As Stanford’s Michael McFaul states simply, Putin is the only BREXIT winner so far. Undeniably true. Nonetheless, Putin is an accidental beneficiary. The entire British political class’ inexplicably widespread moral and political bankruptcy ensured the catastrophic outcome, not Russian active measures (despite RT UK’s best efforts). Ambassador McFaul notes a prevailing Moscow point of view:
Most importantly, one of the European Union’s most principled critics of Russian aggression in Europe will no longer have a vote in Brussels. That’s good for Putin’s interests and bad for U.S. national interests. Boris Titov, Russia’s commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights, who is hardly a militant nationalist by Russian standards, made the argument most clearly when he cheered on Facebook, “UK out!!! In my opinion, the most important long-term consequence of all this is that the exit will take Europe away from the Anglo-Saxons, that is, from the USA. This is not the independence of Britain from Europe, but the independence of Europe from the USA.” London also helped advance our common interests inside the E.U. on non-European security issues from Iran to Libya to as far away as the Pacific. That “Anglo-Saxon” perspective is now lost within this most important international organization.
Titov’s geopolitical prism is not just widely shared in the Kremlin, security circles or Russian apparat generally. Here’s how the Kremlin-founded RISI (Russian Institute of Strategic Studies) phrased the issue last February. The analytical frame – cited here previously – is now a Russian social bromide in some ways. Thanks to many decades of promotion by the report’s co-author, Alexander Dugin, appearing in 2016 under yet a new self-brand.
Americans in particular fail to distinguish (or understand the difference) between Dugin the erratic and still marginal individual and Duginism writ large as Russian domestic ideological vector. He was never ‘Putin’s brain’ or even a direct influence. Dugin, however, promoted his geopolitical analysis of how to attack the United States energetically in the mid 1990s, eventually reaching General Staff circles at Yeltsin’s close. His influence on Russian ‘geopolitical mania’ widened throughout the 2000s. Your policy entrepreneurship “made it” when Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin’s widely read 2006 satire, Day of the Oprichnik (День опричника), lampoons your ideas as the voice of a court faction surrounding the new Tsar.
The individual? Decidedly less successful. The Kremlin (reportedly via Surkov’s faction) in 2014 visibly demoted a marginal Dugin as described here earlier. Some in the West note the timing: Dugin’s demotion coincided with his demand for military escalation in Ukraine. Another, more important factor? Dugin’s marginalization began in July, 2014, after he personally attacked Putin in June for weakness. He denounced Putin’s refusal to initiate “Total Fascism”, exterminate ‘moderate’ Russian elites (the so-called “Fifth and Sixth Columns”) and eliminate institutional constraints on Ruler will. This is the significance of his invocation of his untrammeled ‘Sovereign’. As envisioned by Ur fascists, the Italian Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt and Heidegger (in the latter’s previously secret “Black Books”). Dugin’s dog-whistles to Western Ur fascist traditions (for example, using Evola’s ‘Lunar’ and ‘Solar’ labels to describe weak, bourgeois fascism as in Germany and true fascism), were mocked as ‘weird and bizarre’ locutions by D.C. specialists. The Kremlin (and many European fascists), however, understood. As often the case with Russian foreign policy questions, it’s the internal issues that are determinative.
So it’s understandable that General Reshetnikov, RISI’s head, explained Dugin’s 2016 re-emergence and collaboration in a detailed Russian media interview. Reshetnikov explicitly rejected Dugin’s (faux) Eurasianism and his domestic agenda. Reshetnikov noted instead Dugin’s special utility for attacking the West and the American geopolitical position. Dugin’s ersatz post-1989 ‘Fourth Way’ fascism resonates across Europe. And beyond ideological affinities, Dugin created and maintains extensive so-called Rightist contacts in Austria, Greece, France, Germany and Slovakia, etc. (His American network is not non-existent, either).
Ambassador McFaul’s Titov quote, supra, is the Dugin 1990s elevator pitch as re-circulated by RISI and many others. Again, we emphasize the difference between Dugin’s historic influence on modern Russian geopolitical entrepreneurship and his current individual, limited utility.
On this analytical plane alone, we reject simplistic American ‘sound of trumpets’ enthusiasms for BREXIT, especially as advanced by Eliot Cohen and others. One might observe that Cohen and others would benefit from economic, social, linguistic and historical background to place the EU in the modern geopolitical context. Theirs is a simpler perspective which failed to anticipate the obvious resulting complexity. And future consequences.
We’ve discussed here the EU’s undeniable macro economic, political-historical and geo-political limitations. BREXIT divisions within Merkel’s coalition, between Berlin and Paris, among Founding States and the overall membership merely underscore those structural problems. Juncker’s tragi-comic attempted pronouncements to the permanent apparat in Brussels do not help. Still, the British political class’ failure as a functioning unit highlights the problem is not inherently within the European idea.
Russian 2014 revanchism is an undeniable change in the European space that adds additional complexity to the EU’s challenges. Some in the West mistakenly conflate Russian revanchism with Putin personally. In many ways, Putin is both critical instigator and captive tactical moderate within that dynamic. Putin’s actions after mid-2014 demonstrate this reality, and decisions highlight the diminished room for maneuver he finds within narrowed elites.
Whether with Putin or a post-Putin actor with a sustainable power base, the widespread psycho-emotional reality in the Russian apparat as expressed by Titov or RISI’s ‘analysis’ will remain. How domestic Russian politics may or may not give voice to that reality through foreign policy (and over time) is a more complicated question. All the more reason for American strategy to appraise BREXIT, the shaken EU and their collective place in the U.S post-1945 liberal democratic order responsibly. Even within Cohen and other’s narrow assertions of Great Britain benefiting from BREXIT, blithe assurances NATO is an equal EU substitute for America are unpersuasive. Not only is NATO not immune to European political disarray. NATO isn’t designed to – nor can it – replicate the power dynamics and structure of a functioning European idea for America. That Cohen et al. failed to anticipate a BREXIT would shake profoundly assumptions of a United Kingdom remaining united as an actual country is notable.
Dr Leo Strauss says
MIT experts: BREXIT 4 times worse for UK economy than expected.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-latest-news-four-times-worse-uk-economy-eu-departure-mit-economists-john-van-reenen-trade-a7570016.html