Perceiving the Russian Threat: How Identity Politics are Shaping Central European Attitudes Towards Moscow

Starší články autorů | Autor: Jan Jireš | 20. květen 2011

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 When reacting to security threats, not only their objective character matters but so do the subjective perceptions held by policy-makers and populations. Security threat perception depends on how the society perceives itself and its values and it is thus closely related to collective identities.

 

Politics are Shaping Central European Attitudes Towards Moscow 

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

• When reacting to security threats, not only their objective character matters but so do the subjective perceptions held by policy-makers and populations. Security threat perception depends on how the society perceives itself and its values and it is thus closely related to collective identities.
• To counter the Cold War mental map of a Europe divided into “West” and “East”, Czech, Polish and Hungarian intellectuals developed the concept of "Central Europe" as an entity culturally and socially profoundly distinct from Russia. As a result, a strongly negative view of Russia then became a defining feature of Central European foreign policy-making after 1990. Being “Central European” is above all supposed to mean being “un-Russian”, which in practice often translates into being anti-Russian.
• Because the image of Russia represents such an important element in forming their identities, Central Europeans’ perceptions of the “renewed Russian threat” has been shaped less by objective material circumstances and more by ideational struggles in the region. Identity agenda has played a major role in Central Europeans’ approach towards Russia.
• The most important foreign policy goal of the Central European countries after the Cold War has been to transform as fast as possible their identity and image from “Eastern” to “Western” and to be accepted by the West as its regular part.
• The Central European, identity-shaped perception of the “Russian threat” raises several questions: (1) Which magnitude should be assigned to such a “Russian threat”; (2) which kind of reaction to the Russian policies is most effective in affirming the “Western-ness” of Central Europeans? Answers to these questions show that Central Europeans face some difficult dilemmas:(1) It is believed that the chief goal of the Russian leaders is to use assertive foreign policy as an instrument helping legitimise their regime domestically. Central Europeans thus face a dilemma: Should they help Mr Putin achieve this goal by speaking tough about the graveness of the new “Russian threat” and by admonishing Western Europeans for being weak and appeasing towards Russia? Or should they rather try to avoid affirming Russia’s assumed superpower status in this way? Central Europeans over-dramatising the “Russian threat” are welcome by Mr Putin: He can use them to impress his domestic audience and to demonstrate that Russia is feared again and back in the centre of the global great-power game.(2) The more ardently Central Europeans try to distance themselves from the barbaric Russia and the more hawkish they speak against Russia and its policies, the less credible, paradoxically, their Western character gets and the more vulnerable their assumed Western credentials sound. For Western Europeans, the tough approach of Central Europeans towards Russia is the ultimate proof of their non-Western-ness.
• Central Europeans must realise that should they decide to keep pursuing hawkish policies towards Russia (no matter if such policies are objectively justifiable or not), their “Western” image, which they have sought for so long, will suffer in the eyes of, in particular, Western Europe. Thus, there seems to be a clash between the reality of their strategic environment and their post-Cold War identity agenda.

 

It was Arnold Wolfers, a representative of the classical realist thought in international relations, who first explicitly observed that when it comes to reflecting upon and reacting to security threats, not only their objective character, magnitude and distance matter, but so do the subjective perceptions of them held by security policy-makers and populations. For Wolfers, “security” is thus two-dimensional: It means the absence of vital threats to the valued assets of a society as well as the absence of the subjective perception that such threats exist. 

 

A third dimension was later added to the way how the nature of the security threat should be understood, namely the notion that rather than being objective material reality, “security threats” (and especially the relative importance and degree of urgency assigned to them) are products of the society’s public policy discourse in which politicians, experts, lobbyists, intellectuals and journalists participate and which constantly evolves. 

 

This idea is rather commonsensical. If “security” means the absence of threats to the valued assets of a society, then it first must be formulated by means of public discourse what these values actually are and what is their relative importance. In this respect, there are often dramatic differences between societies; the ultimate conclusion then is that the security threat perception stems from how the given society perceives itself. In other words, threat perception is closely related to societal identity: Our understanding of the dangers that we believe threaten us is in a profound sense shaped by our idea of ourselves, our neighbours, our values, our aspirations and our place in the world.

