How did Putin become Putin? Amb. John Evans met the future Russian leader when he was just a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Evans, then serving as consul general, shares his recollections of the young Putin, situates this in the broader Russian political situation in the 1990s and the evolution of U.S.-Russian relations from the optimism of the period to today’s bitterness. We also speak about Russia’s move into Ukraine – how it came to this and where it may go.
Our guest offers a minor correction to his remarks: “It was Chip Bohlen who got the scoop on the Hitler-Stalin pact from his German colleague in Moscow. [Not George Kennan.] Bohlen tells the story in Chapter Five of his ‘Witness to History.'”
I remember when I visited Crimea in 2015, I spoke to a retired Russian naval officer who was a longtime resident of the peninsula. He admitted that Russia had always viewed Ukraine as the little brother in the relationship and that perhaps Russians had underestimated how much some Ukrainians had resented that. I thought about this when I read the following excerpt of a Twitter thread by Alexander Gabuev in mid-March:
“The Russian Empire has never perceived Ukraine as a ‘colony’ and thus has never developed a discipline to study Ukraine as “the Other.” When Putin wrote that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people,” he meant it. These problematic assumptions have led to a giant flaw in the Kremlin’s understanding of Ukraine. Hence, Russian diplomats and spies who didn’t bother to learn the language or study the culture, and policymakers operating on stereotypes…The level of Ukraine expertise in Russia documented by Liza Surnacheva in 2014 was terrifying, and it hasn’t improved since. If anything, it only got worse.” ~ Alexander Gabuev, Twitter, 3/9/22
In previous pieces, I’ve focused on the larger geopolitical context of this conflict, but how much is the Russian leadership’s mindset about Ukraine itself a factor? Is there validity to Gabuev’s point above that the Russian leadership has a condescending attitude about Ukraine? Is there a lack of a realistic understanding of modern Ukraine among Russian officials?
I asked Professor Nicolai Petro, an expert on Russia and Ukraine, who told me: “Gabuev is not wrong, though the problem he describes is especially bad among countries that share so much. Sigmund Freud called it “the narcissism of the small difference.” As he wrote, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.” It is then exacerbated by the in-fighting that typically occurs in large bureaucracies.”
Petro referenced a 2010 article by Christopher Hitchens that goes into more detail on this phenomenon of small differences between two peoples creating such deep-seated hatred that can be difficult for outsiders to understand:
“But that in itself could well be the explanation. In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who – to most outward appearances – exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents…
…. In his book The Warrior’s Honor, Michael Ignatieff spent some time trying to elucidate what it was that made soldiers in the Balkan Wars – physically indistinguishable from one another – so eager to inflict cruelty and contempt upon Serb or Croat or Bosnian, as the case might be. Very often, the expressed hatred took the form of extremely provincial and local rivalries, inflamed by jealousies over supposed small advantages possessed by the other. Of course, here again there are latent nationalist and confessional differences to act as a force multiplier once the nasty business gets started, but the main thing to strike the outsider would be the question of “How can they tell?””
Indeed, on more than one occasion I have found myself wondering how Russians and Ukrainians can distinguish who is necessarily friend or foe in this conflict (when uniforms are not involved), both having a common Slavic ancestry and with many Ukrainians outside of Donbas – who view themselves firmly as Ukrainians – speaking Russian as their first language.
When I talked to Professor Paul Robinson about this, he agreed with Gabuev’s point to an extent: “I don’t have any direct knowledge of the level of Russian understanding of Ukraine, but Gabuev’s thesis certainly strikes me as credible. It has long struck me that Russians’ understanding of the West is very poor (as is Westerners’ understanding of Russia), so it would not be a surprise if the same is true of Ukraine.”
As for the concept of the small differences driving more intense hostility, he seemed to agree but thought the situation was more complicated:
“Obviously, the long connection between Russia and Ukraine cannot but shape mutual perceptions in certain ways that hinder understanding. Beyond that, official Russia’s view of Ukraine has clearly been shaped by their experiences dealing with the Ukrainian state over the past 30 years, experiences which, I’m told, have not been good even under Ukrainian presidents who were considered ‘pro-Russian’ in the West (but were not viewed that way in Moscow).”
On the Ukrainian side, sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko pointed out in an interview before the war, that surveys over the years had demonstrated that the majority of Ukrainians were not concerned about identity but prioritized jobs, wages, and prices. The disproportionate influence of violent ultranationalists since 2014 has likely served as a convenient diversion away from the lack of economic progress for the majority of the population as neoliberal economic policies were increased at the same time. However, Ishchenko believes the Russian invasion has likely changed the role of identity and its prioritization.
