Who Lost Russia?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
By 1988, Ronald Reagan, who had famously branded the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” was striding through Red Square arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev. Russians were pounding both men on the back.
They had just signed the greatest arms reduction agreement in history—eliminating all Soviet SS-20s targeted on Europe, in return for removal of the Pershing and cruise missiles Reagan had deployed in Europe.
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!” wrote Wordsworth about his first hearing the news of the fall of the Bastille.
Many of us felt that way then.
Within three years, the Berlin Wall had come down, the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe had been swept away, Germany was reunited, the Red Army had gone home, the Soviet Empire had vanished and the Soviet Union had broken up into 15 nations. The Baltic republics were free. Ukraine was free.
Yet, on the eve of the G-8 summit, Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia would re-target missiles on NATO. We must, he said, counter Bush’s decision to put anti-missile missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic. Why are we doing this?
The United States says the ABM system in Europe is to defend against an Iranian attack. But Tehran has no atom bomb and no ICBM.
We appear to be headed for a second Cold War—and, if we are, responsibility will not fully rest with the Kremlin. For among those who have mismanaged the relationship are presidents Clinton and Bush II, the baby boomers who appear to have kicked away the fruits of a Cold War victory won by their Greatest Generation predecessors.
How did they do it?
—When the Red Army went home from Eastern Europe, the United States, in violation of an understanding with Moscow, began to move NATO east. We have since brought into our military alliance six former members of the Warsaw Pact and three former provinces of the Soviet Union: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
—Anti-Russia hawks are now pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. If they succeed, we could be dragged into future confrontations with a nuclear-armed Russia about who has sovereignty over the Crimea and whether South Ossetia should be part of Georgia.
Are these vital U.S. interests worth risking a war? Why are we moving a U.S.-led military alliance into the front yard and onto the side porch of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons? Would we accept any commensurate Chinese or Russian move in the Caribbean?
—After Moscow gave us a green light to use the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to base U.S. forces for the Afghan war, the United States has sought permanent bases there. Russia and China have now united to throw us out of their back yard.
—America colluded with Azerbaijan and Georgia to build a Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline to transmit Caspian Sea oil across the Caucasus to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.
—In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia 78 days to punish her for fighting to hold her cradle province of Kosovo, which Muslim Albanians were tearing away. Orthodox Russia had long seen herself as protectress of the Balkan Slavs. That Clinton ignored Russia in launching this unprovoked war on Serbia was seen in Moscow as proof that Russian concerns had become irrelevant in Washington.
—After helping dump over the government in Belgrade, our Neocomintern—the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other fronts—interfered in Ukraine and Georgia, helping oust pro-Moscow regimes and install pro-American ones. Since then, NED has been run out of Belarus and its subsidiaries are about to get the boot from Moscow.
Can we blame the Russians for being angry? How would we react to left-wing NGOs in Washington, flush with Moscow oil money, aiding elements hostile to the Bush administration?
—The United States has been constantly hectoring Russia on backsliding from democracy. But compared to Beijing, Moscow is Montpelier, Vt. And why, if the Cold War is over, are Russia’s political arrangements any of our business?
If we don’t like the way Putin treats Mikhail Khorokovsky, Boris Berezovksy and the other “oligarchs” who robbed Russia blind in the 1990s, maybe Putin doesn’t like how we treated Martha Stewart.
Harry Truman is often blamed for having started the Cold War. He didn’t. Stalin did. But Clinton, George W. and the neocons have a strong claim to having started the second. A first order of business of the next president should be to repair the damage this crowd has done—and to get out of Russia’s face.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Chuck on 5 June 2007:
Amen!
Trifkovic has suggested elsewhere that Russia and China play an important role by withstanding the attempted spread of American hegemony.
Ever wanted your home team to lose? That’s how it feels with the neo-cons in power.
2 Comment by Audrius on 5 June 2007:
I live in Lithuania. And i’m much closer to Russia than Mr. Buchanan and from this article i may claim that he don’t really understand what initiates the actions of Putin. And i do believe that this is not actions of the USA.