 

The idea of the security threat perception as a product of public discourse seems to be borne out by everyday empirical evidence. For the analyst, it is a useful tool for studying how societies react to the challenges of their security environment. Why, for example, society A considers certain phenomenon as a vital threat to its security while a neighbouring society B considers the very same phenomenon as relatively unimportant? Often, material circumstances do not provide the full explanation for such divergences and we have to look into the realm of ideas – of collective identities and the aspirations embedded in them.

 

Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than in the case of how Central European governments and societies perceive Russia’s new foreign political assertiveness and her recent actions on the international stage. For their image of Russia plays a crucial role in how the societies of Central Europe define themselves and their position on the map of Europe. 

 

This article’s starting point is that precisely because Russia (or rather the image of her) represents such an important element in forming their own identities, Central European countries’ perceptions of the “renewed Russian threat” are shaped less by objective material circumstances and more by ideational struggles in the region. This helps explain why the Central European perceptions of Russia and reactions to her policies have been full of often irreconcilable contradictions. 

 

The Idea of Central Europe

 

It is now commonly acknowledged that categories such as “Western Europe”, “Eastern Europe”, “Central Europe” or “Scandinavia” do not have much to do with the actual physical geography. Although they disguise themselves behind vaguely geographic labels, they are better understood as concepts that have been developed for the sake of organising the messy and complicated world into neater “mental maps” grouping societies and countries into manageable clusters. 

There may well be a number of reasonable criteria justifying the validity of such regional groupings. However, being labelled by the outside world as belonging to this or that regional grouping has had – at least in Europe – a profound impact on collective identities. Even more importantly, it has frequently led to collective frustration when a particular society felt that its self-understanding was ignored or denied by the outside world.

It was not until the 18th century that French Enlightenment thinkers and travellers first turned the imaginary axis of European civilisation by ninety degrees, discarding the age-old South-North axis and adopting in its stead the West-East axis we know today. Ever since, it has been of a tremendous importance to numerous societies and countries of the Continent to determine where exactly they are located on that new civilisational axis, on which “West” is associated with all things positive in politics, society and economy and “East” with all things negative.  

 

This is not merely an issue of self-respect. As international relations tend to be based on and justified by precisely such mental maps, the West-East axis has often tangibly affected material security and well-being of various European societies. For this reason, the countries of “Central Europe” have always seen regional labels assigned to them by the outside world with a degree of sensitivity that sounds odd to Americans or British. For they know that being considered as “Western” (such as Vienna) or “Eastern” (such as Prague) can make a profound difference. 

 

During the later stages of the Cold War a group of dissidents and émigrés from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary embarked on reinvigorating the concept of “Central Europe” and putting it on the mental map shared by Europeans and Americans. It was an attempt to overcome the straightjacket of the then prevailing West-East dichotomy, in which the culturally Western countries of Central Europe – as these intellectuals saw it – were unjustly trapped within the East.  

They decided to defy the West-East dichotomy of the Cold War for two closely related reasons: First, they saw the lumping of the Hapsburg Empire’s successors together with the “East” as depriving them of their identity and denying their essentially Western credentials. Second, this in their opinion led to the legitimisation of the permanent Soviet control over the region. 

 

To counter the prevailing Cold War mental map of a bifurcated Europe of which they felt to be victims, Czech, Polish and Hungarian intellectuals attempted to construct an alternative concept of "Central Europe" as an entity culturally and socially profoundly distinct from "Eastern Europe”, i.e. from Russia and its cultural appendages. As a result, a strongly negative relationship towards Russia was, and remains to be, the defining feature of the concept of Central Europe as it emerged in the 1980s. Being “Central European” is above all supposed to mean being “un-Russian”, which in practice often translates into being anti-Russian. Central Europeans’ hawkish policies towards Russia in the post-Cold War period, so much detested by West Europeans, have thus been driven not just by material realities (such as by the relative geographic proximity of Russia) but also by a psychological need of the region to distance itself culturally and politically from the “East” in order to be accepted a part of the “West”.

