“Egotism” was a word Vladimir Putin used more than once as he gave a thinly veiled dressing down to the United States on Monday. His speech covered little new ground but sharpened his critique of the current world order and called on the world to come together to fight terrorism in the Middle East.
Putin bemoaned “a world in which egotism reigns supreme” and railed against the arrogant hubris of the west. Putin has been giving much the same speech since he first laid out his grievances in February 2007: the “unipolar” world in which Washington dominates, he says, has led to a more dangerous world than that of the cold war, when an imperfect but useful balance stopped any one country from dominating.
This speech, his first to the United Nations general assembly since 2005, comes as Putin visits the US for the first time since the Ukraine crisis prompted acrimony, mistrust and sanctions. It was notable for its intonation. Putin adopted the tone of a wise elder, alternately angered by the bellicosity and saddened by the naivety of the west.
“You want to ask the people who created this situation: ‘Do you at least understand what you’ve done?’ But I fear that the question would just hang in the air, because after all, they have not turned their back on policies based on self-certainty, a sense of superiority and impunity.”
The chaos in the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State? That was the fault of the west, who armed those it naively thought to be secular freedom fighters. The military conflict in Ukraine (or, as Putin put it, the “armed coup organised from abroad followed by civil war”)? Also down to the meddling of the west.
Washington, said Putin, was repeating the mistakes of the Soviet Union by trying to export its own model of development to other countries. It has forced post-Soviet countries to make a “false choice between east and west”, sowing chaos and prompting unrest, he said.
It was a description of events that would not have gone down well with the Ukrainian delegation – though they were not there to hear it, having walked out before Putin took to the podium.
Putin repeatedly speaks of the importance of sovereignty – it may seem an odd topic for the leader of a country that has annexed a chunk of territory from Ukraine and conducted a clandestine military operation across the border over the past year. But in the Putin world view, these moves were simply necessary defensive measures against the octopus-like tentacles of the west, interfering in Russia’s backyard.
Perhaps the main thrust of his trip to New York and Russia’s recent military manoeuvres in Syria was an attempt to build a coalition to fight the Islamic State, which would involve western nations at least tacitly signing up to Moscow’s view of the conflict.
Putin’s speech was trailed all day and broadcast live on the main Russian state television channels, where it was portrayed as another step towards Russia reclaiming its rightful place in the centre of the international stage.
“The whole world is waiting for this speech,” said a correspondent on Channel One, while another channel devoted nine hours of programming to Putin’s speech and later meeting with Barack Obama. The channels even had live footage of Putin’s plane landing in New York, preferring to offer live footage of him descending the steps from the plane and getting into the waiting limousine than cover the beginning of Obama’s own speech to the general assembly, which was happening simultaneously.
On a discussion show after the speech, pro-Putin theatre director Sergei Kurginyan praised Putin’s “Shakespearian” speech, comparing the UN general assembly to the plot of Henry IV: “Putin’s speech was a call to a duel,” he said, to thunderous applause. “An aspiration to global leadership.”
(The Guardian)
