Putin's Wars (11 page)
What—in the end—remains as a justification for a renewed Russian imperialism vis-à-vis
the former Soviet republics is not much more than the naked Russian
state
interest. I am referring here deliberately to the Russian
state
interest and not to the Russian
national
interest, because the new Russian imperialism is clearly in the interest of Russia’s
ruling political and military elite, whose positions are strengthened and consolidated
by a neoimperialist policy. However, this policy is not in the interest of the average
Russian citizen. And this is
a forteriori
the case for the citizens of the other former Soviet republics. Mongrenier spoke
in this context of an “ideology of power for the sake of power.”
[32]
Another French geopolitician wrote that “Pragmatism is one of the characteristics
of the Russian foreign policy of our early twenty-first century: a pragmatic quest
for power characterized by coercive methods and an absence of morals.”
[33]
“Power for the sake of power,” “absence of morals”: it is clear that we
have
here a legitimation theory: it is the old social Darwinism of the end of the nineteenth
century, the right claimed by the strong to dominate the weak for the sole reason
that he is stronger.
Russia’s return to power politics had already started under Yeltsin, who demanded
from the West a
droit de regard
in its “Near Abroad,” which came close to reestablishing the old Brezhnev doctrine
of “limited sovereignty.” The West, however, did not give in to these demands. An
overt neoimperial policy would also contradict the liberal democratic principles that
Russia at that time still claimed to share with the West. Under Putin the principles
of Russian democracy have been fundamentally changed. Russia no longer adheres to
a Western-style liberal democracy with fair elections and the alternation of power.
It has introduced “sovereign” democracy. This concept, forged by Vladislav Surkov,
Putin’s former deputy head of the presidential administration, means that “democracy”
is no longer a universal concept, the reality of which can be measured by applying
universal criteria that are valid in different countries. On the contrary, “sovereign”
democracy means that Russia (i.e., the leadership) itself can determine whether its
system fulfills the democratic criteria. The regime is, therefore, immune against
criticism from international organizations, foreign governments, or human rights organizations.
We are here back at the “Russian specificity,” proclaimed in the nineteenth century
by Russian Slavophiles, for whom Russia was a special and incomparable country with
its own, unique nationhood (
narodnost
). Initially, Putin’s “sovereign democracy” was only conceived as a
defensive
concept against the universalist, Western interpretations of democracy, which made
the Russian democratic praxis vulnerable to criticism. Recently, however, sovereign
democracy has become an
offensive
concept in the ideological war with the West. Russia considers itself the vanguard
of an anti-Western alliance of sovereign democracies (read: autocracies with pseudo-democratic
façades). A second pillar of the new Kremlin ideology is the “power vertical,” a euphemism
for an authoritarian top-down government. These two pillars are complemented by a
third ideological pillar, which is the Orthodox religion, which has been given a prominent
place by the regime in recent years. Surprisingly, this new ideological triad closely
resembles the famous nineteenth-century triad Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Narodnost of Sergey
Uvarov, the Minister of Education of the reactionary tsar Nicholas I. Orthodoxy has
regained its former status of semistate ideology. Autocracy has found its modern translation
in the “power vertical,” and Narodnost, expressing a unique Russian specificity, has
become “sovereign democracy.” These have become the three ideological pillars of Russia’s
internal policy. They combine seamlessly with the renewed social Darwinism of Russia’s
foreign policy. Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, wrote:
A paradoxical situation has emerged in Russian politics today. The élite, and society
at large, holds predominantly outmoded ideological notions which surfaced when the
layer of communist ideology was removed. Take, for instance, the invented dilemma
of “who to be friends with”—the East or the West—which echoes the futile and mainly
fabricated arguments of irreconcilable people. . . . This also comes from the lack
of a modern vision of the world in the absence of the all-embracing communist idea.
Society and the élite have not succeeded in borrowing to any significant degree either
Western liberalism or Western social democratic ideas. What we have instead are ideas
about a 19th century model of a great power which, unlike communist and liberal ideologies,
have nothing useful or practical for the sphere of foreign policy, and moreover, lack
an international element.
[34]
Luzhkov, although himself not exactly an example of a “crystal clear democrat,” has
identified very clearly here the weak spot of present day Russia: the ideological
void and, especially, the lack of an international (read: universal) element.
Vicken Cheterian,
War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier
(London: Hurst & Company, 2008), 220.
Igor Yakovenko, “Ukraina i Rossiya: suzhety sootnesennosti,”
Vestnik Evropy
26, no. 64 (2005).
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,”
Foreign Affairs
73, no. 2 (1994), 72.
It is not correct, therefore, to speak of an American “empire” as, for instance, the
Marxist economists Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy did in their book
Monopoly Capital
(1968). They wrote: “Legitimate differences of opinion will of course exist as to
whether this or that country should be counted as belonging to the American empire.
We offer the following list as being on the conservative side: The United States itself
and a few colonial possessions (notably Puerto Rico and the Pacific islands); all
Latin American countries except Cuba; Canada; four countries in the Near and Middle
East (Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran); four countries in South and South-East
Asia (Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, and South Vietnam); two countries in East
Asia (South Korea and Formosa); two countries in Africa (Liberia and Libya); and one
country in Europe (Greece).” (Paul A. Baran, and Paul M. Sweezy.
