Is Russia, Like the US, Suffering From National PTSD?

There is no excusing Russia's outrageous aggression against Ukraine, but this shouldn't rule out efforts to understand its possible roots.

In a recent column I suggested that U.S. foreign policy for the last several decades could be the result of national Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Russia is also a prime candidate for this diagnosis.

As I explained earlier:

"PTSD is 'a disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.'

"According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms can include being easily startled or frightened, always being on guard for danger, and aggressive behavior. Many American soldiers have been diagnosed with this troubling condition after returning from our recent wars."

Many terrifying events might have contributed to American PTSD , including the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, World War II, the atomic bomb, the Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957, and, especially, 9/11.

Our unsuccessful, unwise wars and foreign policy since 9/11 seem to fit the pattern described by the Mayo Clinic for PTSD in individuals: "easily startled," "always on guard," "aggressive behavior."

Our national trauma has produced huge overspending on military defense and inadequate spending on non-military dangers like pandemics and climate degradation.

According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, U.S. military spending is more than the next 11 countries combined.

Russia, too, could well be suffering suffering from national PTSD. Since the Communist takeover in 1917 the country has experienced catastrophe after catastrophe.

The revolution itself, the subsequent civil war, the famine caused by Joseph Stalin's "collectivization" of the farms, the bloody purges and mass incarceration in The Gulag Archipelago, and the repression of churches all come to mind as traumatizing events. And World War II was even harder on Russia than on the U.S.

An elderly friend lived through World War II in the Soviet Union. She tells me that the May 9th commemoration of that war's end — still a major event in Russia — has always been her favorite holiday.

The Soviet breakup in 1991, which Vladimir Putin accurately called "a major geopolitical catastrophe," and the decade of unemployment, inflation and chaos which followed before Putin came to power only added to the national stress.

Putin's comment about the crackup of the U.S.S.R. is often mistranslated as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century," but however we assess it, it dealt a terrific blow to the Russian national psyche.

Vladimir Putin could be genuinely nervous about the potential threat to Russia posed by NATO's expansion into the former Soviet satellite countries and by its refusal to promise not to add Ukraine to its membership.

He could also be reflecting resentment of the country's decreased world status by Russia's political elite.

We may believe that NATO is strictly defensive and structurally incapable of aggression, but Americans and American leaders are not themselves immune from overreacting to the danger posed by foreign countries.

Our obsession with North Korea and Iran, neither of which would be crazy enough to attack us with atomic weapons, proves this. Our expansion of NATO — originally designed to protect Western Europe from a Soviet attack — since the crackup of the Soviet Union is probably a result of our own national PTSD.

Leaders in both the U.S. and Russia need to make allowances for the psychological factors underlying the foreign policies of each other. This will not be easy, since both the leaders and the people they govern may be succumbing to confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias exists when people are more sensitive to information or experience which reinforces their current opinions than they are to information or experience suggesting they need to reconsider.

The last thing we all need is for the U.S. and Russia to allow our national PTSD (if my "diagnosis" is correct) to impel us into unnecessary conflict which, if it gets out of control, could only make the PTSD in both countries even worse.

Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse's Reports — More Here.