Chekov at Three Thousand Versts generously takes up my posting on the psychology of Russia’s foreign policy, and responds:

In addition, we can agree that insensitivity to Russia’s concerns, from Nato and other western structures, caused Russian disillusionment which effects ‘cooperation’ to this day. Nato’s support for Albanian separatists in Kosovo is a particularly lamentable example.

In fact I don’t really agree about that ‘insensitivity’ point (see below), but moving on:

What are the aspects of ‘westernisation’ to which Russia most strenuously objects? Perhaps the foremost concern is the Ukrainian president’s desire that his country should join Nato. Then there is a large Russian speaking population in the east of the country, whose cultural rights and affinities Russia is keen to safeguard.

Agreed (-ish), but is not the point that these are Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens, who perhaps should be left to safeguard and decide their own rights and affinities?

President Yushchenko, whose regime comprises the least popular in Europe, does not share this ambition with the majority of his countrymen. The rhetoric from anti-Russian politicians (David Miliband is an example) holds that Ukraine should be free to chart its own course in foreign affairs. If that course is to reflect the will of the majority, then it will not involve membership of Nato.

Agreed. Which is why there is no immediate prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. That said, if a firm majority did vote to do that, would that be OK?

No doubt the annual wrangle between Moscow and Kiev over gas prices will once again erupt, this winter. Hysterical columns will accuse the Kremlin of engineering an energy crisis. By expecting payment for its resources, at market rate, Russia will be portrayed as opposed to ‘reform, transparency and modernisation’. Few analysts will ask why Ukraine should receive preferential rates whilst it continues to lambaste its neighbour.

A v good point. In fact I made it in an FCO message from Moscow to London back in 1996 or so. I argued that it made no sense for us to moan about the fact that Russia was unhappy about supplying Ukraine with cheap energy which in substance was an unhealthy post-Soviet bribe, bad for giver and getter alike. Much better for all CIS countries to move to market prices asap.

That said, these deals are (I gather) really nothing about the merits of market-pricing for energy, but instead all about the personal machinations of the oligarchs involved on both sides of the border as they jostle for personal advantage. Sigh.

Continuing Chekov’s argument:

In the Caucasus a fresh Islamic insurgency is claiming lives. This region forms an important geopolitical tinderbox adjacent to Central Asia and close to the Middle East. It should concern policy makers throughout ‘the west’, as well as Russia. If we want to find a common area for cooperation, combating terror would be a great place to start.

Agreed. I in fact accompanied the then Ambassador to Moscow when we were summoned to receive a Very Secret dossier on what Russia knew from the Soviet period about the IRA’s attempts to drum up international support. A dossier was handed over to us. Thin, but not trivial. Alas we did not get the impression that we would be getting a lot more. And many subsequent attempts to turn positive-sounding words into real cooperation just do not get far. It’s not where the Russians are at.

Let’s get back to that Insensitivity word.

Are we too often ‘insensitive to Russian concerns’? And, if so, is that good or bad?

My problem with this whole line of argument and the related absurd claim that ‘Russia fears encirclement’ is that it takes Russia’s ‘concerns’ as the defining issue, and relegates everyone else’s.

The strategic problem is that for seventy years the Soviet Union pumped out violence, corruption and lies. Its brutalisation of its own people and others was on an incomprehensible scale.

So the basic logic of the situation is that the force responsible for so much malevolence needs to show a healthy contrition if it wants its current ‘concerns’ to weigh heavily with the rest of us. And, for all the sense of Order which has been won under Putinism, that is still lacking. Moreover, whereas Yeltsin tried to grapple with these issues with a democratic impulse (albeit flawed), under Putin that trend has gone sharply into reverse.

Russia of course is not responsible for the crimes of the Soviet Union. But an honest Russia likewise can not rummage around in the black, mouldy bun of Soviet history and extract raisins of glory, any more than Merkel can say some positive things about Hitler and expect to be taken seriously.

This is why PM Putin’s speech in Gdansk at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact commemoration was so depressing. The tone of it was evasive-aggressive, aimed at playing down the Soviet Union’s responsibility for anything bad.

Imagine a different speech he might have made: praising the bravery of Soviet forces; blaming Stalin for starting the War and killing so many generals, thereby forfeiting millions of lives; offering to throw open all the Katyn massacre archives, once and for all; and saying that Russia of course does not want NATO enlargement, but looks in a quite new spirit of openness to look at European security in the round.

In short, a speech founded in painful honesty and a sense of personal regret, showing real sympathy and sensitivity towards the victims of Soviet/Russian imperialism and their millions of relatives across central and Eastern Europe.

A strong speech by a strong leader, but one based on universalist optimistic principles and basic decency, not one aimed at pessimistically dragging everyone down into the Dirt of Relativism.

So, insofar as we can identify the ‘concerns’ of contemporary Russia and see in them dark aspects of Homo Neo-Soveticus, we are damn right not to be ‘sensitive’ to them. Since to err in that direction is to be lured into a very deep psychological game aimed at framing issues to suit a specific, malign Sovietish/KGB view of morals and history and everything.

The main answer to this sort of apparently hawkish argument is that it is not ‘realistic’. We have the Russia we have: it will take many decades to flush communist thinking and KGB nomenkatura from the system, so in the meantime we should be patient but firm and straightforward – keeping our own principles in order and not worrying about Moscow’s.

Which broadly speaking is the aim of Western policy, in all its inconsistent fits and starts.

Because the main Guardianista alternative is to treat Russia like a lumbering local bully unable to stop itself bullying its neighbours, but in doing so to adopt a patronising, apologetic, sycophantic tone of trying to ‘understand’ its grievances as it duffs up the smaller kids on the block while revealing its Soviet tattoos to show how tough it really was – and still is.

The smaller kids don’t like being duffed up, or threatened. They look to the people in the smarter houses down the road to protect them from that sort of thing.

What should we do, if we are not minded to sort out the bully once and for all? Look now and then over our hedges and ask the bully to be less unpleasant?

Or do all we can to protect the small kids, while not letting the brawl get out of hand and spoil the neighbourhood?

Diplomacy begins at home?