Putin and the Two Fears of the Prince

Written by Harald Edinger

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Putin and the Two Fears of the Prince

https://www.e-ir.info/2021/03/17/putin-and-the-two-fears-of-the-prince/

HARALD EDINGER, MAR 17 2021

This article is the second in a two part series. Read the first piece here.

Fear is not the first emotion that comes to mind when thinking about leaders like Vladimir Putin. Anger, defiance, or
contempt – those are more like it. There are neuropsychological and semantic reasons for that: some emotions ‘want’
to be expressed. Anger, for example, fulfils an important function in communicating that a red line has been crossed
(van Kleef et al. 2008: 16f). A deeper look into contemporary affective science suggests that all emotions have
physiological manifestations. Specific ‘microexpressions,’ for examples – contractions of facial muscles that last for
just a split second – that cannot be suppressed or concealed (Ekman 2003: 15). Analogously, so-called appraisal
theories of emotion propose that physiological ‘activation’ precedes cognitive appraisal of a situation (Lazarus 1991;
Tomaka et al. 1997: 63). Even when sociocultural norms, identities, or values should put constraints on the
individual’s behaviour, emotions often override them (Turner 2009: 341). These observations should also apply to
political operatives, including the Russian leader.

In a contribution to E-International Relations in November 2020 I argued that we might use emotion as a conceptual
tool in foreign policy analysis. Focusing on fear, the piece suggested that human emotion presents us with a
phenomenon that has been comprehensively studied across psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience and that it is,
to an extent, generalisable. It might therefore offer us some analytical leverage and a way to work out some of the
thornier epistemological and methodological issues facing the discipline: the debate over the primacy of structure or
agency, bridging the gap between theory and practice, or the seemingly unavoidable choice of a level of analysis.
This article, centred again on the emotion of fear, probes the plausibility of some of the theoretical points made
previously by applying it to episodes in Russian-Western relations.

It was an assessment of the academic literature on Russian foreign policy that triggered my interest in psychological
explanations in the first place. Prevailing theoretical paradigms have a mixed track record in guiding the analysis of
Russian foreign policy, let alone producing predictions of future policy moves. A telling example, when surveyed in
late February 2014, only 13.9% of IR scholars thought that Russia would intervene militarily in response to the
political crisis in Ukraine, while more than half ruled out that possibility (Maliniak et al. 2014). There is, however, a
wide spectrum of opinion. Some social constructivists suggest that Russia’s assertive turn is the product of a
process of identity formation in relation to Europe (e.g. Neumann 2016; Tsygankov 2016). Analysis informed by
liberal theory traces Russian foreign policy back to authoritative tendencies in domestic politics (e.g. Lynch 2016;
McFaul 2018). On account of the ambiguity of the term, reference ought to be made to a summary of what ‘liberalism’
refers to in the context of foreign policy analysis (see Doyle 2012). Structural realism, on the other hand, continues to
emphasise that Russian behaviour is the inevitable result of faulty, ideologically driven Western policy (e.g.
Mearsheimer 2014). Policy prescriptions drawing on these analyses vary accordingly.

These theories suffer from some deficiencies with respect to modelling the behaviour of individual decision-makers in
the social context. Structural realism and liberalism rely on the rational actor assumption, whereas much of the
constructivist scholarship, emphasising the intersubjective nature of the social world, offers no distinct theory of
individual actorhood. Both rationalist and constructivist models rely on a traditional, ‘cognitivist’ outlook, i.e. they
focus on factors that can be ‘known’ and ‘understood,’ which does not reflect the state of the art in decision science.
These shortcomings notwithstanding, the question that emerged in my research is whether we are missing

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something in studying patterns of change and continuity in Russian-Western relations, and more generally, in
analysing states’ foreign policies. Were scholars making good enough use of all the explanatory tools available?

