The following are prepared remarks written for a conference on ‘Global Partnerships’ hosted (via zoom) by Moscow State University. The panel featured Pierre de Gaulle, Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs, American University’s Peter Kuznick, among others.
The French political philosopher Regis Debray once wrote that “politics becomes serious when it mobilizes the imagination.”
And today I want to go back in time a little bit and invoke the fearless, deeply moral imagination that was at the heart of Charles de Gaulle’s politics. It is his vision of international politics – particularly his vision of a multipolar world – that continues to mobilize our own imaginations, even today, more than a half century since his passing.
De Gaulle understood as too few understand that Russia is an integral part of the West and that the US alone can not and ought not rule the world on its own. De Gaulle told FDR that after the war,
“It is the West that must be restored. If it regains its balance, the rest of the world, whether it wishes to or not, will take it for an example. If it declines, barbarism will ultimately sweep everything away.”
De Gaulle’s vision was that of a unified Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.
In 2014, speaker of the Russian Duma Sergei Naryshkin observed that de Gaulle sought to create “…a scenario of providing a safe future for Europe [that is] is relevant in our days and does not have an alternative.”
So, our first task is to consider how we might facilitate Russian’s reintegration into the West in order to help regain its sense, missing since at least 2014, of balance.
In order to do this, there needs to be a wider understanding among the public and policymakers that the expulsion of Russia from the Western economy has been counterproductive – that it has hurt Europe far more than it has hurt them.
But there’s another angle I would like to explore, if only as a test of my own political imagination.
Reintegration must necessarily precede partnership. And American public support for both these projects might be won if they are framed as necessary steps that must be taken in order to protect minority Christian populations living among the theocracies of West Asia.
An example that has been very much on my mind in recent weeks that of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing operation in Nagorno-Karabakh in September.
Given recent events, I would be remiss if I did not note that the government of Israel made common cause with the Islamist dictator of Turkey, an eager sponsor, let us not forget, of ISIS, in arming Azerbaijan to the teeth, thereby enabling its purging of 120,000 souls who comprise perhaps the oldest Christian community in the world.
And since I’m on the topic of minority Christian populations, a few words about the war on Gaza are in order.
While Hamas is rightly seen as a Sunni terrorist gang, Israel’s response has been totally indiscriminate, having killed over 5,000 Palestinians including over 2,000 children in only a matter of 2 weeks. In addition to the grotesque hospital massacre for which it disclaims responsibility, Israel has also bombed and destroyed the historic Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza, the third oldest existing Christian church in the world.
Needless to say, the Biden administration’s response to the war on Gaza has been nothing short of a master class in recklessness and double standards.It is also extremely dangerous, as it puts a target on the back of every American citizen.
So — any future collaboration between the US and Russia might include, perhaps above all, cooperation on counter-terrorism and support for minority Christian populations in West Asia and the Greater Middle East. But I readily admit that the problem with such a vision is that over the past 25 years Washington has routinely opted to side with and arm radical Islamists and other ethno-nationalist extremists rather than act as a force for peace and pluralism in cases as far afield as Kosovo, Syria, Ukraine and Palestine.
About whether areas of partnership between the US and Russia still exist, there can be no doubt.
Yet whether the West has within itself the confidence to abandon its failed policy of isolating Russia in favor of a policy of reintegration remains a very open question and will remain so long after the war in Ukraine finally ends.
What we need most – if we are to avoid the global war that seems on the cusp of unfolding – are Western leaders blessed with the courage and imagination of a Charles de Gaulle.
Yet as we sit here today, it appears that such courage and imagination lie well beyond the capabilities of the small, fearful men who today occupy the seats of power in Washington, Berlin, London and Paris.
If only it were otherwise.
James W. Carden is a senior adviser to ACURA and a member of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy in Washington. The views expressed here are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the ACURA Board.