Who's To Blame for Russian Revanchism?

Optimism.

I promised to write about Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People. Recently, I also read Dima Adamsky’s Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy, which investigates the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian nuclear strategy. One thing is clear having read these books—and other books that delve into contemporary Russian history: We didn’t antagonize Russia; Russia is not reacting to U.S. overreach.

Let’s dial back a little bit. It has been stated that the reason for Russian revanchism is the U.S. overreach, especially NATO enlargement, the Iraq War, and the intervention in Libya. The first one is the one that annoys me the most. The detractors cite that President George H.W. Bush pledged to Mikhail Gorbachev not to admit former Warsaw Pact countries to NATO. But the only evidence for such a pledge is Gorbachev’s claim several years later. There is no official document that backs this up. Of course, President Bush was too familiar with the U.S. political regime—one could say that a man more familiar with the U.S. system has never been President—and intelligent to make a verbal commitment on behalf of future administrations. Nevertheless, this reason has been cited by Russians and useful idiot Americans as the reason that Russia became revanchist. Another evidence cited is that Boris Yeltsin objected to enlargement, but historical records show that Yeltsin objected to enlargement before his re-election, as enlargement was indeed unpopular inside Russia, but had little qualms with enlargement after he was re-elected.

The Iraq War is another episode that detractors use, citing Russian propaganda. And I could go into a lot of details about why this doesn’t stand scrutiny, either. Ditto intervention in Libya.

But a survey of Russian contemporary history, as well as a careful identification of key decision makers since the establishment of the Russian Federation, fixes this misunderstanding.

Adamsky’s book focuses on the role of the church in foreign policy, but the most fascinating part of it is the first part. The revival of the church coincided with the demise of the status of Russian military personnel—civilian and uniformed alike. It wasn’t just the status. It was also standard of living. The church intervened to help them get through that period. In return, it established itself as an authority within the military. Now, I am not going to pretend to be an expert on the politics of the church, so I am not going to ascribe incentives and investigate sincerity, but the church has shown to have an interest in Russian revanchism, and this interest goes back to the 1990s, before any of America’s alleged sins. Since then, the church was directing the foreign policy in a revanchist direction.

And then there is Belton’s book. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian security state, as a part of the Soviet security state, did not evaporate. Key personnel remained in the system. Putin, himself an alumnus of the Soviet security apparatus, said it best: “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.” The Russians were disillusioned by the shortcomings of the Soviet system, namely central planning of the economy and state-imposed atheism, but not with foreign policy part. After all, to be disillusioned by the foreign policy part is to be disillusioned by themselves. A theme Belton keeps returning to is that Russians are weaponizing capitalism against the West now. It’s two-folded: 1. Using economic incentives to gain political influence in Western countries and increase financial corruption there; 2. To increase the Russian state’s wealth through capitalism for foreign policy aims. To put it in a different way, the foreign policy decision makers today are alumni of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy apparatus and have not changed their aims, only their methods.

The Russian state propaganda, including church propaganda and statements, going back to the 1990s, talks about Russia’s role to prevent others from establishing world hegemony, and world hegemony is what the United States has sought—and to a great extent enjoyed—since the end of the Cold War. But again, these talking points date back to before NATO enlargement, let alone the Iraq War and intervention in Libya.

Again, not engaging the question of the sincerity of church leaders, it is important to point out that there is a religious element to Russian revanchism. Ukraine has religious significance to the church. As far back as 1992, Bishop Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev, now Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, was emphasizing this point and rejecting “radical sovereignty.” Needless to say, he has been an influential voice in the foreign policy of Russia since the 1990s and has been complaining about the split of the church between the Russian and the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, seeking a reunification.

There is more. For the church, the church is incomplete without the Russian state, and the Russian state is incomplete without the church. Russian nationalism and the church are fused into each other, making the success of one dependent on the success of the other, and restoration of Russian greatness—read imperialism—a requirement for the church.

The Russian national security experts are a different specie. Many of them believe in the church’s message, but they also have other interests. Of course, one is financial corruption. As Belton put it, they don’t see their corruption as stealing Russian national wealth. To them, it is merely their compensation for returning Russia to greatness. But promoting corruption in the West is a tool of Russian foreign policy to increase the power of the state. So, conveniently, Russian revanchism is both a strategic good and a material good for them as individuals. This has been the case since the early 1990s.

But there is also Russian nationalism. It is important to understand that Russian political culture is very statist. The state is the sovereign, no matter the state, and the loyalty of the citizen is to the state, regardless of its form. Of course, this is hardly true for all Russians, perhaps even a majority of them, but it is true for the regime’s leaders. They are dedicated servants of the state who genuinely are embarrassed by the humiliations of the 1980s and the 1990s and want to restore what used to be. As nationalists that they are, they view all ethnic Russians as natural allies—a mistake that made them pay a heavy price in Donbas, and it remains to be seen whether they have been disillusioned ever since—and envision re-absorbing the Near Abroad, where ethnic Russians live.

Having said these, they also have legitimate concerns. A westward posture by Ukraine is a problem for the Russian economy. The policies of the European Union also have caused troubles for Russia. The admission of Eastern European countries into the European Union moves them away from Russia. Except that liberal states accept other liberal states get to choose their own fates, even if they are immediately harmed by it. Russia simply doesn’t accept this and uses all tools in the box, just and unjust, noble and ignoble, to defend its interests. (The parallel here is not that the United States imposes tariffs on other countries. A parallel would have been if the United States tried to assassinate the French president or invaded France over the dispute between Boeing and Airbus.)

So who’s to blame for Russian revanchism? The detractors are correct to say that we are. But we are not for antagonizing Russia, as they like to say, but for being optimistic. Optimism leads to inaction. We thought that Russia would liberalize and cease being a problem and missed the influence of Russian nationalism inside the new regime, many of it carry-over from the Soviet regime. In this era of optimism, the church and the foreign policy apparatus were finding new methods for the same objectives and biding time. Especially for the church, it was also increasing its influence within the new regime since it had just been allowed to operate again.

To be sure, the Russians were never happy about the admission of the former Warsaw Pact countries to NATO. Some Russians still believe that NATO is a conspiracy to invade Russia and not merely a defensive alliance. But the admission of former Warsaw Pact countries also is problematic because it makes it harder for Russia to reincorporate them and manipulate their domestic politics. As for Ukraine’s westward posture, that is a problem because Russia, for the nationalists, is incomplete without Ukraine, and the church is incomplete without the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

As Belton chronicles, during the years of our optimism, Russian national security personnel were plotting to revive Russian imperialism, not believing that the United States was genuinely invested in the success of Russia, rather furious about the humiliation imposed on them by America that was the defeat in the Cold War.

Except that I don’t think that they ever conceded defeat. I think that, in their own minds, humiliated, they just retreated to plot the next campaign.

Russia is the only empire that survived World War I and World War II. Some empires, like Germany, ceased with defeat in war. Others, most prominently Great Britain, ceased through liberalization. Russia never liberalized. But also it never lost a war. The Russian people neither surrendered to atomic blasts, like the Japanese did, nor saw American tanks roll in their streets, like the Germans did. They just suffered economic hardships and a change in the political system—of course, more dramatic than the norm—but never witnessed the shock of a foreign military. Even then, the church was quick to intervene to propagate, using historical facts and manufactured myths, that the success of Russian grandeur has always been enabled by the church, leaving one to the natural conclusion that the Soviet collapse was due to the lack of divine support and the regime’s atheist nature, and revival was possible now that the church is back.

But one thing is clear: Russian revanchism is not because of what we did; it is because we didn’t do anything to prevent it.

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