The broader movement in IR promoting re-engagement with human nature and a focus on affective phenomena, of
which my work is part, should therefore not be mistaken for an effort to disprove rationalist or constructivist models.
In fact, in many instances, affective science corroborates the assumptions made by other theories. The objective is to
showcase the usefulness of emotion as a lens on foreign policy, connecting material capabilities, governing
structures, ideas, and the individual. In the spirit of Graham Allison’s insightful study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
main purpose of ‘conceptual lenses’ is to compare and contrast. By doing that, he suggested, ‘we see what each
magnifies, highlights, and reveals as well as what each blurs or neglects’ (Allison 1971: v).

Some affective phenomena already feature prominently in the field of foreign policy analysis. Academic interest in
Russia’s (as well as China’s) status concerns, specifically Russian responses to perceived disrespect or denial of its
great power status, has been growing steadily (e.g. Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Forsberg 2014; Tsygankov
2014). In international politics, status is more than just nice to have. As ‘reputation for power,’ status makes states
more secure and enables them to achieve their aims without having to resort to force (Gilpin 1981: 31). Historical
great power status may also further the ruling elite’s domestic objectives by providing a concept around which to
build national identity and strengthen community ties. The prototypical response to a denial of status, i.e. not
recognizing another’s rightful place in the social hierarchy, is some form of anger. It could be argued, therefore, that
the literature on status concerns is built around psychological claims concerning social identity, perceptions of ‘unfair’
treatment, and anger. In this context, anger, defiance, or outrage should be understood as more than just an
automated, primitive response but as the affective component of an attempt to restore status. The point here is that
foreign policy analysis staked on status concerns generally does not make the connections between the concept of
status and affective experience explicit. Engaging more thoroughly with the psychology of status seeking (and denial)
as well as the experiential by-products of anger should enable us to hypothesise under what conditions certain
concerns, such as security, military might, territory, status, or values matter, and when one concern matters more
than another.

The same can be said for fear. Despite its foundational place in the IR literature, the phenomenon has been studied
predominantly within rationalist frameworks of deterrence, bargaining, or strategic choice. The ways in which the
subjective experience of fear or loss aversion impact decision makers on a personal level has received comparatively
less consideration. If some events in international politics are based on psychological processes, as seems to be an
assumption underlying all of our traditional IR theories (if only implicitly), it stands to reason that the mechanisms by
which these phenomena unfold should receive more attention.

A staple category in explanations of Russian-Western relations is the former’s fear of encirclement. It rests on both
social and psychological factors. Through a process of socialisation, the historical precedent of multiple land
invasions has implanted a sense of insecurity in Russians. In part, this has been, and continues to be reinforced by
the size of the country and the associated challenge of protecting its vast borders. In his theory of ‘affective
geopolitics,’ Gerald Toal argues that while the size of Russia’s territory already induced a ‘sense of vulnerability,’ it
‘has been accompanied by discourses about plots and encirclement schemes by historic enemies, portraying Russia
as a besieged fortress.’ Education, culture, religion, state holidays and rituals have created ‘the nation-state as an
embodied condition’ (Toal 2017: 46-47). In other words, many Russians deeply care about the security and integrity
of the motherland in ways that seem unfamiliar to Western observers.

There is no reason to assume this deep-seated concern does not extend to the state’s elites. As Neil MacFarlane
(2016: 351) suggests:

Putin and his colleagues in the Soviet security apparatus were acculturated into this perception of isolation, hostility,
and threat in their formative years. That formation may affect the cognitive framing of their current situation. In other
words, despite the possible instrumental value of their rhetoric, they may also believe what they say about the threat
from the West.

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To this end, deeper engagement with how fear of encirclement is being perceived by leaders, and the kinds of
affective action tendencies this might promote, may be instructive. Some of the possible consequences of fear are
discussed in my earlier article. Among them, ‘the fearful’ have a higher tendency to identify future threats (including
ones that do not exist) and they are worse at calculating the costs and risks of their choices. As a consequence, they
might behave in a way that – even if intended as defensive – is seen as threatening by others.

