While Putin is preparing for "war." Republicans only seek to undermine this country's ability to counter the threat

 

In Trump World today, democracy is “the enemy”; even many so-called “mature” Republican U.S. senators claim fraud is afoot despite the knowledge that the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and to “remedy” that “inconvenience,” Republicans on the state level are conducting blatant efforts to cheat their way to “victory” through voter suppression. Republicans are “big” on protecting the right to own guns that kill people, but not the right of the people to peacefully vote. Go figure.

But back in the “old” days, both Republicans and Democrats agreed that the principle enemy of democracy here and around the world was the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. After the fall and break-up of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, the new Russian state appeared poised to join the democratic world. But under the “leadership” of Boris Yeltsin, democracy did not take hold, mainly because the West falsely assumed that younger Russians favored change. But even in the 1990s, before the rise of Vladimir Putin, supposedly “liberal” Russians were few and far between, and most endorsed strong-armed nationalism.

This nationalism may have been partly the result of disillusionment that their country was no longer a “superpower,” and Russians blamed the “chaos” of pseudo-democratic governing for it. But unlike other eastern-bloc countries that only fitfully “embraced” communism after World War II and had a tradition of capitalism, Russians lived under a system where their every movement was controlled by the state for 70 years, and the acceptance of state control became even more ingrained during war, since it was “necessary” to win it. Nothing has really changed in Russia since the break-up, and most of the few anti-corruption activists, journalists and political opponents seem to be in jail or have been “mysteriously” murdered. If that was happening in the U.S., people would be demanding justice; in Russia, it’s just the routine of life.

That Russia would remain an enemy of the West because people willingly “follow the leader” was suggested in British author Colin Thubron’s account of his trip to Russia in the early 1980s, Among the Russians, first published in 1983. This relatively small, 200-page book—which I just happened to find laying discarded in the grass in Seattle—makes for a fascinating time-waster while waiting for the laundry to finish. In his interactions with younger Russians, Thubron found that while they didn’t share their elders veneration of the past (let alone knew anything about the Great Patriotic War), they betrayed no dissatisfaction with the political system in their country; they had simply grown accustomed to it. Each day passed on like the one before, and the next day would be more of the same; they didn’t have to make any decisions, and they liked it that way.

Of course in a democracy, people have to inform themselves about what they want and what political parties offer the most useful policies to achieve those wants and desires. But in Russia, voters didn’t really know what they wanted, and no real political parties emerged with competing visions of the direction of the country. In the end, Russians settled on one “political party” that was ultra-nationalist and only serves as a rubberstamp for anything Russia’s current dictator, Putin, declares he intends to do—and most Russians are quite happy that someone is doing all the “thinking” for them, as long as it makes them feel “super” again.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the Republicans seem more interested in making our country weaker internationally, while blaming Joe Biden for Trump’s many mistakes. I dare you to name even one international agreement with Trump’s signature on it. What did Trump ever do on the foreign policy front that didn’t simply destroy, alienate or make things worse? Take Iran, for example. Trump vacated the nuclear agreement, but to what purpose? The other signatories to the agreement didn’t follow his lead, and Trump never provided a revised proposal of what he wanted. All he wanted to do was “kill” it simply because it had Barack Obama’s name on it.  Did Iran cave in? No, because other than minor annoyances, nothing has really changed, and Iran only used Trump’s actions as an excuse to “enhance” its nuclear capabilities.

And then of course there is Russia again, whose dictator Trump considered a “good friend.” While Trump did leave most sanctions against Russian oligarchs in place, he did nothing to pressure Putin to stop threatening the Ukraine—in fact he threatened the Ukraine by withholding military assistance for personal political ends—or stop election interference and cyber attacks. Trump was so desperate to be make Russia our “friend” that he mindlessly believed every lie Putin told him, and all to no purpose for U.S. interests. Trump only made to the U.S. weaker in the face of a threat that Russian expert Rebekah Koffler wrote in The Hill yesterday was “more dangerous now” than it was during the Cold War.

Koffler notes that it is “understandable” from the Russian perspective that the possibility of the Ukraine entering a military alliance with the West is a “red line” that can’t be crossed. But Russia under Putin has gone out its way to distance itself politically and culturally from the West. The West did want Russia to join them in a “pan-European” entity with shared interests, but Putin is a man with delusions of grandeur, and he wants nothing less than to be the leader of a reconstituted Russian “empire,” and because the West stands in the way of that, the West is still as much the “enemy” as it was in the Cold War period, with the U.S. still the strongest power in the Western “bloc,” and thus still the number one “enemy” of Russia. It is Russia which chose that—and because in the minds of most Americans “we” did not choose that, Putin seems to think that the U.S. is too “weak” to stop him.

Koffler writes that the U.S. spent $23 billion on military intelligence last year, but the present director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, professes that all that money was insufficient to determine why Putin is mobilizing massive forces on the Ukrainian border. Putin has not been clear about what his intentions are, and in this way. Koffler says, “Moscow confuses Western intelligence services and desensitives them to constant changes in force posture, so Putin can conduct a surprise attack if he chooses.” If Putin does send in Russian forces in a ground offensive in the Ukraine, he has threatened a “swift, asymmetric and harsh response” if NATO attempts to intervene militarily.

Putin, for some reason, fears that any success of democracy in the Ukraine and neighboring countries is a “threat” to his dictatorial regime, which is why he has sought to undermine U.S. elections, and to used his intelligence services to corrupt Ukrainian officials and undermine belief in the democratic system there.  Because of this threat to his regime, Putin has ignored economic unrest in the country and poured oil revenues into creating new and more dangerous weapon systems—some of which in testing have seen “mishaps” causing death and environmental damage from radioactive contamination.

Koffler also points out that Moscow’s to us seemingly irrational, “brutal and pitiless” behavior is motivated by “deeply rooted fear of the United States…convinced that U.S. anti-Soviet policy led to the demise of the Soviet Union, rather than its own economic and totalitarian social policies. Putin believes that Washington seeks to weaken Russia economically and militarily and topple his regime.” Putin probably is in correct in one regard: after more than 20 years in power, most people here are tired of his tough-guy act, and want to see if someone else has any better ideas; after all, his friend Trump lost an election, and hopefully we won’t be seeing him holding office ever again.

Putin believes that a U.S.-Russian war is “inevitable,” writes Koffler, which is why Russians have been hacking into government and military computer systems, because they believe that the U.S. military is too dependent on “technology,” and thus is vulnerable to being disrupted by cyber attacks. Russians also “think they understand the American psyche and can maintain the current U.S.-Russian confrontation below the threshold of actual war,” says Koffler, and they believe they can do this by amplifying “existing societal tensions and fuel instability” by disinformation and covert influence operations in this country.

Putin is probably correct in that assumption, because Republicans seem to be deliberately playing into his hands. Of course Republicans are willing toadies to Russian undermining faith in our system of government. I mean, look at what Republicans are doing in Arizona today—six months after the election, and they still insist on a recount of votes in one Democratic-leaning country in search of “fraud.” A Gallup poll in 2016 showed virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats in belief in the threat posed by Russia to U.S. interests; today, only half as many Republicans consider Russia a threat compared to Democrats, and this is wholly due to Trump’s deliberate efforts to deny or underplay that threat.

Like Russians, Trump supporters simply cannot think for themselves—they need their “leader” to do their thinking for them. The problem for us is that their “leader” is preparing for war, and we are not.