Until the Lessons are Learned

Yesterday, President Trump likened the Mueller Special Investigation into the Russian meddling in the 2016 Election to the Army-McCarthy hearings of the early 1950’s.

On the CBC, when it reported this on The National, the following image (in its entirety) was shown in the background:

What astounded me was the chart legend has my birth date on it…

That means this ‘witch hunt’ is more than 68 years old.

Soviet Union

I’m reading Doctor Zhivago at the moment, and the first third of the book is taken up with his life and times leading up to the Russian Revolution. That happened more than 100 years ago in 1917.

The reasons for a revolution are never easy to explain, since so much of it is down to the mood of a nation.

But the important point I’d like to make is that the revolution came from within Russia, not from the common enemy, Germany.

In order to equalize an inequality, Communism was finally adopted by Russia as its governing principle. Then it decided to liberate other countries by sharing its ideas and ideals. Before long, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was born.

The (Unholy) Alliance

When Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler started to expand into neighbouring countries (to ‘reclaim’ former territory), Russia became allies with Britain in the new World War.

This was never going to be an easy alliance, mainly because Russians have a wary nature of other peoples’ intentions. And Winston Churchill had named their attitude as an “Iron Curtain”, a name which stuck. Besides, the British must have been very aware of what Joseph Stalin was doing to his own people. But politics (and war) make for some very strange bedfellows, and these two leaders had to work together to divide and conquer Hitler’s war machine in order to defeat him.

When the USA entered the war, Franklin D Roosevelt became the moderator between Churchill and Stalin (who were never pictured next to each other in any of their conference photographs).

The Cold War (1945-1991)

The McCarthy Era came near the beginning of the Cold War, fought mainly between the USA and the USSR. Each distrusted the other. Each spied on the other, and lots of people got caught in the crossfire.

Here’s a map showing the spheres of influence that each had.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) became the de facto arm of the American way of fighting Communism.

In the middle of this 46 year period, came the Cuban Missile Crisis, when John F Kennedy stared down Nikita Khrushchev and got the Soviets to withdraw their weapons.

And all the while, there was a threat of nuclear weapons. Then in the late 1980’s, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev began a detente which effectively reduced the world’s nuclear holdings.

The Wall Came Down

Towards the end of the Cold War, a symbol of the Iron Curtain came down when the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Within two years the USSR had collapsed and Soviet Russia became the Russian Federation, under Boris Yeltsin.

Even John le Carré had to change his spy books to reflect the end of the Cold War. Within a very short period of time, Islamic extremism became the ‘new’ enemy.

But the seeds that had been sown all those years ago have not really withered and died. In fact, its tendrils have transferred into cyberspace. All new computer techniques of spy craft and dirty tricks have become the tools of most countries, with the USA and Russia leading the way.

Conclusion

In my dream last night, my company’s security system was compromised by hacking. When I investigated, I discovered that the computer equipment was Russian and the hacking had been done by Russian operatives pretending to be computer programmers. Everything was infiltrated. There wasn’t anything that didn’t have their codes imbedded.

It’s a hint, isn’t it? The Mueller Investigation was looking for Russian hacking, and it’s been discovered. What’s becoming obvious is that the Russians have done far worse damage than the American people have a clue about. And the head of their precious country is the top of the pyramid, the tip of the iceberg.

Russia wants to defeat the Americans once and for all time. Putin is the man to do it.