The old Greeks believed that the gods made insane those they wished to destroy. Indeed, the governments of the western world appear to be sinking ever deeper into the spiral of a mental disease that is becoming apparent to many in their otherwise media-stultified and consumption-hypnotised populations, although an enduring belief in Euro-American innate cultural and economic superiority protects most from seeing the real picture. Take the economic crisis in Europe which has momentarily eclipsed the even more real catastrophic plight of the USA’s financial and social edifice. Not only is there no solution in sight, leading the present German envoy to France to declare half-seriously at a recent bilateral gathering that “if there is no solution then there is no problem”; but furthermore, the remedies advocated are known to make the illness worsen.

For instance, after  lavishly funding for decades and then corralling Greece into bankruptcy, or cutting their Greeks to spite their Irish so to speak, the European authorities (who are at once too many and inexistent) are now preparing to inflict the same disastrous treatment to Spain and Italy. Simultaneously, they are proclaiming what everyone knows – that there is no money in the whole of Europe sufficient to rescue Madrid and Rome, which is precisely why they must be forced to accept a bailout in order to respond to the diagnostics issued by the US ratings agencies since Europe in its wisdom and half a century of institutional existence has not been able or willing to set up one or more autonomous rating agencies of its own, despite creating an efficient mechanism to bring down its member nations one by one.

After solemnly declaring that they would never accept the humiliating and draconian terms of a bailout – a term that in the past applied to sinking ships – the leaders of Greece, Portugal, Spain and soon Italy are being forced one by one to relent and turn around to beg for it. When they finally raise the white flag, it is greeted with thunderous applause by their partners who comment with relish for the benefit of the befuddled public that this admission of disaster is a good sign as it will force the country further into unrepayable debt, while dragging the Union into an even more precarious and unsustainable situation.

Britain, which never got into the Euro Union and continuously worked to sabotage it, is solemnly advising its “partners” to protect the ill-fated currency at any cost (to themselves, as UK refuses to share any of it), adding that it was a huge mistake to create it and that though it will never be part of it, the Westminster Government insists on leading the EU as a trustworthy outsider which swears it always will put its national interest first and make sure that whatever happens to Europe, the United Kingdom will be on top.

That frank profession of faith seems to convince the other Europeans that Britain, though it no longer rules the waves, though it still holds sway over the turbulent waters of international finance, is indispensable to the survival of Europe, which London grimly describes as a doomed creature. Thereupon the Goldman-Sachs-groomed Italian head of the Central Bank, Mario Draghi, solemnly declares that he will do anything to save the Euro, which is irreversible and eternal anyway, though he points out that it might not survive, only to add 24 hours later that he can do nothing unless Governments agree first on what to do, that is something ill defined, unpalatable and probably impossible, but necessary. After all, the European Union has gone where no one had dared before in setting up a single currency which Mario Draghi recently called a bumble bee (he should know why) and from which it may never come back. There may have been a reason for the fact that no one tried this before.

If this does not sound confusing enough to the average European who is told everyday that he must tighten his belt and probably lose his job so that states can save money to repay their debts, although he must continue spending lavishly in order to support the market economy because otherwise the state’s austerity policy will bankrupt the country which will then have to seek a bailout from Europe, which does not have the money but will have to create it by getting further into debt…

If that is not enough of a puzzlement, he can try to understand the foreign policy pursued by the great Atlantic Alliance for Peace and Freedom of which he is a privileged citizen. He is then told that China is the world’s emerging superpower, which is very unfortunate on one hand because it is a very dangerous country ruled by duplicitous tyrants who are hostile to peace and freedom… but also very fortunate because that is by far the largest country where the West can save itself by selling its technology and buying the consumer goods it has given up producing in order to…buy them in China.

Thus, the Chinese are growing rich, but they are thereby threatening the West’s dominance of a free and peaceful world, although they are, thank God, buying from the West its automobiles, high speed trains, planes et al… which the West however should not be selling because it is losing its supremacy as a result and making the China a mortal threat for their own survival, not to mention the world’s peace and freedom, which is not really to be seen yet, but can be achieved if enough wars of liberation are conducted to turn the Iraqis into…Italians and the Afghans into…Swiss citizens for example.

