NYU Professor weighs in on increasing tensions between the US and Russia

I've come up with a new way of researching for my thesis, I've been listening to old radio programs that are on US - Russian foreign relations. It works surprisingly well because I can listen during work and after work, go back and transcribe the interesting parts (and even search for the commentors' other works). Here's one I found yesterday: Stephen Cohen, an NYU professor on Russian history, commenting on increasing tensions between the US and Russia. A quick search for his other works included "Failed crusade : America and the tragedy of post-Communist Russia" (Book, 2000), "Second Chance with Russia" (article, 2001), "The Struggle for Russia" (article, 2003), "The Media's New Cold War" (article, 2005), "The New American Cold War" (article, 2006), and "The Soviet Union, R.I.P?" (article, 2006).

You always have to ask how another country has seen us. We have a habit in the United States of always asking how we see things or how we should see things. But in such an important relationship as between the United States and Russia, it is important to understand, in my judgment, that there has grown in Moscow the view, it's very widespread and it's even among the people we used to call democrats, that Russia has been betrayed by the United States. Not once, not twice, not three times but repeatedly since the end of the Soviet Union. That American policy is essentially based on three things: broken promises, the military encirclement of Russia, by which they mean the movement of NATO forces and American forces around Russia, and a persistent view left over from the Soviet era in American policy that when push comes to shove that Russia has no legitimate interest apart from those of the United States. Russians now, many Russians, I'm talking about those in the policy elite not ordinary folk, see this and see it with bitterness in their hearts and in their minds because they expected something different from the United States. Now, the question for us should be, "is that a reasonable fact based interpretation of our behavior in Russia?" I believe that is substantially a reasonable perspective of the dynamics of American policy going back to the Clinton administration and continuing through the bush administration. So therefore this question if whether they've helped or not with terror has to be put in that context. … They did more than any other country in the world to help the United States fight the land war in particular in Afghanistan against the Taliban. We could go into all of the details which range from intelligence to the decision to allow the United States to use a Russian trained force inside Afghanistan. They also acquiesced to the stationing of American military bases in Central Asia, which Russia considers its Mexico, its backyard. The questions the Russians now ask themselves, instead of asking what more Russia did, is what they got in return. What did Russia get in return for that contribution during the first six months to a year of the war against terrorism? And there view is that they didn't get anything. In fact they were betrayed; NATO continued to move eastward. For example, the Americans have made clear, breaking an implied promise, that they are not leaving Central Asia. For example, the sudden arrival of American troops in Georgia also in the Caucus, in Russia's border. So the world is not only how Russia is seen from Washington, but how America is seen from Moscow. You've got to somehow put those two views together and that's the job of diplomacy.


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If you were to ask me what factor most of all in Russia will influence the fate of democracy, and which factor has most influenced it negatively, since the democratic reforms began with Gorbachov, I would say it's this. When the Soviet Union broke up, all of the property of the Soviet state and that was virtually all the meaningful property in the land, billions and billions of dollars in assets, everything from oil and gas to tv stations, and railway lines, and buildings flew into the air and the struggle to catch it became the driving force, the quest for property, vast property, incredible property, became the driving force of Russian politics. And when most of that property was caught, by a very small group of people we call Oligarchs, but not only them, others who were in that oligarchical system, it was regarded as fundamentally illegitimate by the Russian people, in part because so many Russians at the same time fell into terrible poverty, where they remain today. It's those two circumstances, mass poverty and mass perception that wealth in Russia is illegitimate that has driven forward an anti-democratic politic. Just think about how Mr. Putin became president and why. Yeltsin, who had presided over these developments, fearful for his own security, wanted in power a man he was sure could protect him, and so Putin was chosen because who and what he was, put into power and maintained there. And it is interesting that Yeltsin has remained silent on all of this.

Cohen was wrong on this point, the next day Yeltsin and Gorbachov would speak out together against this move by Putin, read more about in this article from the Jamestown Foundation. Unfortunately the original source from the Moscow News has been removed.

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Source:
Diane Rehm Show: September 15th, 2004 (Listen Online: Real Media)