It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who almost a century ago observed that relations between two protagonists really involve six “persons:” each protagonist's self-image, each protagonist's image of the other and, finally, what each actually is. The West’s current confrontation with Russia is as much the result of the West’s failure to comprehend Russia, with its interests, fears and world-view, as it is the outcome of the West’s total failure to understand how others read the West’s rhetoric and actions. At the heart of the West’s dealings with Russia is the assumption that the Kremlin is perfectly well aware of the fact that the West is not and cannot be an imperial power. But is this how Russians really perceive us and is it the way we are in God’s eyes?
In October 2014, in the margins of the annual Valdai Club meeting in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited a small group of foreigners to a private dinner. The composition of the group was as mysterious as Russian behavior in Ukraine. It included some influential Western political leaders who risked coming to the meeting despite the sanctions against Russia either because of old connections with the Kremlin or in the hope that visiting Russia at the height of Moscow’s confrontation with the West would make them important. At the dinner were Russia’s friends, hard in some cases to distinguish from Russian clients, and two or three accidental guests, like one of the authors of this text who seeks to make meetings like this seem more intriguing to the analysts than they really are. The dinner was hosted in a small and charming restaurant, cut off from the rest of the world by an army of visible and invisible security agents. The topics, unsurprisingly, were the state of Russia’s relations with the West and the crisis in Ukraine and, unsurprisingly, Vladimir Putin did most of the talking. The atmosphere around the dinner table was friendly and surreal in equal measure. The Russian President came over as angry and sarcastic. What he found absolutely intolerable in the behavior of the West was not so much its hegemonic ambitions, but rather its hypocrisy. For over three hours, Putin discoursed on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, recognition of Kovoso’s independence, the West’s failure to keep the promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s, George W Bush’s war in Iraq, the West’s misuse of UN Resolution 1973 on Libya , and the West’s meddling in the domestic politics of the post-Soviet states. The West speaks of values and principles, Putin intimated, but all of this talk is simply a mask for the West’s realpolitik, aimed at world hegemony. When the West declares that it is opposed to a “sphere of influence” politics, what it really means is that only the West has the right to a sphere of influence. Hypocrisy and double standards are the defining features of Western foreign policy, he asserted. Today’s Russia is however not as naïve as the late Soviet Union, and will not allow itself to be trapped by any Western rhetoric of shared norms and universal values. It seems that being “naïve” was the really unforgivable crime committed by Soviet leaders as far as Putin was concerned.
In so many words Putin made clear that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was a revolt against the hypocrisy of the West. Russia has now broken the West’s monopoly on breaking the rules, he boasted, and has thus forced the world to choose between new rules or a world without rules . We are aggressive in Ukraine, insisted the Russian President, in order to hold up a mirror that will reflect your own aggression back at you. Contrary to the West’s accusations concerning violation of the rules of the international order, Putin insisted that he was not breaking the rules but was simply playing according to these rules. His behavior in Ukraine was not turning back to the West, on the contrary he was simply imitating the West but the real West, in other words, not what Western leaders say but what they do. It was not the arguments Putin advanced that were most surprising in his denunciation of Western hypocrisy but rather the passion with which they were delivered. Was his outrage sincere? Has he ever truly believed in a liberal order? And could he be right? Is all this talk of values just a masquerade to conceal geopolitical interests? “A man who cannot dissemble,” to cite Louis IX of France, “is not fit to reign.” Is the West hypocritical in observing its self-proclaimed norms and ideals or is Putin’s anger another masterfully staged performance by an ultimate cynic with nothing to offer but the hypocrisy of his anti-hypocrisy?
The irony in Putin’s anti-hypocrisy crusade is that it was the West that first declared war on hypocrisy in the post-Cold-War world. Americans and Europeans harshly condemned authoritarian governments for signing treaties they did not respect and for proclaiming loyalty to values they distrusted. However, while Western governments were quick to denounce the hypocrisy of the newly converted, they also recognized that one of the major achievements of the liberal order lay in the fact that authoritarian governments felt obliged to dish up a “liberal discourse.” In his recent book, The Iron Cage of Liberalism, political scientist Daniel Ritter convincingly demonstrates that those authoritarian regimes that made the greatest investment in faking their democracies are the ones where unarmed revolutions are most likely to be successful.
Putin has obviously come to the same conclusion. He has identified Russia’s imitation of the language and institutions of Western liberal democracies as the Kremlin’s major vulnerability. However, for want of an attractive alternative, his strategy of self-defense focuses on exposing the liberal order’s hypocrisy, combined with a politics of aggressive isolationism. Putin aimed to tear off the West’s liberal masks and provoke Western governments into doing exactly what he wanted, namely isolating Russia. Western observers who claim that Putin is obsessed with borders are essentially correct, but his obsession is with the nature rather than the location of borders.
The only way to make sense of Putin’s Russian foreign policy today is to understand why Putin believes that violating the borders of a sovereign state and blatantly lying to international public opinion gives him the upper hand morally vis-à-vis the West, and indeed why this wins him respect and admiration from non-Western public opinion and even support from some in the West. We want to argue that Putin’s challenge to the international order is not based on offering any alternative normative order, neither a 19th-century balance-of-powers regime nor any other vision for organizing international affairs, but that instead the Kremlin seeks to de-legitimize the liberal order by exposing it as a disorder, an international regime structured around the West’s exclusive right to break the norms. The annexation of Crimea was intended as a global exercise in exposure, “tearing off the masks” of western democracy. “Tear off the masks!” is a slogan with limited appeal in most societies, writes historian Sheila Fitzpatrick: “they operate on the assumption that civilization requires a certain amount of masking. In revolutions, however, that assumption is suspended” . Consequently, Russia’s behavior is revolutionary in its nature, or, if you prefer, call it “preventive counter-revolution,” and while it speaks the language of conservatism and the status quo, it shares global street protesters’ obsessions with shadow power and the elite’s deception. Russia is not a 19th-century power, it is a 21st-century spoiler.

