The Tragic History of the Two-State Solution. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

The Tragic History of the Two-State Solution. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, May 2, 2014.

Time for Democrats to Stop Celebrating Andrew Jackson. By Ari Rabin-Havt.

Time for Democrats to Stop Celebrating Andrew Jackson. By Ari Rabin-Havt. The American Prospect, May 2, 2014.

Realism in the Middle East. By Emanuele Ottolenghi.

Realism in the Middle East. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. Standpoint, May 2014.

Ottolenghi: 

President Obama’s latest attempt to cajole Israel and the Palestinian Authority into reaching a historic peace accord has floundered. Predictably, the blame game has now begun. Adding a new twist to the familiar script of failure in Middle East diplomacy, this time the US administration has chosen to join its European allies’ instinctive reaction of pointing the finger at Jerusalem, while Israel has publicly blamed the US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Each attempt no doubt has its peculiar qualities — the usual mixture of bad timing, clash of personalities and outside imponderables that make each round of failed peacemaking the stuff of lectures, essays, memoirs and recriminations.

Yet they all have much in common. For once one has replaced names or dates — US special envoy Martin Indyk for George Mitchell, 2008 for 2014 — the dynamics, stumbling blocks and predictable negative outcomes are the same.

Western diplomats, who seem keener than anyone else involved — Israelis and Palestinians included — to bring an end to this conflict, should ask the reason why. Why does peace remain elusive?

After all, it is these same diplomats who have insisted for more than 20 years that the contours of a peace deal are known to all and that the two sides always get to a point where they are “closer to a deal than ever before,” as John Kerry optimistically said last December, echoing Ehud Olmert’s almost identical statement in July 2008.

Funny, we are always so close, but we never get there. And that is part of the problem.

After 20 years of trying to find the perfect point of equilibrium in a complex algorithm of territorial, identity, and religious and material claims, it should be obvious that the peace-process formula has the wrong ingredients. Scientists would readily understand that repeating the same experiment over and over again without changing its elements or their quantities will always yield the same result.

Diplomats seem to miss this point. It is easier to blame “the extremists on both sides” or the craven pressure groups lurking in the shadows; the evils of nationalism or the perils of a fractious coalition; the shadows of the past or the narrative of the victor. Every time, something stands in the way whose nefarious influence could be removed or mitigated if only x, y or z were altered.

Europeans are fond of blaming America’s presumed bias towards Israel, forgetting, conveniently, that their lukewarm, fair-weather friendship for Israel can never replace American security guarantees. The liberal commentariat loves to go after Israeli hawks — it gives them a chance to let off their subconscious anti-Semitism by variously relabeling the object of their hatred with such anodyne terms as “the Israel lobby,” “neocons” and “settlers,” while downplaying terrorism, Islamic radicalism and the Arab world’s internal dynamics.

The BBC can wash its hands of the obligation to represent a complex story fairly, by embracing the morally neutered terminology of “bystanderism,” whereby fault lies with “the extremists on both sides” and other such invented “blame-both-sides” categories that only inhabit the moral equivalence of a liberal newsroom’s world.

Nobody, on the other hand, seems to have grasped the obvious, because it is unpalatable and inconvenient, especially to those who have spent a lifetime believing in Middle East peace both as an end in itself and a panacea for other problems. There is no deal because the cost of peacemaking far outweighs its benefits for either side.

After all, consider this. For Israelis and Palestinians alike the stumbling blocks, over the years, remain the same. The Palestinian demand for refugees to be granted a right of return, the Israeli demand for Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and their mutually exclusive demands over sovereignty in Jerusalem are unlikely to change, because if compromised they would irreparably damage the core components of the national identity of each side.

