The West's Cognitive Catastrophe Towards Eastern Europe

The Telegraph (UK) published an opinion piece "Does Russia think it should follow any rules at all? And if not, what should we do about it?" by Charles Crawford on October 27, 2016. The author considers the problem of Russia not following any rules at all.

Not so long ago, it was all very different. In the early years after the Cold War ended and Russia claimed its independence, London and Moscow made a genuine effort both to cooperate across the board and to bring a new tone to that cooperation. I helped draft the new treaty signed in 1992 by Prime Minister John Major and Russia’s President Yeltsin proclaiming bilateral peace and friendship:
"The Parties shall develop their relations in good faith. They declare their commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes, to an open society, to democratic principles and respect for human rights and the rule of law…"
Russian and Western diplomats sat together around the world, closely coordinating positions on the Balkan imbroglio and other policy hotspots. Everyone listened to everyone else and tried to hammer out good joint positions. Things were, for most practical purposes, normal.

This fragment summarizes succintly the type of thinking prevalent in the West regarding relations with Russia. However, the Cold War has not ended. Deception in the communist countries of Eastern Europe, including Russia, continued, entering a new stage: the simulation of democracy and seemingly friendly relations with the West.

Using technical language one may say that Western observers of Eastern Europe were unable to disntinguish between the signal and the noise.

At the end of 1980s the Communists pretended that they lost control of the situation, gave up power and made a transition to democracy. This has taken Western experts completely by surprise. There were no signs that Communism in Eastern Europe would fall apart so suddenly and so easily. The West joyfully declared that the countries of NATO won the Cold War despite the lack of a credible explanation how it really happened.

The situation at the threshold of 1980s/1990s was symbolized by the phrase used by Francis Fukuyama in the title of his book "The End of History" (the full title is "The End of History and the Last Man") in 1993.

It is useful in this context to remind of the following quote from The Red Sword, newspaper of VCheKa troops in Bolshevik Russia:

We do not have and cannot have old foundations of moral and "humanism", invented by the bourgeoisie . . . We are allowed to do anything.

Letter of Malgorzata Gluchowska to President of Poland February 13, 2013

We do not have and cannot have old foundations of moral and "humanism", invented by the bourgeoisie . . . We are allowed to do anything.

The Red Sword, newspaper of VCheKa troops in Bolshevik Russia

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Malgorzata Głuchowska
Zielona Góra
Poland

Bronislaw Komorowski

President of Poland

ul. Wiejska 10

00-902 Warszawa

Poland

Dear Mr. President,

This letter is a continuation of my letters to you of October 14, 2012, and December 13, 2012.

The phenomenon I describe is a social problem, not a individual case. I would like to present methods of an organized group aimed at liquidating a person as a social being and thoroug annihilation of her psyche with a possibility of causing the person's suicide. In other words, I would like to present the process of the killing of the person's soul.

The entire process is described in detail in documentation spanning several volumes, gathered from the very beginning of these extraordinary and tragic events. Significant part of this documentation is located in the building standing across the street from the presidential palace: in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

[the original Polish text of the letter is here]

CIA shared its most secret intelligence with Moscow via pope JPII

When Ronald Reagan was elected US President in 1980, he hired William C. Casey as CIA Director. Casey has been involved in OSS, the CIA predecessor, during WWII and its immediate aftermath. Later he was a successful businessman.

Casey visited the pope John Paul II in the Vatican early in the Reagan administration. In the following years CIA delivered its most detailed information on Poland and other matters relevant to Wojtyła and the Holy See.

Beginning in the spring of 1981, the Reagan administration maintained an intelligence shuttle at the highest level between the White House and the pope, who was regularly briefed by Casey and Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director. Between them, Walters and Casey visited the pope about fifteen times over a six-year period to discuss matters of mutual interest.
The pope's judgments, especially concerning Poland and Central America, came to carry real weight in the White House, the CIA, and the NSC, and above all with Ronald Reagan himself. [...]
Meanwhile, the pope was the beneficiary of some of America's most carefully guarded secrets and sophisticated analysis: information from satellites, from intelligence agents, from electronic eavesdropping, from policy discussions at the White House, State Department, and the CIA. Between 1981 and 1988, General Walters says he met with the pope at approximately six-month intervals, briefing Wojtyła on virtually every aspect of American policy and providing intelligence assessments - military, political, economic - on any and all subjects of interest to the Vatican.

Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness, Doubleday 1996, p. 269

Thus the American administration and the CIA delivered its most secret intelligence and policy analysis straight into Moscow's hands. Communist intelligence, mainly Moscow- and Warsaw-based duped the Americans with any kind nonsense they chose. This is one of the most significant intelligence and political failures in history. A disaster in every respect. Wojtyła was a functionary of the communist intelligence.