![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldCasey Michel's Politico article "Putin’s Plot to Get Texas to Secede" got quite a few attention, and deservedly so.
As Michel himself notes later in the article, and as many of the commenters and linkers have noted on their own, the Russian state's interest in trying to cultivate separatist allies--even unlikely separatist allies, whether fascist or insignificant or both--demonstrate the fundamental lack of seriousness and ability on the part of the people running Russia. The people running Russia don't understand why the Soviet Union came apart; they don't understand how the European Union works; they don't understand the nature of separatist movements, critically including separatist movements; they, at best, don't care about how ridiculous this all makes the Russian state look. They just don't get it.
There has been a fondness, particularly on the right, to look at Putin and his government and see a cabal of canny geopoliticians, able to take advantage of the petty issues of the West. This, though, is demonstrably not the case. Russia has blundered into being the subject of a wide-ranging sanctions regime that has cost it substantially, in terms of present losses and future shortfalls, and might well plunge into a new warmer version of the Cold War with many fewer resources than the old Soviet Union. (Counting on China to prop Russia up may not be a good idea, for many reasons.) I would think it more likely that Russia, rather, is governed by people who do not know what is going on, run by leaders who keep making mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder, digging their country in deeper with no idea how to get out.
This can be a more dangerous situation than one where Russia is woring for a master plan. If Russia is not being run by people who know where they are going or why their opponents are doing what they're doing, the potential for mistakes and misunderstandings is obvious
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union two decades ago, many Russians have come to blame the United States for their plight; a seething resentment over U.S. culpability in the loss of Russian national power is one of the reasons Vladimir Putin is so popular. It has only worsened since the United States has led an international effort to isolate and sanction Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine. Thus, over the past 15 months there has been a sudden, bizarro uptick of Russian interest in and around the American Southwest, most notably Texas, where secessionist sentiment never seems to entirely die out (TNM’s predecessor group, the “Republic of Texas,” disbanded after secessionist militants took hostages in 1997). In a rehash of the Soviet Union’s fate, numerous Russian voices have taken to envisioning an American break-up, E Pluribus Unum in inverse—out of one, many.
Nor is Texas the lone region for which Russia has cast secessionist support since the Crimean seizure. Venice, Scotland, Catalonia—the Russian media have voiced fervent support for secession in all these Western allies. (Of course, Moscow’s mantra—secession for thee, but not for me—means you’d be hard-pressed to find any Russian official offering support for Siberian, Tatar, or Chechen independence.) “Since the destabilization of the West is on Russia’s agenda, they may try to reach out to the U.S. separatists,” Anton Shekhovtsov, a researcher on Moscow’s links to far-right movements in Europe, told me. Russia wants a “deepening of social divisions in the American society, destabilizing the internal political life.” And certain Texans, rather than running from the taint of an authoritarian backing, have reciprocated.
As a political tack, none of this is completely new. Nearly a century ago, British codebreakers presented the American ambassador with a decrypted cable that came to be known as the Zimmermann Telegram, helping to cajole a recalcitrant United States into the Great War. And understandably so: In the deciphered text, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann alerted the Mexican government that, should the U.S. enter the war, “we shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer her lost territory of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona.” President Woodrow Wilson’s pledge to forgo war evaporated overnight.
Just a few months ago, a cousin of the Zimmermann Telegram was delivered by a Russian government official, directed squarely at an American government once more waffling about military intervention in the European theater. The speaker of Chechnya’s parliament, Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, warned that should the U.S. increase its supply of arms to Kyiv, “we will begin delivery of new weapons to Mexico” and “resume debate on the legal status of the territories annexed by the United States, which are now the U.S. states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.” As to the putative destination for the weapons, Abdurakhmanov cited unspecified “guerrillas.” (Sealing his screed, Abdurakhmanov inexplicably cited Joe Biden as the creator of the current Ukrainian government.)
If his comment existed in a vacuum, Abdurakhmanov’s histrionics could be laughed off, another sign of Moscow’s ferment sapping logical discourse. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
As Michel himself notes later in the article, and as many of the commenters and linkers have noted on their own, the Russian state's interest in trying to cultivate separatist allies--even unlikely separatist allies, whether fascist or insignificant or both--demonstrate the fundamental lack of seriousness and ability on the part of the people running Russia. The people running Russia don't understand why the Soviet Union came apart; they don't understand how the European Union works; they don't understand the nature of separatist movements, critically including separatist movements; they, at best, don't care about how ridiculous this all makes the Russian state look. They just don't get it.
There has been a fondness, particularly on the right, to look at Putin and his government and see a cabal of canny geopoliticians, able to take advantage of the petty issues of the West. This, though, is demonstrably not the case. Russia has blundered into being the subject of a wide-ranging sanctions regime that has cost it substantially, in terms of present losses and future shortfalls, and might well plunge into a new warmer version of the Cold War with many fewer resources than the old Soviet Union. (Counting on China to prop Russia up may not be a good idea, for many reasons.) I would think it more likely that Russia, rather, is governed by people who do not know what is going on, run by leaders who keep making mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder, digging their country in deeper with no idea how to get out.
This can be a more dangerous situation than one where Russia is woring for a master plan. If Russia is not being run by people who know where they are going or why their opponents are doing what they're doing, the potential for mistakes and misunderstandings is obvious
