The Past Is The Future--In Russia

Since August seventh when Russia went on a rampage in Georgia (proving a good, really big guy can beat a small, not-so-good one), the hawks in the current US administration headed by Dick (let's-kick-the Russkies-again) Cheney have been in the ascendant. With the same single-minded, to-hell-with-reality! determination which was previously exhibited with regard to our Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq, the bring-on-the-apocalypse-now! crowd has been successfully restoring the Cold War, at least in miniature.

The handful of realpolitikers such as SecDef Robert (PhD in Russian studies) Gates have been on the defensive as they seek to retain necessary channels of communication open. Caught in the middle is SecState Condy (PhD in Soviet studies) Rice.

Time to go to the videotape of history. This is important--no, central--to understanding the source of contemporary Russian behavior and the challenges for American policy makers.

Why? You ask.

Because history may be a simple case of the dead past for Americans but it is a living hand at the back of every educated Russian (and even those who are not so educated.)

In Russia as in so many other countries the past is never really past, never actually dead, buried and of interest only to narrow specialists in history. Events of nearly a thousand years ago (think Mongol conquest and occupation) as well as of the past century (think German invasion in 1941 or the international respect accorded Russia during the Cold War) are alive and well in the minds of Russians.

In simple but not oversimplified terms, the collective mind of Russia is colored by both a sense of inferiority compared to the West and paranoia regarding Russian susceptibility to invasion from both West and East. This combination is assured to make Russian leaders feel both threatened and insecure, as getting no respect from the political elites of other major powers.

One result of this insecurity over the centuries has been a Russian fixation on gaining a protective territorial belt surrounding and buffering the Russian heartland against the ambitions of foreign powers be they European, Asian or in recent decades, American. Originally this protective belt, this buffer area on which future battles would be waged, consisted of those territories coterminous with Russia. The territories of the "Near Abroad" in Russian terminology such as the Ukraine, Georgia, the Central Asian Republics, the Baltic states.

As the Big Three (Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt) met at Yalta in the closing days of World War II in Europe, the Russian jefe made it clear that the Kremlin's definition of a necessary protective belt had expanded. Churchill, being a fine example of the 19th Century British statesman, understood the concept "sphere of influence" and accepted that wherever Red Army tanks sat at war's end would be the Russian sphere of influence.

While Roosevelt may not have accepted the concept of a Russian sphere of influence with equanimity, he both understood the idea and recognised the limits of American military power in April 1945 with half a war yet to be won. He bowed to the power of realism and accepted the facts on the ground (much to the dismay and future political advantage of numerous Republicans.)

A sphere of influence in which Russian interests receive the utmost of regard is one which warms the innermost chambers of the insecure Russian heart. The sphere assures that security is enhanced. The sphere provides a basis for international respect.

For the long decades of the Cold War the sphere formally known as the Warsaw Pact together with the Near Abroad gave the Kremlin material and psychic comfort. The Soviet semi-empire provided a balm for both inferiority feelings and barely suppressed fears of imminent attack.

The empire also made for caution. The Russians had something to lose. The primary goal of all Russian diplomatic and military effort during the Soviet period generally and the Cold War years in particular was conservative. The conduct of the denizens of the Kremlin was as cautious as their rhetoric was bellicose and radical.

The Kremlin kept the tightest of holds on the national Communist parties throughout the world lest they forget their purpose in life--protecting Russia. The assorted Communist parties did not have the purpose of spreading worldwide workers' revolutions. They did not have the goal of establishing global communism. Both of those ideas died along with Trotsky.

The purpose, the goal of Communism throughout the world, was profoundly conservative--protect and guard Russia. Period.

On the rare occasion when the Kremlin was incautious, adventurist as in seeking to base nuclear capable missiles in Cuba, it backed down quickly in the face of a resolute response. Even after the debacle in Vietnam caused the crisis of American confidence, the Kremlin moved with the utmost of caution as in Africa. The Russians tested the waters. When there was no American response they went ahead. But, even so they remained circumspect, using proxy forces from Cuba and other clients rather than their own.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the concomitant loss of both the WarPact and Near Abroad buffer, the Russian insecurity reemerged. For a decade or so the insecurity and conviction of inferiority were submerged in public perception by the extreme economic and social turbulence brought about by the Communist collapse.

The US provided, as correctly noted by Secretary Rice in her speech last week at the German Marshall Society, both material and political aid during the years of privation and upheaval. But, it must be noted that this assistance was provided with a hefty dose of condescension, paternalism and well-intended hectoring.

Members of the Russian political elite remember all too well the attitudes which accompanied the aid more than the aid itself. The feelings of inferiority and insecurity were stoked.

As the Russian economic and social house came more and more to order and a measure of prosperity under the regime of Vladimir Putin, the need to address the feelings of inferiority and insecurity grew. It was up to the US to both take cognizance of these feelings and effectively meet the underlying needs.

We didn't.

We repeatedly refused to acknowledge that the Russians saw Russia as a Great Power. We brushed aside their concerns in Kosovo. We blew off their ill-founded objections regarding the deployment of a small ABM capability in the Czech Republic and Poland. We bashed the Kremlin for opposing our Iraq adventure. In short, we treated the Russians in a way which communicated to the Kremlin that we saw Russia as a lesser power regardless of how we talked.

Objectively our role in the run-up to the Georgian border war was unconstructive. We gave too much public support to the current Georgian government as though it constituted the greatest monument to democracy since the Federalist Papers. We pushed too hard for Georgian (and Ukrainian) membership in NATO, ignoring that the one time Cold War alliance would thereby gain a presence in the Near Abroad.

From the Kremlin's perspective, colored by Russian history as it must be, our actions were both disrespectful and hostile. Far from mitigating Russian inferiority and insecurity, we enhanced them. There can be no surprise that the Russians pulled the several-months-in-preparation plan for war in South Ossetia out of the drawer and implemented it.

That action is every bit as unsurprising as the earlier Russian dusting off of long obsolete bombers and sending them on patrol over US naval forces and near US territory just like in the old days of the Cold War.

We have to get a grip on a simple fact. We need the Russians. We need their cooperation on a wide range of international interests. We need their cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation. We need their cooperation in counter terrorism.

This means we have to take the Russians on their own, historically determined terms. We have to treat them like the Great Power they believe themselves to be. We have to honestly consult with the Kremlin, not have meetings where we talk past each other. We need, horrors on the right, to bow to their interests from time to time.

Or we can go the Dick Cheney way. We can ignore them. Refuse to have high level meetings. Restore some of the more obnoxious features of the Cold War.

None of that will alter Russian behavior. They can take isolation. It makes for inventiveness of diplomacy and political operations.

Let's see, muses the Geek thinking himself in the Kremlin, we are a major oil exporting country. What is the name of that bunch, you know the one our new best friend in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela belongs to? Oh, yeah, Organization of Patroleum Exporting Countries. Maybe I should give those boys a ring.