Today, it is now clear beyond any shadow of a doubt to all US citizens who value the American spirit and are loyal to the American nation (as well as all sane citizens of the UK, Ukraine, and a number of other nations who have fallen victims to Russian aggression) that hostilities between Russia and NATO-aligned nations have been renewed. We are in a new Cold War.
Although it will be up to future historians to pinpoint precisely when this new Cold War started, with the outcome of the 2016 presidential election it has entered into a new stage. Indeed, in February 2016 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev declared, "We can say it even more clearly: We have slid into a new period of Cold War." He went on to say that 2016 reminded him of 1962--the year of the pivotal Cuban Missile Crisis--and chided NATO for being "unfriendly" to Russia.
Unlike JFK, who faced the USSR with nerves of steel, Trump has given Russia every aid and comfort to operate freely. In the primaries, he went so far as to imply he wouldn't honor NATO obligations in the event that Russia invaded the Baltic states, and declared NATO was "obsolete" and that he may consider pulling the US out if elected. (These comments came only months after Medvedev's declaration of a new Cold War, and Trump has continued to "joke" about leaving NATO as recently as June 2018).
Other Russians also saw a new Cold War underway in 2016. In October 2016, retired Lt Gen Evgeny Buzhinsky said “If we talk about the last Cold War, we are currently somewhere between the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile crisis.” By early 2018 Buzhinsky's assessment of the situation seems to have become a bit more grave: “The question always asked these days if this is a new Cold War or a second Cold War. I always state that its worse! In the time of the Cold War, everything was clear: an ideological confrontation, but there were definite truths, definite red lines, no threats, no sanctions.”
Officials in the US have been less willing to acknowledge the renewal of the Cold War. Barack Obama--who mocked Romney in the 2012 presidential election for correctly pointing out Russia is the number one geopolitical adversary of the US--continued to maintain as late as early 2014 that Russia was a mere weak regional power that was only a threat to its neighbors. One can only imagine what was going through his mind later in 2014 (after information began coming in about Russia's growing disinformation campaigns) and in the final year of his term when he warned Trump that his campaign was compromised and placed sanctions on Russia and expelled 35 Russian diplomats, in an ill-fated attempt to give Republicans bad publicity in the eyes of Americans should their party attempt to reverse this action.
Not all Democrats were so naive, however. Notably former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta took a firm stance on what the US should be doing in the ongoing Cold War back in February 2015, a stance which he has maintained in 2018.
"The intelligence community has nailed down pretty well what Putin is all about. And Putin is all about Russia and expanding the influence of Russia. He's about dividing the East from the West. He's about doing everything he can to regain influence over the former states of the Soviet Union.
And he is somebody who will take advantage of other countries and weakness if he sees that. Frankly, we have got to take a tougher stand against him, because we're engaged now in a whole new chapter of the Cold War. And the only thing he understands is power.
[...]
The West, combined with the United States, needs to be much tougher in drawing the line on Vladimir Putin. I think we ought to be providing military aid to the Ukrainians. I think we ought to be bolstering NATO. I think we ought to be doing everything we can to provide other energy supplies, so that Russia isn't the only country that provides energy to those countries in that part of the world.
I think we have got to take a number of steps here to make very clear to Putin that he cannot just simply use military power to be able to invade and take over another country."
***
Other commentators have boldly declared the Cold War never ended. On one hand, this view makes a lot of sense. The Cold War was not an actual armed conflict which had a clear ending point (such as WWI and WWII), but a war of competing ideologies.
While it is true that communism has proven itself unsustainable and collapsed on the world stage, the USSR/Russia was never truly ideologically defeated and subdued in the same way that Germany and its allies were "de-Nazified" and forcefully "re-educated" by the Western Allies and Soviet Bloc in the wake of WWII. Indeed, so strong was the desire to ensure that all traces of the losers' ideologies were destroyed that Germany's guilt culture has been robustly maintained since the end of WWII--for nearly an entire lifetime.
WWII was as much of a battle over which ideology would reign over the post-war world as it was which alliance of nations would emerge militarily dominant. Those who paid attention in history class or have played any video game regarding WWII will remember the war had not two, but three, main ideological blocs.
In the early days of WWII, with the old guard of Western Civilization (the colonial powers of Britain and France) on the brink of defeat, the US began to emerge as the leading power of Western democracy. Entering into a revolutionary period after WWI, Germany and Italy had embraced autocratic forms of government which explicitly rejected the capitalist-communist false dichotomy. Eager to continue the world-wide communist revolution and bitter at communism's political defeat within Germany and Italy, the Soviet Union did not view the Western capitalist alliance much more positively.
