[DEBATE] : Russia ... made a mockery of our leaders' pretensions...west is no longer in charge

[Riaz K Tayob]

Snip:
...
Globalisation is nothing more than the industrialisation of the planet, 
and increasing resource nationalism is an integral part of the process. 
(So is accelerating climate change, but that's another story.) As 
industrialisation spreads, countries that control natural resources use 
these resources to advance their strategic objectives. In deploying 
energy as a weapon Russia is not resisting globalisation but exploiting 
its contradictions.
...
We are back to great-power politics, shifting alliances and spheres of 
influence. The difference is that the west is no longer in charge.
...
Sermonising about "law-based international relations" is laughable after 
Iraq, and at bottom not much more than nostalgia for a vanished hegemony.
...
Deluded about its true place in the world, the west underestimates the 
risks of intervening in Russia's near abroad. Russia's weaknesses - 
demographic decline, cronyism in the economy and a seething sense of 
national humiliation - are well known, but western vulnerabilities are 
no less real.
...

Folly of the progressive fairytale
Russia – rich, nationalist and authoritarian – has made a mockery of our 
leaders' pretensions. The west is no longer in charge
o John Gray
o The Guardian,
o Tuesday September 9 2008
o Article history

The current panic about Russia is a curious phenomenon. By any objective 
standard Russians are freer in the authoritarian state established by 
Putin than at any time in the Soviet Union. Many are also materially 
better off. Russia has abandoned global expansionism, and is now a 
diminished version of what it has been throughout most of its history - 
a Eurasian empire whose chief concern is protection from external 
threats. Yet western attitudes are more hostile than they were during 
much of the cold war, when many on the left viewed the Soviet Union, 
which was responsible for tens of millions of deaths, as an essentially 
benign regime.

To see how this state of affairs has come about one must understand the 
progressive narrative - embraced nowadays as much on the right as the 
left - that shapes western perceptions. The Soviet collapse was a defeat 
for communism, a prototypical progressive ideology. There was never any 
prospect of post-communist Russia embracing neoliberalism, another 
western model. Something like Putin's Russia was always on the cards, 
but the return of history isn't part of the progressive script. Most of 
our leaders are disciples of Woodrow Wilson, with a religious faith in 
what Francis Fukuyama only the other day described as "the march of 
history towards global democracy". Prosperity brings bourgeoisification 
and liberal values, or so they believe. Russia - rich, nationalist and 
authoritarian - doesn't fit this progressive fairytale, and the west's 
reaction is a mix of threatening bluster and mounting panic.

Nothing is more misguided than talk of a new cold war. What we are 
seeing is the end of the post cold war era, and a renewal of 
geopolitical conflicts of the sort that occurred during the late 19th 
century. Their minds befogged by fashionable nonsense about 
globalisation, western leaders believe liberal democracy is spreading 
unstoppably. The reality is continuing political diversity. Republics, 
empires, liberal and illiberal democracies, and a wide variety of 
authoritarian regimes will be with us for the foreseeable future. 
Globalisation is nothing more than the industrialisation of the planet, 
and increasing resource nationalism is an integral part of the process. 
(So is accelerating climate change, but that's another story.) As 
industrialisation spreads, countries that control natural resources use 
these resources to advance their strategic objectives. In deploying 
energy as a weapon Russia is not resisting globalisation but exploiting 
its contradictions.

We are back to great-power politics, shifting alliances and spheres of 
influence. The difference is that the west is no longer in charge. With 
their different histories and sometimes sharply conflicting interests, 
Russia, China, India and the Gulf states are not going to form any kind 
of bloc. But it is these countries that are shaping world development at 
the start of the 21st century. The US - its bankrupt mortgage 
institutions nationalised and its gigantic war machine effectively 
funded by foreign borrowing - is in steep decline. With its financial 
system in the worst mess since the 1930s, the west's ability to shape 
events is dwindling by the day. Sermonising about "law-based 
international relations" is laughable after Iraq, and at bottom not much 
more than nostalgia for a vanished hegemony.

Deluded about its true place in the world, the west underestimates the 
risks of intervening in Russia's near abroad. Russia's weaknesses - 
demographic decline, cronyism in the economy and a seething sense of 
national humiliation - are well known, but western vulnerabilities are 
no less real. Our leaders bore on about Russia needing us as much as we 
need Russia. In fact, despite a recent blip, investment in Russia is a 
byproduct of the global market that will continue for as long as it 
continues to be profitable, whereas Russian energy supplies can be 
curtailed at will by the Russian government. Economists will tell you 
the country is too reliant on oil. But the world's oil reserves are 
peaking while globalisation continues to advance, and Russia stands to 
gain from any international conflict in which supplies are disrupted. 
Again, the west needs Russia if the Iranian nuclear crisis is ever to be 
defused peacefully, and without Russian logistical cooperation Nato 
forces will find it even harder to bring the aimless, unwinnable war in 
Afghanistan to any kind of conclusion.

Right-thinking bien-pensants in all parties believe Russia would be more 
amenable to western interests if only it were more truly democratic. But 
Putin is wildly popular precisely because he is asserting Russian power 
against the west; if he were more accountable to public opinion he might 
be harder to deal with. Democracy has numerous advantages, but it is no 
guarantee of a reasonable foreign policy. The current Georgian imbroglio 
is itself a spin-off from democratic politics. Mikheil Saakashvili's 
reckless incursion into South Ossetia, where Russian forces had been 
stationed under international agreements for 16 years, was most likely 
encouraged by elements in the Bush administration in the hope of 
damaging Obama in the run-up to the presidential election. The gambit 
may have worked, but the result has been a conflict that increases 
Russia's leverage over the flow of oil in the region and strengthens 
Iran in central Asia. If Dick Cheney's pledge of support for Georgia 
during his travels last week was a move in the Great Game it was 
spectacularly ill judged.

Clearly, with the exception of some in "old Europe", our leaders do not 
know what they are doing. The grandstanding of David Miliband and David 
Cameron in Ukraine illustrates the point. Blathering about national 
self-determination and territorial integrity, they seem not to have 
noticed that the two principles are normally incompatible. 
Self-determination means secession and the break-up of states. In the 
Caucasus, a region of multi-sided national enmities, it means a wider 
war and worsening ethnic cleansing. The stakes are even higher in 
Ukraine. Deeply divided and with a major Russian naval base in the 
Crimean port of Sevastopol, the new state will surely be torn apart if 
an attempt is made to wrench it from Russia's sphere of influence. The 
country would become a battlefield, with the great powers irresistibly 
drawn in. Playing with Wilsonian notions of self-determination in these 
conditions is courting disaster.

Let there be no mistake: Russia is, in some respects, a dangerous state. 
With their background in the security services, its leaders are ruthless 
pragmatists who will use any means to achieve their objectives. Their 
goal may be to roll back western influence in Russia's near abroad, but 
their strategy is to take whatever they can. Perceiving the west to be 
in decline, they are testing whether it has any coherent strategy to 
protect its interests. From what we have heard from our leaders, it does 
not.

A start would be to shelve plans for further Nato expansion, while 
making it unequivocally clear that existing commitments in eastern 
Europe and the Baltic states will be honoured. At the same time every 
effort must be made to reduce Europe's dependency on Russian energy. 
Western leaders need to acquire a capacity for realistic thinking, or 
else they will be woken from their dream of progress by the force of events.

· John Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the LSE.

comment at guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/russia?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront