Framing of Russia as a threat is rooted in Orientalist ideals that attempt to Otherize the East and ensure racial assumptions over those that don’t meet the “West’s threshold”

Kevin Blachford PhD, “Western orientalism and the threat from Russia”, Comparative Strategy 39:4, 2020,

Historical patterns of geopolitical competition between the US and Russia have often been understood through their respective competing identities and cultural explanations of contemporary Russia continue to be mired in cliches, stereotypes and caricatures.10 Stereotypes of Putin “playing chess” 11 or “facing up to the bear” 12 also continue to shape Western discourse about tensions with Russia. Understandings of Russia then become mired in attempts to explain Russian foreign policy as irrational, deceptive and non-Western. This orientalist perspective deserves to be investigated because Russian culture is widely seen as a primary cause of conflict and tension with the West. Russia is accused of following a “perpetual” and “historical pattern,” 13 in which Russia’s actions can be understood largely through its history, national identity and its expansive geography. The culture of the Russian leadership and its “way of war” 14 are viewed as a significant source of tension with the West and one of the major causes of the Georgia15 and Ukraine crises.16 These cultural explanations of the tensions between the two sides portray Russia as diverging from Western norms.17 This creates an othering of Russia as it is portrayed as the “West’s mirror image” and antithesis.18 Orientalist perspectives limit the possibilities of negotiation as the othering of Russia leads to an increasingly militarized dispute viewed in cultural terms in which competing identities are seen as radically different and incompatible.

This paper does not aim to be an apologist for Russia. While there can be no doubt Russia is actively seeking to undermine Western institutions, there is however, a need to understand how current tensions have been shaped by cultural divides. Western foreign policy is often described as acting in the name of human rights, democracy promotion, or for a liberal order; whereas Russian foreign policy is largely understood solely through its strategic and national culture. Tensions between the East and West are therefore blamed on Russia’s resistance to Western values and modernity. To explore this discourse the following paper develops in four sections. The first section will argue that Russia’s culture is uniquely seen as a source of tension. Section two builds upon this argument to provide examples of Western orientalism toward Russia. The third section develops this argument further by looking to the current crisis of confidence within the liberal order. I argue that Russia’s resistance to the West has introduced narratives of self-doubt within the Western liberal order. The final section therefore examines how Russia has equally sought to promote a narrative of Russian identity standing apart and separate from the West. The aim of this examination is not to provide a conclusive study of media sources and academic discourse, but to argue that the othering of Russia as a non-Western power, hardens separate identities and reinforces conflict between seemingly incompatible cultures. This paper concludes by arguing that the promotion of distinct cultural divides serves to militarize relations between the two sides and further increase tensions.

Russian culture as a source of conflict and orientalism

Edward Said’s seminal study, Orientalism,19 provided an account of how Western cultural identity is shaped, formed and defined through comparison and contrast to an Eastern orient. For Said, the orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality [and] experience.” 20 Said’s groundbreaking study showed the West’s ideological suppositions in viewing the orient. Although originally developed from the colonial era, orientalism illustrates how the West defines itself and its view of others. Orientalism is a view based on an “imaginative geography” and can be used to understand how the West portrays the East.21 Orientalism provides a framework to understand cultural constructs and purported differences.22 In this case, the following study looks to the othering of Russia as an Eastern power. Western portrayals of the East have shaped identities and culture, but “crucially, it is not the actual, geographic East and West (wherever located) that is at issue” it is the portrayal of distinctive and opposing cultures.23 Russian imperial expansion in the 19th century, has itself, often been a source of orientalism within the work of Russian geographers, and anthropologists, coming into contact with people in Central Asia.24 However, in contemporary politics, Russia is increasingly described in orientalist terms that helps to otherize Russia as a distinctive culture that differs to a liberal democratic West. The following section argues that it is cultural differences that are seen to be a primary cause of geopolitical tensions.

