Putin’s Russia rests on an unsustainable contradiction. It is, at one and the same time, both a colony and an aspiring empire. It can’t be both, however, and sooner rather than later Russia will be forced into one or the other direction.
All the signs point to a disheartening conclusion for the Kremlin’s wannabe empire-builders: Russia will succeed as a colony but fail as an empire.
It’s often said that Putin has effectively transformed his country into a vassal of China. That’s true, but Russia’s relationship with its much more powerful neighbor to the south is more accurately termed colonial. Colonies are locally administered territories that are subordinate to the political and economic priorities set by foreign powers. Colonies are not fully sovereign, inasmuch as they don’t make the decisions that determine their fate. Seen in this light, Putin’s Russia is as much a colony of China as medieval Muscovy was a colony of the Mongol Empire.
Putin’s recent visit to Beijing, with most of his ministers tagging along, nicely illustrates just who is the lord and who comes as the supplicant. Not surprisingly, one of the outcomes of that junket was a deal enabling China to lease large swathes of land in Moscow Province. Equally unsurprisingly, Putin has transformed Russia into China’s raw-materials supplier and home for millions of Chinese expats. Small wonder that China has produced maps of Russia’s Far East with Chinese names for (still) Russian cities.
Some Russian analysts insist that China also interferes in the Russian elite’s ongoing political battles — which wouldn’t be surprising, given China’s growing stake in Russia’s stability and subordination. Whatever the exact nature of China’s domination of Russia, and regardless of their saccharine rhetoric of eternal love, we can be sure that it entails and will continue to entail creeping imperialization. Given the economic mismatch between China and Russia, Russia’s involvement in a war it cannot win and Putin’s evident inability to run his bailiwick efficiently, China has every incentive to meddle in its colony’s internal affairs — in order to correct the Kremlin’s mistakes, protect its settlers and safeguard its investments.
Ironically, while becoming a Chinese colony, Putin’s Russia desires to restore the empire it once had. Putin sees himself as a modern version of Peter the Great, the bloodthirsty czar who converted Muscovy into the Russian Empire. Putin also venerates Alexander Dugin, the imperialist philosopher, and Anton Denikin, the White general who aspired to reestablish the empire during the turbulent years following the Bolshevik seizure of power. Putin invaded Ukraine, twice, in order to capture the jewel in imperial Russia’s crown. His exalted ambitions extend to the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. And all of his expansionist talk and action are taking place at the same time that Russia’s status as a Chinese colony is being cemented.
It won’t work. Empires acquire colonies, but colonies do not acquire empires. Colonies aspiring to become empires can only succeed in destabilizing their relationship with their imperial masters.
Although China has no choice but to side with Russia in its genocidal war against Ukraine, that war and the resultant instability it has engendered are the last things China needs. China’s claims to global hegemony rest on its economic strength, military clout and modus vivendi with the international status quo. A misguided war that threatens to destabilize its largest colony — Russia — and disrupt China’s profitable relations with the rest of the world may bring Beijing some short-term benefits, but is ultimately self-defeating.
If and when the tide turns against Russia in Ukraine, as it very likely will in light of the Russian military’s unsustainably high casualties (1,100 to 1,400 per day), China will have to coax Moscow into reining in its overreach and coming to its senses.
Far more disturbing for both China and Russia is the very real possibility of Russia’s losing the war or getting so battered that Putin, his regime, and the brittle state come under internal attack by Russians and non-Russians within Russia. Colonies are weak, and weak polities have no business pretending to be warlike empires. And when they fail, uprisings, coups and wars amid state and regime failure are extremely likely.
If Putinite Russia goes this way, China will face a painful choice: to watch its colony go down in flames or to try to prop it up, at great cost to itself. The resulting maelstrom may teach rump Russia that it will never again be an empire. China may learn that possessing megalomaniacal colonies just isn’t worth the trouble.
Ukraine, meanwhile, will enjoy watching Moscow and Beijing squirm. So should the West.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”