An article I read in Spiegel online deserves comment. My German is too paltry to be of use so I read Spiegel because it is in English and seems credible.

The article in question is titled “Russian Foreign Policy: ‘We Are Smarter, Stronger and More Determined’ ” and is the transcript of an interview by Christian Neef of Spiegel. Neef interviewed Sergey Karaganov, known as the honorary head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and Dean of Faculty at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia according to Wikipedia.

Karagonov is quite blunt in his distrust of NATO and confident in Russia’s determination to take it’s place as the dominant Eurasian power. Just a few bits of the interview-

Karaganov: The Russian media is more reserved than Western media. Though you have to understand that Russia is very sensitive about defense. We have to be prepared for everything. That is the source of this occasionally massive amount of propaganda. But what is the West doing? It is doing nothing but vilifying Russia; it believes that we are threatening to attack. The situation is comparable to the crisis at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s.

SPIEGEL: You are referring to the stationing of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles and the American reaction?

Karaganov: Europe felt weak at the time and was afraid that the Americans might leave the continent. But the Soviet Union, though it had already become rotten internally, felt militarily strong and undertook the foolishness of deploying the SS-20 missiles. The result was a completely pointless crisis. Today, it is the other way around. Now, fears in countries like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia are to be allayed by NATO stationing weapons there. But that doesn’t help them; we interpret that as a provocation. In a crisis, we will destroy exactly these weapons. Russia will never again fight on its own territory …

July 13, 2016. Spiegel Online International.

It should not be a surprise that Russia has been steadily acquiring a gleaming confidence and a recharging of energetic nationalism under Putin. Too much ink has been spilled on Putin the man rather than Russia the state. I would question whether sufficient resources are being applied to diplomacy with this confident Russian state. I sincerely hope that our elected officials have the intellectual bandwidth to understand what is happening.

I shall now veer in a somewhat different direction.

It is my impression that the Fourth Estate in America is consistently failing in it’s responsibility to participate in the very democracy that facilitates its existence by not keeping the spotlight on the powerful.  Worse yet, a distracted, flaccid American populace consistently fails to hold this pillar of our society accountable.

Elected officials and the agencies they fund are only too willing to keep our country on a perpetual war footing because the production of war materiel keeps people employed and stockholders fat and happy. Defense dollars pour into military installations in the US and the world round to maintain staff, pay contractors for supplies, and drive money into the local economy.

The influential petrochemical industry is only too happy to warn of the dire consequences of lost American influence in the far flung oily spots of the world. That the US is willing to send and keep forces abroad to protect petroleum interests- in the name of liberty- only adds credence to the meme that oil is worth almost any sacrifice in blood and treasure. Against such a longstanding and compelling circumstance, how can elected officials support alternative energy technologies that might undermine the profits of big oil who we’ve fought so hard to support?

Politicians find strident support from the electorate by the evangelical rhetoric of flexing our military might for God and country. And liberty, if you were lucky enough to be born in the US. They well know that a large segment of the electorate is susceptible to all of highly produced emotional imagery of flag waving, weeping veterans kneeling before a tombstone, and country singers belting out patriotic lyrics. Yet with all of the concern for American veterans, nobody has demanded satisfaction on the following question: Are we being careful enough in choosing where we send our troops? Is it based on rock solid information and against qualified threats? The youth who become our troops are national treasure. Yet we send them into battle spaces where combatants look like non-combatants and are fighting over conflicting religious doctrines. When they come home injured we turn them loose in a shamefully inadequate Veterans Administration hospital system. Perhaps a bit of time on the 4th of July and Veterans Day should be devoted to a meditation on this rather than beer and burgers? Is this our best effort?

Electronic media have a clear conflict of interest in their focus on the costly horse race aspects of politics. “Money has corrupted our electoral politics!!” is the shrill cry. But what fraction of that filthy lucre is channeled to the very media in the form of political advertising?  More than a little, perhaps?

Once again we will have conflicting superpowers vying for global influence and resources. With Russia on the rise, do we have the unity and compelling interest to avoid armed conflict with them? What caliber of elected officials do we need to grapple with a future that seems sure to bring the threat of nuclear conflict back? Are we ready? We have never needed a quorum of mature adult voices demanding civilized behavior as much as we do today. Heaven help us all.