Demonizing NATO is a favorite Kremlin pastime, Michael Bohm says in an op-ed in the the Moscow Times today. Taking Medvedev's questionable assertion that there are NATO missiles in Europe, pointing at Russia, as a recent case in point - he traces the history of Russian NATO bashing. There is a rich Soviet history of crude anti-NATO propaganda. Old copies of Krokodil magazine, for example, contain plenty of grotesque caricatures filled with the bloody hands of rapacious Uncle Sam-like figures representing NATO, craving to take over the world. Two generations of Russians grew up reading Krokodil as well as Sergei Mikhalkov, who, in addition to writing several versions of the Soviet anthem, wrote popular, highly politicized fables such as "The Wolf-Diplomat" with direct references to NATO as the predatory wolf that gobbles up innocent hares. Even today, the sound of the word "NATO" invariably evokes a knee-jerk negative response among many Russians, even among the intelligentsia who understand perfectly well that NATO's military capability and its relationship to Russia are completely different now than they were during the Cold War.
Given the degree to which NATO has disarmed over the past 18 years, it is ridiculous, of course, to speak seriously about a NATO military threat to Russia. (The alliance's "political threat" to Russia should not be confused with a military threat.)
But the spirit of Krokodil and Mikhalkov continues to this day, particularly among the conservative journalists and political analysts like Mikhail Leontyev, Alexei Pushkov and Alexander Prokhanov. One popular radio and television host recently described NATO on Ekho Moskvy radio as "the iron leviathan that crushes all humanity." Granted, many Russians to this day find it hard to forgive NATO for its military campaign in the former Yugoslavia, and true, we hear plenty of inflammatory Russia-bashing from Poland and the Baltic states. But isn't "iron leviathan that crushes all humanity" a bit of an overstatement to describe NATO?
This overblown rhetoric can be heard on a regular basis in the Russian mass media, particularly on government-controlled television. It would be nice if this could be dismissed as harmless bluster -- or even encouraged as diversity of opinion, if such pluralism, in fact, existed. But the problem is that anti-NATO and anti-U.S. propaganda by the country's conservative journalists and analysts dominates the mass media, and it has a direct impact on the public. Opinion polls, including the most current ones, confirm that anti-NATOism and anti-Americanism have stayed at the same levels as during the Bush era, despite Obama's clearly new approach to Russia. Some polls indicate that negative feelings toward NATO and the United States have actually increased since Obama became president. This results in a self-perpetuating vicious circle: the more anti-NATOism increases, the more the politicians and journalists want to cater to this public opinion, fueling anti-NATOism even more. This can hardly help "reset" U.S.-Russian relations.Read the whole article here.
The anti-NATO rhetoric looks particularly primitive and obsolete after Russia agreed in July to provide the United States and other NATO countries with an air corridor for military shipments. In addition, new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has made a commitment to improve NATO-Russian relations, and this offers a lot of hope.
Russia has disarmed far more than NATO has. As of 2004, NATO outnumbered Russia by 3.3/1 in troops, 3.1/1 in tanks, and 2.9/1 in artillery in the CFE Treaty area. And NATO military spending is an order of magnitude and more than Russia's. I am of a vintage to recall endless US/NATO bleating about being on the short end of similar ratios.
And considering that NATO demonstrated their willingness to violate the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the NATO-Russia Founding Act a decade ago, I'd say that Russian military concerns are fully warranted.