The late Stephen F. Cohen understood something that the Washington establishment still refuses to learn: you cannot negotiate with a country you have demonized into a cartoon villain. You cannot craft sane policy toward a nation whose leader you have transformed into Hitler, Stalin, and Satan rolled into one.
His final book, War with Russia?, should be required reading in every office that touches foreign policy. It won’t be, of course. The people running things don’t read books that challenge their narratives. They read briefings that confirm what they already believe.
Cohen traced the demonization of Putin from its origins. In 1999 and 2000, when Putin first appeared, the American media welcomed him. The New York Times reported his emotional commitment to building democracy. George W. Bush looked into his eyes and saw his soul. All was well.
Then something changed. By 2004, the same journalists who had praised Putin were complaining of being suckered. By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor declared it was time to think of Russia as an enemy. What happened in those intervening years? Putin cracked down on the oligarchs who had been looting Russia with Western help. He ended the fire sale of Russian assets that had made fortunes for American consultants and lobbyists. He stopped being useful.
The demonization that followed has no basis in fact. Putin did not de-democratize Russia; the democracy he inherited from Yeltsin was already a wreck, a chaos of gangster capitalism and human misery. He did not create the kleptocratic system; that was the 1990s, when American advisors flew in to teach shock therapy and flew out with suitcases full of money. He does not order the killing of journalists; there is no evidence for this, none, and yet it is repeated as gospel.
I met a man recently who has lived in Moscow since 1999. Twenty-three years. He came back to Florida to care for his mother, and I asked him what he had seen. He described Russia in 2000 as a shithole. Looted. Broken. Humiliated. And now? New buildings. World-class public transportation. Safe streets. First-rate infrastructure. Freedom to live his life without looking over his shoulder.
That’s the Russia the demonizers don’t want you to see. Because if Russia is actually functioning, actually improving, actually providing for its people, then the whole narrative collapses. Then Putin isn’t a monster. Then he’s just a nationalist leader doing what nationalist leaders do: putting his country first.
The other factor, the one nobody says out loud, is homosexuality. Nearly three-quarters of Russians believe it is morally unacceptable. The Duma passed a law against propaganda to minors. The Western establishment, which has elevated LGBTQ rights to a test of civilizational worth, looks at Russia and sees heresy. Putin becomes not just a geopolitical adversary but a moral one, a figure of backwardness and bigotry who must be opposed on every front.
This is not a policy. This is a crusade. And crusades do not end well.
I realize that writing this will get me called a Russian tool. I have one response: look it up. Address the substance. The current trajectory of US policy toward Russia is perilous and foolish. Our ability to bully and coerce is not what it once was. The world has changed, and we have not changed with it.
Ronald Reagan understood something that his supposed heirs have forgotten. He treated the Russians as equals. He stood firm on American principles, yes. But he also negotiated. He also respected their power. He also knew that demonizing the other side makes war more likely, not less.
We should follow that example. Instead, we are following the example of people who have learned nothing from the last thirty years and are determined to learn nothing from the next thirty.
Stephen Cohen is gone now. His warnings remain. We would be wise to heed them.
