(By William Moloney, ‘76 Blog Contributor) Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a “Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma.” Now in an atmosphere super-charged by election year controversies the United States is once again trying to puzzle out what the Russians are up to and what we should do about it.
In the course of the Twentieth Century the greatest American authority on Russia was the diplomat/historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005). Those unfamiliar with Kennan’s remarkable career might usefully consult a brief but brilliant book, George Kennan: A Study of Character, by the distinguished historian John Lukacs.
When Franklin Roosevelt established diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia in 1933 he sent the young Kennan to Moscow as second-in-command to Ambassador William Bullitt. In 1952 as Truman’s Ambassador Kennan was expelled from the Soviet Union by Stalin at least in part because he understood the Russians all too well.
In between—February 1946—Kennan sent the famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow, arguably the most consequential document in U.S. diplomatic history. It propounded the doctrine of “Containment” which became the foundation of American policy toward Russia right to the end of the Cold War over forty years later.
In his classic Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin and numerous other books Kennan stressed the critical difference between Lenin, the ideologically driven Marxist intellectual, and Stalin, a “peasant Tsar” principally motivated by Russian Nationalism—a distinction often misunderstood by American policy-makers.
Throughout his long academic career Kennan was frequently a stern critic of U.S. foreign policy. In his view Americans tended toward a naive faith in the absolute purity of their own motives while being reflexively suspicious and dismissive of everyone else’s.
In one of his last and most prophetic warnings to his countrymen Kennan in 1997 wrote in the New York Times that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into Eastern Europe including parts of the former Soviet Union would be the most disastrous mistake of American foreign policy in decades, a move that would retard “development of Russian democracy and restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West Relations.”
As related in the Memoirs of Mikhail Gorbachev and confirmed by Jack Matlock—the last American Ambassador to the Soviet Union—Russia was given a “clear commitment” that such an expansion would not take place. However a Russia gripped by political and economic chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union was in no position to resist when NATO violated said assurances by welcoming the Baltic Republics and several other nations into the alliance.
This expansion would fundamentally transform the NATO alliance and extend its guarantees to peoples and places that would, as Kennan predicted, inevitably provoke Russia. It would also contribute significantly to the rise of Vladimir Putin.
Additionally this expansion would severely strain the coherence of a heretofore very successful alliance and test the loyalty of members to the dramatically increased commitments it entailed.
A 2015 poll by the PEW Research Trust asked the following question of citizens in major NATO countries: “If Russia attacks a fellow NATO ally militarily should we respond?” Only 38% of Germans said “yes,” Italians 40%, French 47%, Spaniards 48%, and British 49%. Only in the USA did a majority (56%) say “yes.” Anders Rasmussen, the former Secretary-General of NATO, called these results “extremely disturbing news.”
Reflecting on this one wonders what Kennan might have thought of George W. Bush in 2008 supporting NATO membership for distant Georgia and also for Ukraine, which prior to 1991 was part of Russia for a thousand years.
Today war-weary America principally concerned with economic revival and defeating radical Islamic terrorism contemplates yet another “reset” in Russian-American relations.
Realistically U.S. commitments to NATO absolutely must be honored, but deeper involvement further East in the historic Russian heartland risks a permanent hostility between Russia and America, which will greatly benefit China, Iran, and North Korea, but not the U.S..
It is now past time to clearly define what is in America’s national interest and what is not.
William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post and Human Events
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