Falls Church City in Northern Virginia decided in the midst of last year’s George Floyd open season to rename two of its public schools. On the block were George Mason High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary.

George Mason was a Founding Father, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the basis for the full Bill of Rights. Nearby George Mason University is still named after him, but the city of Falls Church is stripping his name from its schools because in addition to all he did to create the United States, he was a slaveholder. Same for Thomas Jefferson, Founder, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, first Secretary of State, third President of the United States, and famously, rapist and slaveholder, Joker without the makeup.

The people of Falls Church who made these changes probably mean well in a 2021-ish kind of way. The city is 72 percent white (and only 4.5 percent black.) An amazing 78 percent of adults in Falls Church have a Bachelors degree or higher, and most work for the Federal government in nearby Washington, DC (George Washington and six other presidents held slaves.) The city has a energetic farmer’s market with a proposal pending to add an “informational booth about how communities of color have less access to healthy foods” and votes solidly Democrat.

The process of canceling the Founders was deliberate, with 13 meetings stretching over a year to come up with final school name candidates. For the high school, only one related to history at all, a name related to a local site where the first rural branch of the NAACP was located. The other choices were could-be-anywhere Metropolitan High School, Meridian (the eventual winner), Metro View, and West End. Same for deleting Mr. Jefferson’s name: the same local historical site came up, as did the name of a local white historical figure who started a school for special needs kids, along with a lot of geographical references  — the winner, Oak Street Elementary, “recognizes how trees are important natural elements.” No argument there, trees are good.

What stands out is a devotion to keeping the point out of the renaming. As political the motivation was, it seems no one wanted an MLK high school, or a Rosa Parks elementary. Sally Hemmings, Jefferson’s rape victim and slave, did not make the cut. Truth and Justice Elementary School was seen as a “nod” to Jefferson and thus rejected.

Left undiscussed is how the renamed Thomas Jefferson Elementary School still abuts George Mason Road. The renamed George Mason High School itself is located on Leesburg Pike, near Custis Parkway, named for the slave owning daughter of George Washington’s adopted son and the wife of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It is hard to get away from history.

At this point it is tempting to drive over to Whole Foods, park among the herd of Prius’ and mock the earnest people of Fall Church with their PBS tote bags. A wealthy, nearly all white community making a splash about renaming two schools to cancel a couple of Founding Fathers while carefully avoiding any teachable moment by replacing the slaveholders with the blandest of non-political names. Everyone’s white liberal guilt is assuaged with few feathers ruffled. And did you see the new artisanal cheeses in aisle eleven? Carol sent another $50 to the ACLU for us after George Floyd, you know.

The thing is that as hard as it is to take these people seriously, it is equally hard to not take them seriously. They really believe themselves. And that poses 2021’s question.

America did not invent slavery, racism, or discrimination. We can point to a moral struggle hundreds of years in process including a civil war that remains the most costly conflict to Americans in body count and brutality. The Founders struggled over how to deal with a system most knew was unsustainable, Jefferson among them. We tried.

Yet alone in history we haven’t figured this out. South Africa, with an apartheid system designed to be as plainly racist as possible, found a way to untangle itself. The ancient world was built on slave labor and made the transition. The Germans found a way to deal with their relatively recent attempt not just at enslavement but industrial scale genocide.

We fail because we refuse to admit crying racism, and making faux-fixes as in Falls Church, is as profitable politically as doing racist things is. Getting yourself elected calling out racism with righteous rage is not far away from using racist voting laws to get yourself elected. There is too much to gain by maintaining and then exploiting a racist system. If you heal the patient, what’s left for all the doctors to do?

There is also what we’ll now call the Falls Church myth, this near-idiotic belief that insignificant changes add up to something significant. Changing the name of a school, or tearing down a statue, does not change history. That is why everyone is still “raising awareness” about the same problems after decades. It feels good, though.

