John Kerry has a nice phrase. The West will respond to Russia’s 19th-Century behaviour with 21st-Century tools. The US secretary of state is missing something. Leaving aside whether Europeans can summon the political will to impose serious economic costs on Moscow for its march into Ukraine, there is another dimension to the conflict. Vladimir Putin has been winning the propaganda war.
The Russian president, a child of the KGB, has dusted down the disinformation playbooks of the Cold War. He has added an expensive 21st-Century gloss, harnessing 24-hour news, digital networks and social media to the Kremlin’s cause. Russia Today, the state-directed English-language news channel, is at once slick and untroubled by awkward concerns about accuracy and truth.
Given the state’s iron grip on the domestic media, it is unsurprising that Putin commands strong support at home. The stifling of internal dissent has seen him tap a powerful emotion — nationalism rooted in grievance. He is far from alone in seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a catastrophe and the US as the author of Russia’s subsequent ills. The foreigners are to blame.
More striking is the impact that the sharp, well-funded propaganda strategy has had on opinion beyond Russia. Much public sentiment, particularly in Europe, runs from indifference to a sense that Putin may have a point. If he turns Ukraine into a failed state, what is in it for others to interfere? Doesn’t democratic Europe have troubles enough of its own?
The Kremlin starts with the credo that if you repeat a lie often enough, and with sufficient conviction, some will imagine it to be a truth. Thus, the heavily armed Russian troops who annexed Crimea were said to be local militias. This was asserted with an entirely straight face. The latest seizures of government buildings in eastern Ukraine is likewise characterised as an act of self-defence by Russian speakers. It is an old and effective trick — provocateurs stir up unrest giving Moscow an excuse to intervene “in defence” of the locals.
Such blatant dissembling is not available to democratic states with a free media. Journalists, rightly, make their own judgements. The clarity of the West’s counter-message is anyway clouded by differences among governments — between the US and Europe and within the European Union (EU). Some in Europe want a robust response; others, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, rather admire Putin’s authoritarian nationalism.
Territorial land grabs cannot get in the way of business. The self-appointed poster boy for this “realism” is Joe Kaeser, the chief executive of the German engineering company Siemens. After the annexation of Crimea, Kaeser made a personal pilgrimage to Putin’s residence outside Moscow. Siemens sells a lot of equipment in Russia and, as Kaeser told the newspaper Bild, “dialogue is for us an essential part of long-term relationships”. Europe’s peace and security must take their place in the queue.
Italy’s policy towards Russia has often seemed to have been written by the energy group Eni. After visiting Rome, I have the impression nothing much has changed under the new centre-left government of Matteo Renzi. French defence companies have lucrative export contracts to worry about, while Britain’s BP is concerned about losing hefty dividends from its Russian energy interests. Then there are the London-based financial institutions who wash and press Russian roubles, and the expensive public relations outfits, such as Portland Communications, who are ready to polish Putin’s image.
The parties of the xenophobic right who hope to prosper in next month’s European elections are more shameless still in their backing for Moscow. They share Putin’s authoritarian instincts and cultural conservatism. He can count on the support of the neo-Nazi Jobbik in Hungary and Golden Dawn in Greece. Nigel Farage, the head of the UK Independence party, has been positively gushing about the Russian president. Marine le Pen, who heads France’s National Front, accuses the EU of hypocrisy over Crimea.
On the same side — though for different reasons — stand old-fashioned conservative “realists”. They take a 19th-Century view of international relations. Tough as it may seem to liberals, the West should focus on its narrow interests. Just as the US once had its Monroe Doctrine, Russia has the right to exercise suzerainty over former provinces of the Soviet Union. The expansion of the EU and Nato to Russia’s borders was indeed provocative. In this world view, Ukraine is no more than an unlucky pawn on the great power chessboard.
Perhaps the world is heading back to the 19th Century. The realists can at least claim clarity and conviction. This cannot be said of apologists on the liberal left, who seem entirely indifferent to Putin’s internal repression and external aggression. The West, according to Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, should not get so “worked up” about Ukraine. Parallels are drawn between Russia’s land grab and the West’s intervention in Kosovo. Except no one wanted to annex Kosovo.
Left-leaning academics cite the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in order to draw a phoney moral equivalence between Russia and the US. The logic is at very best twisted. If US military adventurism was so heinous, how can it be acceptable for Russian troops to trample over Ukraine? Am I missing something? Or does liberal postmodernism now inhabit a perverse world where if it is anti-American it must be right?
Ultimately, the West’s democratic diversity is its strength. Its cities are full of Russians. Putin’s apologists would not dream of running off to live in Moscow. Nor can Moscow’s effort to destroy Ukraine hide the simple fact that Tsar Vladimir is leading Russia into precipitate decline. But Europeans need to learn to speak up again for their values. The continent’s freedom, peace and security have long been taken for granted. Putin has thrown them into serious question.
— Financial Times