Ukrainian academic Olga Baysha, who has family and friends in southeastern Ukraine, agrees that Russia likely has not paid sufficient attention to the change in non-rebel territories of the southeast since 2014 when many anti-Maidan residents would have welcomed the Russian intervention: “[W]hat was true in 2014 may not be necessarily the case now. Eight years have passed; a new generation of young people, raised within a new social environment, has grown; and many people simply accustomed themselves to new realities…Even if most of them despise radicals and the politics of Ukrainization, they hate the war even more. The reality on the ground has turned out to be more complex than decision-makers expected.”
But Baysha also noted the lack of understanding and condescension of pro-Western Ukrainians who supported the divisive Maidan protests for those Ukrainians who opposed them. These internal divisions were bound up in culture, class, geography and ethnicity and paved the way for the conflict that started in 2014 and escalated this February: “[F]or me, this is the most tragic part of the whole post-Maidan story, because it is exactly this sense of superiority that prevented the “progressive” pro-Maidan forces from finding common language with their “backward” pro-Russian compatriots. This led to the Donbass uprising, the “anti-terrorist operation” of the Ukrainian army against Donbass, Russia’s intervention, Minsk peace agreements, their non-fulfillment, and, finally, the current war.”
A few comments here – Russia showing Ukrainian POW’s on television would seem to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Any lawyers specializing in international law/laws of war can correct me if I’m wrong. Clearly, such POW’s will have a tendency to say what they think their captors will want to hear, so one must always take such testimonies with a grain of salt. But observing the age of the POW’s and the question it leads Doctorow to ask is interesting. Most important, however, is Doctorow’s point about the US’s view of foreign affairs through the lens of it’s ideological idealism (narcissism is how I would more accurately describe it) versus a realism lens. – Natylie
Ideological blinkers prevent a correct U.S. assessment of the Russian successes in the Ukraine war, of the likely outcomes and of what to do now
Yesterday’s edition of the premier Sunday news wrap-up on Russian state television, Vesti nedeli, hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, marked a turning point in what the Russians are saying officially about their achievements on the ground in Ukraine. It set me to thinking over why Washington is getting it all wrong and how America’s ideological blinkers may lead to very unfortunate consequences on a global level.
Up until now, Russian news has been very quiet about the country’s military achievements in Ukraine. The daily briefings of Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov have only given summary figures on the planes, tanks and other armored vehicles, command centers in Ukraine that were destroyed by high precision Russian missiles plus the names of towns that were taken, without elaborating on their strategic or other value. Otherwise, Russian television programming has been showing only the damage inflicted daily by Ukrainian forces on the city of Donetsk and its suburbs from artillery and Tochka U missile strikes. There is a steady toll of destroyed homes, hospitals, schools and loss of civilian lives. The sense of this programming is clear: explaining again and again to the Russian audience why we are there.
Yesterday’s News of the Week devoted more than 45 minutes to Russian military operations on the ground. The message has changed to what we are doing there. Television viewers were led by the Rossiya team of war zone reporters through the wrecked forests and fields of the Kharkov oblast in northeastern Ukraine as well as in newly liberated parts of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Filming from an armored all-terrain vehicle, they showed us kilometers long stretches of burned out Ukrainian tanks and other heavy military gear as well as dozens and dozens of corpses of Ukrainian soldiers “killed in action” and left behind to rot by their fast retreating comrades and deserters. Then came interviews with Ukrainian prisoners of war, whose faces and words tell a very different story from the heroic encomiums raining down from Zelensky and his entourage. Finally, there were interviews with some of the civilians who were let out of the Azovstal underground complex these past couple of days and made their way to freedom via the humanitarian corridor which the Russians set up each afternoon.
I will deal briefly with each of these segments from last night’s News of the Week. But first, allow me to offer two overall generalizations.
First, the Russian ‘special military operation’ is a millstone that grinds slowly but grinds fine. It is working. The Russians are crushing the Ukrainian forces. It is improbable that any amount of deliveries of foreign equipment to Kiev can make a difference on the outcome of this conflict. Indeed, while critics of the US-led intervention in the conflict claim, correctly, that the deliveries are drawing out the war by encouraging Kiev to fight on, it is also true that the Russians have no problem with that: the longer it goes on, the more territory they can seize, with a view to controlling and ultimately annexing the entire Black Sea littoral. They would thereby ensure that what survives of the Ukrainian state can never again pose a military threat to Russia, with or without NATO help.