Same for the “first…” people, the ones who celebrate the first black this or the first woman that. That we chased that idea all the way into the Oval Office and two consecutive black attorneys general to see nothing much come of it answers the question of what it is worth as a change tool.

We thrive on polarization, thinking somehow calling someone a white supremacist based on little more than his skin color or political party is going to… help? The critical catechism of MLK and the civil rights movement — that race should not matter — is turned on itself to humiliate those who struggled. Sorry folks, it turns out it is all about the color of your skin after all, except that we mean black people should get stuff for being black.

Alongside are the everything-is-racist scorekeepers. These people point out since about 13 percent of us are black, anything that has less than that (colleges, certain jobs, SAT scores) or more than that (prisons, poverty, police shooting rates) is racist. The simplicity is attractive but the reality of ignoring the complexity of every other factor and explanation is where the argument fails hard. At the risk of offense, it is not just black and white out there.

I used to walk past the statue of Marion Sims in Central Park. When I first looked him up in 2012, he was the father of modern gynecology, the founder of New York’s first women’s hospital, the 19th century surgeon who perfected a technique that still today saves the lives of tens of thousands of third-world women. When I checked his biography again in 2018 he had become a racist misogynist who conducted medical experiments without anesthesia on enslaved women. His statue was removed from Central Park while protesters chanted their “ancestors can rest” and “believe black women.” I’m glad they just got rid of the statue instead of putting up a modern plaque “explaining” it in woke-talk.

The thing is Sims did all that he was said to have done. He developed surgical tools and techniques still used today. He did surgeries on both free white women and enslaved black women, mostly without anesthesia in part because anesthesia was not in wide use at the time and in part because he subscribed to the racist theory of his time that blacks did not suffer pain the same way whites did. His often life-saving surgeries (on blacks) have been memed into “medical experiments” to connect them to Nazi horrors, purposefully ignoring the difference between non‐therapeutic and therapeutic procedure and leaving his white patients out of the story altogether. Easier that way.

Left out of the ranting is primary documentation suggesting Sims’ original patients — black and white — were willing participants in his surgical attempts to cure vesicovaginal fistula, a condition for which no other viable therapy existed until Sims invented it. That meant they would have died without his surgery.

I’ll confess there are times I, too, struggle with Jefferson. No one is anyone but a beginner on the road to Galilee, but Jefferson’s gifts make him among the hardest to understand. With such an extraordinary mind, he could turn on a pinpoint towards the cruelty of owning fellow human beings. Yet Jefferson the slave owner did not pass that portion of his ideas to our future. He, Mason, and the other Founders created a system which would eventually eliminate slavery and correct itself. The evil of slavery was defeated at great cost but we seem unable to let it die.

We crave simplicity in our history when there is only complexity. It is ridiculous to ignore world-changing accomplishments thinking that will somehow fix our racial problems. We just don’t want to grapple with the questions of personal responsibility and the problem of intergenerational victimhood as a lifestyle. We want the simplicity of reparations, imagining we can buy our way out of racial troubles. We do not question the value of changing a school’s name or knocking down a statue because that promises a simplistic fix that protects us from hard questions. We like it that way and it is unlikely anything that needs fixing will get fixed until that change

wemeantwell.com

In March 1780, Russia released a «Declaration of Armed Neutrality», setting out its  international stance on the American Revolution. The document mainly focused on allowing neutral vessels to travel freely to any Russian port without being searched or harassed by the Navigation Acts. It significantly hampered Britain’s efforts to strangle the colonies through naval blockade. American freedom fighters were sent a clear message that Russia was on their side.

In 1775 and 1779, Britain asked Russia to send troops to America to aid its forces there. Those requests were rejected. In 1781, Britain attempted to gain Russia’s assistance by offering it the island of Minorca. This time Russia was not asked to send troops but rather convince France to exit the war and force the American rebels to fight alone. This offer was also declined.

