Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 6 – Despite its
claims to the contrary, the Kremlin is rapidly reducing the size of the “Russian
world” rather than increasing it because it is alienating its neighbors by the
use of force rather than attracting them by the strength of its economy and of
its universities, according to Yuliya Latynina.
In short, the “Novaya gazeta”
commentator says, Moscow has misunderstood the nature of international politics
at the present time – its leaders constantly say they are doing nothing the
West hasn’t done – and the possibilities it would have if it were to adopt a
different approach abroad and at home (novayagazeta.ru/columns/63911.html).
The Kremlin has failed to see that
there are certain important “differences” between how other countries conduct
their geopolitical activity and how Russia does, she continues. On the one hand, she points out, Western
countries “support in foreign lands exactly the same values which they have at
home.”
It is legitimate to how realistic that
approach is, she continues, but “one cannot say, for example, that the West
supports democracy in the third word while seeking to root it out at home” or
that it “demands the observation of human rights somewhere in Somalia but at
home does not observe them.”
Russia’s approach is different: it “supports
in Ukraine what is forbidden in Russia itself.” Moscow “recognizes ‘peoples mayors’
and ‘peoples governors’ abroad, but in Russia itself, Putin has just finally
eliminated mayoral elections.” It annexes Crimea with a revolution but doesn’t
allow resolutions in Russia. And itcalls for the dismemberment of Ukraine, but
it has just made any call for a violation of the territorial integrity of
Russia “a criminal offense.”
One can easily imagine how the
Kremlin would react if Navalny’s supporters took arms and seized a city administration,
Latynina writes, but in Ukraine, the Kremlin supports exactly that and demands
that Kyiv simply accept the results of such actions.
Another problem with the Kremlin’s
approach “completely grows out of the first,” she says. When the US gets
involved abroad, it does so with the goal of “solving a problem.” Sometimes it
can and sometimes not, but that is its goal. It is not in Iraq or Afghanistan
to “create bloody chaos.”
Russia’s policy is just the
opposite. It seeks to create chaos, and that by its nature alienates those
Moscow should be seeking to attract. “After the Russian-Georgian war, Russia
lost Georgia, a country which had been part of the Russian world ... Now,
Russia is losing Ukraine.
“Putin isn’t increasing the size of
the Russian world,” Latynina says. “He is reducing it.”
In the past, military conquest might
have been enough to expand influence, but the only means of doing so now, she
suggests “is the development of economics and culture.” One cannot be a “strong geopolitical player
without being a strong economy.” China has understood that, but Russia under
Putin has not.
Moreover, Russia could have become
not only the economic center of a Russian world but also “an intellectual,
educational, and innovation” one as well. Students from Ukraine and Georgia
would have wanted to study in Russia, people from neighboring countries would
have wanted to go to Russian hospitals, and entrepreneurs would have flocked
there.
Had Russia adopted that course
instead of the one it has, Latynina argues, “there would not have been any need
to convert the Russian speaking population of the former republics into something
like an angry Hamas organization which hates the countries in which they live”
and which makes those around them hate their community and Russia itself.
Pursuing
policies like the ones Russia has chosen not do would constitute genuine
geopolitics, the commentator concludes. What is going on is something
else. “It is simply geo-psychiatry.”
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