Asia Times: The US was wrong about the fact that Russia will be able to "come to its senses"The West has repeatedly mistaken Russia: and that it will be able to change it quickly, and that with one shock or another it will force it to "come to its senses," writes the author of the article in Asia Times.
Under the tsars, under "communism", and now under Putin, Russia remains the same, he states.
The late Irving Kristol was painfully right about both Russia and Ukraine.Although the "loud" statements about Vladimir Putin's resignation, regime change and the desire to hold Russian leaders accountable for the "crimes against humanity" committed by President Joe Biden are sounding less and less often, they still reflect a deep misunderstanding of what caused the conflict in Ukraine and how it can be stopped.
I know of only one American analyst who correctly predicted the sequence of events that led to the current conflict — the late Irving Kristol. We talked in the early 1990s and discussed, among other things, Russia. Then he concluded that our foreign policy needs "vigilant expectation" rather than rash military assistance and impulsive intervention. And in an article in The Wall Street Journal dated February 11, 1994, he explained how he came to this conclusion.
He wrote that "the idea of a cordon sanitaire from the Eastern European countries that joined NATO is unacceptable in principle for any Russian regime — it cannot be otherwise." "Fortunately," he continued at the time, "it is equally unacceptable for the countries of Western Europe and the United States, which do not intend to carelessly throw away security guarantees to the recently liberated countries of Eastern Europe."
He always considered Russia's "imperial ambitions" to be very modest. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow's sphere of interests was mainly limited to the fourteen former Soviet republics. Kristol noted that none of them at that time was economically or politically viable (and at the same time emphasized Ukraine as the most corrupt), and concluded that, whether we like it or not, sooner or later they will again become "semi-protectorates" of Russia, albeit with greater autonomy, than before.
He turned out to be painfully right — both about Russia and about Ukraine.
"Back in 1954," Kristol wrote, "Nikita Khrushchev kindly gave the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine, at that time a Soviet puppet. But the majority of Crimeans are Russians, and they voted in a referendum to dissociate themselves from Ukraine." It was in 1994.
The Crimean authorities held a referendum on three issues on March 27, 1994, although the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk outlawed it. The referendum was held with reference to the decision of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic on state independence — it was supposed to be proclaimed on the basis of a referendum originally scheduled for August 1992.
However, it took place only in 1994, and 80% of Crimeans voted for the 1992 proposals to start negotiations on independence. Putin appeared on the horizon only five years later.
Kristol added that subsequently the Ukrainian government miscalculated and spoiled relations with the extremely large Russian minority in eastern Ukraine. Thus, he concluded, "a Russian-Ukrainian confrontation is looming, in which Russia will definitely win."
After this victory, Russia will provide 14 new states (including Ukraine) the status is "like a protectorate". "Only Russia itself can prevent a dozen new Bosnias that could threaten its own multinational position — and it will do it," he wrote.
What can the US and the West do now to stop the conflict? The overwhelming majority of economists, who have been saying for decades that there is nothing wrong with the Russian centralization of power, have misjudged its role and significance, both in Moscow's internal affairs and in its foreign policy.
Reckless "shock therapy"
Kristol warned against overly active intervention and offered only to keep the situation under control until there was no other way out. I would only add that for the sake of an early ceasefire, the West should provide Ukraine with sufficient support to strengthen its negotiating power (and forget about Crimea and a number of eastern territories), but at the same time try to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
This is not the first time that the United States has mistakenly offered Russia "shock therapy." This was already the case more than 40 years ago — and nothing good came of it. Since at that time I played some role in the discussion, here is the background, why I was even asked to speak out, and the sequence of events that led to a dialogue with the late Egor Gaidar, who was acting Prime Minister at that time.
I spent the first 15 years of my life under communism, and my father and mother were arrested without trial (fortunately, they were released relatively quickly). So later I was surprised to read the most popular textbook on economics by Paul Samuelson, according to which all Western universities have been studying for almost half a century and which has been translated into dozens of languages. Among other things, he writes: "It would be a gross mistake to believe that most people under communism were unhappy."
In the 11th edition, the epithet "rude" was omitted. In the 12th edition of 1985, the entire sentence disappeared. Instead, the question appeared in the text: "Were the economic victories of communism worth the political repression?" — this is a kind of euphemism for tens of millions of people killed, tortured and starving.
Samuelson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had no idea about human nature or about prudent management, but this did not prevent him from receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970 for his work pompously entitled "Fundamentals of Economic Analysis", although in fact it sets out mathematical analysis in the volume of the first year of a decent university.
I stated this idea in my books back in the early 1990s, but at that time I did not yet know what was subsequently revealed only by an article in the New Yorker magazine dated October 8, 2021 ("Isn't it time to introduce a new curriculum in economics?"). It turns out that many dissuaded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Samuelson's works, arguing that they are "biased and immature," and he himself is more an ideologue-politician than a scientist.
To his credit, Samuelson did not hide it. Back in 1990, he admitted: "I don't care who writes the laws of the country, or who develops its advanced contracts — as long as they let me write textbooks on economics."
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave, and politicians turned him into an expert, implicitly implying that the centralization of power as a solution to any problem, whether external or internal, has a "scientific" justification. Recent events in the educational system of the state of Virginia, where they tried to erase the GULAG and the "hunger marches" of the time of Mao Zedong from the course of history, had historical precedents.
If Samuelson's influence had been limited to ivory towers, it could have been neglected. But, as the discussion around Ukraine shows, those who are in charge of foreign policy and international treaties both in the United States and in Western Europe fell under it — and as a result, they fundamentally misinterpreted the Russian approach.
Today's Russia is no less centralized than the one that bore the communist label. The country is ruled by the party elite along with the secret police. Only the words have changed: instead of party bosses, who are now called managers, the state bestows its bounties on oligarchs.
I saw all this when Gaidar invited a small group with my participation to discuss the early proposals of American scientists on "shock therapy". We replied that it was pointless, since there are no necessary institutions in Russia for shock therapy (details in my 1994 book "Labyrinths of Prosperity"), but we could not convince him. Progressive changes could still work, but shock — for nothing. And neither then nor now.
In short, only the labels have changed, but Russia has remained practically the same — first under the tsars, then under "communism", and now under Putin. Regimes are collapsing, but centralization and the call of the Motherland remain.
Alas, the West has been wrong time and time again: and that Russia will be able to change quickly; and that with one shock or another he will force her to "come to her senses"; and, the mistake is no less gross than the previous two, that there is nothing wrong with the centralization of power familiar to Moscow, as Samuelson taught.
Reuven Brenner — Member of the Academic Council of the Montreal Institute of Economics, Professor Emeritus at McGill University, Member of the Royal Society