Russia insisted on peace talks and, thus, indirectly helped the Americans win the Revolution and gain independence. Its eventual desire was to act as a mediator. Empress Catherine believed that an independent America would meet Russian business interests.

In October 1780, a proposal to launch peace talks was sent by the empress to each of the European powers involved in the conflict. The discussions started in Vienna with Austria and Russia acting as co-mediators. The Russia-offered guidelines included a multi-year armistice between the countries and a requirement that there be negotiations between Britain and their European enemies, as well as between Britain and America. The effort fell through due to British and French intransigence – the British would not accept the idea of America’s independence and the French would not accept anything short of it. But Russia tried and it did what it could to stop the bloodshed and save lives.

By the time of its independence, the United States had already built a robust foundation of trade, diplomacy, and friendship with Russia. In 1801, Levett Harris was appointed by Thomas Jefferson as the first American Consul-General to Russia. On November 5 (October 24 according to Old Style) 1809, John Quincy Adams, the would-be US President and Secretary of State, presented his credentials as the first US Ambassador to the Emperor Alexander I. The event marked the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States.

Emperor Alexander I helped mediate a peace between the US and the UK to end the War of 1812. In 1832, Russia became the first nation to have «most favored nation» trading status with the United States. The United States alone stood by Russia in 1854 and 1855 during the Crimean War.

After the Revolution, the liberal-minded Tsar Alexander I corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and expressed his «great esteem» for America. He believed it was right to take a page out of the book of American Revolution while preparing plans to reform Russia. Several participants in the 1825 Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg, Russia, were also influenced by America’s model.

In 1861, Russia alerted Abraham Lincoln to the plans of Napoleon III, who was already scheming to promote a joint UK-France-Russia intervention to support the Confederacy. The dangerous possibility that Britain and France would recognize and aid the Confederacy was real during the Civil War – the development of events Russia contributed to prevent. On October 29, 1862 a meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov with US chargé d’affaires Bayard Taylor took place in St. Petersburg. Russia made a formal pledge to never move against the United States, and to oppose any attempt by other powers to do so.

Russia demonstrated its unconditional support to the Union during the American Civil War. Both American President Abraham Lincoln and Russian Tsar Alexander II were emancipators. Russian Tsar Alexander II issued his Emancipation Proclamation on March 3, 1861, after the American Civil War began; Abraham Lincoln issued his own Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

In the fall of 1862, Britain and France proposed to Russia to join them in helping the Confederate States of America. In response, Tsar Alexander II told the British and French representatives that, «I will not co-operate in such action… I shall accept the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States by France and Great Britain as a casus belli for Russia. And, in order that the governments of France and Great Britain may understand that this is no idle threat, I will send a Pacific fleet to San Francisco and an Atlantic fleet to New York».

The Imperial Russian Navy sent two navy squadrons to America. Many saw it as an intervention on behalf of the Union. On September 24, 1863 the Russian Baltic fleet began to arrive in New York harbor. On October 12, the same year, the Russian Far East fleet began to arrive in San Francisco. The squadrons stayed in American waters for about seven months. The Russian officers were feted, with their pictures taken by the famous New York photographer Matthew Brady.

In his historic study, Benjamin Platt Thomas wrote that «In the first two years of the war, when its outcome was still highly uncertain, the attitude of Russia was a potent factor in preventing Great Britain and France from adopting a policy of aggressive intervention». «God bless the Russians!» exclaimed Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to express the general attitude. Russia believed the Union served as a counterbalance to the British Empire. Those were the days of the US-Russian entente cordiale.

During the World War I Russia and the United States were allies. After the 1917 revolution the United States refused to recognize the Soviet government. In 1918-1920 American troops took part in a foreign intervention supporting the White Army. The diplomatic ties were restored on November 16, 1933.

Nazi Germany launched an offensive against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Only a few months later, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor to usher the United States into World War II. Washington and Moscow became allies. The American Lend-Lease program was a significant contribution into the Soviet Union’s war effort. The historic meeting of Soviet and American soldiers on the Elbe River in Germany on April 25, 1945 signaled a high point in American-Soviet relations prior to the onset of the Cold War.

