Энн Эпплбаум - Should the West Engage Putin's Russia?

The debates-within-the-debate variously touched upon who, if anyone, should be isolated: Putin or Russia? If the West is actually doing more to harm its own national security interests by treating Russia as a pariah rather than a partner in bigger struggles, such as against Islamic extremists; did the West bring this upon itself through aggressive NATO expansion; and should it have been guided, as it was, by the security wishes of the sovereign nations of the former East bloc or the traditional sphere of influence claimed by Russia.

For Cohen and Pozner, the issue very much boiled down to “Who lost Russia” — their answer being successive U.S. administrations. By disrespecting its former Cold War adversary in the years following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S., in particular, created the conditions for Putinism. The trick for them is to stop making the same mistake. They argued that a) Russia cannot be isolated in today’s globalized world, and b) it would be folly to turn against a front-line partner in the fight against greater threats. “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy,” Cohen declared, quoting Kissinger before taking it one step further and suggesting that “the demonization of Putin is an excuse to abandon analysis.”

Kasparov and Applebaum thoroughly rejected the assertion that the West humiliated and excluded 1990s Russia, observing it invited its former nemesis into such elite councils as the G8, WTO, and Council of Europe. For the cons, the issue at hand is very much Putin, who they characterized as a mafia-like figure operating a corrupt kleptocracy that leans on anti-American propaganda to shore up its domestic political position. (Bertolt Brecht’s anti-Nazi satire, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , comes to mind.) Kasparov argued Putin has no policy other than maintaining power. “In chess we have fixed rules and unpredictable results,” he said. “Putin’s Russia is the exact opposite.”

The Ukrainian crisis was nothing more than a reaction against a movement that, in the words of Applebaum, was “fighting oligarchs, corruption, and Putinism.” It was not, as Cohen and Pozner contended, the natural by-product of a Russia that felt threatened by NATO expansion and is now basking in its re-emergence as a power to reckon with.

Both sides agreed the issues at hand have splintered the Western alliance. Cohen excoriated Western policy for fixating on Putin rather than pursuing its own broader interests. Applebaum blamed the divisions on the corrupting effect of Putin being allowed to pour his ill-gotten financial gains into European politics.

Kasparov, famous for an aggressive, freewheeling approach to chess, set himself up for the greatest comeuppance of the evening, demanding of Pozner: “When was the last time you were in Kiev?” Pozner looked up and curtly replied he’d been there two years ago to accept an award as Ukraine’s Man of the Year. In case anyone missed it, Cohen stuck the knife in further. “I hope you noticed that the chess master just got checkmated.”

Kasparov seemed to withdraw from the field of combat for a short period. Perhaps he needed time to examine the board and contemplate the moves open to him. Soon enough, though, he was back in the mix, retorting belatedly but effectively that two years previously, the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych had presided over the Ukraine that made Pozner its Man of the Year.

As the debate went into its late innings, Cohen kept returning to the themes that the U.S. had misjudged Putin (he was on his knees pleading to be part of the West) and that U.S. policy shouldn’t be about punishing Putin but serving its own national interest. Striking the pose of the classic realist, he mocked Applebaum for her fairy tales. The U.S. and its allies, he said, had created a situation today more dangerous than during the Cold War, when there were at least protocols about how the superpowers interacted, including the famed hotline between the Kremlin and the White House.

Now it was time for Applebaum to turn the tables on the self-styled realists, accusing them of pining for the good old days of Cold War Russia, when they could simply divide up their bipolar world. Engagement with whom, she challenged, cutting to the crux of the dilemma embedded in the phrase “Putin’s Russia.” Is Western policy to isolate Putin? Or Russia? Can the two be separated, as sanctions, weak though they are, attempt to do? Can one be defeated without the other? Is Putin’s Russia a unique creature, as the cons would have it, or the natural extension of the czars’ Russia, Stalin’s Russia, Breshnev’s Russia?

The big elephant in the room was barely addressed by the debaters: How could Western leaders use statecraft to discourage Putin from further territorial incursions, and what to do if he were to take his Ukraine playbook to the Baltics, which are NATO members and therefore protected in law by the famous Article 5 that says an armed attack against one member is an attack against all. Answers were not readily forthcoming.

If you are on the side of using isolation as a lever, it is particularly incumbent upon you to identity policies that will be effective and can win support across a divided alliance. Perhaps that’s why the con side won the most audience applause by far but barely prevailed with 52 percent of the vote (up ten points from the pre-debate tally).

By the same token, if you favour engagement, what’s your strategy in the face of blatant and repeated assaults on sovereign nations?

I spent the years 1988 to 1991 covering the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the restoration of independence among its client states in central and eastern Europe. On my first visit to Russia with a university group in 1985, several of us met a couple of fellow students in Leningrad who invited us back to their place to listen to underground music and talk about our differing worlds. Gorbachev had recently been named general secretary and we had a Time magazine with his face on the cover. Our hosts initially could not believe the strawberry blotch on his forehead hadn’t been airbrushed in by Western propagandists rather than airbrushed out by their own.

It happened to be my birthday, and I can easily recall the poignancy of the night as one of the Russian students sadly explained how he wanted to be a graphic artist but the state had determined a different course for him. He was clearly also struggling with his sexual identity, and the conversation carried a subtext about the impossibility of being a gay man in Soviet Russia (a theme recurring in Putin’s Russia).

In my time covering political change in Poland, Romania, East Germany, Hungary, Ukraine, and Russia, I was reminded over and over of the universality of the urge for personal freedom.

With all that in mind, I was struck by a plaintive comment from Kasparov in the late stages of the debate. He was still in his twenties when the Soviet Union collapsed. He commented on how he remembered when he didn’t have freedom and the feeling when freedom arrived. Now freedom was slipping away again in Putin’s Russia. “I want to see my country free and strong,” he said.

Whatever the failures in policy, therein lies the real tragedy of the situation.

Edward Greenspon is a journalist who has reported from Russia and Ukraine during his career. He was most recently in Moscow in February.

It’s been almost a quarter century since the world watched in astonishment as the old hammer and sickle red flag of the Soviet Union descended from the Kremlin’s flagpole and was replaced by the Russian tricolour. For a while, it appeared as if the West and Russia might establish a new, unprecedented co-operative relationship.