Others followed America’s example less overtly or even
unconsciously – by adopting a presidential republic, a Constitution and a
bicameral parliament, and proclaiming division of powers and separation of
church and state – all those concepts that had been pioneered by the thirteen
American colonies
It is no longer fashionable to look up to the American
experience. And yet it is imperative that Ukraine, a new nation in the process
of creating itself after more than three centuries of Russian domination, the
Soviet nightmare and a period of post-Soviet oligarchic drift, try to
understand why the United States has been so successful and to apply at least
some of its lessons at home.
It should also look at the related issue why post-Soviet Russia
has been such a dismal failure and try to avoid its mistakes.
I recently went to hear Robert Gates, the former U.S. Secretary
of Defense, speaking at the New York Historical Society. Initially appointed by
George W. Bush, a Republican, in 2006, he was, unusually enough, asked to stay
on in the Democratic Administration of Barack Obama.
Presenting an analysis of the world situation ranging from
Syria and Iran to Russia and China. Gates frankly failed to impress. He was
obviously well-informed, but his views on Iran were questionable, his
discussion of Putin simple-minded and his thoughts on China completely
conventional, like something you’d hear on CNN on any day of the week.
And yet Gates was an exceptionally effective secretary of defense. Taking over a military that was in total disarray – hemorrhaging
troops, committing atrocities and losing the senseless war of occupation – he
righted the ship and allowed Washington to extricate itself from a losing
position with a modicum of dignity and without further major losses.
This has been a pattern in American history. When the situation
seems hopeless, a leader – or a bureaucrat – emerges who somehow manages to set
things right again.
Typically, none of these saviors was a genius.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who
steered the nation out of the Depression and led it to victory in a global war,
had been described as a second-rate mind.
Harry S Truman, who laid the foundations for
the postwar political and economic system, had failed in all of his business
ventures.
Ronald Reagan, who came into the White House when the West seemed to be
losing the Cold War and left with the Soviet Empire reeling, seemed a little
simple-minded, to say the least.
Finally, Barack Obama has been a remarkably
successful president despite lacking in experience and not displaying any of
the conventional politician’s coalition-building skills.
The secret of their success lies in the strength and continuity
of American institutions. In biology there is a concept of homeostasis, a
condition of flexible stability of living systems, such as the ecosystem of
Planet Earth, whose elements work to restore status quo whenever the system gets out of balance. This is what
American institutions tend to do, and America’s successful leaders are merely
smart enough to let them do the adjusting.
Unlike Russians, who talk about living “under (Leonid) Brezhnev” or
“under (Mikhail) Gorbachev” and forever debate the contribution of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and even
Peter the Great in their country’s fate, Americans rarely can recall who was
their president a couple of decades ago.
In the late 18th century, when the rest of the world was still
ruled by more or less absolutist monarchs, America’s Founding Fathers had the
wisdom to set up institutions of government and write a set of laws to govern
relationships between those institutions and between institutions and citizens.
A work of genius, this system has survived for two and a half
centuries and has been flexible enough to accommodate – with only minor
modifications – a continent-wide expansion, industrialization, global
domination, extension of human rights to non-white races and creeds and, now,
the arrival of immigrants from every corner of the globe. It has survived
economic crises and wars, and even withstood a civil war.
Institutions, and an ingrained respect for rules, underpin not
only America’s political success, but its primacy in business, education and
science and technology.
Ironically, it is also what Russians hate most about Americans.
Russians often think that Americans are dumb, and they can’t understand why
these unimaginative people are so rich and have so much power in the world.
Surely there is some chicanery involved here.
They don’t realize that America’s success is built on
institutions because Russia is all about personalities. In Russia,
personalities shape institutions and make their own laws as they go along. Over
the past one hundred years, Russia has had a bunch of different Constitutions
(and established public holidays to celebrate them), each claiming, finally, to
be a good one. The latest Constitution has been altered, ignored or completely
perverted by the current bunch of individuals at Russia’s helm.
Russia’s rulers even shape the country and the era in which
they rule. Putin, for instance, turned Russia into a nasty loser state the
moment he came back to the Kremlin in 2012, after Medvedev (admittedly a mere
place-warmer) managed to make it a somewhat kinder and gentler nation.
This is why Russians keep debating the role of their political
leaders long after they’re dead and buried. This is why they fall in love with
them, proclaiming them the greatest leaders in the world – if not of all time –
even when they’re ruled by thugs and nonentities.
The institutions of the Russian Empire were weak and imperfect.
They didn’t have time to develop before they were swept away by the Bolshevik
Revolution. Just as they had promised, Lenin and his cohorts razed the “old
world to its foundations”. But they also destroyed the legitimacy of power. Since
Stalin, the true Father of the Nation, every new Russian leader had to assert
his legitimacy not through institution, but in the manner of Zeus overthrowing
his father Cronus in Greek mythology – by repudiating his immediate
predecessor’s legacy.
Similarly, in the collapse of the Soviet Union, the weak and
imperfect institutions of the Soviet State went down with it.
Even though Boris Yeltsin had the legitimacy of popular vote during his first term, he didn’t
build any new institutions, preferring to be a kind of Czar Boris without the
institutions of monarchy and nobility to back him. The absence of institutions
– and rules – benefited the oligarchs, too: it was easier for them to privatize
Soviet assets on the cheap.
Russia has paid a heavy price for the absence of institutions.
Since then, Putin and his semi-criminal entourage undermined, destroyed,
corrupted or suborned all remaining institutions of state and society. Russia
is now totally dependent on the personality of its leader – who is clearly unbalanced
and quite possibly deranged.
When sycophants equate Russia’s survival with Putin, they are a
lot closer to the scary truth than they think. There are simply no institutions
to carry on once he’s gone – just criminal clans.
It has taken it a quarter of a century – and a nasty Russian
aggression – for Ukraine to emerge from the ruins of the Soviet Empire. It’s
institutions are still weak – if only because it shares the historical
experience with Russia. As it builds its state, it needs to treat recent
Russian history as a cautionary tale. And it can do a lot worse than to take
some nation-building pointers from 18th century Americans.
