America's Passion for Putin

It is no coincidence that the main themes in the American media before and after the opening of the Olympic Games were not the sports and athletes, but the coming horrors of possible terrorist attacks in Sochi and all over Russia, threats of criminal prosecution against the Russian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, LGBT tourists and athletes from other countries, the inefficiency of the Russian authorities in constructing Olympic facilities that everyone is already sick and tired of, endless conversations about the appalling corruption charges and alleged squandering of billions and billions of dollars by Russian authorities, fantasies of the Western media and “experts” about Russia’s threats against its neighbors and the alleged anti-Western Russian diplomatic demarches.

Such hysteria was supposed to lead the readers and viewers of Western mass media to believe that the Sochi Olympics are taking place in a country very similar to the Nazi Germany of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In fact, the Western media have been preparing their public for the total failure of the Olympics, which would then embody the fiasco of Putin and Russia.

Now, we can say with confidence that the Western mass media and so-called Russian “experts” who kept predicting apocalyptic events during the Olympic Games in Russia are surely the ones who lost the game.

By demonizing Putin’s image for a long time, they were not ready to accept and show that Putin and his Russia can do something big, something colossal, something that can impress both the Russian and international communities. In their desperate effort to prevent Putin from being triumphant, they tried to denigrate everything associated with today’s Russia. The Russian public took these attacks by the Western media not as anti-Putin, but as anti-Russian, degrading to the Russian state and society.

Certainly, in reality, the Western media’s anti-Russian, anti-Putin and anti-Olympic campaign largely contributed to the triumph of Putin, the Sochi Olympics and Russia as a whole. Russian society has come full circle regarding the Western mass media — from full trust and adoration to a total distrust and rejection.

Today, Putin could easily repeat the words that Reagan, a presidential candidate at the time, said in the midst of the U.S.-Iranian relations crisis, which was prompted by Islamist Iranian revolutionaries taking American diplomats hostage, publicly humiliating one of the two global superpowers: “I do not care whether people love the U.S. or hate it, but I will make them respect it.”*

Unfortunately, both the Western mass media and so-called Russian “experts” lack a basic understanding of the nature of the political regime in Russia, as well as domestic and foreign policies pursued by Putin’s administration.

Without an understanding of what is happening in one of the most influential countries in the world, whose constructive participation is necessary to solve any major problem, it is practically impossible to form adequate political relations. The biggest surprise in the analysis of Putin is not that American neoconservatives and liberal interventionists perceive him very negatively. According to the ideologists and strategists of these political forces, the political regimes of any part of the world must meet the standards Washington defines.

The biggest surprise is that today, among those who are attacking Putin and Russia, we can find a number of prominent conservative commentators, journalists and politicians, who clearly contradict the basics of conservatism through their comments about Putin and his political line, maybe because they do not understand the basics of conservatism, or most likely, because they do not understand what is happening in Russia and the essence of Putin’s politics.

The reaction of a number of conservative journalists and analysts to a recently published article in The Nation by New York University professor Steven Cohen was symbolic. In the article, Cohen only stated the obvious — the American mass media hugely distorts the state of affairs in Russia, which is a monstrous fall in the criteria and standards of American journalism. Such a clear and obvious statement, outlined by Cohen in The Nation, stirred up a storm of protest among journalists and analysts, claiming that they take a fair and balanced position on all issues of contemporary politics, both within the U.S. and internationally.

In formulating his attitude to what Cohen wrote, Bill O’Reilly, a well-known journalist, drew attention not to the content, but to it having been published in a left-wing magazine. This statement let another analyst — Charles Krauthammer, who, like O’Reilly, has a very vague idea about modern Russia — authoritatively claim that the authors of this journal, hand in hand with its political leanings, have made endless attempts to apologize to the Soviet Union in the past and to Russia now. However, if leftists were defending the USSR in the past, since it represented the alternative to Western capitalism for them, it is not clear why leftists are defending Putin’s Russia now.

Krauthammer’s comments were extremely primitive, full of all the Western media clichés and stereotypes from the arsenal of extremely marginalized Russian liberals. Cohen’s criticism in a number of articles on Clinton, Bush and Obama, with respect to Russia, is no different from the belief of Patrick Buchanan, known for his conservative views, who believes that a number of unilateral actions by U.S. authorities did not take into account the interests of Russia, which created and continues to create tension between these two countries. The question is not whether Cohen is the leftist and Buchanan is the rightist.

The question is how objective they are in their analysis. After all, I disagree with Cohen on many issues, such as his assessment of Gorbachev’s role. However, no one can deny that Cohen is obviously a great scholar, an expert of Russian and Soviet history, and an objective reporter when it comes to Russia.

By the way, Patrick Buchanan’s conservative positions do not prevent him from being objective, either.

