Gordon M. Hahn is a Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002).
The Washington Post (WP) continues to provide print space only to journalists and pundits who level one-sided criticism of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy. In each dispute involving Russia: continued encroachment of Western military infrastructure around Russian borders (NATO, the ABM system to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic); Europe over gas supplies; and the West’s position on Kosovo; WP editorials and news reports, in violation of all journalistic standards of objectivity, support the side opposed to Russia.
Russia Media Watch will report inaccuracies, biases and violations of journalistic standards in major print media outlets ( New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc.), whether articles reflect positively or negatively on Russia. Unfortunately today, articles that lend credence to Russia’s position on any political issue are rarely published in American print media outlets.
In “Old Europe, New Europe” (Washington Post, February 6, 2008) by Robert Kagan, Europe’s motivations are ascribed only to nobility and considered transcendent of self-interest. This “new Europe” is said to be based exclusively on the values of institutions and laws. This idealistic, “E.U. spirit” stands in sharp contrast, in Kagan’s mind, to a cynically “realist” Russia. In this interpretation, Russia represents ‘old Europe” because it behaves “like a traditional 19th-century power,” meaning that it behaves on the world stage in accordance with realist principles – the pursuit of self-interest, geopolitical calculus, balance of power, etc. In reality, Europe (and the West writ large) is not any different, and Russia is not purely self-interested or ‘cynical’.
The West’s pursuit of its perceived self-interest in the immediate post-Soviet years explains much of Russia’s cynical realism today. This is obvious in a hot issue largely ignored by Kagan: that is, NATO expansion toward Russia’s borders. In 1990, President Ronald Reagan made a public pledge to Russia’s leader Mikhail Gorbachev (in return for Russia permitting the Berlin Wall to fall) that “NATO (then limited to Germany) would not move a kilometer closer to Russia’s borders.” Gorbachev trusted Reagan, and the Russian people believed Reagan could be trusted on this issue which was critical to Russia. During the 1990s under President Bill Clinton, NATO began moving into former Eastern block countries, to the great dismay of Russians. NATO expanded east, without including Russia, in violation of its promises that no expansion would occur. Russia’s realism today, tinged with a growing anti-Westernism, is the consequence of this historic1990 broken pledge.
Here, European legalism played a curious role. Since Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t secure Western promises in writing, new Europe transcendently and nobly ignored Russia’s interests. This is one of the major “Russia’s nightmares” of the 1990s. Other nightmares include unconditional Western political support for corrupt Yeltsin administration that robbed the Russian state blind, America’s failure and misuse of promised massive economic assistance, and the utter failure of policies (shock therapy and vouchers) foisted on Russia by key American consultants from major U.S. institutions.
According to Kagan, Europe has made a bet on a world in which a noble “geoeconomics” transcends Russia’s mucky geopolitics. Unfortunately, Kagan’s and Europe’s distinction between geoeconomics and geopolitics is conveniently too fine (Masha, or should it be overdrawn?) . Even if one accepts that the West favors the “primacy” of the former over the latter, this does not alter the fact that geoeconomic expansion produces important geopolitical implications and consequences.
In the case of NATO expansion, geoeconomic and geopolitical advantages went hand in hand. NATO’s presence guarantees the West both political and economic predominance in Eastern Europe and as NATO expands farther, also into western Eurasia. An economically painful consequence for Russia has been that now Western defense corporations have locked out Russia’s defense industry market from one of its few remaining outlets. This forced Russia to find new military arms clients among the West’s real and potential enemies – with the expected U.S. negative reaction to Russia’s searching for new markets.
The West’s attempts to portray NATO expansion purely in terms of expanding democracy (to regions that already have it), are unconvincing to Russians, who are excluded from the club, and have their interests undermined by that expansion. Since idealistic and realistic aspects of Western expansion are intrinsically intertwined, it is ingenuous to trumpet the former and deny the latter to Russia whose interests are disregarded by Western expansion.
The same is true of EU expansion. Kagan refers to European expansion as “supranational.” Oddly, any manifestation of expansion by new Russian-dominated or inspired multinational institutions such as the newly-formed Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Community, the Russian-Belarusian Union, and even Shanghai Cooperation Organization – is labeled by the West as Russian post-imperialism, neo-imperialism, renewed expansionism, even fascism – not as “voluntary empire” development. Yet often the expansion of Western economic influence, particularly when it becomes overwhelming or hegemonic (as Europe’s may seem to Russia), receives the nomenclature ‘economic imperialism’ or neo-imperialism.
Just as Russia’s recent geoeconomic efforts (oil, gas, and pipeline developments) have geopolitical consequences perceived as undermining Western interests, so too do Western geoeconomic moves have geopolitical consequences for Russia’s security interests.
Typically, Kagan connects neither the pursuit of self-interest nor the tight relationship between the geoeconomic and geopolitical with the EU’s desire to become a “superpower” and “compete as an equal with the United States and China.” Nor is mention given to the implications for Moscow’s interests of a world constructed by the West in which a troika of economic and political superpowers (EU, US, and China) dwarf and isolate Russia economically and politically. Such a perspective leads rather seamlessly to Moscow’s perception of Western powers as acting cynically to Russian interests in their pursuit of geoeconomic ‘equality.’
While Kagan regards geoeconomic expansion as “soft power” wielded by the noble new Europe, Russia’s alleged use of its gas/oil power is seen as part and parcel of “conflict” produced by the “challenge of a “19th-century power.” As with all countries, much of Russia’s foreign policy is based on economic interest. Shorn of all allies and former arms markets as a result of NATO expansion, Russia is using the few cards it has in order to find business partners and gain influence abroad. Thus, Moscow used its support for Serbia’s opposition to Kosovo’s independence to garner oil and gas deals with Belgrade; this is a prime example of the overlap between the geoeconomic and geopolitical.
