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East Or West? Russia's Identity Crisis in Foreign Policy

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East Or West? Russia's Identity Crisis in Foreign Policy East or West? Russia’s Identity Crisis in Foreign Policy Andrei Piontkovsky January 2006 ii First published in 2006 by About the Authors The Foreign Policy Centre 49 Chalton Street London NW1 1HY Andrei Piontkovsky, Director of the Center for Strategic Research UNITED KINGDOM in Moscow, is a Russian political analyst whose articles regularly appear in newspapers and journals in Russia and abroad. His most Email: [email protected] recent book, ‘For the Motherland! For Abramovich! FIRE!’, was published with support from the Yabloko party. He has also printed © Foreign Policy Centre 2006 a collection of op-eds and commentary on some of the most acute problems in Russian domestic and foreign policy over the last five years. All rights reserved ISBN-13: 978 1 903558 78 7 ISBN-10: 1 903558 78 6 Disclaimer The views in this paper are not necessarily those of the Foreign Policy Centre. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the National Endowment for Democracy and the Hudson Institute for their support during his work on this project. iii iv Executive Summary The broad outlines of Russia’s identity crisis are well understood. Indeed the paper claims that its psychological symptoms may even The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a geopolitical predate the Soviet era since the arguments of today’s nationalists earthquake that redrew the map of Europe and Central Asia. In his and liberals merely echo the nineteenth-century debates of state-of-the-nation address, in April 2005, Russia’s President Slavophiles and Westernisers. In other words, Russia is permanently Vladimir Putin went so far as to describe it as the ‘biggest at a crossroads in its history and having to set a course between geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century’. His declaration East and West. The decades-long standoff of the Cold War merely caused a stir among the world’s political scientists, sociologists, tranquillised the patient. economists and even philosophers. Yet the full import of his words was lost on much of his foreign audience. ‘For the Russian people’, Yet the paper proposes a different analysis of the post-Soviet Putin continued, the collapse of the Soviet Union ‘became a real malaise. Some Western observers may claim to identify a nostalgia drama’. among Putin’s siloviki for the ideological purity – and straightforwardness – of the Cold War era. But Russia’s top This paper starts from the viewpoint that the drama was not merely politicians and generals are fully aware that the West no longer geopolitical but also psychological, and that its aftermath led to a poses a military threat. Yet many of them refuse to accept, for kind of schizophrenia at the highest levels of post-Soviet society. example, the eastward expansion of NATO. Only psychology can The paper diagnoses symptoms of this ‘psychodrama’ in Russia’s help explain this paradox. foreign policy today. For the past 15 years Russia’s foreign policy has been engaged in a The paper argues that, in the first year or so of Putin’s presidency, quest for a new identity. The paper draws on a variety of specialist Russia’s foreign policy assumed a clearly anti-American tone. The studies, as well as on the speeches of President Vladimir Putin, to chief objective was publicly to counter the United States on all fronts, describe Russia’s identity crisis in terms of the bitter ideological wars not least by abrogating the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement on between so-called ‘liberal Westernisers’, ‘pragmatic nationalists’ and ending Russian military sales to Iran, by ostentatiously visiting Cuba ‘fundamentalist nationalists’ that have influenced the country’s and by floating the idea of an anti-American pact with China. Yet in foreign policy in recent years. confronting the West certain things have become clearer even for the most fanatical Eurasianists and the most fervent anti- st The paper argues that Russia’s key but vulnerable strategic position Westerners. As the rising superpower of the 21 century, China has in the heartland of Eurasia aggravates its post-imperial crisis of no intrinsic need for any strategic partnership with Russia, least of all identity and threatens not only its ‘vertical power’ in the political one with an anti-American basis. Therefore, in formulating policy, the system and economic spheres but also the very integrity of the Chinese leadership will be guided by anything but the post-Soviet Russian Federation itself. complexes of Moscow’s politicians. The main topics discussed in the paper and, it is suggested, the The paper will argue that, unlike the ideological menace of the Cold main challenges now facing policymakers in the Kremlin can be War, with all its stabilising predictability, Russia’s next civilisational divided into three categories: Russia’s internal instability, the shadow clash will be rooted in religion and culture. It will argue that Russia