MICHAEL JABARA CARLEY | 09.10.2016 | OPINION
«Why Do They Hate Us So?»:
I gave a lecture in Moscow during the spring about
western-Soviet relations over the last century. With the partial exception of
World War II, it is a narrative of unrelenting hostility. After I had finished,
a student asked, «why do they hate us so?» The answer is not complicated. You
cannot cross «da man» in the United States, that is, the powerful, wealthy US
«deep state», which sets the rules for everyone else and enforces its worldwide
hegemony against disobedient states and leaders.
You could not get more disobedient than the
Bolsheviks. In November 1917, or October according to Julian calendar, they
seized power in Russia and declared their intention to make a world socialist
revolution. You can imagine the indignation and anger of the western powers,
all at war with Imperial Germany, looking over their shoulders to see that
revolution had erupted in Russia. It’s a complicated story but not everyone in
the west reacted blindly to the Bolshevik seizure of power; none other than the
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George thought the Entente should back the
Bolsheviks against the Germans. His idea was an early prototype of the eventual
Grand Alliance.
In 1918 there were few takers for that eccentric idea
especially when the Bolsheviks annulled the tsarist state debt and nationalised
banks and industries in which foreigners held billions in investments.
In the west these actions struck at the heart of the capitalist world order,
and for the next three years, the Entente sent money, arms and troops to
overthrow the Soviet government.
The Bolsheviks acted as defenders of the revolution
but also as defenders of Russia. It was an easy transition since the so-called
Allies, had they succeeded in reversing Soviet power, would have established a
Russian semi-colony, much as they sought to do in the 1990s. The Poles too were
mobilised against Soviet Russia, launching an offensive in April 1920, with
tacit French support, to re-establish their 18th century eastern
frontiers, including the city of Kiev. The Polish plan did not work out as
intended, the Bolsheviks fought back, portraying themselves as defenders of the
traditional Russian state. Admittedly it was an incongruous role for world
revolutionaries, but if you scratched the skin of most Bolsheviks, you would
find defenders of Russian national security interests.
The Polish plan did not work out as intended, the
Bolsheviks fought back, portraying themselves as defenders of the traditional
Russian state
During the interwar years Soviet-western relations
were almost always bad. The former Entente powers punished Soviet Russia for
its refusal to pay the tsarist debts and compensate foreigners for nationalised
property and equities. They applied economic sanctions to break the Soviet
state where military force had not succeeded. The red scare, anti-Soviet
electoral politics, and containment characterised US, British and French
conduct during the 1920s. Those policies did not work. The Soviet government
relied on its own resources to modernise its economy. Joseph Stalin’s policies
were brutal and ruthless, but they led to the building of a powerful,
industrialised state by the end of the interwar period.
During the 1930s the Soviet government, recognising
early on the menace of Hitlerite Germany, proposed collective security to the
western powers, in fact, a defensive anti-Nazi alliance. At first there was
some western interest in Soviet ideas, but not for long. One by one, the USSR’s
putative allies reverted to what one Soviet diplomat, Ivan M. Maisky, called
Sovietophobia and Russophobia. Adolf Hitler portrayed Germany as a bulwark
against communism, and the French and British elites played into his hands. As
Maisky put it, the great question of the decade was «Who is enemy no. 1, Nazi
Germany or the USSR?» With notable exceptions, ruling elites in Europe got the
answer wrong.
You have to give Stalin credit for he stuck to
collective security for six years, in spite of all the failures. Only in
August 1939 did he abandon this policy when it became obvious that France and
Britain were not serious about a war-fighting alliance against Nazi Germany. It
was then that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was concluded. Western
opinion was generally indignant, conveniently forgetting the Munich accords in
1938 and all the other western attempts to compose with Hitler. Even today
Russophobic politicians, journalists and historians harp on the non-aggression
pact to blacken Russia and its president Vladimir V. Putin. Such manipulations
remind me of the Biblical parable of the mote and the beam. The west, then as
now, should pull the beam out of its own eye before criticising the mote in the
eye of Russia, Soviet or otherwise.
Unable to count on France and Britain, Stalin concluded
a modus vivendi with Hitler, not to make an «alliance» with him, but
rather as one scorpion wary of another might do, circling and raising its tail
high, ready to strike. Stalin did not want to fight alone against Nazi Germany,
but he outsmarted himself because, as it turned out, the USSR was obliged to
fight almost alone against the Wehrmacht for three years from 1941 to 1944.
This was the period of the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers.
Stalin concluded a modus vivendi with
Hitler, not to make an «alliance» with him, but rather as one scorpion wary of
another might do, circling and raising its tail high, ready to strike
I watched recently a Russian film about the Great
Patriotic War. After some bloody fighting, one Red Army soldier asks another
«what kind of allies are they, who let us do all the fighting against the Wehrmacht?»
Not a bad question to ask. Perhaps it was unfair to Franklin Roosevelt, but not
to Winston Churchill. FDR was a rare president who was able to keep at bay the
Sovietophobic US «deep state». Churchill blew hot and cold about his Soviet
allies, but as soon as the tide of battle turned against Hitler, he erupted
about Russian «barbarians» and communist «crocodiles» even though some of his
cabinet colleagues were scandalised.
Churchill erupted about Russian «barbarians» and
communist «crocodiles» even though some of his cabinet colleagues were
scandalised
In April 1945, it took the US «deep state» only a
fortnight after the death of FDR to persuade his successor, Harry Truman, to
call into question the Grand Alliance. It was also a fortnight after VE Day in
May 1945 that Churchill received a copy of «Operation Unthinkable», a plan he
requested to make war against the USSR, stiffened with ten German divisions.
