In 1957, U.S. policy wonks and politicians began to warn the American public of a frightening “missile gap” between the rival superpowers. Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles were allegedly superior in number and power to those in the U.S. arsenal. This was presented as proof of the Kremlin’s aggressive nuclear posture toward the free world.
The so-called missile gap was actually in reverse: the superiority lay on the U.S. side. But for two decades Anglo-American media outlets swallowed and regurgitated the cooked intelligence, just as they would decades later with Iraq’s vaporous weapons of mass destruction.
And now, in the rush to judgement on the doomed Malaysia airlines flight MH17, the usual suspects are rebranding Russian president Vladimir Putin as Saddam 2.0. To date, the White House has produced no coordinated intelligence to prove who was responsible for bringing down the airline, and how — accidentally or intentionally. Not that this matters when the drums of war require a good beating.
“Putin’s Deadly Doctrine” screamed a July 20 New York Times headline, accompanied by a photograph of a man standing by the wreckage of flight MH17. ”Putin’s War” trumpeted the July 18 New York Daily News. “Putin’s Missile,” launched Britain’s The Sun. “Charles: Putin is Behaving Just Like Hitler,” declaimed The Daily Mail.
Not to be outdone, the Globe and Mail adorned the front page of its July 26 edition with the headline “Public Enemy” and a two-tone illustration of Putin with a passenger plane for a mouth.
The Globe’s Focus section acted as a conduit to the Prime Minister’s Office, with Stephen Harper’s commentary, “It’s our duty to stand firm in the face of Russian aggression.” And last week’s Maclean’s magazine slapped a pic of Putin in aviator specs on a cover bearing the legend: “Getting Away with Murder.”
My point isn’t to defend Russia’s autocratic leader but to condemn the recycling of rhetoric from the Cold War, a time when the U.S. and USSR came to the brink of nuclear war at least five times, according to declassified files and the testimony of former U.S. and Soviet military commanders.
In 1947, U.S. policy silverback George F. Kennan introduced the strategy of containment. “It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies,” Kennan wrote under the pseudonym “X” for the journal Foreign Affairs.
Today the U.S. maintains over 900 military bases outside its 50 states, in 130 countries around the world. Russia is encircled with U.S. bases in Qatar, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Japan — to say nothing of Eastern and Western Europe. Kennan’s “containment” has shaded into the “full-spectrum dominance” of Pentagon war-gamers. (In comparison, Russia reportedly has approximately 25 military bases beyond its borders.)
Already forgotten is western support for neo-Nazi elements in the Ukraine’s regime change. But who’s got time for history lessons, unless they are the approved kind? Last week, CBC Radio’s The Current asked James Sherr, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, about Ronald Reagan’s early ’80s warning to Europeans that if they allowed pipelines into the then-Soviet Union, the latter would have leverage over Europe for decades to come.
“Russia is going to be a significant part of energy markets for the foreseeable future,” Sherr responded, “and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as we can diminish dependency to the point where Russia loses political leverage. And Europe as a whole could probably do this in five years... with a willingness to spend more money.”
Ah yes, money. Could that mean driving a wedge between Moscow and Brussels and trashing Russian/European gas arrangements, so the Anglo-American empire can flog its shale gas to allies and vassal states without free market interference?
In the past week, western politicians and their stenographers in the monopoly press have dialled down a bit on the anti-Russian demagoguery.
The conflicting claims surrounding flight MH17 may be weakening the adhesive on Putin’s “mass killer” name tag. Still, economic sanctions from the U.S., EU and Canada will translate into mass punishment of the Russian people, who will hate us for it and support their poker-faced leader all the more.
We don’t have a missile gap. We have a reality gap.
