Russophobia and the Specter of War

As American political life continues to deteriorate, matters of war and peace rarely merit attention amidst the sound and fury of manufactured news, moral posturing, personal scandals, and tweeting exchanges.  Good for TV ratings and maybe partisan advantage, decidedly less so for addressing issues of political relevance.   Now we have two years of frenzied Russiagate and its attendant neo-McCarthyism.   That the intensifying hostility directed by one nuclear power toward another might bring the world closer to a war that could end all wars seems bizarrely remote to a political class obsessed with little beyond its own power and wealth, faintly camouflaged by identity politics; the “unthinkable” remains, well, unthinkable.

As anti-Russia hysteria spreads, speech taboos harden; any discourse at odds with tightening official political/media consensus brings immediate blowback, smear-mongering, and (where possible) silencing.   It is so obvious that Vladimir Putin is a ruthless, aggressive monster that any dissenting view must be the product of either insanity or Russian propaganda. In this one-dimensional world the recent appearance of Stephen F. Cohen’s important book, War with Russia?, comes with special urgency, Cohen being one of the few public intellectuals to challenge the onslaught of Russophobic narratives churned out relentlessly by the political/media establishment.  And he remains virtually alone in going so far as to write about very real specter of nuclear catastrophe.

Longtime scholar of Soviet/Russian studies, Cohen has for years resisted the tide of mindless Russia bashing that gathered steam first, with the 2014 Ukraine events, and then with Trump’s unacceptable rise to the White House.   For his informed and dispassionate analysis of Russian history and politics, Cohen has been denounced as “Putin’s number one American apologist”, charged by some for having been “duped” by that great Russian mastermind.  Appearing recently on CNN with Anderson Cooper and the neocon warmonger Max Boot, Cohen’s stubborn refusal to see Putin as the worst of all tyrannical evils triggered Boot, who proceeded to attack Cohen for decades of apologetics, followed by a dire warning: “Russia is attacking us right now”.   Such is the state of American media discourse that Boot had no need to furnish evidence of any such “attack”, and Cooper was not about to demand it.

Cohen’s book – a lengthy collection of recent essays – convincingly demolishes every fictional narrative behind Russiagate, the same arguments ritually presented as earth-shattering news at CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere across the corporate media.  In contrast to earlier cycles of anti-Soviet hysteria, including 1950s McCarthyism, the newer variant comes not from the extreme right but mainly from liberal Democrats and their allies in the “intel community”, warfare state, and media culture.  With an abundance of logic and facts, Cohen eviscerates the familiar myths and lies: Putin the maniacal dictator, Russia the imperial aggressor, Ukraine the model democracy, Trump’s love affair with Putin, and of course Putin’s notorious “attack on our democracy”.

In fact the new Cold War is entirely an American creation [as was the first—Eds], starting in the early 1990s and continuing along multiple fronts: NATO expansion to Russian borders, economic sanctions designed to “cripple” the Russian economy, neo-fascist coup in Ukraine promoted in Washington, American withdrawal from the 1972 ABM nuclear treaty, groundless accusations that Moscow conspired to rig the 2016 U.S. presidential election, ongoing economic and military threats.  Nothing of the sort has been carried out by the Russian side.

Prof. Cohen

Cohen shows how the new Cold War and Russiagate effectively constrain President Trump’s flexibility to defuse or at least manage U.S.-Russia conflict.  Any Trump move toward cooperation with Russia – vital to international nuclear sanity – will now surely bring accusations of “collusion”, even treason, reflected in the silly media outrage at Trump’s rather innocuous July summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki.  Room for maneuver has perilously narrowed, negating prospects for détente of the sort historically achieved by the likes of Nixon and Reagan (with the Soviets, no less).   The danger of such global hostilities hardly require elaboration.

