Every year we mark D-Day as a day of remembrance – all in homage to the sacrifices made to win World War II. Except that we invariably spend much of it commemorating the roles the United States, Britain, France, and Canada played in the European theatre on the Western Front, while giving short shrift to the role Russia played (alone) on the Eastern Front.
This is why I can think of no better way to mark this occasion than to reprise the lamentation I wrote five years ago. I harbor no illusions about redressing this oversight. I only hope to convince you to begin voicing concern about it too.
Accordingly, here in its entirety is “D-Day That Saved the World?” June 6, 2014 (followed by a new epilogue):
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Every year Western leaders mark D-Day by hailing The Greatest Generation of Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, and Canadians who “saved the world.” Except that they invariably overlook the role Russians played.
This constitutes a historic oversight (or slight). Moreover, it is at the root of much of the resentment that has beset Russia’s relationship with the West ever since, making attempts to “reset” it so elusive.
I sympathize with [Putin apologist Stephen Cohen’s] assertion that Putin ‘had no choice but to react.’ Indeed, Putin could have based the address he delivered last week [defending Russia’s annexation of Crimea] on the commentary I published six years ago. For, in ‘Bush Digs His Spurs into Butt of Already Scorned Russian Bear,’ April 2, 2008, I warned Western countries about pushing Russia into a corner, explaining that this would provoke, if not goad, Putin into flexing his Cold War muscles.
NATO did not strike the military alliance with Ukraine that I argued would be tantamount to provoking war with Russia. Still, Putin could be forgiven for regarding the way the EU incited the overthrow of its pro-Russian president (to prevent Russia from striking an economic alliance with Ukraine) as no less provocative.
(“Putin Took Crimea More Out of Resentment and Fear than Imperial Ambition,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 24, 2014)
This quote reflects a little of my ambivalence over the way Obama is leading Western efforts to sanction Putin for annexing Crimea. Most notably, Western leaders have disinvited him from this week’s G8 summit, pointedly reclassifying it as the G7.
I fully support Obama’s determination to prevent Putin from emulating Hitler’s military aggression with impunity. I just detest the “do as I say, not as I do,” arrogance, if not hypocrisy, inherent in Obama’s rallying cry.
For example, he lectured Russia in Brussels yesterday about invading a weak neighbor like Ukraine. But I’m surprised he did not bite his tongue. This, given America’s invasion of weak neighbors like Grenada, Haiti, and Panama. Not to mention its far-flung misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More to the point, though, far too many Westerners overlook the indispensable role Russians played, to say nothing of the sacrifices they made, to make D-Day the turning point of World War II (or as the Russians refer to it, the “Great Patriotic War”). Never mind the prevailing view among Russians that, by the time Westerners launched their D-Day offensive in June 1944, Russia’s greatest generation of men had already effectively defeated the Germans. That the Western allies steadfastly ignored Russia’s entreaties – from as early as 1942 – to join the fight laces Russian resentment with indignation.
In any event, I urge you to take a moment to reflect on this war, and how world history has unfolded since, from the Russian perspective. Because you too might agree that Putin had no choice but to “react” by flexing his muscles in Crimea.
Of course, this is hardly the forum to expound on the Cold War. Just bear in mind that its outcome was as humbling for Russians as the outcome of WWII was degrading for Germans. Indeed, it speaks volumes that Putin has famously lamented the former (i.e., the breakup of the Soviet Union) as the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.”
With that, I urge you to consider these few points:
- From the Russian perspective, President Hollande inviting Putin to France to hail the pivotal role Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, and Canadians played in winning WWII is rather like Chancellor Merkel inviting Obama to Germany to hail the pivotal role Poles, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians played in winning the Cold War.
- According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (April 2014), the United States spends more to maintain its worldwide military dominion each year (at $640 billion) than the next eight countries combined, namely, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and India (at $607 billion).
- The United States has between 700 and 1000 military bases in about 70 countries around the world. Russia has between 10 and 15 military bases in about 10 countries.
- Americans would argue that, instead of invading, their host countries invited them to build every one of those bases. But the Russians could argue with just as much conviction, even if not as much credibility, that host countries invited them too; not least in the case of Ukraine, where an infamous referendum three months ago authorized Russia to annex Crimea.
- How do you think Americans would feel if Russians had military bases – complete with nuclear weapons – in places like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua; that is, the way Americans have them not just all over the world, but in so many countries right in Russia’s backyard? How do you think Americans would feel if Russians had aircraft carriers patrolling the Caribbean Sea, the way Americans have them patrolling all international waters, including the Black Sea?
I feel obliged to note that much of the reporting on China’s first aircraft carrier fails to mention that the United States already has eleven of them. Even Italy and Spain have two each. By contrast, when it launches its carrier, China will join Russia, India, Brazil, Thailand, France, and England with just one…
Even if China [or Russia] were to use its aircraft carrier to flex its military might around the world, it would merely be doing what the United States has been doing with self-righteous hegemony for decades.
(“China’s First Aircraft Carrier Incites (more) Irrational Fear,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 9, 2011)
Hell, in this context, Russia can be forgiven for feeling towards America the way Fatah feels towards Israel. In other words, it’s imperative to grasp the unparalleled military dominion the United States has exercised on the world stage for decades. Because only then can one understand a little of Putin’s abiding resentment — his preternatural Napoleonic complex notwithstanding.
Enough said?
Mind you, despite these instructive points, I shudder to think of a world dominated by Russia instead of the United States. I just think the world would be an even better or safer place if the United States exercised its dominion with a little more understanding and humility and less self-righteousness and arrogance.
Related commentaries:
Putin took Crimea…
China aircraft carrier….
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Epilogue
You can probably imagine the flak I got after publishing this. Academics figured most prominently in this respect – not only because they dismissed my take with apparent authority but also because so many readers accepted their criticisms at face value.
Well, here is how no less a person than Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is vindicating my take – complete with understandable indignation:
Ahead of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Russia’s foreign minister said that the commemorations of the event are part of a ‘false’ history which belittles the contribution of the Soviet Union to defeating Nazi Germany. …
‘Young people are being told that the main credit in victory over Nazism and liberation of Europe goes not to the Soviet troops, but to the West due to the landing in Normandy. …
‘It was the peoples of the Soviet Union who broke the backbone of the Third Reich.’
(Business Insider, June 5, 2019)
That said, it’s no accident that Putin is marking this anniversary by hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping on a state visit. To be sure, Putin wants to put on a show so lavish it makes the royal show, which Queen Elizabeth II put on for Trump earlier this week, look common.
But Putin’s real intent is to spook the NATO alliance, which grew out of the D-Day invasion. Because he would like nothing more than to forge a Russo-Sino alliance that will prove a far more worthy adversary for NATO than the Warsaw Pact, which ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Xi might be as wary of Putin as he is of Trump. But it clearly serves his interest to play along. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the way he took back the two pandas that composed the main attraction at the famous San Diego Zoo. He did this just last month – abruptly ending a lease pursuant to China’s Panda Diplomacy that began nearly 25 years ago.
Of course, Xi is clearly fuming at the trade war Trump launched a year ago and seems determined to continue prosecuting against China. This might explain Xi kicking off this state visit by gifting two pandas to Putin for the Moscow Zoo. Meow!
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D-Day that saved the world…