Putin's skewed view of WWII threatens his neighbors and the West

Here's a key point from Lucian Kim's op-ed that most Russians and those who haven't spent time in Eastern Europe do not understand [emphasis mine]:

For most countries that emerged from the Soviet empire 25 years ago, independence from Moscow exposed messy, overlooked histories. The small nations of east central Europe had been pushed and pulled by the Nazi and Communist juggernauts surrounding them. From the Baltics to the Balkans, it was a story of collaboration and betrayal, resistance and subjugation. One and the same army could be viewed as liberator, conqueror and occupier. Loyalties were split, quartered and ground to pieces.

Complexity or inconvenient facts had no place in official Soviet historiography, where the Red Army was celebrated as the undisputed victor in the war against fascism. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that carved up Poland and ceded the Baltic nations to the Soviet Union was forgotten; the Holocaust downplayed; and the role of the Western Allies diminished. World War Two was remembered as the “Great Patriotic War” and didn’t start until the Nazis’ genocidal invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. There was no mention that Hitler and Stalin were allies before the attack. The Pacific war was a sideshow that the Soviet Union didn’t enter until Japan’s defeat was imminent.

Kim said it: complexity. There's no place for it in Soviet hagiography, er, historiography. Take Ukraine in WWII, for instance. Today most Russians and many "liberals" in the West decry Ukraine's national freedom fighters in UIA-OUN as "Nazi collaborators." Their history was complex, and messy. UIA fought with Nazis and against them; they fought Soviet occupiers and Polish forces.  But it's important to keep in mind that the Soviet Union had just recently killed over 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-33!  Today's Russians and 20/20-hindsight historians ignore Soviet genocidal mass murder in Ukraine, and instead express indignation that some Ukrainians would ever have chosen to ally themselves with Nazi Germany in the (probably vain) hope of achieving eventual national liberation from Soviet mass-murderers. 

And indeed, Russians conveniently overlook that their WWII hero Josef Stalin was the first to collaborate with Hitler with terrible, tragic results for both Russia and Europe!  

Coldly rationalizing it, we can understand why Stalin sided with Hitler, for much the same reason those subsequent "collaborators" in E. Europe did: to buy time before eventually turning on an "ally"; because his side was relatively weaker; and because both had common enemies. These things happened -- but in the awful context of world war. If we're going to judge these "devil's pacts" post facto, then we should judge them realistically and equanimously.

Unmentioned in Kim's article are the Soviet Cossack paramilitary units -- the true patriotic ones who today wear St. George's ribbons and say that fight Ukrainian "fascists" and "Banderovtsy" -- who went over to the Nazi side by the thousands, including, ironically, in Crimea. They served in the Russian Liberation Army that was directly commanded by German Nazi officers. (To see more, Google translate this article in Russian: http://crime.in.ua/news/20140324/posobniki-nacystov ).  Germany officers never commanded guerrilla fighters in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. And yet Russians today view Cossack paramilitary units positively and UIA as worse than devils.

Kim also notes, as I and many others have, that today's Russians do not have much to look back at and take pride in. The Allied victory in WWII is one of the few events Russians in the 20th century that they can be proud of:

When Putin came to power in 2000, Russians were still reeling from a decade of nihilism that had followed the collapse of Communism. For a country that was beginning to pick itself up, the “Great Victory” against the Nazis presented itself as the ideal surrogate for a national idea to pull together Russia. Practically every family had suffered in the war, and the whole country knew the iconography from Soviet television and film. Putin couldn’t buy Russia a new identity for all the petrodollars in the world, but he could make Victory Day the de facto national holiday, celebrated with ever more gargantuan military parades.

Finally, I can echo the assertion that most Russians do not understand that there was a real war in the Pacific. To them, the war ended in Berlin when the Soviets seized it. (The Soviets' subsequent rape of Germany is another story....)  Regardless, it's important to Putin and his supporters today that WWII remains a Russian victory to defeat Fascism in Europe. 

How Vladimir Putin’s skewed view of World War Two threatens his neighbors and the West

By Lucian Kim

April 13, 2015 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/idUS376956048920150413

Russians hang an Iron Curtain in their minds

There is another aspect to Russians' mistrust of the West, including some of their ex-Soviet neighbors. Many Russians are envious of countries living better than they do, especially former Soviet states.    

