Alena Ledeneva
I’m just putting my clock for an hour, because we are supposed to finish exactly at 19:00. I am delighted to welcome you all to Chatham House tonight. We have a fantastic opportunity to hear first-hand from Keir Giles, who has written a very interesting book, Moscow Rules, which also sounds like Moscow rules, which also could be named How Russia Really Works, and could also be named Everything You Wanted to Know About Russia But Forgot to Ask. So, I’m very delighted to introduce our speaker tonight. Keir Giles, professional experience, apart from being associated with Chatham House and Russia and Eurasia Programme, includes fascinating experience as a Translator, Stand-up Comedian, Pilot, an Actor, an Interpreter, Librarian twice, which you will see represented in the book, and award-winning Radio Journalist, National Small Business Award winner, Editor, Web-Designers, Security Guard, Radio Presenter, and most importantly, Anatomy Teacher, which is also absolutely essential for dissecting the complexity of Russia today.
Now, finally, he specialises in Russian cyber and information warfare, which is, of course, everything that we want to know about. I would like to mention that tonight is a livestreamed event. We also are on record, so please prepare your questions. We will leave at least half an hour for you to quiz Kier on his fascinating work, and if you do ask a question, please introduce yourself and state your affiliation. But without further ado, I suggest we start with an introduction of the book, which is actually going to be on sale at the very special price of £20 in the corner over there. No need to rush, enough copies for everyone, and Kier will also be available to sign after the event. Over to you.
Kier Giles
Thank you, Alena. Thank you, and thanks to everybody for coming to sit in a basement on a beautiful June evening in February. It’s delightful to see so many of the – of old friends and colleagues in the audience, particularly the old friends and colleagues with whom I disagree violently about Russia, and how it got that way, and what to do about it, so it’s going to be quite a fun evening. The driving impetus for writing the book, Moscow Rules, was a deep and indelible feeling of déjà vu that I and colleagues felt when we were invited into policy seminars to ask what to do about Russia, and asked the same questions over and over again, time and again, year-after-year, in fact, decade-after-decade, and by and large tended to give the same answers, which had next to no impact on policy whatsoever. So, the defining characteristic of Western approaches to Russia in the post-Cold War period has been repeating the same action, while hoping for a different result. As a well-known definition of that behaviour, which I’ve managed to resist the temptation of including in the book, but the main point is – my suggestion is, maybe, it’s time to try something a little bit different, because the results of what we’ve been trying so far are a very stable and predictable cycle in the relationship between not only this country and Russia, but the whole of the West and Russia.
There is a reset in the relationship, and it starts off with high hopes for a new beginning. Then those drift and stagnate as the reality of the completely incompatible strategic parities of both side start to set in. Then there is a period of disillusionment, when the West continues to pretend that all is well in the relationship, and not listen to Russia’s increasing frustration, and, finally, there’s a point of crisis, which, in the last two iterations, has resulted in an armed conflict with one of Russia’s neighbours. Then there’s a reset, we’re back to business as usual, and the whole thing starts all over again. And back in the last part of 2011, I wrote a paper, a study, about the relationship between NATO and Russia, which described this cycle in some detail, and the number of iterations it had already been through, since the end of the Cold War. And I interviewed European and Russian Politicians and officials and experts for it, and they described it to me, in terms of lyrical allegories. They talked about the phases of the moon, and the rhythmical progression of the seasons, and the coming and going of the tides, and I interviewed an American as well, and he had his own cultural reference point for it, too. He said, “It’s like the movie Groundhog Day.” But the point that came out of that study was that the cycle was entirely predictable, and that the crises were getting deeper and worse each time, and so at the end of it I suggested that, based on where we are in the relationship at this moment, despite the fact that NATO is still proclaiming strategic partnership with Russia (does anybody remember that?), we’re probably due for another and worsened, deeper crisis, and, sure enough, just under two years’ later, along comes Ukraine, and we start all over again.
Now, the problem we discern at the moment is that we might be in the phase of the crisis when people are looking for a reset. People who are looking for a reason to go back to business as usual, and not continue with an unsustainable state of confrontation. We see language from the Foreign Office, saying, for example, I quote, “We’re thinking more of moving towards being more focused on collaboration.” The question I ask is, why would we assume that this is going to work out any better this time than it has on any previous occasion?
Now, in the course of the research for the book, what I’ve found is that these patterns go back not just decades, but in fact centuries. I’ve come up time and again with recurring themes about how Russia treats the world, and how Russia treats its own citizens as well. Descriptions from centuries past, which are instantly recognisable today, and can be transferred word-to-word into things that we’re writing about Russia now. Some of them were well-known and expected, others surprised me slightly, and what I’d like to do to answer some of the many questions that you’ve been promised will be answered at this seminar is, is try to repeat some of the questions that we get asked about policy towards Russia, and some of the answers we can give, most of which are explained, in greater detail, in the book.
