Richard Sakwa and Gordon Hahn Join our Symposium on Tucker Carlson's Controversial Interview With Vladimir Putin

Richard Sakwa and Gordon Hahn weigh in on the significance of Tucker Carlson's controversial dialogue with Vladimir Putin.

{Photo Credit: By Kremlin.ru]

From War-War to Jaw-Jaw

By Richard Sakwa

Whatever one may think of the content of the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin, made public on February 9, 2024, the mere fact that the Russian viewpoint has entered the public domain in such a popular format is an event of historical significance. There are undoubtedly points that can be disputed, above all in the long introductory history section, yet the logic of Russian foreign policy behavior came out loud and clear, as did the dangers of military escalation.

It comes at a time when a flood of commentary in the West warns that the world is in a ‘pre-war’ situation. A spate of warnings called for societies to prepare for war with Russia. A report in Bild in January revealed the Bundeswehr’s preparations for a larger European war. The top NATO official, Admiral Rob Hauer, warned that a larger war with Russia and other adversaries was a real threat, against the background of the war in Ukraine.¹ The UK Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, claims that ‘we need an army designed to... equip the citizen army that must follow’, raising fears that conscription would return to the UK.² In his first major speech, UK defense secretary Grant Shapps warned that “the era of the peace dividend is over.” He argued, “We are moving from a post-war to a pre-war world,” where “in five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theatres [of conflict] involving Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.”³ Preparations needed to be made for a long war with Russia. 

Meanwhile, NATO geared up for its largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War. Operation Steadfast Defender-24 runs for four months, February to May, with the participation of all 31 member states, Sweden, and 90,000 troops. It was described by NATO as the “largest military exercise since the Cold War,” with the last on this scale being Reforger in 1988 with 125,000, while the Trident Exercise in 2018 involved 50,000 personnel. The exercise was clearly designed to prepare against a potential land offensive by Russia. Moscow, meanwhile, cancelled its annual military exercise, Zapad (West), to focus on training its influx of recruits. 

The UK seeks to reframe the war as part of an enduring struggle with Russia. Shapps noted that the UN reported that “we are facing the highest number of conflicts since the Second World War.” He boasted that “when the world needed us, we have risen to the moment. Giving Ukraine our unwavering support and galvanising others to their cause.” He asserted that “2024 must mark an inflexion point.” He referred to the UK-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation signed with Ukraine on January 12 and asserted that it was “The start of a 100-year alliance that we are building with our Ukrainian friends.” He underscored his belief “that the battle in Ukraine is existential; it proves that there is no such thing as an isolated conflict’.”⁴ The security pact was the first of its kind and served as a functional substitute to NATO membership. It includes additional funding and intensified intelligence sharing.

On its own, Britain’s commitment did little to change the strategic balance. However, it did raise the spectre of NATO forces becoming directly involved in the conflict and changed the horizon for diplomatic engagement. Asked by Carlson about the danger of a direct clash between NATO and Russian troops, Putin answered, “I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. There are mercenaries from the United States there. The biggest number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity on the brink of a very serious global conflict. This is obvious.”

Eve Ottenberg notes that “this British move will create yet another impediment to the opening of peace talks, both by increasing Russian distrust and by strengthening opponents of talks elsewhere in Europe. This latest British assault can only serve to slow Russian willingness to end combat and talk. In short, it’s a provocation.”⁵ By precluding the possibility of a neutral Ukraine, the pact reinforced the views of hardliners in Moscow that only battlefield successes would allow it to dictate terms. Unfortunately, it does not look as if the Tucker Carlson interview and the virulent responses to it in the West will be able to help shift the dial from war-war to jaw-jaw. 

The Carlson-Putin Interview: Putin’s Failed but Very Russian History Lesson

By Gordon M. Hahn

[Photo Credit: By Kremlin.ru]

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin was a tour de force of both journalism and political communication, with a few caveats. Here I will address the issue of Putin’s long historical preamble to Carlson’s first question as to why he chose to invade Ukraine precisely on February 24, 2024, escalating the Ukrainian civil war to a NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. 

This was not one of Putin’s communication successes during the interview. Many Americans were perplexed, consternated, and/or irritated by Putin’s long introductory exegesis on Russian history in response to a question regarding the reasons he chose to invade Ukraine when he did. But Putin did not do this to filibuster or avoid answering the question. He gave us a review of more than a thousand years of mostly Russian but also Ukrainian history and relations between Russia and the West for several very Russian reasons.

First, in that part of the world and particularly in Russia, history is the root of all existence: past, present, and future. The past explains the present and may foretell the future. History is sacred, not just because it is powerful but because, for many Russians, it has a larger, even religious meaning. Many Russians’ interpretation or view of history is defined directly or indirectly by the teleology of Orthodox Christian eschatology regarding the second coming of Christ and the advent of the Kingdom at the end of time. History is a phenomenon often guided by God and with a meaning defined by God’s world-historical project.

None of the above means that all Russians, or even all those Russians who have an Orthodox view of the meaning of Russian and/or world history, apply an Orthodox Christian model to their views on various historical or contemporary issues. On the other hand, this kind of thinking influences the culture and thus even the thinking of Russian non-believers and even atheists. For example, Soviet communists developed a proletarian model of a coming communist utopia that replaced the Orthodox utopian vision of their forebears.

