UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia
By David Swanson
Even as some Democrats are at long last growing frustrated with the lack of actual evidence for the past several months
of stories about Russia stealing a U.S. election, Russiagate has penetrated so deeply that Trump's ambassador to the
United Nations has declared Russia's alleged crimes to be acts of war. That Russia's fictional actions being warfare would make Donald Trump guilty
of treason is really a minor glitch not to be fretted over if we step back and view the situation calmly and wisely from
the point of view of the weapons dealers.
The University of Virginia's Miller Center has hardly met a war criminal it didn't love. It's now planning three days of nonstop Russophobia:
"Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the United States and Russia have been geopolitical and ideological rivals."
That's one way of noting that the U.S. and its allies immediately sent their militaries into Russia to fight against the
revolution -- an action which had absolutely nothing to do with defending the United States or upholding the rule of law
or preventing genocide or expanding women's rights or spreading democracy or respecting national sovereignty, or any of
the other pieces of nonsense put forward as excuses for wars these days. In fact, this warmaking was a blatant violation
of the sixth of Wilson's 14 Points, and of each of the first five general Points as well.
"In aftermath of the First World War, the Bolshevik challenge to American ideals of democratic capitalism set the tone
for the rest of the century."
So, the U.S. sending troops into Russia didn't set any tones, but the Bolsheviks' disagreements with the "democratic
capitalism" that is working out so well for us did that.
"Despite a period of partnership during the great war against Hitler, the USA and the USSR viewed one another with deep
suspicion and eventually came to see the other as an existential threat. Even with the collapse of the Cold War order,
America and Russia could not develop a stable, mutually beneficial relationship, and since the advent of Vladimir Putin
to power in 2000, the relationship has reached a level of mutual enmity not seen since the depths of the Cold War."
Putin, huh? His offer of friendship and support and gift of a memorial following September 11, 2001, his willingness to
help with a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan just doesn't exist? We have to jump straight to the decline in relations that
began when Putin would not support attacking Iraq, and pretend it happened three years earlier? Boy was he wrong about
attacking Iraq, eh? That sure has paid off big time and set a moral standard for a world full of slimy rivals. (That the
year 2000 is the wrong date on which to begin the "enmity" is acknowledged by one of the Miller Center's articles.)
"This conference aims to place the current US-Russia relationship into broad historical context by returning to key
historical moments of crisis and controversy as well as restraint and compromise. By exploring U.S. presidents and their
ties to Russian and Soviet leaders, and by analyzing the perceptions of the latter, we hope to illuminate the real
nature of the bilateral relationship: the underlying forces, ideological, geopolitical, strategic, historic—that have
placed the United States and Russia at cross-purposes for the past century."
Sure you do. In preparation, the center has published several articles online. Here's the conclusion of one that begins with Wilson and Lenin:
"Putin, we are told, sees international politics as a great power game, governed by that old Thucydidean maxim that
might makes right."
Never mind by whom we are told this and what value it may have!
"This was precisely the logic of the pre-1919 world order that both Wilson and Lenin rejected. They both wanted a world
governed by norms and institutions of international cooperation; they founded the League of Nations and the Third
International, after all, around the same time. Wilson, of course, wanted an order that reflected the principles of
democratic capitalism, and Lenin, those of Communist internationalism. Both, however, would have rejected Putinism as an
abomination."
Putin is very quickly transformed into "Putinism" on the basis of what "we are told," and then denounced as an
"abomination." Egad! What can we do to avoid this abomination?
"The United States, then, has two choices in its general posture toward Russia today. One is to accept Putin’s premise
and shape its policy based on the principles of great power politics. Washington still enjoys vast economic and military
superiority over Moscow, and this, combined with America’s favorable geostrategic position, gives it considerable
leverage. Such a strategy, however, would require a clear definition of strategic priorities and some recognition,
however distasteful, of Russia’s perceived interests in its own near abroad. As much as Washington opposes Russian
involvement in Ukraine, for example, or a potential incursion into the Baltics, how far is it really willing to go to
stop them?
"The second choice is to adopt a more principled, Wilsonian perspective, as Wilson himself did toward Lenin. In this
scheme, Putin’s refusal to abide by the international norms and institutions crafted after 1945 under US influence (if
sometimes flouted by US policies) would render his regime internationally illegitimate. The United States would rally
like-minded allies (presumably, mainly in Europe) to tighten economic sanctions and further reduce diplomatic contacts."
This festering turd of an analysis was produced by Erez Manela of Harvard "No Whistleblowers Allowed!" University. The
proposal, to be clear, is for the United States, with more wars and overthrows than it can keep track of, having utterly
destroyed Iraq, having turned the Middle East into a terrorism factory, in the process of starving the entire population
of Yemen, should use moral pressure to urge Russia to start complying with the norms of good civilized cooperative
behavior.
Another Miller Center article comes from Eugene B. Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment for International "Peace," who gently hints at the possibility of
questioning the wisdom of having expanded NATO before concluding: "In retrospect, it was a sensible approach to take
during that time." Rumer also tells us that the reason for hostile U.S.-Russian relations is all Russia's fault and good
justification for U.S. hostility:
"The standard answer these days in Washington is because of Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election,
because of Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea and war against Ukraine, and because of Putin—his onslaught on
democracy at home and dangerous and megalomaniacal agenda abroad. Each of these is a serious charge capable of doing
serious damage to any relationship between almost any two countries. Taken together, they amount to a legitimate cause
for a new Cold War."
Then Derek Chollet of the German Marshall Fund of the United States tells us that, "As long as Putin remains in charge, there is very little chance for a productive US-Russian relationship, and presidents
should set expectations accordingly. . . . The United States should not be afraid of isolating Russia or plainly stating
that it will work to contain Russia’s aspirations."
Well, that ought to help things.
Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, piles onthe anti-Putin propaganda:
"Putin, like Brezhnev, is deeply illiberal. He respects force and supports militarism, venerates 'Great Fatherland war,'
and promotes state patrimonialism. Yet he is much more than a Soviet 'KGB man.' He had a steep learning curve, when the
Soviet state was destroyed and Russia was flooded by the realities of political and economic liberalization. He accepted
fundamental failure of Communism as economic and ideological doctrine, and does not want to rebuild a territorial Soviet
empire. His project is to improve Russia's place in the existing world order, not to create a new one. And his idea of
power is closer to what he perceives Arab sheiks, China, and Latin American politics to be than to the tsars and the
commissars."
It's remarkable how little any of these demonizers of Putin even mention the existence of Donald Trump.
In a nod to fact-based reality, the Miller Center has included one article by Allen Lynch, professor of politics at the
University of Virginia, which reminds us that, beyond Russia's refusal to back an attack on Iraq in 2003, a big cause of animosity was the way in which the U.S.
played Russia and other nations at the U.N. in 2011, when it pretended it wanted to attack Libya merely to prevent a
fictional threat of genocide, but immediately proceeded to overthrow the government. It was this experience that led
Russia to take a very different approach to U.S. actions in Syria.
Even Lynch, however, brings up the "Ukraine crisis" without ever mentioning the U.S. role in creating it. He does,
however, acknowledge a Russian perspective:
"So long as countries like Ukraine and Georgia remain eligible for NATO membership, Moscow cannot assume that it can
provide for its security at the negotiating table with Washington."
That's reality. I don't expect it to get in the way of the Miller Center's work.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
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