“It was as if the West’s central philosophical commitment to limited government was extirpated by a crude economic determinism that insisted on no government in Russia.” (Peter J. Stavrakis, Kennan Institute Occasional Papers, 1993).
Diplomatic advisors and analysts are a funny breed. They can be lauded as sages, called upon to clarify the complex and offer the odd lapidary statement. Such advice is often ignored and, if implemented, done selectively. The politicians back home are bound to foul things up.
The National Security Archive of George Washington University, as it so often does, performed a fabulous service for historians of diplomatic history prior to Christmas by publishing an insightful cable on US-Russian relations. The 70-paragraph telegram from the US Embassy in Moscow, which has assumed the status of legend, came from analyst E. Wayne Merry in March 1994.
Critical of Washington’s obsession with shock economic reform for a post-Communist Russia, the cable is now publicly available because of the Archive’s successful lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When authored, its content was deemed so hot it had to be sent via the Dissent Channel, limiting circulation within government circles.
One historical parallel regarding Merry’s cable stands out, up to a point. As the Briefing Book put together by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton suggests, George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram authored in April 1946 is an obvious contender. Then the chief of mission to the Secretary of State in Moscow, Kennan’s assessment (“without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of oversimplification”) came to shape Cold War policy. From his suggestions spawned a costly, expansive global machinery based as much on astrological whim as on ideological delusion. While some of this can be laid at the feet, and mind of Kennan, it would be churlish to avoid the more tempered assessments he offered to superiors who simply picked what was expedient and useful at the time.
In terms of “practical deductions” for US policy, Kennan underlined the perceived threat:Washington faced “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the US there can be no permanent modus vivendi.” Soviet power, to be secure, would disrupt, destroy “our traditional way of life” and break “the international authority of our state”. To combat this, Kennan offered a menu list. Soviet power would, for instance, retreat when faced with “the logic of force”. The Soviets remained, vis-à-vis the West, “by far the weaker force.” The durability of the Soviet system had yet to prove itself. Soviet propaganda would be “relatively easy to combat” by means of “any intelligent and really constructive program.”
In full swing as lecturing sage, Kennan urged understanding with “courage, detachment, objectivity” of what the US was facing; educate the public about Russia while placing US dealings “entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis”; ensure societal health and vigour on the home front, seeing as communism fed, “like a malignant parasite […] on diseased tissue”;guide other nations rather than impose responsibilities; and avoid allowing “ourselves to become like those whom we are coping.”
The end of the Soviet Union, which did show parts of the Kennan assessment to have been accurate, presented an opportunity for addressing the new post-Cold War realities. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a political entity, with communism in harried retreat.
Merry’s long telegram of March 28, 1994 echoes Kennan’s guiding tone, though it has a rather gamey taste and would never receive the tutored readership it deserved. The title is instructive: “Whose Russia is it Anyway? Toward a Policy of Benign Respect.” It enabled Merry to furnish own warnings about US policy till that point, which had failed to consider the effects economic shock therapy was having, fed and encouraged by the swarm of US aid specialists indifferent to necessary, accompanying political reforms. Terms such as “democracy” and “the market”, treated as synonymous, if not “mutually dependent” terms in American rhetoric, resisted replication in the Russian context. “Russians (and most non-Americans) are simply baffled by this vision of a societal double helix of political and economic decisions leading to a higher moral and material state of being.”
It was a central contention of Merry that what was contributing to an increasingly cooling relationship between Moscow and Washington at that point was the role of foreign aid and an increasing suspicion in the country of the radical “marketeers”. Russia had been turned into a gargantuan charity case, flooded by ignorant charity workers – of the highly specialised sort – described by local officials as “assistance tourists”. This also meant an utter neglect in terms of reforming the civil institutions necessary for stability, including training a new civil service to supplant the command economy bureaucrats. Unlike the post-Second World WarMarshall Plan that directed aid into clearly stipulated channels to stimulate growth in a devastated Western Europe, these “assistance tourists” rarely thought of asking “their hosts for an appraisal of Russian needs”.
US assistance, he warned, had become “a net detriment to the bilateral relationship.” Three reasons were offered: the overselling of assistance comprised primarily of “financial intangibles and technical assistance”; the failure of much of the assistance to ever leave US shores or enter Russian hands; and the “friction” caused by the intrusiveness of the programs and “linking assistance with Russian actions in other spheres.” On a tart note, Merry suggests that the point had been reached “where it is arguable that the best service our aid program could now serve could be to permit [Russian President] Boris Yeltsin publicly to tell America to take its money and shove it.”
