The US Has Made the New Cold War a People’s War*

*Editor’s note: On March 4, Russia enacted a law that criminalizes public opposition to, or independent news reporting about, the war in Ukraine. The law makes it a crime to call the war a “war” rather than a “special military operation” on social media or in a news article or broadcast. The law is understood to penalize any language that “discredits” Russia’s use of its military in Ukraine, calls for sanctions or protests Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It punishes anyone found to spread “false information about the invasion with up to 15 years in prison.

More than three-fourths of Russian citizens think the U.S. is their enemy. There has never been such a negative attitude about any country in the history of Russian opinion polls. However, the situation is very similar to U.S. at the beginning of the Cold War. Now, Washington also intends to win a new cold war, and has already been successful by significantly weakening Europe.

In the 1990s, the widespread view was that governments not people fought the Cold War (as opposed to traditional “hot” wars). Curiously enough, this view was most popular in Russia, not the U.S. Back then, the U.S. naively wanted to believe that the figure of 99.8% — the share of the population that approved of the Communist Party’s policies — was fraudulent.

This belief is only partly true. Of course, the foreign policy initiative almost always remained with the government but the period during which the U.S. government opposed Moscow and most Americans preferred to remain friends with Russia was relatively short.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and advocated for maintaining an alliance with the Russians until his death in 1945. Vice President Henry A. Wallace was an even more enthusiastic Russophile. However, his views (sympathy for communism, antiracism, etc.), which were too progressive for those times, did not allow him to succeed Roosevelt. Instead, a terminally ill Roosevelt, at the behest of the Democratic Party, made Harry S. Truman the new vice president.

Truman had a fundamentally different attitude toward the Soviet Union. Truman, who despised Nazism and Adolf Hitler, still believed that the more communists the Germans had time to kill, the better. Consequently, he distrusted Moscow, considered it merely a threat and chastised Roosevelt behind his back for what he saw as excessive appeasement of Joseph Stalin.

But the anti-Hitler coalition still officially existed, and the American public remained sympathetic to the Soviets. Even the conflict among the Allies over Turkey (Stalin leveled considerable territorial claims against it) and Iran (Stalin intended either to make it a socialist country or to break off the northern parts of Persia, populated with ethnic Azeris and Kurds) did not particularly affect public opinion. There were plenty of anti-Soviet articles in the American press, but most pointed out that the Soviet Union, which had suffered more than any other country in the fight against Nazism, had a right to worry about its security and expect compensation.

So, on the one hand, Truman negotiated a huge aid package to Moscow, which later fell through. But on the other hand, he prepared the public for confrontation with the Soviet Union. In fact, in many respects, even Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, which is traditionally used to mark the beginning of the Cold War, was Truman’s initiative: The retired British prime minister could say what the American president could not.

It only took two years for the Americans to change their minds and view the Soviet Union with suspicion and fear. The key event in this development was the Berlin Blockade, presented as an inhuman and brutal action in stark contrast to the “Candy Bombers” and other NATO planes carrying supplies to the those living in the divided German capital.

Against this backdrop and against all odds, Truman won the 1948 presidential election. And the popular Wallace, running as the Progressive Party candidate, won only 2.4% of the vote — even less than Strom Thurmond, a far-right racist.

But Truman did not seek reelection although he was legally able to — the polls predicted he would suffer a total defeat against the Republican presidential nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower was on good terms with Truman but took issue with him on three matters: communism, Korea and corruption. In essence, they were all about one thing — Truman was too indecisive and weak in the face of the deadly “Red Menace.” And as most Americans already agreed with him, the country had entered the heyday of McCarthyism.

That is, having opened a Pandora’s box on the issue at Fort Knox, Russophobia eventually caught up with Truman. The president seriously feared a World War III and had no plans at all to confront Stalin the way the “enlightened” electorate demanded.