But even in the heat of the Cold War, cooperation never stopped. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) was signed in 1963. In 1967, the US and the USSR signed the Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting militarization of the outer space. Despite the wide differences dividing the two great powers, the détente policy was fruitful enough leading to three major arms control agreements: SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, and the Helsinki Accords in 1975. These documents laid a solid foundation for keeping the world away from the abyss of potential war. No matter how strange it sounds – it was exactly during the Cold War that most of the fundamental agreements and treaties governing the modern international system were signed and enforced.

The sweeping Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) of 1987 was a milestone agreement to ban an entire category of nuclear weapons as the Cold War started to fade away.

Today, the relationship is at a low ebb again. Much has been said about it. Opinions differ about exactly how bad the situation is, who is to be blamed for the failures, but the hope for better times is not dead. This particular article is not devoted to the things that divide us but rather to what unites the two great nations.

With arms control in doldrums, the Middle East on fire, the crisis in Ukraine unresolved, NATO reinforcements coming to Europe, the controversy over the ballistic missile defense (BMD) appearing insurmountable, the validity of the INF Treaty in question and President Trump’s efforts to improve the relationship stalled by Congress and the media, as well as a host of other issues to complicate the relationship, the relations are definitely on the wrong track. The time is right to turn the tide.

The expected resumption of dialogue between Moscow and Washington at the top level during the G20 Summit (July 7-8) is regarded by many as an opportunity to halt the current slide towards confrontation. The things that divide us cannot serve as an excuse for not trying to work together on the issues of common interest. When the Ukrainian crisis broke out in 2014 to abruptly deteriorate the relations, Russia and the US were cooperating to make progress on Iran’s nuclear program. As a result, the 2015 agreement was reached. The Syrian chemical weapons arsenal was eliminated in 2013 as a result of joint efforts. Russia and the US are parties to the UN-brokered peace talks on Syria. With ups and downs in the relations, the two great nations have a long history of fruitful cooperation. In a few days, their leaders will have a historic chance to jumpstart the process.

Gene Tunney, the champion prizefighter of the 1920s, wanted to promote an image of himself as a great intellectual. Trying to prove it, he always carried in his pocket a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Many members of the press weren’t buying it. When Tunney published a volume titled A Man Must Fight, one sportswriter began his story about it with this immortal line: “Gene Tunney, who has written one book and read several others…”

It’s a line that would work for Donald Trump, too, but only if flipped: “Donald Trump, who has written several books and read one other…”

Of course, his various books have been written with the considerable help of long suffering ghosts. And yes, I know that on several occasions Trump has bragged to reporters about the many books he claims to have read. In 2011, for example, he told the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, “I’ve read hundreds of books about China over the decades.” If you believe that, I’ve got a Great Wall to sell you. A real one. In China, not Mexico.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, one of Trump’s least appealing of many unappealing traits is his incuriosity, his total lack of interest in history or pretty much anything that somehow doesn’t pump up his ego or profits. It’s deeply dangerous for all of us.

On Monday, here he was again, the man who just claimed an unprecedented first 100 days (must have been a helluva shock to FDR), who may have thought Frederick Douglass was still alive (“somebody who’s done an amazing job”) and who seemed eager to spread the news that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican (“Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that!”).

Now he was sharing his thoughts on the Civil War: “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

When my eyes uncross and my head stops coming to a point, I’d like to read aloud to him from the Emancipation Proclamation. Trump’s remarks came as he discussed in a radio interview his oft-stated admiration for Andrew Jackson. But as Aaron Blake at The Washington Post notes, Trump pulled yet another groaner when, “Just last week, in an interview with Reuters, Trump suggested there was really no reason for the Israelis and the Palestinians to have been fighting for all these decades.

