With Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the world is now facing a period of significant crisis: a rapid escalation in violence, a war of aggression, wide-scale destruction and loss, and tens of thousands dead. Russia’s aggression has already claimed many thousands of lives, including many young people, thus depriving both Ukraine and Russia of populations who would contribute to their future. The war has also cast doubt on predictions by some scholars that the world is becoming more peaceful (Pinker, 2011), thus revealing the absurd, archaic, and meaningless yet inescapable truth of reality. In an article by The New York Times, François Delattre, the French ambassador to Germany, stated that “the war has sent Europeans back to basics, to questions of war and peace and our values.”
The military logic dominating the current conflict has instigated significant discussions and debates over support for the conflicting parties, strategies and tactics of warfare, military capacities, and – albeit with serious doubt as to the potential for success – diplomatic solutions. However, neither a diplomatic approach nor a military approach offers an immediate solution to the conflict, and such approaches seem either ineffective (diplomatic) or associated with a high cost (military).
A reinvigorated Europe – with its power centre shifting to the east and with a greater awareness of the role of military power, including nuclear threats – has concluded that democracy must be armed in order to defend itself from the threats of undeterred authoritarians, as reported in an article in The Economist. Analysts predict that the war in Ukraine may last longer than expected and may turn into an interminable confrontation. It now appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in dragging the world into his logic of military confrontation, leading to massive destruction and a battle between “good” and “evil.” While, in response, the West has demonstrated exceptional unity in terms of sanctions and arms supplies to Ukraine, the current power balance is not conducive for a quick end to the aggression.
The following questions thus arise: Was this outcome truly inevitable? Is there any way to get out of the vicious circle of violence? What factors have not been taken into account in designing strategies of deterrence or international diplomacy? And what lessons might be drawn for the future?
Social perception and attribution in international relations
There is a wide variety of interpretations about the root causes of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the driving forces behind Russia’s aggressive international behaviour, and the motivations of Putin and his supporters. Putin’s speeches have been rigorously analysed, investigated, and decrypted. Attempts to incorporate grievance as a driving force in foreign policy arose in the context of the politics of resentment in Russia, which is seen as feeding into the language of entitlement and references to itself as a “great power.” When pointing to resentment linked to elite anti-Americanism as one component of Russian national identity, Khvostunova quotes Liah Greenfeld, who defines resentment “as a psychological state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy toward someone who is perceived as essentially equal in status but in reality is not equal, and the impossibility to act on these feelings.” According to another scholar, “political scientists normally shun emotions favouring, instead, institutionalist approaches based on rationalist foundations” (Sharafutdinova, 2016). The mobilization of morality politics to marginalize the liberal opposition is called, in this context, “Putin style national psychotherapy” (2016, p. 147).
Observers have already noted that there is little consistency across Russian ideas, references, and messages to the West – except for those that add to the portrayal of the West as an enemy and thus help in the consolidation of the Russian nation. But references and quotations in official speeches can mislead and confuse the casual Western observer who assigns too much importance to the literal expression of intentions while underestimating the role of interpretive bias in social perception. In other words, Western observers interpret Putin’s messages and speeches in the framework of concepts such as “empire,” “dictatorship,” and “institutions.” This takes place within the accepted discourse of political and interstate relations and its associated language, concepts, arguments, and driving forces. However, this may be inadequate to understand Russia’s interests.
Notwithstanding the formative role of institutions, the weight of the personal in the political behaviour of Russian officials is high. This includes their expectations, actions, and motivations. In this regard, there might be different connotations and understandings, for instance, of ethical terms such as “sincerity” or “reliability.” In fact, the role of the personal in politics has been demonstrated in a series of studies, including on the role of interpersonal relations between Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush in the demise of the Soviet Union (Brown, 2020) as well as on the greater degree of political trust by Russian society in personalities rather than institutions (Lussier, 2023). Aside from Putin’s personality, there is a political culture that reflects the patrimonial tradition of social and political interactions in Russia. This also extends to international relations, creating a peculiar mixture of personal emotions and expectations on the one hand and the acquired cynicism of the Soviet career path on the other.