 

The anti-communist dissidents who came to power after the Cold War made the concept of "Central Europe" a centrepiece of the new Western-oriented Polish, Czech and Hungarian foreign policies. Not surprisingly, other post-communist states quickly became aspirants to the Central European label, which they viewed as a useful political vehicle for proving their alleged "non-Eastern-ness" and speeding their integration with the West.

Putting aside the intellectual subtleties of the original viewpoint of Milan Kundera et al (who argued that Central Europe is distinct from both Eastern Europe and Western Europe), the post-Cold War goals of the key countries in the region became straightforward, though not always openly declared: To transform as soon as possible their identity and image from “Eastern” to “Western” and to be accepted by the West as its part. Some countries of the region – most notably the Czech Republic – started to see the concept of Central Europe not as an end in itself but just as a vehicle which might be temporarily useful before being accepted as a full-fledged part of the West. 

As academic as all of this may sound, it has profound practical implications for present-day geopolitics in the region, and should be borne in mind by US analysts trying to understand the sources of Central European reactions to an increasingly assertive Russia. For whether Central Europeans are willing to admit it or not, identity issues play a major role in their approach towards Russia – not an unemotional realist strategising. However, the identity-driven perceptions of the “Russian threat” are ultimately mired in a host of paradoxes. Two of the most important ones relate to (1) which magnitude should be assigned to the contemporary “Russian threat” and to (2) which kind of reaction to the Russian policies is most effective in affirming the “Western-ness” of Central European countries.  

 

How Strong is the Bear?

 

When reflecting upon an adversary, an observer tends to oscillate between two contradictory images. To be worth the attention and resources spent on confrontation, the adversary must be strong and formidable. At the same time he must be inferior to us – at least in some respects – so that our cause of confronting him can be justified. It seems Central Europe (as well as much of Western Europe and North America) perceives Russia in precisely this dialectical way today. 

On one hand, we see dire predictions in Western newspapers and journals of a resuscitated superpower Russia bent on igniting a new Cold War. Lumped together with China, Brazil and India, Russia is being presented as a dynamic global power centre and as one of the ascendant world leaders to replace a decaying West. On the other hand, there have been a number of articles and books published recently that look in a more sober way at the reality of the contemporary Russian economy and society and find that in spite of the brash rhetoric of the country’s leading duo, the fundamentals of Russia’s presumed power are shockingly weak and probably destined to grow ever weaker. 

The list of problems facing today’s Russia runs long. Its population is smaller than that of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria and less than one third of the EU population. It is shrinking by approximately 700,000 persons a year in what may be the gravest contemporary demographic crisis, with no remedy available in the mid-term perspective.

 

The average life expectancy of Russians currently stands at 66 years, which is slightly below the world average and comparable to Bolivia or Papua New Guinea. It is considerably lower than the life expectancy of, for example, Indians and Uzbeks. When just the men’s average life expectancy is considered, the contrasts get even sharper. The average Russian man can hope to live to the age of 59, which is five years below the world average and comparable to sub-Saharan African countries such as Ghana, Eritrea and Madagascar. The average Georgian man can hope to live beyond his 73rd birthday, which is whopping fourteen years longer than his Russian counterpart. 

 

When it comes to economy, which is generally understood to be the most important component of a country’s power, the picture does not get any better. A lot has been quipped about the character of the Russian economy and its Third World-like dependence on exporting energy and raw. But what is often overlooked is that the actual size of the Russian economy is not that impressive either. 

 

True, when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is calculated in terms of purchasing power parity, the Russian economy is comparable in size to that of France. However, when the GDP in terms of market exchange rate is considered (which is a category arguably more relevant for assessing country’s ability to project power abroad), the Russian economy turns out to be relatively small, totalling USD 1,290 billion as of 2007. The economies of Spain and Canada are both larger at USD 1,440 and 1,426 billion respectively. The Russian economy is half the size of the French economy and about the same size as the economies of the Netherlands and Belgium combined. With due respect, nobody suspects these two countries to be the next superpowers. 

