Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 22 – The upcoming
elections in Russia offer little intrigue, but the situation in the Kremlin
does, Liliya Shevtsova says. There the question is how to get a new deal from
the West without completely losing face with a serious debate going on between
those who are prepared to make concessions and those who call for putting
Russia on a war footing.
In a new essay, the Russian
political expert says, relations with the West have become “an existential
question” for the Russian elite. Its
members need a restoration of the kind of relations they had before the Crimean
Anschluss and thus Russia “if it is to remain a Power must return to dialogue
with the Western partners” (voboda.org/a/28911965.html).
But the Kremlin must do so without completely
losing face which would cost it its authority among many Russians, and so the
Moscow leadership, having “for the first time become a factor in the domestic
politics of Western countries, chiefly the United States,” is seeking to affect
the outcome of a debate within the West.
“The West doesn’t want a cold or even
more ‘a hot war’ with Russia,” Shevtsova continues. But it hasn’t decided how to contain Moscow
and at the same time enter into dialogue with it. Some favor a hard line in response to what Vladimir
Putin has done in Ukraine and inside Western countries.
Others support what they call “a pragmatic
and realistic foreign policy,” one that would essentially start over with
Russia, ignoring what it has done and seeking to move forward from where the
world is now. Obviously, Moscow would prefer the latter especially if it doesn’t
have to make any concessions or retreats from what it has done.
Many in Moscow are convinced that “the
Syrian ‘victory’ is for the Kremlin a prelude for return to dialogue with the
West,” she says, because “any deal involves an exchange of concessions.” Moscow
wants the West to lift sanctions and return to the exchange of resources and an
end to any threat of more Kerimov-style threats to the Russian elite.
But “for the West, these conditions
are already unacceptable.” The West too has to save face and for that it requires
Russia to leave Ukraine. Everything else can be discussed but not that.
However, in Moscow that is the biggest problem because “the Kremlin can leave Ukraine
only as a victor!”
Syria thus represents for Moscow a
way out, one that can reopen a dialogue with the West and allow “the Ukrainian
knot” to begin to be untied. According
to Shevtsova, however, “the Russian powers are not certain” how they can now
proceed with some arguing, in mirror-image fashion to the West, that Moscow
must get even tougher and others the reverse.
If the Kremlin follows the advice of
the first group, the situation for Russia will become even worse; but many
there feel that they cannot accept the advice of the second lest they lose face
and thus authority at home and abroad.
And those who argue that the West must be forced to “give the Kremlin the
chance to feel victory” are ready for an even more forceful approach.
To the extent that things more in
this direction, Shevtsova argues, “Russia will again be converted into a besieged
camp – even in spite of the desire of the elite which would prefer to locate
itself into the other hostile camp. And we shouldn’t forget how the previous conflict
off this kind ended – with the collapse of the USSR.”
If however the West makes all the concessions Moscow
wants, then this will mean that “the world will return to ‘the big deal’ of the
last 20 years: the West will offer Russia resources and Russia will offer the
West gas and consumption. This will be a scenario not of collapse but of slow
rotting: true, together with the West.”
That
may be a better option for some who do not think about saving their own
societies or about the future; it isn’t for those who are concerned about
both.
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