In an op-ed in the New York Times Lilia Shevtsova comments on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans:
So what is Mr. Putin’s endgame? The immediate aim, to be sure, is to return Ukraine to Russia’s orbit. But that’s only a brush stroke on a much bigger canvas. Mr. Putin’s design is grand: to refashion the post-Cold War settlement, in the process guaranteeing the survival of Russia’s personalized power system. And judging from the West’s awkward, anguished response so far, he might be close to getting what he wants.
In recent years, Mr. Putin has successfully revived Russia’s tradition of one-man rule by amending the Constitution, rewriting history and clamping down on the opposition. Now he seeks to provide the system with a sturdy Great Power spine, returning to Russia its global glamour. In the past decade, Mr. Putin’s Russia not only demonstrated its readiness to resume control over the former Soviet space, testing its ambitions in Georgia and Ukraine, but also left its footprints all over the world, including through meddling in Western democracies. Yet today’s standoff over Ukraine takes things to a new level.
No longer content with upsetting the West, Mr. Putin is now trying to force it to agree to a new global dispensation, with Russia restored to eminence. It doesn’t stop there, though. Crucially, the geopolitical advance would serve to safeguard Mr. Putin’s rule. So the West, by accepting Russia’s geopolitical position, would effectively underwrite its domestic agenda, too. The United States would become, at home and abroad, Russia’s security provider. It’s quite the gambit.
I don’t know whether this is accurate or not but that’s not my point in this post. The NYT blandly describes Dr. Shevtsova as a “Russia expert”. She’s a Ukrainian Russia expert. I would expect her to have a point of view that might, indeed, be different from that of a Russian. Or an American for that matter.
This is a near-perfect instance of something I’ve been remarking on recently. An enormous proportion of the “Russia experts” cited in American media are either Ukrainians or Poles. It’s as though all of the experts on American politics being cited were Mexican scholars. Or Guatemalans. Their insights might well be true but they would represent a specific point of view which might cause them to skew those insights.
Note that I’m not challenging Dr. Shevtsova’s expertise, merely pointing out potential biases. I wish the NYT were doing that for us.
