Listening to the news these days, you would assume that the politics of humiliation has taken over in Europe. Coming out of Greece and Russia, there is fiery rhetoric about nations being downtrodden, their pride trampled, their well-being attacked by hostile external forces. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has accused his country’s creditors of attempting to “humiliate our people”, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that 40 intercontinental missiles would be added to his country’s arsenal, as a retaliatory measure against what he claims are western attempts to humiliate and intimidate Russia.
The grievances that Putin and Tsipras harbour against Europe are different, and translate into acts of varying degrees of gravity: Military aggression on one hand, and the threat to the Eurozone on the other. But they share a notion that national feelings have been severely damaged and that amends need to be made. That Tsipras felt the need to travel to St Petersburg and seek solace in a meeting with Putin says a lot about this alliance of the aggrieved. There has never been a deliberate intention to crush national pride in these countries. Of course, their comments need to be seen in a context of heightened diplomatic posturing. Greece’s negotiations with creditors have reached crunch time.
Russia’s regime pursues a strategy aimed at rewriting post-cold war rules to its advantage, after having launched a war in Ukraine last year. But the perception of humiliation is real nonetheless, not least because the Greek and the Russian people seem to share it with their leaders. And in international relations, careless rhetorical flourishes can leave lasting damage. As the language of humiliation is being ratcheted up to hysterical heights, it is increasingly hard to see how the involved parties can climb down to a more diplomatic level. After so much energy has been spent on claiming victimhood and nursing grievances, talk of a compromise would suddenly sound too much like a retreat.
To deflate the situation, it would be helpful to ask two questions. First: was there ever an intention to actually humiliate? Second, if a conciliatory gesture is really required, should it entail a full-blown mea culpa (through my fault) from the supposed humiliators? My answer to both of these questions would be no.
Saying you are being humiliated supposes that someone is out to humiliate you deliberately. In both cases, that is far from the mark. The economic difficulties that people in Greece and Russia are experiencing are obvious, coming from austerity, falling revenues or the impact of sanctions. But I would argue there has never been a western or European intention to crush national pride in these countries. If there had really been a long-lasting campaign against Russia, for example, former US president George H.W. Bush would have welcomed Ukraine’s drive to independence back in 1991. Instead, he opposed it very publicly, warning the burgeoning Ukrainian independence movement of succumbing to “suicidal nationalism” in his famous “Chicken Kiev” speech that summer.
In fact, in the 1990s, just about everything was done not to humiliate Russia. Tens of billions of dollars of aid were poured into the country by the West to prevent a complete breakdown of the state (and to help safeguard Russia’s nuclear stockpile). Russia was invited into many clubs, such as the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organisation and the G7 ( from which it was expelled again last year).
A cautious Nato-Russia relationship was established: Nato refrained from conducting military exercises in its new member states, and even from setting up defence plans for Poland and the Baltic states, something that only changed after the war in Georgia and after Russia moved into Ukraine. Nato in 1997 said it would not deploy military bases or equipment to eastern Europe, under the condition that strategic circumstances would remain unchanged — which is no longer the case. Europe turned a blind eye on wars in Chechnya. The European Union (EU) launched a “strategic partnership” with Russia.
Yet, in the end, humiliation set in nonetheless. It is true that there has been some tactless western patronising along the way. But the main reason misunderstandings started piling up is that the West misread Russia. It believed Russia had been harnessed, more or less, to democratic transition — or at least, that it was ready to abide by a set of agreed post-cold war rules. Because the west became too confident about this, it failed to assess the mindset of Russia’s ruling caste. In the first decade of the 21st century, western policy towards Russia became one of benign neglect.
What was desired was taken for reality. But as years passed, and as Russia failed to modernise, the Putin regime resorted to heaping blame on the West as a way of deflecting responsibility for its own inabilities. Greece was brought into the Eurozone as a logical extension of its joining the European project in 1981 (French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing argued that “one can’t leave Plato at the door”). But this came with serious misjudgement on behalf of Europe’s leaders: The consequences of Greece having fudged its economic statistics to join the single currency are felt to this day.
Almost everyone agrees that the Eurozone crisis has been badly mismanaged by the EU, and there is no denying austerity has taken a huge toll on Greece. But that does not cancel out the fact that the current situation in Greece is also the result of sovereign decisions taken by successive elected governments over the years. As in Russia’s case, the talk of external “diktats” only goes so far. Tsipras regularly omits to mention the tax evasion of large oligarchic structures and the Orthodox church. It is convenient, politically, to lay all the blame on outside forces.
It is possible a lot of the humiliation comes mostly from the disconnect between how nations like to perceive themselves and the situation they find themselves in. Russia’s loss of empire is an endless sore. Greece has a tortured, courageous history of which many of its citizens are rightly proud. So beyond the technicalities of ceasefires or of primary surpluses and debt relief, some signal has to be sent out by those who negotiate with the “humiliated”. It could come with the admission that mistakes have been made by the West or by the EU: Benign neglect for Russia and excessive austerity for Greece. But my guess is that this will only be possible if Russians and Greeks find a way of addressing their own domestic faults. Humiliation is something you can only come out of by reckoning with your own full past, not just a pruned, self-censored version of it.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Natalie Nougayrède was executive editor and managing editor of Le Monde
