Russophobia obstacle for Russia- West rapport
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russophobia was counterproductive to Moscow- Washington ties in his address at the opening ceremony of this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum early this month. Since the Ukraine crisis in 2014 led to further deterioration in Russia’s ties with Western countries, Russophobia has become a buzzword of the Russian media to refer to the West’s approach to dealing with Moscow.
For Russia, Russophobia is an instinctive, rigid bias and a groundless resentment. It has a number of manifestations.
The estrangement between Moscow and the West could be attributed to the Russian interference in Ukrainian politics and its integration of Crimea, but the role of Western countries has been overlooked. Russia has been accused of meddling in the US presidential election, but the fact is that arrogance might have cost Hillary Clinton and her campaign team victory. What’s more, it was Russian hackers that were blamed for sparking the recent Qatari diplomatic crisis.
Moscow presents a complicated stance on the anti- Russian hysteria gripping the US. On the one hand, the Russian people oppose and hate this rhetoric but can do nothing about it. On the other, Russian nationalists have learned to explain the conundrums between Moscow and Washington over the past few years with the latter’s anti- Russian sentiment, consequently concluding that the West is solely to blame for worsening relations.
Though Russophobia is not the only factor affecting US- Russia ties, it has become an obstacle under the political frameworks of the two countries and in the international political sphere.
In fact, the West’s Russophobia is nothing new. It dates back to the Mongol rule over Russia for more than two centuries. Russia’s subsequent divergence from the West in terms of culture, religion, social system and political rule resulted in mutual suspicion. In the eyes of Western countries, people from Russia were barbarians.
This stereotyped mentality led all the Tsars since Peter the Great ( 1682- 1725) to strive for Europeanization in order to integrate with the West and seek a change in its intrinsic view.
This process was halted by the October Revolution in 1917, which consolidated Russophobia in Western countries and the threat of the Soviet Union to the West was repeatedly emphasized during the Cold War.
In the post- Cold War era, Russophobia reappeared, staging a strong comeback in recent years. It has become a standard discourse in USRussian relations. The reasons could be attributed to Washington’s concern about Moscow’s behavioral pattern. During the Cold War, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Kennan and Henry Kissinger successfully framed Russia as a country that sought expansion in a bid to gain a sense of security. Such a description is still widely ac- cepted by academics and the general public. When everyone accepts this assumption without a second thought, the “Russia threat” theory easily becomes an objective existence psychologically.
From Russia’s perspective, the assumption is convenient for President Putin because it allows the Kremlin to cite Russophobia as the reason for worsening ties with the US and provoke anti- US sentiment within Russia.
Now it has gone too far and Russia has often found itself unjustly blamed. It is accused of rigging the US presidential election campaign. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the Kremlin engaged more with Clinton’s campaign team than with Donald Trump in the earlier stages of the election campaign. But the Russia factor has now become integral to the power struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans.
An interesting phenomenon is that the China hands in the West are usually pro- China while scholars well acquainted with Russia are mostly antiRussia.
Michael Flynn’s resignation as Trump’s national security advisor after coming under suspicion of having links to Russia has further soured relations between the US and Russia, as the Trump administration has to take into account the anti- Russian mentality creeping across the US when engaging with the Kremlin.
Although Trump understands that mollifying Russia is in the interest of the US, such a maneuver will probably be interpreted as confirmation of Moscow’s involvement in the election.
From this perspective, rapprochement does not only rely on national interest but also psychological acceptance. The existence of Russophobia means US- Russia ties are unlikely to escape an on- again, off- again relationship despite a temporary ease. The author is a PhD candidate at the Center for Russian Studies, East China Normal University. opinion@ globaltimes. com. cn