Israel is unlikely to relinquish the strategic depth afforded by territorial control over the Jordan Valley and provided by the West Bank in exchange for vague international guarantees. Palestinian nationalism cannot leave behind, at least notionally, the millions of descendants of refugees who escaped the 1948 war, yet it is doubtful that it could accommodate them physically in a territory as small as the West Bank and Gaza and financially in an economy as tiny as the Palestinian one. And though Israel’s enemies would love to impose such an outcome, Israel is unlikely to commit national suicide.

As if this were not enough, past failures and regional developments compound the problem. Why should either side trust their negotiating partner when each previous attempt collapsed? What has changed to make it better?

Are the Palestinians less determined on resettling refugees? Have they renounced delegitimising Israel? Have settlements shrunk in size and demography? Are their inhabitants streaming back to pre-1967 Israel? Has Islam declared Jerusalem no longer holy? Has Judaism forgotten it? And how can Israel negotiate a final deal with the Palestinian Authority while Gaza remains under Hamas rule? Why should Israel take “risks for peace” when the entire region is in turmoil? Who can believe that a Palestinian government which signs a peace deal will survive long enough to make it stick, given the Islamic resurgence currently shaking the Arab world?

The Arab-Israeli conflict defies solution. It has always done so. It will continue to do so in the near future. Trying once more what failed before is doomed to beget more failure.

It is time the West recognised that the differences between the two sides are irreconcilable — and the sooner the better.

Why Liberals Think Conservatives Are Racists. By Rachel Lu.

Why Liberals Think Conservatives Are Racists. By Rachel Lu. The Federalist, May 2, 2014.

What Happens When A Palestinian Doesn’t Hate Israel Enough? By Luke Moon.

What Happens When A Palestinian Doesn’t Hate Israel Enough? By Luke Moon. The Federalist, May 1, 2014. 

Christy, a Palestinian Christian’s plea to Dr. Saeb Erekat. Video. Emmaus Group, April 25, 2014. YouTube.

When Does Criticism of Israel Become Anti-Semitic? By David Harsanyi.

When Does Criticism of Israel Become Anti-Semitic? By David Harsanyi. The Federalist, April 30, 2014.

The Right Wrestles with the Inequality Debate. By Walter Russell Mead.

The Right Wrestles with the Inequality Debate. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, May 1, 2014.

Does It Matter that John Kerry Compared Israel to Apartheid? By Max Fisher.

Does it matter that John Kerry compared Israel to apartheid? By Max Fisher. Vox, April 29, 2014.

The Real Problem with Kerry’s “Apartheid” Myth. By David Harsanyi. The Federalist, April 29, 2014.

Hamas Must Repudiate the Anti-Semitism in its Charter. By Richard Cohen.

Hamas must repudiate the anti-Semitism in its charter. By Richard Cohen. Real Clear Politics, April 29, 2014. Also at the Washington Post.

John Kerry’s Jewish Best Friends. By Caroline Glick.

John Kerry’s Jewish Best Friends. By Caroline Glick. Jerusalem Post, April 29, 2014. Also at CarolineGlick.com.

Sorry, Israel Doomsaysers, the Conflict Can Be Managed. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Sorry, Israel Doomsayers, the Conflict Can Be Managed. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, April 24, 2014.

Mike & the Mechanics: Beggar on a Beach of Gold.

Mike & the Mechanics: A Beggar on a Beach of Gold. Video. etnopollino, June 10, 2011. YouTube. Originally released 1995. Live at The House of Blues.

Mike & the Mechanics: Beggar on a Beach of Gold (1995). Full Album. Audio. MrOldBrownShoe96, October 15, 2012. YouTube.

Time to Choose: Liberalism or Zionism? By Dov Waxman.

Time to Choose: Liberalism or Zionism? By Dov Waxman. Haaretz, April 23, 2014.

Waiting for the Palestinian Godot. By Ari Shavit. Haaretz, April 24, 2014.

Discard the false visions of a binational state. By Salman Masalha. Haaretz, March 19, 2014.


