Allegations about Donald Trump’s links to Russia continue to mount, stoked by dark rumors and sinister revelations. No smoking gun has been produced, but nothing has been dispelled either, while the man at the center of the storm keeps citing denials by the Kremlin as proof of his innocence.
Troubling questions are multiplying. Was Trump originally identified by Russian intelligence services as a potential asset and worked on since the early 2000s? Was the Trump Organization, run by a scam artist and perennially teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, rescued by Russian oligarchs or even thugs, to whom Trump is now indebted? Why did he hire advisors with evident ties to Putin? Why has he indicated that he may lift sanctions on Russia and recognize the annexation of Crimea? Was he or his advisors in cahoots with Russian hackers who influenced the outcome of the US election? Do the Russians have tapes of prostitutes pissing on Trump? What other skeletons will soon inhabit White House closets?
Trump is inexorably moving toward inauguration and democratic US institutions, ranging from Congress to lame duck president to law enforcement to the judiciary, are unwilling or unable to prevent or even delay his ascent to power. Or, to rephrase it, the United States is inexorably moving toward defeat in the Cold War and no one in the nation can prevent it.
America is the most powerful, wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation on the map, and historically such states always dominated their neighbors and won wars. But not always. At the dawn of the European civilization, Athens, a rich, powerful and enlightened democracy, was defeated by Sparta, a dirt-poor oligarchy. Now that the European civilization is losing its dominance, history may be about to repeat itself.
The United States has its flaws. It is a global empire with a bloated military deployed in some 150 countries. It is a nation of selfish slobs brainlessly consuming more sugar, salt and cholesterol than is good for them and more fossil fuels than is good for the planet.
But it is also a City Upon the Hill which not only offers freedom from oppression and discrimination to its own citizens but spreads democracy around the world and stands as a bulwark against tyranny. It built an international order which kept the world largely at peace and spread unprecedented prosperity to remote corners of the globe. Its two thousand-plus universities are enlightened centers of research, scholarship and education. It is an artistic capital of the world, its films are watched everywhere and its lifestyles are emulated even by its enemies. It is a leader in technology and innovation.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has been in many ways America’s opposite. After a half-hearted attempt at liberal democracy, Russia abandoned it in disgust, sliding into a kind of Third World kleptocratic fascism. It lived high on the hog earning petrodollars while oil and natural gas prices were high, producing little and squandering its Soviet heritage, whatever it was, in industry, science, education, medicine and social services. The United States attracts the best, the brightest and the most ambitious from around the world; Russia is suffering a massive brain drain while bestowing its citizenship on superannuated actors and washed-up athletes.
But Russia is a nation for whom territorial expansion has been a national idea since the Grand Principality of Moscow first shook off the Mongol domination in the late 15th century. Russians were always the poorest and the least developed subjects of the Russian monarch, and drew very few benefits from their vast territorial gains, but they kept zealously pushing the borders of the empire outward.
The loss in the Cold War – and of vast territories which became independent states – was an unprecedented setback. However, since Putin returned to presidency in 2012, Russia decided that it is fighting a new Cold War against the United States – or rather Phase II of the old one. It has been an asymmetrical war fought in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Syria, and now, insidiously, in Washington, where Russia appears to have succeeded at subverting the American democracy from within.
In 5th century BC, Athens was the United States of the ancient world – militarily, economically, politically and culturally. It produced the three most famous Ancient Greek playwrights and the School of Athens philosophy. It was instrumental in developing the Greek vision of the world, a combination of the science, mathematics and religion of the time. established an empire in the Mediterranean, helping bring prosperity to the Greek world.
Sparta, on the other hand, was an oligarchy and not much else. Its citizens were poor – living in Spartan conditions – and laconic (from the Greek term for Spartans) – probably because they didn’t have much to say.
Yet, after more than a quarter century of combat, in 404 BC, Athens had to surrender. It lost its preeminent position in the Greek world and became dominated by much weaker Sparta. As Greek historian Thucydides recounts in his history of the Peloponnesian War, the defeat was the result of the failure of Athens’ institutions and the desire on the part of its allies to throw off its domination, which made them side with Sparta.
This is the direct reference to Trump-supporting Republicans in the United States and rightist parties across Europe who are singing praises to Putin as a way to undermine democracies in their own countries. And of course, we are witnessing the failure of American institutions in the face of very serious allegations of treason and foreign influence in the United States. The Peloponnesian War was, like the Cold War, fought in stages, in some of which Athens also had an upper hand. What counts is the final result – and it was unquestionably Sparta’s victory.
Quite possibly, future historians will likewise will see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet collapse two years later merely as stages in a longer conflict in which the United States was ultimately the loser.
What is important, however, that the 4th century BC was politically unstable, bloody and poverty stricken. It is enough to look at the medieval – if not Ancient Greek – conditions, in which so many Russians currently live – at their poverty, underdevelopment, blight and lack of freedom and dignity – to see what to expect in a world in which the United States has lost the Cold War.
