself who has engaged the process of integration within the Eurasian space. He said: “I am for integration if my interests are respected.” Belarus President Loukachenko has adopted a similar stance.

The crisis in Ukraine is still far from over, but it is clear that it is the most important central event in the early 21st century to date, much more important than Libya, the invasion of Afghanistan, or the question of the future of Iraq. Even Syria can be measured with it. The crisis is not yet resolved, but some answers are already apparent: Crimea is Russian again. The fate of the South East of Ukraine is now almost certain: it certainly will not be part of a future unitary Ukraine, Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic military alliance. There was during the rebellion a (pro) Russian population, which articulated its requirements for many unexpected “Russian Springs”. Southeast – Novorusija can become part of a future federal or confederal Ukraine, independent states dependent on the Russian Federation – but only as interim solution – and in the future an integral part of Russia.

Prof. Dugin, the Western mainstream media and established politicians describe the recent situation in Ukraine as a conflict between pro-European, democratic and liberal oppositional alliance on the one side and an authoritarian regime with a dictator as president on the other side. Do you agree?

Dugin: I know those stories and I consider this type of analysis totally wrong. We cannot divide the world today in the Cold War style. There is no “democratic world” which stands against an “antidemocratic world”, as many Western media report.

Your country, Russia, is one of the cores of this so called “antidemocratic world” when we believe our mainstream media. And Russia with president Vladimir Putin tries to intervene in Ukrainian domestic politics, we read...

Dugin: That´s completely wrong. Russia is a liberal democracy. Take a look at the Russian constitution: We have a democratic electoral system, a functioning parliament, a free market system. The constitution is based on Western pattern. Our president Vladimir Putin rules the country in a democratic way. We are a not a monarchy, we are not a dictatorship, we are not a soviet communist regime.

Egalitarians, be it modern liberals or the Left, would like everyone to think that the colonisation of White homelands by settlers of colour is irreversible, and that this (according them) now permanent situation is a sign of ‘progress’, resulting from the technological overcoming of geographical barriers, the deprecation of ‘antiquated’ notions of identity, the destruction of traditional hierarchies, and the increasing move towards a fluid world. Yet this is vision is purely ideological: there is nothing intrinsically progressive inegalitarianism or globalisation,the latter of which is an expression of the former; they are merely the expression of an ethics that subjectively declares equality to be an absolute moral good. And herein lies the principal difficulty in the effort to instigate a change of government policy: in our age, the dominant morality in our society is an egalitarian morality, and it is this, rather than any of the contrived pseudo-economic arguments we often hear repeated in the mainstream media and liberal and Left-leaning think tanks, that serves as the ultimate basis for justification—either for continuing the policy or for not reversing it. Most ordinary citizens in the West agree that there are too many ‘immigrants’ (settlers of colour) and would rather their governments stopped them coming and sent most of them back. They dare not say or call for this publicly, however, because they fear that desiring this makes them ‘bad people’ and would cause others to think them so too. This is why no amount of economic data, crime statistics, or racial science has any effect on policy. To see it change we will need to be able to articulate the case for change in moral terms, and I believe this cannot be achieved without attacking egalitarianism in moral terms, because it is its enshrinement of equality as a moral good that lies at the base ofthe modern liberal project.Once the moral standing of egalitarianism is destabilised, and once an ethics of inequality (the moral goodness of difference, or the moral goodness of quality) issuccessfully articulated, then it will become a lot easier to justify a change inimmigration policy throughout the West.Of course, reversing the effects of decades of colonisation is more difficult whereit has been more intensive and where the indigenous have intermarried with thesettlers, but, from the perspective of physically relocating, those who immigratedcan just as easily emigrate: after all, did they not emigrate from their countries oforigin in the first place? It is not the migration that is difficult, even if large numbers are involved—it’s everything else.

Dugin: We have to see the struggle for geopolitical power as the old conflict of land power represented by Russia and sea power represented by the USA and its NATO partners. This is not a new phenomenon; it is the continuation of the old geopolitical and geostrategic struggle. The 1990s was the time of the great defeat of the land power represented by the USSR. Michail Gorbatchev refused the continuation of this struggle. This was a kind of treason and resignation in front of the unipolar world. But with President Vladimir Putin in the early years of 2000, came a reactivation of the geopolitical identity of Russia as a land power. This was the beginning of a new kind of competition between sea power and land power.

How did this reactivation start?

Dugin: It started with the second Chechen war (1999-2009). Russia by that time was under pressure by Chechen terrorist attacks and the possible separatism of the northern Caucasus. Putin had to realize all the west, the USA and the European Union took side for the Chechen separatists and Islamic terrorists fighting against the Russian army. This is the same plot we witness today in Syria or yesterday in Libya. The West gave the Chechen guerrilla support, and this was the moment of revelation of the new conflict between land power and sea power. With Putin, land power reaffirmed itself. The second moment of revelation was in August 2008, when the Georgian pro-western Sakashwili regime attacked Zchinwali in South Ossetia. The war between the Russia and Georgia was the second moment of revelation.

From the point of view of geopolitics, Turkey belongs to the "coastal zone", and therefore, the geopolitical theorem of Turkish policy on a global scale is solved through the balance and confrontation between the two orientations - Atlanticist and Eurasian. Since the days of Kemal Ataturk, Turkey has a strong national consciousness, perceives its statehood as a colossal, almost absolute value, and tends to play a strong and independent part in the regional context.

Modern Turkey was born in a bloody battle on the Bosphorus against the British. Kemal Ataturk builds «young Turkey» on the basis of hard confrontation with the Anglo-Saxon project. In other words, the Eurasian choice lies in the foundation of the modern Turkish state, where anti-English momentum begins its modern history. The geopolitical line of Ataturk is clear: Turkey does not intend to be atlanticist colony: it's a free and fundamental choice of father-founder of the Turkish state. And this choice is Eurasian geopolitically.

