Forever Rivals
Will Russia Ever Join the West?
Imagine a world in which Russia is modern, efficient and developing. It is tackling its devastating internal problems such as rampant alcoholism and a plunging birth rate, while its economy transfers wealth from natural resource exports to economic and social development. Its government works closely with the West, as do its financial institutions. Perhaps it is even a member of the EU.
Impossible? Why should it be? Russia has enormous potential as a country, and has always been the source of stupendous scientific and cultural achievements. All the ingredients are there for advancement. Why should it be forever consigned to corruption, stagnation and despotism?
According to a widely-held belief, the Cold War began in 1950 with the secret publication of NSC-68, a memo penned by a high-powered study group containing some of the top minds in American foreign policy. The memo crystallized thinking that had already been influencing washington for some years.
The memo painted a picture of a world dividing rapidly into two camps: the Soviet Union and the American-led West. The Soviets were portrayed as a direct, existential threat to the United States and its way of life, while the best strategy for confronting that threat, in a nuclear age, was to contain Soviet power and prevent it from expanding. That required surrounding it with Western-tilted allies and amilitary bases, and contesting Soviet influence in what we now call the developing world (but which back then was almost entirely contained within the declining empires of Europe). For decades afterward, any step, or apparent step, made by Moscow to break that containment set off major alarm bells in Washington.
To be sure, the Soviet Union of 1950 was, from the perspective of far-away North America, a very frightening entity. It had emerged from the Second World War with arguably the biggest army in the history of the world — an army equipped with thousands of highly advanced tanks, led by skilled officers who had honed their craft in an apocalyptic seesaw fight with the Wermacht, and a combination of manpower and economic might that had humbled Hitler’s empire.
After the war, public opinion had forced the democracies to draw down their military forces, which made the Soviets seem even mightier. And of course while the true depths of Stalin’s cruelty wouldn’t become clear until the dictator was dead — the millions murdered by famine, by gulag, by torture — what was known was terrifying enough. His forces had openly uprooted the societies of Eastern Europe (or what remained of them after the war, anyway) and installed thuggish Communist dictatorships, while communist movements were on the march as far afield as France, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Mao had just triumphed in China, and made a great show of being sympatico with Stalin.
Long afterward, it would become clear, though, that things were not as they seemed. Stalin did not encourage revolutions except where it suited what he perceived to be his national interest. Far from being components of an empire, the communist states of Eastern Europe were satellites that cost the Soviets tremendously to maintain. China was only offered minimal aid, much of it on a cash-and-carry basis, and most importantly of all the Soviet Union was in a perilous state, having paid a catastrophic price in resources, infrastructure and human life to overcome the German invaders.
Stalin, mistrustful of the capitalist nations, went to great lengths to conceal his weakness and exaggerate his strength, which only worsened relations between the Soviet Union and the West. Those opening years set a tone of suspicion, mistrust and fear that made any hope of peaceful coexistence.
Perhaps in a perfect world it would have been possible to come to some sort of arrangement with Stalin. Certainly he did keep his end of the bargain struck with Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta, maintaining his sphere of interest in Eastern Europe while making little effort to expand into other parts of Europe. But it is hard to imagine Stalin’s paranoid empire becoming a partner with a US-led West, either politically or economically. Indeed years later some researchers would insist that Stalin had secret plans to attack the West, and that precipitated his death by assassination by members of the military who feared nuclear war.
In the 1970s, the detente system fostered by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev created an atmosphere of calm after years of tension. But it wasn’t peace in any real sense — the two sides essentially divvied up the world between them and more or less agreed not to escalate tensions beyond control. Trade with Moscow increased, but it was always the West that had the upper hand (we wanted their resources, but there was little to no market for their goods).