Even with its vast wealth of natural resources, Russia's GDP per capita of $18,100 is lower than in EU members and ex-Soviet satellites Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic.  Even EU "basket case" Greece has a higher GDP per capita, $23,600. The EU average GDP per capita is almost double Russia's. That's part of it.

The other part is the aftermath of the Second World War.  My first Victory Day (May 9) celebration in Russia illustrates what I mean. One man started a toast that became a long complaint about the "fritzes" (Germans).  He concluded, "We [meaning Russians] saved the world from German fascism, and now look how they live, and how we live!" His point was obvious to everybody, but without any analysis why it turned out so -- the Soviet Union's planned military-industrial economy; the Iron Curtain and the USSR's withdrawal into isolation; repression by the Soviet state against its own people, and so on.

In his mind -- in millions of Russians' minds-- their victory in WWII and subsequent superpower status entitled them to live better, but it never materialized. Many Russians see this outcome as colossally unfair, and at least partly attributable to a Western conspiracy to keep Russia down. This was a young Russian: he never saw battle, never fought Nazis; nevertheless he was convinced that Europe owed him a Victory Day birthright. 

On top of this historical sleight, a newly united Europe went and admitted Russia's "little brothers" into NATO and the EU, leaving Russia out of the club.  

So WWII and distrust of Europe continue to have an extremely powerful effect on Russians; and the Putin regime amplifies this effect with relentless state propaganda.

Russians' Own Iron Curtain – in Their Heads

By Georgy Bovt

May 13, 2014 | The Moscow Times

The Ukrainian crisis is far from over and might yet get worse. At times, it seems as if this is only a bad dream, but when we wake up, we realize that it is real.

But things will never be the same again. Russia's relationship with the West has been destroyed for a long time. Most likely, normal relations will not be restored until a new generation of leaders comes to power in Russia and the West.

The West prefers to speak to Russia via sanctions and "teach it a hard lesson." But even the harshest sanctions against Russia will not likely cause the economy or the regime to collapse. In fact, sanctions have rarely proven effective against another country. They generally cause more hardship for ordinary citizens than the ruling elite.

Many hawks in the West sense the same old drumbeat of the Cold War in the current confrontation with Moscow. Similarly, old Cold War-era hawks — as well as younger versions of them — have reappeared everywhere in Russia as well. That Cold War-era generation of Russians is familiar with living in state of confrontation with the West and also in isolation from the rest of the world.

Russians have never been citizens of the world. Efforts by a broader cross-­section of Russian society to integrate with European society began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Russian Empire was poised to finally end its provincialism and shake free of its status as the backwoods of Europe. But the thin layer of pro-Western Russians who had been nurtured since the time of Peter the Great were all but eliminated or driven out of the country after the Bolshevik Revolution. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks tried to develop ties with Europe by organizing a global proletariat revolution, but those efforts failed. In its place, the Soviet Union drove itself into isolation from the outside world.

About 80 percent of Russians have never left the Commonwealth of Independent States and have no plans to do so. Of those who have visited the West, many were disappointed to learn that it was not the "heaven on Earth" they had expected. Life there can be difficult and stressful, and the laws are unfamiliar. Many Russians find themselves asking, "Why fill your head with strange rules and regulations and struggle to learn a foreign language?" Only about 5 percent of Russians speak a foreign language at conversational level. The authorities have already prohibited the siloviki from traveling abroad on the far-fetched pretext that 150 different countries might arrest them and extradite them to the U.S. If you add the families members of those siloviki, this means that about 5 million Russians are essentially banned from traveling abroad.

The West will have little luck frightening Russians with the prospect of a new Iron Curtain because Russians themselves already built one long ago — in their minds. And that barrier is higher and more formidable than any physical Berlin Wall. Any information you want is now available on the Internet, but few have the desire and time to search for it, analyze it and compare it to the official propaganda. There is lots of talk that the authorities are planning to build a "cyber firewall" to isolate the Russian Internet as much as possible from "corrupting influences" both within Russia and abroad — including, perhaps, banning Facebook, Twitter and Google from Russia by year's end. But these steps may not be necessary. After all, the widespread anti-Americanism among Russians today arose in an environment in which information offering an alternative to the official propaganda was freely available on the Internet.

Most Russians are comfortable with the limited information they receive from official sources, just as they are comfortable with the growing provincialism of the country as a whole. Everything is simpler that way. What does make them uncomfortable is differing opinions that challenge their provincial world view. And that explains the increasingly hostile attitude toward the West. Never having seen the West, with its more prosperous and democratic societies, those who promote Russia's isolation are attempting to avoid the temptations and feelings of inferiority. That is an infantile reaction, but it is real, giving state propaganda a free hand to manipulate Russians pretty much as it wants.

