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International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
Washington’s Claims to World Leadership
By A. Matveyev
NATO’s war in Yugoslavia manifested in a most graphic manner the new nature of the political system existing on this planet. Lying in ruins are the foundations of international law and political trust, which seemed so firm only yesterday. Based on the UN Charter, the international law proved too narrow to contain the global aspirations animating the new Goliath, the United States of America. The political trust built up between Russia and the West after the end of the Cold War led the United States to believe that Russia and the rest of the world would tolerate any escapades lest they should call into question the good relations (or what would remain of them) with the undoubted rulers of the Earth.
The world has been changed thereby in the most dramatic way although the consequences of that shift will become clear only later. And no amount of incantations about returning to the fold of the UN Charter, about respecting the principles of sovereign equality and the non-use of force, about conscientiousness and decency, about the need finally for a civilized behavior is going to remedy the matter. The stark reality of strong-arm policy has caused the tattered cloak of sovereignty and preeminence of law to fall down. The fig leaves of globalism, humanitarian intervention, and protection of freedom (as well as help to “freedom fighters”) fail to enliven the generally grayish color of the naked reality: like many centuries ago, force is again the only criterion of importance of states and their spiritual values. Substitution of stone arrowheads for Tomahawks makes little change.
But how far and where to do the architects of the global reformation steer their course? Should humankind fear for its fate or at least, like the plebes in ancient Rome, it will have enough bread and circuses, though remaining a side observer of Capitol Hill tussles fought by Caesars and Brutuses?
The picture of the new world is being painted predominantly by one artist – America – the most vigorous and dynamic country, which today lays down the principles of global development and possesses the military might and financial and economic potential for translating them into life.
Laying Claim to World Leadership
On shaking off the ashes of impeachment, Bill Clinton decided to turn his eyes to the heights of world politics so as to go down in history as a man who conquered them. In a series of addresses and statements he made in the last few months, he outlined the main directions of the U.S. effort. Simultaneously, he sought to create an impressive and enticing representation of the future. The substance of his pronouncements leads to the conclusion about the U.S. playing the undoubtedly predominant role in the world and gives a clear idea of the new global structure, which all other nations should uncomplainingly get reconciled to. To be sure, it is only Washington’s eye that will be shining at the top of the pyramid of global security.
This is the main trend of hidden aspirations. But there is also the verbal shell, which likewise may give some rich food for thought. One can find therein both an outline of political goals and an indication of the tools and methods to be used for their attainment, let alone the propaganda accompaniment that has become an indispensable feature of international activities.
While delivering in San Francisco on February 26, 1999, what was conceived to be the corner-stone foreign policy speech, Bill Clinton urged the Americans “to look on our leadership not as a burden, but as a welcome opportunity.” Obviously, an opportunity which will make it possible to deal with all of America’s problems and achieve a global stability on its terms. And the United States knows that it will have to pay: “In an interdependent world, we cannot lead if we expect to lead only on our terms, and never on our own nickel. We can’t be a first-class power if we’re only prepared to pay for steerage.” In other words, America is aimed at a global overhaul in order to assert its domination for centuries to come and to bring the planet in conformity with the U.S. national interests.
In a nutshell, the U.S. foreign policy aims, as seen by Clinton, amount to the following five lines of effort:
Working for a more peaceful 21st century;
“Bringing our former adversaries,” Russia and China, “into the international system;”
Protecting the American people from the threats posed by the proliferation of mass destruction weapons, terrorism, drugs, and climatic change;
Creating a world-wide trade and financial system (plainly speaking, making America free to trade all over the world);
Keeping “freedom” (obviously in the specific U.S. understanding of the term) as the supreme goal for the 21st century world.
Bill Clinton qualifies the present period as an exceptional moment in the world history: “For the first time since before the rise of fascism early in this century, there is no overriding threat to our survival or our freedom” (the same speech of February 26, 1999).
A freedom of action turns into an unfreedom for other states. In the 20th century, nations found a common framework for coexistence – the international law – which restricted the extreme manifestations of freedom some of them were prone to. A set of its rules fixed criteria of self-limitation for states, primarily the renunciation of war as a means of settling international disputes. To be sure, law based on the principle of sovereign equality of states remains an instrument and a guarantee favoring the interests of small nations, but in the eyes of great powers it often appears as fetters which hinder efforts to deal with problems quickly and to the point.
