Russia Is a Troll State, Not a Rogue State

2015/12/9 11:36:56

The label of rogue state is misplaced when it comes to Russia, which clearly desires to win readmission to the clubhouse of world powers. Thus the bombing of Syrian rebels, for all the consternation it has caused, has been accompanied by thinly-veiled pleas for Western governments to lift the isolation imposed on Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.

 

<Photo: Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev are seen on a screen of a tablet computer during a meeting with members and activists of the United Russia political party in Moscow region, October 3, 2013. 

 


By Andrew Kornbluth for the New Atlanticist:

 

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev are seen on a screen of a tablet computer during a meeting with members and activists of the United Russia political party in Moscow region, October 3, 2013.

 

In the eighteen months since Russia annexed Crimea, the world has been alternately captivated and bewildered by the wild swings and sudden shifts that describe Russian foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin. Particularly alarming for those who fear a direct clash between Russia and the West has been Putin's tendency to swerve between antagonism and conciliation, or—even more bizarrely—to pursue both simultaneously.

 

In an attempt to put a name to this behavior, a variety of epithets, from rogue state to spoiler, have been dusted off and applied to the present Russian government. But insofar as the current state of Putin's Russia represents a new kind of autocracy, none of these labels do justice to its innovative nature. Perhaps a better indication of what drives this system can be found in the Russian government's well-documented embrace of Internet trolling, which corresponds surprisingly well to the seemingly random and contradictory fluctuations of the country's relations with the outside world.

 

In its most basic form, trolling refers to the phenomenon of Internet users who post inflammatory messages in online forums like comment sections and social media threads with the aim of antagonizing others. Although most trolling is idle provocation, the Kremlin was famously revealed in the last year to be paying large numbers of professional trolls to both write and up-vote posts praising Russia's occupation of Ukrainian territory and condemning its critics. But how can trolling be a technique of rule

 

To begin with, trolls, regardless of the anger they unleash online, are not people who want to definitively cut themselves off from the real world. Trolls seek instant gratification and attention by spreading vitriol on the Internet, but resume their normal lives offline. With this in mind, Russia's sudden intervention in the war in Syria can be understood as the latest in a long line of trolling campaigns, beginning with the suspension of foreign adoptions three years ago. These acts were intended to needle the West and cheer Russians, but without risking an actual breakdown in foreign relations (in this respect, the war in Ukraine proved to be a serious miscalculation).

 

The label of rogue state is therefore misplaced when it comes to Russia, which clearly desires to win readmission to the clubhouse of world powers. Thus the bombing of Syrian rebels, for all the consternation it has caused, has been accompanied by thinly-veiled pleas for Western governments to lift the isolation imposed on Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.

 

Trolling is also an effective substitute for constructive activity. By tormenting others, trolls create the illusion of action and assuage their own nagging feelings of powerlessness. Likewise, Putin's military adventures in Ukraine and Syria have been remarkably successful at distracting attention from the worsening decay of Russia's human and economic capital.

 

But the satisfaction derived from trolling is inherently short-lived. To sustain their short attention spans, trolls must constantly find new and varied ways to bait their opponents. Hence the dizzying pivot from promoting the so-called People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were banished from the headlines almost overnight, to heralding the creation of an anti-terrorist coalition in Syria.

 

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http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ ... l-state-not-a-rogue-state

 

Photo courtesy article source

 

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