America’s Origins of Russophobia
For those that grew up in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, the explosion of Russophobia over the past decade likely came as something of a surprise. A brief survey of the history of Russophobia, however, reveals that the decade and a half after the end of the Cold War was something of an anomaly in the past century and a half of American foreign policy, with a blend of inherited geopolitical fears and ideological tensions leading to a generally anti-Russian sentiment in Washington.
Our investigation begins with the so-called “Testament of Peter the Great.” An eighteenth century forgery of largely Polish origin, it purported to show, in the words of the University of London historian Orlando Figes, that the aims of Russian foreign policy were nothing less than world domination:
“… to expand on the Baltic and Black seas, to ally with the Austrians to expel the Turks from Europe, to conquer the Levant and control the trade to the Indies, to sow dissent and confusion in Europe and become the master of the European continent.”
First published in Napoleonic France in 1812, on the eve of the Grand Armée’s ill-fated invasion of Russia, it was to go on to provide the grist for many an English fear-monger’s mill.
In 1817, Sir Robert Wilson’s A Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia in the Year 1817 luridly detailed the military and geopolitical threat supposedly posed by Russia, and a decade later George de Lacy Evans’s On the Designs of Russia repeated these earlier warnings—both were favorably received by the public and among the ruling establishment, paranoid as ever about any potential threat to British control of India. Then, in 1834, the highly influential David Urquhart published his own pamphlet, England, France, Russia and Turkey, casting Russia as the perpetual antagonist to British interests in the Near East and Central Asia.
Not everyone was fooled, however. As noted by the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken, the great British liberals, such as Richard Cobden and John Bright, often opposed these characterizations and exaggerated threats. In turn, they were rewarded only with the scorn familiar to today’s scoffers. Indeed, the perception of Russia as a natural, age-old enemy became embedded in British geopolitical thought.
As the nineteenth century progressed, these ideas influenced American perspectives, particularly as the United States emerged as a power in its own right. Initially, U.S.-Russian relations were cordial, demonstrated by the Russian offer to aid the Union during the Civil War should Britain or France recognize the Confederacy, and by the sale of Alaska. However, this camaraderie began to erode in the final decades of the nineteenth century as American elites increasingly viewed Russia as a backwards autocracy at odds with the progress and democratic ideals of the United States.
The overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy and the seizure of power by the communists in 1917 would only further entrench this ideological divide—totalitarian communism being almost as at odds with the republican capitalism of the United States as the old Russian regime, but more dangerous for its apparently global revolutionary ambitions.
At the same time, the Rhodes Scholarship, established in 1902 and conceived by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, was bringing American elites into closer contact with British institutions and thinking. Many prominent U.S. policymakers would pass through Oxford, absorbing the geopolitical theories of figures like Halford Mackinder, who viewed Eurasian control as pivotal to global power.
Graduates of the Rhodes program, such as Stanley Hornbeck, who served as an advisor to longest running Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and J. William Fulbright, the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, carried this thinking into U.S. foreign policy—along with later Rhodes scholars like Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow.
Indeed, during this period, U.S. strategy came to mirror Britain’s in its suspicion of Russian ambitions. Mackinder’s work on the Heartland Theory influenced American realists like Nicholas Spykman, whose views would in turn inform the policies of John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. The synthesis of British and American grand strategies, marked by shared Russophobia, persisted throughout the Cold War, interrupted only by moments of detente.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked a brief period during which Russophobia seemed to wane. However, the resurgence of tensions over the past decade reflects the deep-rooted nature of these perceptions, which never fully dissipated. The influence of figures educated under British tutelage continued, with Rhodes scholars like Richard Haas and Strobe Talbott playing key roles in shaping U.S. foreign policy post-Cold War. Talbott, as Deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, was pivotal in crafting policies that expanded NATO, a move seen by Russia as a direct threat.
The resilience of Russophobia can also be viewed through the lens of American conservatism’s evolution. In Reclaiming the American Right, Justin Raimondo explored how the original Old Right, wary of foreign entanglements and empire-building, largely resisted the knee-jerk Russophobia that would later define the Cold War. Figures like Senator Robert Taft and journalist John T. Flynn saw anti-communism not as an invitation to global interventionism but as a principle grounded in American self-reliance and non-intervention. Raimondo argued that the transformation of conservatism in the post-World War II era—particularly with the rise of the neoconservatives—led to a more aggressive foreign policy, one that embraced Russophobia as both a geopolitical strategy and an ideological necessity.
This shift mirrored the integration of British geopolitical thinking into American policy circles, where Russia remained the perennial “other,” a rival to be contained or defeated. Raimondo’s analysis highlights how historical Russophobia, rooted in fears of Russian autocracy or expansionism, found new life under ideological pretexts—whether combating Soviet communism during the Cold War or resisting Russian influence in the post-Soviet era. As Raimondo reminds us, this hostility was as much about the ambitions of American policymakers as it was about any perceived Russian threat.
In conclusion, Russophobia in America did not arise from a vacuum but from a historical continuum that began with British anxieties and evolved through ideological, cultural, and geopolitical conflicts, and as a function of the domestic political incentive structures in Washington. This lineage of suspicion, and profitable fear mongering, has proven resilient, shaping policy and public perception for over two centuries, much to the detriment of (almost) all involved.
December 19, 2024 -
Posted by aletho |
Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Russia, UK, United States
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