More on how the west views Russia

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have blogged on multiple occasions to highlight an alternative narrative to the mainstream one being conveyed in western mainstream media. The most famous interpreter of this view has been the political scientist John Mearsheimer. 

However, this should not be treated as a justification for the barbaric and criminal nature of the bombings and killings, but merely an explanation or motivations behind the invasion itself. A continuation of the mainstream narrative which absolves America of all blame and puts everything on Russia, while politically convenient and popular at home, is a recipe for catastrophic consequences. 

In this spirit, a long read in the Times by Roger Cohen on Vladimir Putin reveals several important things about western perceptions on Russia. 

Hidden in the middle is this nugget which captures the nub of the problem.

Arriving in Moscow as the U.S. ambassador in 2005, William Burns, now the C.I.A. director, sent a sober cable, all post-Cold War optimism dispelled. “Russia is too big, too proud, and too self-conscious of its own history to fit neatly into a ‘Europe whole and free,’” he wrote. As he relates in his memoir, “The Back Channel,” Mr. Burns added that Russian “interest in playing a distinctive Great Power role” would “sometimes cause significant problems.”

And this on the specific issue of Ukraine,

The United States, however, with the Bush presidency in its last year... wanted a “Membership Action Plan,” or MAP, for Ukraine and Georgia, a specific commitment to bringing the two countries into the alliance, to be announced at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest... France joined Germany in Bucharest in opposing the MAP for Georgia and Ukraine... Mr. Burns, as ambassador, was opposed. In a then-classified message to Ms. Rice, he wrote: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

In the sweep of history, Russia is a great power. And great powers have to treated so. The expectation that Russia could accept subservience to American hegemony and its institutions was fatally flawed. 

From rewriting history (western history narratives downplay the critical role played by Russia in Hitler's defeat and the likes of Victory Day, instead preferring to play-up D-Day and the likes), to covert and overt assistance to pro-democracy forces in Russia, to the NATO expansion into the Russian near-abroad, the Americans have done little to assuage apprehensions and engage with Russia as not a subservient power. In fact, Cohen condescendingly describes the Russian role in the defeat of Germany in the World War II as Russian "mythmaking".