HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

The Germans tried both paths. They went down the first one after the First World War, and it led to a national disaster. They tried the other one after the Second World War, and it led to the re-birth of the nation. The first path was directly linked to the past. It was the path of revanchism and militarism, the violent reawakening of worn-out historical processes. The second was linked to the future. It was a way of re-assessing matters and searching for new solutions.

Unfortunately, in Russia it was not the constructive, but the re-constructive  scenario that was played out. At the start of the twenty-first century the ruling clan tied society to the first path, the revanchist one, and started to push “the elixir of greatness”. The superpower drug worked. For some years society wandered round in a state of endless psychosis, revelling in their imaginary superiority over other peoples and a sense of might that didn’t actually exist (especially after seeing Putin’s famous cartoons about the power of Russian weapons). However, tiredness has already sunk in, along with an awareness that Russia has begun to pay for it, and in the future will be paying an exorbitant price.

The Kremlin doesn’t want to achieve Russia’s greatness by developing its manufacturing potential, or by the glory of its education and science, or by revitalising its culture. All it wants to do to make Russia great again is to employ brutal military might and nuclear blackmail. It shows its level of sophistication and inventiveness by waging a “Scythian war” without rules, what’s become known as “hybrid war”. To do this, it mercilessly uses the military-technical potential that it inherited from the USSR, that might last another 20 or 30 years; in other words, to the end of the lives of today’s Russian rulers. They couldn’t care less about what comes after them. But this should be of concern to society and that part of the elite who are capable of looking over the horizon of their own greed and vanity.

Criticism of this newly announced, post-Soviet militarism comes either from a generally humanistic position – pacifism – or from the point of view that these Kremlin ambitions are impractical – utopian – and that Russia can’t wage war on the whole of humanity and will simply end up killing itself, as the USSR did.

This is both true (in the long-term view) and untrue (in the short- to mid-term view). Generally, Russia’s military adventures are not costing it a great deal. I can show with figures that for now these military provocations (with the exception of Ukraine) were not particularly burdensome for Russia. For example, its “investment” in Syria has been fairly modest by Russian standards. The sums put into Venezuela are manageable. And the African “experiments” are low-budget outlays. The attack on Ukraine, of course, was not merely a crime, but also a massive mistake.

Russia can just about allow itself these costs without destroying the foundations of its economy, especially all the while oil revenues are growing. It’s another matter, though, that this third world war game that the ruling clan is trying to involve Russia in is dangerous not from the point of view of running costs, but because it excludes Russia from the ability to take its place in the twenty-first century economy, and dooms it to a slow, civilised death in an historic technological and social dead-end.

Western countries have excluded us from the global division of labour because we’re not regarded as an equal ally or a safe partner. In the technology market, China, which is steaming ahead, doesn’t need us as a competitor. On our own, of course, we can’t put out even the bare minimum of the technology we need. There are simply too few of us!

In this sense, superpower status is a dangerous myth, and trying to pursue it contradicts the genuine interests of the nation that’s trying to come together. But, I repeat, in the near future these problems won’t threaten the stability of the regime.

The principal question is not one of cost, but of sense. There was an old Soviet joke: “Someone asked Armenian Radio: ‘Could they build socialism in America?’ Armenian Radio replied: ‘Well, they could, but why would they?’” It’s the same with the Kremlin’s war. Could Russia tactically overcome the West, make itself totally isolated from external influences through autarky (like North Korea) and still extend its control over its neighbouring territories? Well, let’s say it could; but why would it? We should look not at what would happen if the Kremlin’s scheming fails, but what would happen should it succeed. That’s where the real disaster would be, because in this logic the Kremlin’s victory would mean the defeat of Russia, and vice versa.