Richard Pipes has an essay in today’s Wall Street Journal that purports to explain Russians’ many “complexes.” While there are some things to say about this part of the essay, I am less interested in that than I am in talking about Pipes’ policy recommendations. Essentially, Pipes spends a great deal of time explaining why all of our provocative policies produce such intense, hostile reactions in Moscow, and he then seems to endorse every last one of those policies. He then caps this off by saying that we should “convince” Russians that they belong to the West and somehow bring them around to adopting the political and economic model that they regard as utterly bankrupt on account of their experience in the ’90s. How we are supposed to do this is left to the reader’s imagination, because there is no way that Washington can continually align itself with overtly anti-Russian governments in neighboring countries while simultaneously persuading the Russian people that we are interested in their well-being.

Pipes says we should avoid any measures that convey the impression of military encirclement of Russia, but nowhere does Pipes rule out the expansion of NATO into Russia’s near abroad. We should understand why Russians react badly to it, he tells us, but nowhere does he say that we should halt expansion. As a practical matter, Pipes is urging that the substance of our message remain unchanged, and that we put it in a more soothing, understanding tone. In other words, we should patronize the Russians, pat them on the head and then go about doing what we have been doing for the last twenty years without interruption. Pipes wants to draw a line between “gentle manners and the hard realities of politics,” which means that we should “take into consideration” Russian sensitivities while taking every available action to irritate and provoke them.

Pipes takes for granted that there is Russian “aggressiveness” that needs to be curbed, and describes the war last year as the “invasion of Georgia,” as if Russian retaliation had not been provoked. It seems to me that it is impossible to understand the actions of the Russian government correctly when one cannot even accurately describe what those actions are. When Westerners constantly pretend to see Russian aggressiveness where it does not exist and always misrepresent conflicts between Russia and our “pro-Western” satellites such that Russia is made to appear the aggressor, it is no surprise if Russians believe that to be “pro-Western” is simply to be anti-Russian and react accordingly.