My weekend in Moscow

OPINION:

When an invitation from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and renowned professor Alexandr Dugin to visit them in Moscow arrived in my inbox, it was the culmination of a series of emails and telephone calls from Russian-American friends giving me a heads-up. Still, it startled me.

Last week, I flew to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and then to Moscow. The sanctions President Biden imposed on Russian people and businesses and kept in place by President Trump bar, among other things, direct flights to Russia from the West.

These absurd executive-ordered regulations, meant to punish Russia for its special military operation in Ukraine, have neither caused a change in Russian military strategy nor harmed the Russian economy.

In three years, they have deprived U.S. businesses of more than $330 billion in revenue.

If you accept Mr. Biden’s version of the conflagration in Ukraine, mouthed uniformly by mainstream media, then you think Russia wants to devour its neighbors.

If you move beyond Western propaganda, you know this war started in 2014 with a coup against a popularly elected president who sought neutrality for Ukraine.

The coup, orchestrated by the State Department in conjunction with the CIA and British MI6, brought about a series of governments determined to attack their Russian-speaking population in the east and to put NATO armaments on the Russian border aimed at Moscow.

If this doesn’t frighten you, imagine Chinese long-range missiles in Havana aimed at Washington.

Moscow today is the city of lights. Its atmosphere is similar to midtown Manhattan’s hustle and bustle, but cleaner, happier and friendlier. Its older buildings around Red Square and its Doha-style gleaming skyscrapers in the financial district are lushly illuminated at night and packed with workers during the day.

The perception of Russia embraced by the consensus of Americans is stuck in the Cold War era of central economic planning, hungry workers, crumbling infrastructure and no relief in sight.

Today’s Russia is thoroughly modern, generally happy, devoutly Christian Orthodox and yearning to interact commercially, culturally and even politically with the West.

Mr. Trump’s intention to be the peacemaker in Ukraine is far more ambitious than ending the war.

Though 180 degrees from Mr. Biden’s failed efforts to use Ukraine as a battering ram to dislodge Russian President Vladimir Putin from office, Mr. Trump understands that the special military operation — though deeply violent and profoundly destructive — has united the Russian people, stimulated their economic development and independence, and reminded the U.S. foreign policy mavens of the virtues and values of realism.

Realism is the theory of relations in which each nation recognizes the territorial sovereignty and legitimate security needs of all others.

Realism — best articulated in the writings of University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs — is the polar opposite of U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II era.

That policy is called exceptionalism. It presumes American cultural, historical, governmental and moral superiority. It has driven all the post-1945 U.S. wars and the construction and maintenance of some 750 U.S. military bases and ports around the globe. It has been the chief engine of the federal government’s $36 trillion in debt.

Mr. Trump rejects American hegemony and has stated that he plans to seek a “great reset.” This geopolitical theory of foreign policy, best articulated by the brilliant former British diplomat Alastair Crooke, seeks to unite the U.S. socially and commercially to Russia for the mutual long-term benefit of both.

Realism and reset recognize that communism in Russia — the old Soviet Union, the crushing of the grape of individual choices for the wine of party dictatorship — is gone. Out of the ashes of the USSR has emerged a society guided by free market capitalism, devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church and welcoming of the West.

You would never know any of this if your knowledge of Russia has been generated in American government schools and animated by neocon elites whose mentality of hatred for all things Russian has choked realism and rejected reset based on ancient and unrealistic fears. 

In my interviews with Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Dugin, I saw a real appreciation for Mr. Trump’s approach. These two intellects, raised under communism, see its faults, celebrate its demise and yearn for realism and reset.

They are Mr. Putin’s closest confidants.

Mr. Trump needs to know that the reset he seeks will be earth-shattering. The European elites still labor under a 1980s mentality. When President Reagan called the USSR “an evil empire” in 1983, he was right. It was the height of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall and Soviet expansionism.

Expansionism and exceptionalism are twin evils of the same breed. One occurred when the USSR sought dominance in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan to keep the West at bay. The other has been occurring around the globe — from the Philippines to the Middle East to Africa and Latin America — as the U.S. used force and deception to tell other countries how to live.

If Mr. Trump could see the Russia I saw, he would bring about realism and reset tomorrow. The Russia I saw had barely a police officer on any street corner, banished woke and all its absurd fashions, embraced cleanliness and happiness, and enjoyed a smooth and highly functional infrastructure.

The Orthodox liturgy, packed to the gills on Sunday, is as faithful and beautiful as the traditional Latin Mass that the pope has suppressed.

The Russia that Americans have hated no longer exists. Our trading partner and friend are in their place. Mr. Trump knows this and doesn’t care what Europe thinks.

• To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.