Professor Richard Pipes has written a compelling article in today's WSJ. Before commenting on Pipes article I would like to make a few points on my perspective. I worked with Professor Pipes in the early 1970s when he was at Harvard and I at MIT and the both of us were Democrats, Massachusetts Democrats at that.
He is a brilliant man and brings to the perspective he has the experience from central and eastern Europe. He knows the world. Then in the late 1970s when I was part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations with the Russians as part of the Carter Administration I got a close up view of the Russian mind. It is not the west, it is not Europe, it is not even central Europe. Finally in the mid 90s to 2004 I had developed and ran my company in Russia as well as other central European companies. I opened the market with a few credit cards and a bunch of plane tickets in my pocket, no big corporate names behind me, yet I did have knowledge of the Russian and a few Russian friends, good friends.
As part of that in the late 1990s I presented a paper to a meeting of the Russian Duma members suggesting that they put fiber along their pipelines and double dip on the revenue stream. Create what I called a Russian hub for world communications. This was the Russian Transit Switch proposal. Their response at the time was consistent with Pipes' perception. I spoke as an American, sensitive as I was, yet an American. They rebelled and I was castigated for telling the Russians what they should do, for they would make their own decisions and they did not want any one else, especially and American, telling them. Once that blunt fact came to me I knew how to move forward and henceforth had no problems.
The Russians are a proud and brilliant people. They are open and friendly and just want respect. They will tolerate a great deal, for they have long suffered from many things, yet they have a willingness to deal with strangers on a par much better than say the French or English. My broken Russian is much better received than my well phrased French, and God forbid my Irish name in London.
Thus the point that Pipes makes about the current Vice President is telling. He says:
"......the recent remarks about Russia by Vice President Joe Biden in an interview with this newspaper were both gratuitous and harmful. "Russia has to make some very difficult calculated decisions," he said. "They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years."...
These remarks are not inaccurate but stating them publicly serves no purpose other than to humiliate Russia. The trends the vice president described will likely make Russia more open to cooperating with the West, Mr. Biden suggested. It is significant that when our secretary of state tried promptly to repair the damage which Mr. Biden's words had caused, Izvestiia, a leading Russian daily, proudly announced in a headline, "Hillary Clinton acknowledges Russia as a Great Power."
Indeed this is how the Russians respond and react. For example the US push to have NATO move east is in the Russian mind a threat and in reality it lends no value to NATO. NATO is a vestige of the Cold War and its members, other than the UK, are weak and have focused more inward to their own economic interests rather than security threats from Russia. The deployment of missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland is another example of sticking it to Russia.
In a 1996 NY Times article the famous George Kennan wrote regarding the expansion of NATO:
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry."
Pipes then makes a very telling observation:
"The solution of the puzzle lies in the fact that during their 1,000-year old history of statehood, the Russians have virtually never been given the opportunity to elect their government or to influence its actions. As a result of this experience, they have become thoroughly depoliticized. They do not see what positive influence the government can have on their lives: They believe that they have to fend for themselves."
In my experience the Russian problem is also in their use of words. As we speak of the Mexican use of Manana, portraying the sense of disregard for immediacy, the Russian phrase, Nyet problemi, no problem, portrays an even greater insight. The Russian phrase when used means the proverbial has hit the fan. It take the British tendency for understatement and moves it a mile or so forward. It is in my experience the embodiment of the Russian's disconnection from the system.
Thus Pipes has brilliantly captured the Russian mind and the continuing US diplomatic blundering in dealing with the Russians, in this Administration and even more so in the last. We just seem to have no understanding of the Russians, their importance, their culture and their future.
Pipes final comment is:
"For this reason, it is incumbent on the Western powers patiently to convince Russians that they belong to the West and should adopt Western institutions and values..... This will be a painful process, especially if the Russian government refuses to cooperate.... in the long run, it is the only way to curb Russia's aggressiveness and integrate her into the global community."
He is spot on with this recommendation. Russia must be integrated into the west. It will never be the democracy as we know it but it has all the elements of a major contributor to society and the economy. It must be respected and treated as an equal.
Now to the disappointment, not with Pipes but with how we have progressed as a society, namely American in the Internet age. One need just read the comments on the article to see where the American mindset is. First comments are raw, blunt, crass, and contain no thought. This seems to be the Internet world. They are anonymous, which engenders almost twelve year old bathroom humor. The comments also bring out another facet of the anonymous commentator, the ad hominem attacks, the viscous content free attacks. The Russians may have more concern about the comments than about Professor Pipes.
