That Europe was the first to develop scientifically and technologically forms the basis for the major antagonism that underlies the supposed “clash of civilizations” we see on the world stage from time-to-time. We see it right now, operating behind the rhetoric of justification for Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. In fact, this is not a “clash of civilizations” as Putin would like the world to believe. The divide between “the West” and Russia, rather, reflects a contingent disparity in relative degrees of scientific and technical sophistication that led to more obvious disparities in economic fundamentals. The clash is between different orders of “development”, even different developmental priorities.
While a sense of moral superiority (rightly or wrongly) may accompany the economic disparities created by relative differences in scientific or technical mastery, we cannot ignore the sociopolitical (and even psychological) significance of this disparity itself. It has real effects. It is significant in shaping diplomatic relations between the major world economic powers, and the relations between the world's military (nuclear) powers–which two diplomatic theaters are most definitely not the same: economic power does not necessarily track military power.
We most especially cannot ignore these disparities with respect to Russia-Europe and Russia-U.S. relations today. Indeed, the longstanding and by now historically overdetermined economic disparities between Russia and “The West”, deriving as they do from more fundamental contingent historical differences in the development of science and technology in Western as opposed to Russian nations, has led to diplomatic chauvinism on the part of the arrogant political-economic agenda-setting of the Western powers, and a resulting deep resentment over the fact of that Western assertion of power. We have a classic case of what Nietzsche, in a different context, calls ressentiment. With the imbalances (both economic and political) that exist between the nuclear powers involved in the Ukraine crisis, this situation is dangerous.
We should be aware of this dimension of ressentiment and how it affects the international relations between scientifically, technologically and economically imbalanced nations. Since greater scientific and technical mastery in a society typically produces greater economic strength (higher productivity), economic disparities among nations threaten to induce feelings of inferiority. Diplomatic condescension is, then, a problem–one of the enduring problems in international relations.
We can certainly find this attitude predominant among the British during the nineteenth century as they colonized their way into world economic and military supremacy. A similar thing can be said about the Americans throughout the twentieth century (and even before). For sociocultural reasons having to do with the emergence of a deepening critical self-awareness of the wrongs of colonialism, imperialism, and unfettered capitalism, this European and American arrogant self-confidence was chastened. But this history of diplomatic geopolitical condescension is hard to shake, and is doubtless even harder to lose when dealing with those whose societies had to suffer it. Thus we can still find this problem tainting European and American international politics today. “The West”, then, as concept is both a cipher for ressentiment, when articulated by self-described “non-Westerns”, and the site of (quite justifiable, in my view) contestable political, social, cultural and moral values. Just what about so-called “Western values” is contestable, and for what reasons, we shall consider momentarily.
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The fact remains that “Western” political-economic arrangements, from North America to Singapore are, despite their (often profound, and possibly fatal) flaws, more economically productive than any of the serious alternatives which attempted to challenge this hegemony. Since the post-war period, however, which began in earnest in the late 1940s, the economic consensus of Western nations (capitalism with regional variations) has been joined to a social and political one: liberal democracy. This, though, was not a trend adopted by all who joined the economic side of this consensus; indeed, many non-Western nations that adopted the capitalist model rejected (or failed to create and maintain) the Western political consensus (liberal democracy). Some, like China, have even adapted the economic side to fit within a larger political-economic vision that was even intended to oppose the Western economic system.
