De longe a melhor analise da decisão do Putin de anexar a Crimeia.
In the antechamber of Vladimir Putin’s presidential office in the Kremlin hangs a large portrait of Nicholas I, who ruled the Russian empire from 1825 to 1855. As Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the west’s retaliatory economic sanctions summon the spectres of hot and cold wars past, policy makers in Washington and Europe would do well to consider why Mr Putin chose the tsar as the historical figure at whose image visitors must gaze before they enter the president’s room. Then they will be on the right road to answering the question: “How do we deal with Putin?”
The story behind the portrait is not that Nicholas I was some all-conquering military commander or an emperor who transformed Russian society. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great have stronger claims to these roles. It is that post-Napoleonic Europe, whatever it thought of Nicholas I’s autocratic system of government, granted Russia respect as a great military and diplomatic power. As he made abundantly clear on Tuesday when he announced Crimea’s absorption into Russia, Mr Putin seethes with resentment at what he sees as the west’s disregard, ever since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991, for Moscow’s status and interests as a leading power.
Mr Putin’s choice of portrait also reflects his belief that Russia under Nicholas I stood for a rock-solid domestic political order, founded on patriotism, the Orthodox religion, a strong central government and a secret police force that cracked down on dissent. Since Mr Putin first assumed the presidency in 2000, this is the kind of state he has sought to construct out of the political disorder, economic weakness and misguided openness to western values that, in his opinion, marked Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s.
Dealing with Mr Putin, in the light of his dismemberment of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, requires an understanding of the political opportunism and willingness to use military force abroad that make him distinctive as a post-communist Russian president. But it also requires a recognition that any other leader might have acted no differently, given that Mr Putin is using a geopolitical playbook written in Moscow immediately after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In particular, the doctrine under which Russia asserts a special interest in its geographical “near abroad” – Ukraine and other post-Soviet states – is not a doctrine specific to the Putin era. On the contrary, it emerged in 1992 and its leading exponent was Andrei Kozyrev, Mr Yeltsin’s foreign minister.
It is all very well for western governments to assert that, in the post-cold war age, the notion of spheres of influence in Europe is abhorrent. The Kremlin has always viewed this as sheer hypocrisy, a mask behind which the west advanced up to Russia’s borders by incorporating the Baltic states, Poland and other former communist countries into Nato and the EU.
In Mr Yeltsin’s day Russia was too weak in military and economic terms to do much about this except growl in frustration. But the February revolution in Kiev raised the prospect that Ukraine would align itself with the EU, tilting the geopolitical scales in the west’s favour in an area of existential importance to Russian national interests and identity. It is telling that Mr Putin’s backlash commanded support not just from his handpicked supporters in the Duma, but even from anti-establishment critics whose pro-democracy rhetoric comes heavily salted with nationalism.
During the past 20 years it is difficult to think of any Russian leader – not just Mr Putin – who has found it psychologically and politically comfortable to think of Ukraine in its 1991 borders as a legitimate, independent state. This by no means excuses Russia’s behaviour in Crimea. But it is pointless to ignore the fact that Mr Putin’s language, menacing though it sounds to western ears, is but common sense to Russians: “We are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus’ is our common source and we cannot live without each other.”
Western leaders are unlikely to get anywhere with Mr Putin unless they appreciate that the crisis, in his view, is about the defence of fundamental Russian interests. He is prepared to pay a very heavy diplomatic and economic price to uphold these interests. He sees this as a do-or-die moment for Russia in a way that it is not for the west.
This does not mean the US and Europe have no red lines of their own. The east-west political climate would be even more alarming than it is today were Mr Putin to encourage ethnic Russian separatism or make threatening military gestures in the direction of Estonia or Latvia, which are Nato members and must benefit from its collective defence guarantee if the alliance is to mean anything. But more likely in the near term, if the climate continues to deteriorate, are the formal Russian annexation of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Transnistria region of eastern Moldova could go the same way. Even a Russian move on eastern Ukraine, which would risk sparking Ukrainian nationalist resistance, cannot be ruled out.
The west clearly has a stake in an orderly international system. But if its basic interests are not at stake it will have no choice but to play the long game, as it did in the cold war. At some point it will have to restore a dialogue with Russia, keeping alive the hope of eventual change for the better in those regions sucked back into Moscow’s orbit.
At present, though, Mr Putin believes himself to be on a historical mission for Russia. He appears in no mood for a conversation and, under Russia’s constitution, he can serve as president until 2024. Who knows, he may find a way of retaining power after that. The west is going to have to dig in and be patient.
Tony Barber
Fonte: FT
