A Time of Turbulence

Professor Adam Daniel Rotfeld, former Polish minister of foreign affairs and long-time director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, talks to Witold Żygulski.

Something hard to imagine has happened:

It is seemingly simple and yet unimaginable. After the end of the Cold War, the entire international security system, all its institutions, were aimed to build an order whose basic premise was to prevent a sudden and unexpected attack by one state on another member of the international community. Russia has made such an attack. However, it was neither sudden nor unexpected. The Russian president had been talking about it for at least 12, maybe even 15 years. In 2014, at a meeting of the Valdai Club to which the Russians invite former politicians, analysts, and experts known to be sympathetic to Russia or at least those who try to understand it, the highlight, as usual at this forum, was Putin’s speech. The title of the debate was “The World Order: New Rules of the Game, or a Game Without Rules?” The Russian president’s main idea boiled down to this: If the new order were not to include Russia as a global power co-determining the fate of the world, then why do we need such an order? Why do we need such a world? This confirmed, in an unusually brutal or indeed simplistic way, an idea that Russia had formulated before, for example in the famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Putin criticized the current world order as allegedly being built for a group of Western countries that are trying to impose their system of values on the rest of the international community. Meanwhile, Russia has its own original values. At a meeting with then Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw in 2008, Sergei Lavrov developed this idea: It is worth, Lavrov argued, going back to old, proven principles, those that worked at the Congress of Vienna (1815) for example, according to which great powers have the right to privileged zones of interest or their spheres of influence. He repeated this during several inaugural lectures at his alma mater, the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO). This mindset recurred repeatedly in subsequent official Russian statements.

Until the invasion of Ukraine, everyone thought that Russia was a country with the phantom pains typical of all declining empires. France had them, having suffered defeat in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and then coming to terms with the breakaway of Algeria, which it considered its “overseas territory.” This was done by Charles de Gaulle in defiance of France’s influential political and military elite, who rebelled against the president’s decision. However, he was a statesman and a leader of such stature that he faced up to it. He was willing to walk away rather than succumb to those who were pushing France to regain what was irretrievably lost. To some extent, the expedition of the British fleet in the Falklands War was a manifestation of a similar phantom pain. We generally and primarily relate the concept of colonialism to overseas territories subject to the states of Western Europe. In fact, though, the three continental European empires - Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia - also captured vast areas in Europe and Eurasia. The Soviet Union, of which modern Russia is the legal successor and continuation, became such an empire in the 20th century.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unthinkable, and yet it became a fact. The reasoning of European political elites and entire nations had long shifted away from the idea that if a great power, even a nuclear one, believes it is entitled to something, it has the right to resort to force in pursuit of its interests; that if someone does not like the way power is exercised in a neighboring country, they can bomb that country and drive tanks into it. A rational person takes into account the consequences of the strategy chosen by an aggressor. Russia’s behavior, in my view, is counterproductive. If Russia believes that Ukraine does not have the right to self-determination because it is not a separate nation, this means that the invasion of Ukraine is a domestic civil war, a fratricidal war. Consequently, Russia has imposed a semi-legal ban on the use of the term “war.” In its place, it obliges its citizens to use a new linguistic norm, namely “special military operation.” This is a semantic and political rhetoric. To some extent, it is embedded in the orthodox Russian tradition in which words are more important than reality.

The negation of Ukraine’s national and cultural identity was not born in Soviet times. In tsarist Russia, the very word “Ukraine” was forbidden, another term was in use: “Malorus” (Little rus) For centuries, everything possible was done to prevent the emancipation of the Ukrainian national community. What Putin and his elite have done now will be regarded years down the line as a great - albeit unintentional - contribution to building a lasting sense of Ukrainian cultural and civilizational identity, not only ethnic, but also national and statehood-related. This is already an irreversible effect today: for all Ukrainians, including those in regions that were pro-Russian for centuries, the awareness that they are part of a separate nation has become dominant as a result of the armed aggression. Otherwise, there would be no need for such violent repression and assault. There would be no consent to exterminating, to killing Ukrainians, and to eliminating them once and for all. Putin’s official claim is that though Ukraine does not exist, the West has turned it into “anti-Russia.” This is not so.

At its core, the invasion of Ukraine is a war of values, a clash of political cultures and two separate worlds. Ukraine has made a choice in favor of the values held by the states of the Western democratic community. The effect produced by Putin and his entourage is that there has even been a significant change in attitudes in countries that were fascinated by Russian culture and civilization and referred

to Russia with friendliness, kindness, and respect for its culture. As a result, Russophobia is growing in the world, which in my view is an undesirable and even harmful trend. Hatred, which evokes similar negative emotions in response, becomes a source of a toxic infection of the minds and behavior of people who are opponents on battlefields.

