When it comes to imperialism — i.e., “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas” — the United States and Europe are quick to label Putin as a rabid practitioner who must be stopped or else he will conquer the world.
This is lazy propaganda on the part of the West and it is a bullshit accusation. Putin is an old school nationalist and an Eastern Orthodox Christian who eschews the Soviet Communist legacy. Since taking power in 1999, Putin has not led unprovoked conquests of adjacent territory. Russia’s military engagements with Georgia in 2008 and with Ukraine are a direct result of U.S. and NATO interference in the region.
But the U.S. and Europe persist in describing Putin as Stalin reincarnated and a man hell bent on imposing Russian sovereignty over the world. This just a 21st century version of the Domino Theory. It is Domino 2.0 and Putin is the new Vietnam. The truth of the matter is that the U.S. and Europe are bona fide imperialists and are ignoring Putin’s actual record. Instead, the West is engaging in gross hypocrisy and psychological projection — attributing to Putin what they themselves have done and are doing.
Putin’s words speak for themselves: What he is aiming for in Ukraine is the restoration of Russia as an imperial power.
Many observers quickly picked up on one of Putin’s more provocative lines, in which he compared himself to Peter the Great, Russia’s modernizing tsar and the founder of St. Petersburg – Putin’s own birthplace – who came to power in the late 17th century.
“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,” a relaxed and apparently self-satisfied Putin said. “On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it… He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was.”
Above all, it means viewing contemporary Russia as the heir to the Soviet empire—a highly centralized state in which the Russian core determined the internal and external policies of the non-Russian republics—and the product of that empire’s sudden collapse.
How did Russia become an imperial power? Not how other European powers did, by crossing seas and oceans to colonize parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Russia’s imperial growth was largely land-locked: expansion stretched continentally across Eurasia. The empire went west into Poland and Lithuania; east towards Siberia; and, in the south, towards the Caucasus region and Ottoman and Persian empires. . . .
“Russia’s concept of empire was different from that of the Western powers. Russia did not possess ‘distant colonies’ but expanded across its borders into the depths of Eurasia. It had a better opportunity for the closer integration of native and Russian nobility into one body.”
Did you catch that last paragraph? Mamedov apparently has not studied American history. If Russia is an imperialist because it “expanded across its borders” and exerted authority over adjacent territory, then what is the United States? Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California were not independent free states who voted to join the U.S. They came under U.S. control thanks to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially ended the Mexican–American War and “required Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory including the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and most of Arizona and Colorado. Mexico also relinquished all claims for Texas and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas.”
After sixty years of failed foreign military expeditions, the political class in Washington, D.C. clings tenaciously to the childish notion that if you can just get rid of the “bad man” you can usher in a political utopia. Just consider the list of villains the United States has targeted in repeated bids to change governments and create “democracy or eliminate terrorism, etc. How have those worked out? Did it make the world safer? Is the United States more secure?
Mossadegh, Iran
Arbenz, Guatemala,
Castro, Cuba
Diem, Vietnam
Mao, China
Noriega, Panama
Saddam Hussein, Iraq
Bashir Assad, Syria
The Shah, Iran
The Ayatollah Khomeni, Iran
Osama Bin Laden, ???
Vladimir Putin, Russia
I am amazed that so many so-called foreign policy experts adhere to the magical belief that eliminating a leader will provide a political solution that favors the West. Just listen to Hillary Clinton pleading for the Russian elite to eliminate Putin:
The notion that getting rid of Putin will neuter Russia and make it an obedient serf of the West is profoundly stupid and myopic. Just because people like Clinton and Biden insist that Putin is a dictator in the mold of Stalin, it does not magically transform delusional belief into reality.
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