 

Reviewing all these data, one must admire the success achieved by President Putin in persuading the rest of the world that his country is an ascendant superpower. But how should Central Europeans react to the great-power policies pursued by the Russian leadership, having in mind their own strategic position as well as their identity-related aspirations? 

 

There is a consensus among European and American observers when it comes to assessing the purpose of Russian leaders’ recent actions and rhetoric. Their primary audience is believed to be domestic and their chief goal to use foreign policy as an instrument helping legitimise their regime and its methods vis-à-vis the Russian population.

 

Herein lies the dilemma for Central Europeans: Should they help Putin and Medvedev achieve this goal by taking their boisterous talking seriously, by speaking tough about the graveness of the new “Russian threat” and by admonishing Western Europeans for being weak and appeasing towards Russia? Or should they rather try to avoid affirming Russia’s assumed superpower status and to take account of the raw reality of Russian power presented above and attempts to more realistically assess the hullabaloo created by Moscow’s power tandem?

 

The second option should at least be taken into consideration by Central European policymakers. For by mobilising against the “Russian threat” and penning books and articles announcing the “new Cold War” waged against a “resurgent Russian superpower”, foreign commentators give the Putin regime exactly what it wants: International recognition of Russia’s great-power status.  

 

To date, the Russian leadership has largely succeeded in this task at the remarkably low cost of merely speaking defiantly, spending a couple of extra billion of petrodollars on armament projects, and waging a minor military conflict a few miles behind Russia’s borders against a country thirty-times smaller. Central Europeans and Americans over-dramatising the “Russian threat” are very welcome by Putin: He can use them to impress his domestic audience and to demonstrate his foreign-political prowess in returning Russia back to the centre of the global great-power game. 

 

As oil revenues contract, the Russian economy shrinks and public funds vanish, the social contract that Vladimir Putin instituted over the past five years may begin to crumble as well. In such a case, increasingly aggressive foreign policy posturing may become the only remaining source of legitimisation the Prime Minister and his power clique still have at their disposal. Over-reacting Westerners will then become even more precious for and sought-after by the Russian regime. For this reason, Central Europeans – perhaps defying some of their identity-driven instincts – will have to carefully weigh their responses to Russian words and actions, realistically assessing the true policy goals of the country’s leadership in order to avoid furthering them unintentionally.

 

How to Sound Sufficiently Western?

 

The second Central European dilemma related to the perception of the “Russian threat” is more profound. As explained above, the single most important foreign policy goal of the Central European countries after the Cold War was to be accepted by the “West” as its full-fledged part – for both geostrategic and identity reasons. The revived concept of Central Europe was arguably employed only as a vehicle to achieve this goal, at least by some of the countries in the region. Today, after several decades of such identity struggles, the question some Central Europeans murmur is: “Will we finally be accepted as an uncontested part of the West if we keep defining ourselves in opposition to Russia or rather if we change our rhetoric and start treating Russia amicably as most Western Europeans do?”

 

Nothing infuriates the average Czech or Polish Atlanticist more than reading in the Western press about how, in attempting to install missile defence sites in Central Europe, Washington is meddling in “Russia’s backyard” or even “Moscow’s backyard”. He sees this expression, which is frequently used by American and British journalists, as an implicit confession of the Western elites that they still consider his country belonging to some kind of legitimate Russian sphere of influence and, therefore, as a failure of his country’s long term foreign-policy efforts, regardless of the formal institutional integration with the West achieved in the past decade.

 

But here lies the core paradox of the Central European relations with Russia. For the more ardently Czechs, Poles or Estonians try to distance themselves from the barbaric Russia and the more hawkish they speak against the Russian regime and its policies, the less credible their Western character gets and the more vulnerable their assumed Western credentials sound. “Normal” Western countries, such as Austria or Finland, do not see Russia in a confrontational way; indeed, their Western character is demonstrated by the fact they do not feel the need to define themselves in opposition to Moscow.