That takes many years or even generations. But it is worth the trouble because it allows the West’s leading arms manufacturing companies to prosper and with many other industries to survive (including some in China), although the cost of war is also bankrupting the West, which compels it to reduce expenses (please go back to para 8 above) especially social costs, because social welfare is a great social advance of which the West is justifiably proud, but which must be drastically reduced right away as it is unsustainable and even immoral.

After China, the great problem we are told is Russia…Wait! There is also the Muslim problem, as Muslims unfortunately proliferate and are trigger-happy and don’t always behave like happy customers. But Muslims can be controlled, even those pesky Al Qaida types which as Hillary Clinton has obligingly reminded everyone, were set up and trained by the USA and are generally useful to higher causes. Were they or are they still not allied to the West in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran, Syria and even perhaps Iraq? 

The Russians in the long term are more dangerous however, because they have nuclear weapons, plenty of them, unlike Iran which might some day have one - according to the nuclear-armed Israelis who never lie - and which for that reason must be annihilated (Iran, not Israel of course). Good sense dictates that only those states that might one day have nuclear capabilities be wiped out, if we don’t like the opinions or dress codes of their rulers, while those which have nuclear weapons must be addressed with a modicum of respect.

Russia may thus deserve some respect, at least those Russians who buy western mansions, football teams, and high fashion, and patronize Saint Moritz and Monte Carlo. But not that fellow Putin who is clearly still quite popular in Russia, but should not be, because he wants to rebuild his country’s greatness, instead of joining the Western League for Peace and Democracy as an obedient understudy.

Russia, China and other similarly undemocratic countries have the gall to pursue their respective national interest, unlike the West which acts only for the common good without thinking of itself.

It is all a matter of nuance. When Putin bombed Chechnya or Assad bombs Aleppo or Homs, they were committing crimes against humanity. But when the US, with other NATO members obediently standing by to mop up, stages “shock and awe” over Baghdad, bombs Fallujah into dust, flattens out the Hindu Kush with oxygen-sucking daisy-cutters or exterminates Afghan wedding parties with missiles, that is peace-keeping regretfully carried out by the leader of the Free West.

The proof is that Americans are even apologizing on occasion when they have fried too many unsuspecting passersby or onlookers. What better evidence of good faith? Freedom has a cost and is it not better for people to be killed by righteous cutting-edge US bombs, than by the second-rate missiles of some tinpot tyrant who probably got them from Russia and China? Think of it, the West makes no money from those weapons.

Putin was elected with a very large majority; but that itself is suspect because it is well-known that real democrats are generally rather unpopular because they can’t do anything about their nations’ problems and never do what they say unless they have said something stupid, which is quite frequent. Thus democratic leaders can barely get over 50% of the vote with a lot of stunts and tricks, and a few months after being elected, they generally languish with approval ratings lower than the real or made up LIBOR rates. If someone like Putin gets a bigger majority or a higher approval rating, he should be overthrown by a street revolution. After all, only the West conducts free and fair elections thanks to the electronic voting machines manufactured and often owned by trustworthy mega-corporations.

It is well known, after all, that if a few hundred people assemble in the streets of Moscow to demand Putin’s exit and form an alternative government, they must be right since they are much more democratic than the many millions who are at work and staying away from the protest. On the other hand, if a few thousand people assemble in New York, London or Paris to protest their governments’s actions, those are not democratic, they are irrelevant, misled demonstrators who don’t really have a point because the democrats in the West are in power, forever or rather (nothing being forever) they will die in power and be succeeded by their children.

