The cheapest, easiest, most reliable –and the vilest – way for a government and its leaders to assure the support of its citizens is to have an enemy. If the nation doesn’t already have a big, fearsome enemy, then the government can always invent one. The bigger, more dangerous and frightening the better. All nations do this. The good old U.S. of A. is particularly adept at this national game.
Preaching a message of Us vs. Them, especially if you can persuade folks to believe that They pose an imminent, existential threat to Us, is the simple, time-tested method of rallying people around the flag and stirring patriotic loyalty to the nation-state. Civil religion is the sharpest hoe for plowing this national field. It doesn’t require much thought from either side, and religious messages – whether civil or uncivil – always cut the deepest.
In fact, the process is downright magical. Religious leaders, especially preachers, are the most adept practitioners of this art of fear-mongering, but precious few presidents, senators or congress-persons have ever been
capable of saying “No” to the mystical powers of simple enemy-conjuring.
In fact, this is a guaranteed method for any nation-state hoping to convince its young men and women to sacrifice their lives on a foreign battlefield, typically a place they have never heard of before, while hating an enemy they don’t know, have never seen, and can only conceive of through the lens of the dehumanizing propaganda dished out to them in basic training – or the nightly news.
Take the latest enemy all Americans are supposed to fear: Russia and the Bear incarnate, Vladimir Putin.
I will not take on the near-hysterical “Russia-meddling in our elections” story here. (Let me just say that I am standing with journalists like Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, and Aaron Maté who still refuse to jump 
onto that bandwagon until we are provided with evidence that any such thing actually occurred. So far, we have only been shown accusations dressed up like evidence. I will also note that members of the important watchdog group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, such as Ray McGovern and William Binney have written extensively on this subject, an area with which they are intimately familiar, and they generally come to the same conclusion. Please, check out their arguments.)
Below I have links to 2 interviews of Professor Steven Cohen.
Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Please take a few minutes to watch and listen. Part 2 especially addresses US culpability in damaging our relationship with Russia.
Cohen is professor of Russian studies at New York University. He is also emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University. He has spent much of his life working in the Soviet Union/Russia. He is a lifelong student of Russian political history. I have read many of his articles, but most recently I read his fascinating book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (Columbia, 2009). The book’s final 3 chapters, The Fate of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s Lost Legacies, and Who Lost the Post-Soviet Peace? are especially pertinent to today’s anti-Russia headlines.
You won’t see Prof. Cohen interviewed on corporate news outlets because he is a man of principle who, as any true academic will tell you, bases his arguments on facts and evidence. He doesn’t toe the popular line. He won’t repeat the standard fear-mongering charges of US politicians, bipartisan Russia-phobes (the Democrats and so-called liberals have gone around the bend!) and the network talking-heads.
In fact, Cohen presciently warns about the very real dangers of today’s 
McCarthyite atmosphere — he calls it a New Cold War more dangerous than the last — where anyone who thinks it is a good idea to talk with Russia and to build a positive, cooperative relationship with the world’s other nuclear super-power can only be a Putin stooge. He also explains why Russia has very good reason to see the United States as an aggressor.
If we are in the midst of a new Cold War, it was begun by the USA not by Russia.
Russia need not be our enemy. In fact, there is every reason for us to work together as allies. If that is not the case, it is our own fault. We need to own
up to and make amends for the many ways the USA has trashed its relationship with Russia by breaking our promises and betraying their trust.
Christians, too, should be deeply concerned about matters of facts, truth, maintaining peace, and building friendships rather than antagonisms. I do not believe that these are the concerns motivating president Trump’s overtures to Vladimir Putin. I suspect that his friendship with Putin has everything to do with his deep financial ties and indebtedness to the Russian mafia, otherwise known as the oligarchs. (See the books by David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America). But, whatever his motives, positive overtures to Russia is the one sensible thing Trump has done.
I encourage God’s people to pray and to think critically before jumping on anyone’s political bandwagon. Pray for diminishing tensions that will help to ensure peace. Pray for national humility. We need to confess our many national sins that have made the Russians skeptical of our intentions…with good reason.
God loves Russia and the Russian people as much as anyone else. We are not His favorites.