The reigning assumption is that Putin – virtually alone among world leaders – cannot be a legitimate participant in normal international diplomacy; mere contact with Russian elites can nowadays be regarded as criminal.  U.S. partnership with Communist dictator Josef Stalin during World War II apparently met criteria for a working partnership, while the popularly-elected Putin is disqualified, forever discredited as “former KGB thug”.  The political/media establishment routinely castigates Putin as a tyrant, imperialist, racist, anti-Semite, and wanton murderer of political enemies though, as Cohen demonstrates, these charges fail to pass close scrutiny.  Since no clear ideological rationale exists for all the Russia bashing – the Communist regime disappeared nearly three decades ago – the new Cold Warriors are forced to rely strictly on personal demonization. 

Cohen takes up the problem of sanctions that Washington has clumsily and repeatedly imposed on Russia, with at best limited success – though a common view in Moscow is that sanctions amount to economic warfare.   That “warfare” actually has a protracted history, going back to the first stirrings of the Bolshevik regime.  It is worth asking what might have been gained from such punishment, aside from needlessly cementing hostile relations with a Eurasian nuclear power?  Nothing much constructive.  Cohen points out that, “Historically, sanctions were not problem-solving measures advancing American national security but more akin to temper tantrums or road rage, making things worse, than to real policy-making.”  One geopolitical outcome, in recent years, has been to push the Russians closer to China and Iran.  Beyond that, sanctions have worked to Putin’s favor as his efforts to persuade “oligarchs” (business elites) to repatriate tens of billions of dollars from offshore enterprises has finally borne fruit.

The very logic of U.S.-imposed sanctions, moreover, is fraudulent: the Ukraine crisis was, more than anything, provoked by regime change sponsored by American neocons. Punishing Russia for its “attack on American democracy” makes even less sense, as “In reality, there was no ‘attack’, no Pearl Harbor, no 9/11, no Russian parachuters descending on Washington [contrary to Boot’s twisted fantasy] – only the kind of ‘meddling’ and ‘interference’ in the other’s domestic politics that countries have practiced almost ritualistically for nearly a hundred years.”  Cohen adds: “Whatever ‘meddling’ Russian actors did in 2016 may well have been jaywalking compared to the Clinton administration’s highly intrusive political and financial intervention on behalf of Russian president Yeltsin’s reelection campaign in 1996.”   Not to mention brazen and repeated U.S. regime-change interventions, often with military force, since World War II.

One result of Russiagate and the new McCarthyism is that, in the virtuous land of freedom and democracy there are nowadays declining levels of both.  At present, in Cohen’s words, “there remained, for the first time in decades of Cold War history, no countervailing forces in Washington – no pro-détente wing of the Democratic or Republican parties, no influential anti-Cold War opposition anywhere, no real debate.”  Congress, the media, academia, think tanks – all seem engulfed, to varying degrees, in the same Russophobia.

From the outset Russiagate was an elite strategy having little to do with the “left” or “extreme left” of FOX News lore – although, sadly, plenty of leftish liberals and progressives have joined a cynical scheme promoted at the summits of power, where the imperial warfare state always requires a diabolical enemy.  Indeed vilification of Putin attracts relatively little public attention, much less fear.   After years of media-fueled tales of terrible Russian deeds, Cohen refers to a 2018 Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of Americans want to “improve relations with Russia”, compared to 36 percent who do not.

In an essay titled “Russiagate and the Risk of Nuclear War”, Cohen observes that Beltway elites remain strangely indifferent to the threat of nuclear catastrophe.  Could a Doomsday scenario end up as the ultimate collateral damage, the legacy of relentless anti-Russia fanaticism?   Cohen writes: “We might fault Trump for being insufficiently strong – politically or psychologically – to resist warfare demands that he prove his ‘innocence’, but the primary responsibility lies with Russiagate promoters who seek obsessively to impeach the president: politicians and journalists for whom a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, seems to be a higher priority than averting nuclear war with Russia.”  Could there be a more depressing commentary on the current state of American political culture?

