Red Scare Redux- Review of The Plot To Scapegoat Russia

Below is my review of Dan Kovalik's The Plot to Scapegoat Russia as submitted to the Sturbridge Times Magazine (now The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine) for the September 2017 issue.

It's a bit late, but still timely in light of the hysteria at large these days.

Return of the Red Scare

The Plot To Scapegoat Russia

By Dan Kovalik

Skyhorse Publishing, 2017 

Paperback, 240 Pages

Dan Kovalik probably never thought that he would have writtenThe Plot To Scapegoat Russia the way he did. Not that he believed the Central Intelligence Agency was beyond any skullduggery in promoting foreign adventures.  Indeed, he has spent years observing the agency’s antics in Latin America.

Mr. Kovalik must be surprised by the fact that the only man we can pin our hopes on to stop the march to conflict, if not nuclear war is Donald Trump.  Trump, being a reactionary plutocrat is the type of person Kovalik would normally have nothing but disdain for.  

It can’t be anything he is too happy about.  Dan Kovalik is an old-school lefty.  He cut his teeth protesting U.S. involvement south of the border, traveling to Nicaragua in 1988 to oppose the Contras.  There may a social program he’s against, but that is hard to imagine.  The Trump agenda must gall him.

Except for one aspect.

Donald Trump was suggesting, in his campaign utterances, that it may not be a bad idea to actually try and get along with Russia.  He suggested as well that maybe we did not have the solution to the Syrian imbroglio.

In that one aspect at least, Donald stood head and shoulders above the competition.  

How did we get to a point in history where a progressive activist could see Donald Trump as preferable to the Democrat’s standard bearer?  It’s a long story and in no way travels a straight line.

He spends much of the book discussing his activities in Latin America.  Kovalik identifies with the Sandinistas and opposes United Fruit (i.e. Chiquita Brands International) Company and their pervasive and destructive influence in Guatemala going back to the 1954 coup.  His account takes the side of the poor and indigenous peoples.  At first, I thought his narrative dwelt a little bit too much on the past.  It does become obvious that he sees U.S. policy as continuing from the past into the present and all cut from the same cloth.

In his coverage of the Cold War between NATO and the Soviets he is also somewhat kind to the memory of the Eastern Bloc.  Not that there is not sufficient blame to go around.

When he does get to the subject of the book’s title, the author is on solid ground.  His detail of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the role of people from the West in looting the corpse, as well as the continuing demonization of the Putin regime is worth the price of the book for the uninformed.  That would be most Americans. 

On Page 132 he begins the story of how we started on the road to the new cold war and though he does not say it, the origins of 911.  

“Another momentous and arguably disastrous, Cold War maneuver of the US was its support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, which at the time shared a 1000-mile-long border with the Soviet Union.”

Without our support for what turned out to include many fanatical Islamic extremists, including Bin Laden, the Soviet Union would probably still have had a lot on its hands, but would have had been better able to manage any changes necessary. 

Our support for the Mujahideen insured, like for us in Vietnam, that the Soviets could never defeat the enemy.  It would be a slow bleed and would fatally weaken the U.S.S.R.

Things had to change and they did. The Reagan Administration and Mikhail Gorbachev came to a modus vivendi.  On Page 111 the author quotes the LA Times,

“In early February 1990, US leaders made the Soviets an offer.  According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9th then- Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation, US could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”  Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”

Kovalik notes the promise was quickly broken and most of the old Warsaw Pact are now NATO members.  The expansion continues with the U.S. trying to enlist former Soviet Republics.  It is hard to argue that the world is better for NATO enlargement.

Chapter 7 CLINTON MEDDLES IN RUSSIA WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES gives an account of the machinations of Bill Clinton’s presidency as regards the Yeltsin regime.  He did not do us proud.  Yeltsin was essentially our stooge until he knew he could not continue.  This led to Putin whose big sin is not being our patsy. 

Chapter 11 THE US EXPANDS AS RUSSIA CONTRACTS: BROKEN PROMISES AND HUMILIATION explores the project to extend our influence at the expense of Russia.  None of it is anything we can brag about, but the worst bit is our Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland deciding the fate of the Ukrainian government after we had helped riot out an elected, if corrupt, president.  The pair were recorded doing just that and the heavy-handed discussion is rightly attacked by Kovalik.  He does not mention that the recording went “viral.” *

Mr. Kovalik eventually reaches the reality show of the recent American election.  The desire to blame the Russians for the inept campaign of Hillary Clinton is explored at length as are the commonsense pronouncements of The Donald.  

Suggesting that we not bug the Russkies and maybe overthrowing Syria was not a genius level idea appealed to a population that was tired of wars without result.  The Putin is the devil campaign left something to be desired with many including an old socialist like the author.

Post-election, Trump has not lived up to his better nature.  Kovalik notes on Page 170 that “it is never clear what Trump is truly thinking or intending.”  This is true and whether it is a good strategy or evidence of a scattered mind is a matter for debate.  Trump was quick in throwing some token bombs at a Syrian air base after a supposed chemical attack.  

Since the book has been published, the new president has not bombed North Korea.  He worked out an agreement with Putin for a ceasefire in South West Syria that is holding and cannot make the neocons in or out of his government happy, so we live in hope.

In his short book, Dan Kovalik covers a lot of ground.  The continuing demonization of a nuclear power makes his book an important resource for anyone who wants to understand what is going on.

Some of the author’s views are a bit one sided.  His favoritism of the now Soviet Ancien Regime can seem a bit overboard.  It is at odds with your reviewer’s memory of the brutal repression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, and certainly the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn.  Still, his account of the anti-Russian hysteria is well sourced with ample footnotes.  Unfortunately, with the media’s parroting of the hostile narrative, from NPR to The New York Times, do not expect him to get glowing reviews.