Sometimes video games do a better job of explaining than most teachers.
Without going into a long tangent on WWII history, it is nevertheless critical to understand that the Cold War originated in the immediate aftermath of WWII as unfinished business between the two remaining ideological blocs. Although the Soviets get lumped in with the "Allies" during WWII, they were always viewed with suspicion by the US-aligned bloc.
Early in WWII (but before the US's official involvement), documents such as the October 1940 McCollum memo suggest that the belief the USSR was more likely to ally with the Axis powers than Britain was circulating within the US intelligence community. The USSR was kicked out of the League of Nations on December 14, 1939, for its invasion of Finland on November 30, 1939 (apparently the USSR's invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939 was no big deal).
Immediately post-war, the British began examining the feasibility of a pre-emptive invasion against the USSR called Operation Unthinkable (abandoned due to the unlikelihood of a quick victory) and the US developed Plan Totality (a nuclear plan designed to fool the Soviets into overestimating US nuclear capacity). By 1949 the US planned Operation Dropshot as the defensive contingency plan for a future invasion by the USSR.
One of the most strong-headed American opponents of the USSR during this time was General George S. Patton. Patton was removed from his command as Military Governor of Bavaria by Eisenhower in late September 1945, after his continued urging to ally with and remobilize Germans in order to attack the USSR became too audacious.
"The question at issue is not so much Tito but as to whether or not he is the pawn of the Russians and, if so, whether he is being used as a red herring to pull us to the south so that the Russians may resume an offensive in Central Germany...
In my opinion, the American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease... If it should be necessary to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it the better.
General Eisenhower and General Bradley were somewhat worried about the attitude of the soldiers. Personally, I don't think the soldier cares. The present American soldier is so well disciplined and so patriotic he will fight anywhere he is told to fight, and do a good job. I believe that by taking a strong attitude, the Russians will back down. So far we have yielded too much to their Mongolian nature."[1]
"I attended the Military Government meeting at Frankfurt. There were a number of speeches by General Eisenhower and his various assistants, all of which were unrealistic, and in every case the chief interest of the speaker was to say nothing which could be used against him. It is very patent that what the Military Government is trying to do is undemocratic and follows practically Gestapo methods.
[...]
I stated that in my opinion Germany is so completely blacked out as far as military resistance is concerned, they are not a menace, and that what we have to look out for is Russia. This caused considerable furore."[2]
Even so, he was not alone in his opinion that Germany was a necessary asset for the destruction of the USSR:
"At dinner with [French] General [Alphonse] Juin, the remarkable statement was made by him to me that "It is indeed unfortunate, my General, that the English and Americans have destroyed in Europe the only sound country--and I do not mean France--and therefore the road is now open for the advent of Russian Communism.""[3]
Examining Patton's willingness to fight the USSR and his diary entries expressing his disgust with the "Mongolian" and "Asiatic" character of "Genghis Khan’s degenerate descendants" [i.e. the Soviets], it is not too difficult to arrive at the interesting suggestion that not only would he have been open to an alliance with the Axis to defeat the USSR, but also that the National Socialist critiques of the Soviet psyche may have been valid all along.
Contrary to prevailing belief, "untermensch" was not an ethnocentric insult, but used against nations which were perceived as being of such low quality that they fell to the ignoble ideology of communism.
This definition is intuitive to everyone--which is why there are endless jokes about how Neo-Nazis will be the first to go in a "Fourth Reich".
Russia was never "de-Russified" or "de-Eurasianized" after the collapse of communism in a manner analogous to how Germany and its allies were thoroughly "de-Nazified". As a result, Russia has outwardly adopted a new geopolitical strategy (Duginism) while its inner psyche remains unchanged.
Vladimir Putin and Aleksandr Dugin, 21st century untermenschen sub-humans.
National Bolshevism--a demon spawn containing the most ignoble aspects of communism, Eurasian steppe patriotism, and Neo-Nazism. Dugin is a leading theorist of this movement, in addition to his influence on mainstream Russian politics.
***
On the other hand, it seems the situation has changed to such an extent over the past two and a half decades that the 21st century Cold War is something distinct from the 20th century one. No doubt it is a direct result of the original Cold War (just as WWII was a direct result of the unfinished business of WWI), but there are two critical factors here.
