The Spy Who Stayed out In The Cold

WHEN Ronald Reagan – from behind the “Iron Curtain” in East Germany – called on Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down these walls”, the imperial and ideological dreams of the Soviet Union (an Ivinghoe beacon of despair), began to wink like a battery-drained flashlight in a horror movie. Nikolai Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” threat in the 1950s began to ring hollow as political history unfolded.

In an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Florida, President Reagan described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” – and before long, the USSR’s once impregnable fortress came crashing down, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power ushered in an era of perestroika (restructuring) and of glasnost (openness). By the way, is it a coincidence that American “openness” died on September 11, the day in history Nikolai Khrushschev, the Soviet leader during the Cold War, shuffled off this mortal coil? But I digress.

When the Berlin Wall – one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War – finally came down, the winds of change were felt as far as the Caribbean, prompting Mikhail Gorbachev to declare that “the Cold War is our common victory”.

The revolutionary echoes of political reform and globalization at the time still reverberate in the corridors of my mind. For some, the end of the Cold War signified the commencement of genuine global economic co-operation and progress – even a safer world. For others, it simply meant a political transition into a “cold peace”, and this, despite the cascade of political, economic and institutional advances around the world.

For Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, in particular, the Cold War never ended (Syria is a Russian-American conflict). The sentiments of “a common victory” as expressed by Mikhail Gorbachev, were never shared by this revisionist Russian president and former spy chief who once said that “the break-up of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

Under the obstreperous leadership of President Putin, the conventional wisdom about foreign policy has been turned on its head. In Russia today (and I don’t mean RT, Russia’s international propaganda machine), to speak publicly of “national weakness” and “political retreat” is seen as an execrable act of apostasy. Ideas about political enlightenment and human liberty are an affront to Putin’s weltanschauung. And so judging from the country’s regular political infelicities and expressions of pull-up-the-drawbridge truculence, it really appears like history has taught it nothing.

At this juncture, it’s probably a bit of a stretch to suggest that history is about to repeat itself – although Mark Twain may have been on to something when he said: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Yet, if the menacing illiberal prose and political fairy tales that Vladimir Putin has been concocting are left unchallenged, then history may indeed not be very kind to us, as the global democratic order would have been gravely assaulted (perhaps even uprooted) and the future of freedom compromised.

In an unprecedented move, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on January 6 issued a statement accusing Putin’s Russia of hacking into the email accounts and computers of senior officials involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The statement declared categorically that Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered an influence campaign… to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

The Economist, ever the champion of liberal democracy, described the saga in conspiratorial terms reminiscent of plots in a cold war classic: “The same hostile power also gained access to computer systems of several state and local electoral boards (though not systems involved in vote tallying) and used an array of front organisations, television channels and social media “trolls” to feed disinformation and propaganda to American audiences, in a bid to influence the result of the election and “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”

If this appears like a scene from the 1962 Cold War film “The Manchurian Candidate” (Donald Trump and the “Manchurian Candidate” are too similar for comfort), perhaps it’s because the former reality TV star has ominously managed to blur the line between political reality and Hollywood movies.

When Mr. Putin took over the presidency, Russia was a friendly enough bear – in retrospect, a misguided calculation initially based on the pledges of good governance and political reform that he had made. However as Mr. Putin started to consolidate power, and his political philosophy began to be rooted in the soil of nationalism and political revisionism, his imperial ambitions and hideous affinities towards authoritarianism were slowly unmasked. He started to use the media and the country’s mineral wealth to promote and spread anti-EU and anti-West propaganda. Most appallingly, he and his current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who also served as president from 2008 to 2012, have shamelessly used the political process to manoeuvre between the positions of president and prime minister – in the process bringing both high offices into disrepute.

It’s been almost three years since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in direct violation of international law and Ukraine’s territorial integrity – accelerating the unwinding of the current international order and conjuring up a geopolitical awakening at the heart of the EU. Since then, the region has become a black hole for human rights, where those who oppose the Russian occupation face repression, torture and persecution.

In the political theatre that is Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has been able to stay in power with the backing of Russia, despite charges of mass murder and torture as well as international calls for him to step down. Syria’s civil war is the worst humanitarian crisis of our time, where half the country’s pre-war population – more than 11 million people – have been killed or forced to flee their homes. According to the United Nations, it will take $7.7 billion to meet the urgent needs of the most vulnerable Syrians in 2016.

Amid a mysterious and spooky alignment of interests between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin (David Rudder sang, “I see the Eagle on the shoulder of the Bear or is it the other way around”), writers and novelists are falling over themselves to produce the first non-fiction script depicting this modern-day espionage saga. According to the UK Telegraph, Salman Rushdie, the novelist, “has hinted an interest, though American thrillers with Russian spies, beauty queens and love affairs are not his style.”

For comments, write to [email protected] – Clement Wulf-Soulage is a Management Economist, Published Author and Former University Lecturer.