A friend, reading the last post, asked exactly how America
had handled Russia badly. A very good question.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 we had a window of
opportunity to reshape our relationship with Russia. And George H.W. Bush, then
president, probably was a person who could have done that successfully, even
though he came from the Cold War era. However, we dumped him in 1993 for
Clinton and a succession of presidents since then, including Trump, who proved woefully
inept at this effort.
Fundamentally what we did when the Soviet Union collapsed
was to take a very loud victory lap, and then proceed to ignore Russia and its legitimate
concerns, treating them like a third-rate banana republic. We humiliated them, a proud people with a
history far longer than our own. We showed what in sports would be considered
poor sportsmanship. We made a very bad psychological mistake – we humiliated
our opponent rather than welcoming them into the world order as a respected
member. There is a saying: ”Choose your
friends any way you like, but choose your enemies carefully”. Our
humiliation of them has produced an enemy who will remember the slight for
generations; indeed, it is a lever that Putin uses constantly with his people
to keep power – very stupid of us!
Some think we should have mounted a Marshall Plan effort to
help Russia in those critical days when it was imploding. I suspect that would
not have worked well, because most of the money probably would have been stolen
rather than used productively. Under the Soviet system a vast corrupt
underground system grew to keep the system running, since the legal system was
so inept. That corrupt underground system would probably have just sucked away any
monetary aid from the West.
But we certainly could have done far more to help the
Russian population, and to make them feel respected by the West, and we didn’t
do that. We could also have acknowledged
their very real fears about Western invasions, and been more sensitive about
pushing NATO right up to their doorstep. Indeed, George H.W. Bush promised the
Russians that we wouldn’t do that, but subsequent presidents ignored that
promise. It’s no wonder Russia doesn’t trust the West.
I doubt that anything the West might have done would have
resulted in a stable, truly democratic government in Russia. But we certainly
could have established better relations than we now have, and we might have
coaxed Russia further into the Western world order. We failed thoroughly at
that.
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