Milyukov Postulation: Or the Velocity of Faith
This is the second chapter in the upcoming book: How to Kill a Queen. Certain names have been altered to safeguard individuals’ privacy and welfare.
A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of the government itself.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
When Pavel Milyukov strolled into the battered building of the Russian Duma on that sunny but frigid November day of 1916, little did he know that his carefully crafted speech, tucked away in the pocket of his shabby coat, would forever alter the trajectory of political thought. He was unaware that his words would transform how his fellow Russians perceived their country and clear the way for a dramatic change that stunned the world.
All he knew was that time was running out.
The Russian army faced devastating setbacks during World War I that shattered the morale of the already exhausted population. With a series of blundering political decisions, the Tzarist leadership brought the country to the verge of humiliating defeat. The Germans annihilated the Russian troops in the Battles of Galicia and Tannenberg. Millions of young men met their end in an ill-equipped and inadequately trained army. On the home front, the famine devastated small towns and villages already suffering from typhus and dysentery. Children perished before helpless parents, as lawlessness and civil unrest ravaged urban areas.
Like many other Russians, Milyukov knew that something had to be done. Being a seasoned intellectual and public figure, he grasped the seriousness of the situation. As a leader of the Democratic Constitutional Party, he believed it was his responsibility to expose and challenge the corrupt monarchy and its incompetent administration.
As he slowly approached the speech podium in the center of Duma, followed by the wondering eyes of his fellow deputies, Milyukov decided he mustn’t hesitate.
He had to reveal the truth.
After just a few opening lines, everyone in the room realized this would not be an ordinary day.
Milyukov began by emphasizing that people lost their faith in government and monarchy and their ability to lead the nation to victory. He referenced the widespread accusations of treason among the highest-ranking military and government officials. He accused the Prime Minister of Russia of taking German bribes and blamed inept generals for betraying the country. Fearlessly, he listed the numerous mistakes the Russian regime and elites had made since the war’s beginning. After every statement, he confidently challenged: “Is this stupidity or treason?” The audience, mesmerized and enchanted, shouted “Stupidity!”, “Treason!” or “Both!”
Milyukov consistently replied that it did not make any difference as “the consequences are the same.”
Considering the autocratic Russian conventions of the time, his discourse was remarkably decisive and direct. It stirred a whirlwind of emotions that affected everyone in the room. Never before in Russia had someone attacked and exposed the powerful and wealthy as courageously and gallantly as Milyukov did that morning. Never before had someone dared to say what ordinary people think.
The speech became a watershed moment in Russian and European politics. Broadly publicized and discussed, it significantly shifted public opinion against the Tsarist government and the ruling class. Its direct practical simplicity revealed all the ineffectiveness and dysfunctionality of a decaying political and social climate.
It started a tsunami of change that swept Russia and Europe just a few months later.
Most importantly, even after a century, the “treason or stupidity” question, this straightforward query, one direct, explicit challenge, remains the most potent analytical instrument used by European political scholars to dissect and examine troubled societies and uncover the causes of their downfall. Despite its simplicity, this philosophical predicament is the most accurate tool used to understand sudden and harmful changes in the affected nation’s political and cultural environment.
The media are dominated by fake news, lies, and half-truths, fostering a culture of deceit that undermines our nation’s ethical and moral reality. Those who hold power manipulate information and mold facts to retain control over society. Their reasons are selfish and their methods are ruthless. They have access to numerous resources that ordinary people do not. That is why Milyukov’s postulation is a priceless logical device designed to simplify often complex political narratives and derive a truthful analysis of the political landscape. Milyukov postulate is to politics what Occam’s razor is to science.
Needless to say, this approach will not be part of any political science curriculum offered in the United States anytime soon. The ruling class considers it highly risky to provide the masses with a practical approach to assess their actions and formulate INDEPENDENT opinions.
While we watch the ethical, cultural, political, and military demise of Russia, its agony, and the change that is coming, it is perplexing why nobody remembers the Russians who outlined the primary mistakes that destroyed its establishment over a century ago.
Because history will repeat itself. Sooner than most Russians think.
Considering the region’s history, it will be as bloody as always.
But let us leave Russia to its destiny.
We should focus on what is essential.
We will use this tool to understand what is happening to us.
To understand the rapid decline of the United States of America
and our fast-approaching downfall.
Stupidity or Treason?
It is a more complicated question than it seems.
But let us start from the beginning.
The skyline of New York is a monument of splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Ayn Rand
On September 11th, 2001, at 8:46 am, an airplane flying hundreds of miles per hour hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Seventeen minutes later, a second airplane struck and destroyed the South Tower. The World Trade Center, the symbol and pride of New York, collapsed less than 90 minutes later. At 9:37 am on that hellish morning, the third airplane crashed into the Pentagon, and at 10:03, the fourth airliner perished on the empty grass field in southern Pennsylvania. Thanks to the heroic sacrifice of its passengers, it never reached its original destination White House.
That day, 256 people died on four planes; 125 were killed at the Pentagon, and 2600 perished at the World Trade Center.
We were defeated that day. And we have never fully recovered..
It is a painful fact that many of us refuse to accept.
The 9/11 attacks imposed a devastating emotional toll on Americans. In just one morning, the terrorists erased the sense of security built for centuries. It was the end of an era, the end of the illusion of invincibility and the delusion of exceptionality.
That day, something changed.
Something was forever lost.
And the new reality settled in.
In his innovative research on the psychological effects of disaster, Kai Erickson argues that collective trauma following a tragedy results in sentiments of personal and group anxiety, defenselessness, damaged national pride, shame, a crisis of identity, and a propensity to respond to new threats with increased alertness. It negatively impacts the essential tissues of social life, damages the bonds connecting people, and impairs the prevailing sense of solidarity.
