Chapter 16
Conclusion
After World War II the American diplomat and Russia expert George Kennan wrote: “It would be useful to the Western world to realize that despite all the vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists.”[1] These words were true after World War II, but are they still true today? Could one say, paraphrasing Kennan’s dictum, “that despite all the vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1991—the KGB inspired coup and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union—the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Soviet diplomatists”? This was the central question of this book. Could a great power for which a quasi-permanent, continued, and centuries-long territorial and political expansion has been the natural way of life, suddenly become a “normal,” post-imperial state? If one listens to some analysts, post-Soviet Russia simply had no choice but to adapt to its status of post-imperial country. Alexander Motyl, for instance, wrote:
Despite empire’s long and venerable track record…, there are strong reasons to think that empire building is no longer a viable political project. Imperial states have acquired territory in three ways: by marriage, by purchase, and by conquest. Marriage no longer works, as no contemporary ruler (not even a dictator) claims to own the territory he rules. Purchase is a dead end, as all the world’s land is divided among jealous states and oftentimes empowered populations. Conquest is still possible in principle, and the twentieth century is full of instances in which it was attempted in practice. But the limits of conquest are clear, in the aftermath of Iraq if not before. International and most national norms, for example, now hold that the conquest of foreign nations and states almost certainly involves violations of human rights and the principles of self-determination and cultural autonomy, and is therefore illegitimate. Moreover, nation-states are unusually effective vehicles of mass mobilization and resistance, making sustained conquest harder now than in the past…. In sum, while history suggests that being or having an empire is a guarantee of longevity, it also shows that acquiring an empire is probably no longer possible.[2]
Motyl wrote these words in 2006, two years before the Russian invasion of Georgia and the dismemberment of this small neighboring country. Another author, who explicitly considered the demise of the Russian empire as definitive, was Manuel Castells. According to Castells,
[T]here will be no reconstruction of the Soviet Union, regardless of who is in power in Russia…. I propose, as the most likely, and indeed promising future, the notion of the Commonwealth of Inseparable States (Sojuz Nerazdelimykh Gosudarstv); that is, of a web of institutions flexible and dynamic enough to articulate the autonomy of national identity and the sharing of political instrumentality in the context of the global economy. Otherwise, the affirmation of sheer state power over a fragmented map of historical identities will be a caricature of nineteenth century European nationalism: it will lead in fact to a Commonwealth of Impossible States (Sojuz Nevozmozhnykh Gosudarstv).[3]
Castells wrote these words in 1997, a year in which Russia seemed to have accepted definitively the loss of empire. Moreover, Castells was certainly right that there would be no reconstruction of the Soviet Union, which had disappeared, forever, with its ideological glue: communism. But empires do not need to be communist, as history teaches us. And empires need not be built only in a nineteenth-century way: relying almost exclusively on military power. They can also be built—or rebuilt—in a postmodern way, making use of a smart mix, which not only includes blackmail, pressure, and naked military power, but also financial instruments, economic leverage, and soft power.
We already cited in the introduction Dmitry Trenin, who, in the same vein as the two aforementioned authors, wrote: “The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that had lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan has gone.”[4] Unlike the other authors, who gave their optimistic assessments before the Russian invasion of Georgia, Trenin’s book was published after the invasion of Georgia and after the gas wars with Ukraine in 2006 and 2009. Trenin, who gave his book the title Post-Imperium, added the subtitle A Eurasian Story. He probably did so without any prior knowledge of Putin’s latest geopolitical project: his book was published before Putin wrote his famous Izvestia article in which he announced the formation of a Eurasian Union[5] and also before the summit on December 19, 2011, during which the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, officially launched the project of the Eurasian Union. Paradoxically—and ironically—Trenin added Putin’s latest, and most important imperial project as a subtitle to a book in which he argued that Russia had definitively lost its imperial drive.
THE CRUCIAL YEAR 1997
Looking back however, it was not the year 2011—the year in which Putin launched his project of the Eurasian Union—which was crucial to Russia’s new course, nor was it the year 1999, when Putin became acting president. In retrospect, the crucial year was 1997. In this year Russia stood at a crossroads. On May 27, 1997, after long hesitation, President Yeltsin signed the “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” In this act the Russian Federation committed itself to a set of common principles. Among these principles was featured the “respect for sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security.”[6] The Kremlin’s recognition of the inherent right of all states “to choose the means to ensure their own security” was a major step forward on the road to a post-imperial state. It was the recognition of the sovereign right of both the post-Soviet states and the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe to choose their own alliances, including the right to become a member of NATO. In the same year—in July 1997—at the Madrid NATO summit, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were invited to join the Alliance.
Reactions in the West were more than positive. In an article with the title “From Empire to Nation State,” Chrystia Freeland wrote in the Financial Times: “After devoting five centuries to imperial expansion, Russia seems abruptly to have reconciled itself to a diminished global role.”[7] She quoted Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Studies, who said: “This spring was a turning point in Russia’s choice between being an imperial power and a nation state. It marked a strong decision to reject empire.”[8] And he added: “The really surprising thing is that the negative reaction to the loss has not been stronger.”[9] However, the Russian advance toward a democratic, post-imperial state during Boris Yeltsin’s second presidential term was not as straightforward as these enthusiastic comments seemed to suggest. Russia’s progress resembled rather the dancing procession of Echternach, in which three steps forward are preceded and followed by two steps backward. This is because, in the same year—on April 2, 1997—Yeltsin signed with the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko a Union Treaty leading to a Union State of Russia and Belarus. The signing of the treaty, wrote the Financial Times, “drew rare praise for Mr. Yeltsin from his Communist and nationalist opponents.”[10] This praise was no surprise, because the initiative put Russia on a quite different track: that of a neoimperial state. The French paper Le Monde referred to a debate in the Russian government between “occidentalists,” wanting to join the European democratic mainstream, and “Slavophiles,” wanting to build a Slavic Union under the aegis of Russia. The first group included two deputy prime ministers: Boris Nemtsov and Anatoly Chubais, and the leader of the liberal Yabloko fraction, Grigory Yavlinsky.[11] The second group included not only ultranationalists, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the communist Gennady Zyuganov, but also Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.[12] Primakov, who would shortly afterward become prime minister, was the former head of the SVR, the external intelligence service, a follow-up organization to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Primakov was described by Ronald Asmus as someone, who “had made his career by standing up to the West—‘the man who could say Nyet.’”[13] He “saw his job as masking Russian weakness while rebuilding Moscow’s strength. By his desk, he kept a small bust of Prince Alexandr Gorchakov, a 19th-century Russian Foreign Minister under Czar Alexander II who had presided over Russia’s recovery from its total defeat in the Crimean war. Partnership with the U.S. was not part of his lexicon.”[14]
3
Manuel Castells,
5
Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya.”
6
“Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_25468.htm.
10
John Thornhill, “Russia Signs Union Treaty with Belarus,”
11
Grigory Yavlinsky criticized the Union Treaty with the following words: “You cannot talk about negotiating integration with a state where there is political repression and the conditions for the normal existence of the opposition are ruled out and the work of the media is restricted.” (Quoted in John Thornhill, “Belarus Link Alarms Russian Liberals,”
12
Sophie Shihab, “M. Eltsine cherche à minimiser les conséquences de l’ “union” entre la Russie et la Biélorussie,”
13
Ronald D. Asmus,