PREVIEW： Realpolitik #11 ｜ Why the West Has Always Hated Russia
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Summary
In this episode, we take a look at the events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and how this may have led to the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.
Transcript
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Hello, welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. Today I'm going to be talking about the word
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unprovoked and whether or not the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in fact unprovoked as we keep
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hearing repeated from Western leaders. To give you some context, we're going to go through a
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little bit of what was happening in Russia and geopolitically in the 1990s to try to give some
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context as to what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and what led us to the crisis
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that we see in Ukraine today. As a reminder, this episode is live, meaning that if you want to post
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any questions on comments, please go ahead and do so. I will be looking at them halfway through and
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near the end of the show and I will try to address them as best as I can. By now you know I always try
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to start these things with a map and this is a map of the alliances in Europe in 1989 before the
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collapse of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain. For those of you who are old enough to remember,
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there were two competing geopolitical blocs. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
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led by the United States, obviously, and the Warsaw Pact, the counter-alliance to NATO, which obviously
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was led by Russia, as well as a number of socialist satellite states, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
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Hungary, Poland, and obviously East Germany. If you remember your history from the time,
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Germany was divided. Berlin was, and still is obviously, in the east of the country. It was
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a divided city, half of it governed by pro-Russian authorities, half of it governed by the Federal
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Republic of Germany, aligned with the United States, and a member of NATO in good standing.
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And you see this string of buffer states trying to separate Russia from NATO. You see Finland and
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Sweden, both of them refusing to join either alliance. The Finns, because they had lost the
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Winter War against the Russians and lost, I think, a tenth of their territory and were forced to sign
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on to neutrality. The Swedes, because they were neutral even in World War II. You see Austria as a
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neutral country, refusing to join either alliance. Switzerland. You have Yugoslavia, a Serbian-led
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socialist entity that still was not part of the Warsaw Pact. And you see Albania, kind of aligned
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with the Russians, kind of not. Both it and Yugoslavia setting out their own path. And Greece,
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Turkey, Italy, Germany, Norway, and behind them, the bigger powers, England and France,
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holding up the European part of the NATO alliance, dreading the potential Russian invasion through the
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Fulda Gap. And you see a kind of balance here. The Russians have a sphere of influence. The Americans
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have a sphere of influence. There is a string of neutral states in the middle. And then the Berlin
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Wall falls. The Berlin Wall falls because essentially the security apparatuses and the political apparatuses
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that underpinned the socialist systems in Eastern Europe and in Russia just lost confidence in
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themselves. Some junior official in the German Democratic Republic, the socialist republic, that is,
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announces that they're going to allow free travel between East Berlin and West Berlin. And people in
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East Berlin just tear the wall down. You can see iconic images of that all over the internet where
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the Germans can't believe that the wall has fallen and implicitly reunification is on the way.
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The Russians at the time had forces deployed in Poland and in Germany, and I think also in
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Czechoslovakia, but they weren't in a position to use them because Russia itself, after Gorbachev,
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had also lost confidence in the socialist system, and it was slowly falling apart over there as well.
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And so everybody's faced with the question, do we now allow a united Germany, given what united Germany
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had done in the First World War and the Second World War, which were obviously deeply ingrained in the
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memory of everybody of that era, unlike today where we sort of operate without a historic memory of
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anything, which is kind of why I'm doing this show. So you see this challenge, okay, will Germany be
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allowed to unify. And the promise that was made to the Russians was that if you allow East Germany and
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West Germany to unify, we will not expand NATO not one inch eastwards. And this was a commitment that
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was made to Gorbachev in order to convince him to allow for the unification of Germany after the Second
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World War. Obviously, the Russians had a major say in whether or not this is something that they
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would tolerate. And they decided to allow it in part based on these guarantees. And here we have
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an American ambassador to the Soviet Union at around that time, explaining the nature of that thing.
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There is one other factor here that we seem to be forgetting. And we did, though it was not a legally
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binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev back when the Soviet Union existed,
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that if a united Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward.
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And, you know, I think that the current Russian government is very clear.
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So we would be, but that assurance was given to the Soviet Union.
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That is right. It is not a legally binding, but it was, you might say, a geopolitical deal.
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So that's exactly it. And that sort of focuses the debate a little bit. You hear the Western side
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saying, we didn't promise them anything of that sort. It wasn't legally binding. It wasn't a real
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commitment, et cetera, et cetera. And from the Russian perspective, the argument is, well, actually,
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no, you made an agreement with us that you would not expand NATO, and then you did anyway, and that
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is a major betrayal. And if you think about it, again, from a Russian perspective, it's always worth
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looking at a map, you know. This is a map of the Soviet Union and its constituent republics.
