The latest chapter of the post-Cold War crisis between Russia and the West has, if nothing else, shone a spotlight on the hollowness of American diplomacy.
We are a long way from the days when the US was ably represented on the world stage by the likes of Chas Freeman, Charles “Chip” Bohlen, Llewellyn Thompson and George F Kennan. Still further are we from the days of John Quincy and Charles Francis Adams and John Hay.
In the US, this long diplomatic decline can, in part, be blamed on the militarization of US foreign policy. Today, the State Department is crowded out of a policymaking process dominated by its more secretive and, because of that, more powerful colleagues in the interagency process.
From the podium of the State Department press room, Price accused Russia of “planning to stage fabricated attacks by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces as a pretext for a further invasion of Ukraine.”
He claimed that the US was in possession of “a video with graphic scenes of false explosions – depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners, and images of destroyed locations or military equipment – entirely fabricated by Russian intelligence.”
The Associated Press’ Matt Lee immediately pointed out that Price showed “no evidence to confirm” the accusation.
Lee continued: “What is the evidence that they – I mean, this is – like, ‘crisis actors’? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now. What evidence do you have to support the idea that there is some propaganda film in the making?”
After a long exchange in which Lee valiantly, though unsuccessfully, tried to get Price to produce a modicum of evidence for these accusations, Price ended it thusly, telling Lee: “If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments, and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”
In other words, Price accused Lee of being an easy mark for Russian propaganda because he refused to take evidence-free accusations at face value.
A national-security and intelligence marionette of long standing, Price’s animus toward Russia (as well as toward reality-based reporters like Matt Lee) accurately reflects the views held by the US foreign-policy establishment as a whole: Russia, a conservative society not terribly impressed by American’s new, ever-shifting, and increasingly baffling societal norms, is not simply a strategic adversary, it is a civilizational enemy.
Needless to say, the policy consequences of Price’s sophomoric accusations (and those of his handlers at Foggy Bottom) are both real and dangerous. And part of the reason people like Price go on in this vein and in blithe disregard for facts, evidence, or logic, is the idea – now dominant in Washington – that the world is now divided between virtuous democracies like the US and malign authoritarian regimes like Russia.
The stories Washington tells itself about “democracies” and “authoritarian regimes” are a pernicious dichotomy that has already done much to poison the very concept of diplomacy. Indeed, during Donald Trump’s administration, there were efforts made by members of the prior administration to criminalize what were once routine acts of diplomacy, acts in which they themselves had engaged.
But the dominant thinking now goes: Why should we walk a mile in an autocrat’s shoes? Vladimir Putin is not a democratically elected leader, therefore his foreign policies are ipso facto illegitimate. But since the US has free and fair elections, our foreign policies – whatever they may be, including illegal invasions, occupations and drone assassinations – come with the stamp of legitimacy.
In the end, the myth of democratic accountability in the formation and practice of US foreign policy provides the national-security state with its most powerful protection from scrutiny.
It also, as we have seen, obviates, in the hive mind of the US foreign-policy establishment, the need for real diplomacy.