Now is the time to find a way out of the East-West confrontation: will Europe or Washington lead the way?
The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, like the centenary anniversary of the start of WWI earlier this year has served as an opportunity for world statesmen to speak ceremoniously and with seeming gravity, to have their photographs taken at the site where history was made and generally to feel virtuous and superior to our dull forebears. However, in both instances the parallels between the sleepwalking of those forebears and the sleepwalkers reading the commemorative speeches tends to go missing.
Several recent publications dealing with the ongoing 25th anniversary break with the pattern of empty solemnity and faux lessons from the past. Perhaps the most impressive because the author was central to the creation of a post-Cold War order is Mikhail Gorbachev’s Speech to the New Policy Forum symposium in Berlin on 8 November published in The Huffington Post.
Gorbachev’s speech reminds us of the key understandings between Russia and the European powers that followed the fall of the wall and preceded the reunification of Germany: the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the principal obligations of which, he insists, have been observed up to this day. He praises the wisdom of the leaders who brought this about, one of whom was of course Gorbachev himself.
Gorbachev clearly lays the blame for the trajectory of East-West relations at the door of the West, who ignored the security interests of Russia. ’Euphoria and triumphalism’’ went to the heads of Western leaders. Gorbachev’s shortlist in the rising tension runs from the enlargement of NATO, missile defense plans, Iraq, Libya, Syria.
And yet while saddened, Gorbachev ends on a somewhat ebullient note. His search for a way out is directed at Europe rather than the USA. He insists that Europe has been the big loser from its confrontational stance against Russia, forfeiting its place as a global power broker as it sinks into regional military conflict. He calls upon European leaders to reflect and reverse course on their Russia sanctions. Most significantly he calls for renewed consideration of a new security architecture for Europe, making reference in passing to the initiative of Dmitry Medvedev during his presidency.
Meanwhile, a recent poll of its 29-man ‘Brain Trust’ by Foreign Affairs magazine with respect to whether the West is to blame for the current imbroglio with Russia over Ukraine imposes itself on our attention. The figures published byFA online on 11 November indicate a significant fault line in what we might otherwise consider a sheer rock face of anti-Russian thinking: fully one-third of the experts, including such well known experts like John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Michael Mandelbaum, Jack Snyder, Dmitri Trenin, Robert Legvold, Robert Jervis, Stephen Kotkin, Joshua Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Jack Snyder, and Stephen M. Walt, dared to say that the West is to blame. In our present moment of stage one McCarthyism, their boldness commands respect as does the decision of the editorial board to release the stats.
My first question to the panel is, in light of the Gorbachev essay, where do we in fact look first for the solution to the present global confrontation, to Washington or to Brussels? Will Europe back down on sanctions first due to the harm they are causing its own economy and political fragility after 6 years of austerity? Will Washington be able to go it alone on containing Russia?
Secondly, given the FA poll results, is there some basis for expecting the Washington political elites to crack on the Russia question even without reference to Europe?
The real solution to the extremely dangerous global confrontation looming between Russia and the West must come from Washington. But the prospects for this happening in the foreseeable future are negligible.
Major European nations are much more susceptible to suffer unanticipated blowback from the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union on Russia. This is likely to lead to intense pressure on the governments of Germany and France in particular to dial down their participation in the sanctions regime.
However, even if Berlin and Paris break ranks with the Brussels bureaucrats in seeking to improve relations with Russia, the most dangerous issues generating levels of hostility unseen since at least 1982-83 remain carved in stone.
First, the United States continues to funnel massive military support to the Kiev government of President Petro Poroshenko, even as it increases its military action against the civilian population of the two breakaway regions of Lugansk and Donetsk. Russia will certainly respond to the ever-rising civilian death tolls in those provinces – now around 5,000, with almost a million refugees fleeing into Russia – stepping up its own military support for the regions and taking more active operations against Poroshenko’s ramshackle army.
Second, the United States continues to deploy its Ironhorse armored cavalry force in the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as protection for these three highly anti-Russian states. However, the Baltic states are the historic invasion route north to St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, and well over a million people were starved to death their when the Nazi Wehrmacht took that very route to besiege the city in the fall and winter of 1941.
The fact that NATO forces are now deployed on the outskirts of St. Petersburg would have been inconceivable to any of the Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush administration policymakers who negotiated the end of the Cold War on the U.S. side.
