The Russian Menace in the American Imagination

Don’t Laugh, But Trump May Be Right on Russia

Foreign Policy Elites Are Still Invested in a Cold War With Moscow That No Longer Makes Sense

Donald Trump’s views on US-Russia relations bring to mind something that Shakespeare points out in King Lear—that sometimes the court fool is the only person telling the truth.

Washington’s foreign policy establishment is an imperial court of a particularly Byzantine kind, and when it comes to Russia and certain other areas of policy, the court’s insular, conformist, and bipartisan consensus has so crushed free discussion, essential critiques have been banished to the fringes. No Washington analyst or commentator who values his or her career, and wants to be recognized as residing within the narrow confines of mainstream American “nationalism,” is likely to have the guts to challenge settled wisdom when it comes to US-Russia relations.

Enter Trump. The candidate may be a professional TV clown, with buffoonish and dangerous opinions on a wide array …

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The (Actual) Communist Agents Who Lurked Among Us

American Fears About Soviet Spycraft Never Seemed to Match Reality

Russian spies held a morbid fascination in the minds of Americans dating back to the Red Scare in 1919, following the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the Communist International, of which the Communist Party of the USA became a constituent member, subject to extra-territorial discipline imposed from Moscow.

Global domination was indeed Moscow’s declared aim. The issue, however, was whether this goal was at all practicable.

The Red Scare blended neatly with popular hostility to mass immigration in America, particularly against a surge of Jews fleeing the anti-Semitic heartlands of Eastern Europe. Responding to hostility, many Jews embraced the inclusive internationalist …

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