Diplomacy

 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov met with American Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Monday of this week in Geneva, Switzerland. This was at the request of the Russian Federation. The subject of the meeting was simple. NATO forces must cease all hostile activities in the former Soviet republics bordering the Russian Federation as was guaranteed verbally at the end of the cold war some 30 years ago. Since then the United States has been withdrawing from treaties dating back to the Nixon days and moving NATO forces further east in what can only be viewed as a hostile move. Russia has retreated as far as she can while rebuilding herself as a prosperous nation and a respected world power. She can go no further. We are literally on her borders aiming seriously big guns at her heart. Enough, in this case indeed, is enough.

This time the commitment must be in writing, fully guaranteed, with assurances all around, unambiguous and verifiable, like a regular treaty between sovereign nations who respect each other and are willing to put that respect on paper. It’s been 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis and the world does not want a sequel. Russia is not the Soviet Union but America, sadly, is still America: Stuck in the Cold War. Some of us can still remember and relate. Our friends in Russia have a legitimate concern and we here in America have an obligation to respect that concern. In December the Russian government provided two draft treaties to this effect, one for the United States and one for NATO. Sign, please.

I remember 30 years ago when the Soviet Union fell and a more equitable government rose in its place, or so we were told. Like many of my generation, I looked forward to a future of joint projects, scientific advancements, cures to all diseases, Jetson style flying cars and cultural exchange. “Bolshoi on the Potomac!” I thought. “The Met on the Muscva! It will be a World’s Fair every day!” Such was my naivete.

We had just graduated from the Reagan Eighties. Who knew that Mr. ‘Shoot-em-up’ California Cowboy would bring about the geo-political compromise of the century? My Russian grandfather’s pride as he waited in line at Ellis Island ninety years earlier would be satisfied. Second Avenue in lower Manhattan had no more prestigious an occupant in my mind than that Russian immigrant holding hopes for his future. In the seventh grade I wrote a social studies paper about astronauts and cosmonauts working together to explore the moon. Why not? We are the same people, right? I could not understand why we couldn’t work together then or now. It took 25 years but better late than never, right?

30 years on and we are still mucking about in the cold war pig stye as the world passes us by. But now the shit is on the other hoof. Can we not clean ourselves of the Cold War? Can we no longer dread the past but embrace the future? I still have the same hope as ever. The hope I had while writing that essay in a 1967 seventh grade social studies class. Every pig stye has a gate. Every gate has a latch but not a lock.

Release the latch. Open the gate. Come out.