Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Why have slaves when you can have "customers". Very practical. I remember the nuns telling us to pray for the "conversion of Russia". This is probably not what they envisioned, but it will do

This article is good by today's standards, but that is partly due to the fact that our standards were weakened by decades of 'necessary' Cold War ideology stuff followed by two decades of naive international views of how Europe and Russia would evolve to be 'like us' as we dreamed about us.

A significant part Putin and KGB mission was to find out what really worked for 'us' and how Russia could develop its own version. Results trumped ideology.

The writer briefly notes earlier efforts to modernize Russia starting with some of their better Czars. That economic partner effort continued through the Harriman family economic era, and even Joe Kennedy Sr. The problems they always had involved a lack of coherent Russian national identity among the people/classes except during defensive wars, and a chronic paranoia from those wars. That was the reason Russia expanded into Europe and Central Asia. Our original Cold War goal was to contain and calm these aspects of Russia so that it could become part of our emerging 'civil and calm' world society. Unfortunately propaganda and psy warfare soon replaced reason in communication with the public and our political establishment.

I'm going to send Tom an E-mail with a list of some rational Golden Oldies by writers before we got swept up with Cold War thinking and post Cold War dreaming. Maybe he can find copies in a library basement.