The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder

The essence of Russia’s foreign policy is strategic relativism: Russia cannot become stronger, so it must make others weaker. The simplest way to make others weaker is to make them more like Russia. Rather than addressing its problems, Russia exports them; and one of its basic problems is the absence of a succession principle. Russia opposes European and American democracy to ensure that Russians do not see that democracy might work as a succession principle in their own country. Russians are meant to distrust other systems as much as they distrust their own. If Russia’s succession crisis can in fact be exported—if the United States could become authoritarian—then Russia’s own problems, although unresolved, would at least seem normal. Pressure on Putin would be relieved. Were America the shining beacon of democracy that its citizens sometimes imagine, its institutions would have been far less vulnerable to Russia’s cyberwar. From Moscow’s perspective, America’s constitutional structure created tempting vulnerabilities. Because of the evident flaws in American democracy and the American rule of law, it was all the easier to intervene in an American election. The rule of law requires that the government control violence, and that the population expects that government can do so. The presence of guns in American society, which can feel like strength to some Americans, appeared in Moscow as a national weakness. In 2016, Russia appealed directly to Americans to buy and use guns...