The Roots of the U.S.-Russia Rivalry

Yves here. While this John Ruehl article gives a useful long historical view of US-Russia relations, I find its extreme underplaying of the impact of what we Americans like to call the Communist Revolution on the US posture towards Russia to be bizarre. The US had long been crassly mercenary, as recounted long form by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. In keeping a big factor that depending on your view of FDR, either enabled or propelled him to make reforms that benefitted ordinary worker was the rise of the Communist-sympathetic CIO, as in if FDR did not make…