It is not even necessary anymore to require exit visas to leave the country, as the Soviet Union did. Most Russians don't want to leave, are scared off by the challenges of starting a new life from scratch in a foreign country, or simply do have no financial means to leave. As for the more innovative, creative and independent-thinking Russians, the authorities have never regretted their emigration from Russia. Recall when prominent economist Sergei Guriev left Russia a year ago. In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "If he wants to leave Russia, let him leave."

But this increasing brain drain only serves to widen Russia's gap with the developed world in the areas of education, technology, information and culture. All of this, coupled with the loss of technological competence, make Russia and individual Russians less competitive and adapted to the modern world.

This new isolation will lead to the same results as the Soviet-era isolation did. Any system that so severely limits communication with the outside world, takes pride in its "unique" form of provincialism and lacks a free exchange of ideas, information, technology and scientific research is doomed to fail. But like the passengers on a boat approaching a waterfall, the overwhelming majority of Russians living in this system will remain blissfully unaware of what is happening and, right up until the very last minute, where they are headed.

Putting vets on a pedestal doesn't help them

On Veteran's Day, let's resolve to help our returning troops do what the WWII generation did after war: get back on with civilian life.  

Applause, "hero worship" and movie theater discounts aren't what they need from us right now. They need education, training and job opportunities. They need patient assistance with reintegrating into society.

Help Veterans by Taking Them Off the Pedestal

By Alex Horton

November 10, 2013 | Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/help-veterans-by-taking-them-off-the-pedestal/281316/

Tea Parties, 9/11 and 'American exceptionalism'

What an insightful and refreshing meditation on 200 years of American history, and meanwhile, Americans' psychological relation to their history!  

To give you an example: Smith's fascinating recognition of the unlikely affinity of two American "losers" who could have re-shaped America's relation to the world: Republican Wendell Wilkie post-WWII; and Democrat Jimmy Carter post-Vietnam.

Now to summarize....

First, Smith argues, as I have, that the Tea Parties are about perpetuating a certain myth about American history, but he goes even further [emphasis and italics mine]:

Whatever the Tea Party’s unconscious motivations and meanings—and I count these significant to an understanding of the group—we can no longer make light of its political influence; it has shifted the entire national conversation rightward—and to an extent backward, indeed. But more fundamentally than this, the movement reveals the strong grip of myth on many Americans—the grip of myth and the fear of change and history. In this, it seems to me, the Tea Party speaks for something more than itself. It is the culmination of the rise in conservatism we can easily trace to the 1980s. What of this conservatism, then? Ever since Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign slogan in 1984 it has purported to express a new optimism about America. But in the Tea Party we discover the true topic to be the absence of optimism and the conviction that new ideas are impossible. Its object is simply to maintain a belief in belief and an optimism about optimism. These are desperate endeavors. They amount to more expressions of America’s terror in the face of history. To take our country back: Back to its mythological understanding of itself before the birth of its own history is the plainest answer of all.

The Tea Parties' constant harking back to a mythical point in time that never existed is a mark of fear of the future, Smith believes, a fear that all Americans share to some extent, and yet to "win the future" (to stupidly quote Newt Gingrich) we must face this fear:

I do not see that America has any choice now but to face this long terror. America’s founding was unfortunate in the fear and apprehension it engendered, and unfortunate habits and impulses have arisen from it. These are now in need of change—a project of historical proportion. Can we live without our culture of representation, our images and symbols and allusions and references, so casting our gaze forward, not behind us? Can we look ahead expectantly and seek greatness instead of assuming it always lies behind us and must be quoted? Can we learn to see and judge things as they are? Can we understand events and others (and ourselves most of all) in a useful, authentic context? Can we learn, perhaps most of all, to act not out of fear or apprehension but out of confidence and clear vision? In one way or another, the dead end of American politics as I write reminds us that all of these questions now urgently require answers. This is the nature of our moment.

