It didn’t have to be this way–us vs. them. It is difficult to imagine a period since the end of the Cold War when relations between Russia and the U.S. have been quite so contentious. And that’s dangerous. Without some basic level of trust and understanding between them, any dialogue rests upon an unstable foundation. With the Cold War at an end for over 30 years, how is it that the U.S. still perceives Russia as its enemy?
The essay attempts to illustrate, what some suggest, were rather shortsighted political miscalculations in the West’s response to Russia after the Wall fell in ‘89. Through hegemonic reasoning and a bit of legerdemain, NATO leaders set the stage for what we have today, a proxy war with Moscow. The work further addresses how a Cold War-era propaganda campaign continues to exacerbate the effects of these missteps well beyond the close of that era.
One issue of critical concern is NATO. Its expansion eastward is seen by Russia as directed against that country’s security interests. The Russian president has been clear for decades that if continued, the expansion would likely be met with serious resistance by the Russians, perhaps even military action. And Moscow is not alone in its concerns. A number of influential American foreign policy experts (CIA Director Burns, Paul Pillar former CIA officer and senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security Studies, George Kennon diplomat and (architect of Russian Containment Policy), Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and others) have given credence to the idea of Western political miscalculation.
In June 1997, two years before Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO, 50 prominent foreign policy experts signed an open letter to Clinton, saying:
“We believe that the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO … is a policy error of historic proportions” that will “unsettle European stability.”
These scholars suggest that NATO’s rather tone‐deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐century deserves a measure of responsibility for the difficult geopolitical issues confronting us today. Analysts committed to a U.S. foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.
There is valid, well documented evidence that NATO leaders were not forthcoming with the “Russian Bear” since the Cold War ended. Promises were made but never kept. Assurances were given–but by people with short memories.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security. Gorbachev and other Soviet officials received reiteration of these assurances throughout the process of German reunification in 1990 and 1991. Declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted December 12, 2017 by the National Security Archive at George Washington University attest to this.
In 1921 Sigmund Freud explored in his work, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, the extent to which instinctive group psychology could affect rational thinking. Ironically, Freud’s ideas were further developed by his nephew, Edward Bernays, who, perhaps unfortunately for all of us, became the father of modern political propaganda.
Over a century ago, Walter Lippman and more recently, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, cautioned us about group psychology managed with propaganda–it comes with a heavy price. Yielding to our instinctual demands of viewing conflict as a struggle between the virtuous “us” versus the evil “them” implies a single-minded approach to conflict resolution. With this view, peace requires defeating one’s adversary, while efforts at a workable solution become tantamount to appeasement. Surrendering to these alternatives is a false dichotomy, an either/or choice–and that is both unnecessary and dangerous. To do so is to remain trapped, psychologically, in a 1940s mind set, where an adversary must be defeated and not appeased with no gray area between them.
NATO leadership and mainstream media in the West are representative of what Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent 1988) and Walter Lippmann (Public Opinion 1922) refer to in their classic works–’manufacturing consent’ through propaganda and the danger it creates when misused or overused.
Newton’s first law of motion, the principle of inertia, says something will remain at rest or in motion until acted upon by a force causing it to deviate from its path. The world can afford neither the inertia of some of today’s dangerous foreign policy initiatives nor the propaganda machines that perpetuate them. The risks are too great for further miscalculation.
The United States remains the last best hope for the future of the world. It has always been a beacon of hope–of refuge from oppression and tyranny. Yet, today its economic and political hegemony is challenged. Much of the world, especially the East and Global South, seem reticent to trust her. This critique is written with the prayer that America finds leadership to redress past missteps and remain that beacon of hope she has always been.
