Even as I toured a reclusive corner of Patagonia, Argentina, this past week, I could not enjoy a moment’s peace on Twitter in my youth hostel without a bombardment of sensationalized news about the Trump-Russia story. At this point, Trump’s connections with Russia couldn't matter less to me. I’m far more concerned with the hidden agenda behind this anti-Russian propaganda campaign and, furthermore, the total lack of historical contextualization in United States-Russian relations.
Surely the meaning behind this story isn’t to demonize Vladimir Putin to such an extent that the public would acquiesce and support an escalating conflict between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe. The media would never create a foreign boogeyman to distract the public from problems, such as the environmental crisis, the prison-industrial complex, student debt, the criminalization of poverty, etc, occurring within the U.S.
One wonders how Rachel Maddow would fare under U.S.-backed regimes and violence: Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, Suharto’s Indonesia, the West Bank and Gaza, Mobuto in the Congo or the Contra invasion of Nicaragua.
Putin’s real motives lie in basic contemporary Russian history. At the end of the Cold War two things happened in Russian politics. First, the broken promise made to Mikhail Gorbachov that NATO would not move “one inch to the East.” Since then, NATO has steadily marched toward the Russian border and commanded the same invasion routes used by Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. U.S. military bases in southeast and central Asia have also assured a total encirclement of Russia. Fear of foreign aggression has helped bolster Putin’s legitimacy as a leader, and Trump’s critique of NATO was a simple cost-benefit analysis for Putin.
Second, dramatic economic reforms and political instability caused a shrink by 30 percent in Russian GDP, an increase in mortality rates and suicide, as well as an explosion in HIV/AIDS cases.
Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president hand-picked by the U.S., then ensured that democracy would not exist in post-Soviet Russia. He illegally dissolved the parliament, shredded the constitution and expanded executive power.
The ironic cherry on top of this was that Yeltsin become so unpopular in Russia he had to resign and hand the presidency to former KGB colonel and then-prime minister Vladimir Putin. No one should be surprised that the culpability of the U.S. in bringing Putin to power is never mentioned in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga.
Putin’s real crime in the eyes of Washington, D.C., is his unwillingness to cooperate with U.S. economic and military interests. I can assure you that Putin would be the U.S.’s poster boy if he were a helpful servant, like when his bloody war in Chechnya was ignored because it conformed with the goals of the War on Terror.
I implore anyone listening in the U.S. to consider what’s happening behind the headlines. Once Trump is removed from power through either impeachment or electoral defeat, we will be stuck with the consequences of a rabid and dangerous anti-Russian political class.
