Le géant empêtré, presentation of Anne de Tinguy's latest book
A continental state straddling Europe and Asia, with a territory 32 times the size of France, Russia is a giant that has thought of itself as a great power for centuries. The conviction that it is destined to be a great country, by virtue of its history, culture, wealth of raw materials, human resources and so on, forms the "mental map" held by its ruling elites, a "mental map" that permeates their vision of the world and their country's place on the international stage.
For Vladimir Putin, grandeur is an obsession. And in some ways, it corresponds to a reality. In international life, Russia has a visibility few states enjoy. Thanks to its nuclear potential and its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, it retains attributes of power that set it apart from most other states on the planet. Richly endowed with raw materials, it is a major energy player. But it is also what Georges Sokoloff has called a "poor" power, ambivalent and paradoxical: strong in some areas, weak in others. And since 1991, it has often been powerless to impose its will on others and to make its point of view prevail. This ambivalence raises questions about the nature of Russian power, the strategy of influence adopted by the Kremlin since the end of the USSR, and the objectives it pursues in international life. In particular, is it seeking to endow Russia with a global, multi-dimensional power, of the kind that makes the United States so strong, which, let's not forget, has the ability to impose itself in several fields at once - security, economics, finance, research, etc.? An analysis of the tools used by France in its foreign action, and of the strategy of influence it has adopted, provides answers to these questions. It also provides a better understanding of the paradoxical situation of strength and weakness in which Russia finds itself.
Russia has tremendous resources. It has a richly equipped toolbox. It has the means to effectively mobilize diplomacy, economics, hard power(coercion) and soft power (seduction and persuasion) all at once. But its current use of this toolbox condemns it to remain a poor power. Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine shows that, in the eyes of the Kremlin, power today is still largely associated with hard power. To gain recognition as an unavoidable player and achieve some of the goals it pursues, Russia has returned to what was a favored means in its time by the USSR: the military tool, coercion and nuisance, conflictuality and power relations.
This option was chosen to the detriment of other choices Russia could have made. Since Vladimir Putin came to power, it has never prioritized internal development, infrastructure modernization and economic diversification, nor has it made the effort to seek to become a force of economic and technological attraction. It continues to be content with a cash economy, highly dependent on hydrocarbons, poorly diversified, with little capacity to innovate and attract high value-added creative activities. The result is that it remains an unbalanced and corrupt power, unable to make up the formidable and humiliating ground it lags behind North America, the countries of the European Union, and now China.
In terms of soft power, a field in which Russia has formidable assets, thanks in particular to an immensely rich culture, which would enable it to seduce and convince, the choices that have been made also have heavy repercussions. In Moscow today, soft power is seen not so much as a means of attracting as of competing with the West, as a form of the conflictuality in which its relationship with the latter has gradually become embedded.
Russia has formidable resources in many areas (human, economic, cultural, etc.) that would enable it to be a dynamic country and a constructive player in the international system. But the strategy of influence that the Kremlin has defined over the past two decades has undermined, if not ruined, many of its assets, ultimately condemning it to pretending that it is a power. Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was a giant entangled in all kinds of problems: in an inability to catch up with a secular economic backwardness and to be anything other than a rentier and corrupt state, handicapped by strong demographic and environmental uncertainties, in a political system that is a brake on innovation, in a past it has so far refused to face up to, and so on. By embarking on this senseless and tragic war, it has embarked on a blind alley that condemns it to decline.
Anne de Tinguy, Professeur des universités en histoire contemporaine
Le géant empêtré - La Russie et le monde de la fin de l'URSS à l'invasion de l'Ukraine, éditions Perrin, sept. 2022, 495 p.
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