Russia and the West: Return of Cold War?
- From: ** <**@.org>
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:38:41 +0800
Russia and the West: Return of Cold War?
Jonathan Power
31-Jul-07
IF RUSSIA has a wise old man who knows where all the bodies are buried at least
in foreign policy it probably is Georgi Arbatov, the retired head of the Moscow
think tank, the Institute for the USA and Canada, and former foreign policy
adviser to Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who in turn ran
the Soviet Union (in Yeltsin's case Russia) from 1964 to 1999.
I met Arbatov, 84 at his Soviet-era apartment an hour's drive from Moscow: We
have not yet returned to a new Cold War. But we can get into one... the danger
looms over us. Two years ago it was impossible to think of this. Now it is
possible, he told me.
The most dangerous frontier of the post-World War II was the Iron Curtain, which
stretched from Lubeck Bay on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. As Jan
Morris has observed, it separated not just states, or people or territories, or
histories, but ideas.
When that was breached by the Soviets themselves in 1989 we knew European
communism was dead, liberty was restored and military confrontation that came
close to incinerating half the planet was over. Or did we? Communism will never
return to Russia. But liberty? It is certainly waning from the wild freedom of
the Yeltsin days. But most Russians don't notice, partly because there is still
plenty of it compared with Soviet times and partly because the last six years
the economy has taken off like a rocket and is likely to continue that way for
some time to come. However, the diplomatic and military atmosphere has
definitely soured and badly so. Russians have become more nationalistic and are
in no mood to so easily bend, as they did in the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, in
the West's direction.
The post-Cold War aggressiveness of American and British foreign policy
affecting Iraq, North Korea, and the southern former states of the Soviet Union
has step-by-step unsettled Moscow. The straw that broke the camel's back is
undoubtedly the US decision to build a new radar facility on Polish and Czech
soil, that although directed at putative Iranian rockets could easily be
upgraded to be aimed at Russian ones. But it began with President Bill Clinton's
decision to expand Nato right up to the frontiers of the old Soviet Union.
Left to their own devices West European leaders would never have thought up the
expansion of Nato. Clinton foisted it upon them. Still, they had a mouth if they
had chosen to wag their tongues.
If only there had been the same somnolence in Russia then perhaps Clinton's
gamble with history would have been all right. But there was deep and profound
outrage that has now come to the surface.
Who lost Russia? is a question that the next generation may sweat over just as
the pre-World War II generation sweated over a resurgent Germany under Hitler.
As John Maynard Keynes had argued, the Versailles peace treaty imposed after
Germany was defeated in World War 1 was designed not to heal scars but to keep
open the wounds. Bitterness and vindictiveness became ingrained in the German
psyche.
Russia if not defeated in a military campaign knows it was decisively beaten in
the Cold War. Part of its polity became resentful and potentially revengeful.
Another part felt liberated and open to all that the West had to offer. The
trouble is that the West offered so little. It missed a great historic
opportunity, in total contrast to the benign way it rushed to help a defeated
Germany. The lesson it learned from Versailles has been forgotten with Russia.
In 1998 at the time when Clinton was pushing his Nato expansion plan a group of
prominent American conservatives wrote in the New York Times that antagonism is
sure to grow if the alliance extends ever closer to Russia...We will have
misplaced our priorities during a critical window of opportunity to gain Russian
cooperation.
Arbatov, although severely critical of the West, does not exonerate President
Vladimir Putin for the deteriorating situation. We have to stop this stupid talk
about Russia going its own way, he says.
I agree with Arbatov: Much of this could have been avoided if Europe had made it
clear that it wanted Russia inside the European Union, in say 10 or 20 years.
But just as European prevarication on the issue has unsettled Turkish stability
so it has done the same with Russia.
Arab News
.
- Prev by Date: US cancer patients face varying care
- Next by Date: Schizophrenia's social toll
- Previous by thread: US cancer patients face varying care
- Next by thread: Schizophrenia's social toll
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