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So you have Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania here on the Baltic Sea. These are states that were part of the
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Soviet Union, and they were given a kind of privileged status under the Soviet Union. A lot of money was
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pumped into them. You have Belarusia, which is still an ally of Russia. You have Ukraine, and you have
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Moldova, and that's the border with Europe. And then you have the border with Turkey and Iran in the
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Caucasus. You have Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. All three of them were incorporated into the USSR.
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And then you have Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, the rest of these countries
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that were under the full control of Moscow. And this was, combined with the Warsaw Pact, a position
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that made Moscow extremely secure. It meant that there was no way for it to be invaded again,
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as had happened under Napoleon and Hitler. It meant that the Russian homeland was secured by a huge buffer
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zone. And nobody in their right mind would think of invading Russia by land, and nobody would think of
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nuking Russia, because it had enormous nuclear capabilities of its own. And the Russian Federation today is
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just this, the part in pink. It's still huge, but in Central Asia, it's vulnerable to China. In the Caucasus,
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it's vulnerable to Iran and to Turkey. In Europe, well, Western Europe is now right at the border of the core
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of Russia. And previously, the Russians had a very firm grip on the Black Sea. You have to remember that
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there are Romania and Bulgaria here, both members of the Warsaw Pact. And you have Georgia here, and you have
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Ukraine, which meant that the only two players in the Black Sea were Russia and NATO member Turkey.
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The Russians felt safe. They didn't feel under the enormous threat that they felt under after the
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collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. And now they are faced in a situation
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where they have very reduced strategic depth between potentially unfriendly countries and Moscow
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in the center. So this is the geopolitical problem as Russia saw it. And it believed that, OK, we got these
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guarantees from the West, from the French, from the Germans, from NATO itself, and from the Americans, that there would be
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no further expansion of NATO. This is the world in 1990, 1991. And so you want to remember that. And you want to remember
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also that under the president that came after Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and then under Vladimir Putin, both these Russian
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presidents asked to join NATO. And they themselves said that, OK, if you're going to expand NATO, well, expand it all the way.
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And we, the Russians, will become part of it. This was obviously very naive and would never be accepted
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by the West for a pretty simple reason. And that reason is primarily Russia is too big.
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It would instantly become the second power in NATO. It would become, it would be able to challenge the
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United States, unlike NATO in its current configuration, which is the American behemoth and a
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bunch of, you know, Britain, France, Germany, OK, big countries, the rest, not really able to do very
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much. And none of these countries are actually independent in their foreign policy decision-making
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from Washington, D.C., whereas the Russians would be a genuine challenge and would force NATO
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to act in a way that respected Russian interests as well. And because Russia was too big, well, what do you do
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with a country that's too big? You do to it what was done to Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, I want to go back to
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the map here, is this country here. Today, I think it's seven different countries. Slovenia, Croatia,
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Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. I'm missing one, whatever. So it's been completely broken up.
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And pretty much each of these countries, other than Serbia, has been absorbed into NATO. Meaning that
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NATO today looks very, very different from a Russian perspective. I had a map of NATO here
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somewhere. Anyway, it looks very, very different from a Russian perspective because it means that
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all of a sudden, rather than NATO being distant from Russia with a bunch of buffer states,
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countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, like the Baltic states, are now all included
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in NATO. Poland, both Czechia and Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania. So the geopolitical picture for the
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naturally, they feel threatened by it in the same way that the United Kingdom would feel threatened
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if the French were to set up military bases in Ireland. In the same way that the Americans would
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be threatened, as they are indeed right now, by Chinese influence over Canada and over Mexico.
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So the Russian reaction isn't them being absolutely and completely irrational. The Russian reaction
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comes from, A, a sense of betrayal. They were promised that NATO would not expand. And, B,
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the reality that now NATO is literally on their borders with, therefore, a much bigger risk
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for Russian security. In the same way that if the Canadians or the Mexicans were to join a Chinese-led
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alliance, it's just perfectly normal, it's just perfectly normal. And to pretend otherwise, it's a little bit
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dishonest, shall we say. But what were the 1990s like? Well, after that commitment was made
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and the Soviet Union collapsed, the currency in Russia collapsed. The state had to cut spending massively.
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Unfortunately, the life expectancy of people in Russia simply fell off a chart. You can see it on
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this graph here. And you can see that the most affected with the biggest declines were really the
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Ukrainians here in orange and the Russians in green. I mean, it just fell to 64 years. Life expectancy
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fell from 70 almost to 64 years. And this was the result of massive cuts in welfare, massive
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unemployment because the whole economy was privatized. And as it was privatized, it was really
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Western companies that reaped a lot of the benefits, as well as the Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs.
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It was the result of a huge increase in alcoholism, in drug abuse, in pretty much everything, in pretty
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much everything that you could imagine. So you see the society simply begin to crumble. And you see
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that Russia goes from feeling invulnerable, if you will, to feeling absolutely surrounded.
