February
22, 2005
Democracies and Double Standards
By
Patrick Buchanan
"Magnanimity
in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great
empire and little minds go ill together," Edmund Burke admonished
the haughty rulers of the British Empire of his time.
Our
American empire is suffering from a similar want of wisdom
and plenitude of the hubris that cost George III his 13
colonies.
Consider
how this generation of politicians is undoing the great
work of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan took office in 1981,
the Soviet Union of the aging autocrat Leonid Brezhnev was
an "evil empire" that stretched from the Elbe to the Bering
Sea with thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on the United
States. The Red Army had recently occupied Afghanistan,
and Moscow had established imperial outposts in the Middle
East, Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.
Yet,
the year Reagan departed, 1989, the Soviet empire threw
open its prison gates, released the captive nations of Eastern
Europe, then peacefully dissolved itself and let 14 republics,
many of which the czars had ruled for centuries, become
free and independent states.
Gorbachev,
Yeltsin and Putin became strategic partners of American
presidents. For once Communism had been exorcised from Russia,
there was no ideological, ethnic or territorial conflict
between us. For we live on different continents in hemispheres
separated by the world's largest oceans. Moreover, Russia
belongs with the West. As Solzhenitzyn wrote, Mother Russia
was "the first captive nation."
Both
of us also have a vital interest in balancing off a rising
and possibly revanchist China and resisting an Islamic fundamentalism
that seeks to drive Russia out of the Caucasus and America
out of the Middle East.
Thus,
as there is no relationship more critical to the security
of the West than that between Washington and Moscow, it
is with near-despair that one reads the front-page story
in the Washington Times: "Senators Seek to Sanction Russia:
Say Putin Acts Autocratically."
Who
are the senators? They are those twin protectors and proctors
of global democracy, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, and
they want Putin sanctioned by having the world's industrial
democracies, the G-8, suspend Russia's membership, which
would be an insult and humiliation.
Putin's
crimes? Says McCain: "Mr. Putin has moved to eliminate the
popular election of 89 of Russia's regional governors, has
cracked down on independent media, continued his repression
of business executives who oppose his government and is
reasserting the Kremlin's old-style central control." Says
McCain, "The coup is no longer creeping -- it is galloping."
But
a question arises: Why are these internal matters of the
Russian republic any business of John McCain's? Putin is
the elected president of Russia. Who elected McCain to anything
outside of Arizona?
During
our Civil War, Lincoln blockaded Southern ports without
the approval of Congress, suspended habeas corpus, sent
troops to prevent a free election in Maryland, sought to
arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, shut down newspapers,
shot down rioters on the streets of New York and made himself
dictator of the Union. Was that any business of the members
of Britain's House of Lords? Just who do we Americans think
we are?
Whether
Russia's governors are elected or appointed is none of our
business. As for the jailing of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
or any of the others in that den of thieves, that is no
more our concern than TR's smashing of the trusts or Truman's
seizure of the coal mines or Bush's incarceration of Martha
Stewart was or is any of Russia's business. As for President
Putin acting "autocratically," can Sen. McCain recall when
Russian rulers have acted any other way?
Why
are McCain and Lieberman bullyragging Russia but not China?
After all, Putin was elected, but Hu Jintao was not. Russia
has an elected legislature with opposition parties. China
has never held a free election. The Russian people have
freedom of religion. China persecutes Christians. Russia
threatens no U.S. ally. China threatens Taiwan. In a recent
issue of Parade, a list was drawn up of the world's 10 worst
dictators based on their human rights violations. Hu Jintao
was fourth from the top. Putin was not even mentioned.
If
Russia is to be insulted by being kicked out of the G-8,
why not adopt a single standard and remove Most Favored
Nation trade status from China, which enabled her to run
up a $160 billion trade surplus last year at our expense?
Since
Reagan achieved the rapprochement with Russia, the United
States has pushed NATO up to her borders, bombed her ally
Serbia for 78 days, interfered in elections in Georgia,
Ukraine and Belarus, and begun a pipeline to cut Moscow
out of the Caspian oil trade.
Now,
Russia is now going her own way: selling SAMs to Syria,
AK-47s to Venezuela, missiles and fighter aircraft to China
and aiding Iran in completing its first nuclear power plant.
Of
this generation of leaders, it may be said in epitaph: They
were too small to see the larger world. They frittered away
in a decade what others had won in a half-century of perseverance
in the Cold War.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
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