In May 1945 Churchill received a copy of «Operation
Unthinkable», a plan he requested to make war against the USSR, stiffened with
ten German divisions.
The United States was quick to follow up with more
realistic ideas on building up a West German «partial state» as the best way to
contain or even roll back the Soviet presence in Europe. With the Marshall Plan
in 1947, the United States was able to buy the loyalty of Western Europeans,
transformed into dependent compradors. Stalin could not compete in that game of
rich Uncle Sam, poor Uncle Joe.
With the Marshall Plan, the United States was able to
buy the loyalty of Western Europeans, transformed into dependent compradors
Having greased the rails with the Marshall plan and
CIA money, NATO was established in 1949. Soviet propaganda portrayed the NATO
«allies» as mere US ciphers. Little has changed since then. Present day NATO
members remain compradors, obedient vassals of the United States, rather than
defenders of the national interests of the countries they represent.
Soviet propaganda portrayed the NATO «allies» as mere
US ciphers
It took another forty years for the USSR to collapse
and disappear. That period was marked by visceral hostility, interrupted only
by a brief period of cosmetic détente after the Cuban missile crisis
in 1962. World War II had scarcely ended before the red scare and containment
policies returned to the fore. It was Act II of the Cold War. In the 1980s the
USSR tried to defeat an Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan supported by the
United States. The Americans allied themselves with Islamist fundamentalists,
most notably Osama bin Laden, portrayed as a hero then, who became a villain
later. «Blowback», one American professor called it. Bin Laden was eventually
shot by US Navy Seals in Pakistan. There were many other Wahhabis, however, to
take his place.
After the disappearance of the USSR, you might think
the Americans would have declared victory and then offered a hand to the
Russian rump state under Boris Yeltsin,. who played court jester in President
Bill Clinton’s White House. Yeltsin claimed he had no choice but to submit to
the Americans, but of course he had a choice. In 1991 he and two other Soviet
politicians plotted the dissolution of the USSR for their own political
purposes. They sold out the country which the Bolsheviks had defended, and for
which 26 million soldiers and civilians died during the Great Patriotic War.
Yeltsin’s grovelling in Washington and his
encouragement of his oligarchs’ looting of Russian national resources earned
only American contempt. «Keep ‘em down» was the US policy; generosity was out.
«We won, you lost,» the Americans proclaimed. Contrary to commitments made to
the fatuous Mikhail S. Gorbachev about no NATO eastward expansion, NATO drove
right up to Russia’s western frontiers.
Under the pretext of «Russian threat», NATO drove
right up to Russia’s western frontiers
In 2000 when Putin was elected president, he
publically promoted security and economic cooperation with Europe and the
United States. After 9/11, he offered real assistance to Washington. The United
States accepted the Russian help, but continued its anti-Russian policies.
Putin extended his hand to the west, but on the basis of five kopeks for five
kopeks. This was a Soviet policy of the interwar years. It did not work then
and it does not work now.
In 2007 Putin spoke frankly at the Munich conference
on Security Policy about overbearing US behaviour. The «colour revolutions» in
Georgia and the Ukraine, for example, and the Anglo-American war of aggression
against Iraq raised Russian concerns. US government officials did not
appreciate Putin’s truth-telling which went against their standard narrative
about «exceptionalist» America and altruistic foreign policies to promote
«democracy». Then in 2008 came the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the
successful Russian riposte which crushed the Georgian army.
In 2008 came the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and
the successful Russian riposte which crushed the Georgian army
It’s been all down-hill since then. Libya, Syria,
Ukraine, Yemen are all victims of US aggression or that of its vassals. The
United States engineered and bankrolled a fascist coup d’état in Kiev and has
attempted to do the same in Syria reverting to their «Afghan policy» of
bankrolling, supplying and supporting a Wahhabi proxy war of aggression against
Syria. Backing fascists on the one hand and Islamist terrorists on the other,
the United States has plumbed the depths of malevolence. President Putin and
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have made important concessions, to
persuade the US government to avert catastrophe in the Middle East
and Europe. To no avail, five kopeks for five kopeks is not an offer the United
States understands. Assymetrical advantages is what Washington expects.
One cannot reproach the Russian government for trying
to negotiate with the United States, but this policy has not worked in the
Ukraine or Syria. Russian support of the legitimate government in Damascus has
exposed the US-led war of aggression and exposed its strategy of supporting
Al-Qaeda, Daesh, and their various Wahhabi iterations against the Syrian
government. US Russophobia is redoubled by Putin’s exposure of American support
for Islamist fundamentalists and by Russia’s successful, up to now, thwarting
of US aggression. Who does Putin think he is?
From my observations, I would reply that President
Putin is a plain-spoken Russian statesman, with the support of the Russian
people behind him. For five kopeks against five kopeks, he will work with the
United States and its vassals, no matter how malevolent they have been, if they
adopt less destructive policies. Unfortunately, recent events suggest that the
United States has no intention of doing so. After one hundred years of almost
uninterrupted western hostility, no one should be under any illusions.
The Russian people cannot be bullied and will defend
their country tenaciously
So then, the question is «Why do they hate us so?»
Because President Putin wants to build a strong, prosperous, independent
Russian state in a multi-polar world. Because the Russian people cannot be
bullied and will defend their country tenaciously. «Go tell all in foreign
lands that Russia lives!» Prince Aleksandr Nevskii declared in the
13th century: «Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as a guest.
But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and forever will we stand!»
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