He is a brilliant man and brings to the perspective he has the experience from central and eastern Europe. He knows the world. Then in the late 1970s when I was part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations with the Russians as part of the Carter Administration I got a close up view of the Russian mind. It is not the west, it is not Europe, it is not even central Europe. Finally in the mid 90s to 2004 I had developed and ran my company in Russia as well as other central European companies. I opened the market with a few credit cards and a bunch of plane tickets in my pocket, no big corporate names behind me, yet I did have knowledge of the Russian and a few Russian friends, good friends.
As part of that in the late 1990s I presented a paper to a meeting of the Russian Duma members suggesting that they put fiber along their pipelines and double dip on the revenue stream. Create what I called a Russian hub for world communications. This was the Russian Transit Switch proposal. Their response at the time was consistent with Pipes' perception. I spoke as an American, sensitive as I was, yet an American. They rebelled and I was castigated for telling the Russians what they should do, for they would make their own decisions and they did not want any one else, especially and American, telling them. Once that blunt fact came to me I knew how to move forward and henceforth had no problems.
The Russians are a proud and brilliant people. They are open and friendly and just want respect. They will tolerate a great deal, for they have long suffered from many things, yet they have a willingness to deal with strangers on a par much better than say the French or English. My broken Russian is much better received than my well phrased French, and God forbid my Irish name in London.
Thus the point that Pipes makes about the current Vice President is telling. He says:
"......the recent remarks about Russia by Vice President Joe Biden in an interview with this newspaper were both gratuitous and harmful. "Russia has to make some very difficult calculated decisions," he said. "They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years."...
These remarks are not inaccurate but stating them publicly serves no purpose other than to humiliate Russia. The trends the vice president described will likely make Russia more open to cooperating with the West, Mr. Biden suggested. It is significant that when our secretary of state tried promptly to repair the damage which Mr. Biden's words had caused, Izvestiia, a leading Russian daily, proudly announced in a headline, "Hillary Clinton acknowledges Russia as a Great Power."
Indeed this is how the Russians respond and react. For example the US push to have NATO move east is in the Russian mind a threat and in reality it lends no value to NATO. NATO is a vestige of the Cold War and its members, other than the UK, are weak and have focused more inward to their own economic interests rather than security threats from Russia. The deployment of missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland is another example of sticking it to Russia.
In a 1996 NY Times article the famous George Kennan wrote regarding the expansion of NATO:
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry."
Pipes then makes a very telling observation:
"The solution of the puzzle lies in the fact that during their 1,000-year old history of statehood, the Russians have virtually never been given the opportunity to elect their government or to influence its actions. As a result of this experience, they have become thoroughly depoliticized. They do not see what positive influence the government can have on their lives: They believe that they have to fend for themselves."
In my experience the Russian problem is also in their use of words. As we speak of the Mexican use of Manana, portraying the sense of disregard for immediacy, the Russian phrase, Nyet problemi, no problem, portrays an even greater insight. The Russian phrase when used means the proverbial has hit the fan. It take the British tendency for understatement and moves it a mile or so forward. It is in my experience the embodiment of the Russian's disconnection from the system.
Thus Pipes has brilliantly captured the Russian mind and the continuing US diplomatic blundering in dealing with the Russians, in this Administration and even more so in the last. We just seem to have no understanding of the Russians, their importance, their culture and their future.
Pipes final comment is:
"For this reason, it is incumbent on the Western powers patiently to convince Russians that they belong to the West and should adopt Western institutions and values..... This will be a painful process, especially if the Russian government refuses to cooperate.... in the long run, it is the only way to curb Russia's aggressiveness and integrate her into the global community."
He is spot on with this recommendation. Russia must be integrated into the west. It will never be the democracy as we know it but it has all the elements of a major contributor to society and the economy. It must be respected and treated as an equal.
Now to the disappointment, not with Pipes but with how we have progressed as a society, namely American in the Internet age. One need just read the comments on the article to see where the American mindset is. First comments are raw, blunt, crass, and contain no thought. This seems to be the Internet world. They are anonymous, which engenders almost twelve year old bathroom humor. The comments also bring out another facet of the anonymous commentator, the ad hominem attacks, the viscous content free attacks. The Russians may have more concern about the comments than about Professor Pipes.
Posts
