I'm a US citizen who's lived more than three decades in five European countries since 1976 and speak 8 European languages, 4 with talk in your sleep fluency. Whether this makes me more or less qualified to comment on European unity than a Russian genocide apologist from Brexited Britain I let readers to decide.
First, Europe committed nationalism-induced suicide twice in the 20th century, saved both times by intervention Americans would have preferred remained unnecessary. See Lend Lease and Stalin's toast to American war production in Tehran in November 1943 for how the US saved the USSR in WWII.
Second, the cold war was a war and one side won and the other, the USSR bankrupted by $10/barrel oil and spending 15% of its GDP on the military, lost. The outcome, the top-down Russian, Belarussian and Ukrainian dissolution of the USSR of December 8, 1991, only partially de-imperialized the Russia empire, preventing the Tatars, Chechens, Dagestanis, Bashkiris and 100+ other subjugated peoples from joining the 1991 "parade of sovereignties". The problem in Russia uniting with Europe isn't US imperialism, it's the incomplete de-imperialization of Russia that began in 1917 and resumed in 1991.
The US certainly inherited the British strategy of allowing no single power to dominate the European continent after Britain confessed to US treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau in December 1940 that it was bankrupt. See Clive Ponting's 1990 book "1940: Myth and Reality" for this story of simultaneous empire-building and demolition.
After the war it was Stalin who turned down the Marshall Plan, not the US that excluded the USSR from it. Or maybe the Berlin blockade and resulting airlift in 1948 wasn't Stalin's fault, but the Americans'? Maybe the 1961-built wall that turned East Germany into a prison was also the fault of US imperialism?
As always in Russia, it's autocratic regime preservation that supersedes national interest. How that's compatible with unification with a liberal, democratic Europe is beyond my understanding. But perhaps Mr. Wight could explain to me how this mix of geopolitical oil and water would work?
Monnet's vision came from the Manifesto di Ventotene inspired by Altiero Spinelli and his politically heterodox comrades in confino (exile) on the Italian island of Ventotene during WWII. It was published just before Italy's surrender in September 1943. (https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/eu-pioneers/altiero-spinelli_en)
Last I heard the US didn't yet exist when Russia began its repressions of Ukrainian culture, language and identity in the 18th century, redefining Ukrainians as "Little Russians", adding the bigotry-laden term "kholki" later. When the Tsars Crimean Loser 1.0 Nicholas I, Alexander II and III banned the Ukrainian language and media, the US was on the edge of or in or recovering from a civil war.
Russia's anti-western turn is a mafia with a flag kleptocracy regime-preservation operation made in Russia, not the USA. Its roots long predate the existence of the USA and lie in the gap between Russia's aspiration to parity with a more powerful West and its real capacity to realize those ambitions. Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin says it better than I can:
"Is Russia inherently imperialist and expansionist? Must Russia by some innate cultural
or civilizational trait seek to conquer its neighbors. No Russian aggression is not innate. It is a choice and Russia's rulers could make different choices. Russian aggression stems from what I call Russia's geopolitical conundrum. Russians, especially elites in Russia, have long harbored an abiding sense of living in a providential country. But for half a millennium Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country's capabilities.
Russia strives to be a great power of the first rank but finds again and again that Western countries are more powerful. This spurs resentment towards the West for supposedly under-appreciating Russia's uniqueness and importance. It also spurs attempts to manage or even even overcome the gap with the more powerful West. Russia's rulers invariably look to the state as their instrument to manage or close the gap with the West they impose coercive state-led modernization to try to beat Russia into being more competitive while also trying to undermine Western power and unity and as a result this quest for a strong state however invariably devolves into the personal rule of a single individual.
One thinks of the tsarist autocrats from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to the Alexanders and the Nicholases and the Communist General secretaries such as Lenin and Stalin down to today's imitator of the czars, Vladimir Putin. Instead of getting a strong state, Russia gets a would-be despot who conflates his personal interests with Russian national interests and conflates the survival of his personal regime with the survival of Russia. And so despite all the differences over time between czarist Russia the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, this pattern has held in a paradox. The efforts to build a strong State have invariably led to subverted institutions and capricious personalistic rule which is only worse than the very geopolitical conundrum falling behind the West it was supposed to fix.
The danger for Russia's neighbors has been evident. Russia has no natural borders except the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean and to an extent the enormous mountain range in Russia's South stretching from the Caucasus to the Himalayas. Russian security has thus traditionally been partly predicated on moving outward in the name of preempting external attack to seize its neighbors before Western countries could use them as supposed springboards for invasion of Russia. Today too smaller countries on Russia's borders are viewed less as potential friends than as potential beachheads for enemies. In fact this sentiment was only strengthened by the Soviet collapse, as has been made abundantly clear. President Putin and many others among Russia's elites do not recognize the existence of a Ukrainian Nation separate from a Russian one. He views all states on Russia's borders now including
independent Ukraine as weapons in the hands of Western Powers intent on wielding them against Russia. Russia's foreign policy orientation in other words is almost a condition A syndrome but to repeat, it is ultimately a choice. If Russian Elites could somehow relinquish their unwinnable competition with the West and acknowledge that Russia not only cannot but need not be an absolute great power of the first rank, they could set their country on a less costly more promising course. In this connection we can think of Britain and France in the first instance and the Netherlands and Portugal to a lesser extent. Although all those cases involved overseas Empires we can also think of Nazi Germany and Hirohito’s Japan, which were crushed in war.
Until Russia brings its aspirations into line with its actual capabilities it will not become a quote normal country even if it can somehow recover. The rise in its per capita GDP experienced in the early years of Putin's rule whether even a transformed Russia would be accepted into and merge well with Europe is an open question. But the start of the process would need to be a Russian leadership able to get its public to accept permanent retrenchment and agree to embark on an arduous domestic restructuring."
