"Brother bruin, brother bruin,

we are both in the wrong"

Our history in these islands is too tragical to think about. We have abandoned its reality, and taken to a myth which is useful for stabilising the State.1

I’ve had this on my mind for some time now. The recent events at the White House2 have brought it to the fore. I speak, of course, of the irrational, visceral, innate fear and/or abhorence of Russia. The word Russophobia, was coined at least by 1836.3 It pervades American thought, to be sure, though we have always had a certain latitude alllowed for dissenting views in this country. And it may be changing a bit. Perhaps being in contact with actual Russians on a weekly basis prevents me from getting twisted up the way some people do.

The unthinking, instinctive Russophobia, however, is much worse in Europe, with a few notable exceptions.4 But the worst offender, I am sad to say, is the U.K., where antagonism to Russia is almost genetic in nature. The belief is held as firmly as if it were a foundational doctrine of their faith. The English may not believe in much of anything anymore, but they do believe in this.

I never initiated this subject in conversation, as I knew my particular beliefs to be at variance with the previous conventional thinking, both left and right. And I do not particularly enjoy ruining lunch appointments. But, if someone insists on talking nonsense in my presence, neither am I known for holding my tongue, especially.

I have my mini-history lesson at the ready; grounded in Kennan and steeped in Mearsheimer, Sachs, and Mercouris, I could start at the end of the Second World War, but going back that far tends to lose your audience. And so, I start about 35 years ago, and lay out my case, to-wit:

1. “Not One Inch”: The promises of no NATO expansion made to Gorbachev in February 1990.5
2. Our almost immediate subsequent discarding of that promise once the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
3. “The greatest mistake”: In 1997, 93-year old George Kennan, our greatest diplomat, having spent 70 years studying Russia and the Russians, wrote that our expansion of NATO eastward was “the greatest mistake of Western policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”6 He later went on to elaborate that expanding NATO to Ukraine would inevitably lead to war with Russia.
4. “The Butcher of Belgrade”: Clinton authorizes 79 days of bombing in 1999, and the severing of Kosovo from Serbia, all to gain points with the Middle East. The lesson to Russia was that the West was allowed to cross borders, to engage in unprovoked attacks, to change borders at will.
5. Despite warnings, Central Europe joins NATO in 1999.
6. Triumphalism marches on: the Baltic statelets and the Balkans join NATO in 2004.
7. Vladimir Putin gives a seminal speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, 2007, though angrily discounted by the West. This speech marks the beginning of the end of the Unipolar Moment. 7
8. February 2008 recognition of Kosovo.
9. NATO’s Bucharest Summint, April 2008: the foolish George W. Bush (but I repeat myself) pushed for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.8 9
10. August 2008, Saakashvili’s Georgia engages Russian solders in South Ossetia and quickly loses in 5-day war; U.S. military support AWOL.
11. February 2014, the U.S.-backed Maidan Coup in Kiev which overthrew the legitimately elected government in Ukraine. All the usual suspects were on board and in play, NATO, EU, USAID, NED, etc.10
12. March 2014, Russian annexation of Crimea; Kosovar pot, meet Crimean kettle.
13. 2014-2022 Minsk I, Minsk II, Istanbul—a series of tricks played on Russia.
14. December 2021, Biden dismisses Putins “Red Line’ on Ukrainian membership in NATO, the last warning from the East.11

Telling all or part of these real events, however, makes no difference at all, for the belief of Vladimir Putin as Darth Vader/Saruman/Hitler is an article of faith. I would welcome an argument about why this is not so; a different construction of the historical record! But it never happens. I can tell a story with these events, connecting one to the other, illustrating with actual facts how one bad decision led to certain consequences, and on and on. Indeed, I find Russia’s eventual actions perfectly undestandable. Not only that, I find them to be a model of restraint—and before you think that I have lost my mind, just think back on our own country’s history over the last 34 years or so. We have not exactly been a poster child for restraint.

Against these episodes in history, the Russophobes push back with emotion and cliches. Here is a sampling; all are variations on the theme:

1. “Russia won’t stop at Ukraine.” (This is the default position of the West. Watch Piers Morgan on any broadcast, and you will hear it in 5 minutes. Is there any evidence to support this? Can you explain Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 without NATO expansion?)
2. “Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union and/or the Russian Empire.” (In point of fact, the actual Communists remaining in Russia oppose Putin; he has never been their man.)
3. “Russian interference elected Trump in 2016.” (First, “Russiagate” has been thoroughly and conclusively discredited. Democrats should look to their 2016 candidate rather than Moscow to understand their loss. Second, Americans should be very, very circumspect in accusing anybody else of election interference. We have done it ourselves all over the world, and have continued to do it through 2024.)
4. “I hate, hate, hate Russia, and I hate, hate hate Putin.” (Haters gotta hate.)
5. “Russia is our enemy and always has been.” (Really? Not so in 1941-1945. I remember they offered assistance after 9/11, for example. But in a binary worldview, someone has to be the baddie. In Britain’s case, their victories in 3 existential crises: Napoleon, World War I and World War II depended on Russian assistance.)
6. “I just don’t want Putin to win.” (Well, what if the only thing keeping him from it is World War III?)
7. “Russia was providing the ammunition that killed our boys in Vietnam!” (This assumes, of course, that it was right for us to be in Vietnam with 545,000 soldiers. Feeding LBJ’s ego is not a good enough reason for me, so that assumption is a non-starter.)