Shared pain penetrates quietly, sometimes even cunningly, into the consciousness of those who experience it.
Sounds familiar?
The agony triggered by the tragedy of 9/11 devastated our society on a material and a deeper psychological level.
Since then, we have experienced persistent political and economic decline, accompanied by the painful erosion of fundamental moral and ethical values.
We are still struggling with the consequences of the September 11 attacks.
Can PTSD ravage and impact an entire country?
Apparently, yes.
But did it have to go this way?
Since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, United States intelligence has been swamped with reports about possible terrorist attacks in the imminent future. In the early nineties, Osama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abdullah Al Azam, and others created a worldwide terrorist network with training centers in Africa and the Middle East and well-organized cells in major European cities. Their successful attacks in Saudi Arabia in 1995, Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the 2000 infamous U.S.S. Cole suicide bombing clearly indicated that the USA faced a very organized, creative, and well-prepared adversary.. Despite the increasing threat, the U.S. intelligence community had not taken any significant steps to destroy Al-Qaida. The “Alec Station,” a small unit created by the CIA in 1996, whose main task was to track Osama bin Laden, received no substantial funding or support. CIA overlooked and ignored analysts and agents who vocally advocated for a more aggressive approach. Until the tragedy of September 11, James Woolsey, John M. Deutch, and George Tenet, the CIA Directors from 1993 to the early 2000s, had never considered Al-Qaida a reputable enemy. The main consensus was that terrorists were not coordinated and organized enough to conduct large-scale attacks.
Bizarrely, many high-ranking officials in the U.S. intelligence community also believed that Al Qaida leadership was reluctant to order attacks that would kill considerable numbers of civilians. This perplexing status quo lasted for over eight years. During that time, Al Qaida became the world’s most organized and deadliest terrorist organization.
In early 2001, Al Qaida activity in Africa and Europe noticeably increased. Many foreign intelligence agencies obtained the leads and data that strongly indicated the impending wide-reaching terrorist attack against the United States. In the words of Jean Renier, the DGSE operative in Algeria, “The rumors were spreading rapidly. In the Summer of 2001, on the streets of Oran, even local thugs boasted, America will burn soon.”
Many foreign diplomats and agencies unsuccessfully tried to warn their colleagues in the USA about the upcoming catastrophe. The ignorance and indifference of our political and security establishment greatly surprised them.. As Turkish diplomat Musa Ozturk noticed: “They were completely uninterested. They believed they ruled the world. They thought they were invincible.”
Intriguingly, the United States media is strangely reluctant to explore this subject. Regardless, we must emphasize that since May 2001, the United States has received more than 40 pieces of credible information from foreign governments, agents, and organizations indicating the high possibility of a devastating terrorist attack on American soil.
To mention a few:
In June 2001, a Pakistani ISI official informed the CIA agents in Lahore that a terrorist cell infiltrated the USA and offered his help in identifying culprits.
He received no response.
In July 2001, Fatou Diouf from the Senegalese DRN foreign intelligence agency intercepted the correspondence of two Al-Qaida operatives. In their letters, he identified information about the plans for the major terrorist attack in the USA. Mr. Diouf informed the USA embassy in Dakar and offered further help.
He received no response.
Just one month later, members of the Cawangan Khas, a Malaysian security organization, contacted the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur with a description of the terrorist plan to attack the most vital political and financial centers in New York and Washington.
They received no response.
That same month in Brussels, during a secret meeting, four VSSE members informed the CIA operatives about the Al-Qaida conspiracy to use airplanes to inflict the maximum damage on the selected targets in the USA. They offered to engage with their contacts and uncover the attackers’ names.
Of course, they heard nothing back.
The private contractor for the Central Korean Intelligence Agency, who studied jihadists in China’s Xinjiang region, obtained information about the terrorists that infiltrated the U.S. and forwarded them to our embassy in Seoul on September 2, 2001. He offered to find out more.
You can guess what the outcome was.
These are just a few examples of many unsuccessful attempts to prevent one of the greatest tragedies in our history. Ironically, even our adversaries shared their intelligence with us. In December 2000, Valentin Korabelnikov, the GRU director, in a rare act of goodwill, transferred intel about terrorist plots against the USA to his counterparts in the CIA. The report was obtained by operational groups from the secretive Twelfth Directorate.
Three months later, Xu Yongyue, the controversial Chinese Minister of State Security, transferred similar info to the USA diplomat in Shanghai. That intelligence was either lost or deliberately obfuscated because the USA was pathetically unprepared for the brutal awakening of September 11. While none of the received information specified the target or the time of the assault, they offered valuable leads that could have been used to stop the tragedy.
Whatever your opinion is about that terrible disaster, one thing is sure: In a hundred years from now, high school students will open their virtual books in their virtual classrooms and explore the history of the early 21st century. They will study Osama bin Laden not only as an infamous terrorist but also as a man who triggered the collapse of the United States of America. Because on September 11th, this country started its devastating enfeeblement.
Throughout the Cold War, even during the terrorism-infested 70s and 80s, the U.S. political elites and the intelligence community successfully protected the country and its people from significant acts of terrorism on domestic soil.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the top leaders of our country, people in charge of defending and safeguarding all of us, failed to understand, respond, and eliminate the threats that ultimately ended in the terrifying deaths of thousands of our fellow citizens. Why is this generation of “leaders” the first to fail drastically at the task that all other administrations have successfully completed?
Have some of them treasonously betrayed our homeland, knowingly obfuscated facts, and assisted our enemies?
If yes, why?
Or were they incompetent to deal with challenges of that magnitude?
Treason or Stupidity, you decide.
Or at least think about it.
Because one day, your life might depend on it.