The first is that both average citizens and the political establishments of most nations have sincerely believed and acted as if the Cold War was over. The world entered into a period of positivity and renewed hopes for the future. The specter of nuclear war was gone, the Iron Curtain had fallen, and we could finally begin to build the world anew. We not only wanted to believe it, we did believe it. We not only believed it, but we acted on it.
The second, and most important, is that the US President and US Congress have gone from (correctly) describing the USSR as an Evil Empire, demanding the Soviet's wall be torn down, and being committed to ensure NATO can crush any Russian military threat to denigrating NATO, actively defending and enabling Russia as they trample on NATO members and aspirant NATO members, and SIDING WITH RUSSIA OVER THE UNITED STATES AFTER IT HAS BEEN PROVEN BEYOND A DOUBT THAT RUSSIA WAS SUCCESSFUL IN MEDDLING IN THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. (The election, if I may add, which placed the current Russia-friendly president in office). Moreover, no one would have ever predicted that right-wing voters in the US are now unceasingly favorable to Russia, its leader, and its ideology (Duginism is viewed positively by many Alt-Rightists for its ethno-tribalism and chauvinism).
In the 21st century, individuals who call themselves 'socialists' are the leading voices against Russia in the US!
While polls show that the majority of Republican voters are critical of Russia, in a historic first, Democrat/liberal voters are no longer more favorable to America's number one geopolitical foe than Republicans.
***
While in the case of the first Cold War it may be difficult to squarely blame anyone for starting it, there is no ambiguity over who has provoked the second Cold War.
Vladimir Putin has been the major player in Russia since 1999. In August of that year, he was appointed as Prime Minister. In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as President, making Putin acting President. In March 2000, Putin officially wins the presidential election. He is re-elected in 2004. Term limits prevent Putin from serving as President three consecutive terms, so his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is elected as President in 2008, and Putin becomes Prime Minister. With the term limits reset, Putin is elected as President in 2012 and again in 2018. The presidential term length is now six years, meaning Putin will be president until 2024.
It is worth noting that, besides for Yeltsin (1991-1999), Putin/Medvedev has been the only post-USSR leader of Russia. It is also worth noting that Putin joined the KGB in 1975, claimed there was "no such thing as a former KGB man," and has been busy rebuilding this Cold War agency. The USSR is not so dead as we'd like to imagine...
Let us take a look at some of the more recent events in the ongoing Cold War:
• Georgia
In late 2003, protests in Georgia lead to the ouster of President Eduard Shevardnadze. In January 2004, Mikheil Saakashvili was elected as the new president of Georgia, and began pursuing foreign policy aimed at bringing Georgia closer to NATO and the EU. In 2006, Georgia entered into an "Intensified Dialogue" with NATO, the first step towards gaining membership. In early 2008, Saakashvili was re-elected, and 77% of Georgians voted in favor of joining NATO in a referendum.
In January 2008, Saakashvili was re-elected and continued with his ambitions of NATO integration. On April 11, 2008, Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian military, stated that if Georgia joins NATO, "Russia will take steps aimed at ensuring its interests along its borders and these will not only be military steps, but also steps of a different nature".
In July 2008, President Bush conducted joint NATO-Georgian military exercises a few weeks after Russians had conducted their own military exercises in the Caucasus region. Georgia-Russia relations had been deteriorating since February 2008, when Russia pledged to become closer with the break-away nations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russian military buildup in the break-away nations began in May 2008, and war broke out between Russia and Georgia in August. On August 12 a ceasefire was called, and on August 26 Russian President Medvedev signed decrees recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (a move opposed by Bush).
In November 2011, Russian President Medvedev boasted that the 2008 invasion had successfully stopped NATO from expanding membership not only to Georgia, but other former Soviet nations as well.
"“If you...had faltered back in 2008, the geopolitical situation would be different now,” Medvedev said in a speech to soldiers at a base in Vladikavkaz, just north of the Georgian border.
"And a number of countries which (NATO) tried to deliberately drag into the alliance, would have most likely already been part of it now.”"
A month later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned there would be a repeat of the 2008 war if Georgia continued to pursue NATO membership. In the aftermath of the 2008 war and with the contentious status of the break-away nations, NATO has been unwilling to move forward with granting Georgia NATO membership. But in the wake of Russian involvement in Ukraine, Georgia pushed for renewed calls to enter NATO in 2014.
