I believe that most of the concerns about Russia are overblown. (See this for the argument.) In fact, I put it into the public hysterics category.
But to the extent that Russia is opposed to the US, and it is, I put most of the blame on the US. Russia desperately wanted to be part of the West, and for many years bent over backwards trying to be. (In this case, it is quite similar to secular Turkey, whose aspirations to EU membership were repeatedly crushed, leading to the rise of Erdogan’s Islamism.)
I want to quote an interview with George Kennan in 1998 about NATO expansion, in particular. For those who don’t know, Kennan was the architect of the Cold War containment policy towards the USSR: He was hardly a dove.
”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [The NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.”…
…
‘I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
”And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia,” said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was US Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ”It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.” (Emphasis mine.)
Indeed, a lot of people have forgotten that Russia also asked to join NATO (under both Gorbachev and Putin) and was rebuffed. Russia wanted IN the club. In fact, it was pathetic how much they wanted in the club and I thought so at the time. The West, steeped in Russophobia, was never going to let them in, and the Russians wasted somewhere between fifteen and twenty years before they got the message that the West, and the US in particular, was implacably hostile and intended to remain so.
Russia has about half the GDP of California. It is a superpower only in terms of nuclear weapons, though its army, technology, and geographic reach mean that it is still a great power.
It has been pushed into the arms of the Chinese, which from a geopolitical POV is ludicrous: Siberia is the most likely point of conflict between the Chinese and the Russians, driven by the realities of climate change, demographics, and aquifer depletion. Siberia has hardly any population, lots of land, and tons of water, and in twenty to thirty years, the Chinese are going to need that water, and in forty years or so they’re going to need the land.
It would have been easy to spin Russia in and make it the Eastern end of West. Instead, it has been made into a foe, and if the hysterics looking for someone to blame for their own electoral failures have their way, made into an actual enemy. (An enemy with enough nukes to destroy the entire world more than once. Sanity suggests picking better enemies.)
Whether or not the majority of Americans “want” this, emergent American behaviour shows this to be the path the US and the West are on.
Those of us who would prefer the world to survive might wish otherwise, but in-group thinking and the death wish are stronger than sanity or reason.
Putin is a result of shock doctrine, imposed by the West. Russian animosity is largely a result of Western actions that the Russians could not but interpret as hostile (including the color revolutions and the Western-backed Ukrainian coup.)
If, at this point, the Russians are trying to return the interference (and they probably are, just not nearly to the extent or effect the propaganda suggests) that is only what is to be expected, and Americans crying about a little bit of interference look ludicrous, given the US’s record of backing actual coups and constant, regular interference in virtually everyone else’s elections.
If you don’t want enemies, don’t treat them like your enemies. If you do, don’t be surprised when they act like your enemies.
And for God’s sake, Democrats, stop blaming Russia for an electoral failure that was primarily your own damn fault. Look to what you can control–your own behaviour–rather than seeking a scapegoat.
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