Our Asinine Russia Policy: Dump the Singers, Keep the Oil

T here was a time during America’s war in Iraq when Americans traveling to Europe had to endure occasional eye rolls, sighs, and unwelcome political commentary from the locals. I remember enduring just a little of this myself and talking to others who had endured it.

I believed the war was a blunder, that George W. Bush was a fool, and that America had kicked over a hornet’s nest in the Middle East, one that continued stinging us and others long after Bush had left office. But when in a foreign country, hearing even an echo of my own sentiments said to me imperiously in a foreign accent, my instinct was not to agree and curry favor, or protest that I’m one of the “good Americans,” but to defend my country and my countrymen.

You think George W. Bush is a fool? I know what a fool he is — but he’s our fool. Our foolishness was good enough to bring peace to Europe decades ago and finally end your violent, destructive, world-threatening folly. Look at your leaders: Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder. Poseurs. These are men who pretend to have responsibility on this ruin of a continent, which you no longer deserve, and which is kept safe, like a museum, by nearly a hundred U.S. installations and depots. You’re protected by the very weapons and institutions you pretend to scorn. You sleep well because of young men who feel ready to give their lives when they hear “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Your criticisms of Bush and America are nothing but a mistranslation of our criticisms of him. I will not hear them from you, and I will not please you by repeating them back to you. Criticizing the American government is my job, as an American citizen, and I’ll do it at home. You can have your opinions among yourselves, but around me, just be grateful we saved you from Hitler and then kept Stalin east of the Elbe.

There is something natural about defending your nation when abroad, even when you accept the criticisms of your country or its leaders at home.

And we know there are many Russians who accept the criticism of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This is why I’m appalled at the moral hysteria we are seeing in America and Europe aimed at Russians as a whole. Ordinary and extraordinary Russians. Political and nonpolitical Russians. A Tory MP, Roger Gale, argued that every single Russian national currently in the United Kingdom should have their visa revoked and face immediate deportation to Russia. California’s representative Eric Swalwell, who allegedly had trouble kicking a Chinese spy out of his bed, has proposed the immediate expulsion and deportation of every Russian student in the United States.

All sorts of bizarre anti-Russian gestures are being made, including the erasure of the Russian National Team from video games made by EA Sports. (There are many World War II video games where you can play as the Wehrmacht.) Then there is the removal of all Russian vodka from state-run liquor stores in New Hampshire. Why? What did Russian vodka ever do to us that wasn’t promised on the bottle itself? Also, many of the companies that make money from Russian vodka aren’t even Russian companies.

But most embarrassing of all is the exile of Russians from the world of performing arts. Last week, it was one of the world’s leading conductors, Valery Gergiev. He lost his appointments in New York, London, and Munich. And now, over the weekend, it is reported that one of the greatest sopranos in the world, Anna Netrebko, has been ousted from the Metropolitan Opera. She will be replaced in an upcoming production of Turandot by a Ukrainian, Liudmyla Monastyrska.

Gergiev and Netrebko  were specifically asked to denounce Vladimir Putin by their institutions. Make this political statement under duress — or lose your job. Those who defend these defenestrations are quick to note that Gergiev and Netrebko have both supported Putin explicitly in the past. Gergiev has campaigned with Putin and defended his record to the West, saying that Putin had saved Russia from the depths of national humiliation and squalor in the 1990s. Netrebko, more hilariously, said over a decade ago that she had only met Putin twice, briefly, but that she admired his strong “male energy” and would have “loved to have been” his lover. Netrebko has also, in recent years, criticized the Ukrainian government for killing Russian nationals in eastern Ukraine.

Why should these two supreme talents lose their jobs — and ultimately their professional reputations — for refusing to criticize, on foreign soil, the government of the nation in which both are likely to make their retirements and be buried someday? Neither of them were presently making themselves obnoxious to the public with jingoistic displays of support that would offend the patrons and ticket-buyers of their institutions. If America believes what it claims about Putin — that he’s a dictator who murders and illegally suppresses dissent — should we not understand a certain reticence among Russian residents to denounce this government, one that half-cocked politicians are threatening to deport them to anyway out of nothing but ethnic spite?

Meanwhile, while the American public takes out their anger on bottles of vodka and supremely talented Russian nationals, the United States, Germany, and much of Europe continue to buy Russia’s cheap oil and gas, doing more each day to fill Russia’s war coffers than anything a conductor and soprano could do in 1,000 lifetimes. All the plans for reducing our reliance on Russia’s chief export are for years in the future.

None of this helps Ukraine. It is indulgent and small-minded and will convince the Russian public that we are hypocrites, false liberals, and simple haters.