Why Did Putin Lie?
In March 2014, the United States’ government was outraged to the point of poetic inspiration. “As Russia spins a false narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine,” to cite the State Department press release, “the world has not seen such startling Russian fiction since Dostoyevsky wrote, ‘the formula two plus two equals five is not without its attractions’.” Washington was not the only capital to be so poetically inspired. On Sunday, March 2, 2014, after talking to President Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Obama and told him, according to the information leaked, that “she was not sure he [Putin] was in touch with reality”. To put it in Merkel’s terms, Putin “lives in another world”. Merkel’s observation reads like Joseph Brodsky’s poem. The confrontation between Russia and the West was no longer about who lives in a better world and owns the future, for that had been the logic of the Cold War confrontation, but was now about who lives in the real world.

What was so puzzling and outrageous about Putin’s behavior in annexing Crimea? Isn’t what the Russian leader did trivial? He used the political crisis in a neighboring country to slice off a chunk of territory that he firmly believes belongs to his nation. Bearing in mind that Russia is a nuclear power, it is understandable that he could hope that such behavior would not be punished too severely. Is it not obvious that, far from grand strategy, Putin's Kremlin is driven by its claim to be entitled to break the rules? In fact, breaking the rules without being punished is the Kremlin’s peculiar definition of being a Great Power. And why was Western public opinion so appalled by the Russian leader’s lies? What else could be expected from a former KGB colonel who believes that any street protest is a covert operation organized by a foreign power, and who has made corruption the norm in his regime?

Yet, there was something puzzling and terrifying in the Kremlin’s behavior over Crimea that explains the West’s shock; it was not the fact that the Russian leader lied to other world leaders but that he did so knowing perfectly well that his falsehood could not survive even a day and that his opponents would have every reason to call him a liar. Putin’s lie about the Russian Special Forces not being in Crimea is radically different than Russian lies about Moscow’s involvement in eastern Ukraine or about Russia’s non-involvement in the Malaysian airliner incident. Putin’s lie was a statement. The question is why he made this statement and what he wants to achieve by it.

Washington was genuinely shocked that Russia was denying obvious facts. They could not understand why Putin was claiming, “It is ‘citizens’ defense groups’ and not Russian forces that have seized infrastructure and military facilities in Crimea” although images of Russian Special Forces capturing the public buildings in Crimea were all over every TV channel and the Internet. Putin’s lies seemed absurd in the age of transparency. Why were the Russians lying so blatantly, knowing perfectly well that their lies would be exposed just hours after they were uttered? They did not even really try to conceal their mendacity. Just days after Crimea was declared a part of the Russian Federation, the nation’s defense ministry issued medals for “liberation” of the peninsula bearing the inscription “For the return of Crimea 20.02.14-18. 03.14.” The first date on the medal preceded even the appearance of Russian troops in Crimea, causing speculation that the annexation had long been in the pipeline. Putin’s behavior ran contrary to the basic assumptions of realpolitik, i.e. that “lying is only effective when the potential victim thinks that the liar is probably telling the truth” and that “nobody wants to be called a liar, even if it is for a good cause”.