There is, for example, the constant question of what Russia wants, which it’s impossible to summarise, even in a book many times the size of mine, and all the moreso in a half-hour policy discussion, but I’ll try to boil it down to one sentence. In effect, Russia wants it to be 1914 again, because then, the aspiration to great power status that Russia seeks would not be dismissed by other countries as irrelevant, but would actually be understood by countries on their own terms, and the entitlement that that gives to dominion over your neighbours, whether it’s expressed as privileged interests, or a sphere of influence, or a cordon sanitaire. Anyway, a means of limiting the sovereignty of those neighbours, so that they do not pose a problem for you. And, of course, the doctrine in not interfering in the internal affairs of other great powers, unless, of course, it’s Russia doing the interfering. And respect, in Russian terms, which is almost universally the terms of the 19th century, as opposed to those which we consider gather a country respect today. But the result of this is the process of expanding Russia’s domain, reducing threats by pushing them farther away, as all possible, continues today, not through the traditional means of military expansion and occupation, but instead, through subversion, through regime change, and the driving attitude underneath it is the end of empire that has been postponed. Russia has not travelled as far down the road that other post-imperial powers have, after losing its external dominions.
Several decades after the end of empire, we haven’t seen the post-imperial shock, that, for example, was Algeria for France, or Suez for the UK, or 1974 for Portugal. There hasn’t been the readjustment of attitudes to give Russia the same kind of relaxed attitude to its former dominions, as, for example, Sweden has today. And that’s just a symptom of the way Russia’s understanding of international relations was frozen during the period of the Soviet Union, to re-emerge and confront an unsuspecting Europe at the end of the Cold War. The world had changed, but some Russian preconceptions and assumptions had not, and this is one of the roots of the clash of attitudes and assumptions, and geostrategic priorities that we see between Russia and the West.
The underlying question that gets debated perennially is whether Russia believes itself sincerely to be under a threat from the West, from NATO, whether Russia is in fact an unreconstructed expansionist power, or is driven by defensive motivations. My suggestion is that while that point is academically interesting, the point at which it was relevant is long past. It doesn’t matter anymore, because perception is reality, and is now driving Russian decisions.
Even if the threat was originally invented to distract from domestic pressures, or even if we swallow the argument that Russia is always acting defensively when it lashes out, the result is the same, that Russia sees itself to be in conflict with the West in every available domain, except open military clashes. And, of course, it is preparing for open military clashes. This intense and immensely expensive programme of military transformation and rearmament and reorganisation that has now been going for just over a decade is driven by the idea that conflict is inevitable, and as put by one of the former Chiefs of General Staff in Russia, Yuri Baluyevsky, that it is an immutable axiom that war is coming.
Another question we get asked time and again is, do we have a Russia problem or a Putin problem? And my answer, very firmly, is that, no, this is not Putin. This is not a country of one person. This is Putin enacting longstanding Russian security preoccupations and ideas about how you deal with security problems, instead of inventing them. But in addition to that, we have to bear in mind that President Putin is not the worst leader that Russia could have, or has ever had. By many different parameters, whether it’s the economic management or mismanagement of the country, whether it’s the wellbeing of the citizens, whether it’s even human rights, Russia has done far, far worse in the past.
In fact, the current situation, despite this drift towards authoritarianism that we see at the moment, where Russia is not imprisoning and murdering its own or foreign citizens on an industrial scale is actually hugely anomalous in Russian history. In fact, it’s unprecedented. We are still, however much we complain about what’s happening in Russia today, in a period of unprecedent liberalism, which means we should be careful what we wish for when we wish for change. I cite repeated instances of optimism triumphing over evidence in the book. People who think that the end of the Putin regime, as they describe it, in other words, the Russian Government, is imminent, and then, of course, when their predictions of imminent collapse don’t materialise, there are new and new justifications sought for why exactly it’s going to happen next week. But, we should be careful, because change in Russia is not always change, and when it is, it is most certainly not always for the better.
One of the things that did take me by surprise, when researching for the book, was looking back to 1917, and how the apprehension and fear that accompanied the forced abdication of the Tsar was also a source of jubilation and rejoicing in those countries that had seen Russia as a despotic tyranny, from which it was now being released, and therefore, because that tyranny was removed, things must now get better. How wrong they were, and how wrong we could be if we wish for change in Russia at any price. So, I would suggest not aiming simply, or even hoping for a replacement for Vladimir Putin. The alternative may not necessarily be better, whether for Russia or for the rest of the world.
Into conclusion, what is it that I’m actually suggesting that we do differently and in order to break that repetitive cycle that I referred to? I’m suggesting that, instead of pretending that there are compatible interests and common views on how the world should be run between the West and Russia, we should actually recognise the incompatibly, the fundamental differences, the fact that the status of the frontline states is something on which Russia and the West are never going to agree, and also recognise that Donald Trump wildcards aside, neither side is actually going to change in the foreseeable future. We may hope for a different Russia, but this is not a strategy.
Instead, learning to live with the differences would lead to a far more stable relationship. Returning to the relative stability of recognising those differences and contradictions, as opposed to pretending they don’t exist. Now, when I describe that situation, people tell me that I am talking about something which resembles the late Cold War, and I want to emphasise that I am not one of those people that says, we are in a new Cold War. The differences are fundamental. At the same time, there are certain similarities, like the ideological gap between the two sides, which is often understated; the growing isolation of Russians from sources of outside information. There are symptoms of Cold War light, but at the same time, that late Cold War period, when the boundaries and parameters of behaviour for Russia and the West more or less understood, and relations were not friendly, but stable, is a less dangerous position than the one we’re in now.
