Pat on Vlad
February 13, 2007
Does Putin Not Have a Point? By Patrick J. Buchanan
“A soft answer turneth away wrath,” teaches Proverbs 1:15.
Our new secretary of defense, Roberts Gates, seems familiar with the
verse. For his handling of Saturday’s wintry blast from Vladimir
Putin at the Munich security conference was masterful.
“As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday’s speeches almost filled me
with nostalgia for a less complex time,” said Gates, adding,
“Almost.” A former director of the CIA, Gates went on to identify
with Putin: “I have, like your second speaker yesterday … a career
in the spy business. And I guess old spies have a habit of blunt
speaking.
“However, I have been to re-education camp, spending the last four-
and-a-half years as a university president and dealing with faculty.
And as more than a few university presidents have learned in recent
years, when it comes to faculty it is either ‘be nice’ or ‘be gone.’”
Gates added he would be going to Moscow to talk with the old KGB
hand, who will be retiring as Russia’s president around the time
President Bush goes home to Crawford. Excellent.
For one of the historic blunders of this administration has been to
antagonize and alienate Russia, the winning of whose friendship was a
signal achievement of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And one of
the foreign policy imperatives of this nation is for statesmanship to
repair the damage.
What did we do to antagonize Russia?
When the Cold War ended, we seized upon our “unipolar moment” as the
lone superpower to seek geopolitical advantage at Russia’s expense.
Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe
voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not
move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring
Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and
virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother
Russia’s front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in
Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.
Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from
Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.
Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old
Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-
bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.
Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states
like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile
systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?
Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and
Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations and
“human rights” institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA
director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in
Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and Russia herself.
U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine and
Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated
restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without
justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.
Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime
of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for
refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take
over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest
in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.
These are Putin’s grievances. Does he not have a small point?
Joe Lieberman denounced Putin’s “Cold War rhetoric.” But have we not
been taking what cannot unfairly be labeled Cold War actions?
How would we react if China today brought Cuba, Nicaragua and
Venezuela into a military alliance, convinced Mexico to sell oil to
Beijing and bypass the United States, and began meddling in the
affairs of Central America and Caribbean countries to effect the
electoral defeat of regimes friendly to the United States? How would
we react to a Russian move to put anti-missile missiles on Greenland?
Gates says we have been through one Cold War and do not want another.
But it is not Moscow moving a military alliance right up to our
borders or building bases and planting anti-missile systems in our
front and back yards.
Why are we doing this? This country is not going to go to war with
Russia over Estonia. With our Army “breaking” from two insurgencies,
how would we fight? By bombing Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Just as we deluded ourselves into believing this war would be a
“cakewalk,” that democracy would break out across the Middle East,
that we would be beloved in Baghdad, so America today has undertaken
commitments, dating to the Cold War and since, we do not remotely
have the resources or will to fulfill. We are living in a world of
self-delusion.
Somewhere in this presidential campaign, someone has to bring us back
to earth. The halcyon days of American Empire are over.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of “The
Death of the West,” “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire”
and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”