In 1989 the Berlin wall tumbled like Humpty Dumpty amid a joyous celebration in Germany and across the West. The symbol of the Russian Communist dictatorship was blasted into bits of concrete. In the subsequent couple of years those states caught in the grip of the Soviet orbit seceded reducing the Russian population by about 150 million people. NATO expanded to embrace many of these former states including the Baltic nations contiguous to Mother Russia. While the West viewed this new reality with promise liberal democracy would spread, former KGB officials regarded this defeat as humiliation, a humiliation that had to be redressed.
The accession of Vladimir Putin into a leadership position was a clear signal KGB operatives were intent on reclaiming the so-called Near Aboard and extending Russian influence into areas from which it was formerly ousted. This plan, transparent from the outset was assisted inadvertently or perhaps directly by the Obama administration that “reset” policy towards Russia by remaining “flexible”, another word for accepting Russian goals. In fact, when President Obama refused to act on his own “red line in the sand” over Bashar al Assad’s use of poison gas, he invited the Russians to adjudicate the matter handing Putin a diplomatic victory and a legitimate pathway into Middle East politics.
Putin seized every opportunity. Signs of U.S. withdrawal from the region, offered Russia the chance to align itself with Iran and Hezbollah and fill the U.S. created vacuum, including naval dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the ensuing months, Russian air superiority over Syria gained one victory after another for pro-Assad forces until the final blow – the bombing of Aleppo, a massacre as noteworthy as the killing fields in Cambodia. But aside from meaningless disapproval in the United Nations, Russian power was ascendant with impunity from the world community. A Russia dying from within as an economy reliant solely on the price of fossil fuels, is emerging as a dominant and growing force from without through its successful foreign policy. Even NATO, the bulwark against potential Russian aggression, is now challenged by Putin’s claims of ethnic unification and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.
At the end of the Cold War, Marxism Leninism was a standard joke in East Europe with Karl Marx cited as the fifth Marx brother. Yet remarkably communist ideology is now making a come back. In the last U.S. presidential election Bernie Sanders, an avowed and unapologetic socialist, garnered more than 45 percent of Democratic primary voters by advocating extensive government control of the economy. The chairwoman of the National Democratic Party, when asked to distinguish between socialism and Democratic politics was unable to do so. Should Marine Le Pen win the French presidential election, it is likely France will drop out of the European Union and tilt towards a rapprochement with Russia. She is certainly not alone as extremist parties in Austria, Hungary, and Germany indicate.
In 1958 a Russian diplomat, testifying before the Congress after obtaining asylum in the U.S., noted that Communist Russian tactics for defeat of America included the systematic infiltration of propaganda into schools and culture. It is revealing that in 2016 a sizable number of American students could not cite any moral difference between Russia and the U.S., as well as any difference between communism and free institutions.
If the question of victory in the Cold War is addressed seriously and if Putin is regarded as the KGB heir of communism – I believe a debatable but accurate point – there is a plausible case to be made for Russia’s victory. After all, Obama’s America is in retreat on the world stage; Russia is rising. Russia is the “strong horse” in the Middle East; the U.S. is irrelevant. The ideology that inspired the American founding is receiving scant attention, while socialism is gaining adherents.
This is certainly not an inexorable historical course, but it does require attention and that starts with recognition of the problem. The U.S. cannot rest on its belief that it won the Cold War when that war is still unfolding. America is a resilient nation, but it is time for that resilience to be on display in defense of American interests, foreign policy and principles of liberty.
Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries at www.londoncenter.org
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