However, in order to get to that, if we are in a new pseudo-Cold War, and at the very early stages, there are a lot of dangerous moments we have to pass first in order to establish those boundaries and parameters. There are the wars in Korea in Vietnam. There are the Berlin crises of 1948 and 1961. There’s the Cuban Missile Crisis, there’s a whole host of other, less spectacular, but still important and potentially dangerous defining moments that we have to go through, not to mention the patchwork of smaller, but still deeply unpleasant proxy wars around the world as each side vies for influence. But my suggestion is if we want to arrive at a position of stability, while minimising the damage and the fallout that is caused to both sides, the best time to start is now. Thank you.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you very much [applause]. Well, if you could please give me a sign just how many questions we might have, thank you, and I was also asked to ask you to please switch off your mobile phones, if you would, and we are going to take questions as they come, and I was also asked to ask something to get the discussion going. And I cannot help being academic here. As an Author of some books on Russia, I know only too well just how hard it is to package the complexity and multi-disciplinarily that is necessary in order to understand Russia in one book, and to make it readable. And Kier has done a fantastic, fantastic job on that, and congratulations. I can’t help, though, asking you three things. One question, which would come from social anthropology, which is, please state your own bias. One would come from sociology, which would be how did you select your sources? And the third one, which would come from political science, which is how would you know if you were wrong?
Kier Giles
Hmmm hmm, okay. Bias, sources, and how would I know if I’m wrong? My bias, I think, is the one that I’ve already described, and the fact of having worked on and with Russia, and effectively made a career out of studying and trying to explain Russia, for quite a few decades now, and detecting these very persistent patterns. On each occasion, validating the hypothesis that I put in the book, that the people who make the most accurate and reliable predictions about Russia are the people who have the most cynical and pessimistic attitude to start with.
Now, there’s a long-running debate in the Russia-watching community, whether you get that way through watching Russia, or whether it actually helps to be cynical and pessimistic in the first place, but the basic answer is that I am entirely comfortable with being called alarmist, because it happens regularly and, generally speaking, the things that I’ve been alarmist about generally happen a short while later. For instance, I’ve mentioned the Crimea conflict already. There’s one very specific instance that comes to mind with the old Conflict Studies Research Centre that used to work within the UK Defence Academy, and of which, at least four former alumni are actually sitting in the room at the moment, which throughout the summer of 2008, was briefing outgoing British defence attachés to Moscow, that, “You know there’s going to be a war with Georgia this year, don’t you?” The point is, Russia is not always as unpredictable as it seems. There are these familiar patterns. There are these familiar responses to stimuli that you see time and time again, and therefore, it is possible to draw conclusions, that if you repeat the same experiments, you might get the same result.
So, my bias is having watched it for a long time and realised that there is a certain degree of consistency in what happens, and that moves us onto the sources. Looking through as much evidence as I could find to either support or disprove this theory, everything I find actually backs it up. And, Alena, you know that I’ve dug particularly deep, wherever possible, in order to find the supporting evidence in this book. Now, an early draft of the book was shown to some trusted academic colleagues. Many of them suggested that I should actually quote people less, and have more of my own voice coming through. It was described as a crowd-sourced volume, because, basically, it was everybody else being quoted, but Alena and I were discussing, just in the anteroom before we came in, how I quote Alena repeatedly through the books. I’m delighted she’s actually chairing today. It turns out I’ve also quoted stuff that she didn’t know existed online, or had ever been published. So, I think that’s an indication that I’ve tried, really, to delve as far as I possibly can, in order to gather the evidence that will either support or disprove.
Final question, an extremely important one, how would I know if I’m wrong? There are plenty of people who tell me that I’m wrong. Fortunately, they are usually the same people, and they tend not to change their opinion when it turns out that, actually, I was right, which brings me back to the question of my own bias. I have tried extremely hard, throughout this book, to resist the temptation of determinism, and assuming that just because this is the way it has always happened, that’s the way it’s going to happen in the future. Unfortunately, it’s hard to push against the compelling weight of evidence that, actually, that is how it works.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. Right, we had a question over there, somewhere. Right, let’s start from the back.
Ewan Grant
Yeah, thank you very much. Ewan Grant, Chatham House Member, a former Law Enforcement Intelligence Analyst, covering the ex-Soviet states, but Law Enforcement. My question for Kier Giles is, are there any positive surprises in the reaction to your book, or that the findings that were coming out? Have various people reacted the way you expected, or have there been negative reactions, where you perhaps expected a positive, or positive reactions, where you expected a negative, particularly, perhaps, among the Russian community in the West? Thank you.
Kier Giles
Do you want me to take one at a time or three?
Alena Ledeneva
Would you like to start…?
Kier Giles
Can do…
Alena Ledeneva
…answering one-by-one…
Kier Giles
Yes.
Alena Ledeneva
…the questions?
Kier Giles
And shortly, okay. That’s a shame, because there’s a long answer to that. Ewan, yes, the reactions to the book, it’s been a mixture of the entirely predictable and of the mildly surprising. The entirely predictable part was that the strongest criticism of the book has come from people who either haven’t read it or have read it, but don’t actually care what it says, because they’re going to say what they want to say anyway, regardless of what’s actually in the book. Now, the primary instance of that, of course, is people looking at the subtitle and saying, “Well, how can you say that Russia confronts the West, when it’s actually the West that’s attacking Russia all the time?” because they haven’t read that there’s actually a significant chunk of the book that discusses exactly that issue.
