United States post cold war stance toward Russia has been, in essence, that of a gleeful enabler of the territorial disintegration of the former Russian Empire. Instead of being magnanimous in victory and exhibiting due sensitivity to Russias fears of a complete territorial disintegration, the United States chose to woo the former Warsaw Pact nations and even the former Soviet republics into the sphere of the EU and NATO influence. As a result, United States is today viewed by a plurality of Russian citizens as a mortal enemy (something that did not happen even during the Cold War!). (Btw, why do we even need NATO today? Is there still a threat of a communist invasion of Western Europe out there?) One has to ask the most basic question — do the United States benefit from turning Russia into an enemy? To me, the answer is a clear and resounding no! I believe that the United States foreign policy should be driven by pure self interest. When one looks at the world from that vantage point, the picture that emerges is that of Russia and United States sharing all of the same geo-political foes. Namely, most of the Muslim world, China, and, yes – the European Union. That being the case, it would seem to me that having Russia as a friend would be of a great benefit to the United States and that enabling or accelerating Russias disintegration only strengthens our real foes. What about Russias human rights violations, one may ask? Let the Russian citizens decide how they want to live on their own, I say. Not our business. We deal every day with countries with far worse human rights records and no one seem to give a crap about that! Russia today is no Soviet Union and their human rights record is still better than Chinas and than the entire Muslim world. Gotta keep that in perspective. Our stance toward Russia should be as follows: we share many interests and a common bond as WWII allies, we therefore want to be friends. And we will be friends with whatever government the citizens of Russia elect / appoint, etc. And we do not get involved in how they run their country. End of story. How does that impact the current crisis in Ukraine? Dont know for sure, but the course we have been on is bad for us and needs to be reversed. A good starting point would be to stop meddling in what Russian wants to do in Crimea. They have a very long and storied past there, lots of military valor, lots of national pride, lots of current strategic value. From their point of view, the very belonging of Crimea to Ukraine is based on a stupid technicality and is not legitimate of fair in any way (I tend to agree). We should stay the hell away from this one. As for the rest of Ukraine, we should use only quiet diplomacy and try help bringing the various sides to the negotiating table. But as we do that, we must remember that the very entity called Ukraine with its current borders is also not something ancient, but merely another 20th century artificial creation. Many of such creations have been breaking into into pieces along the real ethnic and religious divides all over the Eastern Europe. Ukraine may just share their fate. Not the end of the world, better than war for sure.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 18:31:01 +0000
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