Abstract

This article examines the distinct cultural and historical roots of Russia’s foreign policy, challenging the notion of universal values and rights. Drawing parallels between Russian actions in Syria and Ukraine and historic French and American philosophies, it argues that Russia’s behavior reflects its unique history, distinct from Western ideals of freedom and human rights. The text delves into the French Revolution’s universalism, contrasting it with the English tradition that influenced American independence to illustrate how cultural and historical contexts shape national values and policies. It asserts that Russia’s approach to strategic competition and conventional military conflict, as seen in Ukraine, is consistent with its historical ethos and not aligned with Western values. The article warns NATO of Russia’s potential ruthlessness in pursuing its security interests, driven by its cultural past and demographic challenges. This comprehensive analysis offers insight into the complexities of global geopolitics and the limitations of applying universal standards to diverse historical and cultural contexts.

Introduction

The Western public is frequently dismayed with the callousness of Russia. In 2015 and 2016, Russia’s General Surovikin (nicknamed General Armageddon in the media) ordered the direct targeting of civilian population centers in Syria to break resistance to al-Assad’s rule (Eckel, 2022). Surovikin calculated that refugees would not resist the Syrian National Army—they would just flow northward into regions controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, ISIS, and ultimately, Europe.

More recently, Russian brutality was brought to bear against the people of Ukraine. Similar to Syria, civilian population centers, energy infrastructure, mass transit, and the people themselves were directly targeted. But Russia went further in Ukraine.

In many occupied Ukrainian localities Russian soldiers have perpetrated myriad war crimes. For example, in the town of Bucha, every military-age male was simply executed (Forrest, 2022). It is clear that officers allowed or even instructed Russian soldiers to rape and pillage as they pleased—all in service to breaking Ukraine’s will to resist.

The Russians have also conducted mass abductions of children from Ukraine, sending kids to live with Russian foster families (Coles, 2023). These children are taken without documentation of their families or origins deliberately to ensure that their parents can never track them down again. Moscow has adopted this policy to shore up Russia’s increasingly inverted demographics. Russians simply aren’t having enough children to support or replace their parents and grandparents in the workforce (Zeihan, 2023). Shipping a few thousand Ukrainian children to Russia, and then raising them as Russians, will help with the emerging demographic crisis.

How can the Russians do such things? How can they be so cruel? Why don’t they subscribe to western values or perhaps the values embodied in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

The answer is that “Rights” are not universal. Values and culture are not universal. They are anchored to a specific place–the product of a people’s journey through history.

French Universalism

In his famous “Social Contract”, Jean Jacques Rousseau postulated the existence of universal human rights, and these ideas were very much in vogue during the French Revolution. He famously declared that, “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains,” (Rousseau, 1762). Rousseau believed that people were naturally free, and that society enslaved them to lives of drudgery, dependence, and immorality. In 1789, the French National Constituent Assembly, a self-declared quasi-legislative body contrived by radicals of the Third Estate and sympathetic noblemen, channeled Rousseau to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—a precursor to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Elysee, 2022).