• Ukraine
Ukraine's ambitions for closer ties with NATO and the EU began very shortly after the breakup of the USSR. Leonid Kuchma (Ukrainian Prime Minister from 1992-1993 and President from 1994 to January 2005) stated in 2002 that he intended to enter into agreements with the EU in the following years, and meet all membership requirements by 2011 at the latest. After a contentious election in late 2004, the "Orange Revolution" sparked even greater desire for pro-Western government in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the "Orange Revolution" protests, Kuchma's more liberal opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, whose campaign also promised of NATO and EU membership, became the President.
Yushchenko suffered an assassination attempt shortly before the election, being poisoned at a dinner event. He has suggested Russia played a prominent role in the attempt on his life, and has recently warned that all who oppose the Russian geopolitical strategy face a similar danger.
“Every politician in this country and neighbouring countries who turns towards the West is facing that kind of danger. My poisoning took place because I had started taking steps towards the European Union. We have a neighbour who does not want this to happen.”
Despite the assassination attempt he remained steadfast, and in 2006 he expressed his desire for NATO membership by 2008.
In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych became president. Although he publicly stated that he desired for Ukrainian integration with the EU, he did not wish for Ukraine to join NATO. In November 2013, he decided to no longer pursue an Association Agreement with the EU, and instead seek closer ties with Russia. This sparked a large wave of protests called the Euromaidan protests. As riots grew in intensity, President Yanukovych was ousted and the Ukrainian government collapsed in February 2014. Russia did not recognize the new government as legitimate and, taking advantage of the chaos, invaded Crimea and funded pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In March 2014, Crimea was annexed into Russia after a referendum. In April, the pro-Russian groups in eastern Ukraine escalated tensions into what is nominally a civil war. In August, Russian military vehicles were observed entering into Ukraine, which accelerated in subsequent months. Fighting remains ongoing.
Ukraine's new president, Petro Poroshenko, spared no time in signing the Association Agreement with the EU in early 2014, declaring it "Ukraine's most historic day since independence in 1991". During the Euromaidan protests, Soviet monuments were a popular target of destruction. In 2015, President Poroshenko passed a law which began removing communist monuments and street names. In late 2014, Poroshenko announced NATO membership would be a major goal of his, as "the nonalignment status of Ukraine proclaimed in 2010 couldn't guarantee our security and territorial integrity". He reiterated in 2015 that Russian aggression made NATO membership imperative. In March 2018 NATO upgraded Ukraine to an official aspiring member.
In 2016, Poroshenko expressed his concern that Ukraine must be prepared for a full-scale invasion by Russia as violence surged in the east and as a growing amount of Russian supplies were noted amongst rebels. This is not an unreasonable fear, especially considering that in June 2017, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quite candid about Russian involvement in Ukraine:
"I have read and heard much criticism regarding our decision to join the fight in Donbass and in Syria. (...) Would it be acceptable for Russia, considering its international standing, to keep mum and recognise the coup in Ukraine, and to leave Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine in the lurch after the first order issued by the organisers of the anti-constitutional armed revolt, which was supported by their foreign sponsors, banned many things that were connected with the Russian language?"
Other notable facts:
In July 2014, passenger airline MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 on board. Years worth of investigations have confirmed that Russian troops and equipment were responsible for downing the plane. Evidence indicates that the troops mistook the civilian airliner for a military aircraft. The governments of Australia and the Netherlands (who lost many citizens in the incident) have openly blamed Russia.
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort provided consulting services to pro-Russian oligarchs and politicians in Ukraine (including Yanukovych) beginning in 2005. Manafort's firm did not cease operating in Ukraine until April 2016, a month after he joined the Trump campaign. Leaked texts from Manafort's daughter say he was instrumental in inciting violence against protesters in Kiev.
Former President Yanukovych has been living in Russia since he was deposed, but Ukrainian prosecutors have recently stated that he is deserving of 15 years in prison, because he has "betrayed the nation" by his loyalties to Russia.
• Montenegro
In the years following its independence in 2006, Montenegro began forming close ties with NATO. In March 2014, Prime Minister Milo Đukanović voiced his desire for Montenegro to join NATO, but due to the turmoil unfolding in Ukraine, NATO did not formally invite Montenegro until December 2015.
