History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, as Karl Marx said, but many in the West - especially among the American foreign policy elite - prefer to forget the historical dimension when evaluating alternatives or choosing policies that can never be separated from their history.
Some attribute the general neglect of the historical dimension among the Washington elite to the short life of the state and the American experience in general, which is less than 250 years.
Others believe that the nature of the periodic and recurring electoral process, whether at the level of the president every 4 years, or the Congress every two years, cuts off the continuity of politics towards many issues, ignoring its history, whether it is near or far.
Academic Fukuyama considered that human societies put an end to the development of ideological ideas with the spread of liberal democratic values, and that the Cold War ended with the victory of the West, and the demolition of the Berlin Wall to replace it with liberalism, democratic values and market economies in Eastern European countries.
Each administration begins its rule, which lasts only 4 or 8 years, with a general and comprehensive review of many issues and issues, on top of which is the "National Security Strategy", and its contents by identifying the main threats in the eyes of this or that administration.
The president's broad powers - in choosing the names of the occupants of more than two thousand government positions and dismissing them with close associates of the president - add some "discontinuity" to many important issues.
In a few cases, the American elite recalls history, especially when it provides a moral formula for adopting unjust policies, as is the case with the Palestinian cause by recalling the experience of the Holocaust, whose victims were millions of European Jews.
33 years ago, the Japanese-American academic Francis Fukuyama wrote in 1989 an article entitled "The End of History" in the magazine "The National Interest", and then published a book in 1992 with the same name, in which he said that "the era of tyranny and totalitarian regimes is over." It ended irreversibly with the end of the Cold War and the demolition of the Berlin Wall, to be replaced by liberalism, democratic values and market economies.
Fukuyama considered that human societies put an end to the development of ideological ideas with the spread of liberal democratic values, and that the Cold War ended with the victory of the West, and the demolition of the Berlin Wall to replace it with liberalism, democratic values and market economies in Eastern European countries.
Fukuyama's theory gave a powerful boost to the belief of the American elite that the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of an ideological struggle with the indisputable establishment of Western liberal democracy as the final ideological stage of human evolution.
From here, Washington preached the Western liberal model, and imagined that there was no other direction in which history could go.
It should not be understood from the end of history that events have stopped, but rather the struggles that push history forward.
The Russians do not see the matter in this way. A Russian diplomat working in his country’s embassy in Washington told me that “the real dilemma in our relationship with the United States revolves around their belief that the Cold War ended with their victory and our defeat, and accordingly they adopt the behavior of the victor and expect the behavior of the defeated.”
The Russian diplomat adds, "We see that the Cold War ended without fire, without a victor or a defeated," and this is the essence of the differences between Moscow and Washington on many global issues, especially the fate of Ukraine.
In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the American elite does not remember the recent history of the roots of the conflict, which led Russia to violate the rules of international law and violate the sovereignty of a neighboring independent state, which undoubtedly causes human tragedies, deaths and millions of suffering.
And when some American thinkers invoke history, in an attempt to provide a different reading from what I consider the “herd reading” that dominates the Western media, it opens the door to a hell of irrational criticism and attack.
It is now happening with the eminent Professor John Mearsheimer, who disassembled the crisis of the invasion of Ukraine from a historical perspective with the help of theories of the behavior of major powers.
In an interview with The Atlantic, published a few days ago, Mearsheimer attributed all the troubles of Ukraine to the NATO summit that was held in Bucharest in April 2008.
At this summit, NATO issued a statement saying that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO.
The Russians made it clear at the time that they viewed this step as an existential threat.
Washington ignored the concerns of the Russians, and began steps to include Ukraine in the Western alliance, studying its future annexation to the European Union, and supporting the transformation of Ukraine into a liberal democracy loyal to the United States. Mearsheimer reiterated that Moscow considered this an existential threat.
The American elite does not recall that the start of the Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border began after Kyiv and Washington signed the "Strategic Partnership Charter" on the tenth of last November, which confirmed America's support for Ukraine's right to enter NATO, which encouraged the Kyiv government to confirm Her desire to quickly join the largest military alliance in the world.
President Putin in one of his dimensions represents an authoritarian ruler like others around the world, but unlike the Chinese model, Putin failed during his 22 years of rule to bring about a renaissance in his country, whether technologically, economically or politically.
Today, the Russian economy represents only 7% of the size of the American economy, and Russia is no different from other rentier countries that depend on selling energy sources such as gas and oil.
The size of the Russian national product is less than 2 trillion dollars, which is close to that of middle countries such as Spain or Italy, or even one US state such as Texas.
At the same time, the average income of a Russian citizen is $10,000 annually, while his American counterpart is more than $60,000.
But at the same time, Russia possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons and is only ahead of the United States in this regard.
During a speech days after his country's forces invaded Ukraine, Putin unleashed a torrent of threats to the West and the United States.
Putin surprised the world by addressing nuclear weapons and history.
"Anyone who tries to get in our way, much less try to threaten us and our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate, and will lead to consequences of the kind you have not experienced before in your history," he said.
These were not the words of an aggressor calling on the West to let it settle its scores with its weaker neighbor. Rather, it was a cry addressed to Washington's ears, that history should not be ignored.