By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton Times & Transcript]
The fall of the Soviet Union presented a monumental challenge for the new Russian state. Economic, political and military collapse exposed its weakness for the West to exploit.
Russia had to navigate a fragmented ethnic population, create relations with states that it had once ruled through imperial conquest, and had to manage its reduced geographic security with less military and productive resources.
There was initial goodwill between the Russian government and the West, but this diminished with an unceasing expansion of Western hegemony. Multilateral institutions such as the European Union and NATO expanded into the former buffer states of Russia and even into the former Soviet Union itself.
The neoconservative turn of American foreign policy was marked by activity to bring about regime changes in former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine to make them receptive to American power. Russia consequently became interested in controlling its neighbours’ affairs by establishing regional military institutions, countering Western influence in its “near abroad” and withholding trade to enforce its will.
Vladimir Putin was the result of this pushback. Putin has portrayed himself as a strong leader so that the public will view him as capable of leading and defending Russia. In terms of foreign policy, he has based his legitimacy by painting Russia as under attack by illegitimate Western interference. This provided the springboard of his military actions in Georgia and Crimea.
In Ukraine, an oligarchic capitalist system had been aligned with Russia for the maintenance of power by the country’s corrupt rulers. Viktor Yanukovych had become president of Ukraine in 2010 and had been steering the country away from Europe and closer to Russia. But the Maidan Revolution of 2014 ousted him and he was replaced by the pro-western Viktor Yushchenko.
Fear in the Kremlin that Ukraine might join the EU led to the annexation of Crimea and the sponsoring of secessionist groups in the Donbas. This, predictably, caused outrage in western countries, but increased Putin’s popularity at home. Putin utilized the antidemocratic accusations levied against him by the West to fuel his nationalism.
U.S. President Joe Biden has been playing into Putin’s hands since taking office. Biden in a televised interview on March 17 described Putin as a “killer” with no soul and said the Russian leader would pay a price for alleged Russian meddling in the November 2020 presidential election, something the Kremlin denies.
Putin replied that Biden was accusing the Russian leader of something he was guilty of himself. Russia also recalled its ambassador back to Moscow for the first time since 1998.
Policies in Washington have pushed Russia and China closer together since Putin’s annexation of Crimea and China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Biden’s administration has now gone on the offensive with a national security agenda prioritising “rivalry with China, Russia and other authoritarian states.”
The U.S. is even willing to consider NATO expansion into Ukraine, on Russia’s doorstep, and Georgia, in the Caucasus. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated Kyiv’s desire to be admitted to NATO, something which Moscow has repeatedly warned against, threatening that it could catapult the region toward a major war.
To an ex-KGB officer like Putin, this sabre-rattling must seem like a return to the “capitalist encirclement” of the USSR during the Cold War. U.S. sanctions targeting Russia’s policy on Ukraine and China’s suppression of the Uighurs have further aligned Moscow and Beijing’s interests.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited China March 22-23 for talks with his counterpart, Wang Yi, marking the resumption of regular high-level exchanges between the two countries.
The Chinese and Russian military now routinely hold joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean and East China Sea. Moscow has said it would not rule out a possible pact with China to counter NATO, but Beijing seems less interested.
“The latest steps and gestures by the Biden administration, seen as hostile and insulting by the Russian and Chinese leaders, have predictably pushed Moscow and Beijing even deeper into a mutual embrace,” according to Artyom Lukin, a professor of international studies at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. U.S.-Russia relations are at their worst since the Cold War ended and will remain so in the coming years.
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