The mildly surprising part was the reaction that wasn’t – well, I suppose it was an indirect form of criticism of the book, which is that the way it was used to bait in a cyberattack on Chatham House a few days after it was actually published. Chatham House, Associate Fellows and possibly other staff members received an email saying, “Here are the sample chapters from Kier Giles’s book. Let us know what you think.” Apparently, originating from me or from my fictitious Assistant, followed up by a phone call in a thick Russian accent saying, “How did you like the sample chapter?” So, it’s an interesting mix of technical capability, that was at least respectable, and social engineering that was absolutely abysmal.
Anyway, we – I think the assessment is still going on and how many people actually fell for the Russian accent and clicked the link. The point with that, though, was that it’s – it wasn’t actually an attack directly on the book. It was using the book as a means to attack Chatham House, and neither the book nor I were actually important enough to be the targets of this. If I had any form of academic ego, it would be severely bruised now. However, the main onslaught of criticism I think is still to come. We haven’t heard, for instance, from the Russian Embassy in London, what they think of the book, although James Nixey did send them a copy, because he thought they’d enjoy it. We’ll see. We’ll see what comes out, over the next weeks and months. And of course, in-between those two, it’s mildly gratifying to see that the five-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, etc., are racking up, but that’s by-the-by.
Alena Ledeneva
Right, thank you. We will take two question in this.
John Preston
My name is John Preston, Chatham House, and European section. My question, really, is about the benefits or otherwise of Heads of State and Heads of Government actually meeting. We had a meeting here some years ago when Mikhail Gorbachev actually came to London and held a meeting, and the quality of his speech, and the quality of his answers to questions was most impressive. Is that an example, perhaps, for us, at the moment, to follow?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. Over to you.
Stephen Porter
Thank you. My name’s Stephen Porter, I’m a Private Member of Chatham House. Would you say that the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union was accompanied by an almost systemic failure of Western foreign policy, specifically American foreign policy towards Russia? Because, for instance, at the time of 9/11, I think it’s fair to say that the Russian Government’s expressions of horror were very sincere, and there appeared to be very little positive response from the American Government towards it.
Alena Ledeneva
Shall we take one more?
Kier Giles
Certainly, yeah.
Alena Ledeneva
Yes, would you, please?
Cornelia Navari
Cornelia Navari, Academic, University of Buckingham. How would you fit into your thesis the Gorbachev-Yeltsin period, which would seem to contradict a constant power aspiration?
Kier Giles
Okay, thank you. Meetings between Head of States, yes, I think the answer that you’re looking for and expecting is, yes, I think it is critically important, not only because you might find that a Head of State, when performing, is actually quite impressive, although with Vladimir Putin, it might be impressive for all the wrong reasons. But because of another aspect of informal systems in Russia, which Alena has described in her books repeatedly, and which I have tried to emulate in my own, which is the importance of personal relationships over institutional understandings and agreements. Which, of course, has its advantages and its disadvantages. If you establish a personal rapport, for example, with Vladimir Putin, this is a benefit, but there is the downside that we see in Putin’s repeated disappointment that that rapport cannot actually be leveraged into some positive advantage for Russia. Time and again we see the one-to-one personal relationships being established, and then the disappointment that, actually, that doesn’t translate into the individuals that Putin has reached a relationship with being able to organise – to influence their organisations or their countries, be it Berlusconi, or Barroso, or, possibly, at this point, Trump. In each case, the democratic checks and balances, and the fact that they are based on consensus and rigid institutional policies, means that you cannot have one single individual who’s deterred their acting policy.
So, on the one hand, yes, it is a potential avenue for exploring means of communicating directly with the Russian leadership, on the other hand, there need to be very careful bounds and parameters, and management of expectation for what exactly can be achieved through that process, in order that we do not have yet another disappointment for President Putin, which confirms for him this suspicion that the West is conspiring against him, and it is the Deep State within each country that is preventing the elected leaders from actually having their way.
On the Western foreign policy failure since the end of the USSR, you can point to individual moments when things went horribly wrong. The biggest misconception, I think, was the assumption, and it was widespread, and it was entirely forgivable, and it happened in Russia as well, that once the USSR ended, Russia would actually seek to re-join the Western community of nations on the same terms as everybody else. Now, that was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, under the circumstances of the time, but it overlooks, and this comes to the second question as well, it overlooks the fact that the drivers of Russian behaviour, whether it is international, whether it’s social, whether it’s political, go far, far deeper, and the Soviet Union was not an anomalous period, in many ways. In fact, it enshrined and preserved many of the enduring features of Russian life. So, there is a lot further to go to bringing Russia to what the West thinks of as a normal country than simply changing the flag, temporarily changing the national anthem, rewriting the constitution a couple of times. There’s much more that needs to be done.
Specifically, on that question about the attitudes at 9/11, yes, it’s true, and Russia, I think, was entirely genuine in offering help, support, solidarity, because let’s not forget that throughout the preceding decade, Russia had, with some justification, argued that it was standing alone against Islamist terrorism, whereas, countries like the UK were instead offering asylum and support to terrorists. So, there’s the – one of those rare moments when Russia sees, actually, now we’re all on the same page, because we do, for once, have a common threat and a common challenge. The process by which that opportunity was squandered was long and complex, and it wasn’t all down to Western policy failures. It was also, of course, the fundamental mismatch of both expectations and demands on the world between Russia and the West. It was inevitable that the euphoria that last – was not going to last for long. However, yes, I agree with you that there were moments at which a better understanding of the true nature of Russia would have led to fewer policy mistakes.