Being involved in geopolitical studies for decades and being founder of the modern Russian school of geopolitics I have made much historical research on the geopolitical identity of Greece, ancient and modern. In the first place, according to the core texts of geopolitics (starting from Halford Mackinder), it’s regarded as essentially double: Athenian thalassocracy vs. tellurocracy of Sparta. So both principles, Sea and Land, defined the dialectic nature of Greek history. That was precisely what Thucydides who in his history of Peloponnesian war, developed in his dialectic: Fleet/Sea as the main weapon of Athenian Empire, and Infantry/Land as of Sparta. In this way thalassocracy was linked to democracy, and tellurocracy to aristocracy. Therefore all depends on the point of view: if we consider (against Plato and Aristotle) democracy as the absolute form of polity then Greece is seen from thalassocratic angle, but if we prefer nobility, spiritual tradition and hierarchy then Land power and Sparta are taken as ideal.

The EU, which was presented to its peoples as a means for collective progress and democracy, tends to become the means for terminating prosperity and democracy. It was introduced as a means of resistance to globalization, but the markets wish it to be an instrument of this globalization.

 

It was introduced to German and other European peoples as a means of peaceful increase of their power and prosperity, but the way that all peoples are abandoned to be the pray of financial markets, destroys the image of Europe and turns the markets into actors of a new financial totalitarianism, into the new bosses of Europe.

 

We are facing the danger of repeating the financial equivalent of World War 1 and World War 2 in our continent and be dissolved into chaos and decomposition, in favor of an international Empire of Money and Weapons, in the economic epicentre of which lies the power of the markets.

 

The peoples of Europe and the world are facing a historically unprecedented concentration of financial but also political and media power by the international financial capital, ie by a handful of financial institutes, rating agencies and a political and media class redeemed by them, with more centers outside, than inside Europe. These are the markets that attack today in one European country after another, using the leverage of debt to demolish the European welfare state and democracy.

For his first twelve years in power, Mr Putin’s inherent conservativism was been tempered by the need to appeal to a significant and influential liberal elite. But with the desertion of this class to the ranks of protesters, we are seeing a shift, and finally the true Putin is making his worldview known.

But Putin’s steps should not be interpreted as winding the clock back.  Russian society is in transition  -  from pure form of totalitarianism to something new. This conservative moment in this transition  represents more a rethinking of what the end of this transition will be rather than a refusal to change anything at all.

Russia cannot return to the old Soviet model – the premises for it are totally lacking in Russian society. It is possible only on the symbolic level – such as accent on Soviet patriotic themes like return to the Soviet anthem or socialist rhetoric.

I would like to begin by pointing out that this is not the first Arab Spring  – No! That there was another Arab Spring about a hundred years ago. And there is a remarkable similarity between the two Arab Springs. Both of them were engineered by the same Anglo-American Western Alliance. Both of them had the same objectives of advancing the Zionist agenda to further the cause of a Euro State of Israel which would eventually become a ruling state. In that first Arab Spring, remember - that the Ottoman Islamic Empire which has served Western Europe very faithfully while plunging a bloody knife for almost six hundred years into Eastern Europe - what the Qur’an refers to as Rum - that Ottoman Islamic Empire which had served the cause of Western Europe so faithfully for almost five, six hundred years was dismantled and in its place came pro-Western Arab rulers. For example in, in Arabia the Saudi regime came to power with her very faithful agenda of aligning themselves with the Anglo-American Alliance -the Zionist Alliance. Similarly, in other parts of the Arab world that were part of the Ottoman Empire - pro-Western rulers were all put in place. And in consequence of that first Arab Spring - Israel could be created. Had there not been that first Arab Spring - Israel could not have been created. The second Arab Spring is taking place and it’s - it’s purpose is to take the Israeli State one step further to its culmination really where… The Libyan regime was unwilling to become a client and an ally of the Anglo-American Zionist Alliance.

Nowadays the situation of the  ruling power is rather complex. Despite the existence of a mighty patriotic potential, which laid at the roots of Putin’s first election, this potential until now has not received any explicit political configuration. In the present moment there are practically no structures which are able to offer an adequate political-ideological support to the president. There is one structure – a self-declared “party of power”, in the person of United Russia– but its very major problems lay just in its political and ideological manifestations. As a matter of fact, this party saw the convergence of the most different characters, left- and right-wing, regional frondists and étatists, smart politicians and mediocre officials... 

This question asked in the beginning of Putin’s career has been created during the transmutation of the political language of current Russia from Modern into the Post-Modern. In classical language Putin as a human being is an essence, a reality, a personality in the first place. Then he’s being understood inside the political context along his political actions. This is the approach for the Age of the Enlightenment: there is Vladimir Putin, a politician, a person with certain specifics, with certain roots, and there is also his system of evaluations and thoughts. This was true until the Epoch of the Post-Modern has come...

Inside the Post-Modern a person is an empty space, because all a human being deals with is an interpretation of his/her consciousness. As a result, Vladimir Putin’s image appears not from the knowledge of Vladimir Putin, and not from the analysis of his actions, but from the language context he is in. This is why the question "Who is mister Putin?" inside the Post-Modern system has no answer at all. This is a forever open question.

"In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution," says Aleksandr Dugin who spoke this week in Washington. A soft-spoken man, Dugin wore a black shirt and black suit, with a priestly-beard of an old Solzhenitsyn. Like Aleksandr Isievich, Dugin is also a graphomaniac with a bit of a cult following. Many clutched his two kilo Osnovny Geopolitiki (Fundamentals of Geopolitics) like Bibles as he spoke of his philosophy of Eurasianism.