Paradoxically, the Cold War epoch, one permeated with confrontation between the most powerful poles of hostility and real potentials for global annihilation, used to open before small and middle-sized nations much greater opportunities for tackling and the protection of their own interests. It was the epoch of a world-wide confrontation that gave rise to the de Gaulle phenomenon in a nation, which, in effect, was regularly done out of the fruits of victories in world wars, each time snatched away by the Anglo-Saxons. France owes to de Gaulle its success in coming into its own in world politics again as well as its opportunity to show independence while defining and protecting its national interests.
Now, however, after “yet another victory” achieved by a coalition with its participation, France is again in the role of a trace-horse in “the European component” of the U.S. global configuration as well as some other participants in the NATO coalition, which showered Yugoslavia with bombs. The impression is they are content with this state of affairs: it is easier to close one’s eyes on and put up with a problem if one lacks the strength to resolve it. Was it not because of the same reason that the most zealous supporters and perpetrators of hostilities against Yugoslavia were yesterday’s activists of the anti-war movement? Didn’t they attempt to get over an inner discomfort generated by the renunciation of their ideals with the help of an exterior aggression, an outburst of energy fed by an inescapable inner conflict with their own selves, which, regrettably assumed such a devastating scale?
The events in Yugoslavia have shown that a free America has stopped looking on the law as being a check on a free display of its will. The United States winds up the 20th century in the same manner as it prepared its coming. Its attack on Yugoslavia is little different from the imperialist war for the re-division of colonial possessions, which it waged against Spain at the end of the 19th century. Then it was necessary to expand the U.S. influence by acquiring protectorates in Cuba and the Philippines; today, by acquiring protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo. Remarkably, in 1999, like in 1898, America pretends that it just helps a fight for freedom. Casting off outward conventions, the Americans show a sense of purpose in pursuing their “ideals,” something that calls respect but must also cause alarm in others in this world.
But, of course, Bill Clinton speaks about totally different things. About freedom for everyone and a new era of democracy and prosperity. Incidentally, this kind of language makes America slightly more open to the outside world and more receptive to signals coming from elsewhere. This chance must always be kept in view. For all of their mechanistic rationalism, the Americans, even in their political class, retain some elements of the human nature and are therefore vulnerable. While on the subject of the American elite, we must remember that we have before us a society based on the principles of efficient organization and division of labor. Each American is to follow a strictly defined function while his or her life cycle is exceptionally rationalistic. Theirs is a society dominated by experts. The best expert is the one who knows nothing about other areas (much knowledge increases sorrow), whereas the Americans are originally meant to be optimists and winners. The average American is a kind and compassionate person. The average member of the political class may be absolutely the same towards U.S. society. But everything external seems not to exist for them or tends to be perceived as an aberration.
In Yugoslavia, for this reason, the Americans would be ready to do their best to save the lives of U.S. pilots and servicemen but would not so much as think about casualties as they bomb Yugoslavian cities and villages. Their inhabitants are just statistical units listed under the heading of “secondary damage.” A member of the U.S. political class is simply unable to relate to them as he or she does to people proper, the Americans. This leads one to the paradoxical conclusion that “the rulers of the world” tend not to regard themselves as being of this world. At the level of social psychology, the exclusiveness complex has led the Americans to the negation of their identity with the rest of mankind. Engaging in social engineering on a planetary scale are those who possess no feeling of belonging to humankind. They are the best, the most perfect, the strongest, the incomparably more humane and understanding. They stand taller than others, they are above others, they are not one of our kind. Imagine a situation where a highly skilled gardener, nay a park architect, has decided to move an essential anthill closer to a spring of water under the shadow of a tender-crowned high tree, where the ants will fare wonderfully well. Imagine that your country is one of the sides of the anthill. Quite likely, everyone will, in fact, be better off. Or some other way. But in any event it is up to the gardener, not you, to decide, and his place is already occupied.
Azimuths of U.S. Policy
Interestingly, even this sort of theorizing is unwittingly couched in Hobbs-style idiom steeped in the chaos of an all-out confrontation, with America meeting the “challenges” of the outside world and creating a world state to ensure universal peace. Showing therein, incidentally, is the innate hereditary insular complex: it is calm and pleasant being on our rock, but the waves of the surrounding sea may bring in unknown dangers; it means it is necessary to arrange things in such a way as to cause the sea to cease being unknown and thus to become our sea, mare clausum (the first visible contribution which the English made to the assertion of the freedom of high seas).
