This is perhaps the weirdest inversion of history yet.
Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin expels hundreds of Americans and indigenous personnel from their diplomatic posts in retaliation against U.S. sanctions; the Russians are "nervous," says a Georgetown University Eurasian expert, because they see "unpredictability," so they sort of run home to mama — that is, they revive "old habits" of Cold War tactics. Meanwhile, American spooks are reviving blunt, Cold War terminology. As the NY Times reports, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said this month that doubtless the Russians "are trying to undermine Western democracy."
So far, none of this is particularly stunning. What's persistently stunning however is the Times sentence that immediately follows the Coats quote: His boss — the Republican U.S. president — has never uttered a similar phrase.
And therein lies a truly weird inversion of American history. A Republican president is being "soft" on Russian totalitarianism and its expansionist aggression, and behind him is a Republican base that is all too willing to accommodate that president's rather peculiar timidity. In the original version of Cold War domestic politics, it was of course Democratic presidents, their pompous diplomats in striped pants as well as their weak-kneed socialist-Democratic base who traitorously endured the Russian bear.
Those who then denounced the appeasers and accommodationists were, especially, Republican McCarthyites. They saw traitors everywhere, but most perilously within the American government. Pretty much all they nailed to rights were Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, since McCarthyites of yore were little more than reckless, paranoia-promoting demagogues.
Today, however, those same McCarthyites would, with abundant empirical evidence in their grasp, be justified in attacking the sitting Republican president and his loyal base for Russian accommodationism.
For both, in dismissing Putin's attack on the American political process and embracing rejections of our transatlantic allies, are, arm in arm with Russia, "trying to undermine Western democracy." They are fifth columnists of the first order, and what's more, they're open and unabashed about it.
Which brings us to the absolutely weirdest inversion of America's unfolding history: Where are the Republican McCarthyites when they could be of real and legitimate use?