“I glance over your web-site every now and again, and usually find something to enjoy and even by which to be impressed.”

So writes a long-lost pal from college, taking grammar to its limits to avoid finishing a sentence with a preposition. Not that there’s been much to see here recently. As the year ends I go as flat as a tyre, peering out into the rainy murkness and wondering when the evenings will be obviously brighter again.

Any day now a new version of my public speaking book will appear in a hard copy form: Speeches for Leaders. This is a much revised and tightened version of my ebook Speechwriting for Leaders that appeared a year ago. It seems that for books such as this people prefer a physical copy they can mull over. Their wish is being answered. It will be a handy complement to my various masterclass sessions. Maybe I’ll start selling specific places on public speaking courses for anyone wanting to get better. To be continued.

Over the break I have submitted two 2015 speeches for consideration for a 2016 Cicero Award. These are the most prestigious ways any speechwriter can win some acknowledgement. It’s a tough world out there for any speechwriters hoping to win an Award. You have to pay $150 to enter each speech, and there is no tangible prize if you actually win an award(!). Still, glory is glory and better than no glory. I’ll hear in April if I have had any joy.

Wider world? A strange sense of policy and institutional incoherence. This piece on Russia and its population’s willingness to believe lies caught my eye:

… the “five stages of arguing with a Russian nationalist.”

First there are vehement denials, followed by an insistence that there is insufficient proof to back up Western assertions. Second, the rhetoric turns to anger, with claims the West constantly accuses Russia of wrongdoing without being able to meet a near-impossible burden of proof to satisfy Russian apologists.

Next, Russians enter a whataboutist stage of bartering, noting that whatever Russia might or might not have done, it does not compare to any number of actions perpetuated by Western governments over a seemingly infinite timeframe. Then, Russian apologists enter a stage of depression, playing the victim before an increasingly aggressive West.

Finally there is acceptance, whereby Russian apologists not only admit to doing what they had previously denied, but are triumphant in coming clean about their lie.

This model in part helps explains a poll released  by the state-run Interfax news agency in March 2014, which found that 72 percent of Russians believed it is permissible for the media to hold back or otherwise distort information in the national interest.

Then this sharp passage:

Many Russians are quick to discount everything through their triumphant cynicism, while at the same time projecting outright certainly that they in fact know how the world really works. They write off all mediums of disseminating information as being corrupted, accept that the media can (and should) lie to them, and yet, at the same time, are positive that their interpretation of reality is the right one. And what underpins this correct interpretation?

Crudely put, in the “graveyard of ideologies”, for many Russians, a simple rule of thumb has come to define morality of action: “If Russia does it, it is right.”

Many Russians are not for or against military intervention in principle, but they are for Russian military interventions. Many Russians are not for or against security services meddling in the internal affairs of other states, but they do support Russian security services meddling in the affairs of other states. Many Russians are not for or against imperialism, but they support Russian imperialism. And increasingly more Russians do not, in fact, oppose fascism in principle; they merely support Russian fascism and oppose non-Russian fascism.

These beliefs are shored up by Russia’s doctrine of original sin aimed at the West. Everything Russia does, is, prima facie, in self-defense.

This self-serving, and ultimately patho-adolescent worldview creates fundamental problems for attempts to counter Russian propaganda through the creation of, for example, ‘A Transparency International for Disinformation,’ as some have proposed.

Countering small lies in a piecemeal fashion will do nothing to cure the big lie at the heart of modern-day Russia: ‘We are never to blame; we have been eternally wronged.’

This reminds me of my own musings on Animal, Vegetable or Mineral back in 2008, those halcyon days when I had time and money to write furiously at this site:

Do we treat Russia’s ‘fear of encirclement’, ‘insecurities’ and ‘anxieties’ as, so to speak, inanimate facts of life over which we (and they) have no control other than to top-toe widely round them?

Or are they simple genetically coded facts of life which do respond in a predictable but insensate way to what we do?

Or are they animate/sensate facts of life, where we need keener judgement to get the response we want?

Or are they human, even reasonable fears? What if they are human but basically unreasonable paranoid fears?

The gushing Western punditry on Russia contains confusing contradictory elements of all these ideas.

Some people appear to suggest that Russia for reasons of obvious history/geography/Tsars/Communism/vodka has no choice but to behave the way it does. Safest is to adopt a Finlandish stance to avoid risking trouble. Others argue that Russia of course does have choices, hence all the more reason to behave in a subtle respectful way: keep that bear calm and happy, even if he eats some of your rabbits now and again.

And then there are those who say that Russia of course makes its own decisions, but we have to strive to set a robust context in which they know that bad decisions have bad consequences for them. Eventually they will come to see that they have no more reason to fear ‘encirclement’ by democratic NATO states than eg Switzerland does.

The questions that never get answered.

At the end of the month I am down to take part in a debate in London on Obama’s foreign policy record. I’m on the unimpressed side of the argument. The drastic failure to deal sensibly with Russia is of course high on the Fail side of the ledger. See this latest nonsense:

A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia’s national security for the first time, a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years. The document, “About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation”, was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Eve …

It also names the expansion of NATO as a threat to Russia’s national security and said that the United States has expanded its network of military-biological laboratories (sic) in neighbouring to Russia countries.

Remember that awful Reset Button presented by Hillary Clinton to Sergei Lavrov back in 2009, complete with wrong translation of Reset? How’s that one working out these days?

On into 2016.

#pessimism