America: a Beacon, not a
Policeman"Sovietization" of U.S. Foreign Policy --the Russian View
| America: a Beacon, not a
Policeman |
"Sovietization" of U.S. Foreign Policy --the Russian View |
Americans Against World Empire Homepage
|
Nezavisimaya Gazeta (courtesy of United
Press International)
March 27, 2001
THE USA OR THE USSR?
America in the Soviet "expansion space"
Prominent political consultant on relations between Russia and America
Author: Gleb Pavlovsky (Key advisor to President Putin of Russia)
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE UNITED STATES IS STARTING TO USE THE COLD WAR TECHNIQUES OF THE SOVIET UNION. AN
AMERICAN SOVIET UNION IN ITS WORST FORM IS BEING CONSTRUCTED, AS GLOBAL AND IRRESPONSIBLE
AS ITS COMMUNIST PROGENITOR.
If America's activity were to be viewed as a message, it is only
in Russia that such messages are received with such ambivalence. We
perceive them as controversial and unsystematic. Now they are
offensive, and now they are ideological. Later they are vaguely
threatening or appear to be meant for the old enemy that was the
Soviet Union even though nominally directed at Russia.
There is a certain trend in US foreign policy that has been of
interest for me for quite a long time now. By Russians, it is
perceived as sovietization of the American global activity. First
indicated in how air strikes against Baghdad were covered in 1998, it
moved into high gear during the Kosovo intervention in 1999.
Sovietization of the foreign policy of the United States is more
instrumental than deliberate. This undeliberate quotation from the
ideas of the late Soviet Politburo is ascribed to the fact that
precisely the Soviet Union and not the United States that first
initiated an ideocratic globalization.
In other words, an American Soviet Union in its worst form is
being constructed, as global and irresponsible as its communist
progenitor.
The United States is inheriting Soviet globalism now. Russia is
refusing to inherit it. Instead, it is revising its own national
legacy. Russia itself quit the Soviet Union, without support from the
United States (and actually despite resistance put up by Bush the
elder) Russia recognized itself as a democratic state based on the
rule of law, a European state. This is a fact. It means that Russia is
not the Soviet Union. It is because of this that it refuses to discuss
policies based on "the necessity to protect the world from restoration
of the Soviet empire."
The United States missed the restoration of Russia - national,
popular, or integrated. It missed it for the same reason the Politburo
had missed unification of Europe.
It is clear nowadays that Russia will never be ruled from beyond,
particularly by hints from the United States. This factor alone
changes the global situation. The model is coming apart as soon as it
ceased to be total. It stumbles over what Stalin's globalism stumbled
over in Yugoslavia, and late Brezhnev's globalism in the Soviet Union
itself, in Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan - over indestructibility of
dissenter in any global balance. It turns out that reaction of the
American greatness in this case does not differ from the reaction of
Soviet impeccability - the regime has to be changed, the bastards have
to be kicked out from the corridors of power no matter what the cost.
Can we be sure America, confused as it is by its "national
interests" and "global responsibility" which it perceives from the
purely ideological standpoint, will not put Russia on the list of
rogue states one fine day? It will do us world of good to remember
that the United States shifts foreign countries from the category of
rogue states into that of partners and back for purely political
reasons. It was so with the armament of Iraq, it was so with resisting
Soviet policy in Afghanistan. (This was America's response, all the
more irresponsible a policy which ended in the long run in the end of
Afghani statehood.) We know it for what it is. It is creating a
problem so as to heroically overcome it afterwards.
It is not a joke at all, however, when a rogue element of
yesterday is instantly made a partner and America sics it on you. It
was so with Kosovo Albanians. It is so with the American hypocritical
policy with regard to Palestinians. Moreover, it is not as thought we
were not witnessing something like that in the Caucasus and Central
Asia.
When some national structure formulates its opinion in the form
of international laws and acts on the international arena,
deterioration of relations with it may mean that the country in
question will be put on the list of rogue states. The UN will only
play along. What guarantees can America offer to the world with regard
to its own reliability? No guarantees. What does it mean for Russia?
It means we should not fear a military strike from the United States.