Note that Charles Krauthammer, who undertakes to criticize Cohen, does not know B from a bull’s foot about the realities of Russia today and repeats all the nonsense, stereotypes and clichés that are constantly circulated in various U.S. media outlets, serving to multiply the efforts of marginal politicians and extremely liberal journalists in Russia. Surprisingly, the conservatives believe this nonsense of radical liberal marginalism. As Buchanan acknowledges, if there is a big conservative politician in the world today who is not afraid to admit his respect for religion and religious institutions, tradition and traditional values, then that politician is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Many years ago, I enjoyed the book by American intellectual George Will, titled “Statecraft as a Soulcraft,” where he defined himself as an ideological conservative of the Burke tradition. Putin is also, undoubtedly, a conservative of Burke’s tradition, as is clear from his public statements.

Like Burke, Putin really cares about the state, taking on its problems as his own. He also understands that society and the state are organisms, not mechanisms that can be redone according to some abstract schemes drawn up in the head of the dreamer.

That is why he is careful in carrying out social and political reforms. He cannot afford to forget that in the last 100 years, radical political reforms twice led the Russian state to a break-up, accompanied with countless sacrifices and losses.

Instead of receiving adequate support among conservatives, he is being unreasonably critiqued by them. Such funny guys, like Bill O’Reilly and his partner, Dennis Miller, from Fox News, even try to mock Putin’s Russia from time to time, while having no idea what they are talking about.

Krauthammer still believes that Putin canceled gubernatorial elections, although dozens of new governors are being elected under the new laws in different regions of Russia. These conservatives have no idea what is going on in Ukraine or what Russia’s real policy is toward this country. However, they still try to explain everything that is happening in Ukraine as Moscow’s machinations to present the legitimately elected acting president of the state as Putin’s puppet, and consider the regime change and expulsion of the legitimately elected president absolutely normal. Not surprisingly, they kept mum during the military coup in Egypt and expelled the legitimately elected President Morsi. And before that, they did not even raise an eyebrow when, with Obama and the Pentagon’s blessing, the same military forces expelled Mubarak, a long-term ally and a friend of Washington.

It seems that in America, conservatives are in a deep crisis. They just do not understand for what and against whom they act. At least, this is evident in the case of Putin and contemporary Russia. Apparently, American conservatives are still stuck in the Cold War era and are captivated by the stereotypes and clichés. It is convenient to live this way and look at Russia through the same lens as they looked at the USSR. Without adequate knowledge, without the language and access to alternative sources of information, they take all the insanity and trash that comes in huge quantity from absolutely marginal radical liberals in Russia and massively replicate it in the American media landscape.

I find several reasons for this.

First, it is difficult for them to get used to the idea that after the loss in the Cold War, when Russia was practically written off, it suddenly became a factor in the world’s politics again. Russia’s president is strong, confident and charismatic; he requires a proper place and respect in international arena for his country. He also usually turns out to be right in his actions, such as when he united with the Germans and French to oppose the perilous American military incursion in Iraq.

Second, the actions of the Russian authorities still cause strong dissatisfaction with a significant part of the Washington establishment that grew in the 1990s and is obsessed with the idea of a unilateral American dominance in the world, and still cannot accept that someone can prevent this domination.

Third, these people find it difficult to agree with Lord Acton’s famous statement when it comes to the United States — that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely — and that this is true with respect to unlimited power, not only internally, but also internationally. That is why, in some cases, when Russia opposes certain decisions of the United States, it does not intend to harm, but rather wants to show that Russia is just a friendly partner that wants to avoid repeating the same mistakes the U.S. has made in the past two decades. My friend Dimitri Simes identifies the position of many neocons and liberal interventionists vividly and accurately. He believes that in the U.S., a “democracy-promotion complex” has been formed, which is just as harmful and dangerous for U.S. foreign policy as the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned about before leaving his presidency. New realities require new approaches that need paradigmatic changes in the perception of both the U.S. and the world — something that neither analytical Washington nor political Washington are ready for, let alone journalists. This is a serious obstacle to the objective and sober understanding and appreciation of what is happening in the world, especially in Russia.

In the late 1990s, in one of his columns in The New York Times, referring to Madeleine Albright and Evgeny Primakov, William Safayer wrote, “Do not hesitate to admit that you are Jews.” With a little paraphrasing of Safayer, I would like to address O’Reilly, Krauthammer, Sen. McCain, Dennis Miller and a number of others who, today, are trying to cover up their obsession with Putin through lousy attacks: “Gentlemen, do not be afraid to admit that you love Putin, that you dream about such a leader for the United States.” I am sure that such a public statement will heal your psychological dualism problem — it will cure your neuroses and you will stop poisoning Russian-American relations.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.