Last edited Sun Jan 4, 2015, 12:41 PM - Edit history (1)
More than three decades ago, distinguished American historian Barbara Tuchman emerged in American culture by popularizing history. While Tuchman’s critically acclaimed Guns of August and Stillwell and the American Experience in China were recognized with Pulitzer Prizes, it is her March of Folly that seems so appropriate to provide us with contemporary lessons…..Surveying the recorded past ‘from Troy to Vietnam’ , Tuchman explored the recurring phenomena of governments’ pursuit of policies contrary to their interests. Illuminating the folly with these cases: ‘Prototype: The Trojans Take the Wooden Horse Within their Walls’; ‘The Renaissance Popes Provoke the Protestant Secession (1470-1530)’; ‘The British Lose America’; and ‘America Betrays Herself in Vietnam’ Tuchman argued that governments carry out self- destructive acts despite the availability of recognized and feasible alternatives. It seems appropriate to argue that ending two and one-half decades of détente with Russia and moving closer to not just another Cold War but a hot war is the folly Tuchman warned about.
Other issues/major problems that the US and Russia need to work on - nuclear weapons proliferation.
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For those who (would) demonize Putin, I say Russia could and has done a lot worse. After the 9/11 attacks when Putin supported the US War on Terror, the West responded by expanding NATO. Putin telephoned Condoleeza Rice to say that any pre-existing hostilities would be put aside while America dealt with the tragedy. In Russia following the September 11 attacks, television and radio stations went silent to commemorate the dead. Furthermore, Putin met with Douglas Feith for military consultations and facilitated the US use of bases in Uzbekistan for military supply and search and rescue operations. The raison d'etre of NATO was originally to block the then Soviet Union - therefore NATO's raison d'etre was no longer needed to exist after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. But NATO began the wars in the Balkans w/o UN approval in Bosnia (1995) and then Kosovo (1998-9). In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO and then in 2002, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania joined NATO.
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