The Russian Peace Threat

A lot more energy is invested by people in theorizing what respectable and corrupt influences motivate members of the U.S. Congress than at least some members of the U.S. Congress invest in thinking or in having opinions at all. If you’ve ever been the victim of one of those Tonight Show videos in which they ask you and other bumbling idiots on the street in Los Angeles to name a country, any country, or something else that easy, and you couldn’t do it, you may enjoy watching videos of U.S. Congress Members clearly incapable of finding their own asses with a flashlight and a map. Are they opposed on principle to a coup in Venezuela, or in support of one? Do they flip their position because of the party of the emperor in the White House or because of a “donation” to their campaign fund? Have they been swayed by this or that lobbyist or news report? Nope. None of it. They’re lucky if they can identify Venezuela as a place in South America where something or other happened recently. Some of these people, elected to run this so-called country, openly declare that they like to work in only one issue area, which doesn’t happen to be foreign policy. Some of them clearly oppose Trump only haphazardly and for some reason other than the babbling incoherence of his speech habits. Commentators have surmised that Trump addresses his fourth-grade-level logorrhea to the people with the misspelled signs at the fascist rallies, but it’s possible he’s actually a better communicator to Congress than some of his predecessors have been.

Of course, there are other Congress Members with intelligent informed opinions, just as there are smart people on the street in LA. And, of course, all Congress Members do have to vote sometimes, at which point it does matter who or what is determining their votes. But when it comes to thinking and forming opinions on important matters of foreign policy, the incompetence of Congress, combined with the cowardice of Congress, makes the views of those in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department all the more important. And here we’re talking about people who don’t even have to pretend to be embarrassed by being funded by weapons dealers; it’s considered a qualification. “The Russian Peace Threat” sounds strange if you’re a decent human being or if you watch MSNBC and have nightmares about Vladimir Putin. But in the halls of imperial power in Washington D.C., the threat from Russia is clearly more one of peace than war.

I just received and read a new book by Ron Ridenour called The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert. It’s 533 pages and more a collection of incidents than an argument. A lot of it is lengthy quotations, not original writing. But it ought to be read by anyone who’s not spent years searching out the best independent reporting and historical writing about U.S.-Russian relations. Not only should we understand 102 years of U.S. antagonism toward Russia, but we should recognize the power of all those years of propaganda. Typically, the U.S. government/media has demonized a foreign ruler/government/people for some months or years to get a war going, and the effects have been quite long lasting. None of those propaganda campaigns measures up to the volume and duration and all-pervasiveness of the anti-Russian theme. It’s in everything from children’s games to adults’ books, and every adult remembers it from their childhood. It’s so dominant in U.S. culture that it even twists upside down the story of the single most important and mythical incident in U.S. history: World War II. Most of those in the United States who can even tell you that the Soviet Union was on the same side as the United States in that war cannot tell you accurately which of the two countries was in the war first or which did vastly more of the killing, dying, and conquering.

The U.S. and Russian governments blame each other for violating the INF Treaty. But Gorbachev had wanted to go much further and get rid of all of the nukes. Reagan (or, rather, the people around him who decided everything) refused. The INF Treaty was the best that Russia could get the United States to do. And it did a lot of good. Missiles were destroyed by the thousands. Verification and communication procedures were set up. The ability of warmongers to push hatred and paranoia was lessened in Washington and in Moscow. And what happened during the past 18 years of U.S.-led catastrophe-creation across the Middle East and North Africa? Russia tried and tried for better relations. The United States refused. The U.S. left the ABM Treaty. The U.S. expended NATO to the border of Russia and installed missiles. The U.S. threatened and lied about Russia non-stop, habitually. And now the U.S. President wants to leave the INF Treaty, and it hardly even occurs to anyone that Congress could refuse to allow that, if it knew what the INF Treaty was, if it wasn’t busy taking lesson on what a tweet is or how to stand up straight or tie one’s shoes.

Of course, Russia no more wants the United States to trash the INF Treaty than it wants a coup in Venezuela or the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran agreement or the U.S. refusal to ban weapons in space or cyber attacks, or the U.S. weapons in Ukraine, or the ongoing expansion of NATO, or the opposition to Russian energy deals, or most of what the government of Donald Trump does. But there is apparently nothing Trump can do that would be sufficiently anti-Russian to either satisfy the warmongers or to convince the MSNBC viewers that Trump isn’t taking orders from Russia — I mean nothing that would leave anyone alive to approve of it.

The dumbing down of discourse makes it necessary to note here that by saying the United States has not exactly been a good global neighbor toward Russia, I have not in fact asserted that the Russian and Soviet governments have always or ever been perfect models of pure loving wisdom and enlightened kindness. Whatever it is that allows one to read such silliness into words that mean nothing of the sort might be considered for elimination from our public diet.