Dr. Kagan knows as well as anyone that all states conduct themselves in international affairs on the basis of their country’s self-interest. All states are realists, including new Europe. In calculating what is in their best interests, all states make rational calculations, and do so not on the basis of other states’ intentions alone but on the basis of their capabilities. Thus, when Michael McConnell, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, while briefing Congress last week, he (for the first time in a decade) included Russia along with China, Iran, and other U.S. security threats. He did so on the basis of Russia’s military, financial and even cyber “capabilities.”
His comment, “Russian military exercises of the kind not seen since the Cold War,” might be a manifestation of old European realism. U.S. ‘Cold War-style’ military exercises never ended after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact dissolved. America’s and new Europe’s expanded NATO continued strategic bomber flights, along with large naval exercises in far away ‘out-of-area’ seas, while Russia was forced in the 1990s, to cease theirs due to its massive economic depression. Yet, throughout the mid-1990s many NATO exercises used scenarios involving military action against Russian forces, which explains another of Russia’s nightmares.
Kagan and the new Europe are now surprised that Russia is no longer “prostrate,” and consider that European expansion has run into “a new eastern problem” with Russia.When NATO expansion was first being debated in the early 1990s, many analysts, including the present writer, warned that expanding NATO without Russia would automatically threaten Russia due to being locked out of Europe, would turn eastern Europe into contestation between Moscow and the West, and ultimately turn an inevitably revived Moscow in a search of another community of supportive states.
The problem therefore is not, as Kagan suggests, simply the “centuries-old contest between Russia and its neighbors,” but rather the centuries-old separation of Russia from Europe (and the Russo-West contest) for business ties and influence of the countries that lie between them. For Kagan it is not the West – with its expansion of NATO and the EU into all of Eastern Europe and all former Soviet republics – that “seeks to regain predominant influence,” but rather Putin’s new resurgent Russia.
To be sure, Russia’s sense of being isolated from the new Europe has resulted in a rather GGGchildish, but understandable reactions. Kagan and the west never mentions that WTO required that Russia stop subsidizing gas and oil to neighboring countries as a precondition to WTO accession. Cutting off trade and energy supplies to the contested countries still dependent on them – was saying in effect, “if you wish to take sides against us, then let’s cut the cord now. Get what you want from your new ‘noble’ friends who will surely provide what you need.” This reactive mode of operating drives Russia’s growing anti-West mentality. Having been rejected by the West’s major international institutions, like a spurned lover, it now rejects the West and believes it ever should have cared to join it.
Psychoanalysis aside, Kagan misstates the facts regarding Russian keeping forces on Georgian territory. Yes, Russians are there, but they serve under a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) peacekeeping mandate with Georgian approval. Kagan is diligent to point out that Russia recently withdrew from the CFE Treaty. However, he is reliably negligent in ignoring Russia’s legitimate argument that the CFE treaty’s force limits are obsolete (being a tool of the non-existent Warsaw Pact) and the treaty was never ratified by the U.S. or Europe. He leaves aside the Bush administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2001. He also ignores the Reagan-Gorbachev agreements that NATO would not go closer to Russia’s borders; further that there GGG was a jihadi threat emanating from Russia’s southern perimeter, where there was less of an apparent jihadi threat either from across or inside Russia’s southern border. Regarding the latter, Moscow still must contend with dangerous jihadist insurgency conducting a low-intensity terrorist campaign across much of the North Caucasus and with a proven capacity to extend its jihad to Moscow itself (in November they declared jihad was aimed not only at Russia, but also the US, Great Britain, and Israel).
The creeping expansion of NATO is destined seemingly to encompass Russia’s entire western border with the exception of that separated from Europe by Belarus. This has led to the West’s training of Georgian military forces, bringing the West indirectly into the simmering Russian-Georgian conflict over the ‘unrecognized states’ of Abkhazia and North Ossetia. Kagan correctly recognizes the looming danger that this set of relationships poses.
This paper is not to say that NATO or the West is engaged in imperialist adventure aimed at Russia. It is to say that both the West and Russia are engaged in the realist pursuit of self-interest and that much of the conflict between them is driven by mistaken policies of the U.S. during the 1990s and misperceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. Mutual recriminations will not solve the problem. Only an honest reassessment of the errors and shortcomings on both sides can begin to unravel this Gordian Knot. The question is, who has the will or the interest in open dialogue on these critical mistakes and politicization of US-EU-Russia relations.
Kagan is correct to point out that the existing lay of the land constitutes a “new era of geopolitics.” Although he seems to lay the blame for this inordinately on the Kremlin’s spires, he closes seeming to hope for a “shift in policy toward Russia” under a new U.S. administration. However, he is not explicit regarding the type of shift he would recommend: one that seeks to redress some of Russia’s grievances stemming from Western miscalculations in the 1990s or one that moves to expand NATO farther in preparation for a confrontation with Moscow over Georgia and/or Ukraine. Judging by the rest of the article, it seems the latter would be more likely. If so, he would fall in line with the new Washington consensus.
To view full version of Kagan's article please click here:
It's interesting the foresight contained in this article. You ability to recognize certain logical indicators that lead to the conflict in Ossetia. The average American is overwhelmed with the current election for President, while Cheney is futher perpetuates Cold War tactics to ensure his personal access to energy in the region once he leaves office.
Posted by: Cleopheus Williams | September 07, 2008 at 01:52 PM