Putin wants to oppose “The West” but it is clear that what really ails him is the political consensus of the post-war era fundamental to American and European international relations: Putin means to reject liberal democracy as the sociopolitical framework for free market (so-called) capitalism. But the difficulty he and the Russian Federation faces is that there is no economic power to sustain that opposition, or to challenge the predominance of the “Western” sociopolitical consensus he finds so onerous. As has been the case for quite some time–whether we are talking about the Soviet Union or the Czarist Empire of yesteryear–the Russian economy is underdeveloped and underutilized, despite there being valuable and plentiful natural resources. Thus Putin finds himself in the dangerous position of trying to decouple the economic from the political consensus Europe had designed following WWII by projecting military power alone–yet another common theme of much Russian history. Rather than pursue a diplomatic path of economic cooperation and possible integration with the rest of Europe to its West (something signaled by Gorbachev during perestroika, and uneasily pursued by Yeltsin, but met with limited success), or rather than play the longer game of serious domestic economic development in concert with the big economic players, only angling for your own sociopolitical agenda when the economic fundamentals could back it up (the China strategy), Putin instead wants his economic cake and to eat it too–at a shot-gun wedding. In a series of aggressive moves on neighboring countries, beginning in 2008 with the invasion of Georgia (although we might start the clock with the Chechan conflict years earlier during the Yeltsin administration), culminating recently this February with the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Putin has switched to gunboat diplomacy. Overnight, Europe was beset with a military conflagration not seen in many decades, and drawn back into bellicose territorial wrangling (complete with nostalgia for the Old Days) Europe thought it had put to rest with the last of the fallen from World War Two.
Why? Why Putin’s arguably gradual shift to gunboat diplomacy–which, given the unprecedented sanctions levied by European, American and some Asian countries, looks like it will spell certain doom for the whole of the (already fragile) Russian economy? What are Putin’s reasons?
Despite the widespread speculation that Putin may have had a mental lapse of some kind, possibly brought about by the two years of pandemic-related restrictions the nations of the world imposed upon themselves, we must charitably assume the opposite: that there are actual reasons for what Putin is doing, as absurdly immoral as they may appear to much of the global community. Before we condemn Putin, we must know what his reasons are, and condemn those.
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Simply put, as Angela Stent (2018) has recently pointed out: Putin is a Eurasianist. Eurasianism is a deeply conservative ideology, steeped in fascism. Indeed, Putin’s version is derived in part from Russian fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who, like Eurasianists generally, repudiated communism and the Bolsheviks, stressed the uniqueness of Russian civilization, and dreamt of the creation of a “conservative utopia”–one certainly devoid of “Western values” (Stent 2018, 33). Eurasianists did agree with their communist opponents like Stalin on one key point, however: “that Russia had a unique destiny that set it apart from the West and legitimized its right to rule over large swaths of adjacent territory” (ibid.). It would seem that we are seeing this philosophy of conquest on display right now, as Putin continues his invasion of Ukraine. But Putin’s current war with Ukraine is not simply a function of his version of Russian fascism; it is perhaps more immediately motivated by his worries over NATO and/or EU membership for Ukraine–and both are seen by many top Russian officials as a kind of existential threat to the security of the Russian Federation as a whole. This only raises an obvious question to which we believe there is an obvious answer: why is Putin and many of Russia’s political leaders so worried about Ukraine’s potential EU or NATO membership?
Part of the worry about Ukraine’s membership in the EU has to do with identity: many Russians consider Ukraine a kind of place of national and ethnic origin. And there is a history to be told that justifies this view, as a matter of historical fact. But this augment from origins belies an even deeper antagonism between Russian “civilization” and the European world: it is also an historical fact that ethnic Russians have always been uneasy or ambivalent about their connections to the European world–to French or German culture, for example (two of the most important European reference points for Russians). Why? It would be difficult to articulate the reasons for this antagonism in an essay such as this, because we are really dealing with an archeological geography of cultural and conceptual differences. Yet that’s precisely the intellectual and moral trap we should right now avoid at all costs: these historical-cultural differences only describe that there are certain antagonisms–they do not and cannot establish that there must be such antagonisms between Russian and European “civilization”. We must be absolutely clear here: no amount of historical or cultural differences, no matter how well-established they are in the history of Russia, could possibly justify (morally speaking) Putin’s gunboat diplomacy, or his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps, then, there is more to be said for Putin’s reasons beyond the (very old) trope of ongoing European/Russian “civilizational differences”?
Perhaps we can drop the fascist philosophy, and those differences in culture and mentality (or whatever) for a moment, and focus on the territorial issue itself: Is there even a Ukraine as such, Putin wondered recently? After all, Ukraine, like every nation-state, had its boundaries created by some social or political process, and we can rightly ask: was it justified? Legitimate? According to Putin, it most certainly was not. What’s his view, though?
