Of course they think that way. Any sane and honest person would, after Yeltsin’s disastrous administration either gave away or deliberately destroyed the country’s natural resources, infrastructure, and scientific assets. You don’t have to like the KGB and Soviet Union in order to understand that the collapse of the USSR was and still is a colossal humanitarian catastrophe for the overwhelming majority of its residents. A catastrophe that the West either ignored, or gloated about, or exacerbated.
So it’s bad when they think of Lithuania as “their turf,” but not bad when we support openly racist, anti-Russian, Nazi-glorifying governments in that area, draw those governments into anti-Russian military alliances and use them to surround Russia with military bases? The Russian reaction is common sense. If China started building bases in Mexico, you’d react the same way.
At the end of the Cold War, a number of agreements were reached between Russia and the United States. Both agreed to disarm and remove their military forces from Europe. Russia carried out its end of the bargain, dissolved the Warsaw Pact and removed almost all of its foreign bases. We, on the contrary, not only kept NATO, we used it to start an illegitimate war of aggression against Serbia, then stationed it around Russia’s borders. Today Zbigniew Brzezinski openly admits that the US never had any intention of keeping its word. Anyone with an ounce of sense would see that the Russians were going to react eventually, but Bush and Clinton didn’t have any sense, they were too busy gloating.
And again, rightly so. It isn’t even a point of controversy that the Chechen terrorists were affiliated with al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters. They were not <i>controlled</i> by al-Qaeda, but they obviously received money from them. Al-Qaeda always had a special emissary in Chechnya, kind of like an accountant who kept track of how to give out the jihad money.
If the American government really wants to defeat Islamic terrorism, then Russia is a natural “friend,” all the more valuable because there aren’t that many left. And due to experience, the Russian government understands the threat of terrorism much better than the American government does. But neoconservatives have always viewed Russia as their next target, after the Middle East and before China, so their brilliant strategy is to push Russia into a corner and break it up into pieces like they did with Serbia. Not only does this turn Russia into an enemy, it greatly strengthens Islamic radicals. You’re right that it’s not entirely Bush’s fault – Clinton and Bush Sr. paved the way for most of the problems we see, and Bush has just applied his singular incompetence to that same course of action. But nonetheless, if a new Cold War starts, it won’t be because of Putin.
Bush doesn’t need to shut down the press – it’s already more than willing to censor itself to appease its sponsors and target demographics. In reality, media consolidation in Russia closely follows the Western model – it is achieved by large corporations which have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the government, but nonetheless are not the government. The only reason why Western ideologues hate Putin is because he learned their lessons all too well, and is now using those lessons to promote Russia’s interests, rather than the interests of Europe, America, “the international community,” or anything else.
