Essay: Russia's failed attempts to be in the first ranks of the great powers through authoritarian rule and Russian imperialism
Please watch the short video at: Russia's predicament, Stephen Kotkin, video, 2024
The historian Stephen Kotkin stated:
| â | And so it comes up with this solution to try to handle this geopolitical conundrum, the gulf between its aspirations and its capabilities. It comes up with this idea that you can use the state and use state power to force modernize the country to try to push it into the ranks of the first powers coercive. And it does this and sometimes has a spurt, it has an industrialization spurt, like you referred to under Stalin, or that we saw under Putin. We saw it on the Czars regime. It goes back to Peter the Great, as you know. And so they have this spurt and then they hit a wall, they stagnate, it doesn't continue. And instead of catching up to the first rank powers, instead of catching up which is what is now the western powers, the gulf between Russia and the greatest powers only gets wider instead of shrinking. So they try to use the state to manage this. They try to have this coercive modernization. Different forms, again, the Stalin one is much bloodier, incomparable to either the czars or the post-Soviet. And it turns out that they don't build a strong state. Instead they build a personalist regime. And there's a conflation between the survival of the Russian state and the survival of this regime that is trying to force modernize, to try to catch up, to try to match the capabilities with the aspirations. And you end up with personalist rule, you end up with a stagnating economy, and you end up with this conflation where the survival of the regime is somehow meant to mean the survival of Russia.
And today we have this Putin equals Russia equation, which is false, but very widespread. And so if they gave up the aspiration to be a providential power, a power under God, if they gave up the need to have a special mission in the world, to be in the first ranks of the great powers, then they wouldn't feel this geopolitical urgency to try to catch up somehow or close that gap or manage that gap between capabilities and aspirations. And then they wouldn't have to force modernize with coercion, they wouldn't have to suppress consumption and lower living standards to overinvest in the state and in the secret police. And they wouldn't have these moments of quest for a strong state that devolves into personalist rule potentially. So it's a choice. It's a choice that elites in Russia make again and again and again. It's not cultural DNA, although it does come from a self-identity, self-conception about, you know, Russia's special place in the world. And so I call this the geopolitical conundrum, and I think it can be broken.[2] |
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Vladimir Putin's foolish decision to launch an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
Russian imperialism
John Joseph Mearsheimer and U.S. relations with Russia
John Mearsheimer, is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of international relations and teaches at the University of Chicago.
In his March 2022 interview with The New Yorker, Mearsheimer indicated:
| â | Iâm talking about the raw-power potential of Russiaâthe amount of economic might it has. Military might is built on economic might. You need an economic foundation to build a really powerful military. To go out and conquer countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states and to re-create the former Soviet Union or re-create the former Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe would require a massive army, and that would require an economic foundation that contemporary Russia does not come close to having. There is no reason to fear that Russia is going to be a regional hegemony in Europe. Russia is not a serious threat to the United States. We do face a serious threat in the international system. We face a peer competitor. And thatâs China. Our policy in Eastern Europe is undermining our ability to deal with the most dangerous threat that we face today.[3] | â |
In 2014, Mearsheimer said: "Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time."[4]
Russian military weaknesses. Russia getting pummeled in wars in Russian history that hyper Russophiles will not tell you about
Russians overestimate their role in world history
See also: We Made History: Citizens of 35 Countries Overestimate Their Role in World History
"Russians, for example, estimated that their country was responsible for 61% of world history." - Source: We Made History: Citizens of 35 Countries Overestimate Their We Made History: Citizens of 35 Countries Overestimate Their Nationâs Role in World History, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 521-528
- â Why Is Russia So Unproductive?, Moscow Times, 2019
- â Transcript: Stephen Kotkin: Back to the USSR or Back to the Tsarist Empire?, Stephen Kotkin, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies; Havard University
- â Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine, The New Yorker, March 2022
- â Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Westâs Fault, Foreign Affairs, Published August 18, 2014