Steaming somewhere in the Yellow or South China Sea--I can’t remember specifically-- in the spring of 2008, our combat-information team on the USS Cowpens reported some unusual aircraft several miles away. We learned later that they were Russian “bears,” which was some type of bomber. We were not used to Russian bears flying so closely, but taking my cues from more experienced shipmates, I did not sense any danger. We heightened our ship “readiness,” but the day and week passed by without incident.
On the same deployment, the next week or so, combat-information spotted a Chinese submarine several miles away. Similarly, there was no imminent danger--we were all just out cruising in international waters--but, for a crew used to just doing circles and drills for weeks at a time, it provided some excitement. I came up to the bridge that late afternoon to take the watch as officer-of-the-deck (OOD) several hours after the submarine had been spotted. The off-going OOD briefed me where it was, and I took the otherwise routine watch. At one point, I called down to the captain to make a pretty standard report. He then asked me where the Chinese sub was. I told him I would call him right back with the information. When I did, he berated me on the phone for not having “situational awareness” (SA), that is, for not knowing its location off the top of my head. The captain was right. An OOD should have had that information on hand. I finished my watch, we finished our deployment, and we did not hear from the sub again.
Reflecting later on the incident, I admitted, still, that the captain was right--I should have known--but at the same time, of course there was a Chinese submarine there. We were in international waters yes, but relatively speaking, we were pretty close to China. This was not off the coast of California or Alaska, or even Hawaii or Guam. It made half-sense that there would be a Russian plane there, too. We were, relatively speaking, not that far from Russia.
Viewed from the Chinese or Russian perspective, should not they have been the ones alarmed, if there indeed was cause for alarm in the first place? Should not they have been the ones excited, as a US vessel (that was permanently deployed in Japan) cruised by? Or should not they be the ones bothered when they consider the thousands of other US troops, planes, ships, bombs, and missiles stationed all around China and Russia?
“Cognitive empathy” is a skill and virtue that would do the US foreign policy establishment, the US media, and Americans more broadly a lot of good. Cognitive empathy, frequently articulated by writer/journalist Robert Wright, should not be confused with “emotional empathy.” Cognitive empathy requires viewing a situation from an adversary’s perspective, not exactly feeling bad for them. It requires temporarily withholding judgment to understand the causes of a current predicament. Why is China acting the way it is? Why is Russia? (Or Iran or Venezuela?) How does each country view our actions of the past two, five, ten, fifty, or 100 years? Are they just angry and sociopathic, or do they have legitimate gripes, even if we don’t agree with those gripes? (Here are two recent Robert Wright cognitive empathy pieces on Russia: Why Biden didn’t negotiate seriously with Putin (substack.com) and How cognitive empathy could have prevented the Ukraine crisis (substack.com). Here is one on China: China and the Challenge of Cognitive Empathy (substack.com) )
Cognitive empathy does not preclude judgment and condemnation. Regarding China, we should condemn its concentration camps of Uighurs, we should condemn its suppression of dissent in Hong Kong, we should stand in honest solidarity with Tibet, we should be concerned with its building of islands in the South China Sea, for instance. Regarding Russia, we should condemn its recent military buildup along the border of Ukraine. If it invades Ukraine, we should condemn that. We should condemn the suppression of its own internal dissent. Cognitive empathy and seeing things from their perspective does not mean that I would prefer to live in China or Russia ("Love it or leave it!"). It does not even mean I would prefer a China- or Russia- (or China-Russia-) led world order to a US-led world order.
We should keep a healthy skepticism of US media when it comes to foreign policy and war. That does not mean we automatically dismiss reports out of hand. It does not mean there are not some good on-the-ground journalists doing rigorous work for the major corporate outlets. However, empirical historical data shows that good reporting pieces have a difficult time making it up the chain when war is on the horizon--they have a hard time competing with the celebrity columnists and talking heads. The Chomsky/Herman propaganda model from Manufacturing Consent (1988), in my view, is still very true. Truth-telling happens, yes, but it ranks second behind profit-making. Has The New York Times actually learned from its mea culpa in the build-up to Iraq? (If no one is held accountable, do they even have to?) From Panama to Iraq I to the Balkans to Iraq II to Libya, has CNN ever met a war it didn’t like? Need we recall that MSNBC fired Phil Donahue because he was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war? (I don’t mention Fox here; it ceased pretending to be a serious news outlet many years ago; but picking on Fox, while necessary, is easy.) Just to take one of many foreign policy/war sloppy stories from recent years, recall the Times Russians-paying-Afghan-bounty-hunters-to-take-out-US-soldiers story? Recall we liberals were up in arms about it because it fit with our Trump-loves-Putin-I-can’t-believe-he’s letting-Putin-get-away-with-this narrative? Yeah, so it turns out, it was not true. Or at the least, it could not be confirmed. Does anyone pay the consequences for such bad reporting, and shameless amplifying, or do they all keep getting promoted?
At the same time though, having spent the past decade on the antiwar (not necessarily socialist) left, I’m also healthily skeptical of antiwar and alternative media that reflexively downplay the crimes or misdeeds of an adversary. In rightly criticizing US nationalism or imperialism, some alternative outlets go too far in defending other countries’ nationalisms and imperialisms. While we should stand in solidarity with Chinese people, Russian people, or Cuban people, for instance, I don’t believe we need to wholly defend the Chinese state, or the Russian state, or the Cuban state, for instance. (In my short time on the more socialist left, I have seen less of this. Socialist anti-imperialists, on their good days, see all imperialisms and all capitalisms/extractions as the problem. US-led imperialism/capitalism just tends to be the most destructive. Check out these long, scholarly critical-of-everyone interviews on Russia and China).
