Ruling the World: The Kremlin’s attempt to seize global power during the Cold War
By Sergei Radchenko
Cambridge University Press, 2024
It turns out that Sergei Radchenko’s book, a work that took years to write, reached the reader in the third year of Russia’s war against Ukraine. To summarize the idea of the book in a few words, it is about the defining role of the struggle for recognition in world affairs, and this applies perfectly to the 2022 aggression led by Vladimir Putin, supported by the majority citizens. of the Russian Federation. I would go so far as to say that this is the only explanation that makes sense. No economic gain could be expected from the annexation of the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, nor any strategic advantage either – and if Russia had won, the domestic effects of the “victorious little war” would have been too short duration. to justify the costs of victory.
In the final section of the book, Radchenko suggests that an apt metaphor for Putin’s warlike follies would be the crimes of Rodion Raskolnikov, who commits murder to assert his “right” to do as he pleases (p. 602). I would not be surprised if a Dostoyevsky scholar found this allusion unsatisfying, because in the novel Raskolnikov’s evil actions ultimately lead to redemption, but as many people consider Crime and punishment When it comes to a man who kills old ladies just because he can, I would say that Radchenko’s metaphor is valid.
Of course, one cannot write about the struggle for recognition without referring to the Hegelian school, and Radchenko immediately brings Francis Fukuyama to mind – however, the reader would have benefited from a more careful and in-depth examination of the Hegel/Kojeve tradition , which, in the words of Fukuyama (2006, p. 144), is a “non-materialist historical dialectic”. Its basic postulate is that humans “are fundamentally social and other-oriented animals, but that their sociability leads them not to a peaceful civil society, but to a violent struggle to the death for pure prestige.” » (Fukuyama, 2006, p. 147) and Radchenko’s book relies on this same assumption. However, Hegel’s “human” is not static, and the “first man” would change (hence why Fukuyama used “the last man” in the title of his seminal book). I think it’s fair to say that in this regard we see remarkable stagnation in the Kremlin, and it would have been fascinating to read Radchenko’s thoughts on this.
In general, I have the impression that To rule the worldI saw two different book ideas fighting for space and attention. One is an interpretive history (ambition and wounded pride as the driving forces of Kremlin policy) and the other is a narrative history of the Cold War: in-depth, well-researched and presenting the Cold War as a global system with several theaters of war. . The author calls it a “very long book” that covers some “well-known ground” (p. 11). It does, and it does, and I’m not convinced either is necessary.
I think I would not be wrong in saying that the interpretive part (from Dostoyevsky to Fukuyama) is the most exciting thread of the book for the author. This is how it appears to me as a reader. But the interpretation inevitably becomes diluted as it goes on, which is not surprising given the epic proportions of the volume. Choosing just a few case studies to support the author’s vision (e.g., the Yalta Conference for Stalin, the Cuban Missile Crisis for Khrushchev, détente for Brezhnev) would have worked very well, while still keeping the book ergonomic in its objective and its form.
That said, I still think this would be a good book to use in a course on the Cold War: I’ve already mentioned that, unlike many of us, Radchenko is not Eurocentric and treats theaters of war in outside the North Atlantic with all due diligence. Another positive point of the book is its voice: it is a witty and friendly text.
As readers, we are very fortunate that Sergei Radchenko has written a book reintroducing the struggle for recognition, or the battle for pure prestige, as well as “pride” and “ambition” into the conversation about conflict and war. In my opinion, it would be fascinating to read Radchenko’s interpretation of Russia’s foreign policy since 1991. Take for example NATO’s expansion to the East. If we apply the struggle for recognition approach (and I think we should), Russia reacted so furiously to expansion not because there were real problems of security (it was absurd to suggest that NATO would attack Russia from the territory of Poland or Estonia). , but because Moscow felt excluded, all other Eastern European countries (with the notable exception of Russia’s ally Belarus) were invited to join the West’s central institution, so that Russia was not.
The last paragraph of Radchenko’s book says: “A more diverse – “multipolar” – world, with many more actors throwing their weight behind it, was, for Putin, far preferable to a world run from Washington. This would certainly result in a chaotic situation. But chaos creates opportunities for the boldest. Perhaps, with the right combination of audacity and luck, Russia could one day regain its illusory greatness and its insatiable, self-destructive ambition to rule the world” (p. 603). I would disagree with using the word “chaos” to describe the uncertainties of a multipolar world (“anarchy” would be a better term), but the question Radchenko asks is a good one and, like the war in Ukraine has definitely made multipolarity stronger, there are now more opportunities for the bold.
References
Fukuyama, François. The end of the story and the last man. Free Press, 2006.
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