It is finally worth asking: exactly who are the extremists, aggressors, and warmongers seemingly invested in the new Cold-War brinkmanship?   Does Putin have troops stationed on American borders?  Is he waging economic combat against the U.S.?   Has he staged a coup in Mexico?   Has he nullified any treaties?  Is he threatening to destroy Washington, D.C.?   Do we find incessant anti-American hysteria across the Russian public sphere?   For the moment, according to Cohen, “Putin still appears to be, in words and deeds, the moderate, calling Western leaders ‘our partners and colleagues’, asking for understanding and negotiations, being far less ‘aggressive’ than he might be.”

It turns out that Russophobia is riddled with its own contradictions – the most obvious being two incompatible views of the Russians: they are genetically corrupt, backward, and dysfunctional, unable to maintain a vital economy, yet are simultaneously global “puppet-masters” (John Brennan’s words) capable of rigging the outcome of a distant and high-tech American election.  Further, since both Putin and Trump are reputed to be rather thick-headed and out of control – Trump now relegated to special “idiot” status, deserving impeachment — it is truly shocking to be informed how they could so brilliantly and secretly collude, and with such marvelous results.

According to the eminent McCarthyite Brennan, himself a big supporter of the Ukraine coup (never described in the media as “former CIA thug”), Trump’s abominable behavior is nothing short of “treasonous”, unprecedented in the annals of the American presidency.   Cohen is on target to note that “Brennan’s views are those of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover in their prime.”  The difference, of course, is that Brennan is rewarded with a lucrative job at MSNBC and celebrated as truth-teller, while McCarthy was eventually ostracized by Republican colleagues, censored by the Senate, denounced by President Eisenhower, and politically destroyed.

Cohen’s main arguments now seem more rather than less resonant – a bad sign for the trajectory of U.S.-Russia relations and, more ominously, for hopes the new Cold War will never turn into something even hotter than climate change while media attention is fixated elsewhere.  We are not likely to see editorials in the New York Times warning about the perils of disintegrating U.S.-Russia relations.  Or special features on CNN.  Or lectures about the threat of nuclear war from Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, or Don Lemon.  Just more earth-shattering revelations from the Mueller probe and a litany of scandals heroically brought to light by legions of vigilant Russiagate sleuths.

Writing in The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg lays out in great detail the advancing likelihood that strategic nuclear systems – above all those of the U.S. and Russia – will, sooner or later, experience some kind of fatal calamity: not only through deliberate attack but from the very real possibility of false alarms, accidents, computer hacks, or even unauthorized launches.  In recent years fail-safe protections have been disastrously weakened or compromised, at a time of sharpening antagonism between the two biggest nuclear states.  The result of an “event”, Ellsberg writes, would likely be several hundred million dead, global fires raging for months, lethal worldwide radiation, and “nuclear winter that would starve to death nearly everyone living.”  That could be the terrible fate of humanity if Russophobia the new Cold War are allowed to follow their confrontational logic.

The undeserving target of personal smears, Stephen F. Cohen ought to be recipient of extraordinary tribute for his determined (and largely thankless) efforts to counter the barrage of endless myths, lies, and threats fueling anti-Russia hysteria that, if not soon subverted, could take the U.S. and rest of humanity along the road to unprecedented disaster.

APPENDIX
BONUS FEATURE

Our appreciation for Prof. Carl Boggs prompts us to reprint this excellent piece detailing his work (along with Chalmers Johnson) on the Neocon malignancy in our midst.  The article, authored by Pat McDonnel Twair, appeared on the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2004, pages 18, 21 / Neocon Corner—PG

Carl Boggs, Chalmers Johnson Discuss Neocon Ideology and American Empire

By Pat McDonnell Twair

Maverick academics Chalmers Johnson (l) and Carl Boggs at UCLA (staff photo S. Twair).

