--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
Likewise,
> is the Anglo fixation with Chechnya a pomo version
> of getting back at that
> ancient barbarian at the Europe's gate Russia?
>
> Wojtek
>
Anatol Lieven on this:
Indeed, many of the russophobe references to Russian 19th century expansionism are almost word-for-word repetitions of 19th century British anti-Russian propaganda, which denounced Russia's supposedly insatiable desire for conquest at precisely the time when the British themselves were gobbling up a quarter of the globe using extremely similar methods. At the start of the 21st Century, we really ought to be able to do a bit better than this.
This is the most worrying aspect of Western Russophobia: that it demonstrates yet again the capacity of too many Western journalists and intellectuals to forget their supposed standards and behave like 19th century jingoists or Balkan nationalist hacks when their own national loyalties and hatreds are involved. And these tendencies in turn serve wider needs. Taken overall, we are living at a quite exceptionally benign period in human history, above all as far as our own interests are concerned. Yet no-one can live in Washington without becoming aware of the desperate need of certain sections of Western elites for new enemies or warmed-up old ones. This is certainly not the wish of a majority of the American or any other Western people, and it is profoundly dangerous. For of one thing we can be sure: that a country which is seen to need enemies will sooner or later find them everywhere.
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4546.html
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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