"Mythology is not a lie," wrote Joseph Campbell, an expert on myths and archetypes. "She is metaphorical". Myths and metaphors provide narratives that inspire patriotic devotion, motivate soldiers to fight, and help explain the outside world. And the myths that nations nurture about themselves often reinforce the complementary myths they adopt about others.
Russia and the United States have particularly strong myths about each other. The myth that Russia believes about America is that it has vassals and not allies, that it is a hegemon that hides ruthless ambition and selfish interests behind calls for liberal principles and legal order. On the other hand, Americans see Russia as a country without a domestic policy - a highly autocratic power whose malevolent, irresponsible leader completely ignores the wishes of its citizens. As far back as 1855, American President Abraham Lincoln described Russia as a place "where despotism is consumed pure and without an admixture of hypocrisy."
After more than a century of tension and conflict, the American-Russian relationship is now shaped around those myths. Myths burden that relationship, clouding clear perception. And they have shaped, and will continue to shape, the role of both countries in the war in Ukraine. The myth that many Russians have about the US is constantly pushing the Kremlin toward harmful belligerent behavior.
The American myth about Russia is also a trap, leading policymakers to misread the Kremlin and miss opportunities to weaken the regime or find compromises. To minimize dangerous misinterpretations, American leaders must make a greater effort to overcome these myths and archetypes. A better understanding of the US's - and Russia's - own myths would give US policymakers more flexibility, help foster strategic empathy, and anticipate future changes in Russian policy.
In Russia, the common perception is that the US is obsessed with power. A large number of Russians believe that the American public is under the control of the US megalomaniac elites. Enthusiasm for a liberal international order does not attract much interest in Russia not because all Russians are realists, but because their mythic view of the US reduces the liberal international order to an instrument of American ambitions. Many Russians are convinced that American leaders' pointing to a supranational network of norms, laws, and partnerships is just a smokescreen for a win that lies at the very heart of American foreign policy.
The leading Russian myth originates from the Soviet era. According to this myth, during the Cold War, American capitalist elites wanted to rule the world and found numerous military pretexts to achieve their desires. The nightmare allegedly began after World War II, when the US rewrote the political codes of Japan and Germany, pushed these countries into US-dominated alliances, used them as bases for US military operations, and forced them to serve as cheerleaders for US national interests. . In order to keep up, the Soviet Union had to build a wall of "friendly countries" in Eastern Europe and establish its global influence, so that the perfidious America would not advance unhindered.
The global influence of the US during this period was real. But the Soviet characterization was a caricature, which turned out to be long-lasting. Even after the end of the Cold War, according to the Russian myth, the US continued to seduce others with false rhetoric, including Russia's neighbors - such as Poland, Romania and the Baltic states. According to this story, US allies act more as instruments of US power than as independent states. Where governments resisted - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, as well as in Ukraine before the 2014 Maidan uprising - regime change was America's wish. Hegemony by invitation, hegemony by threat of arms: the means may vary, but the end is never in question.
Moscow paid a high price for clinging to this myth. It has committed itself to fighting the American monster even at the cost of becoming even more dependent on China. The European Union's Eastern Partnership program, which led to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine, was an authentic expression of idealism about the country's European future, not a covert exercise of American hegemony. However, the claim that the CIA organized a coup in Ukraine was a lie that the Russians had long been convinced of. Even if Russia's top leaders knew this claim was false, their public insistence on it blocked moderate responses (such as accommodation to the new government in Kiev) and made more extreme options (such as annexing Crimea) seem necessary.
In general, the myth of the United States drunk on power and unwilling to abide by agreements makes it difficult for Moscow to negotiate on regional issues. Russians cannot imagine that the leaders of countries like Ukraine think for themselves. For Moscow, Ukrainian hostility is only a disguised extension of American hostility, and American hostility toward Russia requires equal Russian hostility toward the United States. If the language of power is the only language the US understands, then negotiating, deliberating, and making concessions carry an unprofitable risk.
American myths about Russia have similarly deep historical roots. The American image of Russia as an unadulterated autocracy dates back to the 19th century. It flourished during the Soviet period and briefly receded during the nine-year presidency of Boris Yeltsin. (Americans respected Yeltsin as a greater democrat than he actually was.) Vladimir Putin restored Russia's recognizable image. America's approach to the Cold War often had the fervor of a messianic struggle, and Putin is reawakening Americans' moral outrage.
The United States' myth about Russia - that it is an evil and ambitious tyranny - has some internal political purposes. To get Americans interested in the outside world, Washington needs to conjure up an all-powerful villain. Americans want to believe that they are fighting an individual who can be killed, rather than having to subdue an entire country. In crisis after crisis, comparisons to Hitler are used to shock those democracy-loving but complacent Americans into action. Putin is simply the latest in a long line of autocratic leaders - Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, to name a few - who have been portrayed as single-handedly obstructing democracy and progress.
Putin's imposing personality reinforced the perception that autocratic Russia has no internal politics and that whatever the ruler wants happens. Brian Jenkins, senior adviser to the president at the RAND Corporation, summed up this view when he wrote: “At home, Putin faces no elections, no party or state institutions that threaten his rule, no domestic political opposition. He is Russia. And Russia is his". If Putin is Russia, the only thing to understand about Russia is Putin's psyche. Ukraine and its allies are fighting Putin's Russia in Putin's war. So it's no surprise that the US intelligence community has reportedly made assessing Putin's state of mind their top analytical priority.
