COMPETITION OR CONFRONTATION?

Competition Or Confrontation?

Epigraph #1.

“How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! And reverence is a bridge to love, for he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than the one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor!… In contrast to this, picture the enemy as a man of ressentiment conceives him: he has conceived the evil enemy, ‘The Evil One,’ and this, in fact, is his basic concept from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a good one, himself!” (Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals, I:10, 1887.)

Epigraph #2.

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points but seem to tend toward the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both have grown up unnoticed, and while the attention of mankind was turned elsewhere, they have suddenly put themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned of their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path, to which no limit can be perceived.” (Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy in America. Vol. I, Conclusion, 1835.)

In the summer of 1984 the San Jose Mercury News published my article Competition or Confrontation?, which was a comment on the boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games by the Russians (and by most of the other countries on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain). In that article I put forward, for the first time in print, my Two Boxers metaphor, describing the essence of U.S.-Soviet relations, from my perspective.

“There is something tremendously encouraging in the sight of an American and a Soviet boxer exchanging bloodying punches in the ring. Competition, not confrontation, is the name of their game; and the nations they represent have a lot to learn from these two.”

My metaphor likened the two superpowers to a pair of great boxers, who are adversaries in the ring, but mutually respectful, and even privately friendly in their off-the-ring relationship. In fact, the one can hardly live without the other, as they need each other, to impress the world with their superior skills and professional prowess. (There is some similarity here with the Nietzschean concept of the ‘noble enemy,’ see Epigraph #1 above, but my boxers metaphor seems like a perfect fit to describe the nature of the superpower relationship during the cold war.)

I had started using the metaphor prior to the publication of the Mercury article in my appearances at several Universities and at public events, in late 1983, and throughout 1984. This is what I said:

Most people on the right are insisting that Russia is America’s enemy, and not a friend, while most people on the left disagree with them, by saying that Russia must not be treated as an enemy, but must necessarily be made America’s friend. Who is right here? I would say that both are right and both are wrong. To those who insist that Russia is an enemy I reply that she is also a friend. To those who insist that Russia must be a friend of America I say, yes, they must, but only in so far as the two superpowers remain adversaries. How can both of these be true? Lo and behold---my two boxers metaphor!

In support of Russia’s need to perpetuate the adversarial-competitive relationship with the United States, I pointed out that in the sphere of economic productivity America held such an insurmountable superiority over Russia that a purely economic comparison could never yield the superpower parity that the Russians prized above everything else. On the other hand, there was not much advantage to be gained competitively from Russia’s superiority in natural resources, particularly with regard to oil and gas. Take Saudi Arabia, for instance. Her oil reserves are vast, and dwarf the American oil reserves by any metric, yet nobody would ever give the Saudis the rank of a great power just on that account. To put it in a nutshell, an energy superpower does not qualify as a great power by that metric alone.

This is in fact something that the Western world often likes to forget today: that Russia is not just an energy superpower. She is also a scientific and cultural superpower, a space superpower, as well as a superpower by a number of other parameters, but none of them may be convincing by themselves. The world hasn’t changed much in the last six thousand years, and the clout of the warrior, the cult of great physical strength, has not subsided among men and nations.

Thus, it is in the field of military muscle and as a nuclear superpower that Russia can obtain a demonstrable measure of parity with the United States; and it is here where the bulk of the superpower competition takes place. No need to disparage the other fields of competition, of course, such as in space (a derivative of the military competition), or in science and technology (where Russia leads in research, and America leads in development), or in sports (where all competitions, such as the Olympics, or the World Championships, or the annual track-and-field “Matches of the Giants” used to be seen primarily as extra combat theaters of the Cold War), or in comparative cultural excellence (which was so demonstrable on both sides during the Cold War, but dwindled dramatically as soon as the major Cold War operations had come to an end). But none of these spectacular competitions had much significance by themselves, except for running in the colossal shadow of the monumental nuclear-military standoff between the two global superpowers.

The immense implications of the truth of my Two Boxers metaphor have become apparent in my analysis of what went so terribly wrong in the Russian-American relations, following the breakdown of the USSR. The condescending attitude of Washington and the gloating of all America, over the “fallen” adversary in the 1990’s, (underscored in the 2000’s by the ridiculous Forgive the Russians policy, formulated by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, has brought forth the worst possible fruit: Russia’s deliberate humiliation and her thirst for redemption-read-revenge against the perpetrator. The crux of this point comes out as clear as a developing photographic picture once you have immersed the negative into the Two Boxers metaphor’s fluid. A great boxer must never gloat over his opponent’s sudden foot slip in the ring, nor over a knockdown, and not even over a genuine knockout, as this has been just one fight out of many in the perpetual superpower match-up, as served to us by lady history, in accordance with Alexis de Tocqueville’s genius-inspired old prophecy (see Epigraph #2 above). “Forgive the Russians” as America’s policy toward Russia was an incredibly demeaning slap in the face of the once and future contender on the world stage, as becomes quite obvious in the light of my two boxers metaphor.

Going back to where we started, my 1984 article’s title was Competition, not Confrontation. The point of the article was to insist that Soviet participation in the Los Angeles Olympics was politically too important, to allow the boycott to succeed. I pointed out that there was a loophole in the language of the boycott, which made it possible to save the games from the fate of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

The 1984 Soviet Olympic Boycott was commonly understood in the West as a retaliation for the American boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow (in line with President Carter’s explicit condemnation of the 1979 Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan). But the Russians, understandably, did not explicitly call their boycott a retaliation, but cited serious security concerns for the Soviet athletes and other members of the Olympic Delegation, in the existing atmosphere of “chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States.” I therefore wrote that President Reagan could easily put an end to this nonsense by personally inviting the Russians to participate in the Games, and saying something to the effect that the United States guaranteed the security of every member of the Soviet delegation...

“You can do it, Mr. President, and they will come!” was the last sentence of my article, edited out by the publisher.

Anyway, my advice wasn’t followed, and they did not come.