Russia’s frustration with an incompatible political order

Looking eastwards into the rising sun from the Western capitals it seems that the Kremlin decided nearly single handily to depart from accepted formal (like respecting the sovereignty of states unless in defence or unless the UN rules otherwise) as well as informal (like not to justify armed intervention by protecting the interests of one’s own identity group in another country) rules of international relations.

Annexing the hitherto undisputed territory of a neighbouring state, hands-on, if mostly in “open disguise”, armed destabilisation of public order and threatening this state with further outright military intervention (Federation Council approval, amassing forces on the border) on ethno-chauvinist pretext has not been common practice among the more settled states for some time.

However, gazing westwards into the sunset from the heights of the Kremlin the scenery looks quite different: We tried it like the West but the doors were shut into our faces.

Following the Anglo-American liberal example in the 1990 lead to disaster and the near disintegration of the Russian state; reasserting vertical state power against the centrifugal social forces of the oligarchy proved more successful in the first five years of the third millennium; but turning to the early EU as an example to initiate the institutional reintegration of more or less willing former soviet republics lead to a zero sum confrontation with the EU, a confrontation the Kremlin perceives to be of the EUs choosing.

Putin invested heavily into the Eurasian project; the Customs Union was taken seriously not only by Russia but also by the participating core (Kazakhstan, Belorussia) and invited states (Kyrgysztan, Ukraine, Armenia). For this start-up project of Eurasian institutional integration Ukraine was much more important than it was to the European Union.

–> The best analysis of EU-Eurasia institutional competition I read was provided in a Chatham House briefing paper 2012; interesting that Putin did not seem to see the short term entry of Ukraine into the Customs Union as a long term obstacle of Ukrainian closer engagement with Europe; he actually tried to sell it as a future asset.

It must have been a moment of triumph when Russia managed to frustrate four years of negotiation between the EU and Ukraine by pulling Yanukovich at the last moment back into the Russian orbit. And it must have been nothing short of a shock when something inconceivable to the Kremlin pulled this victory right out of Putin’s hands: a sustained and for the most part peaceful mass-protest against a corrupt and venal regime treating national interests as bargaining chips between foreign power centres.

Up until the signing and immediate failure of the Kiev Accord the Kremlin did not take rash and reckless decisions. I think Putin still thought there was a chance to secure at least a partial victory by more or less accepted political manoeuvres. With Yanukovich on the run and forces way beyond the influence of the Kremlin asserting power this option was gone. And this is when the more short-sighted and high-risk plan B was pulled from the drawer.

–> An interesting piece of Stratfor’s Friedman on the geopolitical rational of the current crisis (like any hard core geopolitical strategist it is a rational he sees beyond short term political choices or ideological preferences)

–> Further article in Sueddeutsche on the return of the geopolitical paradigm to international politics (here, however, not seen as an almost natural confrontation but as a mostly one-sided anachronistic political choice based on an ideological conception of the world as divided into geographical blocks of influence)

I do not know if Putin and his surrounding really feel that the West spoiled the game by “creating” the Maidan or if this is just spin for his supporters. What is clear is that after the breakdown of the Kiev Accord the Kremlin decided very swiftly to change the rules of the game completely. Once this is done there is no way back to the status quo ante. [As a side note: Georgia 2008 was different to this for a number of reasons. Georgia was about NATO enlargement, it took political entities as a starting point that had split from Georgia during the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union, and it met a miscalculating aggressive leader on the other side of the mountain – in Georgia there was no principle departure from the informal rules of the game that had emerged between East and West since the breakup of the Soviet Union.]

And then there is the very different though linked issue of domestic politics and regime stabilisation. The dilemma here is that Russia and most of the former soviet republics opted for democratic constitutions after the breakup of the Soviet Union but encountered operational difficulties once the political elites that had inherited or captured the new states wanted to make them work towards the political stability they had in mind. In an almost post-modern performance Russia under Putin destroyed the institutional foundation of a democratic Russia (basically subordinating the legislative, judicative, regional powers, the media and civil society under de-facto vertical executive power) while keeping the facade of those institutions intact. How hollow even the executive branch of power was in institutional terms became clear when Putin managed to defend his informal personal political dominance against the office of the president he had lent to Medvediev in order to outsmart the constitutional limit on terms in office. If the institutions had worked such a stunt would have failed over the period of 4 years.

–> brilliant piece on what really makes the Russian regime internally tick about the coloured movements of 10 years ago and Maidan or Bolotnaya Square today: saving the “mafia-states”

This democratic facade makes Russia different, however, from straight forward dictatorships like Uzbekistan. It complicates legitimacy of the regime. In terms of legitimacy dictatorships depend on output legitimacy (if they convince the public that they deliver on key public goods like stability, development, security, food security etc.) and ideology. They are by definition bad in terms of input or procedural legitimacy (democratic participation and the rule of law). Until recently the Russian government claimed that it harvested legitimacy according to the constitutional (democratic) rules of the game. De facto it made a mockery of those institutions and worked on a narrative of output (stability) and ideology (Russia’s way, Russia’s mission, now also Russian ethno-chauvinism). This hidden transcript of justifying political power is now turning into the public official transcript. I wonder if the facades of the democratic institutions will now be demolished, too.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply