Why Russia No Longer Fears the West - POLITICO Magazine

8/12/2019 Why Russia No Longer Fears the West - POLITICO Magazine

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The West is blinking in disbelief Vladimir Putin justinvaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and

American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosento gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?

Western leaders are stunned because they havent realizedRussias owners no longer respect Europeans the way they oncedid after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer acrusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about themoney.

Putins henchmen know this personally. Russias rulers have been

WA SHINGTON AND THE WORLD

Why Russia No Longer Fears the WestBy BEN JUDAH March 02, 2014
http://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/washington-and-the-worldhttp://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/washington-and-the-world


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buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flatsfrom Londons West End to Frances Cote dAzure. Their childrenare safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And theirmoney is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British taxhavens.

Putins inner circle no longer fear the European establishment.They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats andcorporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into

play. They now view them as hypocritesthe same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.

Once Russias powerful listened when European embassies issuedstatements denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian statecompanies. But no more. Because they know full well it isEuropean bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty

work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts fromthe Dutch Antilles to the British Virgin Islands.

We are not talking big money. But very big money. None otherthan Putins Central Bank has estimated that two thirds of the $56

billion exiting Russia in 2012 might be traceable to illegalactivities. Crimes like kickbacks, drug money or tax fraud. This isthe money that posh English bankers are rolling out the red carpetfor in London.

Behind European corruption, Russia sees American weakness. TheKremlin does not believe European countries with the exception


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of Germany are truly independent of the United States. They seethem as client states that Washington could force now, as it oncedid in the Cold War, not to do such business with the Kremlin.

When Russia sees Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal outbiddingeach other to be Russias best business partner inside the EU (inreturn for no mention of human rights), they see Americascontrol over Europe slowly dissolving.

Back in Moscow, Russias hears American weakness out of Embassy Moscow. Once upon a time the Kremlin feared a foreignadventure might trigger Cold War economic sanctions where ithurts: export bans on key parts for its oil industry, even being cutout of its access to the Western banking sector. No more.

Russia sees an America distracted: Putins Ukrainian gambit was ashock to the U.S. foreign policy establishment. They prefer talking

about China, or participating in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.Russia sees an America vulnerable: in Afghanistan, in Syria and onIrana United States that desperately needs Russian support tocontinue shipping its supplies, host any peace conference orenforce its sanctions.

Moscow is not nervous. Russias elites have exposed themselves in

a gigantic manner everything they hold dear is now locked up inEuropean properties and bank accounts. Theoretically, this makesthem vulnerable. The EU could, with a sudden rush of money-laundering investigations and visa bans, cut them off from their

wealth. But, time and time again, they have watched European


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governments balk at passing anything remotely similar to the U.S.Magnitsky Act, which bars a handful of criminal-officials fromentering the United States.

All this has made Putin confident, very confident confident thatEuropean elites are more concerned about making money thanstanding up to him. The evidence is there. After Russias strikeforce reached the outskirts of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, in 2008,there were statements and bluster, but not a squeak about Russias

billions. After Russias opposition were thrown into show trials,

there were concerned letters from the European Union, but againsilence about Russias billions.

The Kremlin thinks it knows Europes dirty secret now. TheKremlin thinks it has the European establishment down to a tee.The grim men who run Putins Russia see them like latter-day Soviet politicians. Back in the 1980s, the USSR talked about

international Marxism but no longer believed it. Brussels today,Russia believes, talks about human rights but no longer believes init. Europe is really run by an elite with the morality of the hedgefund: Make money at all costs and move it offshore.

The Kremlin sees its evidence in the former leaders of Britain,France and Germany. Tony Blair now advises the dictatorship inKazakhstan on how to improve its image in the West. NicholasSarkozy was contemplating setting up a hedge fund with money from absolutist Qatar. And Gerhard Schroder is the chairman of the Nord Steam consortium a majority Gazprom-owned pipelinethat connects Russia directly to Germany through the Black Sea.


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Russia is confident there will be no Western economiccounterattack. They believe the Europeans will not sanction theRussian oligarch money. They believe Americans will not punishthe Russian oligarchs by blocking their access to banks. Russia iscertain a military counterattack is out of the question. They expect

America to only posture. Cancel the G-8? Who cares?

Because Putin has no fear of the West, he can concentrate on whatmatters back in Russia: holding onto power. When Putinannounced he would return to the presidency in late 2011, the

main growling question was: why?

The regime had no story to sell. What did Putin want to achieve by never stepping down? Enriching himself? The puppet president heshunted aside, Dmitry Medvedev, had at least sold a story of modernization. What, other than hunger for power, had madePutin return to the presidency? The Kremlin spin-doctors had

nothing to spin.

Moscow was rocked by mass protests in December 2011. Morethan 100,000 gathered within sight of the Kremlin demandingRussia be ruled in a different way. The protesters were scared off the streets, but the problem the regime had in justifying itself remained. Putin had sold himself to the Russian people as the man

who would stabilize the state and deliver rising incomes after thechaos of the 1990s. But with Russians no longer fearing chaos, butrather stagnation as the economy slowed it was unclear whatthis stability was for.


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This is where the grand propaganda campaign called the EurasianUnion has come into its own. This is the name of the vague new entity that Putin wants to create out of former Soviet states thefirst steps toward which Putin has taken by building a CustomsUnion with Belarus and Kazakhstan, and he had hoped with aUkraine run by Viktor Yanuvokych. This is not just about empire;it is about using empire to cover up the grotesque scale of Russiancorruption and justify the regime.

Russia would rather have swallowed Ukraine whole, but the show

must go on. Russian TV needs glories for Putin every night on theevening news. Russian politics is about spin, not substance. Thereal substance of Russian politics is the extraction of billions of dollars from the nation and shuttling them into tropical Westerntax havens, which is why Russian politics needs perpetual PR andperpetual Putinist drama to keep all this hidden from the Russianpeople. Outraged Putin has built up a Kremlin fleet of luxury aircraft worth $1 billion? Angry that a third of the $51 billion

budget of the Sochi games vanished into kickbacks? Forget aboutit. Russia is on the march again.

This is why Crimea is perfect Putin. Crimea is no South Ossetia.This is not some remote, mountainous Georgian village inhabited

by some dubious ethnicity that Russians have never heard of.Crimea is the heart of Russian romanticism. The peninsula is theonly part of the classical world that Russia ever conquered. Andthis is why the Tsarist aristocracy fell in love with it. Crimeasymbolized Russias 18th and 19th-century fantasy to conquer


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Constantinople and liberate Greek Orthodox Christians fromMuslim rule. Crimea became the imperial playground: In poetry and palaces, it was extolled as the jewel in the Russian crown.

Crimea is the only lost land that Russians really mourn. Thereason is tourism. The Soviet Union built on the Tsarist myth andturned the peninsula into a giant holiday camp full of workerssanitariums and pioneer camps. Unlike, the Russian cities of say northern Kazakhstan, Crimea is a place Russians have actually

been. Even today over one million Russians holiday in Crimea

every year. It is not just a peninsula; this is Russias Club Med andimperial romanticism rolled into one.

Vladimir Putin knows this. He knows that millions of Russians will cheer him as a hero if he returns them Crimea. He knows thatEuropean bureaucrats will issue shrill statements and then get

back to business helping Russian elites buy London town houses

and French chateaux. He knows full well that the United Statescan no longer force Europe to trade in a different way. He knowsfull well that the United States can do nothing beyond theatricalmilitary maneuvers at most.

This is why Vladimir Putin just invaded Crimea.

He thinks he has nothing to lose.

Ben Judah is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In AndOut Of Love With Vladimir Putin.


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Additional credits:

Lead image by AP Photo.

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Why Russia No Longer Fears the West - POLITICO Magazine