Waxman:

It’s not easy being a liberal Zionist. Denounced by right-wing Zionists for being insufficiently pro-Israel and disparaged by left-wing anti-Zionists for being insufficiently universalist, liberal Zionists have long been on the defensive. How can they square their commitment to Jewish statehood with their commitment to liberal democracy? How can they support Israel when it oppresses Palestinians? How can they criticize Israel when it is the victim of terrorism, rejectionism and anti-Semitism? How can they align themselves with Israel’s enemies?

 

Challenged with such questions from the left and right, liberal Zionists have defended Israel’s claim to be a Jewish and democratic state (often conveniently overlooking the fact that Arabs make up almost 20 percent of its citizens). They have also championed the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. For liberal Zionists, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only morally and strategically necessary for Israel, it is necessary for them. It is the only way to reconcile their Zionism and their liberalism; their support for Israel and their support for equality and human rights.

 

As long as the two-state solution is possible, liberal Zionism makes sense, at least to its adherents. This is why liberal Zionists have placed such high hopes on the U.S.-backed peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. While most Israelis and Palestinians — and many disinterested observers — long ago gave up their expectations for the peace process and now regard it with a mixture of skepticism and cynicism, liberal Zionists, especially those in the United States, still fervently believe in it. They have enthusiastically thrown their support behind American Jewish organizations like J Street that lobby for it. The peace process offers the tantalizing prospect of the realization of the liberal Zionists’ dream — two states for two peoples living peacefully side by side. As long as there’s a peace process, the dream lives on.

 

The failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace initiative, therefore, is a bitter blow for liberal Zionists. Over the past nine months, they set aside their doubts and invested their hopes in the slim chance that Kerry would somehow be able to cajole, entice and pressure Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas into making the difficult decisions and compromises necessary for a peace agreement. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, liberal Zionists desperately tried to convince themselves that this time things would turn out differently. Although every previous U.S. administration that has tried to broker peace has failed, the Obama administration could succeed; although Bibi has never demonstrated bold leadership, now he would; although Abbas has already turned down a previous Israeli offer, this time he wouldn’t.

 

It is now brutally clear that the current peace process will not end the conflict. Even if peace talks continue, there is no real prospect that a comprehensive final-status agreement can be reached, let alone implemented. Without such an agreement, the two-state solution is impossible to achieve since it can only be accomplished through mutual consent, not unilateral actions (such as an Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank or Palestinian membership in the United Nations).

 

The apparent demise of the peace process forces liberal Zionists to confront a painful question that many wish to avoid — if a two state solution is now impossible, should they support, however reluctantly, a one-state solution? Must they concede that the only way to end the occupation is to endorse the principle of equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in all of Israel/Palestine? While granting citizenship to Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the West Bank effectively spells the end of the Jewish state, how much longer can liberal Zionists uphold Jewish self-determination at the expense of Palestinian self-determination?

 

To be sure, a one-state solution may be just as impossible as a two-state solution, if not more so — civil war and even ethnic cleansing are more likely outcomes than peaceful coexistence. Perhaps this long, interminable conflict cannot be resolved, at least not for the foreseeable future. In that case, liberal Zionists much accept that there is no easy way for them to reconcile their liberalism and their Zionism. Instead, they must either abandon their liberalism or their Zionism, or just learn to live with the constant tension between them. Whatever they choose, it will only become harder to be a liberal Zionist.

What Do You Call It When a Big Country Takes a Chunk of a Small One? Greed (And We Should Know). By David Lee McMullen.

What Do You Call It When a Big Country Takes a Chunk of a Small One? Greed (And We Should Know). By David Lee McMullen. History News Network, April 20, 2014. Also at Rambling Historian.

The Closing of the Academic Mind. By M.G. Oprea.

The Closing of the Academic Mind. By M.G. Oprea. The Federalist, April 21, 2014.

Let’s Give Up on Academic Freedom in Favor of Justice. By Sandra Y. L. Korn. NJBR, February 26, 2014. Published in The Harvard Crimson, February 18, 2014.


