Сергей Медведев - The Return of the Russian Leviathan

In the Russian understanding of geopolitics, the world consists of unitary states, all of which have their own ‘interests’ and political will and which exist in a Darwinian battle for resources. Vladimir Nabokov beautifully described this view of the world in his novel The Gift , using as an example a Russian émigré, Colonel Shchyogolev, who analyses the world from his couch:

Like many unpaid windbags, he thought that he could combine the reports he read in the papers by paid windbags into an orderly scheme… France was AFRAID of something or other, and therefore would never ALLOW it. England was AIMING at something. This statesman CRAVED a rapprochement, while that one wanted to increase his PRESTIGE. Someone was PLOTTING and someone was STRIVING for something. In short, the world Shchyogolev created came out as some kind of collection of limited, humourless, faceless and abstract bullies, and the more brains cunning and circumspection he found in their mutual activities the more stupid, vulgar and simple his world became. [28] Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift (Panther Books, St Albans, 1966; trans. Michael Scammell, pp. 148–9).

In reality, of course, everything is much more complicated than this. There is no unified ‘West’, or ‘Russia’ or ‘America’; nor are there any abstract ‘national interests’. There are the interests of Vladimir Putin and Igor Sechin (the President of the oil company, Rosneft); the interests of Putin’s friends, the Kovalchuk brothers and the Rotenberg brothers; the corporate interests of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the External Intelligence Service (SVR). There are the interests of the White House and the Pentagon; the interests of NATO, and of the [then] President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. Then there are the interests of corporations such as Siemens and Shell. In other words, there is a complicated multilayered configuration of strategies, institutions, bureaucracies, selfish intentions and fatal errors, all pulling in different directions. And there is no single point where these interests coincide, however much the lovers of these narrow theories might wish for it to be so. ‘Geopolitics’ in today’s Russia is simply an ideology that justifies imperial ambitions and the state’s priority over the individual in the allegedly eternal confrontation between Russia and the West in the battle for resources.

In actual fact, there is no competition for ‘Russian resources’; Russia is merely flattering itself thinking that there is. There is simply a normal concern that our country, like the Saudis, regularly produces oil, buys its iPhones and its cars from the West, and doesn’t interfere in the internal affairs of the West. Back home, as far as the West cares, Russians can carry out exorcisms or light the bonfires of the Inquisition. In the West, they gave up caring long ago about the state of democracy or human rights in Russia. And when a single ‘petrol pump which pretends to be a country’ (in the very apt words of Senator John McCain) suddenly starts to kick up a fuss by saying it has been insulted, and takes out its offence on those around it, the West simply sees it as a fire or health hazard and puts it into quarantine.

The fiasco in Ukraine is a good example of how Russia, acting upon its geopolitical fears and myths (a fear of strategic encirclement, Ukraine joining NATO or the European Union), rather than on a rational assessment of the risks and advantages, has forced itself into a trap. Moscow turned its fears into self-fulfilling prophecies: by annexing Crimea and starting a war with Ukraine it simply pushed Ukraine into the embrace of the EU and NATO, wrenching away from itself and embittering a formerly fraternal people. Russia has shot itself in the foot, leaving the West simply to look on in amazement at what Russia is doing, and then gave itself a headache about what to do with this Ukraine that has suddenly fallen into its hands. All this is the result of an erroneous assessment of Russia’s ‘national interests’ and the false conclusion that they lie in a battle with the West for Ukraine in the geopolitical space of Eurasia.

If we look at this closely, we see that Russia is not facing any sort of ‘challenge from the West’. There is the challenge of globalization and of the post-industrial society, and the West and Russia must both face up to that. After 1991 Russia was offered the chance to play by the general rules of the game, perhaps not as a world leader but certainly as a regional player. Over the course of twenty or so years, a unique architecture for mutually advantageous cooperation was constructed, in which Russian resources were exchanged for Western investment, technology and institutions. A Westernized consumer society was created in Russia which, in the words of the American political scientist Daniel Treisman, turned Russia into a ‘normal country’. By the start of the twenty-first century, the West had given up on the idea of a democratic transition in Russia and gave Putin licence to maintain internal stability. At the same time, no one promised Russia a role in resolving global issues simply because of its past merits and victories. Today such a role is guaranteed only by deep structural changes and the construction of a competitive economy and responsible foreign policy, as in China.

A decade and a half ago, in the year 2000 (which now seems so far away that it is hard to imagine that it ever existed), on the eve of his first election, the young and progressive Tsar Vladimir, answering the question of his confidants as to what was meant by the national idea in Russia, answered briefly: ‘being competitive’. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then – and now much blood, too – but if we take that as the definition of national interests, then everything in Russia has been turned on its head. It seemed that at last national interests would include investment and technology, the strengthening of human capital, available education and healthcare, working institutions, freedom of speech and association and free and fair elections. These were the slogans with which the liberal opposition took to the streets; and it is they who today still represent the genuine – and not the false – national interests of Russia.

On the other side are those who are committing acts of aggression against a neighbouring state; who have unleashed a dirty war right under their very noses; who send Russian soldiers to be slaughtered and try to cover up this crime; who have torn up the whole system of links with the West, from arms control to investment and financial instruments; who have turned Russia into an international outcast; who are destroying the very capability for economic growth and modernisation. These are the people who are destroying Russia’s national interests.

Today Russia does not need geopolitical myths that lead us to war and mobilization, but a programme of national demobilization and a lowering of the temperature of hatred and confrontation with the West. The Cold War is over; it’s time to build our house and bring up our children, not send them to the slaughterhouse. We are faced by a multitude of small wars – with the Islamic State, with drugs, poverty, cancer, the Ebola virus – and in these wars the West is our ally. We need to take back the concept of ‘national ideas’ from paranoid people and charlatans, and forbid them by law from using the term ‘geopolitics’ as a false science, on a par with conspiracy and astrology.

In Russia, they love jokes about invading other countries. After Prague in 1968, there was a joke doing the rounds about who uses which mode of transport: the Frenchman said that he goes to work on a moped, on holiday in a Renault, and abroad by aeroplane. The German goes to work on a bicycle, on holiday in a Mercedes, and abroad by ship. The Soviet citizen answered that he goes to work on the tram, on holiday by train, and abroad in a tank.