The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

WHEN considering what’s been going on in Eastern Europe for the past four weeks, an old saying comes to mind. “You’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin has for thirty years made no secret of the fact that he believes the West in general and the United States in particular is out to “get” Russia. And since he has long since fallen into the trap of completely conflating Russia’s interests with his own as the saviour and resurrector of Mother Russia, he takes this existential threat very personally.

Is Putin wrong? Is the West really out to get him and Russia? Absolutely. Ever since some well-known American generals and politicians publicly lamented the Allied failure to push further into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the German army in 1945, it’s been no secret that the US in particular doesn’t trust Russia. Once peace was achieved in 1945 after the Second World War, America turned its attention to an unprecedented rebuilding reconstruction effort in Germany and Japan, culminating in those two nations reaching economic superstar status within 30 years. Against whom might that policy have principally been directed? Mostly against Russia. And while the USSR hewed to a strictly communist ideology for over 70 years, the ideological dialectic between the US and the USSR was at times only a convenient veneer for a bare-knuckled international geopolitical competition.

Much of the 1950s featured a Republican-led sideshow led by demagogic Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy to hunt down communists and their sympathizers in the US. This resulted, naturally, in a notable reduction of warm and fuzzy feelings in Russia toward the US. Communist Party first secretary Joseph Stalin quickly replaced Adolph Hitler as the greatest American bogeyman, and his successors did little to warm the bilateral chill between the USSR and the US, who quickly emerged as the world’s leading protagonists in the Cold War.

A venerable professor friend once reminded his class of a simple lesson regarding the Russians and their foreign policy. “For some reason, perhaps originating from their historical and geographic insularity, Americans persist in their belief that other nations should align their foreign policy with America’s national interest, rather than recognize their own. The superior economic and military power of the US and its resulting preponderant position in the world since World War II have led many nations to align with America, for reasons at least as practical as ideological. They are allied with the US not because of an uncritical perspective on the American democracy, but from an altogether different concept – their own national self-interest.”

“Americans generally take this for granted, since polls consistently expose their inattention to the rest of the world – except for Russia. Americans do tend to notice the Russians, who have for over a century mostly seen their own national self-interest as independent from and often opposed to the self-interest of the United States. And this competition goes well beyond politics.”

The record supports this theory. Take for example two of the most famous Olympic contests of all time, which have come to epitomize the rivalry between these transcontinental giants. In 1972 at Munich, the US men’s team carried a 71-0 cumulative Olympic record into the title game with the Soviet men. The final three seconds were replayed by the officials three different times and the Soviets eventually prevailed by a single point, making a shot at the final buzzer. There were numerous unsubstantiated allegations that the officials had been bribed.

Turnabout arrived at the Winter Games eight years later, when the huge underdog American men’s ice hockey team somehow managed to beat the Soviets in the semi-final and then brushed aside the Finns to win the first American hockey gold medal. “Do you believe in miracles?” was Al Michaels’ famous call after the US team beat the USSR.

This central Cold War rivalry was underscored in the movies. In 1984’s Red Dawn, American high school students lead a desperate guerilla warfare counterattack against occupying Soviet forces. (This script is in some ways prescient: There are aspects of the current struggle by the Ukrainians for their homeland that are similar). The enduringly famous James Bond series of international thrillers often introduced Russian or Russian-affiliated villains for our hero to successfully overcome.

Best-selling author David Baldacci told The Washington Post that “I grew up thinking the USSR wanted to destroy America. I saw that through books, television and movies.” Baldacci said “it was a clear decision back then: It was good versus evil, like Hitler versus the Allies.”

The recent cable TV hit “The Americans” told the story of Soviet spies imbedded in US society in the 1960s. It had an impressively long run from 2013-18, and didn’t really seem to many viewers like the residue of some forgotten era. It felt oddly current. Putin’s cynical decision to invade Ukraine harkens back to and reinforces perhaps the most enduring nickname coined by US President Ronald Reagan. In a 1983 speech to a mostly white Christian evangelistic group that otherwise sounded many of the same anti-abortion and blurred church-state lines that remain GOP trademarks to this day, Reagan called the USSR “the Evil Empire.” The nickname stuck, and Putin is reviving the worst of the Cold War with his murderous behaviour in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the compromise leading to the end of hostilities in Ukraine has been right in front of the world since well before this needless, scary conflict began. The Russians and Putin, because they remain paranoid about the US and the West, want Ukraine to be at least neutral and to foreswear any future Western alliance. This has been rebuffed – so far. But now there are signs that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may be changing his mind.

In an interview with Ukrainian television earlier this week, Zelenskyy said he would be willing to discuss a commitment from Ukraine to not seek NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops, and a guarantee from Russia of Ukraine’s security and independence.

Zelensky called for what he described as “a compromise for everyone: for the West, which doesn’t know what to do with us with regard to NATO; for Ukraine, which wants security guarantees, and for Russia, which doesn’t want further NATO expansion.” This actor-turned-politician, derided at first as an amateur playing a sophisticated game he couldn’t understand, continues to defiantly and courageously speak the truth.

DOLLAR DOMINATION

Now that Putin’s month-long invasion of Ukraine has exposed and exacerbated current great power rivalries, and how the resulting Western sanctions against Putin, his associates and Russia have underscored the economic power granted to the US by virtue of its dollar being effectively the world’s currency, speculation is again rising about the possibility of another currency threatening or replacing the dollar as the basic unit of international trade, finance and economics.

In the past, when these stories emerged, they were quickly quashed. The Chinese, whose own renminbi currency and yuan denominational unit could replace the dollar, have for nearly 15 years pushed against dollar-denominated world commerce and finance, and in 2008 famously called for “a new international financial order.” No sale.

Only two percent of world foreign-exchange reserves are today held in Chinese renminbi. The Russian ruble comes in at much less than one percent. The US dollar’s share in foreign-exchange reserves held by foreign central banks is around 60 percent today; the EU, Japan and the UK account for another 32 percent. The reason, aside from residual mutual political affinity, is simply that any responsible central banker would wish to hold foreign currency reserves in the most widely and reliably traded currency. That is still the dollar.

Furthermore, a similar sixty percent of private foreign currency bank deposits and foreign currency corporate borrowing is also done in dollars.

The Russians and Putin are feeling the sting of this dollar domination as the Western sanctions take ever firmer hold and threaten to squeeze the life out of the teetering Russian economy. And it is a sure thing that as Beijing watches from the sidelines as its rivals square off in Eastern Europe, the Chinese will be mindful of the dollar’s dominance as they consider actions that could generate sanctions against their own economy if they assist Russia to a degree unacceptable to Washington.