Russia’s 21st Century Began in 1991. By Richard Lourie. Moscow Times, May 18, 2014.
Lourie:
Lourie:
As the
year 2000 approached, two of the main topics of conversation were: Could the
world's computers handle the switchover, the so-called Y2K problem, and when
did the 21st century actually begin, in 2000 or 2001?
Numerical
nitpicking aside, it is clear the 21st century began in 1991 with the collapse
of the Soviet Union. The political, ideological and military confrontation that
had defined the second half of the 20th century was done.
What's
taking its place is only gradually becoming evident. At first there was a sort
end-of-history euphoria in the West, the belief that people would devote
themselves to computers and consuming. That giddiness lasted a decade until
Sept. 11, 2001, when a new element of the 21st century made itself dramatically
known.
History
had returned — this time taking the form of anti-modernist Islamic terrorism,
the Koran and Kalashnikov versus the laptop and the mall. The resulting wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq changed warfare. Massed standing armies and nuclear
stockpiles were revealed as antiquated overkill. Drones, intel and special
forces were the new hot thing.
The
financial debacle of late 2007 was the next stroke in the 21st century's
emerging portrait. The crisis highlighted the vast disparity between the
superrich and everyone else.
A bank
may be too big to fail, but no homeowner is. All countries now have their own
version of the 1 percent — whether it is corrupt Chinese officials who have to
rent apartments to hold the cash bribes they have received, Russian oligarchs
buying Western sports teams like Chelsea or the Nets, or top U.S. hedge fund
managers who make a million dollars an hour when the minimum wage cannot make
it to $10.
The
Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent turmoil in Ukraine is another
key feature in the portrait. The process that had begun with the real beginning
of the 21st century in December 1991 had now come full circle. A Russia humiliated
by the Soviet failure and by the triumphalism of the West was now back with a
vengeance. With the $50 billion Olympics behind it, the Russia of 2014 was not
about to allow a failing Ukraine slip into the Western camp. That would mean
Russia would be outflanked by NATO from the Baltic to the Black Sea which
itself would become a sort of Lake NATO.
Russia
was immediately criticized for not acting in a 21st-century fashion — that is,
modern, rational and civilized. But it was the West that was deluded with
fantasies of order and decorum when perceived vital interests were being
threatened. As Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, put
it with blunt concision: "In geopolitics, the past never dies, and there
is no modern world."
The
countries of Eastern Europe were less surprised, remembering all too well that
it was in Yalta, Crimea that they were sold out by the "Big Three" in
1945.
The
most important immediate effect of the Ukrainian crisis is that Russia and the
West have called it quits. The West has rejected Russia for rejecting Western
ways. Russia is now pivoting east toward Central Asia and China — and north to
the riches of the Arctic. Russia has sheared off from the West like one of
those glacial ice masses whose melting will no doubt flood coastal cities
worldwide as the 21st century ends, completing its portrait.
Before that
happens, though, there will be other defining strokes. Some may come soon near
specks of islands for which the Japanese have one name and the Chinese quite
another.