It has something to do with Soviet beneficence in a moment of weakness, and pre-Soviet collapse concessions–and Ukraine’s sudden declaration of independence just as the U.S.S.R. was crumbling. This latter point is the most important issue often missed in discussions of Ukraine’s territorial legitimacy. Putin, for various philosophical, historical and political reasons, might not be able to grant Ukraine territorial legitimacy, but the historical fact remains that Ukraine declared its own independence from the Soviet Union–with whatever territorial extent had been established for Ukrainans during the Soviet era. In other words, the argument should not be about whether Ukraine has a legitimate territorial extent or not, or whether they have a “right” to exist; they themselves, by an overwhelming majority decision using their own local political mechanisms, declared their own independent existence with the territory given them by the Soviet regime. What about the Donbas, a disputed territory–many of whose residents desire union with the Russian Federation? Or the Crimea, yet another region where one finds many who identify with Russia and as Russian? The response here is simple, and should be obvious: that’s an internal matter that needs to be settled by the mechanisms of democracy internal to Ukraine itself–not unilaterally by Putin or by the Russian Federation alone.
In other words, once again, the real issue here has to do with sovereignty, and the territorial integrity that goes along with it. Every other philosophical, historical, cultural, social and political consideration is superseded by this fact of self-declared and self-determined independence for Ukraine–something the Ukrainans decided for themselves decades ago. What explains Putin’s beef with “Western powers”, then, has nothing to do with what real (or even sometimes imagined and exaggerated) differences there are between Russian and European or American peoples. What explains Putin’s war of aggression is quite simply that he doesn’t like not being able to do whatever the f**k he wants, based on whatever (distorted and self-serving) philosophical, historical or political theory he wishes to adopt. To make this an issue of “East v. West” or a “clash of civilizations”, or (as is increasingly common in some elite intellectual circles) to use the “West’s” response to the conflict as a chance to rehearse the moral, political and humanitarian failures and/or hypocrisy of “The West” … is, quite simply, stupid.
But stupid there is, and we have seen it come out in full force among many on the academic Left–as if somehow we in “the West” must apologize and supply justification for the mere fact of our calling Putin, and the actions of the Russian military elites, evil or immoral.
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In response to Putin’s aggression, there is almost universal condemnation: a majority of U.N. member nations, in a special general assembly, denounced Putin’s actions as not only illegal under international law, but immoral. Predictably, American and European academic and educated elites started asking: But can the West take and maintain the moral high ground here? Can it without pause be taken seriously in its denunciation of Putin and the Putin regime? Is the West justified in calling out Putin and the Putin regime as wrong, morally culpable—even evil–when even in the recent past, many Western nations have been guilty of equivalent acts of brutality or barbarity?
I think that it can. And we shouldn’t have to apologize for that stance either, nor should we dither on about the many moral failings of “The West” as this conflict unfolds in unpredictable ways. We may even be justified in taking an even more aggressive stance towards Putin and the Putin regime, as former NATO general Sir Richard Shirreff has long argued. What exactly is the criticism coming from the Western academic left, the intellectual elites manning various humanities departments in the U.S. and throughout Europe? I would like to argue that much of it is stupid (which I do, in part, here).
Complaining that the U.S. is in no position to take the moral high ground on account of its own past foreign policy wrongs; that Putin “has a point” in worrying about Russia’s security; etc.: While I completely agree that the US is a nation of foreign and domestic policy blunders, and of persistent moral failings and failures—even lethal ones—that doesn’t for a moment imply that we should remain quiet and uninvolved, or that we should not voice unapologetic support for basic but fundamental principles of a free world. We need to be clear who and what is wrong here, and what principles (despite not being put properly into practice) we are for. That said, I would try to be as cautious as possible in finding an answer to Putin and his unjustified and unjustifiable war of aggression. Even if the US has blood on its hands for its many senseless and useless wars, that’s not a reason not to speak out and defend what is right….
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