Bush Tries Diplomacy on V-E Day Tour of Europe

At the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe, the Russian leadership was still in shock over the collapse of the Soviet empire. On the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, the Russians are feeling a bit more lively. Hosting 50 world leaders for a major shindig, President Putin's Russia is not the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin. But is isn't Pericles' Athens either. Mr. Bush went visited as guest of honor, and engaged in some praise as well as some tough talk. This is called diplomacy, and it bodes well for the second administration of Bush the Lesser that he has tried it. With practice, he might even come to realize its effectiveness.

Estimates of the war dead during the Second World War put the figure of total dead at somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million, not quite the combined population of Canada and California. Of that, about half were Soviets (not exclusively Russian), around 28 million. Hitler and all he stood for ground itself into defeat against the east. This is not to belittle the contributions of the west to the war effort -- England's cities were bombed regularly, and there are thousands of American kids under the soil of France and Italy. But Leningrad withstood a 900 days siege (the people were reduced to eating sawdust loaves), Stalingrad was leveled, Kursk saw 5,000 tanks and almost 2 million people fight over its plains. Most Russian people of middle age never knew at least one grandparent who numbers among the 28 million. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov suffered the brunt of the war. Its end meant his liberation from the constant fear of death.

But to many of the Soviet Union's neighbors, and Soviet citizens, V-E Day wasn't liberation day. The presidents of Lithuania and Estonia boycotted the Moscow celebrations since their nations were held captive for another 45 years (although, their nations has been part of imperial Russia from 1722, and only gained independence in the aftermath of WWI). Poland's president attended much to the shock of his people. And the difference between Stalin and Hitler was largely the shape of their mustaches.

And that is the situation, in a nutshell, that Mr. Bush walked into on his trip. His host had said the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century was the collapse of the USSR. Mr. Bush comes from the land of anti-communism and the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. His policy of democracy runs counter to Mr. Putin's policy of fighting the anti-democratic oligarchs who run the Russian economy with anti-democratic power from the Kremlin. So, what is a C student from Yale to do?

He relied on a personal affinity with Mr. Putin to argue for more democracy in Russia (to little immediate effect, but at least he is on the side of the angels), he told the Latvians when he stopped there that he wants them to protect the rights of Russian speakers in Latvia (again, on the side of what's right), and in Georgia (his next stop), he will tell that government to avoid military intervention in South Ossetia, which is closely linked to Russia. For a man who believes in a black and white world, this is a very nuanced policy approach. Perhaps, this Mr. Bush will take after the other Mr. Bush -- maybe he is just a late bloomer. One can always hope.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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