An even dumber and more common notion about Russia, of course, is that it is a demonic land filled with subhuman monsters. In U.S. culture, one has to get to know people a little bit intimately, learn their names and some details about them, in order for them to be “humanized.” With that goal in mind, I highly recommend signing up for the following trip:

“U.S. Diplomatic Mission to the Russian Federation by American Citizens, May 30 –– June 15, 2019: When official diplomacy is non-existent, when the two nuclear Superpowers are poised for war with each other, when both major political parties support a warring position toward Russia, when only one side of the history or story is being told in U.S. mainstream media, it’s time for American citizens to search for contributing factors and travel to Russia themselves to get other points of view on these issues … and collect information to bring home, to dilute the war-making efforts. The Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI), with its thirty-five year history working between the U.S. and USSR/and the new Russia, invites you to request an application for a 17-day diplomatic mission to Russia for American citizens. Please email me for more information: President and Founder, Center for Citizen Initiatives, Website: ccisf.org, sharon@ccisf.org.”

5 thoughts on “The Russian Peace Threat”

  1. Pingback: The Russian Peace Threat – limitless life

  2. People would be well advised go view the film “Who are These Russians?” by Regis Tremblay who went there and actually found them to be very civilized. That might surprise the folks who inhabit Congress, however.

  3. Pingback: The Russian Peace Threat by David Swanson + The REAL Reason The U.S. Wants Regime Change in Venezuela – Dandelion Salad

  4. (local letter to the editor)

    DEMONIZATION OF RUSSIA

    This is something I’ve been concerned about for some time; let me see if I can state my feelings in the matter clearly, together with the reasons for them.

    The “left” (and much of the “right”, but it’s a particularly useful tool for the left to wield against Trump) seems to grant Russia absolutely no legitimacy whatever. I think that they’re operating more from emotional predisposition than from rational thought based on facts; they’re making exactly the same mistake that the Trumpsters do in demonizing anyone without a white skin, and it’s ignorant and dangerous in both cases.

    Is it really out of order to stop and consider the following facts? 1) Russia is the largest country in the world, and the ninth most populous. 2) They have been one of the most important nations in the world, arguably since the ninth century, with contributions to humanity ranging from Fabergé to Dostoevsky. 3) A recent example of that importance is the role they played in WWII, where they lost twenty million people in the process of defeating the Germans. While all the major allies were crucial, if any single nation can claim preeminence in the war effort it would have to be Russia. 4) Failed though the experiment would seem to have been (like ours with democracy?), they tried in 1917 to replace a monarchical system of government with one whose fundamental premise was sharing the wealth of nations among ALL the people (this appealed to a great many Americans as well, for which sentiments they were rewarded with the Red Scare, or should I say “the first Red Scare”?). 5) Their nation has disintegrated twice in living memory, first with the Revolution and most recently with the breakup of the U.S.S.R. Is it understandable that they would like to prevent that from happening again; that they’d like to retain their status as a great nation among great nations (if you bother to listen to Putin, this is how he talks, not like Hitler, Mussolini, or Trump)? 6) One must bypass the PC demonization and look at the facts in order to see this, but is it not understandable that Russia feels threatened by the U.S. and NATO in view of the fact that they’re both absolutely centered (their rhetoric notwithstanding) on global control, demonstrated by not just “messing with elections” but by outright “regime change”, wherein we just take out your government if we don’t like it and put ours in (Venezuela is currently in the crosshairs, as is Iran [again])? We didn’t care for it one bit when Russia showed up in Cuba; how do we expect them to react when we and NATO press right up to their borders in direct contradiction of our promise not to “move one inch closer”, when Russia agreed to the reunification of Germany? Or when we pull off a regime change operation in Ukraine (just google “Victoria Nuland”) and then bleat ceaselessly away about how their reaction was pure aggression, not defense (necessitating, of course, increased $military buildup$ on our part)? How was Russia supposed to react to that threat to their Black Sea base in Crimea? Not a real threat? Nothing to do with us? Please.

    I AM NOT SAYING THAT PUTIN IS AN ANGEL. I AM NOT SAYING THAT RUSSIA IS NOT GUILTY OF A VARIETY OF AGGRESSIVE ACTIONS (including financial chicanery and all manner of hacking [in which they’re hardly alone]). What I am saying, and I’m saying it as loudly and clearly as I can, is that operating on the (easy) basis of our emotional predispositions rather than the (hard) process of clear observation, rational thought, and ultimate judgement of the heart (fairness and all that) is wrong, no matter who is doing it, and it’s dangerous. I continue to feel that we are doing this big time now with Russia, and that it’s a very substantial mistake. And I ask, what would the reaction be, were I to make the above arguments at any DNC gathering? I’d get the same stink-eye that I’ve gotten so often from the “liberals” when I try to point out where the “conservatives” happen to have a point. Emotional predisposition trumping realism.

    I can imagine a President saying “You know, Trump was right that we’d be better off if we had better relations with Russia. Why don’t we grant them the legitimacy that they deserve; give them credit where it’s due, and see if we can agree on our common interest and find ways to work together in that interest?” What if we simply refused to be turned from that path by the Congressional/Military/Industrial Complex that insists that the only way to resolve human disagreements is militarily? Isn’t it worth a try?!

    I continue to feel that a big mistake is being made here; those on the “left” are just as susceptible to normal human failings as those on the “right” and neither will admit it. It’s so much easier to blame everything on the “enemy”, rather than honestly and courageously examining our own behavior. But the hour is late; Right is right and Wrong is wrong. Either we get real now or we go over the Big Cliff to which we are so terribly close.

Leave a Reply to Jon Olsen Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.