Oprea:

Harvard student Sandra Y.L. Korn recently proposed in The Harvard Crimson that academics should be stopped if their research is deemed oppressive. Arguing that “academic justice” should replace “academic freedom,” she writes: “If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?”

 

In other words, Korn would have the university cease to be a forum for open debate and free inquiry in the name of justice, as defined by mainstream liberal academia.

 

Unfortunately, this is already a reality in most universities across America, where academics and university administrators alike are trying, often successfully, to discredit and prohibit certain ideas and ways of thinking. Particularly in the humanities, many ideas are no longer considered legitimate, and debate over them is de facto non-existent. In order to delegitimize researchers who are out of line, academics brand them with one of several terms that have emerged from social science theory.

 

The first term, “hegemonic,” is frequently used in history courses, literary criticism, and gender studies. Hegemony, of course, is a legitimate word that is often useful in describing consistency and uniformity. However, most people outside academia are unaware that being called “hegemonic” is the insult du jour. It strongly implies that you are close-minded and perhaps even bigoted. This term may be applied to offences ranging from referencing the habits or dress of a cultural group to discussing the views held by a religion (and daring to question them—so long as the religion in question is not Christianity).

 

To do these things is to “essentialize” those people by speaking about them broadly and being so bold as to imply that they may share a practice or belief in a general sense. It is the insult of those who would have every department in academia broken down into sub-departments ad infinitum in order to avoid saying anything general about anything, resulting in verbal and intellectual paralysis.

 

This strategy of labeling has been particularly successful in its application to middle-eastern and Islamic studies. Any author, or student, who does not join in the liberal narrative about Islamic culture—which includes unwavering support for Palestinians, the absolute equality of men and women in Islam, and an insistence on the peaceful nature of the religion despite any violent tendencies in its foundation— will find themselves labeled an “orientalist.”

 

Edward Said popularized this term in his 1978 post-colonial work Orientalism. According to many of my colleagues, an orientalist is a person who writes about the Middle East from a “western perspective,” which is when one does not unquestioningly support and affirm Middle Eastern and Islamic culture. This does not mean that westerners are excluded from writing about the Middle East and Islam. A westerner can do so successfully so long as their research is void of criticism. Write anything else and you will find yourself labeled an orientalist and no graduate course will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.

 

Sadly, this is precisely what has happened to the work of Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s most renowned Middle East scholars. Because he has written about clashes between Islam and the West, and is willing to look at the Middle East outside the utopian academic optic, Lewis has been “dis-credited” and replaced with authors like Tariq Ramadan in college or graduate course syllabi. Similarly, Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown universities, has been dismissed as “not a historian” by some academics, presumably because of his pro-Israeli stance. Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, an associate professor at Reed College, strips the scholar Daniel Pipes of his status as a historian, writing that he is a “historian of Islam turned pro-Israel activist,” implying that the two are mutually exclusive.

 

The effect of discrediting one’s opponents in this way—rather than engaging and debating their ideas—is to create an academia where there is only one right way to think. If you dissent, you will be blackballed and labeled as hegemonic or orientalist.

 

Nowhere has this been more evident than in Brandeis University’s withdrawal of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently because of her “controversial” stance on women’s rights in Muslim society, which mostly consists of objecting to things like female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and honor killings. Rather than defending Hirsi Ali, or at the very least welcoming the debate that her presence would bring, Brandeis chose to shut her out. This was done at the behest of Brandeis faculty, students, and the Council of American-Islamic Relations, all of whom claim she is Islamaphobic.

 

The censorial climate of academia extends beyond tenured professors and touches the students, both in undergraduate and graduate school. They are being taught what is and is not an “acceptable” way of thinking rather than being encouraged to think through difficult questions on their own.

