Russia
James has an unusual take Western attitudes towards Russia:
So here’s my peanut: bad relations with Russia make us feel so uncomfortable because they challenge and undermine our most cherished narratives about the moral and social progress of the global white community. I know even suggesting that we think analytically in terms of an ‘international white race’ sets off alarms, but it’s obvious that Russian disinterest in, or outright hostility to, liberal political norms is noteworthy primarily because virtually every other majority-white country in the world has embraced and institutionalized them. We (small-l) liberals recoil at the very idea that any white person could seriously appreciate or even live under a regime like Russia’s, because this is a reminder that white people are not the charmed winners of Earth’s civilizational marathon — contestants who can rest easy now that they’ve completed the course and won the race.
I have to give James high marks for creativity, but I don’t think so. The idea of a “global white community” doesn’t set off any alarms, because this refers to something that is a community in about the same way that “the international community” is actually a community. Discomfort with poor Russian relations is not anxiety caused by Russia’s subversion of some international white narrative. Put differently, what James is trying to say might not sound so strange. What annoys Westerners about Russia is that Russians are historically Christian, culturally European and are the most thoroughly Westernized so-called “Eastern” nation (in no small part because they have been part of “Western Civilization” for a millennium), but this does not lead most Russians to quite the same political preferences as their neighbors. That suggests that political preferences and constitutions are highly contingent and they are driven by particular interests and conditions. Western liberals seem to find this hard to believe, and they are reduced to explaining away such things by invoking irrationality as the cause.
It also suggests that a country’s history imposes limitations and constraints on how a polity develops, and it tells us yet again that there is no single model of modernity or modernization. Westerners may accept this in theory, but a lot of them don’t like it. However, before we get carried away in emphasizing Russian “disinterest” in or “hostility” to liberal norms, it is worth noting, as Lieven has done, that most Russians want a free media and the rule of law, or at least they say they do, but this does not therefore translate into what is conventionally defined as a “pro-Western” attitude on various matters of policy. This may help get at one of the real sources of Western frustration with Russia: the enduring importance of nationalism in international affairs.
If post-1989 central and eastern European liberal democrats embraced Western norms, they did so in part to reject Russia. As Lieven made clear in that item from earlier this month, liberal democracy succeeded in post-communist Europe where it did in part because it was grounded in an anti-Russian, nationalist reaction that the Russians themselves could never have. Instead, like every other post-communist nation (and like every still-officially communist state in existence), Russians have become or rather continued to be very nationalistic. Undomesticated, fierce nationalism in post-Soviet space is fine in the eyes of most Westerners, provided that its hostility is directed squarely at Moscow or its allies, but any expression of nationalism coming from Russia causes Westerners to worry, even though this resurgence of nationalism is something that is common to all post-communist nations.
This brings us back to a more basic issue, which is widespread and persistent hostility to Russia that taps into various old prejudices about tsarism, communism, Orthodoxy, Slavs and all things from “the East.” Were Russia somehow to become the vanguard of a global democratic revolutionary force, I can almost imagine many Westerners finding cause to celebrate authoritarian governments cropping up all over eastern Europe to help thwart the democratic Russian menace. After all, even a thoroughly liberal democratic Russia will not cease to have its own national interests and ambitions, and a liberal Russia would have far more pretexts for intervention in the affairs of its neighbors, perhaps beginning with the “liberations” of Belarus and Azerbaijan from the grip of their local despots. One can almost imagine all of the defenders of “liberal imperialism” from the last few years suddenly discover the dangers of ideologically-justified interference in the internal affairs of other nations.
I would say that Russia vexes Western liberals (broadly defined) because the Russian example suggests that historical memory, culture and the nation’s past are far from irrelevant to the constitution of a polity. Western liberals seem to want these things to be absolutely irrelevant, because they tend to get in the way of planting liberal democracies in other countries. I’ll wager the people who are made uncomfortable by bad relations with Russia are very few, and we are unlikely to be representative. Most people are either indifferent to this or may even be pleased by it. Nothing brings back comfortable, lazy policy-making and self-congratulatory rhetoric like being able to vilify “the Russkies” as in the old days. Unless ensuring bad relations with Russia is the deliberate goal, I cannot explain how else Washington can persist in policies that are guaranteed to result in bad relations.
