Moscow Considering Russian Analog of Monroe Doctrine for Post-Soviet Space, Apukhtin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 4 – Russia as a self-standing civilization must recover its exclusive interest over the former Soviet space, and some experts in Moscow are urging that the Kremlin declare something like the Monroe Doctrine that the US maintains with respect to the Americas, Yury Apukhtin says.

            But for that to work and for Russia to succeed in its civilizational mission rather than decay into a marginal part of the West, the Moscow commentator says, Russia must develop a new vision of the future, one that will attract the peoples of the region to its side (alternatio.org/articles/articles/item/86453-dolzhna-li-rossiya-borotsya-za-postsovetskoe-prostranstvo).

            Without such a vision which would take the form of an ideology based on historical experience, Apukhtin says, Moscow will find that other powers will continue to play an expanded role in the former Soviet space and that the centrifugal forces now dominant there will become even stronger in the future.

            In tsarist and communist times, Moscow pursued an expansion of its territory and droit de regard over adjoining areas by offering an attractive vision and investing in the periphery, often at the expense of the core national territory. It now must come up with a new vision and also be willing to invest in the periphery if it hopes to win back these peoples.

            What makes Apukhtin’s argument significant is that he combines the desire many around the Kremlin have for reasserting Moscow’s dominance over the former Soviet space with a demand that few of them now share for a new ideological construct and financial commitment that few in the top leadership of Putin’s Russia are committed to.

            Many in the Kremlin believe they can recover Russian influence in the former Soviet space on the cheap as it were, he suggests. But “the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union became powerful and influential civilizational units not on the basis of trade but thanks to military-political and ideological power.” Today’s elite must take that into consideration.

            Apukhtin argues that now “the Russian ruling class instead of offering the borderlands a social-political model of joint existence and the restoration of political and economic influence has tried to buy the friendship of these borderlands by offering only low prices for energy and economic gifts.” That isn’t and won’t be enough.

            “Compared to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union,” he continues, “the Russian Federation can offer far less to the former Soviet republics in political and social-economic spheres. Moscow does not have a strategy for civilizational development” that is based on a recognition of the fundamental importance of the borderlands.

            Having failed in this task of creating “an image of the future of Russia and Russian civilization,” the commentator says, “the Russian elite has decided to repeat the liberal model of the West which has led to the decline of the economy and tensions in the social sphere,” including radical income differentiation and a lack of integration models.

            Apukhtin says that in the Moscow expert community ever more people are talking about the need to proclaim “’a Monroe Doctrine’” that would hold that the former Soviet republics as “a zone of exclusive Russian interests” and declare that Moscow could use all means, including military ones, to keep other powers out.

            “The reintegration of the post-Soviet space can only be on a voluntary basis,” the analyst argues, one based on a shared civilizational model. Moscow must develop and articulate that model more clearly or it will continue to find itself unable to hold the periphery except by the use of force, something that may prove counterproductive.

            And in doing so, Apukhtin argues, Moscow must focus first and foremost on reintegrating places where Russian civilizational values remain strong, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. In the Caucasus and Central Asia, Moscow needs to use protectorates or a confederation to link these more different regions to itself.

            According to the analyst, “the rebirth of Russian civilization and the reintegration of the post-Soviet space are a question of time. And Russia now must show that it is not part of Western civilization but an independent and self-standing civilizational union with its own values and interests.”

            That requires a clear articulation of those values and interests rather than their treatment as something of secondary importance.