Fourth Scenario for Russia: What the American Experts Spoke for and What the Speak Out
Some time ago, an extremely interesting document was published in Washington called Alternative Futures For Russia to 2017, prepared by a group of American experts from the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (The Center for Strategic and International Studies). СSIS). The 2017 page English version of the report is available on the CSIS official website on the Internet.The document immediately attracted the attention of Russian journalists and politicians with one extravagant episode in which the speech, however, in the subjunctive mood, was about the murder of Putin on Christmas night when he left the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and followed this abrupt change of state policy. The overwhelming majority of domestic experts were quick to accuse American authors, firstly, of not knowing Russian political realities and professional incompetence, secondly, of perverted imagination bordering on irresponsible fantasy, and, thirdly, of malicious provocation.
A report on alternative scenarios for the future of Russia, published under the auspices of CSIS, is a very serious document, in accordance with this “agenda” the entire network of atlantist influence in our country will act.
Many Russian media outlets - newspapers, magazines, radio and TV channels - paid some part of their print space and airtime to the report’s coverage, though not very significant, and immediately forgot about it in the whirlpool of new informational motives. And in vain ... A careful reading of this document gives perhaps the most important keys to understanding the political situation in modern Russia, reveals some non-obvious (even for us Russians) semantic lines along which its fate unfolds.
However, at first there is one small, but extremely important for the correctness of the whole subsequent presentation, a retreat. The discussion will focus on those people who, within the framework of the so-called “Russia-2017 Working Group” (Russia 2017 Working Group), worked on developing appropriate scenarios. The project manager is Andrew Kuchins (Andrew C. Kuchins). Other experts who have made the most significant contribution to the preparation of the final version of the report include Anders Eslund, Thomas Graham, Henry Hale, Sarah Mendelson and Cory Welt. 15 minutes of working with Google will be enough to make sure that all of the above people are not just reputable American experts in Russia, but also so-called Kremlinologists. Many of them were professional Sovietologists in the past, and with the end of the Cold War they began to work in the format of Eurasian studies, the priority object of which remains Russia and the entire post-Soviet space - Eurasia.
Kremlinologists new type
Kremlin scientists form a kind of elite of former Sovietologists. It is understood that they thoroughly understand not only the nuances of the Russian-Soviet stories, but also in all the subtleties of relations between informal groups in the leadership of modern Russia - “siloviki”, liberals, oligarchic clans, etc. Including in their personal composition, ideological, financial, human resources, the process of making major government decisions, political and worldview trends that have even the slightest influence on the Kremlin or can get one in the future.
On the Internet you can also find information that Kuchins is the director of the Russian and Eurasian research program of the aforementioned “think tank” СSIS. From 2000 to 2006, he held a similar position at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (DC), while from 2003 to 2005 he headed the foundation's office in Moscow. Prior to this (1993-1997), Kuchins worked at the MacArthur Foundation (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation), where he oversaw a grants program for scientists from the former Soviet Union.
Today, this initiative is notorious for the fact that on its base throughout the post-Soviet space, and especially in the “hot spots” of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, the so-called monitoring networks (in particular, EAWARN) were deployed, which are engaged in the interests of the United States, and experts, collecting the most important information about the socio-political, ethno-religious and economic situation. Therefore, Kuchins knows firsthand what he writes about, he is personally acquainted with many Russian politicians, leading scientists, political scientists and ethnologists, who for many years have received wages in the form of grants from his hands.
The biographies of the rest of the Russia-2017 group are remarkably similar to each other. They are so similar that suspicions are beginning to creep in that a certain instance in the USA is preparing all these people for the mission that they are carrying out according to a typical template program. For example, Sarah Mendelsohn, Kuchins colleague at CSIS, is leading an initiative on human rights and security in this organization, and is one of the ideologists of the international anti-Russian campaign on human rights and North Caucasus issues, including the project to establish an international tribunal on Chechnya, similar to the Yugoslav one. At the end of 1990's, she worked at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington and the Carnegie Corporation of New York (The Carnegie Corporation of New York). 1994-1995 spent in Russia as an employee of the National Democratic Institute in Moscow (The National Democratic Institute's Moscow office), where she worked with human rights activists (Memorial Society, etc.) and pro-Western liberal democratic organizations.
At various times, both Mendelssohn and Kuchins were employees of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which in the Western press has for several decades called nothing less than a "secret world government."
Graham joined the Carnegie Foundation in 1998, having previously spent more than a year in Moscow in diplomatic service (the US Embassy, RAND Corporation representative office), held senior positions in the State Department and the US Department of Defense. Like Mendelssohn, he has a degree in sovietology from Yale University.
