Is Russia Our Enemy?

Fred Kaplan says no:

Formal alliances faltered; shifting coalitions became the rule. Americans weren't accustomed to this disconnect between their dictates and the rest of the world's actions. When France refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq, the reaction was manically fierce—the renaming of French fries, the boycotts of Bordeaux wine. But what this panic reflected was sheer bewilderment. France was hardly America's enemy, but that's how many Americans suddenly treated it. Habituated to the Cold War mentality, they found it hard to view a nation that contested America's interests and blocked America's policies as anything other than a foe.

The next sentence in the following paragraph is "Russia is not France," a nice tautology that might have eliminated the need for all of the preceding.

The problem with Kaplan's analysis is that, as much as he accuses the anti-Putinists of a "cold war mentality," he himself succumbs to the hoary vices of detente "realists." Can the United States criticize the Kremlin for its blood-brutal war in Chechnya, its highly suspect attitude to the assassinations of Anna Politkovskaya and Sasha Litvinenko, its undermining of democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia, its suborning of the Estonian cyberwar, etc.? Of course not, argues Kaplan, because, well, we're responsible for warrantless wiretaps and Abu Ghraib, much to our everlasting shame.

I doubt Putin needs such instruction in the fine art of moral equivalence given his rhetoric of late, which compares the United States to the Third Reich. (Russians think they can get away with the "fascist" slur after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and here come cartloads of forgetful Western pundits telling them they can.)

Kaplan's thesis is scarcely different from the Hamilton-Baker commission's recommendation for courting that other anti-ally Syria, at the allowable expense of letting justice for Rafiq Hariri and Pierre Gemayel's murders melt away in the warm comity of nations.

One needn't argue for a return to 1963 to be on guard against Putin's dictatorship. Some of us with strong opposition to the new Russian bear still think an American missile shield a profligate folly. Nor do we advocate the unveiling of a new Iron Curtain.

But consider the consequences of turning a deaf ear to those victims of the Off-White Tsar. What happens when their historical turn comes and we seek to make them our allies? Will they agree that our support at this crucial time could not have been forthcoming given our dirty hands in the Middle East and our desire to maintain a post-Soviet state of equilibrium? Or will they rightly see us as overly selective participants in the struggle for human rights and civil liberties?

Anyone who claims to care about Guantanamo Bay or the politically self-serving termination of federal prosecutors has got no business cherrying picking moral issues if Gary Kasparov's Other Russia isn't even a bud on the tree.

UPDATE: The Other Russia's website just posted the following today:

President Bush’s ambitious second inaugural speech was also full of promises of standing up for democracy around the world: 

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.

The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.” The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.

Since that day, January 20, 2005, Mr. Bush’s strongest statement about the destruction of democracy and civil rights in Putin’s Russia was that one sentence on June 5 in Prague. We are not so proud as to not count ourselves as “democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile.” Stand up for your words, Mr. Bush, and stand up to your friend Vladimir. He’s not your friend any more than he is ours.