“‘I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians,’ Trump said. ‘There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians — none whatsoever. So we’re looking at that, and we’re also looking at the potential of going to Saudi Arabia.'”

“No reason whatsoever! You know, besides the whole claim-to-the-very-same-holy-land thing. Minor details.”

Don’t Know Much…

It boggles the mind. My former colleague, historian David McCullough, is no stranger to American presidents, having written Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams. He has been making the rounds promoting his new book, a collection of his speeches called The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For.

When he appeared on Leonard Lopate’s talk show on New York public radio a couple of weeks ago, McCullough noted that in Donald Trump we had “put someone in the pilot seat who has never ever flown a plane before; who doesn’t understand how our government works, who has no interest in the history of the country and has said so on more than one occasion, who has never read a book about the presidency or a biography of a president and claims… that he doesn’t need to read books because he knows so much intuitively.”

And yet when Trump declares that health care reform or pretty much anything else — in fact the entire job of being president — is much more complicated than he imagined it would be, it’s precisely because he has no knowledge of history, the kind of knowledge that might at least from time to time buffer for him the shock of reality by offering the golden gift of precedence.

History, McCullough writes, is “an aid to navigation in such troubled uncertain times. … All problems have histories and the wisest route to a successful solution to nearly any problem begins with understanding its history. Indeed, almost any attempt to solve a problem without an understanding of its history is to court failure — an example our tragic plunge into Vietnam with hardly a notion of its past.”

Or our plunge into Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Iran. Or North Korea — especially when the sum total of Trump’s knowledge of that country’s fraught history seems to have been a 10-minute tutorial from the president of China.

History is that proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico and causing a tsunami in Malaysia. Which makes it all the more perilous when you have a president who uses “America First” as a campaign slogan, revealing little knowledge of the isolationist movement before World War II; whose press secretary makes ill-considered statements comparing Nazi Germany, Syria and the use of poison gas to massacre civilians; and who calls Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” demonstrating a willful, repugnant ignorance of Native American history that goes all the way back to a time some 24 years ago when he claimed owners of tribal casinos “are not Indians” because they didn’t conform to his stereotype of what Native Americans should look like.

‘A Bad Thing’

But even worse than any of these is a lack of knowledge of history and government that puts our very existence as a free and democratic government in peril. Embracing other countries’ dictators is one slippery slope. And then on Sunday there was Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus suggesting to Jonathan Karl of ABC News that his boss is contemplating amending or even eliminating the First Amendment to curb negative coverage of the president. And finally, there was Trump himself, complaining to Fox News about the difficulty of getting his program through Congress: “It’s a very rough system. It’s an archaic system… It’s really a bad thing for the country.”

In other words, history, the system of checks and balances and the Constitution itself are just getting in Trump’s way, despite his prior claims to regard as inviolate the original language of the founders.

David McCullough has said that our past is an invaluable asset, but “if you’ve inherited some great work of art that is worth a fortune and you don’t know that it’s worth a fortune, you don’t even know that it’s a great work of art and you’re not interested in it — you’re going to lose it.”

Trump and his minions seem determined to send the admittedly flawed masterwork that is our legacy to the trash. One of David’s favorite quotes comes from Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Sadly, those words are probably unfamiliar to Trump precisely because of what Jefferson suggested. Past presidents have embraced our past as prologue, read books, invited eminent historians to the White House for advice and consultation. But Trump takes his history, as little as it is, from the dark spoutings of pseudointellectuals like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, or in tweets and soundbites from Fox & Friends. When he tries to parrot the words back as public statements, they come out even more mangled and malevolent.

While he is so ignorant we cannot be free.

consortiumnews.com

There is nothing preordained about the current state of affairs between the Kremlin and the White House. Even a brief glance over the key events from our shared history shows that during the crucial moments of that history, Russians and Americans have always been allies and never opponents. The hostility of the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century was to a great extent the exception to this rule and not the norm. It is interesting that Lawrence Solomon of the National Post wrote that «[c]ontrary to the common perception that Russia is a natural enemy of the U.S., Russia is a natural friend». He claims that, with the exception of a few decades, no other country in the history of the US has been «a more faithful friend, particularly in times of need».

