Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism

In December 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The end of the last European empire came suddenly and unexpectedly, not least for the Russians themselves. However, with hindsight it seemed to be the logical conclusion of a chapter in European history. Other European countries had gone down the same road. Spain had already lost its colonies in the nineteenth century. France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands had decolonized after World War II. Even Portugal, a colonialist “laggard” that clung to its possessions in Africa and Asia until the bitter end, had to give up its empire after the “carnation revolution” of 1974. Decolonization—until now—has seemed to be an irreversible process: once a former colony had obtained its independence, it was unlikely that the former colonial power could make a comeback. The history of European decolonization has been, so far, a linear and not a cyclical process. The chapter of European colonialism seems to be closed definitively, once and for all. But is it? Does this analysis also apply to Russia? This is the big question because not only the conditions under which Russia built its empire were quite different than for the other European countries, but also because the process of decolonization was different. Let us consider these differences. There are, at least, five:

• First, Russia did not build its empire overseas, as did the other European powers. Its empire was contiguous and continental: the new lands it acquired were incorporated in one continuous landmass.

• Second, with shorter communication lines and no need to cross oceans, rebellions and independence movements in the colonized territories could be more easily repressed.

• Third, Russian empire building was also different because it did not come after the process of state-building, as was the case in Western Europe. In Russia it was an integral part of the process of state-building itself.

• Fourth, Russian empire building was neither casual, nor primarily driven by commercial interests, as was the case in Western Europe, but from the start, it had a clear geopolitical function, namely, to safeguard Russia’s borders against foreign invaders.

• Fifth, in Russian history periods of decolonization were never linear, nor irreversible. Decolonization was never definitive. When, for instance, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the colonized lands of the Russian empire were set free, they were soon afterwards reconquered by the Red Army.

It is these five historical characteristics of Russian colonization and decolonization that one has to bear in mind when analyzing the behavior of the Russian leadership. The thesis of this book is that—unlike in Western Europe, where the process of decolonization was definitive—the same is not necessarily true for Russia. For the Russian state colonizing neighboring territories and subduing neighboring peoples has been a continuous process. It is, one could almost say, part of Russia’s genetic makeup. The central question with which we are confronted after the demise of the Soviet Union is whether this centuries-old urge to subdue and incorporate neighboring peoples has disappeared or if this imperial reflex might be making a comeback.

RUSSIA: A POST-IMPERIUM?

According to some authors the end of the Soviet Union sounded the death knell of Russian colonialism and imperialism. One of these authors is Dmitri Trenin, a Russian analyst and the head of the Moscow bureau of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In his book, with the telling title Post-Imperium, he tries to reassure the reader that “Russia has abandoned the age-old pattern of territorial growth. A merger with Belarus was not pursued as a priority. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were turned into military buffers, but only in extremis.”[1] In his book Trenin repeats this reassuring mantra again and again. He writes: “The days of the Russian empire are gone; Russia has entered a post-imperial world;”[2] or: “Russia will never again be an empire;”[3] and again: “The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that had lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan is gone. In the two decades since the collapse, imperial restoration was never considered seriously by the leaders, nor demanded by a wider public.”[4] Trenin gives several arguments for his thesis. The first of these is the presence in Russia of an empire fatigue. Russians, he argues, are no longer willing to pay for an empire: “At the top, there was neither money nor strong will for irredentism.”[5] Instead of an empire, he continues, Russia has only the desire to become a “great power.” The difference between the two is, in his opinion, that great powers are selfish. They don’t want to spend money on behalf of other nations. “Empires,” writes the author, “for all the coercion they necessarily entail, do produce some public goods, in the name of a special mission. Great powers can be at least equally brutish and oppressive, but they are essentially selfish creatures.”

However, the sudden eclipse of Russia’s eternal imperial drive cannot be explained exclusively by “selfishness.” Trenin gives a second reason, which is the growing xenophobia in the Russian population. Although xenophobia may be an ugly, anti-humanist attitude, in Russia’s case, it would have some positive effects. “What the rise in xenophobia, the upsurge of chauvinism, and the spread of anti-government violence also tell,” writes the author, “is that there is no appetite whatsoever for a new edition of empire, only residual nostalgia for the old days.”[6] Like Bernard Mandeville, who in his Fable of the Bees explained how public benefits could emerge from private vices, Dmitri Trenin explains how in contemporary Russia private vices, such as xenophobia and egoism, result in a public benefit: the lack of appetite in the Russian population for the restoration of the lost empire.