Smith thinks we Americans must face our psychological defeat suffered on 9/11/2001, the realization that they did not like us, and did not want to be like us:

What was it Americans reiterated through all the decades leading to 2001—and, somewhat desperately, beyond that year? It was to remake the world, as Condoleezza Rice so plainly put it. It was to make the world resemble us, such that all of it would have to change and we would not. This dream, this utopia, the prospect of the global society whose imagining made us American, is what perished in 2001. America’s fundamentalist idea of itself was defeated on September 11. To put the point another way, America lost its long war against time. This is as real a defeat as any other on a battlefield or at sea. Osama bin Laden and those who gave their lives for his cause spoke for no one but themselves, surely. But they nonetheless gave substantial, dreadful form to a truth that had been a long time coming:The world does not require America to release it into freedom. Often the world does not even mean the same things when it speaks of “freedom,” “liberty,” and “democracy.” And the world is as aware as some Americans are of the dialectic of promise and self-betrayal that runs as a prominent thread through the long fabric of the American past.

Look upon 2001 in this way, and we begin to understand what it was that truly took its toll on the American consciousness. Those alive then had witnessed the end of a long experiment—a hundred years old if one counts from the Spanish war, two hundred to go back to the revolutionary era, nearly four hundred to count from Winthrop and the Arbella. I know of no one who spoke of 2001 in these terms at the time: It was unspeakable. 

9/11 wasn't about killing, or even creating terror; it was their way of screaming, "We reject you!"

Does America have a democratic mission?  Was it meant to be a shining City on a Hill?  It never did; it never was, argues Smith, convincingly. Which seems obvious to most non-Americans, but a bit frightening for us born-and-bred Amuricans to mull over.  If we were not chosen, if we are not special, if we do not have any special mission -- and with it, special prerogatives -- then what about all that "bad stuff" in our history?  Didn't it mean anything?  Wasn't it all for a greater purpose?.... No, it was just about Power.

And here's what Smith has to say about U.S. power:

Power is a material capability. It is a possession with no intrinsic vitality of its own. It has to do with method as opposed to purpose or ideals—techne as against telos. It is sheer means, deployment. Power tends to discourage authentic reflection and considered thought, and, paradoxically, produces a certain weakness in those who have it. This is the weakness that is born of distance from others. In the simplest terms, it is an inability to see and understand others and to tolerate difference. It also induces a crisis of belief. Over time a powerful democracy’s faith in itself quivers, while its faith in power and prerogative accumulates. 

Power and strength are not the same; we should resolve to possess the latter, Smith avers:

To reflect upon those final years before 2001, it is not difficult to understand in our contemporary terms the distinction between a powerful nation and a strong one. Strength derives from who one is—it is what one has made of oneself by way of vision, desire, and dedication. It has nothing to do with power as we customarily use this term. Paradoxically, it is a form of power greatly more powerful than the possession of power alone. Strength is a way of being, not a possession. Another paradox: Power renders one vulnerable to defeat or failure, and therefore to fear. Strength renders one not invulnerable—no one ever is—but able to recover from defeats and failures. The history of the past century bears out these distinctions very clearly. Most of all, a strong nation is capable of self-examination and of change. It understands where it is in history—its own and humankind’s.

And here's Smith's call to action at the end of his remarkable essay:

I propose the taking of an immense risk. It is the risk of living without things that are linked in the American psyche: the protection of our exceptionalism, the armor of our triumphalist nationalism, our fantastical idea of the individual and his or her subjectivity. For Americans to surrender this universe of belief, emotion, and thought may seem the utmost folly. A century ago Americans flinched at the prospect. What followed was often called heroic, but in many cases it was just the opposite, for the American century was so often an exercise in avoidance of genuinely defined responsibility. True enough, it ended as it began, with uncertainty and choices. But the outcome need not be the same now, for there is too much more to be gained than lost this time.

Are we brave enough to change, or do we prefer to revert to a mythical childhood of ourselves that never was?

American exceptionalism is a dangerous myth

By Patrick Smith

May 26, 2013 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/26/american_exceptionalism_is_a_dangerous_myth/

U.S. still paying for Civil War, WWI...what about Afghanistan & Iraq?

This is fascinating. The USG is still paying survivors of WWI and children of Civil War vets:

If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat. 

This ought to make us think twice -- then twice more -- about sending our troops into battle.

Costs Of War Linger 100 Years After Combat Ends

By Mike Baker

March 19, 2013 | AP

URL: http://huff.to/ZqPkcL

Forgotten history: Twice the U.S. rescued Russia

This one's worth posting in full.  [HT: Sasha.]  I've had several Russians tell me I don't know history, especially World War II history, (true enough), but I never once heard any of them mention these two examples.  It's understandable why their Soviet schools never told them.  Of course most Americans know nothing about it either.  So all y'all git yerselfs edumacated!

