Planned Missile System Dropped, but Not Forgotten

It's too bad that our relationship with Russia hasn't changed very much since the fall of the Iron Curtain and dissolution of the Soviet Union. We can thank President Bush for his ineptitude in world affairs. He wasted  eight years. While he was in office, instead of reaching out to Russia when they were at their most vulnerable state of social realignment, we continued to treat them as our worst enemy. The result? The seedlings of freedoms and democracy were are all but squashed by Putin. In response, we stiffened our backs and quickly returned to a posture of guarded dialogue. Life was so bad under the new democracy in Russia, the people longed for the good old days of Communism, when they at least had pride in their country, and people spoke of Russia as a world power to be feared and respected.

Vladimir Putin exploited that frustration. Today Russia is a quagmire of gangsters and greedy, uncaring, selfish capitalists, exploiting all that is good about the country and nurturing old belligerent behaviors in the process. The people have neither the freedoms of our society or the entitlements of their old communist system. Is it natural law that when opposite ideologies converge we get the worst of both worlds, rather than the best of each-- or do we have to work at making it come out that way?

President Bush exacerbated the problem by proposing a missile defense system in former Soviet Block countries. It doesn’t take a Henry Kissinger to figure out why he was doing it- it was childish cold war behavior on his part and inexcusable. He claimed Iran was an emminent threat. Iran wasn’t the threat, and still isn’t- Russia was his threat, but he wouldn't admit it. Russia called him out on it by inviting the U.S. to put the missile system in Russia. It was an embarrassing overture for President Bush to turn down. We missed an opportunity to challenge the President on his true objective by not making more of the overture at the time- the press and Congress were asleep at the wheel.

President Obama has taken a small step for humankind by dropping Bush’s insane plan. Putin thanked Obama, but the damage was already done. I was disheartened by the response from the Russian people. They’re so distrustful of our motives, they only see the action as dropping an old gun pointed at their head, to be replaced with another more dangerous one. If the people distrust us this badly, can we ever reconcile our differences, or are we forever destined to be divorced?