If the west is weak, Putin’s Russia is a much greater threat

Natalie Nougayrède

The crisis in our liberal democracies is strengthening the Kremlin’s hand, making it the dangerous foe of MI5’s and Nato’s warnings

 Illustration by Noma Bar

Lenin once said: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Vladimir Putin is no Lenin, nor can his regime – run by an elite that enjoys offshore accounts and oligarchic privileges – quite be described as anti-capitalist. Yet in Russia’s new confrontation with the west, the Kremlin’s strategy is to exploit western weaknesses and confusion as much as it is geared towards showing a bellicose face, whether in Ukraine, Syria or cyberspace. 

Perhaps this is why the head of MI5 has warned of the need to fend off Russia’s hostile interference.

Lenin is not Putin’s ideological guru. Foreigners, whether public officials or investors, who have at length met with Putin sometimes point to his particular brand of pragmatism (even if Angela Merkel once said he “lives in another world”). If he senses strong pushback, he adapts. If he detects gaps, he strikes at the Achilles heel.

There is little doubt Russian power is on the offensive. Since 2014, when it deployed its troops in Ukraine and annexed territory there, and since its policies in Syria have been analysed as overtly hostile to western endeavours, “Russian aggressiveness” has become a mainstay of the west’s official political discourse. But beyond boasting about Russia’s nuclear forces, demonstrating its new conventional military capacities and activating an army of internet trollers (none of which should be minimised), Putin’s regime is banking on the hope that western democracies will falter and be unable to offer up genuine resistance.

He’s essentially waiting for that rope to be handed over. Brexit is one section of it, because in Russian eyes it has the potential to divide the west. The growth of national-populist movements in Europe and elsewhere is another, because it echoes the Kremlin’s illiberal narrative and produces useful allies. Radical leftwing anti-Americanism also fits handily into the picture, as it did decades ago when pacifists demonstrated in the west while missiles were being deployed by the eastern bloc during the cold war.

As paradoxical as it is, the far right and the far left in Europe today join forces when it comes to Russia. The far right sees virtues in Putin; they are fascinated by his strong-man image, the ultra-conservative Christian values he espouses, and by a hostility they share towards Muslims. The far left sees a leader unfairly demonised, an underdog able to counter the greater evil of “western neo-imperialism” – whatever Russia’s behaviour in its own former empire. The failure of politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Melanchon (the Labour leader’s closest equivalent on the French left) to clearly denounce Russia’s massacring of civilians in Aleppo points to the kind of complacency, or silence, that Moscow is keen to capitalise on.

For a decade and a half, the west had its eyes set solely on the threat of international terrorism. Now it finds itself having to focus on a state threat also. Identifying the exact nature and extent of the Russian threat, and what should be done about it, are issues still being debated in Europe and during the US election. But to claim that Nato and western security agencies are deliberately exaggerating the danger coming from Russia for self-serving purposes (such as pumping up their budgets) is simply side-stepping a problem that cannot be denied.

If anyone needs to be convinced of this, travelling to the Baltic region might offer valuable insights. At a recent international conference I attended in Latvia’s capital, Riga, much of the talk centred understandably on the strengthening of western defence guarantees (Nato countries are set to deploy four battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states by June 2017). It might be tempting to cast this move as open “provocation” towards Russia, but it is less so if you visit Riga’s Museum of Occupations, where one small nation’s history of being invaded and persecuted by large powers (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) is vividly recounted.

Yet what I found most striking was Latvian officials saying that in Russia’s reported attempts to interfere with this US election there were echoes of the Kremlin meddling in their own elections over the years. “We might have useful experiences to share on that account,” is the comment. Baltic governments are making strong efforts to counter Russian propaganda. The reasoning is that the challenge is as much about making their societies more resilient as it is about Putin’s posturing. With that logic, it hardly even matters whether or not Putin is actually pulling strings in the US campaign – the fact that he is widely perceived to be doing so is a victory in itself.

Likewise, when public confidence in western institutions is eroded (the suspicion that elections can be rigged, or that elites always lie and plot against the people), one clear beneficiary is the man who sits in the Kremlin. Russian propaganda is more effective if democracy is seen as tainted and perverted everywhere.

This is not to say that the rope Lenin mentioned is at the ready. In fact, Putin’s strategy might actually be backfiring. Russia’s actions and antics have arguably done more for Ukrainian national self-awareness, Baltic security efforts and Nato’s renewed sense of mission (territorial defence in Europe) than any other development since the break-up of the Soviet Union. What remains to be seen is whether loss of confidence within the west, over the very functioning of liberal democracy, threatens to encourage Putin’s worst instincts. That perhaps is worth pondering, before we dismiss MI5’s warnings as needlessly alarming, or even unjustified.

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