On the other hand, attempts of "technical assistance" we have never
asked for are quite probable. What we should be wary of is a crisis of
how America understands Russia which may result in a whole bunch of
new complexes and suspicions.
There is a tendency in this country to see Washington's cunning
plots in everything. This is a relic of the Cold War, an optimistic
relic. It will be much more dangerous if we start seeing stupidity
instead of plots. Because consequences of stupidity are even more
serious.
An American patriot was told Thomas Mann the following: rely on
American common sense in a dire hour. Mann replied that dire hour was
precisely the time of hesitations and doubts. Strategic immaturity of
Washington is a fact. Can Russia rely on a country whose
administration always misunderstands Moscow, builds its policy on this
erroneous basis, and later apologizes for it?
There is no such a thing as a global American plot. There is the
amazing American inability to understand something. But this is not
its domestic policy. The US is not evil. It just dimly perceives the
world the way it is accustomed to doing. Like a student learning a
poem by heart - word by word, with his or her eyes closed for better
concentration. This world ought to be comfortable for a certain way of
perception and understanding, and therefore for the structure of
investment with minimal risks at this level of perception and
understanding.
The US is not an enemy of regimes that are not democratic. It is
an enemy of the regimes it does not understand, the regimes whose
parameters it does not control, and does not therefore knows what to
do about them in conflicts. The globally-minded United States is an
enemy of overly-independent regimes. Stalin's tactic in such cases
called for preventive conflicts. These conflicts forced the potential
threat to materialize and enforced a better discipline in his own
camp. The United States is following suit.
With prospects like that, no state can be secure. Actually,
nobody should. Every state should constantly ask itself if it has done
everything properly, if it perhaps has offended the Big Brother...
This psychology is the objective of all policies of harassment from
Stalin's purges to McCarthyism. In the international arena, it may
result in the same sort of thing - purges with the use of military
resources. As a result, we are moving towards a new variation of an
unsafe world - a proscriptionist globalism. A globalism of scaring
others, a globalism of deliberate sanctions, a police globalism.
As far as Russia is concerned, the question is fairly simple.
Unless this possibility is ruled out, military policy should take the
US philosophy of security with a grain of salt. After all, the United
States is just a big island, and we are a continental nation.
Understanding islanders' logic is sometimes difficult for us. And vice
versa. Russia cannot rely on American common sense. It needs some
protection from fools regardless or whether they live on an island or
a continent. And fools with an ideology are particularly dangerous.
It is the United States and not Russia who is the inheritor off
the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. Russia will not attend
global party conferences with reports of loyalty. Inevitably doomed
are attempts to talk to Russia as though it were a Soviet Union in
disguise, as well as attempts to force American psychological traumas
and xenophobic projections on Russia. It only reiterates the somewhat
irrational nature of American political reaction. Bent on controlling
everything and everyone, the United States is looking for the same
motive in Russia's actions. This mysterious American soul! This time
it is Russia that should help the United States get rid of the
syndrome of post-Soviet globalism. At the same time, we should not
exaggerate the role and importance of the US shifting to and fro.
US dominance is a reality which grates on the nerves of those who
long for the Soviet Union. It prevents these people from seeing
pointlessness of this dominance as a resource. A fact is not an
ideology.
We live in a world dominated by Americans. Let us take it with
humor and that is that. We have to be cleverer than Americans, and
that is that. Moreover, it is not very difficult.
Thirty years ago KGB dominance over individuals was more
impressive than US dominance over the Old World nowadays.
The Kremlin State Department provoked us then just the way the
Washington Lubyanka is provoking - a dissenter was forced into getting
a gun or a bomb. It was needed in order to do away with the dissenter
in question for good. But rouges chose a different option. Back then,
a person who decided to fight the global ideocracy could rely only on
the Soviet Constitution, a typewriter, and some student from Italy
fond of Dostoyevsky and the man himself as such. This days our
confidence is based on the reinforcing European community and on
restored and integrating Russia. Even though the US-European alliance
remains an important element of the global system, neither Russia nor
the European Union in the long run will accept sovietization of the
new world order.