Aslund, from 2003 to 2005 years (when Kuchins was in Moscow) took his place as a research manager for Russia and Eurasia at the Carnegie Foundation in Washington, at various times worked at the Brookings Institution, the Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies (The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies). In the dashing 90, Aslund was even an economic advisor to three post-Soviet governments - Russia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.
Fiona Hill is at the heart of Russian politics
Looking through the materials on the network for the members of the Russia-2017 group, it was impossible not to stumble upon another person who is not directly listed among the authors of the report, but which in this context in all cross-hyperlinks is given insistently by Google - Fiona Hill. This charming young lady, half English, half Scottish, a US citizen, friend of Kuchins and Mendelssohn, is rightfully considered one of the most influential Kremlinologists, as well as an expert on the problems of the Russian North Caucasus. Her work experience includes working at Harvard University in 90-s, where she was a project manager for the study of ethnic conflicts in the CIS countries (while Kuchins was creating monitoring networks that collected data on these conflicts) , The Eurasia foundation, The George Soros Open Society Institute (The Open Society Institute).
Hill learned the Russian language during an internship at the Institute. Maria Theresa in Moscow. As a member of the editorial board of the Russian-speaking news Washington Profile participated in meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and foreign journalists as part of the Valdai Discussion Club.
It is thanks to Hill that the institutional environment in which the report we are analyzing was created is most clearly clarified. The fact of the matter is that she currently heads the Russian and Eurasian Studies Section at the National Intelligence Council (NIC). As follows from the materials of his official website, Hill de facto oversees the work of a key interdepartmental group (task force) or, in other terminology, an operational center dealing with Russian and, more broadly, Eurasian issues in the interests of top US political leadership. The center brings together, on the one hand, analysts of the American special services, and on the other - leading Sovietologists and Kremlinologists from NGOs.
Of course, we don’t know who is on this team, and we don’t know, but the participants in the Russia-2017 project, taking into account their personal acquaintance with Hill and other autobiographical data, are just perfect shots. But if this is so, and most likely this is the case, then the report on alternative scenarios for the future of Russia, published under the auspices of CSIS, is a very serious document prepared in close cooperation with the NIC. In accordance with this “agenda”, the entire network of atlantist influence in our country (both through the special services and NGOs) will most likely operate in the foreseeable future.
So what did the report developers want to say to the political leadership of the United States and the rest of the world? And what did they really say? What is not included in the published version? And how to find out about it? Well, let's move on to the most important thing ...
Without bothering the reader with a direct retelling of the text, we will try to understand its conceptual foundations, which in an explicit form (with the exception of a few passages) in the introductory part almost never mentioned. Attentive analysis suggests that in the methodological terms, the document is substantiated by a very peculiar system of ideological coordinates, in which the American experts have written the main ideological projects of modern Russia and their carriers (parties, groups, individuals). One of the axes of this coordinate system is defined by a pair of opposites liberal (liberal) - illiberal (illiberal), while the other pair - the nationalists (nationalists) - internationalists (internationalists). The scope of these concepts (liberal / illiberal, nationalists / internationalists) will become clear in the course of our presentation.
Scenario One: Liberal Internationalism
The most favorable, to the maximum extent relevant to American national interests (the assessment of "5"), but at the same time the least likely scenario, from the point of view of analysts of the Russia-2017 group, is the coming to power of "liberal-internationalists" (liberal-internationalists) in Russia. In the patriotic lexicon, to refer to this group, as a rule, such synonyms as "cosmopolitan", "Westerners", and "ultra-liberals" are used. According to American experts, the most emblematic figures here are Boris Nemtsov, Grigory Yavlinsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as well as Mikhail Kasyanov and Garry Kasparov.
Acknowledging that the probability of their victory is close to zero (or, say, about 2%, which was confirmed once again by the December elections to the State Duma, where this political segment was represented by the Right Cause Party), the report’s developers do not lose hope of repeating scenario "color revolution" in Russia in the near future. Force majeure circumstances (wild cards), in particular, an extremely unfavorable economic situation for energy carriers in the world market, come to the aid of people of “goodwill”. It develops after a series of natural disasters, forcing the United States and other Western European countries to switch to alternative energy sources. As a result, there is a drop in oil prices to 20 dollars per barrel and, as a result, a systematic financial and economic crisis in Russia.