However, the problem with Trenin’s analysis is not only that it is too simple, but also that it contradicts the facts. One of these facts is that during Putin’s reign the phase of “empire fatigue” has definitively come to an end. Under the guise of the “Eurasian Customs Union,” “Eurasian Economic Union,” and—most recently—“Eurasian Union,” new efforts of empire building have begun. As concerns xenophobia, presented by Trenin as an effective antidote against empire building, history shows that xenophobia, far from eliminating an imperialist drive, it often accompanies it. One does not have to go back to the 1930s to find extremely xenophobic regimes that at the same time were expansionist and imperialist. A good example of this combination in contemporary Russia is the leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party in the Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who, in his book Poslednyy brosok na yug (Last Push to the South), likens immigrants to Russia from the Caucasus or Central Asia to “cockroaches” (tarakany) who should be expelled from the European center of Russia.[7] This does not prevent Zhirinovsky from pleading for a reconquest of both the Soviet and tsarist empires (the latter included parts of contemporary Poland and Finland). Zhirinovsky even claims Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan as exclusive spheres of influence, not excluding that “Russia gets a frontier with India.”[8] Trenin’s argument that the widespread xenophobia in Russia will prevent Russia from becoming imperialist is therefore not valid. In fact the contrary is true: ultranationalism and imperial chauvinism are often most developed in xenophobic and racist countries.

Ironically, Trenin mentions in his book a number of facts that undermine his own theory of Russia as a post-imperium. These facts are rather disconcerting. When Trenin mentions how Putin called the demise of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” he writes that “Putin’s words were interpreted as evidence of an active Kremlin nostalgia for the recently lost empire, and even as a sign of his intention to bring back the USSR. This was a misinterpretation.”[9] Trenin is certainly right that Putin did not want to bring back the USSR—because, as he rightly stresses, Putin “blamed the non-performing communist system for losing the Soviet Union.” But a Russian empire does not have to be a communist empire, as the tsarist experience proves. Trenin also mentions Putin’s remark at the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008 that Ukraine “was not even a state” and “would break apart.” This was, according to Trenin, neither an expression of Russian imperial arrogance and contempt, nor a barely disguised threat. Putin, he wrote, “was probably highlighting the brittleness of Ukraine’s unity, which would not survive a serious test.”[10]

But if Putin was completely free of any annexationist fervor, why, in 2003, did he propose that Belarus return to Russia and join the Russian Federation as six oblasts (provinces), a proposition that was refused by Belarus? As long ago as 1993, the Supreme Soviet laid claim to the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.[11] However, if Putin’s objectives are so radically different, why would his government distribute Russian passports in the Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine, knowing that the Ukrainian Constitution strictly forbade dual nationality? And why was this distribution of Russian passports accompanied in August 2008 by Medvedev’s introduction of “five foreign policy principles,” which included the right for the Kremlin to protect Russians “wherever they are” and intervene on their behalf? These principles were applied in the case of Georgia, which was invaded in August 2008. And why, after the Orange Revolution, did Russian politicians speak out in favor of the “federalization” of Ukraine?[12] As Trenin himself writes, this proposal was interpreted by Ukrainian politicians as “paving the way to its breakup and the absorption of its eastern and southern regions by Russia.” And why, in 2003, did Putin equally propose the federalization of Moldova?[13] Was it not because it would make a breakup of that state easier and bring the breakaway province of Transnistria definitively back within Moscow’s sphere of influence? Trenin also mentions that after the Ukrainian bid for a route into NATO, “some not entirely academic quarters in Moscow played with the idea of a major geopolitical redesign of the northern Black Sea area, under which southern Ukraine, from the Crimea to Odessa, would secede from Kiev and form a Moscow-friendly buffer state, ‘Novorossiya’—New Russia. As part of that grand scheme, tiny Transnistria would either be affiliated with that state or absorbed by it. The rest of Moldova could then be annexed by Romania.”[14] These sentences need to be read very carefully: for “some not entirely academic quarters in Moscow,” one could read: the Kremlin or Kremlin-related politicians. For “played with the idea of a major geopolitical redesign,” one could read: military intervention in order to break up Ukraine, an internationally recognized sovereign state (also recognized by Russia). Moreover, the creation of a Russia-friendly “buffer state” has traditionally, in Russian politics, led to that state becoming part of Russia. One could be tempted to see some historical parallels. But, of course, you need not. Because Trenin is reassuring us: Putin’s Russia has no plans to reconquer its lost empire. Russia is a post-empire and intends to remain so.

