Hence, one can only guess as to what Russia is trying to achieve through its war with Ukraine given what we have stated already. But of course, certain scholars and theorists have already taken a shot at it. As Samuel Huntington argued, Russia is seeking to create a “civilizational bloc” equivalent to that of NATO or the European Union. He wrote: “The successor to the tsarist and communist empires is a civilizational bloc, paralleling in many respects that of the West in Europe.” He added: “Overall Russia is creating a bloc with an Orthodox heartland under its leadership and a surrounding buffer of relatively weak Islamic states which it will in varying degrees dominate and from which it will attempt to exclude the influence of other powers. Russia also expects the world to accept and to approve this system.”
And of course, for Russia, the initial building block to achieving the end goal of creating an entire civilizational bloc is Ukraine. As Huntington wrote: “The Russian-Ukrainian relationship is to eastern Europe…what the Franco-German relationship is to western Europe. Just as the latter provides the core of the European Union, the former is the core essential to unity in the Orthodox world.”
One must note that in the 19th century, Russia occupied France, and in the 20th century, Russia occupied Germany. That implies the breadth and the scope by which Russia has expanded and can expand today. To borrow from Henry Kissinger: “Everything about Russia – its absolutism, its size, its globe-spanning ambitions and insecurities – stood as an implicit challenge to the traditional European concept of international order built on equilibrium and restraint.”
What Russia seeks to ultimately do with Europe “had long been ambiguous.” Russia is of course tied to Europe, but in the sense that it must dominate it. As Kissinger wrote: “Russia affirmed its tie to Western culture but – even as it grew exponentially in size – came to see itself as a beleaguered outpost of civilization for which security could be found only through exerting its absolute will over its neighbors.”
For Russia, expansion rather than restraint is the only way forward. Restraint means taking a beating from everyone, whereas expansion means security. “We will bury you” as Khrushchev said. And as Kissinger wrote:
“The Soviet capability to inflict a catastrophic blow on the United States is increasing year by year, and just beyond the horizon lies the prospect of a world in which not only two superpowers will possess nuclear weapons, but also many weaker and perhaps more irresponsible nations, with less to lose. Henceforth, our problem will be one long familiar to less favored nations: how to relate the desirable to the possible and above all how to live with possible catastrophe.”
It follows that there are no absolute or clear-cut answers when it comes to the question of how to approach Russia. And of course, the inability to find absolute and clear-cut answers in terms of how to approach the “Russian Enigma” leaves us “vulnerable” to say the least. To borrow from Kissinger yet again:
“This has been the problem which has haunted American military thinking since World War II. Its dilemma can be defined as the conflict between the quest for absolute answers and the risks of the nuclear age, between the realization that we have become infinitely vulnerable and our rebellion against it.”
In essence, our general circumstances and our situation is thus one of rebellion against our own vulnerability, and of course, Russia seeks to exacerbate and amplify this existential and moral crisis and predicament in a variety of ways.
Adam A. Azim 