A friend asked my opinion of this preposterous article by Stephen F. Cohen. What follows is the sort of thing that happens when I read a bad article on a good day and have an excuse to jot down my reactions as I read:
Hmmmm.
1) This retired prof must think it’s nice to have a chance drag out his old Cold-War “Americans are jingoistic bullies” pro-Soviet rhetoric, again, after so many years. He sounds just like he probably sounded in the 1980s.
2) “the unlawful change of government in Kiev.” Hmmmm. Interesting choice of words in the 2nd sentence of the essay. One might also refer to “the change of unlawful governments in Kiev,” I suppose. Or possibly, “the predictable result of kleptocratic oligarchy in Kiev.” Hmmm….
3) “potentially more dangerous than its US-Soviet predecessor the world barely survived” — incoherent attempt to have it both ways. IF this is more dangerous, it is because actual hot conflicts are more likely BECAUSE less costly. IF the world “barely survived” the Cold War, it wasn’t because of the (surprisingly few) hot conflicts, but because the (never actually suffered) worst-case scenario was so very costly (global thermonuclear war).
4) his points about the risk of tactical nukes are worth noting. Also worth noting: the U.S. wargaming in the early 1980s that assumed tactical nuke use in a total war scenario between NATO and Warsaw Pact was very likely, ICBM use much less likely. Nothing new here, but certainly a thing to think about.
5) “surreal demonization of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin” — oh, HONESTLY. I don’t know precisely how much one needs to do to “demonize” a grandiose totalitarian leader with aggressive regionalist ambitions. Another friend has been sending me far-out Pravda snippets for years, now, that sound quite a bit like the Bad Old Days to me.
…I mean, I don’t know precisely what the job requirements for “Director, KGB” were, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t include saintly character.
6) Oh, OK, yeah, pretty much thought so from the first paragraph: “We—opponents of the US policies that have contributed so woefully to the current crisis—are few in number, without influential supporters and unorganized. I am old enough to know our position was very different in the 1970s and 1980s, when we struggled for what was then called détente.” They lost the political argument, and Reagan + Thatcher + John Paul II won the Cold War. Gorbachev understood Russa far better than Prof. Emeritus Cohen, methinks.
7) Repeated references to Kissinger. WOW, this guy is living in the 1970s. “And back when me and Lincoln and Napoleon and Catherine the Great had lunch, that one time, back then we KNEW how the world should be run.” Sad when old Marxist fellow-travellers are so eager to find any opening for their old lines.
8) …oh, yeah, here’s where he was in 1985: [ 1985 Times Review ] …so I guess it all comes down to just exactly how much better it would have been to be ruled by the guy who devised Stalin’s “Socialism In One Country” and helped Stalin get rid of Trotsky than by, say, Stalin or Trotsky. Color me skeptical that any of these guys were the great hope of anybody except those who take Lenin and Mao as their idea of moderate centrists….
9) “Russia’s traditional zones of national security” — if by “traditional” you mean the Warsaw Pact, then yes. But the USSR is hardly the only transnational imperialist/colonial power to be divested of its holdings in the 20th Century; and this line of argument also assumes that Russia, or the Russian Federation, is somehow meant to account for the whole of the legitimate political units in the former Soviet Union. If you do *not* assume that, then building up Russia’s neighbors in order to *prevent* the rise of a Russia with a USSR-style grand strategy is a pretty sensible notion.
10) Ukraine *is* historically divided, and, uh–so are the rest of “Russia’s traditional zones of national security,” which represent scores of transitional spaces and ancient migration routes.
11) The idea that the EU proposal was a “provocation” is … breathtaking Putin propaganda. It did force the kleptocrat-in-charge to choose, sure. And he chose the side more likely to keep his corrupt oligarchy in charge, while a vocal and successful opposition movement rejected his regime.
12) Similarly, Cohen’s description of the Maidan protests is history airbrushing of a positively Stalinist sort. Well, actually, given that he loves Bukharin, and Bukharin was the Pravda editor, perhaps we should call it Bukharin-esque rewriting of history. Here’s something fairly middle-of-the-road.
13) “patriotic heretics” … piffle.
…………………..
Well, that’s what I think of the article. Twaddle from the 70s.