Vodka does not sell well in the Arab world, for obvious reasons. Nor are the countries of the Middle East short of oil. So the campaign to boycott Russian exports in protest against the Kremlin's backing of the murderous regime in Syria may be more symbolic than real. But the psychological shift is huge. Ever since Soviet days, Arab dictators and strongmen have had chummy relations with Moscow. Russia counted as a counterweight to American hegemony. Now Russia (like China) is detested across the region as an accomplice to mass murder. That is yet another dent in Russia's sharply diminishing soft power. It also undermines the regime's fraying legitimacy at home.
For many outsiders, therefore, Russia's approach is baffling – indefensible in both principle and practice. Russia is making just the same mistake as it did when it backed Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi. It taints itself by associating with dictators. It also guarantees that, when they fall, their successors regard them unkindly. If Russia wants to preserve its ramshackle naval base at Tartus in Syria, then the best way would be to hedge its bets by talking to the opposition, not by selling weapons to a regime in its death throes.
From Russia's point of view, the argument looks different. It is not about the merits or otherwise of a particular regime. It is about the rules of the international game and the way in which the West habitually flouts them, flaunting its military power and diplomatic clout in a world that has become dangerously one-sided.
Some Russians will try to stitch this into a single narrative, which goes roughly like this. First, the West destroyed the Soviet Union with a mixture of psychological and economic warfare, pushing Russia out of central Europe and the Baltic states. Then it reneged on the deal it struck over NATO expansion. It also broke up Yugoslavia, to create pliant client mini-states. When Serbia tried to stop that, it got bombed, first over Bosnia and then over Kosovo. It biffed Afghanistan and Iraq. The same fate awaits anyone else who gets in the way of the Euro-Atlantic juggernaut.
From this point of view, the instigation of civil war in Syria is just the latest flagrant example of hypocritical meddling. Russia has no alternative to try to block it by the only means it has: the United Nations veto.
Truth, of course, is much more complicated. For a start ‘the West' is not a single entity. It has been hugely divided on all sorts of issues. The main motor for NATO expansion was the countries concerned: if they did not want to join, nobody would have invited them. NATO agonised for far too long over intervention in Yugoslavia and when it did get involved was far too tentative (remember Srebrenica?).
Moreover, the Arab Spring was not an outside plot, but the result of political and economic constipation in the countries concerned. It took an impending massacre in Benghazi before outside military involvement started in Libya – an operation in which the US took little part and expressed deep scepticism. Oh, and in Afghanistan, the West backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban – which is exactly what Russia had been doing for a decade.
No matter: for Moscow, huddling inside this mental comfort blanket, bemoaning mythical broken promises and imaginary hegemonic encroachment is preferable to the truth. The real story is that unpleasant regimes get their come-uppance sooner or later, either at the hands of their own citizens, or because they exasperate the outside world, or both. That is an uncomfortable message for Vladimir Putin and his pals.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Monday, March 17th 2014 at 4:31PM
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