Sunday, October 16, 2016

Paul Robinson — Book Review: The New Politics of Russia

For the most part, I concur with Monaghan’s approach. The New Politics of Russia expertly dismantles the way the West views Russia. The book is a refreshing addition to the literature on Russian-Western relations.
If I were to add anything to Monaghan’s analysis, it would be to say that one of the reasons why we misperceive Russia is because we misperceive ourselves and so misperceive how Russians see us. We do not take seriously their objections to what we do; and we do not take those objections seriously because of our inability to regard ourselves as anything other than the ‘good guys’. If we are to improve our understanding of Russia, we perhaps first need to improve our understanding of ourselves.
Because exceptionalism. One consequence of assuming exceptionalism is conflating the supposed need for "American leadership" with imposing permanent US global hegemony.

In this scheme the US is the center, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (five eyes") are the core. NATO is comprised of vassal states that support the core and which the core pretends are part of the core. The rest of the world is the periphery consisting of colonies.

Russians don't see it this way.

Irrussianality
Book Review: The New Politics of Russia
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

3 comments:

Peter Pan said...

New Zealand? Really?? I'd replace them with Germany.

Tom Hickey said...

The US and UK don't trust Germany.

Germany is the lynchpin of Europe.

The goal is to keep Germany in and Russia out, since together they control Eurasia.

Germany is still an occupied country. And the the US was caught tapping Merkel's phone.

And Russia is being ring fenced.

Notice that US, UK, Canada, Oz and NZ are English speaking and share a common cultural heritage. This is the iteration of the British Empire post-WWII.

It's really an American empire but the US is cutting them in as part of the core, positioning the US with special relationships in the East and West, North and South. "Cover your bases."

Anonymous said...

.... and revenge (essence of the mahabharata) still rules the world. After 200,000 years on the road, how do we break the cycle?