The worse part is that Putin is, like the abominable but so indispensable Chinese, an accomplice to those backward tyrants in the Middle East like…the King of Saudi Arabia? No wait, that one is good, he is a friend of the US which has sworn to support him come what may. His country is said to have sponsored terrorism - after all Osama Ben Laden and many of his merry men in robes were from there - and our media tell us that Saudi Arabia seeks to convert all Muslims to its brand of radical, militant Wahhabi Islam, but that is not really a matter for us to think about. Washington tells us the guy is OK because he buys many billions of our weapons and toys every year, and his cousins have purchased the most expensive apartments in Knighstbridge. Marbella and the Avenue Foch so he is kosher, he might even have secretly made peace with Israel; no, the real threat to civilization since Saddam and Gaddafi have gone to a better world is Assad of Syria, a former London ophthalmologist who should long have been killed and buried with all his family and supporters, but who persists in putting down a rebellion backed and promoted by our friends the Saudis.

We know Assad must go, though we don’t want to know what percentage of his people supports him, because the Israelis have never liked him and because the Amir of Qatar, who rules a family-owned company, I mean country, that he took over having his father overthrown and expelled by a French special Force, tells us that Assad is not democratic and that he is not even a real Muslim. The Amir of Qatar is a real democrat as he personally owns most of his country’s wealth and invests much of it in the West after giving away half of his island to the Americans so that they could build a giant military base there to protect democracy.

However, because of Putin’s shameless support, Assad is still in power and fighting, instead of obeying American, French and British orders to step down with all his supporters, disarm his army, and wait to be dutifully massacred by West-approved rebels whom nobody knows, but who must be very good people since they say they want weapons and troops from the West to take over their country and they even want to be friends with Israel. How much more democratic can one be? If Assad were good enough to abdicate and leave his country on his own, we might even be gracious enough to try him for crimes against humanity in the International Court, which is only competent to judge people from countries south of Gibraltar and East of Trieste. Who knows, he might even live to spend fifty years in a cell as our guest.

Though Putin has arguably improved Russia’s situation a lot (which is a pity since Russia is meant to be like Rumania or Bulgaria, very successful members of the EU, very poor and unhappy, with democratic systems unfortunately run by Mafias – nobody’s perfect – which might join the Eurozone in 2095 if the Euro or they – Rumania and Bulgaria – are still around), he also does terrible things. For example, he has let some billionaires be arrested, tried and imprisoned for a variety of crimes. In a real democracy it is well known that billionaires are above the law and they can only be given on a slap on the wrist at most since they control the state anyhow. Russia was so good when it had all those billionaires and no government. Well, maybe it was not so good for the people there, but one must accept the cost of transition to democracy, however harsh, in order to graduate as a subsidiary of the West.

Even worse, Putin has allowed three girls from a hitherto unknown Rock group to be tried for indulging in a cathedral in acts that people found blasphemous. The fact that some people in Russia still think that there is such a thing as blasphemy shows how dangerous Putin can be, because we all know in the West that it does not exist (though Muslims still get upset about that, but we’ll make them change their views over time, we are good at that, perversion through conversion after subversion).

Those wannabe Pop Stars obviously wanted publicity at any cost, which shows that they are real westernized democrats because Western democracies believe that any kind of stunt, no mater how tasteless, is permitted if it produces fame and money. The more outrageous the better.  Check out Madonna! In fact the three girls imprisoned in Moscow had earlier tried to achieve global fame by performing group sex in a museum in the Russian capital. Now, group sex attracts instant sympathy from Western democratic leaders. It is so… democratic and free.

Now you see why Putin is beyond redemption. Not only is he not inducting these girls into his government as ministers for religion, art and culture, and giving them the highest national award, but he is also refusing to approve the Democratic West’s reluctant resolve to bomb Syria to smithereens and occupy it in order to put the rebel guerillas in power. When will he learn?

Let the three girls come out of prison and travel to the West. They will be received as martyrs and will instantly become millionaires. In the West we know that to make money; scandal, not talent, is the key. That is why we are democrats and we must bomb Syria. Never fail to repeat an action that led to disaster. When we are on the edge of the abyss that is when we must step boldly forward, so that known unknowns may become unknown knowns.

The author is Convener, Editorial Board, World Affairs Journal