Mushroom on wheels

Professor Karaganov is not the only one who calls for a nuclear impact on a “conditional cognizo”. Revanchist "teaching" that only force decides everything in the world, again in trend

Sometimes it is difficult to get rid of the thought that we are living a remake of Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strandzhlav, or how I stopped being afraid and fell in love with a bomb”. There was an American doctor of German descent, admiring the beginning of a nuclear war and recommending the government to go into underground shelters, where there will be ten women for each man to reproduce and “improve” the human race. The closer the man -made apocalypse was, the easier Streinjlav threw up his hand in a Nazi greeting.

Sergei Karaganov - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Creator and Scientific of the Faculty of Higher School of Economics, Favorite Expert of the Foreign Ministry - casting for the role of a half -bell -tied bloodthirsty scientist was successful. The other day, he published an article under the heading: “A difficult but necessary decision. The use of nuclear weapons can protect humanity from a global catastrophe. ” The content of the text is fully consistent with its name.

Karaganov is less known to the general public than another “doctor of evil”, the gurus of Eurasian esoteric cannibalism Alexander Dugin. But in narrow circles, he is much more respected and influential. I will quote the political scientist Vladimir Gelman: “... the views of [Karaganova] on the deep and irreversible decline of the West and the need for hard strength opponing from Russia unconditionally dominate the Russian establishment. Karaganov School <...> today is the Mainstream of Russian foreign policy thought. Her founding father in terms of the scale of his today's intellectual influence in the corresponding circles should be compared, of course, not with Dugin, but with Karl Househofer the sample of the second half of the 1930s. <...>

I look at domestic internationalists from the outside, and it seems to me that the views, significantly different from the Karaganovsky, are frankly marginal in this community. ”

The science of international relations, which formally belongs to Karaganov, is the subdiscipline of "great" political science. And if in world science this is a truly academic and quite legitimate field of research, then in Russia, as accurately and importantly, Gelman notes, the “school of Karaganov” replaced and replaced almost the entire international political science of a healthy person.

Domestic internationalists

What are the ideological foundations of Russian science about international relations? I would say, a third is a disease of “geopolitics”, another third - conspiracyology in the spirit of “liberal totalitarianism”, “controlled chaos” and “Arab spring arranged the CIA”, and for another third - vulgarly understandable American neorealism. Speaking briefly, the “state-nations” are considered as the main and unchanged subjects of world politics, and “national interests” are objective and depend on the geostrategic position of the country. The states are in constant struggle with each other for "security". Power confrontation is a natural state. This confrontation can go both military and other means: economic, cultural, information and so on. A very convenient optics that allows you to bring the theoretical base to any violations of "international rules".

This school of “theory of international relations” has always been popular in Russia (probably because the most simple, understandable and pleasant to the great -powers), but after the accession of Crimea in 2014, it became almost the only one used. For more complex optics, criminal cases have already threatened.

Role models and inspirers of Karaganov and Co. (and all that in all Russian universities - from HSE, MGIMO and Moscow State University - are taught under the guise of international relations) Kissinger, Huntington and Brzezinsky are taught. All of them are intellectuals, all of them (were) are influential, and all of them as scientists are conventionally considered “realists”. They did not “hide” behind the illusions of “international law” and meaningless “international organizations” like the UN, but saw objective reality: where are the interests of the security of the United States and Russia, say, are in “insurmountable” contradiction.

Although, of course, this is a superficial understanding of these authors. If the Russian internationalists had read Brzezinsky, for example, not only the “chessboard” about geopolitics, but also “choice: global domination or global leadership”, they would know that he was just opposed to power dominance and “imperial” policy, and supports the search for long -term compromises (institutions of international cooperation).

In fact, what is called the “science of international relations” in Russia over the past ten years has become a special sect. Even at faculties, where there is still normal political science and teachers are at least trying to maintain ties with foreign colleagues and transmit real knowledge to students, political scientists recommend that they are not to listen to and not take the “colleagues” of international people seriously.

This does not mean, of course, that there are no normal specialists at all. Views, different from the Karaganovsky, and generally surprisingly adequate , for example, Andrei Kortunov, for February 2022 - Director of the Midovsky Think Tank RSMD. But the skepticism in relation to the war was not forgiven for him.

The force decides everything

At the same time, as Gelman notes , “unlike the same Dugin, who probably sincerely believes in his ideas - it does not matter how to perceive them - Karaganov seems to treat them more than instrumental. <...> In the early 2010s, Karaganov acted as a apologet of teninization and lustration, <...> in the 2000s with malicious meaningful grin, he commented on the zigzags of Soviet foreign policy in the Parfyonov series “The Poreni”, in the 1990s it talked at joint forums with the Westerners who were currently scourged. <...>

If, after the defeat of Nazism, Hauser has committed suicide, then Karaganov is easily able to survive both his followers and his critics, once again commit an intellectual turn. ”

How Karaganov's views changed

Indeed, we compare several quotes of our professor from the earlier articles discussed now.

2023 : “If we completely free the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions - this will become a minimal victory. The liberation during the year - two of the East and the south of current Ukraine will be a slightly great success. ”

2021 : “The most terrible hostile option that the Americans can take in relation to Russia, this is a disaster - if they give us Ukraine. Fortunately, this will not happen, since they do not have enough brains and will. But, if they gave it to us, then we would really have a race. They received a half -medical impoverished population with destroyed infrastructure ” [1] .