In his book Why Leaders Lie John Mearsheimer, the doyen of the realist school of international relations, makes a remarkable effort to explain why lying makes sense in international politics, identifying the major types of strategic lies and when leaders are most likely to lie. He also explains why it is that, running contrary to common cliches, states actually lie to each other much less than people expect and secondly, underlines that leaders lie much more often to the public in their own country, with democratic leaders as the most frequent offenders. However, Putin’s behavior does not fit into a realist framework. Putin lies in order to be exposed as a liar, and for Mearsheimer such behavior does not make sense.
If Putin’s initial denial of the Kremlin’s operation in Crimea can be psychologically explained by the panic Kiev’s Maidan triggered in him, his insistence even when the peninsula was already under Russian control that Russian troops did not participate in the Russian Spring in Crimea does not make sense. Even more confusingly, from a military point of view the Kremlin’s insistence that Russian troops were not involved in Crimea was risky. Viewed from today’s vantage point, when we know that Russia managed to annex Crimea without losing a single soldier, it is natural to believe that capturing the peninsula was a low-risk operation. However on the night of February 23 the picture looked very different. More than 20,000 Ukrainian troops were stationed in Crimea; the Crimean Tatars were on the streets ready to defend the Maidan revolution; and indeed, if the Russian leaders really believed that what was unfolding in front of their eyes was a deliberately planned American operation, it would be natural to believe that the Americans would have their Crimean scenario too.
The question of why the Russian President never tried to excuse/explain his untrue statements challenges the logic of deception as a strategic weapon, in other words, the argument adopted by the realists.
Currently the Western media agrees that Russia is a land of lies, so the explanation is that the President lied as that is how Russian leaders behave when they do not know what else to do. This image is best summarized in the closing remarks on the Berezovsky-Abramovich trial when Mrs. Justice Elizabeth Gloster declared in her final verdict: “I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable witness, who regards truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes. I gained the impression that he was not necessaryily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of the events.” This is not a verdict on Berezovsky but on the entire Russian post-Communist elite including the President.
It is not just that Russia is perceived as a land of lies: the politics of deception is believed to be a trademark of Putin’s behavior as Russian leader. The logic is that former spies all live in the world of John le Carré's novels where all politics is deception. Just remember The Spy Who Came From the Cold. Deception is not simple lying; it is a three or four-move operation in which deceiving your own side is no less important than deceiving your enemies. History is no longer the story of class wars but an album of special operations.
In Viktor Pelevin’s story “Operation ‘Burning Bush’,” the first-person narrator, Semyon Levitan, is recruited for a special FSB project. Levitan’s initial mission is to speak, as God, with American President George W. Bush through an implant in Bush’s tooth. It was the Russian Special Services speaking with God’s voice who gave Bush the idea of invading Iraq and in the course of talking to the American President our protagonist learned that through a similar operation the Americans made Gorbachev believe he had spoken to Lenin, and thus perestroika and the disintegration of the Soviet Union were initiated. Pelevin’s message is clear: conspiracy theories are the only way to make sense of the contemporary world. Only God’s voice implanted in Bush’s tooth can explain a foreign policy blunder like the invasion of Iraq. The Kremlin’s leaders are no admirers of Pelevin but they share his understanding that only conspiracy theories shed light on our world. Russia’s obsession with the manipulative nature of the West is vital to make sense of Putin’s behavior.

It seems obvious that Putin as an ex-intelligence officer would be in love with lying and deception. Strangely enough historical record tells us a different story. The ex-KGB officer is a reluctant liar. He is tough and often unpleasant but also someone who keeps his word. When the then Russian president claimed in 2008 that he would not change the Constitution in order to run for a third term of office, he was being honest. There is an explanation for Putin’s general aversion to lying. Deception is a strong weapon in an institutional system where people tend to trust the rules but it is a dangerous strategy in the surreal reality of today’s Russia where the Russian President is the ultimate arbiter and the whole universe of power is sustained by the belief that he will keep his promises. In this context Putin’s behavior looked more like that of a criminal boss than of an intelligence officer. In the criminal world, lying and deception is a nuclear option because the response could be total destruction. Living ,по понятиям” is the criminal version of living in truth.

