A ‘Risky Westward Turn’? Putin's 9–11 Script and Ordinary Russians

Abstract

SINCE THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF 11 September 2001 Russia has played a key part in the efforts of the Bush administration to build an international coalition to conduct the war on terrorism. In the hours immediately after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to speak with President Bush and to personally offer his condolences.' Putin also dispatched a telegram to Washington DC conveying 'anger and indignation' against the 'series of barbaric terrorist acts directed against innocent people'.2 In a national television address later that day he described the 9-11 attacks as 'an unprecedented act of aggression on the part of international terrorism'. The attacks, he claimed, were not a localised American drama but an event that 'goes beyond national borders'. Terrorism, Putin declared, was the 'plague of the twenty first century' and 'Russia knows first hand what terrorism is. So, we understand as well as anyone the feelings of the American people'. Broadening the common identification with America into a transcendent community, he described 9-11 as 'a brazen challenge to the whole of humanity, at least to civilised humanity'. This common identity formation and divide-terrorist barbarism versus 'civilised humanity'-led Putin to declare that 'we entirely and fully share and experience your pain. We support you'.3 Putin later declared a national minute of silence in commemoration of the victims of the attacks. Less than two weeks after this first reaction Putin went on national television again and articulated what some have described as Russia defining its 'strategic choice'.4 The Russian Federation, he stated, 'has been fighting international terrorism for a long time' and 'has repeatedly urged the international community to join efforts'. The forums for those efforts were 'international agencies and institutions', most especially 'the UN and the UN Security Council'. Putin outlined a series of specific measures that Russia would adopt to aid the emergent American-led coalition against the Taliban government of Afghanistan. The Russian government would supply intelligence about 'the infrastructure and locations of international terrorists' and would 'make the Russian Federation's air space available for the through-flights of planes carrying humanitarian cargo to the area of that anti-terrorist operation'. In a noteworthy break from traditional Russian geopolitical thinking about controlling the Eurasian Heartland, he accepted the establishment of bases by America and its allies in Central Asia for operations against 'international terrorism'.5