For failing to destroy U.S.-Russian bilateral relations all together by throwing the diplomatic equivalent of a temper tantrum, Secretary Gates is getting hammered by some at The Corner. 

Allow me to explain why Gates’ non-response response to Putin was the appropriate and smart one, and why it could be a very healthy sign.  For the first time that I can recall in the last eight years, a major U.S. official had the opportunity to take an easy pot shot at Russia for some perceived offense (in this case, Putin’s sharply critical speech about the U.S.) and refused to do so.  This is potentially a huge step forward. 

In an upcoming article at Taki’s Top Drawer, which should be up later this week, I will be talking about the depressing pattern of anti-Russian reporting, propaganda and commentary that have spun the events of the last eight years in such a way as to try to foment a new wave of Russophobia for the sake of certain interested parties in the West and the advance of their preferred policies. 

If Secretary Gates is moving away from this exploitative, confrontational mode of engaging Russia, it is all to the good.  However, I suspect that this is not a substantial change, but was only done out of a consideration for avoiding an open breach with the Russians.  Meddlesome, confrontational and unwise policy, whether it involves NATO expansion, the Near East or internal Russian affairs, will unfortunately remain the order of the day under this administration and under the next one as well.

Mr. McCarthy is especially distraught that Secretary Gates dismissed the ridiculous and damaging Old Europe/New Europe idea first offered by Mr. Rumsfeld when American-European relations were at a generational nadir in 2002 and early ’03.  On this, I have to applaud Secretary Gates.  He is doing some of the necessary repair work in European relations that has been left undone until now.  Mr. Rumsfeld said many silly and obnoxious things in his time at the Pentagon, but few did more to worsen relations with western European allies, specifically France and Germany, than the Old Europe/New Europe crack. 

As a failure of diplomacy, it was magnificent to behold in all its brusque stupidity.  As an actual description of political realities in Europe, it was the most transparent fraud.  Actual anti-Americanism was higher in many of the central and eastern European states whose heads of government signed the Aznar/Blair letter, and opposition to the Iraq war was as high in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, for instance, as it was in Britain or Germany.  New Europe, to the extent it existed, consisted of the smaller, poorer, formerly communist states.  Some were terrified and intimidated into supporting the superpower’s foolish gamble, while others saw it as a first-rate opportunity to suck up to Washington.  Many had also joined NATO in the last round of foolish expansion in 2002 and felt obliged to pitch in, despite the fact that they saw no threat from Iraq to their countries and despite serious opposition at home.  Spain and Britain joined in because they were led by two great egomaniacs who dismissed the objections of overwhelming majorities of their countrymen, and both countries have paid significant prices for following them. 

There was nothing new about New Europe–in fact, most of the people who signed that letter or otherwise backed the invasion were reformed or not-so-reformed communists who had successfully adapted themselves to the rhetoric of “liberal democracy” like the good lackeys that they always were.  Medgyessy, the Hungarian PM who supported the war and committed a few dozen unfortunate Hungarians to drive trucks in Iraq over the strenuous objections of the Fidesz opposition, had even been a member of the communist Hungarian intelligence service in the old days! 

In 2002 and 2003 a new foreign master was calling the tune, and they were dancing appropriately.  Not for nothing did a Russian-American friend of mine refer to these people as the “bootlicking eastern Europeans.”  That embarrassing collection of greying commies and opportunists was strangely what Rumsfeld chose to call the “new” part of Europe, when most represented nothing at all new.  These leaders did not even represent their own nations, whose good names were turned into jokes because of their governments’ positions, much less did they represent some significant trend in European politics.  Repudiating the Old Europe/New Europe nonsense is just about the first thing Secretary Gates has done in an official capacity that really separates him from Rumsfeld and the man’s poisoned legacy.  That seems to me to be obviously good for America. 

Update: Am I dreaming, or has Max Boot written something that might almost be mistaken for responsible comments on foreign policy?  At Commentary‘s blog (everybody has one now), Contentions, he wrote:

Thus Gates avoided making news—a trick Rumsfeld never mastered—and kept the focus where it belonged, on Putin’s remarks, which alarmed many of the Europeans in the room. The Secretary of Defense also showed an unexpected flair for humor, joking, for example, about how he had given up his old habit of “blunt speaking” because as president of Texas A&M he had been sent to “reeducation camp” in order to learn how to deal with the faculty. 

The unfortunate thing here is that Boot, as neo-imperialist and anti-Russian as they come, has more reason to be pleased with Gates’ move than I do.  Gates did not escalate the public row with Russia, which was obviously smart and was the reason why I approve of what he both did and did not say, but by saying nothing at all about Putin’s speech he has allowed Putin’s speech to be used as an excuse for Europeans to pull away even more from Russia.  In this sense, it actually furthers the goals of people like Boot who want nothing more than a continued harrassment and isolation of Russia, even though Gates did not work to push Russia into a corner more than it already is.