If there is war with Russia or if there is war in Ukraine, yes, we must blame Russia for its aggression. And, we must stand with Russians--and Ukrainians--who are resisting their own governments’ militarisms (like how this transnational group of women did). However, if there is war in Ukraine, it must be noted that the US is to blame as well. From the end of the Cold War to the current administration, the US has played a role in antagonizing Russia. One very important factor has been the expansion of NATO:
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.
White House Press Secretaries Jen Psaki and Rachel Maddow might assume that this quote is from some "Putin apologist." But, it's from no less than William Burns, in 2008, then US ambassador to Russia and now director of the CIA. He went on to say that it was “hard to overstate the strategic consequences” of offering Ukraine NATO membership, which, he predicted, would “create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.” Furthermore, if we felt the need to expand NATO, why would we not at least consider including Russia at that point in the ‘90s? (We did not ever give it serious consideration.) Then-ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, wrote:
The plan to increase the membership of NATO fails to take account of the real international situation following the end of the Cold War, and proceeds in accord with a logic that made sense only during the Cold War. The division of Europe ended before there was any thought of taking new members into NATO. No one is threatening to re-divide Europe. It is therefore absurd to claim, as some have, that it is necessary to take new members into NATO to avoid a future division of Europe; if NATO is to be the principal instrument for unifying the continent, then logically the only way it can do so is by expanding to include all European countries. But that does not appear to be the aim of the administration, and even if it is, the way to reach it is not by admitting new members piecemeal.
From our exiting of various arms deals to our meddling/bombing in the Balkans--and the very quick recognition of Kosovo, for instance--to our actual or perceived role in the 2014 Ukraine coup to the Obama administration encouraging regime change in Russia itself, is it any wonder that Russia does not trust the US? Absolutely, this does not justify a Russian invasion. Sure, there was a case to be made for Kosovo. Sure, we might tell Russia they shouldn’t feel encircled--and yes, absolutely don’t take it on any innocents sure to be killed in an invasion of Ukraine--but cognitive empathy requires us to stand back and take stock.
Taking stock also requires looking at structures and institutions and histories of Russia not just lazily focusing on the singular personality of Vladimir Putin. Putin is a symptom of recent Russian history, not the cause. Liberals and Democrats looked for Vladimir Putin behind every one of Trump’s nefarious actions and all nefarious actions worldwide. (Trump, by the way, for all his strange personal overtures to Putin, was quite concretely hawkish on Russia.) Tony Wood’s Beyond Putin: Money, Power, and the Myths of the New Cold War is a highly recommended corrective to the facile mainstream obsession with Putin-the-man. The book does not paint a rosy picture of him, but it depicts him as a creature of and from a particular social-political-economic milieu. Not only is the singular focus on Putin-the-man lazy and incorrect. It is convenient. We are able to just say, “He’s crazy or ruthless,” and not consider--enter cognitive empathy!--the forces that move and shape him, both foreign and domestic (he still might be ruthless but I don't think crazy). We don’t seem to commit that same error with China. Rarely do we say “Xi did a, b, or c.” We tend to say, “China did x, y, or z.”
But, we do commit many errors with China. There is much to say about our misguided approach to China, but because we are not at the moment saber-rattling with them, I will not go into great detail (I have previously). However, a couple quick notes. One, we should keep in mind that, between 1820 and 1949, the US intervened in China no fewer than thirty times with “dollar diplomacy,” or “gunboat diplomacy," or helping the British to force opium upon their markets, or forcing them to open their markets to other goods, or many other small invasions/extractions. Two, at the end of World War I, Woodrow Wilson and the victorious allies gave the German colonized region of China to…Japan. Blowback occurred in many ways (see Japan 1910s to 1945), but it also occurred in the the form of Mao and the communist revolution. Meanwhile, Wilsonian hypocrisy, dressed in lofty rhetoric, lives on in the US. (I hope there are no moves on Taiwan--on the Cowpens I had to miss a Sting/Police concert in Tokyo because we were sent to go steaming off the coast of Taiwan during their elections as show of strength. I guess we were successful. I hope Taiwan and China can live together amicably. But, a cognitive empathy thought exercise is helpful to understand how China views Taiwan. You may not agree with China’s perspective or Wright’s analogy, but if we want to lessen the chances of war, it would behoove us to understand.)
The Chinese and Russian states certainly have their crimes. However, I believe what Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech--a speech that was derided by the The New York Times, The Washington Post, and by many of his liberal civil rights allies: the U.S. is the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Since the end of World War II, from outright wars in Vietnam and Iraq, to CIA coups in Guatemala and Chile, to “Washington consensus”/IMF “structural adjustment programs” and debt-wealth extraction and so-called “free-trade agreements,” it is hard to find a government during these years that has killed, starved, or immiserated, directly or indirectly, more people on earth than the United States has. All the while saying it is doing the opposite--that it is liberating.
The point is not to keep count or to rank atrocities or to prove that the US (instead of Vladimir Putin) is behind every bad action. I just think it might make our overtures for peace more credible and maybe even more effective. As a citizen of the US, I have more agency with this government--and by extension, some agency with US client states like Israel, Ukraine, Egypt, or Colombia--and that is why I start here. But, we shouldn't stop here either.
Peace! Solidarity!