Second, the teleological approach to history and Russian history—that they have meaning and even a predetermined outcome of one kind or another—conveys to Russians’ vision of world and/or Russian history as being integral or whole. Russians prefer and in good part aspire to the unity of their history, and this follows from their habit of viewing history as having a single meaning, goal, or outcome, whether under or aside from God. The single, predetermined end unites the historical process. As I have written elsewhere, Putin himself has called for preserving the unity of Russian history by respecting all its different periods as a single history that belongs to each and every Russian.

I wrote in my book Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture Thought, History, and Politics that Russians have a general tendency to aspire to, or to assume, the existence of wholeness or the condition of wholeness (tselostnost’ in Russian). Russian tselostnost’ includes monist tselostnost’ or simply monism (a unity between God and Man, the Divine and the material, spirit and matter), universalism (the wholeness of the world or parts of the world), communalism (social unity), and solidarism (political, national, and identity wholeness). Across Russian history, numerous Russian writers, theologians, philosophers, political, religious, and opinion leaders have articulated these five (historical, monist, universalist, communalist, and solidarist) kinds of wholeness in their work.

The desire for historical wholeness has particular resonance in the Russian mind when considering Ukraine, or, more precisely, Kiev. As Putin emphasized in his opening monologue to Tucker Carlson, the Russian state and Russian Orthodox Church were founded in Kiev. He reviewed the continuity between Kievan Rus and Muscovite, then Imperial Russia, and the interconnections between Russia and Ukraine across history, up through the Soviet period into today’s post-Soviet Russia. Thus, if one takes Kiev and thus Ukraine as well out of Russia and its history, then this leaves shattered: the integrality of Russian history and of the Russian state (having implications for political solidarist tselostnost’ and identity), as well as the integrality of the Russian Church (having implications for Russian monist tselostnost’). But Russians would deny this is possible: all these form a single whole.

With regard to Ukraine, historical tselostnost’ is intertwined with universalist and solidarist tselostnost’. Universalism presumes and might logically be preceded by smaller, narrower unifications. Semi-universalisms popular among Russians are pan-Eurasianism, pan-Orthodoxy, and pan-Slavism. Many Russians are enamored by the idea of, and support the unity of, the eastern Slavic peoples: the Great Russians (Rusians), the Little Russians (Ukrainians), and the White Russians (Belorussians). In this view, this ‘triune’ of peoples forms a united Russian nation with overlapping cultures, languages, and familial ties, as Putin himself has argued. If the Russian triune is a single nation, formed albeit by a trinity or troika of essentially Russian nationalities, then Russian solidarism, which is the most politically relevant of the Russian tselostnosts, would lend Russians a preference for some form of at least minimal ‘national’ political and ontological (identity) unity. In these ways, with regard to Ukraine, historical tselostnost—historicism, if you will—is closely tied to and supports the values of universalism, solidarism, and corresponding popular feelings.

None of this means necessarily that any particular Russian or even a majority of Russians requires that Ukraine or Kiev remain part of territorial Russia of the Russian state. However, it does mean that Ukraine’s and Kiev’s turn against Russia, so encouraged and cultivated by the West, is a blow to Russian national identity. Many Russians would be quite happy if Ukraine were to join the Russia-Belarus Union, strengthening the interconnectedness of the Russian triune. In lieu of all this, Kiev’s turn against Russia by seeking NATO membership and attacking ethnic Russians, and more recently, the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, is a harsh blow to Russian honor, an aspect of international relations that has been unduly ignored, as Andrei Tsygankov has pointed out.

All the above does not by itself explain why Putin decided to invade Ukraine on February 22, 2024. The main cause of that decision was national security: the threat posed by the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, being armed by NATO, and then, in our post-2014 world, attempting to seize back Crimea and the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. However, turning Ukraine, in particular Kiev and historically Russian and Russian-populated eastern Ukrainian lands, against Russia added insult to injury, perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back, bringing Putin’s invasion earlier than it might have come otherwise as NATO expansion continued. Thus, Putin’s history lesson was intended to explain why, beyond security, Ukraine is such a sensitive issue for Russia. Ukraine’s break with Russia and movement toward the West is an offense to Russian honor and sense of wholeness, adding insult to injury, as it were. For the same reason, Putin mentioned twice that a large portion of Russian families have Ukrainian roots, relatives, and other ties.

What is regrettable and disappointing is that Putin’s historical discourse will have little to no influence on average Americans, who have a very limited interest in history, even their own history, much less that of a distant people or at least that of a political figure whom they have been trained to be suspicious of, if not to despise. Russians live in the past and future. For the present, Americans live in the present.

Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an analyst at Corr Analytics and a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS). He has taught at a number of U.S. universities and has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, at the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, and at the Hoover Institution. 

1.  ‘NATO Admiral Warns of Potential All-Out War with Russia’, The Hill, 19 January 2024, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4417551-nato-admiral-war-russia-ukraine/.

2. Jonathan Beale, ‘’Britain Must Train Citizen Army, Military Chief Warns’, BBC, 24 January 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68086188.

3. Grant Shapps, ‘Defending Britain from a More Dangerous World’, Lancaster House, 15 January 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/defending-britain-from-a-more-dangerous-world.

4. Shapps, ‘Defending Britain from a More Dangerous World’

5. Eve Ottenberg, ‘Did Britain Just Put Ukraine on a Path to NATO?’, Responsible Statecraft, 22 January 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/britain-ukraine-security-pact-nato/.