And Cornelia’s question, well, yes, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the early period broke the mould in many ways, and one of the things that we argue, time and again, is that when considering Russia’s options, we should not be looking at the last quarter century, because that’s the anomaly. That’s the part that stands out from history, that’s the part which is not typical of Russian behaviours. But, again, one of the things that I had not fully appreciated, before doing the detailed research on the book, despite having covered some of these events at the time, it took an effort of memory to recall that Russia’s expansionist instincts, during the Gorbachev and early Yeltsin periods, were just as strong as they are today. It’s just that they did not have the means and the capability to realise them. Their instincts to try to regather the countries of the Soviet Union, within some sort of successor organisation under recon – under Russian control never really stopped. We underestimate it because, most of the time, those efforts were so ineffective we really didn’t notice, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t happening.
So, yes, the post-Cold War period is a departure from history for Russia, but it has not been a departure from Russian persistent attitudes over time.
Alena Ledeneva
Right. We’ve got one question on the left, one on the right, and one in the middle.
Kataryna Wolczuk
Kataryna Wolczuk, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme. Kier, I think I would like to push your optimism a bit more, because you analysed Russia, but it’s not just Russia we’re dealing with, it’s also the West’s own identity and understanding how the world works. And, you know, at so many academic conference around Europe, it is the autoimmune disease, people, Academics arguing that the West caused the conflict. So, what makes you optimistic that your message on Russia is that there’s not a degree of determinist, in terms of, actually, how we interpret, and the Western ability to abandon this Fukuyama moment or legacy that we still live with. Thank you.
Alena Ledeneva
Would you like to go…?
Kier Giles
Yeah, let’s…
Alena Ledeneva
Yeah?
Kier Giles
…answer it.
Alena Ledeneva
Okay.
Joseph Dutton
Thank you. Joseph Dutton and Member here at Chatham House, and also from E3G, which is an energy and climate change think tank. Russian state revenue is around 40% from oil and gas. If you pose that against the fact that Europe is setting itself on path to, potentially, net zero by 2050, a big part of that is not weaning itself just off its own supplies of natural gas, but also, that that it imports from Russia, and the EU is the largest customer for gas from, and vice versa, in terms of supply. So, as that falls away, potentially, in the coming decades, which it needs to, to be climate compatible, how will Russia respond, both financially and with its own – balancing its own economy, and how will that affect Russia’s political engagement, not only with transit countries, think of the Ukraine and Poland, but also just generally, in terms of how it approaches Central Europe countries, which are currently big clients for its gas supplies? And we’re already seeing that effect, in terms of climate denialism, and how it’s influencing these countries. So, how do you see that panning out in the coming decades?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you, there is one in the middle.
James Richardson
Hi, James Richardson, over from Russia. My question, kind of, concerns accepting these expansionist, kind of, ideas that you were talking about, on the part of Western leaders, and maybe wanting to know whether that would – if we accept that Russia is going to try and be expansionist, if we can engage with these desires on a political level, if that can be a way of resolving geopolitical struggles?
Kier Giles
Great. So, Kataryna, yes, you said you wanted to push my optimism, but I wasn’t quite sure in which direction you wanted to push it until it got to the end of the question. I have to say, I – despite the impression I may have mistakenly, have given, I’m not really an optimist, and that includes, in terms of the – any potential impact of this book. I don’t think we are going to divert from this repetitive cycle. I don’t think we are going to ever overcome the suggestion that you referred to, by Western academics, that, actually, it is the West that is to blame for pushing Russia into these behaviours, as opposed to it being something which has been consistent over centuries, before anybody had even dreamed of NATO. So, I wouldn’t like anybody to think that I’m coming from this from the point of view of now everything can be different. That’s not the case at all. It will continue to be an uphill struggle, and the process of dealing with Russia will continue to be messy, expensive and unpleasant, in part, due to Western policy mistakes. That is something we’re going to have to deal with.
Now, the by-product of that, of course, is that every time things go horribly wrong in the Russian relationship, it helps people like me pay the rent, but that’s not really a justification for hoping it continues like that. I would like to think that there might eventually come a time when there is a stable relationship with Russia, but the experience of the Cold War that I was referring to, suggests that this takes decades, if not generations, with many mistakes along the way.
The – yes, Russia’s economy and its reliance on energy supplies, and how it might respond when it realises that that is a strictly time-limited source of revenue. I think Russia is in a state of denial on many indicators that suggest it is going to be a very, very different country, in a relatively short space of time, and I’m talking as short as 20 or 30 years from now. If you take one of the biggest indicators of change within Russia that has been brewing now already for several decades, the demographic – I was about to say crisis, but the demographic – it’s hard to think of a word that encompasses the biblical nature of the demographic collapse at the end of the Soviet Union, and the way that is going to feed into every single way about how Russia defines itself as a state, in a short period of time, whether it is economically, or socially, or politically, or possibly, geographically as well.