Second, the Ukrainian army indeed has NATO trained officers and skilled professionals who may be admirable fighters, as the Western media insist. But it also has a lot of cannon fodder. By cannon fodder I mean overaged recruits dragooned into the forces and also volunteers who are useless to any modern military and are no longer trainable. Most of the prisoners of war shown on Russian television were in their late 50s and even late 60s; they had no prior military experience. One of the latter, with haggard face and scraggly beard down to his chest was asked why he enlisted to fight. The answer came back: “There was no work. So I signed up just to make some money.” After seeing their mates shot dead, is it any wonder that such soldiers raise their arms to surrender at the first opportunity?
The question not being asked is where are all the young and able Ukrainian males? How have they evaded the draft? Given the widely acknowledged corruption in Ukrainian government and society, would it not be strange if some just buy their way out of the war? Are they among the 5 million Ukrainians who have gone abroad since the start of the hostilities? Are they the ones now driving their high priced Mercedes with Ukrainian license plates around the streets of Hamburg? Who in the West records this or really cares about it?
The testimony of the prisoners of war shows that they were misled by their officers. They were told that the Russians would simply slaughter them if they showed the white flag. The testimony of the several women who walked to freedom from the Azovstal catacombs supports the official Russian version of the situation there: they were intimidated by the nationalist warriors who used them as human shields. They were barely fed and were warned that the way out was mined so that they would die in any attempt at escape.
The advance of the Russians on the ground as they finish preparations of the cauldron or total encirclement of the major part of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas is slow, only a couple of kilometers per day. The reason was clear from the reporting last night: apart from the open fields and forests mentioned above, the Ukrainians are in well-fortified bunkers that they constructed over the past eight years and they are situated in the midst of small towns where they have to be flushed out street by street, house by house. Carpet bombing or unlimited shelling would result in heavy loss of life among the civilian population, many of whom are Russian speakers, precisely the people whom the Russians are seeking to liberate.
The reasoning underlying the Russian Way of War in Ukraine has been wholly overlooked or dismissed out of hand by official Washington. American media and senior politicians speak only of Russia’s supposed logistical problems and poor implementation of its war plans. This is so is not because Biden’s advisers are lame-brained. It is so because of the ideological blinkers that the whole foreign policy establishment in the United States wears. The ideology may be called (Wilsonian) Idealism. It stands in contrast to Realism, which is espoused by a tiny minority of American academics.
The distinction is not mere words. It is how foreign policy issues are analyzed. It is about the creation in the United States of a post-factual world that might just as well be called a virtual world.
Idealism in foreign policy rests on the assumption that universal principles shape societies everywhere. It systematically ignores national peculiarities, such as history, language, culture and will. By contrast, Realism is based precisely on knowledge of such specifics, which define national interests and priorities.
Under these conditions, the think tank scholars in the United States can sit at their computers and write up their evaluations of the Russian prosecution of the war in Ukraine solely on what they, the Americans and their allies, would do if they were directing the Russian military effort. They would fight the American way, meaning a start with “shock and awe” followed by vast destruction of everything in the way of their march on the capital of the enemy state to bring about total capitulation in short order. The reasoning of the men in the Kremlin holds no interest for them. Hence, the dead wrong conclusion that the Russians are losing the war, that Russia is not the strong military force that we feared, and that Russia can be successfully challenged and beaten down until it submits to American directions and American definitions of its national interest.
The same problem of a “virtual world” approach comes up now in the discussion among American experts of the likelihood that Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine and how the US-led West should respond. The possibility that the Russians are winning and have no need for extreme solutions is excluded. The possibility that non-nuclear solutions like carpet bombing might be applied if the Russians genuinely were stymied is excluded.
The latest variation on Russia’s possibly escalating towards WWIII by using tactical nuclear weapons is a reaction to President Putin’s vague threat of a ‘lightning quick’ response to any sign of Western powers becoming co-belligerents by their deeds in support of Ukraine. Curiously, the threat was deemed to mean precisely tactical nuclear attacks, not the launch of the new Sarmat hypersonic and ABM-evading ICBMs, or the dispatch of the deep-sea drone Poseidon to wash away Washington, D.C. in a nuclear explosion caused tidal wave. In any case, the assortment of devastating new weapons systems at Russia’s disposal seems to be ignored by our policy experts. They have settled on just one, about which they speculate endlessly.
The virtual world bubble in which the U.S. foreign policy community exists and flourishes is a disaster waiting to happen. Who will heed the wake-up call of John Mearsheimer and the few policy experts who hold up the Realpolitik standard?