The Russian example is discouraging to democracy enthusiasts, because it makes clear how vital strong legal institutions and limitations on state power are to a mass democracy if it is not going to become a plebiscitary authoritarian state. Even if the enthusiasts acknowledge this, they don’t like being reminded that liberal and good government is largely of a function of all the very un-democratic institutions and elements of our system. Whenever these people whine about Russian “backsliding” away from democracy, they don’t want to have to think about how the current Russian government is illiberal, authoritarian and interventionist in the economy because this is in many (though not all) ways what most of the people want.
The Russian example is discouraging to democracy enthusiasts, because it makes clear how vital strong legal institutions and limitations on state power are to a mass democracy if it is not going to become a plebiscitary authoritarian state.
While I think this is true to knee-jerk DeMint style “tent-of-freedom” type people, I can’t think of a serious human rights or civil rights group that doesn’t acknowledge the strong role of substantive due process and an independent judiciary, the two most maligned anti-democratic elements of our system, in the formation of a state that doesn’t run roughshod over people who aren’t a statistical majority. If some people don’t explicitly say that when they mention other countries in regards to democracy, it is because people seem to presume that sort of ground work will spring up.
The novel idea of liberals being disappointed in the “white race” because of Russia’s long trend towards authoritarianism seems to be injecting issues of race where none actually exists. It simply cuts into the old debate about whether Russia is a European country, an Asian country, or something else altogether. It’s certainly an empire, and as an empire it has pursued interests in both Europe and Asia, and long resisted attempts to define itself as belonging to either.
Russian nationalism is predicated upon a unique sense of cultural identity, and thus it resists conforming to outside norms, whether they are Europe’s, or Asia’s, or anyone else’s. It’s one of the reasons communism was able to take hold there first – it sees itself a vanguard of a unique historical culture, and has endless fantasies of political, cultural, and economic domination. That’s how it got to be such a huge empire to begin with. And in that sense, it’s entirely “white”, in that what defines European political culture is not “democracy”, but the desire to dominate other people and impose their political culture upon others. As you mention, if Russia’s culture were democratic, and Europe authoritarian, the same problems would exist, because each would still be trying to impose their culture on others as a means of extending their own imperial power. This is of course an outgrowth of the Christian faith that has dominated the cultural history of both. Other, non-Abrahamic faiths that established empires did not much care about exporting their political culture, evangelical-style, to their dominated holdings. The only reason James doesn’t ascribe liberal disappointment in Russia to religion, rather than race, is that this impulse is so universalized in European and Russian culture that it no longer is tied to religion itself. Even secularists in these cultures retain the poltiical evangelicalism of their religious forebears.
conradg
“Even secularists in these cultures retain the political evangelicalism of their religious forebears.”
Like fanatical liberalism?
Conrig
“it’s entirely “white”, in that what defines European political culture is not “democracy”, but the desire to dominate other people and impose their political culture upon others”
Honestly, it It’s hard for me to believe this guy is white (ie Gentile European). He keeps up the oppressive-European shtick, quite a bit doesn’t he? — historical realities aside.
So, if we date Western Civ back to the greeks, circa 500BC, in the course of that 2500 years or so, Europe (ie White people) culturally dominated in a traditional ethnically chauvinistic way for maybe 300 years (say, 1650 -1950). This is of course a Christian thing, since the Arabs didn’t jihad and occupy much of Europe and north Africa, engage extensive European and African slave trade, an otherwise imperialize from the 600-1300, Nor did the turks, when taking over power in the region do the same thing from 1300-1700, conquering much of South Asia and Eastern Europe. Nor did Japan attempt to set up a Co-prosperity zone — because it was a peaceful non-Abrahamic country — that just wanted to sing and dance. Nor did the Monguls conquer and control the Han Chinese, setting up the Yaun dynasty and attempt to invade Japan, or the Manchu later control the Han under the Qing dynasty setting up an ethnic aparthied —
We can go on an on about what did not happen for Conrigs view to make sense, but it takes a lot of historical editing — Just like the supposed historic Hispanic discrimination, among other things,
But of course that is what you get from his type.