Obviously, we’d imagine that the last thing on anyone’s mind amid the high stakes geopolitical chess being played in Ukraine would be race. Yet, one of the first things you can’t avoid arguing as Russian troops roll into the Crimean peninsula is the racial subtext.
That’s not something mainstream coverage of the event is going to waddle through, understandably. For one, we’ve got bigger fish to fry and world wars to avoid. The two largest players in this, the United States and Russia, each have a nearly equal amount of active nuclear weapons still pointing at each other, and no one wants any of that. And both countries, each the most populated in their respective hemispheres, are slowly recovering from that bruising global recession while Europe – in the middle – can barely manage its own debt crisis. At this stage, it’s questionable if the United States, as closely linked to Europe as it is, could even handle its own sanctions.
Yet, the thorny topic of race keeps injecting itself in the completely unnecessary and brazen way Russian President Vladimir Putin continues finding creative ways to poke his finger in President Barack Obama’s head. Certainly, geopolitics “ain’t beanbag” (quoting embattled New Jersey governor Chris Christie) and the President signed on for what is arguably the bloodiest of contact sports. So, it’s a difficult proposition when raising race in this conversation; we don’t want to end up using it as a crutch to explain or excuse this particular president’s flaws or missteps since he’s not perfect – no president is.
But, it’s hard not to given the open spits of Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on CNN the other day who claim that “[e]very time the president goes on national television and threatens Putin or anyone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll.” There is quickness and relative ease in the way this is pointed out, as if the only viable option were for him to just press red buttons and blow shit up – but, if he did that, he’d be an angry apocalyptic black man.
Every move Putin makes seems more calculated for maximum humiliating impact than it for a specific strategic outcome. Short of war with Ukraine, it’s not like anything else he’s doing is placing him into any favorable diplomatic position: most of the countries on the old Soviet periphery either can’t stand him or are sickeningly afraid of him; he just offered NATO, the archaic treaty alliance of Western powers, an excuse to keep existing; and Obama – despite his critics – has actually made some strong symbolic shoves back by threatening to snatch Russia’s seat at the G-8 table and canceling all joint U.S. and Russian Federation military exercises.
Putin can’t resist the temptation to flashback to glory days of gold hammers and sickles on red flags. That continues to drive and cloud his judgment in a number of ways, notwithstanding a Russian public that is both nostalgic and jittery after centuries of war and slaughter. Some of it, like World War II, they didn’t ask for, thus much of modern Russian muscle-flexing is really a nervous knee-jerk anytime the country gets a whiff of its borders being threatened. We don’t know how that feels because we’ve had two massive oceans protecting us from direct invasion, so we’ve never had a Napoleon or a Hitler to deal with on the same scale as the Russians.
But, that doesn’t diminish the racial subtext playing out in every Putin move. Still living in the age of hard power and military spectacle as the dominant form of strategic conversation, Putin appears to liken himself to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV beating the life out of fictitious black boxer and reformed Rocky franchise hero Apollo Creed. It’s as if every step by the Russian strongman, now in his third isolated term, is carefully choreographed to not only weaken his American counterpart, but to also punch below the racial belt: his pick of Russian politician Irina Rodnina to co-light the Sochi Olympic torch, after she had tweeted a bigoted meme of the Obamas, was one such recent jab. The history of Putin’s open distaste for Obama is now long and strangely obsessive on the part of the neo-totalitarian since we don’t find him openly disrespecting Obama predecessor George Bush in the same way. Yet, the way in which he toys with and tests the current White House raises compelling questions: from his finger-flipping amnesty for NSA leaker Edward Snowden to his active mooning of U.S. power by shifting 16,000 troops to Crimea in clear violation of international conventions. One could make the argument that his 2008 invasion of Georgia during Bush’s presidency proves that, perhaps, Putin is color-blind (as well as his famous groping of then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at a G8 summit in 2006). But, generally speaking, Putin and Bush always showed fairly good relations when in public as opposed to the obvious constipation between the Russian president and his current African American counterpart.
That Putin’s Russia bubbles with racism and anti-Semitcism, as it’s been reported quite extensively, adds fresh levels of intrigue to the argument. Hate crimes and open insults against people of color in Russia – particularly African immigrants – have been resurgent for some time, without intervention or comment from Putin’s Kremlin on the subject (save the efforts of local law enforcement in mitigating it). African soccer players routinely suffer racist chants during Russian Football Union games and there have been frequent reports of xenophobic beatings since the early 2000s. This is a far cry from the old Soviet Union which, in its Cold War moves against Western interests in Africa, offered a free Russian higher education to aspiring African Marxists (yes, excuse the bit of flagrant tea party irony in that statement). And beyond a recent multi-billion dollar arms deal with Egypt, Russia isn’t showing any real appetite for involvement on the African continent like its Soviet self once was, appearing to leave that role to the Chinese.
There’s always been this tough-white-dude bravado about Putin – something that clearly irks Obama in his introverted, Chicago-chiseled black cosmopolitania. And maybe that’s not so much commentary on the possibility of Putin’s racism as it is an examination of Obama’s interactions with cowboyish white dudes who like to flash their guns and whiskey … and, now, vodka. We’ve seen this in his inability to master effective communication with Congressional Republicans.
That the latest White House budget calls for deep troop reductions and the cancellation of weapons systems doesn’t help Obama’s cause optically (even though the U.S. military is, by far, still better equipped than its Russian or Chineses counterparts). Neither do the teasing insults of hawkish Republicans who are always on a war footing. Still, there are many diplomatic arrows at the Obama White House’s disposal regardless of Putin’s muscular disposition. An assessment of race in the context of this tense episode in no way reduces Obama’s 21st century “soft-power” doctrine. It merely shows that it could be a major element as both leaders move their black and white pieces. Clearly, Putin sees his Apollo and some Republicans are crying for their Rocky Balboa. For now, everyone will just have to shut up and settle for Tom Beck.
CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran political strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine. He’s also a frequent politics contributor to The Root and Washington Correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune. He can be reached via Twitter @charlesdellison.