Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 9 – It is now common
ground that Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea represents a revision of the
1991 settlement involving the end of the USSR, with some portraying this as an
indication that “Russia is back” and others viewing it as the kind of
revanchism that inevitably threatens the international system.
But in a certain sense, this
revision of the international order is less important than two other acts of
revisionism the Kremlin leader is engaged in, acts that unlike the first have
immediate consequences beyond the border of what was the Soviet Union because
other countries, even those which did not emerge from imperial collapse, may
pick up on.
The first of these is Putin’s
revision of the 1945 settlement, not the division of Europe into spheres of
influence but rather the insistence of the founders of the United Nations that
citizenship is more important than ethnicity and that no country can assert the
contrary, even though under the right of nations to self-determination, ethnic
groups sometimes can.
The reason for the enshrinement of
that principle, of course, is Europe had just survived a world war against a
German dictator who insisted the contrary, who arrogated to himself the right
to defend ethnic Germans regardless of their citizenship and location and who
did so through the use of massive force.
From the Sudetenland on, Hitler acted
to bring political borders into line with ethnic ones, an approach that in his
case not only entailed aggressive wars at home but genocide at home and abroad
in the name of the new world order he wanted to create. Fortunately, he was
defeated, and the United Nations sought to prevent anyone from doing that
again.
Tragically, 69 years after the Third
Reich was destroyed, Putin’s regime is pursuing a program that also elevates
ethnicity over citizenship at least with regard to ethnic Russians and that
claims that the Russian state has the right to use force to protect ethnic
Russians who are not its citizens abroad.
The consequences of this are truly
horrific for three reasons. First, there are more than 15 million ethnic
Russians living in the former Soviet republics and formerly occupied Baltic
states who would be the object of such a policy – or what is almost as bad, the
assumed object of such a policy, thus generating uncertainty about their
loyalty and destabilizing these countries.
Second, the nationalistic impulses
behind such a policy are unlikely to be kept only in the foreign policy
realm. Instead, those who push for using
force to defend ethnic Russians abroad are almost certainly going to be tempted
to use force against the quarter of the Russian population that is not ethnic
Russian at home.
On the one hand, that could quickly
lead to an expansion of the pogroms we have already seen against migrants to
other groups, especially if the Putin regime continues to rely on informal
militant groups to “maintain order.” And
on the other, the threat that this could happen will certainly make many in
these groups less interested in and willing to integrate into Russian life.
As a result, Putin’s much ballyhooed
defense of ethnic Russians abroad will lead either to greater authoritarianism
at home, with all the negative consequences that will have for Russians and
non-Russians alike, or to efforts by some of the minorities to break away and
form their own states as their last remaining defense against his regime.
And third, unlike the specific case
of the Russian Federation and the post-Soviet space, this kind of dynamic can
spread to a variety of other places in the world, especially given that the
Kremlin is now promoting ties with leaders and groups who have already shown
themselves contemptuous of the rights of minorities of all kinds.
The other Putin
act of revisionism concerns the settlement of 1919. Putin and even more some of
those around him are celebrating the virtues of empire, of the right of powerful
states to hold less powerful peoples in thrall, in the name of some grand
vision or simply in order to further enrich those in control.
One can debate the implications of
Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to the right of nations to self-determination, but
one cannot deny that it signaled the death knell of empires as the basis of
political organization first in Europe where World War I had destroyed them and
then elsewhere when the US pushed for the end of European empires in Asia and
Africa.
By celebrating empire, the Russian
leadership is not just revising the settlement of 1991 or that of 1945. It is
challenging this settlement of 1919 and pushing the world back to one where
some nations claimed the right to rule others without their consent and use the
latter for their own benefit.
Some Russian commentators have
already become shills for empire, and some in the West have now come to see “the
virtues” of such political arrangements, forgetting of course that in many
cases, their country got its start by breaking away from an empire and that
they in no case see themselves as being a dependency of another state.
Putin and his supporters in Moscow
and the West would like to keep the focus on what Putin is doing in Ukraine as
narrow as possible. Diplomats are likely
to say that is the only way to make “progress.” But Putin’s three-fold
revisionism of the hard-won settlements of the 20th century is so
dangerous that they and the rest of us need to recognize what is at stake.
Restoring Ukrainian control in
Crimea won’t be easy, nor will preventing further Russian aggression elsewhere
in Ukraine. But in the name of the
principles of 1919, 1945, and 1991, those goals must be pursued until they are
achieved, or the world will become a much more horrific place and not just in
and around Russia.
Putin clearly understands that what
he is doing is not just about Crimea or Ukraine or some other former Soviet
republic. It is a challenge to the international system as such. Many in the West are reluctant to see that
because if they acknowledge that fact, they must act to block him or show
themselves poor stewards of the ideals they say they are for.
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