Is Russia Our Enemy?These days, it's not so simple.
Posted Thursday, June 7, 2007, at 6:45 PM ET
A president tends to make categorical statements only when his truth is in doubt. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." "I am not a crook." "The state of the union is sound."
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StumbleUponThus, on Wednesday, at the G8 summit, when President George W. Bush said, "Russia is not an enemy," he did so, clearly, because many people are wondering if maybe it is.
The fusillades of harsh rhetoric fired back and forth between Moscow and Washington are casting dark shadows. Vladimir Putin likens the United States to Nazi Germany, tests a new intercontinental ballistic missile, and threatens to resume aiming nuclear weapons at Western Europe. Bush and Condoleezza Rice accuse Putin of abandoning Russian democracy—a charge that happens to be undeniably true.
Is the Russian bear awakening from its slumber? Are we all about to plunge into a new Cold War? Nearly 20 years after the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, and the crumbling of the Soviet Union, are Russia and America once again enemies?
Something is happening. The era of Russia's aspiring Westernization—of glasnost, perestroika, industrial privatization, and easy disarmament—is kaput. But, in this case, Bush is right: We're not—or at least there's nothing inevitable about our becoming—enemies.
Those who believe otherwise are falling prey to a Cold War mentality. By that, I mean not so much a mutual U.S.-Russia hostility, but rather a tendency to regard other powers as friends or foes, with nothing in between.
It's a tendency left over from the Cold War Era, when the globe was divided into two spheres—an American-led, capitalist, Western bloc vs. a Soviet-led, Communist, Eastern bloc—and nations that wanted a steady place in world politics had to choose one side or the other. (A few nations had the resources or brashness to carve out their own space by playing the two off each other; but even in those cases, their conditions were set, and their options defined, by the superpowers' competition and dominance.)
The implosion of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent end of the Cold War, shattered that whole global structure. Many believed, at first, that America was left in a pre-eminent position ("the sole superpower"). But in fact, the world was left in a condition of quasi-anarchy. Nations that once felt compelled to bow to their bloc's protector could now pursue their own interests.
Formal alliances faltered; shifting coalitions became the rule. Americans weren't accustomed to this disconnect between their dictates and the rest of the world's actions. When France refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq, the reaction was manically fierce—the renaming of French fries, the boycotts of Bordeaux wine. But what this panic reflected was sheer bewilderment. France was hardly America's enemy, but that's how many Americans suddenly treated it. Habituated to the Cold War mentality, they found it hard to view a nation that contested America's interests and blocked America's policies as anything other than a foe.
Russia is not France. It does not share the bedrock Western values that France and America share (whatever other disputes may sometimes divide them). But what we're seeing now in Russia is similar to what we saw in 2003 when France bucked the United States in the debate over war in Iraq—a nation (in Russia's case, a large, increasingly powerful nation) pursuing its own interests.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Kaplan needs to pose a second question. Is the USA the enemy of Russia? Under the Bush administration, who can trust the USA on anything, as we spit on treaties and international obligations, particularly those involving arms control?
Actually, just as Bush is the best thing that ever happened in advancing Bin Laden's agenda to destabilize the Middle East and make our government afraid of its own shadow, Bush could be the best thing that ever happened for Russia.
Picture this scenario: Bush attacks Iran and preciptates a world-wide depression as oil supplies from the Persian Gulf are largely cut-off. Who's the largest oil producer, covering their own industrial needs plus exporting? Russia!
--bubba_barry
(To reply, click here.)
Russia is a funny kind of superpower. Its population is declining, its public health statistics are appalling, its industrial economy is an artifact of a long history of mismanagement, and its predator class has turned Moscow into one of the world's most expensive cities in which to live, while turning the vast majority of the country's people into dog food. And then there's oil.
As long as Putin keeps the local population in control, he stands to control the largest proven reserves of the world's single most crucial industrial commodity, especially as Iran and the Gulf states deplete their assets in the next ten years.
Putin's in it for the long run. He's young, he's healthy, and he's willing to kill millions of people to keep his oil monopoly. He is, and will remain, the world's most successful gangster.
So what is there about Putin that could possibly bother George Bush? What frightens us are true Believers, and Putin believes in nothing but oil and power. Basically, he's a younger, shorter version of Dick Cheney.
--melvyl
(To reply, click here.)
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