Making the Kremlin Queasy: Massive American Aid Has Helped Russians Three Times in the Last Century

By James Brooke

September 25, 2012 | VOA Blogs

As American officials struggle to meet an Oct. 1 deadline for closing the 20-year-old USAID office in Moscow, it is worth looking at America’s other great 20th century aid program to Russians.

In a corner of Public School 1262 in Moscow, there is a one-room, privately run museum, the Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease. It celebrates a crucial act of American generosity largely unknown to Russians.

Under the bland title of the Lend-Lease Act, American taxpayers sent to the Soviet people, from 1941 to 1945, $11.3 billion worth of war supplies. That is $146 billion in contemporary dollars.

This steel river of jeeps, trucks and bombers was neither a loan nor a lease. Franklin Roosevelt chose that title in the hopes of deluding American isolationists who opposed what they saw (correctly) as an outright gift to Moscow.

What did this money buy for the USSR? 3,770 bombers, 11,594 fighter planes, 5,980 anti-aircraft guns, 2,000 railroad locomotives, 51,000 jeeps, 361,000 trucks, 56,445 field telephones, 600,000 kilometers of telephone wire, 22 million artillery shells, almost one billion rifle cartridges, and 15 million pairs of army boots.

Shipped through the North Atlantic, driven up through Persia, or flown in from Alaska, this ready-made war material also freed up 600,000 Soviet factory workers to directly fight the Nazi invaders.

What was the impact of this generosity?

Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference in 1943, said publicly of the American Lend-Lease program: “Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war.”  After the war, the aid became a taboo topic. 

Without it, Adolf Hitler might have enjoyed his planned victory banquet at the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg. Then, he might have proceeded with his plan to raze Moscow and turn Russia’s capital into a lake. As a rump Soviet government retreated to the Urals, Hitler might have pursued his grand plan to reduce “excess” Slav populations and convert the Black Soil belt into agricultural plantations devoted to feeding the Third Reich. (Note to Russian neo-Nazis: Sorry to break the news, but the real Nazis wanted your grandfathers dead).

Russian cynics will say the United States needed the Soviet Union to bolster the American war effort.

Au contraire.

Even after Dec. 7, 1941, one current of thought in the United States said, in effect: trade Britain for the Bolsheviks. In other words: Adolf, lay off London. Focus your energies on Moscow. An Anglo-American alliance could learn to live with a Nazi dominated Europe. Our fight is with the Japanese, who attacked Hawaii, and were killing and interning Americans in the Philippines and the Marianas.

Instead, a more generous and liberal American worldview prevailed: free the world from fascism.

It was toward this goal, that my mother worked at a factory building bomb sites outside of New York City, and my father drove a military ambulance in the North African campaign against the Nazis. They were just two of the millions of Americans who volunteered — were not drafted — in the war effort.

Today, American Lend-Lease aid is largely ignored in Russian history books.

It did not fit with Stalin’s self-aggrandizing victory narrative.

After the fall of communism, the Lend-Lease never recovered its place in Russian history books.

There was an earlier precedent.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

In 1921-22, the United States Congress-funded American Relief Administration helped feed about 10 million starving Russians. Initially, Lenin had refused Western aid. But as the death toll mounted, he relented. American food aid continued through 1923. But American popular support dwindled when it became clear that the Soviet government was exporting its own grain to earn foreign currency, and then asking foreigners to feed Russian peasants.

Soviet textbooks ignored the American aid and glossed over the famine. Largely manmade, this hunger killed about five million people – 10 times higher than any late Czarist era famine.

I bring this up because a similar Kremlin official revisionism is now underway about American taxpayers’ third great aid project to Russia in the last century: the USAID project.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has given $2.7 billion in aid to post-communist Russia. Initially, the aid was designed to stave off severe food shortages. But the bulk was to ease Russia’s transition from a closed society and economy to an open one.

Much of the money went to such building block projects as drawing up a land code, a tax code, promoting small business and judicial reforms.

Over the last two decades, I have known many AID workers in Russia. They came in all shapes and sizes, but seemed to be motivated by a common goal: to see Russia progress from a state-controlled economy and society to an open one.

The program had American support. Year after year, it was approved by the U.S. Congress. Congress answers to the 138 million Americans who pay income tax. If aid to Russia was unpopular, it would have been thrown out years ago.

