What is it about Washington liberals and Democratic leaders that made them so anxious for a deal with Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1970s and 1980s, but not with Vladimir Putin in the second decade of the 21st century? Why was making a deal with Russia’s communist leaders preferable to making a deal with Russia’s current nationalist leader? What is it about Putin that sets him apart from Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev in the eyes and minds of Washington’s liberals?
The same crowd that was more than willing to strike deals with Russia’s communist leaders … are loathe to engage in similar diplomacy with Putin.
One answer might be that liberals instinctively position themselves in opposition to Republican presidents, but that would not explain their support for President Nixon’s deals with Brezhnev and later President Reagan’s deals with Gorbachev. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Washington Democrats (with a few notable exceptions like Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson) were the strongest proponents of détente and lessening tensions with our Soviet enemy.
Liberal Democrats and others on the left in the United States often advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament, no-first use of nuclear weapons, a nuclear “freeze” that would have left Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles (SS-20s) in Europe unopposed by U.S. intermediate-range missiles there, and generally looked to improve relations with the Soviet Union — even after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Many liberals opposed President Reagan’s aid to the contras in communist-controlled Nicaragua, criticized Reagan’s liberation of communist-controlled Grenada, opposed aid to the government of El Salvador that was fighting a communist-backed insurgency, fought against Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative — derisively naming it “Star Wars” — and reacted negatively when Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Reagan’s policies and belligerent rhetoric, many on the Democratic left said, were bringing the world closer to World War III.
The Democratic left in Washington favored easing tensions with the USSR even though Soviet forces were killing Afghan children with bombs disguised as toys; even though a Soviet-backed assassin shot Pope John Paul II; even though Soviet fighter jets shot down a Korean commercial airliner, killing everyone on board including a Republican congressman; even though Soviet leaders continued to imprison dissidents in the Gulag and in psychiatric hospitals; even though the Soviet-backed regime in Poland cracked down on the Solidarity trade union movement.
As Marc Thiessen once pointed out, “For decades, while the Soviet Union sowed tyranny across the globe, sent millions to rot in prisons, and threatened America with nuclear annihilation, Democrats were for détente and peaceful coexistence.”
In his masterful two-volume The Age of Reagan, Steven Hayward recounts the Democratic left’s reflexive opposition to anti-Soviet policies and rhetoric, all in the name of improving relations with the Soviet Union. Hayward noted that, for example, Democratic congressmen discussed with communist Nicaraguan leaders how best to undermine Reagan’s policies in Central America (the NSA intercepted those calls). Connecticut liberal Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd led the opposition to Reagan’s tough anti-communist policies in the region.
Meanwhile, Reagan’s opponent in the 1984 election, Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale, blamed Reagan for the lack of progress in halting the arms race. Mondale met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and claimed that there was an “‘opportunity for significant progress’ in Washington-Moscow relations.”
Reagan’s “evil empire” speech produced scathing criticism from the pro-Democratic liberal press and the foreign policy establishment. Historian Henry Steele Commager called the speech “the worst presidential speech in American history.” The New Republic accused Reagan of “contemplating holy war.” New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the speech “outrageous” and primitive.” Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, accused Reagan of “inordinate self-righteousness.” Liberal reporter Tom Wicker denounced the speech as dangerous and the result of Reagan’s “holy war mentality.” Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz noted that many of our European allies were “alarmed” by the speech.
After the evil empire speech, liberal writer and future Democratic administration official Strobe Talbot did a big think piece in Time which was highly critical of Reagan’s aggressive approach to the Soviet Union, blaming Reagan for the “poisonous” relationship with Moscow. Talbot urged Reagan to negotiate arms control agreements and tone down the anti-Soviet rhetoric.
Talbot epitomized the foreign policy establishment’s insistence on making deals with communist Russia in the interest of preserving general peace. It didn’t matter to liberals and the foreign policy establishment that the Soviet Union repressed its own people, violated human rights, held an empire together with brute force, and whose ideology proclaimed world revolution.
Fast forward to 21st century international relations. A much-less powerful and much less globe-threatening Russia led by Vladimir Putin launched an aggressive war against Ukraine — a nation whose independence had never — never — been considered a vital national security interest of the United States. Putin’s war has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Ukraine and among Russia’s armed forces, and has devastated many Ukrainian cities and towns.
After three years of deadly, inconclusive fighting, President Donald Trump wants to negotiate an end to the war. The outlines of a settlement involve Ukraine’s loss of the Crimea and some of its eastern provinces, Ukraine remaining outside of the NATO alliance, and some form of European security guarantee to Ukraine without U.S. participation. Trump, like President Obama before him, recognizes that Russia has a greater interest in Ukraine than we do. Trump also recognizes that Putin’s Russia poses less of a threat to American interests than did the USSR.
Liberals, Democrats and the foreign policy establishment in the U.S., however, strongly oppose any negotiations with Putin’s Russia. Democrats in Congress reportedly urged Ukraine’s President Zelensky to reject any deal with the Trump administration, which they labeled as a “fake” peace agreement. Zelensky apparently followed their advice which resulted in the needlessly contentious Oval Office meeting at which Zelensky demanded U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine.
Liberal Democrats and the foreign policy establishment, of course, blamed Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The same crowd that was more than willing to strike deals with Russia’s communist leaders in the past in the interests of “peaceful coexistence” and “détente,” are loathe to engage in similar diplomacy with Putin.
Are Liberals Suffering a Bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome?
The answer to the questions posed in the first paragraph in this article may be something as simple as Trump Derangement Syndrome — anything Trump is for, liberals, Democrats, and even establishment Republicans congenitally oppose. Putin, after all, is no more sinister than Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev were. Putin and those Soviet leaders possessed a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the United States, though Putin’s arsenal is much smaller than were his Soviet predecessors’ arsenals. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a Soviet conventional assault to overrun Western Europe was plausible; Russia today can barely hold on to a few eastern provinces of Ukraine.
Geopolitics makes strange bedfellows. The United States made deals with an autocratic Russian Czar in World War I, with a totalitarian monster (Josef Stalin) in Russia in World War II, and with the greatest mass murderer in world history (Mao Zedong) in the Cold War. Why would striking a deal with Putin to end a disastrous war and potentially improve our geopolitical position vis-à-vis China be worse than what Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan did? Can any liberals plausibly answer that?
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