The thesis of this book is that the Russian Federation is both a post-imperial state and a pre-imperial state. The aim of this book is to analyze Putin’s wars in Chechnya and Georgia and to put them in a broader context in order to better understand the inner dynamic of Putin’s system. The key idea of the book is that in Russian history there has always existed a negative relationship between empire building and territorial expansion on the one hand and internal democratization on the other. Reform periods in Russia (after 1855, 1905, and 1989) are often the result of lost wars and/or the weakening of the empire. Periods of imperial expansion, on the contrary, tended to have a negative impact on internal reform and democratization. Gorbachev’s perestroika—a product of the lost Cold War—is an example of the former, Putin’s policy of a reimperialization of the former Soviet space is an example of the latter.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The book consists of three parts.

In this part I analyze the role of empire building in Russian history and look at the similarities and differences with empire building in Western Europe. Why is it that in Russia empire building and despotism have always tended to go hand in hand? What are the differences and similarities between the legitimation theories used for empire building in Russia and in the West? This part ends with a chapter on “empire fatigue” in post-Soviet Russia and suggests that empire fatigue came to an end with the arrival of Vladimir Putin, who considered it his historic role to reestablish the lost empire. In the final chapters of this part the different diplomatic initiatives of Putin are analyzed, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Russia-Belarus Union State, the BRICS, the Customs Union, as well as his most recent project: the Eurasian Union.

Part II analyzes how Putin, convinced that in order to rebuild the empire he needed to rule for at least twenty years without interruption, put a system in place that guaranteed this continued rule. It analyzes in detail how he eroded and dismantled the democratic reforms, manipulated the party system, introduced fake parties, falsified elections, and transformed the ruling party “United Russia” from a centrist party into a revanchist and ultranationalist party. One particular chapter describes the activities of the Kremlin’s youth movement “Nashi,” which enabled the Kremlin to inculcate its adherents with its ultranationalist ideology and strengthen its grip on civil society by harassing and intimidating opponents. Another chapter describes the new role, assigned to the Cossacks, who function as Putin’s praetorian guard and auxiliary police force after the mass protests of 2011–2012.

In this part the wars of Putin’s regime are analyzed and compared with other recent wars fought by (Soviet) Russia. In the first chapter three lost wars are analyzed: the war in Afghanistan, the Cold War, and the First Chechen War. This analysis is followed by a chapter on the casus belli, which offered (then) Prime Minister Putin an opportunity to start an all-out second war in Chechnya: the so-called “apartment bombings” of September 1999, which killed hundreds of Russian citizens. The Kremlin ascribed these attacks to Chechen terrorists, but the official Kremlin version is put in doubt by allegations that the FSB, the KGB’s follow-up organization, masterminded these explosions. This chapter is followed by a chapter on the Second Chechen War, a war characterized by purges, torture, and forced disappearances. I explain that this war had a triple function for the Kremlin: to consolidate Putin’s position, to legitimate Putin’s power, and, additionally, to enable him to roll back the democratic reforms. In the final chapters the 2008 war with Georgia is analyzed. I distinguish three phases in this war: a “cold” war, a “lukewarm” war, and, finally, the “hot” (five-day) war. Despite the Kremlin’s declarations that this war came as a surprise, I present and analyze the many circumstances indicating that this war was preplanned with the objective of bringing about a regime change in Georgia.