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 183.) Clearly this hotchpotch of sovereign countries
does not make an empire. Alexander Motyl’s description of the relationship of the
United States with many Latin American countries as a “hegemonic
nonimperial
relationship” comes closer to the reality. (Alexander J. Motyl,
Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 20 (emphasis mine).)
Charles Tilly, “How Empires End,” in
After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the
Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires
, eds. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 7 (emphasis
mine).
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.
Manuel Castells,
The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Volume II: The Power of Identity
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 37.
In 1990 Estonia’s per capita GDP was 119.3 percent, and Latvia’s 107.5 percent of
Russia’s. (Source:
Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR
, Studies of Economies in Transformation, Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: The World Bank,
1992), 4–5 and 14–15). This also occurred sometimes in other colonial empires. Piers
Brendon, for instance, indicated that Hong Kong, at the time of its handover to China
in 1997, had “£37 billion in reserves and inhabitants who were richer per capita than
those of the United Kingdom.” (Piers Brendon,
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997
(London: Vintage Books, 2008), 655.)
The figures for 1991 for the other republics are: Armenia 17.1 percent, Belarus 16.3
percent, Kazakhstan 23.1 percent, Turkmenistan 21.7 percent, and Ukraine 5.9 percent
(
Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR
, 14–15). This dependence on the Union Budget could be one of the factors that explain
the Central Asian republics’ initial, sometimes almost reluctant, attitude to “accepting”
their independence in 1991.
The Russian situation resembled, therefore, that of the British in India, of which
A. N. Wilson wrote: “[T]he British incursion into India, which had begun as a profit-making
enterprise for merchants, had become a drain on British resources.” (A. N. Wilson,
After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 489.)
Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations,
Volume II, with an introduction by Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman (London: Dent Dutton,
1971), 112–113.
In 1881, for instance, the Earl of Dunraven wrote: “The future of England certainly
depends upon her relationship with her colonies. She may remain the centre of a great
empire, or become a small, scantily populated, and unimportant kingdom.” A prospect
that was considered totally unacceptable by the author: “British possessions will
remain British as long as we can hold them, by force if necessary.” (The Earl of Dunraven,
“The Revolutionary Party,” August 1881, in Michael Goodwin,
Nineteenth Century Opinion
, 272–273.)
Franz Cede, “The Post-Imperial Blues,”
The American Interest,
7, no. 2 (2011), 118.
Despite these doomsday prophecies the Netherlands experienced a protracted economic
boom after the loss of Indonesia. This certainly helped to assuage post-imperial pain,
but did not eradicate it. According to Thomas Beaufils, “In the Netherlands the workings
of memory still prove difficult . . . . Fifty years [!] is a too short period to hope
that wounds that are still open can be healed.” (Thomas Beaufils, “Le colonialisme
aux Indes néerlandaises,” in
Le livre noir du colonialisme: XVIe–XXIe siècle: de l’extermination à la repentance
, ed. Marc Ferro (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2003), 262.)
Yegor Gaidar,
Collapse of an Empire
, xiv. The same image was used by the Russian sociologist Yury Levada, who said: “The
phantom pain from the loss of the Soviet empire remains vivid, like an amputated limb
that one still feels.” (Quoted in Marie Jégo, Alexandre Billette, Natalie Nougayrède,
Sophie Shibab, and Piotr Smolar, “Autopsie d’un conflit,”
Le Monde
(August 31–September 1, 2008).)
Van Doorn,
Indische lessen
, 72.
Van Doorn,
Indische lessen
, 72.
Van Doorn,
Indische lessen
, 73.
Gaidar,
Collapse of an Empire
, xvi.
Gaidar,
Collapse of an Empire
, xvi.
Pitirim A. Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity: The Effects of War, Revolution, Famine, Pestilence upon
Human Mind, Behavior, Social Organization and Cultural Life
(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1946), 277. Sorokin was not the first to analyze
the different phases of revolutions, nor their immanent tendency toward restoration
of prerevolutionary trends. In his classic book,
The Anatomy of Revolution
(1938), Crane Brinton made a similar analysis. Sorokin, whose book was published
four years later (the first printing was in 1942), did not quote Brinton.
Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity
, 277.
Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity
, 277.
Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity
, 280.
Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity
, 284.
Sorokin,
Man and Society in Calamity
, 283.
Lilia Shevtsova,
Russia: Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007), 320.
F. A. Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 103.
Ulrich Beck, “Nation-States without Enemies: The Military and Democracy after the
End of the Cold War,” in
Democracy without Enemies
, ed. Ulrich Beck (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 143 (emphasis mine).
Gaidar,
Collapse of an Empire
, xiv.
Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier,
La Russie menace-t-elle l’Occident?
with a preface by Yves Lacoste (Paris: Choiseul, 2009), 202.
Mongrenier,
La Russie menace-t-elle l’Occident?
98.
Michel Guénec, “La Russie face à l’extension de l’OTAN en Europe,”
Hérodote
no. 129 (2008), 224.
Yuri M. Luzhkov,
The Renewal of History: Mankind in the 21st Century and the Future of
Russia
(London: Stacey International, 2003), 156 (emphasis mine).