There's a Bolshevik in My Soup

When I was growing up, my sister’s favorite movie was Annie. Those with younger siblings can imagine how many times I had to see it. And though my sister danced and sang along with her favorite orphan, my favorite scene had practically nothing to do with the plot at all. It involved a crazy guy throwing a bomb through the window in an attempt to kill Daddy Warbucks. Of course the day is saved, and while the rest of the office goes about its business, the confused little orphan asks: who would want to kill Mr. Warbucks? The answer:

“The Bolsheviks, dear. He's living proof that the American system really works and the Bolsheviks don't want anyone to know about it.”

I have no idea why this delighted me so much. The sincerity with which the line is delivered is pretty funny, but I’m sure I had no idea what a Bolshevik was. Once I learned, it became even funnier, but as the Bolsheviks were a group long since relegated to the history books I was pretty sure our paths would only cross when my sister felt the need to belt out “Tomorrow.”

So imagine my surprise to be attending a conference in Washington years later, about a month after September 11th, in which the Bolsheviks made an appearance. While listening to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee talk about the attack, he was adamant that we had to be careful of similar Bolshevik groups. Now my colleague and I, who up to that point had dutifully been taking notes, raised our eyebrows and looked at each other, but no one in the room seemed to have been bothered by the comment. The equation of terrorist activity to a left-wing group from the 1917 Russian revolution seemed, well, odd. Not to mention historically inaccurate.

That’s when the light went on. The US had long enjoyed an ideological battle with the Soviet Union, and when it collapsed in the early 1990s, the US could rightly proclaim that its system was better. But the Soviet Union has not gone away. That much was clear when yet another speaker (a State Department official) warned about alliances with Soviet states. Not “former Soviet states” or “Soviet-like states,” but plain old Soviet states. I asked my colleague if the USSR had been recreated the previous night while I was sleeping, and when assured that it hadn’t, I tried to piece two and two together.

My colleague and I were easily the youngest people in the room, barely teenagers when the USSR collapsed. Though we grew up in a US vs. USSR world, we adapted quickly to the fact that Germany is one country, not two, and the Soviet Union is now a historical entity. In Washington, evidently, old habits die hard.

Granted, I have never lived through any red scares, missile crises, or wars predicated on the domino theory. Glasnost and perestroika marked my youth, and perhaps through the naïveté and innocence of childhood, I took them seriously. I certainly never believed in communism, but nor did I fear it. But although my youth and inexperience has perhaps skewed my view of international relations, the persistent Cold War hangover that pervades Washington is endangering our foreign policy.

The collapse of the USSR has brought about two interesting phenomena: a feeling of invincibility and the need for an archrival. The first became clear to me in July 2001, when discussing an Africa project with a senior colleague of mine. I told him that the recent discoveries of oil were interesting, as was our then growing interest in the continent through legislation such as AGOA. I suggested that the US might be cozying up to some non-OPEC oil-rich countries. No way, I was told. The price of oil is fixed. I then asked, well, what if something were to happen, and we suddenly didn’t want any oil from the Middle East? The response: What could possibly happen? Unfortunately, September 11th could not be predicted, but the use of terrorism should have been.

As for the need for an enemy, much has been written about current policies of the US making China and enemy, whether it wants to be or not. The US had been balanced by the USSR for so long, that we now find it lonely at the top. In our Coalition of the Willing, the attitude of “if you’re not with us you’re against us,” could have been the perfect cold war slogan.

The administration, much of which is a holdover from Bush I, is comfortable with the realpolitik of the Cold War: superpowers, defined nation states, and strong ideological differences that had to be vanquished one way or another. But these principles do not necessarily hold anymore, and that is why comments likening Al Qaeda with Soviet-era vocabulary words are so disturbing. They show the true disconnect that exists between political thinking and what is actually going on. There are ghosts of communism everywhere, but they should no longer hiding under our beds.

Case in point: Cuba. Disregarding its impact on elections, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. Why the US wastes its time on a small island with a population of 11 million is a mystery, especially as we have notoriously aided similarly heavy-handed regimes all over Latin America. Of course, the variable in this equation is that Cuba is filled with communists who threaten the American way of life. But they don’t. And chances are if they were exposed to an influx of American tourists and imports, they’d probably get a kick out of capitalism. Our relationship with Cuba is a holdover from another time. The threat facing our country comes from extremist sleeper cells bent on our destruction, not lengthy speeches by Fidel Castro.

This is not to minimize the threat that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations pose. They are an alarming threat, and more so than the Soviet Union ever was. Where the US and the USSR had ideological differences, Al Qaeda and the like have no ideological beef with the US; they are fueled by hatred. Hatred is not ideological, but it is powerful, and it makes them all the more dangerous. This is why not only the administration but all policy makers must take an aspirin and a shower and realize that the Cold War is over.

Even though we won, the Cold War has proven to be our Achilles heel. Because our victory proved us right, we felt no need to change. But it’s a new game and we need to follow a new rulebook. It’s not an issue of idealism or realism, Democrat or Republican, but a generational and historical leap that must be made. The war on terror does not have a neat beginning, middle and end. Though winning the Cold War may have been like slaying a dragon, the war on terror is like fighting the Hydra: remove one head and two more appear.

Unfortunately one of those heads popped up in London yesterday. Besides expressing our total disgust with terrorism and the cowards who employ it, we want our British friends to know that just as you were there when we needed you, we are here for you. Rule Britannia!