The current Russian narrative on Ukraine is generated artificially for the purposes of war propaganda. The enemy must be hated and destroyed. This narrative is meant to convince the Russians that there is no alternative to the path of development that Putin’s Russia has chosen. If the transformation in Ukraine had been successful, as it was in Poland between 1989 and 2015, Ukraine would have become such a model and example for the Russians as Poland was for the Ukrainians in its time.

Volodymyr Zelenski has grown into one of the main world leaders before our eyes, gaining popularity equal to that of Lech Wałęsa years ago. Russian propaganda must therefore - firstly - repeat that Ukraine does not exist as an independent state at all, that it has always been an integral part of Russia. Political technologists have created a new entity called russkiy mir (mistranslated as “Russian peace”). In its essence, this concept defines the “Russian world” (the root of the adjective comes from the word Rus’). The parts of this world are supposed to be Great Rus’ (Russia), White Rus’ (Belarus) and Little Rus’ (i.e. Ukraine). According to some Russian thinkers (e.g. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), this world also includes northern Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, Ukraine chose the direction of Europeanization and respect for the universal values of Western civilization.

There was a chance that the new order in Europe would eliminate wars on our continent for good. In Russian thinking, however, it is not the force of law but the law of force that has been and remains the decisive factor. The elites of modern Russia see a free and democratic Ukraine as a threat and a challenge. Russia would like to shape Ukraine in its own image and likeness. The Russian historical gene - autocracy and authoritarianism (samoderzhaviye) - was defined in the first half of the 19th century by the minister of education during Nicholas I’s reign, Count Sergei Uvarov, who formulated three principles for the exercise of power in Russia: autocracy - orthodoxy - peoplehood (samoderzhaviye - pravoslaviye - narodnost). In a sense, the invasion of Ukraine is therefore not so much an attempt to stop the course of history, but rather to return to what history has verified negatively and, it seemed, once and for all. Russia has not come to terms with the fact that it is the last great colonial area in the world, and that the process of decolonization of this area began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of the countries that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union built their statehood practically from scratch, often without any experience of their own statehood. The Central Asian republics, for example, have a tradition of nomadic communities organized in the form of tribes, great families and principalities.

How might this war progress, then, and how might it end? I do not aspire to be futurologist, an author of optional scenarios. What is certain is that the negotiators will strive to reach a compromise that the leaders of both countries in conflict can present to their public as a success. Otherwise, they could expose themselves to charges of treason and selling out national interests. There are many indications that Ukraine is ready to declare itself a neutral state, provided that it receives international guarantees of respect for this status. In turn, the territories seized by the Russian army n the Donbass will probably remain under Russian control. This also applies to the Crimean Peninsula seized in 2014. One thing is certain: No one has the right to or should impose any solutions on the Ukrainians. It is up to the Ukrainians to decide what is in their best interest and what concessions they can afford. The resistance and determination of Ukrainian troops to defend their independence has meant that the Russian side will present piecemeal territorial gains as the realization of the “special operation’s” objectives. Russia will have to accept that Ukraine cannot be eliminated and has to be recognized as having the right to exist.

The 1994 agreements concluded between Ukraine and Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom in Budapest stipulated that, in exchange for giving up post-Soviet nuclear weapons deployed on Ukrainian territory, the powers would guarantee the inviolability of Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity. The document, to which China and France appended their signatures, was registered as a UN Security Council decision on Dec. 19, 1994. The five nuclear powers thus agreed to guarantee Ukraine its independent and sovereign state existence. This document could play an important role in the search for a solution to the crisis under the auspices of the OSCE, within which it was developed nearly 30 years ago in Budapest. The new peace accord will certainly not bring a solution to all the problems. It can be assumed that it will be characterized by what diplomatic language calls constructive ambiguity.

It is natural that Ukraine expects guarantees from both the nuclear powers and those states that are actively involved in seeking peaceful solutions. The essence of even a provisional agreement will be the cessation of hostilities and respect for Ukraine’s right to exist independently. In practice, this would mean that only the citizens of Ukraine - without any external intervention - will decide who will govern their country and in what form.

In response to Russian demands about the need to “denazify” Ukraine, we should rather consider the need to defascistize Russia and to recognize the ideology of Ivan Ilyin and his follower Alexander Dugin as contravening current domestic and international law. Great-power chauvinism and para-fascist views, which the current Russian authorities see as “intellectual” background and justification of the new mission Russia has to fulfill in the world, should be stigmatized on a par with the ideology that guided the NSDAP elites in the German Third Reich.

