The leaders in Kiev have so far been able to milk the US and UK governments of hundreds of billions of dollars by simply taking advantage of the virulent russophobia that is deeply entrenched in the education of English-speaking elites.
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In 2014 Paul Starobin, formerly Businessweek's Moscow bureau chief, wrote an article about the russophobia affecting elites in the Anglosphere. In it, Starobin traces the origins of the current russophobia displayed by American political and intellectual elites to the UK.
During most of its modern history, Russia was less developed than Europe when it came to standards of modernity. The country was relegated to the status of "other" by Victorian political and intellectual elites, during the competition between Britain and Russia for colonial expansion in Asia. Books like George Stoker's "With the Unspeakables", written in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, gave further impetus to anti-Russian feelings within Britain and its far-flung territories.
In his 1950 book "The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain", historian J.H. Gleason concluded that British antipathy towards Russia was the brainchild of the imperial-minded political elite in Britain, worried that Russia would advance beyond the Himalayas into India.
As it usually happens, British attitudes towards Russia crossed the Atlantic into the United States. One of the main American foes of Russia was President Theodore Roosevelt himself who, in 1905, portrayed Russians as "untrustworthy in every way" and - by contrast - the Japanese as a " wonderful and civilised people"...
It is thus unfortunate that, with the shining exception of George F. Kennan, the quasi-totality of 20th century American intellectual and political elites were badly affected by Russophobia.
Not even the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union brought much of a respite in anti-Russian phobia.
As Starobin astutely observed, more than 150 years after the Crimean War, russophobia is still gravely affecting the minds of politicians involved in framing US foreign policy in the 21st century, from the late Senator John McCain who derided Russia as a "gas station masquerading as a country", to former Moscow bureau chief of The Economist Edward Lucas and many others. Anglosphere experts and politicians indulge in Russia-bashing in the Western media on a regular basis, with potentially dire consequences for their countries.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that English-speaking states are now almost totally devoid of policymakers able to negotiate a peace treaty with Russia.
In truth, when it comes to the aforementioned policymaking circles, russophobia has reached Freudian proportions. That acts as a paralysing factor which stymies meaningful political action and prevents the adoption of a set of adequate political solutions to the challenges posed by Russia internationally. Against this background, it is very hard - if not impossible - to foresee how future conflicts, including a nuclear one, with Russia could be indefinitely avoided.
The mammoth task of re-educating British and American elites could conceivably take between 25 to 50 years, and this only after russophobia is recognised as an intellectual pathology and dealt with accordingly. Alas, the leaders of the Anglosphere have allowed the problem to fester for so long that it now seems next to impossible to rectify matters before a catastrophe happens.
