... As if the US did not have enough on its plate, the latest strongly anti-American statements of Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials suggest the possibility of a new..........war with Russia. And from the Russian point of view, these statements are only responding to a series of bitterly anti-Russian statements and actions...........over the past year, including plans to bring Ukraine into NATO..........and the latest move to extend American anti-missile defenses to Eastern Europe....
Were it not for the last clause, you would not know that those words were written in early 2007 by Anatol Lieven, and published in The American Conservative magazine. Lieven is a Brit journalist who spent several years in Russia (and Afghanistan and India.)
That's not all that he had to say.
....for the US to take these risks is not remotely justified by vital American interests. [In contrast to the Soviet Union of the '40's, '50's, and '60's].....Russia has no global agenda of ideological or geopolitical domination but mainly wants to exert predominant influence (but not imperial control) within the territory of the former Soviet Union and the centuries-old Russian empire....
And some things have not changed at all since 2007.
.......when it comes to the main lines of its foreign and domestic policy, the Putin Administration has the support of the vast majority of ordinary Russians, while the Russian pro-Western liberals we call "democrats" are supported by a tiny minority.....It does not help with criticism of Russia's record on democracy and freedom comes from that notorious defender of human rights Dick Cheney.......
Only a President as craven and stupid as Biden could sign on to the anti-Russian ideology dating from the Cold War and kept 'hot' through the early '00's.
...The case of Ukraine and NATO is worth considering as a prime example of the deep irrationality affecting US policy in the former Soviet Union. For it is not just a question of Ukrainian NATO membership infuriating Russia, real though that threat is--and understandable. After all, the Russians have lost far more men fighting in Ukraine in various wars than have died in all of America's wars put together, and the Russian flag was flying over the naval port of Sevastopol before the United States was even created. Even more important..........the vast majority of Ukrainians do not want NATO membership. ..........Ukrainians are well aware of how economically dependent their country is on Russia and how little by comparison the West has done to help them.
The second fact is that if Ukraine does become a member of NATO, the US cannot defend it....
A fact un-remarked but as clear as crystal in the current proxy war. Do you really think that Bai-Den could re-start the draft on behalf of Ukraine? Or that Congress would approve?
.........There seems to be a particular hatred of Russia on the part of many members of the Washington elite because long before the Iraq disaster, Russia "betrayed the magic," the set of beliefs forming the ideological basis of America's global empire since the end of the Cold War and used to justify the costs of that empire to the US public. Put starkly, "the magic" is a completely irrational set of assumptions, at the center of which is the idea that America represents and leads the spread of Freedom and Democracy around the world and that nascent democracies will automatically follow its lead both politically and economically, if necessary sacrificing their own national interests in the process. .....
It worked--after a fashion--in Eastern Europe because of the hatred of the Soviet Union and because the EU did the heavy lifting economically and institutionally.
Putin is no angel. But...
...we should be very glad that the Putin administration is as pragmatic as it is in its international policy and as relatively law-abiding at home.......During the 1990s..........I and many other Western observers in Russia feared an eruption of outright fascism......
He ends his essay with a poignant question:
....the US needs to develop a strategy toward Russia tailored to real American interests and real American strength. Surely the country that produced George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and Dwight Eisenhower must still be capable, somewhere in its being, of this kind of strategic wisdom?
We certainly hope so. But strategic wisdom is sorely lacking in Washington, DC since the departure of one Donald Trump.
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