We cannot therefore make sense of Putin’s behavior if we are not ready to read it as a deliberate strategy. Putin lied blatantly about Russian troops’ presence in Crimea and was not afraid to be called a “liar” because for him any attack on his treacherous behavior was a way of reminding the world how often he was lied to. Putin’s attacks on the liberal order do not serve to promote any alternative but to critique the hypocrisy of that order. War on Western hypocrisy is at the heart of Putin’s revisionism.
In Putin’s image of the West, lying and deception lie at the heart of the US-dominated liberal order. It was the West that led Moscow to believe that NATO would never expand into Central Europe while secretly preparing precisely that expansion. It was the West that lied to Russia to secure its support for the UN Resolution on Libya, promising that safe haven does not mean regime change while secretly preparing to oust Gaddafi.
Since the 1990s gangster movies have become the trademark of Russia’s new mass culture. The gangster was the new “hero of our times.” In most of these movies a typical moment occurs that has become something of a cliché. At some point in his career, the talented and brave gangster contacts politicians or state officials. He needs them to make the really big money he wants to go legal, for he wants to be accepted, but it is at this very moment that his life is in the gravest danger for it turns out that politicians and state officials are the most deceptive and untrustworthy of all. They are the ones who never keep their word. Putin’s perspective on his relations with the West very much fits this cliché. He is the gangster but it is they who could not be trusted.

Today it is fashionable to interpret Putin’s policies as an attempt to restore the reach of the Soviet Union’s power, if not the Soviet Union itself, and to emphasize Russia’s role as a conservative power seeking to re-make Europe in its own self-image as a crusading opponent of modern decadence. Alarming statements by Alexander Dugin, the pop star of Russian Eurasianism, are frequently recycled in Western media.
In reality, Putin’s policies have almost nothing to do with Russia’s traditional imperialism or expansionism, nor is cultural conservatism such a decisive factor as some commentators allege. Putin does not dream of conquering Warsaw or re-occupying Riga.
Putin’s aggressive isolationism is packed and conceptualized not as a war on liberal order but as a war on the West’s hypocrisy. In order to make sense of Putin’s behavior we should distinguish between Russia’s three different modes of imitating the West, namely: imitation as transformation (reforming the country’s polity and economy according to Western models); imitation as mimicry (a way to preserve the old order by Westernization of the façade); and, most interestingly, imitation as a calculated strategy to dismantle the post-WW2 international order by exposing its fundamental hypocrisy.
Fukuyama’s “end of history” unleashed an avalanche of imitations. The heralded triumph of liberal democracy signified only the proliferation of its various simulacra. Initially, the West’s victory in the Cold War meant that imitating the West’s values, institutions and practices was seen as an efficient way to transform countries exiting decades of Communist rule. The scramble for accession to the European Union was the ultimate embodiment of this trend. In the early 1990s, Yeltsin’s Russia, too, looked ready to try imitation of Western models as the shortest route to economic, social, and political transformation. By 1996, however, this initial reform-mimicry project had already basically been abandoned. The country’s leadership then turned to imitation as faking. Superficially, Russia seemed to be imitating western institutions. It was using politically correct language, but the object of the exercise was no longer to reform the country but only to preserve social peace and protect those in power. Annexation of Crimea marks the third and radically different phase or style of imitation. For President Putin, Russia’s 1990s style of imitating the West brought only geopolitical humiliation and domestic unraveling. The problem, he concluded, was that Russia had been imitating the West, constructed by the Western powers as a way to preserve their own power, for exactly the wrong reasons. His current strategy still involves imitation, but now for the “right” reason, that is, in pursuit of aggressive destabilization and subversion, rather than for political and economic reform or to protect the privileges of regime insiders. It is therefore imitation purged of any trace of subordination or humiliation. Phase-three imitation does not require Putin to offer a viable alternative to the liberal order, but merely to demonstrate its corrupt nature by holding up a mirror in which the West can view its hypocritical self. Russia has decided to de-legitimize the West simply by doing what the West is doing and rationalizing what it does, mockingly, by using the West’s own self-satisfied, self-exculpatory rhetoric of justification.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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