Current establishment of the Kremlin is not thinking in the categories that are used in this article. Thay think in the way as the disadvantaged kids do. Putin and his fellows grew in the Soviet Union and for them totalitarism is the good way of ruling the state also they don’t understand what the concept of human rights is and why every nation has a right to choose whether they want a sovereing state or to be under influence of the others.
I live in a small country and i understant that 3.5 million people are a very little number in the wolrd political arena, but we are not worse than any other in the earth and if we had chosen to have our own state Russia can’t interfere with this, but it doe’s. Russian Federation oficialy is spending huge amounts of money to bribe politicians in former soviet states like LIthuania and to put these countries back to the sphere of influence “neo-Soviet Russia”.
Russia is not spreading the values of respect for human life or other rights so i believe that the only way for future colabaration for Lithuania is only with the USA.
3 Comment by Lee on 5 June 2007:
I agree that Bush II is certifiable. But, he didn’t pay for Czech radar nor for the Polish missiles out of his own pocket; our Congress did with our money. This is a beltway project.
4 Comment by Frank B Lee on 5 June 2007:
“they don’t understand what the concept of human rights is and why every nation has a right to choose whether they want a sovereign state or to be under influence of the others.”
And America does?
5 Comment by Mickey Droney on 6 June 2007:
Russia was never ours to lose.
6 Comment by chris on 6 June 2007:
>And i’m much closer to Russia than Mr. Buchanan and from this
>article i may claim that he don’t really understand what initiates the
>actions of Putin.
I’m quite sure that Mr. Buchanan has had much more access to senior Russians during the Cold War years than you have. That you live closer to Russia does not inherently make you more knowledgeable on the topic.
>Current establishment of the Kremlin is
>not thinking in the categories that are used in this article.
And you know this how?
>Thay think in the way as the disadvantaged kids do.
Sounds like you’re bitter. Buchanan makes a good case for the fact that the Russians, whatever their many faults (I’m Polish), do have good grounds for being suspicious of Western motives in Russia’s backyard.
7 Comment by Mickey Droney on 7 June 2007:
In the late 80’s/early90’s, in order to avoid a complete internal collapse, the Russians agreed to “abandon” communism. While the old Soviet style of communism had proven untenable, the Russians were simply biding their time until they could re-work their old system into a new pseudo-communism molded in the likeness of the Chinese model. The Russians are just as dangerous today as they were during the Cold War and the Chinese, as most of us know, will succeed in using our greed and avarice to destroy us, if we do not stop our current practices.
8 Comment by David Rolfe on 7 June 2007:
From what I’ve seen, most of the UK newspapers are taking an anti-Putin stance. However, a few dissident voices are being heard. In today’s (London) Times, Anatole Kaletsky takes much the same line as Patrick Buchanan in pointing out that Russia has some legitimate grievances.
“Why is hostility to the West so popular in Russia? Let us try to look at the West through Russian eyes. Despite all the past sentimental rhetoric of Western politicians describing Russia as a friend and “strategic partner”, US and European behaviour has consistently treated Russia more as an enemy than an ally. Russia has been told it could never join Nato or the EU and Mr Putin’s invitation to G8 summits is scant consolation for the denial of WTO membership and the continuation of US trade sanctions dating back to the Cold War. On human rights and extrajudicial assassinations, Russia’s record may be deplorable, but its abuses pale in comparison with those of Western friends such as Saudi Arabia and China, not to mention President Bush’s “boil them in oil” ally, Uzbekistan.
But far more serious from the Russian standpoint than any diplomatic conflicts is what the West has done to their country’s territorial integrity. Ever since the first Bush Administration undermined Mikhail Gorbachev by denying him the financial assistance of the International Monetary Fund and then encouraged the dissolution of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin, the West has appeared, at least from Moscow’s standpoint, to seize every opportunity to weaken, isolate and encircle Russia.
