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Just how rational is Russia?

The timing could hardly have been better. Just as the New York Times published yet another opinion essay arguing that Russians rationally perceived NATO enlargement as a genuine threat to their security and therefore embarked on war with Ukraine, the authoritative Russian policy journal, Russia in Global Politics, ran its own piece decisively illustrating that the Russians are either irrational or that their rationality is not of this world.

The article in question was authored by Sergey Karaganov, identified as “Doctor of History, Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.” His words speak for themselves. Here are a few of his particularly noteworthy comments, as translated by the journal, with a few corrections made by me.

Who started the war? Desperate Western elites, of course. Karaganov writes, “The deep, even the main reason for the Ukrainian crisis, like many other conflicts in the world, and the general increase in the military threat is the accelerating failure of the modern ruling Western elites created by globalization in the last decades.”

What has Karaganov been reading? The U.S. economy is still the world’s largest; the European Union and NATO are still remarkably effective. True, American politics are dysfunctional, but somehow U.S. and E.U. elites manage to govern societies that are models of democracy and abundance for much of the world.

Then Karaganov goes off the deep end: “This weakening infuriates not only the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (Biden and Co.), but also frightens the imperial-national ones (Trump).” Infuriates? The mild-mannered Biden? Trump, who may not even know where much of the world is? “The West,” concludes Karaganov, “is losing the ability it had for five centuries to suck out wealth from the whole world, imposing, first of all, by brute force, political, economic orders and establishing its cultural dominance.” Karaganov doesn’t seem to understand that China’s and India’s rise does not entail a reduction in the West’s ability to “suck out wealth” or, more accurately, to make wealth. One is also tempted to resort to a tu quoque argument: How did Russia become the largest country in the world, if not by brute force?

As if this weren’t enough, Karaganov gets even deeper: “I have been studying the history of nuclear strategy for many years and have come to an unequivocal, albeit not quite scientific-sounding, conclusion. The appearance of nuclear weapons is the result of the intervention of the Almighty.” Please note that Karaganov isn’t joking. What is one to say about a supposedly serious analyst who genuinely believes that God works in such incredibly mysterious ways? Worse, just why did the good lord decide to communicate this knowledge to none other than Karaganov?

The world is a mess, thanks to the West, but Russia can save it if it does two things. First, it needs to dream big: “The confrontation with the West in Ukraine, no matter how it ends, should not distract us from the strategic internal movement — spiritual, cultural, economic, political, military-political — to the Urals, Siberia, the Great Ocean.” Cynics might call Karaganov’s aspirations nothing less than imperialism masquerading as “the urgently needed formulation of the ‘Russian dream’ at last — the image of that Russia and the world that one wants to strive for.” If that image of Russia and the world is anything like what Russia has done to Ukraine, then heaven help us all — although if God is as fiendish as Karaganov makes him out to be, even miracles won’t do the trick.

So far, most of these statements sound at best absurd, at worst muddleheaded. But it’s the core of Karaganov’s piece that shows just how unhinged he and his fellows are. His second recommendation for saving the world from desperate Western elites involves acting big: “We will have to restore the credibility of nuclear deterrence by lowering the unacceptably high threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, prudently but quickly moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.”

So, what exactly does he have in mind? Karaganov goes way beyond the Russian military doctrine of de-escalation via escalation. “Things can even go as far as warning compatriots and all people of good will about the need to leave their places of residence near objects that could become targets of nuclear strikes in countries providing direct support to the Kyiv regime.” That’s all the countries involved in the Ramstein process — over 50 at last count.

Now consider what Karaganov has effectively stated: He wants to threaten most of the developed world and one-quarter of the world’s states with nuclear war. And he’s confident he can get away with it, because “Only if a madman sits in the White House … will America decide to strike at the ‘defense’ of the Europeans, incurring a response, sacrificing a conditional Boston for the sake of a conditional Poznan.” Once again, tu quoque comes to mind: What happens if a madman sits on Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy or in the Kremlin?

To what degree are Karaganov’s deeply disturbed views reflective of those of the powers that be in Russia? We don’t know, except that his authoritative role on the Council suggests that he is no lone wolf. Serge Schmemann of the New York Times characterized Karaganov as “a prominent Russian political scientist whom I have known for almost 20 years in covering Russia and have interviewed many times as a window into Kremlin thinking.”

Some Western policymakers and analysts believe that Russia isn’t irrational, that its rationality is unlike that found in the West. Whatever the case, just how does one talk to people who completely misunderstand geopolitical realities, truly believe that nuclear weapons are a product of divine intervention, aspire to create a messianic Russia, and believe that destroying Poznan and other European cities isn’t to start World War III but to prevent it?

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

Tags NATO Nuclear weapons Putin Russia Russia-Ukraine conflict Ukraine

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