Opinion The new USSR By Roger Pulvers	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
米国に、ソ連の再来を見た 国連を無視する米国の態度を見て思い出したのは、ブレジネフ時代のソビエト連邦のことだった。

I made my first trip to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1964 ... an age ago. It was a country that now seems like a place out of a twisted fairytale. Its leader was First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev.

In the autumn of that year I embarked on a course known as Russian Area Studies.

In October Khrushchev was dismissed from his duties and Leonid Brezhnev became first secretary and de facto leader of the world's second superpower.

In those days we who studied the USSR were taught to view it as a stubbornly obstructionist state. When the U.N. Security Council grew close to agreement on one issue or another, the representative of the Soviet Union, with raised hand and scowling grimace, often voted Nyet. My professors told me that only the Soviets abrogated treaties, which they considered merely to be expedient deals to be tossed aside when no longer useful to their ends of world domination.

By the 1970s, when Brezhnev had consolidated power, the economy was stagnating and the environment deteriorating from cynical neglect. He needed something to turn the attention of his people away from domestic corruption and decay. That something was the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. The military victory was swift, and the Brezhnev Doctrine came to life with the triumph: the USSR had bestowed upon itself "the right" to liberate countries where its leader, in this case Brezhnev, deemed democracy threatened.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan lasted for more than nine years, ending in defeat, humiliation and disgrace. The Brezhnev Doctrine proved to be no more than a cover-up for personal greed and national ambition. The similarities with what has occurred this year in the United States and Iraq are striking.

It is the United States that is now the one blocking the will of the United Nations with bullying and devious rhetoric. Listening to the speeches of America's U.N. ambassador, John D. Negroponte, reminds me of Anatoly Dobrynin, the USSR's ambassador to the United Nations who strove to justify his country's shifty intentions.

It is now the United States under George W. Bush that abrogates treaties when they no longer are considered useful to powerful interests in the country. It is Bush's America that turns its back on pressing environmental issues so that favored companies can loot nature. And it is America that has forged a doctrine of intervention "to liberate" countries where its leader, in this case Bush, deems democracy threatened.

The USA is the new USSR.The moralistic self-justification, the beautiful words defiled by ugly action, the dismissal of any advice that is not fawning compliance. All of this is reminiscent of what we used to call "Soviet reality."

In the end the Brezhnev Doctrine was unmasked for what it was. The Bush Doctrine will certainly meet a similar fate. The handwriting is on the wall, in bold indelible strokes, for this administration. The only difference now is that "your days are numbered" is written not in Russian but in American English.

Shukan ST: Oct. 24, 2003

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