2023 : “It is necessary to solve internal problems - to finally get rid of Westocentrism in the minds and Westerners in the managerial layer, from compradors and their characteristic thinking.”

2011 : “Society cannot begin to respect itself and its country, while it hides the terrible sin of seventy years of communism - stalinism -totalitarianism. When the people made a revolution, led to power and supported the anti -human barbaric regime. <...> If we do not recognize the very end of the truth, we will remain the heirs of not the best part of our people and not the best in our people, but the worst of it and its worst part - executioners, informers, the organizers of the Holodomors, and the destroyers of the churches. <...> I understand that I will call unpleasant emotions “undermining” the attractiveness of the project. But any efforts to restore public morality, self -esteem are depreciated by the process of Khodorkovsky. No one believes that this process is not a political nature. If it is impossible to justify, have mercy. ”

2023 : "We did not listen to a quarter of a century of those who warned that the expansion of NATO would lead to war, tried to delay," agree "."

2010 : “... I am generally satisfied with the results of the summit in Lisbon. But satisfaction remains incomplete. The split of Europe is de facto overcome. But de jure-by concluding a new agreement on euro safety or through Russia's entry into NATO, which would then acquire a qualitatively different character-not yet. ”

2023 : “We will have to restore the conviction of nuclear deterrence, lowering the unacceptably lifted threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. <...> Many times I spoke and wrote that if you correctly build an intimidation strategy and even application, the risk of a “response” nuclear [blow] <...> can be minimized. Only if a madman will sit in the White House, and besides, who hated his country, America will decide to blow in the “defense” of Europeans, incurring the answer, sacrificing the conditioned Boston for the sake of conditional cognizin. ”

2006 : “... it is necessary to avoid drawing into a new arms race by all means, which will ruin the country without any new external threats. But it is clear that a series of similar and other one -sided measures for “extreme (albeit more likely) case” is relatively ineffective, can only serve as insured.

Therefore, <...> it is necessary to triple activity, even try to become the ideological leader of the international community in promoting the idea of ​​creating a strategic union, the “new concern of nations” for the 21st century, aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, falling into the hands of terrorists, to prevent the spread and reflection of nationalist and religious radicalism, other security challenges of the early XXI century. <...> You cannot refuse [this idea], falling into the general hole of now suicidal traditionalism and one -sidedness. It needs to be put forward again and again. ”

To analyze the intellectual evolution of Karaganov is not a very interesting task: to change or adjust your views and beliefs - in general, a sign of human normality. It is clear that Karaganov is not a scientist, but a publicist, and his audience is not a colleague, but “those in power”, whose adviser and confidant he always tried and tries to be. The map of revengeism and “real politics” for this purpose is perfectly suitable: “Russia is either a great power, and you talk to it on an equal footing, or dump and do not be offended, we will force yourself to respect.” The trajectory of his views changed in full accordance with the trajectory of the views of the team leading the country - and there is nothing special about this either.

Important other. The context changed, but the ideological foundation of the Karaganov School is the doctrine that power solves everything in world politics, and where even the culture is seen as an instrument of influence of superpower, the so -called (and also interpreted vulgar), Softpower, remained the same. This is not a whole system of beliefs, but rather a worldview - revenge, primitive and anti -scientific.

But this worldview was brought up by a whole generation of bureaucrats, diplomats, businessmen, managers - graduates of those very “best universities” of Russia. “Political elites”, who, even without particularly interested in the problems of international armament treaties, including nuclear ones, from the teachers in schools to political scientists from television screens and professors in the lecture halls - listened for years for years. The result was the exposure of the elites of its own propaganda - an amazing phenomenon when the “Stories for the People” from the show Vladimir Solovyov is accepted on faith by the same people who are ordering this show.

Such a pseudoscience can be dangerous to society. The theory of social selection (also called social darwinism) 100 years ago became a justification for fascism and Eugenics, which ultimately led to concentration camps and the Holocaust. The theory of “realism” in international relations, the apologetics of “security” and “balance of power” from an academic point of view has long been a thing of the past.

But as a zombie-idea that can justify even the most crazy foreign policy steps, she continues to live and live.

And here we must, on the contrary, thank Karaganov. In his fresh text there is nothing original or shocking. The idea that in order to prevent a full -scale nuclear war, it is necessary to seriously demonstrate a willingness to suicidal response, ascends to the idea of ​​“de -escalation through the escalation” and the “Mad Mades theory ” of the President of the Vietnamese War.

Other theses, such as “having studied the history of the American nuclear strategy, I know that after gaining the USSR, Washington did not seriously take a convincing ability to return nuclear impact <...> the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Soviet territory” are simply false.

But he bribes - and even causes respect - honesty, with which Karaganov clearly, directly, without elaborations, justifies the need for mass murder "for the sake of the future of humanity." And the lesson here is not only that the ideologist and inspirer of a war crime can be considered as his accomplice. The lesson is also that if you say “national interests” and “balance of power” five times, the sixth time suddenly will definitely break out: “My Fuhrer, you give a nuclear blow!”