Daniel Lazare
Last week as Donald Trump was preparing to take office, The New York Times — reeling from Trump's interview in which he said he didn't "really care" if the European Union holds together and described NATO as "obsolete" — declared that "the big winner" of the change in U.S. presidents was Vladimir Putin.
Why? Because Putin "has been working assiduously not just to delegitimize American democracy by interfering with the election but to destabilize Europe and weaken if not destroy NATO, which he blames for the Soviet Union's collapse." And based on what Trump has been saying about the alliance and the E.U., it appears that, as of noon on Friday, Putin has a co-thinker in the White House.
The Times may be right about Putin coming out on top, but its bill of indictment against him is over the top. The Russian president is not working to delegitimize America democracy - the U.S. is doing the job just fine on its own - and he's not destabilizing Europe either since the forces undermining the E.U. are essentially generated by the West (traceable to the austerity medicine administered after the 2008 financial collapse and to the refugee flows created by the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and the "regime change" project in Syria, none of which were initiated by Putin).
But the Times is entirely correct in pointing out that Putin is now riding high. He has a friend in Washington, he's calling the shots in the Middle East, and it looks like he'll soon be in a position to hammer out a rapprochement with Europe. So the big question facing the world is: how did he do it? The answer is not by blackmailing Trump, hacking the Democratic National Committee, or any other such nonsense put out by disappointed Clintonites. Rather, Putin prevailed through a combination of skill and luck. He played his cards well. But he also had the good fortune of having an opponent who played his own hand extremely poorly. Russia won because America lost.
Years from now, as historians gather to discuss the great U.S. foreign-policy debacles of the early Twenty-first Century, they'll have much to debate - the role of oil, Zionism and Islam; the destabilizing effects of the 2008 financial meltdown; and so forth. But one thing they'll agree on will be the impact of hubris.
The U.S. emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall as history's first "hyperpower," a country whose military strength dwarfed that of the rest of the world combined. It celebrated by engaging in a series of jolly little wars in Panama, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf that seemed to confirm its invincibility. But then it made the mistake of invading Afghanistan and Iraq and found itself in serious trouble.
Why? Because Putin "has been working assiduously not just to delegitimize American democracy by interfering with the election but to destabilize Europe and weaken if not destroy NATO, which he blames for the Soviet Union's collapse." And based on what Trump has been saying about the alliance and the E.U., it appears that, as of noon on Friday, Putin has a co-thinker in the White House.
The Times may be right about Putin coming out on top, but its bill of indictment against him is over the top. The Russian president is not working to delegitimize America democracy - the U.S. is doing the job just fine on its own - and he's not destabilizing Europe either since the forces undermining the E.U. are essentially generated by the West (traceable to the austerity medicine administered after the 2008 financial collapse and to the refugee flows created by the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and the "regime change" project in Syria, none of which were initiated by Putin).
But the Times is entirely correct in pointing out that Putin is now riding high. He has a friend in Washington, he's calling the shots in the Middle East, and it looks like he'll soon be in a position to hammer out a rapprochement with Europe. So the big question facing the world is: how did he do it? The answer is not by blackmailing Trump, hacking the Democratic National Committee, or any other such nonsense put out by disappointed Clintonites. Rather, Putin prevailed through a combination of skill and luck. He played his cards well. But he also had the good fortune of having an opponent who played his own hand extremely poorly. Russia won because America lost.
Years from now, as historians gather to discuss the great U.S. foreign-policy debacles of the early Twenty-first Century, they'll have much to debate - the role of oil, Zionism and Islam; the destabilizing effects of the 2008 financial meltdown; and so forth. But one thing they'll agree on will be the impact of hubris.
The U.S. emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall as history's first "hyperpower," a country whose military strength dwarfed that of the rest of the world combined. It celebrated by engaging in a series of jolly little wars in Panama, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf that seemed to confirm its invincibility. But then it made the mistake of invading Afghanistan and Iraq and found itself in serious trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment