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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 3 (February 2001)
By: Anssi Kullberg, 8th November 2000, Tartu, Estonia
At the moment of writing this article, the results of the U.S. presidential election are still not clear, and votes of Florida will be re-counted. It is not exaggerated to say that the final outcome of this recount, decisive considering whether Bush or Gore will be declared the new president, is crucial to the Russian foreign political lines during the forthcoming period. Russian foreign policy has namely traditionally been a mirror of the Western, especially the hegemonic Western, foreign policy. Russia has traditionally produced a strange mirror image of all influential Western political currents, whether liberalism, socialism, nationalism, "fascism" or quasi-capitalism. France, Germany and the U.S. have all in turn been mirrored by Russia - in the even older times Moscow inherited and copied the political currents of its Mongol, Kipchak and Byzantine models.
When trying to forecast a situation that might prevail in 2010, one could start with a glance at the development ten years backwards from here, starting with 1990. Since the amount of pages for this essay is limited, I cannot give but a general and therefore trivial-sounding overview of what, to my mind, happened in Russia during this time, and what would consequently happen during the next ten years:
The expression "Evil Empire" of Ronald Reagan - the most idealistic of recent U.S. presidents and thus most able to employ U.S. hegemony for certain moral purposes - was surprisingly fitting. Only a realm of fear can keep a totalitarian giant state together. When fear is lost, power is lost in a system based on coercion, not on legitimacy and attraction. Thus, the regime should have known what would happen if the system would be represented by a figure such as Mikhail Gorbachev. Thanks to Reagan, however, the regime finally had to chose a "parachute" and once having lost the Cold War, had to survive the game by redefining the rules. The best way was to get the West think that there is no game any longer. Stratfor’s Russia 2000 series in 1999 described well the strategy the regime adopted at the eve of collapse.
Let us presume that the main goal of the regime was not to abolish the "Evil Empire" but to preserve it. In order to preserve the empire, the West had to be persuaded to support such a programme, apparently opposite to all the Reaganian goals of the Cold War. The three brilliant creations persuasive enough to be swallowed by the West in a way that would have made the Pavlov Institute feel proud any time, were perestroika, glasnost and Gorbachev. Basically foreign political truths are always constructed - by myths, geopolitical interests and state-ideas. So are the external images of countries. Suddenly, the arbitrary monopolisation of people’s property into the hands of the regime, which was called collectivisation in the old times, was renamed privatisation. (In the West, it has been normally called organised crime.) KGB was renamed FSB. Transparency was used so that when Russia revealed her sins, everything was suddenly forgiven and there was never any Red Nuremberg. Most important was to find a new enemy, a common one for the West and Russia. Thus, suddenly the West was no longer against communism, but against all kinds of "instability", "nationalism" (this means peoples like Estonians and Georgians who are oppressing Russians) and "Islamism" (any Muslims who are not ruling a recognised state, while Islamist states like Iran are supported by Russia).
The short Zapadnik interregnum in Russia lasted from 1989 to 1992, and was permanently buried in 1993 by the "Migranyan doctrine" and renaissance of the "Derzhava" as a leading state-idea. Development ever since has strengthened the Slavophile element, with some level of Eurasianism, but only in an expansionist and imperialist form. Once again, the Russian geopolitical thought has mirrored the Western one. Maybe one of the greatest Western contributions to the Russian return into Potemkinian projects of conquering the South has been the rise of multipolarist theories, especially by Samuel Huntington, who would grant Russia an interest sphere consisting of not only "legitimate hegemony of all Orthodox civilisation" but also of "a cordon sanitaire of various Islamic nations in the south". Huntington demands that the West should support Russia in these imperialist tasks. Zbigniew Brzezinski and the whole realist school arguing for "employment of the U.S. supremacy for the benefit of democracy, liberty and market economy", has stayed in opposition throughout the Clinton period. Because of this, it is most decisive whether Gore or Bush will become the next U.S. president.
Generally the development in Russia during Putin’s reign in 2000 has been what could be expected in the process of his rise into power by a new war in Chechnya and by Yeltsin’s new year show to guarantee Putin as his successor - an historical déjà vu for those who recalled Paul von Hindenburg and Hitler’s nomination. Putin’s main lines in internal politics have been to radically increase centralism and state domination - over regions, over media and over economy. This means that Putin has been abolishing the remnants of federalism, freedom of speech and democratic system in Russia. These lines not only recall the Soviet times, but maybe even more, the czarist periods when Jews, Freemasons and liberals were seen as Muslims, oligarchs and dissidents today, when the Circassian genocide corresponded the present Chechen genocide, and when Russia played the active hidden hand behind the Balkan wars and initiation of world wars.
Putin has also showed tendencies of turning towards the Eurasianist/Slavophile approach of the three-fold Russian geopolitical thought by searching for ideological and moral basis for his policy from the well-known Russian nationalist and former dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (The Economist, 23rd-29th Sept.) Putin’s turn to search philosophical basis for geopolitical policies recalls Francisco Franco’s turn towards so far marginal Falangist ideology. However, as much as many right-wing Western observers hoped Putin to become a Russian Franco or a Russian Pinochet in the meaning of "putting economy to an order by authoritarian rule", Putin is proving that in Russia authoritarianism has traditionally occurred without any improvement in economy.
The continuation of the Chechen War will increase both war hysteria and war tiredness in Russia. The politicians committed to the war in the first place will not be able to stop it, because then nothing would have been won with the mindless sacrifices. Thereby the war is likely to continue as long as Putin is the leader of Russia, and the legitimisation of the war calls for provocations, pogroms and other political refreshments every now and then. At the same time the ethnic minorities and regions will get totally alienated from the state. Czars Nicholas I and Nicholas II almost made their empire collapse as they could not stop the wars they had started - Nicholas I in Caucasia and Crimea, Nicholas II against Japan and in the WW I. Putin’s militarism has similarities with both these predecessors.
Putin’s ‘Ordnung muss sein’ policy increasingly resembles the Russian policy between 1905 and 1914. The euphoria of reformation after the humiliating defeat to the Japanese had been left behind, and the central power started to cancel autonomy formerly given to the imperial dominions - for example Finland. If the revolutions of 1905 and 1991 can be compared, are we then now living the correspondent of 1914...? Consequently, what can we expect of the development towards 2010?
Putin’s rise has also been compared with the development of Napoleon Bonaparte’s career 200 years ago. A difference seems to be that Bonaparte first rushed to make peace with the numerous enemies of France, while Putin first had to create an image as a warlord. An interesting question is if Putin will be able to abandon his army to the distant battlefields as promptly as Bonaparte when he returned from his campaign in Egypt. Both the leaders based their power on strong secret police.
A third parallel could be found in the career development of Benito Mussolini (source for Mussolini: Andres Kasekamp’s lectures). The fascist argumentation about strength of aggressive and expansionist nations versus degenerate democratic fallen nations highly resembles the political rhetorics prevailing in Russia before, during, and after Putin’s rise. Also Mussolini set up ‘moralist’ campaigns against the ‘oligarchs’ of his times, demanding centralisation and state involvement in economy, at the same time strongly relying on myths and religious images. Apart from Hitler’s indiscriminate expansionism and willingness to fight anyone (though there is clear similarity between German "Drang nach Osten" and Russian "Drang nach Süden"), Mussolini and Putin have been following the more traditional lines of imperialism. Putin, like Mussolini, does not want to mess too much with the strong Western powers, as the aggression needed to "unite" internal polity can be directed against "second-class" victims: Mussolini attacked Albania and Ethiopia, Putin seeks glorifying battlefields in Caucasia and Central Asia.
When Mussolini attacked to Ethiopia (Abessinia), he first made it clear that England and France would not oppose this aggression too strongly. This was what Yeltsin and Putin did in relation to the Western attitudes to Chechnya, too. However, soon after the start of the aggression, the West found itself in a nasty situation both in Ethiopia and in Chechnya. The brutality and exaggerated violence of the Italian aggression against Ethiopian tribes rose criticism in England: Was it really necessary to cast poison gas upon some basically unarmed ‘Negroes’? This was not ‘fair game’. Same kind of tones - without any concrete opposition - were heard in the West in regard to the ‘exaggerated and indiscriminate use of violence by Russian forces against civilians’. Italy was also criticised for bombing the Red Cross staff in Ethiopia. Likewise, Russia wished no foreign, especially no Western, witnesses for its second Chechen War.
Of course both Mussolini and Putin had to know it most clearly, that the Western superpowers would not really intervene, or punish them from a couple of genocides against strategically unimportant nations. Britain would have had a very effective weapon against Italy: oil blockade by closing the Suez Canal from Italian ships. However, the Britons decided not to use such ‘extreme methods’ for such an ‘issue of minor importance’ as the massacre and conquest of Ethiopia was. The same policy by the West has been observed in relation to the Russian policy towards the Caucasus. So, basically the Western message is that all that people like Mussolini and Putin would have to fear is discussion on the option of using a couple of economic sanctions. This was also for a long time the Western message for people like Saddam and Milosevic, let alone for Hitler in the times of the Anschluss, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakian occupation.
