by Amir Taheri
[Putin] admits that the days when US and Soviet summits were held in neutral venues to underline their equality in status are gone. Despite all the saber-rattling by his minions like Dmitry Medvedev, Putin knows that the war isn't going well for him.
Trump.... must have realized that Russia remains economically resilient and politically determined enough not to throw in the towel. He also realized he couldn't expect Putin to simply walk out of Ukraine without carrying something with him. This is why Trump talks of "territorial concessions by both sides", knowing that the "both sides" part of the phrase fools no one.
Thus, we are faced with another "land-for-peace" conundrum that has never worked as a permanent solution to conflicts between adversaries that regard each other as existential threats.
Even before Friday's meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska had happened, conflicting views were aired about its purpose and possible outcome.
Trump-bashers, that is to say usual suspects such as the New York Times and CNN, dismissed it as another photo-op to add a brushstroke to his portrait as peacemaker deserving Nobelization.
The Blame America First crowd, in this case represented by Harvard Professor Jeffery Sachs, claimed that Trump will try to get a chunk of Russia's oil and gas for American big business.
The European nay-sayers' chorus, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, sang their song of "Trump kowtowing to Putin" by excluding the European Union from the rendezvous in icy Alaska.
But even if all those assertions were true, there is no doubt that the summit marks an important event.
Trump had insisted that Putin should first accept a halt in the war before there is a meeting. That hasn't happened. If anything, Putin has increased the rhythm and tempo of his war symphony to crush Ukraine.
For his part, Putin had made the summit conditional on two exigencies: easing of sanctions and a halt to US military support for Ukraine. Again, neither of those things happened.
Trump imposed tougher sanctions on Russia and upgraded weapons supplied to Ukraine. In other words, both men have upped the ante in their gamble over the war-ravaged Ukraine. All that may paint a grim prospect for anything useful coming out of Alaska.
However, seen from another angle, things may not appear that forlorn. To start with, by accepting Trump's summons to Alaska, Putin acknowledged the United States' status as the indispensable power in world politics. In other words, he admits that the days when US and Soviet summits were held in neutral venues to underline their equality in status are gone. Despite all the saber-rattling by his minions like Dmitry Medvedev, Putin knows that the war isn't going well for him.
Trump, on the other hand, must have realized that Russia remains economically resilient and politically determined enough not to throw in the towel. He also realized he couldn't expect Putin to simply walk out of Ukraine without carrying something with him. This is why Trump talks of "territorial concessions by both sides", knowing that the "both sides" part of the phrase fools no one.
Thus, we are faced with another "land-for-peace" conundrum that has never worked as a permanent solution to conflicts between adversaries that regard each other as existential threats.
The roots of the current war might be found in the historic failure of Russia to resolve its identity crisis and the European failure to help it do so.
Since post-empire Europe was re-organized with the Westphalian treaties, the trouble-ridden continent has experienced two threats: pan-German domination by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia and from 1870 the united German Reich on one side and pan-Slavism led by Tsarist and later Soviet Russia on the other.
The phrase "the Russians are coming!" was used as early as the 18th century to vocalize the Europeans' fear of what Marx called "barbarians from the east". Also, it wasn't Winston Churchill who invented the phrase "Iron Curtain" but German writer Franz Schuselka in 1872.
All along, Russia was split between its Asiatic and European identities. Although it touches on a frozen portion of the Pacific and has some access to open seas via the Sea of Azov, Russia remains a landlocked power. This is why it never succeeded in building an empire beyond its land outreach. The European powers that divided the world into colonial trophies in the Berlin Conference left Russia out of the thieves' family picture.
Interestingly, however, Russia never invaded Europe but was invaded by Swedish, French and German armies on a number of occasions.
Russians also boast that they acted as Europe's rampart against the "Yellow Peril," while cutting the Ottoman Empire and Iran, both Islamic challengers of Christian Europe, down to size.
The 19th century poet Aleksandr Blok complains in a long poem that Europeans do not appreciate what Russia has done for them as the advanced guard of civilization against "Asiatic hordes".
At the end of the poem, he threatens Europeans that "if you don't want us and try to keep us out, we shall come back at the head of those hordes."
At the same time, what became Russia after Peter the Great was to a large extent a European project. Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wouldn't have been possible without access to English Victorian and French literature. Russian music, dance and paintings are also offspring of European art, starting with Byzantine influence.
Italians designed Petrograd, Venice of the North, and Moscow reflected French architecture.
Yet Russia, Europe's prodigal son, bears a grudge against the West like one treated as the back sheep of the family.
Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom, but the Europeans mocked his move as a subterfuge to bolster his tyranny. They also ignored the fact that the Russian royal family was German and that French was the court language. German aristocrat Count Nesselrode was Russia's foreign minister for half a century, but never bothered to learn proper Russian. French philosopher Voltaire got a lot of money from Empress Catherine but treated Russia with contempt.
The 1917 Russian revolutionaries were all westernized bourgeois do-nothings who carried the Marxist virus from the West but never won equal status, even from European Communists in their pay.
Part of the reason why Russia misbehaves is the feeling that whatever it does, it will always be treated as an outsider by the family of "civilized nations".
At a time when the USSR was under an oxygen tent, President George H.W. Bush, unwittingly perhaps, showed his contempt when he asked "how could we save Russia?"
President Barack Obama showed his arrogance when he graded Russia as a "regional power" not worthy of special attention.
All that fed the pan-Slavic discourse that pits Russia against the West. The invasion of Ukraine was a symptom of the failure to find a proper place for Europe's prodigal son.
Jeffrey Sachs' bogus claim that Putin invaded because he feared Ukraine would join NATO is deliberately misleading. A nation with border disputes with any of its neighbors can't even apply for NATO membership.
Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan
in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable
publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
Source:https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21845/russia-europe-prodigal-son
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