Even Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large at Sun Myung-Moon’s Washington Times and United Press International, thinks the Putin-bashing is excessive:
Beating up on Russia’s shrinking democracy has become a geopolitical blood sport from Vice President Dick Cheney down to unreconstructed cold warriors who gleefully say, “I told you so.” They see no contradiction in berating Vladimir Putin’s governing style and imprecatory Bush administration diplomatic efforts to enlist the Russian president’s support to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Even Moscow’s anti-Putin newspaper Kommersant called the Bush administration’s Russophobia an echo of the history-making 1946 Fulton speech when Winston Churchill first warned of an Iron Curtain descending across Europe from Stettin to Trieste.
He notes the provocations …
Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire, NATO’s frontiers have moved steadily eastward. First it took in three of Moscow’s ex-satellites—Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Two years ago, NATO expanded by seven new members to 26 countries by taking in six former Soviet satellites: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia—and Slovenia. Now NATO’s frontier extends from the Black Sea coast to Finland. Its air defense shield covers the Baltic States with a tripwire presence of four F-16 fighter planes in Lithuania. The U.S. is also setting up “lilypad” bases on the Black Sea for contingency deployments in the Middle East or the Caucasus.
… and the huge risks taken by the US that affect the world economy:
Today, the U.S. borrows $7 billion a day—much of the debt held by China, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia—to stay in the superpower business. But Mr. Putin does not denounce President Bush for gambling with global monetary stability. Or blast the laissez-faire gambling of a derivative market of $300 trillion (U.S. Fed estimate)—not $300 billion—in bets for or against almost anything placed by wealthy hedge fund managers. Futures, forwards, options, calls, swaps are greed run amok.
Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, has raised serious concerns about the growing menace of derivatives. A derivatives meltdown would be a global financial tsunami.
Naturally, when one is talking about the Bush administration, there’s a healthy dose of hypocrisy involved:
The double standard of the Bush administration is also a sore point in Moscow. The U.S. accuses Russia of playing “pipeline politics” while the U.S. lobbies hard for the new Baku–Ceyhan pipeline through the near abroad to avoid Russian territory.
And the Russians haven’t forgotten the role played by the US in “restructuring” the former Soviet Union:
Deeply resented in Russia is how the U.S. pushed in 1991 for instant political democracy and market economics to replace communism cold turkey. This led to history’s biggest plunder. Some $220 billion was literally stolen from Russia—from raw materials and icons to gold and diamonds—and stashed in offshore bank accounts to buy choice properties from France to Fiji and Buenos Aires to Berlin. A country that had known nothing but authoritarian rule for 1,000 years was suddenly turned over to bandit capitalism—and eventually total collapse under Boris Yeltsin.
Putin is taking steps to clean up the mess, and for that he’s popular in his own country (70% approval, compared to 30% for George Bush and pocket change for his attack dog, Dick Cheney). Also, the Russians do not suffer from a starry-eyed admiration of the United States—Vanya and Lyuba are more likely to tease myth from reality than Jack and Amanda. Borchgrave concludes:
Russian news reports from the United States also reflect American democracy, warts and all. Six out of 10 young Americans between ages 18 and 24 could not find Iraq on a map of the world. Half of U.S. teachers are likely to quit within the first five years because of low salaries and poor working conditions. More than 50 percent of the U.S. prison population of 2.1 million is black.
The litany is long. But it should teach us that when we live in a glass house, with full transparency, we should ease up on the brickbats.
Indeed. (If old Arnaud is engaging in a bit of arcane disinformation, he sure fooled me.)
