Читать книгу The Story of Putin - United States Department of Defense - Страница 13

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Chapter II will offer a thorough examination of the central character in this thesis: Vladimir Putin. An analysis shall be made regarding Putin’s personal history from a modest childhood upbringing to eventual twenty-first century global strongman. Special focus shall be offered regarding his adulthood experience within the Soviet Union and his tenure within the anti-Western paranoia-generating machine, namely the Committee for State Security, or KGB. The investigations shall then turn toward Putin’s post-Soviet-era experiences during the Yeltsin years culminating in Putin’s own ascendency to the pinnacle of power within the Russian Federation.

This chapter will provide evidence that Vladimir Putin’s anti-Americanism over his lifetime has been a consistent personal attribute, even if temporarily behind-the-scenes given fluctuations in official Russian government attitude toward the United States. According to Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, and Ivan Krastev, anti-Americanism represents a wide mental propensity to negatively view all aspects of America and American society.1 This study of Putinist anti-Americanism, therefore, will not be reduced to any single isolated incident of criticism or opposition to a particular U.S. policy or action. Rather, an extended pattern of animosity in rhetoric and actions will be observable. Putin has always been innately anti-American based on his earlier history. The vehemence of his anti-Americanism, as measured by the frequency of anti-American rhetoric and policy actions, seems to fluctuate over the course of his tenure on the global scene. The roots of his anti-Americanism, nevertheless, run too deep, formed in his early adulthood, ossified before his rise to power, and eventually displayed in earnest while in power.

1 Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, Anti-Americanism in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 12; Ivan Krastev, “The Anti-American Century,” Journal of Democracy 15, no 2 (April 2004): 7.