#12
The Russia Journal
May 6-12, 2002
Whose double standards should apply?
By IRA STRAUS

Russian diplomats and analysts are constantly complaining about the "double standards" of the West – so much so that it comes to sound tedious to Western ears. After all, everyone has double standards.

Nevertheless, there is a real problem behind these complaints. The West should pay heed.

The problem is not that the West skews its moral standards to take into account its selfish interests. Everyone does this, Russia included. Here, the Russian complaints are indeed tedious. The sensible approach to this is not to try to get rid of all double standards – that would be utopian – but for Russia and the West to reach a joint conception of their global interests, so that they could have one and the same set of double standards on most issues.

The real problem, meanwhile, is that the West pursues certain double standards even when they run contrary to its selfish interests. It has double standards based on what look like rhetorical vendettas against certain countries, including Russia.

This cannot be good for relations with Russia.

Let us look at one telling instance. Russia is said to be ineligible for NATO membership because of its handling of ethnic minorities, while Georgia is sometimes discussed as a potential member, and Estonia and Latvia are fully expecting to receive membership invitations this November.

Georgia is a basket case by every NATO standard, yet it ranks ahead of Russia in Western discourse on NATO expansion. Perhaps oil interests can explain this discrepancy. But what about the Baltic states?

Does the West need the Baltics in NATO? Hardly. Bringing them in would actually run contrary to the security interests of the West. It would be a dangerous overextension of Article 5 of the alliance treaty as long as Russia is not included in a comparable manner but is left outside as the implied adversary.

Yet discrimination against ethnic Russians in the Baltic states is treated as acceptable for NATO, as long as the most extreme manifestations of it are moderated. It is not a national interest that is being served here, but a psychological interest – supposedly a way of rewarding countries that meet democratic standards, but in view of the skewed standards, perhaps it would be better to call it a vendetta.

In the 1990s, NATO invented its current standards on ethnic-minority issues for a very specific, practical reason: so that new members would not drag the alliance into ethnic disputes, especially ones involving cross-border co-ethnics, that in turn could drag NATO into conflict with neighboring states. Estonia and Latvia are the cases where this concern is the most relevant. Their ethnic issues do indeed spill over to draw in a neighbor, a big powerful neighbor with nuclear weapons at that. They are indefensible militarily; they bring NATO no military benefit, only a big risk. To fail to insist on the most stringent standards of ethnic conduct in their case is to fail to attend to the West’s basic security interests.

Despite this, Westerners often speak as lawyers for the two Baltic states, explaining away their shortcomings, showing irritation that the question is even brought up, insinuating that this is being done as a pretext for Russian imperialism and excusing any problems by pointing to greater historical injustices suffered at the hands of Russia in the past. Nadya Arbatova, a sociologist with Moscow’s Institute of World Economics and International Relations and a member of the Russia in Europe committee, has described this as a policy of "selective historical indignation." She reminds us that "all history is a graveyard of grievances" and that there is a big difference between redressing grievances and nursing them.

The West is not applying double standards here out of any valid selfish interest. It is doing it out of pure sentimentality – at best a love of the Baltics, at worst a more negative feeling against Russia.

Meanwhile, Russian shortcomings in ethnic policy are treated to denunciations in the most extreme language. Every rhetorical effort is made to exaggerate them, just as every effort is made to minimize the failings in the Baltic cases.

No attention is given to the fact that the relevant standard of comparison for Russia is not a single small Eastern European state, but all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans combined. Russia has as many people – and even more ethnic minorities – as all of these states put together. Several of Russia’s minorities have taken semi-secessionist steps, usually for the sake of control of resources – in contrast to the good behavior of Russians in the Baltics. Russia has handled almost all of these difficult situations peacefully.

On balance, Russia has come out considerably better on minority matters than Eastern Europe and the Balkans, where there have been multiple wars and ethnic cleansings. Only in Chechnya has Russia failed; and a fair-minded observer would have to admit that the blame is not on Russia alone, the Chechen nationalists and militants having posed a problem far more intractable than any of the ethnic groups in Eastern Europe.

Russia’s record has been unusually good – without even mentioning its broader record of guaranteeing the general peace during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Arguably this is for the very reason that it has held together as a vast pluralistic state. It has not succumbed to small-state ethnic nationalism as in much of Eastern Europe and the Trans-Caucasus. Ethnic minorities in Georgia would love to be annexed by Russia. Small has been ugly, at least in ethnic relations: here Bush the elder seems to have been right in his much-derided 1991 speech in Kiev about "suicidal nationalism."

Despite this, Russia is treated in Western discourse as the greatest offender on ethnic minority relations, excepting only Serbia. Even the worst Balkan, Caucasian and Central Asian states are allowed to leapfrog ahead of Russia in being thought about for NATO membership, not to mention the two Baltic states.

By every consideration of Western self-interest, NATO should be skewing its judgments in favor of Russia, whose ethnic problems do not threaten to entice any neighboring states to invade – and should stop skewing its judgments in favor of small states whose ethnic problems often do threaten to draw in bigger neighbors. By every consideration of global Western strategic interest, too, Russia should be judged more generously than the others, as the one potential new member that can be of strategic help to the West.

Instead, the judgments are skewed against Russia. It is depicted as a pariah on ethnic matters. Many people in NATO circles say that it must be excluded from NATO on this very ground.

It should be evident by now that it is not really the ethnic issue that is keeping Russia out of NATO, it is the prejudice against Russia that is leading to misjudgments on this issue. This prejudice is rooted in other sources of distrust, some of which may raise real difficulties for integration of Russia with the West, but which cannot be addressed or resolved as long as they are expressed in such a mystified form.

This is not only harmful to Russia, it is harmful to the West.

Russians notice when the West skews its rules at the expense of its own interests, with no apparent pattern except that it is also at Russia’s expense. They draw all the conclusions that seem objectively logical about Western goals and intentions, even if, subjectively, Westerners cannot imagine that such conclusions could be drawn about them.

And this in turn tells us what the basic problem is on double standards. It is a pattern of distortions arising out of prejudices and passions – prejudices and passions that are blinding the West not only to justice but to its own vital interests.

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