A fateful struggle
Stephen F. Cohen writes another love letter to Putin in The Nation:
Cohen argues that America is now in unprecedented danger due to two related crises. A new and more dangerous Cold War with Russia that is fraught with the real possibility of hot war between the two nuclear superpowers on several fronts, including Syria. And the worst crisis of the American presidency in modern times, which threatens to paralyze the president’s ability to deal diplomatically with Moscow. (To those who recall Watergate, Cohen points out that, unlike Trump, President Nixon was never accused of “collusion with the Kremlin” or faced reckless, and preposterous, allegations that the Kremlin had abetted his election by an “attack on American democracy.”)
(He’s describing himself in the third person because he’s summarizing a dialogue he had with John Batchelor on the latter’s eponymous radio show.)
What Trump did in Vietnam last week was therefore vitally important and courageous, though uniformly misrepresented by the American mainstream media. Despite unrelenting “Russiagate” attempts led by Democrats to impeach him for “collusion with the Kremlin” (still without any meaningful evidence), and perhaps even opposition by high-level members of his own administration, Trump met several times, informally and briefly, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Presumably dissuaded or prevented by some of his own top advisers from having a formal, lengthy meeting, Trump was nonetheless prepared. He and Putin issued a joint statement urging cooperation in Syria, where the prospects of a US-Russian war had been mounting. And both leaders later said they had serious talks about cooperating on the crises in North Korea and Ukraine.
Because why would we not want to cooperate with Putin? Why would we not prefer the journalist-murdering oligarch to more “mainstream” (as Cohen puts it) allies like Merkel and Macron? Why would we not want to cooperate with Putin on his takeover of Ukraine?
Trump’s diplomatic initiatives with Putin in Vietnam also demonstrate that a fateful struggle over Russia policy is under way at high levels of the US political-media establishment, from the two political parties and Congress to forces inside Trump’s own administration. Whatever else we may think of the president—Cohen reiterates that he did not vote for him and opposes many of his other policies—Trump has demonstrated consistency and real determination on one existential issue: Putin’s Russia is not America’s enemy but a national-security partner our nation vitally needs. The president made this clear again following the scurrilous attacks on his negotiations with Putin: “When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
This shit is in The Nation of all places.
Cohen is married to the editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, but that just pushes the puzzle back a step, it doesn’t solve it.
That was one of the first things that struck me.
I think there are some on the left who reflexively distrust any distrust of Russia, because they hearken back to McCarthyism. Even though McCarthyism was an awful evil, that doesn’t mean the Soviet Union was all about fluffy bunnies and cute puppies; Stalin’s regime was brutal, and many of his successors were only marginally better. And Putin? Putin is not our friend. Putin is nobody’s friend. Not Trump’s. Not mine. Not Cohen’s. Not Russia’s. Putin is only Putin’s friend.
There is a clear segment on the left, which denies that “Russia is a thing”, has been since the allegations first surfaced. This segment not only claims there’s no evidence of collusion with Russia, that even if there is it’s no big deal, that the American people (i.e. the voters) don’t care either way (this may be true, granted), and most striking of all, that Russia is not a threat to anyone.
As someone who grew up in a country next to the then Soviet Union, now Russia, I would like to state that the last claim is at best unbelievably naiive based on history and geopolitics alone.
Granted, these people may think that Russia is not a realistic threat to the U.S. at this time, which is a slightly more defensible position. There’s plenty of evidence from all over Europe, of Russia’s attempts to undermine the general international consensus that democracy and civil rights are meaningful concepts, which governments ought to follow. This does not however necessarily translate into a direct military or economic threat at this point.
This segment of the left isn’t mainly centrist, nor does it seem to be uniformly far left either. As far as I can tell, it includes people from all over the left spectrum. People who otherwise seem clear, evidence based thinkers are included, so it’s not even just a lot of insulary know nothings. The claim that people talking about Russia are attempting to start a new cold war is a popular one. People who make it seem to completely ignore the actions Russia is taking in that direction and I’m left wondering whether they’re ignorant of international politics or just don’t want to see what’s going on. The fact that the corporate media is giving the Russia scandal a lot of attention does not seem to be helping, as it’s typically taken as a confirmation that it’s a manufactured issue meant to distract. I’ve been following this for a while now and I’m quite baffled about it. There are news sources I otherwise like, but which have such abysmal reporting on the Russia scandal that I ignore all their stories on that issue.
It’s one of those things I think, that once you notice it once, you start noticing it all over the place. I don’t think it’s spreading right now, but if it starts to, that’ll be worrying.
Part of the catastrophe that made Trump possible is the self-paralyzing, ‘populist’ tone of the supposedly progressive Left. The Assange-Greenwald-Chomsky fed progressives are as much in a bubble as the Fox News-Breitbart crowd. Self-righteous indignation is tapped like a fossil fuel in the service of any absurdity.