And so are the Americans, for whom the contemporary outside world continues to be full of dangers – so much so that its independent existence itself seems fraught with a threat. This outside world, therefore, ought to be incorporated in the internal one, ought to be subdued and tamed.
In this context, like images appear on a photographic plate dipped in a developer, so does this reasoning reveal some sufficiently primitive logical links and constructions. Says the U.S. President: “Our first challenge is to build a more peaceful 21st century world.” Some specific steps towards this goal are the following: “That is why I have pushed hard for NATO’s enlargement and why we must keep NATO’s doors open to new democratic members, so that other nations will have an incentive to deepen their democracies.” NATO itself must be ready for “meeting challenges (again a dichotomy between us and them, exterior and interior, a calm inside NATO and challenges of the environment. – A.M.) to our security beyond its territory.” Upon saying this on February 26, Bill Clinton found no hindrance in having these ideas translated into a guide to action for this aggressive bloc (a match in aggressiveness to its leader) – NATO’s strategic concept approved by the Washington summit on 23 – 24 April, 1999.
After endorsing what the United States saw as an important objective – to “prevent the re-nationalization of defense policies” (God forbid a new General de Gaulle should appear in the scene) – the allies decided to concentrate on “the maintenance of the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area.” In this context, “An important aim of the Alliance and its forces is to keep risks at a distance by dealing with potential crises at an early stage. In the event of crises which jeopardize Euro-Atlantic stability and could affect the security of Alliance members, the Alliance’s military forces may be called upon to conduct crisis response operations.” All aspects of such operations, on a global scale, will be defined by NATO at its own discretion without taking heed of the international law or the opinion of other nations.
Concern is the word in connection with the bent for simple solutions, exhibited by the U.S. political class, a quality of mind, which tends to leave out of consideration the entire diversity of differences characterizing the modern world and its inhabitants. In its international behavior, the U.S. government bears a resemblance to a medical student experimenting with frogs, seeing the world only as a field to which he may apply force and feeling no affinity, emotional or otherwise, with it. Hence the lightness with which it adopts decisions, whose value is mechanistically estimated only by how effective they are for attaining some set goals. Whatever may be said, the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945 belonged to the category of such acts ignoring the anxieties of this world, a purely rational decision considered solely from the point of view of military advantage.
In this context, NATO remains the priority channel for an addressed or other application of U.S. military might. But the head of the United States still deems it necessary to explain why this application may be needed at all. “It is in our interest to be a peacemaker, not because we think we can make all these differences go away, but because, in over 200 years of hard effort here at home, and with bitter and good experiences around the world, we have learned that the world works better when differences are resolved by the force of argument rather than the force of arms.”
And yet one month after these very sound words were uttered, they slid into an ignominious military campaign: without looking the enemy into the eye, without engaging him in an honest combat, they doggedly bombed cities and villages, everything that moved or just existed on the Yugoslavian soil.
We are far from thinking that the U.S. leaders, in fact, consciously seek to plunge the world in chaos of conflicts and clashes alternating with some milder demonstrations of a strong-arm policy. More likely than not, they even sincerely believe that their simple remedies are able to make everyone happy. But simplicity of mind could never guarantee universal wellbeing, particularly if it was combined with military might. Besides, it is too naive to think that the world is eager to be made happy in this fashion. But, filled with an inner conviction that theirs was a just cause, people over there obviously decided not to go into such petty details. In some respects, the elite representative of the political class, who has his residence in the White House, is akin to certain figures of Russian history. It appears, he very much fits the description which historian N.I.Kostomarov made of Czar Boris Godunov: “Boris was not an evil man, there was no pleasure for him in doing evil unto others, he did not like executions or blood-letting. Boris was even inclined to do good, but he was a man out of that generally fair breed of people, for whom charity always began at home and who were kind as long as good could be done without detriment to one’s own self; when faced with a slightest danger, they would think only about themselves and would not stop short of any evil.”