 

(I recently met a fellow graduate student from a Muslim-majority country who confessed that she is disgusted with the way women are treated in her home country. She finds the inequality unacceptable. However, she felt the need to make a caveat: “I know as an academic and a Muslim I shouldn’t say this…”)

 

The trouble is, very few in academia will even engage supposedly orientalist and hegemonic views. How can one argue against a room full of graduate students—and a professor—who dismiss such views out of hand and label dissenters with epithets that are tantamount to “racist” in academic parlance?

 

Korn’s dream of a “just” academic utopia is already being realized. But like many utopian visions, there is a dark underbelly. Anyone who does not ascribe to the dogma of “academic justice” can expect to be shunned and muzzled—as Brandeis demonstrated recently. The irony is that in its effort to eliminate allegedly close-minded and bigoted views, the university itself has become illiberal, dogmatic, and intellectually hegemonic.

 

If we shut the doors on academic freedom, the acceptable territory of research and discourse will continue to shrink over time, and the self-censorial dogma of the academy will inevitably trickle out beyond the boundaries of the university campus, threatening freedom of speech—and thought—in society at large.

David McCullough, Jr, the “You’re Not Special” Teacher, Pens New Book.

“You’re not special” teacher pens new book. Video. The Kelly File. Fox News, April 22, 2014. Also at Fox News Insider.

You Are Not Special Commencement Speech from Wellesley High School. By David McCullough, Jr. Video. WellesleyChannelTV, June 7, 2012. YouTube. Transcript.

Taking Religion Seriously. By Charles Murray.

Taking Religion Seriously. By Charles Murray. The American, April 18, 2014.

Inequality Today: The Left-Liberal Narrative. By Walter Russell Mead.

Inequality Today: The Left-Liberal Narrative. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, April 22, 2014.

Class Warfare Justified? By Robert J. Samuelson. Real Clear Politics, April 21, 2014. Also at the Washington Post.

The Most Important Book Ever Written Is All Wrong. By Clive Crook. Bloomberg, April 20, 2014.

Marx Rises Again. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, April 19, 2014.

Why We’re in a New Gilded Age. By Paul Krugman. New York Review of Books, May 8, 2014. Also here.

Why Inequality Doesn’t Matter. By Ben Domenech. The Federalist, April 23, 2014.

What Thomas Piketty’s Popularity Tells Us About the Liberal Press. By David Harsanyi. The Federalist, April 23, 2014.

The Sources of Egyptian Anti-Semitism. By Samuel Tadros.

The Sources of Egyptian Anti-Semitism. By Samuel Tadros. The American Interest, April 21, 2014.

Mark Levin Interviews William A. Jacobson on the BDS Movement.

On The Mark Levin Show talking Israel and the boycotters. By William A. Jacobson. Audio. Legal Insurrection, April 21, 2014. YouTube. Also at The Right Scoop.

Anti-Conservative Eliminationist Theorist Exonerates Anti-Zionist Conspiracy Theorist. By William A. Jacobson.

Anti-Conservative Eliminationist Theorist exonerates anti-Zionist Conspiracy Theorist. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, April 20, 2014.

Putin’s Empire of the Mind. By Mark Galeotti and Andrew S. Bowen.

Putin’s Empire of the Mind. By Mark Galeotti and Andrew S. Bowen. Foreign Policy, April 21, 2014. Also here and here.

How Russia’s president morphed from realist to ideologue – and what he’ll do next.

Galeotti and Bowen:

A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Russian imperialism.

When Vladimir Putin first came to power in 1999, he talked ideologically but acted rationally. He listened to a range of opinions, from liberal economist Alexei Kudrin to political fixer Vladislav Surkov – people willing to tell him hard truths and question groupthink. He may have regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, but he knew he couldn’t re-create it. Perhaps the best metaphor is that while he brought back the Soviet national anthem, it had new words. There was no thought of returning Russia to the failed Soviet model of the planned economy. And as a self-professed believer who always wears his baptismal cross, Putin encouraged the once-suppressed Russian Orthodox Church.