At the birth of the American state in the 1770s, Catherine II supported the young commonwealth. When the 13 colonies rebelled against the British crown in 1775, King George III asked the Russian empress to assist the efforts of British troops to suppress that insurrection. He was firmly refused. In 1780, at the height of the Revolutionary War, Russia’s announcement of armed neutrality actually translated into support for the rebellious colonies. Russia also reserved the right to attack British warships that were attempting to establish a blockade that would have prevented other countries’ merchant ships from reaching the American coast. Russia even founded the League of Armed Neutrality. This would seem an apt moment to refresh our memories about Russia’s fight to lift those sanctions against the US. The first US president, George Washington, emphasized that the Russian government was guided by principles of «respect for the rights of humanity».

In 1809, Russia and the United States established full diplomatic relations. The first US ambassador to Russia was John Quincy Adams, who later became the sixth US president. A famous warning to the future leaders of America is attributed to him, in which he urged them to ensure that the US «goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy», for in fact there were none. It is possible that he came to this conclusion during the time he spent in St. Petersburg. In his correspondence with Alexander I, the then-US president, Thomas Jefferson, described the Russian Empire as «the most cordially friendly to us of any power on earth» and expressed the hope that his friendly feelings towards Russia «should become those of the nation».

The years of the American Civil War (1861-1865) were also noteworthy in this regard. It is interesting that Abraham Lincoln, who was extolled for abolishing slavery, was inaugurated as US president on March 4, 1861, the day after Alexander II outlawed serfdom in Russia. The fates of these two statesmen were closely linked, as they were both were killed by assassins. In his correspondence with Lincoln, Alexander II signed his letters, «Your good friend», and the American president used the same closing in his replies. Both the American abolitionists as well as Lincoln himself considered Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe to be their indispensable companion, and this book was also found in the personal library of Alexander II at his palace in Tsarskoye Selo. To foil the actions of the British fleet that was supporting the South, Rear Admiral Stepan Lesovsky arrived in New York with his Atlantic Squadron in 1863, while Alexander Popov sailed into in San Francisco with a squadron from Russia’s Pacific Fleet. Once stationed in the US, the Russian sailors were prepared to bring British maritime trade to standstill in the event of war.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his assistance in negotiating the Portsmouth Peace Treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). It is believed that his involvement allowed Russia to obtain more favorable peace terms than would otherwise have been possible. The US thus established itself as a new world power, with which the Concert of Europe now had to contend.

In World War I, Russia and the US were allies. In 1917, the US was the first to recognize the February Revolution, given the similarity of many of that revolution’s principles with American philosophies, and later Washington made no secret of its sympathy for the republican faction of the White movement.

Nor was there any threat of serious conflicts even during the early days of the Soviet Union. Although the US waited quite a while, until 1933, to recognize the USSR, she provided significant assistance to the starving Volga region in the 1920s through the American Relief Administration (ARA). US manufacturers took an active role in supplying equipment to help the Soviet Union fulfill its initial five-year plans. Many American engineers were directly involved in establishing new industrial plants, such as the GAZ automotive factory, which was built with the help of Henry Ford.

