Just a test
The current level of hostility in US-Russian relations was caused in part by Washington’s contemptuous treatment of Moscow’s security concerns in the aftermath of the cold war, a former US defense secretary has said.William Perry, who was defence secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration from 1994 to 1997, emphasised that in the past five years it has been Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that have driven the downward spiral in east-west relations.
But Perry added that during his term in office, cooperation between the two countries’ militaries had improved rapidly just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union and that these gains were initially squandered more as a result of US than Russian actions.
“In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame,” Perry said, speaking at a Guardian Live event in London.“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that Nato could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having Nato right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In his memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Perry writes that he argued for a slower expansion of Nato so as not to alienate Russia during the initial period of post-Soviet courtship and cooperation. Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat, led the opposing argument at the time, and was ultimately supported by the vice-president, Al Gore, who argued “we could manage the problems this would create with Russia”.
Perry said the decision reflected a contemptuous attitude among US officials towards the troubled former superpower.
“It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said he don’t agree with that argument,” he said. “Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point ... the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path.”
The third factor that Perry pointed to in the poisoning of US-Russian relations was Washington DC’s support for pro-democracy demonstrators in the “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics including Georgia and Ukraine. Perry agreed with the ethical reasons for backing such revolutions but noted their severely damaging effect on east-west ties.
“After he came to office, Putin came to believe that the United States had an active and robust program to overthrow his regime,” the former defense secretary said.
“And from that point on a switch went on in Putin’s mind that said: I’m no longer going to work with the west ... I don’t know the facts behind Putin’s belief that we actually had a program to foment revolution in Russia but what counts is he believed it.”
That highlighted paragraph, that is obvious arrogance. IMO, it amounts to professional political malpractice, not just excusable incompetence. Things like this: Perry agreed with the ethical reasons for backing such revolutions but noted their severely damaging effect on east-west ties, are what requires professionalism, experience, intelligence, tact and pragmatism over ideology to deal with. The blunderbuss tactics of American politics have badly failed and betrayed us.
Clearly Gore was wrong. We could not manage the problems we created. As the popular but only mildly effective deflection goes, “mistakes were made.”
Our two-party system is not working at all now. Arguably it has been a mess for decades. Between arrogant ideological blindness, distrust of government and expertise, gross incompetence and other ridiculous stupefying factors, it seems that we are in a deep hole we helped dig.
Whatever this horror is, it could get most all of us killed fairly soon. One can only hope the odds of that are extremely low. But with all the incompetence, stupid demagoguery and moral rot going on in American politics, the odds might not be aren't low enough for comfort. Now we get to contemplate an unknowable possibility of nuclear Armageddon.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for pointing this article out.
Maybe a surprise coming to a city near you
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