As Russia’s economy stabilized and grew, the aid shrank. This year, it is $49 million – less than 20 percent of the mid-1990s peak. It increasingly went into health issues – fighting tuberculosis, AIDS prevention, and reducing the abandonment of children.

On one level, the Putin Administration feels Russia has outgrown foreign aid. But, just as Russia seeks foreign investment in factories, foreign aid in health care brings in new techniques and experience. There is no point in reinventing the wheel in either sector. Should Russia throw out foreign car companies and go back to making its own world-beating cars?

On another level, Vladimir Putin feels that Washington is interfering in Russian politics by granting a total of $29 million this year to such civil society groups as Golos, a clean elections group, Memorial, a human rights group, and Transparency International, a corruption fighting group.

Hmm, what does that say about the Kremlin’s attitudes toward clean elections, human rights, and corruption fighting?

The USAID Russia civil society promotion budget is barely 1 percent of USAID’s total $23.8 billion budget this year.

And what does it say, when the Kremlin elephant stands on a stool, and cries ‘eek, eek’ at the sight of a $29 million American mouse?

Today, Russia’s finance minister, Andrei Belousov, announced that Russia’s net capital outflow for the first eight months of 2012 was $52 billion. At that rate, it took three hours to clock $29 million out the door. Presumably, private Russian donors can be found to pick up the slack. Of course that assumes that the Kremlin will allow non-governmental groups to take non-governmental donations.

Kremlin apologists try to persuade the public that Western money is the reason for the protest movement in Russia. But, in a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, 58 percent of Russians believe the opposition protests were home-grown. Only 25 percent believe that foreign powers are behind the protests.

All the same, 20 years of USAID assistance to Russia is being sacrificed on the current altar of anti-Americanism.

In a sign of the times, an American, Marc Schneider, was chosen earlier this month to play the role of Napoleon in the Sept. 2 reenactment of the Battle of Borodino. This 1812 epic confrontation pitted the French dictator’s Grande Armee against the forces of Czar Alexander I.

So while, President Putin and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing met at the battlefield and talked to reporters about the eternal friendship between France and Russia, a pint-sized American Napoleon swaggered up and down the French lines, urging his troops to kill Russians.

An American Napoleon.

Now, THAT fits the Kremlin’s historical narrative.

Baker: Failing arithmetic on national debt

Baker is the first pundit I know of who has made this point:  

While our debt to GDP ratio is approaching levels not seen since the years immediately following World War II, there is another key ratio that has been going in the opposite direction. This is the ratio of interest payments to GDP. This fell to 1.3 percent of GDP in 2009, its lowest level since World War II. While it has risen slightly in the last couple of years, the ratio of interest payments to GDP is still near a post-war low.

This gives us yet another example how the U.S. Government is not like a household.  How many of us can pay a lower interest rate as our debts grow bigger?  You and I can't.  But the USG can and does.    

Baker goes on to illustrate how interest owed on the national debt is more important than the absolute dollar value of outstanding debt, or the debt-to-GDP ratio:

Suppose that we issue $4 trillion in 30 year bonds at or near the current interest rate of 2.75 percent. Let's imagine that in 3 years the economy has largely recovered and that long-term interest rates are back at a more normal level; let's say 6.0 percent for a 30-year bond.

In this case the bond price would fall by over 40 percent meaning, in principle, that it would be possible for the government to buy up the $4 trillion in debt that it issued in 2012 for just $2.4 trillion, instantly lowering our debt burden by $1.6 trillion, almost 10 percentage points of GDP. If we had been flirting with the magic 90 percent debt to GDP ratio before the bond purchase, we will have given ourselves a huge amount of leeway by buying up these bonds.

Of course, this would be silly. The interest burden of the debt would not have changed; the only thing that would have changed is the dollar value of the outstanding debt. Fans of the 90 percent debt-to-GDP twilight zone theory may think that the debt burden by itself could slow the economy, but in the real world this doesn't make any sense.

Let's recall that America's debt-to-GDP ratio was nearly 120 percent after WWII.  "Yeah, but that was WWII!" you might say, "And after the Great Depression! No comparison!"

Well, yeah, it's hard to compare a war that lasted four years with two simultaneous wars that have lasted about 10 years and counting.  Meanwhile, the Great Recession wiped out $15.5 trillion in U.S. wealth -- about equal, coincidentally, to one year of U.S. GDP, and our total federal debt.  