The mutual respect and even trust between Stalin and FDR is well known, and without it the anti-Nazi coalition could never have taken materialized. As early as 1934, Stalin spoke of Roosevelt as «one of the strongest figures among all the captains of the contemporary capitalist world», noting his «initiative, courage, and determination». At the end of their first personal meeting in Tehran in 1943, the American president stated, ««We have proved here at Tehran that the varying ideals of our nations can come together in a harmonious whole, moving unitedly for the common good of ourselves and of the world». As Stalin put it, «the need to create an alliance between the USSR, Great Britain, and the US came not from accidental or transitory motives, but vitally important and long lasting interests». Back in 1946 the well-known journalist and historian Alexander Werth asked Stalin whether he believed that friendly and long-term cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies was possible, despite their ideological differences, and the Soviet leader replied, «I certainly do». On April 2, 1946 the newspaper Pravda marked the anniversary of Roosevelt’s death with an article commemorating him. Pravda emphasized that «the Soviet people saw in Roosevelt a friend to the USSR». Around the same time, Anthony Eden stated, «had Roosevelt lived and retained his health he would never have permitted the present situation to develop … his death, therefore, was a calamity of immeasurable proportions».

Given such a historical legacy, the Cold War was in a certain sense an aberration in the two countries’ relations. With the exception of some «proxy wars», the two superpowers never directly clashed during that time. The emergence of nuclear weapons was only one of the explanations for why this did not happen – in truth, both sides had sufficient common sense to avoid it. Clearly psychological factors, such as the benign historical background and the absence of any mutual hostility in the past, also played a role. In any event, all reasons to perpetuate the tension between the two countries would seem to have disappeared by 1991, and that perpetuation only continued as the result of a choice made by a small group of people who were then in power in the United States. For reasons that have still not been made clear, the powers that be in the US thought it best that Russia continue to be kept «down and out» when it came to Europe. So when Donald Trump once again questions the extent to which the enmity between Russia and the United States is preordained, he is not challenging historical precedent. He is, in fact, only casting doubt upon the validity of some arbitrary and shortsighted political decisions from the past.

And one can to a certain extent agree with Edward Lozansky and Gilbert Doctorow, who wrote in the Washington Times that Trump is being forced to work with politicians who are «trapped by an image of Russia burned into their thinking… which requires them to view Moscow’s every action as aggressive, hostile and aimed at undermining U.S. interests». According to these authors, «it is time to think seriously about including Russia as a possible ally and friend rather than an eternal adversary and enemy».

Russia’s occasional disagreements with some US actions on the international stage, including those that Washington itself has now realized were misguided, is used as a supporting argument, bolstered by references to Russia’s «anti-American agenda». This is especially noticeable when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea that Russia is «interfering» with Washington’s policies in these two countries has been held up by some as an example of Moscow’s «hostility» to the United States. This is absolutely not the case – so long as Washington’s policy there is truly aimed at peacemaking and not fanning the flames of war.

Notes

* Interview, Aug. 22, 1946, Diplomatic History 32, Nov. 2008., Costigliola, Broken Circle

John Avlon (former speechwriter for Rudolf Giuliani, and before that, schooled at Milton Academy and then Yale) is now the Editor-in-Chief of the rabidly anti-Russian — or «neoconservative» — ‘news’ (or propaganda) site «The Daily Beast». He will issue on January 10th, his book, Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, which is an extended essay on President George Washington’s famous Farewell Address.

Here, then, is a passage from that Address, in which our first (and — along with Lincoln and FDR, one of our three greatest) President(s) actually had warned us against the neoconservative path, which our nation has been on ever since 24 February 1990 and the end of the USSR and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance. That’s the path of wars (such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine) (which some wags call «perpetual war for perpetual peace») to conquer first all of Russia’s allies, and then finally (once Russia is thus thoroughly isolated), to conquer Russia itself — in other words, George Washington, when retiring from public life, warned us against Mr. Avlon’s website’s own neoconservative foreign-affairs obsession: eternal enmity against Russia (President Washington warned us, instead, to avoid eternal enmity against any nation, including Russia, as is indicated in this passage): 

Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Such «temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies» includes The Allies (England, Soviet Union and U.S.) during World War II, but certainly nothing after the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. The entire ‘Western Alliance’ — basically NATO plus Japan — is anti-American policies by the American aristocracy (controlling the U.S. Government) after 1991, and should therefore promptly terminate, and U.S. armed forces be withdrawn from all foreign countries, in accord with the will and intention of America’s democratic Founders including President Washington. Using the U.S. Defense Department, and the U.S. Treasury Department, as (which neoconservatives do) a vast welfare program for the super-wealthy owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturers and for U.S. and other mercenaries, is unauthorized by America’s Founders, and was explicitly condemned by George Washington.