The Council of Europe decided that it would not exclude Russia, even though there was nothing concrete from Russia’s side that would have met the most moderate Western demands of ‘more constructive attitude to the war in Chechnya’. Quite the contrary, while bloodshed of civilians continued in Chechnya, the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov accused the Baltic countries of ‘violating the human rights’ of their Russian minorities. (Monitor, 15th May.)
The Ethiopian War was extremely popular among Italians, exactly as Mussolini had foreseen when he wished to ‘raise Italian self-esteem and warrior-like nature’. The FSB made it sure that the second Chechen War would be popular among Russians, by very similar provocations and mass propaganda that Mussolini had used 70 years earlier. Both the Ethiopian and the Chechen War were designed to cover up internal political illegitimacy, and to back up into power two authoritarian centralist leaders.
The famous Russian human rights activist and widow of Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, stated last April: "The war is horrible not only for Chechnya but for Russia as well. Because Russia, blinded by militarism, is becoming a fascist state. The methods being employed by the military are methods of genocide; the things happening in Chechnya today are crimes against humanity and they deserve their own Nuremberg." How justified it is for us to make an analogical comparison between the development of Russia since 1993, and the development of European fascist regimes?
Common opinion in Russia has turned ever more hostile against Muslims. Researcher Aleksey Malashenko told that in 1992 only 17 per cent of the Russians considered Islam as a "bad thing", but as many as 80 per cent of the present Russian youth think so! The main reason is purposeful agitation of hatred and propaganda through the Russian state-controlled media. Putin’s crusader style speeches in Britain have been compensated by the Kremlin by founding a loyalist Muslim group named Refah in the Duma (the name is same as the Turkish Islamist party’s). At the same time the Chechen resistance against Russian occupation is being addressed to various foreign conspiracies, extending from Arab mercenaries and Turkish secret service even to Scots wearing quilts. (New Statesman, 1st May.)
Anti-Islamist propaganda and disinformation has spread in the world as widely as anti-Semitic propaganda during the late 1800s and 1900s up until the WW II. The notorious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" that later inspired Alfred Rosenberg and other Nazis were originally produced as a falsification by the czarist Ohrana. (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17th Dec. 1999.) Basically the same organisation has produced a major part of the "documents" preaching "Islamist conspiracy" in the present world - a "conspiracy" stretching from Kosovar Albanians to Chechens, Tajiks of Afghanistan (those fighting against the Taliban), Central Asian oppositions, Uighurs of Sinkiang and the Kashmiris, involving of course (secular) Turkey and Musharraf’s Pakistan but surprisingly ignoring Russia’s traditional allies Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and forgetting the fact that the Taliban’s leaders consist for a significant part of former pro-Soviet leaders (atheists). The mythical Osama bin Laden is very useful when spotted by "security-related sources" around the world.
But in the middle of all these stories, Najibullah’s hanging, and claimed Uzbek support for Ahmad Shah Masoud’s anti-Taliban freedom-fighters (Masoud is a Tajik and the Tajiks do not trust Uzbekistan, let alone Islam Karimov), the world has failed to remark the UNOCAL-Gazprom deal (Gore and Chernomyrdin) in 1996 with its consequent sudden triumph of the Taliban.
Most highly flammable situation are born when hopes have first been raised, but are then not met. This happened in Germany in the beginning of 30s, when the economy collapsed again after WW I. Russian propaganda that directs the people’s hatred against internal and external enemies and towards mythical missions of conquest seems to repeat the fascist propaganda almost identically. In Russia, the situation is most critical in peripheries. When their inhabitants are trying to get to Moscow and other wealthier cities, these are likely to start controlling migration by returning to the Soviet system where one’s home place was ordered and migration strictly limited. Also people’s tendency to support pogroms is expected to rise during autumn, and besides Caucasians, also Muslims in general will be targeted. A lot of signs of this tendency are visible.
When Putin’s campaign to abolish regional autonomy continues, and Russian elections on all levels are making a big joke out of the conception of democracy as known in the West, the people of the provinces are getting more and more alienated from the central regime, and vertical legitimacy on all levels decreases radically. Most critical will be the psychological effect among all the non-Russian populations and republics, in which the hopes of new national revival have been raised. Tatars are the strongest ones; North Caucasians probably the ones most prepared to fight, since they have not that much to lose as the Tatars. The regime will try to compensate the vertical illegitimacy - and consequent horizontal centrifugal tendencies of the empire - with increasing national paranoia, centralism, control of press and economy, probably ending in the large-scale terror against civil population also elsewhere than in Chechnya within the targeted 10 years. Comparison with the development of fascist regimes may prove most fruitful.