He was a Russian patriot, but he also was willing to cooperate with the West when it suited his interests. One of the first leaders to offer his condolences after the 9/11 attacks, Putin shared Russian intelligence on al Qaeda with the United States. He did not hesitate to protect Russia’s interests against the West – in 2008 Putin undercut any thought of NATO expansion into Georgia by launching a war against its vehemently pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili – but Putin’s challenges were carefully calibrated to minimize repercussions while maximizing gains. He shut off gas to Ukraine, unleashed hackers on Estonia, and, yes, sent troops into Georgia, but he made sure that the costs of asserting regional hegemony were limited, bearable, and short term.

But that was the old Putin. Today, the West faces a rather different Russian leader.

After all, the annexation of Crimea, by any rational calculation, did not make sense. Russia already had immense influence on the peninsula, but without the need to subsidize it, as Ukraine had. (Russia has already pledged $1.5 billion to support Crimea.) The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s position in the Crimean seaport of Sevastopol was secure until 2042. Any invasion would anger the West and force it to support whatever government took the place of Viktor Yanukovych’s administration in Kiev, regardless of its composition or constitutionality.

In Putin’s actions at home as well, the Russian president is eschewing the pragmatism that marked his first administration. Instead of being the arbiter, brokering a consensus among various clans and interests, today’s Putin is increasingly autocratic. His circle of allies and advisors has shrunk to those who only share his exact ideas. Sober technocrats such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu played seemingly no role in the decision-making over Crimea and were expected simply to execute the orders from the top.

This has become one of the new themes of Russian politics: the conflation of loyalty to the Kremlin with patriotism. It says much that dissidents at home, from journalists failing to toe the official line to protesters on the streets, are castigated either as outright “foreign agents” (every movement, charity, or organization accepting foreign money must register itself as such) or else as unknowing victims and vectors of external contamination – contamination, that is, from the West, whose cosmopolitanism and immorality Putin has come to see as an increasing threat to Russia’s identity. As a result, Putin's relationship with Russia’s elite – now often foreign-educated, usually well-traveled, and always interested in economic prospects abroad – has become tortuous. Having provided members of the elite with opportunities during his first presidency, Putin not only mistrusts the elite now, but sees it as unpatriotic. Some $420 billion has flowed out of Russia since 2008, and in 2013, Putin decried those who were “determined to steal and remove capital and who did not link their future to that of the country, the place where they earned their money.” In response, he launched a program of “de-offshorization” that has prompted major Russian telecom, metals, and truck-manufacturing companies to announce their return to Russia. And Alexander Bastrykin, the powerful head of the Investigative Committee and one of Putin’s closest acolytes, promised a crackdown on schemes designed to transfer money out of the country.

These efforts are representative of a broader reconsolidation that requires the West to stay out of Russia’s politics and that prevents its ideas and values from perverting Putin's country. In this context, Yanukovych’s ouster from the Ukrainian presidency was the inevitable catalyst for a decisive expression of a new imperialism. From the Kremlin’s perspective, a Western-influenced and -supported opposition movement in Kiev rose up and toppled a legitimate leader who preferred Russia over the European Union, in the process threatening the liberties and prospects of the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine's east.

Perhaps the world should have paid more attention when Putin made 2014 Russia’s “Year of Culture.” This was to be when the country celebrated its unique identity – a year of “emphasis on our cultural roots, patriotism, values, and ethics.” It was nothing less than a recipe for a new Russian exceptionalism, one that Putin himself would craft and impose. Seen in those terms, the turmoil in Ukraine did not merely allow him to step in – it demanded it.

The imperialism that has sprung from Putin’s revived emphasis on Russian identity cannot neatly be compared with either its tsarist or its Soviet forebears. The tsarist empire was driven by an expansionist logic that would gladly push Russia’s boundaries as far as they could stretch. Although multiethnic, there was no question that ethnic Russians were the imperial race and that others – with a few exceptions, such as the Baltic German aristocrats on whom Tsar Nicholas I relied – were second-class subjects. This was Russkii, ethnic Russian, not Rossiiskii, Russian by citizenship. By contrast, Soviet imperialism embodied, at least in theory, a political ideology greater than any one people or culture and a rhetoric of internationalism and evangelism.

