Resumen de Self-Inflicted Marginalization? Illiberal Russia in Search for its own Reality
After the disintegration of the USSR and the loss of empire, a second trauma was the gradual comprehension of Russia’s inability to meet the high normative and institutional standards of the West.
With all its undeniable imperfections, it is the international society established after 1991 that provided Russia with multiple chances to augment its international influence, and boost its status and role in the world.
A newborn conservative consensus, built on a combination of parochial Orthodoxy, spiritual mythology and retrograde nostalgia about the “old good times” of Russian grandeur, is a good example of using normative rhetoric for detaching and isolating Russia from the West.
Putin proved to be able to take advantages of the multiple controversies emanated from the post-modernization of the EU, including the lack of “strong” (i.e. unified and acting more politically than institutionally) leadership and own military capabilities.
Putin’s realism is deficient in its core aspect - it puts divisive emotions above rational calculations, and its concept of interests leads to confrontation with a stronger group of countries, instead of expanding terrain for pragmatic solutions.
