“Would you stand in front of a tank?” a student asked during a lecture. “Who are we, what is our moral superiority to lecture the Russians?” asked another. “Our invasions in the Middle East were just as odious.” Despite that murmur, the majority of the Dutch and European, and witness the UN vote, even the vast majority of the world’s population condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But what’s the next step? Should we join the new Foreign Legion? Sending more anti-aircraft guns? Invent more sanctions? Or would you rather demonstrate for peace, talk to Putin and offer Russia accession to the EU?
In times of urgent military crises like this one, the primary concern is aid to the Ukrainian people. They are entitled to anything we can offer them, be it weapons, supplies or shelter, and it may cost us dearly – right up to the limit of nuclear escalation.
But what I’ve missed is that we also need help ourselves. Not material, but immaterial and ideological.
Because our reactions are substantively helpless and sometimes quite hopeless. ‘Putin is insane’, the ‘invasion is irrational’ I hear an entire camp of colleagues shouting. The other side thinks he has a point, that we should think more in geopolitical spheres of influence, and that we should keep the peace at all costs. Even at the expense of Ukraine.
Those reactions say everything about us, the West, the Netherlands, but nothing about Putin. And there lies our helplessness. Because what should we do with Putin? What the hell drives him? Just as in dealing with terrorists, after every attack, reasons and triggers for the radicalization are sought. Are they root causes such as poverty, fear, deprivation? Is it a lack of recognition? Shouldn’t we have helped the radicalizing person sooner and better instead of further irritating him? Too little is taken seriously what the radicalized perpetrators themselves say. That they did it for their god, for their nation, that they have a sacred dream, and that they pursue it at all costs.
Going back to tsardom
I have also referred elsewhere to Niels Drost’s graduation research. In his thesis (with the beautiful title Tsar-struck), he shows that from 1999 Putin has systematically mobilized Russian history in his speeches and statements. The Russian leader hardly went back to the Soviet era, but to the tsarist empire of the 18th and 19th centuries. Initially, Putin spoke enthusiastically about the ‘enlightenment ideals’ of Peter the Great. He described Russia as ‘a window onto Europe’, and honored Tsar Alexander I (who defeated Napoleon as part of the Allied coalition in 1814/1815) as the guardian of the European values that Russia shares with the continent. After the Orange Revolution (2004), the war in Georgia (2008) and the major protests in his own country (2011), Putin changed his tone. He began to embrace Tsar Alexander II and III, referring to Catherine the Great. Why? These were the tsars who expanded, consolidated, and, in the case of Alexander II, relentlessly carried out the “Russification” of Ukraine and Crimea.
From then on, Putin was more often referred to as ‘vozhd’, the leader who is above people, land and history. A transcendent dimension was added: Putin invested in the construction of hundreds of churches. He had already reintroduced the double-headed eagle (after the Soviet Union abolished it in 1917) as a weapon for the Russian republic. Those two headings indicate the unity of church and state, and the myth of the Russian Empire as ‘Third Rome’, and some continuation of the Byzantine Empire. Putin’s Russia is a third empire – called to greatness, to the salvation of that supposedly indivisible Russian nation, with Putin as tsar.
Last week, Russian patriarch and church leader Kirill openly confirmed that myth: Putin’s adversaries are demons, “they embody evil.” And only Russia can curb that evil. Putin himself elaborated on this last Thursday: ‘The Russian people are one and indivisible’, and Ukraine ‘is the anti-Russia, supported by the West, which must be overthrown’. In short, this is no longer propaganda, Putin himself has come to believe in it. He wages a holy battle, with his dream of the Holy Russian Empire as his stake.
Religiously harnessed
Negotiation is of course still a must. To this end, NATO, the EU, and the UN must pull out all the stops. That means arms and aid must be delivered in the coming days, while the war is still raging, and strength must be shown at the alliance’s borders. That also means that all conversations must bear in mind that Putin has a set of non-negotiable values. That he is ideologically and almost religiously harnessed in it. That he is willing to sacrifice half his people for his dream of imperial greatness.
We can do nothing with holy warriors in the Kremlin. We’d rather eat each other and go down bickering about parliamentary troubles at Volt. Yet every negotiator knows that you can only negotiate effectively 1) if you know your opponent and 2) if you have your own story, and if you have your own non-negotiable values in order. So the question is: what do we take into the bargain, and what do we dare to put permanently in the orbit of the tank?
Beatrice de Graaf is professor of the history of international relations in Utrecht.