But even with such an optimistic and almost unrealistic forecast (oil futures for March 2012 of the year are already traded for almost 120 dollars), coupled with the extreme inefficiency of the state administration under the current president, Americans devote almost 4 of the year so that Russian society at least minimally matured to support frankly the pro-Western political course - putting Moscow’s geopolitical positions in the world, dismantling the nuclear arsenal, the country's territorial disintegration into smaller entities, exporting energy resources abroad by dumping Ngovy prices. “Liberal internationalism” is the integration of the remnants of a decaying federation into a “golden billion” with “weak positions”.
Scenario Two: Liberal Nationalism
The most likely and, in principle, quite acceptable scenario for the USA (“4” assessment) is the coming to power in Russia of so-called “liberal nationalists” (liberal-nationalists). In many ways, this ideological project continues Putin’s course, combining the development of liberal-democratic institutions with a strong Russian statehood. However, American analysts emphasize that in this case Putin’s final departure from the political arena is crucial, which alone will be the key to the implementation of this scenario. In the current presidential candidate number one, at the level of his individual psychology, the archetypes of the unconscious, personal fate, the report’s developers intuitively feel some kind of identity trick, speaking therefore of “putinism without Putin”. But more on this later.
The implementation of the national liberal plan in the long term will lead to the fact that Russia will strengthen its national component (hence the “nationalists”), pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy, reforming the army, increasing the level of welfare of the population and turning it into one of the regional centers of the "civilized world." However, at the same time, it will not cast doubt on the “global rules of the game” and on the very axioms of the liberal world order (individualistic and egoistic), which are established exclusively from Washington (hence “liberal”).
The large-scale crisis in the North Caucasus is beneficial for the United States, as it allows us not so much to weaken our country as to keep it in orbit of Euro-Atlantic influence.
In other words, it is the integration of the “regional power” into the “golden billion” with “strong positions”. When you have a powerful economy, a deadly nuclear weapon and the “energy baton”, you can claim a more honorable place at the cake, which the “golden billion” bites. And the Americans are ready to meet such requirements. In this context, Dmitry Medvedev is seen as a key figure in conjunction with Sergey Naryshkin. The ideological design of this course is the project of “sovereign democracy” approximately in the form in which it was proposed by Vladislav Surkov and was developed by the journal Expert.
Scenario Three: Illiberal Nationalism
Being relatively unlikely, but still more real than the victory of “cosmopolitans” (liberal internationalists), this scenario considers the possibility of the coming to power of “illiberal nationalists” (illiberal-nationalists) in Russia, which, according to the Americans, are the so-called “ siloviki ”from Putin’s entourage (Sechin, Patrushev, Ivanov, Ustinov, etc.).
After the assassination of the newly re-elected president, popular unrest, natural unrest, and social chaos begin in the country. The leaders of the special services are taking control of the situation into their own hands and by tough, repressive measures, right up to the execution of mass demonstrations, they bring order. On this wave, they nominate their candidate, the chairman of RAO Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, who becomes president of Russia. "United Russia" is renamed the party "Glory to Russia", and the "siloviki" are beginning to pursue a nationalist policy under the slogan "Russia for the Russians." Illegal migrants, primarily Caucasians, are massively deported from the capital. In the North Caucasian republics, large-scale purges begin among Muslims, local nationalists, and clan elites. De facto Russians receive a privileged position among other Russian peoples.
An authoritarian form of government is established, in which secret services and fear rule society. The largest anti-corruption campaign is unfolding. The construction of state corporations continues, to which is added the nationalization of natural monopolies. Despite foreign policy confrontation with the West and isolationism, Moscow eventually becomes the largest financial, economic and political center of regional importance, whose further civilizational expansion (even within the CIS) is limited, however, by nationalistic ideological attitudes and the lack of an ideological project attractive to other nations.
Paradoxically, even to such an extravagant, illiberal and anti-American, at first glance, the authors of the report set a confident “credited” (“3” rating). The fact is that according to their forecasts, the dependence of the Russian economy on the export of energy resources abroad, as well as the need for new technologies, will not allow “illiberal-nationalists” to finally break with the West. Moreover, the Kremlin’s nationalist policy in the long term will prevent the export of Russian influence outside the country and will lead to an increase in separatist tendencies within it, primarily in the North Caucasus. A sharp surge of Islamic fundamentalism, which is likely to be associated with Al-Qaida, will form a new global threat against which Russia and the West can only fight together.
Thus, all three scenarios, describing the coming to power in Russia of various political and ideological forces, in the long run are fully in line with the strategic interests of the United States, albeit with varying degrees. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that many of the so-called “objective tendencies” embodied in this analysis are in fact not so objective. They are rather the “bottlenecks” of modern Russian statehood, a blow to which, with an adequate response, is quite possible to parry. The task of the opposite side will be to turn these almost virtual trends into stable trends. The West will certainly continue to support the pro-Western opposition in Russia (“liberal internationalists”), using it as an instrument of pressure on the political elite (“liberal nationalists”), seeking to minimize the “national” component and strengthen the “liberal” one.
