Considering the obsession Russia has with Britain as the source of all its woes, it is perhaps surprising how David Cameron’s return to politics is being taken. Or rather, how little Moscow thinks it matters.
After all, there is a flatteringly pervasive sense that while the United States is the main threat to Russia, Britain is more than just its sidekick. Instead, if Washington has the resources, London has the low cunning. Time and again, the Kremlin claims to see MI6 or the Foreign Office or some other arm of Perfidious Albion behind its reversals. Even the recent allegations that a Ukrainian officer masterminded the bombing of its Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which one would have thought was a propaganda gift, was rubbished as Kyiv simply taking the punch for its ‘Anglo-Saxon masters.’
The Russians regard this as a desperate move by a dying government
In this context, one would think that the identity of the Foreign Secretary matters, but instead it has been reported in a rather matter of fact way, if at all, in the official media. Ironically, the first and best real analysis came in the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets, which tongue-in-cheek described Cameron as ‘a “super weapon” against Putin that has already expired.’
Noting what it considered the largely pretty lamentable succession of Foreign Secretaries, from Johnson (‘famous for his extreme dislike of performing his official duties’), Raab (‘known as a rare boor’), Truss (‘ignorant’), it reserved unexpected praise for James Cleverly as ‘a polite and thoughtful man’ even as it noted that he was hardly a heavyweight.
Cameron is, the newspaper accepts, not a lightweight, and it interprets this as a sign that ‘London is returning to the list of the loudest anti-Russian voices on the international stage.’ This is an angle also evident in TV and social media commentary, that a moribund British government, desperate to conceal its impotence behind a show of importance, has turned to a smooth PR professional — one commentator called Cameron ‘a sheep who will tell you he’s in wolf’s clothing’ — simply to sell it as still being relevant. Moscow is bracing for Britain to step up its rhetorical assaults on it simply because it is an easy way to pretend to status and purpose.
To a degree, there is truth here. The sense that Cameron has been brought in as entertainments manager on a sinking Titanic is hard to shake. It also reveals an odd duality, in that ‘foggy Albion’ is still being presented as at once a has-been state and at the same time a dangerous enemy. (Of course, there is an element of the same duality in Western representations of Russia.) Perhaps most interesting is the continued conviction that British — and by extension all Western — criticism of Russia and its imperialistic policies are rooted not in a genuine feeling but cynical political calculation. So long as Moscow believes we are every bit as cynical as they are, the Russian government can still hope we will be willing to abandon Ukraine, if the price gets too high and the deal is right.
In this context, Cameron is unlikely to give the Russians pause. His close business relationships with China have already been noted and is regarded as proof that he, and a privileged British elite in general, is happy to perform virtue while practicing ruthless self-interest. His role in the war against Libya — an operation that, perhaps more than anything else, convinced Putin that the West was actively deceiving Russia and that he has to return to the presidency after the space-filler term of his crony Dmitri Medvedev — is also being cited as proof that he cannot be trusted. Most importantly, the Russians regard this as a desperate move by a dying government, and so while they continue to hold the British state in wary regard, they regard this administration as a spent force. Again, they may not be entirely wrong about that.
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