The present regime is very secretive about its long-term foreign policy goals and keeps its cards close to its chest. But there are many disconcerting signals. Russia is playing a dangerous “Great Game” in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, destabilizing its neighborhood and trying to reestablish itself as the dominant power. After the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the subsequent dismemberment of this small neighboring country, an acceleration of measures and actions could be observed that—taken together—were rather disconcerting. These actions began with the combined massive Zapad (West) 2009 and Osen (Fall) 2009 maneuvers in August and September 2009 in which up to thirty thousand troops participated. For these maneuvers Khadafi’s son was invited, but not Western observers (OSCE rules for the invitation of observers were circumvented by simply dividing the maneuver into two smaller parts). The Zapad maneuver ended in September 2009 in the Kaliningrad oblast with a simulated tactical nuclear attack on Poland—an action that led to protests from the Polish government. Moreover, Russia’s nuclear doctrine was changed, to allow the preventive use of tactical nuclear weapons in local wars—even against nonnuclear states, which is a flagrant breach of the Nonproliferation Treaty. On August 10, 2009, a law was signed by Medvedev, permitting the use of Russian troops in foreign countries “to protect citizens of the Russian Federation.” These measures seemed to be meant as a legal preparation for eventual armed interventions in Russia’s Near Abroad and were interpreted as a growing Russian bellicosity, experienced as a threat by its neighboring states. According to the French geopolitician Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier, “the Russians seem to be seriously convinced that in the end the empire will always return to where it [once] reigned.”[31] The existence of the Russian empire is, indeed, for many Russians so self-evident, that it is almost a law of nature, a necessity hidden in la nature des choses. The problem is that this is not self-evident for the formerly colonized peoples, who—at last—have gained or regained their national independence. A reconstitution of the former empire on a new basis will, therefore, necessitate a huge, prolonged, and concentrated effort by the Russian leadership, an effort involving making use of all the means the Russian state has at its disposaclass="underline" from economic investments and economic cooperation to economic boycotts, from pipeline diplomacy to energy blackmail, from using its “soft power” to diplomatic pressure and corruption of local political elites, from charm offensives to provocative actions and military threats.
IN SEARCH OF A NEW LEGITIMATION THEORY FOR A POST-SOVIET EMPIRE
However, this new Russian imperialism needs an ideological justification. What kind of justification can the Russian leadership give to their neoimperial ambitions? It is clear that it can no longer invoke a specific mission, as in the case of the Soviet Union, which was considered as the global vanguard of the working classes. Nor can it rely on theories of the white man’s burden, which have definitively been discredited. Furthermore “spreading democracy” and the defense of human rights cannot be used as an argument. The democratic credentials of Russia are not much better than those of Belarus. What we are seeing rather are elements of the old Pan Slavism when the Kremlin calls the Ukrainians or the Belarusians “brother peoples” who should not remain separated from the “mother country” Russia. But the old Pan Slavism was meant to liberate Slav peoples from a foreign yoke. Today Belarus and Ukraine are sovereign countries and are in no need of being liberated. The new Russian Pan Slavism vis-à-vis Belarus and Ukraine has, therefore, rather the character of an annexationist Pan-Russianism. (This finds, by the way, support in the name Russians use for Ukraine: Malaya Rossiya—Little Russia.) Do Russia’s imperial ambitions stop there? Or do they equally include Moldova, Kazakhstan, the South Caucasus, and the Central Asian republics?
What—in the end—remains as a justification for a renewed Russian imperialism vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics is not much more than the naked Russian state interest. I am referring here deliberately to the Russian state interest and not to the Russian national interest, because the new Russian imperialism is clearly in the interest of Russia’s ruling political and military elite, whose positions are strengthened and consolidated by a neoimperialist policy. However, this policy is not in the interest of the average Russian citizen. And this is a forteriori the case for the citizens of the other former Soviet republics. Mongrenier spoke in this context of an “ideology of power for the sake of power.”[32] Another French geopolitician wrote that “Pragmatism is one of the characteristics of the Russian foreign policy of our early twenty-first century: a pragmatic quest for power characterized by coercive methods and an absence of morals.”[33] “Power for the sake of power,” “absence of morals”: it is clear that we have here a legitimation theory: it is the old social Darwinism of the end of the nineteenth century, the right claimed by the strong to dominate the weak for the sole reason that he is stronger.
A NEW IDEOLOGICAL TRIAD: ORTHODOXY, THE POWER VERTICAL, SOVEREIGN DEMOCRACY
Russia’s return to power politics had already started under Yeltsin, who demanded from the West a droit de regard in its “Near Abroad,” which came close to reestablishing the old Brezhnev doctrine of “limited sovereignty.” The West, however, did not give in to these demands. An overt neoimperial policy would also contradict the liberal democratic principles that Russia at that time still claimed to share with the West. Under Putin the principles of Russian democracy have been fundamentally changed. Russia no longer adheres to a Western-style liberal democracy with fair elections and the alternation of power. It has introduced “sovereign” democracy. This concept, forged by Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s former deputy head of the presidential administration, means that “democracy” is no longer a universal concept, the reality of which can be measured by applying universal criteria that are valid in different countries. On the contrary, “sovereign” democracy means that Russia (i.e., the leadership) itself can determine whether its system fulfills the democratic criteria. The regime is, therefore, immune against criticism from international organizations, foreign governments, or human rights organizations.
We are here back at the “Russian specificity,” proclaimed in the nineteenth century by Russian Slavophiles, for whom Russia was a special and incomparable country with its own, unique nationhood (narodnost). Initially, Putin’s “sovereign democracy” was only conceived as a defensive concept against the universalist, Western interpretations of democracy, which made the Russian democratic praxis vulnerable to criticism. Recently, however, sovereign democracy has become an offensive concept in the ideological war with the West. Russia considers itself the vanguard of an anti-Western alliance of sovereign democracies (read: autocracies with pseudo-democratic façades). A second pillar of the new Kremlin ideology is the “power vertical,” a euphemism for an authoritarian top-down government. These two pillars are complemented by a third ideological pillar, which is the Orthodox religion, which has been given a prominent place by the regime in recent years. Surprisingly, this new ideological triad closely resembles the famous nineteenth-century triad Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Narodnost of Sergey Uvarov, the Minister of Education of the reactionary tsar Nicholas I. Orthodoxy has regained its former status of semistate ideology. Autocracy has found its modern translation in the “power vertical,” and Narodnost, expressing a unique Russian specificity, has become “sovereign democracy.” These have become the three ideological pillars of Russia’s internal policy. They combine seamlessly with the renewed social Darwinism of Russia’s foreign policy. Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, wrote:
31
Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier,
33
Michel Guénec, “La Russie face à l’extension de l’OTAN en Europe,”