In any case, the understanding by Western observers of Putin’s political behaviour might be significantly influenced by the mechanisms of attribution in social perception. In psychology, the latter (attribution) means inferences of the cause of the other’s and one’s own behaviour. While there are many theories of an attribution and their applications in the International Relations, the most relevant in this case is the notion of pre-emptive personal constructs by George Kelly, which reflect the observer’s preference of a particular explanation to the exclusion of others (Contrada, 2022). Where the Westerner sees an intention to create an empire, Russia may in fact be solely attempting to imitate the West (Holmes, Krastev, 2018) in the act of self-assertion – as argued by S. Radchenko (2022) when comparing Putin to the hero of Dostoyevsky (Rodion Raskolnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment’). This is also reflected in diverging objectives – gaining recognition of a status versus actual territorial expansion (in other words, territorial expansion as means of recognition of a status). Similarly, the current war might not be caused by hatred toward Ukrainians but instead may be a way to increase Putin’s brand by behaving as a spoiler – an aim that Ben Aris (2015) has argued that Putin achieved. As a result, the role of political or state-related factors might be greatly exaggerated when seeking to interpret the deeply personal attempts to resolve complexes developed throughout a leader’s life. In turn, from Putin’s side, his conspiratorial views of Western behaviour – fomenting revolutions in his neighbourhood – and heightened concerns over the security of his regime and himself are the result of an attribution bias based on his personal values and experiences.
Two sources of cynicism
The other component of international relations and political culture in Russia (and, to varying degrees, other post-Soviet states) is a double cynicism. One layer of cynicism is inherited by politicians from Soviet times. This is well described by Charles Fairbanks in “The Politics of Resentment” (1994), in which he argues that Soviets were raised in a system that “displayed a stark contrast between the loftiest principles and an arbitrary and callous way of ruling” (Fairbanks, 1994, p.36). This cynicism was expressed in “a double talk” that revealed the gap between rhetoric on the one hand and convictions, beliefs, and motivations on the other. This made verbal discourse and narratives highly conditional, serving primarily to mask the reality.
The other source of cynicism is explained in an earlier article of mine (2000) in which I argue that the realism of former communist bosses (unlike the idealism of the first generation of dissidents) in international relations is rooted in their career paths in the Soviet Union. The combination of flattery and bribery was the shortest route for ambitious party functionaries to gain access to the highest echelons of power in Moscow. In the 1990s, then-President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev (1993-2003) famously said that “Nowadays Polit-bureau is in Washington.”
The former Soviet leaders have quickly adjusted to the liberal international order, viewing pragmatism and realpolitik as guiding factors in contemporary international relations. They have interpreted liberal values such as freedom to be insignificant or simply instruments of influence, while viewing pragmatism as a weakness. Post-Soviet developments have only strengthened these perceptions, as the inconsistent application of norms and principles in international relations and the primacy of economic interests were used by leaders to involve Western actors in relations that ended up in a series of corruption schemes and scandals alongside energy and political dependency. All this adds to the sophisticated manipulation of ethical norms and conservative values that are tuned to the growing trends of illiberalism and far-right and nationalist movements in the West and the anti-imperial struggle in the Global South.
Impunity and the inconsistent application of norms
Several post-Soviet republics have wound up more centralized and authoritarian than others, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. In combination with the absence of institutions guaranteeing checks and balances, political power has been characterized by increasing personalization, making international relations and foreign policy hostage to the ruling autocrat’s perception of the world and the costs to their behaviour. One of the lessons drawn from what has been called Putin’s “strategic testing” policy (Feinstein, Pirro, 2021) is that he can get away with certain violations of the law both in his own country and abroad without significant penalties. There were many such examples, including the war in Georgia and the annexation of Crimea on an international level as well as the subjugation of Chechnya on a domestic level. None of these actions brought significant costs or consequences for Russia. Nor was the practice of territorial expansion discouraged in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Vladyslav Kanevskyi, the Ukrainian ambassador to Azerbaijan, wrote in a Facebook post commemorating the tragic events in Khojali that “what Russian Federation is doing today against Ukraine today once again proves, that impunity breeds new crimes.”
Putin’s growing sense of impunity contributed to the perceived inconsistency or the selective application of norms internationally. This “realpolitik” perception was strengthened by delayed reactions by the West to genocides, such as in Bosnia, or to the persecution of minorities, such as in Iraq. The West’s intervention in Afghanistan was viewed as yet another expression of power politics. This selective application of norms drew support for Putin’s position by countries in the Global South – and not only by authoritarian leaders – as the primary force challenging the “imperial” policies of the US. While the most recent UN General Assembly resolution, although non-binding, received 141 votes in favour compared to only 7 votes opposed, 32 members abstained, most of which were from the Global South. According to a report by Ukrainian Prism, “the overwhelming majority of the Global South are still in no hurry to call the Russian Federation an aggressor and do not join an anti-Russian sanctions” (Schevchenko, 2023). Most importantly two Asian powers – China and India – were among the countries that abstained.
