The relationship between the United States and Russia has been one of the driving forces behind American imperialist policies around the world since the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the communist Soviet Union.  America’s goal of permanent global hegemony is dependent on the nonexistence of any near peer competitor that can challenge its role as the world empire. The Soviet Union and now modern Russia have consistently been marked as America’s most prominent rival, whose global influence and reach must be limited by any means necessary in order to preserve U.S. dominance.

While the majority of the twentieth century was highlighted by the Cold War and the existential clash between the Soviet Union and the United States, there is a case to be made that America was largely responsible for the conditions that led to the rise of communism in Russia in the first place.  World War I wreaked havoc on all participants, but especially Russia, which suffered over 1.7 million military deaths and over 400,000 civilian casualties, both far greater totals than any other participant. By 1917, the Russian Empire had lost significant popular support at home due to the devastation of the war, but with the war appearing to be coming to a stalemated conclusion, the Tsarist regime seemed to have an opportunity to restore its image by bringing the troops home and beginning to rebuild the country.  Instead, the U.S. intervened to prolong the war, and with the Russian army now forced to continue the fight, the Bolsheviks were able to take power in the October Revolution of 1917.

The U.S. opposed the Bolshevik regime led by Vladimir Lenin from the outset and, along with other Allied powers, backed opposition groups during the Russian Civil War.  However, American covert opposition was unsuccessful at removing the Bolsheviks from power and in 1922 the Soviet Union was established. America was the last country to officially recognize the Soviet Union in 1933, as they eventually restored diplomatic relations and fought together as allies during World War II, with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin maintaining a notably friendly relationship in which FDR referred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe”.

After the Allied victory in World War II, U.S.-Soviet relations quickly soured with the beginning of a long, destructive, and dangerous Cold War between the two global superpowers.  In 1946, George Kennan introduced the doctrine of “Containment”, a strategy aimed at containing Soviet power by preventing the spread of communism around the world. In 1947, President Harry Truman declared that his primary foreign policy goal would be to curb geopolitical expansion by the Soviet Union, a strategy coined as “The Truman Doctrine”.  The Cold War was consolidated by the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance between 12 western nations intended to combat the Soviet Union and provide mutual military defense.

Throughout the Cold War, American culture was dominated by anti-communist paranoia, a phenomenon known as “The Red Scare”.  Senator Joseph McCarthy was notably the promoter of a campaign to constantly accuse those thought to have communist inclinations as being secret Soviet assets or sympathizers.  The Cold War period also involved a massive nuclear arms race between the two nations. Both were believed to be progressing towards a nuclear weapon during World War II before the U.S. became the first and still only nation to actually deploy one when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  After this display of American nuclear proficiency, both nations began building huge stockpiles of nuclear weaponry, including Hydrogen bombs far more devastating than the A-bombs previously used by the U.S., capable of devastating the entire planet. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis provided the greatest nuclear scare in world history when American intervention in the island nation in an attempted regime change of Soviet communist ally Fidel Castro nearly led to a nuclear response by the Soviets, who had missiles stationed in Cuba.

Much of America’s military engagement throughout the second half of the twentieth century was a direct implementation of the strategy of Containment and the Truman Doctrine.  The U.S. fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, both for the purpose of fighting communist revolutions that threatened to envelop those countries in the Soviet orbit. America also intervened covertly in countries like Guatemala, Iran, Laos, Cuba, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua in pursuance of the policy of containment, using the CIA and other secret military operations to thwart communist or otherwise pro-Soviet movements in those nations.

By the 1980s, the Cold War was finally beginning to wind down, as the U.S. and the Soviets began to pursue diplomacy.  Ronald Reagan, despite referring to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”, strongly denouncing communism, and continuing many of the aggressive “Containment” policies around the world, was able to negotiate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and foster a more diplomatic relationship that let to both leaders declaring the end of the Cold War in 1989.  In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, as its failed communist economic system finally had ran its course. With the Soviet Empire no more, it was now inconceivable that Russia and the other former Soviet republics could possibly contend with the United States for geopolitical dominance.

Through the 1990s, American-Russian relations were relatively warm, as the U.S. supported the rise to power of Russian president Boris Yeltsin.  However, by the late 90s, the United States would begin to further expand NATO, an alliance that was created to act as a check against the threat of a Soviet Empire which no longer existed.  At the end of the Cold War, NATO reached only as far east as the border of East and West Germany, but since, it has expanded all the way to the Russian border with the inclusion of eastern European countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, among others.  George Kennan, who was the primary advocate for the Containment policy, strongly warned against the expansion of NATO after the end of the Cold War, saying, “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era…Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”  Essentially, Kennan argued, expanding NATO would be a major unnecessary provocation of the Russians. A country that has been invaded from the west countless times throughout its history and had been the arch-nemesis of the all-powerful American empire for so long, now lived with the threat of a global military alliance that had troops stationed directly on its border.

Around the turn of the century, relations between the U.S. and Russia began to slowly deteriorate, primarily due to NATO expansion and America’s loss of influence over Russian leadership, as Yeltsin was replaced by newly elected president Vladimir Putin.  Putin pursued a more nationalistic policy for Russia and although he has mostly been popular among the Russian people, his independence from the U.S. and refusal to fall in line with the American-led world order has made him the primary target and bogeyman for U.S. foreign policy elites who believe in the project of American empire.  Growing U.S. antagonism towards Russia has led to policies like support for the 2004 coup in Ukraine against the Russian-friendly Viktor Yanukovych, support for Georgia against the Russians in the Russo-Georgia War in South Ossetia in 2008, and leadership in another Ukraine coup in 2014 to overthrow Yanukovych once again.  Additionally, the U.S. has opposed Russia in conflicts like the Syrian civil war, where Russia intervened in 2015 to aid Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and to oppose the al-Qaeda rebels who had been supported by the CIA since 2011.

Tensions between the United States and Russia peaked after the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the ensuing “Russiagate” scandal, in which the Trump campaign was accused of colluding with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.  The accusations led to an over two year investigation led by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, which resulted in a thorough debunking of all claims of collusion and no hard evidence of Russian interference in the election outside of a small amount of money spent on social media ads presumed by many to be intended to help Trump and unproven claims that Russia hacked into Democratic National Committee servers in order to steal their emails and give them to Wikileaks.  The Russiagate scandal perfectly encapsulates the state of hysteria in the U.S. and the desires of many in the establishment media and political class to incite a new cold war and have perpetual tension with Russia, who despite having shown no expansionist intentions and being no threat to the U.S. militarily, still pose an existential threat based on their large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The Russians pose no imminent threat to the American people whatsoever, but there are many who benefit from portraying them as a great satan and comparing Putin to Hitler, as Hillary Clinton did.  The corporate media gets great ratings from a scandal like Russiagate, arms manufacturers and the military industrial complex greatly benefit from the demand created by constant tension and brinkmanship, and the political class maintains power by convincing the people they are needed to protect the public from the monstrous Russians who are coming to get them.  At the end of the day however, Russia and the United States, two nations that have the nuclear capacity to destroy the planet, have no choice but to get along, as any true military escalation between the two countries could easily lead to utter nuclear devastation. Those who continue to push this new cold war are playing with fire and if any of them reaches too far and gets burnt, it truly could result in the rest of us going up in flames with them.