Monday, December 15, 2014

The "new Cold War": Timothy Snyder

I really hate to think that matters might actually develop into a "New Cold War" between the NATO countrie and Russia. One of my Facebook friends called attention to this 11-minute clip from Timothy Snyder, Renommierter US-Professor entlarvt Russische Propaganda in nur 10 Minuten! (English with German subtitles) 11/09/2014:



His opening statement in this clip says that when Russia presents the confrontation over the Ukraine -"the Ukrainian revolution," he calls it - as a geopolitical matter, they are making propaganda marketed toward "the European left, and partially the American left, who really do, kind of, tend to think that America is behind everything."

This strikes me as a fairly heavy-handed attempt to re-create the old Cold War anti-Russian positions of the Cold War, when "the left" was accused of being allied with Russia, which was only a credible charge against Moscow-line Communist Parties. If anything, "the left" in the Cold War spent way too much time, energy and thought demonstrating all they ways that they were against the Soviet Union, too.

Some did so with more serious thought than others. And the more serious criticisms provided suggestions of alternative interpretations of the fall of the USSR to the preferred Western triumphalist, neoliberal narrative. A lot of it generated only sterile polemics, much of it reflected the Sino-Soviet split.

Much of this clip seems to be a critique of the coverage on RT (Russia Today), the state-owned channel which I've never considered especially reliable on matters directly pertaining to Russia. I haven't actually paid a lot of attention to RT reporting since Putin reportedly tightened official control over its reporting several years ago. But I also wouldn't dismiss it entirely. A critical view toward news reporting is always in order, with some sources more so than others.

I find Snyder's presentation here more puzzling than anything. He references RT (Russia Today) and other Russian government propaganda positions. And with these remarks in a conference in Chicago, he's presumably mainly addressing an American audience when he says, "You have heard there is no Ukrainian state." And more:"You have heard there is no Ukrainian nation," "all Ukrainians are nationalists," "there is no Ukrainian language," "Russia is fighting a war to save the world from fascism," etc. Actually, for all those points I just quoted, Synder's clip was the first and only time I've heard them. In the American discussions actually influencing policymaking on Ukraine, so far as I can tell those arguments play no role.

Snyder has had several pieces in the New York Review of Books this year, including: Ukraine: The New Dictatorship 01/23/2014; Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine 02/19/2014; Ukraine: The Haze of Propaganda 03/01/2014; Crimea: Putin vs. Reality 03/07/2014; Ukraine: The Edge of Democracy 05/22/2014; Ukraine: The Antidote to Europe's Fascists? 05/27/2014; Putin’s New Nostalgia 11/10/2014; Ukraine: Putin’s Denial 12/13/2014.

Snyder's articles in the New York Review pretty much guarantee that his views will get a hearing among the liberal interventionists in the US. I can't claim to be any kind of specialist on Ukraine. But I have tried to follow the situation this year, with particular reference to US policy.

I find Snyder's presentation here more puzzling than anything. He references RT (Russia Today) and other Russian government propaganda positions. And with these remarks in a conference in Chicago, he's presumably mainly addressing an American audience when he says, "You have heard there is no Ukrainian state." And more:"You have heard there is no Ukrainian nation," "all Ukrainians are nationalists," "there is no Ukrainian language," "Russia is fighting a war to save the world from fascism," etc. Actually, for all those points I just quoted, Synder's clip was the first and only time I've heard them. In the American discussions actually influencing policymaking on Ukraine, so far as I can tell those arguments play no role.

My own view of US policy in the Ukraine crisis has been heavily affected by the arguments of the "realist" school of foreign policy thinkers like Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt and even the late George Kennan, who was warning up until the end of his life about the risks of expanding NATO far into the former Warsaw Pact.

Which makes the first part of this clip, when Snyder says Russian propaganda is marketed to "the European left, and partially the American left, who really do, kind of, tend to think that America is behind everything," also murky. Even if he's only referring to the conflict in the Ukraine, I don't know who he's talking about in the American context. The Republicans will cheerfully refer to anyone who disagrees with any war they want to start as being part of what neocon godmother and Reagan's UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick liked to call the "blame American first" crowd. But that's a propaganda intimidation tactic of its own. I suppose someone who reads uncritically the articles on Ukraine at, say, the Consortium News website, which is edited by the able and experienced investigative reporter Robert Parry and would qualify as "left", might think some of them one-sidedly skeptical of the neoconservatives' claims against Russia in the Ukraine crisis. But if that site or any other is making the claims quoted above from Snyder's speech, it's escaped my notice.

See this interesting piece from Robert Parry at Consortium News on the blame-America-first insult, How Reagan Enforced US Hypocrisy 12/13/2014. I included a number of links to Consortium News pieces on the Ukraine crisis in Mearsheimer on the Obama Administration's policy on Ukraine 10/11/2014.

We've just had a reminder with the release of the Senate Torture Report this past week that senior national security officials are willing to lie, even to use torture to provide phony support for false claims, in pursuit of foreign policy objectives they think they can't convince the public to support with the truth. All Americans who don't want to be suckered into supporting more unnecessary wars should want to look carefully and critically at claims being made that would lead to major shifts in foreign policy, especially one as significant as a new Cold War with Russia.

And the people advocating for war should be able to come up with a better answer that post-Soviet redbaiting.

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