The success of the United States’ line in the Balkans has become a demonstration of its might and determination to assert a world system, within which it will, in fact, control the political process either with the help of diplomacy and law, if it can, or by having a recourse to military force, if it has to.
The system is multi-dimensioned and owes its stability to numerous vertical ties, with NATO representing the main component thereof. The Yugoslavian war has revealed some part of NATO’s potential and capabilities. It is really a force difficult to resist in practice. One is impressed by the circumstance that the military missions were accomplished without losses and, as shown by a generally stable growth of stock exchange quotations in New York and other centers, without any particular exertion of the economic organism.
The rout of Iraq in 1991 did not strike one as something out of the ordinary because at that time it came in the wake of the joint action undertaken by the international community. It represented an application of certain clauses of the UN Charter and by that virtue a practical embodiment of the ideas of its architects, who had envisaged collective measures for preventing threats to peace and suppressing acts of aggression. Launched in late 1998, the Anglo-Saxon strikes at Iraq caused more irritation than respect. The United States forced UN organizations to dance to its tune and asserted its own impunity in respect of any actions, which from that time on it found itself in a position to perform without regard for other nations. As far as the strikes themselves were concerned, their military success was more than dubious.
Against this background, the war in Yugoslavia appears as being of a totally different nature. For the first time since Vietnam, the Americans attacked a politically and morally motivated adversary, seeking to seize a part of its national territory and to inflict a military defeat on its armed forces. As Washington sees it, these goals have been achieved. A fact of no less importance is that the United States has rallied round itself the entire Western world and allowed practically no breach of discipline among the allies. The political manifestos, which were being approved at the NATO summit in Washington last April to the echo of Yugoslavian explosions, acquired thereby a real meaning and frightening implications.
The Yugoslavian war has shown how the United States is changing the physics of international relations. Linear forces take the place of an universal, multi-dimensioned logos, traditions and habitual ties between states, which used to exist in the form of jus gentium. 1 It may be that the political phlogiston, perceived as a reality by many, from Ulpianus and Hugo Grotius to the present-day Hague jury persons, is, in fact, a fiction which has a right to exist only by virtue of everyone recognizing its actuality.
For all its simplicity, the picture fails to rejoice or convince one. The magnet has been left with just one pole... The new law of gravity (pulling the world in the direction of Washington) is incarnated in a pyramidal configuration of international relations, which gives the United States an incontestable supremacy and rests on the concentric circles of security circumscribed by links with Washington. NATO is a bridle for Europe and a tool of intimidation hanging over many countries, from Yugoslavia to Brazil. Agencies existing in the shadow of NATO and international organizations, which form an integral whole with the system (both the UN and the OSCE), add to the dense fabric of defensive alliances and political agreements, which make it possible for the United States to keep the world under control or in its sights. Bulky and solid, the whole thing suggests one an association with a pyramid, a figure possessing a clearly visible tip, from which pressure increases steadily all the way down to the bottom. This has nothing to do with a multiplicity of dimensions or poles. To quote Alexander Zinovyev, “mankind is entering a post-democratic era” and “in its nature, its actions, and its consequences, this new totalitarianism is more frightening and dangerous than its Hitlerite and Stalinist predecessors.” 2
Communicating stability to the pyramid is the force of gravity, a lack of which will produce either “a dispersal of galaxies” or the emergence of a new system of strong and weak influences.
As of today, there are two monoliths – Russia and China – which the Americans have failed to hew into shape to form yet another set of building blocks. Their sheer size as well as many other factors tends to create too much hindrance in the way of their inclusion in the pyramidal stability patterns. But without their incorporation into the system (it makes no difference with what rights and status), the picture of the world will not be complete.
Russian and Chinese Factors in U.S. Global Determination
Bill Clinton never tires of substantiating the incontestability of the U.S. leadership in the world as well as his nation’s natural right to define all the parameters of its functioning. “And it falls now to America not to be a wild-eyed idealist, but just to remind the people that we are trying to set a model for the world,” he told his fellow Democrats at a dinner in Mayflower Hotel at half past eight in the evening on March 23, 1999. He uttered these words a short while after he had given the order to bomb Yugoslavian cities and villages, this without applying to the UN Security Council or thinking it necessary to consult Russia and China. Thereby he graphically demonstrated that these two states were by far not the close and equitable partners in the context of U.S. active global policy scenarios. But what are they for America?
