Can the West Stop Putin’s Russia?

The horrible demise of Alexei Navalny in a penal colony, as well as the antics of Tucker Carlson, a useful idiot from America, make a shameful mockery of the West.

The death of Alexei Navalny and the real cause of his death, which is easy to guess, raise the question of whether the West can still wield any influence over what the Kremlin is doing. This question is also relevant to the near perverse brazenness with which Tucker Carlson, American right-wing media star, paraded in Moscow’s shopping centers and bragged about how great it is to shop in the Russian capital today. Both Navalny’s horrible demise in a penal colony and the antics of a useful idiot from America make a terrible mockery of the West.

A man was born in America 120 years ago, and after World War II, he suggested how the U.S. should respond to Stalinist Russia. George Kennan, the American ambassador in Moscow, wrote anonymously in a 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs that for Stalin, the end of the war was only a convenient starting point for launching a policy of new conquests. The goal was for communist Russia to gain global hegemony. So, if America didn’t stop Stalin, he would achieve his goal. Kennan’s conclusion was groundbreaking since earlier, even if only based on suspicion, the Kremlin ruler was considered an ally of the West in defeating the Third Reich. In this way, Kennan contributed to the American strategy of containment that determined Western policy on Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The West’s old dilemma with respect to Putin’s Russia is still relevant. Yet, this approach has had its critics. And it wasn’t just people from Eastern Europe who were left on their own behind the Iron Curtain. Americans, too, such as James Burnham, criticized the policy of containment because of its defensive nature.* Burnham believed that Kennan, in fact, had promoted an old American policy of defending its influence zones, whereas Soviet Russia was not the kind of traditional power with which you could reach an agreement on anything. Therefore, it should be defeated, and the world should be freed from it.

Today, the world is different and more complex than during the Cold War period. Yet the old dilemma the West faces with regard to Putin’s Russia remains as pressing as ever — whether containing Russian expansion is enough — or whether a strategy of liberation from it is necessary.

*Editor’s note: James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. He died in 1987.

Marek A. Cichocki is a Professor at Collegium Civitas