Geopolitical tensions between Russia and the West are commonly understood in cultural terms. This goes beyond an examination of differing national interests, to become an ideological divide between a liberal democratic West and an irrational Russian East. The Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was often expressed in ideological terms. Russia was portrayed in the Cold War as an oriental enemy based on godless communism against America’s liberal democracy.25 What is significant about the portrayal of the opposing sides in the Cold War is that cultural explanations were used to explain state behavior. The Soviet Union was seen as an irrational enemy that was more likely to use nuclear weapons.26 The Cold War conflict was also viewed as an “irreconcilable struggle between two fundamentally different value systems.” American culture was celebrated for its embracing of personal freedom, while the Soviets were understood as an oppressive empire.27 Since the end of the Cold War, the West has assumed that tensions would disappear and Russia would become more “Western.” Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Crimea have led to the revival of tensions, but crucially, Russian culture is again seen to be a major cause for conflict. The fall of the Berlin Wall led the West to assume that “as Russia became more prosperous it would become more like other European countries.” 28 The post-Cold War era saw an ideological wave of support for a Fukuyama-esque future in which Western style liberal democracy would spread inexorably across the globe. Underpinning these views was an ideological belief in the evolution of progress and a triumphalist understanding of Western modernity.29 Liberal scholars in IR have continued to claim that “there is ultimately one path to modernity.” 30 This ideological understanding of politics in evolutionary terms views an American West and a liberal international order as the highest form of modernity. Russia’s own interests and understandings of political order can therefore be dismissed because of “Russian backwardness.” 31

The triumphalist post-Cold War mood led liberal scholars of IR to argue that the West and Europe was in a fundamental new era. The EU was celebrated for achieving a Kantian Peace,32 having created a new approach to international politics through acting as a “civilian” 33 and “normative” power.34 Conflict and war within Europe was believed to have been all but essentially eradicated. The political order of European security based on international institutions and collaboration was celebrated for creating a Europe “whole, free and at peace.” 35 Some scholars even went so far as to claiming Europe had moved into a new historical era through creating “postClausewitzian political cultures” that openly questioned “the utility of force.” 36 Russia’s own willingness to use force in defence of its national interests has therefore caused disbelief amongst elites within Europe. Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Crimea caught European elites by “surprise” 37 and led to criticisms of Western elites being caught “napping.” 38 The end of the Cold War created a Western ideology, which believed in a “prolonged sense of inevitability about Russia rejoining the West.” 39 Russia’s use of force in defence of its interests led one observer to declare the West is “discovering that Russia’s understanding of events, its discourse, methods and calculus of risk differ from its own.” 40 The annexation of Crimea appeared to show that Western triumphalism had misunderstood Russian culture and identity, that the West had simply “got Russia wrong.” 41

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the politics of Ukraine has been explained largely through a cultural lens. According to Mark Galeotti, Russia believes that it is fighting a “political” war and “faces an existential cultural” threat from the “West.” 42 In trying to understand the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s use of hybrid warfare is explained as originating from a particular “ideological vision and political ambition” 43 and from the “worldview” of Russian elites and society.44 Russia’s actions in Ukraine are also attributed to the way the Russia’s leadership “look at the world.” 45 Anatol Lieven argues that overused analogies comparing Russia’s actions to Nazi Germany also imply that Russia’s leadership is a “force of absolute evil, drawing on deeply rooted, malevolent elements of Russian culture.” 46 It is the “culture” of Russian society and its elites that is uniquely blamed for “the return of geopolitics” to Europe.47 Analysts have rushed to also explain these tensions as a new “East-West” confrontation48 in which Russia’s non-Western culture has exacerbated the divide between NATO and Russia.

This East-West divide continues an orientalist tendency within Western security debates. The idea of a “West at war with an East conceived as radically other is pervasive and longstanding” within political discourse.49 The War on Terror is just one recent example of a long propensity within Western security discourse to fall into an orientalist perspective. But it is during conflict and warfare that an orientalist perspectives frame an “us” versus “them.” Political discussions on the War on Terror often portrayed a “law abiding, Christian and Western civilization” as threatened by an irrational Eastern enemy that was “ever-resistant to modernity.” 50 In trying to explain the return of geopolitical competition to Europe, there is an orientalist tendency to see Western states as acting rationally, responding to incentives; while Russian foreign policy is shaped by a resistance to modernity and the Russian culture of its elites, or by a primordial instinct traced to its national character and the weight of its history.51 As the following section explores, Western political discourse toward Russia is often framed through this orientalist lens.