And the economic challenges that Russia faces because it has not, up until this point, grasped the challenges and decided to tackle them, are going to be just one aspect of that. And I think it – the thrust of your question was, how will Russia actually seek to address these challenges when they become critical, because the past performance indicates they’re not going to be addressed before they are critical? Let’s not forget this is a country which three times, either two or three, depending on how you count 1905, during the 20th century spent itself into state collapse, pursuing completely illusory state goals. We already see some of the soft targets being taken on. You mentioned the rear-guard actions, for example, against energy independence, the constant and insistent anti-fracking campaign, for example, trying to maintain those sources of revenue for Russia. Is it possible there’d be more damaging actions in the future, as Russia sees its power declining past a critical point? I think it’s highly likely, but that brings us onto the third question.
How exactly do we, in time, before that, set the parameters for what Russia actually calculates for itself it can get away with, in terms of damaging other countries? Because it doesn’t matter whether it is an expansionist urge, or whether it is defensive instincts that cause Russia to lash out. That actually doesn’t make any difference for those who are in the path of the blows, and that includes, primarily, but not only, the frontline states that you were referring to. I think you put it in a slightly more elegant way, the Mearsheimer argument that, actually, we should abandon these countries to Russia, if, for the sake of a better relationship with Russia, which goes against not only all moral considerations, but also the weight of historical evidence, that when has it ever been the case that if you give Russia half the cake, it’s satisfied and doesn’t want the whole thing? But also, it overlooks the fact that there are quite a few millions of people in those countries who might actually want to have their own say in the matter.
It goes to the root of the conflict that we see at the moment, and that is Russia wishes to see these countries’ foreign and security policies constrained, in order that they do not pose a challenge to the Russian way of making money, and to the Russian way of protecting its own security. The West, at the same time, thinks that these should be sovereign, independent nations, and that that is sacrosanct. Those two views are entirely incompatible, and when we talk about the problem of NATO enlargement, the problem is that NATO, in the previous couple of decades, made an immoral choice, without having to actually consider the practical implications, because Russia, at the time, was not in a position to do anything about it. Now, we’re faced with the practical implications, and people are proposing the choice of abandoning our morals and our values, and the people in the countries in-between, for the sake of a quiet life. I can see the policy attractiveness of that. As a moral choice, I find it repellent.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. We’ve got two – that’s for you, then I’d like to go a little bit left, within that cluster, but this gentleman first, sorry.
John Ackroyd
Thank you very much. I’m John Ackroyd, Independent Member, Chatham House. With regard to the confrontation question, how much weight do you put on the fact that Russia sometimes feels hemmed in by countries surrounding their borders, and also, the effect of NATO and the expansive nature of European Union? Thank you.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you for being so short. Could, please, the gentleman – all of you ask the questions quite sharply, thank you.
Max Dubois
Max Dubois, hanger-on to a Member of Chatham House. Sanctions, what is their impact in the medium and long-term?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you.
Domenic Carratu
I’m the person who invited him, Domenic Carratu. You talked about some of the European border states, what about China? Because, in the 70s, obviously, that was used by Nixon and Kissinger as a bulwark to Russia.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. There was one more question there. Yes, please.
Steve Cooney
Thank you. Steve Cooney from Chatham House, and more relevant to this discussion, I worked for six years for Siemens, and the question I have is, what’s your opinion on the strategy of the Nord Stream 2 project?
Alena Ledeneva
Right, so this is the usual suspects of session.
Kier Giles
Okay. Well, I will try to be brisk as well. NATO feeling – sorry, Russia feeling hemmed in and surrounded by NATO and the EU. Fortunately, we have a map, here behind us, because the first recommendation to anybody that is suggesting that Russia is surrounded by NATO is to have a look at a map. But the serious point is, yes, this is put forward as a justification to Russia lashing out and defending itself, NATO coming closer to Russia’s borders, and potentially, not actually, threatening its military security. The EU coming closer to Russia’s borders, and, as a result, threatening the Russian way of making money, because it brings market rules, transparency, rule of law, etc., everything that is inimical to how the Russian leadership and its business leadership works. However, again, we have to look back further than the immediate period we’re looking at today, to understand what the Russian behaviours are. And then, we see Russia lashing out and conducting small wars around its periphery, without the excuse of NATO being anywhere nearby, and without even the first thought of the EU indulging in Eastern partnership, or anything else that threatens Russia. It simply is not the case that Russia has ever needed NATO as an excuse to do what it does to its neighbours. It simply has arrived at a convenient excuse, now, that NATO is ever so slightly closer.
Sanctions and their impact? Well, I have some highly intelligent, far more numerate colleagues from Chatham House in the room, who have written extensively about sanctions and the impact. I particularly refer you to the other output from the Chatham House REP, Russia and Eurasia Programme, who have written on this persuasively and at length. The bottom line that I would like to introduce is my assessment, having looked at it, is sanctions must be hurting, otherwise Russia would not be putting so much effort into pretending that they’re irrelevant. All of the campaigns that we see to laugh off sanctions, which have been growing in intensity and pitch and volume recently, I think, are founded on a realisation that they – if you can get people to believe that sanctions aren’t working, then they will be more willing to abandon them. However, the evidence is to the contrary. No, the sanctions were never supposed to be a quick fix or a quick means of inducing Russia to change its behaviour. Instead, they were a long, slow, considered and calculated process of adjusting Russia’s calculus for how exactly it should behave itself in the future, and to that extent, just like deterrents, we never know to what extent it’s working. We know for sure when it hasn’t worked, but sanctions, overall, I would suggest, are far less ineffective than you will often hear media discussions suggesting.