While making his fundamental foreign policy speech in San Francisco on February 26, 1999, Bill Clinton put them in the second place among the U.S. foreign policy priorities: “A second challenge we face is to bring our former adversaries, Russia and China, into the international system as open, prosperous, stable nations.” In itself, this formula is undoubtedly a positive one. But how sincere was he in saying this (the question may appear naive when applied to political statements made by a political leader, but still why not ask it)?
There is no doubt that Russia’s and China’s potentials must be taken into consideration as America makes her planet-wide calculations, including as a factor of threat, which, on the surface, flies in the face of her plans of global domination. To be sure, Russia and China are seen each in a different light, although in the methodological sense the approaches, which Washington practices in respect of both of them reveal many things of the same type.
Above all, this concerns their nuclear status, which means preserving a deterrence potential, something that America cannot fail to reckon with and that she regards as her duty to eliminate. Indicative in this context was the Russian – American meeting held within the framework of the G-8 summit in Cologne in July of this year, at which the United States confirmed its line for revising the ABM limitation regime, the best evidence to that effect.
Add to this such factors as territory and population, which are due to play a more important role in the 21st century, although in a way different from what it was at the start of the 20th century, when these were mostly the categories of direct military registration and use. Incidentally, the exponential population growth and aggravation of territorial shortages on a global scale are in themselves capable of wrecking the plans drawn up by the Americans, where everything is too fine-tuned and foreordained to admit of the play of such basic forces.
For the United States, China is a future threat, because today her potential cannot be compared with the American one. Speaking on foreign policy at the Mayflower Hotel on April 7, 1999, Bill Clinton calculated that “China has fewer than two dozen long-range nuclear weapons today; we have over 6,000.” The U.S. is firmly determined to keep its overwhelming nuclear superiority, this remaining the corner stone of all its strategic calculations in respect of China.
At the same time, inspired by the collapse of the USSR, the Americans count on inculcation of Western democratic values. The latter will hopefully erode the foundation of the strong state power in China and make it dependent on the public opinion, which in its decisive segments will be shaped by successes of links with the United States. Transformation of the Chinese political system with the help of economic and humanitarian influences is seen by the Washington politicians as the optimum method for building China into the integral fabric of U.S. global preparations, into the pyramidal stability, which implies preservation of a militarily weak China on the outside and a democratically fragmented and disintegrated political organization inside.
It must be said that this scenario will hardly be spurned by the Chinese themselves, who think in terms of so long drawn-out time periods that they may outdo any triumph-winner with a propensity for dramatic gestures.
Against this background, the destruction by the Americans of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade shines in all colors of the rainbow. What meets the eye in this incident is the Americans’ monstrous indifference to non-Americans, which tends to degenerate into sheer managerial sloppiness. As it followed from press reports, the CIA, which boasts a 1.5 times greater budget than the whole of Russia, failed to scrape up enough money to buy a modern map of Belgrade and therefore had to rely on ancient manuscripts. One can also see here a measure of punishment for Beijing’s excessive independence of estimate, the more so that there is no guarantee that similar mistakes will not occur again some time in the future.
But what is more important, the incident has put in bold relief the political skills and sense of measure characterizing Beijing. National pride and anger towards murderers of their compatriots have united the people and the authorities of China. An external crisis has become a promoter of internal unity, making it possible to turn a page on what happened in downtown Beijing ten years ago. The Chinese played out the diplomatic party flawlessly as well, doing that in respect of the entire war. Their clear understanding of the limits of accessible, restraint in practical steps, and freedom of political assessment have allowed them once again to set off the independence of and an almost complete lack of opportunism in their foreign policy. Limiting herself to consistently weighed and yet hard-hitting estimates of the aggression launched by “the U.S.-led NATO,” China avoided a direct involvement in the conflict as well as all the negative consequences which it entailed, but she never betrayed her principles. And, to be sure, the destruction of her embassy in Belgrade is going to be a propaganda long-player, which, judging by all appearances, will bring much benefit to Beijing. All of this allows one to rate China as the second biggest beneficiary (the first one is undoubtedly the United States) of the Yugoslavian war.
