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2 Russia's hudna with the
Muslim world By Spengler
local population, but the Russians
have no such intention. Putin and his comrades
will employ all the guile and violence at their
command to delay the decline of European Russia.
The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a
fallen civilization; for better or worse, the
Russians still are real men.
Putin is
playing a Great Game in Central Asia, comparable
in scope to the long duel with Britain during the
19th century, but with a difference: Russia's
object is no longer imperial, but
existential. America's
blundering about its borders in the form of "color
revolutions" in the republics of the former Soviet
Union is an intolerable form of interference.
I do not mean to explain all of President
Putin's objections to US policy through the lens
of Russia's Islamic problem. At the Munich
Conference on Security Policy this month, Putin
protested a number of US actions that seem like
encirclement to the Russians, including the
installation of advanced anti-missile radar on
Russia's borders, and the presence of North
Atlantic Treaty Organization forces on Russia's
border. Russia's concerns in these matters are
understandable. But US radar in Poland or the
Czech Republic does not present an existential
threat to the Russian Federation: the internal
encirclement by the burgeoning Muslim population
does present an existential threat.
It is
instructive to contrast Russia's policy in
Chechnya with America's catastrophic policy in
Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Force, duplicity and
bargains with the devil are the hallmarks of
Russian strategy. Free elections have brought
Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories,
entrenched Hezbollah in Lebanon, and set in motion
a civil war in Iraq. By contrast, Putin has
pacified the most stubborn Muslim population in
the world, namely Chechnya, by means that
horrified the world. The United States offers
democracy to the Muslim world, and is universally
hated; Putin destroys an entire Muslim country,
and is welcomed as a friend. The question begs
itself: who better understands the Islamic world,
Vladimir Putin or George W Bush?
What
infuriates Moscow the most is the suspicion that
Washington's Central Asia policy is running on
autopilot, with no accountability for
consequences. At the outset of the Afghanistan
campaign, the Pentagon fostered "lily pad" bases
in Central Asia to support the effort against the
Taliban. By bureaucratic inertia these have turned
into a continuing deployment of personnel into
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other
former Soviet republics. The US State Department
extended its mandate to hothouse democratic
movements to Kyrgyzstan in March 2005, in the
"Tulip Revolution", supposedly a continuation of
the "color revolutions" already accomplished in
Georgia and Ukraine.
The "color
revolutions" in Central Asia were to US diplomacy
what the Borat movie was to Kazakh public
relations: an unspeakably incompetent all-around
cluster-bungle with no purpose but to check the
boxes and secure the promotions of the American
officials involved. No one in Washington is
accountable for the overall consequences of US
actions toward the Russian Federation. In
frustration, Putin appealed directly to President
Bush in his angry speech to the Munich Conference.
I do not believe that Russia truly wants to
frustrate US policy in the Persian Gulf,
particularly where the prospect of a nuclear-armed
Iran is concerned. Perhaps Putin is stepping on
Bush's sore toe because it is so difficult to get
his attention otherwise.
It is maddening
to contemplate the denizens of Washington sipping
white wine and debating the final triumph of
liberal democracy and free markets in the vaunted
"end of history". Russia's tragedy is beyond their
comprehension. For three generations, the
communist system rooted out and extirpated any
soul intrepid enough to show thought or
initiative. By the early 1990s, Russia's European
population was a passive, sullen rabble incapable
of asserting its rights; the cleverest and most
adventurous emigrated. Demoralization manifested
itself in high rates of alcoholism, drug use and
venereal disease. Life expectancy fell from 70
years in 1990 to 65 years today. It will take two
or three generations before Russians acquire the
courage and the sense of civil society to
determine their own destiny after the fashion of
the Anglo-Saxon countries.
The only
leadership left in Russia by the terrible adverse
selection process of the communist system was the
former secret guardians of the state, men whose
unique position required them to live by their
wits. The former secret-police official Vladimir
Putin is the only sort of man who could rule
Russia in the wake of its 20th-century tragedy.
There is nothing to like about the man, but there
is something to respect. Russia is fighting for
its life against the odds, and there is no one
left to fight for Russia but the bloody-handed
fighters of the old regime.
Safe in their
own continent, with a Muslim population of no more
than 2 million to 3 million, composed to a great
extent of educated immigrants, the Americans are
incapable of understanding what Russia now faces.
Yet Russia is a natural ally of the United States
for the remainder of the 21st century, perhaps the
only natural ally the US will have. Europe does
not have the stomach to resist its gradual
assimilation in the Islamic world. But Russia will
resist, and it will do so ruthlessly. America's
cookie-cutter approach to nation-building has been
a disaster; Washington stands to learn a great
deal from the tragic history of the Russian
Empire.
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