Memory, resentment and riches

By Fester:

Brad Delong in 2007 wrote something that has stuck to me as a very useful analytical perspective in analyzing American policy for the next fifty years and the value of creating positive sum relationships:

There is a good chance that China is now on the same path to world preeminence that America walked 130 years ago. Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America's future national security and nothing more destructive to America's future prosperity than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.

Pat Lang is looking at the motives and trends in general Russian public opinion and national security perceptions:

The 90s were a hard, hard time for Russians, hard emotionally and very hard in terms of the reduction in what had already been a pitifully low standard of living under the Communists.

The boom in oil money has erased a lot of the economic hardship, but the scabs are still there over wounded national pride.

The United States has done little to help those wounds heal. Instead, we have insisted on measures like; the missile shield system in former Warsaw Pact countries.  The Russians are neither stupid nor unsophisticated.  They know that the difference between the defensive and offensive meanings of most weapons systems lie wholly in the intention of the possessor.

At the same time, we have pushed the boundaries of NATO as close to Russia's shrunken borders as we could manage to do.  NATO was always an anti-Soviet alliance.  It was a necessary and useful thing.  Now, the Russians see NATO pushed right up to their frontiers.  Surprise!  They now see NATO as an anti-Russian alliance. Its expansion is viewed as a symbol of their continuing humiliation.

As part of a bi-partisan consensus over the past twenty years, the United States has been trying to lock in a temporary ebb of great power relationships into permanent advantage.  This attempt to stand atop a tidal wave and yell stop has failed and it has great costs. 

Comments

[Steve Hynd]

Good point, Fes. I'd note too that there are many in Europe who mark the American Right's cheerleading for every sign of failure or disharmony in the EU. Don't be surprised if that bites the US on the ass one of these days. (Arguably, it already did - over Iraq).

Regards, C

[john]

Russia has been helped by the US, The rule's in russia were not that much sharp, they are not knowing what US is willing for Russia. NATO has been expanded time by time.

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john

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