So, there was a question, what about China? I think that’s probably a book that should be written at much, much greater length than the one I’ve written here. Yes, it – Moscow Rules, the book, is about how Russia sees the West as the primary determinant of how Russia defines itself. How Russia deals with China is going to be far, far more important for Russia’s future as a country, for Russia’s existence as a country in half a century from now. Not actually what the book was about. Far more complicated topic, and one which we do need to study urgently, because it is going to be critical to what happens in Moscow again, in a relatively short time from now, certainly within all of our lifetimes. I think what Russia wants to avoid at the moment, through keeping its friends close, but its enemies as close as possible, including China, is the Finlandisation of Russia by comparison with China, to being an adjunct of China that in fact is not able to determine its own foreign and security policy, for fear of offending its main market, its main producer, its main place for exporting energy, its biggest threat along its longest border. The China relationship will be critical, but that’s probably a subject for another seminar, another day.
And finally, Nord Stream 2. My views on Nord Stream 2 are completely uncontroversial. I think it is a project which is entirely political, has no basis in economic reality whatsoever, and is just one of the many ways in which Russia seeks to increase its leverage, over its neighbouring states, by collaborating with whatever interests it can find in Europe to further its aims.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. We have one question here, one – Mary Dejevsky, after this gentleman, and then we need more questions from the back, please.
Yassine
Good evening. My name is Yassine, from JP Morgan, and LSE student in international strategy and diplomacy. Looking in the future, how do you see the Arctic playing out in the relationship between Russia and the West? Do you see it as a potential conflict, or just [inaudible – 48:18]?
Mary Dejevsky
Thank you. I’m Mary Dejevsky, a Journalist, and I fit in all your stereotypes, somebody who hasn’t read your book, who would answer your question, “What drives Russia to confront the West?” a lot of what the West has done. But I’d like to pick up one phrase that you used, you were talking about Russia today, and about how Putin was less of a problem, in a way, than Russia age-old habits. And then you said that what came after might actually not be quite to our heart’s desire, and that, actually, Russia was currently going through a period of what you called unprecedented liberalism. I wondered whether you could maybe expand on that, and say why you see Russia through, as it were, the – all the traditional stereotypes, going back way before the Cold War, nonetheless, you admit that the current climate is actually one of, as you said, unprecedented liberalism?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. Thank you, that’s over to you.
Kier Giles
And that’s all? Okay, great. Will the Arctic be a problem between Russia and the West? Almost certainly, yes, primarily because Russia has already said it will be. It sees this a domain of competition, and it might take two to tango, but it doesn’t take two to start a geopolitical conflict. So, we have, again, to cast our minds a little bit further back than the current focus on the Arctic, and see that Russia has been thinking about this for far, far longer than most other people. They have been considering the implications of the melting of the Arctic ice cap, and they have been thinking of the Arctic as rightful compensation for the loss of Eastern Europe. In other words, even if you can’t make a legal argument for ownership of all the mineral resources there, you can at least make some kind of moral justification for grabbing it in the first place.
Now, put that in the context of Russian military-thought leaders talking about the inevitability of resource conflict, again, in a very short space of time, in the space of the coming couple of decades, and that being a driving factor for why Russia is modernising its military. And again, you have – the situation that, I think, probably, in part, leads to the release of the Russian nuclear target list in the United States, just this week, where Russia is sometimes a little bit disappointed that we don’t notice all of the bellicose rhetoric, and we don’t notice all of the preparations for conflict, and therefore, has to rattle the cage a little bit more, just so that we’ll actually pay attention and, once again, accord Russia respect as a potentially dangerous military power, even if that’s not really how we define respect these days. So, yes, the Arctic will be a problem, yes, it requires attention, but we need to frame it, again, in the way that Moscow sees the problem, as opposed to any post-nationalist Western idea of co-operation.
And Mary, the – I always enjoy your questions, and I’m serious, I do, because – let me roll back and explain that a little bit. We have regular sessions at Chatham House that get together in a smaller format and discuss Russia and what to do about it, and Mary attends regularly, and it’s very important she does, because we might think that we operate in a shared space of assessing the same evidence and reaching the same conclusions from it, but then, we always need the conclusions that come from somewhere else and represent a different body of opinion to what me might take for granted.
In this case, yes, I do say that this – Russia is currently in a period of unprecedent liberalism, and I do admit it, as you say, and I do say that this is not like the Russian traditional stereotypes. What I didn’t quite grasp from the question is, what’s the contradiction there? The – yes, Russia has always made a habit of imprisoning and murdering its citizens on a mass scale. Now it’s not doing that. Now, I do sympathise with those people who point to the individual targeted murders that are carried out by the Russian state, and I do condemn them as unequivocally as anybody else, but I do also point out that they are now the exception, not the rule. Unlike any previous period in history, you have to have done something particularly effective to annoy the Russian leadership, or to cost it money, in order to be murdered by the Russian state these days, as opposed to being simply picked up off the street and dispatched to Siberia, as would have been the case in any previous age.
