Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 14 – The creation by
the United States of the Trans-Pacific Partnership signals both the continuing
American role as the key pole in international affairs and the declining
importance of Europe, developments that “paradoxically” have more serious
consequences for Russia than any other country, Vadim Shtepa says.
On the one hand, it highlights the
inability of Russia to function as the other pole of international relations.
The country lacks the economic power, and its military strength may win it some
short term victories but over the longer term by itself is a “negative” factor
that drives others away, the regionalist argues (rufabula.com/articles/2015/10/14/without-the-west).
And
on the other and more profoundly, it leaves Russia “without ‘a West’” to define
itself against, thus calling into question the meaning of debates that have
informed Russian intellectual and political life for more than two centuries
between Westernizers and their opponents, the Slavophiles.
The passing of a Europe-centric world is not a
problem for the Europeans who for some time have been accustomed to avoiding
any suggestion of the superiority of their culture over others, and it is not a
problem for the US or Asia, both of which will become partners of Europe rather
than antagonistic competitors.
But
for Russia, the end of a Europe-centric world is a real crisis. In the 19th
century, Russians divided over whether to become European or to distance
themselves from it. In the 20th,
“this dichotomy was rapidly reproduced in the USSR,” with Soviet propaganda presenting
the West “in the form of a global enemy.”
Today,
Shtepa continues, “anti-Westernism has again become in fact the official
doctrine.” But there are two problems:
On the one hand, unlike in tsarist and Soviet times, when Russia had its own
state ideology, “present day [Russian] anti-Westernism is pure reaction,”
opposed to everything.
And
on the other, with the formation of the TransPacific Partnership, Shtepa
argues, it is not clear just what the West is, given how difficult it is to put
under that rubric Japan, New Zealand and Chile. As a result, “’anti-Western’
rhetoric is losing all meaning; and ‘the struggle with the West’ is
degenerating into hostility to the entire rest of the world.”
That
in turn highlights something else, the Russian regionalist says. How is Russia to identify itself? The country isn’t “east” in critical ways,
and “Eurasianism doesn’t work either – it is too broad and can be give a
plethora of definitions.” Moreover, Eurasianism typically presupposes an
Orthodox-Muslim “civilization,” something Russia’s “interference in an
intra-Islamic conflict destroys any possibility” of achieving.
In
many ways, Shtepa continues, “Russia today reminds one of the Byzantine Empire
which also consider the West its chief enemy but fell as a result of a shock
from the East.” In addition, Byzantine civilization was deeply conservative and
was afraid of any real efforts at modernization.
Tsarist Russia felt itself to be the successor of
Byzantium and conducted two wars in the 19th century in failed
efforts to “liberate Constantinople.”
Indeed, even “Dostoyevsky’s ‘Diary of a Writer’ in places looks like a
collection of slogan resembling ‘Tsargrad is ours.’” Now, even if Russia took
Istanbul, it would not have access to the world ocean because of British
Gibralter.
Russia
had another opportunity at that time to break out of the cage it had kept itself
in at the other end of the earth, “but because of the dominance of
Euro-centrism in Russian politics, this was not given great attention.” That possibility
was to develop Alaska, but the tsarist authorities feared what that might mean
for them and sold it to the US.
There
are many theories about why the tsars did this “but one of the probable ones is
that the Russian government wanted to prevent a mass resettlement there of the
recently liberated peasants,” who would create a new kind of society with a
civic worldview and would ultimately break away from the empire the way the US
did from Britain.
“The
Pacific Ocean space has always been considered by Russia as a distant
periphery,” Shtepa says, pointing out that its ports there came into existence
as military outposts while the ports in the west coast of the United States
developed as trading centers. That difference, military versus economic, is one
reason why Russia couldn’t be part of the TransPacific Partnership.
There
is one chance for Russia to overcome this alienation and reorient itself toward
the Pacific. That would involve the construction of a railroad linking Eurasia
and America via a bridge across the Bering Straits. That idea circulated after
the construction of the TransSiberian, and it had the backing of the last tsar
and his government before they were overthrown.
Some Russians talked about this idea in
the 1990s, but all too soon, “these global-integration ideas in Russia again
yield to customary opposition to the West. Although in reality,” Shtepa notes, “Alaska
is to the east of Chukotka: Russian geopoliticians have simply forgotten that
the Earth is round…”
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