In parallel, first of all, in the North Caucasus, conflicts between Russian and indigenous peoples will be inspired, which against the background of the federal center’s ineffective migration policy is promoted by the provocative activities of radical nationalist organizations (such as DPNI) responsible for the pogroms in Salsk, Kondopog, Stavropol (“liberal nationalists”) "). The large-scale crisis in this multinational and multicultural region, according to the logic of the American Caucasians from the Russia-2017 group, is beneficial for the United States, as it allows us not so much to weaken our country as to keep it in orbit of Euro-Atlantic influence. Perhaps this explains the extremely restrained, if not positive, reaction of Washington to the statements of Doku Umarov about the abolition of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the creation of the Caucasus Emirate.
The fourth script?
Actually, the fourth scenario in the text of the report is not presented, it is omitted by the authors of the report for some reasons. However, the methodology used in its preparation makes it possible to reconstruct the fourth scenario on its own. Another sector remained vacant - a place for “illiberal internationalists” (illiberal internationalists). Given the rationality and consistency of Anglo-Saxon thinking, it is difficult to believe that they could forget about him.
It is obvious that the fourth scenario was intentionally lowered by the authors of the report while publishing as the most dangerous and unfavorable for the USA, leaving it for official use somewhere in the Hill Department. So let's try to find the missing elements of this fascinating puzzle!
After re-reading the document prepared by the Russia-2017 group, one detail catches the eye, which seems insignificant at the first acquaintance with the text. On the 4 page, American experts still use the phrase “illiberal internationalism” (“illiberal internationalism”), firstly, to denote the general that binds together the royal and Soviet periods of national history, and, secondly, for the fundamental characteristic - and this is fundamental! - Putin's regime. After the change of political and legal facades, starting with the Russian state of Ivan III and the Russian empire of Peter I, up to the Soviet statehood of Joseph Stalin, Western Sovietologists always unmistakably guessed the effect of the same force - the Russian people, endowed with a special universal mission (Moscow - Third Rome) , realized in history in the most paradoxical forms.
It was Putin who, according to the authors of the report, after the Gorbachev-Yeltsin rebellion, restored the seemingly lost lines of deep continuity between the white, red and modern stages of Russian statehood. The signing of the act of canonical communication between the Russian Orthodox Church and “foreigners” became the apogee and at the same time providential symbol of this process. “Illiberal Internationalism” is a secret formula of Russian identity.
On the one hand, the Russians have always been the imperial people, alien to the ethnic, national conceit, open to external expansion, to integrating other peoples into their civilization projects (hence “internationalism”). “Russian” is a special state of mind that any person can be filled with. “Russian” is the only adjective in our language used to designate a cultural-civilizational identity, which has given birth to such amazing “international phrases” as “Russian Tatar”, “Russian Jew”, “Russian Chechen”. That is why the global communist project, which met such a response throughout the world, and even the Third International, in the West at one time was interpreted as veiled tools for the realization of Russian geopolitical interests.
On the other hand, the archetypes of our collective unconscious, our cultural values have always been the opposite of Western - sobornost / individualism, religiosity / atheism, righteousness / legitimacy, solidarity / selfishness, socialism / liberalism (hence “illiberal”). This ideological dualism, whose origins are rooted in the division of the church into Western and Eastern, has never been overcome. Having accepted the baton of the guardian of true faith from Byzantium in the 15th century and becoming the “Third Rome”, Moscow stubbornly refuses to go off this path.
This perspective, in our opinion, frightened analysts from the Russia-2017 group. Through the external liberal-democratic attributes of modern Russia (“liberal nationalism”), they saw the alarming tendency of the imperial revival in form and illiberal (Orthodox-religious) in content line. Moreover, the country's movement in this direction has not yet begun, since at the level of elites, where oligarchs and bureaucrats still dominate, there are no serious institutional actors capable of being guides of this line.
Without this line, only the post-Yeltsin country remains, torn apart by the struggle of clans for spheres of influence, defenseless before the liberal suggestion of the West. Hence the concept of "Putinism without Putin."
In modern Russia, the most disturbing and unpredictable element is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a man talking to Russian history, a “providential man of fate,” as French metaphysician Jean Parvulesco once put it. It is a pity that Russia has not gained such a Putin. And it seems it will not gain. The question of what kind of scenario will be implemented in Russia after March remains open?
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