Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

August 18, 2008

By Its Own Choice, Russia Is Our Enemy

During the Cold War, it always seemed the Russians were menacing because they were communists. Maybe the communists were menacing because they were Russians.

During the same week in which Russia invaded Georgia, pulled back, accepted a truce, then invaded again, the Russian foreign minister point blank threatened to launch a nuclear attack on Poland. They’re not happy that the Poles agreed to host American missile interceptors.

However over the Cold War may be, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Russia – against all apparent logical self-interest – prefers to be America’s enemy.

The Russians, who claim to have no further imperialist designs on the rest of the world, consider both western missile defenses and the spread of democracy as threats to their interests. Don’t protect yourself from despotism, and for goodness sakes, don’t protect yourself from nuclear attacks. The Russians don’t like that.

But it doesn’t stop there. Russia has also objected strenuously to North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for former Soviet republics, including Georgia, as well as former behind-the-Iron-Curtain nations in Eastern Europe. NATO is an alliance of democracies that pledges an attack on one amounts to an attack on all, and will result in the defense of one by all.

Don’t make friends who might help you if you’re attacked. The Russians don’t like that.

And while the world races against the clock to stop the successors to the Ayatollah Khomeini from getting nuclear weapons, the Russians sell Iran the means to do just that.

Any way you look at it, when the U.S. and its allies seek to promote peace and freedom, the Russians oppose it. Any way you look at it, therefore, Russia is not our friend – and the next U.S. president had better be prepared to implement a foreign policy that recognizes that fact.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, two years after Eastern Europe broke free, Americans rightly rejoiced, even if the American media and intelligentsia found it hard to muster much joy. (On the night the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and the hammer-and-sickle came down from atop the Kremlin, NBC Nightly News ran the story third.) Capitalism’s victory over communism on the world stage, achieved without firing a shot, proved that an ideology of austerity and collectivism simply could not compete with one of growth and freedom.

Free markets lead to free people.

Of the few remaining communist regimes functioning today, those who appear to have a future (China, Vietnam) are those who have opened markets, even while they have not yet loosened the strings on political freedom. If they continue to open markets, it will be harder for them to restrain liberty.

Those who stand as anachronistic, backwards hellholes (North Korea, Cuba) are those who still look to Marx as their economic guidepost.

But while the Soviet Union’s collapse ended communism’s run as a viable global ideology, it did not end Russian bellicosity. That predated the Bolshevik Revolution – by a lot. In an 1855 letter to his law partner, Joshua Speed, Abraham Lincoln cited Russia as the home to a more honest form of despotism than the United States. Whereas the U.S. extended freedom to some while enslaving others, Lincoln said, the Russians were pure despots and made no bones about it.

I suppose it would require 1,000 years’ worth of national psychoanalysis to understand why Russia feels threatened when freedom advances. Perhaps then we could discern why the Russians think their interests can only be protected when they retain the ability to nuke you.

Russia is rich in natural resources and has tremendous potential to develop as a valuable trading partner with a flourishing economy. When the seemingly Western-friendly Boris Yeltsin consolidated power in post-Soviet Russia, that was the vision many Americans had dancing in their heads.

But Yeltsin proved corrupt and erratic, and successor Vladimir Putin has been more concerned with shoring up Russia’s ability to act as a bully on the national stage – aiding troublemakers and obstructing Western efforts to contain nuclear proliferation.

The world has extended the invitation since 1991 for Russia to join the community of free, civilized nations. The Russians have replied with their regrets.

You can take the hammer and sickle off the flag, but it appears you can’t stop Russians from being Russians. Memo to voting Americans: History hasn’t ended, and the United States still has to contend with forces bent on global mayhem – including a nation-state whose status as our enemy should look awfully familiar.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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