These are the printable responses. Other than the last, none of them are based on the factual record; all are emotional and prejudicial outbursts. The most honest came from a close friend who does not really follow geopolitics. But he is a lifelong Republican who now thinks he may have to turn in his “Republican card.” I asked why, and he launched off onto a tirade against Russia, apparently believing that Trump and Vance had been mean to Zelensky (I, however, think they merely exposed his true nature.) Anyway, I went through my historical spiel, starting at the end of the first Cold War in 1989. At the end, he said, “Well, all that you say may very well be true, but it goes against everything I was ever taught growing up.” No doubt. But what if what we were taught was wrong? The nastiest response came from an Englishman I had considered to be a friend, having connected on a mutual literary interest. He trolled a Facebook post of mine and told me in no uncertain terms not to ever come back to his country. It was so extreme and over-the-top that it didn’t bother me much. But it did bring into clearer focus the extreme, vitriolic nature of Russophobia.

And it has been with us for a while. Richard Cobden was a prominent and impressive Liberal Party politician in England, In 1836, after an extensive tour of Russia, published a book entitled The Cure for Russo-Phobia. He was 32 years old at the time. A third of the book can be found online here, and I highly recommend it. John Howe Gleason’s 1950 The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain: A Study of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion, credited Cobden as being one of the two voices from the 1830s “opposed to the chorus of hate.”12 In 1836, he wrote:

They who predict the unbounded extension of Russia, forget the inevitable growth of weakness which attends the undue expansion of territorial domination...blind to the dangers which must attend the attempt to incorporate into one cumbrous empire these remote and heterogeneous nations.

The Russians are accused by us of being...incessantly addicted to picking and stealing. But in the meantime, has England been idle?...We, who are staggering under the embarrassing weight of our colonies...are not exactly the nation to preach homilies to other people...Nor, if we were to enter upon a comparison of the cases, should we find that the means whereby Great Britain has augmented her possessions, are a whit less reprehensible than those which have been resorted to by [Russia] for a similar purpose...During the last hundred years, England has, for every square league of territory annexed to Russia, by force, violence, or fraud, appropriated to herself three...the British lion and the Russian bear, instead of tearing one another, had better hug and be friends—”Brother bruin, Brother bruin, we are both in the wrong”...If the English writer calls down indignation upon the conquerers of the Ukraine13, Finland, and the Crimea, may not Russian historians conjure up equally painful reminiscences upon the subjects of Gilbraltar, the Cape, and Hindostan?

Cobden goes into great detail about the folly of British policy to prevent Russia from taking Constantinople—then still largely Christian—from the Turks. He argues that a Christian Constantinople under the Russians posed no more threat to British commerce than did the Americans, but rather an opportunity for expanded trade. Later, Cobden asked a question that is even more relevant today than then.

Where, then, are the motives—seeing that Russia has not inflicted the slightest wrong upon us, or even contemplated one substantial injury to our people—for the warlike spirit which now pervades the current writings and speeches upon the subject of that nation. 14

Indeed, only this weekend Prime Minister Starmer has convened a War Conference in London, with the major like-minded Europeans. The governing class of Great Britain has decided that Ukraine is the hill that they want to die on, financially, if not militarily. I will believe British troops in Ukraine when I see them, not before. Starmer talks of the military support they plan to provide, with the qualification that it cannnot be successful without American backing. The U.S. administration has repeatedly said, in every way imaginable, that they will not provide this. In this fantasy realm, Starmer, like Zelensky, refuses to accept the refusal. One would have to go to Scandinavia or the Baltics to find official pronouncements as disconnected with reality as this. And all the while, the British press steadily churns out the propaganda, claiming Russia is nearing collapse.15

I love England, so their folly hurts me deeply. There are still the occassional truth-tellers, however:

1. Alexander Mercouris in “The Duran.” All the dissident sources—Mearsheimer, Sachs, Blumenthal, Larry Johnson, Alastair Crooke, Jack Matlock, Chas Freeman, et al—find their way there as guests. I listen to him daily on Telegram, but he is easily findable on YouTube.
2. Recently a British peer, Robert Skidelsky, wrote that British policy was misguided, and urged a realistic compromise, here.
3. Also, Aris Roussinos laid out the bitter truth about the British military on Unherd.
4. And then there’s George Galloway, bless him. Find him anywhere you can. His MOAT is a regular on YouTube.

Otherwise, it is slim pickings in the U.K. for anything outside of the fantasy narrative.

1Peter Levi, The Flutes of Autumn, 1983, in “Introspect,” Binscombe Tales by John Whitbourn, 1998.

2The disastrous Zelensky meltdown with Trump and Vance at the White House.

3Richard Cobden, A Cure for the Russo-Phobia, 1832, reprinted (in part) in “Econ Journal Watch”, Volume 21, Number 2, September, 2024, https://journaltalk.net/articles/6112/

4Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia

5https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

6https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/32234-document-11-draft-letter-strobe-talbott-george-kennan

7http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034

8https://www.nato.int/cps/us/natohq/official_texts_8443.htm

9https://www.reuters.com/article/world/bush-to-press-for-ukraine-and-georgia-in-nato-idUSL01417062/

10https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea

11https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/biden-didnt-accept-putins-red-line-on-ukraine-what-it-means.html

12“Econ Journal Watch,” p. 465.

13I find it interesting that the writer considers the Ukraine as something absorbed by Russia, but not really part of Russia. But then, he also mentions Little Russia, the area thrown together with the Ukraine by the Soviets, but apart from Ukraine, and the current arena of conflict.

14Ibid, p. 491.

15Alexander Mercouris believes that this narrative—Russian near collapse, Russian throwing human waves against the valiant Ukrainians—is being pushed so that when Ukraine does collapse, it can be blamed on Trump’s lack of support.

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