*The recording is still extant and one can hear it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k .  After listening you may be forgiven for wondering if State recruits at clown colleges.

The Most Famous American Writer You Never Heard Of—Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife: The Civil War and the Emergence of an American Writer

I was a boy when I watched the Twilight Zone episode, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.  Rod Serling, who created and produced the Twilight Zone, introduced the episode, “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: in two forms, as it was dreamed... and as it was lived and died. This is the stuff of fantasy, the thread of imagination... the ingredients of the Twilight Zone.”

The story was so well done that my memory of the episode haunted me for a long time and still does.

Briefly, during the Civil War, Union soldiers ready a man for hanging.  With noose around neck, he drops, but the rope breaks and he slips into the river below and somehow makes it home to his wife.  As he is about to fall into her arms, the reverie ends.  He has not escaped and dies abruptly.

It was a well-made short and had won at Cannes, but I thought it just an episode and did not know its provenance.  I was well into adulthood when I learned more about the author, Ambrose Bierce.

His The Devil’s Dictionary is how he comes to the attention of most people, unless some high school teacher assigns one of his short stories.  The Devil’s Dictionary reveals a humorous, but deeply cynical man.  Indeed, it is the quality that most defined Bierce.  As an example, his definition of Inhumanity as “n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity” aptly makes the point.

Such people may not be born, but experiences of life lead them to look at the motives of men from a deeply skeptical viewpoint.  How did Bierce get there?

It was the American Civil War that most influenced the man.  In Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife: The Civil War and the Emergence of an American WriterChristopher Kiernan Coleman studies the military career that left its indelible mark on the subject.

Bierce grew up in Indiana and tried his hand at a few trades until the Civil War arrived.  For a time, he was at a military academy, but left after a year.  Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) was mostly southern in sympathy and that might have had some effect, as he was from a staunchly abolitionist family.

When the war came, Bierce had been whiling away the time, and was the second man to enlist in the company that would become part of the Ninth Indiana Regiment. That unit would gain the nickname, “The Bloody Ninth.”  The sobriquet gives an indication of what the young man was in for. 

Coleman’s account makes it seem that before the war Bierce was a bit of a devil-may-care, or liked to think he was.  His enlistment, however, was as an idealistic anti-slavery man as much as, if not more than, to save the Union.

War would change him.  He would not lose his antipathy to involuntary servitude, but idealism would not survive.  The mischievous lad might not have become a martinet, but he came to appreciate the need for discipline in the dangerous business of war.

The author speculates that, pre-war, at military school Bierce could stomach only the year he spent there.  This he contrasts with “a positive preference for spit-and-polish discipline while serving under Brigadier William Hazen” that Bierce acquired.

Hazen met Bierce and his unit after the campaign in Western Virginia.  That effort had been successful and Hazen thought his command would be a disciplined force.  As they did not meet his standards, he set about to put them in shape. This was not popular amongst the troops save for one.  Bierce said of the general that he was “the best hated man that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in the service.”

Bravery in battle led to a promotion to sergeant.  Distinguishing himself in that role saw Bierce raised to the rank of sergeant major.  The young man was now the senior non-commissioned officer in his regiment.  Considering that he was just shy of nineteen when he first enlisted, it could be considered a meteoric rise.  Of course, the odd Confederate bullet may have opened up the possibility of advancement as well.

Bierce was not finished moving up.  He would be commissioned a second lieutenant and eventually, a first.  Hazen found him useful and he was the General’s topographic engineer.  The making of maps, which he might have learned something of at KMI, was a valuable and necessary skill.  Battles were lost due to lack of accurate geographic knowledge.

As he was clearly a man of skill and bravery in the profession of arms.  Whence came the tendency to cynicism?

A possible clue to the change in spirit would be his wounding.  He had been detailed by General Hazen to take the orders for advancing the picket line to the units involved.  The troops would move forward watched by Confederate snipers who relished officers as targets.

Captain Eastman, leading from the front was shot, fatally as it would turn out.  Bierce went to the assistance of the doomed man.

Coleman began Chapter 13, Casualties of War, with a Bierce story that parallels what happened to Ambrose to a point

“The Butternut(i.e. a confederate soldier)takes aim; he pauses a second.  The shot is more difficult this time.  The second officer is kneeling over the first now.  No mind; he presses the trigger.  A loud report, a flash, a puff of grey smoke, then-nothing.  For a moment the Butternut thinks he misses.  But no; suddenly the second man falls to the ground.  It is a good day for hunting Yankees.” 

Obviously, the second officer would be Bierce.  Coleman does not say it happened exactly that way, but a serious head wound was inflicted.

The story of his journey to the army hospital in Nashville is harrowing.  The recuperation on leave home does not seem to have been complete.  His romance with a local girl apparently died during the furlough.

The author quotes what Ambrose’s brother Albert said of the man post-wound, “He was never the same after that.  Some of the iron of that shell seemed to stick in his brain, he became bitter and suspicious, especially of his close friends.”

Coleman’s account makes clear the words happy camper could never apply to Bierce.  

Was the injury the origin of the literary career of the man who would write so cynically?  If so, his fans owe some gratitude to the shot that wounded him. Bierce’s worldview meant he was not going to write Hallmark card level cheerfulness.

He would continue in the army and after the war, would work with General Hazen in government service and pursue a writer’s career.  His end is mysterious as he disappeared presumably while traveling to another civil war, this time in Mexico.  Considering his life and writings, it was fitting he went as a man of mystery.  He might have wanted it that way.

Full disclosure: Christopher Kiernan Coleman was my undergraduate classmate.  He was and is what I was not, a scholar.  Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strifeis well-ordered and Chris’ prose is a pleasure to read.