 

Paradoxically, while anti-Russian policies were employed by Central Europeans with the aim to affirm their Western-ness, precisely these policies became at the same time one of the reasons the assumed Western character of Central Europe seem compromised in the eyes of Western Europeans. For them, the hawkish posture of Central Europeans towards Russia is the ultimate proof of their non-Western-ness. And by dramatising the “Russian threat”, Central Europeans in fact admit they do consider themselves to be still “in Russia’s backyard”. Speaking tough against Russia thus seems bringing outcomes fundamentally conflicting with their post-Cold War identity goals.

 

One should realise that when Czechs and Poles speak about the “Russian threat” in relation, for instance, to the muscular Russian reaction to the US missile defence plans in Central Europe, they do not genuinely believe their countries’ security is physically threatened (that would, after all, exclude them from the “West”). But they know it is threatened ideationally. They are upset by the fact that both Russia and (a part of) the West apparently do not take their Western character very seriously and that Russia is able to raise doubts in the West about whether Central Europe, after all, does not lie in her legitimate sphere of influence. Russia thus seems capable of questioning rather effectively the Western-ness of Central European countries.

 

It is profoundly mistaken to expect that Central European countries would or could form a regional defence alliance, separate from the “Old West”, in order to contain the perceived Russian threat (at least unless a direct and urgent military threat to the region fully develops). For this would only equal the ultimate confirmation of their non-Western-ness and, therefore, a complete failure of their long-term identity-driven policies. 

 

If a Central European replies “OK, but we are objectively speaking in a different geostrategic position than Western Europeans so we naturally react to Russian policies differently”, he is only admitting that his country is of a non-Western character and that its security position is inferior to that of the “West”.

 

After all, the question of the objective existence of a threat is not particularly relevant here as it is the inter-subjective perception shaped by country’s identity and ideology what matters. For example, in the view of liberal transactionalism (which is one of the sources of the European integration ideology) the existing European energy dependence on Russia is actually a positive phenomenon, at least potentially: As the theory goes, the growing economic interdependence between Europe and Russia will force both sides to search for sustainable engagement with each other, which will ultimately lead to an improvement in mutual understanding and to a reduction in the probability of a conflict emerging. For most Western Europeans, this is the wisdom to be followed.

 

Conclusion

 

The aim of this article was not to discuss whether there really exists a “Russian threat” to Central Europe today and if so, what is the objective nature and magnitude of such a threat. It has merely tried to draw attention to some of the paradoxical implications of talking about the “Russian threat” for the Central European identity policies pursued after the Cold War. 

 

Central Europeans must realise that if they decide to pursue hawkish policies towards Russia, the “Western” image that they have for so long worked to acquire will suffer in the eyes of, in particular, Western Europeans, irrespective of whether the policies themselves are objectively justifiable.

 

This is not to suggest that Central Europeans should be soft and accommodating towards Russia if there is an objective need to be tough and principled. In such a case, however, Central Europeans should understand that, unfortunately, they will have to give up the goal of becoming perceived as a regular part of the West as there is obviously a clash between the reality of their strategic environment and their post-Cold War identity agendas.

 

At the same time, the “Old West” needs to understand how important a role the above sketched identity agenda has played in Central European approach towards Russia and how strong a driving-force it has represented in shaping the Central European foreign policies of the past two decades. Defining themselves in opposition to Russia has been seen by the region’s elites as the only way to clearly distance from the past, to affirm their Western-ness and to join the West culturally and politically. This strategy, though completely understandable, has not been very successful because, in the long run, it proved to be somewhat counterproductive.

 

If Central Europe keeps feeling insecure and not being fully accepted by the “Old West”, governments in the region may stick to defining their policies in a radical opposition to Russia, potentially representing an obstacle to achieving pragmatic relationship between the West and Moscow. However, as long as the Central Europeans have legitimate reasons to believe that they are treated like third-class passengers by their Western fellow travellers, they will tend to feel the need to affirm their Western-ness by opposing Russia vigorously and pursuing identity-driven policies towards her.

 

Jan Jires is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Charles University in Prague and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced Intermational Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C.

 

Článek vyšel v upravené podobě 15. ledna 2009 v elektronickém magazínu Central European Digest, vydávaném think-tankem CEPA.