If any U.S.-based international corporations need those foreign U.S. military bases, then they should pick up all of the government’s tab topay for them, because that kind of ‘capitalism’ is mere imperialism, which is nothing that any of our Founding Fathers advocated — it’s un-American, in terms of the U.S. Constitution and the men who wrote it.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote on 9 January 1796, in defending the new Constitution, and especially its Treaty Clause: «I aver, that it was understood by all to be the intent of the provision [the Treaty Clause] to give to that power the most ample latitude to render it competent to all the stipulations, which the exigencies of National Affairs might require—competent to the making of Treaties of Alliance, Treaties of Commerce, Treaties of Peace and every other species of Convention usual among nations and competent in the course of its exercise to controul & bind the legislative power of Congress. And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded; the cooperation of two thirds of the Senate with the President being required to make a Treaty. I appeal for this with confidence».

He went further: «It will not be disputed that the words ‘Treaties and alliances’ are of equivalent import and of no greater force than the single word Treaties. An alliance is only a species of Treaty, a particular of a general. And the power of ‘entering into Treaties,’ which terms confer the authority under which the former Government acted, will not be pretended to be stronger than the power ‘to make Treaties,’ which are the terms constituting the authority under which the present Government acts». So: there can be no doubt that the term «treaty» refers to any and all types of international agreements. This was the Founders’ clear and unequivocal intent. No court under this Constitution possesses any power to change that, because they can’t change history.

Furthermore, the third President Thomas Jefferson said in his likewise-famous Inaugural Address, that there should be «Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none». Jefferson’s comment there was also a succinct tip-of-the-hat to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties — that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners, they also discriminate against  non-partner nations, and so endanger «peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,» which was the Founders’ chief goal in their foreign policies. But, the Founders’ chief concern was the mere recognition that treaties tend to be far more «permanent» and «entangling» than any purely national laws. This was the main reason why treaties need to be made much more difficult tobecome laws, and so the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement for passing-into-law any treaty was instituted as the Treaty-Clause, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2. 

Though this thinking — avoidance of favoritism in America’s foreign policies — was pervasive amongst the creators of America’s democracy (or people’s republic), America’s newly developed aristocracy subsequently in the 20^th Century targeted elimination of the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement, because it’s an impediment toward their re-establishing the aristocracy that the American Revolution itself had overthrown and replaced by this people’s republic. And, the big chance for the aristocracy to restore its position via an imperial President, and so to extend their empire beyond our own shores, came almost two hundred years after America’s founding; it came in1974, which was when a law finally became passed by Congress allowing some treaties to emerge as U.S. law with only the normal 50%+1 majority in the Senate (unConstitutional though that is). Without that Nixonian law, George Herbert Walker Bush’s NAFTA wouldn’t have been able to become law under Bill Clinton in 1993, and Barack Obama’s TPP with Asia and TTIP with Europe wouldn’t have stood even a chance of becoming law in 2016. Both of Obama’s proposed mega-treaties were designed to isolate and weaken both Russia and China in international trade, but all that Obama ended up with, before his leaving office, was economic sanctions against Russia for its havingaccepted the desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin with Russia after Obama’s Ukrainian coup overthrew the democratically elected President of next-door Ukraine, who had received 75% of the vote within Crimea.

Avlon’s website, as a mainstream neoconservative ‘news’ site, opposes both Donald Trump and Russia. They actually urge punishing Russia for Trump’s election! What would George Washington think about having a person (Avlon) so partisan against George Washington’s vision for our country as that, becoming the modern ‘interpreter’ of his famous Farewell Address? Would he like that?