[LINK] Various links on the Russia of Putin as a global conservative power

[rfmcdonald]

Over on Facebook, my friend Andrew joked that Putin was the president that Republicans wished the United States had: a man who persecuted non-heterosexuals, who waved the Red White and Blue, who was backed by the Church, who invaded foreign countries.

The thing is, it wasn't a joke. Putin's Russia really has been mounting a very visible effort to promote itself as a global standard-bearer for conservative values. In a December essay, no less a person than Patrick Buchanan identified Putin as a supporter of the paleoconservative brand of right-wing thought. Writing at The Atlantic, Brian Whitmore outlined what was afoot.

The Kremlin leader's full-throated defense of Russia's "traditional values" and his derision of the West's "genderless and infertile" liberalism in his annual state-of-the-nation address last week was just the latest example of Putin attempting to place himself at the vanguard of a new "Conservative International."

The speech came on the heels of the appointment of Dmitry Kiselyov—the television anchor who has said the hearts of gays and lesbians who die should be buried or burned—as head of the new Kremlin-run media conglomerate Rossia Segodnya.

And just days before Putin's address, the Center for Strategic Communications, an influential Kremlin-connected think tank, held a press conference in Moscow to announce its latest report. The title: "Putin: World Conservatism's New Leader."

According to excerpts from the report cited in the media, most people yearn for stability and security, favor traditional family values over feminism and gay rights, and prefer nation-based states rather than multicultural melting pots. Putin, the report says, stands for these values while "ideological populism of the left" in the West "is dividing society."

[. . .]

The Kremlin apparently believes it has found the ultimate wedge issue to unite its supporters and divide its opponents, both in Russia and the West, and garner support in the developing world. They seem to believe they have found the ideology that will return Russia to its rightful place as a great power with a messianic mission and the ability to win hearts and minds globally.

As the West becomes increasingly multicultural, less patriarchal and traditional, and more open to gay rights, Russia will be a lodestone for the multitudes who oppose this trajectory. Just as the Communist International, or Comintern, and what Soviet ideologists called the "correlation of forces" sought to unite progressive elements around the globe behind Moscow, the world's traditionalists will now line up behind Putin.

Isaac Chotiner at The New Republic provided a bit of background for this.

All the way back in 1946, with Nazi Germany defeated and the cold war commencing, George Orwell wrote a brilliant essay on James Burnham. The author of The Managerial Revolution and a leading political philosopher, Burnham was a frequent contributor to the young National Review, and, more broadly, a leading voice of postwar American conservatism.

What Orwell found in his analysis of Burnham was that this ostensible democrat and cold warrior held deep regard for--and even envied--authoritarian or totalitarian powers, including Stalin's Russia. This is why, Orwell explained, Burnham originally predicted a Nazi victory in World War II. (Britain, typically, was considered "decadent.") In later years, Orwell continued, Burnham would write about Stalin in "semi-mystical" terms (with a "fascinated admiration"), comparing him to heroes of the past; Burnham didn't like Stalin's politics, but he admired his strength. Of Burnham's odd quasi-regard for Stalinism and its supposedly destined victory over the forces of sickly democratic regimes, Orwell added: "The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established, or, if established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a stable basis for human society."

Orwell, then, was not merely critical of Burnham's pessimism (Orwell himself could be overly pessimistic.) He also saw this pessimism as reflective of a mindset that prioritized vicious power-wielding and coercion over other things that allowed states to succeed and prosper.

This variety of pessimism did not end with Burnham, unfortunately. During the nearly 50 year Cold War, Americans were informed time and again by rightwingers that the Soviet Union did not allow dissent, and could therefore pursue its desired policies without protest. While the Soviets were single-minded, we were, yes, decadent. Soviet leaders could fight wars as they pleased, but freedom-loving presidents like Ronald Reagan had to put up with what Charles Krauthammer laughably called an "imperial Congress."  (Some of the same type of commentary shows up about today's China: look how quickly the Chinese can build bridges! And, as Thomas Friedman proves, it isn't coming solely from the right.) But more unique among conservatives is the desire for a tough leader who will dispense with niceties and embrace power.