Whichever anxieties Russian elites might have already had were exacerbated by the slide of the country into chaos
and corruption throughout the 1990s, and associated feelings of powerlessness vis-à-vis a prosperous and self-
assured West. Especially the decision of the US and its European partners to take military action against Yugoslavia
in 1999, despite vocal protest from Moscow, marks a crucial turning point in relations. To this day, the NATO
bombing campaign is used as an example of US hegemonic ambitions, pursued outside the common framework of
international law, in the guise of humanitarian intervention. It challenged the post-Cold War role Russian policy
makers foresaw for the UNSC among international institutions but more importantly, their self-image. Apart from the
humiliation, Russians agreed that NATO intervention set a dangerous precedent. Among the elite, it implanted fears
of Western-backed insurgencies in the ‘near abroad’ and destabilisation in Russia’s own peripheral regions. The
resulting defiant attitude helped in formulating a common vision of a Russian Federation that should restore its
rightful status as a great power.

One Russian observer remarked that NATO had bombed not just Serbia, but also the UN and post-Cold War
Europe, ‘as an idea, as a political and civilizational project’. For many, ‘Gorbachev’s crystal dream of a “common
European home” lay in pieces’ (Grachev 2009). Such swan song for Russian designs of a rules-based international
order might have masked a deeper, civilizational shift that began around the same time. Up until the turn of the
century, Europe was commonly viewed as ‘the main track of civilization’ (Putin 1999) – a model to emulate. ‘We are a
part of the Western European culture. No matter where our people live, in the Far East or in the south, we are
Europeans,’ the new president proclaimed in a speech before the German Bundestag (Putin 2000: 169).

By the mid-2000s, perspectives regarding Europe had changed considerably. Talk of a ‘common European home’
had given way to representations of Europe as something ‘other,’ ‘false,’ or even ‘rotten’ (Neumann 2016: 1392). It
ought to be mentioned that such representations did not arise out of nothing. Russian conceptions of Europe and
‘Western’ patterns of human development had evolved and shifted over centuries (see Greenfeld 1992: 267;
MacFarlane 1994). Whether it was being viewed positively or negatively, Europe has always been central to the
Russian self-image and the psychological, ideational, and normative aspects of that relationship. The concept of
Europe, MacFarlane argues, ‘occupies a psychological, as well as an institutional and geographical, space’ and
encompasses evolving perspectives regarding ‘European’ ideas and norms (MacFarlane 1994: 237). Put differently,
concepts of Russia and Europe are interdependent. Or, as Andrei Tsygankov puts it: ‘the “self’s” assessment of the
“other” is subject to variations, depending on the “other’s” willingness to accept the “self’s” influence’ (Tsygankov
2018: 103).

This (re-)definition of the ‘self’ in relation to Europe helps explain the downturn in Russian-Western relations from the
mid-2000s onwards. Depending on whether the ‘self’ (Russia) and its influence is recognised or denied by the ‘other’
(Europe and the West), it may generate either hope or resentment and the perception of threat (Tsygankov 2018:
103). This has crucial implications on whether the ‘self’ will be primed toward benevolence or spite – cooperation or
acting as a spoiler. According to Tsygankov, this emotional evolution from fear to hope to frustration has been a
recurring pattern in Russian-Western relations since the 19th century:

Hope frequently turned into frustration with what Russia saw as the other side’s unwillingness to reciprocate and,
ultimately, mistrust and fear that the Western nations indeed aim to undermine Russia’s sovereignty and security.
Sustained fear and mistrust on occasions turned into anger and anger-shaped policies of abandoning cooperative
initiatives and adopting patterns of defensive or assertive behaviour (Tsygankov 2014: 346).

Jack Barbalet, who studied the emotional effects of differentially distributed levels of power and prestige, argues that
when an ‘other’ becomes simply too powerful for one’s own side to realise their interests, anger and resentment are
often accompanied by fear (Barbalet 1998: 133). In contrast to a scenario where a lack of power is viewed as one’s

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own failing and fear leads to a flight response or social withdrawal, when the other side is blamed for one’s
powerlessness, fear occurs jointly with resentment and the response is likely to be of the ‘fighting’ kind. ‘Such
perceptions,’ Turner writes, ‘may be mobilized by ideologies or arise spontaneously, but in either case, very intense
emotions like vengefulness are aroused, and these are the emotions of violence’ (Turner 2009: 350).

