Slate: Don’t Accept Putin’s Version of History. The West didn’t provoke Russia...

[MFrohike]

74. This one did not start off well

"But one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: The integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO."

Nothing quite says completely disconnected from reality than to describe the EU as a phenomenal success. However, it actually got worse, which is pretty impressive with a start like that.

"Before joining the EU, each adopted laws on trade, judiciary, human rights. As a result, they became democracies. This was “democracy promotion” working as it never has before or since."

Just don't try to practice that democracy or Merkel will cut off the funding.

" But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come."

Naked assertion with no facts offered to support it. I find it interesting that this particular time period, 1992, is chosen to make a claim of Russian revanchism given the fateful events of the very next year.

"Russia also received Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Russian recognition of Ukraine's borders."

No mention that it was deemed wiser to put all the nukes in one place than have every ex-Soviet republic selling them to the highest bidder. It makes it sound like the US was doing Russia a favor when it benefited the US just as much to have those nukes under our client's control (Yeltsin).

"Presidents Clinton and Bush both treated their Russian counterparts as fellow “great power” leaders and invited them to join the G-8—although Russia, neither a large economy nor a democracy, did not qualify.

During this period, Russia, unlike Central Europe, never sought to transform itself along European lines. Instead, former KGB officers with a clearly expressed allegiance to the Soviet system took over the state in league with organized crime, seeking to prevent the formation of democratic institutions at home and to undermine them abroad."

That section is just dishonest. It's dishonest because it neglects to mention the rather large role the US played in creating a Russia of kleptocrats. To hear this author tell it, Yeltsin never illegally attacked his elected parliament with the army with the full support and backing of Bill Clinton. You'd think he was never a quasi-dictator of Russia, supported by organized crime which was as ruthless as any ever seen in the world. He did all this with American support. How many experts, how much money, how many photo ops? How about the fact that Vladimir Putin was Yeltsin's last, drunken gift to the world?

"Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia's revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential. "

Actually, no, it was supporting a drunken dictator who reigned over a country with declining birth dates, accelerating death rates, rampant corruption, rampant disease, organized crime as the government, etc. The mistake wasn't not expanding NATO, as this author would have you believe, it was in ever supporting Yeltsin.



So, what's the point of the above? US policy toward Russia has been a succession of failures since 1989. Learn what we actually did and don't fucking do it again. This author would have us stare down Putin and I have no idea why. For Europe? Man, Merkel and the EU do exactly what Putin does, but they use the ECB and IMF instead of the army. For freedom? Whose? For Ukraine? The people of Ukraine or the plutocrats busy running it into the ground, with our full support? If you can't answer those questions honestly, you have no business dicking with Putin or anybody else because you're clearly not serious about the matter.