McCarthy has Left the Building

    In light of the recent shift in US/Cuba policy, I had to ask myself: ‘what changed?’  While I was busy worrying about Ebola, mid-term elections, and government shutdowns, did the Castro boys skip town?  Were the lack of diplomatic relations with Cuba just a forgotten holdover from the United States’ Cold War policy, or was there something different with the island nation in December of 2014?  What changed last week to cause President Obama’s announcement?  The answer: very little.

    In the 1990s, the United States began to normalize relations with Russia and the former Soviet nations, and some people have drawn a comparison between the current action and that as if the US had simply forgotten to end the Cold War with its closer neighbor in the Caribbean.  The reality is quite different.  Russia underwent a massive shift in leadership, direction, and policy in response to western pressure.  Big changes took place – then the policy shift occurred.  Meanwhile, the Castro Bros. and their status quo remains in full swing 90 miles south of the border.

    However, I do not believe that this foreign policy shift is unique to this administration.  In fact, there is a definitive and traceable pattern developing.  What we are seeing is transference of the (arguably) failed Middle East policy into Latin America.  I.E. if we play nice, give them a seat at the table, we will gain ground.  Whether you like the honey over vinegar approach or not, it has clearly not proven to be tenable currency in the world of Islamic extremism.   Perhaps it will work better in Cuba.  After all, a case can be made that this is similar to the model we followed with China as it erupted into the world economy a few decades ago. 

    The biggest change did not happen last week, but actually took place over the last decade.  The American people simply are not scared of Communism anymore.  With Islamic terrorists as public enemy number one, McCarthy has left the building without so much as a raised eyebrow.

    Like it or not, America is on track to spend at least the next two years attempting “restorative justice.”  I’m sure some of our other antagonists are watching the situation very closely.  Sadly, sometimes being the ‘bigger person’ just makes you a larger target.

The Crimean Trail of Tears

   An entire ethnicity uprooted and forced to march across hundreds of miles of rough terrain.  Possibly 46% of the total population dies along the way to their new “homeland.”  While this sounds like the United States’ relocation of the Native American nations in the 1830s, it is actually the story of the Crimean Tatars from the Crimean Peninsula as the USSR orchestrated its own Trail of Tears in 1944. 

   The buildup to deportation included a decades-long pattern of [Russian] government induced starvation of the regional population, but the final excuse for removal came after the Second World War.  The Tatars were collectively blamed for collaborating with Nazi Germany and relocated into camps and then dispersed to other Russian controlled territories to the east such as Uzbekistan for their alleged treason. 

   But the purge went beyond deportation.  A massive effort was made to completely erase them from the history of the region.[1]  Everything written or translated to their language was burnt and grave markers were destroyed.  Even Tatars who fought in the Russian army during WWII were deported upon their return home while others who had been captured as POWs by the Nazis rarely escaped work camps or execution at the hand of those who should have been their liberators.

   Be it their Islamic roots, their history of antagonism towards Russia and Europe over centuries of raiding and capturing slaves, or the Nazi collaboration of a few, Soviet leaders were happy to be rid of the entire population and quickly bequeathed the entire peninsula to their trusted Soviet Socialist member state: Ukraine in 1954. It would be over 30 years before significant efforts were made to bring this people group back to their homeland.  Today, the Crimean Tatars struggle to champion civil rights and the interests of their people in the region and to reestablish their history, brutally erased in the name of ethnic cleansing.    

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[1] Allen W. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Hoover Press, 1978), page 172.

Crimea 2.0

Don’t have a clue about the Crimean Peninsula that everyone on the news is talking about?  Read on, because ignorance is not bliss.

   This is not the first time that the Crimean region has been fought over.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (that all you homeschoolers almost certainly memorized – or maybe it was just me) immortalized the events of an ill-fated charge into almost certain defeat ordered by poor military leaders during the Crimean War.[1]  The conflict was plagued by terrible leadership and planning all around.  Between 1853 and 1856, Russia fought against an unusual alliance of the Ottoman Empire and France, England, and other European nations over (1) who had access to the Holy Land and (2) Russian territorial expansion.  Russia favored the Orthodox Church while France and the others pushed for Catholic supremacy.  (Rabbit to chase: Thus Russian Expansionism is not new or somehow tied to communism.  Communist leaders simply used nationalism to fuel public opinion since expansion was already part of their collective heritage.)

   Eventually, Russia lost the war, and the territory reverted back to Ottoman Control for a brief time after going back and forth over the century before. 

   The Crimean War bears horrifying similarity to the growing tension today, and longtime Columbia professor Shepard Bancroft Clough’s (d.1990) prophetic words capture the situation best even though they were published in 1969: “The Crimean War, which cost the lives of half a million men, was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took.”[2]  Let’s hope that while the last half of his statement has most certainly happened, the massive loss of life can be prevented before it is too late in 2014.

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[1] The opening stanza really foreshadows the end result: 

“Half a league half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred: 'Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns' he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”  Read the whole poem: http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.ykp0Ojd7.dpuf

[2] Shepard Bancroft Clough, A History of the Western World, vol 2 (D.C. Heath and Company,1969), page 1010.

(1) Why was Russia culturally and politically isolated?

Map of the Break-up of the Ottoman Empire
(Years in the green areas show when territory transferred to Russia).
From William R. Shepherd's Atlas of Medieval and Modern History (Henry Holt: London, 1932).

If you watched US coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, you might have caught the fact that Peter the Great (Tsar of Russia from 1682-1721), made a real effort to westernize his nation.  So what happened in the last 293 years?  Why did Russian history travel its own path as an isolated and anti-Western country?  If your answer was that it began with communism or the Russian Revolution, think again.

Peter the Great died on 28 January 1725 leaving his wife Catherine I to rule in his place, but her poor health did not allow her much time on the throne (she died in 1727).[1]  However, she used this time to continue to bolster foreign alliances including The Treaty of 1726 with the Austrian Empire that insured mutual military aid if the Turks attacked either nation (Sochi was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire at this time). 

But in the chaos following the death of Catherine I, we begin to already glimpse the push back of the nobility to keep the West out.[2]  Many favored moving the capital away from St. Petersburg and instead to Moscow in an effort to set their own path independent of the tsars.  While the family was able to right the autocratic ship in the years to come, these ideas of toppling the elite (who were synonymous with their elite family members ruling in the rest of Europe) kept growing and finally were consummated with the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

The bottom line: Most of the interaction ordinary Russians had with the West came about because of the ruling elite, so when they pushed back against them, they were indirectly pushing back against Western ideas. 

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[1] Walter Keating Kelly, The History of Russia (Henry G. Bohn: London, 1854), page 400.

[2] Arthur Hassall, The Balance of Power: 1715-1789 (Rivingtons: London, 1963), pages 114-115.