Reconsidering US – Russian Relations

The controversy over who leaked Hillary Clinton’s embrassing emails and the possibility that the leaked emails may have affected the outcome of the presidental election has focused attention on the relations between the United States and Russia.

Regardless of who was responsible for the email leaks (Julian Assange of Wikileaks says that is was not Russia while Democrats and Stop Trump Republicans claim it was Vladamir Putin’s government) the subject of relations between the USA and Russia deserves review from a post-Cold War perspective.

For most of today’s Americans the Cold War provides the frame for thinking about USA-Russian relations, a frame which has the Unites States in opposition to Russia. Besides being anachronistic, such a frame is too narrow. More appropriate would be the consideration of American-Russian relations since the early decades of the twentieth century which would include the First and Second World Wars. In both wars the United States and Russia were on the same side, defending against Germany’s aggression — aggression against Russia in its ambition to rule continental Europe, aggression against the United States in its ambition to rule the world.

As had been the case with France of the era of Napolean, Germany’s object in both world wars was to first gain control of continental Europe and then defeat and replace the leading naval/commercial power (Britian in World War I, the United States in World War II) as master of the seas and come thereby to be “ruler of the world.”

In a recent conversation, a friend and fellow historian of modern Europe suggested to me that Russia’s recent expansion in the Crimea in the Ukraine was comparable to Hitler’s conquest of Poland, Czechoslovakia and France. When I countered that Russians activities regarding the Ukraine and Crimea would better be understood as Putin’s effort to regain areas of Russians rule in the Tsarist and Soviet areas, not gain control of all Europe as Napoleon and Hitler had attempted, my friend agreed.

Understanding the relationship between the United States and Russia requires an understanding of the relationship between the United States and Germany.

During World Wars I and II the United States fought on the same side as Russia in opposition Germany’s aggression. After each World War the United States promoted Germany’s interests. After World War I American help to Germany included huge but little remembered never-to-be repaid loans. These loans produced a flow of funds into Germany greater than the flow of funds out of Germany resulting from the country’s payment of well remembered reparations to the victims of its aggression. After World War II U.S. Marshall Plan to aid to Germany was greater than to any participant in the war. Following both the First and Second World Wars the United States protected Germany’s war criminals and committers of atrocities from prosecution and punishment.

Interestingly, the architect of both aspects of American policy toward Germany after World War I, secretary of state Robert Lansing, was the uncle of the architects of both aspects of American policy toward Germany after World War II, Allen Dulles, head of the CIA and John Foster Dulles, U.S. secretary of state.

Implicit in the claim that Putin’s Russia hacked and publicized Hillary Clinton’s emails is the accusation that Russia intervened improperly in the United States’ political affairs. Whether or not this was the case, there is compelling evidence of far greater influence in America’s political affairs by Germany. It is time this interference be ended.

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Robert E. Kaplan, an historian of modern Europe, is the author of The Soros Connection: How the Exposure of George Soros as an agent of Germany has led to revelation of Germany’s Here-to-Fore Unrecognized Apparatus for Controlling the USA and Achieving World Rule and Germany’s Handbook – Germany’s Manual of Operations: Soft Power Strategies and Tactics to Rule the World.