Although Montenegro is a small nation, its accession to NATO did not go unnoticed by Russia. In May 2014, Russian MP Mikhail Degtyarev declared Montenegro would be "a legitimate target of Russian missiles" if it joined NATO. On October 16, 2016, during the Parliamentary elections, Montenegrin authorities foiled an attempted coup. Over a dozen individuals were indicted for their role, including Serbian citizens and two Russian citizens. After an investigation, Montenegrin officials found that the conspirators were not just pro-Russian, but funded by Russia itself. They had planned to assassinate Đukanović and thwart the attempt to join NATO.
Montenegro joined NATO in June 2017, and faced a cold welcome from Trump. Insanely, Trump suggested Montenegro was "aggressive" and could end up starting WWIII. Of course, these comments came after Trump had aggressively shoved the Montenegrin President during a photo op.
• Brexit, the EU, and Britain
In June 2016, a majority a Britons voted to leave the EU. This result shocked both political commentators and leave voters alike. After Russian interference in the 2016 US election became apparent, it was uncovered that Russian-coordinated propagandists helped push Britain towards Brexit. (Even without this evidence, it had long been obvious to political commentators that Brexit and a weakened EU would be the most desirable outcome for Putin).
In March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who had worked as a double agent for Britain, was poisoned. After serving a prison sentence in Russia in the '00s, he had been living in the UK since 2010 following a spy swap program. Skripal's daughter was also injured in the attack. In July, two more Britons were poisoned when they came across remnants of the poison--one of them died. UK intelligence agencies quickly narrowed down Russia as being behind the attacks.
Previously, British intelligence agent and anti-Putin writer Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated with polonium-laced tea by Russia in 2006. Litvinenko had previously worked for the Russian FSB before leaving Russia in 2000.
Beyond Brexit, Putin has been funding far-right parties (in addition to pro-Russian biker gangs, soccer hooligans, and militias) throughout Europe in order to weaken the EU and exacerbate religious and ethnic divisions.
• US election
The fact that Russia pursued actions to help elect Donald Trump (which ranged from propaganda campaigns by bots and trolls to hacking of emails of the Democratic Party) should not be new information to readers. Both members of US and allied intelligence agencies as well as Congressional committees have continued to gather evidence of the extent of the interference and the extent to which the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
To highlight a few points: the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller has initiated criminal charges against 32 individuals (including 26 Russians and 5 US citizens) and 3 Russian organizations. The US citizens include Paul Manafort (Trump campaign chairman) and Michael Flynn (a retired General and former National Security Advisor to Trump).
Russian hacking attempts on Hillary Clinton's emails began on July 27, 2016, the same day Trump said, "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."
In July 2017, Trump reluctantly signed a bill which was designed to enact new sanctions on Russia. However, he has refused to enforce it. Although Trump claims to be tough on Russia, the truth is so hilariously obvious that presenters on Russian state TV commonly "joke" that "Trump is ours" and that US politicians commonly ask Russian hackers for assistance.
Beyond our election, Russia has also hacked into the power grid infrastructure, amongst other things. In 2015, Russians hacked into Ukraine's power infrastructure, causing blackouts for 200,000 people, foreshadowing the damage they could do to the US if they chose to do so. Additionally, US intelligence believes Russia is responsible for targeting dozens of US diplomats in Cuba and China with high-tech weaponry which caused brain damage. The attacks began in late 2016, damaging US-Cuba relations which were improving for the first time in over a century. In 2018, the attacks in China occurred.
For more in-depth timelines of events, here are a few resources:
Simple timeline of the Trump-Russia investigation. January 2013 - February 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/05/a-so-far-complete-timeline-of-the-investigation-into-trump-and-russia/
Simple timeline of Trump-Russia involvement. June 2013 - February 2018.
https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/timeline-of-events
Detailed summary of the Special Counsel Investigation, including a list of criminal charges initiated so far.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_(2017%E2%80%93present)
Detailed summary of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
Detailed timeline of Russian interference in the US election, which includes relevant information dating back to the early mid-'00s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
***
During the 2016 election, a common anti-Clinton talking point was that she could potentially start a new Cold War and that Trump would take a more level-headed and "diplomatic" stance with Russia than the "warmonger" Clinton. While Clinton's role facilitating the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, her vote in favor of the Iraq War, her friendship with Israel and promise to crush Iran, and her advocacy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to increase hostilities between the US and China give her an abysmal foreign policy record, if Trump can be said to have averted the US from entering a Cold War, it is only because Trump has dishonorably stepped aside while his ally Putin has been allowed to wreak havoc unopposed by the US.