THE SUDDEN rise of neoconservatives from outsiders-looking-in to global masterminds, and the militaristic rule of the “boy emperor from Crawford,” were discussed at an April 12 seminar at UCLA featuring maverick academics Carl Boggs and Chalmers Johnson.

Boggs has just completed a book entitled Neocon Ideology and Contradictions of Empire. In preparing for it, he said, he had no choice but to read most of their writings—an experience he described as “painful.”

Although they had some influence during the Reagan administration and a little input during the reign of George Bush I, stated the National University social scientist, the neocons’ rapid rise to power was legitimized by 9/ll.

Boggs characterized the neocons as a cohesive group that developed over a long time and today constitute the greatest threat to the planet. They are almost exclusively male, he said, and are “liars” and “warmongers” who came of age in the 1980s and 90s.

Who are they? Boggs identified Commentary editor Norman Poderetz, his son-in-law and National Security Council Middle East specialist Eliot Abrams, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former chair and member of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Steven Bryen of the Jewish Institute of National Security (JINSA), and the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Ledeen, “a shadowy figure close to Israel.”

Others Boggs associates with them, but who some might disagree are full-fledged neocons, are former Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Max Boot, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Samuel Huntington of “Clash of Civilizations” fame, the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack (husband of CNN’s Andrea Koppel and son-in-law of Ted), author Robert Kaplan and the converted Christopher Hitchens.

“George W. Bush definitely wasn’t a neocon,” according to Boggs, “nor were Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell.

Boggs described the neocon philosophy as driven by the notion of good versus evil, a hatred for compromise or détente, a respect for technological warfare, the doctrine of preemptive/preventive war, a fierce defense of Israel and the Israeli right wing, a contempt for the United Nations, and a desire to radically reform the CIA, which they believe is infested with liberals.

“Neocons adore Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli,” Boggs continued. “They thrive on visions of a Hobbseian world and its nightmarish world of chaos. They are ultra-nationalists who view patriotism as the key element in a system mired in corporate and political scandals.”

Neocons take comfort in the belief that they have overcome the Vietnam syndrome, Boggs added. Glorification of the weakened nation that regains its might on the battlefield, he stressed, is synonymous with historical fascism.

Their virulent ideology of “let’s create more instability so we have reason to intervene,” he added, explains the war path the neocons would like to pursue in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and, down the line, China.

The neocon ideology could be around for a long time, Boggs warned. However, he pointed out, the quagmire in Iraq could discredit them. “They have lost their sense of history,” he observed, “and are pushing the barbarism of occupation so far that the process won’t work.”

And therein lies a quandary, the professor pointed out: “Just what are the neocons willing to do if they see their power challenged?”

Der Spiegel magazine called Chalmers Johnson the “California Cassandra” for the prescience of his 2000 book, Blowback, which predicted that U.S. foreign policies were creating resentment abroad that could result in retaliatory attacks.

Blowback, Johnson explained, is a CIA term coined to describe the reaction to foreign operations the government keeps secret from Americans. For example, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini was blowback to the CIA’s covert actions in 1953 overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosadegh.

“On the morning of 9/11,” Johnson said, “when my publisher called to tell me Blowback had just hit, I didn’t think about Muslims, but, instead, I thought of Sept. 11, 1972, when the government of Salvador Allende was overturned in Chile. Later, I saw photos of women in Manhattan holding photos of their loved ones, and I thought of the women in Santiago and Buenos Aires holding photos of their disappeared ones.”

In the aftermath of 9/11—as Americans asked “why do they hate us?”—George W. Bush had to look no further than to the people in his entourage who clandestinely trained and supplied arms to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, Johnson stated. After the Soviets were defeated, he noted, the Americans walked away, leaving the nation in shambles.

“Osama bin Laden wasn’t a Muslim fanatic,” Johnson said. “He would be skiing on the slopes of Gstaad, or sailing in the Greek Islands today if we hadn’t betrayed him in Kabul.”