Putin has spent considerable effort in forging a new Rossiiskii state nationalism. Absent is the visceral anti-Semitism of the Russian Empire, and the widespread racism and hostility visible within much of Russian society is not reflected in government policy. Nor does the president seem interested in expanding direct Russian rule (as opposed to political authority) or in exporting any particular political philosophy to non-Russians. At the same time, Putin thinks that “the [ethnic] Russian people are, without a doubt, the backbone, the fundament, the cement of the multinational Russian people.” In other words, though ethnic Russians do not rule the state, they do provide the foundations for the “Russian civilization” on which it is based.

Putin’s reference to Russia as a “civilization” signals itself a return to the time-honored belief that there is something unique about Russia rooted not only in ethnic identity but in culture and history – a belief that began when the country became the chief stronghold of Eastern Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople. As he put it in his 2012 state-of-the-federation address: “In order to revive national consciousness, we need to link historical eras and get back to understanding the simple truth that Russia did not begin in 1917, or even in 1991, but, rather, that we have a common, continuous history spanning over 1,000 years and we must rely on it to find inner strength and purpose in our national development.”

Putin’s conception of what it means to be Russian combines the stern-jawed heroics of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad with the exuberant loyalty of the tsar's own Cossacks, while excluding the humanism of Andrei Sakharov and the ascetic moralism of Leo Tolstoy. It is a version of Russian history and philosophy cherry-picked to support Putin’s notion of national exceptionalism. In fact, he recently assigned regional governors homework, writings by three prominent 19th- and 20th-century intellectuals: Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyov, and Ivan Ilyin. These three, whom Putin often cites, exemplify and justify his belief in Russia’s singular place in history. They romanticize the necessity of obedience to the strong ruler – whether managing the boyars or defending the people from cultural corruption – and the role of the Orthodox Church in defending the Russian soul and ideal.

In this, Putin is directly drawing on a classic Russian dichotomy between autocracy and anarchy, as well as on the country’s experiences during the 1990s, when there was no strong, consistent central rule and the country was beset by rebellion, gangsterism, poverty, and geopolitical irrelevance. In his 2013 state-of-the-federation speech, Putin made the connection between authoritarianism and social order, admitting, “Of course, this is a conservative position. But speaking in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”

THIS IS THE CENTER OF PUTIN’S IMPERIAL VISION: The pragmatic political fixer of the 2000s now genuinely believes that Russian culture is both exceptional and threatened and that he is the man to save it. He does not see himself as aggressively expanding an empire so much as defending a civilization against the “chaotic darkness” that will ensue if he allows Russia to be politically encircled abroad and culturally colonized by Western values at home.

This notion of an empire built on the basis of a civilization is crucial to understanding Putin. There are neighboring countries, such as those in the South Caucasus, that he believes ought to recognize that they are part of Russia’s sphere of influence, its defensive perimeter, and its economic hinterland. But, he stops short of wanting forcefully to bring them under direct dominion because they are not ethnically Russian. Even when Moscow separated the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008, for example, it set them up as independent puppet states; it did not annex them into the Russian Federation.

Putin does insist, however, that Moscow is the protector of Russians worldwide. Where there are Russians and Russian-speakers and where Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox faith hold or held sway, these are nash – “ours.” Despite his mission to “gather the Russian lands” like the 15th-century’s Prince Ivan the Great, this does not necessarily mean occupying Crimea today, Donetsk in eastern Ukraine tomorrow, and Russian-settled northern Kazakhstan the day after, but it helps define what he thinks is Russia’s birthright. In his defense of the annexation of Crimea, he said that the Soviet Union’s collapse left “the Russian nation . . . one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.”

