Why did Russia choose war?

The survival paradigm

Russia has already started living in a different dimension, finally becoming aware of the end of a whole era and fleetingness of the current political structure

By Lilia SHEVTSOVA

History teaches us to remember its lessons, and it also makes us pay for forgetfulness. 2014 must become an anniversary of two events. The first one happened in 1814, when heads of leading European countries created a system, which provided Europe with relative peace (it was disrupted only by short wars). The second event took place in 1914, when the Concert of Europe fell apart and Europe entered the bloodiest war in its history until then without even noticing it. These anniversaries should have become a subject of historic discussions and debates on the reasons these events happened. But it turned out that these anniversaries became a proof that leaders and political elites have not learned to understand history and draw lessons from the past.

It is proven by Russia’s war against Ukraine and the world’s reaction to this war. Having annexed Crimea and violated the post-war borders in Europe, and then having started military operations on the territory of Ukraine, Russia virtually destroyed not only the world order that was established after the collapse of the USSR, it also undermined a whole system of international agreements, which had been consolidating the European field for a long time: agreements between Russia and Ukraine; the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which guaranteed territorial integrity to Ukraine as a non-nuclear actor; the Helsinki Accords, Yalta-Potsdam agreements, the essence of which was the consensus division of areas of influence; and finally, the Westphalian system, which emphasized the sovereignty of states. It is no less important, and many understand this, that the legal and contract guarantees of the global rules of the game collapsed, but they do not want to admit it, because they would have to react to the ongoing events. And this is what they want to avoid, and there is no understanding of how to react without putting their own interests at risk.

When you do not want to react to the reality, you start creating myths, or force yourself to believe in myths helpfully presented by the others. So, this war has already been webbed with made-up pretexts, the absurdity of which is obvious. But many use them, since these pretexts justify their indifference or other motives, which are even less attractive. Look at the most popular excuses for Russia’s aggression, which are offered by Russian propagandists and which are frequently used by the West. Here is the most popular myth: Russia was cornered and had to react to the threat of Ukraine’s joining NATO. But wait, what are we talking about if the West already refused to present this option to Ukraine back in 2008? And the NATO itself has grown decrepit during the past few years to the extent that it seemed it would not last much longer. Moreover, it seems that Western leaders, including Obama, have been concerned with only one task during the past years: not to upset President Putin! And here is one more myth: Russia could not tolerate watching Ukrainian nationalists who seized the power in Kyiv! But why does the Kremlin bear the view of Russian nationalists and even plays the ethnic card? And one more: Russia should have guaranteed the federalization of Ukraine, which would protect the rights of Russian-speaking citizens. But the Kremlin destroyed Russian federalism and it is not bothered with the rights of Russian citizens. In short, the essence of this primitive mythology is clear, and it is even somewhat awkward to watch when it is reproduced by seemingly adequate experts.

Meanwhile, you start realizing that this war (just like many others) was programmed by the desire of one group of people to settle their problems by means of force; attempts of others not to pay attention to the first group; and the unreadiness of the third group to defend the state’s interests. A whole set of factors appeared, which pushed those who were ready to apply force to applying it, or created a favorable environment for that.

Undoubtedly, a great role was played by the fact that after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the West lost the drive and desire to preserve its principles, it relaxed and believed in the end of history and irreversibility of its triumphalism. The world has entered the era of postmodernism, when values lost their meaning and the epoch of pragmatism and deideologization has come. The erosion of borders between principles was partially reflected in the fact that authoritarian Russia became a member of the European Council and started teaching liberal democracies how democracy should be comprehended. The swamp of postmodernism created grounds for imitation, political fakes, readiness to forget about principles in the name of profit. This situation created exceptional opportunities not only for survival of Russian autocracy, but for growth of its self-confidence, aggressiveness, belief in Europe’s decline, and desire to fill the niche that appeared.

The epoch of deideologization and loss of ethical dimension, accommodation to authoritarianism, and granting its representatives access to the structures of the Western society could have lasted even longer if the Kremlin had not felt the urge to leave this farce and return to the traditional for Russian autocracy form of survival: “besieged fortress.” Perhaps, Russia’s government sensed that the state of complacency, integration of the ruling elite into the West, preservation of personal freedoms of citizens becomes dangerous and may cause the loss of control over society. When Moscow residents took to the streets in 2011-12, it was a wake-up call for the Kremlin. Putin immediately applied every effort to transform the Russian system into the format of restraining the Western civilization. I want to point out that it happened before Maidan, during 2012-13. By the time Maidan happened, the Kremlin had already started living in a paradigm of fighting the enemy. Ukrainian events gave the Kremlin an opportunity to shift into the military mode and openly go back to militarization as a way to consolidate the society around the government, and also probe the West’s ability to suppress the new Russian aggressiveness. Twenty years of the West’s complacency, its policy of connivance in relation to the Kremlin’s authoritarianism, liberal democracies’ inability to shape their course and cope with their own problems have created a perfect field for the Kremlin’s experiment.

