War of the Worlds, The Early Years

The facts of the end of the Cold War support the short and astonishing version that Ronald Reagan’s imagination and style won out over American and Allied doubt and the sadistic and stupid Soviet empire.  I learned from Martin and Annalise Anderson, Hoover, that Ronald Reagan carried his entire Cabinet and National Security team across the threshold and into the house of Star Wars just because he believed that Star Wars — a theoretical extravagance against incoming ballistic missiles, never proved at the time — would demoralize and defeat the Soviet hawks.

 Ronald Reagan was correct.   The Soviets started to crumble when Stalin died.  There was no coherent plan for succession, and the regime staggered through Khurshchev and hit the status quo ante of Patriotic War thugs with Brezhnev and Kosygin.  Brezhnev’s slow, ignorant death left the state to the KGB, which shoved in its grotesque apparatchik Andropov, who prompltly died of kidney failure and ignorance.

Reagan’s presidency confronted Andropov’s sinister paranoia (a thrilling version of this tension in David Hoffman’s “Dead Hand)”, a state so rotten and blind that the senior apparatus convinced itself that Reagan was going to launch a first strike and piously prepared for Armageddon for the nomenklatura.  Chernenko inherited a failed state, and then Gorbachev was handed the keys to an empty state.

Reagan challenged the ill-educated Gorbachev to give up his nukes at Iceland.  Star Wars overwhelmed the Soviets as a threat they could not to counter.  One year after Iceland, Ronald Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, delivering the ringing 20th Century verdict on the Soviet novelty, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

One year later, Gorbachev tore down the Soviet Empire by shaking Reagan’s hand in Moscow and standing idle, in 1989, while the client states abandoned Moscow in a rush of resentment, the clients collapsing from the top as the Soviets would not send troops to prop up the hollow regimes –  Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucuses and the Stans and then Ukraine all quitting in a helter-skelter of drunken nihilism.

Iceland beat the Soviets.  Star Wars beat the Soviets.  Reagan beat the Soviets.  Berlin beat the Soviets.  The War of the Worlds, the early years, ended with American World success and Russian World dejection.  

Ronald Reagan’s speech is a critical moment in the old war of the worlds, yet it has no place or utility in the new war of the worlds.  The defeated Soviet Union is a museum piece that is rarely discussed outside of the academies.  The ambitious Russia is an energy superpower that now commands attention and financial obedience in Western Europe, especially Berlin, and also spans Asia as a military superpower.

Russia is master of the energy supply to the EU and that means there is no Euro unless Russia continues to deliver.  At the same time, Russia wants investment from Europe and Asia, and right now has started bargaining for investors without strings, such as demands for transparency.

There is a new Russia that is fresh and savvy, called the civiliki, and it aims to ease out the old and clumsy KGB crowd that came in with Putin, called the siloviki.  Medvedev is the center of civiliki, but the brains of the operation is said to be Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.  Long struggle to follow, the uniforms and spooks and thugs vs the technocrats and managed oligarchs.  What this means for the US is that the Obama administration is not well positioned to deal with the strength and aggression of Moscow.

National Security Adviser Jim Jones was in Moscow last week, negotiating about sanctions and Iran.  He played a weak hand.  Moscow knows that Tehran has nukes.  Moscow wants Tehran to remain a wedge between the Stans and the defeatist jihadist luddites of the Gulf.  Moscow also wants to grow to outshine the United States in the 21st Century.

In sum, the war of the worlds, the later years, is now rejoined, and Moscow has the advantage of geography and resources and alliances.   The Berlin Wall is a patriotic exhibit.  Berlin and Moscow are a sturdy alliance.  Ronald Reagan freed the people of Eastern Europe and the Caucuses who are now all beholden to the energy pipelines from Moscow.  Washington is in the hands of a young and poorly foreign policy schooled team that does not look to regard Moscow as a potent adversary.  Leslie Gelb, foreign policy wiseman, judges POTUS as an inexperienced actor who “hasn’t done worse than Bush, but who hasn’t accomplished much either.”  Gelb is arguing about Afghanistan, Iraq and the Ummah.

My eye fixes on Moscow.  I was trained to confront the Russians.  I see them now as sophisticated and innovative adversaries and also as very useful comrades in the struggle with the Devils.  ”There is the right way, the wrong way, and the Russian way,” is the proverb.  Washington would do well to go along the Russian way in Europe, in the Middle East, in Central Asia.  America needs an enforcer, at least someone who can wield a club and guard a pipleline,  No evidence so far that Washington is ready to ally with Moscow, as in, enemy of my enemy is not my enemy.

How long till the Obama administration comprehends that Moscow is a virile threat unless and until it is regarded with respect and cooperation?  Unknown.