Armed with Putin Power How Did They Lose the Cold War?

Source: Pew Research Center

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I enjoy reading Gerald Seib’s columns in the Wall Street Journal and Tuesdays was no exception. Seib, a serious bourgeois commentator and Executive Editor of the Wall Street Journal, reports on what a wonderful year Russian PresidentVladimir Putin has had.

Seib is not alone in pointing to Vladimir Putin as the destroyer of US democracy. Ingesting this dominant narrative when it comes to the crisis of the US political system I might wonder how on earth the Soviets lost the cold war. Fortunately I did read some of the Russian Revolutionary, Leon Trotsky’s works on the Soviet Union before Stalin had him murdered that provided me with some answers that made sense.

I am not denying that the Russians, Putin or any other global competitor did what it could to influence the US elections. All the major powers do this and the US is no exception. If it cannot influence elections, US imperialism will simply replace an unreliable regime, Mossadegh for example, with a friendly one-------the infamous Shah of Iran and we know how that turned out.

But it seems that all was well in the US over the past half-century and the neo-liberal period until the rise of Trump and his ally Putin.  Putin may well have some real dirt on Trump and the idea that Trump would spit or ejaculate on a bed he was sleeping on that had been used by Obama sounds like something Trump would do.

But over the past 40 years, through my union activity in the struggle for an independent Labor Party based on the trade unions, and my union local played a major part in that campaign here in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as nationally, I have watched and written about the constant rejection of the electoral process by millions of US workers and pointed out many times how the rank and file of organized labor and the wider working class were withdrawing from the electoral process in droves for the want of an alternative. The average union member and class-conscious worker drew the conclusion long ago that when it came down to the issues that really mattered, jobs, wages, security, shelter, health care, education and so on, nothing much changed no matter which party was in power. Neither voting nor belonging to a union is simply an exercise in civics as far as working people are concerned. Millions of Americans long ago determined that voting for either party changed very little and simply opt out.

According to Seib, it was Putin’s agents’ interference in the 2016 election that set the ball rolling and sowed “discord within the US political system”  and crafty old Putin is sitting back watching them deflect blame for this interference from, “…..Moscow and toward Ukraine….”, he writes.

Seib quotes Fiona Hill who gave very powerful testimony last week when she said, “The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.”

The entire US state department and the ambassador core is being undermined by Putin.

After manipulating the US election results Putin hopped over to the UK and now that poor country is in a heated and divisive debate over exactly how much Russian “disinformation was unleashed” that influenced the British people to vote to exit the EU. So far, Putin is responsible for Trump and Brexit. 

There is no mention of years of declining living standards in the US, a public education crisis, crumbling infrastructure and dwindling public services that have occurred under both Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Here in California it is at times referred to as a one party state the Democrats are such a dominant force. But here too we have seen the rich get richer and the poor and middle class sinking deeper and deeper in to poverty and debt bondage. This is the state with the most billionaires in the US.  We have witnessed an almost catastrophic dam failure that could have led to thousands of deaths, an accident that experts warned authorities would occur. We have experienced undoubtedly catastrophic fires, both these disasters caused by market failure. Like Katrina and other disasters, they are not natural, or acts of God or any other supernatural force but a by-product of capitalism.

And as far as the EU and the UK is concerned, there is much more to this crisis than manipulation by Russia. Since the crushing of the miners’ strike and the weakening of the unions as well as the neo-liberal privatization policies of Thatcher and the shift to the right of the Labor Party under Blair, the British working class has been driven back. Homelessness, poverty, an assault on the treasured National Health System are all contributors to the political crisis there. You can blame Putin all you want but there is a global crisis of capitalism and of the established capitalist parties. The British Tory party (Conservatives) the oldest capitalist party in the world, is under threat of extinction.

And I suppose Putin initiated and directed the massive protests still going on France, the movement we know as the yellow vest protests that receive very little coverage in the tightly controlled US mass media. Just ten days ago there were huge demos and occupations celebrating the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement.

Internationally, Russian influence in the Middle East through its presence in Syria and with Iran is also of concern to western imperialist interests in general. And Seib is right of course when he writes that discord among western capitalist powers is generally a positive for Russia. Do we in the US think the US government’s support of the Hong Kong protests and the passing of legislation in the US Senate aimed at giving concrete support to it is for purely egalitarian reasons? I think not.

Putin is a former KGB head and the KGB is well known for its capabilities for global espionage and murder and who can disagree with Seib when he says that Putin is, “Master of his craft.” . But the CIA tops the list when it comes global terror and interference in the affairs of foreign governments simply by the fact that the US has more money. Throughout Latin America including in Bolivia and Venezuela today, the CIA has influenced or overthrown governments, assassinated or its flunkies have, reformers, priests, union leaders forming unions that threaten US corporate interests. The first US personnel in Vietnam were CIA operatives and there is surely no one that can seriously argue that the Vietnamese people were a threat to the everyday lives of millions of American workers. This country had not threatened the US in anyway, neither did Iraq.

I am not in the slightest suggesting Putin, a ruthless individual indeed, or Russian Imperialism or any other world power has not or will not influence US politics and public opinion. That’s what they all do. But the failed US political system elected Trump, not Putin. The undemocratic Electoral College put Trump in the White House and the lack of any viable alterative to the two capitalist parities and their candidates held bring that about. The Democrats are not calling for the abolition of the Electoral College, they may need it some day.

The end of the era in which these two capitalist parties dominated US political life is over and has been heading that way for some time.  One can disagree with the 100 million or so that didn’t vote in the last US presidential election but you can’t blame Putin for that. The heads of organized labor in the US are more responsible for this than Putin. They have consistently pushed workers and their members to support a political party they have abandoned decades ago. And as I have pointed out in the past, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) of which I am a member is making a mistake supporting the Democratic candidates in the coming election. DSA has endorsed Bernie Sanders and I am not sure what they’ll do if he doesn’t get the nomination. Whether he does or doesn’t there will be crisis regardless and that in turn will be exacerbated by the coming slump.

The DSA has over 60,000 members, no small force. Where it has the resources DSA could link up with the numerous movements that have arisen over the past few years help build an independent movement and also put forward a candidate for the presidency. It can build in this way.

US Capitalism welcomed the collapse of Stalinism and along with other forces, the Vatican included, did what it could to promote the return of capitalism to Russia and the Soviet bloc and block any movement toward a healthy democratic socialist alternative. The problem is that it wanted a subservient capitalism not a rising power like China and to a lesser extent Russia. But capitalism is not a cooperative but a competitive system and any capitalist state with the resources will be driven in to conflict with its competitors.

US capitalism wanted a return to capitalism in Russia and got it. Now they long for the good old cold war days when these two global superpowers shared the loot in a this bi-polar world.

But as the Rolling Stones song goes, You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

Putting or no Putin. The US and global situation has changed as many of the old established parties are on the verge of collapse and new ones on the left and the right will arise. We are seeing mass movements against austerity and the market on every continent (bar Antarctica). This is not Putin’s doing either and he is facing revolts from below as well.