Another analogy could be found from the oil price manipulation through the OPEC. Combined with the arms race, the Reagan regime successfully used the low oil prices to bring about the collapse of the Evil Empire. Can we see a totally contrary strategy in the oil policy during Clinton’s regime? The artificially maintained high oil price is especially benefiting Russia and contributing to the Russian war expenses. Unlike Iran, Nigeria, Egypt and other countries that could provide much more oil than the OPEC cartel allows them to push into market, Russia is not capable of improving its oil production at the time being, and so the whole oil policy can be said to be extremely beneficial for Russia - even direct contribution and encouragement to Russian aggression southwards. That is, towards the future oil regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
So, to return to the beginning of this essay: If Gore will lead the U.S. for the next eight years, the West will most probably repeat the mistakes that Rooseveltian policies made in the interwar situation. Russia’s aggression southwards will be passively encouraged, and Russia will probably attack Afghanistan, besides strengthening the grip over former Soviet states. In the South, only Turkey and Pakistan are capable of gaining real military victory over Russia, so Russia will aim at destabilisation of these two countries especially. Haidar Aliyev will die within a year; Russia will work hard in order to get his son to continue a vassal dynasty in Azerbaijan, which is the most important of the Caspian oil states. At the same time, anti-Caucasian disinformation will be marketed to the West. Georgia will be destabilised through maintenance of the Abkhaz and Samadzablo conflicts and possible activation of a conflict in Dzavakheti - Georgia is the needed bridge between Azerbaijan and Turkey. Iran will continue to support Russia in the Caucasus, unless the reform movement really proves victorious in Iran. (So far, Mohammad Khatami has been rather an Iranian Gorbachev than a true reformer, but recently he has suffered several backlashes.)
If the multipolarist doctrine becomes prevalent in the West (as it most probably does due to renewed Democrat presidency in the U.S.), Eurasia will be increasingly divided into Western, Russian and Chinese spheres of interest, America basically accepting Russian aggression against Islamic states and Chinese hegemony over the East and Southeast Asian market economies (which the U.S. will increasingly abandon: destabilisation continues from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines towards Thailand, Taiwan and Korea; China increases hegemony over Laos, Burma and Vietnam). India will join Russia in creating official ties with the Taliban, which will suddenly become a "stable" force in Afghanistan, yet still used as a propaganda weapon to brand "Islamic regimes". For at least five years, both Russia and China will be fulfilling a southwards expansion of their hegemony. By the time of 2010, however, they may be confronting each other. This confrontation would otherwise be won by China (who already has strong influence over Eastern Central Asia and Russian Far East), but Russia probably counts upon continued Western assistance.
Europe may still feel secure for a couple of years, but before 2010 there will be efforts by Russia to destabilise the situation in Southeast Europe - also in the Baltics, if there is a chance. Romania will be the primary target, as it is a non-Slavic, now Western-oriented and yet potentially strong country which is, moreover, located between Russian and Serbian troops. If the U.S. removes from Kosova, claiming that ultra-nationalist Kostunica’s Serbia is a democratic country, a new war will break out in the Balkans (though it could be ignored by the West like the Kosovar situation in 1991-1998), and Russia will get involved. In the north, Lithuania will be Russia’s main target of domination, while the strategy towards Estonia and Latvia will be destabilisation. In case that Russia will gain hegemony in the South, Baltics will be the next target. There may be a "Narva Republic" repeating the stories of Transnistria, Abkhazia, Samadzablo, Nadterek, Crimea and Karabagh within a couple of weeks.
In case there will be Republican presidency in the U.S., with increasing realist (not multipolarist) council to foreign political administration (Brzezinski, Wolfowitz, McCain, Shalikashvili...), the future will be much brighter to small countries surrounding Russia, but more tough for Westerners reading their newspapers and facing a "truth" every morning, while drinking their coffee. While encouraged Russian fascism and expansionism can end with a third world war, a tough Republican line towards Russia will probably at its worst only create a new Cold War. That would consolidate the Russian nationalism, but weaken the mythical-religious rhetorics of foreign policy - Russia would mirror the geostrategic views of the Western policy. Instead of imaginary clashes of civilizations, a grand chessplay would start again...
AKK