After Blowback became a bestseller and was reprinted 13 times in the post-9/11 era, Johnson wrote The Sorrows of Empire, which predicts the downfall of the U.S. military-industrial complex as it overextends itself globally.

“I’m 72 years old,” he told his UCLA audience, “but, given the pace of events, I think there’s a good chance I’ll live to see the end of the American empire.”

Noting that the U.S. maintains 725 military bases worldwide—not including espionage bases, Air Force bases or 14 permanent bases under construction in Iraq—Johnson said this could bankrupt the nation.

“Americans may still prefer to use euphemisms such as ”˜sole superpower,’” he remarked, “but since 9/11, our country has undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible.”

Drawing upon his own experience, Johnson, a specialist in Japan-U.S. relations, said he was invited to Okinawa in 1996. The former Japanese colony is an island smaller than Kauai with a population of 1.3 million, he noted, but 38 U.S. military bases are maintained there. The best real estate is given over to recreation facilities for Americans which exclude locals. Troops rape an average of two Okinawan women per month—an outrage that fuels native objections to a U.S. presence.

Okinawa is just one example of U.S. intrusion upon foreign populations, Johnson pointed out. If, however, Turkey (for instance) had a military base in Southern California, American fathers would be encouraging their sons to attack the Turkish occupiers at any time.

Because Americans never have had to put up with foreign troops, he noted, they have no idea of the resentment our military bases create all over the world.

There are 101 U.S. bases in South Korea, he said, and others in Germany, Italy, England, and the island of Diego Garcia, from which all the strategic bombers left for Iraq.

“Life in the military today is not the same as most veterans knew it,” Johnson continued. “Kitchen duties, laundry, clean-up are farmed out today to Kellogg, Brown and Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Richard Cheney was CEO of before becoming vice president).”

A state of perpetual war is a prerequisite of the military state, Johnson averred, and this is what Cheney foresees in his call for a regime change in 50 countries.

The retired professor recalled the words of Founding Father James Madison, who warned against entrusting the right to go to war with just one man. “Yet,” he exclaimed, the Congress gave this right to Bush in August 2002!”

According to Johnson, “The fact that Bush has imperiled Articles 4 and 6 of the Bill of Rights—habeas corpus and illegal searches of property and person—should be enough to start impeachment proceedings. If he declares you a Bad Guy, he can put you in prison indefinitely.

“In the neocon world view,” he asserted, “America was to be the new Rome, led by the boy emperor from Crawford.

“In September 1999,” Johnson continued, “Bush II accepted the neocon flag as demonstrators protested the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The elder Bush had Brent Scowcroft as an adviser and was wise enough to seek a second opinion before accepting neocon advice.”

In Johnson’s opinion, the same forces that brought down the U.S.S.R. are working on the U.S. today. “The decline of the military empire began May 1, 2003,” he said, “when the president pretended to fly a plane onto the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln replete with a banner reading ”˜Mission Accomplished.’ Well,” he noted, “the Iraqis are no longer stooges of the Saddam regime—and they want the Americans out.”

Rather than comparing Iraq to Vietnam, Johnson would compare it to Algeria. The American attack on Fallujah, he said, is akin to the reprisals the Nazis made on occupied civilian populations.

“The Iraqis who perpetrated those atrocities on the four American mercenaries were out of Fallujah within the hour,” he pointed out. “And so to bombard the entire city is like the Gestapo rounding up every third person and executing them.”

Johnson believes bankruptcy is what will bring an end to the Pax Americana. “The military is expensive,” he explained, “but we aren’t paying for it. Instead, we are borrowing to finance it. And if those creditors in Asia find the Euro, for instance, more lucrative than the dollar and tell us to pay up, it’s all over.”

Though he is not optimistic, Johnson’s advice to the peace movement is to encourage like-minded foreigners to demand that U.S. bases be closed in their respective countries.

—Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.