Towards the end of Putin’s second term, these emotions were on full display. Most famously, when he launched a
verbal tirade against US unipolarity at the 2007 Munich Security Conference: ‘(…) the United States, has overstepped
its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes
on other nations. (…) It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this – no one feels safe!’ In
August of the following year, Russia’s assertiveness manifested itself in undeniable terms. Putin responded with
overwhelming force to a Georgian attack on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, crippling the Georgian military
in all but five days. Russian actions imposed a heavy toll on civilians, too, and were met with vehement criticism from
the Western world.

The subjective hierarchy of concerns can be used to explain why Russian decisions in the early stage of the war did
not seem to factor in potential repercussions of ‘disproportionate’ action against Georgia. These included, for
example, the threat of sanctions, capital flight, the increased intractability of the war the longer it would last, and the
humiliation dealt by the refusal of even some CIS states to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. The affective intensity of officials’ fear and outrage outweighed such potential consequences of taking
action. As these consequences became harder to avoid, their impact on policy appreciated. By recognising that
Russian conduct during the August War was heavily affectively charged, we can square the scale and intensity of the
initial invasion with the decision, just five days later, to desist from pushing on to Tbilisi and forcing the Georgian
president from power.

In 2013, Ukraine’s move to conclude (and later refuse to sign) an Association Agreement with the EU set in motion
another series of fateful events, culminating in the annexation of Crimea in late March 2014. In marked contrast to the
bulk of Western expert opinion and media coverage, notable IR theorist John Mearsheimer blamed the West for the
crisis because it had fallen prey to ‘liberal delusions’ and ignored the political reality of just how important maintaining
control over its borderlands was to Russian elites (Mearsheimer 2014). Irrespective of how one evaluates
Mearsheimer’s argument, his structural realist take on Ukraine highlights the role of fear in many of our classical
frameworks of IR theory that are applied to study cases in international politics.

Realism generally describes politics as determined by the anarchical structure of the international system (structural
realism) or the lust for power inherent in human nature (classical realism). However, realist politics may also be
traced to fear. When viewed through the prism of fear, the pursuit of power is not an end in itself but an essential
survival strategy. Classical realists stated this quite clearly: ‘power struggles are seen as emanating either from the
animus dominandi of human nature or from fear, or from a mix of the two’ (Neumann and Sending 2010: 685).
Structural realists, too, despite their emphasis on the balance of power between states, make psychological
assumptions; the theory’s state-centrism merely disguises its ontological foundations in human nature (Freyberg-Inan
2004: 3; Johnson and Thayer 2016).

Russian foreign policy analysis informed by ‘liberal’ theory has tended to be diametrically opposed to structural realist
conclusions. While the term does not denote the same, uniform explanation across cases, liberal accounts often
assume a similar, Western-centric vantage point. Starting from this normatively charged position, Russian foreign
policy often serves as an inverse template, a ‘dark double’ of US foreign policy (Foglesong 2007: 11). As a
consequence, liberal explanations of Russian behaviour often dovetail with the official US foreign policy line.
Evidently, when policy prescriptions precede analysis, explanations of state conduct are somewhat constrained.
Furthermore, a liberal position might blind the analyst to seeing how the impact of the policies of one’s ‘own’ side are
being perceived. For example, why it is that NATO expansion, recognising Kosovo’s independence, or the
construction of a missile defence system in Europe are met with such fierce rejection by Russian officials are
important questions in and of themselves that are often left unaddressed.

Such questions are more difficult than they seem. The argument that Russia should be afraid of NATO, for example,

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is not supported by an assessment of ‘hard,’ i.e. primarily military-related, security factors. In the early 1990s, Russia
viewed NATO as a relic of the Cold War, now devoid of a purpose. Its plans for enlargement were misguided, driven
by organisational inertia, but posed no real threat (Patrushev 2005). Even after the most recent phase of
enlargement, experts suggested that NATO presence on the Russian border amounts to more of a ‘speed bump’
than credible deterrence. Why, then, do Russian leaders keep referring to the alliance as the number one threat to
national security? The answer has to be sociopsychological: NATO’s purpose has come to be viewed as mounting a
perennial attack on Russian culture and values. The threat posed by the alliance is thus not being perceived as a
military but primarily a psychological or ontological one.

