Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/05/2015 22:30 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-05/role-reversal-new-cold-war
Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,
This past weekend marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reunification of Germany, an event that formalized the end of the cold war.
The so-called “German Democratic Republic,” one of the most repressive
of the Soviet-imposed regimes established in the wake of World War II,
was no more. It imploded without a shot being fired.
The largely bloodless revolution that swept across Eastern Europe,
toppling Communist dictatorships from Berlin to Budapest, soon
penetrated the epicenter of the “evil empire” itself – and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics evaporated like mist on a sunlit morning. It
was the end of the cold war, and peoples all over the world breathed a
joyful sigh of relief – and yet that joy was not shared by all.
The cadre of that troublesome little sect known as the
neoconservatives weren’t convinced that the Soviets were on their last
legs: they had opposed the arms control agreements signed by
Ronald Reagan in the Kremlin’s twilight years, attacking them as signs
of “
appeasement”
and arguing that any rapprochement with the Soviets would give them
breathing room and the strength to gather their forces for one last push
against the West.
The United States, they averred,
should take the opportunity to push harder and institute a policy of
“rollback,” because only a foreign policy of aggression could defeat the
Evil Empire once and for all.
They were wrong.
What happened, instead, is that the captive nations of the
Soviet bloc rose up all on their own, without any substantial support
from us, and overthrew their oppressors. Not because we had
weakened the USSR in any significant way, but because a system that
never worked to begin with had finally reached its endpoint. As the
great libertarian theoretician Ludwig von Mises had predicted
as early as 1920 that it would.
Indeed, it could be argued that all our efforts during the cold war
era had merely strengthened the Leninist project, unnaturally extending
its lifespan. For Joseph
Stalin realized two vital facts early on:
1)
That in spite of Soviet propaganda, the Russian economy was no match
for the West, and that it was necessary to build up Soviet industry on a
massive scale. Thus began the various Five Year Plans that sought to make the leap from a backward agricultural economy into something resembling an industrial powerhouse.
2) That the old Bolshevik ideology of “proletarian internationalism”
– the idea that the World Revolution was a perquisite for the survival
of the Soviet state – had to be ditched. The Trotskyists, who clung to the original Leninist conception, were purged, and in the place of the old party line the Stalinists substituted Soviet “patriotism,” i.e. Russian nationalism, as the official ideology of the post-Leninist Kremlin.
While the economic project of the Stalinist regime rendered dubious results –
slave labor cannot serve as the basis of a modern economic order, and the inability of the Soviet system to overcome the calculation problem could not be overcome
– their ideological revisionism met with more success. Instead of
appealing to some abstract ideal, i.e. egalitarianism, the theories of
Karl Marx, etc., they instead evoked loyalty to real-world allegiances:
in short, they became “patriots,” in whatever country they were
operating in.
In Russia, Soviet propaganda focused on the “Great Patriotic War”
against Germany during World War II – of course downplaying Stalin’s
pact with Hitler and their joint invasion of Poland, which sparked the
conflict to begin with. Sure, the Russian people had to wait on line for
the simplest items, but, the regime told them – with some justification
– that the West was getting ready to destroy them, just as Hitler had
tried to do, and that only the Soviet government could protect Holy
Mother Russia from a repeat of that horrific catastrophe in which
millions perished.
In the Third World, where the Soviets were engaged in an
ideological battle with Western-backed regimes, they posed as champions
of “national liberation,” and – abjuring purely communist slogans –
called for a “national democratic revolution” and inveighed against
“foreign domination,” denouncing the brutalities of colonialism. This is what made
the victory
of the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front of Vietnam
possible, and it energized Marxist insurrections throughout Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. Fidel Castro never revealed himself as a
Communist until well after taking power because
he realized
what Stalin discovered long before the Cuban revolution overthrew a
US-supported despot: that nationalism – allegiance to a really-existing
entity, rather than a moral or ideological abstraction – has the power
to inspire people to resist.
So while economic reality eventually overcame the Soviets,
and doomed their system to failure from the beginning, they managed to
survive as long as they did – and inspire a global movement – in large
part due to the energy imparted to them by the West. The very
effort to “roll back” Communism had the opposite result, generating a
nationalistic reaction that aided the Soviets to such an extent that,
for a while, it looked – on the surface – as if they had the advantage.
Communism, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the “wave of the future,”
along with all the other totalitarian movements – fascism and national
socialism – that gained ascendancy in the wake of World War I. As it
turned out, Marxism proved to be a dead end, albeit one that had all the
appearance of an idea whose time had come.
Looking back on the demise of the Soviets, one can see
that the same hubris that blinded the Communists to their own imminent
decline and fall has its echoes in today’s world.
The Western response to the Communist implosion was, at first, quite reasonable.
In negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw the Soviet empire
crumbling all around him, Western leaders guaranteed that NATO would not
move eastward. As Joshua Shifrinson, citing declassified US government
documents,
argued in
Foreign Affairs:
“The
story begins in the months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as
policymakers struggled to determine whether and how a divided Germany
might reunify. By early 1990, U.S. and West German officials decided to
seek reunification. Uncertain about whether the Soviets would be willing
to withdraw from East Germany, they decided to offer a quid pro quo.
“On January 31, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich
Genscher publicly declared that there would be “no expansion of NATO
territory eastward” after reunification. Two days later, US Secretary of
State James Baker met with Genscher to discuss the plan. Although Baker
did not publicly
endorse Genscher’s plan, it served as the basis for subsequent meetings
between Baker, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. During these discussions, Baker repeatedly
underlined the informal deal on the table, first telling Shevardnadze
that NATO’s jurisdiction ‘would not move eastward’ and later offering
Gorbachev ‘assurances that there would be no extension of NATO’s current
jurisdiction eastward.’ When Gorbachev argued that ‘a broadening of the
NATO zone’ was ‘not acceptable,’ Baker replied, ‘We agree with that.’
Most explicit was a meeting with Shevardnadze on February 9, in which
Baker, according to the declassified State Department transcript,
promised ‘ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would
not move eastward.’ Hammering home the point, West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl advanced an identical pledge during meetings in Moscow the
next day.
“At that point, it was easy to see the outline of a new strategic
landscape coming into view: Germany would reunify, the Soviet Union
would pull back, and NATO would halt in place. According to any ordinary
sense of the term ‘east,’ all of the countries to which NATO later
expanded would have remained outside the Western orbit. As a diplomatic cable
summarizing Baker’s meetings put it, ‘The Secretary made clear that the
US had supported the goal of [German] unification for years; that we
supported a unified Germany within NATO, but that we were prepared to
ensure that NATO’s military presence would not extend further
eastward.’”
Yet the domestic pressures in the US for NATO expansion were too strong to let this guarantee stand for very long.
NATO maintains standards for its member militaries, and the upgrades
required for the entry of the East European countries would prove
immensely profitable for US weapons makers – who soon launched a
campaign for NATO expansion
that had its tentacles reaching into both political parties. And there
was also the inherently expansionist dynamic embedded in all global
empires, such as the American. This was fueled by the ideological
Kool-Aid of the “
end of history” fable, pushed by the neoconservatives, who dreamed of a
Hegelian “
universal homogenous state” – to be established
by the United States.
As NATO pushed up to the gates of Moscow, what happened, oddly enough, is that the Americans and the Russians switched roles. The former, invoking a militant “democratic” internationalism, adopted the
revolutionary rhetoric and mindset of the early pre-Stalinist communists, while the latter took up the conservatizing role abandoned by Washington.
Which is where we are today –
except that the danger posed by Washington is far greater than any the old Soviet empire could have mustered, for two reasons:
1)
The Soviet economic system was inherently unworkable, and ended the
only way it could have ended. On the other hand, the American economic
system is the mightiest industrial machine the world has ever known:
capitalism has created enormous wealth, and while we’ve eaten a lot of
our seed corn and built up an enormous mountain of debt, the system is
still coasting along on the achievements of the past.
2) Stalin was essentially an “isolationist,” that is, he didn’t want
to get too involved in the affairs of other countries, concerned as he
was with cementing his own despotic rule at home. That’s why he ditched
the old Leninism, drove Trotsky into exile, and declared the official
Soviet doctrine of “socialism in one country.” In the US, however,
“isolationism” is out of style: both parties support an
“internationalist” foreign policy, differing only in the details of how
to apply the general principle of empire-building on a global scale.
What all this means is that the world’s wealthiest nation has
now decided it can and should rule the world – and has embarked on a
campaign, consisting of both military and “soft power” aspects, to
achieve just that. And while this effort effectively undermines
whatever claim the US once had to be being the leader of the “Free”
World – as Edward Snowden revealed, and as the continuous erosion of our
constitutional liberties underscores every day – Washington still
wields the banner of “freedom” to great effect, especially when compared
with the regimes it seeks to overthrow.
Baldly stated, the United States government is the greatest danger to peace and freedom the world has ever known.
This is true precisely because
it has held aloft the torch of liberty for so long, an example to the
world of what a society based on individual freedom can achieve. That is the great paradox of American power.
As
we abandon our libertarian heritage – even as we retain the forms of a
constitutional republic – we destroy what made our power possible.
The process is reversible: we can restore our old republic – but only if we give up the mirage of empire.
If we continue to pursue the fatal dream of a beneficent
internationalism, America will lose itself, dissolve its unique
character – and wreak destruction, not only on its own people but on the
peoples of the world. In switching roles with the Soviets, we prefigure
their fate: and the resulting implosion is going to shake the world to
its foundations in a way that the fall of the Kremlin never did.
In programming our own self-destruction, we will likely drag much of the world with us.
Those are the stakes, and they are high – too high for us anti-interventionists to rest for a single moment.