Getting out of the vicious circle of military logic
Putin’s state of the nation speech on February 21, 2023, was interpreted by many as revealing nothing new. Indeed, his argument that the war is not so much with Ukraine but rather with the West – which is “trying to destroy Russia and to make our people suffer” – is nothing new. Neither were the references to orienting the economy to domestic consumption – familiar from Soviet times – anything new. However, Putin articulated in his speech an image of a strong Russia, understood not as a country possessing a great culture and history but instead as a country made up of good and friendly people – “generous, compassionate and helping” – thus trying to respond to the corroding social effects of Russia’s inhumane and destructive war and addressing the need to create a more positive national identity.
The rebranding of Russia, as I wrote in a previous article, has been continually hijacked by Putin and instrumentalised for his political aims. In his speech he seems to move away from the image of Russians as victors in battle to the image of a Russia composed of a talented new generation that is oriented towards the future – which is perhaps a reflection of the growing unpopularity of the war. In turn, the notion of Russians being treated as “second class citizens” in the West sounded like a remarkable projection of the deeply personal feelings and complexes of Putin himself.
In any case, the resort to war is a result of Russia’s weakness and the failure to create a new vision for Russia (Alieva, 2022). Could the international community have prevented this use of hard power in the middle of Europe? Russia’s unattractive political model and backward economy might have been addressed through social empowerment to reform and democratize by recognizing the country’s capacity and potential at the relevant multilateral level. The calls directed to the Russian public from the EU to recognize their European identity fell on deaf ears once the war had already started. On a personal level, the policy message to Putin over the preceding years should not have been “You are not an impressive person, but you can get away with murder because you are in charge of a big country” but rather “You are an intelligent person, but you must follow the rules and none of the violations you commit will be left unpunished.”
There is no doubt that a resilient and proportionate level of military defence is required for the security of states and societies, democracy, and freedom. However, the war in Ukraine is important from the point of view of lessons learned and conclusions drawn about the West’s past policies. Putin’s perception of his impunity combined with the West’s prioritization of pragmatic interests over values, its selective application of norms, its underestimation of the personal character of political behaviour of Russian officials and neglect for a positive national identity as a basic societal need – are all factors that contributed to the failure to anticipate, deter, and prevent a war in the heart of Europe that continues to claims thousands of precious lives.
After the war began, the fastest solution – the rapid military defeat of Putin followed by an international legal trial for those involved in war crimes – would have helped address the sense of impunity. However, the slow response by the West and nuclear blackmail by the Russian leader have delayed any resolution to the war at an extremely high humanitarian cost. In this regard, the recent decision of the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin is an important step in this direction.
In combatting a militant regime, the West must differentiate between the governing parties and the society and upon and along with an atonement give credit to the potential of Russian society to reform itself in order to avoid exacerbating feelings of resentment. Diplomatic negotiations will not resolve the root causes of the issue, because, as demonstrated above, the current situation is the result of long-term systemic factors affecting international relations. As one of the lessons learned, the international community – and the West first and foremost – should send the right signals showing a consistent application of norms and resistance to blackmail. Most importantly, their responses should devalue any status void of normative content or not supported by normative actions in order to discourage destructive behaviour that may, in the long term, be among the possible ways out of the current situation in which the courageous people of Ukraine are now paying daily with their lives.
Destruction and mass murder should not be rewarded by recognizing the actions of a spoiler, and the best response would be based on the consistent application of norms and justice in addressing violations of international rules and crimes against humanity, regardless of the identity of the victims or geopolitical considerations. In the longer-term perspective, multilateral structures that prioritize and recognize universal values based on respect for international norms while also devaluing the legitimacy of military force and the physical size of a country should take their rightful place in the global order.
Dr. Leila Alieva is an affiliate of Russian and East European Studies, Oxford University School for Global and Area Studies, and a part-time tutor at the Oxford Department for Continued Education, previously Senior Common Room member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and an academic visitor. She was founder and a president of two think-tanks in Azerbaijan. In 2018 she was a research fellow at the Institute Fur Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna, Austria. She was Richard von Weizsacker Fellow at Robert Bosch Academy in 2021-2022. Her research is in the EU and the area studies – ENP, EaP and Azerbaijan, Caucasus, Former Soviet Union; along with Russia, energy security, democratization and civil society in the oil rich states.
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Media:
“The West is struggling to forge the new arsenal of democracy” The Economist, 19.02.2023
“War in Ukraine has changed Europe forever”. The New York Times, 26.02.2023
Social media:
Vladyslav Kanevskyi Ambassador of Ukraine to Azerbaijan, FB statement, 26.02.2023.