The ‘affective’ lens primes the analyst to be sensitive to these nuances in leaders’ perception and motivation. Neither
the Russian-Georgian war nor its incursion into Ukraine can be directly ascribed to an affective response, or even
viewed as the result of the worsening of relations between Russia, Europe, and the US. However, the emergence of
an embedded, almost institutionalised, contemptuous attitude towards the West surely lowered the threshold and
aided Russian elites in the process of rationalisation and ex-post justification of determined action.

Niccolò Machiavelli, in his treatise on leadership written for Lorenzo de’ Medici, suggested that a prince (or a state
leader) should have two fears: ‘one internal, concerning his subjects; the other external, concerning foreign powers.
From the latter, he can defend himself by his effective arms and his effective allies. (…) concerning his subjects, when
external affairs do not change, he has to fear that they may be plotting in secret. The prince will protect himself
against this danger by avoiding being either hated or despised and by keeping the people satisfied with him’
(Machiavelli and Bondanella 2005: 63-64).

In other words, the two fears of the prince are foreign invasion and popular uprising. Since the late 1990s, Russian
leaders have been quite vocal about both kinds of fear, including frequent references to Western-backed
insurgencies in the ‘near abroad’ or even Russia itself. In their own experience, the threats they reacted to might have
been of a different kind, though. Rather than a military invasion, elites may be more sensitive to challenges to a
system of government they have constructed, undoubtedly with hard work, which provides for their livelihood and
physical well-being. Russian officials have suggested as much by expressing their aversion to democratisation and
regime change – though such references are fewer than warnings of Western incursion using a security vernacular.
‘Since 2004, Putin and his colleagues have taken the democratization of neighbouring countries, notably Ukraine, to
be a compelling threat, not so much to Russia, but to the structure of power and profit he and his colleagues have
attempted to build in Russia’ (MacFarlane 2016: 351-52).

It is possible that Putin and those around him evoke fear of encirclement to self-rationalise other, more existential
anxieties. Mark Galeotti (2016) argues that, ‘to many in and close to the Kremlin, Russia faces a real threat, not
borne by tanks and missiles but cultural influences, economic pressure, and political penetration. This is, in their
eyes, a civilizational threat aimed at making Russia a homogenized, neutered, subaltern state.’ At the core of this
civilizational threat lies the centrality of individualism and political competition in Western societies which is pitted
against collectivist desires for stability and concentrated authority in Russian culture (Tsygankov 2018: 102). The
encirclement narrative is thus closely connected to one’s self-identification as ‘superior’ through a process of
affective change. As Alexander Motyl (2014) observes, ‘the superiority of Russia and Russian civilization are still
closely held values, as is the belief that the West is hostile and that the country needs a strong leader, Putin, to assert
Russia’s greatness and combat Western influence.’

Going forward, Putin will have to face a simple reality: with every additional month in office, he has more to lose and
fewer ways out. It has also been documented that long-standing leaders like him are prone to psychopathologies like
detachment, hubris, or fear of persecution (see Robertson 2015). For Putin, who is surely convinced that the
prosperity and security of Russia depend on him, it is not just his political legacy that is at stake. More viscerally, the
success of his policies, the course of the country, and the question of his succession have direct implications on his
financial and physical security. All of this raises the stakes in the perception of the leader considerably and provides
fertile ground for high-intensity affective responses.

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About the author:

Harald Edinger is completing his doctorate in International Relations at the University of Oxford. His research aims
at improving explanations of change and continuity in Russian-Western relations. By offering a new interpretation of
classical realist theory, which builds on findings from evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, he intends to show
when and how emotions such as anger and fear matter in Russian foreign policy. Prior to entering academia, he
worked in management consulting and European financial regulation.

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