Third, U.S. warships and aircraft remain deployed in the Black Sea in support of the volatile and unpredictable successive governments of little Georgia in the Caucasus. As long as they are there, potential flash point incidents with Russian naval air force units will continue.
The United States cannot hope to restore reasonable relations with Russia or to revive the US-Russian dialogue that is essential to both nations unless and until it unilaterally tackles these three core issues.
Fourth, the Obama administration should also launch a serious dialogue to share early warning space-based strategic intelligence with Russia to reduce the dangers of accidental thermonuclear world war. Russia’s failure to successfully establish its own space-based early warning system means that the world’s most heavily armed nuclear superpower is reduced to "only as far as the horizon” radar alerts to alert it of any potential preemptive first strike.
Serious figures ready to advocate such policies certainly exist in the United States. However, they are locked out of President Barack Obama’s National Security Council. His National Security Adviser Susan Rice has never shown the slightest indication that she even begins to understand any of these life or death issues.
Even worse, the results of the November 4 midterm congressional elections were a disaster for the President and his Democratic Party. The elections delivered the Senate into the hands of the Republicans who remain far more anti-Russian and a super-hawkish than the Democrats, and who seek to humiliate and pressure the president into a far more anti-Russian policy at every turn.
Rice’s ignorance and incompetence is replicated through the news producers and editors of the U.S. national broadcast and print media. No open debate and discussion on the different sides of the Ukrainian conflict is almost ever permitted to see the light of day. The president of Russia is routinely demonized in the most simplistic, cartoonish and ridiculous ways.
U.S. policymakers, pundits and media executives will have to wake up and grow up before there can be any hope of restoring the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship – the most important strategic relationship for the entire human race.
Russia –West Confrontation: Ways Out.
European countries gravitate toward each other and this process is inevitable. Had the US continued to be a true leader of the Free World, the country that inspires the world by the care that it takes of its citizens, by its ability to control unruly businesses or financial institutions, by its courage and vision in confronting the world problems-- then Europeans would more than happy to follow such a lead. But with its victory in the Cold War, the US abandoned vision and ideals, resorting instead to raw power. By its equally aggressive defense of its geopolitical interests, which were challenged by the US for no obvious reasons except for the need to spread its own hard power, Russia has managed to call the US bluff. TheUnited States has to demonstrate to the rest of the world how it intends to lead: through its moral superiority and its vision or through its hard power and tired rhetoric. Common sense tells us that a system that relies on armies, bases, bombers, and spying on its allies coupled with dismissal of environmental, financial, or economic concerns of the rest of the world, stands in very drastic need of change.
The end of the Cold War offered an historic opportunity for Europe to finally end centuries of conflict that had culminated in the devastation of WWII and to start building what President Mikhail Gorbachev called our "common European home”. Communist totalitarianism had quit the world stage, and it seemed there were no obstacles to realising Gorbachev’s vision.
Worse, after having burnt its fingers in Georgia (where the Russian army swiftly repulsed a treacherous and deadly attack but refrained from occupying the entire country – thus amply demonstrating Moscow’s aversion to neo-imperialism), Washington zeroed in on Ukraine. This time we, Europeans, have a simmering but bloody military confrontation at the heart of our "common home”. We are witness to terrorized Ukrainians massacring one another in their thousands in our immediate neighbourhood. And this is being allowed to happen not in the interests of us Europeans but of that self-proclaimed "exceptional” democratic power across the ocean. The truth is that, far from caring about us, the Great (self-appointed) Protector is interested first and foremost in pursuing its agenda of preventing Russia and the EU from developing closer ties and creating a stable and secure environment in Europe. The Great Protector is cynically playing with our lives and fates, risking a nuclear stand-off with potential unthinkable consequences.
5. And, finally, publish true and verifiable information on the number of casualties in the ranks of the Ukrainian army.
Current decision makers in Washington and Brussels can not be counted on to reach solutions independently of each other. They need each other to survive.
Europe will tank with political unrest before European heads of state will dare go against current Washington policy makers. We need to know from Snowden what do NSA and Washington neocons have on Merkel and other European heads of state that they continue to go against their own business-people’s needs and interests. These sanctions could easily be political suicide for them.