The United States should have chosen a better moment to play the
Soviet Union.
(Translated by A. Ignatkin)
#1
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
March 27, 2001
THE USA OR THE USSR?
America in the Soviet "expansion space"
Prominent political consultant on relations between Russia and America
Author: Gleb Pavlovsky
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE UNITED STATES IS STARTING TO USE THE COLD WAR TECHNIQUES OF THE
SOVIET UNION. AN AMERICAN SOVIET UNION IN ITS WORST FORM IS BEING
CONSTRUCTED, AS GLOBAL AND IRRESPONSIBLE AS ITS COMMUNIST PROGENITOR.
THE US IS JUST ACCUSTOMED TO SEEING THE WORLD IN A CERTAIN WAY, AND
REFUSES TO CHANGE.
If America's activity were to be viewed as a message, it is only
in Russia that such messages are received with such ambivalence. We
perceive them as controversial and unsystematic. Now they are
offensive, and now they are ideological. Later they are vaguely
threatening or appear to be meant for the old enemy that was the
Soviet Union even though nominally directed at Russia.
There is a certain trend in US foreign policy that has been of
interest for me for quite a long time now. By Russians, it is
perceived as sovietization of the American global activity. First
indicated in how air strikes against Baghdad were covered in 1998, it
moved into high gear during the Kosovo intervention in 1999.
Sovietization of the foreign policy of the United States is more
instrumental than deliberate. This undeliberate quotation from the
ideas of the late Soviet Politburo is ascribed to the fact that
precisely the Soviet Union and not the United States that first
initiated an ideocratic globalization.
In other words, an American Soviet Union in its worst form is
being constructed, as global and irresponsible as its communist
progenitor.
The United States is inheriting Soviet globalism now. Russia is
refusing to inherit it. Instead, it is revising its own national
legacy. Russia itself quit the Soviet Union, without support from the
United States (and actually despite resistance put up by Bush the
elder) Russia recognized itself as a democratic state based on the
rule of law, a European state. This is a fact. It means that Russia is
not the Soviet Union. It is because of this that it refuses to discuss
policies based on "the necessity to protect the world from restoration
of the Soviet empire."
The United States missed the restoration of Russia - national,
popular, or integrated. It missed it for the same reason the Politburo
had missed unification of Europe.
It is clear nowadays that Russia will never be ruled from beyond,
particularly by hints from the United States. This factor alone
changes the global situation. The model is coming apart as soon as it
ceased to be total. It stumbles over what Stalin's globalism stumbled
over in Yugoslavia, and late Brezhnev's globalism in the Soviet Union
itself, in Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan - over indestructibility of
dissenter in any global balance. It turns out that reaction of the
American greatness in this case does not differ from the reaction of
Soviet impeccability - the regime has to be changed, the bastards have
to be kicked out from the corridors of power no matter what the cost.
Can we be sure America, confused as it is by its "national
interests" and "global responsibility" which it perceives from the
purely ideological standpoint, will not put Russia on the list of
rogue states one fine day? It will do us world of good to remember
that the United States shifts foreign countries from the category of
rogue states into that of partners and back for purely political
reasons. It was so with the armament of Iraq, it was so with resisting
Soviet policy in Afghanistan. (This was America's response, all the
more irresponsible a policy which ended in the long run in the end of
Afghani statehood.) We know it for what it is. It is creating a
problem so as to heroically overcome it afterwards.
It is not a joke at all, however, when a rogue element of
yesterday is instantly made a partner and America sics it on you. It
was so with Kosovo Albanians. It is so with the American hypocritical
policy with regard to Palestinians. Moreover, it is not as thought we
were not witnessing something like that in the Caucasus and Central
Asia.
When some national structure formulates its opinion in the form
of international laws and acts on the international arena,
deterioration of relations with it may mean that the country in
question will be put on the list of rogue states. The UN will only
play along. What guarantees can America offer to the world with regard
to its own reliability? No guarantees. What does it mean for Russia?
It means we should not fear a military strike from the United States.
On the other hand, attempts of "technical assistance" we have never
asked for are quite probable. What we should be wary of is a crisis of
how America understands Russia which may result in a whole bunch of
new complexes and suspicions.
