The Last Soviet

"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep."

Mikhail Gorbachev

November 1987

Mikhail Gorbachev died today, and the Western media is celebrating him as the man who ended the Cold War.  What about Reagan?  No, he was the man who might have nuked the world and only Gorbachev saved us.  How is it that the leader of a totalitarian state has long been hailed as a peacemaker while his democratically elected opponents - Reagan & Thatcher - are painted as dangerous extremists?  The fact is that Gorbachev had the misfortune of coming to power during the final decline of the Soviet system.  He lost the Cold War, but the Democrat and Labour opponents of Reagan and Thatcher weren't about to give them credit.  No, the hagiographies were composed for the loser.  For years, Reagan's refrain was 'We win, you lose,' to the Soviets.  The US economy dwarfed the Soviet economy, and an arms race was like Usain Bolt racing a 10-year-old.  Efforts to keep pace could only result in bankruptcy for the USSR.  Then there was Chernobyl.  That disaster changed the dialogue.  Even Gorbachev decried the shoddy workmanship in the Soviet Union, admitting failings that prior leaders spent decades denying.  While the Soviet people view Gorbachev negatively, he has been quite popular in the West.  By presiding over the destruction of the nation he led, he received a Nobel Prize (1990).  The man who wanted to save Soviet communism, and failed, was lionized.  In retrospect, that was a fair trade.  Even Reagan would agree.

“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.”

Ronald Reagan

"The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood."

Margaret Thatcher

Turnabout is Fair Play

In 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba.  This was viewed as grounds for risking World War III, a nuclear Armagedon.  If not for Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine B-59 would have launched a nuclear strike on October 27, 1962.  It was the Cold War and tensions were high.  Of course, Cuba was an independent country.  What business did we have in denying them missiles, especially considering US involvement in the Bay of Pigs disaster the previous year?

Beginning in 1979, the United States and Russia fought a proxy war in Nicaragua.  The US supported the Contras while the Soviets supported the Sandinistas.  The US Monroe Doctrine had essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the US, foreign powers not welcome.

In 1983, the US invaded Grenada.  It had been communist-friendly since a 1979 bloodless coup, trading with Cuba and the USSR.  However, when a coup by hardline Marxists murdered the milquetoast Prime Minister, the US sent in the Marines. 

Let us consider the current situation in that light.  During the Cold War, the NATO states were on one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other.  When the Soviet Union crumbled, many Warsaw Pact countries sought membership in NATO.  In much the same way that the US considered Cuba to be encroaching, Russia has reason to view such NATO expansion as an encroachment.  How far have we encroached?  Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Croatia, and Hungary were all in the Soviet Bloc but are now members of NATO.  That's a lot of encroachment that Russia has tolerated.  Of course, most of these countries had only been 'acquired' during World War II.  Sure, it stings, but it's not like they had been part of Russia for centuries.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent for the first time in centuries.  It had long been swapped among empires: Ottoman, Polish, Russian, Soviet Union.  It had been part of Russia/USSR since the 17th century and still has a large Russian minority (17%).  It is closer to Russia than Cuba is to the United States.  If Russia had something similar to the Monroe Doctrine, offering NATO membership would be a clear violation.  NATO is a military organization created to oppose Soviet expansion, but now it has been expanding toward Russia for 30 years.  Now it proposes to annex a region that has been in the Russian Empire for centuries.

It is argued that World War II was caused by the mismanagement of the peace in the wake of World War I.  The Treaty of Versailles was as much about assigning blame to Germany as to providing for peace.  How likely is it that the current conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of the mishandling of the peace in the aftermath of the Cold War?