Like other analysts, I was eager to hear Putin’s “Victory Day” speech live back on May 9. Analysis by Robert C. Castel.
What did we expect from this speech?
There were those who still hoped that Mr. Putin would smile benignly and call off the war with a wave of his hand so that humanity could breathe a sigh of relief and return to the comforting nightmare of climate-COVID ersatz-world-ending scenarios.
There were those who hoped that plans for conquering countries would be unveiled, or perhaps targets for imminent nuclear strikes would be identified. And there were those who hoped that someone would finally explain to them what had happened to their little world, which had suddenly become so ominously alien to them.
When expectations are so high and so wide-ranging, disappointment is inevitable. Worst of all, many people — including serious analysts — have simply fallen over the edge.
If the president did not say what we expected, he did not actually say anything.
This is of course a very strong exaggeration.
It is not impossible that Putin’s rather laconic speech on Monday will be considered one of the most important political milestones of the 21st century.
Historians of the future, relying only on the interpretation of the text, will find it difficult to understand why this particular rhetorical haiku has become the dividing line between the unipolar past and the multipolar future.
A speech is, of course, much more than a text read by someone standing on a podium. The significance of a speech is primarily given by the historical context in which it is delivered. Secondly, there is its symbolic significance, which goes far beyond the written text. The context here is a new continental war in Europe, with some nuclear threats thrown in.
And the symbolic meaning of speech is the declaration of civilizational war within it.
Mr. Fukuyama has tried in vain to cling tooth and nail to the limelight of long-lost relevance. The world beyond the president’s speech is now Huntington’s world.
Those who, in the heat of the moment, were busy vehemently explaining to everyone how wrong Putin was or how right he was, missed the message in all the noise they themselves were making: the line at the end of a unipolar world, the formal creed of a new ideology, and the declaration of war shrouded in World War II nostalgia.
The speech can be summarized in five points.
- Within the unipolar world order, Russia’s needs have not received the attention they deserve. The international system based on so-called laws and rules is a steep downward slope, and the existing world order’s promise of a peaceful settlement of disputes is a pile of fake money.
- The most pernicious influence in the world, on friend and foe alike, is American exceptionalism.
- Russia is the real depositary of the values of Western civilization, because the West has turned its back on these values of many millennia.
- Russia is the homeland of a nation made up of many ethnicities, whose strength lies in its unity. It is this unity that the West, with its secret schemes, is trying to destroy.
- As so many times in history, Russia today is again in a struggle to defend its values and its unity.
In fact, there was not much new in the president’s speech.
However, there was something about it that markedly distinguished it from the much-heralded „Valdai speech” of October 21, 2021.
The culture war has been replaced by a continental war.
State theory was replaced by Clausewitzian war theory. The critique of the Soviet system was replaced by nostalgia for the Russian imperial past. The Russian national „melting pot” was replaced by the multiculti Eurasianism of Aleksandr Dugin.
The president’s speech, in which some say he said nothing, is a historic dividing line.
A dividing line between the unipolar world of the past and the multipolar world of the future. The dividing line between Fukuyama’s burying of history and Huntington’s civilization warfare. And last but not least, a dividing line between the unhappy world of peace and the unhappier world of endless wars.
