In 1861, with Union spirits low after Bull Run,
Charles Wilkes, captain of the U.S. warship San
Jacinto, intercepted the British steamer Trent,
removed Confederate agents Mason and Slidell, who were
sailing to Europe, and brought his prisoners to Fort
Warren in Boston Harbor.
Unionists went wild. But Victoria was not amused. The
queen regarded Wilkes's coup as piracy and kidnapping
on a vessel flying the British flag. With all of
England howling for war with the detested Yankees, the
Royal Navy cleared the decks and 8,000 troops sailed
for Canada. A stunned Abraham Lincoln beat a hasty
retreat, let Mason and Slidell go, and told his
secretary of state, "One war at a time."
Sound advice. As President Bush decides whether to arm
Taiwan with advanced U.S. warships, and Beijing's
belligerence mounts, why are we antagonizing Russia?
Recently U.S. officials met an envoy of Chechen rebels
who had just murdered 21 Russians and wounded 130 in
car bomb attacks. A week earlier, we expelled 50
"spies." The White House has said Bush has no desire
to meet President Putin any time soon.
Again, why are we driving Russia into the arms of
China?
A decade ago, Moscow marched the Red Army out of
Eastern Europe, allowed the captive nations to dump
over their Communist regimes, and let the Soviet Union
dissolve into 15 nations. Ronald Reagan, who had
decried the "evil empire," was being cheered in Red
Square.
Yet since Russia called off the Cold War, we have
broken our word and moved NATO to its borders, smashed
its old Serb ally and now collude with Azerbaijan and
Georgia to cut Russia out of the Caspian oil trade.
Bush aides talk of bringing Baltic states into NATO
and forging new military bonds with ex-Soviet
republics.
How would we react if a Russia, victorious in the Cold
War, invited Cuba into the Warsaw Pact, handed a war
guarantee to Panama and cut us out of the oil trade
with Mexico?
But U.S. arrogance is matched by Muscovite folly. If
Tony Blair is complaining of spies, Putin is
overloading the circuits. Russia is also selling
weapons to Iran and providing Beijing with destroyers,
anti-ship missiles, submarines and fighter-bombers to
contest the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Putin must know that America, its superpower hubris
aside, does not threaten Russia. But the Islamist
regime in Iran is a threat in the Caucasus; and after
Hong Kong and Taiwan have been digested, China will
look to recover its lost lands in Russia.
In the treaties of Aikun and Peking in 1858 and 1860,
China was swindled by agents of Alexander II out of
350,000 square miles along the Amur and Ussuri. On
that territory today sits the trans-Siberian railroad
and port of Vladivostok. In 1969 Soviet and Chinese
troops clashed on both rivers. Chinese settlers are
slowly moving in, just as Americans once moved south
into the Mexican province of Texas.
Russia is a dying nation. Its population is down to
145 million, and Putin has said it may fall to 123
million by 2015 -- a 15-year loss as huge as all the
dead in the Great Patriotic War. By 2025, Iran will
have as many people. Russians are today outnumbered by
Chinese 9 to 1. East of the Aral Sea, the ratio is
closer to 50 to 1. In the 1990s the quarrels that
exploded into wars within and between nations were
ideological, territorial, religious and tribal. With
Bolshevism dead, no such quarrel exists between
America and Russia. If there is any vital U.S.
interest, it is that Russia not be dismembered by the
warriors of Islam or by a China which, by 2025, will
have 1.5 billion people.
Bolshevik Russia was an enemy, but Orthodox Russia is
part of the West, a natural ally. Why, then, treat it
as a potential enemy? Would we really prefer the
Chinese across the Bering Strait?
Moscow has behaved boorishly, but Beijing drowned in
blood the Tienanmen Square heroes, has persecuted
Christians and the Falun Gong, shipped nuclear
technology to Pakistan and missiles to Iran, fired
rockets over Taiwan, threatened us with war if we dare
to intervene, upgraded Saddam's air defense against
U.S. pilots -- and been rewarded with annual
favored-nation trading status and $400 billion in
trade surpluses with the United States in a single
decade.
That was Clinton's legacy. Is it the Bush policy as
well?
With Europe steaming, Moscow embittered, Arabs
enraged, Iran and Iraq hostile, North Korea
threatening and China forcing down U.S. planes,
perhaps we should recall Mr. Lincoln's counsel to Mr.
Seward, "One war at a time."
