Today’s Russia is less than half as rich as it was two years
ago, less free, internationally isolated and
– judging by a variety of statements and аctions of its leaders,
bureaucrats and public figures –
completely insane.
Ukraine has lost a substantial portion of its territory and
is fighting a war against a foreign aggressor, but in many ways it is more
stable and more governable. Its pro-Russia population pining away for the good
old Soviet Union has been reduced by a few million and most other Ukrainians
have rallied around the yellow and blue national banner. The country has a
democratically elected government and is enjoying economic, political and
military support from the West.
In recent weeks, many people have pointed to a paradox:
Vladimir Putin has been working hard to undermine the legitimate government in
Ukraine and supporting thugs fighting Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas and
running Crimea, while also providing military support to Bashar al-Assad and
cautioning the West against undermining established governments.
Putin articulated his political doctrine from the podium of the
United Nations’ General Assembly in late September. He argued against
overthrowing established regimes – even if they’re not democratically elected,
commit crimes against their own people and their neighbors and lack legitimacy
by international standards.
By such regimes he meant, above all, his own. But he has also
made a stand in Syria, using his military to prop up its “legitimate”
government and trying to convince Western leaders to include Bashar al-Assad in
a peaceful settlement.
Putin may be right in one respect: a growing number of
countries around the world are becoming ungovernable. Once their existing
regimes collapse, countries tend to shatter along ethnic, sectarian and
ideological fault lines. We have seen it happen in Iraq, where few citizens
would be ready to agree with George W. Bush’s mantra that they are better off
today than they were under Saddam Hussein. Chaos has come to Libya once its own
oppressive regime was overthrown, and we are witnessing the same thing in
Syria, which is unlikely to return to the kind of stability and predictability
seen under the Assads.
Other countries in the region are teetering on the brink of
disaster, and Egypt narrowly avoided this fate thanks to a military coup – even
though it is not completely out of the woods yet. A similar disaster may befall
Pakistan – a situation that will be made all the more dangerous because of its
arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The problem is that the place of admittedly brutal regimes is
taken by a variety of splinter groups, each under its own national, ideological
or religious banner, recruiting into their ranks determined followers from
among lumpenized social groups. Such groups are known as non-state actors. They
are not a government and are not interested in becoming one. Their followers
are interested in war, not stability.
Putin, whose formal education outside Leningrad mean streets
has been limited to the KGB spook school, clearly believes that world history
is one massive conspiracy theory and that nothing ever happens anywhere in the
world without it first being planned by fat men in a cigar smoke-filled room
somewhere in Washington, DC. In his view, the Arab Spring was not a spontaneous
eruption of popular discontent across the Middle East and Northern Africa, but
a plot hatched by the Obama Administration.
In his mind, if it weren’t for the machination of the US State
Department, the Soviet Union would still be standing in all of its economic
might and military glory, Yanukovych would be ruling Ukraine and Muammar
Qaddafi would be alive and well and in charge in Tripoli.
This has been Putin’s belief all along, but lately he has been
particularly concerned with neutralizing those putative American efforts to
overthrow his regime. Foreign funding for non-government organizations has been
banned and a number of human rights organizations concerned with protecting
democracy and human rights in Russia have been declared foreign agents. Anyone
not swearing loyalty to Putin has been pretty openly accused of being the Fifth
Column and selling out to the enemy. A considerable effort has been made to
present large-scale corruption by loyal government officials and Putin’s
friends as a far milder crime than support for peaceful democratic change in
Russia.
Ironically, if Russia could go through a regime change similar
to the one that occurred in Ukraine – by means of a Russian version of the
Maidan with democratic leaders coming in and winning a free election – it too
could have preserved the country’s stability. But Putin is doing everything
possible to make sure that this won’t happen, systematically eradicating every
kind of political oppostion.
In this respect, Russia is very different from Ukraine, where
for a variety of cultural and historic reasons there always remained political
life. Ukraine also had a number of people with government experience. Petro
Poroshenko, for example, had an independent power base and, although a member of
the opposition, served as Minister of Trade and Economic Development in a
Yanukovych government and was elected to the Supreme Rada in 2012.
In Russia, Putin relies on lumpenized riffraff and street thugs
such as motorcycle gangsters, Uralvagonzavod “workers,” “Nashi” hooligans,
Eduard Limonov’s Nazi-Bosheviks and others to form various Anti-Maidan
groupings. Moreover, the Ukrainian misadventure demonstrated that Russia is
full of underemployed, undirected, poorly educated men willing to embrace loony
nationalist, regiligious, Stalinist or fascist creeds.
Just as there has been no shortage of volunteers to fight for
Novorossiya – be it in order to earn money by wielding a Kalashnikov or to find
a purpose in life – there have also been plenty people supplying them with
ideologies and justifications, and willing to lead them in battle.
These are the same type of people who make up ISIS in Iraq and
Syria as well as Libyan gangs. The danger for Russia is not that Dombas
fighters will come home – apparently, no one is letting them back in – but that
there are more of those people scattered throughout the country willing to take
up arms when the established order starts to crumble. In other words, Russia
shows every sign of becoming an ungovernable country in its turn – and Putin is
doing his best to ensure that after him there will be the Flood – to quote
Louis XV.