Strategic Partnership American-Style
Russia is a more difficult case. It was for too long that Moscow remained the chief target of strategic planning. It was too much fear that it forced the Americans, unaccustomed to live under the threat of destruction, to endure. Moreover, Russia’s nuclear missile potential has not been phased out completely, which makes her a nation to be reckoned with. For all the fine words about support of democracy, it transpires from Bill Clinton’s foreign policy speech of February 26, 1999, that the emphasis is on the elimination of the Russian nuclear factor: “We will work to continue cutting our two nations’ nuclear arsenals, and help Russia prevent both its weapons and its expertise from falling into the wrong hands.” Describing it as critical threat reductions, the U.S. President is insisting on a 70-percent increase in budget allocations for these purposes within the next five years.
The times are long past when M.S.Gorbachev had to talk the Americans into making parity reductions, whereas the latter jibbed and haggled over loopholes for them to keep some or other components of “the deterrence potential,” unaware as they were then of their own fairly long-term interest in a consistent nuclear disarmament. Today one has the impression that Washington has come to realize that its stable military preeminence in the world is going to be of long duration and has based upon it its pyramidal stability arrangement, which is made shaky precisely by an unpredictable Russia with her overly considerable nuclear set-up.
Of course, one may wait till it gradually falls into a decline and even help it go that way (including via increasing the relevant budget expenditures by 70 percent). One may actively promote disarmament, for, like previously, it will every time be fragmentary and directed at the areas where the Russian factor could be potentially dangerous, whereas conventional arms, including the dominant factors of U.S. supremacy and tools for installing order on the global scale (take, for example, the naval forces, whose limitation has not been discussed for nearly half a century since the London conference) will invariably remain outside of the scope of vision.
But one may also attempt to adjust Russia’s internal evolution, which means throwing an economic noose on her. In the same speech, Bill Clinton refers with satisfaction to the forced cuts in Russian steel exports to the United States, because, as he said, “We have to follow lawful economic trends.” (Plainly speaking, market is market, but it is up to Washington to decide to what extent “a free market economy” is admissible and whether it has a right to exist at all.) Let us recall how the Americans keep free competition out of the sphere of commercial space launches, thrusting on Russia and the rest of the world a system of quotas characterized by an almost Stalinist strictness (try to tell it from a global-scale state order).
Finally, one cannot fail to notice how Washington changed its tone in dealing with Russia during the incumbency of Ye.M.Primakov Government. It was one’s impression in late 1998 and early 1999 that the United States and after it the world financial institutions and other Western countries changed the coordinate grid, on which the position of Russia and vectors of her intercourse with America were plotted.
The United States has arranged its foreign policy priorities in a sequence, where a strong Russia is not to be found. A power like her simply cannot fit in with the pyramidal stability plans. The obvious need is for an open Russia, a weak state in what it concerns its external reactions, one keeping its economy and civic society wide open and having no claim to an independent role in the world. Unlike China, Russia no longer possesses a considerable population that has to be taken into account as a particular factor. But she has another crucial asset, her territory. By all standards, it is too vast.
The United States boasts quite a record of controlling the “break-away” [Soviet] republics. All of them with the exception of Byelorussia are easily inscribed in the U.S.-drawn concentric security circles. Hence the objective conclusion that America is interested in not permitting restoration of the true integrity of Russia (as an empire if you will, meaning a territory obeying uniform rules, within which all citizens possess equal rights and opportunities, something guaranteed by them being protected against outside threats). Of course, trends will continue to clash as a search for an optimum approach to Russia is persisted with, the latter implying that she must not be allowed to sink into anarchy and entropy that will leave her nuclear weapons uncontrolled. A simultaneous effort should be also made to head off a return to the times of strategic parity, which is incompatible with pyramidal stability.
“Today, we must confront the risk of a Russia weakened by the legacy of communism and also by its inability at the moment to maintain prosperity at home or control the flow of its money, weapons and technology across its borders,” said Bill Clinton. A measure of control is necessary over Russia therefore, but better still that she present no danger at all. All of this echoes with a refrain which Cato the Elder repeated again and again between the second and third Punic Wars: “Ceterum, censeo Carthaginem esse delendam”. 3 Carthage had been destroyed by that time, its military potential had been eliminated, but its territory was still there and the state itself continued to exist, thereby poisoning the life of those on the Capitol Hill, who demonstrated the same understanding of the freedom of trade and competition as Bill Clinton does in the modern times: only the rules we set, only on our terms.
