Of all the interpretations Western commentators have floated for why the president of the Russian Federation has responded the way he has to the events in Ukraine over the course of February and March of 2014 -- a bellicose foreign policy, bullying, concerns over NATO expansion, -- the most illuminating interpretation is that he is insane. Illuminating, that is, precisely for what it reveals about the West.
In prior centuries, when the international landscape accommodated multipolar and dipolar orders, which itself signified a multiplicity of vying ideologies, alternative schemes of social and economic organization, the actions of other state actors on the international stage could be understood, at least in part, in terms of such ideology. Even with extreme figures -- Stalin or Hitler, say, -- questioning their sanity was in a sense only an intensified way of describing the brazenness with which they pursued their political interests. When Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, asks whether Putin is living "in another world", or whether he is in touch with reality, which echoes a theme in the Western media narrative of events, something quite literal is meant by the question.
We question someone's sanity when their behavior or logic is irreducible to any comprehensible principles rooted in a common reality. They become utterly unpredictable, capable of carrying on a normal conversation one moment and lunging at our throats the next. The decisions and actions of insanity appear rash and disordered, as if inhabiting a world parallel to but completely different from our own. Putin appears to be lunging at our throats, and the West is acting baffled and scared. But are these same commentators and government officials really as surprised as they pretend to be?
The startled shock with which the West looks on at the developments in Crimea could itself be seen as a studied tactic in deliberate psychiatric isolation. The West, that is, the United States and the European Union, is playing the role of chief psychiatrist in the world insane asylum. In pretending to be utterly baffled by Putin's behavior, they are simply asserting the primacy of their own picture of the world and the consensus norms of international conduct.
The intention is for the patient, as in the movie Shutter Island, to begin to question the nature of his own conduct, of his self and his motives, to doubt his own sanity in the face of the incredulous authority figure until the deliberately induced existential vertigo and paranoia overcomes him, and he shrivels back down into a docile patient.
The intention is for the patient, as in the movie Shutter Island, to begin to question the nature of his own conduct, of his self and his motives, to doubt his own sanity in the face of the incredulous authority figure until the deliberately induced existential vertigo and paranoia overcomes him, and he shrivels back down into a docile patient.
Rachel 2: You think I'm crazy?
Teddy Daniels: No. No, no I...
Rachel 2: And if I say I'm not crazy. But that hardly helps, does it? That's a Kafkaesque genius of it. People tell the world you're crazy and all you're protests to the contrary just confirm what they're saying.
Teddy Daniels: I'm not following you. I'm sorry.
Rachel 2: Once you're declared insane, then anything you do is called part of that insanity. Reasonable protests are 'denial'. Valid fears 'paranoia'.
Teddy Daniels: Survival instincts are 'defence machanisms'.
Rachel 2: You're smarter than you look, Marshal. That's probably not a good thing.
Shutter Island (2010)
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One could mark the ascension of the West to the role of world psychiatrist from around the end of the Cold War. The wall came down, Western Capitalism, Democracy, and Liberalism had won. The dipolar order gave way to the one way the world works, the one model of what moves society forward, the one model of what is the best and most productive form of economic, social, and political organization. Denying the Russian Federation the courtesy of comprehending their behavior as motivated by rational self-interest, by a coherent alternative view of the way the world is and should be from the Russian perspective, they are invoking their supremacy, their absolute hegemony, their role as arbiters of what counts as normal and abnormal thought and behavior.
Prior diagnoses appear to have been faulty:
I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.
- George W. Bush, Slovenia Summit 2001
The patient expertly deceived the psychiatrist, made him to believe sanity had dawned. But now Putin is again acting as if the "best interests of his country" conflict with the best interests of the West -- in other words, a relapse into insanity. The patient is running amok in violation of his probation, and the West, as judge, jury, and executioner, is desperately trying to drag the patient back into the courtroom where a plea of nolo contendere is equivalent to a plea of insanity.
Some sympathy for the wardens of this asylum is due, however. The developments in Ukraine and Crimea are especially troubling for us because of the linear conception of history in the West. In this account, the advanced first world nations (Western Europe and North America, mainly) are way ahead of the pack, trying simply, out of great compassion, to encourage the stragglers along. The fall of the Soviet Union was a key psychological breakthrough in this story. We thrive on it. It defines us and gives us our sense of meaning and purity of purpose. Anything that pokes at its basic premises is deeply disturbing.
Unmitigated failure in the 21st century, however, has been hard to ignore and has quickly begun to shake the premises of this story loose. In these short 15 years, the triumphalist self-narrative has been trying to accommodate a string of reality checks: 9/11, the defeat in Afghanistan, the defeat in Iraq, the global financial meltdown, intractable unemployment, and economic stagnation. It's not hard to see the special significance that this confrontation with Vladimir Putin might now have for the Western psyche.
This confrontation psychologically functions as more than yet another roadblock along our ascendant trip through linear history, another passing anomaly. The paradox underneath these events -- that a situation with such low stakes (Crimea and the political leanings of a failed state) has taken on such vast proportions -- confirms that this stands for something more. The political turmoil that has taken root in the fertile soil dividing West and East, in Ukraine, which literally translates to "borderland", functions as a powerful symbol of the declining hegemony of the West. This confrontation continues to cast shadows of historical proportions because the authority of the world psychiatrist and world policeman is being openly challenged. The other inmates have taken notice and are taking heart. The brief illusion of the triumph of the West is cracking. We have not entered into some post-historic phase, some fundamentally new future. The inmates are breaking free, and it looks as if the psychiatrist was the crazy one all along.
