Russian civilizationism is proving handy as President Vladimir Putin seeks to
expand the imaginary boundaries of his Russian World, whose frontiers are
defined by Russian speakers and adherents to Russian culture rather than
international law and/or ethnicity.
اضافة اعلان
Putin’s
disruptive and expansive nationalist ideology has underpinned his aggressive
approach to Ukraine since 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the stoking of
insurgencies in the east of the country. It also underwrites this month’s brief
intervention in Kazakhstan, even if it was in contrast to Ukraine at the
invitation of the Kazakh government.
Putin’s
nationalist push in territories that were once part of the Soviet Union may be
par for the course even if it threatens to rupture relations between Russia and
the West and potentially spark a war. It helps Russia compensate for the
strategic depth it lost with the demise of communism in Europe and the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
However, equally
alarmingly, Putin appears to be putting building blocks in place that would
justify expanding his Russian World in one form or another beyond the
boundaries of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
In doing so, he
demonstrates the utility of employing plausibly deniable mercenaries not only
for military and geopolitical but also for ideological purposes.
Standing first
in line is the Central African Republic. A resource-rich but failed state that
has seen its share of genocidal violence and is situated far from even the most
expansive historical borders of the Russian empire, the republic could
eventually qualify to be part of the Russian world, according to Putin’s
linguistic and cultural criteria.
Small units of
the Wagner Group, a private military company owned by one of Putin’s close
associates, entered the Central African Republic once departing French troops
handed it over to a United Nations peacekeeping force in 2016. Five years
later, Wagner has rights to mine the country’s gold and diamond deposits.
Perhaps
surprisingly, the Russian mercenary presence persuaded President
Faustin-Archange Touadera that the African republic should embrace Russian
culture.
As a result,
university students have been obliged to follow Russian-language classes
starting as undergraduates in their first year until their second year of
post-graduate studies. The mandate followed the introduction of Russian in the
republic’s secondary school curriculum in 2019.
Touadera is
expected to ask Putin for Russian-language instructors during a forthcoming
visit to Moscow to assist in the rollout.
Neighboring Mali
could be next in line to follow in Touadera’s footsteps.
Last month,
units of the Wagner Group moved into the Sahel nation at the request of a
government led by army generals who have engineered two coups in nine months.
The generals face African and Western sanctions that could make incorporating
what bits of the country they control into the Russian world an attractive
proposition.
While it is
unlikely that Putin would want to formally welcome sub-Saharan and Sahel states
into his Russian world, it illustrates the pitfalls of a redefinition of
internationally recognized borders as civilizational and fluid rather than
national, fixed, and legally enshrined.
For now, African
states do not fit Putin’s bill of one nation as applied to Ukraine or Belarus.
However, using linguistics as a monkey wrench, he could, overtime or whenever
convenient, claim them as part of the Russian world, based on an acquired
language and cultural affinity.
Putin’s
definition of a Russian world further opens the door to a world in which the
principle of might is right runs even more rampant with the removal of whatever
flimsy guard rails existed.
To accommodate
the notion of a Russian world, Russian leaders, going back more than a decade,
have redefined Russian civilization as multi-ethnic rather than ethically
Russia.
The Central
African Republic’s stress on Russian-language education constitutes the first
indication in more than a decade that Putin and some of his foreign allies may
expand the Russian world’s civilizational aspects beyond the erstwhile Soviet
Union.
Some critics of
Putin’s concept of a Russian world note that Western wars allegedly waged out
of self-defense and concern for human rights were also about power and
geopolitical advantage.
For example,
pundit Peter Beinart notes that NATO-led wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Libya
“also extended American power and smashed Russian allies at the point of a
gun”.
The criticism
does not weaken the legitimacy of the US and Western rejection of Russian
civilizationalism. However, it does undermine the United States’ ability to
claim the moral high ground.
It further
constrains Western efforts to prevent the emergence of a world in which
violation rather than the inviolability of national borders become the accepted
norm.
If Russian
interventionism aims to change borders, US interventionism often sought to
change regimes. That is one driver of vastly different perceptions of the US
role in the world, including Russian distrust of the post-Soviet NATO drive
into Eastern Europe and independent former Soviet states such as Ukraine.
“People with
more experience of the dark side of American power — people whose families hail
from Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Haiti, or Mexico, where US guns have sabotaged
democracy rather than defended it — might find it easier to understand Russian
suspicions. But those Americans tend not to shape US policy towards places like
Ukraine,” Beinart said.
The writer is an award-winning journalist and scholar and a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
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