The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 25 Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. Their advice, in a spring 2013 report, “Building Mutual Security in the Euro- Atlantic Region,” included the establishment of a new, high- level “Euro-Atlantic Security Forum” to promote core security interests throughout the region. Common to this report and the 2002 book on the same subject is the notion that this geographi- cal construct should be thought of as a single security space in the long term. The Permanent Revolution Back in February 2005, alluding to recent unrest in Georgia and Ukraine, Putin speculated that some nations “are doomed to permanent revolution. ... Why should we introduce this in the post-Soviet space?” The answer, of course, is that those govern- ments refused to meet pent-up demand for changes, leading to a series of political explosions—which Putin accused Russia’s old antagonist, the United States, of fomenting. Putin’s belief in American complicity in the “permanent revolution” had first surfaced during a Nov. 26, 2004, press conference inThe Hague. Discussing the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, he remarked: “We have no moral right to incite mass disturbances in a major European state. We must not make solv- ing disputes of this nature through street disturbances part of international practice.” Such warnings about permanent revolution stemmed from his perception of Russia’s weakness and its possible fragmenta- tion. On Sept. 7, 2004, after terrorists killed nearly 400 people, many of them schoolchildren, in Beslan, North Ossetia, he said: “Some would like to tear from us a ‘juicy piece of pie.’ Others help them. They help, reasoning that Russia still remains one of the world’s major nuclear powers, and as such still represents a threat to them.” Later in the same speech, Putin remarked: “We are living through a time when internal conflicts and inter-ethnic divi- sions that were once firmly suppressed by the ruling ideology have now flared up.” Russia had not reacted adequately to these new dangers, he lamented; instead, “we showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten.” In other words, Moscow must show itself to be tough, even at the expense of its own best interests. Any step back from dominance over the new nations of “post-Soviet space” would be tantamount to encouraging the disintegration of the Russian Federation itself. Similarly, compromises with Russia’s enemies are a slippery slope that can only lead to a serious weakening of its international and domestic position. A New Iron Curtain? The last straw for Putin was probably his conclusion that the West was determined to prevent him from realizing his vision of a Eurasian economic bloc, dominated by Russia, that would include at least Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. When Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, seemed ready last fall to sign an association agreement with the Euro- pean Union, Moscow pressured him to reverse the decision. Putin saw an American hand behind the resulting popular upris- ing that ousted Yanukovych. A desire to have friendly neighbors on one’s borders is not unique to Russia, of course. Nor is it unusual for a powerful state to expect that its opinions and interests will exert considerable influence on the policies of neighboring states. But there is a line beyond which a special relationship becomes domination. If things remain as they are in Putin’s Russia, the reality of a continent divided will congeal, leaving most of the newly inde- pendent republics trapped on the other side of the fence from a democratic Europe. This appears to be exactly what the Putin Doctrine is intended to achieve. Writing in the July/August issue of For- eign Affairs , Alexander Lukin, vice president of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noted that some in Moscow are searching for an ideological foundation for a Eurasian union. Lukin wrote that the distinctive value system of Eurasian people had helped Putin “succeed in establishing an independent power center in Eurasia.” Putin and the “siloviki”—his former colleagues in the KGB who now occupy key positions in the Russian government—are disposed to confront Washington if American activities seem to be encouraging too much independence within “post-Soviet space.” Putin’s rollback of the democratic institutions in Russia that his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, had encouraged underscores the fact that joining a Western-oriented community is not one of No government likes to borrow trouble from the future, and democracies, including the United States, are very poor at setting strategic priorities and sticking to them.