Studying leaders is important to understanding our adversaries, and especially to understanding Russia. The Russian president clearly dominates his country. However, Putin still faces dilemmas at home. He sits uncomfortably atop a complex system of competing factions and interests. He must ensure that the feuding close associates below him do not kill each other or rise up against him. At the same time, he has to maintain enough public excitement about him. The largest producer and consumer of sociological research in Russia is, in fact, the Russian government, which nervously monitors small changes in public opinion.
Washington's various wars against evil dictators should have provided some hard-learned lessons by now. None of these leaders proved to be all-powerful. Nor were they responsible for every problem in their policies, as the US repeatedly discovered after making enormous efforts to remove them from the scene. For every such leader, including Putin, domestic politics sets the parameters of their foreign policy. They rarely went to war without their men behind them. Like democratic leaders, autocrats know how to get the populace on their side when they go to war.
Public opinion and the bureaucracy are partially opaque in the dictatorship that Russia has turned into. However, public opinion limits the way Putin conducts the war and the compromises the Kremlin can accept. Like any belligerent, the Russian government wants to be able to declare victory: if Russia clearly loses the war in Ukraine, public frustration and anger could topple the government.
In international relations, myths are dangerous because they reinforce archetypes. Archetypal Russia is a malignant autocracy, archetypal America is a greedy hegemon
Committed to the myth of a Russia without domestic politics, however, the US struggles to interpret Russia. Their policymakers miss the fact that many of the Kremlin's actions are aimed at the domestic electorate. Take for example Putin's sudden decision in September 2022 to annex territories in Ukraine, many of which were not even under Russian control. Just months earlier, Putin had publicly mocked his intelligence chief over the annexation proposal. Putin's change of attitude puzzled American analysts, who interpreted it as part of a grand, if phantasmagoric, plan to subdue Ukraine. Was Putin losing his mind? In reality, these annexation aspirations may have been rhetorical decoration for domestic use, an opportunistic attempt to gain public support for a war that was spiraling out of control.
The burdens these myths impose go beyond their distortion of reality. In international relations, myths are dangerous because they reinforce archetypes. Archetypal Russia is a malignant autocracy, archetypal America is a greedy hegemon. Archetypes are the refined cousins of stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is their negation of complexity. A country that believes its adversary can be understood in simple categories is likely to stop looking for subtle adjustments it can make in its policy and to stop trying to respond creatively to its adversary's adjustments.
If American leaders had better understood that Russia is not a monolith but that it can crack, for example, they might have been able to better exploit the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner paramilitary company, in 2023, exploiting divisions within the Russian elite and military. Understanding why those divisions occurred could have allowed the US and its allies to highlight them, perhaps by highlighting Prigozhin's attacks on the Russian air force or the ways in which Putin is losing control of his security services. Instead, engrossed in Putin's power, Washington missed signs of division and was confused by the rebellion. Washington may be missing similar vulnerabilities looming ahead of Russia's presidential election in March, which it assumes will be nothing more than a ritual of autocratic self-congratulation. Putin will surely win, but it will still be an important political moment as rival Russian political currents vie for greater power and influence.
The biggest problem with the myths that Russia and America have about each other is that they reinforce each other. The more fanatical Moscow is about challenging alleged acts of American hegemony, the more Russia resembles the maniacal autocracy of the American myth. And the more Washington imagines Russia as a permanent and evil "other" in American foreign policy, the more militarized its relations with Europe will become - and the more likely Moscow will interpret US goals as hegemonic. So far, the war in Ukraine epitomizes this cycle of gradual entrenchment of prejudice. With each passing month, each country sees its myths moving closer to objective truth.
An obstacle to sound strategy and agile diplomacy
Neither the US nor Russia can easily dismiss the myths cultivated by the other side. Both countries cherish their myths for certain reasons. The Russian regime wants the US - and everyone else - to think that there is no domestic politics and that Putinism and Russia are one. If the US sees the war in Ukraine primarily as a struggle for territorial integrity, rather than a battle of good and evil against a lone tyrant, Americans may lose interest.
And even if leaders wanted to, it would be difficult to dispel the myths. The more actively Washington would use public diplomacy to change Russian perceptions of the US, the more Russians would perceive America as manipulating their country. And to transform its image within the US, the Russian government would have to renounce autocracy and withdraw militarily from Europe - never a winning combination for governing Russia.
If American leaders had better understood that Russia is not a monolith but that it can be cracked, for example, they might have been able to make better use of Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellion
These myths will be with us for a long time. But Washington must recognize them as such. If the US, in its internal policy debates, could challenge the myth of pure Russian autocracy and discover the ways in which domestic politics and public opinion constrain and construct Russian foreign policy, it might find the tools to disrupt Russia's war effort. They would also be more prepared for the political transition after Putin. Politically, Russia tends to change rapidly, its politics do not remain frozen forever.
As they try to predict Russia's behavior, US leaders would also benefit from greater awareness of the mythic status of the US in the Kremlin, which runs counter to Washington's self-image. Russians believe that the eternal essence of the US is the will to power: this explains the Kremlin's decision to invade Ukraine, and also explains Russia's refusal to end that devastating war. As attractive as they are, myths are misleading because they conceal the enormous complexity and openness of reality. In all that they reveal about human nature, myths allow for endless interpretations. But fundamentally, they are also static - and stand in the way of sound strategy and agile diplomacy.
Michael Kimmage is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and Senior Fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Jeremy Shapiro is director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations
The article was published in the magazine "Foreign Affairs"
Translated and edited by: A. Šofranac
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