The state of being vigorously against Russian
President Vladimir Putin is becoming out of
control. It is in danger of becoming pathological
and self-destructive. What does the West gain in
the long run if it sees nothing ahead but being
anti-Russia? The West is in danger of embarking
on a journey to nowhere. Moscow is not going
to change significantly in the near future. Putin
and Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev will remain
in the saddle for a long time.
We are not yet in a second Cold War. Those
who say we are do not know their history. The
Cold War was years of military confrontation,
not least with nuclear arms. It was a
competition for influence that stretched around
the globe, and it was done with guns. There was
the Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear weapons
were nearly used.
If Putin is here to stay, we have to deal with
him in a courteous and constructive way. Russia
is not a serious military threat. President Donald
Trump’s proposal for an increase in US defense
spending is larger than the whole of Russia’s
defense budget.
Neither is Russia a threat ideologically. When
the Soviet Union was communist, there was a
purpose behind its foreign policies: To spread
the type of government of the supposedly
Marxist-Leninist workers’ state. No longer.
Today, militant anti-Putinists — including former
US President Barack Obama, most of the major
media in much of the West, and most EU
leaders — believe they are defending the US-led
“liberal democratic order.” They believe Russia
is intent on undermining it. In their eyes, it is
democracy against authoritarianism. But it is
not. As renowned Russian scholar Gordon Hahn
tirelessly points out, a significant number of
democracies are non-NATO.
India is the most important, with its massive
population. New Delhi has excellent relations
with Moscow, and in no way feels challenged.
Neither does Moscow feel that India is engaged
in nefarious activity on Russia’s southern flank.
Just as the US does not arm itself against
Mexico and vice versa, so India and Russia do
not prepare to be militarily engaged against
each other.
India has neither encouraged nor supported
illegal, revolutionary seizures of power in
countries neighboring Russia. Moscow has never
encouraged Pakistan in its confrontations with
India, even when Beijing was a close ally of
Islamabad.
We see a continuously improving relationship
between India and Russia. BRICS, for example
— which joins these two countries with Brazil,
South Africa and China — brings the five of
them economically closer and develops amity
between them.Moscow has good relations with other Asian
democracies: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
Indonesia and Sri Lanka. There are few tensions
between Tokyo and Moscow, even though they
have failed so far to settle a sensitive dispute
over ownership of the Kuril islands, a leftover
from World War II.
During Putin’s recent trip to Tokyo to talk with
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, there was a
significant breakthrough on the issue. The two
agreed that their countries would engage in joint
economic activity on the islands.
South Korea is a firm US ally. Nevertheless,
Moscow has not raised the issue of the US
deployment of an anti-missile defense system in
South Korea, aimed at North Korea. Seoul
recently signed some 20 economic agreements
with Moscow. Moreover, South Korea plans to
sign a free-trade agreement with the Russian-
led Eurasian Economic Union, the very one that
the US and EU leant on Ukraine not to join.
There is no sign that Russia is bent on
subverting democracy. Democracy flourishes all
over the world — in nearly every Latin American
country, in most of Africa and a good part of
Asia. None of these countries complain of
Russian opposition to their “liberal democratic
order.” They live happily with Moscow (as does
authoritarian China). So why not the West?
It would be enjoying the same benign
relationship with Moscow if under Presidents Bill
Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama the US had
not, step by step, put Russia under the hammer
by expanding NATO, breaking a solemn promise
not to. Neither Presidents Ronald Reagan nor
George H.W. Bush, who understood Russia, saw
fit to expand NATO. Richard Nixon, a
Russophile, would never have.
Russia’s own post-Soviet politics have veered
from chaotic democracy under former President
Boris Yeltsin to half-way-house authoritarianism
under Putin. For all their deficiencies, they have
been miles away from the repression of Soviet
rule. The West is going to have to live with this
kind of Russia for a long time. The West must
stop being paranoid and vindictive; this is
counterproductive.