And Dubya's Great Recession cost us 8.8 million jobs (more than the previous four recessions combined); as a result, many of those jobless people have qualified for "income security" payments built into our system that didn't exist in the 1930s, such as unemployment insurance, disability pay, food stamps, housing assistance, etc. Income security outlays increased from $431 billion in 2008 to $533 billion in 2009 to $622 billion in 2010 to $597 billion in 2011.  Next, more people opted for early Social Security benefits, plus they got a 5.8 percent cost of living increase in 2009, and for the first time the program ran a deficit.  Social Security outlays jumped from $617 billion in 2008 to $683 billion in 2009 to $706 billion in 2010 to $731 billion in 2011.  And let's not forget national defense spending, which increased from $616 billion in 2008 to $661 billion in 2009 to $693 billion in 2010 to $705 billion in 2011.

Finally -- and this is the factor so many people, especially on the right, overlook -- decreased economic activity -- combined with an extension of Dubya's tax cuts -- led to lower income and corporate tax receipts (and FICA receipts): down $419 billion in 2009 and $360 billion in 2010, compared to 2008.  

Meanwhile, overall spending increased $535 billion in 2009 (most of it thanks to Dubya) and $475 billion in 2010, compared to 2008.  

(See all the OMB's historical spending and revenue data here.)

So there are objective reasons why our deficits and debt have climbed.  It's ludicrous to blame it all on $475 billion in stimulus spending.

Next, let's look at the GAO's historical picture of annual net interest paid on the federal debt as a percentage of annual federal spending.  In 2011, interest payments were 6.4 percent of federal outlays.  From Reagan thru Dubya, that figure never fell below 7 percent.  In the decadent '80s it never fell below 8.9 percent.  In the dot-com '90s it never fell below 13.5 percent.  

Sure, interest rates will eventually go up as the economy recovers.  But first it has to recover.  Economic recovery should be our top priority right now, not paying off our debt when we enjoy historically low interest rates and suffer historically high unemployment.  Debt reduction now, which would cut GDP and raise unemployment, is putting the cart before the horse.

Just trying to put things in perspective.  Not that my Tea Partying friends will care....

Debt Worries: Economists Fail Arithmetic, Again

By Dean Baker

September 24, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/UzBh4o

CNN's Zakaria agrees with me after mulling it over

I'm glad a TV big shot like Fareed Zakaria decided after one week to totally agree with me: "If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most," Zakaria asked Sunday on CNN, "why are we fighting a major war?"

However, it's unfortunate he had to revert to a WWII analogy to get his point across. Pundits and politicians think we're just too dumb to understand wars on their own terms; they're constantly putting things in terms of Nazis and Fascists.

Fareed Zakaria Criticizes 'Disproportionate' Afghanistan War On CNN

July 4, 2010 | Huffington Post

Fareed Zakaria criticized the Afghanistan war in unusually harsh terms on his CNN program [Fareed Zakaria GPS] Sunday, saying that "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem."

His comments followed CIA director Leon Panetta's admission last week that the number of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan may be down to just 50 to 100 members, or even fewer.

"If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most," Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war?"

Zakaria noted that the war is costing the U.S. a fortune in both blood and treasure. "Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan.," the CNN host said. "That's more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month.

"The latest estimates are that the war in Afghanistan will cost more than $100 billion in 2010 alone. That's a billion dollars for every member of Al Qaeda thought to be living in Afghanistan in one year."

To critics who suggest that we need to continue fighting the war against the Taliban because they are allied with Al Qaeda, Zakaria countered that "this would be like fighting Italy in World War II after Hitler's regime had collapsed and Berlin was in flames just because Italy had been allied with Germany."

[ Ohhhh, OK, now I get it. Right, Nazis and Fascists; Germany and Italy. Now it makes sense to me. But wait!... then who is the Japanese this time... Pakistan? Iran? Maybe I don't get it after all! - J ]

"Why are we investing so much time, energy, and effort when Al Qaeda is so weak?" Zakaria concluded. "Is there a more cost-effective way to keep Al Qaeda on the ropes than fight a major land and air war in Afghanistan? I hope someone in Washington is thinking about this and not simply saying we're going to stay the course because, well, we must stay the course."

Why Russia needs the "Great Patriotic War"

The op-ed below is dead on. Without the "Great Patriotic War" to redeem it, the Soviet Union would be viewed in Russia today as it actually was: a sick, self-deluded murder machine. Putin knows this. He also knows that without a redeemable Soviet Union to link Russia's present with its Imperial past, Russia would be a state decoupled from history.

