Despite the fact that a NATO loss in Afghanistan would also spell disaster for Russia, there is always an element of schadenfreude – taking pleasure in the pain of others – in Russian coverage of the war. In that respect, this article from Russia’s Izvestia – the one time mouthpiece of Soviet communism – is a classic example.
Are Westerner’s on too much of a high moral horse when it comes to Russia? If the WikiLeaks release has done anything, according to Russian columnist Dmitriy Babich, it has once and for all “dispelled the myth of a fundamental difference between ‘inhumane’ Russia and the ‘humane’ West.”
For Ivestia, Dmitriy Babich writes of the consequences of the WikiLeaks release:
One of the cornerstone myths of modern Western ideology may have been destroyed – the myth of a fundamental difference between “inhumane” Russia and the “humane” West. At the very least, serious harm has been done to the notion of such a difference on the battlefield.
For many years, Western politicians and human rights activists lectured Russians that the war in Chechnya isn’t being conducted according to the rules, and that in a similar situation, American and British soldiers would act in strict adherence to the “rules of engagement,” which allegedly excludes losses among the civilian population. This myth of a “surgical war,” ostensibly possible in the modern world, can now be relegated to the relatively harmless vestiges of the Cold War. But the trouble is, the policy of the United States and its allies, of a total reform of Afghanistan in 2001-2010, was based on this myth. Bush Jr. was convinced that America would succeed where from 1979-1989, the Soviet Union could not: The creation of a “new” Afghanistan, which suddenly and miraculously would leave behind the remnants of thousands of years of feudalism, tribal tradition, and militant Islam.
Why will the United States succeed at this? Because United States isn’t Russia. They are so much better.
The published documents show that throughout the period of occupation, which as of now corresponds exactly to the length of the Soviet occupation (nine and a half years), Americans and their allies, one by one, repeated all the mistakes of the USSR. Confronting similar difficulties, they reacted exactly the same way as did Soviet political and military leaders, and achieving precisely the same result.
Significantly, after laying out the great similarities of error made by both NATO and the USSR, Babich also writes:
Russians have every reason to gloat, but let’s face facts: no one today, except perhaps for bin Laden, wants to see NATO’s Afghan campaign end the way the USSR’s did. It is necessary to avoid a repetition of the last phase of the “Soviet scenario” in Afghanistan. But for this to happen, the U.S. and its allies must finally rid themselves of their superiority complex in respect to its chief potential asset: Russia.
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