In other words, a combination of several factors played a role, which created an opportunity for the Russian aggression: the liberal civilization’s loss of its regulatory essence and ability to defend its principles; a gradual exhaustion of peaceful ways to preserve the Russian autocracy; the revolution in Ukraine, which caused civil resistance in this country and weakening of the Ukrainian state.

It seems that in this situation the annexation of Crimea became the personal decision of Putin who used Ukraine’s weakness, propagated Crimea as Russian territory, and enforced a military patriotic mobilization, for which he was already prepared and which he would carry out in any case. And what an opportunity presented itself! So, we are dealing with a subjective implementation of objective logic of Russian autocracy at the stage of its degradation and advanced decay. Putin became a personificator of this logic, if you please.

The annexation of Crimea entailed the rest, including the war in eastern Ukraine. But let us make a clear statement: this war would have hardly been possible, should there be a firm response of the West and international institutions to the fact of the annexation of Crimea (consideration of Ukrainian events in the context of the West’s connivance at the war between Russia and Georgia and the annexation of a part of Georgia’s territory by Moscow is also completely justified). Finally, this war would have hardly been possible, if the West had not displayed its complete confusion at the first stage of the aggression and readiness to view it as an “internal Ukrainian conflict.”

The very fact that this war is not recognized as such by the international institutions makes it even more cynical and hard to end. There is still no clear understanding of the borderline between war and peace. The truce itself is but a form of continuation of war. The phenomenon of this undeclared and unrecognized war creates a huge and yet obscure for the world threat to the international stability and security, because it gives a precedent of borderline state between war and peace.

We are only starting to realize the possible consequences of this war for Ukraine, for Russia, for the whole system of world order. We are not fully aware of the consequences and the tectonic shifts this war will cause, because we do not yet know how to finally put an end to it and how to live with what is to become its legacy. So far, I can only say that this war has given Russia a pretext for the military and patriotic consolidation and militarist survival paradigm, which, perhaps, means a transition of Russian autocracy to the stage of agony. In any case, Russia has already started living in another dimension, feeling an end of the whole era and fleetingness of the current political structure. However, it still remains unclear what will follow when the autocracy starts to disintegrate, and what forces and processes it will involve.

Wars always have consequences, many of which are comprehended only years after they come to an end.

Lilia Shevtsova is a  senior associate at Carnegie Moscow Center

War as peace, peace as war

The obvious goal is to hinder free development of the Ukrainian nation and statehood

By Dmitry SHUSHARIN, special to The Day

A reliable way to eschew studying a political situation is to declare it genetically predetermined. Everybody does so. Kremlin guys like talking about an inner genetic link between the Russians and the Ukrainians, which makes them one nation. The Ukrainians use this to explain Russian aggressiveness. Genetics is part of biology, and reducing interethnic differences to biological factors has such a non-evaluative definition as racism. It remains non-evaluative until political concepts begin to be formulated on its basis.

Therefore, to answer the question if Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was inevitable, it is very simple to say that it was genetically predetermined. Where is this gene hiding and how is it brought into play? Yuk is the word!

There is also another way to evade the answer and, for some people, to escape responsibility. In 2008 an inveterate liberal from Chubais’ retinue mocked me: why on earth should we defend Saakashvili who called the President of Russia “Lilliputin”? Come on, they’ll just frolic a little, kill a thousand or two Georgians and a certain number of Russians, and that’s it!

The same applies to Ukraine, but it is now being done less cynically but more maliciously with respect to Putin – he has let us all down because of his imperial complexes.

Boris Yeltsin was as tall as a tree and free of complexes, especially after he had come out of the Gorbachev-imposed disgrace. However, the dismemberment of Georgia and Moldavia, the subjugation of Tajikistan, the conflict with the West due to NATO enlargement and the Yugoslav crisis – all this began when he was in power.

Forget Yeltsin! Vladmir Ulianov, the last century’s most successful putschist, got a very nice opportunity to build a totalitarian state almost within the bounds of present-day Russia, without paying attention to the problems of the new nation states that were emerging on the former empire’s territory. Ruin, famine, and other troubles were supposed to make him focus on the territory under Bolshevik jurisdiction. However, he marched as far as Warsaw, leaving the Baltic countries and Finland alone – temporarily, of course. And there was a long and bloody war in Central Asia well after his death.

Neither a mystic-genetic nor a vulgar psychological explanation will do here. What will do is, no matter how banal this may sound, a historical and socio-cultural explanation, which has in fact been clear for a long time. Russian culture still does not have a mechanism to form a new identity which would tie up such things as national interests and a democratic nation state. Otherwise, when elites and societies are changing, and classes and estates are vanishing and emerging, any ideological schemes will only serve as substitutes for the changes that can be called modernization of identity.