Soviet glory in WW II provides the unifying mythos that Russia needs to maintain a positive self-image in these trying, often humiliating, times. Minus the comforting delusion that "the Soviet Union saved the world from Fascism," Russia today would be nothing but the orphan of a serial killer. (The Soviet Union was itself a fascist state, with all the fascist hallmarks: a single political party; a cult of the Great Leader; secret police and prisons; expansionist military policies and state identification with the military; state-controlled media and propaganda; concentration camps for dissidents and undesirables; even pogroms against Jews).

May 9 (Victory Day) is coming soon, when Russian pride about WW II victory is at its peak. Maybe all this pride serves a positive purpose, but… at the cost of self-delusion?

Every nation has its unifying myths, and these myths aren't all bad. I would argue, however, that the younger the nation, the more important these myths are. (The United States, by comparison, has more than its fair share of founding myths; and its tender age is probably the reason why.) Without a long, storied history with which to define itself, a nation struggles to find its "national idea," its place in the world of other nations beyond its geography, customs, etc.

Russia today is a young nation, a nation reincarnated. So the unifying myth of the "Great Patriotic War," (a term coined by Stalin), is vitally important to maintaining Russia's fragile young ego. It's very comforting to believe that in a past life you accomplished magnificent things.

The only problem arises when someone, or some nation, "insults" that myth. This is what Estonia has done to Russia, and it's paying the price.

The Elephant and the Mouse

By Risto Penttila
May 4, 2007 | International Herald Tribune

Russia is the largest country in the world by area and has 150 million. Estonia is one of the smallest states in Europe with a population of 1.5 million. Yet Russia's politicians and media are spending an awful lot of time, band-width and ink these days bashing the Estonians.

Why is the elephant so concerned with of the mouse? And why are the Russian comments so emotionally charged?

The questions are particularly pertinent in the wake of the removal of an old Soviet statue, the so-called "Bronze Soldier," from the center of Tallinn, the Estonian capital.

Part of the answer is that the statue symbolizes different things for different people: For the Estonians it is a reminder of Soviet occupation; for the Russians the statue is a tribute to the role of the Red Army in defeating Nazi Germany.

Yet something more fundamental is at play here. We are dealing with a great power that is failing to come to terms with its diminished stature.

For many Russians, Estonia today is Finland in the 1930s - a former pearl of the empire whose independent existence is a painful reminder of a glorious past.

Finland became independent in 1917 at a time when Imperial Russia was in the process of becoming the Soviet Union. Estonia became independent (for the second time) in 1991, when the Soviet Union was in the process of becoming Russia.

In the 19th century Finland had been the most modern part of the Russian empire; in the 20th century Estonia had had the same distinction in the Soviet Union.

Being a runaway child is not easy. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union accused Finland of all sorts of bad things - it was a Nazi stooge, a fascist sympathizer, an unreliable neighbor.

In the spring of 2007 similar accusations are being made against Estonia: It mistreats Russians, glorifies fascists and, of course, is an unreliable neighbor.

One can understand why Stalin's Russia was so hostile to a capitalist Finland in the 1930s. But why is Putin's Russia so hostile to a democratic Estonia? After all, the Bronze Soldier has to do with the Soviet Union, not with the Russian Federation.

The answer is simple: The present Russian regime sees itself as an heir to the Soviet Union.

The contrast to the Yeltsin years is radical - Boris Yeltsin turned against the Soviet Union and declared Russia independent of the Soviet empire. Intellectually he was in the same camp with the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians - all wanted to make a clean break with the past.

A clean break with the past is the last thing President Vladimir Putin wants. For him, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century. For him, there is no distinction between Russia of today, the Soviet Union of yesterday and the Imperial Russia of yore. The history of these three is a continuing history of Russian greatness.

The Kremlin wants to salvage the last moral justification for the existence of the Soviet Union - that its brave people played a crucial role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Without this justification, the whole Soviet era appears a sorry experiment, an absurd period of history.

By attacking Estonians for their lack of respect for an old Soviet statue, the Russian are sending a strong warning to anyone who seeks to equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany.

The stakes are high. For Finland it took two wars and 50 years of diplomatic tip-toeing to reach a relaxed relationship with Russia.

Nobody is talking about war now, but it is quite clear that the animosity between Russia and Estonia is not going to go away any time soon.

Risto Penttila is director of EVA, a Finnish business and policy forum.