of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, and the growing might of should urgently relinquish its time-honoured suspicion and fear of China looming over Russia’s Far East and Siberia. the United States, in order to deal with the spectre of Islamic v vi radicalism not only in Central Asia but within the borders of the Russian Federation itself, namely in Chechnya. The key policy finding is that: CONTENTS only by facing westwards can Russia achieve its foreign policy goals and secure a European identity for the twenty- first century. This paper contends that Putin and his siloviki accuse the West, and INTRODUCTION .....................................................................1 the United States in particular, of exporting a version of democracy that will deprive Russia of its sovereignty. Such propaganda RUSSIAN IDENTITY: IS IT EURASIAN OR WESTERN? .......1 threatens to drive the traditional anti-Americanism of Russia’s political elite to the level of hysteria. But the negative outcome will MAPPING RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY AFTER 9/11 ..........4 not just be psychological. It will have a long-term effect on Russian policy and lead to the country’s isolation and marginalisation. PROBLEMS OF ISLAMIST FUNDAMENTALISM AND TERRORISM ...........................................................................7 SPINNING RUSSIA’S ‘WAR ON TERROR’ ..........................10 RUSSIA AND THE THIRD WORLD WAR.............................12 THE ‘GRAND CHESSBOARD’: RUSSIA’S NEXT MOVE? ...15 vii It is not just a case of paranoia. For decades Soviet diplomats and the military establishment were trained to think of themselves and Introduction their profession, of which they were extremely proud, only within the context of global confrontation with the West, and above all, with the The fall of the Soviet Union a decade and a half ago sparked an United States. identity crisis in Russia. Its effects continue to influence foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin today. This pamphlet will Adopting a celebrated maxim of the French philosopher Rene examine the post-Soviet legacy in terms of Russian geography and Descartes – cogito ergo sum – the unspoken logic of Soviet politics but it will also take into account psychological factors in the diplomats and military strategists, whether conscious or nation’s quest for a new identity. That quest is discernible in the unconscious, was: ‘I am America’s rival, therefore I exist.’ Or to be conflicting viewpoints of so-called ‘liberal Westernisers’, ‘pragmatic more precise: ‘I am America’s equal rival, therefore I exist.’ For many nationalists’ and ‘fundamentalist nationalists’ whose bitter disputes in the Russian elite, losing the West as a threat feels like a loss of and rhetorical outbursts have become a staple of Russian political personal status. So for Russia’s political class their country’s search life. Its outcome will have a decisive impact on the kind of foreign for its place in the new geopolitical framework represents a policy, pro-Western or Eurasian, conducted by Putin’s successor in psychological problem. It is very difficult for them to concede not only the Kremlin. This pamphlet will argue that only by facing westwards that the United States does not pose a threat to Russia but, can Russia achieve its foreign policy goals and secure a European moreover, that a long-term alliance with the West offers the best and identity for the twenty-first century. maybe the only solution to Russia’s real security problems. Russia holds a key but vulnerable strategic position in the heartland of Eurasia. Firstly, an arc of instability (a zone of present and Russian Identity: is it Eurasian or inevitably future unrest in the coming decades) runs along its southern border from the larger Middle East towards northeast Asia. Western? Secondly, its geographical position aggravates the post-imperial The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ruptured Russian crisis of identity. Everything in Russia is under scrutiny now. conceptions of identity, stimulating and splintering powerful debate Everything is open to question: the political system, the economic on national self-perception. Russian identity had, after all, emerged model, and even the ethnic composition of Russia as a whole. from the remainder of Soviet territory left behind after the non- Therefore we can put Russia’s security problems into three Russian republics had gained their independence. In the 1990’s it categories: arose entangled in the geographical and psychological inheritance of empire, a question barely settled by 2000 and the start of Vladimir Russia’s internal instability Putin’s presidency of the Russian Federation. The beginning of a Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism new millennium has prompted a lot of talk, in Moscow and The growing might of China looming over Russia’s Far East and elsewhere, of Russia being at a crossroads in history. In fact, such Siberia talk is just another symptom of Russia’s troubled quest for a new idea even if the quest itself is anything but new.
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