“History repeats itself,
first as tragedy, then as farce,” a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to
mind in this time of Trump.
To those of us raised in the Truman era, when the Red Army was
imposing its bloody Bolshevik rule on half of Europe, and NATO was needed to
keep Stalin’s armies from the Channel, the threat seemed infinitely more
serious. And so it was.
There were real traitors in that time.
Alger Hiss, a top State Department aide, at FDR’s side at Yalta,
was exposed as a Stalinist spy by Congressman Richard Nixon. Harry Dexter
White, No. 2 at Treasury, Laurence Duggan at State, and White House aide
Lauchlin Currie were all exposed as spies. Then there was the Rosenberg spy
ring that gave Stalin the secrets of the atom bomb.
Who do we have today to match Hiss and the Rosenbergs? A
29-year-old redheaded Russian Annie Oakley named Maria Butina, accused of
infiltrating the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast.
Is Putin’s Russia really a reincarnation of Stalin’s Soviet
Union? Is Russia a threat of similar magnitude?
Russia is “our No. 1 geopolitical foe,” thundered Mitt Romney in
2012, now cited as a sage by liberals who used to castigate Republicans for any
skepticism of detente during the Cold War.
Perhaps it is time to contrast the USSR of Stalin, Khrushchev
and Brezhnev with the Russia of Vladimir Putin.
Have something to
say about this column?
Visit Pat’s FaceBook page and post your comments….
Visit Pat’s FaceBook page and post your comments….
By the beginning of Reagan’s tenure in 1981, 400,000 Red Army
troops were in Central Europe, occupying the eastern bank of the Elbe.
West Berlin was surrounded by Russian troops. East Germany,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria were all ruled by Moscow’s
puppets. All belonged to a Warsaw Pact created to fight NATO. Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine were inside the USSR.
By the end of the Jimmy Carter era, Moscow had driven into
Ethiopia, Mozambique and Angola in Africa, Cuba in the Caribbean, and Nicaragua
in Central America, in the greatest challenge ever to the Monroe Doctrine.
The Soviets had invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The Soviet
navy, built up over 25 years by Adm. Sergey Gorshkov, was a global rival of a
U.S. Navy that had sunk to 300 ships.
And today? The Soviet Empire is history. The Soviet Union is
history, having splintered into 15 nations. Russia is smaller than it was in
the 19th century. Russia is gone from Cuba, Grenada, Central America, Ethiopia,
Angola and Mozambique.
The Warsaw Pact is history. The Red Army is gone from Eastern
Europe. The former Warsaw Pact nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania and Bulgaria all belong to NATO, as do the former Soviet “republics” of
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
When the flagship of Russia’s navy, the aircraft carrier Admiral
Kuznetsov, sailed from Murmansk to Syria, it had to pass through the North Sea,
the Channel, the east Atlantic, the Straits of Gibraltar, and then sail the
length of the Med to anchor off Latakia.
Coming and going, the Kuznetsov was within range of anti-ship
missiles, aircraft, submarines and surface ships of 20 NATO nations, among them
Norway, Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, and many U.S. bases and
warships.
Entering the Med, the Kuznetsov had to travel, without a naval
base to refuel, within range of the missiles, planes and ships of Spain,
France, Italy and Greece. Along the banks of the Adriatic and Aegean there are
only NATO nations, except for Kosovo, which is home to the largest U.S. base in
the Balkans, Camp Bondsteel.
To sail from St. Petersburg through the Baltic Sea to the
Atlantic, Russian warships must pass within range of 11 NATO nations — the
three Baltic republics, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
Britain and France.
The Black Sea’s western and southern shores are now controlled
entirely by NATO: Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey. Russia’s lone land passage to its
naval base in Crimea is a narrow bridge from the Kerch Peninsula.
With the breakup of the USSR, Russia has been reduced to
two-thirds of the territory and half the population of the Soviet Union.
Its former republics and now neighbors Georgia and Ukraine are
hostile. Its space launches are now done from a foreign land, Kazakhstan. Its
economy has shrunk to the size of Italy’s.
It has one-tenth the population and one-fifth the economy of its
looming neighbor, China, and, except for territory, is even more dwarfed by the
United States with a GDP of $20 trillion, and troops, bases and allies all over
the world.
Most critically, Russia’s regime is no longer Communist. The
ideology that drove its imperialism is dead. There are parties, demonstrations
and dissidents in Russia, and an Orthodox faith that is alive and promoted by
Putin.
Where, today, is there a vital U.S. interest imperiled by Putin?
Better to jaw-jaw, than war-war, said Churchill. He was right,
as is President Trump to keep talking to Putin — right through the Russophobia
rampant in this city.