Not only has Russia lost its Eastern European satellites, but the homeland itself has been dismembered. No reasonable Russian could object to the independence of Poland, Hungary and even the Baltic states, which were forcibly annexed into the Soviet Union after the Second World War. But the loss of the Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and central Asia are a different matter. These areas – or at least large swaths of them – were integral parts of the Russian “motherland” long before Texas and California belonged to the United States. For Russians, the separation with Ukraine and Belarus in particular is at least as emotionally wrenching as Welsh and Scottish independence would be to Britain or Catalonian and Basque secession would be to Spain.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1896029.ece
9 Comment by Sean Scallon on 7 June 2007:
Viewed from the prisim of the average common joe who is not a foreign policy expert, they will ask why the U.S. is needlessly offending and turning into a foe a fellow Christian and European people that could be a valubale ally against Al Qaeda and other Isdlamic extremist terrorist group? This isn’t about “going toe-to-toe with the Ruskies,” any more. They will see through the necons BS and wonder why we are treating them like an enemy and why we care what form of government they have.
10 Comment by EMete on 1 July 2007:
I wonder, what would Patrick J. Buchanan do if he would ever be elected President of the United States? Being in the position that he is in now enables him to criticize any politician in office.
Russia-United States relationship has always been characterized by contradictions. And these contradictions are not dependent on the whims of this or that president, either in Russia or the United States. Look at history, the unerring guide, and you will understand the state of relations between the United States of America and Russia at present. Contradictions are inherent in the very nature of relations between countries, be they small or big. Every country tries to take advantage of the other, all the more so when the ruling cliques have set themselves the task of domination of other peoples and have brainwashed the populace for this purpose. Russia is a classic example. Putin is doing the same thing. He feels that Russia is now in a better bargaining position than in Yeltsin’s time.
What article writers should not do is blame individuals entirely for policies and situations that are out of their control. Individuals, be they presidents, have a part to play but not one that determines the course of history. To think otherwise is to be very superficial and very subjective, to fall into the trap of hero’s worship. The world is too big to be dependent on an individual no matter how smart or stupid he happens to be.
Putin’s behavior is tainted with Russian mentality that draws upon religion, racism and ultranationalism and imperialistic ambitions that Russia has inherited from its imperial past. Let us refer to one example only, Russia’s support for Serbia over Kosovo. Russians support the Serbs because they share the same Eastern Orthodox religion, a fact admitted by the author who says that “Orthodox Russia had long seen herself as protectress of the Balkan Slavs”. Serbs and Russians also belong to the Slavic race, the basis of Pan Slavism. By saying that “in 1999, the United States bombed Serbia 78 days to punish her for fighting to hold her cradle province of Kosovo, which Muslim Albanians were tearing away”, the author proves that he is biased, ignorant of history and a defender of Pan Slavism, in other words, he is against American interests though he sounds to be unaware of it. It was not the United States, but NATO that bombed Serbia for the atrocities in Kosova and the massacre and deportation of about one million Albanians to the neighboring countries. Kosova is, of course, “the cradle of Serbia” according to Serbian fairy tales and to those, like the author, who are as naive as to believe them. For more information, I would suggest Mr. Buchanan to read Noel Malcolm’s “Short history of Kosovo”. Reading the book would help him restrain himself from expressing such wrong opinions and be in touch with reality, past or present.
The author does not see that Russia is seeking to reassert itself after its post-Communist humiliation and find a place in the sun to challenge the position of the United States as the only superpower, which won the economic, political and military contest with the former Soviet Union. The United States is doing what a victorious power is supposed to do. What the author wants the United States to do is help Russian imperialism get back to its feet and claim the communist empire. If for one moment we would reverse the roles, we would witness a Russia way more aggressive and overbearing than the United States. American policies in the world today are being pursued in the name of democracy, human rights and peoples’ right to selfdetermination and national freedom. Russia’s policies would have nothing to do with such “slogans” as Putin describes them because, in his opinion, they do not suit the mindset of the Russian people who are used to seeing one person only at the helm, the helmsman, or the Fuhrer, if times had not changed.
His statements and Russian mentality are indication of how Russians would behave if Russia would have been the only superpower in the world with such a helmsman as Putin in command.