Today, Russia has what Carthage could not possess more than two thousand years ago. It is a nuclear potential, which may still assure a general destruction. It must prevent the Americans from choosing some grimmest scenarios of international policy and create conditions for a positive partnership. This, however, provided that the actual possession of nuclear missiles and nuclear tectonic assets be combined with a will and readiness for their employment, which means lowering the level of decision-making on their use and their inclusion in the admissible arsenal for dealing with operational-tactical missions.
What is the good of an assured global destruction, if there is no all-out missile attack against Russia, just local conflicts and the “gnawing” at the Russian influence by the Yugoslavian war methods. It is only in situations where nuclear weapons form one of the capabilities for tackling the same goals which the Americans attain with the help of cruise missiles and aviation without engaging in an “honest combat” that Russia’s strategic potential is beginning to yield political dividends.
The post-war arms race led to a military-strategic parity, which enabled peacetime stability and renunciation of war and opened the way for an internal transformation, in Russia among others. All of her previous history was characterized by the existence of a permanent outside threat, one of total enslavement or destruction: Polovtsi and Mongol-Tartars in the east, Crimean Tartars and Turks in the south, Poles and Germans in the west. Hardly a decade passed without raids, invasions, and devastation. Living in a state of perpetual readiness for defense influenced the people’s and the nation’s entire world outlook, in which service to the state was viewed as an organic element of one’s being and a will for sacrifice, as a rule or even a usual thing.
This state of mind was not without an impact on some features of the Russian political system, which proved more transcendental than the profession de foi of some or other ruler, no matter what – autocracy or democracy – they talked about. But this also became the cause of a general cultural inadequacy and backwardness of Russian society in its various components, including in the area of political culture, an inadequacy, which got only strengthened due to the steadfastness and an insuperable patience characterizing the Russian people.
N.I.Kostomarov writes this in his historical study called “The Personality of Czar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible:” “The Kazan and the Crimean Tartars, no longer strong enough to force Russian sovereigns to come to them with the tribute, would time and again plunder and ravage Russian homes and Russian fields, would massacre or lead away to captivity tens of thousands of Russian folk, compelling them to buy peace, which, in effect, was a continuation of tribute payments, would hinder the Russians from either advancing to the most fertile areas or improving their way of life. It is thanks to them that the Russian people continued to be the most unfortunate and poorest of peoples; the whole of its history is filled with unvaried, innumerable and, in their time, fearsome ravages.” It only suffices to mention the fact that after the capture of Kazan in 1522, “over a hundred thousand unfortunate Russian slaves were freed and brought back to Fatherland and Christianity.” That an outside threat is fraught for Russia with some monstrous devastation was confirmed in the 20th century by the Germans’ crusade, who sought to eradicate the entire Russian civilization and brought about the death of 27 million people.
It turns out that the strategic parity, which was achieved over the last few decades, proved a unique chance of sorts (since the times of Prince Svyatoslav) for Russia to turn her attention to some internal development problems and concentrate on her cultural growth. And Russia used the chance. Yet, lost in the process were conditions that used to guarantee the external security and by that virtue the forward trend of internal development. One can hear again near the Russian doorstep the measured tread of crusaders inflamed with the “sacred” longing for thrusting the Western values on the rest of the world and for civilizing the barbarians. As for Russia, she is internally divided and none the wiser than she was in the first few decades of the 13th century. In this respect, the war in Yugoslavia is for her the same as the capture of Khoresm or perhaps even the battle of Kalka.
Thus, the U.S. strategy in respect of Russia is marked by a certain permanent disparity. It is no use hoping to achieve universal wellbeing without her participation or via her humiliation. The latter can be avoided only on principles of partnership with Russia, by way of treating her as an equal ally and of renouncing advantages stemming from the military superiority. But this is something that Washington is unable to do, since the entire pyramidal stability system is based on the postulates of incontestable U.S. domination. Russia does not fit in with Bill Clinton’s publicly declared constructions and that means that some other Realpolitik options have been prepared too.
Aleksandr Matveyev is senior adviser to the permanent representative of Russia in OSCE, Vienna.
Endnotes
Note 1: International law (Latin). Back.
Note 2: Le Monde, May 25, 1999 Back.
Note 3: ”Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed” (Latin). Back.