In the process of creating a new state in Russia, the special services took responsibility for staffing the entire country’s management apparatus. The result has been what is ironically called a “democratorship” (diemokratura), in which the position of the secret police, intelligence and counterintelligence services occupies a special place. When Putin became prime-minister, he addressed the heads of the secret services in a humorous speech with the words: “I report that the task assigned to me under the codename ‘Creation of the Government of the Russian Federation’ has been completed!” The response from the room was applause and a standing ovation. The words of the new PM, until recently a lieutenant-colonel in the intelligence service, were received with full approval. Shortly afterwards, Putin posted his programmatic article “Dictatorship of Law” on the Internet. In it, he presented his vision of the state. I was working at SIPRI at the time and recommended that my colleagues read this text. I added: “Fifty percent of this announcement is in the bag; there will certainly be a dictatorship in Russia, while whether the law will be respected remains an open question.”

All democratic institutions function as a façade in the Russian state, as an ornament of no importance. An opposition does not exist in Russia. The loyalty of subordinates is based not so much on a community of opinions as on fear and corruption. Instead of democratization, oligarchization has taken shape in the country, and instead of modernization there has been militarization. Disinforming society also plays a significant role. Pervasive lies and propaganda have replaced honest journalism, where corruption, inherent in the system, plays a major role. For example, the chief TV-propagandist of the Putin regime, Vladimir Solovyov, has two villas in Tuscany and several luxury apartments in Europe for his children. Pseudo-scholars also join in the propaganda tone: a month before the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, the dean of the Faculty of World Economy and Politics at the Moscow School of Economics, Sergei Karaganov, wrote that “NATO is a cancer.” He called for “limiting the metastasis of this cancer with the simultaneous application of therapeutic measures, that is, military radiation and political chemotherapy.” He advised territorial curbing of this disease at first, and after that - we will see. Karaganov creatively developed this surgical advice already during the “operation”...

Very many people say that we are dealing with a new Cold War. You can also put it another way: Today’s world is not so much divided by ideologies (like communism vs. anti-communism) as by ways of exercising power (democracies vs. dictatorships). China in Asia, Venezuela in Latin America and Russia in Eurasia are examples of countries that have chosen nondemocratic paths of development. The aggression against Ukraine has simply made Russia the pariah of nations. The outcome of the vote on the United Nations General Assembly resolution on the war in Ukraine was an obvious manifestation of this. This body is composed of all the countries of the world, i.e. 193 nations. Of these, Russia was supported by four: Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria.

The new order that is emerging before our eyes is not the realization of some ready-made model. It is an order in statu nascendi. It will contain some elements of all previous orders - from the Peace of Westphalia (1648), through the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Treaty of Versailles (1919), to the Yalta and Potsdam conferences that ended World War II (1945), and the Final Act of the CSCE (1975). Today Russia has put forward a revisionist agenda concerning not only territorial disputes, but also a “new” historical truth in which wars of aggression are presented as wars of liberation. It also negates internationally recognized values, such as the liberties and dignity, the obligation to respect human rights or the sovereign equality of states. Recalling his youthful years as a Leningrad street urchin, Putin considered it a virtue that he understood early on that it is not the person who is the biggest and has the strongest muscles who has the advantage in a fight, but the one who attacks first. We are witnessing a policy based on exactly such a philosophy: Russia made such an attack, and its leader seemed not to understand that it was leading Russia to inevitable disaster. Erroneous premises lead to false assessments and decisions with far-reaching fatal consequences. The Russian president hoped to disintegrate and destabilize the West. He did not believe that his actions could strengthen the unity and solidarity of the West. The unprecedented sanctions now being imposed on Russia are testimony to this. He underestimated US President Joe Biden, who was ridiculed by the Russian media. Today he is the respected leader of the entire democratic world. The speech he gave at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (March 26, 2022) will go down in history. The American president emphasized that the current conflict in its essence is not a dispute over territory or access to nonrenewable energy sources, but a dispute about principles: about morality, about the choice between good and evil.

In other words, Ukraine, Europe, and the whole world have entered a period of serious turbulence. Biden’s appeal delivered at the Royal Castle in Warsaw was a kind of pilot’s message: “Fasten your seatbelts!”

Polish society has shown that it is ready for solidarity and sacrifice. Poland has taken in nearly 3 million refugees from Ukraine. It also supports Ukraine’s defense capabilities in many other ways. There is a prevailing awareness in the European Union that rebuilding Ukraine after the barbaric Russian attacks on civilian structures - schools, hospitals, residential buildings - is on the agenda. Some kind of new Marshall Plan will be needed to strengthen this country, enabling the entire international community to provide tailored assistance in rebuilding a free, sovereign, democratic and strong Ukraine.

Adam Daniel Rotfeld is a professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, the author of many books, studies and reports on international law and international relations. From 2008 to 2015 he co-chaired the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters. He has been a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (2006-2011) and many other international panels and working groups. His last monograph is In Search of aStrategy (2018).