The same attitude lasted more or less until “perestroika.” Then, President Ronald Reagan, reelected in 1984 having won in 49 out of 50 states, famously called the Soviet Union an evil empire and promised to fight communism throughout the world.

An illusion of friendship followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Everything American became fashionable and was in demand in Russia. Relations with Washington were perceived as those of allies. But at the same time, Americans learned to think of themselves as winners in the Cold War, a concept articulated in a 1992 speech by President George H.W. Bush that jarred even Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Since Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech in 2007, Russia’s relationship with the U.S. have usually been characterized as one of rivalry and, after 2014, as one of conflict. In 2022, polls estimated that Russians view America roughly the same way Americans viewed the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

When the state pollster VCIOM asks Russians to name a hostile country, 76% of respondents name the U.S. This is 9% greater than three years ago. And it is the highest figure ever measured.

Also noteworthy is the huge gap between the first and second place on this list. The “silver medal” goes to Ukraine, but only 43% of Russians consider it a hostile state despite the special military operation. In 2019 it was 10% greater at 53%.

Apparently, a significant number of respondents now draw the distinction between Ukraine and its government, rightly perceiving the Ukrainian administration as an extension of the United States. That is, in Ukraine, Russia is also in conflict with the U.S.

Third place in terms of hostile countries goes to the United Kingdom, America’s main ally in Europe, at 39%. This percentage has more than quadrupled since 2014. The U.K., it goes without saying, has expended much effort into persuading Russians that bilateral relations amount to a global confrontation.

Simply put, this is what the Cold War looks like in opinion polls. This is how it looked in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1980s, and this is how it looks now in Russia. It is precisely a people’s war.

But if a negative attitude about the U.S. has prevailed among Russian society for quite some time, calling large European Union countries hostile is a most recent development.

In 2019, 9% of Russians and 5% of the French considered Germany an enemy. Even Poland was considered an enemy by only 12% — presumably since people are not particularly interested in Russia’s relations with Poland. The figures now stand at 32%, 21% and 28%, respectively.

In other words, people hate Germany more than they hate Poland because of its role in the conflict in Ukraine, presumably due to the same lack of interest. In fact, Berlin has taken a moderate position on the conflict, while Warsaw has become radically anti-Russian.

Why Western Europe needs all this is another question that will have a clear answer. But one way or another, most of the responses depend on the role Washington takes as the only obvious party to benefit from the conflict among the entire list of Russia’s perceived enemies.

Ukraine will pay the highest price for what is happening. Europe’s cost will be less, but it will be substantial as well. It is not only about facing the worst winter in history and the burden of maintaining the Ukrainian army but also about losing cheap gas, something that offers an important competitive advantage to Europe’s industry. The comfortable life is over, probably for a very long time.

The U.S., too, is struggling — a 40-year-high inflation rate, galloping gasoline prices and public irritation with the amount of funding going to Kyiv. But it is already clear that this crisis will weaken America much less than it will weaken Europe. Of course, Washington expects Russia to grow weaker in the first place. However, America’s intends to see a weakened EU become totally dependent on the U.S. in the long term. Indeed, when Europeans get comfortable and don’t feel they have to dig in against the “threat from the East,” they think too much of themselves and dare to defy Washington.

George Friedman, the director of the private geopolitical intelligence platform Stratfor (also known as the “shadow CIA”), has been insisting for years that the U.S. considers preventing a Russian-German alliance in Europe a paramount strategic objective.

Suppose this is so (and there is little reason for doubt). In that case, Washington is closer than ever to its strategic objective, leaving 1941-1945 behind.

What Washington can’t understand is that Russia will emerge from this crisis as a far more dangerous country than it was before. One which no longer tries to negotiate, but proceeds from an absolute, uncompromising position, and relies not only on the practices of the political elite but also on the opinion of the majority of people.

Through the pressure of sanctions and its Ukrainian projects, Washington has truly made the new Cold War a people’s war. The kind that does not end with a transfer of power or that will be canceled by another “perestroika.”