So, to reiterate, I sympathise with those people who are deeply unhappy at Russia’s drift towards authoritarianism, and I am also concerned at the apparent preparations for dealing with mass unrest in Russia, particularly with the establishment of the Russian National Guard, notionally internal security force, but equipped for inflicting mass casualties on a huge scale on Russia’s own population, or, indeed, as part of its mission, on the populations of newly occupied territories. I hope and pray that they will not actually be called on to use those capabilities, because, if they are, that represents a return to the Russian historical norm, which is very dark and very bloody indeed.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. Can I ask something? It sounds like you might agree with the fact that Russia is better in playing the game of confrontation with the West than the West.
Kier Giles
Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but I think the defining factor is that Russia always senses that there is a confrontation. Russia is aware that there is a problem, even when the West, collectively, as a whole, with honourable exceptions, like the frontline states who are confronted with it, is actually either not recognising it or pretending that it doesn’t exist. I referred to NATO’s aspirations for strategic partnership earlier, and this was at a time when it was already clear that the relationship was in serious trouble, and yet, it’s thought that actually declaring that all is fine, is a way to ameliorate the relationship. That, unfortunately, is not the case, and what I’m suggesting is, instead, a policy of slightly more honest appraisal of the differences between what Russia wants and what the West wants, in order that those differences and what to do about them can in fact be effectively communicated, not just to Russia, but also to the West’s own publics, to explain just what is going wrong.
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you. We do have four minutes remaining, and we do have three questions. Could we collect them quickly, and give Kier a chance to sum up?
Roy Cave
Okay. I’m – my name’s Roy Cave, and I hope this isn’t a stupid question. I’m a bit concerned about the deterministic nature of your argument, partly from personal experience, and having lived in Russia in the 90s and the 2000s that it seemed there was a multitude of possible outcomes that could’ve happened, and it doesn’t seem to me entirely linear that we would’ve ended up in the situation we are. Second, that the policies that we’re calling the Russian State seem to be so detrimental to the long-term future of Russia, whether it’s the high cost of capital, lack of investment or something like arresting Mike Calvey, and shutting down smart money and high-tech investment, which is supposed to be the future of Russia. And I wanted to suggest, as an alternative explanation, that you’ve considered that we’re actually considering a special interest, that the siloviki are a particular group that have managed to seize state power, and as such, they’re purely representing their own interests, and things like Ukraine aren’t actually trying to push the borders, but trying to create a political distraction. I could go on, but that’s supposed to be for a question, but that’s what I wanted to propose, thank you.
Vincent Champion
Vincent Champion, and I’m Journalist and independent Chatham House Member. How do you contextualise Russia’s enormous contribution to European culture, over many centuries, in terms of music, art, literature and so on, and this ever-present conflict?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you.
Andy Barker
Yeah, Andy Barker [inaudible – 57:02] of MoD. Do you think the West missed a great opportunity to work hand-in-hand with Russia, whether internally, with the Syria crisis?
Kier Giles
Is that it? Is it alright if I wrap up?
Alena Ledeneva
Yeah.
Kier Giles
Okay, great. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Plenty of stupid answers sometimes, but am I being determinist? I’m trying not to be. Is it possible that there may have been other outcomes from where Russia was going in the 1990s and 2000s? You would like to think that yes, however, the persistent Russianness of Russia prevailed over those other possible outcomes. We saw the reimposition of those very persistent terms of behaviour, not only of Russian society, but also of its governing elites, and it is the governing elites, in particular, to go to the root of the second part of your question. So many things that are being done that are detrimental to the long-term future of Russia, but we need to distinguish between the long-term future of Russia and the long-term future of people who own Russia at the moment, because one of the patterns of behaviour that we see returning again is managing or governing the country being more or less indistinguishable from owning it. Farming out the country’s resources and its wealth to people to manage and to curate and to enrich themselves in the process.
Now, those people are not necessarily going to be concerned with the long-term future of the country after they have died, unlike people who actually want to curate the national interest, and that, I think, is the root of that distinction that you noted, and you talked about the – is it captured by the siloviki? I think it’s far more complex than that, but I’ve just been given a 90-second warning, so maybe we’ll talk afterwards.
European culture, art, literature from previous centuries, yes, where there has been a – where it has been allowed to integrate with Russian culture – with European culture, it has flourished. However, let’s not forget, most of the time it hasn’t. This is a country that has, repeatedly, throughout history, seen the spread of ideas and opinions and knowledge from abroad as so damaging that it has banned the import or possession of foreign books, in much the same way that now Russia is now preparing and practicing to cut itself off from the internet. So, again, we need to – you said how do I contextualise it? I contextualise it as isolated flashes of things going right for a change.
Finally, did we miss an opportunity to work with Russia in Syria? No, because the end-state that Russia wanted in Syria, and the means by which Russia wanted to get there were, again, basically, uncompatible with anything that we find morally acceptable or practically implementable. Let’s not forget that the template for how Russia wanted to pacify Syria was Grozny, which, in Russia, is a success story. Flatten it, kill everybody you can see, install a few overlord, things are nice and peaceful, that’s success. Is that really what we wanted in Syria?
Alena Ledeneva
Thank you, and it’s a big clap, and if you’d like to ask more questions, Kier is going to be here signing his books. Thank you very much for coming tonight [applause].