The reason for all this ancient history is the situation today in Ukraine, where an autocratic Russian leader who exudes manly vibes has ordered his armed forces into Crimea. It is unclear whether this move on Russia's part will prove successful, but, amidst uncertaintly among western leaders over what to do, there has arisen a new strain of the Burnham syndrome. Conservatives don't just see the west and President Obama as weak; they also seem envious of Putin's bullying. "There is something odd," Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote in New York magazine, "about commentators who denounce Putin in the strongest terms and yet pine for a more Putin-like figure in the White House."

I've seen bits of this myself, people commenting at right-wing blogs about their preference for Putin over Obama, based largely on their stance on cultural issues. Russia doesn't have gay marriage, therefore Russia is better.

Writing at The Federalist, David Ernst made the point that the effort at outreach is global, Europe particularly being a focus.

Putin’s appeal to right in Europe is far more serious. In his speech to the Duma in June of last year French rightwing geostrategist Aymeric Chauprade claimed to address Russia “as a French Patriot” who sees “Russia as a historical ally.” He decried the color revolutions, the legalization of gay marriage in his home country, the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN, and the willful sacrilege of pussy riot. He characterized these unwelcome developments as the result of “the alliance of Western globalism with anarchist nihilism” which persist courtesy of American financial and military might. In what undoubtedly flattered the Kremlin’s elite, Chauprade concluded with the bold declaration that the world’s true patriots “now turn their attention to Moscow.” For most Americans it is likely tempting to dismiss Chauprade as a crank: a representative of a loud fringe element that lacks any real political influence. Recent polling data, projections for the EU elections this May, and the Hungarian government’s recent solicitation of a 14 billion dollar loan from Moscow, however, suggest that Putin’s right turn coincides with widespread European disenchantment with the EU. Indeed, European trust in the government in Brussels is at an all time low. Moreover, as the British academic Matthew Goodwin pointed out, the stubborn persistence of the Eurozone crisis will likely yield many voters who will go to the polls to vent their frustrations.

Russia’s growing influence in European affairs begs the question, how can policymakers in Brussels counter Putin’s charms? More specifically, how can they address the grievances that many Europeans have against the EU, and indeed the transatlantic alliance itself? The dispiriting answer increasingly appears to be that they cannot; the only electoral trump card that the EU bureaucrats can play against Euroskeptics and the European radical right is the promise of continued economic growth, and the survival of Europe’s generous social programs. Other essential elements of the human condition: religious faith, national identity and a spiritual sense of purpose have no place in their discourse, or indeed in the EU’s very reason for existing. Putin has shrewdly chosen a debate over hearts and minds with an opponent who is entirely ill equipped to respond.

All this fits into the geopolitical doctrine of Eurasianism that seems to have been adopted by the Russian government, one that seeks to hold the Anglo-American powers (and China) at bay while consolidating the ex-Soviet periphery into Russia. Russia has tried to discourage its neighbours from entering into closer ties with the European Union by emphasizing the supposedly malign influence of European culture--Armenia, for one, may have opted for the Eurasian Union over the European Union because of this.

In the American Conservative, Leon Hadar cautioned against some American conservatives' fondness as a basic misreading of the Russian situation.

The bottom line is that Putin is first and foremost an autocratic right-wing nationalist who not unlike the fascist-communist clique ruling Beijing could care less if other countries embrace his political model or not, as long as Russian interests—and his—are being served.

You could have probably said the same thing about the communists who ruled Russia in the last century. They enunciated their commitment to the idea of the international solidarity of the socialist parties, but at the end of the day, the national interests of Russia took precedence over any universal principles, just as they do now.

Putin, contrary to the fantasies of some paleoconservatives in the West, doesn’t even pretend to speak for the world’s conservatives, traditionalist or otherwise. Hence it was weird to hear Western critics of the European Union (EU) applaud Russia’s attempts to sabotage an agreement between Kiev and Brussels, suggesting that Putin was trying to defend the national sovereignty of Ukraine against the expanding power of the Eurocrats.

But it is ridiculous to portray Putin as an ally of the Euroskeptics battling the creation of European super-state, when what he really wants is to tie Ukraine to his own Eurasian economic community that will be ruled from Moscow by his own political apparatchiks instead of Brussels’. Putin’s super-state for poor people, if you will.

Will it really help them in the future? And will Russia's appeal to the Atlantic right survive the current crisis?