On the Russian side, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin warned that NATO enlargement would provoke a revanchist backlash… On the American side, the two founders of containment against Soviet Union, China, and world communism, George Kennan and Paul Nitze (who could hardly be considered soft on Moscow) likewise warned that NATO enlargement would provoke a dangerous backlash. True, an unreformed NATO was not the only cause of the Russian backlash, but NATO expansion as a collective defense organization was definitely the primary political cause that unified Russian revanchists of all forms… And even more crucially, Yeltsin could not stop NATO’s 1999 war “over” Kosovo against Russia’s historical Serb ally. Turkish and Arab allies, if not by Washington itself).
#THE RED CARPET WORLD OF GOO FREE#
In addition to opposition to Yeltsin’s decentralization and free market neo-liberalism, Yeltsin was seen by such revanchists as a weak leader who could not effectively prosecute the war in Chechnya (seen by Moscow as backed by U.S. In effect, a virtually unknown Vladimir Putin represented the relatively “less” extreme bird who could appeal to “moderates” as well as extremists and who would take up the flame after Yeltsin had failed to curtail NATO’s military expansion and its intervention in Russia’s historical spheres of influence. Ironically the American liberal democrats aligned with American neo-conservatives to push for NATO enlargement, thereby providing VZ and other revanchist Russian birds of a feather an opportunity to propagandize and build up their “liberal democratic” coalition against Yeltsin 1. The American Congress debated: If Russian revanchists could come to power in Russia, would it not be better to expand NATO membership as fast as possible, all the way to the Baltic states and Ukraine, just in case? Or would the very process of expanding NATO provide the justification for such a revanchist movement to come to power, in a self-fulfilled prophecy? At the same time, to guarantee the process, NATO expansion would seek to stabilize those fledgling “democratic” countries that would become members-as if NATO has any real control or influence over domestic policies, populations, and their leaders.įew wanted to believe at the time that such a revanchist movement could come to power in Moscow, yet the question nevertheless began to be posed. With the liberal democratic “End of History” mindset that existed among many American elites at the time (an ideology that Zhirinovsky sought to mock by naming his Liberal Democratic party as such), the general belief was that Russia would continue to “democratize” after Gorbachev, and that Yeltsin was the natural outgrowth of that democratization process. liberal democracy vs VZ’s liberal democracy
The danger is that such an “special operation” could soon become a direct NATO-Russia confrontation much as VZ advocated in his crapulous bombast. When he died in April 2022, VZ must have been a very happy man after Vladimir Putin initiated his “special military operation” into Ukraine in February. Otherwise well have to teach them the lessons of May 1945. Let NATO immediately ask for negotiations with ourįoreign Ministry. So that not a single launch pad remains or even one plane. To be aimed at Russia from their territories. Because we cannot allow missiles and planes But Eastern Europe countries will place themselves under the threat of total annihilation. Nothing threatens America, it’s far away. In August 2014, VZ argued in support of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, foreshadowing Putin’s 2022 decision: Now, after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it is clear that his revanchist ideology gained a significant elite following in Russia over the past 30 years. I saw Vladimir Zhirinovsky (VZ), leader of the so-called Liberal Democratic Party, preaching to a small crowd in Red Square.Īt the time, VZ was considered by many as a fascist buffoon with no political weight -a “Son of Fuehrer II” as I depicted him in my poem Red Squares. When I led a second study trip to Moscow in the first year of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in May 1992, after my first trip in May 1991, the last year of Mikhael Gorbachev’s rule, it was very clear that there a spirit of revanche in the air-but it was still a minority phenomenon.
#THE RED CARPET WORLD OF GOO PLUS#
This month I am publishing one poem from my book, "The Wake-Up Blast" (2008), "Red Squares" (Moscow, May 1, 1992), that I wrote after my May 1992 visit to Moscow, plus Patriarch’s Ponds that I wrote in 2005 and updated after I spoke in a panel discussion at the American University in Moscow.
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