Two threats, one devouring the other

Per Qigong Gin (The Phatom Menace): There’s always a bigger fish.

We are told that Russia + China is a “transactional” relationship, and that is fundamentally true.

We are also told that the levels of transactions are unprecedented in their historical relationship, and that is also true.

So, which is it?

It is both.

Putin has done his best to turn back the ideological clock with regard to hatred and fear of the West, but there is zero reason to believe that this effort has succeeded beyond its immediate application — as in, Putin falls, the brainwashing effort is terminated, and Russians re-emerge as non-haters of the West.

Think of it like a topical steroid versus some DNA editing.

After all, the Soviet system made that effort for decades — generations even — and then, like nothing, it was all jettisoned by the public once the Communist regime fell one day. There are good reasons to believe that can and will happen again.

Why?

First off is the historical pendulum swing that we’ve witnessed before in Russia’s trajectory:

• Russia feels itself the abject loser vis-a-vis the more advanced West and goes into Slavic-world-savior mode (or the one-time-only proletariat-world-savior mode under the USSR) and decides it must combat the West in its totality (manic phase).

• But, after years of doing this to its own detriment, only confirming its backwardness compared to the West, Russia abandons its uniqueness argument, goes into a self-abasing funk, and re-tries pervasive Westernization (depressive phase).

It is a rinse-and-repeat dynamic for a culture that has never been able to form a coherent whole from its combination of Asiatic and European roots.

In others words, Russia still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows and — hence — it never has grown up.

I don’t come to this conclusion lightly. I spent a solid decade studying the language and literature, spent some time there over the years (during and post-Soviet), and actually got a master’s in the subject.

There’s just no there there when it comes to a Russian identity. It is a kluge of civilizations that has never really grown comfortable with itself or its position/role in the world.

And I don’t see it surviving this century.