US policy towards an ailing, then moribund, and eventually extinct Soviet Union, is not a glorious tale. Promises, to be frequently broken, were made to placate and sooth the Russian psyche that eastward expansion on the spear of NATO, incorporating former Warsaw Pact states, would not take place. Russia, as vulnerable economic patient, was assured that capitalist fed prosperity was just around the corner, even as communism’s hammer and sickle, with its proletarian promise, repaired to the historical museum.
While historical forces, local conditions and cultural idiosyncrasies will always guide the development of any state and community, there is something to be said that post-Cold War Russia might have taken something of a different path had Merry’s sharp words found their mark. But a hubristic atmosphere had infected Washington, heated by such neoliberal dogmatists as Larry Summers, Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs between 1993 and 1995. Officials in his department went so far as to shield him from Merry’s observations, claiming they would give him “a heart attack.” Far better to let the Russian economy suffer a cardiac arrest instead and wait for the consequences we see today.
Also by Dr Binoy Kampmark: Detained Without Charge: Eleven Yemenis Leave Guantánamo
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As the article also covers the period after the collapse of the Soviet system, I’m surprised that Dr Kampmark has not delved deeper into Kennan’s advice at that time, instead preferring to focus on his advice from decades before. The earlier advice was indeed problematic as the article shows, but his advice in the 90s was insightful, and ignored.
After the expansion of NATO to Russia’s doorstep had begun, George Kennan stated that NATO’s decision was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Far from protecting the West, he explained, expansion would lead the U.S. toward war with Russia. And once this outcome occurred, Kennan correctly predicted that proponents of the expansion would say this proved that inherent Russian militarism was the cause.
Kennan stated: “Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the proponents of expansion will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.”
Kennan’s prediction was doubly correct: First, about Russian reactions to NATO expansion; second, about the circular, self-justifying response of those Western policy hawks who were on the wrong side of events.
In 2014, Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, offered a pithy retrospect on the situation that Kennan had anticipated: “In the end, NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement. The former Warsaw Pact and Baltic states joined NATO to enhance their security, but the very act of doing so created a security dilemma for Russia that undermined the security of all.”
“NATO’s existence became justified …”
There’s a lot that can be read into that, and it ain’t pretty.
As someone wrote many years ago, “The rulers of the world will take from the philosophers only those things that conduce to their own greater power.” That also applies to advice from intelligence agencies, as we saw with the invasion of Vietnam, and it also applies to advice from diplomats.
From Wiki — Soon after his concepts had become U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the foreign policies that he had helped articulate. By late 1948, Kennan became confident that the US could commence positive dialogue with the Soviet government. His proposals were dismissed by the Truman administration, and Kennan’s influence waned.
Too much cherry picking to avoid inconvenient facts while bypassing academic credibility?
Another example of how Australian tankies give macro level agency to USSR/Russia, US, NATO and EU/Europe, by going back 20thC into a narrow and often unrelated history, to ignore current events in the 21stC and civilian cost due to Russia’s invasion; gives no agency or recognitions of Ukrainians, but e.g. Assange the ‘hero’ (for what?), does?
However, it could be framed, differently eg. why did former East German citizens prefer the ‘west’, and why do nations neighbouring Russia ask to join NATO inc those formerly neutral?
Why does Russia attract so much support from Anglo RW ultra conservatives & related anti-EU fossil fuel Koch Network (Mearsheimer, Abbott, Downer, Farage & friends inc PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban), MAGA, alt right and tankies of the right masquerading as anti-imperialists of the left, doing the bidding of Russian neo- imperialism vs US Democrats, EU nations etc., but never the right?
In the UK everyone, except Johnson, Farage et al and MI5/6, are demanding their Russia Report to be unredacted and explain eg. Brexit and why UK security services refused to cooperate?
Closer to the coalface are working academics and researchers in Europe with a deep knowledge of USSR and modern Russia.
For example, in Finland, Tampere University’s Russian Disinfo Research Unit or ‘Vatnik Soup’ with database on Anglosphere agents, assets, contacts, grifters, willing dupes and useful idiots for Russia; includes several Australian RWNJs and a mob that fraternise with RW Russian protagonists, including Farage, ie. Wikileaks.
https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/269/