The Neo-Soviet mind-set. Coexistence with a dominator? How not to be a Yankee vassal. Power, cooperation and security. A third-world base for first world power. Personal success as the triumph of freedom. About compromising the sacrificial lambs. Stalin-cult and policy. "Respect."
1. The symptoms of "if you dread to fix it, cover it with masking tape" are appearing. Accordingly, Russia is, as under her previous systems, insecure. Recognition and respect by the West is wanted. Post-Soviet times brought humiliation. The equality of living standards was not achieved while equality in power was lost. Material progress was not shared by the masses. Meanwhile, their lack of knowledge precluded the perception of fundamental achievements. This left power as the measuring rod comprehended by all. Therefore, losing control over land that the Tsars or Stalin had conquered is painful. Wanting to separate from Russia implies ungrateful rejection in favor of a superior foreign entity. This confirms the fear of being inferior because one ceased to be superior.
Equating international status with bringing secessionists back into the fold provokes the latter. Wanting to secede is treason and, if accomplished, it signals weakness. Attempts to re-impose Kremlin rule inserts foreigners into the picture as they are asked for support by threatened entities. (Balts in NATO, the candidacy of the Ukraine, Georgia.) Thus, in terms of the Soviet mind-set the ghost of encirclement rises. Some conclude that a close relationship with the endangered is to be avoided because of its provocative effect. The problem with this is that while it reduces some tensions it also encourages expansion by suggesting that the country is written off. Historically, such appeasement produced the opposite of what the appeasers wanted. Furthermore, if accepted as an excuse, the above makes out of Russia a psychologically benighted irrational country that is led by persons committed to paranoid policies. Hardly reassuring to practice coexistence with a party that cannot take less than subservience in order to feel secure and satiated.
2. More masking tape. An argument justifying non-reactive silent treatment runs like this. The US criticizes Russia for its way of making order in Georgia. (Overreaction to Georgia's challenge to her separatists, ethnic cleansing in seceding territories, the violation of agreements.) America also promises to help Georgia reconstruct. What happens to those that assume similar positions? They wind up supporting the USA. Doing so implies that, those chiming in with Washington thereby become followers of the USA. That makes the country subservient to the States. Consequently, to escape vassal status, Europeans need to assert their independence by refusing to toe the Americans' line. Note: the real or assumed difference with the USA is twisted to take precedence over the original issue.
3. Russia is only able to feel comfortable in its international context if it dominates the world community. Reestablishing control over the Soviet "sphere of interest" (Medvedev) of yesteryear is necessary. Economic interests and security, achieved through cooperation, are secondary considerations. Therefore, these goals are instinctively sacrificed on the altar of supremacy.
4. Since about 1700, Russia held membership in the club of Great Powers. She played this role while her system (political order, development, wealth) differed radically from that of the other major players. In today's terminology, a third-world system was used to support a first-world role. (To focus limited means a dictatorship was needed and global power justified the tyranny.) There were repeated attempts to close the developmental gap. Their failure led to major reverses. The current system also shows signs of trying to substitute for internal renewal a modern military and superpower role. Meiji Japan and now China offer a revealing contrast. Both have realized that their weakness in the international arena was caused by having a system that differed from the norm of the leading nations. Accordingly, Japan has and China seems now, to be adjusting their system to conform to the vanguard. If successful, this correlation between economic performance and political institutions and military-political might make China a more effective challenger of the West than Russia. Meanwhile, there is hope that, once the balance is achieved and her role secured, China's behavior will be determined by rational considerations rather than by goals that belong into some text of Psychology 101.
5. NATO‘s and therefore Europe's security problem can be attributed to the Islamists or to an increasingly aggressive Russia. An aspect of the problem is that the alliance has founding members who feel invulnerable. At the same time, new countries see themselves, due to their historical experience and an informed analysis of Russian policies, threatened. These states are recent members and represent a region that "Europe" likes to write off. This zone is geographically in Europe but not part of it in terms of the West's perceptions. Now it demands a collective security policy that the "club" is reluctant to provide. New Europe wants protection if needed. Old Europe wants a compromise with the challenger at any price — to be paid by the exposed "outskirts." The compromise is desired even if the casting means that Russia is the butcher and the lesser parts of Europe play the sacrificial lamb.
6. Not only is Imperial Russia's Soviet mutation back. So is Stalin as a positive figure in school texts, the Soviet anthem he had imposed is intoned and his picture is over the desk of NATO Ambassador Rogozin. The millions of his victims are a multiple of Hitler's. Therefore Stalin's appeal raises concerns if you see his cult as a symptom. His attraction? He extended Moscow's power over a larger area than the Tsars had even coveted. The retouched past as a symbol can often serve as a program.
7. The plight of minorities, for instance in central Europe, is likely to worsen because of "Georgia." There the rescue of "Russians" was used to justify intervention beyond the zone of contention. Similar excuses could be used elsewhere. 25 million Russians wound up on the "wrong side" of new boundaries when the USSR dissolved. Non-Russians elsewhere are potential cards in a copy-cat game whose rules were laid down in Georgia. Therefore, suspecting minority-populations might justify centralistic pressure upon them to prevent their secession. In Central Europe the oppressive practice of the politics of suspicion has a long tradition.
8. Some countries, movements and people tend to protest angrily the injustice to which they are subjected by an "insensitive" world and its order. The demand for "respect" is even louder than is the insistence for a quickened transfer of more wealth. The problem is that genuine "respect" is "earned." Threats and pressure might suffice to extort palliative pretenses but never the real concept's substance.
9. One more thing. Searching for a name caused the writer to stumble on data he did not seek. If one looks at a listing of people that "made a difference," their biographies point to a revelation. Perusing such lists it is stunning how many of those that became great in their field and who matured before 1950 made part of their career outside their original country. A globalization of talents? Not quite. The movement of talent was a trend but it was not voluntary. Furthermore, the able moved one way, namely from East to West. Specifically, central and eastern Europeans lumbered westward, to England and mainly to the USA. Their contribution explains much of America's rise beyond the level that anybody like Teddy Roosevelt could have imagined at the turn of the century. It also reveals an Achilles heel of the Nazi and Communist great powers. Some of the current developmental lag of everything between the Bering Sea and Vienna's eastern city limits is also explained. The conclusion emerges that the motor of the movement of talents was the persecution of totalitarian systems. These had consciously "decapitated" the societies they kidnapped. Beyond the murder of millions, this is one of the main damages inflicted upon the entities that were once ruled according to the principles of Fascism, National Socialism and Communism. Among the lessons behind these personal success stories is that they express the triumph of freedom made into a system by the receiving country.
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