“If we were to use traditional measures
for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national
flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time.
“On
the world stage, who could vie with him?”
So
asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale
College’s March issue of its magazine, Imprimis.
What
elevates Putin above all other 21st-century leaders?
“When
Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It
was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in
collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that.
In the first decade of this
century, he did what Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a
crumbling empire, he resurrected a national-state and gave it coherence and purpose.
He disciplined his country’s plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And
he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role
in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business
leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country.”
Putin’s
approval rating, after 17 years in power, exceeds that of any rival Western
leader. But while his impressive strides toward making Russia great again
explain why he is revered at home and in the Russian diaspora, what explains
Putin’s appeal in the West, despite a press that is every bit as savage as
President Trump’s?
Answer:
Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future
ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists
and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their
own decadent civilization.
What
they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He
rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United
States. Putin puts Russia first.
And in defying the Americans he
speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national
identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European
Union. Putin also
stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut
its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.
The
U.S. establishment loathes Putin because, they say, he is an aggressor, a
tyrant, a “killer.” He invaded and occupies Ukraine. His old KGB comrades
assassinate journalists, defectors, and dissidents.
Yet
while politics under both czars and commissars has often been a blood sport in
Russia, what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally
Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a
military coup in Egypt?
What
has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in
Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July’s coup — or our Philippine ally
Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands
of drug dealers?
Does
anyone think President Xi Jinping would have handled mass demonstrations
against his regime in Tiananmen Square more gingerly than did President Putin
this last week in Moscow?
Much
of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the
West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his
defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.
He
not only remains popular in his own country but has admirers in nations whose
political establishments are implacably hostile to him.
In
December, one poll found 37 percent of all Republicans had a favorable view of
the Russian leader, but only 17 percent were positive for President Barack
Obama.
There
is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who
wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin
has openly welcomed many of these movements, America’s elite do not take even a
neutral stance.
Putin
has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the
world divided into a Communist East and a free and democratic West, new and
different struggles define the 21st.
The
new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent
secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state
and the New World Order.
On the new dividing lines, Putin is on the
side of the insurgents. Those who envision de Gaulle’s Europe of Nations
replacing the vision of One Europe, toward which the EU is heading, see Putin
as an ally.
So
the old question arises: Who owns the future?
In
the new struggles of the new century, it is not impossible that Russia — as was
America in the Cold War — may be on the winning side. Secessionist parties
across Europe already look to Moscow rather than across the Atlantic.
“Putin
has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism,”
writes Caldwell. “That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last
election shows, that’s true even here.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/04/patrick-j-buchanan/preeminent-statesman-times/
