January 15, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
The American public and U.S. policymakers
both have an unfortunate tendency to
conflate Russia with the Soviet Union. That
habit emerged again with the media and
political reaction to the Helsinki summit
between President Trump and Russian
President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s critics
accused him
of appeasing Putin
and even of
committing treason for not doing enough
to defend American interests and for being
far too solicitous to the Russian leader.
They regarded that as an unforgivable
offense because Russia supposedly poses a
dire threat to the United States. Hostile
pundits and politicians charged that
Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016
U.S. elections constituted an attack on
America akin to
Pearl Harbor and
9-11.
Trump’s supplicant behavior, opponents
contended, stood in shameful contrast to the
behavior of
previous presidents toward tyrants,
especially toward the Kremlin’s threats to
America and the West. They trotted out
Ronald Reagan’s
“evil empire” speech and his later
demand that Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down
the Berlin Wall as examples of how Trump
should have acted.
The problem with citing such examples is
that they applied to a different country:
the Soviet Union. Too many Americans act as
though there is no meaningful difference
between that entity and Russia. Worse still,
U.S. leaders have embraced the same kind of
uncompromising,
hostile policies that Washington pursued
to contain Soviet power. It is a major
blunder that has increasingly poisoned
relations with Moscow since the demise of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) at the end of 1991.
