Wait for It to Implode

The Best Way to Deal With Russia: Wait for It to Implode

By PETER ELTSOV

Over the past decade, the Russia threat has loomed larger and larger in the minds of U.S. foreign-policy experts and officials, but the fear has especially grown in the wake of the Russian government’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. “It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here,” former special counsel Robert Mueller said of Russia’s election interference efforts during his recent hearing on Capitol Hill. “And they expect to do it during the next campaign.” “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago,” one intelligence official told the New York Times in mid-June about stepped-up attacks on Russia’s power grid in response to Moscow’s hacking and disinformation campaigns.

But what if the biggest threat to Russia isn’t the United States, or any other foreign government for that matter, but Russia itself?

As Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to annex former Soviet territories, orchestrated cyberattacks on foreign infrastructure and rolled back domestic democratic protections over the past decade, the country may appear very powerful. But in reality, Russia today is much weaker than either the Romanov Empire, which lasted from 1613 to 1917, or the Soviet Union. Russia’s biggest problem is internal: This vast Eurasian country failed to produce a national identity that would encompass its entire population. Millions of citizens of Russia have a dubious allegiance to their state, and as soon as Moscow weakens its tightly held control over local elections—likely only to happen when Putin is no longer president—those groups will seek independence. As an anthropologist, historian and political scientist who has spent a great deal of time in Eurasia, I think it’s likely that the ticking time-bomb of separatism that Putin so fears will explode in 10, 20 or—maximum—30 years.

Why? Three big reasons.

First, most importantly, the separatist impulses inside Russia are strong. As just two examples, take Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, two ethnically autonomous republics in the center of Russia. These republics have strong nationalist organizations—Azatlyk (The Union of Tatar Youth) and Bashkir Kuk Bure (The Heavenly Wolf)—which call for unity with other Turkic-speaking and Finno-Ugric nationalities of the region. Both still commemorate the sack of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, which took place in 1552 and led to a five-century-long sense of loss for both republics. As we saw during the Russian-Chechen wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, in which tens of thousands were killed, separatist movements in Russia can be bloody and long-lasting. (It’s not just ethnic minorities, either: Ethnic Russians living in resource-rich Siberia, the Urals and the Far East have tried to seek independence on several occasions.)

Under Putin’s successor, the country’s tense unity might finally give way to those separatist agendas. One can only speculate who the next ruler will be, but most likely Putin will personally choose him or her at the very of the end of his term, and it’s unclear whether that successor will be able to continue the strong hold that Putin has exerted over different groups and regions. In the absence of a system of checks and balances or any other strong institutions in Russia, that level of control is perhaps necessary for ensuring the continuity of the country as an integrated whole. Vyacheslav Volodin, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, may see his famous words realized: “If there is Putin, there is Russia; if there is no Putin, there is no Russia.”

Second, Russia’s unifying ideology today just doesn’t have the power of its earlier counterparts. Vladislav Surkov, a longtime Putin aide, claims that Russia has entered a new historical stage: “the long state of Putin,” a global ideology that he says holds as much appeal to followers as Marxism. In reality, Putinism is a fiery mix of Eurasianism and what the Russian ultra-conservative philosopher Aleksandr Dugin calls the Fourth Political Theory. Eurasianism is a school of thought which emerged in the 1920s among the Russian anti-communist émigrés. It advocates an exceptional and messianic role for Russia as a civilization existing on its own terms, part of neither the East nor the West. The Fourth Political Theory is meant to combine the “best” of fascism and communism in a new crusade against liberalism. Dugin suggests removing atheism from communism and racism from fascism while largely continuing their combined mission.

Despite how frightening this ideology may seem, it is no match to either Czarism or Marxism-Leninism, two earlier dominant ideologies in Russia. The sanctity of the Czar provided a real bond to the Russian people for centuries. The Marxist-Leninist ideas of equality and distribution of wealth were genuinely attractive in many countries in the post-colonial era. In our current age, regional nationalisms, based on populist agendas, present a far bigger threat to liberalism than Russia’s new authoritarianism, or Putinism.

Last, Russia’s current intellectual and economic circumstances pale in comparison to those during the Czar’s Empire or the Soviet Union. Under the Czarist regime, Europeans were coming to Russia to practice medicine, teach at the universities, conduct research and open businesses. The Soviet government, in spite of all the purges and atrocities, created a relatively comfortable life for some top scientists, as long as they did not go against the system. Today, higher education and science in Russia are in a catastrophically poor state. The economy is resource-based with no signs of modernization. The most telling sign is that children of Russia’s elites prefer to study and live in the West.

The world needs to be ready for the disintegration of Russia. The best policy that the United States and its closest allies should follow is a combination of strategic patience and containment, with a strong emphasis on strategic patience. Working with Putin in a pragmatic manner is not appeasement; it is realpolitik aimed at the U.S. national interest. First of all, top U.S. officials, including the president, need to meet regularly with Putin and his circle. There is nothing wrong with talking. Second, they should pursue a policy of quid pro quo deals—the only language the Kremlin understands. Russia may withhold or alter some of its actions, such as its dialogue with the Taliban or support for the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, in exchange for certain favors from the United States.

And the United States would do well to reevaluate its current sanctions strategy, rolling them back in some instances and toughening them up in others. The Cold War was won not because of sanctions, but because the Soviet people, including some individuals in the highest echelons of the government, lost faith in their ideology and looked to the West for their futures.

The same might happen today as Russia continues its very slow implosion—no outside meddling necessary.