Putin's Wars полностью

But if Putin was completely free of any annexationist fervor, why, in 2003, did he propose that Belarus return to Russia and join the Russian Federation as six oblasts (provinces), a proposition that was refused by Belarus? As long ago as 1993, the Supreme Soviet laid claim to the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.^[11] However, if Putin’s objectives are so radically different, why would his government distribute Russian passports in the Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine, knowing that the Ukrainian Constitution strictly forbade dual nationality? And why was this distribution of Russian passports accompanied in August 2008 by Medvedev’s introduction of “five foreign policy principles,” which included the right for the Kremlin to protect Russians “wherever they are” and intervene on their behalf? These principles were applied in the case of Georgia, which was invaded in August 2008. And why, after the Orange Revolution, did Russian politicians speak out in favor of the “federalization” of Ukraine?^[12] As Trenin himself writes, this proposal was interpreted by Ukrainian politicians as “paving the way to its breakup and the absorption of its eastern and southern regions by Russia.” And why, in 2003, did Putin equally propose the federalization of Moldova?^[13] Was it not because it would make a breakup of that state easier and bring the breakaway province of Transnistria definitively back within Moscow’s sphere of influence? Trenin also mentions that after the Ukrainian bid for a route into NATO, “some not entirely academic quarters in Moscow played with the idea of a major geopolitical redesign of the northern Black Sea area, under which southern Ukraine, from the Crimea to Odessa, would secede from Kiev and form a Moscow-friendly buffer state, ‘Novorossiya’—New Russia. As part of that grand scheme, tiny Transnistria would either be affiliated with that state or absorbed by it. The rest of Moldova could then be annexed by Romania.”^[14] These sentences need to be read very carefully: for “some not entirely academic quarters in Moscow,” one could read: the Kremlin or Kremlin-related politicians. For “played with the idea of a major geopolitical redesign,” one could read: military intervention in order to break up Ukraine, an internationally recognized sovereign state (also recognized by Russia). Moreover, the creation of a Russia-friendly “buffer state” has traditionally, in Russian politics, led to that state becoming part of Russia. One could be tempted to see some historical parallels. But, of course, you need not. Because Trenin is reassuring us: Putin’s Russia has no plans to reconquer its lost empire. Russia is a post-empire and intends to remain so.

The thesis of this book is that the Russian Federation is both a post-imperial state and a pre-imperial state. The aim of this book is to analyze Putin’s wars in Chechnya and Georgia and to put them in a broader context in order to better understand the inner dynamic of Putin’s system. The key idea of the book is that in Russian history there has always existed a negative relationship between empire building and territorial expansion on the one hand and internal democratization on the other. Reform periods in Russia (after 1855, 1905, and 1989) are often the result of lost wars and/or the weakening of the empire. Periods of imperial expansion, on the contrary, tended to have a negative impact on internal reform and democratization. Gorbachev’s perestroika—a product of the lost Cold War—is an example of the former, Putin’s policy of a reimperialization of the former Soviet space is an example of the latter.

Structure of the Book

The book consists of three parts.

Part I: “Russia and the Curse of Empire” (chapters 1–5)