The Hunt For A Theory Of Russia

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf interviewed James Poulos:

So here’s my peanut: bad relations with Russia make us feel so uncomfortable because they challenge and undermine our most cherished narratives about the moral and social progress of the global white community. I know even suggesting that we think analytically in terms of an ‘international white race’ sets off alarms, but it’s obvious that Russian disinterest in, or outright hostility to, liberal political norms is noteworthy primarily because virtually every other majority-white country in the world has embraced and institutionalized them. We (small-l) liberals recoil at the very idea that any white person could seriously appreciate or even live under a regime like Russia’s, because this is a reminder that white people are not the charmed winners of Earth’s civilizational marathon — contestants who can rest easy now that they’ve completed the course and won the race

[...]So good relations with Russia are important because writing off Russia as a kooky nationalistic foe allows us to all-too-conveniently keep ignoring this sensitive but real set of issues. There’s one other reason why they’re important: we can’t secure vital American interests around the world with Russia as an enemy. Full stop. When you boil it right down, this is true because Europe won’t function as the sort of counterweight we would need, in addition to allies like India, in order to manage an actively adversary Russia. I do think it’s essential that Europe recover the ability to defend and assert its own interests, and to take its own side in an argument, but not in order to ‘put the Russian bear at bay’ or any such colorful metaphor. Europe simply is adrift, confused, unsure, weak, and weakening. The Europeans have finally figured out how to neutralize the contending powers that have driven them to war so many times. But to neutralize should not be to neuter. Europe cannot survive as we know and like it — as thriving and powerful culture and a wealthy, stable civilization — unless it gathers around and follows the lead of a ruling vision of the highest, a vision that Europe can incarnate in institutional form. Despite the brilliant moral history of a people like the Poles, neither Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, nor any other country but one can truly lead Europe. Only France has the economic, political, and cultural credibility, drawn from its venerable history and ideals, to organize the European identity and direct it toward the confident, worthy, and practical goals that Europe requires to endure.

Daniel Larison comments:

I have to give James high marks for creativity, but I don’t think so. The idea of a “global white community” doesn’t set off any alarms, because this refers to something that is a community in about the same way that “the international community” is actually a community. Discomfort with poor Russian relations is not anxiety caused by Russia’s subversion of some international white narrative. Put differently, what James is trying to say might not sound so strange. What annoys Westerners about Russia is that Russians are historically Christian, culturally European and are the most thoroughly Westernized so-called “Eastern” nation (in no small part because they have been part of “Western Civilization” for a millennium), but this does not lead most Russians to quite the same political preferences as their neighbors. That suggests that political preferences and constitutions are highly contingent and they are driven by particular interests and conditions. Western liberals seem to find this hard to believe, and they are reduced to explaining away such things by invoking irrationality as the cause.

[...] I would say that Russia vexes Western liberals (broadly defined) because the Russian example suggests that historical memory, culture and the nation’s past are far from irrelevant to the constitution of a polity. Western liberals seem to want these things to be absolutely irrelevant, because they tend to get in the way of planting liberal democracies in other countries. I’ll wager the people who are made uncomfortable by bad relations with Russia are very few, and we are unlikely to be representative. Most people are either indifferent to this or may even be pleased by it. Nothing brings back comfortable, lazy policy-making and self-congratulatory rhetoric like being able to vilify “the Russkies” as in the old days. Unless ensuring bad relations with Russia is the deliberate goal, I cannot explain how else Washington can persist in policies that are guaranteed to result in bad relations.

The Russian example is discouraging to democracy enthusiasts, because it makes clear how vital strong legal institutions and limitations on state power are to a mass democracy if it is not going to become a plebiscitary authoritarian state. Even if the enthusiasts acknowledge this, they don’t like being reminded that liberal and good government is largely of a function of all the very un-democratic institutions and elements of our system. Whenever these people whine about Russian “backsliding” away from democracy, they don’t want to have to think about how the current Russian government is illiberal, authoritarian and interventionist in the economy because this is in many (though not all) ways what most of the people want.

In other Russian posts, we have this article in Foreign Policy by Peter Savodnik:

Granted, there are many reasons to doubt that Russia is poised to forge a more constructive relationship with the United States: Putin remains (presumably) the most powerful man in the country, and the underlying systemic problems that have inhibited U.S.-Russian cooperation persist. No matter how many niceties Obama and Medvedev manage at their joint press conference, the United States and Russia will continue to butt heads about the future of Ukraine and Georgia. “The Obama administration has made clear that ‘resetting’ relations with Moscow does not mean accepting a Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space,” says Steven Pifer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

But there is a sense that something must change. This sense is reflected in the everyday behaviors of ordinary people worried about their pensions and their jobs; it is felt in the increasingly combative press; it is evident at the highest levels. (Putin’s recent very public spanking of oligarch Oleg Deripaska, in which the prime minister called the metals tycoon a greedy cockroach to his face, contrasts sharply with the chumminess of just a year or two ago, when optimism and consensus were the norm.) This development is not simply emotional, as if after eight years of worsening relations a sudden weariness has set in.

What is happening is historical, almost dialectic, a function of the sways and perturbations of global plate tectonics. For centuries, Russia has swung, with a metronome-like consistency, between a westernizing, outward-looking pole and an Oriental, inward-looking one. These swings have been demarcated by varying periods and intensities, but they are a constant; they are the constant. The signs of this most recent swing, or thaw, are there. The question for U.S. foreign policymakers is whether they take advantage of it.

UPDATE: Foreign Policy Initiative‘s letter to Obama. Peter Wehner is a signatory and blogs here.

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