When the system finally collapsed in the early 1990s, there were those who hoped that the communist wreckage could be swept aside and a new, democratic, pro-Western capitalist nation built in its place. For a moment the glittering possibility appeared that the West could dramatically expand not just to Eastern Europe but across the former USSR to the Pacific Ocean. Economic experts flocked to Moscow to institute “shock therapy” to zap the economy out of its post-communist doldrums and into the 21st Century.
The results, though, were dismal. The ruins of the Soviet system proved far harder than expected to sweep away, while building a new political and economic order, especially one founded on the western model, seemed impossible. Instead of prosperity and friendship came poverty, anarchy, and more suspicion.
Through the 1990s and beyond, Russia received little help from the West. Indeed, it seemed as though we had collectively dismissed the nation as a lost cause, a permanent basket case. There was still fear, mostly that a strongman would take charge, rejuvinate the nation with a nationalist creed, and once again turn hostile. Yet despite those fears little was done to stop it from happening.
Finally, by the 2010s, we meet Vladimir Putin. Flush with cash from Russia’s grand oil wealth, standing as unquestioned leader thanks to a quasi-personality cult (and brutal treatment of opponents both imagined and real), and perhaps most of all in control of a somewhat rejuvinated military machine, Putin saw an opportunity to rid Russia of what had always seemed to be its chief enemy: NATO.
The strategy was simple: act aggressively in Georgia and Ukraine (and perhaps beyond), proving NATO to be toothless and unwilling to fight. In the aftermath of NATO’s collapse, Russia would be able to gobble up whichever newly-defenseless countries it felt like acquiring, either by direct occupation or as paid satellites.
In some way this has proven successful. The West has replied in a haphazard, timid fashion that some might say reeks of appeasement. However as time has passed, it would seem his fangs have been filed down again. While Crimea remains occupied by Russian forces and eastern Ukraine is still in conflict, it seems that Putin’s moment has passed.
Ukraine itself, far from folding under the pressure of attack, has become more united than it has been since declaring its independence in the early 90s — indeed some are saying that it’s finally being welded into a modern nation-state for the first time in its history. Meanwhile, sanctions have begun to really bite, playing a major role in the plunging value of the Ruble. And finally an unexpected drop in oil prices, revenues from which the Russian government depends on for approximately half its budget, are sowing fears of a financial collapse.
Russia might have found friends in the West in the 1940s, the 1970s, and the 1990s, but on each occasion the ties were never able to become firm. And now it seems that Putin might be on his way out (though probably not immediately). In the post-Putin era, will Russia finally join the West?
There were good reasons why, in all those past occasions, the connections failed. But underlying those failures are very real factors that will need to be addressed if Russia is really to be integrated:
- Russia must let go of its tendency toward authoritarianism. All the various flavors of dictatorship seem like they offer stability and strength, but in truth it’s always feast or famine — you either have a brief period of unity and apparent prosperity, or you have anarchy, corruption and poverty.
- Russia must finally embrace the rule of law. For generations, even centuries, laws have been the playthings of the elite, who likely as not are completely self-serving. This encourages the formation of cliques and oligarchs and discourages investment. It also makes political instability more likely.
- The Russian people must demand more from their institutions and hold their politicians accountable. A fatalistic, passive view of politics is what has permitted generations of injustice and it must stop.
- Russian political and business leaders need to stop exploiting the country’s natural resources for personal gain. Even during the oil boom of recent years, even while many individuals have made out like bandits, the government, and indeed even the state energy concerns themselves, have piled up debt. Natural resources should benefit the nation, not just a handful of insiders.
- It’s long past time to let go of the dreams of empire. Those days are just finished, not just for Russia but for everyone. Clinging to impossible dreams of international greatness achieve nothing, or worse, perpetuate evil (for instance, Russia’s strong support of the Assad regime has prolonged the Syrian civil war and led to thousands of pointless deaths).
This is not a complete list, but they are the deal-breakers. Until Russia and its people step forward and really embrace the standards of behavior and governance befitting a modern nation-state, it will probably always be an international outcast to some degree.
