Putin is the Leader America Needs, But Not the One it Deserves

BY HENRY KOPESKY

I’m envious of Russia.

I know that, with that line, I’ve lost a good chunk of you already. Russia is, for a lack of a better word, a bully. Russia is the bully who is a few years older than everyone else in its class and is past its prime, but still occupies a position of power (but over by the swings, not at the top of the playground with the NATO clique). Russia is the kid who is the butt of jokes in the classroom, but who avenges every laugh with a punch once the bell marks the end of class. Russia is the one who breaks every rule in the book, but never seems to care or receive a meaningful punishment. And Russia is the kid who, at the end of high school, seems like a toss-up to be a successful businessman or a meth addict by the time the first reunion comes around.

To be clear, I wholeheartedly prefer the domestic situation of the United States to Russia. From its persecution of gays to the corrupt oligarchy that has allowed Vladimir Putin to become one of the richest men in the world, Russia is broken: its economy relies far too heavily on energy production, an obscene amount of its wealth is held by a handful of its citizens, imprisonment for political reasons is routine, and it has a chronic problem with domestic terrorism. Yet, despite the mess that is the political structure in Russia, the country is one of three or four primary centers of power that exist in the world today, alongside China, the United States, and perhaps Europe.

The absurd juxtaposition of Russian global importance with its domestic situation is made no clearer by its economic situation: according to the World Bank, Russia’s GDP is just eighth in the world, scarcely above Italy and markedly behind Brazil, which occupies the number seven spot. The Russian Federation certainly doesn’t have the economic clout to be one of the most powerful nations on the planet; what gives?

Some might say that Russia’s power stems from its permanent position on the United Nations Security Council. Historically, though, permanent UNSC membership has been no guarantor of real power: until 1971, the puny Republic of China held a permanent position; permanent members France and the United Kingdom, though not nations to sneeze at, are hardly international power players of Russia’s status, either. Russia, then, does not derive its power from the UN.

So, why am I envious of Russia? The simple answer is its relevance, its ability to be the world’s Second or Third State long after the death of the Soviet Union. But how does such a disadvantaged, dysfunctional nation achieve at such a high level? Russia, and, more specifically, its president Vladimir Putin, has recognized and openly embraced the reality of international relations: the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. As long as a state is small enough to fly under the radar (Swaziland and Uzbekistan), dangerous enough to scare off the global community (Qaddafi’s Libya and North Korea), or entrenched with a powerful state (Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Israel), they are all but untouchable. Even more so, the states that wield significant power of their own, such as the United States, Russia, and China, act with almost unequivocal impunity when they choose to do so.

Let’s examine the situation in Ukraine. Since the ouster of former president Viktor Yanukovych, Russia has supported violent unrest in another sovereign state, both openly and covertly, and suffered only trivial sanctions as a result. Russia has gone unpunished principally because of Europe’s reluctance to impose an economic penalty for its open meddling in another country’s affairs. Like Russian aggression, this reluctance stems purely from self-interest: angering President Putin is likely to have an inflationary impact on the price of Europe’s oil and natural gas, much of which originates in – you guessed it – Russia. So, Putin has Europe between the proverbial rock and a hard place, damned to have expensive energy prices if they do, damned to watch the buffer between themselves and Russia grow thinner if they don’t.

What many observers fail to realize is that there is no difference in motivation or outcome between the two sides of this conflict. Both Russia and Europe are acting purely out of self-interest, disregarding the plight of the Ukrainian people in order to protect their own goals, which for Russia entail the expansion of their regional hegemony and the solidification of support for Putin at home. There is but one difference between Russia and Europe here: he former is strong, and the latter is weak. The former has chosen to accept largely trivial sanctions in exchange for achieving its goals (immaterial though they may seem), while the latter has, unwittingly, elected to let Russia take control of the situation in Europe and run with it.

Russia isn’t infallible, though. In supplying East Ukrainian rebels with Soviet-era weaponry, they took a risk that came to fruition on July 17, when the Donetsk People’s Army mistakenly shot down a Malaysian airliner, killing nearly 300 mostly European civilians. Finally, the EU and the US were forced to impose sanctions more substantive than the freezing of assets held by Putin and his cronies. But were they? At the time this article was written, American sanctions excluded OAO Sberbank, one of the largest state-run lenders in the Russian Federation, and European sanctions allowed European subsidiaries of Russian banks a workaround for the EU’s barriers.

Why, even after the (allegedly) Russian-enabled murder of hundreds of Europeans, have the US and EU remained reticent to stand up firmly to Putin’s Russia? It’s simple – the protection of their interests. Imposing meaningful sanctions on Russia would jeopardize the already-fragile European economy. Letting slide the deaths of so many European citizens is part of the simple calculus that puts power, money, and self-interest above the lives of ordinary people, the same calculus that pushed Russia to finance and arm rebels in another country. My question is this: if the US, Europe, and Russia all engage in deadly political and economic posturing, and have for decades (see: the War on Terror and in Vietnam, the blind eyes turned toward genocides in Iraq, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia, and even the Space Race), why is Russia the best at it?

Yes, even one of the most openly manipulative, deceptive, subversive nations in the world, loathed by many of our leaders as a specter of the Cold War, is better at what the United States does than the United States. For its economic size, Russia creates hegemony much more assertively and effectively than does the United States; Russia is playing way above its league right now, and has established a sphere of influence at which the West can hardly turn up its nose. Put simply, the US could learn a thing or two from Russia.

Obviously, Russia’s tactics with regards to foreign policy are controversial. Violating other countries’ sovereignty, displaying open disregard for other heads of state, and achieving power through strength are not popular in the United States. And yet, not once have I heard a policymaker publicly reject an idea because it would violate another state’s sovereignty; that objection never seems to come from those policymakers’ constituents, either. No, Americans are afraid of conflict because it costs money and lives, but neither are they prepared to accept a world in which the United States is not at the head of the table for everything from mediating international disputes to the world’s First Spouse Book Club (which may or may not exist).

The reality is that the world, including the United States and our European allies, is run by bad, angry, unpredictable, violent, vengeful, frightening people, and that many of these people, given the chance, would suck their homelands dry of their resources, all while imprisoning or slaughtering wholesale their political, ethnic, or religious opponents.

This argument has started to sound an awful lot like the White Man’s Burden: Redux, and I understand that. The key difference, though, is that I would not for a moment make the argument that American hegemony is good for the people of the world. It is foolhardy to imagine that the American people and government are any more intelligent, able, civilized, or intrinsically benevolent than those of other states around the world; we’re all human, after all.

The only argument that exists for American hegemony, the only argument we need, is that it serves our self-interest. Every country acts in its self-interest, and the United States has never been and will never be an exception; it’s time to accept that and use it to this country’s advantage. It’s time for the United States to reclaim a little hubris and act like the world’s most powerful nation. It’s time for the United States to let itself flourish. It’s time for the American people to realize that the only way to maintain their way of life is through holding onto our national clout. And the only way to keep a firm hold on American preeminence abroad is to embrace the seemingly long-lost maxim of power through strength.