There is a tendency in this country to see Washington's cunning
plots in everything. This is a relic of the Cold War, an optimistic
relic. It will be much more dangerous if we start seeing stupidity
instead of plots. Because consequences of stupidity are even more
serious.
An American patriot was told Thomas Mann the following: rely on
American common sense in a dire hour. Mann replied that dire hour was
precisely the time of hesitations and doubts. Strategic immaturity of
Washington is a fact. Can Russia rely on a country whose
administration always misunderstands Moscow, builds its policy on this
erroneous basis, and later apologizes for it?
There is no such a thing as a global American plot. There is the
amazing American inability to understand something. But this is not
its domestic policy. The US is not evil. It just dimly perceives the
world the way it is accustomed to doing. Like a student learning a
poem by heart - word by word, with his or her eyes closed for better
concentration. This world ought to be comfortable for a certain way of
perception and understanding, and therefore for the structure of
investment with minimal risks at this level of perception and
understanding.
The US is not an enemy of regimes that are not democratic. It is
an enemy of the regimes it does not understand, the regimes whose
parameters it does not control, and does not therefore knows what to
do about them in conflicts. The globally-minded United States is an
enemy of overly-independent regimes. Stalin's tactic in such cases
called for preventive conflicts. These conflicts forced the potential
threat to materialize and enforced a better discipline in his own
camp. The United States is following suit.
With prospects like that, no state can be secure. Actually,
nobody should. Every state should constantly ask itself if it has done
everything properly, if it perhaps has offended the Big Brother...
This psychology is the objective of all policies of harassment from
Stalin's purges to McCarthyism. In the international arena, it may
result in the same sort of thing - purges with the use of military
resources. As a result, we are moving towards a new variation of an
unsafe world - a proscriptionist globalism. A globalism of scaring
others, a globalism of deliberate sanctions, a police globalism.
As far as Russia is concerned, the question is fairly simple.
Unless this possibility is ruled out, military policy should take the
US philosophy of security with a grain of salt. After all, the United
States is just a big island, and we are a continental nation.
Understanding islanders' logic is sometimes difficult for us. And vice
versa. Russia cannot rely on American common sense. It needs some
protection from fools regardless or whether they live on an island or
a continent. And fools with an ideology are particularly dangerous.
It is the United States and not Russia who is the inheritor off
the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. Russia will not attend
global party conferences with reports of loyalty. Inevitably doomed
are attempts to talk to Russia as though it were a Soviet Union in
disguise, as well as attempts to force American psychological traumas
and xenophobic projections on Russia. It only reiterates the somewhat
irrational nature of American political reaction. Bent on controlling
everything and everyone, the United States is looking for the same
motive in Russia's actions. This mysterious American soul! This time
it is Russia that should help the United States get rid of the
syndrome of post-Soviet globalism. At the same time, we should not
exaggerate the role and importance of the US shifting to and fro.
US dominance is a reality which grates on the nerves of those who
long for the Soviet Union. It prevents these people from seeing
pointlessness of this dominance as a resource. A fact is not an
ideology.
We live in a world dominated by Americans. Let us take it with
humor and that is that. We have to be cleverer than Americans, and
that is that. Moreover, it is not very difficult.
Thirty years ago KGB dominance over individuals was more
impressive than US dominance over the Old World nowadays.
The Kremlin State Department provoked us then just the way the
Washington Lubyanka is provoking - a dissenter was forced into getting
a gun or a bomb. It was needed in order to do away with the dissenter
in question for good. But rouges chose a different option. Back then,
a person who decided to fight the global ideocracy could rely only on
the Soviet Constitution, a typewriter, and some student from Italy
fond of Dostoyevsky and the man himself as such. This days our
confidence is based on the reinforcing European community and on
restored and integrating Russia. Even though the US-European alliance
remains an important element of the global system, neither Russia nor
the European Union in the long run will accept sovietization of the
new world order.
The United States should have chosen a better moment to play the
Soviet Union.
(Translated by A. Ignatkin)
Copyright 2001, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, All Rights Reserved