Crimea, after all, is historically, ethnically, and culturally Russian, which is why, after its residents voted in favor of annexation, Putin approvingly noted that “after a long, difficult, exhausting voyage, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their native harbor, to their native shores, to their port of permanent registration – to Russia.” By contrast, the case to reach out to Transnistria in Moldova, for example, or even eastern Ukraine, is less clear. The Transnistrian Russians are relatively new colonists, arriving after World War II, and eastern Ukraine has Russian cities, but also a Catholic, Ukrainian countryside.

Putin is putting as much effort into defending his vision of “Russian civilization” at home as abroad, and he has drawn a direct connection between the two. In the past, he was a patriot, a Russian Orthodox believer, and a social conservative, but he saw the difference between his own views and state policy and was little interested in enforcing a social agenda. Indeed, he warned in 1999 that “a state ideology blessed and supported by the state . . . [means] practically no room for intellectual and spiritual freedom, ideological pluralism, and freedom of the press – that is, for political freedom.”

But what he once merely frowned upon, Putin now wants to ban. The conservative backlash, with laws against gay “propaganda,” the heavy-handed prosecution of members of punk band Pussy Riot after their “blasphemous” performance in a church, and renewed state control of the media, all speak to a new moral agenda – a nationalist and culturally isolationist one. Just as Putin has been trying to “de-offshorize” the Russian elite, he is now launching what could be called a “moral de-offshorization.” His more recent pronouncements have been full of warnings about the “destruction of traditional values,” threatening the moral degradation of Russian society.

The Russian Orthodox Church thus comes increasingly to the fore as a symbol and bastion of these traditional values and all that they mean for the new imperialism. Russian Orthodoxy was never an especially evangelical faith, concentrating on survival and purity over expansion, and much the same could be said of Putin’s worldview. In Putin’s previous presidency, the church was supportive, but just one of many of his allies. Now, though, from the pulpit to television news programs, the church is one of the most consistent and visible supporters of Putin’s state-building project. When interviewed on the subject of Crimea, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, one of Putin’s cassocked cheerleaders, asserted that the church has long believed that “the Russian people are a divided nation on its historical territory, which has the right to be reunited in a single public body.”

IN 1999, SOON BEFORE HE BECAME ACTING PRESIDENT, Putin released a personal manifesto in which he admitted that Soviet communism was “a road to a blind alley, which is far away from the mainstream of civilization.” Now, he is looking for exit ramps from that mainstream. Speaking in 2013 at the Valdai International Discussion Club, he warned against “mechanically copying other countries’ experiences” because “the question of finding and strengthening national identity really is fundamental for Russia.” It is a quest that he has taken upon himself in the name of personal and national greatness: A people with a destiny cannot be allowed to let him, themselves, their country, and their mission down.

All this helps explain the difficulty that Western governments have in understanding and dealing with him, especially this most aggressively cerebral U.S. administration. It seems that much is lost in translation between the Kremlin and the White House. Putin is not a lunatic or even a fanatic. Instead, just as there are believers who become pragmatists in office, he has made the unusual reverse journey. Putin has come to see his role and Russia’s destiny as great, unique, and inextricably connected. Even if this is merely an empire of, and in, his mind – with hazy boundaries and dubious intellectual underpinnings – this is the construct with which the rest of the world will have to deal, so long as Putin remains in the Kremlin.

In San Francisco and in Palestine, It’s Time to Grow Up and Take Responsibility. By Liel Leibovitz.

In San Francisco and in Palestine, It’s Time to Grow Up and Take Responsibility. By Liel Leibovitz. Tablet, April 18, 2014.

The Moral Case of Zionism. By Lawrence J. Epstein.

The moral case of Zionism. By Robert J. Epstein. Ynet News, April 17, 2014.

Unmasking Modern Anti-Semitism: The BDS Smokescreen. By Robert Fulford.

The BDS smokescreen. By Robert Fulford. National Post, April 19, 2014.