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And then, to add insult to injury, a series of wars is launched in order to weaken Russia
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further. The first one, well, when Yugoslavia fell apart, first the Koroats broke off and the
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European community said that it was going to support them. And then the Slovenians, no, first
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the Slovenians broke off, and then the Koroats. And you see these small wars beginning in 1990, 1991.
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And then the core of Yugoslavia, which is the part that includes Bosnia, that all comes crashing down
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and breaks into total civil war. And you see the West interfering in that conflict, gradually,
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step-by-step, providing weapons, providing arms. When the war in Bosnia happened, when the siege of
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Sarajevo happened in, I think, 1994, you have to remember, not only were the jihadis fighting on the
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Muslim side, and you saw people from Al-Qaeda, with funding from Saudi Arabia, backing from Turkey,
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backing from the UAE, backing from the Gulf states. You also saw the Shia joining in on the game.
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So there's a number of senior Hezbollah commanders who, in the 1990s, while Lebanon was still partly
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occupied by Israel, traveled to Bosnia to support the Muslim side in a war against the Serbs.
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It's quite similar to how you saw this big assembly of jihadis coming from all over the world
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to fight the Syrian government of Assad, starting from the 2011 uprising. It's pretty much the same
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playbook. So you see the West siding with the Muslim side against the Orthodox Serbs, who, because they are
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Orthodox, are naturally allied with Russia. And you see this massive effort to break up Serbia and to break
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up Yugoslavia in order to make sure that there wouldn't be a large, strong entity sitting on the
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Adriatic Sea and in a position to pursue autonomous policy. I mean, you have to remember, this is a big
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country, a population rivaling maybe Poland or Germany, very diverse population, obviously, religiously
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diverse, not ethnically diverse. And you see this big effort to break them up and to divide them. And if you
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think about the Russian requests, okay, nice, Mr. NATO, can we please become a part of you? The response is,
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actually, actually, you're too big, and you're too autonomous. The corollary of that is that the only
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way that Russia could be absorbed into the Western order is to break it up into its constituent parts.
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And if today you were to take the time to look at the Atlantic Council or if at various think tanks that
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sort of deal with the Russia problem and see what are they advocating, well, what they're advocating
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is the breakup of Russia. So let's sort of pause and recap. And I'm going to do that a couple of times
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because there's a bunch of threads that I'm trying to tie together to give you an idea briefly of what
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the 1990s and early 2000s were like for Russia and why Ukraine is important. You see this promise,
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we're not going to expand NATO. You see Russian society imploding with gangsters, criminals, oligarchs,
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partnering with Western companies in order to take control of the best assets in the Soviet Union
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and in Ukraine so that these could be made more profitable and the result naturally is going to be
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asset stripping, mass unemployment, a collapse in the currency, etc., etc. You see the only remaining
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natural ally of Russia, which is Serbia, being decimated and destroyed with NATO intervening in 1998
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to bomb Belgrade and to bomb Serbia to smithereens in order to take away from it Kosovo. And if you look at
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the sort of foundational history, almost mythological history of the Serbian people, it's about Kosovo and
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capturing Kosovo and defeating the Muslims there because their whole shtick is that we stood up against
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the Ottomans as they were expanding into Europe and we fought them and we defended ourselves against
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them successfully. You have to keep that background in mind. So the one remaining ally that Russia has
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gets pummeled to smithereens and that's the first war. And the second war is the Chechen War.
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From 94 to 96 and then again from 99 to 2000, you see that the West is backing this insurgency in Chechnya
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on in the Caucasus, where basically Russia is most vulnerable to invasion by Muslim powers.
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And this is the sort of Kosovo, Ingushatia area right around here, where you see these crazy jihadis
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backed by Saudi money with some Saudi fighters, Arab fighters, Bin Laden, I think, wanted fighters to go and
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join the Chechen jihad, who are going around attacking schools, attacking civilians, attacking a theater in
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Moscow, conducting pretty much heuristic, nihilistic violence comparable to 9-11. And you see these guys
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being backed by the West and kind of treated like heroes. And you see this resultant instability in Russia
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because, as you might know from the Lord of War film, the Russian arsenals were being looted.
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The army had to be reduced. The competency of the military is highly in question.
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And the Russians are just getting pummeled on all sides. And you see these regular meetings
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between Yeltsin, the new president of Russia, and Bill Clinton. And Yeltsin, he wins an election in 1992
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and again in 1996. But he's a drunkard. And according to one friend of mine, people around
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him, at the instigation of other powers, were really encouraging him to remain a drunkard. And
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where sort of every day would start telling him around 10-11 in the morning, how about a shot?
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How about we have a drink? And you get this video compilation of an incredibly drunk Russian president
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running around the world, stumbling, falling. In one incident, I think in 1994,
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the guy is visiting the White House. And the security at around 1 or 2 a.m. finds him in a bathrobe
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walking outside of the White House, trying to hail a taxi, saying that he wanted a pizza,
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