Soft power
Watching Russians' teary-eyed support for Mr. Putin over Crimea, you couldn't help but see a different side of Russia. It isn't all about spheres of influence and nostalgia for empire - there is also a feeling among the Russians that they have been blocked and hemmed in from legitimate aspirations such as international trade. The mistrustful treatment by the West is reminiscent of the Cold War in ways less obvious than the rhetoric of toughness brings to mind.
Russians are all too conscious that their country was traumatized by the collapse of Central Planning, with Russian standard of living falling by one-fourth (imagine that your job was replaced by one paying only 75% as much.). If it resembles the massive invasion and sacrifice of WWII to some, surely they can be forgiven. And this translates into an achievement of those Russophobes who would humiliate Russia every chance they get, (and then gambol about, chortling with glee), at least in the minds of many Russians.
I would make two points about this chasm of perceptions. The first is that we missed a golden opportunity for soft power when we did so little to help after the transition. For a country who recognized the opportunities to win hearts and minds in post-War Marshall Plan spending, and then again in cementing the Camp David accords with a stream of assistance, this must rank as a major failure. I hope historians will analyze it carefully.
(My boss at OMB at the time looked me straight in the eye over this, and said "No one wants their fingerprints on it." Put that on the tombstones of Bush I and of Clinton, I say).
The second is that Putin will live to regret choosing hard power over soft, one day. It is frequently argued that we in North America cannot fathom the patchwork of ancient animosities that is the old world, and that Russia still has to fight for territory just as Israel or Turkey does. My response is that the soft power of mutual economic cooperation overcomes that need, and that Russia's need to cling to Stans in the Caucasus is as manufactured as its encirclement by a hostile West. Only by persisting in acting as though they are under threat can they make such a paranoid worldview seem reasonable, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Which brings us back to the tearful backers who see Crimea as the bastion of Russian civilization. Soft power comes from within, as surely as hard power does, and Russia's pathetic need to continue lording it over someone is the source of their lack of actual persuasiveness.
Russians are all too conscious that their country was traumatized by the collapse of Central Planning, with Russian standard of living falling by one-fourth (imagine that your job was replaced by one paying only 75% as much.). If it resembles the massive invasion and sacrifice of WWII to some, surely they can be forgiven. And this translates into an achievement of those Russophobes who would humiliate Russia every chance they get, (and then gambol about, chortling with glee), at least in the minds of many Russians.
I would make two points about this chasm of perceptions. The first is that we missed a golden opportunity for soft power when we did so little to help after the transition. For a country who recognized the opportunities to win hearts and minds in post-War Marshall Plan spending, and then again in cementing the Camp David accords with a stream of assistance, this must rank as a major failure. I hope historians will analyze it carefully.
(My boss at OMB at the time looked me straight in the eye over this, and said "No one wants their fingerprints on it." Put that on the tombstones of Bush I and of Clinton, I say).
The second is that Putin will live to regret choosing hard power over soft, one day. It is frequently argued that we in North America cannot fathom the patchwork of ancient animosities that is the old world, and that Russia still has to fight for territory just as Israel or Turkey does. My response is that the soft power of mutual economic cooperation overcomes that need, and that Russia's need to cling to Stans in the Caucasus is as manufactured as its encirclement by a hostile West. Only by persisting in acting as though they are under threat can they make such a paranoid worldview seem reasonable, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Which brings us back to the tearful backers who see Crimea as the bastion of Russian civilization. Soft power comes from within, as surely as hard power does, and Russia's pathetic need to continue lording it over someone is the source of their lack of actual persuasiveness.
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