My overarching concern is the "Invincibility” factor with current Washington policy makers which could easily move into action and make the decision to go nuclear. Their behaviors are being driven consciously and unconsciously by envy/jealousy, fear, revenge and hatred. This is obvious from their continuous vicious commentaries, repeated character assassinations and deadly actions. Countries, like human beings, get caught up in psychotic behaviors and then drive their masses into herd mentality to carry out their bidding. The 20th century was full of such cases. And here it is cropping up again in the 21st century.
So what are the neocons, Republicans and Democrats, most fearful of? Loss of American hegemony, first and foremost …. not being the #1 hegemon in the world. They see that we are a nation in decline and it most likely will continue. They don’t know what to do about it. This has to be frightening. What have other nations throughout history done as they began sinking into decline? Most over-extended themselves, created wars, and attempted unsuccessfully to recover their past glory. What are we doing?
Washington policy makers fear Russia will take America’s place as the world’s next hegemon, though this is not an intention of Putin or the Russian population. Regardless of how many times Putin and his team discuss the need for a multipolar world and "every nation being sovereign," this notion has been totally rejected by Washington. They see an exceptionally bright leader in his prime in Russia, and a country rapidly coming out of its dark night and assume they intend to become the next hegemon. They envy and covet Russia’s subsoil riches and sufficient oil and gas to keep Russia running for decades. What do human beings and countries do in such cases? They project their "shadow," (the unacceptable behaviors they have done and are still doing) on their target. In later stages, they will do anything to destroy the perceived villain. So it is, we are seeing these well-documented behaviors being played out in the highest offices of our land.
Part of me understands why Washington is fearful and consumed by ill will. America is mired in national debt and much of the world no longer trusts us. Policy makers know if America becomes "one of several nations" making major decisions in the world, America’s life style will in time become quite different. This will eventually have considerable impact on America's economy, unemployment levels and our financial institutions. We will have to develop values other than constant consumerism.
We are fragile as it is now. Can you imagine what would happen if the military industrial complex wasn't getting contracts, and workers were being laid off by the thousands in the 45 states where the production has been carried out for decades? Further, if a lot of the world trade goes off of the dollar, as Russia and China are now planning (in order to deal with the sanctions), our American financial systems could go through a grave shaking. The world system itself is unstable today due in part to our 2008 financial crisis which quickly traveled abroad and countries haven't recovered.
This means that Putin and Russia, the pushers of the multipolar world (that hopes to solve problems rather than fight wars), are a gargantuan threat to current Washington policy makers. No wonder they are demonizing them both, applying increased sanctions to strangle them economically, tampering with world oil prices to destabilize their chief export which supports their national budget, and lastly trying to find ways to push Russia into a war in Ukraine to then have an all-out war with them. This in itself is insanity. The two countries have essentially the same numbers of nuclear weapons and air power.
Will Washington policy-makers gamble on a first-strike nuclear war to prevent personal and collective loss of power and halt U.S.' decline? If so, Russia will respond in kind …. which could leave the earth as a cinder traveling in space with no living thing on it. This could happen at any time. It’s well known that today both nations have long-range bombers with nuclear weapons on high alert in the air at all times, in addition to submarines loaded with nuclear missiles in the waters all over the planet, plus ICBMs in silos. We need to be praying there will be no accidents, let alone intentional firings.
I assume the reason that Putin has been so forthright in flexing Russia's military muscle in the past couple of weeks is that he wants Washington to see clearly that Russia will meet them head on if they gamble on a first strike. He is acting with foreboding and logic.
I formerly saw hope on the horizon. Today I do not see hope absent some totally out-of-the box event forces decision makers to come to their senses.
Something at a totally different level needs to be done quickly. For instance, Kissinger might convene a first-ever "World Elders Speak to the Nations of the World” and promote speak-ins on "The Future of the World” across America in strategic cities and in Europe, carried by the latest technologies. Or another out-of-the-box possibility lies with Gorbachev, for whom Americans still have a soft spot in their hearts. Invite him to come to America to speak with Americans, to give joint presentations with Kissinger, Ambassadors Matlock, Pickering and Collins to the American people in strategic areas outside of Washington. This type of diplomacy could be carried out in numerous venues. It is critical to break out of the normal channels which will not change.