But you will never explain this in genetic terms, even if you are eager to do so. History and culture know no genes that function outside the will and consciousness of people. Reproduction of the same mental – verbal and preverbal – structures that fit in with the stereotypes of mass awareness and the dominating culture (mass culture now) is always on the conscience of concrete people. Their names may be known or unknown, but it is they, not a mysterious ethnic DNA, that are to blame.

No matter what apparel the Russian authorities may be donning – be it the Russian or Prussian attire or Monomakh’s hat or the budenovka hat that was invented for the tsarist army and called bogatyrka, – they have remained Russian for centuries. The combination of these hats and the Prussian cavalry coats which the 1st Red Cavalry Army wore is a nice illustration of the fact that anything can be used in conjunction with anything else to ward off the establishment of a modern European state in Russia.

It is now being said openly and straight at last that democracy and liberalism impair Russian identity. The latter word is being used openly, albeit not in the broadest circles. This admission blows sky-high all the incantation-like assumptions that the Russian path is a path to nowhere, to the past, away from the civilized world. What’s the use of unmasking if the one that is being unmasked says calmly: yes, that’ right, so what?

If the Russians were following a special path just on their own, this would adversely affect just a small number of dissenters and outcasts among themselves. But the identity that can harm democracy includes the necessity of continuous expansion – ideally, imposing the Russian pattern on as many nations of the world as possible. In the current circumstances, this means to prevent neighbors from forming nation states.

When there emerged the first publications on the Kremlin’s plans to establish Novorossia, I compared this to what prompted Hitler to lay his hands on Czechoslovakia. He could have only unleashed World War Two, in conjunction with the USSR, if he had added the Czech military-industrial potential to that of the Reich. I could not help drawing a parallel, when Russia was evidently intent on seizing the regions where Ukraine’s military-industrial potential was concentrated.

But, apart from parallels with the distant past, there is also the practice of the last 25 years. The seizure of Transnistria did not exactly result in an industrial boom there. The Kremlin’s main goal was to deprive Moldova of this industry rather than to use it. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are a case that was thoroughly discussed long ago. Crimea is turning into a military base, where nuclear missiles may be stationed in the future. Nor is the Donbas intended to prosper.

The obvious goal of this war is to hinder free development of the Ukrainian nation and statehood. Military arguments for continuing the Russian aggression with the deployment of all kinds of conventional (so far) weapons are quite serious – first of all, it is a corridor to Crimea. And there still remains the likelihood of a full-scale invasion before the elections. But it is also very likely that the Kremlin has taken a pause before implementing a Georgia-like scenario – with essential modifications, of course.

In the case of Georgia, emphasis was put on the elections, on an overtly pro-Russian candidate. In the case of Ukraine, the overtly pro-Kremlin forces are standing a slim chance. But there is also a different thing.

Very few wars have ever ended in unconditional surrender. By all accounts, it was an exception made to such monsters as Nazi Germany and its allies on the initiative of Franklin D. Roosevelt and patterned on the US Civil War, when the Confederates were to be denied the right of legal personality. But the world has already granted this right to the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” and, hence, may do so later with respect to Novorossia. But the point is that it is possible to win if the enemy begins to dodge confrontation and agree to concede.

Many are saying that the Ukrainian ruling elite has been waging a phony war – some are engaged in fighting, others in commerce. These people think they are buying a place in the European elite by paying for this with their own country’s territory – for it is the European Union that ordered them to “ditch” Crimea. As for Putin, he views this war as a means to achieve a collusion of the elites and the consent of the Ukrainian elite, which relies on a considerable part of Ukrainian society (let us not forget it), to the current situation in Ukraine which is coordinating EU association with the Kremlin – in other words, consent to a limited national sovereignty.

This means it would be wrong to regard the Ukraine-Russia war as something opposite to peace as a different condition. It is not the case that we fight today but do not fight from 4 a.m. onwards. On the whole, Russia’s policy towards the rest of the world is war – a hybrid war, as NATO calls it, or a war of iterance, as Ukrainian researcher Viktor Skoryk defines it, when you cause the enemy to make concessions step by step by combining the use of force, bribery, blackmail, deception, propaganda, etc.

The ulterior motive of all this is the need of the government to preserve and strengthen its power inside Russia and to rally together its populace. The main goal is to ward off the modernization of Russia itself and the transformation of Russian identity.

A lot of people involved in the systematic work aimed at causing the Russian nation to degrade are interested in this. They in fact constitute the party of war, which was forming in Russia in the last years of the USSR. And this intellectual core of the current regime is far more dangerous and worse than those who are on the surface.

Dmitry Shusharin is a Moscow-based historian and political journalist