Who Lost Russia, and America?

Barack Obama’s trip to Russia, calling for a partnership with America’s former Cold War enemy nearly 20 years too late, brought up some painful memories.

In 1989, I started a company with a visiting Russian I met in San Francisco, touted as a leading example of perestroika. In January of 1990, I traveled to Moscow, just as the whole creaking edifice of communism was nearing collapse.

The premise was that both superpowers would collapse simultaneously—the USSR economically and politically, the US socially and spiritually. The fates of the nuclear-armed-to-the-teeth enemies were therefore locked together, and we could help each other ‘reset’ our disastrous national directions.

In a statement to the graduating class at the New Economic School in Moscow that was so dated and understated that it seemed laughable, Obama said, “It is difficult to forge a lasting partnership between former adversaries.”

From the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until the collapse of American capitalism in 2008, the United States ran on ‘sole remaining superpower’ fumes. The social and spiritual collapse of America occurred at the same time the USSR collapsed, with Gulf War I the straw that broke the spirit’s back in this country. But such is the power of denial, and the appearance of power, that only now, 18 years later, is the truth beginning to hit home.

From the moment of my arrival in Moscow in January ‘90, it seemed that the Russian people had been taught the same line my mother had often given me growing up: “If the Russians ever throw off the chains of communism, Americans will be there to help them build a market and democracy.”

After his driver picked me up at the airport, and I arrived at his luxurious apartment, Andrei asked me two questions. In California, we had briefly discussed the opportunities that the end of the Cold War held for both former enemies, but some basic questions remained unaddressed.

“Which direction do you want to go—political or economic?” This was the core question that my partners in Silicon Valley and I had grappled with, and we had decided on market development. It was what the United States did best, although we insisted on doing it in a radically different way—in an “ecologically and ethically sound way.”

Andrei then asked, “Where do you want to go and whom do you want to meet?” “Where can I go, and whom can I meet?” I replied. “Anywhere, and anyone,” he said. “Including Gorbachev?” “Yes, perhaps.”

Within a few minutes of meeting in Moscow, this fellow had confirmed my intuition about him in San Francisco. If anything, as I came to discover, he had too much power.

But perhaps one has to get in bed with the devil’s own to get things done. Playing at the highest levels, the perennial spiritual and philosophical challenge is not becoming one of the devil’s own oneself.

The pivotal moment came back in Silicon Valley. Andrei went back to the States before I left Russia, and when I returned we put an initial proposal from the Soviet space agency on the table with five Ford Aerospace vice presidents in a two and half hour meeting. This was before anyone had even conceived of Russian-American cooperation in space, but the Ford Aerospace execs could see the writing on the wall.

Well, all but one of them could. The lawyer in the bunch vetoed that first foray into high-profile cooperation. (Having obtained strong interest from Ford Aerospace before I left, Andrei had met with top Soviet space agency officials when I was in Russia.)

In the end, Ford Aerospace became Loral SpaceSystems, turned its attention to China, helped the Chinese make advances in their rockets (and incidentally, ICBM’s), and blew up a rocket that killed possibly thousands of Chinese in a virtually unknown accident in the mid-90’s.

The whole vision, which had looked in America and Russia as though the gods had greased the rails, suddenly went south. And the rest is history. Instead of the best with the best, what America, Russia, and the world got was the worst with the worst.

As the Cold War was ending, one of the men in Gorbachev’s inner circle made a remark that indicated he understood Americans very well. “We’re going to do the worst thing to you,” he said; “we’re going to deprive you of an enemy.”

Having been overwhelmed by the goodwill of the Russian people everywhere I went that winter of ’90, I’m struck by how much they’ve come to dislike and distrust Americans. Russians also believed Americans would be there to help them when they threw off the chains of communism, and saw me as the leading edge of a wave that would help them build a market and forge a democracy.

Instead they got the back of Clinton’s triumphalist, “indispensable nation,” globalizing hand. The ‘all markets at once’ strategy was one that Clinton’s incoming Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, told me they were going to pursue. Now, the entire world is reaping the whirlwind of the American boom that the Clintonites, followed by the Bushites, thought would never end.

Russians, who tend to be a pretty cynical people anyway, have utterly lost faith in Americans, capitalism, and democracy. Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB martial arts expert, is a throwback to the Russian strongman, while Medvedev fronts him and plays footsie with the West.

Russian young people have a clear-eyed view of Obama. As Kirill Zagorodnov, 25, one of the graduates at the Western-oriented New Economic School said, it’s a matter of “how he behaves, how he positions himself--that typical charisma, which in Russia is often parodied. Russians really are not accustomed to it. It is like he is trying to manipulate the public.”

The lost opportunity went both ways of course, as much due to Russian pride and need for control as American arrogance and self-righteousness.

But Americans are still in massive denial, or zombie-like indifference to the social and spiritual collapse that occurred in this country at the time the USSR fell.

The bipolar world of US/USSR rivalry is ancient history, and the unipolar world of the ‘sole remaining superpower’ was stillborn. Now that the collapse of both the communist and capitalist systems is undeniable, the question is, what new order can be built?

Some anarchists share the view of right wingnuts that the only good government is a dead government. But the absence of a human created order and organization is not the path to utopia, but the road militarism and fascism. All over the world, the likes of Cheney and Palin work and wait in the wings.

Now, with even Barack Obama not enough to halt America’s decline, and the rickety post-Cold War multilateral order on the verge of collapse, there is tremendous urgency for global citizens to manifest, create, and build a tangible and workable global polity.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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