(Adding to this, Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon's statement that "there's no doubt" the US would be at 'hot' war with China within the next decade did little to reassure us of the sanity of the Trump administration's foreign policy; nor have Trump's deranged Tweets threatening "fire and fury" against North Korea and Iran, his plan to invade Iraq again specifically to take their oil, and his desire to overthrow Venezuela on a whim, convinced anyone he is less of a warmonger than Clinton).
Without giving praise to Clinton's foreign policy positions (as she deserves absolutely none), simple observation of the facts shows that not only has Clinton been willing to take a diplomatic stance with Russia, but that Russia has gone out of its way to reject all these attempts at improving US-Russia relations. Combining this with Russia's increasingly overt acts of aggression (e.g. in Georgia, Ukraine), it has been demonstrated that the blame for the escalating tensions in the new Cold War has been absolutely one-sided.
"...once we pressed that reset button in 2009, between then and 2012, we achieved a great deal in cooperation with Russia to advance our mutual interests and I would argue the interests of Europe -- the New START Treaty that reduced our strategic nuclear arsenal by one-third; ...
All of us, we all invested in a type of Russia we hoped -— and still hope -— will emerge one day: a Russia integrated into the world economy; more prosperous, more invested in the international order.
It was in that same spirit that we supported the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council and Russian membership in countless other institutions, from the Council of Europe to the WTO. Unfortunately, and I mean it when I say unfortunately, as the Chancellor [Merkel] pointed out this morning, President Putin has chosen a different path." -Joe Biden, February 2015
In March 2009, two months into the Obama administration (and while the blood was still drying from Russia's war with Georgia), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a literal "reset button" to offer a new chapter of relations moving forward. Even in spite of the Democrats' dangerously naive levity toward Russia, Putin cared so little about sincerely entering a new stage of US-Russia relations that he not only waged a massive cyber warfare and disinformation campaign to prevent Clinton from being elected, but did all he could to put a complete patsy in the White House. (And this is not even touching the Russian role in supporting Brexit in the UK or far-rightist and anti-EU parties throughout Europe). Some revisionist whataboutists have recently been claiming that Putin's meddling is merely revenge for the US's role in propping up Yeltsin and quashing USSR-revivalists in 1996; if so, Russia has certainly returned the favor over 100-fold.
Perhaps the previous paragraph gives Putin too much credit--afterall, he would never have been able to have the startling success he did without countless collaborators within the US. This includes those working directly with Russia (e.g. Flynn, Manafort); those who are personally more inspired by Russian values than American values and are therefore willing to trample on America under their own volition (e.g. Bannon, all Republican Party members who by this point have not resigned membership or taken unceasing measures to rid their party of anti-American elements); and those who are useful idiots at best (e.g. Jill Stein voters and other left-leaning individuals who failed their duty to vote for the only force which had a chance at defeating Trump).
Remember: Putin didn't do any of this alone.
***
Just as it was during the 20th century Cold War, being loyal to Russia is treason, and being loyal to the ignoble Duginist view of civilization is treason against the American Dream and American Spirit.
The statement in the image was written by a Trump-supporting White Nationalist... How does this suggest leftists should view MAGA-supporters who think Duginist Russia is a better place than the post-counter-culture USA?
During the 20th century, those who were vehemently supportive of the USSR and communism were largely outcast to the fringes of society (to such an extent that membership in communist organizations still precludes individuals from being granted US citizenship); today, the most well-organized political party in the US believes Russian society is greater than American society. This is what Americans are up against.
What was that thing Americans used to say during the Cold War? 'Better dead than Red'?
If merely believing the USSR was a more positive place than the USA was anti-American, what does that make those who are actively colluding with Russia and literally committing treason? And what does this make apathetic left-leaning individuals who act as if the Trump administration is simply business as usual?
Ultimately, the only way to stop the Trump Train and win the Cold War once and for all is for the left to articulate a positive, noble, vision of America and regain our pride in being Americans. America will not be great until it abolishes all ignoble aspects of Western Civilization which MAGA-enthusiasts, Alt-Rightists, and Duginists support--White Supremacy, sexism, Islamophobia, Zionism, hostility towards immigrants, class warfare, and so forth. This is the ideological and cultural battle of the New Cold War.
References
[1] George S. Patton. Diary entry, May 18, 1945.
Library of Congress. George S. Patton Papers: Diaries, 1910-1945; Annotated transcripts; 1943-1945; 1945, Mar. 22-Sept. 26.
[2] Ibid. August 27, 1945.
[3] Ibid. August 18, 1945.
